Page 123 of Threads that Remain

Chapter LIII.

There is not, in all the world, a spectacle more affecting than that of a large and happy family gathered together for the wedding of not one but three cherished members of that same family.

There was no sleeping in that house, and nobody pretended otherwise. By ten o’clock the gentlemen had been sent off to their own devices — Edward to his book, which he did not read a word of, and the Colonel to a chair by the window, from which he could be observed, at intervals, simply looking at nothing — and the women of the family had gathered instead in Anne’s room, where the two brides were to sleep for the last time as girls of their own households, and where a fire had been lit against the August evening chill that always seemed to find its way into old houses after dark.

It was a smaller, quieter gathering than the sort that had seen off Margaret, or Mary before them. There were no late confessions, no old antics turned over and laughed at until the small hours; only Marianne and Elinor, and Mrs. Dashwood with her shawl and her handkerchief already in evidence, and Margaret, down from Portman Square for the night with a basket she would not yet explain, and the three girls themselves, Mary included, sitting about the room in their dressing-gowns with their hair down and their hands, for once, with nothing to do.

It was Sophia who had sent ahead, that afternoon, two flat velvet cases, with a note in her small, decided hand that said only that she hoped they would do, and that she had thought a great deal about it, and that she was not, on the whole, sorry to have daughters by marriage rather than by nature, since it meant she had got to choose. In the first case lay a necklace of seed pearls, simply strung, the sort of thing a woman might wear for the whole of a long and comfortable life without ever once thinking she had outgrown it; and this was laid, by Marianne’s own hand, about Anne’s neck, with a kiss, and the words, “She says it is for a life of being exactly as good as you already are, and I think that is the kindest thing I have ever known her to say.”

In the second case was a set to match it in spirit if not in temper: a sapphire necklace and a pair of drop earrings, blue as a clear evening, that caught the firelight and held it; and these went to Sarah, who turned them over in her hands for a long moment before she could speak, and said at last, rather unsteadily, that she had always thought Sophia did not entirely approve of her, and that she now saw she had been quite wrong, and would have to find some other person to be wary of.

“She approves of anybody who makes her boys happy,” said Elinor. “It is the whole of her creed. She has never pretended to another.”

There were other gifts, given more quietly, and received with less ceremony, as such things are among people who have loved each other the whole of their lives. Marianne and Elinor had each brought a small volume of poetry for her own daughter, bound in soft leather and no bigger than a hand, chosen, each said, for no better reason than that she had read it once and thought of the girl it was given to; and because neither mother could be persuaded to leave the other’s daughter out, Mary found a third such book waiting for her as well, from her aunt Marianne, with an inscription that made her laugh and then, a moment later, press the book very hard against her chest.

Mrs. Dashwood gave each of her granddaughters — Mary, and Anne, and Sarah together — a set of hair combs, carved and gilt-edged and far finer than anything she had ever worn herself, and said, with her eyes already overflowing, that a woman ought to have one beautiful thing from her grandmother that had nothing whatever to do with being useful.

And Margaret, last of all, opened her basket, and lifted out three folded cloaks of wool, soft and warm and patterned each a little differently, in deep indigo, which she had carried the whole way from Thebes against exactly this evening, not knowing, when she bought them, who she might one day give them to, only that there would be three, in time, who needed warming.

“For the two of you going on your journeys,” said Margaret, “and for you, Mary, because I will not have it said that I left out the one who stayed closest to home. They were each woven by the local weavers in a small Egyptian village.”

It was very late before the candles were put out. There was a great deal of embracing, and a little weeping that nobody minded, and Anne fell asleep at last with the pearls still, by some oversight, about her neck; and it was Elinor, going round at midnight to see that the fire was safe, who stood for a moment in the doorway looking at the room full of sleeping and half-sleeping women she loved, with its borrowed shawls and its open velvet cases and its three new cloaks folded at the foot of three beds, and thought that whatever the morning brought, this, at least, had already been exactly right.

Anne stood in the middle of the upstairs great blue second drawing-room, and Marianne and Margaret put her into the gown of soft ivory muslin that Marianne had chosen, trimmed with a delicate border of old lace around a small round neck and sleeves, into the veil, that had been Mrs. Dashwood’s, with Sophia’s seed pearl necklace at her throat.

Elinor and Mary put Sarah into a gown of pale forget-me-not blue silk, its fine sarsenet fabric catching the morning light with subtle lustre. Wearing Sophia’s sapphires, she had on her head a fashionable matching satin cottage bonnet, its underside lined with white pleated tulle to softly frame her face.

Just as both brides were finished with the last adornment, there was a knock at the door. It was Mrs. Dashwood carrying a very small package, done up in brown paper and tied with a bit of string. On entering, she said, in a high excited whisper:

“It is from …” She stopped.

Anne and Sarah stood side by side and turned. There was a collective gasp, followed by absolute silence.

The two brides presented a breathtaking study in contrasts, each achieving absolute perfection through entirely opposite expressions of style. Their individual beauty did not compete; instead, the striking difference between them seemed to heighten the unique radiance of each woman.

Mrs. Dashwood, already weeping, reached out with a trembling hand as if to touch their gowns but stopped short for fear of leaving a mark.

Marianne, her voice an emotional whisper, said in tears and awe, “I have always wondered how you would both look today, but my imagination was not big enough for this. You are both completely yourselves and you are both utterly breathtaking.”

“You are absolute perfection,” said Elinor, pressing a handkerchief to her eyes.

“Look at the two of you!” Margaret gushed, looking first at Sarah then at Anne. “You look like a royal queen, and you look like a dream walking on air!”

It was some minutes with handkerchiefs pulled out of a nearby drawer and passed around, before Margaret remembered her mother had seemed to come for a reason.

“Mamma, what are you holding there?”

“Oh, yes, yes! Sarah, Henry sent me to give this to you.”

Sarah took the parcel. She undid the string, with fingers that were not quite steady; and there fell into the palm of her hand a small round grey-and-white pebble, banded, and worn smooth, and warm from her grandmother’s hand. And upon the little scrap of paper that came with it, in a large round hand with a great many capitals, she read aloud what was written:

“Something Borrowed. The same as before. It has been to Ohio, and Peru, and the top of Vesuvius, and it has never once been lost. I have a great deal more faith in it than in myself. You are to return it after. — H.”

She began to laugh, as did the other women. They could not help it; theirs were laughs with a few tears in them, of the kind that comes, in the very last minute, from hearts that are overfull.

Sarah put the pebble into the little white satin bag at her wrist, which had been sewn for the purpose, and turned round to her family, with her wet, radiant, transfigured face, and said: “I am ready.”

Anne reached over and clasped her hand. “And I am ready.”