Page 62 of Threads that Remain

Elinor watched her go, and only when Mary’s door had closed did she allow herself a smile.

She knew her children well. She knew Mary, with her steady voice and her gentle manner, had inherited rather too much of Edward’s gift for making even the most stirring events sound like an account of the weather. She knew, too, that Ned had inherited enough of the family cleverness to recognise an opportunity when it presented itself.

The boy had not wished to stop hearing Mary’s stories.

He had merely discovered that the best time to hear them was when he was permitted to fall asleep.

Elinor shook her head, smiling to herself, and resumed her progress down the hallway.

Clever boy, she thought.

And very wise, too, to make certain that Mary never discovered it.

The Colonel, in the meantime, was spoiling them all. He had always done it.

Yet thoughts of his indulging Eliza were never far from the back of his mind. He had learned from the experience; and the results had been painful. He had come to understand that there was a difference between unchecked indulgence and showing his affection.

It was a fault for which it was impossible for the family to justify any reproach. He came home from Blandford, on a market day, with a small wooden box under his arm, and the deliberate, guilty, slightly abstracted air of a man who has been buying something he ought not. There were sugar-plums in it. There were also, at the bottom, a magic lantern, a clockwork bear that turned somersaults, a small brass telescope, and a bag, tied up with a bit of red string, containing ten marbles, each of a different colour; and it was distributed, upon the drawing-room carpet, by a person who appeared to be entirely unaware that he was doing anything remarkable, and whose eyes, when the children cried out, had a quality of most secret and unaffected delight.

“You are spoiling them,” said Marianne, from the sofa.

“I am,” the Colonel admitted sheepishly.

“It is a dreadful example. Henry does not need a magic lantern.”

“He has not asked for it.” He was upon his knees, in the middle of the carpet, in his good coat, attaching a lens to a small tin box, with the gravity of a man carrying out a delicate operation; he did not look up. “I do not know that a person can be spoiled too much by having been loved. By being left to their own devices unchecked, yes. But I have known a number who were spoiled by the want of it.”

He fitted the lens. “There. Sarah. Draw the curtains. And you will find, in the parcel on the third chair, a small book with a green cover, that has been provided for Ned, and that you are not to open until he has done so.”

They drew the curtains. In the darkness, upon the white wall, there swam up, with a small hiss, a round bright disc of golden light, and in the middle of it, faint and trembling and shot with rainbows, a picture of a ship; and there was, in the room, a long, indrawn, rapt, enchanted silence, of the kind that greets, at any age, the first appearance of a marvel.

It was Ned who broke it. “It is moving,” said he in wonder.

“It is the water,” said the Colonel, gently. “You must look at the waves.”

And they looked; and Marianne, from the sofa, in the flickering half-dark, with her chin upon her hand, watched the reflected light move upon the faces of the children, upon the small bent heads of Ned and Anne and Madeline, on the serious young profile of the Captain, on Mary’s serious, attentive brow, on Sarah’s open lips, and on Henry’s, who was sitting a little apart, on the arm of the chair, with his long legs folded, and his eyes fixed, not upon the wall, but upon the man who had made it. She said nothing. But when the ship had passed, and the candle was lit again, and the noise had broken out, she leaned over, and put her hand upon her husband’s shoulder, where he knelt.

“I was thinking, on the road,” said the Colonel, very low, “how fortunate I have been.”

“Brandon.”

“I mean it. I am not a man who says these things. But I was driving home from Blandford, in the rain, and I had been thinking about my own life; how, at five-and-thirty, I had made up my mind that the best I could hope for was a quiet study and a small dog; and I found that I was smiling, in the gig, like an idiot, at the thought of a house full of noise.” He lifted his eyes. “I have had more than my share, Marianne. I have had a great deal more than I ever had a right to. I should not like you to think that I did not know it.”

She did not answer. She bent down, in front of the entire nursery, and kissed him upon the forehead, and there was a groan of prodigious disgust from all the young persons within earshot, and a loud crow of laughter from the Captain; and the Colonel, who had turned very red, and looked as though he could have wished the floor to open, said with dignity that there was no occasion for remarks.

Mrs. Dashwood, in the meantime, had taken to drinking tea with Mrs. Smith on Thursdays.

It was upon one of these afternoons, in the month of September, that Mrs. Dashwood was found with a face so pale, and a step so unsteady, that Mrs. Smith was heard to inquire whether anyone had died.

“It is Iceland,” said Mrs. Dashwood.

“I beg your pardon?”

“They have gone to Iceland. Margaret and Simon. They wrote in June and I have only just had it. It is a great wild place; it is at the very top of the map; there is nothing in it but the Northern Lights, snow, and volcanoes, and a kind of hot spring that shoots straight up into the air, and they have gone to look at it.” She sank into a chair. “I have it here. She says — she says that they have been eleven days on a small boat, and were sick, and then after arriving, Simon slipped and got his hand into a spring. He was boiled, Mrs. Smith. He was a good deal boiled. She says that he is quite well, and only a little pink, and that the natives were extremely kind, and put a poultice on him, and that he was heard to say afterwards that it was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to him.”

Mrs. Smith gave this some thought before saying, “In my experience, a man who has been boiled once will generally be a good deal more careful. And I have observed that your daughter, whatever else she may be, is not a person who makes a fuss.”

“That is what frightens me,” said Mrs. Dashwood, with a small sob. “She never says it was dangerous. She says it was diverting.” She then announced, in a voice that was perfectly firm, that she was going to London.