Page 67 of Threads that Remain

For both Elinor and Marianne, it was a small domestic surprise.

“It is only a dress,” Elinor said quietly to her sister, trying not to get her hopes up.

“It is only a dress,” Marianne agreed, threading a needle, “the way a particular afternoon is only an afternoon. I find that the ones that turn out to matter rarely announce themselves beforehand.”

The dress was a month in the making, between the sewing-woman from the village and Elinor’s own hand at the finer work, and Sarah hung about the sewing-room a good deal more than strictly necessary for someone who professed not to care, watching the thing take shape with an attention she would have been embarrassed to call eagerness. And when it was finished, and she put it on for the first time, with Elinor standing by to fasten the hooks at the back, she did not say anything at all, for a moment.

She stood in front of the looking glass and looked at herself with an expression Elinor had never before seen on her daughter’s face: not vanity, quite, and not surprise exactly either, but something nearer to recognition, as though she had opened a door expecting one room and found, unaccountably, another one behind it, better lit.

The blue did something for her colouring that no one, least of all Sarah herself, had troubled to notice before — brought out something in her eyes that was generally lost under the plain round gowns she had worn without complaint since she was in short frocks, and the cut of it, close through the bodice and falling clean from a high waist, did for her figure what three years of growing had done without anyone’s particular observation: it made it apparent, all at once, that the girl who had been all arms and legs and scraped knees was not a girl any longer, not quite, whatever the register continued to say about her age.

“Oh,” said Sarah, faintly, to her own reflection.

“Well,” said Mary, coming into the room from behind her, with her usual precision, “I did wonder when you would notice.”

“Notice what?”

“That you have turned out rather well. I have been expecting it for some time.” Mary came round to inspect the fastening with a critical eye. “It is a very good blue on you, and the style becomes you. I should not have chosen it myself, but then I should not have had the figure to carry it.”

Sarah turned, this way and that, in front of the glass, with an unaccustomed and rather endearing shyness, smoothing the skirt with both hands as though to confirm it was real and would not vanish if she stopped looking at it directly.

“I like it,” she admitted at last, as though the words cost her something. “I have never minded what I had on before. But I like this one. I keep wanting to look at myself, which I am sure is a very vain thing to want, and I find I don’t mind that either, just at present.”

“You look very well, Sarah,” Elinor said sincerely. “You have looked well for above a year now, if the truth be told, and simply declined to notice it, which I own I thought rather restful of you, in a world so full of girls who notice nothing else. But I am glad you have found it out at last. It is no bad thing to know what one has, provided one does not spend all one’s time admiring it in the glass instead of doing something useful in the meantime.”

“I shall try to manage both,” said Sarah, with the ghost of her old climbing-tree grin breaking through the new shy pleasure.

On a cool day in late autumn, Elinor and Marianne sat with their needlework and cups of tea in the small parlour of the parsonage, listening to the three girls talking of where they might wear their new dresses, going to balls, and perhaps being courted by young men.

“We were once young ourselves,” Marianne remarked to her sister.

Anne’s head turned towards her mother. “Mamma, I have never heard you speak about your coming out balls.”

“That is because my father died before I was old enough to have a season in London and afterwards, we were in no position to attend balls,” Marianne answered.

“What about you, Mamma?” asked Mary.

“Our father was already terribly ill when I came of age, and so I put off my coming out, expecting to have my season once he improved. Of course, we had no idea that he never would, and we had moved to the cottage at Barton when I was but nineteen.”

“That is very sad,” said Anne. “I suppose you have no advice to offer us then for when we come out. Mary says she does not want a season, but Sarah and I do.”

“Well,” stammered Sarah, “I think I may like to attend at least a few balls and dance for hours on end. We have been practicing and we are getting quite good at the Quadrille and the Waltz.”

“I do prefer the country dances,” Mary added. “We have mastered them already. But Anne is correct; I am in no rush to be married anytime soon.”

Marianne took up the thread with her usual directness. “Just because we did not enjoy a London season does not mean we have no meaningful advice to give. One thing I wish I had known at your ages is that a young lady does not show the whole of her heart before she is asked for it. I do not mean she ought to be cold, or false, or pretend an indifference she does not feel — I spent a good part of my own youth despising exactly that kind of pretence, and I have not entirely changed my opinion of it. But there is a difference between honesty and haste. A thing declared all at once leaves no room for anything but a yes or a no, and a no, given that way, is very hard for either party to recover from.”

“You mean,” said Mary, with her usual precision, “that one does not declare an attachment before it is returned.”

“I mean that feeling shown too soon, and too plainly,” said Marianne, “does not always have the effect one hopes for. Give him time to notice you. Give yourself time, too, to be certain of his character. Both of those things want patience, and patience was never my own best quality, as my sister will tell you.”

“It was not,” Elinor agreed, mildly, “but you arrived at it in the end, which is more than many manage.”

“What if,” said Sarah, who had been sitting very still through all of this, with attention, “if you are already quite sure? Not excited — sure. What if you have known it a long while, and waited already, and he has still not declared himself?”

There was the smallest pause. Elinor and Marianne exchanged a glance of the kind that passes very quickly between two people who have raised children together and have learned to say a great deal to one another without a single word.

“Then you wait regardless,” said Elinor, gently, but without softening the answer itself. “Time is your friend; it allows you to truly get to know the other person and it has a way of proving out the sure ones as often as it corrects the mistaken ones.”