Page 78 of Threads that Remain

“And along with your grandmother’s garnets,” said Elinor. “You are well on your way to becoming the best dressed lady in the county.”

“But I have no daughter to hand it to,” said Mary.

“You have a small son, whose wife may one day want it,” said Elinor, “and you are a good deal more likely than you suppose to have a daughter as well.”

Mary went a deep and unexpected pink, and for a moment the room was so full of silent laughter that Anne was obliged to put down her sketch-book and hold on to the bedpost.

Mary put the ring on.

Sarah said, “You look exactly as you should. It quite becomes you.”

“Do you know,” said Mary, touching one stone with a single finger, “I believe I shall wear it a good deal more than once.”

“There,” said Marianne, “that is what Sophia was after.”

It grew late. The chicken was reduced to bones, and the seed-cake to crumbs, and Marianne was moved, at some hour past midnight, to tell the whole history of the fork from its origin at Barton, at a length and with a wealth of digression that the company was afterward unable to reproduce.

It was some while after that, in a lull, that Sarah said, not quite lightly, “I shall miss you dreadfully, you know.”

“I will still remain in the neighbourhood, Sarah,” said Mary. “You can come and visit anytime you would like. I dare say Georgie is more than enough to keep both a mother and an aunt busy.”

Marianne looked at Elinor over the rim of her cup, with an expression of the most affectionate smile.

Chapter XXXIX.

The wedding was on a Saturday, in the third week of February.

Mr. Philip Marsh stood at the chancel rail: a broad-shouldered, quiet man of thirty, with hands that were not perfectly steady. He had the look, which the parish afterward remarked upon, of a man who has spent a long time at a problem and has been handed the answer and has not quite dared until now to believe it would come out.

In the front row, upon the knee of a nurse, sat a very small boy in a very new blue coat, who had been told, on pain of the loss of a peppermint, that he was to be perfectly quiet, and was contemplating the situation with the deep gravity of one who has been told a great many things and believed none of them.

Sarah came up the aisle first, in a gown of pale green silk, with a posy of primroses in her hands. Her hair, which had been put up that morning by Betsy and a quantity of pins, was arranged, to the astonishment of anyone who had known it a few years before, in a smooth, shining knot, and had, by some art not yet fully understood, stayed where it was put. She stood at the chancel step and turned and did not look at the fourth row on the left, where a tall young man in a blue coat, whose attention had never for one moment been upon the bride, had given up all pretence of anything else. It was remarked afterward by the Colonel, who missed nothing, that Miss Sarah Ferrars looked fixedly at the east window throughout, with the concentration of a person who is deliberately not looking at something.

Then the organ began and Mary came in upon the Colonel’s arm.

She walked neither too fast nor too slowly, in a gown of plain white satin with a veil of old lace, and she wore her garnet and diamonds. She was not a beauty and had never been called one; but she had that prettiness that comes with youth and the smile of pure happiness and it made, as a great many people said afterward, a much better bride than beauty would.

Edward stood at the rail, in his surplice, waiting. He had married a great many people in the twenty-odd years he had had the parish, and he had never, to anyone’s recollection, been anything but perfectly steady about it; and it was noticed by his wife, in the front row, that he was holding the book with rather more care than a book requires.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God —

He read the exhortation in his low, level, unhurried voice. He came to the place where he must charge the company that if any man knew cause why these two might not lawfully be joined together, he should now declare it; and reverent silence followed.

That was the moment. Edward had rehearsed it, in his study, a good many times; and he found, quite without warning, that he could not for the moment say what came next. He opened his mouth. Nothing whatever came out. He stood there before the whole parish with his eyes filling and did not know how he was to go on.

Mary looked at him. She did not smile, nor hurry him, nor look at anybody else. She gave him, very gently, the tiniest and most private of nods: the nod of one careful person to another, which said as plainly as words, Take your time, Papa. I am not going anywhere.

He drew a long breath. It seemed to steady him; it steadied, at any rate, his voice; and he took the bridegroom’s right hand and laid Mary’s in it, and stepped back one pace, and went on.

The rest went as it ought and Edward pronounced, in a voice that was quite steady again, though he was seen to swallow, that they were man and wife together. But it was remarked by everyone present that when he closed the book, and lifted his hand, he stood, for the space of a moment, quite silent before he could give the blessing, with everyone waiting for him, without a sound, until he was ready.

By evening, after the couple had long since said their good-byes and all the guests were gone, Edward Ferrars had not entirely recovered from it.

They had at last retired for the night and Edward felt the exhaustion of the day with full force. With his wife wrapped in his arms in the quiet of their bedroom, he declared, “I shall never do it again.”

“Never do what again? Do you mean marry off a daughter?” asked Elinor.

“Never. One is quite enough.”