Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters (25 page)

“Ay, if we can do
that
, Ma’am,” said Elinor, “we shall do very well with or without Colonel Brandon.” And then rising, she went away to join Marianne, whom she found, as she expected, in her own room, pressing her face up against the Dome-glass, and signing to a passing sucker-fish an ardent desire to switch places.

“You had better leave me,” was all the notice that her sister received from her, and even that pale utterance was difficult to comprehend, since her mouth was very much smashed against the glass.

In the drawing room, whither she then repaired, Elinor was joined again by Mrs. Jenning—and much to the surprise of both, Colonel Brandon arrived soon after. By his manner of looking round the room for Marianne, Elinor immediately fancied that he neither expected nor wished to see her there. Mrs. Jennings walked across the room to the tea-table where Elinor presided and whispered, “The colonel looks as grave as ever. See how his face-feelers stand at grim attention? He knows nothing of it. Do tell him, my dear.”

Shortly afterwards, Colonel Brandon drew a chair close to Elinor’s and inquired after her sister.

“Marianne is not well,” said she. “She has been indisposed all day, and we have persuaded her to go to bed.”

“Itching?”

“No.”

“Rashes?”

“No.”

“Joint pain?”

Elinor only shook her head. “It is not an aeroembolism that afflicts her. Ah, if only it were.”

“Perhaps, then,” he hesitatingly replied, “what I heard this morning may be—there may be more truth in it than I could believe possible.”

“What did you hear?”

“If you know it already, as surely you must, I may be spared.”

“You mean,” answered Elinor, with forced calmness, “Mr. Willoughby’s marriage with Miss Grey. Yes, we
do
know it all. Where did you hear it?”

“In the Retail Embankment, where I had business. Two ladies were waiting for their decorated tortoise shell, and one of them was giving the other an account of the intended match, in a voice so little attempting concealment, that it was impossible for me not to hear all. The name of John Willoughby, frequently repeated, first caught my attention; and what followed was a positive assertion that everything was now finally settled respecting his marriage with Miss Grey, daughter of Sterling Grey.”

“But have you likewise heard that Miss Grey has fifty thousand pounds? In that, if in any thing, we may find an explanation.”

“It may be so; the man proves a treasure hunter to the last!” He stopped a moment, gurgled softly, then added in a voice which seemed to distrust itself, “And your sister? How did she—”

“Her sufferings have been very severe. I have only to hope that they may be proportionately short. It is a most cruel affliction. Till yesterday, I believe, she never doubted his regard; and even now, perhaps—but I am almost convinced that he never was really attached to her.”

“Ah!” said Colonel Brandon, his tentacles dancing with animation below his chin. “But your sister does not—I think you said so—she does not consider quite as you do?”

“You know her disposition, and may believe how eagerly she would still justify him if she could.”

He made no answer; and soon afterwards, the subject was dropped. Mrs. Jennings expected to see the effect of Miss Dashwood’s communication as an instantaneous gaiety on Colonel Brandon’s side; instead she saw him remain the whole evening more serious and thoughtful than usual.

F
ROM A NIGHT
of more sleep than she had expected, Marianne awoke the next morning to the same consciousness of misery in which she had closed her eyes.

Elinor encouraged her to talk of what she felt; and before the breakfast-loaf was sliced on the table, they had gone through the subject again and again. Marianne expressed her wish for the very lid of Sub-Station Beta to open and all the world to be drowned—which earned the stern condemnation of Elinor, who reminded her that such a possibility was not to be taken lightly, considering the tragic fate of Sub-Station Alpha!

With a letter in her outstretched hand, and countenance gaily smiling, Mrs. Jennings entered their room, saying, “Now, my dear, I bring you something that I am sure will do you good.”

Marianne heard enough. In one moment her imagination placed before her a letter from Willoughby, full of tenderness and contrition, explanatory of all that had passed; and instantly followed by Willoughby
himself, rushing eagerly into the room costumed in his dashing diving suit and flipper feet, streaming with sea-water as he had been on the day they met. The work of one moment was destroyed by the next. The hand writing of her mother, never till then unwelcome, was before her.

The letter, when she was calm enough to read it, brought little comfort. Its opening sections, written with an unusually shaky hand, related their mother’s fresh concerns regarding Margaret.

Since your departure for the Station, your sister’s peculiar behaviour has not, I fear, been remedied—to the contrary, I grow increasingly worried about her. The girl is dreadfully quiet at mealtimes, all the youthful exuberance with which she once attacked a plate of crawfish all but sapped from her. Many a night of late have I been awakened from a restless, worried sleep by the slam of the door, followed by the rapid clatter of Margaret’s footfalls down the front steps, as she heads off to … Heaven only knows where. At breakfast next morning, she denies ever having left the house, but never eats nor converses, only mutters strangely to herself, her head half-bowed, as if offering prayers to some unknown deity. There are unwholesome changes in her physical being, as well: her once-rosy cheeks have grown pale, her hair limpid and ashen; and her teeth, dear daughters, her teeth are filed to sharp points, like those of an animal.

Here Elinor and Marianne, reading the letter together, exchanged a troubled glance, and then continued:

What she sees and does out in the reaches of this Island under the baleful light of the moon, I dare not imagine; but my fervent hope is that all of this wandering, and the bizarre habits with which she returns, represent nothing but youth in its vagaries,
and by the time we are reunited, she will be once again the old, joyful Margaret you have loved.

As Elinor tried to make sense of such an unwelcome transfigurement, a second scrap of paper tumbled forth from the envelope, this piece not of the customary eel-grass parchment on which Mrs. Dashwood’s missive was composed, but a tissue-thin sheath that Elinor instantly recognized as torn from the Dashwood family Bible. It was, Elinor found as she bent to examine the scrap, a page from the book Isaiah, with one passage—circled in what she knew at once, with dread certainty, was Margaret’s blood:

In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish LEVIATHAN the piercing serpent, even LEVIATHAN that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.

Elinor swiftly folded the page in half and tucked it away in her bodice. The rest of Mrs. Dashwood’s letter brought still less comfort; Willoughby filled every page. Marianne’s impatience to be at home again now returned; her mother was dearer to her than ever; dearer through the very excess of her mistaken confidence in Willoughby, and she was wildly urgent to Ascend from Sub-Marine Station Beta. Elinor, unable herself to determine whether it were better for Marianne to be in-Station or on Pestilent Isle, offered no counsel of her own except of patience till their mother’s wishes could be known.

Mrs. Jennings left them earlier than usual; for she could not be easy till the Middletons and Palmers were able to grieve as much as herself. Elinor, with a very heavy heart, aware of the pain she was going to communicate, sat down to write her mother an account of what had passed, and to inquire further as to Margaret’s unsettled condition; Marianne remained fixed at the table where Elinor wrote, watching the advancement of her pen, grieving over her for the hardship of such a task, and grieving still more fondly over its effect on her mother.

In this manner they had continued about a quarter of an hour, when Marianne, whose nerves could not then bear any sudden noise, was startled by a rap at the door.

“Who can this be?” cried Elinor. “So early too! I thought we
had
been safe.”

Marianne moved to the window.

“It is Colonel Brandon! Blech!” said she, with vexation. “We are never safe from
him
.”

“He will not come in, as Mrs. Jennings is from home.”

“I will not trust to
that
,” Marianne said, retreating to her own room. “A fish-man who has nothing to do with his own time has no conscience in his intrusion on that of others.”

The event proved her conjecture right, for Colonel Brandon
did
come in; and Elinor, who was convinced that solicitude for Marianne brought him thither, and who saw
that
solicitude in the woeful and melancholy hang of his tentacles, could not forgive her sister for esteeming him so lightly.

“I met Mrs. Jennings in Bond Causeway,” said he, after the first salutation, “and she encouraged me to come on; and I thought it probable that I might find you alone. My object—my wish—glurb—hurble—is to be a means of giving comfort and gurble—” He stopped, and with a genteel motion of his handkerchief dabbed away a greenish mixture of spittle and mucus that had accumulated on his chin.

“I think I understand you,” said Elinor. “You have something to tell me of Mr. Willoughby that will open his character further. Your telling it will be the greatest act of friendship that can be shown Marianne. My gratitude will be insured immediately by any information tending to that end. Pray, pray let me hear it.”

“You will find me a very awkward narrator, Miss Dashwood; I hardly know where to begin. A short account of myself, I believe, will be necessary, and it shall be a short one. On such a subject,” he said, sighing wetly, “I have little temptation to be diffuse.”

He stopped a moment for recollection, and then, with another wet sigh, continued:

“You have probably forgotten a conversation between us one evening at Deadwind Island—it was the evening of a beach-side bonfire—a girl was consumed by a jellyfish—in which I alluded to a lady I had once known, as resembling your sister Marianne.”

“Indeed,” answered Elinor, “I have
not
forgotten it.” He looked pleased by this remembrance; she smiled at him, and then lurched and looked away immediately. He added:

“There is a very strong resemblance between them. The same warmth of heart, the same eagerness of fancy and spirits. This lady Eliza was one of my nearest relations, an orphan from her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father. Our ages were nearly the same, and from our earliest years we were playfellows, friends, and constant companions. She was, as you might have guessed, as blind as a cave bat. I cannot remember the time when I did not love Eliza, but at seventeen she was lost to me forever. She was married against her inclination to my brother, who is like me in many respects but suffers not from that prominent misfortune which has marked my fate as much as my face. Her fortune was large, and our family estate much encumbered.

My brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her. The blow was severe—but had her marriage been happy, a few months might have reconciled me to it. But my brother had no regard for her; he played tricks on her blindness, such as telling her she was wearing a red spencer jacket when really it was lemon-coloured. The consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced, was but too natural. Eliza, now Mrs. Brandon, resigned herself to all the misery of her situation. I meant to promote the happiness of both by removing from her for years, and so requested posting with a unit of the British marines, assaulting serpent grottos in the West Indies. The shock which her marriage had given me,” he continued, his voice gurgling and warbling along with his agitation, “was nothing compared
to what I felt when I heard, about two years afterwards, of her divorce.”

He could say no more, and rising hastily walked for a few minutes about the room. He stared mournfully out the observation glass as a black barbed dragonfish came upon a bigfin squid unawares, and devoured it in four ghastly bites. Elinor, affected by Brandon’s distress, could not speak. He saw her concern, and coming to her, took her hand, pressed it, and kissed it with grateful respect; she waited till he looked away and wiped her hand on the hem of her dress. A few minutes more of snuffling, gurglingly heavy breathing and he was able to proceed with composure.

“My first care, when I returned to England after three years, was of course to seek her, but the search was fruitless. I presumed a blind woman of middle-age, in mismatched clothing, travelling alone, would be easy to track, but I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, and I learnt from my brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he imagine it, that her extravagance, and consequent distress, had obliged her to dispose of it for some immediate relief. He laughed cruelly to imagine her blindly wandering the beaches. At last, however, after I had been six months in England, I
did
find her. Regard for a former servant of my own, who had since fallen into misfortune, carried me to visit him in a sponging-house, where he was confined for debt—forced by his creditors to make sponges until he had worked off his obligations; and there, under a similar confinement, was my unfortunate sister-in-law. What I endured in so beholding her—’twas the worst I have ever suffered, far worse even than the daily portion of suffering that is mine when I regard myself in the mirror. That she was in the last stage of a consumption was my greatest comfort. Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death. I saw her placed in comfortable lodgings, and under proper attendants; I visited her every day during the rest of her short life; I was with her in her last moments. She reached out
before all strength left her hands, and stroked my face, and I can only pray that its writhing, spaghetti-like texture was not disgusting to her, at such a moment, but comforting in its familiarity.”