Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters (30 page)

M
RS. PALMER WAS SO WELL
at the end of a fortnight that her mother felt it no longer necessary to give up the whole of her time to her. Content with visiting her once or twice a day, she returned to her own docking station, in which she found the Miss Dashwoods very ready to resume their former share.

About the third or fourth morning after their being thus resettled, Mrs. Jennings, on returning from her ordinary visit to Mrs. Palmer, entered the drawing-room, where Elinor was sitting by herself, tearing into a package of thrice-exsiccated crumpets.

“My dear Miss Dashwood! Have you heard the news?”

“No, ma’am. What is it?”

“Something so strange!”

“Has another infant been sucked up into a filtration duct?”

“No, thank heavens! When I got to Mr. Palmer’s, I found Charlotte quite in a fuss about the child. She was sure it was very ill—it cried, and fretted, and was all over pimples. So I looked at it directly, and, ‘Lord! my dear,’ says I, ‘it is nothing in the world, but a tapeworm bedeviling the poor child’s small intestine—fetch me a tweezers and a box of wooden matches!’ and nurse said just the same. But Charlotte, she would not be satisfied, so Mr. Donavan was sent for; and as soon as ever he saw the child, he said just as we did, that it was nothing in the world but a tape-worm, and he forced the child’s jaw open, lowered a fishing line in there, and got the bugger out; I burnt it thoroughly in the ash-heap, and then Charlotte was easy. And so, just as he was going away again, it came into my head, I am sure I do not know how I happened to think of it, but it
came into my head to ask him if there was any news. So upon that, he smirked, and simpered, and looked grave, and says I, “Did another infant get sucked up into a filtration duct?” and he says, “no,” and then—at last— he said in a whisper, ‘For fear any unpleasant report should reach the young ladies under your care, I must say I believe there is no great reason for alarm. I hope Mrs. Dashwood will do very well.’”

“What!” cried Elinor. “Is Fanny ill?”

“That is exactly what I said, my dear. ‘Lord!’ says I, ‘is Mrs. Dashwood ill? Did
she
get sucked up into the filtration duct?’ And the doctor replied no, and begged me to stop asking that, and from frustration with my single-mindedness on it, I believe, revealed the whole story. The long and the short of the matter seems to be this: Mr. Edward Ferrars, the very young man I used to joke with you about, has been engaged above this twelvemonth to Lucy Steele!”

Upon the utterance of that name, and this public revelation of the news she had privately held for so long, Elinor found herself at once in a kind of debilitated, feverish state, combined with a headache of unutterable agony; she doubled over, her head clutched between her legs. As she exhaled deep, heaving breaths, the five-pointed star danced malevolently in the dark space between her eyes.

Mrs. Jennings, from an excess of either politeness or self-regard, gave no notice to this extraordinary reaction.

“There’s for you, my dear!” she continued, heedless. “And not a creature knowing a syllable of the matter, except Anne! Could you have believed such a thing possible? That matters should be brought so forward between them, and nobody suspect it! I never happened to see them together, or I am sure I should have found it out directly. Well, and so this was kept a great secret, for fear of Mrs. Ferrars, and neither she nor your brother or sister suspected a word of the matter; till this very morning, poor Lucy, her sister Anne, you know, is a well-meaning creature, but a few sails short of a schooner, popped it all out. And so, away she went to your sister, who was sitting all alone at her carpet-work, little suspecting what
was to come—you may think what a blow it was to all her vanity and pride. She fell into violent hysterics immediately, with such screams as reached your brother’s ears, as he was sitting in his own dressing-room downstairs, writing a letter. The screams were of displeasure, amplified tenfold by surprise, and tenfold again, at least as far as your brother was concerned, by his having been implanted last Thursday with the hyper-sensitive eardrums of a pinecone soldierfish.

“So up he flew directly, hands covering his poor ears to muffle the
shriek-shriek-shriek
, and a terrible scene took place, for Lucy was come to them by that time, little dreaming what was going on. Poor soul! I pity
her
. And I must say, I think she was used very hardly; for your sister scolded like any fury, and soon drove her into a fainting fit. Anne, she fell upon her knees, and cried bitterly; and your brother, he walked about the room, disoriented, ears still ringing, blundering into the walls, and said he did not know what to do. Mrs. Dashwood declared they should not stay a minute longer in the house, and your brother was forced to go down upon
his
knees too, to persuade her to let them stay till they had packed up their clothes.”

“My goodness,” interposed Elinor.

“The gondola was moored dockside, ready to take the poor Miss Steeles away, and they were just stepping in as Mr. Donavan came off; poor Lucy in such a condition, he says, she could hardly walk; and Anne, she was almost as bad. Lord! What a taking poor Mr. Edward will be in when he hears of it! To have his love used so scornfully! The whole affair is simply …” Mrs. Jennings then lapsed into her native tongue, indecipherable to Elinor, who tried to collect her thoughts.

But a slight rapping at the glass of the Station Dome distracted her from her course of reflection. Glancing up, she saw that the source of the sound was a small swordfish, tapping on the glass. Even as she was buffeted by the waves of inner turmoil caused by Edward’s undoing, the appearance of the small fish, with its slight, small, but determined tapping, sent a queer chill down Elinor’s spine. The chill intensified when she observed that this swordfish had a gleaming patch of silver iridescence under its
horn; it was not, therefore, the same swordfish that had rapped ’pon the glass previously. It was a
different
fish.

As Mrs. Jennings could talk on no subject but Edward’s engagement, Elinor soon saw the necessity of preparing Marianne for its discussion. No time was to be lost in undeceiving her, in making her acquainted with the real truth, and in endeavouring to bring her to hear it talked of by others, without betraying that she felt any uneasiness for her sister, or any resentment against Edward.

Elinor’s office was a painful one. She was going to remove what she really believed to be her sister’s chief consolation, to give such particulars of Edward as she feared would ruin him forever in her good opinion, and to make Marianne, by a seeming resemblance in their situations, which to
her
fancy would seem strong, feel all her own disappointment over again. But unwelcome as such a task must be, like the scraping of barnacles off a long-neglected hull, it was necessary to be done.

She was very far from wishing to dwell on her own feelings; she told the tale of Edward’s engagement to Lucy in a manner calm and clear, endeavouring to ignore both her own feelings on the matter and the persistent tap-a-tap of the swordfish on the glass. Her narration was not accompanied by violent agitation, nor impetuous grief.
That
belonged rather to the hearer, for Marianne listened with horror, and cried excessively.

“How long has this been known to you, Elinor? Has he written to you?”

“I have known it these four months. When Lucy first came to Pestilent Isle last November, on the day we were nearly drowned and mauled by the hideous two-headed Fang-Beast, she told me in confidence of her engagement.”

At these words, Marianne’s eyes expressed the astonishment which her lips could not utter. After a pause of wonder, she exclaimed—

“Four months! Have you known of this four months? Since the Fang-Beast?”

Elinor confirmed it.

“What! While attending me in all my misery, this has been on your heart? And I have reproached you for being happy!”

“It was not fit that you should then know how much I was the reverse!”

“Four months!” cried Marianne again. “So calm! So cheerful! How have you been supported?”

“By feeling that I was doing my duty. My promise to Lucy obliged me to be secret. I owed it to her, therefore, to avoid giving any hint of the truth.”

Marianne seemed much struck. Behind her, on the glass, a second swordfish joined the first, and the two tapped together, labouring diligently, their glassy eyes staring straight ahead. Had Elinor not been distracted by the emotional intensity of the subject matter at hand, she might have reflected that the presence of the two swordfish, side by side, confirmed a certain sense of grim and unholy purpose about their labours.

“I have very often wished to undeceive yourself and my mother,” said Elinor; “and once or twice I have attempted it; but without betraying my trust, I never could have convinced you.”

“Four months! And yet you loved him!”

“Yes. But I did not love only him; and while the comfort of others was dear to me, I was glad to spare them from knowing how much I felt. I would not have you suffer on my account.”

“Oh, Elinor!” she cried. “You have made me hate myself for ever. My behaviour has been more barbarous to you, my own sister, than the most rapacious of pirates—worse than Dreadbeard himself! You, who have been my only comfort, who have borne with me in all my misery, who have seemed to be only suffering for me!”

The tenderest caresses followed this confession. In such a frame of mind as she was now in, Elinor had no difficulty in obtaining from her whatever promise she required; and at her request, Marianne engaged never to speak of the affair to anyone with the least appearance of bitterness; to meet Lucy without betraying the smallest increase of dislike to her;
and even to see Edward himself without any diminution of her usual cordiality. As the sisters consoled one another, a spider web of tiny cracks appeared in the glass. The two swordfish swam away, making little playful patterns as they disappeared into the dark of the deep ocean.

Marianne performed her promise of being discreet to admiration. She attended to all that Mrs. Jennings had to say upon the subject with an unchanging complexion. When Mrs. Jennings talked of Edward’s affection, it cost her only a spasm in her throat, easily attributed to the effort of swallowing so much desiccated food paste. Such advances towards heroism in her sister, made Elinor feel equal to anything herself.

The next morning brought a further trial of it, in a visit from their brother, who came with a most serious aspect to talk over the dreadful affair, and bring them news of his wife.

“You have heard, I suppose,” said he with great solemnity, in a wheelchair because his feet were recovering from the surgery necessary to make his toes webbed, to increase (or so hoped his physicians) his speed and agility in the water. “Of the very shocking discovery that took place under our roof yesterday.

They all looked their assent; it seemed too awful a moment for speech.

“Your sister,” he continued, “has suffered dreadfully. Mrs. Ferrars too—in short it has been a scene of such complicated distress—but I will hope that the storm may be weathered without our being any of us quite overcome.” Here he paused and let out a most inhuman shrieking noise; besides the toe webbing, John Dashwood had submitted (for four pounds sterling) to have implanted in his throat a complex biological mechanism for echolocation, such as that used by toothed whales and other
odontoceti
to navigate unseeing through the ocean’s depths. Thus far Mr. Dashwood did not have the system under his control, and so periodically he gave off a chilling shriek, which his sisters attempted to politely ignore.

“Poor Fanny! She was in hysterics all yesterday. But I would not alarm you too much. The doctor says there is nothing materially to be apprehended;
her constitution is a good one, and her resolution equal to anything.” John paused, and let out another of the strange loud shrieks. “She has borne it all, with the fortitude of an angel! She says she never shall think well of anybody again; and one cannot wonder at it, after being so deceived! It was quite out of the benevolence of her heart, that she had asked these young women to her docking station; merely because she thought they deserved some attention. Otherwise we both wished very much to have invited you and Marianne to be with us! And now to be so rewarded! ‘I wish, with all my heart,’ says poor Fanny in her affectionate way, ‘that we had asked your sisters instead of them.’”

Here he stopped and darted his head violently around the room, as his bat-like hearing informed him of some minute motion past his field of vision.

“What poor Mrs. Ferrars suffered, when first Fanny broke it to her, is not to be described. While she with the truest affection had been planning a most eligible connection for Edward, was it to be supposed that he could be all the time secretly engaged to another person! Such a suspicion could never have entered her head! If she suspected
any
prepossession elsewhere, it could not be in
that
quarter. ‘
There
, to be sure,’ said she, ‘I might have thought myself safe.’ She was quite in an awful humour. A servant coughed, interrupting her loud denunciation of Ms. Steele, and she had the unfortunate man shot out of her docking with the water cannon, and shouted ‘huzzah’ when he landed in the canal. At last she determined to send for Edward. He came. But I am sorry to relate what ensued. All that Mrs. Ferrars could say to make him put an end to the engagement was of no avail. She filled up a tank with sea-water and forced him to stand in it, and then added vicious biting snapfish, one by one. ‘Foreswear your engagement!’ she cried, adding the second of the snap-fish even as the first nipped eagerly at Edward’s toes, but he remained solid. Duty, affection, everything was disregarded. ‘Foreswear it!’ and added a third snapfish. ‘But no; I never thought Edward so stubborn, so unfeeling before. And indeed, the soles of his feet must be fashioned of pure lead.’

“His mother explained to him her liberal designs, in case of his marrying Miss Morton; told him she would settle on him the Norfolk estate, which, clear of land-tax, brings in a good thousand a-year; she threw in another dozen vicious biting snapfish, which went to work on his feet most mercilessly; she offered even, when still he refused, to make it twelve hundred. She vowed to never see him again; she swore to do all in her power to prevent him from advancing in any profession. At last he was allowed to emerge from the tank, his feet bleeding and gouged.”