Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters (11 page)

But Elinor did not hear—she was at that moment frozen at the top of the stairs, gasping in horror, as Margaret in her delirium lost her footing and pitched head over heels into the bay. In the next moment,
Willoughby shot out the door and plunged into the murky depths. And just in time, for a school of bluefish had instantly surrounded the hysterical Margaret, like pigeons upon a scrap of bread, sinking their knife-edged teeth into her torso and legs, roiling the water with their forked tails in their enthusiasm for this sudden gift of human flesh.

“Don’t thrash,” Willoughby warned Margaret sternly—and then drew a six-inch cutlass from a pocket of his wet-suit, took a deep breath, and disappeared beneath the surface. As the others watched in stunned silence, bluefish corpses bobbed to the surface one by one in a grim ring around Margaret’s head, each one bearing but a single pierce wound, as Willoughby did his quick and deadly work below the surface. And then, in a matter of moments, the man himself resurfaced, a single fish impaled and wriggling on the end of his blade like a prisoner of war. As the elder Dashwoods cheered, he bit off the bluefish’s head—before slinging Margaret over his shoulder and swimming her gracefully to shore.

Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood were appropriately appreciative, Marianne all the more so, given her habitual fascination with the Alteration-spawn, coupled with her excitement at seeing Willoughby again spring to the rescue. That evening, Willoughby’s heart seemed more than usually open to every feeling of attachment to the objects around him. On Mrs. Dashwood’s happening to mention her design of improving the shanty’s monster-proofing in the spring, he warmly opposed every alteration of a place which affection had established as perfect with him.

“What!” he exclaimed, his eyes widening shock beneath his jaunty otter-skin cap. “Improve this dear old cottage! No.
That
I will never consent to. Not a plank must be added to its walls, not a single nine-gun to its charming rampart, not another layer of lead lining to its reservoir, if my feelings are regarded.”

“Do not be alarmed,” said Miss Dashwood, “nothing of the kind will be done, for my mother will never have money enough to attempt it.”

“To me this place is faultless,” he went on. “I consider it as the only form of building in which happiness is attainable, and were I rich enough
I would instantly pull down my own ancestral home at Combe Magna, in Somersetshire, and build it up again in the exact plan of this charming shanty.”

“With dark narrow stairs and a kitchen that smokes, I suppose,” said Elinor.

“Yes,” cried he in the same eager tone. “With all and every thing belonging to it. Then, and then only, under such a roof, I might perhaps be as happy back home at Combe as I have been at Barton Cottage. This place will always have one claim of my affection, which no other can possibly share.”

Mrs. Dashwood looked with pleasure at Marianne, whose fine eyes were fixed so expressively on Willoughby, as plainly denoted how well she understood him. Monsieur Pierre also looked with pleasure on the happy couple, and Elinor thought it possible he winked at her.

“Shall we see you to-morrow to dinner?” said Mrs. Dashwood, when he was leaving them. “It’s prawns dipped in butter buckets.” He engaged to be with them by four o’clock, and to bring his own bib. Margaret heard nothing of this entire exchange; wrapped in blankets, bandaged at her wounds, she was back at the window, staring grimly into the distance as another thick fog rolled in.

M
RS. DASHWOOD WAS ROWED
over to Deadwind Island to visit Lady Middleton the next day, and two of her daughters went with her; Margaret, still recovering from her recent traumas, barely spoke on the short journey; Marianne, meanwhile, excused herself from being of the party, under some trifling pretext of employment. Her mother concluded that a promise had been made by Willoughby the night before, of calling on her while they were absent.

On their return they found Willoughby’s yacht, with its distinctive shovel-formed
W
at the hull, tied up at the dockside, and Mrs. Dashwood was convinced that her conjecture had been just. But on entering the house she beheld what no foresight had taught her to expect. They were no sooner in the passage than Marianne came hastily out of the parlour apparently in violent affliction, with her handkerchief at her eyes; and without noticing them ran upstairs. Surprised and alarmed they proceeded directly into the room she had just quitted, where they found only Willoughby, in his full diving costume and helmet, leaning against the mantelpiece with his back towards them. He turned round on their coming in, and when he flipped open the portcullis they saw in his countenance the same emotion which overpowered Marianne.

“Is anything the matter?” cried Mrs. Dashwood as she entered. “Is it the octopus?”

“I’ll get the fireplace poker!” cried Elinor.

“I hope not,” he replied, trying to look cheerful; Elinor, with a small twinge of disappointment, lowered the poker. With a forced smile, Willoughby explained: “It is I who may rather expect to be ill—for I am now suffering under a heavy disappointment!”

“Disappointment?”

“Yes, for I am unable to keep my engagement with you. Mrs. Smith has this morning exercised the privilege of riches upon a poor dependent cousin, by sending me on business to the Sub-Marine Station. I have just received my dispatches, and taken my farewell of Allenham; and I am now come to take my farewell of you.”

“To the Station! And are you going this morning?”

“Almost this moment. And I have no idea of returning to the Devonshire coast immediately. My visits to Mrs. Smith are never repeated within the twelvemonth.”

“And is Mrs. Smith your only friend? Is Allenham the only isle in the archipelago to which you will be welcome? For shame, Willoughby! Can you wait for an invitation here?”

His colour increased; in embarrassment, he snapped closed his portcullis and lowered his gaze to the ground and replied, “You are too good.”

Mrs. Dashwood looked at Elinor with surprise. Elinor felt equal amazement. For a few moments everyone was silent. Mrs. Dashwood first spoke.

“I have only to add, my dear Willoughby, that at Barton Cottage on Pestilent Isle, you will always be welcome.”

“My engagements at present,” replied Willoughby, his voice emerging tinny and muffled from within the diving helmet, “are of such a nature—that—I dare not flatter myself—”

He stopped. Mrs. Dashwood was too much astonished to speak, and another pause succeeded. This was broken by Willoughby. “It is folly to linger in this manner. I will not torment myself any longer by remaining among friends whose society it is impossible for me now to enjoy.”

He then took his leave of them, his flipper feet
fwap fwap fwapping
as he hastened from the room. They saw him step into his yacht; as the yachtsman adjusted the boom and they tacked gently forward, an alligator lifted its long snout from the water and tried to attach his jaws to the hull; the yachtsman whacked the beast once with a bargepole; then again; with the third whack the gator glumly ceded its grip and sank beneath the surface of the water.

Willoughby waved sadly from the foredeck, and was gone.

Mrs. Dashwood felt too much for speech, and instantly quitted the parlour to give way in solitude to her concern and alarm.

Elinor’s uneasiness was at least equal to her mother’s. She sat in the kitchen plucking the eyeballs from prawns, the ritual action of which calmed her mind and cleared her head. Willoughby’s embarrassment and affectation of cheerfulness in taking leave of them, and his unwillingness to accept her mother’s invitation—a backwardness so unlike a lover— greatly disturbed her. One moment she feared that no serious design had ever been formed on his side; and the next that some unfortunate quarrel had taken place between him and her sister. But whatever might be the
particulars of their separation, her sister’s affliction was indubitable; and she thought with the tenderest compassion of that violent sorrow which Marianne was in all probability not merely giving way to as a relief, but feeding and encouraging as a duty. Her hands were now sticky with prawn goo; she washed them thoroughly until only the smallest traces remained stubbornly beneath her nails.

In about half an hour her mother returned, and though her eyes were red, her countenance was not uncheerful.

“Our dear Willoughby is now many nautical miles from Pestilent Isle, Elinor,” said she, as she sat down to work, “and with how heavy a heart does he travel!”

“It is all very strange. So suddenly to be gone! It seems but the work of a moment. And last night he was with us so happy, so cheerful, so affectionate? And now, after only ten minutes notice, gone without intending to return! Something must have happened. What can it be? Can they have quarreled? Why else should he have shown such unwillingness to accept your invitation here?”

“It was not inclination that he wanted, Elinor; I could plainly see
that
. He had not the power of accepting it. I have thought it over, and I can account for everything that first seemed strange to me as well as to you.”

“Can you, indeed!”

“Yes. I have explained it to myself in the most satisfactory way—but you, Elinor, who love to doubt where you can—it will not satisfy
you
, I know; but you shall not talk
me
out of my trust in it. I am persuaded that Mrs. Smith suspects his regard for Marianne, disapproves of it, and on that account is eager to get him away. Or, alternatively, he has in his quest for treasure disturbed the burial site of a pirate captain, and incurred the wrath of the pirate captain’s ghost, who has thusly cursed him to wander the seven seas until fate should claim him. It’s one of those two.”

“But, mother—”

“You will tell me, I know, that this may or may
not
have happened;
but I will listen to no cavil, unless you can point out any other method of understanding the affair as satisfactory as one of the two options I have presented. And now, Elinor, what have you to say?”

“Nothing, for you have anticipated my answer. I cannot presume to know Mrs. Smith’s motives; and as for pirate curses, my education and understanding leads me to cast a wary eye on such superstitions, as I would hope would be the same for you.”

“Oh, Elinor, how incomprehensible are your feelings! You had rather take evil upon credit than good. You had rather look out for misery for Marianne, and guilt for poor Willoughby, than an apology for the latter. You are resolved to think him blamable, because he took leave of us with less affection than his usual behaviour has shown. You refuse to imagine that he has labours under the jealousy of a relative, or the Sisyphean curse of a pirate-ghost! And is no allowance to be made for inadvertence, or for spirits depressed by recent disappointment? Is nothing due to the man whom we have all such reason to love, and no reason in the world to think ill of? After all, what is it you suspect him of?”

“I can hardly tell myself. But suspicion of something unpleasant is the inevitable consequence of such an alteration as we just witnessed in him. There is great truth, however, in the allowances for him you have urged, and it is my wish to be candid in my judgment of everybody. Willoughby may undoubtedly have very sufficient reasons for his conduct, or it may be there really is such a thing as a pirate-ghost, and I will hope that he has, or there is. But it would have been more like Willoughby to acknowledge them at once. Secrecy may be advisable; but still I cannot help wondering at its being practiced by him.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Dashwood, handing Elinor a file with which to remove the prawn residue clinging ’neath her nails. “I am happy—and he is acquitted.”

“Not entirely. It may be proper to conceal their engagement (if they
are
engaged) from Mrs. Smith—and if that is the case, it must be highly
expedient for Willoughby to be but little among us on these islands at present. But this is no excuse for their concealing it from us.”

“Concealing it from us! My dear child, do you accuse Willoughby and Marianne of concealment? This is strange indeed, when your eyes have been reproaching them every day for incautiousness.”

“I lack no proof of their affection,” said Elinor; “but of their engagement I do.”

“I am perfectly satisfied of both.”

“Yet not a syllable has been said to you on the subject, by either of them.”

“I have not wanted syllables where actions have spoken so plainly. Has not his behaviour to Marianne and to all of us, for at least the last fortnight, declared that he loved and considered her as his future wife? Have we not perfectly understood each other? Has not my consent been daily asked by his looks, his manner, his attentive and affectionate respect? My Elinor, is it possible to doubt their engagement?”

“I confess,” replied Elinor, “that every circumstance except
one
is in favour of their engagement; but that
one
is the total silence of both on the subject, and with me it almost outweighs every other.”

“How strange this is! You must think wretchedly indeed of Willoughby! Has he been acting a part in his behaviour to your sister all this time? And what is that five-pointed shape you are tracing in prawn guts on the table linen?”

“Oh! It is merely a—a sort of—a shape that has—that keeps occurring to me somehow.”

“How odd. Well, do you suppose Willoughby really indifferent to her?”

“You must remember, my dear mother, that I have never considered this matter as certain. I have had my doubts, I confess; but they are fainter than they were, and they may soon be entirely done away. If we find they write to one another, every fear of mine will be removed.”

“A mighty concession indeed! But what if the iron sides of the correspondence
ship are pierced and sunk by the tusks of some demonic walrus, as you know happens with distressing frequency! I require no such proof. Nothing in my opinion has ever passed to justify doubt; no secrecy has been attempted; all has been uniformly open and unreserved. You cannot doubt your sister’s wishes. It must be Willoughby therefore whom you suspect. But why? Is he not a man of honour and feeling? Has there been any inconsistency on his side to create alarm? Can he be deceitful?”