Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters (16 page)

“You have been long acquainted with Colonel Brandon, have you not?” asked Elinor.

“Yes, a great while. He is a dear friend of Sir John’s.” She added in a low voice, “I believe Colonel Brandon would have been very glad to have had me, if he could. The very thought of becoming his wife fills me with nausea, and a sort of queer nameless dread. In sooth, I am much happier as I am. Mr. Palmer is the kind of man I like.”

As if invoked by the pronunciation of his name, Mr. Palmer at that moment entered the room, and paused before Elinor, ignoring entirely the presence of his wife.

“How long have you resided on Pestilent Isle?” he enquired roughly, gesturing out the window to where the island sat in the distance, crowned by the craggy flat top of Mount Margaret. Elinor explained their situation, but Mr. Palmer seemed barely to listen. He only stared, his eyes hooded and empty—as if seeing something in that desolate spit of land he did not want to see, and understanding something he wished not to understand.

T
HE PALMERS SET OFF
the next day to return to their customary habitation, a houseboat called
The Cleveland
, moored off the shore of Somersetshire. Elinor had hardly got their last visitors out of her head before Sir John procured new acquaintances to see and observe.

In a morning’s crossing to Plymouth for supplies, Sir John met with two amiable young ladies and invited them directly to Deadwind. Lady Middleton was thrown into no little alarm by hearing that she would soon be visited by two girls whom she had never seen in her life, and of whose elegance—whose tolerable gentility even, she could have no proof. The alarm was compounded by the information, let out offhandedly by Sir John, that a panfish the size of a coach-and-four, with two rows of lion’s teeth, had nearly sunk the clipper. Charles the Oarsman, a great favourite of Lady Middleton, had valiantly fought it off, rolling up his sleeves and plunging his bare hands into the churning tide to snap the spine of the monster; but he had been too vigorous and tumbled over the side and into the sea, where his foe proved the fiercer fighter. Sir John’s detailed description of the incident, particularly the sound of the panfish’s teeth crunching into dear Charles’s skull, disquieted her nearly as much as the information regarding their new houseguests-to-be.

As it was impossible, however, to prevent the arrival of the visitors, Lady Middleton resigned herself to the idea of it, with all the regal bearing of the island princess that she was—or had been before her unwilling matrimony—contenting herself with merely giving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject five or six times every day.

The mysterious young ladies arrived: Their appearance was by no means ungenteel or unfashionable. Their dress was very smart, their manners very civil, they were delighted with the house, and in raptures with the furniture, and they happened to be so dotingly fond of children that Lady Middleton’s good opinion was engaged in their favour before they had been an hour on Deadwind Island. She declared them to be very agreeable girls indeed, which for her ladyship was enthusiastic admiration. Sir John’s confidence in his own judgment rose with this animated praise, and he rowed directly to Barton Cottage to tell the Miss Dashwoods of the Miss Steeles’ arrival, and to assure them of their being the sweetest girls in the world. From such commendation as this, however, there was not much to be learned; Elinor well knew that the sweetest girls in the world were to be met with in every part of England, under every possible variation of form, face, temper, and understanding. Sir John wanted the whole family to row to Deadwind Island directly and look at his guests. Benevolent, philanthropic, old adventurer! It was painful to him even to keep a pair of kind strangers to himself.

“Do come now,” said he. “Pray come! You must come! Lucy is monstrous pretty, and so good humoured and agreeable! She is helping Lady Middleton in the kitchen, plucking the wings from dragonflies so they can be ground into paste! And both sisters long to see you of all things, for they have heard at Plymouth that you are the most beautiful creatures in the world; and I have told them it is all very true. You will be delighted with them I am sure. How can you be so cross as not to come?” His old eyes bugged out from his head as he exhorted them, and he tugged earnestly on his beard for emphasis.

But Sir John could not prevail. He could only obtain a promise of their calling at Deadwind within a day or two, and then left in amazement at their indifference, to row home and boast anew of their attractions to the Miss Steeles, as he had been already boasting of the Miss Steeles to them. He broke into the rum early, and the more he drank, the more he boasted; drinking, boasting, drinking, and boasting, until he
fell asleep on the hammock, a coconut half-filled with punch dangling from his ropy hands.

When their introduction to these young ladies finally took place, the Miss Dashwoods found nothing to admire in the appearance of the eldest, Anne, who was nearly thirty and had a very plain and not a sensible face; but in Lucy, who was not more than three and twenty, they acknowledged considerable beauty; her features were pretty, and she had a sharp quick eye, and a smartness of air which gave distinction to her person. Their manners were particularly civil, and Elinor soon allowed them credit for sense, when she saw with what constant and judicious attention they were making themselves agreeable to Lady Middleton. They put to her polite questions about her former life as ruler of an island race, and with her children they were in continual raptures, extolling their beauty, courting their notice, and humouring their whims. A fond mother, in pursuit of praise for her children, is the most rapacious of human beings and likewise the most credulous.

“What a sweet woman Lady Middleton is!” said Lucy Steele, when that lady had returned to the kitchen to attend to her dessert: a lightly glazed pastry with a single maggot baked inside, and served in slices, so the person served the piece with the maggot earns a prize.

Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion; and to Elinor the task of telling polite lies always fell. She did her best when thus called on, by speaking of Lady Middleton with more warmth than she felt, though with far less than Miss Lucy.

“And Sir John too,” cried the elder sister, “what a charming man he is!”

Here too, Miss Dashwood’s commendation, being only simple and just, came in without any éclat. She merely observed that he was perfectly good humoured and friendly, and had once survived three months in the Amazon navigating by the stars and drinking filtered rainwater.

“And what a charming little family they have! I never saw such fine children in my life. I declare I quite dote upon them already, and indeed I am always distractedly fond of children.”

“I should guess so,” said Elinor, with a smile, “from what I have witnessed this morning.”

“I have a notion,” said Lucy, “you think the little Middletons rather too much indulged; perhaps they may be the outside of enough; but it is so natural in Lady Middleton; and for my part, I love to see children full of life and spirits; I cannot bear them if they are tame and quiet.”

“I confess,” replied Elinor, “that while I am on Deadwind Island, I never think of tame and quiet children with any abhorrence.”

A short pause succeeded this speech. The waves lashed the beach, and the wind moaned in the sky. Then Miss Steele, who seemed very much disposed for conversation, and said rather abruptly, “And how do you like Devonshire, Miss Dashwood? I suppose you were very sorry to leave Sussex.”

In some surprise at the familiarity of this question, Elinor replied that she was.

“Norland is a prodigious beautiful place, is not it?” added Miss Steele, leaning forward slightly and offering an insinuating glance.

“I think everyone
must
admire it,” replied Elinor, “though few can estimate its beauties as we do.”

“And had you many smart beaux there? I suppose you have not so many in this part of the world.”

“But why should you think,” said Lucy, looking ashamed of her sister, “that there are not as many genteel young men in Devonshire as Sussex?”

“Nay, my dear, I’m sure I don’t pretend to say that there ain’t. I’m sure there’s a vast many smart beaux in Plymouth; it is a coastal city, drawing its share of adventurous young men interested in murdering sea swine. But you know, how could I tell what smart beaux there might be about the islands off the coast; and I was only afraid the Miss Dashwoods might find it dull, if they had not so many as they used to have. But perhaps you young ladies may not care about the beaux. For my part, I think they are vastly agreeable, provided they dress smart and keep their monster-slaying swords sheathed on the dance floor. But I can’t bear to see them dirty and nasty, dripping with sea-water and reeking of fish guts.
I suppose your brother was quite a beau, Miss Dashwood, before he married, as he was so rich?”

“Upon my word,” replied Elinor, “I cannot tell you, for I do not perfectly comprehend the meaning of the word. But this I can say, that if he ever was a beau before he married, he is one still for there is not the smallest alteration in him.”

“Oh! One never thinks of married men’s being beaux—they have something else to do.”

This specimen of the Miss Steeles was enough. The vulgar freedom and folly of the eldest left her no recommendation, and Elinor was not blinded by the beauty or the shrewd look of the youngest, to her want of real elegance and artlessness. She left the house without any wish of knowing them better.

Not so the Miss Steeles. They came from Exeter, well provided with admiration for the use of Sir John Middleton and his family, and no small proportion was now dealt out to his fair cousins. To be better acquainted, therefore, Elinor soon found was their inevitable lot; that kind of intimacy must be submitted to, which consists of sitting an hour or two together in the same room almost every day.

Elinor had not seen them more than twice, before the elder of them wished her joy on her sister’s having been so lucky as to make a conquest of a very smart beau since she came to the islands.

“’Twill be a fine thing to have her married so young,” said she, “and I hear he is quite a swift swimmer, dashing in his flipper feet, and prodigious handsome. And I hope you may have as good luck yourself soon— but perhaps you already have a crab in the net, as they say.”

Elinor supposed that Sir John had proclaimed his suspicions of her regard for Edward; indeed it was rather his favourite joke. Since Edward’s visit, they had never dined together without his drinking, and drinking, and drinking, to her best affections with so many nods and winks, as to excite general attention.

The Miss Steeles now had all the benefit of these jokes, which the
eldest of them raised a curiosity to know the name of the gentleman alluded to. But Sir John did not sport long with the curiosity. One night, they sat as a group before the dinner table, where a broiled rattlesnake had been laid out upon the table by Lady Middleton, cut into individual slices as if it were a long, flat cake.

“His name is Ferrars,” said Sir John, in a very audible whisper; “but pray do not tell it, for it’s a great secret.”

“Ferrars!” repeated Miss Steele, chewing with her back teeth on a tough bite of snake. “Mr. Ferrars is the happy man, is he? What! Your sister-in-law’s brother, Miss Dashwood? A very agreeable young man to be sure; I know him very well.”

“How can you say so, Anne?” cried Lucy, who generally made an amendment to all her sister’s assertions. “Though we have seen him once or twice at my uncle’s, it is rather too much to pretend to know him very well.”

Elinor heard all this with attention and surprise. “And who was this uncle? Where did he live? How came they acquainted?” She wished very much to have the subject continued, though she did not join in it herself; she wished also that dinner would end, so she could stop pretending to eat the rattlesnake, which she was collecting in her lap to dispose of later. Nothing more of the Ferrars was said, and for the first time in her life, she thought Mrs. Jennings deficient either in curiosity after petty information, or in a disposition to communicate it. The manner in which Miss Steele had spoken of Edward, increased her curiosity; for it struck her as being rather ill-natured, and suggested the suspicion of that lady’s knowing something to his disadvantage. But her curiosity was unavailing, for no further notice was taken of Mr. Ferrars’s name by Miss Steele when alluded to, or even openly mentioned by Sir John.

At last the dinner was concluded, and they were rowed home in silence, the oarsmen navigating skillfully, relying greatly upon the fog-cutters. The Dashwood sisters travelled home in silence, except for the small splashes as they all cast the remains of their dinner into the sea.

M
ARIANNE, WHO HAD NEVER
much toleration for anything like impertinence, vulgarity, or even difference of taste from herself, was at this time particularly ill-disposed to be pleased with the Miss Steeles. She was cold towards them and checked every endeavour at intimacy on their side.

Lucy was naturally clever; her remarks were often just and amusing; and as a companion for half an hour Elinor frequently found her agreeable; she was even quick with a blade; one night in the Middleton’s kitchen Elinor watched her decapitate a not-quite-dead flounder in one smooth chop. But her powers had received no aid from education: She was illiterate of even the most basic knowledge of fish species, navigation, and grades of net meshing; and her deficiency of all mental improvement, her want of information in the most common particulars, could not be concealed from Miss Dashwood. Elinor pitied her for it; but she saw, with less tenderness of feeling, the thorough want of delicacy, of rectitude, and integrity of mind, which her attentions and flatteries at Deadwind Island betrayed; and she could have no lasting satisfaction in the company of a person who joined insincerity with ignorance.