Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters (27 page)

“You are very good,” Elinor responded, glad for the interruption that had drawn her attention back to her immediate reality, and away from the mystifying five-pointed polyhedron that danced menacingly in her mind’s eye. “My sister will be equally sorry to miss the pleasure of seeing you; but she has been very much plagued lately with nervous headaches, which make her unfit for company or conversation.”

“Oh, dear, that is a great pity! But such old friends as Lucy and me! I think she might see
us
; and I am sure we would be as quiet as a bucket of clams.”

“But less malodorous,” added Lucy hastily.

Elinor, with great civility, declined the proposal. Her sister was perhaps
laid down upon the bed, or in her dressing gown, and therefore not able to come to them.

T
HAT NIGHT
, Marianne slept but restlessly, her mind wracked by terrifying dreams. The Dashwoods were somehow installed again at Norwood, and Willoughby was there with them. She strolled with him along the beach, Monsieur Pierre hopping happily alongside them. They stopped, gazed into each other’s eyes, and Willoughby extended an affectionate hand—he was
himself
again, he whom she had so loved at Barton Cottage. But when Marianne reached for that hand, grasped it lovingly and pressed it against her cheek, it transmogrified from a hand to an octopus’s tentacle, purple and writhing, closing its powerful sucker over her mouth. Choking, desperate for breath, Marianne awoke with tears streaming down her face.

Elinor, too, was plagued by nightmares. In her dreamscape, the five-pointed figure came yet more vividly to life, dancing cruelly about in her mind, pulsating and quivering in a nightmare pallet of purple-blacks and blood-scarlets.

Sometime after midnight she woke with a start and rose from her bed, her body atremble, her brow slick with sweat, and sat till morning staring out into the inky depths of the sea beyond the observation glass. Her terrifying visions, she felt, were doing more than scaring her—it was warning her—but of what? Of Willoughby’s treachery? Too late, surely, for that alarm!

In the dim bioluminescence of a passing gulper eel, Elinor spied a tiny crack in the Dome-glass, at the very spot where she had seen the little swordfish tapping away at the glass; her mind still troubled by the dream’s ill-imagery, her body by the exertion of suffering through same, she hardly marked the small spider web of cracks before the gulper eel swam off in pursuit of a hapless school of copepods, and the sea was plunged again in darkness.

MARIANNE STROLLED WITH WILLOUGHBY ALONG THE BEACH, AND MONSIEUR PIERRE HOPPED HAPPILY ALONGSIDE THEM.

Just as the dawn’s light reached its long fingers from the Surface-Lands into the depths of Sub-Station, a fog-horn bleated noisily through the Dome. The sounding of the horn meant that a merman had been reported, and the accused would soon be brought to the Justice Embankment for testing and—if veracity were found in the accusation—execution by gutting knife.

After some opposition, Marianne yielded to her sister’s entreaties, and consented to go out with her and Mrs. Jennings to watch the solemnities.

Sir John, as a respected elder who knew much of the watery part of the world, was in charge of the proceedings. As a crowd gathered, many training opera glasses on the proceedings, Sir John lined seven suspected mermen along the water’s edge, where they stood quivering in fear. Narrowing his piercing grey eyes, the old man leveled an accusing finger at the first suspect, who was quickly wrapped by three Station attendants in secure netting, as if he were naught but an oversized marlin—which, in a sense, he may indeed have been. Sir John then bodily lifted the net-wrapped man, and with a grunt of determined exertion, tossed him screaming into the canal.

“What—?” began Elinor.

“It’s simple,” said Mrs. Jennings, clapping delightedly along with the rest of the crowd as the suspected merman thrashed helplessly within the net. “If he is truly a merman, he will reveal his tail rather than drown, at which point Sir John will fish him from the water and slice him from crotch to throat. If
no
tail appears, and he is proved thereby to be human through and through, your uncle will fish him from the water and slice him from his crotch to his throat, as a warning to the others.”

“Pardon me?” said Elinor. “It strikes me that—”

“Best not to ask questions, dear,” cautioned Mrs. Jennings.

After the gruesome exhibition—at which three of the suspected proved indeed to be mermen, and the other four innocent, and all were duly executed by Sir John—even Marianne agreed that a calming walk would do well to clear their minds of the grim ritual they had just witnessed. All proceeded to the Retail Embankment, where Elinor was carrying on a negotiation for the exchange of a few old-fashioned pearl-strings of her mother’s.

When they stopped at the door of the shop, Mrs. Jennings recollected that there was a lady at the far end of the Causeway on whom she ought to call; and she got back in the gondola, announcing that she would pay her visit and return for them.

The Miss Dashwoods found so many people before them in the room, that there was not a person at liberty to tend to their orders; and they were obliged to wait. All that could be done was to sit down at that end of the counter; only one gentleman was standing there. He was giving orders for a customised Float-Suit for himself; the design of the suits were strictly regulated under Station law, but it was common practice for those with means to have theirs customised and inlaid with all manner of fashionable modifications. Till its size, shape, and ornaments were determined, the clerk had no leisure to bestow any other attention on the two ladies, but at last the affair was decided. The ivory, gold, and pearls would spell out
Hail
on one inflatable arm-band, and
Britannia
on the other. Then the gentleman left with a happy air of real conceit and affected indifference.

Elinor lost no time in bringing her business forward, and she had nearly concluded it when another gentleman presented himself at her side. She found him with some surprise to be her brother.

Their affection and pleasure in meeting was just enough to make a very creditable appearance in the shop. Elinor found that he and Fanny had been in town two days.

“I wished to call upon you yesterday,” said he, “but it was impossible, for we were obliged to take Harry to see the otter fights at Exeter
Exchange; it’s really quite remarkable; they’ve trained the slippery little fellows to go after each other with straight razors. But to-morrow I think I shall certainly be able to call, and be introduced to your friend, Mrs. Jennings. I understand she is a woman of very good fortune, except for the unfortunate circumstance of her extended husband and sons being slaughtered, and her two daughters dragged off into marital servitude. And the Middletons too, you must introduce me to
them
. They are excellent neighbours to you on the islands, I understand.”

“Excellent indeed. Their attention to our comfort, their friendliness in every particular, is more than I can express. Sir John’s knowledge of sea-monster habit and vulnerability has kept us safe many times over.”

The next day, Mr. Dashwood’s visit was duly paid. His manners to
them
, though calm, were perfectly kind; to Mrs. Jennings, most attentively civil; and on Colonel Brandon’s coming in soon after himself, he started and grabbed a kitchen knife, but laid it down promptly when it was explained that this was a human being, facial features notwithstanding.

After staying with them half an hour, he asked Elinor to take him to be introduced to Sir John and Lady Middleton. The weather was remarkably fine, and she readily consented. As soon as they were out of the house, his enquiries began.

“Who is Colonel Brandon? Is he a man of fortune? What in the name of the Father and the Son is wrong with his face?”

“He has very good property in Dorsetshire. And, it is reported, a sea-witch curse.”

“Well, he seems a most gentlemanlike man; and I think, Elinor, I may congratulate you on the prospect of a very respectable establishment in life.”

“Me, brother! What do you mean?”

“He likes you. I am convinced of it.”

“I am very sure that Colonel Brandon has not the smallest wish of marrying
me
.”

“You are mistaken, Elinor; you are very much mistaken. Perhaps just
at present he may be undecided; the smallness of your fortune may make him hang back; his friends may all advise him against it. But some of those little attentions and encouragements which ladies can so easily give will fix him, in spite of himself. Brush those tentacles of his as if by accident with the back of your hand; adjust his cravat, wipe the excretions from his chin. It is a match that must give universal satisfaction. Your friends are all truly anxious to see you well settled; Fanny particularly, for she has your interest very much at heart, I assure you. And her mother too, Mrs. Ferrars, a very good-natured woman, I am sure it would give her great pleasure; she said as much the other day.”

Elinor would not vouchsafe any answer.

“It would be something remarkable, now,” he continued, “if Fanny should have a brother and I a sister settling at the same time.”

At this surprising declaration from her brother, the five-pointed star flashed in Elinor’s mind with the suddenness and violence of a pistol shot; and then was gone again.

“Is Mr. Edward Ferrars,” said Elinor, with resolution, “going to be married?”

“It is not actually settled, but there is such a thing in agitation. His mother will come forward and settle on him a thousand a year, if the match takes place. The lady is the Honourable Miss Morton, only daughter of the late Lord Morton, the very engineer and public hero who over-saw the creation of Sub-Marine Station Alpha. It is a very desirable connection on both sides, and I have not a doubt of its taking place in time. A thousand a year is a great deal for a mother to give away, but Mrs. Ferrars has a noble spirit. On occasion, I tell you confidentially, she puts bank-notes into Fanny’s hands; I find this extremely acceptable, for we must live at a great expense while we are here. But I am also finding ways to earn a bit extra.”

“Oh?”

“Indeed. I am—
participating
.”

Elinor, having lived in the Station now for a period of weeks, knew
the meaning of the expression; her brother was submitting himself to the attentions of the Station’s government scientists, in their ongoing efforts to enhance human beings, to provide us advantages over the sea-borne beasts determined to bedevil our race. John was giving his sister to understand, in short, that he was allowing his body to be experimented upon, in exchange for financial recompense. Having now said enough to make his poverty clear, and to do away the necessity of buying a pair of ear-rings for each of his sisters, John inquired after Marianne. “She looks very unwell,” he said.

“She has had a nervous complaint on her for several weeks.”

“I am sorry for that. At her time of life, anything of an illness destroys the bloom forever! She was as handsome a girl last September, as I ever saw; and as likely to attract the man. I question whether Marianne
now
, will marry a man worth more than five or six hundred a year, at the utmost, and I am very much deceived if you will not do better.”

Elinor tried very seriously to convince him that there was no likelihood of her marrying Colonel Brandon; but he was really resolved on seeking an intimacy with that gentleman, and promoting the marriage by every possible attention, before at last he put on his Float-Suit and departed.

M
RS. JOHN DASHWOOD
had so much confidence in her husband’s judgment, despite his chemically altered perceptions, that she waited the very next day on Mrs. Jennings and her daughter. Her confidence was rewarded by finding the woman with whom her sisters were staying most worthy of her notice; and as for Lady Middleton, she found her one of the most charming women in the world, even if she had been married, as the saying has it, out of a bag!

Lady Middleton was equally pleased with Mrs. Dashwood. There was a kind of cold-hearted selfishness on both sides, a desire to escape, on the one hand, from pecuniary anxiety, and on the other, from civilization as a whole, which mutually attracted them.

To Mrs. Jennings, however, Mrs. Dashwood was a mere
pxtypyp
; that is, a little proud-looking woman of uncordial address. She met her husband’s sisters without any affection, and almost without having anything to say to them; for of the quarter of an hour bestowed on Berkeley Causeway, she sat at least seven minutes and a half in silence.

Elinor wanted very much to know, though she did not choose to ask, whether Edward was in town; but nothing would have induced Fanny voluntarily to mention his name before her. The intelligence she would not give, however, soon flowed from another quarter. Lucy came very shortly to claim Elinor’s compassion on being unable to see Edward, though he had arrived in-Station with Mr. and Mrs. Dashwood. Despite their mutual impatience to meet, they could do nothing at present but write.