Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters (39 page)

“Yes, yes,” returned Elinor, colouring likewise, and hardening her heart anew against any compassion for him. “I have heard it all. And how you will explain away any part of your guilt in that dreadful business, I confess is beyond my comprehension.” The boat creaked wearily as it tossed in its mooring, and Elinor froze for a second, imagining she discerned the sound of a silvered boot heel pacing the deck outside; but the ominous noise was not repeated, and her heart after a moment unclenched.

“Remember,” cried Willoughby, “from whom you received the account of my behaviour. Could it be an impartial one? I acknowledge that her situation and her character ought to have been respected by me. Her affection for me deserved better treatment, and I often, with great self-reproach, recall her tenderness. I wish—I heartily wish it had never been. But I have injured more than herself; and I have injured one, whose affection for me was scarcely less warm than hers; and whose mind was infinitely superior!”

“Your indifference is no apology for your cruelly leaving her in such circumstances, abandoned by your affection and buried neck-deep by the shore. You must have known that while you were enjoying yourself in Devonshire pursuing fresh schemes, she was reduced to the extremest indigence—or even worse. The tide might have swallowed her whole!”

“But, upon my soul, I did
not
know of her ultimate circumstances,” he warmly replied. “I did not recollect that I had omitted to give her my address; and common sense might have told her how to find it out.”

“Well, sir, and what said Mrs. Smith?”

“Good woman! She offered to forgive the past, if I would marry Eliza. That could not be—and I was formally dismissed from her favour and her house.”

“This, I must mention, is exactly as I suspected—though my mother insisted it was a ghost who had cursed you.”

“The night following this affair—I was to go the next morning— was spent by me in deliberating on what my future conduct should be.
The struggle was great—but it ended too soon. My affection for Marianne, my thorough conviction of her attachment to me—it was all insufficient to outweigh that dread of poverty. I had reason to believe myself secure of my present wife, if I chose to address her, and I persuaded myself to think that nothing else in common prudence remained for me to do. I have spent my life searching for treasure—I could not abandon one, once found. And so I went to Marianne, I saw her, and saw her miserable, and left her miserable—and left her hoping never to see her again.”

“Then why did you call, Mr. Willoughby?” said Elinor. “A note would have answered every purpose. Why was it necessary to call?”

“It was necessary to my own pride. I could not bear to leave the Devonshire coast in a manner that might lead you, or the rest of the neighbourhood, to suspect any part of what had really passed between Mrs. Smith and myself—and I resolved therefore on calling at the shanty. The sight of your dear sister, however, was really dreadful; and, to heighten the matter, I found her alone. You were all gone I do not know where. I had left her only the evening before, so fully, so firmly resolved within myself on doing right! A few hours were to have engaged her to me forever; and I remember how happy, how gay were my spirits, as I rowed from your shack back to Allenham Isle, satisfied with myself, delighted with everybody! But in this, our last interview of friendship, I approached her with a sense of guilt that almost took from me the power of dissembling. Her sorrow, her disappointment, her deep regret, when I told her that I was obliged to leave Devonshire so immediately—I never shall forget it. Oh, God! What a hard-hearted rogue was I! I hid behind the portcullis of my diving helmet! I could not meet her eye!”

They were both silent for a few moments. Waves rattled the sides of the houseboat, and the old wood creaked again in the tide.

“Well, sir,” said Elinor, who, though pitying him, grew increasingly impatient for his departure. “And this is all? If so then pray allow me leave to return to the deck, and my spyglass, and my watch for the hated Dreadbeard.”

“My God—Dreadbeard, you say?”

The infamous name brought Willoughby to his feet, and seemed in an instant to clear his head and bring his eyes to full attention. “Miss Dashwood, think what you will of me—of my morals and of my depravity in my treatment of you and your relations—but I have spent my life in pursuit of buried treasures, and though I have never crossed paths with Dreadbeard, I have learned much about pirates. Come—let us booby-trap your boat.”

Willoughby hurriedly strode out onto the verandah and from there down onto the foredeck. Asking firstly of Elinor where the hammocks were kept, he used them to rig neat mesh tiger-traps across each of the trap-doors.

“That notorious letter,” he inquired of her, when they had travelled below-decks, where he splashed cooking oil across the locked door of the stores, so it could be lit to create an impassable wall of fire. “Did she show it you?”

“Yes, I saw every note that passed.”

“When the first of hers reached me, my feelings were very, very painful. Every line, every word was—in the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, were she here, would forbid—a dagger to my heart.”

Elinor’s own heart, which had undergone many changes in the course of this extraordinary conversation, was now softened again—yet she felt it her duty to check such ideas in her companion as the last. “This is not right, Mr. Willoughby. Remember that you are married. Relate only what in your conscience you think necessary for me to hear.” As she chastised him, she gingerly poked with the toe of her boot at the fake plank Willoughby had just rigged, through which a pirate’s heavy boot would fall, sending him crashing into the quarterdeck.

“Marianne’s note, by assuring me that I was still as dear to her as in former days, awakened all my remorse. I say awakened, because time and the delights of the Sub-Marine Station, had in some measure quieted it, and I had been growing a fine hardened rapscallion, fancying myself indifferent
to her, and choosing to fancy that she too must have become indifferent to me; talking to myself of our past attachment as a mere idle, trifling business, shrugging up my shoulders in proof of its being so, and silencing every reproach, overcoming every scruple, by secretly saying now and then, ‘I shall be heartily glad to hear she is well married.’ But this note made me know myself better. I felt that she was infinitely dearer to me than any other woman in the world, and that I was using her infamously. But everything was already settled between Miss Grey and me. To retreat was impossible. All that I had to do, was to avoid you both. I sent no answer to Marianne, intending by that to preserve myself from her further notice; and for some time I was even determined not to call in Berkeley Causeway. But at last, judging it wiser to affect the air of a cool, common acquaintance than anything else, I watched you all safely out of the docking station one morning, and left my hermit-crab shell.”

“Watched us out of the house!”

“Even so. You would be surprised to hear how often I watched you, how often I was on the point of falling in with you. I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight, as the gondola glided past. Lodging as I did in Bond Causeway, there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a glimpse of one or other of you; and nothing but a prevailing desire to keep out of sight could have separated us so long. I avoided the Middletons as much as possible, as well as everybody else who was likely to prove an acquaintance in common. If you
can
pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it was
then
. With my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced to play the happy lover to another woman! Those three or four weeks were worse than all. Well, at last, as I need not tell you, you were forced on me; and what a sweet figure I cut! What an evening of agony it was! Aside from the feral lobsters that gouged a half dozen people to death, and I sad to not be in their number! Marianne, beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me Willoughby in such a tone! Oh, God! Holding out her hand to me, asking for protection from the armored beasts, asking me for an explanation, with those bewitching eyes fixed in such speaking solicitude on
my face! And Sophia, jealous as the devil on the other hand, equally vulnerable to those hell-claws! Such an evening! I ran away as soon as I could, but not before I had seen Marianne’s sweet face as white as death. That was the last, last look I ever had of her—the last manner in which she appeared to me. It was a horrid sight! Among many horrid sights from that evening, it was the most horrid of all! Yet when I thought of her to-day as really dying—of malaria,
and
yellow fever,
and
lupus—”

“No, not lupus.”

“Really? Well, that’s good.”

“But the letter, Mr. Willoughby, your own letter; have you anything to say about that?”

“Yes, yes,
that
in particular. Your sister wrote to me again, the next morning after the lobster attack at Hydra-Z. You saw what she said. I was breakfasting at the Ellisons—and her letter was brought to me there from my lodgings. It happened to catch Sophia’s eye before it caught mine— and its size, the elegance of the paper, the hand-writing altogether, immediately gave her a suspicion. Some had received some vague report of my attachment to a young lady in Devonshire, and what had passed at Hydra-Z had marked who the young lady was, and made her more jealous than ever. Affecting that air of playfulness, therefore, which is delightful in a woman one loves, she opened the letter directly, and read its contents. She was well paid for her impudence. She read what made her wretched. Her wretchedness I could have borne, but her passion—her malice—at all events it must be appeased. In short—what do you think of my wife’s style of letter-writing?”

“Your wife! The letter was in your own hand-writing.”

“Yes, but I had only the credit of servilely copying such sentences as I was ashamed to put my name to. The original was all her own—her own happy thoughts and gentle diction. But what could I do! I copied my wife’s words, and parted with the last relics of Marianne. Her three notes—un-luckily they were all in my pocketbook, or I should have denied their existence, and hoarded them forever—I was forced to put them up, and could
not even kiss them. And the lock of hair—that too I had always carried about me, which was now searched by Madam with the most ingratiating virulence—the dear lock—all, every memento was torn from me.”

Now they were finished in laying their traps and stood together again at the wheel, gazing out into the black of the nighttime sea. Monsieur Pierre gave a little monkey shake of the head, as if remembering the whole nasty business, and offering his beloved master every sympathy.

“I appreciate your able assistance in arming this craft, Mr. Willoughby, but you are very wrong—very blamable,” said Elinor, while her voice, in spite of herself, betrayed her compassionate emotion. “You ought not to speak in this way, either of Mrs. Willoughby or my sister. You had made your own choice. It was not forced on you. Your wife has a claim to your politeness, to your respect, at least. She must be attached to you, or she would not have married you. To treat her with unkindness, to speak of her slightingly is no atonement to Marianne—nor can I suppose it a relief to your own conscience.”

“Do not talk to me of my wife,” said he with a heavy sigh. “She does not deserve your compassion. She knew I had no regard for her when we married. Well, married we were, and came down to Combe Magna to be happy, and afterwards returned to Sub-Marine Station Beta, before it was destroyed, to be gay. And now do you pity me, Miss Dashwood? Or have I said all this to no purpose? Am I less guilty in your opinion than I was before? Have I offered you a yellowed map, which you may follow to a forgiving place in your heart?”

“Yes, you have proved yourself, on the whole, less faulty than I had believed you. You have proved your heart less wicked, much less wicked. But I hardly know—the misery that you have inflicted—I hardly know what could have made it worse.”

“Will you repeat to your sister when she is recovered, what I have been telling you? Tell her of my misery and my penitence—tell her that my heart was never inconstant to her, and if you will, that at this moment she is dearer to me than ever.”

“I will tell her all that is necessary. But you have not explained to me the particular reason of your coming now, nor how you heard of her illness.”

“On a fishing bank along the Thames, I ran against Sir John Middleton, and when he saw who I was—for the first time these two months— he spoke to me. His good-natured, honest, stupid soul, full of indignation against me, and concern for your sister, could not resist the temptation of telling me what he knew ought to—though probably he did not think it
would
—vex me horridly. As bluntly as he could speak it, therefore, he told me that Marianne Dashwood was dying of malaria, yellow fever—and I could have sworn he said, lupus, but if you say no, wonderful—at
The Cleveland
—a letter that morning received from Mrs. Jennings declared her danger most imminent—the Palmers are all gone off in a fright, etc. What I felt was dreadful! Thus my resolution was soon made, and at eight o’clock this morning I was preparing my kayak. Now you know all.”

He held out his hand. She could not refuse to give him hers—he pressed it with affection.

“And you
do
think something better of me than you did?”—said he, letting it fall, and leaning against the wheel as if forgetting he was to go.

Elinor assured him that she did—that she forgave, pitied, wished him well—was even interested in his happiness—and added some gentle counsel as to the behaviour most likely to promote it. His answer was not very encouraging.

“As to that,” said he, “I must rub through the world as well as I can. Domestic happiness is out of the question. If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the means—it may put me on my guard—at least, it may be something to live for. Marianne, to be sure, is lost to me forever. Were I even by any blessed chance at liberty again—were Sophia to meet with a giant octopus, say, and I not around.”