Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters (43 page)

“One observation may, I think, be fairly drawn from the whole of the story—that all Willoughby’s difficulties have arisen from the first offence against virtue, in his behaviour to Eliza Williams. That crime has been the origin of every lesser one, and of all his present discontents.”

Marianne assented most feelingly to the remark; and her mother was led by it to an enumeration of Colonel Brandon’s injuries and merits, warm as friendship and design could unitedly dictate. Her daughter did not look, however, as if much of it were heard by her.

Elinor, according to her expectation, saw on the two or three following days, that Marianne did not continue to gain strength as she had done; but while her resolution was unsubdued, and she still tried to appear cheerful and easy, her sister could safely trust to the effect of time upon her health. Every day the pustules that marked her skin were healing, and the cool (though malodorous) sea winds that swept through the windows of Barton Cottage seemed to do her spirits well.

Elinor grew impatient for some tidings of Edward. She had heard nothing of him since the destruction of the Sub-Marine Station, nothing new of his plans, nothing certain even of his present abode. Some letters had passed between her and her brother, in consequence of Marianne’s illness; and in the first of John’s, which otherwise related the lingering after effects of his experiments in Station, including an insatiable appetite for grub worms, there had been this sentence: “We know nothing of our unfortunate Edward, and can make no enquiries on so prohibited a subject,” which was all the intelligence of Edward afforded her by the correspondence, for his name was not even mentioned in any of the succeeding letters. She was not doomed, however, to be long in ignorance of his measures.

Their man-servant, Thomas, had been ordered one morning to row to Exeter on business. Later that afternoon, while serving a bowl of Mrs. Dashwood’s latest culinary specialty—a lobster bisque served in the hollowed-out skull of a porpoise—Thomas offered the following voluntary communication: “I suppose you know, ma’am, that Mr. Ferrars is married.”

Marianne gave a violent start, fixed her eyes upon Elinor, saw her turning pale, and fell back in her chair in hysterics. Mrs. Dashwood, whose eyes had intuitively taken the same direction, was shocked to perceive by Elinor’s countenance how much she really suffered.

Elinor’s mind was aflame; her entire spirit throbbed with distress. The five-pointed symbol, that totem of agony, returned at the servant’s news in its most intense incarnation yet, twirling and throbbing in her mind’s eye.

“Ah,” she cried out, clutching with two hands at her skull. “The pain—”

Though desperate for further information, Elinor was unable in such a condition to ask Thomas for the source of his intelligence. Mrs. Dashwood immediately took that trouble on herself; and Elinor had the benefit of the information without the exertion of seeking it.

“Who told you that Mr. Ferrars was married, Thomas?”

“I see Mr. Ferrars myself, ma’am, this morning in Exeter, and his lady too, Miss Steele as was.”

With every repeat of the name—Miss Steele—the pain recurred, amplified it seemed by its repetition.

“They was stopping at the door of the New London Inn. I happened to look up as I went by the chaise, and so I see directly it was the youngest Miss Steele.”

Pain—the pain grew nearly unbearable. Elinor endeavored with all her ability to keep her attention upon the servant’s story, so she could know of the fate of Edward.

“So I took off my hat, and she knew me and called to me, and inquired after you, ma’am, and the young ladies, especially Miss Marianne, and bid me I should give her compliments and Mr. Ferrars’s.”

“But did she tell you she was married, Thomas?”

“Yes, ma’am. She smiled, and said how she had changed her name since she was in these parts. She was always a very affable and free-spoken young lady.”

“Was Mr. Ferrars in the carriage with her?”

“Yes, ma’am, I just see him leaning back in it, but he did not look up—he never was a gentleman much for talking.”

Elinor’s heart could easily account for his not putting himself forward; and Mrs. Dashwood probably found the same explanation.

“Was there no one else in the carriage?”

“No, ma’am, only they two.”

“Do you know where they came from?”

“They come straight from town, as Miss Lucy—Mrs. Ferrars told me.”

“And are they going farther westward?”

“Yes, ma’am—but not to bide long. They will soon be back again, and then they’d be sure to take a convenient and well-armored ship out to the islands, and call here.”

Mrs. Dashwood now looked at her daughter; but Elinor knew better than to expect them. She recognized the whole of Lucy in the message, and was very confident that Edward would never come near them.

Thomas’s intelligence seemed over. Elinor looked as if she wished to hear more.

“Did you see them off, before you came away?”

“No, ma’am—the horses were just coming out, but I could not bide any longer; I was afraid of being late.”

“Did Mrs. Ferrars look well?”

“Yes, ma’am, but to my mind she was always a handsome young lady—and she seemed vastly contented.”

Mrs. Dashwood could think of no other question, and Thomas and the tablecloth, now alike needless, were soon afterwards dismissed; Thomas returned downstairs to begin slicing up crayfish for to-morrow’s breakfast.

Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters remained long together in a similarity of thoughtfulness and silence. Mrs. Dashwood feared to hazard any remark, and ventured not to offer consolation. She now found that she had erred in relying on Elinor’s representation of herself; and justly concluded that everything had been expressly softened at the time, to spare her from an increase of unhappiness, suffering as she then had suffered for Marianne. Elinor, for her part, experienced such pain as if her head were captured in a vice.

She felt at last that it was appropriate to explain to her mother and her sister that the source of her pain was not merely the violent tugs upon her heartstrings occasioned by the information regarding Edward and the new Mrs. Ferrars; she finally told them of the odd symbol that had first
appeared in her mind about the time of the Steeles’ first arrival among them in the islands; she further explained how it had re-occurred intermittently in the months since; and how, finally, she had glimpsed it one other place only—on the lower back of Lucy Steele, when they changed clothes after the Fang-Beast’s attack.

“I am at sea, my dear,” said Mrs. Dashwood with a puzzled expression. “What can it mean? What connection can there be between this recurring pain in your brain, and this girl?”

“I shall tell you what it means.” Sir John suddenly stepped into the shanty, looking very serious indeed; Mrs. Jennings stood beside him, wringing her hands together.

“What it means,” Sir John continued, “is that she is not a girl at all. She is a sea witch! And Mr. Ferrars is in the gravest danger.”

“S
EA WITCHES WANDER THE EARTH
when it suits them, but their true habitation is in undersea grottos, where they live and thrive for many centuries,” said Sir John with a grave look. “But they are not an immortal race, contrary to what is commonly said of them. Indeed, the rest of us might well be counted safer if they
were
—since the only certain way for a sea witch to prolong its foul existence is by consuming human bone marrow, which is therefore, to them, the most precious of elixirs. Hence their occasional appearance, in the guise of attractive human women, among the terrestrial world—where they make love to an unknowing man, marry him unawares, and then, when the opportunity presents itself, kill him and suck out his marrow.”

Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood heard this oration in stunned silence, struggling to reconcile the picture in their minds of charming Lucy Steele,
who had lived among them for so many months, with this new picture, of a devil-spirit who had emerged from a watery cavern to drink the juice of human bones.

“And what of the
elder
Miss Steele,” wondered Marianne. “How could she not know that her sister had been replaced by a sea witch?”

“It is impossible that she did
not
know,” Sir John answered, “For a sister to a sea witch is certain to be a sea witch herself.”

“And yet, Anne Steele did not find a man to marry her!” protested Mrs. Dashwood.

“As I said, the witches take the
physical form
of human women,” explained Sir John. “There is nothing they can do about their personalities.”

Elinor, consumed with concern for Edward, and hoping to find some justification for disbelieving Sir John’s counsel, inquired as to how he had arrived at his dire conclusion. “It is the five-pointed symbol you described, and its accompanying distress,” came the reply. “Certain sensitive souls can sense their presence of sea witchery; they come to sense the distinctive presence of a witch, and it causes them a searing, throbbing pain, precisely as you have described it.”

As if to confirm this conclusion, the pain returned to Elinor again, and she was overcome by a twisting pain, that gripped her body from her head to her guts.
Edward
—
Edward
—was all she could think.

“If your friend has indeed been so fool enough to wed a sea witch,” Sir John concluded, “then she has already come upon him sleeping, snapped his bones, and feasted upon the precious white fluid within as if it were mother’s milk.”

Elinor realised—even as fresh waves of pain coursed through her body—that the hope she had harboured, in spite of herself, that something would occur to prevent Edward’s marrying Lucy, was grounded in some instinctual understanding of the horrid danger that his engagement posed; if only resolution of his own, some mediation of friends, or some more eligible opportunity of establishment for the lady, had arisen to assist the happiness of all, and prevent his being turned into an immortality-
preserving snack for a sea witch! But he was now married, and thusly doomed. Except—

“Wait a moment,” she managed to say. “If the pain and sensitivity you mention function as a sort of alarm of a witch’s foul intentions—”

“As indeed it does.”

“Why am I, even now, wracked by it—if Lucy Steele has already found her mark, and consumed him?”

Sir John, for once unsure of his answer, was trying to fashion one when Mrs. Dashwood beckoned them both to the window. The figure of a man clambering from a skiff, just tied to the dock, drew her eyes to the window. He approached their gate. It was a gentleman—it was Colonel Brandon! But why would Colonel Brandon, who had swum so nobly to Marianne’s rescue and, they thought, shed his embarrassment of his fishier qualities, now arrive onboard a skiff? No—it was
not
Colonel Brandon— neither his air—nor his height—and no mucous-dripping tentacles. Were it possible, she must say it must be Edward. She looked again. He was at the bottom of the steps now. She could not be mistaken. It
was
Edward. Intact! And here!

The pain evaporated from her mind, but still Elinor was overwhelmed. She moved away and sat down. “I
will
be calm; I
will
be mistress of myself.”

She saw her mother and Marianne change colour and whisper a few sentences to each other. She would have given the world to be able to speak—and to make them understand that she hoped no coolness, no slight, would appear in their behaviour to him; but she had no utterance, and was obliged to leave all to their own discretion.

No further syllable passed aloud. They all waited in silence for the appearance of their visitor. His footsteps were heard climbing the rickety wooden steps of the gravel path; in a moment he was in the passage, and in another he was before them.

His countenance, as he entered the room, was not too happy, even for Elinor. His complexion was white with agitation, and he looked as if
fearful of his reception, and conscious that he merited no kind one. “My God!” muttered Sir John. “He is half consumed!” But a closer inspection revealed that he was walking upright and breathing normally, which would be impossible if several of his bones had been snapped and sucked upon.

Mrs. Dashwood, uncertain of the social requirements of a situation in which an acquaintance is newly married, but (unknowingly so) to a witch of the deep, met him with a look of forced complacency, gave him her hand, and wished him joy.

He stammered out an unintelligible reply. Elinor’s lips had moved with her mother’s, and, when the moment of action was over, she wished that she had shaken hands with him too. But in the next moment she resolved that she could not let her friend not know the truth about the woman he had wed. Elinor, resolving to exert herself to caution her old friend, though fearing the sound of her own voice, now said:

“There is something we must tell you about Mrs. Ferrars! Some most terrifying information, so you best brace yourself.”

“Terrifying information? About my mother?

“I meant,” said Elinor, taking up some work from the table, “terrifying information about Mrs.
Edward
Ferrars.”

She dared not look up—but her mother and Marianne both turned their eyes on him. He coloured, seemed perplexed, looked doubtingly, and said, “Perhaps you mean—my brother—you mean Mrs.
Robert
Ferrars.”

“Mrs. Robert Ferrars!” was repeated by Marianne and her mother in an accent of the utmost amazement; and though Elinor could not speak, even
her
eyes were fixed on him with the same impatient wonder. He rose from his seat, and walked to the window, apparently from not knowing what to do; took up a pair of scissors that lay there, and while spoiling both them and their sheath by cutting the latter to pieces as he spoke, said, in a hurried voice, “Perhaps you do not know—you may not have heard that my brother is lately married to—to the youngest—to
Miss Lucy Steele.”

His words were echoed with unspeakable astonishment by all but Elinor, who sat in a state of such agitation as made her hardly know where she was.