Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters (6 page)

M
RS. JENNINGS WAS A WIDOW
, her husband and male children having been ruthlessly slaughtered in the same raid during which she and her daughters were carried off in a sack by Sir John and his men. She had now, therefore, nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world. In her promotion of this object she was zealously active, as far as her ability reached; and missed no opportunity of projecting weddings among all the young people of her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings also possessed a vast trove of island lore relating to getting and keeping male attention, which she vigorously recommended to such ladies as she drew into her circle.

“Only cause by some wile a man to shed tears,” she recommended to the astonished Dashwood sisters, “and catch three of his teardrops in an emptied jam jar. Mix these salty effusions with your own sputum, and smear the resulting ointment on your forehead before taking to bed. His heart shall soon enough be your own.”

She was remarkably quick in the discovery of attachments. This kind of discernment enabled her, soon after her arrival on the Barton Isles, to insinuate that Colonel Brandon was very much in love with Marianne Dashwood. She rather suspected it to be so, on the very first evening of their being together, from his listening so attentively while Marianne sang to them; and when the visit was returned by the Middletons’ dining at the cottage, the fact was ascertained by his listening to her again. It must be so. She was perfectly convinced of it. It would be an excellent match, for
he
was rich and
she
was handsome. Mrs. Jennings had been anxious to see Colonel Brandon well married, ever since her connection with Sir John first brought
him to her knowledge; and she was always anxious to get a good husband, even one marked by a bizarre octo-face, for every pretty girl.

The immediate advantage to herself was by no means inconsiderable, for it supplied her with endless wet-lipped, cackling amusement against them both. At the Deadwind Island she laughed at the colonel, and at Barton Cottage to Marianne. All in all, it was perfectly annoying to both of them. And when the object of raillery was understood by Marianne, she hardly knew whether to laugh at its absurdity, or censure its impertinence. It seemed an unfeeling reflection on the colonel’s advanced years and preposterous appearance, and on his forlorn condition as an old bachelor.

Mrs. Dashwood, however, could not think of a man five years younger than herself so exceedingly ancient as he appeared to the youthful fancy of her daughter.

“But you cannot deny the absurdity of the accusation, though you may not think it intentionally ill-natured. Colonel Brandon is old enough to be my father, and if he were ever animated to be in love, surely he has long outlived every sensation of the kind. In addition, he has to clothes-pin his tentacles to his ears in order to eat; it is perfectly nauseating. When is a man to be safe from such wit, if age and infirmity and the chance of him strangling his accuser with his rage-stiffened face-appendages, will not protect him?”

“Infirmity!” said Elinor, “do you call Colonel Brandon infirm? Deformed, maybe; repulsive, certainly. More fish than man, face-wise, it cannot be argued. But infirm? I can easily suppose that his age may appear much greater to you than to my mother, but you can hardly deceive yourself as to his having the use of his limbs! In a way, he has more limbs than all of us put together.”

“Good point,” agreed Mrs. Dashwood.

“Did you not hear him complain of cartilage rot?” Marianne protested. “And is not that the commonest infirmity of declining life for a person with his affliction?”

“My dearest child,” said her mother, laughing, “at this rate you must
be in continual terror of my decay; and it must seem to a miracle that my life has been extended to the advanced age of forty.”

“Mama, you are not doing me justice,” said Marianne, who could not be driven from her theme. “I know very well that Colonel Brandon is not old enough to make his friends apprehensive of losing him in the course of nature. He may live twenty years longer, long enough for those fleshy maxillae to turn green-grey and droop with age. But five and thirty has nothing to do with matrimony.”

“Perhaps,” said Elinor, “five and thirty and seventeen had better not have anything to do with matrimony together. But if there should by any chance happen to be a woman who is single at seven and twenty, and, say, visually impaired somehow, I should not think Colonel Brandon’s being five and thirty any objection to his marrying
her
.”

“A woman of seven and twenty,” said Marianne, “can never hope to feel or inspire affection again. If her home be uncomfortable or her fortune small, I can suppose that she might bring herself to submit to the offices of a nurse or a ship’s wench. In his marrying such a woman, therefore, there would be nothing unsuitable. It would be a compact of convenience, and the world would be satisfied. In my eyes it would be no marriage at all; to me it would seem only a commercial exchange, in which each wished to be benefited at the expense of the other.”

“It would be impossible, I know,” replied Elinor, “to convince you that a woman of seven and twenty could feel for a man of five and thirty anything near to love. But I must object to your dooming Colonel Brandon, merely because he chanced to complain yesterday (a very cold damp day) of a slight cartilage rot in his face.”

“But he talked of flannel waistcoats,” said Marianne; “and with me a flannel waistcoat is invariably connected with aches, cramps, rheumatisms, and every species of ailment that can afflict the old and the feeble.”

“Had he been only in a violent fever, you would not have despised him half so much. Confess, Marianne, is not there something interesting to you in the flushed cheek, hollow eye, and quick pulse of a fever? It is
imminent danger that excites you! I swear by the northern lights, when that bosun’s mate was being consumed by those devil fish, you looked upon his rapidly disappearing corpse with a blush of interest upon your cheek.”

Soon after this, upon Elinor’s leaving the room, Marianne spoke again. “Mama,” she began, “I have an alarm on the subject of illness which I cannot conceal from you. I am sure Edward Ferrars is not well. We have now been here almost a fortnight, and yet he does not come. Nothing but real indisposition—perhaps Asiatic cholera?—could occasion this extraordinary delay. What else can detain him at Norland? Must we assume he was dispatched by a giant serpent, perhaps cousin to the one that launched itself against us on our inward journey?”

“Had you any idea of Edward’s coming so soon?” said Mrs. Dashwood. “I had none. On the contrary, if I have felt any anxiety at all on the subject, it has been in recollecting that he sometimes showed a want of pleasure and readiness in accepting my invitation to visit. Does Elinor expect him already?”

“I have never mentioned it to her, but of course she must.”

“I rather think you are mistaken, for when I was talking to her yesterday of getting a new, tightly meshed grate for the guest bedchamber, she observed that there was no immediate hurry for it, as it was not likely that this room would be wanted for some time.”

“How strange it is! What can be the meaning of it! But the whole of their behaviour to each other has been unaccountable! How cold, how composed were their last adieus! How languid their conversation the last evening of their being together! In Edward’s farewell there was no distinction between Elinor and me: It was the good wishes of an affectionate brother to both. Twice did I leave them purposely together in the course of the last morning, and each time did he most unaccountably follow me out of the room. And Elinor, in quitting Norland and Edward, cried not as I did. Even now her self-command is invariable. When is she dejected or melancholy? When does she try to avoid society or appear restless and dissatisfied in it?”

Margaret at that moment returned from a long morning of exploring the coastline and rough interiors of Pestilent Isle, and stood in the doorway in uncharacteristic silence, contemplating a fresh mystery she had encountered as she made her way around their habitation.

“Mother?” Margaret began tremulously. “There is something I must—”

She was interrupted by a rumble of thunder loud enough to shake the little cottage like a child’s toy. Mrs. Dashwood and Marianne rose and stared out the front window, where in the cove below the cottage the waves were rushing up against the rocks; and a low, ominous fog could be seen, miles out to sea but drawing nearer with the tide.

Margaret, for her part, stood staring out the
southerly
vantage, which took in the whole unwholesome geography of Pestilent Isle: the rutted swamps and sloping flats and jagged promontories—and that rock-pocked, ugly hill she had dubbed Mount Margaret.

“We are not alone here,” she whispered. “We are not alone.”

T
HE DASHWOODS WERE NOW SETTLED
at Barton Cottage with tolerable comfort to themselves. The shanty upon its jutting ridge, the fetid, wind-tossed tidewaters below, the muddy beaches dotted by clumps of brackish algae, were all now become familiar. They had strung the encircling fence with garlands of dried kelp and lamb’s blood, which Sir John Middleton had proscribed as the surest method to ward off the attentions of whatever hydrophilic malevolencies might prowl the coast.

There was no other families on the island; no village; no human habitation but for themselves. Fortunately, the whole of Pestilent Isle abounded in intriguing walks. Black and rugged hills, overrun with marsh
vegetation, challenged them from almost every window of the cottage to seek the enjoyment of air on their summits; towards one of these hills did Marianne and Margaret one memorable morning direct their steps, attracted by the rare appearance of sunshine in the claustrophobic gloom of their surroundings. Margaret was insistent on trekking to the centre of the island to ascend Mount Margaret and find the source of the column of steam she still swore she had seen, and Marianne was pleased to oblige. This opportunity, however, was not tempting enough to draw the others from their pencil and their book; Mrs. Dashwood sat composing short verses about sailors dying of influenza, whilst Elinor drew again and again a cryptic five-pointed symbol that had appeared to her in a fever dream on the night they first arrived in the islands.

Marianne gaily ascended the downs, trying to keep up with Margaret as she plunged forward, using the bent branch of a kapok tree for a walking stick. Together they traced the upward journey of a sprightly brook— which Margaret suspected had its headwaters at the apex of the little mountain—rejoicing in every glimpse of blue sky, and catching in their faces the animating gales of a high southwesterly wind, despite the keen odor of rot and decay it curiously bore. Marianne took little notice of the peculiar chill in the air, and the fact that the wind only increased as they rambled, seeming indeed to moan, as it swept through the trees, with the restless voices of the damned.

“Is there a felicity in the world superior to this?” asked Marianne with a grin. “Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours, and if we are set upon by any sort of man-beast with giant lobster claws, I shall swiftly butcher it with this pickaxe I brought for that purpose.”

Margaret gave no reply to her sister’s flight of fancy, remaining keen and alert as they tromped. She jumped, as they turned one sharp corner of the path, when suddenly she heard muted voices, mumbling in a kind of ragged chorus, a menacing, polysyllabic chant:
K’yaloh D’argesh F’ah. K’yaloh D’argesh F’ah. K’yaloh D’argesh F’ah.

“Do you hear that?” Margaret asked her sister.

Marianne, busily composing romantic couplets dedicated to their new island home, responded with an airy, “Hear what?”

Indeed, the chanting had abruptly stopped; Margaret jerked her head, peering into the trees beside the brook for the source of this puzzling refrain. For a fleeting moment she glimpsed a pair of gleaming eyes, and then another—before they disappeared in the dark heart of the underbrush.

She shook her head and pressed on.

The sisters pursued their way against the wind, resisting it for about twenty minutes longer, when suddenly the fog that hugged the coast lifted and united into a sudden cloud cover, and a driving rain set full in their face, every drop noxious to smell and sulfurous upon the skin. Chagrined and panic-stricken as they imagined what fresh peril this sudden, acrid downpour must portend, they were obliged to turn back, for no shelter was nearer than their own house. Their hearts pounding with horror, they ran desperately down the steep side of the craggy hill which led immediately to their garden gate.

Marianne had at first the advantage, but a false step brought her splashingly into the brook, newly swollen and rushing with rainwater, where she was suddenly submerged from head to toe in the icy cold water. Margaret was involuntarily hurried along by the steepness of the hill; her face was a rictus of fear as she heard the chilling splash of her sister entering the water, and words appeared in her mind unbidden:
It’s them.
The people she had spotted for those brief moments in the underbrush.
They will not let us ascend. They protect the geyser… . Them …

Marianne, meanwhile, lay face down in the brook, her pickaxe thrown from her grip. Freezing, waterlogged, and pummeled by stones carried by the swift current, she drew her face from under and sputtered for breath—only to find her head pulled back towards the surface by the strong, ropy tentacle which had snaked itself around her neck, and which wound itself over her mouth before she could scream. As she was dragged below the surface, she saw that the tentacle was attached to an enormous, purple-black giant octopus with the long, sharp beak of a bird, and that
upon the very tip of the rubbery limb now constraining her was a single, baleful eye.

Thwack! A harpoon pierced the giant octopus’s bulbous head, and it burst, raining blood and ooze into the brook and all over Marianne, who managed to lift her face from the water as the tentacle released its grip. As she lay gasping on the bank, soaked by the fetid water and the foul juices of the monster, spitting small bits of brain and gore from the corners of her mouth, a gentlemen clad in a diving costume and helmet, and carrying a harpoon gun, ran to her assistance. The gentleman, opening the circular, hinged portcullis on the front of his helmet, offered his services; and perceiving that her modesty declined what her situation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without further delay and carried her down the hill. Then passing through the garden, he bore her directly into the house, and quitted not his hold till he had seated her in a chair in the parlour.