Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters (7 page)

Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood rose up in astonishment; their eyes were fixed on the gentleman with an evident wonder, and in Mrs. Dashwood’s case, concern about the brackish water dripping from his diving costume onto the parlour carpet. He apologised for his intrusion by relating its cause, in a manner so frank and so graceful that his person, which was uncommonly handsome, received additional charms from his voice and expression. Had he been even old, ugly, and vulgar, the gratitude and kindness of Mrs. Dashwood would have been secured by the act of saving her child from the gruesome attentions of the beast; but the influence of youth, beauty, and elegance, gave an interest to the action which came home to her feelings.

She thanked him again and again; and, with a sweetness of address which always attended her, invited him to be seated. But this he declined, as he was covered with mud and giant octopus effluvia. Mrs. Dashwood then begged to know to whom she was obliged. His name, he replied, was Willoughby, and his present home was on Allenham Isle, from whence he hoped she would allow him the honour of calling to-morrow to enquire
after Miss Dashwood. The honour was readily granted, and he then departed; from the parlour window, they watched as he leapt dolphin-like back into the brook and swam readily away upstream.

His manly beauty and abilities as a swimmer and monster slayer were instantly the theme of general admiration; and the laugh which his gallantry raised against Marianne received particular spirit from his exterior attractions. Marianne herself had seen less of his person than the rest, for the confusion which crimsoned over her face, on his lifting her up, had robbed her of the power of regarding him after their entering the house. But she had seen enough of him to join in all the admiration of the others, and with an energy which always adorned her praise. So effectively harpooning the giant octopus and carrying her into the house showed an admirable rapidity of thought. Every circumstance belonging to him was interesting. His name was good, his residence was on a neighbouring island, and she soon found out that of all manly dresses a wet-suit and flip-per feet were the most becoming. Her imagination was busy, her reflections were pleasant, so much so that she could nearly disregard the pain as Mrs. Dashwood burnt off the giant octopus tentacle, still clinging demonically to her neck, with a hot poker seized from the fireplace.

Margaret sat meanwhile in a corner of the room, ignored in the general commotion; already her wild story had been dismissed as the preposterous imaginings of a child. “Margaret was beset by a malevolent cephalopod,” said Elinor, “Not by any sort of muttering man-trolls meandering through the treeline.”

So the youngest Dashwood simply stared out the back window, repeating to herself again and again those strange words, if words they were:
K’yaloh D’argesh F’ah. K’yaloh D’argesh F’ah.

Sir John called on them as soon as the next interval of fair weather that morning allowed him to get out of doors; and Marianne’s near-drowning and near-mauling being related to him, he was eagerly asked whether he knew any gentleman of the name of Willoughby at Allenham Isle. “Willoughby!” cried Sir John; “what, is he in the country? That is
good news! I will ride over to-morrow, and ask him to come to Deadwind Island for dinner on Thursday.”

“You know him, then,” said Mrs. Dashwood.

“Know him? To be sure I do. Why, he is down here every year.”

“And what sort of a young man is he?”

“As good a kind of fellow as ever lived, I assure you. A treasure hunter, by trade; a remarkable shot with a harpoon gun, and there is not a faster swimmer in England, in water fresh or briny.”

“And is that all you can say for him?” cried Marianne, indignantly. “But what are his manners on more intimate acquaintance? What his pursuits, his talents, and genius?”

Sir John was rather puzzled.

“Upon my soul,” said he, “I do not know much about him as to all that. But he is a pleasant, good-humoured fellow, and he has at his home a remarkable collection of deadman’s maps, a team of handsome treasure-dogs, and for amusement a tank full of captured man-eating tropical fish, which he keeps sated with small rodents.”

“But who is he?” said Elinor. “Where does he come from? Has he a house on Allenham Isle?”

On this point Sir John could give more certain intelligence; and he told them that Mr. Willoughby had no island property of his own; his estate is Combe Magna, in Somersetshire; he resided on the archipelago only while he was visiting Mrs. Smith, an old lady who lived in a stately seaside manor on Allenham Isle, to whom he was related, and whose possessions he was to inherit; adding, “Yes, yes, he is very well worth catching I can tell you, Miss Dashwood; he has a pretty little estate of his own, in Somerset-shire besides, and a thirty-foot skiff outfitted with carronades for shooting at predatory serpents; and if I were you, I would not give him up to my younger sister, in spite of all this tumbling into the lairs of octopi. Miss Marianne must not expect to have all the men to herself. Brandon will be jealous, and his jealousy may cause the evil spirits that inhabit his bile ducts to erupt, with the usual consequences,” he added with a shudder.

“I do not believe,” said Mrs. Dashwood, with a good-humoured smile, “that Mr. Willoughby will be incommoded by the attempts of either of my daughters, towards what you call catching him. It is not an employment to which they have been brought up, and they have enough to concern themselves with. Men are very safe with us, let them be ever so rich. I am glad to find, however, from what you say, that he is a respectable young man, and one whose acquaintance will not be ineligible.”

“He is as good a sort of fellow, I believe, as ever lived,” repeated Sir John. “I remember last Christmas, at a little hop on the Deadwind Island, he danced from eight o’clock till four without once sitting down.”

“Did he, indeed?” cried Marianne, with sparkling eyes; “and with elegance, with spirit?”

“Yes; and he was up again at eight to muck for clams off the southern coast.”

“That is what I like; that is what a young man ought to be,” sighed Marianne. “Whatever be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and leave him no sense of fatigue. Because it is when you are tired that the monsters get you.” To which concluding point the Dashwoods all nodded solemnly.

“Aye, aye, I see how it will be,” said Sir John, “I see how it will be. You will be setting your cap at him now, and never think of poor, malformed Brandon.”

“That is an expression, Sir John,” said Marianne, warmly, “which I particularly dislike.”

“Malformed?”

“No—’setting your cap.’ I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended; and ‘setting one’s cap at a man,’ or ‘making a conquest,’ are the most odious of all. Their tendency is gross and illiberal; and if their construction could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago destroyed all its ingenuity.”

Sir John laughed heartily at this, smoothed his great white beard with his massive hands, and then replied, “Aye, you will make conquests
enough, I dare say, one way or other. Poor Brandon! he is quite smitten already; you should see him when your name is mentioned, gibbering and moaning and tugging at his feelers. He is well worth setting your cap at, in spite of all this tussling with giant octopi.”

W
ILLOUGHBY CALLED AT THE COTTAGE
early the next morning to make his personal inquiries. He was received by Mrs. Dashwood with a kindness which Sir John’s description of him and her own gratitude prompted; and everything that passed during the visit tended to assure him of the sense, elegance, mutual affection, and domestic comfort of the family to whom yesterday’s entanglement with the octopus had now introduced him. He had not required a second interview to be convinced of the family’s charms.

Elinor had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her face was so lovely, that when in the common cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens. Her complexion was uncommonly brilliant; her features were all good; she looked to Willoughby’s admiring gaze to have lungs of a remarkable capacity; her smile was sweet and attractive; and in her eyes, which were very dark, there was a spirit of eagerness which could hardly be seen without delight. From Willoughby their expression was at first held back, by the embarrassment and lingering disquiet which the remembrance of the monster assault created. But when this passed away she saw that to the perfect good-breeding of the gentleman, he united frankness and vivacity. He wore his diving costume, even when not planning a dive, though today it was coupled not with his flippers and helmet, but thigh-high
leather boots and a hat of sleekest otter skin. Further, he was accompanied by a pet orangutan called Monsieur Pierre, who crouched obediently by his side and made amusing facial expressions. When, finally, Marianne heard Willoughby declare that he was passionately fond of singing shanties and dancing jigs, she gave him such a look of approbation as secured the largest share of his attention to herself for the rest of his stay.

It was only necessary to mention any favourite amusement to engage her to talk. She could not be silent when such points were introduced, and she had neither shyness nor reserve in their discussion. They speedily discovered that their enjoyment of dancing and music was mutual, and they shared a general conformity of judgment in all that related to either. She proceeded to question him on the subject of books; she adored tales of pirates and piracy, but her favourites were the recovered diaries of shipwrecked sailors, and she discussed these with so rapturous a delight, that any young man of five and twenty must have been insensible indeed, not to become an immediate convert to the excellence of the works in question. Their taste was strikingly alike. The same books, the same passages were idolized by each—especially the section in
Being the True Account of the Wreck of the HMS
Inopportune,
by Seamen Meriwether Chalmers, Its Sole Survivor
, where the desperate midshipman scrambles up a tree to catch a rock dove, and when it is revealed to be merely a clump of leaves, eats his belt.

Long before his visit concluded, Marianne and Willoughby conversed with the familiarity of a long-established acquaintance.

“Well, Marianne,” said Elinor, busily tailing and deveining a pile of shrimp, while the fire pit was prepared to roast them, “for
one
morning I think you have done pretty well. You have already ascertained Mr. Willoughby’s opinion in almost every matter of importance. But how is your acquaintance to be long supported? You will soon have exhausted each favourite topic. Another meeting will suffice to explain his sentiments on picturesque beauty, second marriages, and the virtues of breaststroke versus the Australian crawl, and then you can have nothing further to ask.”

“Elinor,” cried Marianne, playfully flicking raw shrimp juice at her sister’s face with three fingers, “Is this fair? Is this just? Are my ideas so scanty? But I see what you mean. I have been too much at my ease, too happy, too frank. I have erred against every common-place notion of decorum; I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been reserved, spiritless, dull, and deceitful—I should have talked in dull tones of hydrology and tidal science, and spoken only once in ten minutes.”

“My love,” said Mrs. Dashwood to Marianne, dabbing shrimp from Elinor’s cheeks with a sponge, “you must not be offended with Elinor— she was only in jest. I should scold her myself, if she were truly capable of wishing to check your delight.” Marianne was softened in a moment, and soon they were all busily employed in piercing the shrimp with spits, and listening happily as they crackled over the fire pit.

Willoughby, on his side, gave every proof of his pleasure in their acquaintance. He came to them every day. Marianne was confined for some days to the house, as she recovered from the octopus attack, with Sir John monitoring the wound and applying to it a bewildering array of tinctures and extracts—in his experience such a gash, once infected, could cause the sufferer themselves to transform into an octopus; but never had any confinement been less irksome. Willoughby was a young man possessed of good abilities, quick imagination, a charming simian companion, and affectionate manners. He was, in short, exactly formed to engage Marianne’s heart, and his society became gradually her most exquisite enjoyment. They read, they talked, they sang; they sat in the bay window and amusedly discerned patterns in the ever-present low-hanging fog—here a cat of fog, here a sailboat of fog, here a fog frog. His shanty-singing and composing talents were considerable; and he read her beloved journals of nautical ruin with all the sensibility which Edward had unfortunately wanted.

In Mrs. Dashwood’s estimation he was as faultless as in Marianne’s. Elinor saw nothing to censure in him but a propensity to say too much of what he thought on any occasion, a propensity underscored by the weirdly humanish laughter of Monsieur Pierre, which his ribaldry invariably
elicited. In hastily forming and giving his opinion of other people, a habit in which he strongly resembled and peculiarly delighted her sister, he displayed a want of caution which Elinor could not approve.

Marianne began now to perceive that the desperation which had seized her at sixteen and a half, of ever seeing a man who could satisfy her ideas of perfection, had been rash and unjustifiable. Willoughby was all that her fancy had delineated in that unhappy hour, and in every brighter period. He was the sun shining on smooth rocks; he was a clear blue sky after monsoon season’s end; he was perfection in a wet-suit.

Her mother too, in whose mind not one speculative thought of their marriage had been raised (by his prospect of one day becoming rich from a discovery of buried treasure) was led before the end of a week to hope and expect it; and secretly to congratulate herself on having gained two such sons-in-law as Edward and Willoughby.

The repellant Colonel Brandon’s partiality for Marianne, which had so early been discovered by his friends, now became perceptible to Elinor. She was obliged to believe that the sentiments which Mrs. Jennings had assigned him for her own amusement were now real; and that however a general resemblance of disposition between the parties might forward the affection of Mr. Willoughby, an equally striking opposition of character was no hindrance to the regard of Colonel Brandon. She saw it with concern; for what was a silent man of five and thirty, bearing an awful affliction upon his face, when opposed to a very lively man of five and twenty, dripping with charisma and the sea-water streaming from his physique-accentuating diving costume? And as she could not wish Brandon successful, she heartily wished him indifferent. She liked him— in spite of his gravity and reserve and the raft of unsettling physical sensations occasioned by looking upon him directly, she beheld in him an object of interest. His manners, though serious, were mild; and his reserve appeared rather the result of embarrassment as to his peculiar condition, than of any natural gloominess of temper. Sir John in his gnomic way had dropped obscure hints of past injuries and disappointments, which justified
her belief of Brandon’s being an unfortunate man, having suffered disappointments even beyond the seminal misfortune written, quite literally, all over his face.