Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

by Jane Austen; Ben H. Winters

  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.

  Perhaps she pitied and esteemed him the more because he was slighted by Willoughby and Marianne, who, prejudiced against him for being neither lively nor young nor entirely human, seemed resolved to undervalue his merits.

  “Brandon is just the kind of man, if man he truly be,” said Willoughby one day, when they were talking of him together, “whom everybody speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and everybody is sort of mildly afraid to look at directly.”

  “That is exactly what I think of him,” cried Marianne.

  “Do not boast of it, however,” said Elinor, “for it is injustice in both of you. He is highly esteemed by all the family on Deadwind Island, and I never see him myself without taking pains to converse with him, although sometimes I shield my eyes with my hands, like this.”

  “That he is patronized by you,” replied Willoughby, “is certainly in his favour; but as for the esteem of the others, it is a reproach in itself. Who would submit to the indignity of being approved by such a woman as Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, that could command the indifference of anybody else?”

  “Oo-oo-oo!” agreed Monsieur Pierre, leaping upon an armoire and pounding his chest with his fists.

  “But perhaps the abuse of such people as yourself and Marianne will make amends for the regard of Lady Middleton and her mother. If their praise is censure, your censure may be praise, for they are not more undiscerning than you are prejudiced and unjust.”

  “In defense of your protégé you can even be saucy.”

  “My protégé, as you call him, is a sensible man; and sense will always have attractions for me. Yes, Marianne, even in a man between thirty and forty. He has seen a great deal of the world; has been abroad, has read, and has a thinking mind. I have found him capable of giving me much information on various subjects. It’s true! Though I stand a few feet away, so his animation on topics of interest does not cause his tentacles to accidentally brush against me. He has always answered my inquiries with readiness of good breeding and good nature.”

  Through this tribute, Willoughby executed a mocking gesture with his hands, holding the flat of his palm below his nose and wiggling his fingers in comical imitation of Brandon’s deformity.

  Elinor rolled her eyes. “Why should you dislike him so?”

  “I do not dislike him. I consider him, on the contrary, as a very respectable man, who has everybody’s good word, and nobody’s notice; who has more money than he can spend, more time than he knows how to employ, and two new coats every year. Who, though he may have a thinking mind, has also a fish’s face, and should perhaps be more comfortable out of his gentlemen’s coats and submerged in the tank in my parlour.”

  “Add to which,” cried Marianne, “that he has neither genius, taste, nor spirit. That his understanding has no brilliancy, his feelings no ardour, and his voice makes that low gurgling noise that really turns one’s stomach, does it not?”

  “You decide on his imperfections so much in the mass,” replied Elinor, “and so much on the strength of your own imagination—except, I grant you, your observation on the tone of his voice, which is indeed quite unsettlingly aqueous—that the commendation I am able to give of him is comparatively cold and insipid. I can only pronounce him to be a sensible man, well-bred, well-informed, of gentle address, and, I believe, possessing an amiable heart.”

  “Miss Dashwood,” cried Willoughby, “You are endeavouring to disarm me by reason, and to convince me against my will. But it will not do. You shall find me as stubborn as you can be artful.” Pleased with his point, he patted Monsieur Pierre, who was defecating. “I have three unanswerable reasons for disliking Colonel Brandon; he threatened me with rain when I wanted it to be fine; he has found fault with my harpooning grip; and I cannot persuade him to buy my fine antique canoe, carved by hand of sturdiest balsam. If it will be any satisfaction to you, however, to be told, that I believe his character to be in other respects irreproachable, I am ready to confess it. And in return for an acknowledgment, which must give me some pain, you cannot deny me the privilege of disliking him as much as ever, and referring to him privately as Ole Fishy Face.”

  CHAPTER 11

  LITTLE HAD MRS. DASHWOOD or her daughters imagined when first they sailed into the choppy waters of the Devonshire coast, that so many engagements would arise to occupy their time, or that they should have such frequent invitations and such constant visitors. Yet such was the case. When Marianne was recovered from her assault, and the wound closed to Sir John’s satisfaction, the schemes of amusement at home and abroad, which Sir John had been previously forming, were put into execution. Sir John was particularly fond of organizing events on the beach at Deadwind Island, such as tiki dances, crawfish fries, and bonfires, on which he would roast a mucilaginous sweetmeat extracted from the marsh-mallow plant; he took upon himself the responsibility both for each evening’s entertainment and for taking the elaborate precautions necessary for the safety of his guests. These included both superstitious means, such as drawing a large quadrangle upon the beach in an admixture of squid ink and whale blood, beyond which his guests were firmly instructed never to stray; and the more practical measures represented by the stern-faced stewards, armed with tridents and torches, who stood at intervals of twelve paces, eyes fixed upon the water, while the evening’s amusements were undertaken.

  In every entertainment Willoughby was included; they afforded him opportunity of witnessing the excellencies of Marianne and of receiving, in her behaviour to himself, the most pointed assurance of her affection.

  Elinor could not be surprised at their attachment. She only wished that it were less openly shown; and once or twice did venture to suggest the propriety of some self-command to Marianne. “For Heaven’s sake, dear sister,” she scolded. “You cling to him like a barnacle.” But Marianne abhorred all concealment; and to aim at the restraint of sentiments which were not in themselves illaudable, appeared to her not merely an unnecessary effort, but
a disgraceful subjection of reason to common-place and mistaken notions. Willoughby thought the same, and their behaviour at all times was an illustration of their opinions.

  When he was present, she had no eyes for anyone else. Everything he did was right. Everything he said was clever. Every lobster he drew from the tank was the biggest and plumpest of lobsters. If battledore and shuttlecock formed the evening’s sport, his was the cleverest racket-hand. If reels and jigs formed the amusement, they were partners for half the time; and when obliged to separate for a couple of dances, were careful to stand together and scarcely spoke a word to anybody else. Such conduct made them of course most exceedingly laughed at; but ridicule could not shame, and seemed hardly to provoke them.

  Mrs. Dashwood entered into all their feelings with warmth; to her it was but the natural consequence of a strong affection in a young and ardent mind.

  This was the season of happiness to Marianne. The fond attachment to her former life at Norland was much softened by the charms which Willoughby’s society bestowed on her present island home.

  Elinor’s happiness was not so great. Her heart was not so much at ease, nor her satisfaction in their amusements so pure; they afforded her no companion that could make amends for what she had left behind. Neither Lady Middleton nor Mrs. Jennings could supply to her the conversation she missed; Lady Middleton was in especially dismal humour after attempting to escape back to her home country in a raft she had painstakingly constructed out of broom-straw and clamshells—and being recaptured two miles off the coast. As for Mrs. Jennings, she was an everlasting talker, and had already repeated her own history to Elinor three or four times; had Elinor been paying the scantest attention, she might have known very early in their acquaintance all the particulars of Mr. Jennings’s last moments, just before his head was sliced off by an enthusiastic subaltern of Sir John’s, and what he said to his wife a few minutes before he died (“Kill yourself! Kill yourself rather than suffer life with the foreign devils!”).

  In Colonel Brandon alone, of all her new acquaintance, did Elinor find a person who could in any degree claim the respect of abilities, excite the interest of friendship, or give pleasure as a companion. Willoughby was out of the question. He was a lover; his attentions were wholly Marianne’s, and a far less agreeable man might have been more generally pleasing. Colonel Brandon, unfortunately for himself, had no such encouragement to think only of Marianne. In conversing with Elinor he found the greatest consolation for the indifference, shading into revulsion, of her sister.

  Elinor’s compassion for him increased, as she had reason to suspect that the misery of disappointed love had already been known to him. This suspicion was given by some words which accidently dropped from him one evening, when they were sitting together before the bonfire, staring into its guttural embers, while the others were dancing; the dancing was more spirited than usual, attributable to a punch Sir John was serving that he called Black Devil, made from a rum so dark that no light could pass through it.

  Brandon’s eyes were fixed on Marianne, and, after a silence of some minutes, he said, with a faint smile, “Your sister, I understand, does not approve of second attachments.”

  “No,” replied Elinor, “her opinions are all romantic.”

  “Or rather, as I believe, she considers them impossible to exist.”

  “I believe she does.”

  “Well, some people believe sea witches don’t exist. Or that they don’t curse people. But they do. They really do,” remarked Colonel Brandon bitterly.

  “A few years will settle Marianne’s opinions on second marriages on the reasonable basis of common sense and observation,” Elinor said, politely passing over Brandon’s pained comment regarding his own lamentable condition. “And then they may be more easy to define and to justify than they now are, by anybody but herself.”

  “This will probably be the case,” he replied; “and yet there is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.” He breathed wetly through the slimy hanging forest of his face. In the pause before he resumed speaking, Elinor glanced to sea and noticed with a shiver that the fog seemed especially thick and ominous; she then discovered that with the toe of her shoe she was absently tracing a pattern— the same five-pointed symbol which she had found herself sketching in the notebook, the afternoon that Marianne was assaulted by the octopus.

  She was about to remark on this when Brandon resumed the conversation by saying, “Does your sister make no distinction in her objections against a second attachment? Or is it equally criminal in everybody? Are those who have been disappointed in their first choice, whether from the inconstancy of its object, or the perverseness of circumstances, to be equally indifferent during the rest of their lives?”

  “Upon my word, I am not acquainted with the minutiae of her principles. I only know that I never yet heard her admit any instance of a second attachment’s being pardonable.”

  “This cannot hold,” said he, and his fishy face fingers grew rigid, as they sometimes did when he became animated. “No, no, do not desire it; for when the romantic refinements of a young mind are obliged to give way, how frequently are they succeeded by such opinions as are but too common, and too dangerous! I speak from experience.” Elinor, though engrossed in her friend’s confession, noted with a start that the tide was rushing in with a fierceness wholly unsuited to the hour of evening; the armed stewards snapped to attention and redoubled their attentions to the sea. The other party-goers, their senses dulled by Sir John’s concoction, continued dancing.

  “I once knew a lady who in temper and mind greatly resembled your sister,” Brandon continued, lost in remembrance, “who thought and judged like her, but who from an enforced change—from a series of unfortunate circumstances—”

  “What in the—” shouted Sir John, rushing from the dunes, where he had been helping himself to more Black Devil, towards the tide where it now crashed furiously upon the beach. Elinor, surprised and afraid, instinctively huddled into Brandon’s arms, and then instantly pulled away, wiping tentacle-snot from her shoulder. “Sir John?” Brandon cried. “What transpires?”

  The attention of the party was now fully caught; their alarm was severe, and well-warranted. The water rushed yet farther up the beach and was suddenly gathered around their ankles, and from it rose a great scrabbling thing, a jellyfish twice the size of the largest man present, which presently dragged itself puckering and groaning from the tide. The stewards succumbed to fear; Elinor, observing tremulously from her position at the bonfire, saw one of the guards literally quaking at the knees, another sprinting full-bore inland. Only Sir John had the decisiveness and fortitude equal to the danger at hand; his advanced years seeming to melt away, he leapt in a swift movement to the bonfire, seized a burning ember, and proceeded to the water’s edge to confront the fiend.

  The gibbering sea-beast was meanwhile demonstrating itself to be faster than any creature lacking legs or other apparent means of locomotion ought naturally to be; indeed, unnatural was but the mildest appellation this massive man-o’-war might justifiably bear. Before Sir John could reach it with his torch, it threw itself in three great wet, slavering motions across the beach and launched its sickening bulk across an unfortunate girl named Marissa Bellwether.

  As the party watched in stunned horror, Miss Bellwether was wrapped inside the quavering blanket-shape of the beast and consumed; the stomach acids of the enormous jellyfish dissolved her flesh, emitting a sickening sizzling noise, followed by a sort of unholy belch. And then, as quickly as it had come, the creature dragged itself back into the sea; the tide withdrew; and all that was left of Miss Bellwether was a pile of corroded bones, a clump of hair, and a whalebone corset.

  Elinor turned to Brandon, only to find that he had hastened to Marianne’s side. Instead she approached Sir John, who clutching his improvised torch was crouched beside the poor girl’s remains; this evidence
he examined carefully, producing a monocle from an inside pocket and peering at the scene of the violence. It was not the bone and hair which seemed to draw his attention, however, but a small slick of blue-green slime glimmering in the moonlight, a few paces down the beach.

  “What might that be, Sir John?” Elinor inquired. “Some noxious spray emitted by the malefic cnidaria as it murdered poor Marissa?”

  “Worse still,” he said. And then, shaking his wizened head, repeated it. “Worse still. If I am right—the Fang-Beast . . . the dreaded Devonshire Fang-Beast . . .”

  “I am sorry,” inquired Elinor, smoothing her skirts. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” responded Sir John. “Nothing at all. Have some punch, dear.”

  AS THE PARTY WATCHED IN STUNNED HORROR, MISS BELLWETHER WAS WRAPPED INSIDE THE QUAVERING BLANKET-SHAPE OF THE BEAST AND CONSUMED.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE NEXT MORNING, Elinor and Marianne were walking home from the sad seaside ceremony, at which the remains of Miss Bellwether were gathered in a sachet bag and solemnly tossed into the ocean. Marianne took the occasion to communicate a piece of news to her sister, which surprised Elinor by its extravagant testimony of her sister’s imprudence and want of thought. Marianne told her with the greatest delight, that Willoughby had given her a domesticated sea horse—one that he himself had bred all man-hating instincts from, in his own aquatic experimentation tank in Somersetshire, among the few such tanks to be found outside Sub-Marine Station Beta—and which sea horse, with its iridescent multi-hued scaling, was exactly calculated to please a woman’s sensibilities. Marianne had accepted the present without hesitation—without considering that it was not her mother’s plan to keep any sea horse, and that its maintenance would require an appropriate aquarium, specially-designed exercise equipment, and a well-trained servant to tend it.