Elinor returned to her entreaties. From The Cleveland, which was within a few miles of Bristol, the distance to the Devonshire coast was not far; and as there could be no occasion of their staying above a week aboard The Cleveland, they might now be at home in little more than three weeks’ time. As Marianne’s affection for her mother was sincere, it must triumph with little difficulty, over the imaginary evils she had started.
Mrs. Jennings was so far from being weary of her guests that she pressed them very earnestly to return with her again from The Cleveland. Elinor was grateful for the attention, but it could not alter her design; everything relative to their return was arranged as far as it could be; and Marianne found some relief in drawing up a statement of the hours that were yet to divide her from their beloved shanty high atop the wind-swept cliffs of Pestilent Isle.
The issue was settled, and now Elinor was allowed luxury to discover the cause of agitation among the servants, who were still rushing hither and thither, and one of whom was donning his Ex-Domic Float-Suit and being outfitted with a pair of shiny gutting knives. By way of answer to Elinor’s enquiries, the newly costumed servant merely gestured with his knives to the back wall of the Dome-glass, where a half dozen swordfish were tapping steadily, and with military precision, against the glass. As Elinor watched, a seventh joined their school, and then an eighth. Looking closer, Elinor saw the true root of the servants’ distress and quick action: A clearly discernible and rapidly spreading network of tiny cracks in the Dome-glass, with its epicenter where the swordfish continued at their unending labour.
Tap, tap, tap . . . tap tap tap . . . taptaptap . . .
She gave the servant an encouraging smile, and watched as he disappeared down the small hallway that led to the emergency exit chamber. By then, Colonel Brandon had arrived, and Mrs. Jennings had apprised him of the Dashwoods’ plan for Ascending the Sub-Station and returning home, via a visit to the Palmers.
“Ah! Colonel Brandon, I do not know what you and I shall do without the Miss Dashwoods,” was her plaintive address to him, “for they are quite resolved upon going home from the Palmers—and how forlorn we shall be, when I come back! Lord! We shall sit and gape at one another as dull as two cats; one old, slightly crazy cat, and one cat with a mass of writhing slimy tentacles in place of whiskers!”
Perhaps Mrs. Jennings was hoping, by this vigorous sketch of their future ennui, to provoke Colonel Brandon to make that offer which might give himself an escape from it—and if so, she had soon afterwards good reason to think her object gained; for, on Elinor’s moving to the aquarium glass to watch the knife-bearing servant’s efforts to dispatch the ever-multiplying number of swordfish, he followed her to it with a look of particular meaning, and conversed with her there for several minutes. But his subject was not, as Mrs. Jennings hoped, romantic affection; all over the Sub-Station, Colonel Brandon confided to Elinor, outer-ring residents were reporting similar pecking swordfish massing outside the Dome, and all were sending out their own servants to do battle with them.
Preferring not to contemplate the possible outcome of such an unwelcome event, they conversed on other topics for several minutes. And though Mrs. Jennings was too honourable to listen, and had even changed her seat, on purpose that she might not hear, to one close by the pianoforte on which Marianne was playing a tender, melancholy, high-octave arrangement of “Yo, Ho, Ho, and a Bottle of Rum,” she could not keep herself from seeing that Elinor changed colour, attended with agitation, and was too intent on what he said. Still further in confirmation of her hopes, in the interval of Marianne’s turning from “Rum” to “A Pirate’s Life for Me,” some words of the colonel’s inevitably reached her ear, in which he seemed to be apologizing for the badness of his house. This set the matter beyond a doubt. She wondered, indeed, at his thinking it necessary to do so; but supposed it to be the proper etiquette. What Elinor said in reply she could not distinguish, but judged from the motion of her lips, that she did not think that any material objection—and Mrs. Jennings commended her in her heart for being so honest. They then talked on for a few minutes longer without her catching a syllable, when another lucky stop in Marianne’s performance brought her these words in the colonel’s calm voice: “I am afraid it cannot take place very soon.”
Astonished and shocked at such a speech, Mrs. Jennings was almost ready to cry out, “Lord! what should hinder it?” So engrossed was she with these snippets of conversation, she did not notice that the servant outside the glass had been run through on the rapier-like horn of a swordfish; two of his fellows grasped him beneath each of his armpits and hauled him hastily upwards; the other fish, thankfully, did not offer chase; they continued instead with their steady, determined rapping upon the Dome.
On Elinor and Colonel Brandon breaking up their conference soon afterwards, and moving different ways, Mrs. Jennings very plainly heard her say, with a voice showing strong feeling, “I shall always think myself very much obliged to you.”
Mrs. Jennings was delighted with her gratitude, and only wondered that after hearing such a sentence, the colonel should be able to take leave of them, as he immediately did, with the utmost sang-froid, tentacles tipping politely by way of farewell, without making her any reply! She had not thought her old friend could have made so indifferent a suitor.
What had really passed between them was to this effect:
“I have heard,” said he, with great compassion, “of the injustice your friend Mr. Ferrars has suffered from his family. If I understand the matter right, he has been entirely cast off by them for persevering in his engagement with a very deserving young woman. Have I been rightly informed? Is it so?”
Elinor told him that it was.
“The cruelty, the impolitic cruelty,” he replied, with great feeling, “of dividing, or attempting to divide, two young people long attached to each other, is terrible. I have seen Mr. Ferrars two or three times in Harley Piscinca, and am much pleased with him. I understand that he intends a career as a lighthouse keeper. Will you be so good as to tell him that the lighthouse at Delaford is his; as I am informed by this day’s post that it is now vacant, the old keeper having been dragged off by the Pirate Dreadbeard for some trivial slight; anyway, the post is his, if he think it worth his acceptance. I only wish it were more valuable. It is a lake, merely, and a small one, with only one or two tiny monsters within it, and a couple of villages surrounding that live in mild terror of same; the late incumbent, I believe, did not make more than two hundred pounds per annum, and though it is certainly capable of improvement, I fear, not to such an amount as to afford him a very comfortable income. The lighthouse itself can hardly be deserving of the name; it is really just a tumbledown cottage, with a couple of torches kept burning in the tallest branches of a nearby sycamore tree. Such as it is, however, my pleasure in presenting it will be very great. Pray assure him of it.”
Elinor’s astonishment at this commission could hardly have been greater, had the colonel been really making her an offer of his hand. The preferment, which only two days before she had considered as hopeless, would enable him to marry—and she, of all people in the world, was fixed on to bestow it! Her emotion was such as Mrs. Jennings had attributed to a very different cause; but whatever minor feelings less pure, less pleasing, might have a share in that emotion, her esteem for the general benevolence, and her gratitude for the particular friendship, which together prompted Colonel Brandon to this act, were strongly felt, and warmly expressed. She thanked him for it with all her heart, spoke of Edward’s principles and disposition with that praise which she knew them to deserve; and promised to undertake the commission with pleasure. She could undertake therefore to inform him of it, in the course of the day. After this had been settled, Colonel Brandon began to talk of his own advantage in securing so respectable and agreeable a neighbour, and that it was that he mentioned with regret, that the house was small and indifferent.
“I cannot imagine any inconvenience to them,” said Elinor, �
��for it will be in proportion to their family and income.”
By which the colonel was surprised to find that she was considering Mr. Ferrars’s marriage as the certain consequence of the presentation; for he did not suppose it possible that the lighthouse at Delaford could supply such an income, as anybody in his style of life would venture to settle on—and he said so.
“A simple lake-side lighthouse can do no more than make Mr. Ferrars comfortable as a bachelor; it cannot enable him to marry. I am sorry to say that my patronage ends with this; and my interest is hardly more extensive. If, however, by an unforeseen chance it should be in my power to serve him further, I am ready to be useful to him. What I am now doing indeed, seems nothing at all, since it can advance him so little towards what must be his principal object of happiness. His marriage must still be a distant good—at least, I am afraid it cannot take place very soon.”
Such was the sentence which, when misunderstood, so justly offended the delicate feelings of Mrs. Jennings.
As they all departed the room, the swordfish continued to mass; now a dozen, now two dozen, now three dozen beady-eyed beasts, some as small as cats, some big as horses, all with their cruel sharp bills clattering away against the glass. All over the Dome it was the same, and by nightfall there were a thousand pairs of deadly golden fish-eyes glowing eerily in the darkness, just outside the protective glass shell of the Sub-Station. An army of malevolent fish, mostly tapping, but some simply staring— staring, staring coldly in from without.
CHAPTER 40
“WELL, MISS DASHWOOD,” said Mrs. Jennings, sagaciously smiling, at the next morning’s breakfast of gelatinated oatmeal loaf and fatback powder, “I do not ask what the colonel has been saying to you; upon my honour, I tried to keep out of hearing. But his set of distended maxillae were leaping and fluttering most anxiously under his nose, and though his gurgly breathing was if anything more pronounced than usual, I could not help catching enough to understand his business. I assure you I never was better pleased in my life, and I wish you joy with all my heart.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Elinor. “It is a matter of great joy to me; and I feel the goodness of Colonel Brandon most sensibly. There are not many men who would act as he has done. Few people who have so compassionate a heart! I never was more astonished in my life that this opportunity should occur.”
“Opportunity!” repeated Mrs. Jennings. “When a man has once made up his mind to such a thing, somehow or other he will soon find an opportunity. Well, my dear, I wish you joy of it again and again; and if ever there was a happy couple in the world, I think I shall soon know where to look for them.”
“You mean to go to Delaford after them I suppose,” said Elinor, with a faint smile.
“Aye, my dear, that I do, indeed! And as to the house being a bad one, I do not know what the colonel would be at, for it is as good a one as ever I saw.”
“He spoke of its being out of repair.”
“Well, and whose fault is that? Why don’t he repair it? Who should do it but himself?”
As Elinor puzzled over Mrs. Jennings remarks, they were interrupted by a great, shuddering crash as the whole docking station absorbed an enormous blow. Their conversation ceased, and from her place at the pianoforte Marianne looked up, startled and wide-eyed.
As one, they turned their eyes to the glass, and comprehended what looked for all the world like a swordfish grown to gargantuan proportions. A moment’s inspection revealed that this was not a swordfish at all, but a narwhal—a whale of some 3,500 pounds, with tiny eyes gleaming from its giant head, and a long, wicked and twisted horn upon its brow; a sea-beast, in other words, bearing the same relation to the swordfish as a snarling lion does to a Cheshire cat. And indeed, a small school of swordfish darted about the tail and torso of the narwhal in delighted little circles, as if proclaiming it their champion.
“Dear God,” cried Elinor. “They’ve brought reinforcements.”
The narwhal now commenced ramming the blunted tip of its six-foot spiraled horn against the glass, again and again, not with the persistent tick-tock tapping of the swordfish, but with a giant, reverberating smash; and then a long pause as it drew back, and then a second smash.
“I think it is time to summon Sir John, and see what he may think of this,” said Mrs. Jennings.
Before the older woman rushed off in pursuit of that errand, Elinor reminded her not to mention the subject of their prior conversation to anyone. “Oh, very well,” said Mrs. Jennings, rather disappointed; and then, as she double- and then triple-checked that her Float-Suit was properly assembled and attached, “Then you would not have me tell it to Lucy?”
“No, ma’am, not even Lucy if you please. One day’s delay will not be very material; and till I have written to Mr. Ferrars, I think it ought not to be mentioned to anybody else. I shall do that directly. It is of importance that no time should be lost with him, for he will, of course, have much to do relative to his new position.”
This speech puzzled Mrs. Jennings exceedingly. She could not comprehend why Elinor might need to write to Mr. Ferrars in such a hurry. She was preparing to enquire further of its meaning when the loudest crash yet rattled the whole of the Dome, like it was a snow globe in the hands of a careless child. The narwhal had now turned its body lengthwise and was bringing its whole huge flank lolloping into the wall of the Station, again and again, faster and faster. From the pianoforte, her fingers frozen above the keys, Marianne swore the swordfish were cheering.
“Good-bye, my dear,” said Mrs. Jennings hurriedly to Elinor. “I have not heard of any news to please me so well since Charlotte was brought to bed. I only hope our joy in it is not undone by . . . by—” Again, a great and terrifying smash against the glass; again, the whole of the Dome trembled in its moorings. “By whatever is happening.”
Elinor sat considering how to begin—how she should express herself in her note to Edward? How could she summon the delicacy to compose such a missive, when her very home, her very world was under assault from a marine army, under the command of a gigantesque narwhal? She sat deliberating over her paper, with the pen in her hand, till interrupted by the entrance of Edward himself. Her astonishment and confusion were very great on his so sudden appearance. She had not seen him before since his engagement became public, and therefore, not since his knowing her to be acquainted with it. The consciousness of what she now had to tell him made her feel particularly uncomfortable. He too was much distressed; but now he had much more immediate concerns. He glanced swiftly at the Dome-glass and said gravely, “Ah. They are here. So they are here, as well!”
“And why do you suppose they are so determined to lay this siege against Mrs. Jennings’s docking?’ inquired Elinor innocently, glad to have a subject of conversation other than his engagement, and the new information regarding the lighthouse at Delaford that she was bound to impart.
“Do you think they are only here?” said Edward. “This strange phenomenon has made itself known in every quarter of the Station. At Berkeley’s, a great dugong slams its broad forehead upon the Dome; at Rumpole Piscina, it is a school of bass, a thousand strong, that form a mighty armada and slam against the glass in a thick barrage, time and time again. The engineers say we have nothing to worry about, that every panel is tested and re-tested a thousand times over before installation, and that the Dome is secure.”
“And so we have nothing to fear,” said Elinor, preparing to turn to the subject of which she needed to unburden herself.
“Indeed,” replied Edward. “And yet . . .”
Outside the glass, a servant swam within a dozen yards of the narwhal, and leveled a Furci-Landy gun—a high-powered air-rifle designed to shoot a shell through the foreboding density of water at 4,000 leagues beneath—at the broad flank of the beast. He fired, missed, and turned to reload.
“Mrs. Jennings told me,” said Edward, in this brief pause in the action, “that you wished to speak with me. I certainly should not have intruded on
you in such a manner; though at the same time, I should have been extremely sorry to Ascend from the Station without seeing you and your sister; especially as it will most likely be some time—it is not probable that I should soon have the pleasure of meeting you again.”
“You would not have gone, however,” said Elinor, recovering herself, and determined to get over what she so much dreaded as soon as possible, “without receiving our good wishes, even if we had not been able to give them in person.” Again the servant fired his Furci-Landy gun, and this time found his mark; the narwhal, however, reacted no more to the pellet than would a vast iron-hulled warship to a bit of gravel tossed against its broadside.
Elinor shook her head slightly and continued. “Mrs. Jennings was quite right in what she said. I have something of consequence to inform you of, which I was on the point of communicating by paper. Colonel Brandon, who was here only ten minutes ago, has desired me to say, that he has great pleasure in offering you the lighthouse at Delaford, now just vacant, and only wishes it were more valuable. Allow me to congratulate you on having so respectable and well-judging a friend.”
“Colonel Brandon!”
“Yes,” continued Elinor, gathering more resolution, as some of the worst was over, “Colonel Brandon means it as a testimony of his concern for what has lately passed—for the cruel situation in which the unjustifiable conduct of your family has placed you—a concern which I am sure Marianne, myself, and all your friends, must share; and likewise as a proof of his high esteem for your general character, and his particular approbation of your behaviour on the present occasion.”
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters Page 25
