Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

by Jane Austen; Ben H. Winters

  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.

  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.”

  CHAPTER 10

  WILLOUGHBY 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 an
d 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.