Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters (17 page)

“You will think my question an odd one,” said Lucy to her one day, as they were co-rowing a two-person kayak from Deadwind Island back to Barton Cottage, “but are you acquainted with your sister-in-law’s mother, Mrs. Ferrars?”

Elinor did think the question a very odd one, and in her surprise she stopped rowing for three beats; the boat described a small semi-circle in the water before she answered that she had never seen Mrs. Ferrars.

“Indeed!” replied Lucy. “I thought you must have seen her at Norland. Then, perhaps, you cannot tell me what sort of a woman she is?”

“No,” returned Elinor. “I know nothing of her.”

“I am sure you think me very strange, for enquiring about her in such a way,” said Lucy, eyeing Elinor attentively as she spoke, “but perhaps there may be reasons—”

“Watch out!” called Elinor, for Lucy had taken her gaze off the sea-lane and now they were rowing directly into a flat rock, grey and slick, which jutted up from the deep water ahead. “Row! Row!”

Together the girls endeavoured to maneuver the boat around the partially submerged promontory, and Lucy took up her apology once more. “I hope you will do me the justice of believing that I do not mean to be impertinent.”

Elinor made a civil reply and they rowed on for a few minutes in silence. It was broken by Lucy, who renewed the subject again by saying, “I cannot bear to have you think me impertinently curious.”

“For Heaven’s sake, be careful!” called Elinor again. Something very bizarre—the rock formation, or was it a patch of coral, somehow elevated above the surface?—which they had seemed to row around was again ahead. Examining it more closely, Elinor realised with a pang of unease that the rock was rippling slightly as the water coursed over it; this was not a thing of rock or coral at all, but the flexing grey back of a living creature. Lucy took no note of this vexing phenomenon and continued to speak:

“I am sure I would do anything in the world than be thought impertinent by a person whose good opinion is so well worth having as yours.”

“Lucy—” Elinor began, removing her oar from the water and holding it high above her head, prepared to crack it down on the back of the beast, at the instant it should raise its head to strike.

“And I am sure I should not have the smallest fear of trusting
you
,” the other girl continued, noticing neither Elinor’s defensive crouch, nor
that the “rock” was now rising slowly from the water, revealing more of its slimy, silvery bulk—and here were two red eyes, deep-set and glowering, set above a pair of nostrils breathing hot steam.

“Lucy!” Elinor shouted.

“Indeed, I should be very glad of your advice how to manage in such an uncomfortable situation as I am; but, however, there is no occasion to trouble
you
.”

The Thing had now drawn itself so far up from beneath the surface that its whole frontal portion was fully visible, and facing them directly. It bore a long, flat head, the red eyes glimmering with preternatural intelligence. The body was long and twisted, dripping with slime; a cloud of thick water-borne slime oozed from its body, muddying the waters around the creature. As the tiny boat came ever closer, the Thing opened its mouth, revealing fangs. Elinor turned cold. The Devonshire Fang-Beast!

“I am sorry you do not happen to know Mrs. Ferrars.”

“I am sorry I do
not
,” said Elinor, in great astonishment, “But for now the subject must be dropped, and we must focus our attentions—”

But Lucy was lost in her reverie. Even as Elinor snapped her oar over her knee with the intention of repeating her mother’s trick of dispatching the vast beast that had attacked their boat on the way to Barton Cottage, the other girl continued her peroration. “Mrs. Ferrars is certainly nothing to me at present—but the time
may
come—how soon it will come must depend upon herself—when we may be very intimately connected.”

Lucy looked down as she said this, amiably bashful, with only one side glance at her companion to observe its effect on her.

“Good heavens!” cried Elinor, swinging her oar towards the flat head of the Fang-Beast, as astonished by the sheer size of the creature she faced, as by her dawning understanding of Lucy Steele’s meaning. “What do you mean? Are you acquainted with Mr. Robert Ferrars? Can you be?” The Fang-Beast, meanwhile, easily avoided the strike of the oar, which
splashed uselessly on the surface of the water.

“No,” replied Lucy, “not to Mr.
Robert
Ferrars. I never saw him in my life; but to his elder brother.”

Elinor turned towards Lucy in silent amazement, and it was in that moment that a
second
great head reared out of the surface of the water, compounding Elinor’s shock. While the first of the Fang-Beast’s monstrous faces hissed fiercely, this second long head slid up onto their boat and caught Elinor at the knees in a coil of its slimy neck. She went into the water, and landed with a gasp, her mouth filling with the thick mucous cloud that emanated from the Beast.

“You may well be surprised,” continued Lucy, and then stopped short, at last noticing that something was amiss, and she stood alone in the vessel. “Elinor?”

Elinor, suffocating in the cloud of slime, caught in the hideous rubbery embrace of the Fang-Beast, was struggling to keep her head above the surface of the water. She recalled as she struggled for breath the lore she had learned from Sir John when in his cups: There is a certain strain of overgrown monster-fish that takes its sustenance from fog like infants from their mother’s milk. Thus the lately suffocating weather pattern could be no coincidence—this fearsome, two-headed beast had been thriving in this dank weather, expanding its bulk, awaiting its chance to strike.

This knowledge was useless to Elinor now—all she could do was earnestly hope for assistance from Lucy, who at last was through unburdening herself of her secret and attentive to their unenviable circumstance. To Elinor’s considerable surprise, the younger Miss Steele proved equal to the task. Tucked into the calf of her stylish travelling boot was a long serrated fish-knife; without the slightest hesitation, she wrapped her fist around its handle and plunged the business end into the churning cove-water to slash violently at the neck coil that was wrapped python-like around Elinor’s waist.

But while the coil tightened around Elinor, the Fang-Beast’s first head slunk along the floor of the boat to within striking distance of Lucy Steele; she deftly stomped on its flat snout with the heel of her boot, bringing forth an eruption of slime and blood from its nostril and causing the thing to withdraw in pain. Thus emboldened, Lucy redoubled her assault on the first head, and soon she had hacked Elinor free; with each strike, more slime poured from the neck of the Beast, until both girls were covered with the noxious emanation. At last, the Fang-Beast, maimed but not, evidently, unto death, sunk back beneath the water’s surface and away.

THIS FEARSOME, TWO-HEADED BEAST HAD BEEN THRIVING IN THIS DANK WEATHER, EXPANDING ITS BULK, AWAITING ITS CHANCE TO STRIKE.

In a few moments more, the little craft bumped against the shore below Barton Cottage, and the two girls lay flopping and heaving for breath, like fish plucked from a stream and tossed on the riverbank. But before Elinor could begin to recover herself, Lucy picked up the thread of her engagement story.

“I dare say Edward never dropped the smallest hint of our engagement to you because it was always meant to be a great secret. Not a soul of all my relations know of it but Anne, and I never should have mentioned it to you, if I had not felt the greatest dependence in the world upon your secrecy; and I really thought my behaviour in asking so many questions about Mrs. Ferrars must seem so odd, that it ought to be explained. And I do not think Mr. Ferrars can be displeased, when he knows I have trusted you, because I know he has the highest opinion in the world of all your family, and looks upon yourself and the other Miss Dashwoods quite as his own sisters.”

Elinor for a few moments remained silent; her frame was still quivering from muscular exertion and sheer fright, and her soul was shaken even more by the information Lucy had imparted. At length forcing herself to speak, and to speak cautiously, she said, with calmness of manner, “May I ask if your engagement is of long standing?”

“We have been engaged these four years.”

“Four years!” A pain in Elinor’s spine, where the Fang-Beast had tightened its grasp around her, throbbed with the shock of this revelation.

“Our acquaintance is of many years. He was under my uncle’s care for a considerable while.”

“Your uncle!”

“Yes, Mr. Pratt. Did you never hear him talk of Mr. Pratt?”

“I think I have,” replied Elinor, with an exertion of spirits, her body pulsing with discomfort and dismay.

“He was four years with my uncle, and it was there our acquaintance begun, for my sister and me were often staying with my uncle, and it was there our engagement was formed, though not till a year after he had quitted as a pupil; but he was almost always with us afterwards. I was too young, and loved him too well, to be so prudent as I ought to have been. Though you do not know him so well as me, Miss Dashwood, you must have seen enough of him to be sensible he is very capable of making a woman sincerely attached to him.”

“Certainly,” answered Elinor, without knowing what she said; but after a moment’s reflection, she added, with revived security of Edward’s honour and love, “Engaged to Mr. Edward Ferrars! I confess myself so totally surprised at what you tell me. Surely there must be some mistake of person or name. We cannot mean the same Mr. Ferrars.”

“We can mean no other,” cried Lucy, smiling. “Mr. Edward Ferrars, the eldest son of Mrs. Ferrars, of Park Street, and brother of your sister-in-law, Mrs. John Dashwood, is the person I mean; you must allow that
I
am not likely to be deceived as to the name of the man on who all my happiness depends.”

“It is strange,” replied Elinor, “that I should never have heard him even mention your name.”

“Considering our situation, it was not strange. Our first care has been to keep the matter secret. You knew nothing of me, or my family, and, therefore, there could be no
occasion
for ever mentioning my name to you; and, as he was always particularly afraid of his sister’s suspecting anything,
that
was reason for his not mentioning it.”

She was silent. Elinor’s security sunk; but her self-command did not sink with it.

“Four years you have been engaged,” said she with a firm voice.

“Yes; and heaven knows how much longer we may have to wait. Poor Edward! It puts him quite out of heart.” Then taking a small miniature from her pocket, she added, “To prevent the possibility of mistake, be so good as to look at this face. It does not do him justice, to be sure, but yet I think you cannot be deceived as to the person it was drew for. I have had it above these three years.”

She put it into her hands as she spoke; Elinor returned it almost instantly, acknowledging the likeness.

“I have never been able,” continued Lucy, “to give him my picture in return, which I am very much vexed at, for he has been always so anxious to get it! But I am determined to set for it the very first opportunity.”

“You are quite in the right,” replied Elinor calmly. They struggled to their feet now, and began the walk on unsteady legs, up the stairs to the door of the shanty.

“I am sure,” said Lucy, “I have no doubt of your faithfully keeping this secret, because you must know of what importance it is to us, not to have it reach his mother; for she would never approve of it, I dare say. I shall have no fortune, and I fancy she is an exceeding proud woman.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” assured Elinor.

As she said this, she looked earnestly at Lucy, hoping to discover something in her countenance; perhaps the falsehood of the greatest part of what she had been saying; but Lucy’s countenance suffered no change. For a fleeting moment, Elinor wished that the Fang-Beast had succeeded in eating her or, better yet, in eating Lucy; such was her distress and anxiety over what she had heard.

“I was afraid you would think I was taking a great liberty with you,” Lucy continued, “As soon as I saw you, I felt almost as if you were an old acquaintance. And I am so unfortunate, that I have not a creature whose advice I can ask. I only wonder that I am alive after what I have suffered for Edward’s sake these last four years. Everything in such suspense and uncertainty; and seeing him so seldom—we can hardly meet above twice a-year. I wonder my heart is not quite broke.”

Here she took out her handkerchief, but Elinor did not feel very compassionate.

“Sometimes,” continued Lucy, after wiping her eyes, “I think whether it would not be better for us both to break off the matter entirely. What would you advise me to do in such a case, Miss Dashwood? What would you do yourself?”

“Pardon me,” replied Elinor, startled by the question; “but I can give you no advice under such circumstances. Your own judgment must direct you.”

They had by now ascended the stairs and reached the door of the shanty, and agreed it was wise to sponge their bodies of all traces of the foul spew that had emanated from the Fang-Beast. They stood at a modest distance from one another as they removed their sodden clothing and undergarments. Meanwhile, Lucy continued her self-pitying tale. “To be sure, his mother must provide for him sometime or other; but poor Edward is so cast down by it! Did not you think him sadly out of spirits when he was here?”