CHAPTER 35

ELINOR’S CURIOSITY TO SEE Mrs. Ferrars was satisfied, as was her curiosity to know how a fur seal might wield a badminton racquet. She had found in Mrs. Ferrars everything that could make a further connection between the families undesirable. She had seen enough of her pride, her meanness, and her determined prejudice, to comprehend all the difficulties that must have perplexed the engagement of Edward and herself, had he been otherwise free.

“My dear friend,” cried Lucy, as soon as they met the next day, “I come to talk to you of my happiness. Could anything be so flattering as Mrs. Ferrars’s way of treating me yesterday? So exceeding affable as she was! Arranging me a seat up front, where I could best view the floorshow, but draping me considerately with a poncho. You know how I dreaded the thoughts of seeing her; but the very moment I was introduced, there was such an affability in her behaviour. She had quite took a fancy to me. Now was not it so? You saw it all; and was not you quite struck with it?”

“She was certainly very civil to you.”

“Civil! Did you see nothing but civility? I saw a vast deal more. Such kindness as fell to the share of nobody but me!”

Elinor wished to talk of something else; rifling through her mind for other topics of interest, she recalled the subject of the swordfish and the tiny cracks she had noticed in the Dome, and enquired whether Lucy had ever seen such a crack before, during her time in-Station—but Lucy would not allow the subject to be changed; she still pressed her to admit she had reason for her happiness, and Elinor was obliged to go on.

“If they had known your engagement,” said she, “nothing could be more flattering than their treatment of you; but as that was not the case—”

“I guessed you would say so,” replied Lucy quickly, “but there was no reason in the world why Mrs. Ferrars should seem to like me, if she did not. Mrs. Ferrars is a charming woman, and so is your sister-in-law. They are both delightful women, indeed! I wonder I should never hear you say how agreeable Mrs. Dashwood was!”

To this Elinor had no answer to make, and did not attempt any.

“Are you ill, Miss Dashwood? You seem low. You don’t speak. Sure you ain’t well?”

“I never was in better health.” In truth, as the conversation on the hated topic continued, Elinor felt the familiar terrifying darkness swimming about her eyes, saw the familiar star pattern begin to form itself in her mind. She took a series of deep breaths, in desperate hope that she could keep the eerie vision at bay. What was this torment? Why would it not leave her be?

“I am glad of it with all my heart,” Lucy continued. “But I cannot help notice you are squeezing your eyes shut and holding your head between your legs. I should be sorry to have you ill. Heaven knows what I should have done without your friendship.”

Elinor was prevented from making any response by the door’s being thrown open, the servant’s announcing Mr. Ferrars, and Edward immediately walking in.

It was a very awkward moment; and the countenance of each showed that it was so. They all looked exceedingly foolish; and Edward seemed to have as great an inclination to walk out of the room again, as to advance farther into it. The very circumstance, which they would each have been most anxious to avoid, had fallen on them. They were not only all three together, but were together without the relief of any other person. There they were, like three fish, caught unexpectedly together in the same net—all wishing they could be eaten straightaway, rather than continue together in their current company.

The ladies recovered themselves first. It was not Lucy’s business to put herself forward; the appearance of secrecy must still be kept up. After slightly addressing him, she said no more. For Elinor’s part, she was only glad that Edward’s familiar, comforting presence had for now dispelled the five-pointed design, and the weird, suffocating darkness, from her mind.

Elinor resolved that she would not allow the presence of Lucy, nor the consciousness of some injustice towards herself, deter her from saying that she was happy to see him. She would not be frightened by Lucy from paying him those attentions which, as a friend and almost a relation, were his due.

Her manners gave some reassurance to Edward, and he had courage enough to sit down; but his embarrassment still exceeded that of the ladies in a proportion; for his heart had not the indifference of Lucy’s, nor could his conscience have quite the ease of Elinor’s.

It only contributed to the awkwardness when a loud bang was heard against the glass back wall of the docking; turning their heads, they saw that a servant, who had been changing the water filtration tank and come detached from the breathing hose of his special Ex-Domic Float-Suit, was clamouring for their attention. The operations of the Station’s various life-sustaining apparatuses were meant to be entirely invisible to the inhabitants, and the man’s noisy exhibition was a rather embarrassing violation of decorum; Elinor and her guests studiously ignored him, and his increasingly insistent thrashing became the background to the ensuing uncomfortable exchange.

Almost everything that was said proceeded from Elinor, who was obliged to volunteer all the information about her mother’s health, their coming to town, etc.—all things Edward ought to have inquired about, but never did. In the resulting silence, the drowning servant pounded violently against the Dome, forming his mouth into the words HELP ME and clawing at the glass.

Elinor then determined, under pretence of fetching Marianne, to leave the others by themselves; and she really did it, and that in the handsomest manner, for she loitered away several minutes on the landing-place before she went to her sister. When that was once done, however, it was time for the raptures of Edward to cease; for Marianne’s joy hurried her into the drawing-room immediately. Her pleasure in seeing him was like every other of her feelings, strong in itself, and strongly spoken. She met him with a hand that would be taken, and a voice that expressed the affection of a sister. “Dear Edward!” she cried. “This is a moment of great happiness! This would almost make amends for everything! Oh my God, there is a man out there—a drowning man!” Elinor leveled her sister with a corrective expression, to warn her from excessive enthusiasm regarding the presence of Edward, or as to the fate of the filtration-unit attendant. A gigantic and grotesquely toothsome anglerfish was swimming rapidly towards the latter, it’s photophore angled upwards like a spotlight; seeing the fish, the man turned back to the glass wall, eyes bulging, pleading wordlessly for rescue.

Edward tried to return Marianne’s kindness as it deserved, but before such witnesses he dared not say half what he really felt. Again they all sat down, and for a moment or two all were silent; while Marianne was looking with the most speaking tenderness, sometimes at Edward and sometimes at Elinor, regretting only that their delight in each other should be checked by Lucy’s unwelcome presence.

The anglerfish closed its hundreds of razor-like teeth on the man’s lower half, splitting him messily in two.

Edward was the first to speak, and it was to notice Marianne’s altered looks, and express his fear of her not finding the Sub-Station agreeable.

“Oh, don’t think of me!” she replied with spirited earnestness. The filtration-man’s upper body floated upwards, as his legs disappeared in ragged hunks into the gullet of the anglerfish. “Elinor is well, you see. That must be enough for us both.”

This remark was not calculated to make Edward or Elinor more easy, nor to conciliate the good will of Lucy, who looked up at Marianne with no very benignant expression.

“Do you like the Sub-Station?” said Edward, willing to say anything that might introduce another subject.

“Not at all. I expected much pleasure in it, but I have found none. The sight of you, Edward, is the only comfort it has afforded; and thank Heaven! You are what you always were!”

Outside the Dome, enough blood was left in the man’s upper portion for him to remain conscious, and he watched in horror as his lower portion was chewed to pieces by the great beast. Marianne paused— and no one spoke. The anglerfish finished the legs and began its assault on the remaining portion of the filtration attendant. The ocean fogged with blood.

“I think, Elinor,” she presently added, “we must employ Edward to take care of us in our return to Barton Cottage. In a week or two, I suppose, we shall be going; and, I trust, Edward will not be very unwilling to accept the charge.”

Poor Edward muttered something, but what it was, nobody knew— it may have been to the effect of, “Anglerfish certainly have a lot of teeth.” But Marianne, who saw his agitation, was perfectly satisfied, and soon talked of something else. “We spent such a day, Edward, in Harley Piscina yesterday! So dull, so wretchedly dull! But I have much to say to you on that head, which cannot be said now.”

And with this admirable discretion did she defer the assurance of her finding their mutual relatives more disagreeable than ever, and of her being particularly disgusted with his mother, till they were more in private.

“But why were you not there, Edward? Why did you not come?”

“I was engaged elsewhere.”

“Engaged! What was that, when such friends were to be met?”

“Perhaps, Miss Marianne,” cried Lucy, eager to take some revenge on her, “you think young men never stand upon engagements, if they have no mind to keep them, little as well as great.”

Elinor was very angry, but Marianne seemed entirely insensible of the sting. The water-tank servant was all the more insensible, and would remain so forever, as the anglerfish swallowed his head in two great gulps. At this, Edward gasped and hid his eyes behind his hand.

“I am very sure that only conscience kept Edward from Harley Piscina,” Marianne calmly replied to Lucy’s slight. “And I really believe he has the most delicate conscience in the world; the most scrupulous in performing every engagement, however minute, and however it may make against his interest or pleasure. He is the most fearful of giving pain, of wounding expectation, and the most incapable of being selfish, of anybody I ever saw. Edward, it is so, and I will say it.” Winding up her speech, she turned and looked at the observation glass. “My God! That will need cleaning!”