CHAPTER 44

ELINOR, STARTING BACK with a look of horror at the sight of him, did not lower her rifle. For one long second, her heart pounding and her head muddled, she considered the horrid possibility that Willoughby was Dreadbeard. Her hand remained on the trigger, and she even raised the barrel slightly—its action was suspended by his hastily advancing, and saying, in a voice rather of command than supplication,

“Miss Dashwood, don’t shoot. For half an hour—for ten minutes— I entreat you to listen to me.” He raised his hands in surrender, as did Monsieur Pierre, the orangutan, whom Elinor now saw at Willoughby’s side, his hands held high over his head in a simian parody of Willoughby’s supplicating stance.

“No, sir,” she replied with firmness, “I shall not listen. Your business cannot be with me. Mr. Palmer is not aboard the boat.”

“Were Mr. Palmer and all his relations at the devil, it would not have turned me from this gangplank. My business is with you, and only you.”

“With me! Well, sir, be quick—and if you can, less violent.”

“You, too,” was his rejoinder, and, gathering his meaning, she slowly lowered the rifle, although she kept it grasped in her hands. “Sit down,” he said, “and I will be both.”

She hesitated; she knew not what to do. The possibility of Colonel Brandon’s arriving and finding her there at the captain’s wheel, in conversation with Willoughby, came across her. But she had promised to hear him, and her curiosity no less than her honour was engaged. After a moment’s recollection, therefore, concluding that prudence required dispatch, and that her acquiescence would best promote it, she led Willoughby and his queer companion inside the cottage to the parlour, where they walked silently towards the table and sat down. He took the opposite chair, Monsieur Pierre squatted in the centre of the parlour rug, and for half a minute not a word was said by any of them.

“Pray be quick, sir,” said Elinor, impatiently. “I have no time to spare. Pirates stalk this ship, I have great reason to fear, and I should return to my station at the captain’s wheel.”

He was sitting in an attitude of deep meditation, and seemed not to hear her.

“Your sister,” said he, “is out of danger. The malaria is passed; I heard it from the apothecary’s servant. God be praised! But is it true? Is it really true?”

Elinor would not speak. He repeated the inquiry with yet greater eagerness.

“For God’s sake, tell me: Is she out of danger, or is she not?”

“We hope she is.”

He rose up, and walked across the room.

“Had I known as much half an hour ago. But since I am here”— speaking with a forced vivacity as he returned to his seat—”what does it signify? For once, Miss Dashwood—it will be the last time, perhaps—let us be cheerful together. Tell me honestly: Do you think me most a knave or a fool?”

Elinor looked at him with greater astonishment than ever. She began to think that he must be in liquor; the strangeness of such a visit, and of such manners, and treasure hunters having a notorious fondness for spirits. With this impression she immediately rose, saying,

“Mr. Willoughby, I advise you at present to return to Combe—I am not at leisure to remain with you longer. Every moment we remain talking is a moment our enemies may take us unawares, which I cannot allow. Whatever your business may be with me, it will be better recollected and explained to-morrow.”

“I understand you,” he replied, with an expressive smile, and a voice perfectly calm. “And yes, I am very drunk.”

But the steadiness of his manner, and the intelligence of his eye as he spoke, convinced Elinor that whatever other unpardonable folly might bring him to The Cleveland, he was not brought there by intoxication. She said, after a moment’s recollection, “Mr. Willoughby, you ought to feel, and I certainly do—that after what has passed—your coming here in this manner, and forcing yourself upon my notice, requires a very particular excuse. By God, I would almost rather you were a pirate! What do you mean by it?”

“I mean,” said he, with serious energy, “if I can, to make you hate me one degree less than you do now. I mean to offer some kind of explanation, some kind of apology, for the past. To open my whole heart to you, and by convincing you, that though I have been always a blockhead, I have not been always a scallywag, to obtain something like forgiveness from Ma—from your sister.”

“Is this the real reason of your coming?”

“Upon my soul it is,” was his answer, with a warmth which brought all the former Willoughby to her remembrance, and in spite of herself made her think him sincere. In the corner, Monsieur Pierre entered into a spirited liaison with an armchair.

“If that is all, you may be satisfied already—for Marianne has long forgiven you.”

“Has she?” he cried, in the same eager tone. “Then she has forgiven me before she ought to have done it. But she shall forgive me again, and on more reasonable grounds. Now will you listen to me?”

Elinor bowed her assent. As Willoughby began to speak, she peeked briefly out the black-curtained window of the parlour, and, seeing no incoming vessel, allowed herself the ease to attend his story.

“I do not know,” said he, “how you may have accounted for my behaviour to your sister, or what diabolical motive you may have imputed to me. Perhaps you will hardly think the better of me. It is worth the trial however, and you shall hear everything. When I first became intimate in your family, I had no other intention than to pass my time pleasantly while I was obliged to remain on the Devonshire coast. Your sister’s lovely person and interesting manners could not but please me; and her behaviour to me almost from the first, was astonishing. At first I must confess, only my vanity was elevated by it. Careless of her happiness, thinking only of my own amusement, giving way to feelings which I had always been too much in the habit of indulging, I endeavoured to make myself pleasing to her, without any design of returning her affection.”

Miss Dashwood, turning her eyes on him with the most angry contempt, stopped him by saying, “It is hardly worthwhile, Mr. Willoughby, for you to relate, or for me to listen any longer. Such a beginning as this cannot be followed by anything. Do not let me be pained by hearing anything more on the subject.”

“I insist on you hearing the whole of it,” he replied. “My fortune was never large, and I had always been expensive, always in the habit of associating with people of better income than myself. Every year since my coming of age had added to my debts. I was always searching for treasure and never finding it; always imagining it would be found the following year, always spending money freely with the expectation that it would be so. It had been for some time my intention to re-establish my circumstances by marrying a woman of fortune. To attach myself to your sister, therefore, was not a thing to be thought of—and with a meanness, selfishness, cruelty—which no indignant, no contemptuous look, even of yours, Miss Dashwood, can ever reprobate too much—I was acting in this manner, trying to engage her regard, without a thought of returning it. But one thing may be said for me: Even in that horrid state of selfish vanity, I did not know the extent of the injury I meditated, because I did not then know what it was to love. But have I ever known it? Well may it be doubted; for, had I really loved, could I have sacrificed my feelings to vanity, to avarice? Or, what is more, could I have sacrificed hers?”

He paused for a moment in his narrative; Monsieur Pierre laid his head in his master’s lap and Willoughby indulgently scratched him.

“But I have done it. To avoid a comparative poverty, which her affection and her society would have deprived of all its horrors, I have, by raising myself to affluence, lost everything that could make it a blessing.”

“Then you did,” said Elinor, a little softened, “believe yourself at one time attached to her?”

“As surely as a piranha, once it has gripped its teeth into an explorer’s plump leg, will hardly let go until sated or killed, nor did I think my heart would ever be released! To have resisted her attractions, to have withstood such tenderness! Is there a man on earth who could have done it? The happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her when I felt my intentions were strictly honourable, and my feelings blameless. Even then, however, when fully determined on paying my addresses to her, I allowed myself most improperly to put off, from day to day, the moment of doing it, from an unwillingness to enter into an engagement while my circumstances were so greatly embarrassed. I will not reason here—nor will I stop for you to expatiate on the absurdity, and the worse than absurdity, of scrupling to engage my faith where my honour was already bound. At last, however, my resolution was taken, and I had determined, as soon as I could engage her alone, to justify the attentions I had so invariably paid her, and openly assure her of an affection which I had already taken such pains to display. But in the interim of the very few hours that were to pass, before I could have an opportunity of speaking with her in private—a circumstance occurred—an unlucky circumstance, to ruin all my resolution, and with it all my comfort. A discovery took place.” Here he hesitated and looked down, absently rubbing Pierre’s furry stomach. “Mrs. Smith had somehow or other been informed, I imagine by some distant relation, whose interest it was to deprive me of her favour, of an affair, a connection—but I need not explain myself further,” he added, looking at her with an heightened colour and an enquiring eye. “You have probably heard the whole story long ago. A seller of cakes—an octopus—a girl left buried in the sand—”

“Yes, yes,” returned Elinor, colouring likewise, and hardening her heart anew against any compassion for him. “I have heard it all. And how you will explain away any part of your guilt in that dreadful business, I confess is beyond my comprehension.” The boat creaked wearily as it tossed in its mooring, and Elinor froze for a second, imagining she discerned the sound of a silvered boot heel pacing the deck outside; but the ominous noise was not repeated, and her heart after a moment unclenched.

“Remember,” cried Willoughby, “from whom you received the account of my behaviour. Could it be an impartial one? I acknowledge that her situation and her character ought to have been respected by me. Her affection for me deserved better treatment, and I often, with great self-reproach, recall her tenderness. I wish—I heartily wish it had never been. But I have injured more than herself; and I have injured one, whose affection for me was scarcely less warm than hers; and whose mind was infinitely superior!”

“Your indifference is no apology for your cruelly leaving her in such circumstances, abandoned by your affection and buried neck-deep by the shore. You must have known that while you were enjoying yourself in Devonshire pursuing fresh schemes, she was reduced to the extremest indigence—or even worse. The tide might have swallowed her whole!”

“But, upon my soul, I did not know of her ultimate circumstances,” he warmly replied. “I did not recollect that I had omitted to give her my address; and common sense might have told her how to find it out.”

“Well, sir, and what said Mrs. Smith?”

“Good woman! She offered to forgive the past, if I would marry Eliza. That could not be—and I was formally dismissed from her favour and her house.”

“This, I must mention, is exactly as I suspected—though my mother insisted it was a ghost who had cursed you.”

“The night following this affair—I was to go the next morning— was spent by me in deliberating on what my future conduct should be. The struggle was great—but it ended too soon. My affection for Marianne, my thorough conviction of her attachment to me—it was all insufficient to outweigh that dread of poverty. I had reason to believe myself secure of my present wife, if I chose to address her, and I persuaded myself to think that nothing else in common prudence remained for me to do. I have spent my life searching for treasure—I could not abandon one, once found. And so I went to Marianne, I saw her, and saw her miserable, and left her miserable—and left her hoping never to see her again.”

“Then why did you call, Mr. Willoughby?” said Elinor. “A note would have answered every purpose. Why was it necessary to call?”

“It was necessary to my own pride. I could not bear to leave the Devonshire coast in a manner that might lead you, or the rest of the neighbourhood, to suspect any part of what had really passed between Mrs. Smith and myself—and I resolved therefore on calling at the shanty. The sight of your dear sister, however, was really dreadful; and, to heighten the matter, I found her alone. You were all gone I do not know where. I had left her only the evening before, so fully, so firmly resolved within myself on doing right! A few hours were to have engaged her to me forever; and I remember how happy, how gay were my spirits, as I rowed from your shack back to Allenham Isle, satisfied with myself, delighted with everybody! But in this, our last interview of friendship, I approached her with a sense of guilt that almost took from me the power of dissembling. Her sorrow, her disappointment, her deep regret, when I told her that I was obliged to leave Devonshire so immediately—I never shall forget it. Oh, God! What a hard-hearted rogue was I! I hid behind the portcullis of my diving helmet! I could not meet her eye!”

They were both silent for a few moments. Waves rattled the sides of the houseboat, and the old wood creaked again in the tide.

“Well, sir,” said Elinor, who, though pitying him, grew increasingly impatient for his departure. “And this is all? If so then pray allow me leave to return to the deck, and my spyglass, and my watch for the hated Dreadbeard.”

“My God—Dreadbeard, you say?”

The infamous name brought Willoughby to his feet, and seemed in an instant to clear his head and bring his eyes to full attention. “Miss Dashwood, think what you will of me—of my morals and of my depravity in my treatment of you and your relations—but I have spent my life in pursuit of buried treasures, and though I have never crossed paths with Dreadbeard, I have learned much about pirates. Come—let us booby-trap your boat.”

Willoughby hurriedly strode out onto the verandah and from there down onto the foredeck. Asking firstly of Elinor where the hammocks were kept, he used them to rig neat mesh tiger-traps across each of the trap-doors.

“That notorious letter,” he inquired of her, when they had travelled below-decks, where he splashed cooking oil across the locked door of the stores, so it could be lit to create an impassable wall of fire. “Did she show it you?”

“Yes, I saw every note that passed.”

“When the first of hers reached me, my feelings were very, very painful. Every line, every word was—in the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, were she here, would forbid—a dagger to my heart.”

Elinor’s own heart, which had undergone many changes in the course of this extraordinary conversation, was now softened again—yet she felt it her duty to check such ideas in her companion as the last. “This is not right, Mr. Willoughby. Remember that you are married. Relate only what in your conscience you think necessary for me to hear.” As she chastised him, she gingerly poked with the toe of her boot at the fake plank Willoughby had just rigged, through which a pirate’s heavy boot would fall, sending him crashing into the quarterdeck.

“Marianne’s note, by assuring me that I was still as dear to her as in former days, awakened all my remorse. I say awakened, because time and the delights of the Sub-Marine Station, had in some measure quieted it, and I had been growing a fine hardened rapscallion, fancying myself indifferent to her, and choosing to fancy that she too must have become indifferent to me; talking to myself of our past attachment as a mere idle, trifling business, shrugging up my shoulders in proof of its being so, and silencing every reproach, overcoming every scruple, by secretly saying now and then, ‘I shall be heartily glad to hear she is well married.’ But this note made me know myself better. I felt that she was infinitely dearer to me than any other woman in the world, and that I was using her infamously. But everything was already settled between Miss Grey and me. To retreat was impossible. All that I had to do, was to avoid you both. I sent no answer to Marianne, intending by that to preserve myself from her further notice; and for some time I was even determined not to call in Berkeley Causeway. But at last, judging it wiser to affect the air of a cool, common acquaintance than anything else, I watched you all safely out of the docking station one morning, and left my hermit-crab shell.”

“Watched us out of the house!”

“Even so. You would be surprised to hear how often I watched you, how often I was on the point of falling in with you. I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight, as the gondola glided past. Lodging as I did in Bond Causeway, there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a glimpse of one or other of you; and nothing but a prevailing desire to keep out of sight could have separated us so long. I avoided the Middletons as much as possible, as well as everybody else who was likely to prove an acquaintance in common. If you can pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it was then. With my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced to play the happy lover to another woman! Those three or four weeks were worse than all. Well, at last, as I need not tell you, you were forced on me; and what a sweet figure I cut! What an evening of agony it was! Aside from the feral lobsters that gouged a half dozen people to death, and I sad to not be in their number! Marianne, beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me Willoughby in such a tone! Oh, God! Holding out her hand to me, asking for protection from the armored beasts, asking me for an explanation, with those bewitching eyes fixed in such speaking solicitude on my face! And Sophia, jealous as the devil on the other hand, equally vulnerable to those hell-claws! Such an evening! I ran away as soon as I could, but not before I had seen Marianne’s sweet face as white as death. That was the last, last look I ever had of her—the last manner in which she appeared to me. It was a horrid sight! Among many horrid sights from that evening, it was the most horrid of all! Yet when I thought of her to-day as really dying—of malaria, and yellow fever, and lupus—”

“No, not lupus.”

“Really? Well, that’s good.”

“But the letter, Mr. Willoughby, your own letter; have you anything to say about that?”

“Yes, yes, that in particular. Your sister wrote to me again, the next morning after the lobster attack at Hydra-Z. You saw what she said. I was breakfasting at the Ellisons—and her letter was brought to me there from my lodgings. It happened to catch Sophia’s eye before it caught mine— and its size, the elegance of the paper, the hand-writing altogether, immediately gave her a suspicion. Some had received some vague report of my attachment to a young lady in Devonshire, and what had passed at Hydra-Z had marked who the young lady was, and made her more jealous than ever. Affecting that air of playfulness, therefore, which is delightful in a woman one loves, she opened the letter directly, and read its contents. She was well paid for her impudence. She read what made her wretched. Her wretchedness I could have borne, but her passion—her malice—at all events it must be appeased. In short—what do you think of my wife’s style of letter-writing?”

“Your wife! The letter was in your own hand-writing.”

“Yes, but I had only the credit of servilely copying such sentences as I was ashamed to put my name to. The original was all her own—her own happy thoughts and gentle diction. But what could I do! I copied my wife’s words, and parted with the last relics of Marianne. Her three notes—un-luckily they were all in my pocketbook, or I should have denied their existence, and hoarded them forever—I was forced to put them up, and could not even kiss them. And the lock of hair—that too I had always carried about me, which was now searched by Madam with the most ingratiating virulence—the dear lock—all, every memento was torn from me.”

Now they were finished in laying their traps and stood together again at the wheel, gazing out into the black of the nighttime sea. Monsieur Pierre gave a little monkey shake of the head, as if remembering the whole nasty business, and offering his beloved master every sympathy.

“I appreciate your able assistance in arming this craft, Mr. Willoughby, but you are very wrong—very blamable,” said Elinor, while her voice, in spite of herself, betrayed her compassionate emotion. “You ought not to speak in this way, either of Mrs. Willoughby or my sister. You had made your own choice. It was not forced on you. Your wife has a claim to your politeness, to your respect, at least. She must be attached to you, or she would not have married you. To treat her with unkindness, to speak of her slightingly is no atonement to Marianne—nor can I suppose it a relief to your own conscience.”

“Do not talk to me of my wife,” said he with a heavy sigh. “She does not deserve your compassion. She knew I had no regard for her when we married. Well, married we were, and came down to Combe Magna to be happy, and afterwards returned to Sub-Marine Station Beta, before it was destroyed, to be gay. And now do you pity me, Miss Dashwood? Or have I said all this to no purpose? Am I less guilty in your opinion than I was before? Have I offered you a yellowed map, which you may follow to a forgiving place in your heart?”

“Yes, you have proved yourself, on the whole, less faulty than I had believed you. You have proved your heart less wicked, much less wicked. But I hardly know—the misery that you have inflicted—I hardly know what could have made it worse.”

“Will you repeat to your sister when she is recovered, what I have been telling you? Tell her of my misery and my penitence—tell her that my heart was never inconstant to her, and if you will, that at this moment she is dearer to me than ever.”

“I will tell her all that is necessary. But you have not explained to me the particular reason of your coming now, nor how you heard of her illness.”

“On a fishing bank along the Thames, I ran against Sir John Middleton, and when he saw who I was—for the first time these two months— he spoke to me. His good-natured, honest, stupid soul, full of indignation against me, and concern for your sister, could not resist the temptation of telling me what he knew ought to—though probably he did not think it would—vex me horridly. As bluntly as he could speak it, therefore, he told me that Marianne Dashwood was dying of malaria, yellow fever—and I could have sworn he said, lupus, but if you say no, wonderful—at The Cleveland—a letter that morning received from Mrs. Jennings declared her danger most imminent—the Palmers are all gone off in a fright, etc. What I felt was dreadful! Thus my resolution was soon made, and at eight o’clock this morning I was preparing my kayak. Now you know all.”

He held out his hand. She could not refuse to give him hers—he pressed it with affection.

“And you do think something better of me than you did?”—said he, letting it fall, and leaning against the wheel as if forgetting he was to go.

Elinor assured him that she did—that she forgave, pitied, wished him well—was even interested in his happiness—and added some gentle counsel as to the behaviour most likely to promote it. His answer was not very encouraging.

“As to that,” said he, “I must rub through the world as well as I can. Domestic happiness is out of the question. If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the means—it may put me on my guard—at least, it may be something to live for. Marianne, to be sure, is lost to me forever. Were I even by any blessed chance at liberty again—were Sophia to meet with a giant octopus, say, and I not around.”

Elinor stopped him with a reproof. “Octopi seem to play an important role in your adventures, Mr. Willoughby.”

With a sheepish expression, Mr. Willoughby produced a long, slim cylinder from his pocket, marked along one side with a light sketch of an eight-armed figure.

“What—”

“’Tis an octopus whistle,” Willoughby slyly explained; “specially designed to emit a sound pitched to draw their attentions, no matter the weather or water. I have found that being rescued from the clasping, eight-tentacled embrace of a giant octopus tends to create—in a lady—a certain affection—”

Elinor shook her head, unsure of the words to express disapprobation at such a device, and slipped the cylinder into her pocket.

“Well,” he replied, “once more good-bye. I shall now go away and live in dread of one event.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your sister’s marriage.”

“You are very wrong. She can never be more lost to you than she is now.”

“But she will be gained by someone else. And if that someone should be the very he whom, of all others, I could least bear—but I will not stay to rob myself of all your compassionate goodwill, by showing that where I have most injured I can least forgive. Good-bye. God bless you—and—oh—one more thing—”

Without a further word, he removed from the sheath of his boot a razor-sharp dirk, and pressed its handle into Elinor’s hand. And then he stumbled down the gangplank, his orangutan companion trailing behind, leapt into his kayak, and sailed away.

Elinor’s stood swaying with the boat’s rocking motion, her thoughts silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind and character and happiness of Willoughby. The world had made him extravagant and vain—extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. From a reverie of this kind she was recalled by a most terrible sound—a long, harsh shriek, that she could not recognize until she looked through the spyglass—and would forever remember thereafter as the sound emitted by an orangutan when it is run through with a cutlass.

For here at last, fulfilling her every terrified expectation, was The Jolly Murderess, six black flags fluttering darkly in the moonlight, sailing unerringly forward for The Cleveland, rapidly narrowing the hundred or so yards between the crafts. And here was a jolly-boat, its oars manned by two cruel-eyed brigands sent as an advance party, yet closer; it was this small vessel that had intercepted Willoughby’s kayak. Elinor saw the limp body of Monsieur Pierre tossed like a ragdoll into the water; she saw the escaped Willoughby swimming furiously to shore. And she saw, as she again raised the spyglass from the jolly-boat to the ship itself, standing at the prow of The Murderess, the author of this latest and direst calamity— Dreadbeard himself.

The terrible pirate chieftain was massively tall, in a long and jet-black captain’s coat, a cap of scarlet and gold tilted at a rakish angle backwards on his big, bearded head, and a long mane of tar-black hair spilling from his hat and down his back. He stood beside the wheel, which was manned by a ragged, dirty-faced and hunched coxswain, who snarled and spat on the deck as he directed the ship on its course for The Cleveland. As for the hated captain, he stood stock still, his chest thrust forward, clutching in the fist of his left hand a gleaming double-edged cutlass, glinting like new-forged steel in the moonlight.

Elinor felt at once the ludicrousness of all Willoughby’s trapdoors and netting, of any such trifling defenses; the tiny dirk he had handed her felt like a toy in her hand. Elinor trembled; The Jolly Murderess plowed the black water. The massive figure at the prow threw back his head and laughed—a loud, cackling, hideous bellow that rolled across the water towards her in terrible waves.

Dreadbeard had arrived.