CHAPTER 46

MARIANNE’S ILLNESS, though multifaceted and weakening in its kind, had not been long enough to make her recovery slow; and with youth, natural strength, and her mother’s presence in aid, it proceeded so smoothly as to enable her to remove, within four days after the arrival of the latter, into Mrs. Palmer’s dressing-room. She was impatient to pour forth her thanks to Colonel Brandon for fetching her mother; and bringing her hence so swiftly with such a strong steady crawl stroke; and for decapitating the fearsome Pirate Dreadbeard; and so he was invited to visit her.

His emotion on entering the room, in seeing the burst pustules that dotted her face and neck, and in receiving the pale hand—its fingernails yellowed and brittle from illness—which she immediately held out to him, were clear. In Elinor’s conjecture, they must arise from something more than his affection for Marianne, or the consciousness of its being known to others. She soon discovered in his melancholy eye and the embarrassed little shuffle of his appendages as he looked at her sister, the probable recurrence of many past scenes of misery to his mind, brought back by that resemblance between Marianne and Eliza already acknowledged, and now strengthened by the wandering eye, the sickly skin, the posture of reclining weakness, the slow but steady streams of pus from various orifices, and the warm acknowledgment of peculiar obligation.

Mrs. Dashwood saw nothing in the colonel’s behaviour but what arose from the most simple and self-evident sensations, while in the actions and words of Marianne, even as her words emerged in a hoarse croak, her vocal cords having been ravaged by infection, she persuaded herself to think that something more than gratitude already dawned.

At the end of another day or two, Marianne growing visibly stronger every twelve hours, Mrs. Dashwood, urged equally by her own and her daughter’s wishes, began to talk of removing to Barton Cottage. On her measures depended those of her two friends; Mrs. Jennings could not quit The Cleveland during the Dashwoods’ stay; and Colonel Brandon was soon brought, by their united request, to consider his own abode there as equally determinate, if not equally indispensable. At his and Mrs. Jennings’s united request in return, Mrs. Dashwood was prevailed on to accept the use of his fully outfitted and newly refurbished pleasure yacht on her journey back, for the better accommodation of her sick child; and the colonel, at the joint invitation of Mrs. Dashwood and Mrs. Jennings, whose active good-nature made her friendly and hospitable for other people as well as herself, engaged with pleasure to redeem it by a visit at the shanty, in the course of a few weeks.

The day of separation and departure arrived; and Marianne, took a particular and lengthened leave of Mrs. Jennings, effusively professing her gratitude not only for nursing her back to health, but also for her part in fending off the pirates, whose attack and repulsion Marianne had only been told of after her constitution was more fully restored. She was so earnestly grateful, so full of respect and kind wishes as seemed due to her own heart from a secret acknowledgment of past inattention. Bidding Colonel Brandon farewell with a cordiality of a friend, she was carefully assisted by him onboard the pleasure yacht. Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor then followed, and the others were left by themselves, to talk of the travellers, and feel their own dullness; and Colonel Brandon immediately afterwards took his solitary way to Delaford.

The Dashwoods were two days aboard, and Marianne bore her journey without fatigue. They flew the captured flag of The Jolly Murderess, which, whether either by suggesting that they themselves were onboard that most feared of pirate vessels, or by giving fluttering evidence that they had destroyed it, kept all potential marauders at bay.

As they sailed into Sir John’s archipelago and the choppy waters of Pestilent Isle, and entered on scenes of which every piece of shoreline brought some peculiar, some painful recollection, Marianne grew silent and thoughtful, and turning away her face from their notice, sat earnestly gazing through the window. Elinor, for her part, felt as she examined the old mudflats, the twisted trees, the familiar peak of “Mount Margaret” that something was decidedly altered in the landscape of their old home-stead—as if something had somehow shifted—but she had not the luxury to reflect upon her impression. Her only priority was to monitor Marianne for any signs that the familiar sights would discomfit her, or restore her ill health by plunging her into a new depth of melancholy.

But Elinor could neither wonder nor blame; and when she saw, as the yacht was moored to their rebuilt wooden dock and she assisted Marianne down the gangplank, that she had been crying, she saw only an emotion too natural in itself to raise anything less tender than pity. Upon entering their common sitting-room, Marianne turned her eyes around it with a look of resolute firmness, regarding the dripping roof and weather-beaten windows as if determined at once to accustom herself to the sight of every object with which the remembrance of Willoughby could be connected. She said little, but every sentence aimed at cheerfulness, and though a sigh sometimes escaped her, it never passed away without the atonement of a smile. After dinner she would try her pianoforte. She went to it, but the music on which her eye first rested was a seamen’s lament in six verses, procured for her by Willoughby, containing some of their favourite duets, one rhyming “a lassie so curvy” with “lay dying of scurvy” and bearing on its outward leaf her own name in his hand-writing. That would not do. She shook her head, put the music aside, and after running over the keys for a minute, complained of feebleness in her fingers—and indeed, the minute action of running her hands over the keys had caused a brittle piece of fingernail to slide off and fall to the floor—and closed the instrument again; declaring however with firmness as she did so, that she should in future practice much.

Only when Marianne had retired to her old room for a well-needed rest, did Elinor venture to press again the question that had been on her mind since the yacht brought them within view of Pestilent Isle.

“Mother,” she asked haltingly. “Where is Margaret?”

Mrs. Dashwood dissolved in tears, and at last gave her unhappy response: The girl had not been seen for several weeks; the night after Mrs. Dashwood penned her last missive to Elinor and Marianne, in which she had included the most distressing news of Margaret’s depilation and the newly fang-like nature of her teeth, the girl had gone out again on one of her unannounced and unwarranted midnight walks—and, this time, never returned.

Mrs. Dashwood would fear the very worst, except for the strange incident she now relayed to Elinor—an incident which seemed to give assurance that the girl still lived, though it was a most unwelcome assurance, indeed. It seemed that on one rain-soaked recent night, Mrs. Dashwood had been woken, long past the stroke of midnight, by what she was quite certain was the voice of her youngest daughter, coming high and piercing across the rocky hills of Pestilent Isle, several times repeating the same distorted, bizarre phrase: K’yaloh D’argesh F’ah!

It was agreed that not a word of this would be imparted to Marianne, for fear of unsettling the course of her recovery. Indeed, the next morning produced no abatement in her happy symptoms.

“When the weather is settled, and I have recovered my strength,” said Marianne, “we will take long walks together every day. We will walk to the dunes at the water’s edge; we will travel to Deadwind Island and wander through Sir John’s exotic gardens; we will again slog through the marshy fens and climb the lightning-scarred trees. I know we shall be happy. I know the summer will pass happily away. I mean never to be later in rising than six, and from that time till dinner I shall divide every moment between music and reading. I have formed my plan, and am determined to enter on a course of serious study. Our own library is too well known to me, to be resorted to for anything beyond mere amusement. But there are many works well worth reading at Sir John’s estate; and there are others of more modern production which I know I can borrow of Colonel Brandon. I shall learn engineering; I shall study hydrology and biology and aeronautics; I shall endeavour to understand Mendel’s principles and comparative zoology.”

“But of what use will be such knowledge?” inquired Elinor with a smile meant to offer encouragement, but from which she could not hide a small measure of teasing.

“Someone,” replied Marianne, looking away shyly, “will need to build Sub-Marine Station Gamma.”

Elinor honoured her for a plan which originated so nobly as this; though smiling to see the same eager fancy which had been leading her to the extreme of languid indolence and selfish repining, now at work in introducing excess into a scheme of such rational employment and virtuous self-control. Her smile however changed to a sigh when she felt, still cosseted in her bosom, the octopus whistle, and remembered that promise to Willoughby was yet unfulfilled. Willing to delay the evil hour, she resolved to wait till her sister’s health were more secure before she appointed it. But the resolution was made only to be broken.

They had been three days at home when the ever-present sea mist lifted enough for an invalid to venture out. Marianne, leaning on Elinor’s arm, was authorized to walk as long as she could without fatigue, down the wandering lane that led inland from the shanty.

The sisters set out at a slow pace, and they had advanced only so far beyond the house as to admit a full view of the hill when Marianne calmly said, “There, exactly there, into that rolling brook, where the octopus set upon me—there did I first see Willoughby.”

Her voice sunk with the word, but presently reviving she added, “I am thankful to find that I can look with so little pain on the spot! Shall we ever talk on that subject, Elinor? Or will it be wrong? I can talk of it now, I hope, as I ought to do.”

Elinor tenderly invited her to be open.

“As for regret,” said Marianne, “I have done with that, as far as he is concerned. I do not mean to talk to you of what my feelings have been for him, but what they are now. If I could be satisfied on one point—if I could be allowed to think that he was not always acting a part, not always deceiving me; but above all, if I could be assured that he never was so very wicked as my fears have sometimes fancied him, since the story of that unfortunate girl—”

She stopped. Elinor joyfully treasured her words as she answered, “If you could be assured of that, you think you should be easy.” They paused in their walk to sit together on a large, jagged rock on the edge of mist-enshrouded little pool. “But how would you account for his behaviour?”

“I would suppose him only fickle. Very, very fickle.”

Elinor said no more. She was debating within herself on the eligibility of beginning her story directly, or postponing it till Marianne were in stronger health. As they sat, the pool filled to a height of some inches with cloudy water, fed by some underground spring; in the next moment the water receded, revealing the muddy bottom of the basin. They sat for a few minutes in silence, during which time the pool emptied and filled again; the repetitive action of the water in the pond struck a familiar chord with Elinor, but she could not recall why. Perhaps it was nothing; perhaps it was only fancy. She could not forget that Margaret was missing, and wished with a pang of longing that her whole family might be safe and reunited.

“I am not wishing him too much good,” said Marianne at last with a sigh, “when I wish his secret reflections may be no more unpleasant than my own. He will suffer enough in them.”

“Do you compare your conduct with his?”

“No. I compare it with what it ought to have been. I compare it with yours.”

“Our situations have borne little resemblance.”

“They have borne more than our conduct. Do not, my dearest Elinor, let your kindness defend what I know your judgment must censure. My illness has made me think—and weep, and itch terribly, and have these weird feverish visions of parakeets pecking at my eyes—but it also made me think. Long before I was enough recovered to talk, I was perfectly able to reflect. I considered the past: I saw in my own behaviour, since the beginning of our acquaintance with him last autumn, nothing but a series of imprudence towards myself, and want of kindness to others. I saw that my own feelings had prepared my sufferings, and that my want of fortitude under them had almost led me to the grave. And I saw, as I have mentioned, whole great swooping flocks of multi-coloured parakeets, as vicious as they were colourful, descending on my eyes again and again. My illness, I well knew, had been entirely brought on by myself by such negligence of my own health.”

“Your illness was brought on by mosquitoes.”

“Yes, brought on by myself and also by the mosquitoes. But had I died, it would have been self-destruction. I did not know my danger till the danger was removed; but with such feelings as these reflections gave me, I wonder at my recovery—wonder that the very eagerness of my desire to live, to have time for atonement to my God, and to you all, did not kill me at once. Whenever I looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected, or some failing indulged. Everybody seemed injured by me. The kindness, the unceasing kindness of Mrs. Jennings, I had repaid with ungrateful contempt. To the Middletons, to the Palmers, the Steeles—

At the mention of the Steeles, Elinor had a fleeting but distinct pain in her forehead—the five pointed symbol shot back into her mind’s eye for one painful moment and then disappeared. Why? Why again?

The mist in the pond breathed out again, and then in. Marianne continued her oration.

“I had been insolent and unjust; with a heart hardened against their merits, and a temper irritated by their very attention. To John, to Fanny, yes, even to them, little as they deserve, I had given less than their due. But you above all, above my mother, had been wronged by me. I, and only I, knew your heart and its sorrows; yet to what did it influence me? Did I imitate your forbearance? No!”

Here ceased the rapid flow of her self-reproving spirit; and Elinor, impatient to soothe, though too honest to flatter, gave her instantly that praise and support which her frankness and her contrition so well deserved. Marianne pressed her hand and replied, “If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.”

Elinor, with a hand resting lightly on Willoughby’s whistle, reflected on the propriety or impropriety of speedily hazarding her narration; and perceiving that as reflection did nothing, resolution must do all, soon found herself leading to the fact. She prepared her anxious listener with caution; related simply and honestly the chief points on which Willoughby grounded his apology; did justice to his repentance, and softened only his protestations of present regard. She described that as he spoke, Willoughby’s appearance had seemed genuinely penitent, and Monsieur Pierre’s as well. Marianne said not a word. She trembled, her eyes were fixed on the ground, and her lips became whiter than even sickness had left them. A thousand inquiries sprung up from her heart, but she dared not urge one. She caught every syllable with panting eagerness; her hand, unknowingly to herself, closely pressed her sister’s, and tears covered her cheeks.

Elinor led her towards home; and till they reached the door of the shanty, talked of nothing but Willoughby and their conversation together. As soon as they entered and tugged off their mud boots, Marianne with a kiss of gratitude and the words “Tell Mama” withdrew from her sister and walked slowly up stairs. Elinor would not attempt to disturb a solitude so reasonable as what she now sought; and so she turned into the parlour to fulfill her parting injunction. The conversation felt momentous; it felt like Marianne’s very heart had shifted in her chest; indeed, it seemed to Elinor—even as she watched her sister trudge wearily up to her room—that the very island they stood on had moved beneath their feet.