Sense and Sensibility, Part II
Part I here: Do you ever look at somebody and think to yourself: Jesus Christ I just know that man’s going to buy me a horse.
WILLOUGHBY: Are you free to get your hopes up tomorrow around midafternoon?
MARIANNE: Yes, hugely
WILLOUGHBY: Wonderful…I’ll be back then, to say something enormous to you. Don’t forget to raise your expectations!!
LUCY STEELE: Speaking of Tuesday, I have a secret fiancé named Edward.
ELINOR: I think we should check, just to be sure, that Marianne is really engaged to Willoughby —
MRS. DASHWOOD: I don’t need to ask. I’m satisfied with my mental calculations. Cancelling out, completing the square, distributive property. They are engaged to be married, and there is nothing in the world ruder than asking someone who is engaged to be married when the wedding is going to take place.
ELINOR: It would settle an enormous amount of uncertainty and discomfort
MRS. DASHWOOD: Remember your algebra, Elinor: First Outside Inside Last. We will be the last to know, according to the family binomial system. The fact that Willoughby has disappeared and your sister hasn’t eaten or slept in three days only strengthens my faith in them.
ELINOR: I am not saying he intended to mislead her. But I think we could be more useful to Marianne if we knew what was going on —
MRS. DASHWOOD: I’m going to start sewing her a wedding present. I suggest you refamiliarize yourself with your old algebra books. They played on the piano together, Elinor. Do you really think I would have allowed that sort of thing if I had not been convinced of their engagement? You sound insane and disgusting, and you’re making me hate you.
SIR JOHN: Will SOMEBODY PLEASE come over to my HOUSE for DINNER
LUCY STEELE: I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but I couldn’t help but notice that you have hair…Perhaps you know that someone else who also has hair is Edward Ferrars? My fiancé? I’ve taken the liberty of bringing a notarized lock of it with me. You’ll see that all the paperwork is in order. I hope you don’t mind my mentioning it, but I knew you would think it strange if I noticed you had a full head of hair and didn’t discuss the connection…
LUCY STEELE: Elinor! I missed you so much all morning. You look awful, like a bad pancake. It’s not because of my secret fiancé, is it? Let me give you a back rub and describe how much he loves me again…that always makes me feel better
Do you want to hold my engagement ring for a while? Wow it looks so good on you…Let me feed you like a baby bird. If you stop resisting it will go a lot easier! Would you like to join us on our honeymoon? You can carry his shoes around while I have sex with him, or clean the bathroom. You’re the best friend I have ever had and I love you.
LUCY STEELE: Why don’t you try something different with your hair? If you tell me to break up with Edward I will. Will you please get him a job so we can get married faster? Will you promise on your own honor and affection for Edward? I’m going to knit you some fingerless gloves as a wedding present, because whenever I picture you it’s like a little waif warming her hands in front of an oil drum that’s on fire with the fingerless gloves and the bed made of newspaper.
ELINOR: You should do whatever seems best to you. [A beat] I think it’s going to rain later.
LUCY STEELE: Have you ever noticed that whenever he visits you after leaving me, he’s incredibly unhappy? There’s something about going to see you that seems to make Edward Ferrars (my fiancé) almost unutterably sad. I wonder what could be causing it!…Just for fun I painted a watercolor of what it would look like if you and Edward were getting married. I think it would look incredible in your bedroom. Sorry, was that rude of me, because you don’t have a bedroom, because you sleep on a pile of newspapers like a rat?
MRS. JENNINGS: if I have to go to London alone I am going to HANG MYSELF
MARIANNE: I have a very simple plan: I am going to write Willoughby five hundred letters a day until he shakes hands with me. In between letters I will pace loudly across the dining-room floor and FREAK OUT
Dear Willoughby,
I am so, so emotionally unguarded and vulnerable like you wouldn’t believe. I have been screaming your name at parties all over town and am enclosing part of my own liver and most of my fingernails in this letter as token of my sincerity. Please come play the piano with me immediately or I will send more fingernails.
At-risk,
Marianne
Hiiii,
It’s Mary-Anne, right? Am I saying that right? It was so fun to get to read your letter the other day because I could always use more fingernails, and because I love to read. Please don’t take this the wrong way but are you sure you didn’t mean to send your letter to another Willoughby? Because I’ve never played the piano in my life and I happen to be engaged (engaged to be married) already. Do you want your fingernails back? I’m fine either way.
Good luck with your whole deal,
Willoughby (Engaged)
ELINOR: This is a wicked letter, and a cruel one —
MARIANNE [brightening]: Probably some bitch made him write it.
ELINOR: I don’t see how that would make things any better?
MARIANNE: Elinor, shut up. Shut up to death, Elinor.
[A few days later: Marianne is dying of a fever and Willoughby unexpectedly appears at the front door.]
WILLOUGHBY: I could not let Marianne die without assuring you that…it was a real bitch who made me write that letter. A real bitch.
ELINOR: If she ever wakes up, I’ll be sure to tell her.
WILLOUGHBY: Thank you. That is such a load off of my mind. And not just a bitch, by the way, but a total non-entity. Zero personality, all cash. She’s like a talking wallet. Marianne will like that zinger. Will you tell her? That my wife is like a talking wallet—?
ELINOR [closing the door in his face]: First thing when she wakes up.
MRS. JENNINGS: I didn’t want to say anything while they were engaged, my dear, but this does leave a wide-open space for Colonel Brandon, and the thing with Colonel Brandon is that his illegitimate child is almost grown up, whereas Willoughby’s illegitimate child is brand-new and that’s when love-children are the most expensive. They still have to eat and wear clothes just like regular children, you know. So when she wakes up can you tell her that I have good news because the good news is that she can get married to someone else now that the man she likes is unavailable. You remember your algebra. Transitive properties of husbands and so on. And he lives much closer to all the shops, which isn’t nothing.
MARIANNE: Why aren’t I dead yet
COLONEL BRANDON: …It’s a sort of a nesting-doll situation, whereby every time a vulnerable young woman comes into my care, someone gets her pregnant and then abandons her. But I’m sure that’s not going to happen with the next one. I’m sending her to the same place in the country where her mother and grandmother were also seduced and abandoned.
COLONEL BRANDON: After the seventeenth mortal insult I decided there was nothing for it: I was going to have to duel Willoughby.
ELINOR: Duel Willoughby!
COLONEL BRANDON: Don’t get excited. Nothing happened. His went wide and I accidentally shot a duck flying just overhead. We did what we could to salvage things, and ate the duck, but it was pretty embarrassing for everyone involved.
Part III forthcoming.
[Image via]
This is truly the most beautiful and wonderful thing I have ever read in my entire life. Thank you so much, muchly.
Devastating. That is all.