“It was my
mother’s
favourite walk.
Austen - Northanger Abbey
”
She looked round the room. The window curtains seemed in motion. It
could be nothing but the violence of the wind penetrating through the
divisions of the shutters; and she stepped boldly forward, carelessly
humming a tune, to assure herself of its being so, peeped courageously
behind each curtain, saw nothing on either low window seat to scare her,
and on placing a hand against the shutter, felt the strongest conviction
of the wind’s force. A glance at the old chest, as she turned away from
this examination, was not without its use; she scorned the causeless
fears of an idle fancy, and began with a most happy indifference to
prepare herself for bed. “She should take her time; she should not hurry
herself; she did not care if she were the last person up in the house.
But she would not make up her fire; that would seem cowardly, as if
she wished for the protection of light after she were in bed. ” The fire
therefore died away, and Catherine, having spent the best part of an
hour in her arrangements, was beginning to think of stepping into bed,
when, on giving a parting glance round the room, she was struck by the
appearance of a high, old-fashioned black cabinet, which, though in
a situation conspicuous enough, had never caught her notice before.
Henry’s words, his description of the ebony cabinet which was to escape
her observation at first, immediately rushed across her; and though
there could be nothing really in it, there was something whimsical, it
was certainly a very remarkable coincidence! She took her candle and
looked closely at the cabinet. It was not absolutely ebony and gold; but
it was japan, black and yellow japan of the handsomest kind; and as she
held her candle, the yellow had very much the effect of gold. The key
was in the door, and she had a strange fancy to look into it; not,
however, with the smallest expectation of finding anything, but it was
so very odd, after what Henry had said. In short, she could not sleep
till she had examined it. So, placing the candle with great caution on
a chair, she seized the key with a very tremulous hand and tried to turn
it; but it resisted her utmost strength. Alarmed, but not discouraged,
she tried it another way; a bolt flew, and she believed herself
successful; but how strangely mysterious! The door was still immovable.
She paused a moment in breathless wonder. The wind roared down the
chimney, the rain beat in torrents against the windows, and everything
seemed to speak the awfulness of her situation. To retire to bed,
however, unsatisfied on such a point, would be vain, since sleep must be
impossible with the consciousness of a cabinet so mysteriously closed
in her immediate vicinity. Again, therefore, she applied herself to the
key, and after moving it in every possible way for some instants with
the determined celerity of hope’s last effort, the door suddenly yielded
to her hand: her heart leaped with exultation at such a victory, and
having thrown open each folding door, the second being secured only by
bolts of less wonderful construction than the lock, though in that her
eye could not discern anything unusual, a double range of small drawers
appeared in view, with some larger drawers above and below them; and in
the centre, a small door, closed also with a lock and key, secured in
all probability a cavity of importance.
Catherine’s heart beat quick, but her courage did not fail her. With a
cheek flushed by hope, and an eye straining with curiosity, her fingers
grasped the handle of a drawer and drew it forth. It was entirely empty.
With less alarm and greater eagerness she seized a second, a third, a
fourth; each was equally empty. Not one was left unsearched, and in not
one was anything found. Well read in the art of concealing a treasure,
the possibility of false linings to the drawers did not escape her, and
she felt round each with anxious acuteness in vain. The place in the
middle alone remained now unexplored; and though she had “never from
the first had the smallest idea of finding anything in any part of the
cabinet, and was not in the least disappointed at her ill success thus
far, it would be foolish not to examine it thoroughly while she was
about it. ” It was some time however before she could unfasten the door,
the same difficulty occurring in the management of this inner lock as of
the outer; but at length it did open; and not vain, as hitherto, was her
search; her quick eyes directly fell on a roll of paper pushed back
into the further part of the cavity, apparently for concealment, and
her feelings at that moment were indescribable. Her heart fluttered, her
knees trembled, and her cheeks grew pale. She seized, with an unsteady
hand, the precious manuscript, for half a glance sufficed to ascertain
written characters; and while she acknowledged with awful sensations
this striking exemplification of what Henry had foretold, resolved
instantly to peruse every line before she attempted to rest.
The dimness of the light her candle emitted made her turn to it with
alarm; but there was no danger of its sudden extinction; it had yet some
hours to burn; and that she might not have any greater difficulty in
distinguishing the writing than what its ancient date might occasion,
she hastily snuffed it. Alas! It was snuffed and extinguished in one. A
lamp could not have expired with more awful effect. Catherine, for a
few moments, was motionless with horror. It was done completely; not a
remnant of light in the wick could give hope to the rekindling breath.
Darkness impenetrable and immovable filled the room. A violent gust
of wind, rising with sudden fury, added fresh horror to the moment.
Catherine trembled from head to foot. In the pause which succeeded, a
sound like receding footsteps and the closing of a distant door struck
on her affrighted ear. Human nature could support no more. A cold sweat
stood on her forehead, the manuscript fell from her hand, and groping
her way to the bed, she jumped hastily in, and sought some suspension of
agony by creeping far underneath the clothes. To close her eyes in
sleep that night, she felt must be entirely out of the question. With
a curiosity so justly awakened, and feelings in every way so agitated,
repose must be absolutely impossible. The storm too abroad so dreadful!
She had not been used to feel alarm from wind, but now every blast
seemed fraught with awful intelligence. The manuscript so wonderfully
found, so wonderfully accomplishing the morning’s prediction, how was it
to be accounted for? What could it contain? To whom could it relate?
By what means could it have been so long concealed? And how singularly
strange that it should fall to her lot to discover it! Till she had made
herself mistress of its contents, however, she could have neither repose
nor comfort; and with the sun’s first rays she was determined to peruse
it. But many were the tedious hours which must yet intervene. She
shuddered, tossed about in her bed, and envied every quiet sleeper. The
storm still raged, and various were the noises, more terrific even
than the wind, which struck at intervals on her startled ear. The very
curtains of her bed seemed at one moment in motion, and at another
the lock of her door was agitated, as if by the attempt of somebody to
enter. Hollow murmurs seemed to creep along the gallery, and more than
once her blood was chilled by the sound of distant moans. Hour after
hour passed away, and the wearied Catherine had heard three proclaimed
by all the clocks in the house before the tempest subsided or she
unknowingly fell fast asleep.
CHAPTER 22
The housemaid’s folding back her window-shutters at eight o’clock the
next day was the sound which first roused Catherine; and she opened her
eyes, wondering that they could ever have been closed, on objects of
cheerfulness; her fire was already burning, and a bright morning
had succeeded the tempest of the night. Instantaneously, with the
consciousness of existence, returned her recollection of the manuscript;
and springing from the bed in the very moment of the maid’s going away,
she eagerly collected every scattered sheet which had burst from the
roll on its falling to the ground, and flew back to enjoy the luxury
of their perusal on her pillow. She now plainly saw that she must not
expect a manuscript of equal length with the generality of what she had
shuddered over in books, for the roll, seeming to consist entirely of
small disjointed sheets, was altogether but of trifling size, and much
less than she had supposed it to be at first.
Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import.
Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false? An inventory
of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that was before
her! If the evidence of sight might be trusted, she held a washing-bill
in her hand. She seized another sheet, and saw the same articles with
little variation; a third, a fourth, and a fifth presented nothing
new. Shirts, stockings, cravats, and waistcoats faced her in each. Two
others, penned by the same hand, marked an expenditure scarcely more
interesting, in letters, hair-powder, shoe-string, and breeches-ball.
And the larger sheet, which had enclosed the rest, seemed by its first
cramp line, “To poultice chestnut mare”--a farrier’s bill! Such was the
collection of papers (left perhaps, as she could then suppose, by the
negligence of a servant in the place whence she had taken them) which
had filled her with expectation and alarm, and robbed her of half her
night’s rest! She felt humbled to the dust. Could not the adventure of
the chest have taught her wisdom? A corner of it, catching her eye as
she lay, seemed to rise up in judgment against her. Nothing could now
be clearer than the absurdity of her recent fancies. To suppose that a
manuscript of many generations back could have remained undiscovered in
a room such as that, so modern, so habitable! --Or that she should be the
first to possess the skill of unlocking a cabinet, the key of which was
open to all!
How could she have so imposed on herself? Heaven forbid that Henry
Tilney should ever know her folly! And it was in a great measure his
own doing, for had not the cabinet appeared so exactly to agree with his
description of her adventures, she should never have felt the smallest
curiosity about it. This was the only comfort that occurred. Impatient
to get rid of those hateful evidences of her folly, those detestable
papers then scattered over the bed, she rose directly, and folding them
up as nearly as possible in the same shape as before, returned them
to the same spot within the cabinet, with a very hearty wish that no
untoward accident might ever bring them forward again, to disgrace her
even with herself.
Why the locks should have been so difficult to open, however, was still
something remarkable, for she could now manage them with perfect ease.
In this there was surely something mysterious, and she indulged in the
flattering suggestion for half a minute, till the possibility of the
door’s having been at first unlocked, and of being herself its fastener,
darted into her head, and cost her another blush.
She got away as soon as she could from a room in which her conduct
produced such unpleasant reflections, and found her way with all speed
to the breakfast-parlour, as it had been pointed out to her by Miss
Tilney the evening before. Henry was alone in it; and his immediate hope
of her having been undisturbed by the tempest, with an arch reference
to the character of the building they inhabited, was rather distressing.
For the world would she not have her weakness suspected, and yet,
unequal to an absolute falsehood, was constrained to acknowledge that
the wind had kept her awake a little. “But we have a charming morning
after it,” she added, desiring to get rid of the subject; “and storms
and sleeplessness are nothing when they are over. What beautiful
hyacinths! I have just learnt to love a hyacinth. ”
“And how might you learn? By accident or argument? ”
“Your sister taught me; I cannot tell how. Mrs. Allen used to take
pains, year after year, to make me like them; but I never could, till
I saw them the other day in Milsom Street; I am naturally indifferent
about flowers. ”
“But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new
source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness
as possible. Besides, a taste for flowers is always desirable in your
sex, as a means of getting you out of doors, and tempting you to more
frequent exercise than you would otherwise take. And though the love
of a hyacinth may be rather domestic, who can tell, the sentiment once
raised, but you may in time come to love a rose? ”
“But I do not want any such pursuit to get me out of doors. The pleasure
of walking and breathing fresh air is enough for me, and in fine weather
I am out more than half my time. Mamma says I am never within. ”
“At any rate, however, I am pleased that you have learnt to love
a hyacinth. The mere habit of learning to love is the thing; and a
teachableness of disposition in a young lady is a great blessing. Has my
sister a pleasant mode of instruction? ”
Catherine was saved the embarrassment of attempting an answer by the
entrance of the general, whose smiling compliments announced a happy
state of mind, but whose gentle hint of sympathetic early rising did not
advance her composure.
The elegance of the breakfast set forced itself on Catherine’s notice
when they were seated at table; and, luckily, it had been the general’s
choice. He was enchanted by her approbation of his taste, confessed it
to be neat and simple, thought it right to encourage the manufacture of
his country; and for his part, to his uncritical palate, the tea was as
well flavoured from the clay of Staffordshire, as from that of Dresden
or Save. But this was quite an old set, purchased two years ago.
The manufacture was much improved since that time; he had seen some
beautiful specimens when last in town, and had he not been perfectly
without vanity of that kind, might have been tempted to order a new
set. He trusted, however, that an opportunity might ere long occur of
selecting one--though not for himself. Catherine was probably the only
one of the party who did not understand him.
Shortly after breakfast Henry left them for Woodston, where business
required and would keep him two or three days. They all attended in
the hall to see him mount his horse, and immediately on re-entering the
breakfast-room, Catherine walked to a window in the hope of catching
another glimpse of his figure. “This is a somewhat heavy call upon your
brother’s fortitude,” observed the general to Eleanor. “Woodston will
make but a sombre appearance today. ”
“Is it a pretty place? ” asked Catherine.
“What say you, Eleanor? Speak your opinion, for ladies can best tell the
taste of ladies in regard to places as well as men. I think it would be
acknowledged by the most impartial eye to have many recommendations. The
house stands among fine meadows facing the south-east, with an excellent
kitchen-garden in the same aspect; the walls surrounding which I built
and stocked myself about ten years ago, for the benefit of my son. It
is a family living, Miss Morland; and the property in the place being
chiefly my own, you may believe I take care that it shall not be a bad
one. Did Henry’s income depend solely on this living, he would not be
ill-provided for. Perhaps it may seem odd, that with only two younger
children, I should think any profession necessary for him; and certainly
there are moments when we could all wish him disengaged from every tie
of business. But though I may not exactly make converts of you young
ladies, I am sure your father, Miss Morland, would agree with me in
thinking it expedient to give every young man some employment. The
money is nothing, it is not an object, but employment is the thing.
Even Frederick, my eldest son, you see, who will perhaps inherit as
considerable a landed property as any private man in the county, has his
profession. ”
The imposing effect of this last argument was equal to his wishes. The
silence of the lady proved it to be unanswerable.
Something had been said the evening before of her being shown over the
house, and he now offered himself as her conductor; and though Catherine
had hoped to explore it accompanied only by his daughter, it was a
proposal of too much happiness in itself, under any circumstances, not
to be gladly accepted; for she had been already eighteen hours in the
abbey, and had seen only a few of its rooms. The netting-box, just
leisurely drawn forth, was closed with joyful haste, and she was ready
to attend him in a moment. “And when they had gone over the house, he
promised himself moreover the pleasure of accompanying her into the
shrubberies and garden. ” She curtsied her acquiescence. “But perhaps
it might be more agreeable to her to make those her first object.
The weather was at present favourable, and at this time of year the
uncertainty was very great of its continuing so. Which would she prefer?
He was equally at her service. Which did his daughter think would most
accord with her fair friend’s wishes? But he thought he could discern.
Yes, he certainly read in Miss Morland’s eyes a judicious desire of
making use of the present smiling weather. But when did she judge amiss?
The abbey would be always safe and dry. He yielded implicitly, and
would fetch his hat and attend them in a moment. ” He left the room,
and Catherine, with a disappointed, anxious face, began to speak of her
unwillingness that he should be taking them out of doors against his own
inclination, under a mistaken idea of pleasing her; but she was stopped
by Miss Tilney’s saying, with a little confusion, “I believe it will be
wisest to take the morning while it is so fine; and do not be uneasy on
my father’s account; he always walks out at this time of day. ”
Catherine did not exactly know how this was to be understood. Why
was Miss Tilney embarrassed? Could there be any unwillingness on the
general’s side to show her over the abbey? The proposal was his own. And
was not it odd that he should always take his walk so early? Neither her
father nor Mr. Allen did so. It was certainly very provoking. She was
all impatience to see the house, and had scarcely any curiosity about
the grounds. If Henry had been with them indeed! But now she should not
know what was picturesque when she saw it. Such were her thoughts, but
she kept them to herself, and put on her bonnet in patient discontent.
She was struck, however, beyond her expectation, by the grandeur of
the abbey, as she saw it for the first time from the lawn. The whole
building enclosed a large court; and two sides of the quadrangle, rich
in Gothic ornaments, stood forward for admiration. The remainder was
shut off by knolls of old trees, or luxuriant plantations, and the steep
woody hills rising behind, to give it shelter, were beautiful even in
the leafless month of March. Catherine had seen nothing to compare with
it; and her feelings of delight were so strong, that without waiting for
any better authority, she boldly burst forth in wonder and praise. The
general listened with assenting gratitude; and it seemed as if his own
estimation of Northanger had waited unfixed till that hour.
The kitchen-garden was to be next admired, and he led the way to it
across a small portion of the park.
The number of acres contained in this garden was such as Catherine could
not listen to without dismay, being more than double the extent of all
Mr. Allen’s, as well as her father’s, including church-yard and orchard.
The walls seemed countless in number, endless in length; a village of
hot-houses seemed to arise among them, and a whole parish to be at
work within the enclosure. The general was flattered by her looks of
surprise, which told him almost as plainly, as he soon forced her to
tell him in words, that she had never seen any gardens at all equal to
them before; and he then modestly owned that, “without any ambition of
that sort himself--without any solicitude about it--he did believe them
to be unrivalled in the kingdom. If he had a hobby-horse, it was that.
He loved a garden. Though careless enough in most matters of eating, he
loved good fruit--or if he did not, his friends and children did. There
were great vexations, however, attending such a garden as his. The
utmost care could not always secure the most valuable fruits. The pinery
had yielded only one hundred in the last year. Mr. Allen, he supposed,
must feel these inconveniences as well as himself. ”
“No, not at all. Mr. Allen did not care about the garden, and never went
into it. ”
With a triumphant smile of self-satisfaction, the general wished he
could do the same, for he never entered his, without being vexed in some
way or other, by its falling short of his plan.
“How were Mr. Allen’s succession-houses worked? ” describing the nature
of his own as they entered them.
“Mr. Allen had only one small hot-house, which Mrs. Allen had the use of
for her plants in winter, and there was a fire in it now and then. ”
“He is a happy man! ” said the general, with a look of very happy
contempt.
Having taken her into every division, and led her under every wall, till
she was heartily weary of seeing and wondering, he suffered the girls
at last to seize the advantage of an outer door, and then expressing
his wish to examine the effect of some recent alterations about the
tea-house, proposed it as no unpleasant extension of their walk, if Miss
Morland were not tired. “But where are you going, Eleanor? Why do you
choose that cold, damp path to it? Miss Morland will get wet. Our best
way is across the park. ”
“This is so favourite a walk of mine,” said Miss Tilney, “that I always
think it the best and nearest way. But perhaps it may be damp. ”
It was a narrow winding path through a thick grove of old Scotch firs;
and Catherine, struck by its gloomy aspect, and eager to enter it,
could not, even by the general’s disapprobation, be kept from stepping
forward. He perceived her inclination, and having again urged the plea
of health in vain, was too polite to make further opposition. He excused
himself, however, from attending them: “The rays of the sun were not too
cheerful for him, and he would meet them by another course. ” He turned
away; and Catherine was shocked to find how much her spirits were
relieved by the separation. The shock, however, being less real than the
relief, offered it no injury; and she began to talk with easy gaiety of
the delightful melancholy which such a grove inspired.
“I am particularly fond of this spot,” said her companion, with a sigh.
“It was my mother’s favourite walk. ”
Catherine had never heard Mrs. Tilney mentioned in the family before,
and the interest excited by this tender remembrance showed itself
directly in her altered countenance, and in the attentive pause with
which she waited for something more.
“I used to walk here so often with her! ” added Eleanor; “though I never
loved it then, as I have loved it since. At that time indeed I used to
wonder at her choice. But her memory endears it now. ”
“And ought it not,” reflected Catherine, “to endear it to her husband?
Yet the general would not enter it. ” Miss Tilney continuing silent, she
ventured to say, “Her death must have been a great affliction! ”
“A great and increasing one,” replied the other, in a low voice. “I was
only thirteen when it happened; and though I felt my loss perhaps as
strongly as one so young could feel it, I did not, I could not, then
know what a loss it was. ” She stopped for a moment, and then added, with
great firmness, “I have no sister, you know--and though Henry--though my
brothers are very affectionate, and Henry is a great deal here, which I
am most thankful for, it is impossible for me not to be often solitary. ”
“To be sure you must miss him very much. ”
“A mother would have been always present. A mother would have been a
constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all other. ”
“Was she a very charming woman? Was she handsome? Was there any picture
of her in the abbey? And why had she been so partial to that grove? Was
it from dejection of spirits? ”--were questions now eagerly poured forth;
the first three received a ready affirmative, the two others were passed
by; and Catherine’s interest in the deceased Mrs. Tilney augmented with
every question, whether answered or not. Of her unhappiness in marriage,
she felt persuaded. The general certainly had been an unkind husband. He
did not love her walk: could he therefore have loved her? And besides,
handsome as he was, there was a something in the turn of his features
which spoke his not having behaved well to her.
“Her picture, I suppose,” blushing at the consummate art of her own
question, “hangs in your father’s room? ”
“No; it was intended for the drawing-room; but my father was
dissatisfied with the painting, and for some time it had no place.
Soon after her death I obtained it for my own, and hung it in my
bed-chamber--where I shall be happy to show it you; it is very like. ”
Here was another proof. A portrait--very like--of a departed wife, not
valued by the husband! He must have been dreadfully cruel to her!
Catherine attempted no longer to hide from herself the nature of the
feelings which, in spite of all his attentions, he had previously
excited; and what had been terror and dislike before, was now absolute
aversion. Yes, aversion! His cruelty to such a charming woman made him
odious to her. She had often read of such characters, characters which
Mr. Allen had been used to call unnatural and overdrawn; but here was
proof positive of the contrary.
She had just settled this point when the end of the path brought them
directly upon the general; and in spite of all her virtuous indignation,
she found herself again obliged to walk with him, listen to him, and
even to smile when he smiled. Being no longer able, however, to receive
pleasure from the surrounding objects, she soon began to walk with
lassitude; the general perceived it, and with a concern for her health,
which seemed to reproach her for her opinion of him, was most urgent
for returning with his daughter to the house. He would follow them in
a quarter of an hour. Again they parted--but Eleanor was called back in
half a minute to receive a strict charge against taking her friend round
the abbey till his return. This second instance of his anxiety to delay
what she so much wished for struck Catherine as very remarkable.
CHAPTER 23
An hour passed away before the general came in, spent, on the part of
his young guest, in no very favourable consideration of his character.
“This lengthened absence, these solitary rambles, did not speak a mind
at ease, or a conscience void of reproach. ” At length he appeared; and,
whatever might have been the gloom of his meditations, he could still
smile with them. Miss Tilney, understanding in part her friend’s
curiosity to see the house, soon revived the subject; and her father
being, contrary to Catherine’s expectations, unprovided with any
pretence for further delay, beyond that of stopping five minutes to
order refreshments to be in the room by their return, was at last ready
to escort them.
They set forward; and, with a grandeur of air, a dignified step,
which caught the eye, but could not shake the doubts of the well-read
Catherine, he led the way across the hall, through the common
drawing-room and one useless antechamber, into a room magnificent both
in size and furniture--the real drawing-room, used only with company of
consequence. It was very noble--very grand--very charming! --was all that
Catherine had to say, for her indiscriminating eye scarcely discerned
the colour of the satin; and all minuteness of praise, all praise
that had much meaning, was supplied by the general: the costliness or
elegance of any room’s fitting-up could be nothing to her; she cared for
no furniture of a more modern date than the fifteenth century. When the
general had satisfied his own curiosity, in a close examination of every
well-known ornament, they proceeded into the library, an apartment, in
its way, of equal magnificence, exhibiting a collection of books, on
which an humble man might have looked with pride. Catherine heard,
admired, and wondered with more genuine feeling than before--gathered
all that she could from this storehouse of knowledge, by running over
the titles of half a shelf, and was ready to proceed. But suites of
apartments did not spring up with her wishes. Large as was the building,
she had already visited the greatest part; though, on being told that,
with the addition of the kitchen, the six or seven rooms she had now
seen surrounded three sides of the court, she could scarcely believe it,
or overcome the suspicion of there being many chambers secreted. It was
some relief, however, that they were to return to the rooms in common
use, by passing through a few of less importance, looking into the
court, which, with occasional passages, not wholly unintricate,
connected the different sides; and she was further soothed in her
progress by being told that she was treading what had once been a
cloister, having traces of cells pointed out, and observing several
doors that were neither opened nor explained to her--by finding herself
successively in a billiard-room, and in the general’s private apartment,
without comprehending their connection, or being able to turn aright
when she left them; and lastly, by passing through a dark little room,
owning Henry’s authority, and strewed with his litter of books, guns,
and greatcoats.
From the dining-room, of which, though already seen, and always to be
seen at five o’clock, the general could not forgo the pleasure of pacing
out the length, for the more certain information of Miss Morland, as
to what she neither doubted nor cared for, they proceeded by quick
communication to the kitchen--the ancient kitchen of the convent, rich
in the massy walls and smoke of former days, and in the stoves and hot
closets of the present. The general’s improving hand had not loitered
here: every modern invention to facilitate the labour of the cooks had
been adopted within this, their spacious theatre; and, when the genius
of others had failed, his own had often produced the perfection wanted.
His endowments of this spot alone might at any time have placed him high
among the benefactors of the convent.
With the walls of the kitchen ended all the antiquity of the abbey; the
fourth side of the quadrangle having, on account of its decaying state,
been removed by the general’s father, and the present erected in its
place. All that was venerable ceased here. The new building was not
only new, but declared itself to be so; intended only for offices, and
enclosed behind by stable-yards, no uniformity of architecture had been
thought necessary. Catherine could have raved at the hand which had
swept away what must have been beyond the value of all the rest, for the
purposes of mere domestic economy; and would willingly have been spared
the mortification of a walk through scenes so fallen, had the general
allowed it; but if he had a vanity, it was in the arrangement of his
offices; and as he was convinced that, to a mind like Miss Morland’s,
a view of the accommodations and comforts, by which the labours of her
inferiors were softened, must always be gratifying, he should make
no apology for leading her on. They took a slight survey of all; and
Catherine was impressed, beyond her expectation, by their multiplicity
and their convenience. The purposes for which a few shapeless pantries
and a comfortless scullery were deemed sufficient at Fullerton, were
here carried on in appropriate divisions, commodious and roomy. The
number of servants continually appearing did not strike her less than
the number of their offices. Wherever they went, some pattened girl
stopped to curtsy, or some footman in dishabille sneaked off. Yet this
was an abbey! How inexpressibly different in these domestic arrangements
from such as she had read about--from abbeys and castles, in which,
though certainly larger than Northanger, all the dirty work of the house
was to be done by two pair of female hands at the utmost. How they could
get through it all had often amazed Mrs. Allen; and, when Catherine saw
what was necessary here, she began to be amazed herself.
They returned to the hall, that the chief staircase might be ascended,
and the beauty of its wood, and ornaments of rich carving might be
pointed out: having gained the top, they turned in an opposite direction
from the gallery in which her room lay, and shortly entered one on
the same plan, but superior in length and breadth. She was here shown
successively into three large bed-chambers, with their dressing-rooms,
most completely and handsomely fitted up; everything that money and
taste could do, to give comfort and elegance to apartments, had been
bestowed on these; and, being furnished within the last five years, they
were perfect in all that would be generally pleasing, and wanting in all
that could give pleasure to Catherine. As they were surveying the last,
the general, after slightly naming a few of the distinguished characters
by whom they had at times been honoured, turned with a smiling
countenance to Catherine, and ventured to hope that henceforward some of
their earliest tenants might be “our friends from Fullerton. ” She felt
the unexpected compliment, and deeply regretted the impossibility of
thinking well of a man so kindly disposed towards herself, and so full
of civility to all her family.
The gallery was terminated by folding doors, which Miss Tilney,
advancing, had thrown open, and passed through, and seemed on the point
of doing the same by the first door to the left, in another long reach
of gallery, when the general, coming forwards, called her hastily, and,
as Catherine thought, rather angrily back, demanding whether she were
going? --And what was there more to be seen? --Had not Miss Morland
already seen all that could be worth her notice? --And did she not
suppose her friend might be glad of some refreshment after so much
exercise? Miss Tilney drew back directly, and the heavy doors were
closed upon the mortified Catherine, who, having seen, in a momentary
glance beyond them, a narrower passage, more numerous openings, and
symptoms of a winding staircase, believed herself at last within the
reach of something worth her notice; and felt, as she unwillingly paced
back the gallery, that she would rather be allowed to examine that end
of the house than see all the finery of all the rest. The general’s
evident desire of preventing such an examination was an additional
stimulant. Something was certainly to be concealed; her fancy, though
it had trespassed lately once or twice, could not mislead her here;
and what that something was, a short sentence of Miss Tilney’s, as they
followed the general at some distance downstairs, seemed to point out:
“I was going to take you into what was my mother’s room--the room
in which she died--” were all her words; but few as they were, they
conveyed pages of intelligence to Catherine. It was no wonder that the
general should shrink from the sight of such objects as that room
must contain; a room in all probability never entered by him since the
dreadful scene had passed, which released his suffering wife, and left
him to the stings of conscience.
She ventured, when next alone with Eleanor, to express her wish of being
permitted to see it, as well as all the rest of that side of the house;
and Eleanor promised to attend her there, whenever they should have a
convenient hour. Catherine understood her: the general must be watched
from home, before that room could be entered. “It remains as it was, I
suppose? ” said she, in a tone of feeling.
“Yes, entirely. ”
“And how long ago may it be that your mother died? ”
“She has been dead these nine years. ” And nine years, Catherine knew,
was a trifle of time, compared with what generally elapsed after the
death of an injured wife, before her room was put to rights.
“You were with her, I suppose, to the last? ”
“No,” said Miss Tilney, sighing; “I was unfortunately from home. Her
illness was sudden and short; and, before I arrived it was all over. ”
Catherine’s blood ran cold with the horrid suggestions which naturally
sprang from these words. Could it be possible? Could Henry’s father--?
And yet how many were the examples to justify even the blackest
suspicions! And, when she saw him in the evening, while she worked
with her friend, slowly pacing the drawing-room for an hour together in
silent thoughtfulness, with downcast eyes and contracted brow, she felt
secure from all possibility of wronging him. It was the air and attitude
of a Montoni! What could more plainly speak the gloomy workings of a
mind not wholly dead to every sense of humanity, in its fearful review
of past scenes of guilt? Unhappy man! And the anxiousness of her spirits
directed her eyes towards his figure so repeatedly, as to catch Miss
Tilney’s notice. “My father,” she whispered, “often walks about the room
in this way; it is nothing unusual. ”
“So much the worse! ” thought Catherine; such ill-timed exercise was of a
piece with the strange unseasonableness of his morning walks, and boded
nothing good.
After an evening, the little variety and seeming length of which made
her peculiarly sensible of Henry’s importance among them, she was
heartily glad to be dismissed; though it was a look from the general not
designed for her observation which sent his daughter to the bell.
When the butler would have lit his master’s candle, however, he was
forbidden. The latter was not going to retire. “I have many pamphlets to
finish,” said he to Catherine, “before I can close my eyes, and perhaps
may be poring over the affairs of the nation for hours after you are
asleep. Can either of us be more meetly employed? My eyes will be
blinding for the good of others, and yours preparing by rest for future
mischief. ”
But neither the business alleged, nor the magnificent compliment,
could win Catherine from thinking that some very different object must
occasion so serious a delay of proper repose. To be kept up for hours,
after the family were in bed, by stupid pamphlets was not very likely.
There must be some deeper cause: something was to be done which could
be done only while the household slept; and the probability that Mrs.
Tilney yet lived, shut up for causes unknown, and receiving from the
pitiless hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food, was the
conclusion which necessarily followed. Shocking as was the idea, it
was at least better than a death unfairly hastened, as, in the natural
course of things, she must ere long be released. The suddenness of her
reputed illness, the absence of her daughter, and probably of her other
children, at the time--all favoured the supposition of her imprisonment.
Its origin--jealousy perhaps, or wanton cruelty--was yet to be
unravelled.
In revolving these matters, while she undressed, it suddenly struck her
as not unlikely that she might that morning have passed near the very
spot of this unfortunate woman’s confinement--might have been within
a few paces of the cell in which she languished out her days; for what
part of the abbey could be more fitted for the purpose than that which
yet bore the traces of monastic division? In the high-arched passage,
paved with stone, which already she had trodden with peculiar awe, she
well remembered the doors of which the general had given no account. To
what might not those doors lead? In support of the plausibility of this
conjecture, it further occurred to her that the forbidden gallery, in
which lay the apartments of the unfortunate Mrs. Tilney, must be, as
certainly as her memory could guide her, exactly over this suspected
range of cells, and the staircase by the side of those apartments of
which she had caught a transient glimpse, communicating by some
secret means with those cells, might well have favoured the barbarous
proceedings of her husband. Down that staircase she had perhaps been
conveyed in a state of well-prepared insensibility!
Catherine sometimes started at the boldness of her own surmises, and
sometimes hoped or feared that she had gone too far; but they were
supported by such appearances as made their dismissal impossible.
The side of the quadrangle, in which she supposed the guilty scene to be
acting, being, according to her belief, just opposite her own, it struck
her that, if judiciously watched, some rays of light from the general’s
lamp might glimmer through the lower windows, as he passed to the prison
of his wife; and, twice before she stepped into bed, she stole gently
from her room to the corresponding window in the gallery, to see if it
appeared; but all abroad was dark, and it must yet be too early. The
various ascending noises convinced her that the servants must still be
up. Till midnight, she supposed it would be in vain to watch; but then,
when the clock had struck twelve, and all was quiet, she would, if not
quite appalled by darkness, steal out and look once more. The clock
struck twelve--and Catherine had been half an hour asleep.
CHAPTER 24
The next day afforded no opportunity for the proposed examination of the
mysterious apartments. It was Sunday, and the whole time between morning
and afternoon service was required by the general in exercise abroad or
eating cold meat at home; and great as was Catherine’s curiosity, her
courage was not equal to a wish of exploring them after dinner, either
by the fading light of the sky between six and seven o’clock, or by the
yet more partial though stronger illumination of a treacherous lamp.
The day was unmarked therefore by anything to interest her imagination
beyond the sight of a very elegant monument to the memory of Mrs.
Tilney, which immediately fronted the family pew. By that her eye
was instantly caught and long retained; and the perusal of the highly
strained epitaph, in which every virtue was ascribed to her by the
inconsolable husband, who must have been in some way or other her
destroyer, affected her even to tears.
That the general, having erected such a monument, should be able to face
it, was not perhaps very strange, and yet that he could sit so boldly
collected within its view, maintain so elevated an air, look so
fearlessly around, nay, that he should even enter the church, seemed
wonderful to Catherine. Not, however, that many instances of beings
equally hardened in guilt might not be produced. She could remember
dozens who had persevered in every possible vice, going on from crime to
crime, murdering whomsoever they chose, without any feeling of humanity
or remorse; till a violent death or a religious retirement closed their
black career. The erection of the monument itself could not in the
smallest degree affect her doubts of Mrs. Tilney’s actual decease. Were
she even to descend into the family vault where her ashes were supposed
to slumber, were she to behold the coffin in which they were said to
be enclosed--what could it avail in such a case? Catherine had read too
much not to be perfectly aware of the ease with which a waxen figure
might be introduced, and a supposititious funeral carried on.
The succeeding morning promised something better. The general’s early
walk, ill-timed as it was in every other view, was favourable here; and
when she knew him to be out of the house, she directly proposed to Miss
Tilney the accomplishment of her promise. Eleanor was ready to oblige
her; and Catherine reminding her as they went of another promise, their
first visit in consequence was to the portrait in her bed-chamber. It
represented a very lovely woman, with a mild and pensive countenance,
justifying, so far, the expectations of its new observer; but they were
not in every respect answered, for Catherine had depended upon meeting
with features, hair, complexion, that should be the very counterpart,
the very image, if not of Henry’s, of Eleanor’s--the only portraits of
which she had been in the habit of thinking, bearing always an equal
resemblance of mother and child. A face once taken was taken for
generations. But here she was obliged to look and consider and study
for a likeness. She contemplated it, however, in spite of this drawback,
with much emotion, and, but for a yet stronger interest, would have left
it unwillingly.
Her agitation as they entered the great gallery was too much for any
endeavour at discourse; she could only look at her companion. Eleanor’s
countenance was dejected, yet sedate; and its composure spoke her inured
to all the gloomy objects to which they were advancing. Again she passed
through the folding doors, again her hand was upon the important lock,
and Catherine, hardly able to breathe, was turning to close the former
with fearful caution, when the figure, the dreaded figure of the general
himself at the further end of the gallery, stood before her! The name of
“Eleanor” at the same moment, in his loudest tone, resounded through the
building, giving to his daughter the first intimation of his presence,
and to Catherine terror upon terror. An attempt at concealment had been
her first instinctive movement on perceiving him, yet she could
scarcely hope to have escaped his eye; and when her friend, who with an
apologizing look darted hastily by her, had joined and disappeared
with him, she ran for safety to her own room, and, locking herself
in, believed that she should never have courage to go down again. She
remained there at least an hour, in the greatest agitation, deeply
commiserating the state of her poor friend, and expecting a summons
herself from the angry general to attend him in his own apartment. No
summons, however, arrived; and at last, on seeing a carriage drive up
to the abbey, she was emboldened to descend and meet him under the
protection of visitors. The breakfast-room was gay with company; and
she was named to them by the general as the friend of his daughter, in
a complimentary style, which so well concealed his resentful ire, as to
make her feel secure at least of life for the present. And Eleanor,
with a command of countenance which did honour to her concern for his
character, taking an early occasion of saying to her, “My father only
wanted me to answer a note,” she began to hope that she had either been
unseen by the general, or that from some consideration of policy she
should be allowed to suppose herself so. Upon this trust she dared still
to remain in his presence, after the company left them, and nothing
occurred to disturb it.
In the course of this morning’s reflections, she came to a resolution
of making her next attempt on the forbidden door alone. It would be much
better in every respect that Eleanor should know nothing of the matter.
To involve her in the danger of a second detection, to court her into
an apartment which must wring her heart, could not be the office of a
friend. The general’s utmost anger could not be to herself what it might
be to a daughter; and, besides, she thought the examination itself
would be more satisfactory if made without any companion. It would be
impossible to explain to Eleanor the suspicions, from which the other
had, in all likelihood, been hitherto happily exempt; nor could she
therefore, in her presence, search for those proofs of the general’s
cruelty, which however they might yet have escaped discovery, she felt
confident of somewhere drawing forth, in the shape of some fragmented
journal, continued to the last gasp. Of the way to the apartment she was
now perfectly mistress; and as she wished to get it over before Henry’s
return, who was expected on the morrow, there was no time to be lost.
The day was bright, her courage high; at four o’clock, the sun was now
two hours above the horizon, and it would be only her retiring to dress
half an hour earlier than usual.
It was done; and Catherine found herself alone in the gallery before the
clocks had ceased to strike. It was no time for thought; she hurried
on, slipped with the least possible noise through the folding doors,
and without stopping to look or breathe, rushed forward to the one in
question. The lock yielded to her hand, and, luckily, with no sullen
sound that could alarm a human being. On tiptoe she entered; the room
was before her; but it was some minutes before she could advance another
step. She beheld what fixed her to the spot and agitated every feature.
She saw a large, well-proportioned apartment, an handsome dimity bed,
arranged as unoccupied with an housemaid’s care, a bright Bath stove,
mahogany wardrobes, and neatly painted chairs, on which the warm beams
of a western sun gaily poured through two sash windows! Catherine had
expected to have her feelings worked, and worked they were. Astonishment
and doubt first seized them; and a shortly succeeding ray of common
sense added some bitter emotions of shame. She could not be mistaken
as to the room; but how grossly mistaken in everything else! --in Miss
Tilney’s meaning, in her own calculation! This apartment, to which she
had given a date so ancient, a position so awful, proved to be one end
of what the general’s father had built. There were two other doors in
the chamber, leading probably into dressing-closets; but she had no
inclination to open either. Would the veil in which Mrs. Tilney had last
walked, or the volume in which she had last read, remain to tell what
nothing else was allowed to whisper? No: whatever might have been the
general’s crimes, he had certainly too much wit to let them sue for
detection. She was sick of exploring, and desired but to be safe in her
own room, with her own heart only privy to its folly; and she was on
the point of retreating as softly as she had entered, when the sound of
footsteps, she could hardly tell where, made her pause and tremble.
To be found there, even by a servant, would be unpleasant; but by the
general (and he seemed always at hand when least wanted), much worse!
She listened--the sound had ceased; and resolving not to lose a
moment, she passed through and closed the door. At that instant a door
underneath was hastily opened; someone seemed with swift steps to ascend
the stairs, by the head of which she had yet to pass before she could
gain the gallery. She had no power to move. With a feeling of terror
not very definable, she fixed her eyes on the staircase, and in a few
moments it gave Henry to her view. “Mr. Tilney! ” she exclaimed in a
voice of more than common astonishment. He looked astonished too. “Good
God! ” she continued, not attending to his address. “How came you here?
How came you up that staircase? ”
“How came I up that staircase! ” he replied, greatly surprised. “Because
it is my nearest way from the stable-yard to my own chamber; and why
should I not come up it? ”
Catherine recollected herself, blushed deeply, and could say no more. He
seemed to be looking in her countenance for that explanation which her
lips did not afford. She moved on towards the gallery. “And may I not,
in my turn,” said he, as he pushed back the folding doors, “ask how you
came here?
She looked round the room. The window curtains seemed in motion. It
could be nothing but the violence of the wind penetrating through the
divisions of the shutters; and she stepped boldly forward, carelessly
humming a tune, to assure herself of its being so, peeped courageously
behind each curtain, saw nothing on either low window seat to scare her,
and on placing a hand against the shutter, felt the strongest conviction
of the wind’s force. A glance at the old chest, as she turned away from
this examination, was not without its use; she scorned the causeless
fears of an idle fancy, and began with a most happy indifference to
prepare herself for bed. “She should take her time; she should not hurry
herself; she did not care if she were the last person up in the house.
But she would not make up her fire; that would seem cowardly, as if
she wished for the protection of light after she were in bed. ” The fire
therefore died away, and Catherine, having spent the best part of an
hour in her arrangements, was beginning to think of stepping into bed,
when, on giving a parting glance round the room, she was struck by the
appearance of a high, old-fashioned black cabinet, which, though in
a situation conspicuous enough, had never caught her notice before.
Henry’s words, his description of the ebony cabinet which was to escape
her observation at first, immediately rushed across her; and though
there could be nothing really in it, there was something whimsical, it
was certainly a very remarkable coincidence! She took her candle and
looked closely at the cabinet. It was not absolutely ebony and gold; but
it was japan, black and yellow japan of the handsomest kind; and as she
held her candle, the yellow had very much the effect of gold. The key
was in the door, and she had a strange fancy to look into it; not,
however, with the smallest expectation of finding anything, but it was
so very odd, after what Henry had said. In short, she could not sleep
till she had examined it. So, placing the candle with great caution on
a chair, she seized the key with a very tremulous hand and tried to turn
it; but it resisted her utmost strength. Alarmed, but not discouraged,
she tried it another way; a bolt flew, and she believed herself
successful; but how strangely mysterious! The door was still immovable.
She paused a moment in breathless wonder. The wind roared down the
chimney, the rain beat in torrents against the windows, and everything
seemed to speak the awfulness of her situation. To retire to bed,
however, unsatisfied on such a point, would be vain, since sleep must be
impossible with the consciousness of a cabinet so mysteriously closed
in her immediate vicinity. Again, therefore, she applied herself to the
key, and after moving it in every possible way for some instants with
the determined celerity of hope’s last effort, the door suddenly yielded
to her hand: her heart leaped with exultation at such a victory, and
having thrown open each folding door, the second being secured only by
bolts of less wonderful construction than the lock, though in that her
eye could not discern anything unusual, a double range of small drawers
appeared in view, with some larger drawers above and below them; and in
the centre, a small door, closed also with a lock and key, secured in
all probability a cavity of importance.
Catherine’s heart beat quick, but her courage did not fail her. With a
cheek flushed by hope, and an eye straining with curiosity, her fingers
grasped the handle of a drawer and drew it forth. It was entirely empty.
With less alarm and greater eagerness she seized a second, a third, a
fourth; each was equally empty. Not one was left unsearched, and in not
one was anything found. Well read in the art of concealing a treasure,
the possibility of false linings to the drawers did not escape her, and
she felt round each with anxious acuteness in vain. The place in the
middle alone remained now unexplored; and though she had “never from
the first had the smallest idea of finding anything in any part of the
cabinet, and was not in the least disappointed at her ill success thus
far, it would be foolish not to examine it thoroughly while she was
about it. ” It was some time however before she could unfasten the door,
the same difficulty occurring in the management of this inner lock as of
the outer; but at length it did open; and not vain, as hitherto, was her
search; her quick eyes directly fell on a roll of paper pushed back
into the further part of the cavity, apparently for concealment, and
her feelings at that moment were indescribable. Her heart fluttered, her
knees trembled, and her cheeks grew pale. She seized, with an unsteady
hand, the precious manuscript, for half a glance sufficed to ascertain
written characters; and while she acknowledged with awful sensations
this striking exemplification of what Henry had foretold, resolved
instantly to peruse every line before she attempted to rest.
The dimness of the light her candle emitted made her turn to it with
alarm; but there was no danger of its sudden extinction; it had yet some
hours to burn; and that she might not have any greater difficulty in
distinguishing the writing than what its ancient date might occasion,
she hastily snuffed it. Alas! It was snuffed and extinguished in one. A
lamp could not have expired with more awful effect. Catherine, for a
few moments, was motionless with horror. It was done completely; not a
remnant of light in the wick could give hope to the rekindling breath.
Darkness impenetrable and immovable filled the room. A violent gust
of wind, rising with sudden fury, added fresh horror to the moment.
Catherine trembled from head to foot. In the pause which succeeded, a
sound like receding footsteps and the closing of a distant door struck
on her affrighted ear. Human nature could support no more. A cold sweat
stood on her forehead, the manuscript fell from her hand, and groping
her way to the bed, she jumped hastily in, and sought some suspension of
agony by creeping far underneath the clothes. To close her eyes in
sleep that night, she felt must be entirely out of the question. With
a curiosity so justly awakened, and feelings in every way so agitated,
repose must be absolutely impossible. The storm too abroad so dreadful!
She had not been used to feel alarm from wind, but now every blast
seemed fraught with awful intelligence. The manuscript so wonderfully
found, so wonderfully accomplishing the morning’s prediction, how was it
to be accounted for? What could it contain? To whom could it relate?
By what means could it have been so long concealed? And how singularly
strange that it should fall to her lot to discover it! Till she had made
herself mistress of its contents, however, she could have neither repose
nor comfort; and with the sun’s first rays she was determined to peruse
it. But many were the tedious hours which must yet intervene. She
shuddered, tossed about in her bed, and envied every quiet sleeper. The
storm still raged, and various were the noises, more terrific even
than the wind, which struck at intervals on her startled ear. The very
curtains of her bed seemed at one moment in motion, and at another
the lock of her door was agitated, as if by the attempt of somebody to
enter. Hollow murmurs seemed to creep along the gallery, and more than
once her blood was chilled by the sound of distant moans. Hour after
hour passed away, and the wearied Catherine had heard three proclaimed
by all the clocks in the house before the tempest subsided or she
unknowingly fell fast asleep.
CHAPTER 22
The housemaid’s folding back her window-shutters at eight o’clock the
next day was the sound which first roused Catherine; and she opened her
eyes, wondering that they could ever have been closed, on objects of
cheerfulness; her fire was already burning, and a bright morning
had succeeded the tempest of the night. Instantaneously, with the
consciousness of existence, returned her recollection of the manuscript;
and springing from the bed in the very moment of the maid’s going away,
she eagerly collected every scattered sheet which had burst from the
roll on its falling to the ground, and flew back to enjoy the luxury
of their perusal on her pillow. She now plainly saw that she must not
expect a manuscript of equal length with the generality of what she had
shuddered over in books, for the roll, seeming to consist entirely of
small disjointed sheets, was altogether but of trifling size, and much
less than she had supposed it to be at first.
Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import.
Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false? An inventory
of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that was before
her! If the evidence of sight might be trusted, she held a washing-bill
in her hand. She seized another sheet, and saw the same articles with
little variation; a third, a fourth, and a fifth presented nothing
new. Shirts, stockings, cravats, and waistcoats faced her in each. Two
others, penned by the same hand, marked an expenditure scarcely more
interesting, in letters, hair-powder, shoe-string, and breeches-ball.
And the larger sheet, which had enclosed the rest, seemed by its first
cramp line, “To poultice chestnut mare”--a farrier’s bill! Such was the
collection of papers (left perhaps, as she could then suppose, by the
negligence of a servant in the place whence she had taken them) which
had filled her with expectation and alarm, and robbed her of half her
night’s rest! She felt humbled to the dust. Could not the adventure of
the chest have taught her wisdom? A corner of it, catching her eye as
she lay, seemed to rise up in judgment against her. Nothing could now
be clearer than the absurdity of her recent fancies. To suppose that a
manuscript of many generations back could have remained undiscovered in
a room such as that, so modern, so habitable! --Or that she should be the
first to possess the skill of unlocking a cabinet, the key of which was
open to all!
How could she have so imposed on herself? Heaven forbid that Henry
Tilney should ever know her folly! And it was in a great measure his
own doing, for had not the cabinet appeared so exactly to agree with his
description of her adventures, she should never have felt the smallest
curiosity about it. This was the only comfort that occurred. Impatient
to get rid of those hateful evidences of her folly, those detestable
papers then scattered over the bed, she rose directly, and folding them
up as nearly as possible in the same shape as before, returned them
to the same spot within the cabinet, with a very hearty wish that no
untoward accident might ever bring them forward again, to disgrace her
even with herself.
Why the locks should have been so difficult to open, however, was still
something remarkable, for she could now manage them with perfect ease.
In this there was surely something mysterious, and she indulged in the
flattering suggestion for half a minute, till the possibility of the
door’s having been at first unlocked, and of being herself its fastener,
darted into her head, and cost her another blush.
She got away as soon as she could from a room in which her conduct
produced such unpleasant reflections, and found her way with all speed
to the breakfast-parlour, as it had been pointed out to her by Miss
Tilney the evening before. Henry was alone in it; and his immediate hope
of her having been undisturbed by the tempest, with an arch reference
to the character of the building they inhabited, was rather distressing.
For the world would she not have her weakness suspected, and yet,
unequal to an absolute falsehood, was constrained to acknowledge that
the wind had kept her awake a little. “But we have a charming morning
after it,” she added, desiring to get rid of the subject; “and storms
and sleeplessness are nothing when they are over. What beautiful
hyacinths! I have just learnt to love a hyacinth. ”
“And how might you learn? By accident or argument? ”
“Your sister taught me; I cannot tell how. Mrs. Allen used to take
pains, year after year, to make me like them; but I never could, till
I saw them the other day in Milsom Street; I am naturally indifferent
about flowers. ”
“But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new
source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness
as possible. Besides, a taste for flowers is always desirable in your
sex, as a means of getting you out of doors, and tempting you to more
frequent exercise than you would otherwise take. And though the love
of a hyacinth may be rather domestic, who can tell, the sentiment once
raised, but you may in time come to love a rose? ”
“But I do not want any such pursuit to get me out of doors. The pleasure
of walking and breathing fresh air is enough for me, and in fine weather
I am out more than half my time. Mamma says I am never within. ”
“At any rate, however, I am pleased that you have learnt to love
a hyacinth. The mere habit of learning to love is the thing; and a
teachableness of disposition in a young lady is a great blessing. Has my
sister a pleasant mode of instruction? ”
Catherine was saved the embarrassment of attempting an answer by the
entrance of the general, whose smiling compliments announced a happy
state of mind, but whose gentle hint of sympathetic early rising did not
advance her composure.
The elegance of the breakfast set forced itself on Catherine’s notice
when they were seated at table; and, luckily, it had been the general’s
choice. He was enchanted by her approbation of his taste, confessed it
to be neat and simple, thought it right to encourage the manufacture of
his country; and for his part, to his uncritical palate, the tea was as
well flavoured from the clay of Staffordshire, as from that of Dresden
or Save. But this was quite an old set, purchased two years ago.
The manufacture was much improved since that time; he had seen some
beautiful specimens when last in town, and had he not been perfectly
without vanity of that kind, might have been tempted to order a new
set. He trusted, however, that an opportunity might ere long occur of
selecting one--though not for himself. Catherine was probably the only
one of the party who did not understand him.
Shortly after breakfast Henry left them for Woodston, where business
required and would keep him two or three days. They all attended in
the hall to see him mount his horse, and immediately on re-entering the
breakfast-room, Catherine walked to a window in the hope of catching
another glimpse of his figure. “This is a somewhat heavy call upon your
brother’s fortitude,” observed the general to Eleanor. “Woodston will
make but a sombre appearance today. ”
“Is it a pretty place? ” asked Catherine.
“What say you, Eleanor? Speak your opinion, for ladies can best tell the
taste of ladies in regard to places as well as men. I think it would be
acknowledged by the most impartial eye to have many recommendations. The
house stands among fine meadows facing the south-east, with an excellent
kitchen-garden in the same aspect; the walls surrounding which I built
and stocked myself about ten years ago, for the benefit of my son. It
is a family living, Miss Morland; and the property in the place being
chiefly my own, you may believe I take care that it shall not be a bad
one. Did Henry’s income depend solely on this living, he would not be
ill-provided for. Perhaps it may seem odd, that with only two younger
children, I should think any profession necessary for him; and certainly
there are moments when we could all wish him disengaged from every tie
of business. But though I may not exactly make converts of you young
ladies, I am sure your father, Miss Morland, would agree with me in
thinking it expedient to give every young man some employment. The
money is nothing, it is not an object, but employment is the thing.
Even Frederick, my eldest son, you see, who will perhaps inherit as
considerable a landed property as any private man in the county, has his
profession. ”
The imposing effect of this last argument was equal to his wishes. The
silence of the lady proved it to be unanswerable.
Something had been said the evening before of her being shown over the
house, and he now offered himself as her conductor; and though Catherine
had hoped to explore it accompanied only by his daughter, it was a
proposal of too much happiness in itself, under any circumstances, not
to be gladly accepted; for she had been already eighteen hours in the
abbey, and had seen only a few of its rooms. The netting-box, just
leisurely drawn forth, was closed with joyful haste, and she was ready
to attend him in a moment. “And when they had gone over the house, he
promised himself moreover the pleasure of accompanying her into the
shrubberies and garden. ” She curtsied her acquiescence. “But perhaps
it might be more agreeable to her to make those her first object.
The weather was at present favourable, and at this time of year the
uncertainty was very great of its continuing so. Which would she prefer?
He was equally at her service. Which did his daughter think would most
accord with her fair friend’s wishes? But he thought he could discern.
Yes, he certainly read in Miss Morland’s eyes a judicious desire of
making use of the present smiling weather. But when did she judge amiss?
The abbey would be always safe and dry. He yielded implicitly, and
would fetch his hat and attend them in a moment. ” He left the room,
and Catherine, with a disappointed, anxious face, began to speak of her
unwillingness that he should be taking them out of doors against his own
inclination, under a mistaken idea of pleasing her; but she was stopped
by Miss Tilney’s saying, with a little confusion, “I believe it will be
wisest to take the morning while it is so fine; and do not be uneasy on
my father’s account; he always walks out at this time of day. ”
Catherine did not exactly know how this was to be understood. Why
was Miss Tilney embarrassed? Could there be any unwillingness on the
general’s side to show her over the abbey? The proposal was his own. And
was not it odd that he should always take his walk so early? Neither her
father nor Mr. Allen did so. It was certainly very provoking. She was
all impatience to see the house, and had scarcely any curiosity about
the grounds. If Henry had been with them indeed! But now she should not
know what was picturesque when she saw it. Such were her thoughts, but
she kept them to herself, and put on her bonnet in patient discontent.
She was struck, however, beyond her expectation, by the grandeur of
the abbey, as she saw it for the first time from the lawn. The whole
building enclosed a large court; and two sides of the quadrangle, rich
in Gothic ornaments, stood forward for admiration. The remainder was
shut off by knolls of old trees, or luxuriant plantations, and the steep
woody hills rising behind, to give it shelter, were beautiful even in
the leafless month of March. Catherine had seen nothing to compare with
it; and her feelings of delight were so strong, that without waiting for
any better authority, she boldly burst forth in wonder and praise. The
general listened with assenting gratitude; and it seemed as if his own
estimation of Northanger had waited unfixed till that hour.
The kitchen-garden was to be next admired, and he led the way to it
across a small portion of the park.
The number of acres contained in this garden was such as Catherine could
not listen to without dismay, being more than double the extent of all
Mr. Allen’s, as well as her father’s, including church-yard and orchard.
The walls seemed countless in number, endless in length; a village of
hot-houses seemed to arise among them, and a whole parish to be at
work within the enclosure. The general was flattered by her looks of
surprise, which told him almost as plainly, as he soon forced her to
tell him in words, that she had never seen any gardens at all equal to
them before; and he then modestly owned that, “without any ambition of
that sort himself--without any solicitude about it--he did believe them
to be unrivalled in the kingdom. If he had a hobby-horse, it was that.
He loved a garden. Though careless enough in most matters of eating, he
loved good fruit--or if he did not, his friends and children did. There
were great vexations, however, attending such a garden as his. The
utmost care could not always secure the most valuable fruits. The pinery
had yielded only one hundred in the last year. Mr. Allen, he supposed,
must feel these inconveniences as well as himself. ”
“No, not at all. Mr. Allen did not care about the garden, and never went
into it. ”
With a triumphant smile of self-satisfaction, the general wished he
could do the same, for he never entered his, without being vexed in some
way or other, by its falling short of his plan.
“How were Mr. Allen’s succession-houses worked? ” describing the nature
of his own as they entered them.
“Mr. Allen had only one small hot-house, which Mrs. Allen had the use of
for her plants in winter, and there was a fire in it now and then. ”
“He is a happy man! ” said the general, with a look of very happy
contempt.
Having taken her into every division, and led her under every wall, till
she was heartily weary of seeing and wondering, he suffered the girls
at last to seize the advantage of an outer door, and then expressing
his wish to examine the effect of some recent alterations about the
tea-house, proposed it as no unpleasant extension of their walk, if Miss
Morland were not tired. “But where are you going, Eleanor? Why do you
choose that cold, damp path to it? Miss Morland will get wet. Our best
way is across the park. ”
“This is so favourite a walk of mine,” said Miss Tilney, “that I always
think it the best and nearest way. But perhaps it may be damp. ”
It was a narrow winding path through a thick grove of old Scotch firs;
and Catherine, struck by its gloomy aspect, and eager to enter it,
could not, even by the general’s disapprobation, be kept from stepping
forward. He perceived her inclination, and having again urged the plea
of health in vain, was too polite to make further opposition. He excused
himself, however, from attending them: “The rays of the sun were not too
cheerful for him, and he would meet them by another course. ” He turned
away; and Catherine was shocked to find how much her spirits were
relieved by the separation. The shock, however, being less real than the
relief, offered it no injury; and she began to talk with easy gaiety of
the delightful melancholy which such a grove inspired.
“I am particularly fond of this spot,” said her companion, with a sigh.
“It was my mother’s favourite walk. ”
Catherine had never heard Mrs. Tilney mentioned in the family before,
and the interest excited by this tender remembrance showed itself
directly in her altered countenance, and in the attentive pause with
which she waited for something more.
“I used to walk here so often with her! ” added Eleanor; “though I never
loved it then, as I have loved it since. At that time indeed I used to
wonder at her choice. But her memory endears it now. ”
“And ought it not,” reflected Catherine, “to endear it to her husband?
Yet the general would not enter it. ” Miss Tilney continuing silent, she
ventured to say, “Her death must have been a great affliction! ”
“A great and increasing one,” replied the other, in a low voice. “I was
only thirteen when it happened; and though I felt my loss perhaps as
strongly as one so young could feel it, I did not, I could not, then
know what a loss it was. ” She stopped for a moment, and then added, with
great firmness, “I have no sister, you know--and though Henry--though my
brothers are very affectionate, and Henry is a great deal here, which I
am most thankful for, it is impossible for me not to be often solitary. ”
“To be sure you must miss him very much. ”
“A mother would have been always present. A mother would have been a
constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all other. ”
“Was she a very charming woman? Was she handsome? Was there any picture
of her in the abbey? And why had she been so partial to that grove? Was
it from dejection of spirits? ”--were questions now eagerly poured forth;
the first three received a ready affirmative, the two others were passed
by; and Catherine’s interest in the deceased Mrs. Tilney augmented with
every question, whether answered or not. Of her unhappiness in marriage,
she felt persuaded. The general certainly had been an unkind husband. He
did not love her walk: could he therefore have loved her? And besides,
handsome as he was, there was a something in the turn of his features
which spoke his not having behaved well to her.
“Her picture, I suppose,” blushing at the consummate art of her own
question, “hangs in your father’s room? ”
“No; it was intended for the drawing-room; but my father was
dissatisfied with the painting, and for some time it had no place.
Soon after her death I obtained it for my own, and hung it in my
bed-chamber--where I shall be happy to show it you; it is very like. ”
Here was another proof. A portrait--very like--of a departed wife, not
valued by the husband! He must have been dreadfully cruel to her!
Catherine attempted no longer to hide from herself the nature of the
feelings which, in spite of all his attentions, he had previously
excited; and what had been terror and dislike before, was now absolute
aversion. Yes, aversion! His cruelty to such a charming woman made him
odious to her. She had often read of such characters, characters which
Mr. Allen had been used to call unnatural and overdrawn; but here was
proof positive of the contrary.
She had just settled this point when the end of the path brought them
directly upon the general; and in spite of all her virtuous indignation,
she found herself again obliged to walk with him, listen to him, and
even to smile when he smiled. Being no longer able, however, to receive
pleasure from the surrounding objects, she soon began to walk with
lassitude; the general perceived it, and with a concern for her health,
which seemed to reproach her for her opinion of him, was most urgent
for returning with his daughter to the house. He would follow them in
a quarter of an hour. Again they parted--but Eleanor was called back in
half a minute to receive a strict charge against taking her friend round
the abbey till his return. This second instance of his anxiety to delay
what she so much wished for struck Catherine as very remarkable.
CHAPTER 23
An hour passed away before the general came in, spent, on the part of
his young guest, in no very favourable consideration of his character.
“This lengthened absence, these solitary rambles, did not speak a mind
at ease, or a conscience void of reproach. ” At length he appeared; and,
whatever might have been the gloom of his meditations, he could still
smile with them. Miss Tilney, understanding in part her friend’s
curiosity to see the house, soon revived the subject; and her father
being, contrary to Catherine’s expectations, unprovided with any
pretence for further delay, beyond that of stopping five minutes to
order refreshments to be in the room by their return, was at last ready
to escort them.
They set forward; and, with a grandeur of air, a dignified step,
which caught the eye, but could not shake the doubts of the well-read
Catherine, he led the way across the hall, through the common
drawing-room and one useless antechamber, into a room magnificent both
in size and furniture--the real drawing-room, used only with company of
consequence. It was very noble--very grand--very charming! --was all that
Catherine had to say, for her indiscriminating eye scarcely discerned
the colour of the satin; and all minuteness of praise, all praise
that had much meaning, was supplied by the general: the costliness or
elegance of any room’s fitting-up could be nothing to her; she cared for
no furniture of a more modern date than the fifteenth century. When the
general had satisfied his own curiosity, in a close examination of every
well-known ornament, they proceeded into the library, an apartment, in
its way, of equal magnificence, exhibiting a collection of books, on
which an humble man might have looked with pride. Catherine heard,
admired, and wondered with more genuine feeling than before--gathered
all that she could from this storehouse of knowledge, by running over
the titles of half a shelf, and was ready to proceed. But suites of
apartments did not spring up with her wishes. Large as was the building,
she had already visited the greatest part; though, on being told that,
with the addition of the kitchen, the six or seven rooms she had now
seen surrounded three sides of the court, she could scarcely believe it,
or overcome the suspicion of there being many chambers secreted. It was
some relief, however, that they were to return to the rooms in common
use, by passing through a few of less importance, looking into the
court, which, with occasional passages, not wholly unintricate,
connected the different sides; and she was further soothed in her
progress by being told that she was treading what had once been a
cloister, having traces of cells pointed out, and observing several
doors that were neither opened nor explained to her--by finding herself
successively in a billiard-room, and in the general’s private apartment,
without comprehending their connection, or being able to turn aright
when she left them; and lastly, by passing through a dark little room,
owning Henry’s authority, and strewed with his litter of books, guns,
and greatcoats.
From the dining-room, of which, though already seen, and always to be
seen at five o’clock, the general could not forgo the pleasure of pacing
out the length, for the more certain information of Miss Morland, as
to what she neither doubted nor cared for, they proceeded by quick
communication to the kitchen--the ancient kitchen of the convent, rich
in the massy walls and smoke of former days, and in the stoves and hot
closets of the present. The general’s improving hand had not loitered
here: every modern invention to facilitate the labour of the cooks had
been adopted within this, their spacious theatre; and, when the genius
of others had failed, his own had often produced the perfection wanted.
His endowments of this spot alone might at any time have placed him high
among the benefactors of the convent.
With the walls of the kitchen ended all the antiquity of the abbey; the
fourth side of the quadrangle having, on account of its decaying state,
been removed by the general’s father, and the present erected in its
place. All that was venerable ceased here. The new building was not
only new, but declared itself to be so; intended only for offices, and
enclosed behind by stable-yards, no uniformity of architecture had been
thought necessary. Catherine could have raved at the hand which had
swept away what must have been beyond the value of all the rest, for the
purposes of mere domestic economy; and would willingly have been spared
the mortification of a walk through scenes so fallen, had the general
allowed it; but if he had a vanity, it was in the arrangement of his
offices; and as he was convinced that, to a mind like Miss Morland’s,
a view of the accommodations and comforts, by which the labours of her
inferiors were softened, must always be gratifying, he should make
no apology for leading her on. They took a slight survey of all; and
Catherine was impressed, beyond her expectation, by their multiplicity
and their convenience. The purposes for which a few shapeless pantries
and a comfortless scullery were deemed sufficient at Fullerton, were
here carried on in appropriate divisions, commodious and roomy. The
number of servants continually appearing did not strike her less than
the number of their offices. Wherever they went, some pattened girl
stopped to curtsy, or some footman in dishabille sneaked off. Yet this
was an abbey! How inexpressibly different in these domestic arrangements
from such as she had read about--from abbeys and castles, in which,
though certainly larger than Northanger, all the dirty work of the house
was to be done by two pair of female hands at the utmost. How they could
get through it all had often amazed Mrs. Allen; and, when Catherine saw
what was necessary here, she began to be amazed herself.
They returned to the hall, that the chief staircase might be ascended,
and the beauty of its wood, and ornaments of rich carving might be
pointed out: having gained the top, they turned in an opposite direction
from the gallery in which her room lay, and shortly entered one on
the same plan, but superior in length and breadth. She was here shown
successively into three large bed-chambers, with their dressing-rooms,
most completely and handsomely fitted up; everything that money and
taste could do, to give comfort and elegance to apartments, had been
bestowed on these; and, being furnished within the last five years, they
were perfect in all that would be generally pleasing, and wanting in all
that could give pleasure to Catherine. As they were surveying the last,
the general, after slightly naming a few of the distinguished characters
by whom they had at times been honoured, turned with a smiling
countenance to Catherine, and ventured to hope that henceforward some of
their earliest tenants might be “our friends from Fullerton. ” She felt
the unexpected compliment, and deeply regretted the impossibility of
thinking well of a man so kindly disposed towards herself, and so full
of civility to all her family.
The gallery was terminated by folding doors, which Miss Tilney,
advancing, had thrown open, and passed through, and seemed on the point
of doing the same by the first door to the left, in another long reach
of gallery, when the general, coming forwards, called her hastily, and,
as Catherine thought, rather angrily back, demanding whether she were
going? --And what was there more to be seen? --Had not Miss Morland
already seen all that could be worth her notice? --And did she not
suppose her friend might be glad of some refreshment after so much
exercise? Miss Tilney drew back directly, and the heavy doors were
closed upon the mortified Catherine, who, having seen, in a momentary
glance beyond them, a narrower passage, more numerous openings, and
symptoms of a winding staircase, believed herself at last within the
reach of something worth her notice; and felt, as she unwillingly paced
back the gallery, that she would rather be allowed to examine that end
of the house than see all the finery of all the rest. The general’s
evident desire of preventing such an examination was an additional
stimulant. Something was certainly to be concealed; her fancy, though
it had trespassed lately once or twice, could not mislead her here;
and what that something was, a short sentence of Miss Tilney’s, as they
followed the general at some distance downstairs, seemed to point out:
“I was going to take you into what was my mother’s room--the room
in which she died--” were all her words; but few as they were, they
conveyed pages of intelligence to Catherine. It was no wonder that the
general should shrink from the sight of such objects as that room
must contain; a room in all probability never entered by him since the
dreadful scene had passed, which released his suffering wife, and left
him to the stings of conscience.
She ventured, when next alone with Eleanor, to express her wish of being
permitted to see it, as well as all the rest of that side of the house;
and Eleanor promised to attend her there, whenever they should have a
convenient hour. Catherine understood her: the general must be watched
from home, before that room could be entered. “It remains as it was, I
suppose? ” said she, in a tone of feeling.
“Yes, entirely. ”
“And how long ago may it be that your mother died? ”
“She has been dead these nine years. ” And nine years, Catherine knew,
was a trifle of time, compared with what generally elapsed after the
death of an injured wife, before her room was put to rights.
“You were with her, I suppose, to the last? ”
“No,” said Miss Tilney, sighing; “I was unfortunately from home. Her
illness was sudden and short; and, before I arrived it was all over. ”
Catherine’s blood ran cold with the horrid suggestions which naturally
sprang from these words. Could it be possible? Could Henry’s father--?
And yet how many were the examples to justify even the blackest
suspicions! And, when she saw him in the evening, while she worked
with her friend, slowly pacing the drawing-room for an hour together in
silent thoughtfulness, with downcast eyes and contracted brow, she felt
secure from all possibility of wronging him. It was the air and attitude
of a Montoni! What could more plainly speak the gloomy workings of a
mind not wholly dead to every sense of humanity, in its fearful review
of past scenes of guilt? Unhappy man! And the anxiousness of her spirits
directed her eyes towards his figure so repeatedly, as to catch Miss
Tilney’s notice. “My father,” she whispered, “often walks about the room
in this way; it is nothing unusual. ”
“So much the worse! ” thought Catherine; such ill-timed exercise was of a
piece with the strange unseasonableness of his morning walks, and boded
nothing good.
After an evening, the little variety and seeming length of which made
her peculiarly sensible of Henry’s importance among them, she was
heartily glad to be dismissed; though it was a look from the general not
designed for her observation which sent his daughter to the bell.
When the butler would have lit his master’s candle, however, he was
forbidden. The latter was not going to retire. “I have many pamphlets to
finish,” said he to Catherine, “before I can close my eyes, and perhaps
may be poring over the affairs of the nation for hours after you are
asleep. Can either of us be more meetly employed? My eyes will be
blinding for the good of others, and yours preparing by rest for future
mischief. ”
But neither the business alleged, nor the magnificent compliment,
could win Catherine from thinking that some very different object must
occasion so serious a delay of proper repose. To be kept up for hours,
after the family were in bed, by stupid pamphlets was not very likely.
There must be some deeper cause: something was to be done which could
be done only while the household slept; and the probability that Mrs.
Tilney yet lived, shut up for causes unknown, and receiving from the
pitiless hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food, was the
conclusion which necessarily followed. Shocking as was the idea, it
was at least better than a death unfairly hastened, as, in the natural
course of things, she must ere long be released. The suddenness of her
reputed illness, the absence of her daughter, and probably of her other
children, at the time--all favoured the supposition of her imprisonment.
Its origin--jealousy perhaps, or wanton cruelty--was yet to be
unravelled.
In revolving these matters, while she undressed, it suddenly struck her
as not unlikely that she might that morning have passed near the very
spot of this unfortunate woman’s confinement--might have been within
a few paces of the cell in which she languished out her days; for what
part of the abbey could be more fitted for the purpose than that which
yet bore the traces of monastic division? In the high-arched passage,
paved with stone, which already she had trodden with peculiar awe, she
well remembered the doors of which the general had given no account. To
what might not those doors lead? In support of the plausibility of this
conjecture, it further occurred to her that the forbidden gallery, in
which lay the apartments of the unfortunate Mrs. Tilney, must be, as
certainly as her memory could guide her, exactly over this suspected
range of cells, and the staircase by the side of those apartments of
which she had caught a transient glimpse, communicating by some
secret means with those cells, might well have favoured the barbarous
proceedings of her husband. Down that staircase she had perhaps been
conveyed in a state of well-prepared insensibility!
Catherine sometimes started at the boldness of her own surmises, and
sometimes hoped or feared that she had gone too far; but they were
supported by such appearances as made their dismissal impossible.
The side of the quadrangle, in which she supposed the guilty scene to be
acting, being, according to her belief, just opposite her own, it struck
her that, if judiciously watched, some rays of light from the general’s
lamp might glimmer through the lower windows, as he passed to the prison
of his wife; and, twice before she stepped into bed, she stole gently
from her room to the corresponding window in the gallery, to see if it
appeared; but all abroad was dark, and it must yet be too early. The
various ascending noises convinced her that the servants must still be
up. Till midnight, she supposed it would be in vain to watch; but then,
when the clock had struck twelve, and all was quiet, she would, if not
quite appalled by darkness, steal out and look once more. The clock
struck twelve--and Catherine had been half an hour asleep.
CHAPTER 24
The next day afforded no opportunity for the proposed examination of the
mysterious apartments. It was Sunday, and the whole time between morning
and afternoon service was required by the general in exercise abroad or
eating cold meat at home; and great as was Catherine’s curiosity, her
courage was not equal to a wish of exploring them after dinner, either
by the fading light of the sky between six and seven o’clock, or by the
yet more partial though stronger illumination of a treacherous lamp.
The day was unmarked therefore by anything to interest her imagination
beyond the sight of a very elegant monument to the memory of Mrs.
Tilney, which immediately fronted the family pew. By that her eye
was instantly caught and long retained; and the perusal of the highly
strained epitaph, in which every virtue was ascribed to her by the
inconsolable husband, who must have been in some way or other her
destroyer, affected her even to tears.
That the general, having erected such a monument, should be able to face
it, was not perhaps very strange, and yet that he could sit so boldly
collected within its view, maintain so elevated an air, look so
fearlessly around, nay, that he should even enter the church, seemed
wonderful to Catherine. Not, however, that many instances of beings
equally hardened in guilt might not be produced. She could remember
dozens who had persevered in every possible vice, going on from crime to
crime, murdering whomsoever they chose, without any feeling of humanity
or remorse; till a violent death or a religious retirement closed their
black career. The erection of the monument itself could not in the
smallest degree affect her doubts of Mrs. Tilney’s actual decease. Were
she even to descend into the family vault where her ashes were supposed
to slumber, were she to behold the coffin in which they were said to
be enclosed--what could it avail in such a case? Catherine had read too
much not to be perfectly aware of the ease with which a waxen figure
might be introduced, and a supposititious funeral carried on.
The succeeding morning promised something better. The general’s early
walk, ill-timed as it was in every other view, was favourable here; and
when she knew him to be out of the house, she directly proposed to Miss
Tilney the accomplishment of her promise. Eleanor was ready to oblige
her; and Catherine reminding her as they went of another promise, their
first visit in consequence was to the portrait in her bed-chamber. It
represented a very lovely woman, with a mild and pensive countenance,
justifying, so far, the expectations of its new observer; but they were
not in every respect answered, for Catherine had depended upon meeting
with features, hair, complexion, that should be the very counterpart,
the very image, if not of Henry’s, of Eleanor’s--the only portraits of
which she had been in the habit of thinking, bearing always an equal
resemblance of mother and child. A face once taken was taken for
generations. But here she was obliged to look and consider and study
for a likeness. She contemplated it, however, in spite of this drawback,
with much emotion, and, but for a yet stronger interest, would have left
it unwillingly.
Her agitation as they entered the great gallery was too much for any
endeavour at discourse; she could only look at her companion. Eleanor’s
countenance was dejected, yet sedate; and its composure spoke her inured
to all the gloomy objects to which they were advancing. Again she passed
through the folding doors, again her hand was upon the important lock,
and Catherine, hardly able to breathe, was turning to close the former
with fearful caution, when the figure, the dreaded figure of the general
himself at the further end of the gallery, stood before her! The name of
“Eleanor” at the same moment, in his loudest tone, resounded through the
building, giving to his daughter the first intimation of his presence,
and to Catherine terror upon terror. An attempt at concealment had been
her first instinctive movement on perceiving him, yet she could
scarcely hope to have escaped his eye; and when her friend, who with an
apologizing look darted hastily by her, had joined and disappeared
with him, she ran for safety to her own room, and, locking herself
in, believed that she should never have courage to go down again. She
remained there at least an hour, in the greatest agitation, deeply
commiserating the state of her poor friend, and expecting a summons
herself from the angry general to attend him in his own apartment. No
summons, however, arrived; and at last, on seeing a carriage drive up
to the abbey, she was emboldened to descend and meet him under the
protection of visitors. The breakfast-room was gay with company; and
she was named to them by the general as the friend of his daughter, in
a complimentary style, which so well concealed his resentful ire, as to
make her feel secure at least of life for the present. And Eleanor,
with a command of countenance which did honour to her concern for his
character, taking an early occasion of saying to her, “My father only
wanted me to answer a note,” she began to hope that she had either been
unseen by the general, or that from some consideration of policy she
should be allowed to suppose herself so. Upon this trust she dared still
to remain in his presence, after the company left them, and nothing
occurred to disturb it.
In the course of this morning’s reflections, she came to a resolution
of making her next attempt on the forbidden door alone. It would be much
better in every respect that Eleanor should know nothing of the matter.
To involve her in the danger of a second detection, to court her into
an apartment which must wring her heart, could not be the office of a
friend. The general’s utmost anger could not be to herself what it might
be to a daughter; and, besides, she thought the examination itself
would be more satisfactory if made without any companion. It would be
impossible to explain to Eleanor the suspicions, from which the other
had, in all likelihood, been hitherto happily exempt; nor could she
therefore, in her presence, search for those proofs of the general’s
cruelty, which however they might yet have escaped discovery, she felt
confident of somewhere drawing forth, in the shape of some fragmented
journal, continued to the last gasp. Of the way to the apartment she was
now perfectly mistress; and as she wished to get it over before Henry’s
return, who was expected on the morrow, there was no time to be lost.
The day was bright, her courage high; at four o’clock, the sun was now
two hours above the horizon, and it would be only her retiring to dress
half an hour earlier than usual.
It was done; and Catherine found herself alone in the gallery before the
clocks had ceased to strike. It was no time for thought; she hurried
on, slipped with the least possible noise through the folding doors,
and without stopping to look or breathe, rushed forward to the one in
question. The lock yielded to her hand, and, luckily, with no sullen
sound that could alarm a human being. On tiptoe she entered; the room
was before her; but it was some minutes before she could advance another
step. She beheld what fixed her to the spot and agitated every feature.
She saw a large, well-proportioned apartment, an handsome dimity bed,
arranged as unoccupied with an housemaid’s care, a bright Bath stove,
mahogany wardrobes, and neatly painted chairs, on which the warm beams
of a western sun gaily poured through two sash windows! Catherine had
expected to have her feelings worked, and worked they were. Astonishment
and doubt first seized them; and a shortly succeeding ray of common
sense added some bitter emotions of shame. She could not be mistaken
as to the room; but how grossly mistaken in everything else! --in Miss
Tilney’s meaning, in her own calculation! This apartment, to which she
had given a date so ancient, a position so awful, proved to be one end
of what the general’s father had built. There were two other doors in
the chamber, leading probably into dressing-closets; but she had no
inclination to open either. Would the veil in which Mrs. Tilney had last
walked, or the volume in which she had last read, remain to tell what
nothing else was allowed to whisper? No: whatever might have been the
general’s crimes, he had certainly too much wit to let them sue for
detection. She was sick of exploring, and desired but to be safe in her
own room, with her own heart only privy to its folly; and she was on
the point of retreating as softly as she had entered, when the sound of
footsteps, she could hardly tell where, made her pause and tremble.
To be found there, even by a servant, would be unpleasant; but by the
general (and he seemed always at hand when least wanted), much worse!
She listened--the sound had ceased; and resolving not to lose a
moment, she passed through and closed the door. At that instant a door
underneath was hastily opened; someone seemed with swift steps to ascend
the stairs, by the head of which she had yet to pass before she could
gain the gallery. She had no power to move. With a feeling of terror
not very definable, she fixed her eyes on the staircase, and in a few
moments it gave Henry to her view. “Mr. Tilney! ” she exclaimed in a
voice of more than common astonishment. He looked astonished too. “Good
God! ” she continued, not attending to his address. “How came you here?
How came you up that staircase? ”
“How came I up that staircase! ” he replied, greatly surprised. “Because
it is my nearest way from the stable-yard to my own chamber; and why
should I not come up it? ”
Catherine recollected herself, blushed deeply, and could say no more. He
seemed to be looking in her countenance for that explanation which her
lips did not afford. She moved on towards the gallery. “And may I not,
in my turn,” said he, as he pushed back the folding doors, “ask how you
came here?
