Northanger Abbey
the day with her. Miss Tilney added her own wishes. Catherine was
greatly obliged; but it was quite out of her power. Mr. and Mrs. Allen
would expect her back every moment. The General declared he could say
no more; the claims of Mr. and Mrs. Allen were not to be superseded;
but on some other day he trusted, when longer notice could be given,
they would not refuse to spare her to her friend. “Oh, no; Catherine
was sure they would not have the least objection, and she should have
great pleasure in coming.” The General attended her himself to the
street-door, saying everything gallant as they went downstairs,
admiring the elasticity of her walk, which corresponded exactly with
the spirit of her dancing, and making her one of the most graceful bows
she had ever beheld, when they parted.
Catherine, delighted by all that had passed, proceeded gaily to
Pulteney Street, walking, as she concluded, with great elasticity,
though she had never thought of it before. She reached home without
seeing anything more of the offended party; and now that she had been
triumphant throughout, had carried her point, and was secure of her
walk, she began (as the flutter of her spirits subsided) to doubt
whether she had been perfectly right. A sacrifice was always noble; and
if she had given way to their entreaties, she should have been spared
the distressing idea of a friend displeased, a brother angry, and a
scheme of great happiness to both destroyed, perhaps through her means.
To ease her mind, and ascertain by the opinion of an unprejudiced
person what her own conduct had really been, she took occasion to
mention before Mr. Allen the half-settled scheme of her brother and the
Thorpes for the following day. Mr. Allen caught at it directly. “Well,”
said he, “and do you think of going too?”
“No; I had just engaged myself to walk with Miss Tilney before they
told me of it; and therefore you know I could not go with them, could
I?”
“No, certainly not; and I am glad you do not think of it. These schemes
are not at all the thing. Young men and women driving about the country
in open carriages! now and then it is very well; but going to inns and
public places together! it is not right; and I wonder Mrs. Thorpe
should allow it. I am glad you do not think of going; I am sure Mrs.
Morland would not be pleased. Mrs. Allen, are not you of my way of
thinking? Do not you think these kind of projects objectionable?”
“Yes, very much so indeed. Open carriages are nasty things. A clean
gown is not five minutes’ wear in them. You are splashed getting in and
getting out; and the wind takes your hair and your bonnet in every
direction. I hate an open carriage myself.”
“I know you do; but that is not the question. Do not you think it has
an odd appearance, if young ladies are frequently driven about in them
by young men, to whom they are not even related?”
“Yes, my dear, a very odd appearance indeed. I cannot bear to see it.”
“Dear madam,” cried Catherine, “then why did not you tell me so before?
I am sure if I had known it to be improper, I would not have gone with
Mr. Thorpe at all; but I always hoped you would tell me, if you thought
I was doing wrong.”
“And so I should, my dear, you may depend on it; for as I told Mrs.
Morland at parting, I would always do the best for you in my power. But
one must not be over particular. Young people _will_ be young people,
as your good mother says herself. You know I wanted you, when we first
came, not to buy that sprigged muslin, but you would. Young people do
not like to be always thwarted.”
“But this was something of real consequence; and I do not think you
would have found me hard to persuade.”
“As far as it has gone hitherto, there is no harm done,” said Mr.
Allen; “and I would only advise you, my dear, not to go out with Mr.
Thorpe any more.”
“That is just what I was going to say,” added his wife.
Catherine, relieved for herself, felt uneasy for Isabella, and after a
moment’s thought, asked Mr. Allen whether it would not be both proper
and kind in her to write to Miss Thorpe, and explain the indecorum of
which she must be as insensible as herself; for she considered that
Isabella might otherwise perhaps be going to Clifton the next day, in
spite of what had passed. Mr. Allen, however, discouraged her from
doing any such thing. “You had better leave her alone, my dear; she is
old enough to know what she is about, and if not, has a mother to
advise her. Mrs. Thorpe is too indulgent beyond a doubt; but, however,
you had better not interfere. She and your brother choose to go, and
you will be only getting ill will.”
Catherine submitted, and though sorry to think that Isabella should be
doing wrong, felt greatly relieved by Mr. Allen’s approbation of her
own conduct, and truly rejoiced to be preserved by his advice from the
danger of falling into such an error herself. Her escape from being one
of the party to Clifton was now an escape indeed; for what would the
Tilneys have thought of her, if she had broken her promise to them in
order to do what was wrong in itself, if she had been guilty of one
breach of propriety, only to enable her to be guilty of another?
CHAPTER 14
The next morning was fair, and Catherine almost expected another attack
from the assembled party. With Mr. Allen to support her, she felt no
dread of the event: but she would gladly be spared a contest, where
victory itself was painful, and was heartily rejoiced therefore at
neither seeing nor hearing anything of them. The Tilneys called for her
at the appointed time; and no new difficulty arising, no sudden
recollection, no unexpected summons, no impertinent intrusion to
disconcert their measures, my heroine was most unnaturally able to
fulfil her engagement, though it was made with the hero himself. They
determined on walking round Beechen Cliff, that noble hill whose
beautiful verdure and hanging coppice render it so striking an object
from almost every opening in Bath.
“I never look at it,” said Catherine, as they walked along the side of
the river, “without thinking of the south of France.”
“You have been abroad then?” said Henry, a little surprised.
“Oh! no, I only mean what I have read about. It always puts me in mind
of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in The
Mysteries of Udolpho. But you never read novels, I dare say?”
“Why not?”
“Because they are not clever enough for you—gentlemen read better
books.”
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good
novel, must be intolerably stupid. I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe’s
works, and most of them with great pleasure. The Mysteries of Udolpho,
when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember
finishing it in two days—my hair standing on end the whole time.”
“Yes,” added Miss Tilney, “and I remember that you undertook to read it
aloud to me, and that when I was called away for only five minutes to
answer a note, instead of waiting for me, you took the volume into the
Hermitage Walk, and I was obliged to stay till you had finished it.”
“Thank you, Eleanor—a most honourable testimony. You see, Miss Morland,
the injustice of your suspicions. Here was I, in my eagerness to get
on, refusing to wait only five minutes for my sister, breaking the
promise I had made of reading it aloud, and keeping her in suspense at
a most interesting part, by running away with the volume, which, you
are to observe, was her own, particularly her own. I am proud when I
reflect on it, and I think it must establish me in your good opinion.”
“I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of
liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised
novels amazingly.”
“It is _amazingly;_ it may well suggest _amazement_ if they do—for they
read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundreds and hundreds.
Do not imagine that you can cope with me in a knowledge of Julias and
Louisas. If we proceed to particulars, and engage in the never-ceasing
inquiry of ‘Have you read this?’ and ‘Have you read that?’ I shall soon
leave you as far behind me as—what shall I say?—I want an appropriate
simile.—as far as your friend Emily herself left poor Valancourt when
she went with her aunt into Italy. Consider how many years I have had
the start of you. I had entered on my studies at Oxford, while you were
a good little girl working your sampler at home!”
“Not very good, I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho
the nicest book in the world?”
“The nicest—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend
upon the binding.”
“Henry,” said Miss Tilney, “you are very impertinent. Miss Morland, he
is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is forever finding
fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking
the same liberty with you. The word ‘nicest,’ as you used it, did not
suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall
be overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way.”
“I am sure,” cried Catherine, “I did not mean to say anything wrong;
but it _is_ a nice book, and why should not I call it so?”
“Very true,” said Henry, “and this is a very nice day, and we are
taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! it
is a very nice word indeed! it does for everything. Originally perhaps
it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or
refinement—people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or
their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised
in that one word.”
“While, in fact,” cried his sister, “it ought only to be applied to
you, without any commendation at all. You are more nice than wise.
Come, Miss Morland, let us leave him to meditate over our faults in the
utmost propriety of diction, while we praise Udolpho in whatever terms
we like best. It is a most interesting work. You are fond of that kind
of reading?”
“To say the truth, I do not much like any other.”
“Indeed!”
“That is, I can read poetry and plays, and things of that sort, and do
not dislike travels. But history, real solemn history, I cannot be
interested in. Can you?”
“Yes, I am fond of history.”
“I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me
nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and
kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for
nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome: and yet I
often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it
must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes’ mouths,
their thoughts and designs—the chief of all this must be invention, and
invention is what delights me in other books.”
“Historians, you think,” said Miss Tilney, “are not happy in their
flights of fancy. They display imagination without raising interest. I
am fond of history—and am very well contented to take the false with
the true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in
former histories and records, which may be as much depended on, I
conclude, as anything that does not actually pass under one’s own
observation; and as for the little embellishments you speak of, they
are embellishments, and I like them as such. If a speech be well drawn
up, I read it with pleasure, by whomsoever it may be made—and probably
with much greater, if the production of Mr. Hume or Mr. Robertson, than
if the genuine words of Caractacus, Agricola, or Alfred the Great.”
“You are fond of history! and so are Mr. Allen and my father; and I
have two brothers who do not dislike it. So many instances within my
small circle of friends is remarkable! at this rate, I shall not pity