Northanger Abbey
presenting even a funereal appearance? Will not your heart sink within
you?”
“Oh! but this will not happen to me, I am sure.”
“How fearfully will you examine the furniture of your apartment! and
what will you discern? Not tables, toilettes, wardrobes, or drawers,
but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a
ponderous chest which no efforts can open, and over the fireplace the
portrait of some handsome warrior, whose features will so
incomprehensibly strike you, that you will not be able to withdraw your
eyes from it. Dorothy, meanwhile, no less struck by your appearance,
gazes on you in great agitation, and drops a few unintelligible hints.
To raise your spirits, moreover, she gives you reason to suppose that
the part of the abbey you inhabit is undoubtedly haunted, and informs
you that you will not have a single domestic within call. With this
parting cordial she curtsies off—you listen to the sound of her
receding footsteps as long as the last echo can reach you—and when,
with fainting spirits, you attempt to fasten your door, you discover,
with increased alarm, that it has no lock.”
“Oh! mr. Tilney, how frightful! this is just like a book! but it cannot
really happen to me. I am sure your housekeeper is not really Dorothy.
Well, what then?”
“Nothing further to alarm perhaps may occur the first night. After
surmounting your _unconquerable_ horror of the bed, you will retire to
rest, and get a few hours’ unquiet slumber. But on the second, or at
farthest the _third_ night after your arrival, you will probably have a
violent storm. Peals of thunder so loud as to seem to shake the edifice
to its foundation will roll round the neighbouring mountains—and during
the frightful gusts of wind which accompany it, you will probably think
you discern (for your lamp is not extinguished) one part of the hanging
more violently agitated than the rest. Unable of course to repress your
curiosity in so favourable a moment for indulging it, you will
instantly arise, and throwing your dressing-gown around you, proceed to
examine this mystery. After a very short search, you will discover a
division in the tapestry so artfully constructed as to defy the
minutest inspection, and on opening it, a door will immediately
appear—which door, being only secured by massy bars and a padlock, you
will, after a few efforts, succeed in opening—and, with your lamp in
your hand, will pass through it into a small vaulted room.”
“No, indeed; I should be too much frightened to do any such thing.”
“What! not when Dorothy has given you to understand that there is a
secret subterraneous communication between your apartment and the
chapel of St. Anthony, scarcely two miles off. Could you shrink from so
simple an adventure? No, no, you will proceed into this small vaulted
room, and through this into several others, without perceiving anything
very remarkable in either. In one perhaps there may be a dagger, in
another a few drops of blood, and in a third the remains of some
instrument of torture; but there being nothing in all this out of the
common way, and your lamp being nearly exhausted, you will return
towards your own apartment. In repassing through the small vaulted
room, however, your eyes will be attracted towards a large,
old-fashioned cabinet of ebony and gold, which, though narrowly
examining the furniture before, you had passed unnoticed. Impelled by
an irresistible presentiment, you will eagerly advance to it, unlock
its folding doors, and search into every drawer—but for some time
without discovering anything of importance—perhaps nothing but a
considerable hoard of diamonds. At last, however, by touching a secret
spring, an inner compartment will open—a roll of paper appears—you
seize it—it contains many sheets of manuscript—you hasten with the
precious treasure into your own chamber, but scarcely have you been
able to decipher ‘Oh thou, whomsoever thou mayst be, into whose hands
these memoirs of the wretched Matilda may fall’—when your lamp suddenly
expires in the socket, and leaves you in total darkness.”
“Oh, no, no; do not say so. Well, go on.”
But Henry was too much amused by the interest he had raised to be able
to carry it farther; he could no longer command solemnity either of
subject or voice, and was obliged to entreat her to use her own fancy
in the perusal of Matilda’s woes. Catherine, recollecting herself, grew
ashamed of her eagerness, and began earnestly to assure him that her
attention had been fixed without the smallest apprehension of really
meeting with what he related. “Miss Tilney, she was sure, would never
put her into such a chamber as he had described! she was not at all
afraid.”
As they drew near the end of their journey, her impatience for a sight
of the abbey—for some time suspended by his conversation on subjects
very different—returned in full force, and every bend in the road was
expected with solemn awe to afford a glimpse of its massy walls of grey
stone, rising amidst a grove of ancient oaks, with the last beams of
the sun playing in beautiful splendour on its high Gothic windows. But
so low did the building stand, that she found herself passing through
the great gates of the lodge into the very grounds of Northanger,
without having discerned even an antique chimney.
She knew not that she had any right to be surprised, but there was a
something in this mode of approach which she certainly had not
expected. To pass between lodges of a modern appearance, to find
herself with such ease in the very precincts of the abbey, and driven
so rapidly along a smooth, level road of fine gravel, without obstacle,
alarm, or solemnity of any kind, struck her as odd and inconsistent.
She was not long at leisure, however, for such considerations. A sudden
scud of rain, driving full in her face, made it impossible for her to
observe anything further, and fixed all her thoughts on the welfare of
her new straw bonnet; and she was actually under the abbey walls, was
springing, with Henry’s assistance, from the carriage, was beneath the
shelter of the old porch, and had even passed on to the hall, where her
friend and the General were waiting to welcome her, without feeling one
awful foreboding of future misery to herself, or one moment’s suspicion
of any past scenes of horror being acted within the solemn edifice. The
breeze had not seemed to waft the sighs of the murdered to her; it had
wafted nothing worse than a thick mizzling rain; and having given a
good shake to her habit, she was ready to be shown into the common
drawing-room, and capable of considering where she was.
An abbey! yes, it was delightful to be really in an abbey! but she
doubted, as she looked round the room, whether anything within her
observation would have given her the consciousness. The furniture was
in all the profusion and elegance of modern taste. The fireplace, where
she had expected the ample width and ponderous carving of former times,
was contracted to a Rumford, with slabs of plain though handsome
marble, and ornaments over it of the prettiest English china. The
windows, to which she looked with peculiar dependence, from having
heard the General talk of his preserving them in their Gothic form with
reverential care, were yet less what her fancy had portrayed. To be
sure, the pointed arch was preserved—the form of them was Gothic—they
might be even casements—but every pane was so large, so clear, so
light! to an imagination which had hoped for the smallest divisions,
and the heaviest stone-work, for painted glass, dirt, and cobwebs, the
difference was very distressing.
The General, perceiving how her eye was employed, began to talk of the
smallness of the room and simplicity of the furniture, where
everything, being for daily use, pretended only to comfort, etc.;
flattering himself, however, that there were some apartments in the
Abbey not unworthy her notice—and was proceeding to mention the costly
gilding of one in particular, when, taking out his watch, he stopped
short to pronounce it with surprise within twenty minutes of five! this
seemed the word of separation, and Catherine found herself hurried away
by Miss Tilney in such a manner as convinced her that the strictest
punctuality to the family hours would be expected at Northanger.
Returning through the large and lofty hall, they ascended a broad
staircase of shining oak, which, after many flights and many
landing-places, brought them upon a long, wide gallery. On one side it
had a range of doors, and it was lighted on the other by windows which
Catherine had only time to discover looked into a quadrangle, before
Miss Tilney led the way into a chamber, and scarcely staying to hope
she would find it comfortable, left her with an anxious entreaty that
she would make as little alteration as possible in her dress.
CHAPTER 21
A moment’s glance was enough to satisfy Catherine that her apartment
was very unlike the one which Henry had endeavoured to alarm her by the
description of. It was by no means unreasonably large, and contained
neither tapestry nor velvet. The walls were papered, the floor was
carpeted; the windows were neither less perfect nor more dim than those
of the drawing-room below; the furniture, though not of the latest
fashion, was handsome and comfortable, and the air of the room
altogether far from uncheerful. Her heart instantaneously at ease on
this point, she resolved to lose no time in particular examination of
anything, as she greatly dreaded disobliging the General by any delay.
Her habit therefore was thrown off with all possible haste, and she was
preparing to unpin the linen package, which the chaise-seat had
conveyed for her immediate accommodation, when her eye suddenly fell on
a large high chest, standing back in a deep recess on one side of the
fireplace. The sight of it made her start; and, forgetting everything
else, she stood gazing on it in motionless wonder, while these thoughts
crossed her:
“This is strange indeed! i did not expect such a sight as this! an
immense heavy chest! what can it hold? Why should it be placed here?
Pushed back too, as if meant to be out of sight! i will look into
it—cost me what it may, I will look into it—and directly too—by
daylight. If I stay till evening my candle may go out.” She advanced
and examined it closely: it was of cedar, curiously inlaid with some
darker wood, and raised, about a foot from the ground, on a carved
stand of the same. The lock was silver, though tarnished from age; at
each end were the imperfect remains of handles also of silver, broken
perhaps prematurely by some strange violence; and, on the centre of the
lid, was a mysterious cipher, in the same metal. Catherine bent over it
intently, but without being able to distinguish anything with
certainty. She could not, in whatever direction she took it, believe
the last letter to be a _T;_ and yet that it should be anything else in
that house was a circumstance to raise no common degree of
astonishment. If not originally theirs, by what strange events could it
have fallen into the Tilney family?
Her fearful curiosity was every moment growing greater; and seizing,
with trembling hands, the hasp of the lock, she resolved at all hazards
to satisfy herself at least as to its contents. With difficulty, for
something seemed to resist her efforts, she raised the lid a few
inches; but at that moment a sudden knocking at the door of the room
made her, starting, quit her hold, and the lid closed with alarming
violence. This ill-timed intruder was Miss Tilney’s maid, sent by her
mistress to be of use to Miss Morland; and though Catherine immediately
dismissed her, it recalled her to the sense of what she ought to be
doing, and forced her, in spite of her anxious desire to penetrate this