Northanger Abbey
mystery, to proceed in her dressing without further delay. Her progress
was not quick, for her thoughts and her eyes were still bent on the
object so well calculated to interest and alarm; and though she dared
not waste a moment upon a second attempt, she could not remain many
paces from the chest. At length, however, having slipped one arm into
her gown, her toilette seemed so nearly finished that the impatience of
her curiosity might safely be indulged. One moment surely might be
spared; and, so desperate should be the exertion of her strength, that,
unless secured by supernatural means, the lid in one moment should be
thrown back. With this spirit she sprang forward, and her confidence
did not deceive her. Her resolute effort threw back the lid, and gave
to her astonished eyes the view of a white cotton counterpane, properly
folded, reposing at one end of the chest in undisputed possession!
She was gazing on it with the first blush of surprise when Miss Tilney,
anxious for her friend’s being ready, entered the room, and to the
rising shame of having harboured for some minutes an absurd
expectation, was then added the shame of being caught in so idle a
search. “That is a curious old chest, is not it?” said Miss Tilney, as
Catherine hastily closed it and turned away to the glass. “It is
impossible to say how many generations it has been here. How it came to
be first put in this room I know not, but I have not had it moved,
because I thought it might sometimes be of use in holding hats and
bonnets. The worst of it is that its weight makes it difficult to open.
In that corner, however, it is at least out of the way.”
Catherine had no leisure for speech, being at once blushing, tying her
gown, and forming wise resolutions with the most violent dispatch. Miss
Tilney gently hinted her fear of being late; and in half a minute they
ran downstairs together, in an alarm not wholly unfounded, for General
Tilney was pacing the drawing-room, his watch in his hand, and having,
on the very instant of their entering, pulled the bell with violence,
ordered “Dinner to be on table _directly!_”
Catherine trembled at the emphasis with which he spoke, and sat pale
and breathless, in a most humble mood, concerned for his children, and
detesting old chests; and the General, recovering his politeness as he
looked at her, spent the rest of his time in scolding his daughter for
so foolishly hurrying her fair friend, who was absolutely out of breath
from haste, when there was not the least occasion for hurry in the
world: but Catherine could not at all get over the double distress of
having involved her friend in a lecture and been a great simpleton
herself, till they were happily seated at the dinner-table, when the
General’s complacent smiles, and a good appetite of her own, restored
her to peace. The dining-parlour was a noble room, suitable in its
dimensions to a much larger drawing-room than the one in common use,
and fitted up in a style of luxury and expense which was almost lost on
the unpractised eye of Catherine, who saw little more than its
spaciousness and the number of their attendants. Of the former, she
spoke aloud her admiration; and the General, with a very gracious
countenance, acknowledged that it was by no means an ill-sized room,
and further confessed that, though as careless on such subjects as most
people, he did look upon a tolerably large eating-room as one of the
necessaries of life; he supposed, however, “that she must have been
used to much better-sized apartments at Mr. Allen’s?”
“No, indeed,” was Catherine’s honest assurance; “Mr. Allen’s
dining-parlour was not more than half as large,” and she had never seen
so large a room as this in her life. The General’s good humour
increased. Why, as he _had_ such rooms, he thought it would be simple
not to make use of them; but, upon his honour, he believed there might
be more comfort in rooms of only half their size. Mr. Allen’s house, he
was sure, must be exactly of the true size for rational happiness.
The evening passed without any further disturbance, and, in the
occasional absence of General Tilney, with much positive cheerfulness.
It was only in his presence that Catherine felt the smallest fatigue
from her journey; and even then, even in moments of languor or
restraint, a sense of general happiness preponderated, and she could
think of her friends in Bath without one wish of being with them.
The night was stormy; the wind had been rising at intervals the whole
afternoon; and by the time the party broke up, it blew and rained
violently. Catherine, as she crossed the hall, listened to the tempest
with sensations of awe; and, when she heard it rage round a corner of
the ancient building and close with sudden fury a distant door, felt
for the first time that she was really in an abbey. Yes, these were
characteristic sounds; they brought to her recollection a countless
variety of dreadful situations and horrid scenes, which such buildings
had witnessed, and such storms ushered in; and most heartily did she
rejoice in the happier circumstances attending her entrance within
walls so solemn! _She_ had nothing to dread from midnight assassins or
drunken gallants. Henry had certainly been only in jest in what he had
told her that morning. In a house so furnished, and so guarded, she
could have nothing to explore or to suffer, and might go to her bedroom
as securely as if it had been her own chamber at Fullerton. Thus wisely
fortifying her mind, as she proceeded upstairs, she was enabled,
especially on perceiving that Miss Tilney slept only two doors from
her, to enter her room with a tolerably stout heart; and her spirits
were immediately assisted by the cheerful blaze of a wood fire. “How
much better is this,” said she, as she walked to the fender—“how much
better to find a fire ready lit, than to have to wait shivering in the
cold till all the family are in bed, as so many poor girls have been
obliged to do, and then to have a faithful old servant frightening one
by coming in with a faggot! how glad I am that Northanger is what it
is! if it had been like some other places, I do not know that, in such
a night as this, I could have answered for my courage: but now, to be
sure, there is nothing to alarm one.”
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