Chapter 21

A m om ent’s glance was enough to satisfy Catherine that her apartm ent

was very unlike the one which Henry had endeavoured to alarm her by the description of. It was by no m eans unreasonably large, and contained neither tapestry nor velvet. The walls were papered, the floor was carpeted; the windows were neither less perfect nor m ore dim than those of the drawing-room below; the furniture, though not of the latest fashion, was handsom e and com fortable, and the air of the room altogether far from uncheerful. Her heart instantaneously at ease on this point, she resolved to lose no tim e in particular exam ination of any thing, 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 convey ed for her im m ediate accom m odation, when her ey e suddenly fell on a large high chest, standing back in a deep recess on one side of the fireplace. The sight of it m ade her start; and, forgetting every thing else, she stood gazing on it in m otionless wonder, while these thoughts crossed her: “This is strange indeed! I did not expect such a sight as this! An im m ense heavy chest! What can it hold? Why should it be placed here? Pushed back too, as if m eant to be out of sight! I will look into it – cost m e what it m ay, I will look into it – and directly too – by day light. If I stay till evening m y candle m ay go out.” She advanced and exam ined it closely : it was of cedar, curiously inlaid with som e darker wood, and raised, about a foot from the ground, on a carved stand of the sam e. The lock was silver, though tarnished from age; at each end were the im perfect rem ains of handles also of silver, broken perhaps prem aturely by som e strange violence; and, on the centre of the lid, was a m y sterious cipher, in the sam e m etal. Catherine bent over it intently, but without being able to distinguish any thing with certainty. She could not, in whatever direction she took it, believe the last letter to be a T; and y et that it should be any thing else in that house was a circum stance to raise no com m on degree of astonishm ent. If not originally theirs, by what strange events could it have fallen into the Tilney fam ily ?

Her fearful curiosity was every m om ent growing greater; and seizing,

with trem bling hands, the hasp of the lock, she resolved at all hazards to satisfy herself at least as to its contents. With difficulty, for som ething seem ed to resist her efforts, she raised the lid a few inches; but at that m om ent a sudden knocking at the door of the room m ade her, starting, quit her hold, and the lid closed with alarm ing violence. This ill-tim ed intruder was Miss Tilney ’s m aid, sent by her m istress to be of use to Miss Morland; and though Catherine im m ediately dism issed 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 m y stery, to proceed in her dressing without further delay. Her progress was not quick, for her thoughts and her ey es were still bent on the obj ect so well calculated to interest and alarm ; and though she dared not waste a m om ent upon a second attem pt, she could not rem ain m any paces from the chest. At length, however, having slipped one arm into her gown, her toilette seem ed so nearly finished that the im patience of her curiosity m ight safely be indulged. One m om ent surely m ight be spared; and, so desperate should be the exertion of her strength, that, unless secured by supernatural m eans, the lid in one m om ent 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 ey es 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 sham e of having harboured for som e m inutes an absurd expectation, was then added the sham e 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 im possible to say how m any generations it has been here. How it cam e to be first put in this room I know not, but I have not had it m oved, because I thought it m ight som etim es be of use in holding hats and bonnets. The worst of it is that its weight m akes 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, ty ing her

gown, and form ing wise resolutions with the m ost violent dispatch. Miss Tilney gently hinted her fear of being late; and in half a m inute 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 trem bled at the em phasis with which he spoke, and sat pale

and breathless, in a m ost hum ble m ood, concerned for his children, and detesting old chests; and the general, recovering his politeness as he looked at her, spent the rest of his tim e in scolding his daughter for so foolishly hurry ing 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 sim pleton herself, till they were happily seated at the dinner-table, when the general’s com placent sm iles, and a good appetite of her own, restored her to peace. The dining-parlour was a noble room , suitable in its dim ensions to a m uch larger drawing-room than the one in com m on use, and fitted up in a sty le of luxury and expense which was alm ost lost on the unpractised ey e of Catherine, who saw little m ore than its spaciousness and the num ber of their attendants. Of the form er, she spoke aloud her adm iration; and the general, with a very gracious countenance, acknowledged that it was by no m eans an ill-sized room , and further confessed that, though as careless on such subj ects as m ost people, he did look upon a tolerably large eating-room as one of the necessaries of life; he supposed, however, “that she m ust have been used to m uch better-sized apartm ents at Mr. Allen’s?”

“No, indeed,” was Catherine’s honest assurance; “Mr. Allen’s dining-

parlour was not m ore than half as large,” and she had never seen so large a room as this in her life. The general’s good hum our increased. Why, as he had such room s, he thought it would be sim ple not to m ake use of them ; but, upon his honour, he believed there m ight be m ore com fort in room s of only half their size. Mr. Allen’s house, he was sure, m ust 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 m uch positive cheerfulness. It was only in his presence that Catherine felt the sm allest fatigue from her j ourney ; and even then, even in m om ents 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 storm y ; the wind had been rising at intervals the whole

afternoon; and by the tim e the party broke up, it blew and rained violently. Catherine, as she crossed the hall, listened to the tem pest 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 tim e 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 storm s ushered in; and m ost heartily did she rej oice in the happier circum stances attending her entrance within walls so solem n! She had nothing to dread from m idnight assassins or drunken gallants. Henry had certainly been only in j est in what he had told her that m orning. In a house so furnished, and so guarded, she could have nothing to explore or to suffer, and m ight go to her bedroom as securely as if it had been her own cham ber at Fullerton. Thus wisely fortify ing her m ind, 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 im m ediately assisted by the cheerful blaze of a wood fire. “How m uch better is this,” said she, as she walked to the fender – “how m uch better to find a fire ready lit, than to have to wait shivering in the cold till all the fam ily are in bed, as so m any poor girls have been obliged to do, and then to have a faithful old servant frightening one by com ing in with a faggot! How glad I am that Northanger is what it is! If it had been like som e other places, I do not know that, in such a night as this, I could have answered for m y courage: but now, to be sure, there is nothing to alarm one.”

She looked round the room . The window curtains seem ed in m otion. It

could be nothing but the violence of the wind penetrating through the divisions of the shutters; and she stepped boldly forward, carelessly hum m ing 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 exam ination, was not without its use; she scorned the causeless fears of an idle fancy, and began with a m ost happy indifference to prepare herself for bed. “She should take her tim e; she should not hurry herself; she did not care if she were the last person up in the house. But she would not m ake 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 arrangem ents, 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, im m ediately rushed across her; and though there could be nothing really in it, there was som ething whim sical, it was certainly a very rem arkable coincidence! She took her candle and looked closely at the cabinet. It was not absolutely ebony and gold; but it was j apan, black and y ellow j apan of the handsom est kind; and as she held her candle, the y ellow had very m uch the effect of gold. The key was in the door, and she had a strange fancy to look into it; not, however, with the sm allest expectation of finding any thing, but it was so very odd, after what Henry had said. In short, she could not sleep till she had exam ined it. So, placing the candle with great caution on a chair, she seized the key with a very trem ulous hand and tried to turn it; but it resisted her utm ost strength. Alarm ed, but not discouraged, she tried it another way ; a bolt flew, and she believed herself successful; but how strangely m y sterious! The door was still im m ovable. She paused a m om ent in breathless wonder. The wind roared down the chim ney, the rain beat in torrents against the windows, and every thing seem ed to speak the awfulness of her situation. To retire to bed, however, unsatisfied on such a point, would be vain, since sleep m ust be im possible with the consciousness of a cabinet so m y steriously closed in her im m ediate vicinity. Again, therefore, she applied herself to the key, and after m oving it in every possible way for som e instants with the determ ined celerity of hope’s last effort, the door suddenly y ielded 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 ey e could not discern any thing unusual, a double range of sm all drawers appeared in view, with som e larger drawers above and below them ; and in the centre, a sm all door, closed also with a lock and key, secured in all probability a cavity of im portance.

Catherine’s heart beat quick, but her courage did not fail her. With a

cheek flushed by hope, and an ey e straining with curiosity, her fingers grasped the handle of a drawer and drew it forth. It was entirely em pty. With less alarm and greater eagerness she seized a second, a third, a fourth; each was equally em pty. Not one was left unsearched, and in not one was any thing 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 m iddle alone rem ained now unexplored; and though she had “never from the first had the sm allest idea of finding any thing 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 exam ine it thoroughly while she was about it.” It was som e tim e however before she could unfasten the door, the sam e difficulty occurring in the m anagem ent of this inner lock as of the outer; but at length it did open; and not vain, as hitherto, was her search; her quick ey es directly fell on a roll of paper pushed back into the further part of the cavity, apparently for concealm ent, and her feelings at that m om ent were indescribable. Her heart fluttered, her knees trem bled, and her cheeks grew pale. She seized, with an unsteady hand, the precious m anuscript, for half a glance sufficed to ascertain written characters; and while she acknowledged with awful sensations this striking exem plification of what Henry had foretold, resolved instantly to peruse every line before she attem pted to rest.

The dim ness of the light her candle em itted m ade her turn to it with

alarm ; but there was no danger of its sudden extinction; it had y et som e hours to burn; and that she m ight not have any greater difficulty in distinguishing the writing than what its ancient date m ight occasion, she hastily snuffed it. Alas! It was snuffed and extinguished in one. A lam p could not have expired with m ore awful effect. Catherine, for a few m om ents, was m otionless with horror. It was done com pletely ; not a rem nant of light in the wick could give hope to the rekindling breath. Darkness im penetrable and im m ovable filled the room . A violent gust of wind, rising with sudden fury, added fresh horror to the m om ent. Catherine trem bled 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. Hum an nature could support no m ore. A cold sweat stood on her forehead, the m anuscript fell from her hand, and groping her way to the bed, she j um ped hastily in, and sought som e suspension of agony by creeping far underneath the clothes. To close her ey es in sleep that night, she felt m ust be entirely out of the question. With a curiosity so j ustly awakened, and feelings in every way so agitated, repose m ust be absolutely im possible. The storm too abroad so dreadful! She had not been used to feel alarm from wind, but now every blast seem ed fraught with awful intelligence. The m anuscript so wonderfully found, so wonderfully accom plishing the m orning’s prediction, how was it to be accounted for? What could it contain? To whom could it relate? By what m eans could it have been so long concealed? And how singularly strange that it should fall to her lot to discover it! Till she had m ade herself m istress of its contents, however, she could have neither repose nor com fort; and with the sun’s first ray s she was determ ined to peruse it. But m any were the tedious hours which m ust y et intervene. She shuddered, tossed about in her bed, and envied every quiet sleeper. The storm still raged, and various were the noises, m ore terrific even than the wind, which struck at intervals on her startled ear. The very curtains of her bed seem ed at one m om ent in m otion, and at another the lock of her door was agitated, as if by the attem pt of som ebody to enter. Hollow m urm urs seem ed to creep along the gallery, and m ore than once her blood was chilled by the sound of distant m oans. Hour after hour passed away, and the wearied Catherine had heard three proclaim ed by all the clocks in the house before the tem pest subsided or she unknowingly fell fast asleep.