Part 14

Catherine has her walk, and for once the reality fulfils the expectation.

Whether intentionally or accidentally, Jane Austen illustrates the contrast between John Thorpe and Henry Tilney by their different estimates of novels. The walking-party had determined to walk round Beechen Cliff--“that noble hill,” Jane Austen calls it, in more than her ordinary chary words of description, “whose beautiful verdure and hanging coppice[29] 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.’[30]

“‘But I really thought before,’ persisted Catherine, ‘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?’ or ‘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.’”

About this time Captain Tilney, General Tilney’s eldest son, a handsome, fashionable young man, arrives on a visit to his family. Catherine is most willing to acknowledge his advantages, but his tastes and manners are decidedly inferior, in her opinion, after she hears him, at one of the assemblies, not only protest against every thought of dancing himself, but even laugh openly at his brother Henry for finding it possible.

Isabella, who has begun by announcing her intention to sit all the evening, in compliment to James Morland’s temporary absence, is soon seen dancing with Captain Tilney, in spite of his and her protest.

James Morland’s application to his father for his consent to his marriage with Isabella Thorpe brings a kind and considerate answer. A family living of four hundred a year is to be resigned to James; an estate of nearly equal value is secured to him. The greatest trial is that the young couple must wait two or three years, till James Morland can take orders.

James and Catherine, being good and reasonable children, are perfectly satisfied with their father’s generosity.

Isabella says the prospect is very charming, but says it with a grave face.

The period of the Allens’ visit to Bath is drawing to a close; and the question whether they may stay longer or not seems to involve the happiness of Catherine’s whole life; and so, when the lodgings are taken for another fortnight, everything appears secured. “What this additional fortnight was to produce to her beyond the pleasure of sometimes seeing Henry Tilney, made but a small part of Catherine’s speculation;” Jane Austen comments with regard to her heroine’s unreasonable joy. “Once or twice, indeed, since James’s engagement had taught her what _could_ be done, she had got so far as to indulge in a secret ‘perhaps;’ but, in general, the felicity of being with him for the present bounded her views. The present was now comprised in another three weeks; and her happiness being certain for that period, the rest of her life was at such a distance as to excite but little interest.” This is pre-eminently the calculation of seventeen, when a month in anticipation reckons as a year, a year as a lifetime.

However, when Catherine calls for Miss Tilney with the glad news, she receives an unexpected blow. The Tilneys are to quit Bath soon. Poor Catherine cannot hide her dejection, but an ample compensation, far beyond her brightest hopes, awaits her.

Miss Tilney stammers some words of invitation, which are at once seconded by her father. The General, so far from being haughty to Catherine, has distinguished her by an oppressively marked degree of attention, which has rather a tendency to extinguish the frank kindness of his son and daughter.

Catherine is now pressed in the most flatteringly solicitous manner, by this somewhat overpowering fine gentleman, to go with the family to Northanger Abbey, and give his daughter the pleasure of her company there, for a few weeks.

Catherine is to be the Tilneys’ chosen visitor: “She was to be for weeks under the same roof with the person whose society she most prized; and in addition to all the rest; this roof was to be the roof of an Abbey! Her passion for ancient edifices was next in degree to her passion for Henry Tilney, and castles and abbeys made usually the charm of those reveries which his image did not fill. To see and explore either the ramparts and keep of the one, or the cloisters of the other, had been for many weeks a darling wish, though to be more than the visitor of an hour had seemed too nearly impossible for desire; and yet this was to happen. With all the chances against her of house, hall, place, court and cottage, Northanger turned up an Abbey, and she was to be its inhabitant. Its long damp passages, its narrow cells and ruined chapel, were to be within her daily reach; and she could not entirely subdue the hope of some traditional legends, some awful memorials of an injured and ill-fated nun.”

Catherine’s happiness is not without alloy. Isabella improves the occasion of being with Catherine at the Pump-room one morning, to tell her that John Thorpe is over head and ears in love with her, and to urge his suit, greatly to Catherine’s astonishment and discomfiture. For has not Isabella long professed herself convinced of a mutual attachment between Henry Tilney and her friend?

Catherine, with all the innocence of truth, protests her ignorance of Mr. Thorpe’s wishes, and her incapacity to respond to them.

Isabella accepts her brother’s disappointment with a wonderfully good grace, though she will imply, in spite of Catherine’s indignant denial, that there has been a relinquished flirtation, a change of mind on Catherine’s part, which Isabella would be the last person to blame.

As the girls are speaking, they are joined by Captain Tilney, and Catherine is first bewildered and then shocked to find him addressing her friend and future sister in terms which cannot be mistaken. “‘What! always to be watched in person or proxy?’ he said low, but not too low for Catherine to hear.

“‘Pshaw! nonsense!’ was Isabella’s answer, in the same half-whisper; ‘why do you put such things into my head? If I could believe it! my spirit, you know, is pretty independent.’

“‘I wish your heart were independent, that would be enough for me.’

“‘My heart, indeed! What can you have to do with hearts? You men have none of you any hearts.’

“‘If we have not hearts we have eyes, and they give us torment enough.’

“‘Do they? I am sorry for it; I am sorry they find anything so disagreeable in me. I will look another way. I hope this pleases you’ (turning her back on him). ‘I hope your eyes are not tormented now.’

“‘Never more so, for the edge of a blooming cheek is still in view, at once too much and too little.’”

Catherine will not remain longer. She is confounded; but still the girl who is so honourable herself can think no greater evil than that Captain Tilney has fallen in love with Isabella, and that Isabella is unconsciously encouraging him--unconsciously it must be, for Isabella’s attachment to James is as certain as their engagement.

But when Catherine sees Isabella admitting Captain Tilney’s attentions in public as readily as they are offered, and allowing him almost an equal share with James of her notice and smiles, charity itself cannot vindicate the lady’s conduct.

Catherine has too much good sense to continue to be deceived. She tries to believe still that Isabella cannot be aware of the pain she is inflicting; but her friend must resent the wilful thoughtlessness, since James is the sufferer.

When Catherine Morland learns that Captain Tilney is to remain in Bath after his family have left, she speaks to Henry Tilney on the subject. She expresses her regret for his brother’s evident admiration of Miss Thorpe, and entreats him to make known her engagement.

“‘My brother does know it.’

“‘Does he? Then why does he stay here?’

“He made no reply, and was beginning to talk of something else; but she eagerly continued, ‘Why do not you persuade him to go away? The longer he stays the worse it will be for him at last. It is only staying to be miserable.’

“Henry smiled, and said, ‘I am sure my brother would not wish to do that.’

“‘Then you will persuade him to go away?’

“‘Persuasion is not at command; but pardon me if I cannot even endeavour to persuade him. I have myself told him that Miss Thorpe is engaged. He knows what he is about, and must be his own master.’

“‘No, he does not know what he is about,’ cried Catherine; ‘he does not know the pain he is giving my brother. Not that James has ever told me so, but I am sure he is very uncomfortable.’

“‘And are you sure it is my brother’s doing?’

“‘Yes, very sure.’

“‘Is it my brother’s attentions to Miss Thorpe, or Miss Thorpe’s admission of them, that gives the pain?’”

Catherine, in her ignorance of the ways of the world, wonders General Tilney does not interfere; is sure if _he_ spoke to Captain Tilney he would go away.

Henry Tilney has some trouble in convincing her that her “amiable solicitude” is a little mistaken. Will her brother thank her, either on his own account or on that of Miss Thorpe, for supposing that her affection, or at least her good behaviour, can only be secured by her seeing nothing of Captain Tilney? For anything further, Frederick must soon rejoin his regiment, and what will then become of his acquaintance with Miss Thorpe? The mess-room will drink “Isabella Thorpe” for a fortnight, and she will laugh with Catherine’s brother over poor Tilney’s passion for a month.

This is a novel view of the situation to Catherine, but she cannot refuse comfort from such a quarter; and she parts not only placably but affectionately from her friend.

III.

The bustle of the Tilneys starting on their journey is rendered trying by the exactions and complaints of the arrogant, ill-tempered master of the household; still he is all complaisance and sedulous politeness to Miss Morland; and his first fretful murmur at the chaise’s being overcrowded with parcels, is professedly that she will not have room to sit. “And so much was he influenced by this apprehension when he handed her in, that she had some difficulty in saving her own new writing-desk from being thrown out into the street.”

Luckily, the General drives in his son’s curricle; but even the agreeable conversation of Eleanor Tilney, the bliss of their destination, the glory of travelling in “a fashionable chaise and four, postilions handsomely liveried, rising so regularly in their stirrups, and numerous outriders properly mounted,”[31] sink a little under the tediousness of a two hours’ bait at Petty France.

The General, in his anxiety that Catherine may see the country, proposes to her to change places, and drive with his son for the rest of the way.

Catherine’s recent experiences of such driving have not been encouraging, and she recalls an unfavourable opinion delivered too late by Mr. Allen, on the presence of young ladies in young men’s open carriages. For I am glad to be able to show that Catherine, though extremely in love, has neither forgotten duty nor propriety in her love; but backed by the powerful sanction, even the recommendation, of such a judge of good manners as General Tilney, she feels she need have no scruple in giving the consent she longs to give.

Henry Tilney is as far removed from John Thorpe in driving as in everything else. The young clergyman drives so well, so quietly, without making any disturbance, without parading to her, or swearing at the horses, “so different from the only gentleman-coachman whom it was in her power to compare him with! And then his hat sat so well, and the innumerable capes of his great-coat looked so becomingly important.[32] To be driven by him was, next to dancing with him, certainly the greatest happiness in the world. In addition to every other delight, she had now that of listening to her own praise, of being thanked, at least on his sister’s account, for her kindness in thus becoming her visitor, of hearing it ranked as real friendship and described as creating real gratitude.”

It is a little drawback, certainly, to hear that Henry Tilney has an establishment at his parsonage at Woodston, nearly twenty miles off, where he has to spend some of his time,[33] but what pleasure under the sun is without drawback?

Unfortunately, too, as it proves, Henry Tilney, with his propensity for chaffing, cannot resist making game of his companion with regard to her expectations of Northanger Abbey. He conjures up for her benefit a fac-simile of the abbeys and castles of her beloved romances, and pictures her like Emily in “Udolpho”--conducted by an ancient housekeeper along gloomy passages--standing by a bed with its dark velvet coverlet resembling a pall--inspecting broken lutes and cabinets of ebony, while peals of thunder rattle overhead, and the flame of her lamp sinks in the socket just as she has been impelled to unlock the folding-doors and search through every drawer of the cabinet, and has come upon a roll of manuscript.

In short, Jane Austen, speaking by Henry Tilney, in the most barefaced and liveliest manner, parodies and makes fun of Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances, which she has praised so highly elsewhere;[34] and this example of the humourist’s satire shows how free it is ordinarily from illiberality and harshness. She laughs merrily here at what she really esteems, the merits of which in another light she is the first to acknowledge.

It is not in a thunderstorm, but under the more prosaic inconvenience of “a scud of rain,” fixing all Catherine’s attention on the welfare of her new straw bonnet, that she arrives at her destination, with only a dim apprehension--from the modern lodge-gates, the smooth gravel of the avenue, and the Rumford grate and ornaments of pretty English china on the chimney-piece of the drawing-room, to which she is hurried--that the Abbey, in one sense, may not come up to her dreams.

The hall has been large and lofty, and there is a broad staircase of shining oak, up which Catherine is taken to her room. But that comfortable room possesses papered walls and a carpeted floor, while the windows are neither less perfect nor dimmer[35] than those of the drawing-room.

Catherine receives some consolation, as she is hastening to remove her riding-habit (the common travelling dress of the day), to dress for dinner, in time to suit the fiery punctuality of the General. Her eye falls on a large, high chest in a deep recess on one side of the fireplace. The chest, which is of cedar, curiously inlaid with some darker wood, and furnished with a tarnished silver lock, might have formed a treasure among the Queen Anne furniture and art curiosities of to-day; but it is not from premature æsthetic tastes that Catherine flies to it, entranced at the sight--it is because the chest looks like a realisation of her visions, a prelude to adventures in her own person, such as those which her favourite heroines have encountered and surmounted triumphantly.

The incidents which follow the discovery of this chest would be impossible in the days of social science and board schools. They read like exaggerations, even in Jane Austen’s usually temperate, as well as witty, pages.[36]

Then we must keep in remembrance that Catherine Morland was, in age, but sweet, immature seventeen, while George III’s reign was in many things removed from that of Queen Victoria.

Miss Tilney’s maid, and later Miss Tilney herself, surprise Catherine in what looks like burglarious intentions, in her eager investigation of the chest. In the last instance, Catherine has just succeeded in throwing back the lid, and discovering----a nicely-folded white cotton counterpane!

This anti-climax does not prevent the infatuated Catherine, when she has retired for the night, during an appropriate storm of wind and rain, looking about her, at intervals, in pursuit of more old furniture. And just as she is about to step into bed, her eyes light on an ebony and gold cabinet, such as her mischievous lover has described. To be sure the cabinet is not exactly of ebony and gold, but it is of the next thing to them--black and yellow Japan--with the yellow looking like gold. The key is in the door--wonderful to relate, as Henry has said! Catherine cannot sleep till she has turned it. Naturally, the lock tries her trembling, unfamiliar fingers, but she overcomes its difficulties, only to open drawer after drawer with emptiness revealed. The middle cavity alone remains unexplored. She succeeds with the second lock as with the first, and meets her reward--a roll of paper, pushed far back for concealment, lies before her.

Catherine’s heart flutters, her knees tremble, her cheeks grow pale. She seizes the precious MS. without a doubt as to her right to take possession of it. Has one of her heroines hesitated in similar circumstances? She glances round, as if by instinct, to detect the next accomplishment of Henry Tilney’s predictions, in the waning of her light. It happens to be a half-burnt-down candle needing snuffing, instead of a lamp with the wick burnt to the socket. Sometimes modern prosaic substitutes prove convenient. Catherine has only to snuff her candle to restore its brightness. Alas! in her agitation she snuffs it out, and leaves herself at once in total darkness. Gas might not have served her any better, since gas runs the risk, in these circumstances, of being turned off.

Poor Catherine’s plight has become lamentable, since, as a matter of course, she believes she distinguishes receding footsteps, and the closing of a distant door, the moment she has put out her light. A cold sweat stands on her forehead, the manuscript falls from her hand, and, groping her way to the bed, she jumps in, seeking some suspension of agony by creeping unheroically far underneath the clothes. Sleep must be impossible, and actually eludes Catherine’s grasp till all the clocks about the place have struck three.

The housemaid’s folding back her window-shutters at eight o’clock rouses Catherine to a bright morning and a cheerful fire. With revived spirits and curiosity, she waits only to be alone, in order to surrender herself to the absorbing interest and distinction of her discovery. She sees at once she must not expect a manuscript of equal length to those she is accustomed to read when printed. Here are only some small, unconnected sheets of paper. “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-strings, and breeches ball; and the larger sheet, which had enclosed the rest, seemed by its first cramped line--‘To poultice chesnut 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 had robbed her of half her night’s rest! She felt humbled to the dust.”

Catherine fervently trusts that nobody--above all, not Henry Tilney, who is in some respects the originator of her misadventure, but whom, of course, she magnanimously forgives--will ever learn what she has been about.

She soon forgets her affronted discomfiture in a little conversation with Henry Tilney, in the breakfast-parlour, before the others come down. She is praising Miss Tilney’s hyacinths, and adds, “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.”[37]

Henry Tilney ends the conversation with the assertion, “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?”

I need not quote further than that Catherine is delightfully embarrassed, and that she has the happiness of being still more discomposed by a hint from the General when he appears, which does sound as if the formidable great man were deigning to rally the young couple on a sympathetic habit of early rising.

But Catherine is not yet quite cured of her romantic fancies.[38] She has been forced to see that the Abbey, in spite of its indisputable pretensions to antiquity and grandeur, its fine situation, and the ostentatious display made by the present owner of his rank and fortune, in its gardens and hot-houses, is, according to her standard, a mere commonplace, handsome, country house. She has found out for herself that old chests and cabinets may be no better than humbugs; still, she must hanker after family secrets and terrible mysteries. She cannot like pompous, despotic General Tilney, before whom his daughter trembles, and his sons grow silent--let him be ever so grandly polite to herself--not even though he seems to imply his gracious approbation, before it is asked, of his son Henry’s suit, with the General’s earnest desire that Catherine may accede to that suit.

Perverse Catherine takes it into her head that the General interferes to prevent her from being shown over the Abbey, and that he avoids certain parts of the grounds. Her rampant, over-stimulated imagination leaps to the conclusion, on the customary grounds, that these suspicions peculiarities have to do with General Tilney’s late wife, of whom her husband never speaks, who has died rather suddenly, during her daughter’s absence from home.