Part 15

Has Mrs. Tilney died a natural death? Catherine begins to question herself quakingly; or is she dead at all? Can her children have been imposed upon? May she not be secluded and imprisoned in some remote turret or dungeon, to serve an unknown purpose of her unworthy husband? In that case, Catherine must be destined to restore the unfortunate Mrs. Tilney to her children and the world.[39]

Catherine considers that she has a strong confirmation of her worst fears in what she is told of the General’s habits of sitting up late, and walking up and down his room at night.

Before taking it upon her to act the part of a private detective in any more original or offensive manner, Catherine sets out one evening to enter secretly the closed room which Eleanor has pointed out to her as that in which her mother died.

Catherine goes into the Bluebeard chamber--which is certainly not kept locked--on tiptoe. “She beheld what fixed her to the spot, and agitated every feature. She saw a large, well-proportioned apartment, a handsome dimity bed unoccupied, arranged with a housemaid’s care, a bright Bath stove, mahogany wardrobes and neatly-painted chairs, on which the warm beams of a western sun gaily poured through two sash-windows. Catherine had expected to have her feelings worked upon, and worked upon they were. Astonishment and doubt first seized them, and a shortly-succeeding ray of common sense added some bitter emotions of shame.”

She is endeavouring to retreat as quickly as she has come. She has got as far as the gallery, when she hears footsteps approaching. It would be awkward for a servant, it would be dreadful for the General to meet her prowling about there.

Happily for Catherine, though she cannot think so at the time, it is Henry Tilney who comes running up the side stair.

“‘Mr. Tilney,’ she cries, taken by surprise, ‘how did you come here?’

“‘How did I come up that staircase?’ he echoes, as much astonished as she is; ‘because it is my nearest way from the stable-yard to my own chamber; and why should I not come up it?’

“Catherine recollected herself, blushed deeply, and could say no more. He seemed to be looking in her countenance for that explanation which her words did not afford. She moved on towards the gallery.

“‘And may I not, in my turn,’ said he, as he pushed back the folding doors, ‘ask how came _you_ here? This passage is at least as extraordinary a road from the breakfast-parlour to your apartment as that staircase can be from the stables to mine.’

“‘I have been,’ said Catherine, looking down, ‘to see your mother’s room.’

“‘My mother’s room! Is there anything extraordinary to be seen there?’

“‘No, nothing at all. I thought you did not mean to come back till to-morrow.’”

But he will not be put off the subject, and a few more skilful questions enlighten him with regard to her preposterously uncharitable surmises. Though Henry Tilney is the gay deceiver who has played on her imagination not so long ago, he is considerably scandalised at the length to which she has gone. After gravely explaining to her all the simple, natural circumstances of his mother’s illness and death, and of his father’s sincere affliction for his loss--since, though his temper may have injured her in life, his judgment never did--the son takes Catherine to task very earnestly, if tenderly, for her most unwarrantable flights of fancy. “Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians.”

Catherine is punished. In the retirement of her own room she cries bitterly. She hates herself for her folly, and becomes a more reasonable woman for all time to come.[40]

IV.

Catherine is recalled from her compunction and mortification, which unquestionably Henry Tilney soothes to the best of his power, by the trials of real life. After nine successive mornings of looking in vain for letters, Catherine receives one from James at Oxford. It is a short, manly letter, full of pain, but full also of self-command and forbearance, announcing the breaking off of his engagement with Miss Thorpe, and hoping, for his sister’s sake, that her visit to Northanger Abbey may be over before Captain Tilney makes known his engagement.

Catherine cannot conceal her sorrow for James, and is soon induced to tell what will not remain long concealed to her sympathising friends, Eleanor and Henry Tilney. Isabella Thorpe has given up Catherine’s brother, and is to marry theirs. Both her listeners--Henry Tilney especially--are full of pity for Catherine’s wondering sorrow that such fickleness and everything which is bad can exist in the world and make her brother James their victim; but the Tilneys doubt that part of her information which relates to their brother. They do not dispute Frederick’s share in the lovers’ quarrel, but they are exceedingly sceptical with regard to Frederick’s marrying Isabella Thorpe--a lawyer’s daughter without any portion. Henry’s incredulity is only shaken by the recollection of Frederick’s former pretensions and confidence in himself, and by the fact that he, Henry, has too good an opinion of Miss Thorpe’s prudence to suppose that she would part with one gentleman before another was secured.

Henry Tilney’s humour asserts itself, as usual, through his vexation. He begs Eleanor to prepare for a sister-in-law open and guileless as the day. He heartily endorses Catherine’s innocent argument--intended to be consolatory--that, perhaps, though Isabella has behaved so badly to the Morland family, she may behave better to the Tilneys--she may be constant to Captain Tilney.

“‘Indeed, I am afraid she will,’ replied Henry Tilney, ‘unless a baronet should come in her way; that is Frederick’s only chance. I will get the Bath paper and look over the arrivals.’

“‘You think it is all for ambition, then?’ inquired Catherine, at length beginning to see there were some things which looked very like it. ‘I never was so deceived in any one’s character in my life.’

“‘Among all the great variety you have known and studied,’ Henry Tilney cannot resist saying.” And really the masterful young lover makes game of his simple mistress so habitually, that one is tempted to imagine he is purposely testing the sweetness of her temper, and her freedom from pride and vanity.

He is soon rallying her on the loss which she herself has sustained. Society must have become irksome--the very idea of such amusements as she has shared with Isabella Thorpe cannot but prove abhorrent to her. Catherine would not now, for instance, go to a ball for the world. She must feel that she has no longer any friend to whom she can speak without reserve, on whose regard she can depend.

But Catherine answers him very sensibly, and with a charming sincerity that disarms his mocking mood. “No,” said Catherine, “ought I? To say the truth, though I am hurt and grieved that I cannot still love her, that I am never to hear from her, perhaps never to see her again, I do not feel so very much afflicted as one would have thought.”

“You feel as you always do, what is most to the credit of human nature. Such feelings ought to be investigated, that they may know themselves.”

We can easily understand how Catherine’s spirits revive under this conversation.

The happiest episode of Catherine’s visit to Northanger Abbey is her going with the Tilneys--the idea of the visit having originated with the General--to “eat their mutton” with Henry in his parsonage at Woodston. An abbey has become no more to Catherine than any other building. There is nothing now so alluring to her imagination as the unpretending comfort of a “well-connected parsonage”--something like Catherine’s home at Fullerton, but better. Fullerton has its faults, but Woodston probably has none.

Before the visit, it has seemed to Catherine that the Wednesday when she is to go to Woodston will never come. She dreads the arrival in the meantime of Captain Tilney to ask his father’s consent to his marriage. But no Captain Tilney makes his appearance, and all goes well. The day comes, proves fine, and Catherine treads on air. “By ten o’clock the chaise and four conveyed the party from the Abbey, and after an agreeable drive of almost twenty miles they entered Woodston, a large and populous village in a situation not unpleasant. Catherine was ashamed to say how pretty she thought it, as the General seemed to think an apology necessary for the flatness of the country and size of the village; but in her heart she preferred it to any place she had ever been at, and looked with great admiration at every neat house above the rank of a cottage, and at all the little chandler’s shops which they passed. At the farther end of the village, and tolerably disengaged from the rest of it, stood the parsonage, a new-built, substantial, stone house, with its semi-circular sweep and green gates; and as they drove up to the door, Henry, with the friends of his solitude--a large Newfoundland puppy and two or three terriers--was ready to receive and make much of them.”

The General’s hints and allusions, with his requests for Catherine’s opinion and approval, which now become more conspicuous and significant than ever, may be embarrassing, but it is a delicious embarrassment.

Catherine thinks the house the most comfortable in England, and cannot hide her admiration of the prettily-shaped unfurnished drawing-room. “‘Oh! why do you not fit up this room, Mr. Tilney? What a pity not to have it fitted up. It is the prettiest room I ever saw; it is the prettiest room in the world!’

“‘I trust,’ said the General with a most satisfied smile, ‘that it will very speedily be furnished: it waits only for a lady’s taste.’

“‘Well, if it was my house, I should never sit anywhere else. Oh! what a sweet little cottage there is among the trees; apple-trees too! It is the prettiest cottage----’

“‘You like it? you approve of it as an object? It is enough. Henry, remember that Robinson is spoken to about it. The cottage remains.’

“Such a compliment recalled all Catherine’s consciousness and silenced her directly; and though pointedly applied to by the General for her choice of the prevailing colour of the paper and hangings, nothing like an opinion on the subject could be drawn from her. The influence of fresh objects and fresh air, however, was of great use in dissipating those embarrassing associations; and having reached the ornamental part of the premises, consisting of a walk round two sides of a meadow, on which Henry’s genius had begun to act about half a year ago, she was sufficiently recovered to think it prettier than any pleasure-ground she had ever been in before, though there was not a shrub in it higher than the green branch in the corner.

“A saunter into other meadows, and through part of the village, with a visit to the stables to examine some improvements, and a charming game of play with a litter of puppies just able to roll about, brought them to four o’clock, when Catherine scarcely thought it could be three. At four they were to dine, and at six to set off on their return. Never had any day passed so quickly.”

Yet reflection might have suggested one drawback to the delights of Woodston. Catherine had already marvelled and even exclaimed when Henry Tilney proposed to go away from Northanger several days before the date of their visit, in order to make preparations for their entertainment at Woodston. How could he think so much trouble necessary for their dinner, when the General had particularly desired him not to put himself about, and had made a point of his providing nothing extraordinary? But Henry had only smiled, and started betimes for Woodston.

Now on the occasion of the visit, Catherine “could not but observe that the abundance of the dinner did not seem to create the smallest astonishment in the General; nay, that he was even looking at the side-table for cold meat which was not there. His son and daughter’s observations were of a different kind. They had seldom seen him eat so heartily at any table but his own; and never before known him so little disconcerted by the melted butter being oiled.”

Catherine might at least have foreseen that, however eager the General was to welcome her as a daughter-in-law, he would prove an alarming parent to visit Woodston in days to come.

The morning after the happy day at Woodston, Catherine is surprised by a letter from Isabella Thorpe, which is so cleverly characteristic of that transparently designing and entertaining girl, I must give it all.

“_Bath, April_----.

“MY DEAREST CATHERINE,--I received your two kind letters with the greatest delight, and have a thousand apologies to make for not answering them sooner. I really am quite ashamed of my idleness; but in this horrid place one can find time for nothing. I have had my pen in my hand to begin a letter to you almost every day since you left Bath, but have always been prevented by some silly trifler or other. Pray write to me soon, and direct at my own home. Thank God! we leave this vile place to-morrow. Since you went away I have had no pleasure in it; the dust is beyond anything; and everybody one cares for is gone. I believe if I could see you I should not mind the rest, for you are dearer to me than anybody can conceive. I am quite uneasy about your dear brother, not having heard from him since he went to Oxford, and am fearful of some misunderstanding. Your kind offices will set all right. He is the only man I ever did or could love, and I trust you will convince him of it. The spring fashions are partly down, and the hats the most frightful you can imagine. I hope you spend your time pleasantly, but am afraid you never think of me. I will not say all that I could of the family you are with, because I would not be ungenerous, and set you against those you esteem; but it is very difficult to know whom to trust, and young men never know their minds two days together. I rejoice to say that the young man whom of all others I particularly abhor has left Bath. You will know from this description I must mean Captain Tilney, who, as you may remember, was amazingly disposed to follow and tease me, before you went away. Afterwards he got worse, and became quite my shadow. Many girls might have been taken in, for never were such attentions; but I knew the fickle sex too well. He went away to his regiment two days ago, and I trust I shall never be plagued with him again. He is the greatest coxcomb I ever saw, and amazingly disagreeable. The last two days he was always by the side of Charlotte Davis. I pitied his taste, but took no notice of him. The last time we met was in Bath Street, and I turned directly into a shop that he might not speak to me; I would not even look at him. He went into the Pump-room afterwards, but I would not have followed for all the world. Such a contrast between him and your brother! Pray send me some news of the latter; I am quite unhappy about him; he seemed so uncomfortable when he went away, with a cold, or something that affected his spirits. I would write to him myself, but have mislaid his direction; and as I hinted above, am afraid he took something in my conduct amiss. Pray explain everything to his satisfaction; or if he still harbours any doubt, a line from himself to me, or a call at Putney when next in town, might set all to rights. I have not been to the rooms this age, nor to the play, except going in last night with the Hodges, for a frolic, at half-price. They teased me into it; and I was determined they should not say I shut myself up because Tilney was gone. We happened to sit by the Mitchells, and they pretended to be quite surprised to see me out. I knew their spite: at one time they could not be civil to me, but now they are all friendship; but I am not such a fool as to be taken in by them. You know I have a pretty good spirit of my own. Anne Mitchell has tried to put on a turban like mine, as I wore it the week before at the concert, but made wretched work of it. It happened to become my odd face, I believe; at least Tilney told me so at the time, and said every eye was upon me; but he is the last man whose word I would take. I wear nothing but purple now; I know I look hideous in it, but no matter; it is your dear brother’s favourite colour. Lose no time, my dearest, sweetest Catherine, in writing to him and to me,

“Who ever am, &c.”

But the upright, unsuspicious young girl who thinks no evil, is not a fool, and in this respect she has a great advantage over such female characters as the Amelia of another great humourist, Thackeray. It is refreshing to learn that the inconsistencies, contradictions, and falsehoods of that letter strike Catherine from the very first. “She was ashamed of Isabella, and ashamed of having ever loved her. The professions of attachment were now as disgusting, as her excuses were empty, and her demands impudent.” “Write to James on her behalf! No, James should never hear Isabella’s name mentioned by her again.”

On Henry’s arrival from Woodston, Catherine makes known to him and Eleanor their brother’s safety, congratulating them with sincerity on it, and reading aloud the most material passages of her letter with strong indignation. When she has finished it, “So much for Isabella,” she cries, “and for all our intimacy. She must think me an idiot, or she could not have written so; but perhaps this has served to make her character better known to me than mine is to her. I see what she has been about. She is a vain coquette, and her tricks have not answered. I do not believe she had ever any regard either for James or for me, and I wish I had never known her.”

“It will soon be as if you never had,” said Henry.

V.

The unpleasant sequel of Catherine Morland’s visit to Northanger Abbey is, we trust, barely possible in our day. The unworthy resentment, unworthily vented on an innocent victim by an arrogant, worldly-minded man, foiled in his selfish schemes, and enraged at finding himself taken in by so shallow a conspirator as John Thorpe, may be common enough at all times; but, at least, we live in a generation when men do not wear their tempers, any more than their vices, on their sleeves.

General Tilney has gone up to London, while Catherine’s visit to Northanger Abbey is prolonged at Eleanor Tilney’s request, with her father’s full approval. The girls have been left alone one evening, by Henry’s having found himself under the necessity of taking his curate’s place at Woodston. They are about to separate at eleven o’clock at night, when they hear a carriage drive up to the door, followed by the loud noise of the door-bell.

Eleanor predicts the unexpected arrival of her elder brother Frederick, and Catherine retreats to her room in some discomposure. But her trepidation at the notion of encountering her brother’s rival is nothing compared to her affright when, half an hour later, she discovers her friend Eleanor hovering about Catherine’s door, in a state of extreme agitation. Eleanor is the reluctant, grieved, and affronted messenger from her father to the guest whom he has hitherto delighted to honour. General Tilney has recollected an engagement which will take the whole family away from Northanger Abbey on Monday (this day is Saturday). The Tilneys are all going to Lord Longtown’s, near Hereford, for a fortnight. General Tilney has sent Eleanor, her heart swelling with sorrow and shame, to tell Catherine of a departure which, in the most unceremonious and unkind manner, compels her own.

Great and unpleasant as her surprise is, I am glad to say Catherine displays dawning dignity. She suppresses her feelings, speaks of a second engagement’s yielding to a first, and declines to take offence. She will finish her visit to Northanger Abbey at some other time, and cannot Eleanor come to her? Happy thought! cannot Eleanor come to Fullerton on her way back from Herefordshire?

“It will not be in my power, Catherine,” Eleanor answers briefly, in awkwardness and dejection.

Still Catherine continues resolutely cheerful. Let Eleanor come when she can. Then Catherine betrays she is calculating on bidding another friend good-bye. She will be able to go when the rest set out on Monday, she says. It does not matter, though word has not been forwarded to her father and mother. The General, she hopes, will send a servant with her half-way. She will soon be at Salisbury, and then she will only be nine miles from home.

My readers must remember that the inconveniences of young ladies travelling alone were multiplied indefinitely, and even magnified to dangers, when girls had to go in post-chaises, or by coaches, over rough roads, and in a very deliberate fashion--largely affected by the merits or defects of the inns on the route, the horses, and, above all, the weather--even granting that highwaymen had waxed scarce by the close of last century.

Poor Eleanor has the still harder task of dashing these modest expectations to the ground. The General has sent his daughter with the unconscionably insulting and unfeeling message that Catherine must leave early next morning. Even the choice of the hour is not left to her: the carriage is ordered at seven o’clock, and no servant will be offered to her.

I am fain to think such rude insolence, such an ungentlemanlike and unfatherly breach of hospitality to, and consideration for, a young girl--his invited guest, his daughter’s friend--could seldom have been perpetrated by the most irresponsible member of the old “quality”--the most selfish tyrant who ever figured in an antiquated army list. I believe General Tilney’s action on this occasion to be one of the few-and-far-between exaggerations to be found in Jane Austen’s earlier novels.

Catherine sits down breathless and speechless under the outrage. She can scarcely listen to Eleanor’s earnest, humble apologies, her faltering explanations that her father’s temper is not happy, and something has occurred recently to ruffle it in an uncommon degree.

When Catherine speaks, after she has put the one wistful, fruitless question, “Have I offended the General?” it is to say, quietly and firmly, that she is very sorry if she has offended Eleanor’s father; it is the last thing she would willingly have done. She bids Eleanor not be unhappy; a few days longer would not have made any great difference. The journey of seventy miles by post will be nothing. She can be ready at seven. She begs to be called in time.

In short, Catherine behaves at this crisis with a simple self-respect and an absence of either rancour or frenzy which brings her out in striking and agreeable contrast to the rampaging termagants of later fiction.

But when she is left alone, poor young Catherine cannot so much as attempt to persuade herself that she has not been very badly treated, and that she is not smarting under the sense of the unprovoked ill-usage in addition to her own little private stock of wretchedness. For not only has the polite, high-bred General Tilney, who had seemed so particularly fond of her, behaved to her with gross incivility, there is the crowning misery of the knowledge that the false and barbarous General is Henry Tilney’s father, and that she will not even see Henry to hear what he thinks of the cruel injustice, and to bid him farewell. Besides, what will her father and mother, the Allens, and the world think of the disgraceful indignity which has been put upon her, the bitter mortification to which she has been subjected?