Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons

by Jane Austen

  “Yes, I remember avidly! I adore Udolpho and all the horrid things described, the black veil—oh!”

  Catherine stopped, remembering the angels’ warning.

  “So you do want to know what is on the other side of the black veil?” said Isabella with a crafty wicked gleam.

  “No! That is, I think I can tell you, I am certain I can, but—oh! Do remind me of the titles again!” Catherine had enough presence of mind to redirect the question.

  “Why yes, I do have them memorized at this point.” Isabella was quickly engaged and began to recite: “They are: The Mysteries of Udolpho, Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries.”

  “Thank you. Now let me think upon them a bit,” said Catherine. “Perchance indeed I will come upon the unraveling of this—this Udolpho Code.”

  “Ah, you are a wonder, my dearest Catherine, and what a splendid name for it too, ‘The Udolpho Code!’ It has such a fierce horrid ring to it!”

  And Isabella—having delegated this fierce and immense responsibility for a labor of thought to her dearest friend—smiled, radiated a strong puff of freezing air, and then turned around and talked the rest of the evening to James.

  Catherine’s resolution of endeavouring to meet Miss Tilney again continued in full force the next morning. And till the usual moment of going to the pump-room, she felt some alarm from the dread of a second prevention.

  But nothing of that kind occurred, no visitors appeared to delay them, and they all three set off in good time for the pump-room, where the ordinary course of events took place.

  Mr. Allen, after drinking his glass of water, joined some gentlemen to talk over the politics of the day, compare the accounts of their newspapers, and remark upon the rumors of some kind of monstrous creature that had assailed someone on a drive, supposedly some gentlemen and ladies out on a pleasure excursion. There was mention of a certain infernal thing known as the Brighton Duck; and then it was concluded absolutely inconceivable, to have such an attack in broad daylight. Besides—a gentleman imparted additional facts—the creature seen had been at least the size of a bullock, or maybe even an elephant, or quite possibly larger. . . .

  It was at such juncture that another gentleman suggested an even more inconceivable option—that the creature, airborne as it was, was none other than a dragon; likely an African dragon, or possibly hailing from the Australian continent. Obviously it was not native and had flown all across the ocean and arrived in haste here in Bath, possibly due to inclement weather, or—

  And in that moment everyone had ceased wondering. For it came to all that the single best reason why a semi-legendary, nearly extinct, and altogether foreign creature such as a dragon might show up here in Bath was to uncover and appropriate a hoard of treasure.

  By Jove, that had to be it! It was common speculation that dragons sniffed out treasure, collected it, and fervently guarded it whenever possible.

  “Bah! I knew it; we have got us a hoard somewhere!” an elderly gentleman exclaimed, brandishing his walking stick. And immediately all political discussion expired and there was only talk of secret clues.

  In the meantime, the ladies walked about together, noticing every new face, and almost every new bonnet in the room. The female part of the Thorpe family, attended by James Morland, appeared among the crowd in less than a quarter of an hour, and Catherine immediately took her usual place by the side of her ice-bearing friend. James, who was now in constant attendance, maintained a similar position on the other side.

  Separating themselves from the rest of their party, they walked in that manner for some time. Catherine began to sense that being confined entirely to her friend and brother, gave her very little share in the notice of either. They were always engaged in some sentimental discussion or lively dispute, with such whispering voices and laughter (undeterred by the arctic cold that surrounded Miss Thorpe), that Catherine’s opinion was not heeded, though frequently called for by one or the other.

  At length however she was empowered to disengage herself from her friend, by the avowed necessity of speaking to Miss Tilney, whom she most joyfully saw just entering the room with Mrs. Hughes, and whom she instantly joined.

  Miss Tilney met her with great civility, returned her advances with equal goodwill, and angels soared from one to the other with an abundance of brightness. They continued talking together as long as both parties remained in the room, speaking nothing new, yet with uncommon simplicity and truth, and without personal conceit.

  “How well your brother dances!” Catherine artlessly exclaimed, surprising and amusing her companion.

  “Henry!” she replied with a smile. “Yes, he does dance very well.”

  “He must have thought it very odd to hear me say I was engaged the other evening, when he saw me sitting down. But I really had been engaged the whole day to Mr. Thorpe.”

  Miss Tilney could only bow.

  “You cannot think,” added Catherine after a moment’s silence, “how surprised I was to see him again. I felt so sure of his being quite gone away.”

  “When Henry had the pleasure of seeing you before, he was in Bath briefly, only to engage lodgings for us.”

  “That never occurred to me; and of course, not seeing him anywhere, I thought he must be gone.”

  And then Catherine and Miss Tilney shared a few more pleasant comments.

  “He never comes to the pump-room, I suppose?”

  “Yes, sometimes; but he has rid out this morning with my father.”

  Mrs. Hughes now joined them, and asked Miss Tilney if she was ready to go. “I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again soon,” said Catherine. “Shall you be at the cotillion ball tomorrow?”

  “Perhaps we—Yes, I think we certainly shall.”

  “I am glad of it, for we shall all be there.” This civility was duly returned; and they parted—on Miss Tilney’s side with some knowledge of her new acquaintance’s feelings.

  Catherine went home very happy. The morning had answered all her hopes, and the evening of the following day was now the object of expectation. Thoughts of reading Udolpho or decrypting secret clues were farther from her mind than usual (though occasionally she did allow the titles of the other horrid novels to sliver into her imagination, whirl around briefly, and rise up as delightful specters to engage her).

  What gown and what head-dress she should wear on the occasion became her chief concern. Catherine knew very well it was frivolous; and yet she lay awake ten minutes on Wednesday night debating between her spotted and her tamboured muslin, and only time prevented her buying a new one for the evening.

  This would have been an error in judgment, from which someone of the opposite sex might have warned her—for man only can be aware of the insensibility of man towards a new gown. The heart of man is little affected by fashion.[18] Woman is finely attired for her own satisfaction alone.

  She entered the rooms on Thursday evening with feelings very different from the Monday before. She had then been exulting in her engagement to Thorpe, and was now chiefly anxious to avoid him, lest he should engage her again—even if he were to mumble tantalizing hints about treasure and clues.

  For though she dared not expect that Mr. Tilney should ask her a third time to dance, her wishes, hopes, and plans all centered in nothing less.

  Every young lady may feel for my heroine in this critical moment, for every young lady has at some time or other known the same agitation. All have been, or believed themselves to be, in danger from the pursuit of someone ogre-like whom they wished to avoid. And all have been anxious for the attentions of someone amiable whom they wished to please.

  As soon as they were joined by the Thorpes, Catherine’s agony began. She fidgeted about and hid herself as much as possible from John Thorpe’s infernal view, and, when he spoke to her, pretended not to hear him. The cotillions were over, the country-dancing beginning, and she saw not
hing of the Tilneys.

  Even the several angels she daringly sent on a mission of discovery soon flitted back to inform her that Mr. Tilney was not directly in sight. Catherine could only sigh in regret and gently thank the heavenly beings while coughing into her fan.

  “Do not be frightened, my dear Catherine,” whispered Isabella, “but I am really going to dance with your brother again. I declare positively it is quite shocking. You and John must keep us in view. Make haste, my dear creature, come! John is just walked off, something to do with treasure, I dare say, but he will be back in a moment.”

  Catherine had neither time nor inclination to answer. The others walked away, horrid John Thorpe was still in view, and she gave herself up for lost.

  However, she kept her eyes intently fixed on her fan, making no eye contact with a certain brutish heat-radiating gentleman. It was folly in supposing that among such a crowd they should even meet with the Tilneys . . .

  And yet she suddenly found herself addressed and again solicited to dance, by none other than Mr. Tilney himself!

  With what sparkling eyes and ready motion she granted his request, and with how pleasing a flutter of heart she went with him to the set! To so narrowly escape John Thorpe, and to be asked—so immediately—by Mr. Tilney, as if he had sought her on purpose! Verily, life could not supply any greater felicity.

  Scarcely had they worked themselves into the quiet possession of a place, however, when her attention was claimed by John Thorpe, who stood behind her, together with a blast of oven heat which caused even Mr. Tilney to blink momentarily.

  “Heyday, Miss Morland!” bellowed Thorpe, in his gentlest voice. “What is the meaning of this? I thought you and I were to dance together.”

  “I wonder you should think so, for you never asked me.”

  “That is a good one, by Jove! I asked you as soon as I came into the room, and I was just going to ask you again, but when I turned round, you were gone! This is a cursed shabby trick! I only came for the sake of dancing with you—well, and a bit of talk as to those rare dratted Clues; we may be up to something there—and I firmly believe you were engaged to me ever since Monday. And here have I been telling all my acquaintance that I was going to dance with the prettiest girl in the room; and when they see you standing up with somebody else, they will quiz me famously.”

  “Oh, no; they will never think of me, after such a description as that.”

  “By heavens, if they do not, I will kick them out of the room for blockheads.” But the compliment was lost on Catherine, who was beginning to feel the familiar moisture on her brow from the inferno. A lady nearest her in the set pointed worriedly at what looked to be the beginnings of a particularly well-formed mirage of the supper table, wavering in the middle of the dance floor (the original, of course, was set up many paces away, against the distant wall). . . .

  Thorpe continued: “What chap have you there?”

  Catherine satisfied his curiosity.

  “Tilney,” he repeated. “Hum—I do not know him. A good figure of a man; well put together. Does he want a horse? A friend of mine, Sam Fletcher, has got one to sell. A famous clever animal—only forty guineas. I had fifty minds to buy it myself—” And then Thorpe roared for several excruciating minutes about horses, hunting, more secret clues, and buying a house in Leicestershire next season.

  But before he could weary Catherine’s attention any longer, he was borne off by the resistless pressure of a long string of passing ladies. Heat dissipated, and at last bright angels could soar gently overhead without needing to fan their wings for ventilation.

  Her partner now drew near, and said, “That gentleman would have put me out of patience, had he stayed with you half a minute longer. He has no business to withdraw the attention of my partner from me.”

  And as Catherine smiled radiantly at him with all her being, yet registering the smile merely with her eyes, Mr. Tilney continued: “We have entered into a contract of mutual agreeableness for the space of an evening, and all of it belongs solely to each other for that time. Nobody can fasten themselves on the notice of one, without injuring the rights of the other. I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principal duties of both. Those men who themselves do not choose to dance or marry, have no business with the partners or wives of their neighbours.”

  “But they are such very different things!” Catherine wanted to laugh and sing and jump in place, just hearing Mr. Tilney speak. Good thing they were already dancing, else she may have been moved to something rather more silly than was suitable for an heroic young lady watched over by a cadre of angels.

  “—That you think they cannot be compared together.”

  “To be sure not. People that marry can never part, but must go and keep house together. People that dance only stand opposite each other in a long room for half an hour.”

  “And such is your definition of matrimony and dancing. You will allow, that in both, man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal. Both constitute an exclusive engagement formed for mutual advantage, till the moment of its dissolution. The duty of both is to give the other no cause for wishing themselves elsewhere. You will allow all this?”

  “Yes, all this sounds very well; but still they are so very different. I cannot look upon them at all in the same light or concerning the same duties.” Catherine mused lightly, watching angels perch all over Mr. Tilney’s coat sleeves and hide in his cravat.

  “In one respect, there certainly is a difference. In marriage, the man is supposed to provide for the support of the woman, the woman to make the home agreeable to the man. He is to purvey, and she is to smile. But in dancing, their duties are reversed. The agreeableness, the compliance are expected from him, while she furnishes the fan and the lavender water. That, I suppose, was the difference of duties which struck you, as rendering the conditions incapable of comparison.”

  “No, indeed, I never thought of that. Though—it seems somewhat unfair, does it not, to expect the woman to take on a lifelong duty of compliance, while the man merely supplies agreeable smiles for the duration of a dance—”

  “Then I am quite at a loss. One alarming thing, however, I must observe. You disallow any similarity in the obligations. May I thence infer that your notions of the duties of dance are not so strict? Ought I fear that if the gentleman who spoke to you just now—or any other gentleman—were to return to address you—there would be nothing to restrain you from conversing with him as long as you choose?”

  “Mr. Thorpe is such a very particular friend of my brother’s, that if he talks to me, I must talk to him again. But there are hardly three young men in the room that I have any acquaintance with.”

  “And is that to be my only security? Alas, alas!”

  “Nay, I am sure you cannot have a better; for if I do not know anybody, it is impossible for me to talk to them. Besides, I do not want to talk to anybody.”

  “Now you have given me a security worth having. I proceed with courage. Do you find Bath as agreeable as when I had the honour of making the inquiry before?”

  “Yes, quite—more so, indeed.”

  “More so! Take care, or you will forget to be tired of it at the proper time: at the end of six weeks.”

  “I do not think I should be tired, if I were to stay here six months. There is so much that is secret and delightful to discover here!”

  “Bath, compared with London, has little variety, and so everybody finds out every year. But now I am curious—whatever can be so secret and delightful?”

  And Catherine told Mr. Tilney of the wonderful rumors of the secret hoard of hidden treasure, hidden right here, somewhere in Bath. Upon hearing the words “secret treasure,” Mr. Tilney’s expression became rather hard to describe. And then he started to laugh.

  “So this is what everyone is talking about!” he said with a measure of amusement and not a little surprise. “Whether one goes to the Theatre, the Upper Rooms, to the
pump-room, the dining halls, all one hears, it seems, are secret whisperings—and not of the usual gossip or amorous kind! And as to why, at last everything is clear as day. Now, Miss Morland, have you any notion to whom do we owe the honor of this fantastic rumor?”

  “I have more than a notion,” said Catherine, surprising Mr. Tilney yet again. “Indeed, I have the utmost certainty that it was all initiated by none other than the very gentleman you observed talking to me a few moments ago, Mr. Thorpe. He is the one searching most earnestly for various secret clues, as he calls them, believing them to be encrypted in some portions of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels. And he does speak somewhat boisterously and indeed rather loudly so that he is often overheard—”

  “I see,” said Mr. Tilney. “And pray, might you be so kind as to divulge to me your own mind? Do you give credence to this truly delightful rumor? Should it be taken in all seriousness, or is this but nonsensical stuff that one is best allowed to ignore?”

  “Oh, no, I think it must be quite true!” Catherine exclaimed. “Why else would Mr. Thorpe be so intent on discovering all of it? I am even now wondering myself as to the hidden secrets in this place. Could there be clues, for example, in this very ballroom?”

  “Why else indeed. I have no answer to that,” replied Mr. Tilney, observing her with a very peculiar and close expression, and the barest hint of a smile.

  “These horrid and wonderful clues, why they could be anywhere! Just observe the walls, sir! Note the shape of the room, the lovely parquet floor. Indeed, could the floor itself conceal a mystery underneath?”

  “Good heavens, you really do find Bath wondrous in every detail, do you not?”

  Catherine blushed, and the angels closest to her rose up to gently fan her cheeks. “Well, other people must judge for themselves, and those who go to London may think nothing of Bath. But I, who live in a small retired village in the country, find it a wonder even without secrets or hidden treasure. For here are a variety of amusements, of things to be seen and done all day long, which I can know nothing of at home.”