by Jane Austen
“The child has done nothing wrong yet it suffers, because it—and everything that comprises it: flesh, spirit, ancestral past, an existential chain of being, components from the stars themselves; all these things put together—is in a unique place and time—a cosmic coordinate where suffering is to be found—that is the end result of many ‘someones’ and their various choices.
“The angels cannot protect or guard where there are no choices to be found or made. And the secret truth is, we are not guardians of the flesh but of the spirit. We only guard that which can be guarded, the kernel that is everlasting. All else is ephemeral clamor, and fades away to dust, as the world turns.
“Indeed, the world is nothing but a sum total of eternally cascading and intermingling choices made by all of us—human beings, living creatures, angels, seraphim, and the fallen ones.
“The entire world has been thusly made—as a one thing of perfect balance. And, being a One Perfect Thing, its individual living components, each imbued with free will, are yet bound by the limits of this Original Framework to maintain this perfection at whatever cost to themselves.
“Through the very nature of our original creation, we are all inexplicably bound together. We are constrained by creation’s rules and physical limitations—which include personal inconveniences, loss, dire harm, and blatant idiocy—and we are bound through the collective choices of ourselves and others.
“Choices—even seemingly neutral ones such as whether to smile at someone, or drink a cup of tea, or take a turn into this dark street, or step with your left foot or right (or another arrangement, such as a walking-shovel)—all have natural consequences. And consciously selfish or wicked choices, (made by the Udolpho villains, or the fallen ones, who had chosen not for the common ‘all’ together, but for themselves alone) adversely affect everyone else.
“But in that same perfect Original Framework of interconnectedness, lies hope and ultimate salvation—there is always free will to make the best choice for as long as you can: even under duress; even when you are thrust into a horrid novel . . . and choice is immortal.
“Thus, be not afraid or surprised to consider that choices existed before a moment of perfect innocence that is known as birth, and will continue long after the soul is taken by death to reside with God.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Catherine, enthralled. “What happens when the soul is taken to reside with God?”
But the angel (it was Lawrence), so grave and dignified only moments before, suddenly smiled almost in mischief, and continued in a voice as light as air. “Why, dear, just think of what happens to a loaf of bread after it is eaten. And remember, that, just as the immortal soul, it too has a long eternal history after!”
The angelic discourse and instruction slipped into a nonsensical daydream. Catherine roused herself from this reverie—of choices, cosmic coordinates, baking bread, infants, and villains—with a start and again glanced about the apartment.
It was by no means unreasonably large, and contained neither tapestry nor velvet. The walls were papered, the floor carpeted; the windows similar to those of the drawing-room below. The furniture, though not of the latest fashion, was handsome and comfortable, and the air of the room altogether far from uncheerful.
Her heart sufficiently at ease on this point, she resolved to lose no time in particular examination of anything, as she greatly dreaded disobliging the general by any delay.
Her habit therefore was thrown off with all possible haste. She was preparing to unpin the linen package (which the chaise-seat had conveyed for her immediate accommodation), when her eye suddenly fell on a large high chest, standing back in a deep recess on one side of the fireplace.
The sight of it made her start. And, forgetting everything else, she stood gazing on it in motionless wonder, while these thoughts crossed her:
“This is strange indeed! I did not expect such a sight as this! An immense heavy chest! What can it hold? Oh dear! Why should it be placed here? Pushed back too, as if meant to be out of sight! I will look into it—cost me what it may—and directly too—by daylight. If I stay till evening my candle may go out.”
She advanced and examined it closely. It was of cedar, curiously inlaid[24] with some darker wood, and raised, about a foot from the ground, on a carved stand of the same.
The lock was silver, though tarnished from age. At each end were the imperfect remains of handles also of silver, broken perhaps prematurely by some strange violence. And, on the centre of the lid, was a mysterious cipher, in the same metal.
Oh Dear God! Could this be the Udolpho Code?! A lightning thought struck her.
And immediately inflamed with entirely rabid pangs of imagination, Catherine bent over it intently, but without being able to distinguish anything with certainty.
She could not, in whatever direction she took it, believe the last letter to be a T . . . And yet that it should be anything else in that house was a circumstance to raise no common degree of astonishment. And even if indeed it was a T—What if it were missing the initial three letters before it, so that in fact it was R-O-O-T? Which then properly scrambled would be “Orphan of the Rhine?”
Oh Dear God!
Catherine was shaken to the foundation. Surely, here it was! The secret code barely touched upon by Mrs. Radcliffe, possibly locked away in other dire and horrid details, to be found inside this chest! What was inside this chest? For that matter, what was this chest? Whose? If not originally theirs, by what strange events could it have fallen into the Tilney family?
Her fearful curiosity was every moment growing greater, turning to agony of a Need to Know. Seizing, with trembling hands, the hasp of the lock, she resolved at all hazards to satisfy herself at least as to its contents.
“Dear child, beware! It is highly advised that you do not open anything that you do not know—” tried Lawrence, flying gently overhead, and Terence and Clarence echoed in sonorous harmony, from either side near her ears.
But Catherine ignored the angels and proceeded—with difficulty—for something seemed to resist her efforts; indeed, something was almost pulsing and humming on the inside, the closer she drew to it with her ear. She raised the lid a few inches (while the terrible strange humming continued, and verily grew in volume, beginning to remind Catherine of the sound of distant angry bees gathering).
But at that moment a sudden knocking at the door of the room made her, starting, quit her hold . . . and instantly the lid closed with alarming violence.
This ill-timed intruder was Miss Tilney’s maid, sent by her mistress to be of use to Miss Morland.
Her heart pounding, Catherine immediately dismissed her. But the interruption recalled her to the sense of what she ought to be doing. Catherine forced herself, in spite of her anxious desire to penetrate this 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, while the bright angelic forms attempted to distract her with muslin and ribbons. And though she dared not waste a moment upon a second attempt, she could not remain many paces from the chest. It beckoned her, like a siren of old calling the Greek hero Odysseus—except that Catherine had no special wax to pour into her ears, nor anyone to tie her to a mast; nor, for that matter, was a mast at hand, for here was a proper apartment, as opposed to a sloop—that is, oh dear . . .
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 Catherine had to spring back immediately with an ungodly scream directly out of Udolpho—
Darkness, roiling screeching darkness burst out like a
billowing smoke-stack from a chimney, at first without form, but in seconds resolving into many distinct shapes—all vaguely humanoid, but wickedly distorted, and translucent, made of the fabric of smoke. And these smoke creatures scattered all around the chamber . . .
And, oh goodness, the shrieking! The infernal shrieking and hissing!
The three angels at Catherine’s side flew before her, suddenly growing three times larger and brighter than usual, attaining the size of large dolls or maybe small children, their wings beating rapidly, and keeping the smoke monster—whatever it was—at some minor distance. But it was not quite enough.
The darkness gathered and undulated; figures elongated, or grew squat, with limbs like angry fog, reaching out for her. And Catherine, cowering back at first, then absolutely petrified, heard something that vaguely sounded almost like human speech, but modulated in a very high and simultaneously very low rumbling register, so that at least five octaves separated it:
WEEEEEGIHOOOONNN!!!
HWEEEHHHAWWWRRRREGHEWOOOOWNN!
And before Catherine could react, the living hive of darkness—for there was no better manner of describing it—spun rapidly around the chamber, and then dove like a million bees directly into the nearest wall, and went right through it, like incorporeal ghosts . . .
. . . And was gone. As though none of this had even existed.
Catherine exhaled with amazed horror, and straightened up, while her dear angels attempted to console her.
“Oh! Oh! What in the world was that?” Catherine finally managed to utter. “Were those dreadful things ghosts?”
But the angels sighed in sorrow. One of them gently placed its white-iridescent wings on her cheek, and Catherine felt in that exact spot a current of warm kindness fill her with momentary peace.
“Were those real ghosts?” she repeated, feeling a tad better.
“Dear Catherine, oh, would that they had been ghosts. No, these are far worse . . . But fortunately they are no longer here.”
“Did—did I release them? Were they locked in the chest?”
And Catherine finally glanced down at the odious object before her, which had possessed her to such an act of mad curiosity. Her astonished eyes were treated to a view of a white cotton counterpane, properly folded, reposing at one end of the chest in undisputed possession. An ordinary silly counterpane!
Still stunned by what had just taken place, she was gazing on it vacantly with the blush of unbelieving surprise when Miss Tilney, anxious for her friend’s being ready, entered the room.
Catherine was now additionally shamed. She was caught in an idle and unseemly search of her hosts’ property!
“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 in this room I know not. But I have not had it moved, thinking it might sometimes be of use in holding hats and bonnets. Though, 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, simultaneously blushing, tying her gown, throwing pointed glances at the angels and at the wall into which the dark hive disappeared.
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. The instant they entered, he pulled the bell with violence, and 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 and stunned mood, concerned for his children, and detesting old chests and whatever they contained.
The general, recovering his politeness as he looked at her, now scolded his daughter at length for so foolishly hurrying her fair friend, who was so out of breath from haste—there was no occasion for hurry in the world.
But Catherine could not get over the varied distress of having opened that horrid chest, involved her friend in a lecture and been a great simpleton herself, till they were happily seated to dinner. The general’s complacent smiles, and a good appetite of her own, restored her to peace.
But, oh dear, whatever had been in that chest?
The dining-parlour was a large noble room, done in a style of luxury which was almost lost on Catherine, who saw little more than its spaciousness and the number of their attendants. She spoke aloud her admiration; and the general graciously acknowledged that it was by no means an ill-sized room. 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 in her life.
The general’s good humour increased, and he waxed eloquent about having and using large rooms. But 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 any fatigue from her journey; and she could think of her friends in Bath without one wish of being with them.
What she had released from the chest still bothered her, and thoughts returned to the dark smoke-beings writhing and menacing her—it was far less amiable to experience such an Udolpho occurrence in reality, than from the pages of a novel.
The night was stormy; the wind had been rising at intervals the whole afternoon. 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 shivers down her spine. The angels flew cheerfully before her, casting a bright tiny glow like a trio of candles visible only to herself. She thought with gratitude of their presence always at her side . . . and then noticed that their specks of light multiplied in number, turning into many more than what Catherine was used to seeing when she was all alone and without the company of other people and their own angels.
“Dear child,” said Lawrence, “we have been told, now that the danger is greatest, we must guard you in full force. So in addition to myself, Terence, and Clarence, there are several others sent to be your permanent guardians.”
“I am Florence!” cried a new dulcet voice, separating from the glowing cloud.
“And I am Patrice!” sang another.
“Maurice!
“Clarisse!”
“Horace!”
“Felice!”
“Delice!”
“Charisse!”
And finally, one littlest form of light danced just before Catherine’s eyes. “And I am Jack!”
“Oh!” said Catherine. “It is so nice to meet you, and thank you! For indeed it is somewhat frightful to be alone with all these highly peculiar things happening all the time.” And then she added: “Oh dear, but now I do think I might have forgotten all your names . . .”
Accompanied by the twelve angels, Catherine now felt far less terror than moments ago.
And yet, listening to the storm rage round a corner of the ancient building and close with sudden fury a distant door, it truly felt for the first time that she was really in an abbey.
Yes, these sounds brought to her recollection a countless variety of dreadful situations and horrid scenes, which such buildings had witnessed, and such storms ushered in. . . . And other, perfectly inexplicable things found locked in encrypted chests.
And then, 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—only demonic smoke entities and dragons outside the window! For indeed, now Catherine had no doubt the hive, though less putrid and belching than Isabella’s demon and less lumpy and grotesque than John Thorpe’s—was of ungodly origins—even though for some reason the dear an
gels refused to tell her precisely what it was.
And yet—was it not the case that demons were forbidden to appear before midnight? Another horrid mystery!
Henry had certainly been only in jest in what he had told her that morning. And yet, Catherine was equally certain she had found the real Udolpho Code, and nowhere else than in her own assigned apartment! And was it not that strange letter T (and possibly missing R-O-O) that bound whatever it was she had so thoughtlessly released from the chest?
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. Because surely, her bedroom was the key to it all!
Thus wisely fortifying her mind, as she proceeded upstairs, she was able (especially seeing that Miss Tilney slept only two doors from her), to enter her room with a tolerably stout heart, and not one, not three, but a dozen heavenly guardians.
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[25]—“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 in novels have been obliged to do—and then to have a faithful old servant frightening one by coming in with a faggot![26] 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. Nothing!”