by Jane Austen
CHAPTER 21
A moment's glance was enough to satisfy Catherine that her apartmentwas very unlike the one which Henry had endeavoured to alarm her by thedescription of. It was by no means unreasonably large, and containedneither tapestry nor velvet. The walls were papered, the floor wascarpeted; the windows were neither less perfect nor more dim than thoseof the drawing-room below; the furniture, though not of the latestfashion, was handsome and comfortable, and the air of the roomaltogether far from uncheerful. Her heart instantaneously at ease onthis point, she resolved to lose no time in particular examination ofanything, as she greatly dreaded disobliging the general by any delay.Her habit therefore was thrown off with all possible haste, and she waspreparing to unpin the linen package, which the chaise-seat had conveyedfor her immediate accommodation, when her eye suddenly fell on a largehigh chest, standing back in a deep recess on one side of the fireplace.The sight of it made her start; and, forgetting everything else, shestood gazing on it in motionless wonder, while these thoughts crossedher:
"This is strange indeed! I did not expect such a sight as this! Animmense heavy chest! What can it hold? Why should it be placed here?Pushed back too, as if meant to be out of sight! I will look intoit--cost me what it may, I will look into it--and directly too--bydaylight. If I stay till evening my candle may go out." She advanced andexamined it closely: it was of cedar, curiously inlaid with some darkerwood, and raised, about a foot from the ground, on a carved stand of thesame. The lock was silver, though tarnished from age; at each endwere the imperfect remains of handles also of silver, broken perhapsprematurely by some strange violence; and, on the centre of the lid, wasa mysterious cipher, in the same metal. Catherine bent over it intently,but without being able to distinguish anything with certainty. She couldnot, in whatever direction she took it, believe the last letter to bea T; and yet that it should be anything else in that house wasa circumstance to raise no common degree of astonishment. If notoriginally theirs, by what strange events could it have fallen into theTilney family?
Her fearful curiosity was every moment growing greater; and seizing,with trembling hands, the hasp of the lock, she resolved at all hazardsto satisfy herself at least as to its contents. With difficulty, forsomething seemed to resist her efforts, she raised the lid a few inches;but at that moment a sudden knocking at the door of the room made her,starting, quit her hold, and the lid closed with alarming violence. Thisill-timed intruder was Miss Tilney's maid, sent by her mistress to be ofuse to Miss Morland; and though Catherine immediately dismissed her, itrecalled her to the sense of what she ought to be doing, and forced her,in spite of her anxious desire to penetrate this mystery, to proceed inher dressing without further delay. Her progress was not quick, for herthoughts and her eyes were still bent on the object so well calculatedto interest and alarm; and though she dared not waste a moment upona second attempt, she could not remain many paces from the chest. Atlength, however, having slipped one arm into her gown, her toiletteseemed so nearly finished that the impatience of her curiosity mightsafely be indulged. One moment surely might be spared; and, so desperateshould be the exertion of her strength, that, unless secured bysupernatural means, the lid in one moment should be thrown back. Withthis spirit she sprang forward, and her confidence did not deceive her.Her resolute effort threw back the lid, and gave to her astonished eyesthe view of a white cotton counterpane, properly folded, reposing at oneend 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 therising shame of having harboured for some minutes an absurd expectation,was then added the shame of being caught in so idle a search. "That isa curious old chest, is not it?" said Miss Tilney, as Catherine hastilyclosed it and turned away to the glass. "It is impossible to say howmany generations it has been here. How it came to be first put in thisroom I know not, but I have not had it moved, because I thought it mightsometimes be of use in holding hats and bonnets. The worst of it is thatits weight makes it difficult to open. In that corner, however, it is atleast out of the way."
Catherine had no leisure for speech, being at once blushing, tying hergown, and forming wise resolutions with the most violent dispatch. MissTilney gently hinted her fear of being late; and in half a minute theyran downstairs together, in an alarm not wholly unfounded, for GeneralTilney 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 trembled at the emphasis with which he spoke, and sat paleand breathless, in a most humble mood, concerned for his children, anddetesting old chests; and the general, recovering his politeness as helooked at her, spent the rest of his time in scolding his daughter forso foolishly hurrying her fair friend, who was absolutely out of breathfrom haste, when there was not the least occasion for hurry in theworld: but Catherine could not at all get over the double distressof having involved her friend in a lecture and been a great simpletonherself, till they were happily seated at the dinner-table, when thegeneral's complacent smiles, and a good appetite of her own, restoredher to peace. The dining-parlour was a noble room, suitable in itsdimensions to a much larger drawing-room than the one in common use, andfitted up in a style of luxury and expense which was almost lost on theunpractised eye of Catherine, who saw little more than its spaciousnessand the number of their attendants. Of the former, she spoke aloudher admiration; and the general, with a very gracious countenance,acknowledged that it was by no means an ill-sized room, and furtherconfessed that, though as careless on such subjects as most people, hedid look upon a tolerably large eating-room as one of the necessariesof life; he supposed, however, "that she must have been used to muchbetter-sized apartments at Mr. Allen's?"
"No, indeed," was Catherine's honest assurance; "Mr. Allen'sdining-parlour was not more than half as large," and she had neverseen so large a room as this in her life. The general's good humourincreased. Why, as he had such rooms, he thought it would be simple notto make use of them; but, upon his honour, he believed there might bemore comfort in rooms of only half their size. Mr. Allen's house, he wassure, must be exactly of the true size for rational happiness.
The evening passed without any further disturbance, and, in theoccasional absence of General Tilney, with much positive cheerfulness.It was only in his presence that Catherine felt the smallest fatiguefrom her journey; and even then, even in moments of languor orrestraint, a sense of general happiness preponderated, and she couldthink of her friends in Bath without one wish of being with them.
The night was stormy; the wind had been rising at intervals the wholeafternoon; and by the time the party broke up, it blew and rainedviolently. Catherine, as she crossed the hall, listened to the tempestwith sensations of awe; and, when she heard it rage round a corner ofthe ancient building and close with sudden fury a distant door, feltfor the first time that she was really in an abbey. Yes, these werecharacteristic sounds; they brought to her recollection a countlessvariety of dreadful situations and horrid scenes, which such buildingshad witnessed, and such storms ushered in; and most heartily did sherejoice in the happier circumstances attending her entrance within wallsso solemn! She had nothing to dread from midnight assassins or drunkengallants. Henry had certainly been only in jest in what he had told herthat morning. In a house so furnished, and so guarded, she could havenothing to explore or to suffer, and might go to her bedroom as securelyas if it had been her own chamber at Fullerton. Thus wisely fortifyingher mind, as she proceeded upstairs, she was enabled, especially onperceiving that Miss Tilney slept only two doors from her, to enterher room with a tolerably stout heart; and her spirits were immediatelyassisted by the cheerful blaze of a wood fire. "How much better isthis," said she, as she walked to the fender--"how much better to find afire ready lit, than to have to wait shivering in the cold till all thefamily are in bed, as so many poor girls have been obliged to do, andthen to have a
faithful old servant frightening one by coming in with afaggot! How glad I am that Northanger is what it is! If it had been likesome other places, I do not know that, in such a night as this, I couldhave answered for my courage: but now, to be sure, there is nothing toalarm one."
She looked round the room. The window curtains seemed in motion. Itcould be nothing but the violence of the wind penetrating through thedivisions of the shutters; and she stepped boldly forward, carelesslyhumming a tune, to assure herself of its being so, peeped courageouslybehind each curtain, saw nothing on either low window seat to scare her,and on placing a hand against the shutter, felt the strongest convictionof the wind's force. A glance at the old chest, as she turned away fromthis examination, was not without its use; she scorned the causelessfears of an idle fancy, and began with a most happy indifference toprepare herself for bed. "She should take her time; she should not hurryherself; she did not care if she were the last person up in the house.But she would not make up her fire; that would seem cowardly, as ifshe wished for the protection of light after she were in bed." The firetherefore died away, and Catherine, having spent the best part of anhour in her arrangements, was beginning to think of stepping into bed,when, on giving a parting glance round the room, she was struck by theappearance of a high, old-fashioned black cabinet, which, though ina situation conspicuous enough, had never caught her notice before.Henry's words, his description of the ebony cabinet which was to escapeher observation at first, immediately rushed across her; and thoughthere could be nothing really in it, there was something whimsical, itwas certainly a very remarkable coincidence! She took her candle andlooked closely at the cabinet. It was not absolutely ebony and gold; butit was japan, black and yellow japan of the handsomest kind; and as sheheld her candle, the yellow had very much the effect of gold. The keywas in the door, and she had a strange fancy to look into it; not,however, with the smallest expectation of finding anything, but it wasso very odd, after what Henry had said. In short, she could not sleeptill she had examined it. So, placing the candle with great caution ona chair, she seized the key with a very tremulous hand and tried to turnit; but it resisted her utmost strength. Alarmed, but not discouraged,she tried it another way; a bolt flew, and she believed herselfsuccessful; but how strangely mysterious! The door was still immovable.She paused a moment in breathless wonder. The wind roared down thechimney, the rain beat in torrents against the windows, and everythingseemed to speak the awfulness of her situation. To retire to bed,however, unsatisfied on such a point, would be vain, since sleep must beimpossible with the consciousness of a cabinet so mysteriously closedin her immediate vicinity. Again, therefore, she applied herself to thekey, and after moving it in every possible way for some instants withthe determined celerity of hope's last effort, the door suddenly yieldedto her hand: her heart leaped with exultation at such a victory, andhaving thrown open each folding door, the second being secured only bybolts of less wonderful construction than the lock, though in that hereye could not discern anything unusual, a double range of small drawersappeared in view, with some larger drawers above and below them; and inthe centre, a small door, closed also with a lock and key, secured inall probability a cavity of importance.
Catherine's heart beat quick, but her courage did not fail her. With acheek flushed by hope, and an eye straining with curiosity, her fingersgrasped the handle of a drawer and drew it forth. It was entirely empty.With less alarm and greater eagerness she seized a second, a third, afourth; each was equally empty. Not one was left unsearched, and in notone was anything found. Well read in the art of concealing a treasure,the possibility of false linings to the drawers did not escape her, andshe felt round each with anxious acuteness in vain. The place in themiddle alone remained now unexplored; and though she had "never fromthe first had the smallest idea of finding anything in any part of thecabinet, and was not in the least disappointed at her ill success thusfar, it would be foolish not to examine it thoroughly while she wasabout it." It was some time however before she could unfasten the door,the same difficulty occurring in the management of this inner lock as ofthe outer; but at length it did open; and not vain, as hitherto, was hersearch; her quick eyes directly fell on a roll of paper pushed backinto the further part of the cavity, apparently for concealment, andher feelings at that moment were indescribable. Her heart fluttered, herknees trembled, and her cheeks grew pale. She seized, with an unsteadyhand, the precious manuscript, for half a glance sufficed to ascertainwritten characters; and while she acknowledged with awful sensationsthis striking exemplification of what Henry had foretold, resolvedinstantly to peruse every line before she attempted to rest.
The dimness of the light her candle emitted made her turn to it withalarm; but there was no danger of its sudden extinction; it had yet somehours to burn; and that she might not have any greater difficulty indistinguishing the writing than what its ancient date might occasion,she hastily snuffed it. Alas! It was snuffed and extinguished in one. Alamp could not have expired with more awful effect. Catherine, for afew moments, was motionless with horror. It was done completely; not aremnant of light in the wick could give hope to the rekindling breath.Darkness impenetrable and immovable filled the room. A violent gustof wind, rising with sudden fury, added fresh horror to the moment.Catherine trembled from head to foot. In the pause which succeeded, asound like receding footsteps and the closing of a distant door struckon her affrighted ear. Human nature could support no more. A cold sweatstood on her forehead, the manuscript fell from her hand, and gropingher way to the bed, she jumped hastily in, and sought some suspension ofagony by creeping far underneath the clothes. To close her eyes insleep that night, she felt must be entirely out of the question. Witha curiosity so justly awakened, and feelings in every way so agitated,repose must be absolutely impossible. The storm too abroad so dreadful!She had not been used to feel alarm from wind, but now every blastseemed fraught with awful intelligence. The manuscript so wonderfullyfound, so wonderfully accomplishing the morning's prediction, how was itto be accounted for? What could it contain? To whom could it relate?By what means could it have been so long concealed? And how singularlystrange that it should fall to her lot to discover it! Till she had madeherself mistress of its contents, however, she could have neither reposenor comfort; and with the sun's first rays she was determined to peruseit. But many were the tedious hours which must yet intervene. Sheshuddered, tossed about in her bed, and envied every quiet sleeper. Thestorm still raged, and various were the noises, more terrific eventhan the wind, which struck at intervals on her startled ear. The verycurtains of her bed seemed at one moment in motion, and at anotherthe lock of her door was agitated, as if by the attempt of somebody toenter. Hollow murmurs seemed to creep along the gallery, and more thanonce her blood was chilled by the sound of distant moans. Hour afterhour passed away, and the wearied Catherine had heard three proclaimedby all the clocks in the house before the tempest subsided or sheunknowingly fell fast asleep.