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<h2> CHAPTER 21 </h2>
<p>A moment's glance was enough to satisfy Catherine that her apartment was
very unlike the one which Henry had endeavoured to alarm her by the
description of. It was by no means unreasonably large, and contained
neither tapestry nor velvet. The walls were papered, the floor was
carpeted; the windows were neither less perfect nor more dim than 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 instantaneously 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, and 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:</p>
<p>"This is strange indeed! I did not expect such a sight as this! An immense
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 into it—cost me
what it may, I will look into it—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 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. 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. If not originally theirs, by what strange
events could it have fallen into the Tilney family?</p>
<p>Her fearful curiosity was every moment growing greater; and seizing, with
trembling hands, the hasp of the lock, she resolved at all hazards to
satisfy herself at least as to its contents. With difficulty, for
something 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. This
ill-timed intruder was Miss Tilney's maid, sent by her mistress to be of
use to Miss Morland; and though Catherine immediately dismissed her, it
recalled 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 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; and though she dared not waste a moment upon a second
attempt, she could not remain many paces from the chest. 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 gave to her astonished eyes the view of a white cotton
counterpane, properly folded, reposing at one end of the chest in
undisputed possession!</p>
<p>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 the rising
shame of having harboured for some minutes an absurd expectation, was then
added the shame of being caught in so idle a search. "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 first put in this room I
know not, but I have not had it moved, because I thought it might
sometimes be of use in holding hats and bonnets. The worst of it is that
its weight makes it difficult to open. In that corner, however, it is at
least out of the way."</p>
<p>Catherine had no leisure for speech, being at once blushing, tying her
gown, and forming wise resolutions with the most violent dispatch. 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, and having, on the
very instant of their entering, pulled the bell with violence, ordered
"Dinner to be on table directly!"</p>
<p>Catherine trembled at the emphasis with which he spoke, and sat pale and
breathless, in a most humble mood, concerned for his children, and
detesting old chests; and the general, recovering his politeness as he
looked at her, spent the rest of his time in scolding his daughter for so
foolishly hurrying her fair friend, who was absolutely out of breath from
haste, when there was not the least occasion for hurry in the world: but
Catherine could not at all get over the double distress of having involved
her friend in a lecture and been a great simpleton herself, till they were
happily seated at the dinner-table, when the general's complacent smiles,
and a good appetite of her own, restored her to peace. The dining-parlour
was a noble room, suitable in its dimensions to a much larger drawing-room
than the one in common use, and fitted up in a style of luxury and expense
which was almost lost on the unpractised eye of Catherine, who saw little
more than its spaciousness and the number of their attendants. Of the
former, she spoke aloud her admiration; and the general, with a very
gracious countenance, acknowledged that it was by no means an ill-sized
room, and further confessed that, though as careless on such subjects as
most people, he did look upon a tolerably large eating-room as one of the
necessaries of life; he supposed, however, "that she must have been used
to much better-sized apartments at Mr. Allen's?"</p>
<p>"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 as this in her life. The general's good humour increased.
Why, as he had such rooms, he thought it would be simple not to make use
of them; but, upon his honour, he believed there might be more comfort in
rooms of only half their size. Mr. Allen's house, he was sure, must be
exactly of the true size for rational happiness.</p>
<p>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 the smallest fatigue from her journey;
and even then, even in moments of languor or restraint, a sense of general
happiness preponderated, and she could think of her friends in Bath
without one wish of being with them.</p>
<p>The night was stormy; the wind had been rising at intervals the whole
afternoon; and 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, when she heard it rage round a corner of the
ancient building and close with sudden fury a distant door, felt for the
first time that she was really in an abbey. Yes, these were characteristic
sounds; they brought to her recollection a countless variety of dreadful
situations and horrid scenes, which such buildings had witnessed, and such
storms ushered in; and 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. Henry had
certainly been only in jest in what he had told her that morning. 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. Thus wisely fortifying her mind, as she
proceeded upstairs, she was enabled, especially on perceiving that Miss
Tilney slept only two doors from her, to enter her room with a tolerably
stout heart; 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—"how much better 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 have been obliged to do, and then to have a faithful old
servant frightening one by coming in with a faggot! 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."</p>
<p>She looked round the room. The window curtains seemed in motion. It could
be nothing but the violence of the wind penetrating through the divisions
of the shutters; and she stepped boldly forward, carelessly humming a
tune, to assure herself of its being so, peeped courageously behind each
curtain, saw nothing on either low window seat to scare her, and on
placing a hand against the shutter, felt the strongest conviction of the
wind's force. A glance at the old chest, as she turned away from this
examination, was not without its use; she scorned the causeless fears of
an idle fancy, and began with a most happy indifference to prepare herself
for bed. "She should take her time; she should not hurry herself; 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 if she wished for the
protection of light after she were in bed." The fire therefore died away,
and Catherine, having spent the best part of an hour in her arrangements,
was beginning to think of stepping into bed, when, on giving a parting
glance round the room, she was struck by the appearance of a high,
old-fashioned black cabinet, which, though in a situation conspicuous
enough, had never caught her notice before. Henry's words, his description
of the ebony cabinet which was to escape her observation at first,
immediately rushed across her; and though there could be nothing really in
it, there was something whimsical, it was certainly a very remarkable
coincidence! She took her candle and looked closely at the cabinet. It was
not absolutely ebony and gold; but it was japan, black and yellow japan of
the handsomest kind; and as she held her candle, the yellow had very much
the effect of gold. The key was in the door, and she had a strange fancy
to look into it; not, however, with the smallest expectation of finding
anything, but it was so very odd, after what Henry had said. In short, she
could not sleep till she had examined it. So, placing the candle with
great caution on a chair, she seized the key with a very tremulous hand
and tried to turn it; but it resisted her utmost strength. Alarmed, but
not discouraged, she tried it another way; a bolt flew, and she believed
herself successful; but how strangely mysterious! The door was still
immovable. She paused a moment in breathless wonder. The wind roared down
the chimney, the rain beat in torrents against the windows, and everything
seemed to speak the awfulness of her situation. To retire to bed, however,
unsatisfied on such a point, would be vain, since sleep must be impossible
with the consciousness of a cabinet so mysteriously closed in her
immediate vicinity. Again, therefore, she applied herself to the key, and
after moving it in every possible way for some instants with the
determined celerity of hope's last effort, the door suddenly yielded to
her hand: her heart leaped with exultation at such a victory, and having
thrown open each folding door, the second being secured only by bolts of
less wonderful construction than the lock, though in that her eye could
not discern anything unusual, a double range of small drawers appeared in
view, with some larger drawers above and below them; and in the centre, a
small door, closed also with a lock and key, secured in all probability a
cavity of importance.</p>
<p>Catherine's heart beat quick, but her courage did not fail her. With a
cheek flushed by hope, and an eye straining with curiosity, her fingers
grasped 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, a
fourth; each was equally empty. Not one was left unsearched, and in not
one was anything found. Well read in the art of concealing a treasure, the
possibility of false linings to the drawers did not escape her, and she
felt round each with anxious acuteness in vain. The place in the middle
alone remained now unexplored; and though she had "never from the first
had the smallest idea of finding anything in any part of the cabinet, and
was not in the least disappointed at her ill success thus far, it would be
foolish not to examine it thoroughly while she was about it." It was some
time however before she could unfasten the door, the same difficulty
occurring in the management of this inner lock as of the outer; but at
length it did open; and not vain, as hitherto, was her search; her quick
eyes directly fell on a roll of paper pushed back into the further part of
the cavity, apparently for concealment, and her feelings at that moment
were indescribable. Her heart fluttered, her knees trembled, and her
cheeks grew pale. She seized, with an unsteady hand, the precious
manuscript, for half a glance sufficed to ascertain written characters;
and while she acknowledged with awful sensations this striking
exemplification of what Henry had foretold, resolved instantly to peruse
every line before she attempted to rest.</p>
<p>The dimness of the light her candle emitted made her turn to it with
alarm; but there was no danger of its sudden extinction; it had yet some
hours to burn; and that she might not have any greater difficulty in
distinguishing the writing than what its ancient date might occasion, she
hastily snuffed it. Alas! It was snuffed and extinguished in one. A lamp
could not have expired with more awful effect. Catherine, for a few
moments, was motionless with horror. It was done completely; not a remnant
of light in the wick could give hope to the rekindling breath. Darkness
impenetrable and immovable filled the room. A violent gust of wind, rising
with sudden fury, added fresh horror to the moment. Catherine trembled
from head to foot. In the pause which succeeded, a sound like receding
footsteps and the closing of a distant door struck on her affrighted ear.
Human nature could support no more. A cold sweat stood on her forehead,
the manuscript fell from her hand, and groping her way to the bed, she
jumped hastily in, and sought some suspension of agony by creeping far
underneath the clothes. To close her eyes in sleep that night, she felt
must be entirely out of the question. With a 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 blast seemed fraught with awful
intelligence. The manuscript so wonderfully found, so wonderfully
accomplishing the morning's prediction, how was it to be accounted for?
What could it contain? To whom could it relate? By what means could it
have been so long concealed? And how singularly strange that it should
fall to her lot to discover it! Till she had made herself mistress of its
contents, however, she could have neither repose nor comfort; and with the
sun's first rays she was determined to peruse it. But many were the
tedious hours which must yet intervene. She shuddered, tossed about in her
bed, and envied every quiet sleeper. The storm still raged, and various
were the noises, more terrific even than the wind, which struck at
intervals on her startled ear. The very curtains of her bed seemed at one
moment in motion, and at another the lock of her door was agitated, as if
by the attempt of somebody to enter. Hollow murmurs seemed to creep along
the gallery, and more than once her blood was chilled by the sound of
distant moans. Hour after hour passed away, and the wearied Catherine had
heard three proclaimed by all the clocks in the house before the tempest
subsided or she unknowingly fell fast asleep.</p>
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