Northanger Abbey — EN

CHAPTER 9

The progress of Catherine’s unhap­pi­ness from the events of the evening was as fol­lows. It appeared first in a gen­er­al dis­sat­is­fac­tion with every­body about her, while she remained in the rooms, which speed­i­ly brought on con­sid­er­able weari­ness and a vio­lent desire to go home. This, on arriv­ing in Pul­teney Street, took the direc­tion of extra­or­di­nary hunger, and when that was appeased, changed into an earnest long­ing to be in bed; such was the extreme point of her dis­tress; for when there she imme­di­ate­ly fell into a sound sleep which last­ed nine hours, and from which she awoke per­fect­ly revived, in excel­lent spir­its, with fresh hopes and fresh schemes. The first wish of her heart was to improve her acquain­tance with Miss Tilney, and almost her first res­o­lu­tion, to seek her for that pur­pose, in the pump-room at noon. In the pump-room, one so new­ly arrived in Bath must be met with, and that build­ing she had already found so favourable for the dis­cov­ery of female excel­lence, and the com­ple­tion of female inti­ma­cy, so admirably adapt­ed for secret dis­cours­es and unlim­it­ed con­fi­dence, that she was most rea­son­ably encour­aged to expect anoth­er friend from with­in its walls. Her plan for the morn­ing thus set­tled, she sat qui­et­ly down to her book after break­fast, resolv­ing to remain in the same place and the same employ­ment till the clock struck one; and from habi­tude very lit­tle incom­mod­ed by the remarks and ejac­u­la­tions of Mrs. Allen, whose vacan­cy of mind and inca­pac­i­ty for think­ing were such, that as she nev­er talked a great deal, so she could nev­er be entire­ly silent; and, there­fore, while she sat at her work, if she lost her nee­dle or broke her thread, if she heard a car­riage in the street, or saw a speck upon her gown, she must observe it aloud, whether there were any­one at leisure to answer her or not. At about half past twelve, a remark­ably loud rap drew her in haste to the win­dow, and scarce­ly had she time to inform Cather­ine of there being two open car­riages at the door, in the first only a ser­vant, her broth­er dri­ving Miss Thor­pe in the sec­ond, before John Thor­pe came run­ning upstairs, call­ing out, “Well, Miss Mor­land, here I am. Have you been wait­ing long? We could not come before; the old dev­il of a coach­mak­er was such an eter­ni­ty find­ing out a thing fit to be got into, and now it is ten thou­sand to one but they break down before we are out of the street. How do you do, Mrs. Allen? A famous ball last night, was not it? Come, Miss Mor­land, be quick, for the oth­ers are in a con­found­ed hur­ry to be off. They want to get their tum­ble over.”

“What do you mean?” said Cather­ine. “Where are you all going to?”

“Going to? Why, you have not for­got our engage­ment! Did not we agree togeth­er to take a dri­ve this morn­ing? What a head you have! We are going up Claver­ton Down.”

“Some­thing was said about it, I remem­ber,” said Cather­ine, look­ing at Mrs. Allen for her opin­ion; “but real­ly I did not expect you.”

“Not expect me! That’s a good one! And what a dust you would have made, if I had not come.”

Catherine’s silent appeal to her friend, mean­while, was entire­ly thrown away, for Mrs. Allen, not being at all in the habit of con­vey­ing any expres­sion her­self by a look, was not aware of its being ever intend­ed by any­body else; and Cather­ine, whose desire of see­ing Miss Tilney again could at that moment bear a short delay in favour of a dri­ve, and who thought there could be no impro­pri­ety in her going with Mr. Thor­pe, as Isabel­la was going at the same time with James, was there­fore oblig­ed to speak plain­er. “Well, ma’am, what do you say to it? Can you spare me for an hour or two? Shall I go?”

“Do just as you please, my dear,” replied Mrs. Allen, with the most placid indif­fer­ence. Cather­ine took the advice, and ran off to get ready. In a very few min­utes she reap­peared, hav­ing scarce­ly allowed the two oth­ers time enough to get through a few short sen­tences in her praise, after Thor­pe had pro­cured Mrs. Allen’s admi­ra­tion of his gig; and then receiv­ing her friend’s part­ing good wish­es, they both hur­ried down­stairs. “My dear­est crea­ture,” cried Isabel­la, to whom the duty of friend­ship imme­di­ate­ly called her before she could get into the car­riage, “you have been at least three hours get­ting ready. I was afraid you were ill. What a delight­ful ball we had last night. I have a thou­sand things to say to you; but make haste and get in, for I long to be off.”

Cather­ine fol­lowed her orders and turned away, but not too soon to hear her friend exclaim aloud to James, “What a sweet girl she is! I quite dote on her.”

“You will not be fright­ened, Miss Mor­land,” said Thor­pe, as he hand­ed her in, “if my horse should dance about a lit­tle at first set­ting off. He will, most like­ly, give a plunge or two, and per­haps take the rest for a minute; but he will soon know his mas­ter. He is full of spir­its, play­ful as can be, but there is no vice in him.”

Cather­ine did not think the por­trait a very invit­ing one, but it was too late to retreat, and she was too young to own her­self fright­ened; so, resign­ing her­self to her fate, and trust­ing to the animal’s boast­ed knowl­edge of its own­er, she sat peace­ably down, and saw Thor­pe sit down by her. Every­thing being then arranged, the ser­vant who stood at the horse’s head was bid in an impor­tant voice “to let him go,” and off they went in the qui­etest man­ner imag­in­able, with­out a plunge or a caper, or any­thing like one. Cather­ine, delight­ed at so hap­py an escape, spoke her plea­sure aloud with grate­ful sur­prise; and her com­pan­ion imme­di­ate­ly made the mat­ter per­fect­ly sim­ple by assur­ing her that it was entire­ly owing to the pecu­liar­ly judi­cious man­ner in which he had then held the reins, and the sin­gu­lar dis­cern­ment and dex­ter­i­ty with which he had direct­ed his whip. Cather­ine, though she could not help won­der­ing that with such per­fect com­mand of his horse, he should think it nec­es­sary to alarm her with a rela­tion of its tricks, con­grat­u­lat­ed her­self sin­cere­ly on being under the care of so excel­lent a coach­man; and per­ceiv­ing that the ani­mal con­tin­ued to go on in the same qui­et man­ner, with­out show­ing the small­est propen­si­ty towards any unpleas­ant vivac­i­ty, and (con­sid­er­ing its inevitable pace was ten miles an hour) by no means alarm­ing­ly fast, gave her­self up to all the enjoy­ment of air and exer­cise of the most invig­o­rat­ing kind, in a fine mild day of Feb­ru­ary, with the con­scious­ness of safe­ty. A silence of sev­er­al min­utes suc­ceed­ed their first short dia­logue; it was bro­ken by Thorpe’s say­ing very abrupt­ly, “Old Allen is as rich as a Jew—is not he?” Cather­ine did not under­stand him—and he repeat­ed his ques­tion, adding in expla­na­tion, “Old Allen, the man you are with.”

“Oh! Mr. Allen, you mean. Yes, I believe, he is very rich.”

“And no chil­dren at all?”

“No—not any.”

“A famous thing for his next heirs. He is your god­fa­ther, is not he?”

“My god­fa­ther! No.”

“But you are always very much with them.”

“Yes, very much.”

“Aye, that is what I meant. He seems a good kind of old fel­low enough, and has lived very well in his time, I dare say; he is not gouty for noth­ing. Does he drink his bot­tle a day now?”

“His bot­tle a day! No. Why should you think of such a thing? He is a very tem­per­ate man, and you could not fan­cy him in liquor last night?”

“Lord help you! You women are always think­ing of men’s being in liquor. Why, you do not sup­pose a man is over­set by a bot­tle? I am sure of this—that if every­body was to drink their bot­tle a day, there would not be half the dis­or­ders in the world there are now. It would be a famous good thing for us all.”

“I can­not believe it.”

“Oh! Lord, it would be the sav­ing of thou­sands. There is not the hun­dredth part of the wine con­sumed in this king­dom that there ought to be. Our fog­gy cli­mate wants help.”

“And yet I have heard that there is a great deal of wine drunk in Oxford.”

“Oxford! There is no drink­ing at Oxford now, I assure you. Nobody drinks there. You would hard­ly meet with a man who goes beyond his four pints at the utmost. Now, for instance, it was reck­oned a remark­able thing, at the last par­ty in my rooms, that upon an aver­age we cleared about five pints a head. It was looked upon as some­thing out of the com­mon way. Mine is famous good stuff, to be sure. You would not often meet with any­thing like it in Oxford—and that may account for it. But this will just give you a notion of the gen­er­al rate of drink­ing there.”

“Yes, it does give a notion,” said Cather­ine warm­ly, “and that is, that you all drink a great deal more wine than I thought you did. How­ev­er, I am sure James does not drink so much.”

This dec­la­ra­tion brought on a loud and over­pow­er­ing reply, of which no part was very dis­tinct, except the fre­quent excla­ma­tions, amount­ing almost to oaths, which adorned it, and Cather­ine was left, when it end­ed, with rather a strength­ened belief of there being a great deal of wine drunk in Oxford, and the same hap­py con­vic­tion of her brother’s com­par­a­tive sobri­ety.

Thorpe’s ideas then all revert­ed to the mer­its of his own equipage, and she was called on to admire the spir­it and free­dom with which his horse moved along, and the ease which his paces, as well as the excel­lence of the springs, gave the motion of the car­riage. She fol­lowed him in all his admi­ra­tion as well as she could. To go before or beyond him was impos­si­ble. His knowl­edge and her igno­rance of the sub­ject, his rapid­i­ty of expres­sion, and her dif­fi­dence of her­self put that out of her pow­er; she could strike out noth­ing new in com­men­da­tion, but she read­i­ly echoed what­ev­er he chose to assert, and it was final­ly set­tled between them with­out any dif­fi­cul­ty that his equipage was alto­geth­er the most com­plete of its kind in Eng­land, his car­riage the neat­est, his horse the best goer, and him­self the best coach­man. “You do not real­ly think, Mr. Thor­pe,” said Cather­ine, ven­tur­ing after some time to con­sid­er the mat­ter as entire­ly decid­ed, and to offer some lit­tle vari­a­tion on the sub­ject, “that James’s gig will break down?”

“Break down! Oh! Lord! Did you ever see such a lit­tle tit­tup­py thing in your life? There is not a sound piece of iron about it. The wheels have been fair­ly worn out these ten years at least—and as for the body! Upon my soul, you might shake it to pieces your­self with a touch. It is the most dev­il­ish lit­tle rick­ety busi­ness I ever beheld! Thank God! we have got a bet­ter. I would not be bound to go two miles in it for fifty thou­sand pounds.”

“Good heav­ens!” cried Cather­ine, quite fright­ened. “Then pray let us turn back; they will cer­tain­ly meet with an acci­dent if we go on. Do let us turn back, Mr. Thor­pe; stop and speak to my broth­er, and tell him how very unsafe it is.”

“Unsafe! Oh, lord! What is there in that? They will only get a roll if it does break down; and there is plen­ty of dirt; it will be excel­lent falling. Oh, curse it! The car­riage is safe enough, if a man knows how to dri­ve it; a thing of that sort in good hands will last above twen­ty years after it is fair­ly worn out. Lord bless you! I would under­take for five pounds to dri­ve it to York and back again, with­out los­ing a nail.”

Cather­ine lis­tened with aston­ish­ment; she knew not how to rec­on­cile two such very dif­fer­ent accounts of the same thing; for she had not been brought up to under­stand the propen­si­ties of a rat­tle, nor to know to how many idle asser­tions and impu­dent false­hoods the excess of van­i­ty will lead. Her own fam­i­ly were plain, mat­ter-of-fact peo­ple who sel­dom aimed at wit of any kind; her father, at the utmost, being con­tent­ed with a pun, and her moth­er with a proverb; they were not in the habit there­fore of telling lies to increase their impor­tance, or of assert­ing at one moment what they would con­tra­dict the next. She reflect­ed on the affair for some time in much per­plex­i­ty, and was more than once on the point of request­ing from Mr. Thor­pe a clear­er insight into his real opin­ion on the sub­ject; but she checked her­self, because it appeared to her that he did not excel in giv­ing those clear­er insights, in mak­ing those things plain which he had before made ambigu­ous; and, join­ing to this, the con­sid­er­a­tion that he would not real­ly suf­fer his sis­ter and his friend to be exposed to a dan­ger from which he might eas­i­ly pre­serve them, she con­clud­ed at last that he must know the car­riage to be in fact per­fect­ly safe, and there­fore would alarm her­self no longer. By him the whole mat­ter seemed entire­ly for­got­ten; and all the rest of his con­ver­sa­tion, or rather talk, began and end­ed with him­self and his own con­cerns. He told her of hors­es which he had bought for a tri­fle and sold for incred­i­ble sums; of rac­ing match­es, in which his judg­ment had infal­li­bly fore­told the win­ner; of shoot­ing par­ties, in which he had killed more birds (though with­out hav­ing one good shot) than all his com­pan­ions togeth­er; and described to her some famous day’s sport, with the fox-hounds, in which his fore­sight and skill in direct­ing the dogs had repaired the mis­takes of the most expe­ri­enced hunts­man, and in which the bold­ness of his rid­ing, though it had nev­er endan­gered his own life for a moment, had been con­stant­ly lead­ing oth­ers into dif­fi­cul­ties, which he calm­ly con­clud­ed had bro­ken the necks of many.

Lit­tle as Cather­ine was in the habit of judg­ing for her­self, and unfixed as were her gen­er­al notions of what men ought to be, she could not entire­ly repress a doubt, while she bore with the effu­sions of his end­less con­ceit, of his being alto­geth­er com­plete­ly agree­able. It was a bold sur­mise, for he was Isabella’s broth­er; and she had been assured by James that his man­ners would rec­om­mend him to all her sex; but in spite of this, the extreme weari­ness of his com­pa­ny, which crept over her before they had been out an hour, and which con­tin­ued unceas­ing­ly to increase till they stopped in Pul­teney Street again, induced her, in some small degree, to resist such high author­i­ty, and to dis­trust his pow­ers of giv­ing uni­ver­sal pleasure.

When they arrived at Mrs. Allen’s door, the aston­ish­ment of Isabel­la was hard­ly to be expressed, on find­ing that it was too late in the day for them to attend her friend into the house: “Past three o’clock!” It was incon­ceiv­able, incred­i­ble, impos­si­ble! And she would nei­ther believe her own watch, nor her brother’s, nor the servant’s; she would believe no assur­ance of it found­ed on rea­son or real­i­ty, till Mor­land pro­duced his watch, and ascer­tained the fact; to have doubt­ed a moment longer then would have been equal­ly incon­ceiv­able, incred­i­ble, and impos­si­ble; and she could only protest, over and over again, that no two hours and a half had ever gone off so swift­ly before, as Cather­ine was called on to con­firm; Cather­ine could not tell a false­hood even to please Isabel­la; but the lat­ter was spared the mis­ery of her friend’s dis­sent­ing voice, by not wait­ing for her answer. Her own feel­ings entire­ly engrossed her; her wretched­ness was most acute on find­ing her­self oblig­ed to go direct­ly home. It was ages since she had had a moment’s con­ver­sa­tion with her dear­est Cather­ine; and, though she had such thou­sands of things to say to her, it appeared as if they were nev­er to be togeth­er again; so, with snif­fles of most exquis­ite mis­ery, and the laugh­ing eye of utter despon­den­cy, she bade her friend adieu and went on.

Cather­ine found Mrs. Allen just returned from all the busy idle­ness of the morn­ing, and was imme­di­ate­ly greet­ed with, “Well, my dear, here you are,” a truth which she had no greater incli­na­tion than pow­er to dis­pute; “and I hope you have had a pleas­ant air­ing?”

“Yes, ma’am, I thank you; we could not have had a nicer day.”

“So Mrs. Thor­pe said; she was vast­ly pleased at your all going.”

“You have seen Mrs. Thor­pe, then?”

“Yes, I went to the pump-room as soon as you were gone, and there I met her, and we had a great deal of talk togeth­er. She says there was hard­ly any veal to be got at mar­ket this morn­ing, it is so uncom­mon­ly scarce.”

“Did you see any­body else of our acquaintance?”

“Yes; we agreed to take a turn in the Cres­cent, and there we met Mrs. Hugh­es, and Mr. and Miss Tilney walk­ing with her.”

“Did you indeed? And did they speak to you?”

“Yes, we walked along the Cres­cent togeth­er for half an hour. They seem very agree­able peo­ple. Miss Tilney was in a very pret­ty spot­ted muslin, and I fan­cy, by what I can learn, that she always dress­es very hand­some­ly. Mrs. Hugh­es talked to me a great deal about the family.”

“And what did she tell you of them?”

“Oh! A vast deal indeed; she hard­ly talked of any­thing else.”

“Did she tell you what part of Glouces­ter­shire they come from?”

“Yes, she did; but I can­not rec­ol­lect now. But they are very good kind of peo­ple, and very rich. Mrs. Tilney was a Miss Drum­mond, and she and Mrs. Hugh­es were schoolfel­lows; and Miss Drum­mond had a very large for­tune; and, when she mar­ried, her father gave her twen­ty thou­sand pounds, and five hun­dred to buy wed­ding-clothes. Mrs. Hugh­es saw all the clothes after they came from the ware­house.”

“And are Mr. and Mrs. Tilney in Bath?”

“Yes, I fan­cy they are, but I am not quite cer­tain. Upon rec­ol­lec­tion, how­ev­er, I have a notion they are both dead; at least the moth­er is; yes, I am sure Mrs. Tilney is dead, because Mrs. Hugh­es told me there was a very beau­ti­ful set of pearls that Mr. Drum­mond gave his daugh­ter on her wed­ding-day and that Miss Tilney has got now, for they were put by for her when her moth­er died.”

“And is Mr. Tilney, my part­ner, the only son?”

“I can­not be quite pos­i­tive about that, my dear; I have some idea he is; but, how­ev­er, he is a very fine young man, Mrs. Hugh­es says, and like­ly to do very well.”

Cather­ine inquired no fur­ther; she had heard enough to feel that Mrs. Allen had no real intel­li­gence to give, and that she was most par­tic­u­lar­ly unfor­tu­nate her­self in hav­ing missed such a meet­ing with both broth­er and sis­ter. Could she have fore­seen such a cir­cum­stance, noth­ing should have per­suad­ed her to go out with the oth­ers; and, as it was, she could only lament her ill luck, and think over what she had lost, till it was clear to her that the dri­ve had by no means been very pleas­ant and that John Thor­pe him­self was quite disagreeable.