Northanger Abbey — EN

The Allens, Thor­pes, and Mor­lands all met in the evening at the the­atre; and, as Cather­ine and Isabel­la sat togeth­er, there was then an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the lat­ter to utter some few of the many thou­sand things which had been col­lect­ing with­in her for com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the immea­sur­able length of time which had divid­ed them. “Oh, heav­ens! My beloved Cather­ine, have I got you at last?” was her address on Catherine’s enter­ing the box and sit­ting by her. “Now, Mr. Mor­land,” for he was close to her on the oth­er side, “I shall not speak anoth­er word to you all the rest of the evening; so I charge you not to expect it. My sweet­est Cather­ine, how have you been this long age? But I need not ask you, for you look delight­ful­ly. You real­ly have done your hair in a more heav­en­ly style than ever; you mis­chie­vous crea­ture, do you want to attract every­body? I assure you, my broth­er is quite in love with you already; and as for Mr. Tilney—but that is a set­tled thing—even your mod­esty can­not doubt his attach­ment now; his com­ing back to Bath makes it too plain. Oh! What would not I give to see him! I real­ly am quite wild with impa­tience. My moth­er says he is the most delight­ful young man in the world; she saw him this morn­ing, you know; you must intro­duce him to me. Is he in the house now? Look about, for heaven’s sake! I assure you, I can hard­ly exist till I see him.”

“No,” said Cather­ine, “he is not here; I can­not see him anywhere.”

“Oh, hor­rid! Am I nev­er to be acquaint­ed with him? How do you like my gown? I think it does not look amiss; the sleeves were entire­ly my own thought. Do you know, I get so immod­er­ate­ly sick of Bath; your broth­er and I were agree­ing this morn­ing that, though it is vast­ly well to be here for a few weeks, we would not live here for mil­lions. We soon found out that our tastes were exact­ly alike in pre­fer­ring the coun­try to every oth­er place; real­ly, our opin­ions were so exact­ly the same, it was quite ridicu­lous! There was not a sin­gle point in which we dif­fered; I would not have had you by for the world; you are such a sly thing, I am sure you would have made some droll remark or oth­er about it.”

“No, indeed I should not.”

“Oh, yes you would indeed; I know you bet­ter than you know your­self. You would have told us that we seemed born for each oth­er, or some non­sense of that kind, which would have dis­tressed me beyond con­cep­tion; my cheeks would have been as red as your ros­es; I would not have had you by for the world.”

“Indeed you do me injus­tice; I would not have made so improp­er a remark upon any account; and besides, I am sure it would nev­er have entered my head.”

Isabel­la smiled incred­u­lous­ly 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 and con­ver­sa­tion took place; Mr. Allen, after drink­ing his glass of water, joined some gen­tle­men to talk over the pol­i­tics of the day and com­pare the accounts of their news­pa­pers; and 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 friend. James, who was now in con­stant atten­dance, main­tained a sim­i­lar posi­tion, and sep­a­rat­ing them­selves from the rest of their par­ty, they walked in that man­ner for some time, till Cather­ine began to doubt the hap­pi­ness of a sit­u­a­tion which, con­fin­ing her 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, but their sen­ti­ment was con­veyed in such whis­per­ing voic­es, and their vivac­i­ty attend­ed with so much laugh­ter, that though Catherine’s sup­port­ing opin­ion was not unfre­quent­ly called for by one or the oth­er, she was nev­er able to give any, from not hav­ing heard a word of the sub­ject. 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, with a firmer deter­mi­na­tion to be acquaint­ed, than she might have had courage to com­mand, had she not been urged by the dis­ap­point­ment of the day before. Miss Tilney met her with great civil­i­ty, returned her advances with equal good­will, and they con­tin­ued talk­ing togeth­er as long as both par­ties remained in the room; and though in all prob­a­bil­i­ty not an obser­va­tion was made, nor an expres­sion used by either which had not been made and used some thou­sands of times before, under that roof, in every Bath sea­son, yet the mer­it of their being spo­ken with sim­plic­i­ty and truth, and with­out per­son­al con­ceit, might be some­thing uncommon.

“How well your broth­er dances!” was an art­less excla­ma­tion of Catherine’s towards the close of their con­ver­sa­tion, which at once sur­prised and amused 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 but for a cou­ple of days. He came only to engage lodg­ings for us.”

“That nev­er occurred to me; and of course, not see­ing him any­where, I thought he must be gone. Was not the young lady he danced with on Mon­day a Miss Smith?”

“Yes, an acquain­tance of Mrs. Hughes.”

“I dare say she was very glad to dance. Do you think her pretty?”

“Not very.”

“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, and on Catherine’s, with­out the small­est con­scious­ness of hav­ing explained them.

She went home very hap­py. The morn­ing had answered all her hopes, and the evening of the fol­low­ing day was now the object of expec­ta­tion, the future good. What gown and what head-dress she should wear on the occa­sion became her chief con­cern. She can­not be jus­ti­fied in it. Dress is at all57 times a friv­o­lous dis­tinc­tion, and exces­sive solic­i­tude about it often destroys its own aim. Cather­ine knew all this very well; her great aunt had read her a lec­ture on the sub­ject only the Christ­mas before; and yet she lay awake ten min­utes on Wednes­day night debat­ing between her spot­ted and her tam­boured muslin, and noth­ing but the short­ness of the time pre­vent­ed her buy­ing a new one for the evening. This would have been an error in judg­ment, great though not uncom­mon, from which one of the oth­er sex rather than her own, a broth­er rather than a great aunt, might have warned her, for man only can be aware of the insen­si­bil­i­ty of man towards a new gown. It would be mor­ti­fy­ing to the feel­ings of many ladies, could they be made to under­stand how lit­tle the heart of man is affect­ed by what is cost­ly or new in their attire; how lit­tle it is biased by the tex­ture of their muslin, and how unsus­cep­ti­ble of pecu­liar ten­der­ness towards the spot­ted, the sprigged, the mull, or the jack­onet. Woman is fine for her own sat­is­fac­tion alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the bet­ter for it. Neat­ness and fash­ion are enough for the for­mer, and a some­thing of shab­bi­ness or impro­pri­ety will be most endear­ing to the lat­ter. But not one of these grave reflec­tions trou­bled the tran­quil­li­ty of Catherine.

She entered the rooms on Thurs­day evening with feel­ings very dif­fer­ent from what had attend­ed her thith­er the Mon­day before. She had then been exult­ing in her engage­ment to Thor­pe, and was now chiefly anx­ious to avoid his sight, lest he should engage her again; for though she could not, dared not expect that Mr. Tilney should ask her a third time to dance, her wish­es, hopes, and plans all cen­tred 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 at least all have believed them­selves to be, in dan­ger from the pur­suit of some­one whom they wished to avoid; and all have been anx­ious for the atten­tions of some­one whom they wished to please. As soon as they were joined by the Thor­pes, Catherine’s agony began; she fid­get­ed about if John Thor­pe came towards her, hid her­self as much as pos­si­ble from his view, and when he spoke to her pre­tend­ed not to hear him. The cotil­lions were over, the coun­try-danc­ing begin­ning, and she saw noth­ing of the Tilneys.

“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. I tell him he ought to be ashamed of him­self, but you and John must keep us in coun­te­nance. Make haste, my dear crea­ture, and come to us. John is just walked off, but he will be back in a moment.”

Cather­ine had nei­ther time nor incli­na­tion to answer. The oth­ers walked away, John Thor­pe was still in view, and she gave her­self up for lost. That she might not appear, how­ev­er, to observe or expect him, she kept her eyes intent­ly fixed on her fan; and a self-con­dem­na­tion for her fol­ly, in sup­pos­ing that among such a crowd they should even meet with the Tilneys in any rea­son­able time, had just passed through her mind, when she sud­den­ly found her­self addressed and again solicit­ed to dance, by 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, may be eas­i­ly imag­ined. To escape, and, as she believed, so nar­row­ly escape John Thor­pe, and to be asked, so imme­di­ate­ly on his join­ing her, asked by Mr. Tilney, as if he had sought her on pur­pose!—it did not appear to her that life could 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. “Hey­day, Miss Mor­land!” said he. “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, and I firm­ly believe you were engaged to me ever since Mon­day. Yes; I remem­ber, I asked you while you were wait­ing in the lob­by for your cloak. 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. 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? Here is a friend of mine, Sam Fletch­er, has got one to sell that would suit any­body. A famous clever ani­mal for the road—only forty guineas. I had fifty minds to buy it myself, for it is one of my max­ims always to buy a good horse when I meet with one; but it would not answer my pur­pose, it would not do for the field. I would give any mon­ey for a real good hunter. I have three now, the best that ever were backed. I would not take eight hun­dred guineas for them. Fletch­er and I mean to get a house in Leices­ter­shire, against the next sea­son. It is so d— uncom­fort­able, liv­ing at an inn.”

This was the last sen­tence by which he could weary Catherine’s atten­tion, for he was just then borne off by the resist­less pres­sure of a long string of pass­ing ladies. 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. We have entered into a con­tract of mutu­al agree­able­ness for the space of an evening, and all our agree­able­ness 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; and those men who do not choose to dance or mar­ry them­selves, have no busi­ness with the part­ners or wives of their neighbours.”

“But they are such very dif­fer­ent things!”

“—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. Tak­en in that light cer­tain­ly, their resem­blance is not strik­ing; but I think I could place them in such a view. You will allow, that in both, man has the advan­tage of choice, woman only the pow­er of refusal; that in both, it is an engage­ment between man and woman, formed for the advan­tage of each; and that when once entered into, they belong exclu­sive­ly to each oth­er till the moment of its dis­so­lu­tion; that it is their duty, each to endeav­our to give the oth­er no cause for wish­ing that he or she had bestowed them­selves else­where, and their best inter­est to keep their own imag­i­na­tions from wan­der­ing towards the per­fec­tions of their neigh­bours, or fan­cy­ing that they should have been bet­ter off with any­one else. You will allow all this?”

“Yes, to be sure, as you state it, all this sounds very well; but still they are so very dif­fer­ent. I can­not look upon them at all in the same light, nor think the same duties belong to them.”

“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 exact­ly changed; 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.”

“Then I am quite at a loss. One thing, how­ev­er, I must observe. This dis­po­si­tion on your side is rather alarm­ing. You total­ly dis­al­low any sim­i­lar­i­ty in the oblig­a­tions; and may I not thence infer that your notions of the duties of the danc­ing state are not so strict as your part­ner might wish? Have I not rea­son to fear that if the gen­tle­man who spoke to you just now were to return, or if any oth­er gen­tle­man were to address you, there would be noth­ing to restrain you from con­vers­ing with him as long as you chose?”

“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 besides him 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; and, besides, I do not want to talk to anybody.”

“Now you have giv­en me a secu­ri­ty worth hav­ing; and I shall 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. You ought to be tired at the end of six weeks.”

“I do not think I should be tired, if I were to stay here six months.”

“Bath, com­pared with Lon­don, has lit­tle vari­ety, and so every­body finds out every year. ‘For six weeks, I allow Bath is pleas­ant enough; but beyond that, it is the most tire­some place in the world.’ You would be told so by peo­ple of all descrip­tions, who come reg­u­lar­ly every win­ter, length­en their six weeks into ten or twelve, and go away at last because they can afford to stay no longer.”

“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, can nev­er find greater same­ness in such a place as this than in my own home; for here are a vari­ety of amuse­ments, a vari­ety of things to be seen and done all day long, which I can know noth­ing of there.”

“You are not fond of the coun­try.”

“Yes, I am. I have always lived there, and always been very hap­py. But cer­tain­ly there is much more same­ness in a coun­try life than in a Bath life. One day in the coun­try is exact­ly like another.”

“But then you spend your time so much more ratio­nal­ly in the coun­try.”

“Do I?”

“Do you not?”

“I do not believe there is much difference.”

“Here you are in pur­suit only of amuse­ment all day long.”

“And so I am at home—only I do not find so much of it. I walk about here, and so I do there; but here I see a vari­ety of peo­ple in every street, and there I can only go and call on Mrs. Allen.”

Mr. Tilney was very much amused.

“Only go and call on Mrs. Allen!” he repeat­ed. “What a pic­ture of intel­lec­tu­al pover­ty! How­ev­er, when you sink into this abyss again, you will have more to say. You will be able to talk of Bath, and of all that you did here.”

“Oh! Yes. I shall nev­er be in want of some­thing to talk of again to Mrs. Allen, or any­body else. I real­ly believe I shall always be talk­ing of Bath, when I am at home again—I do like it so very much. If I could but have Papa and Mam­ma, and the rest of them here, I sup­pose I should be too hap­py! James’s com­ing (my eldest broth­er) is quite delightful—and espe­cial­ly as it turns out that the very fam­i­ly we are just got so inti­mate with are his inti­mate friends already. Oh! Who can ever be tired of Bath?”

“Not those who bring such fresh feel­ings of every sort to it as you do. But papas and mam­mas, and broth­ers, and inti­mate friends are a good deal gone by, to most of the fre­quenters of Bath—and the hon­est rel­ish of balls and plays, and every­day sights, is past with them.” Here their con­ver­sa­tion closed, the demands of the dance becom­ing now too impor­tu­nate for a divid­ed attention.

Soon after their reach­ing the bot­tom of the set, Cather­ine per­ceived her­self to be earnest­ly regard­ed by a gen­tle­man who stood among the look­ers-on, imme­di­ate­ly behind her part­ner. He was a very hand­some man, of a com­mand­ing aspect, past the bloom, but not past the vigour of life; and with his eye still direct­ed towards her, she saw him present­ly address Mr. Tilney in a famil­iar whis­per. Con­fused by his notice, and blush­ing from the fear of its being excit­ed by some­thing wrong in her appear­ance, she turned away her head. But while she did so, the gen­tle­man retreat­ed, and her part­ner, com­ing near­er, said, “I see that you guess what I have just been asked. That gen­tle­man knows your name, and you have a right to know his. It is Gen­er­al Tilney, my father.”

Catherine’s answer was only “Oh!”—but it was an “Oh!” express­ing every­thing need­ful: atten­tion to his words, and per­fect reliance on their truth. With real inter­est and strong admi­ra­tion did her eye now fol­low the gen­er­al, as he moved through the crowd, and “How hand­some a fam­i­ly they are!” was her secret remark.

In chat­ting with Miss Tilney before the evening con­clud­ed, a new source of felic­i­ty arose to her. She had nev­er tak­en a coun­try walk since her arrival in Bath. Miss Tilney, to whom all the com­mon­ly fre­quent­ed envi­rons were famil­iar, spoke of them in terms which made her all eager­ness to know them too; and on her open­ly fear­ing that she might find nobody to go with her, it was pro­posed by the broth­er and sis­ter that they should join in a walk, some morn­ing or oth­er. “I shall like it,” she cried, “beyond any­thing in the world; and do not let us put it off—let us go tomor­row.” This was read­i­ly agreed to, with only a pro­vi­so of Miss Tilney’s, that it did not rain, which Cather­ine was sure it would not. At twelve o’clock, they were to call for her in Pul­teney Street; and “Remember—twelve o’clock,” was her part­ing speech to her new friend. Of her oth­er, her old­er, her more estab­lished friend, Isabel­la, of whose fideli­ty and worth she had enjoyed a fortnight’s expe­ri­ence, she scarce­ly saw any­thing dur­ing the evening. Yet, though long­ing to make her acquaint­ed with her hap­pi­ness, she cheer­ful­ly sub­mit­ted to the wish of Mr. Allen, which took them rather ear­ly away, and her spir­its danced with­in her, as she danced in her chair all the way home.