The hall has been large and lofty, and there is a broad staircase of shining oak, up which Catherine is taken to her room. But that comfortable room possesses papered walls and a carpeted floor, while the windows are neither less perfect nor dimmer[35] than those of the drawing-room.
Catherine receives some consolation, as she is hastening to remove her riding-habit (the common travelling dress of the day), to dress for dinner, in time to suit the fiery punctuality of the General. Her eye falls on a large, high chest in a deep recess on one side of the fireplace. The chest, which is of cedar, curiously inlaid with some darker wood, and furnished with a tarnished silver lock, might have formed a treasure among the Queen Anne furniture and art curiosities of to-day; but it is not from premature æsthetic tastes that Catherine flies to it, entranced at the sight—it is because the chest looks like a realisation of her visions, a prelude to adventures in her own person, such as those which her favourite heroines have encountered and surmounted triumphantly.
The incidents which follow the discovery of this chest would be impossible in the days of social science and board schools. They read like exaggerations, even in Jane Austen’s usually temperate, as well as witty, pages.[36]
Then we must keep in remembrance that Catherine Morland was, in age, but sweet, immature seventeen, while George III’s reign was in many things removed from that of Queen Victoria.
Miss Tilney’s maid, and later Miss Tilney herself, surprise Catherine in what looks like burglarious intentions, in her eager investigation of the chest. In the last instance, Catherine has just succeeded in throwing back the lid, and discovering——a nicely-folded white cotton counterpane!
This anti-climax does not prevent the infatuated Catherine, when she has retired for the night, during an appropriate storm of wind and rain, looking about her, at intervals, in pursuit of more old furniture. And just as she is about to step into bed, her eyes light on an ebony and gold cabinet, such as her mischievous lover has described. To be sure the cabinet is not exactly of ebony and gold, but it is of the next thing to them—black and yellow Japan—with the yellow looking like gold. The key is in the door—wonderful to relate, as Henry has said! Catherine cannot sleep till she has turned it. Naturally, the lock tries her trembling, unfamiliar fingers, but she overcomes its difficulties, only to open drawer after drawer with emptiness revealed. The middle cavity alone remains unexplored. She succeeds with the second lock as with the first, and meets her reward—a roll of paper, pushed far back for concealment, lies before her.
Catherine’s heart flutters, her knees tremble, her cheeks grow pale. She seizes the precious MS. without a doubt as to her right to take possession of it. Has one of her heroines hesitated in similar circumstances? She glances round, as if by instinct, to detect the next accomplishment of Henry Tilney’s predictions, in the waning of her light. It happens to be a half-burnt-down candle needing snuffing, instead of a lamp with the wick burnt to the socket. Sometimes modern prosaic substitutes prove convenient. Catherine has only to snuff her candle to restore its brightness. Alas! in her agitation she snuffs it out, and leaves herself at once in total darkness. Gas might not have served her any better, since gas runs the risk, in these circumstances, of being turned off.
Poor Catherine’s plight has become lamentable, since, as a matter of course, she believes she distinguishes receding footsteps, and the closing of a distant door, the moment she has put out her light. A cold sweat stands on her forehead, the manuscript falls from her hand, and, groping her way to the bed, she jumps in, seeking some suspension of agony by creeping unheroically far underneath the clothes. Sleep must be impossible, and actually eludes Catherine’s grasp till all the clocks about the place have struck three.
The housemaid’s folding back her window-shutters at eight o’clock rouses Catherine to a bright morning and a cheerful fire. With revived spirits and curiosity, she waits only to be alone, in order to surrender herself to the absorbing interest and distinction of her discovery. She sees at once she must not expect a manuscript of equal length to those she is accustomed to read when printed. Here are only some small, unconnected sheets of paper. “Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import. Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false? An inventory of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that was before her! If the evidence of sight might be trusted, she held a washing-bill in her hand. She seized another sheet, and saw the same articles, with little variation; a third, a fourth, and a fifth presented nothing new. Shirts, stockings, cravats, and waistcoats faced her in each. Two others, penned by the same hand, marked an expenditure scarcely more interesting in letters, hair-powder, shoe-strings, and breeches ball; and the larger sheet, which had enclosed the rest, seemed by its first cramped line—‘To poultice chesnut mare’—a farrier’s bill! Such was the collection of papers (left, perhaps, as she could then suppose, by the negligence of a servant, in the place whence she had taken them) which had filled her with expectation and alarm, and had robbed her of half her night’s rest! She felt humbled to the dust.”
Catherine fervently trusts that nobody—above all, not Henry Tilney, who is in some respects the originator of her misadventure, but whom, of course, she magnanimously forgives—will ever learn what she has been about.