Poor Eleanor has the still harder task of dashing these modest expectations to the ground. The General has sent his daughter with the unconscionably insulting and unfeeling message that Catherine must leave early next morning. Even the choice of the hour is not left to her: the carriage is ordered at seven o’clock, and no servant will be offered to her.
I am fain to think such rude insolence, such an ungentlemanlike and unfatherly breach of hospitality to, and consideration for, a young girl—his invited guest, his daughter’s friend—could seldom have been perpetrated by the most irresponsible member of the old “quality”—the most selfish tyrant who ever figured in an antiquated army list. I believe General Tilney’s action on this occasion to be one of the few-and-far-between exaggerations to be found in Jane Austen’s earlier novels.
Catherine sits down breathless and speechless under the outrage. She can scarcely listen to Eleanor’s earnest, humble apologies, her faltering explanations that her father’s temper is not happy, and something has occurred recently to ruffle it in an uncommon degree.
When Catherine speaks, after she has put the one wistful, fruitless question, “Have I offended the General?” it is to say, quietly and firmly, that she is very sorry if she has offended Eleanor’s father; it is the last thing she would willingly have done. She bids Eleanor not be unhappy; a few days longer would not have made any great difference. The journey of seventy miles by post will be nothing. She can be ready at seven. She begs to be called in time.
In short, Catherine behaves at this crisis with a simple self-respect and an absence of either rancour or frenzy which brings her out in striking and agreeable contrast to the rampaging termagants of later fiction.
But when she is left alone, poor young Catherine cannot so much as attempt to persuade herself that she has not been very badly treated, and that she is not smarting under the sense of the unprovoked ill-usage in addition to her own little private stock of wretchedness. For not only has the polite, high-bred General Tilney, who had seemed so particularly fond of her, behaved to her with gross incivility, there is the crowning misery of the knowledge that the false and barbarous General is Henry Tilney’s father, and that she will not even see Henry to hear what he thinks of the cruel injustice, and to bid him farewell. Besides, what will her father and mother, the Allens, and the world think of the disgraceful indignity which has been put upon her, the bitter mortification to which she has been subjected?
But there is no help for it, and though sleep is impossible, Catherine can be as punctual as her friend Eleanor, who is up to do all that the most sincere affection and hearty regret can contrive, to atone for her father’s conduct. Catherine may be unable to swallow a mouthful when she thinks of the last breakfast in the same room: “Happy, happy breakfast! for Henry had been there; Henry had sat by her and helped her.” But she is able to decline decidedly, though tenderly, to write to Eleanor when Catherine finds that correspondence has been prohibited between the girls, and the one letter, announcing Catherine’s safe arrival, for which Eleanor entreats, must be directed under cover to her maid Alice. It is only Eleanor’s distress at her refusal which draws from Catherine a promise to commit this single infringement of the prohibition.
At the last moment, had it not been for Eleanor Tilney’s anxious forethought in ascertaining whether Catherine’s purse would meet the requirements of the journey, the inexperienced young girl would have found herself “turned from the house without even the means of getting home.” The necessary loan is quickly offered and accepted, but this realisation of the situation so overwhelms the two girls that they exchange their parting embrace in silence. Catherine forces her quivering lips to leave “My kind remembrance for my absent friend,” but the reference is too much for her, and she has to hide her face as she jumps into the chaise and is driven from the door.
The only solution which Catherine can think of, for the unaccountable change in the General’s behaviour to her, is too dreadful for her to dwell upon, though it has a serio-comic effect, as Jane Austen no doubt intended, on the reader. Can General Tilney have found out, by any means short of a tremendous breach of faith on the part of Henry or Eleanor Tilney, that Catherine has been so foolish and wicked as to suspect him of being a murderer, and is he now revenging himself upon her, almost justifiably, by refusing to let her remain in the same house with him, or to hold any farther communication with his family?
The real explanation may as well be given here. Catherine’s one great offence in the General’s eyes is that she is less rich and prosperous in every way than he had believed her to be. The fine gentleman is capable of the most mercenary efforts for the aggrandisement of his family. His greed has caused him to fall an easy prey to so vulgar a schemer as John Thorpe. In the days when Isabella Thorpe and her brother were ready to hail the probability of a double family alliance with James Morland and his sister. General Tilney had chanced to notice his son’s attentions to Catherine in the theatre at Bath. Being on speaking terms with John Thorpe, the General had not disdained to fish for some information with regard to the young lady’s circumstances.