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 manu,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.
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 immoveable 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 manu 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 manu 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.
Chapter 22
The housemaid's folding back her window shutters at eight o'clock the next day,was the sound which first roused Catherine;and she opened her eyes,wondering that they could ever have been closed,on objects of cheerfulness;her fire was already burning,and a bright morning had succeeded the tempest of the night.Instantaneously with the consciousness of existence,returned her recollection of the manu;and springing from the bed in the very moment of the maid's going away,she eagerly collected every scattered sheet which had burst from the roll on its falling to the ground,and flew back to enjoy the luxury of their perusal on her pillow.She now plainly saw that she must not expect a manu of equal length with the generality of what she had shuddered over in books,for the roll,seeming to consist entirely of small disjointed sheets,was altogether but of trifling size,and much less than she had supposed it to be at first.
