‘Nothing further to alarm perhaps may occur the first night.After surmounting your unconquerable horror of the bed,you will retire to rest,and get a few hours'unquiet slumber.But on the second,or at farthest the third night after your arrival,you will probably have a violent storm.Peals of thunder so loud as to seem to shake the edifice to its foundation will roll round the neighbouring mountains and during the frightful gusts of wind which accompany it,you will probably think you discern (for your lamp is not extinguished)one part of the hanging more violently agitated than the rest.Unable of course to repress your curiosity in so favourable a moment for indulging it,you will instantly arise,and throwing your dressing gown around you,proceed to examine this mystery.After a very short search,you will discover a division in the tapestry so artfully constructed as to defy the minutest inspection,and on opening it,a door will immediately appear which door being only secured by massy bars and a padlock,you will,after a few efforts,succeed in opening, and,with your lamp in your hand,will pass through it into a small vaulted room.’
‘No,indeed;I should be too much frightened to do any such thing.’
‘What!not when Dorothy has given you to understand that there is a secret subterraneous communication between your apartment and the chapel of St Anthony,scarcely two miles off Could you shrink from so simple an adventure?No,no,you will proceed into this small vaulted room,and through this into several others,without perceiving anything very remarkable in either.In one perhaps there may be a dagger,in another a few drops of blood,and in a third the remains of some instrument of torture;but there being nothing in all this out of the common way,and your lamp being nearly exhausted,you will return towards your own apartment.In repassing through the small vaulted room,however,your eyes will be attracted towards a large,old fashioned cabinet of ebony and gold,which,though narrowly examining the furniture before,you had passed unnoticed.Impelled by an irresistible presentiment,you will eagerly advance to it,unlock its folding doors,and search into every drawer; but for some time without discovering anything of importance perhaps nothing but a considerable hoard of diamonds.At last,however,by touching a secret spring,an inner compartment will open a roll of paper appears: you seize it it contains many sheets of manu you hasten with the precious treasure into your own chamber,but scarcely have you been able to decipher “Oh!thou whomsoever thou mayst be,into whose hands these memoirs of the wretched Matilda may fall” when your lamp suddenly expires in the socket,and leaves you in total darkness.’
‘Oh!no,no do not say so.Well,go on.’
But Henry was too much amused by the interest he had raised,to be able to carry it farther;he could no longer command solemnity either of subject or voice,and was obliged to entreat her to use her own fancy in the perusal of Matilda's woes.Catherine,recollecting herself,grew ashamed of her eagerness,and began earnestly to assure him that her attention had been fixed without the smallest apprehension of really meeting with what he related.‘Miss Tilney,she was sure,would never put her into such a chamber as he had described! She was not at all afraid.’
As they drew near the end of their journey,her impatience for a sight of the abbey for some time suspended by his conversation on subjects very different returned in full force,and every bend in the road was expected with solemn awe to afford a glimpse of its massy walls of grey stone,rising amidst a grove of ancient oaks,with the last beams of the sun playing in beautiful splendour on its high Gothic windows.But so low did the building stand,that she found herself passing through the great gates of the lodge into the very grounds of Northanger,without having discerned even an antique chimney.
She knew not that she had any right to be surprised,but there was a something in this mode of approach which she certainly had not expected.To pass between lodges of a modern appearance,to find herself with such ease in the very precincts of the abbey,and driven so rapidly along a smooth,level road of fine gravel,without obstacle,alarm or solemnity of any kind,struck her as odd and inconsistent.She was not long at leisure however for such considerations.A sudden scud of rain driving full in her face,made it impossible for her to observe anything further,and fixed all her thoughts on the welfare of her new straw bonnet: and she was actually under the Abbey walls,was springing,with Henry's assistance,from the carriage,was beneath the shelter of the old porch,and had even passed on to the hall,where her friend and the General were waiting to welcome her,without feeling one aweful foreboding of future misery to herself,or one moment's suspicion of any past scenes of horror being acted within the solemn edifice.The breeze had not seemed to waft the sighs of the murdered to her;it had wafted nothing worse than a thick mizzling rain;and having given a good shake to her habit,she was ready to be shown into the common drawing room,and capable of considering where she was.
