Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons (29 page)

This seemed to indicate it was time to part. Catherine found herself hurried away by Miss Tilney in such a manner as convinced her that the strictest punctuality to the family hours would be expected at Northanger.

Returning through the large and lofty hall, they ascended a broad staircase of shining oak, which, after many flights and many landing-places, brought them upon a long, wide gallery.

On one side it had a range of doors. And it was lighted on the other by windows which Catherine had only time to discover looked into a quadrangle, before Miss Tilney led the way into a chamber, and scarcely staying to hope she would find it comfortable, left her with an anxious entreaty that she would make as little alteration as possible in her dress.

After she had gone, Catherine turned momentarily to the nearest window and grew very still.

Outside, silhouetted against the sky, moved the swiftly receding unmistakable silhouette of a great
dragon
.

A
moment’s glance was enough to satisfy Catherine that her apartment was very unlike the one which Henry had described with the amused intent to alarm her.

Her heart was still beating rapidly after having seen the dragon outside her window. But our heroine composed herself. After all, unlike all the poor orphans, urchins, noble maidens, and waifs left to fend for themselves under tragic
Udolpho
circumstances, she was not
alone.

She was surrounded by a world of heavenly guardians.

But then, so was everyone else (the only difference being, to them, all such guardianship was invisible). It never before occurred to Catherine to wonder
if
and
why
those doleful others—the sorrowful victims in the horrid novels—had been abandoned by Heaven’s guardians to such destitute fates.

But now the sobering thought, brought on by the menacing shadow right outside her window, suddenly plagued her. What right, what hope had
she
, then, to a better fate?

But the answer came quickly and surely.

“You, dear child, can
see
and
hear
us in a manner unlike most everyone else. Thus, you are also guided and protected more securely—not because you are any better or more deserving than other mortals in the eyes of God, but because you are capable of being shown solutions that others
cannot
and
will not
make the effort to discover.”

But Catherine persisted. “Dearest angels, but what of the innocents? Surely the little babes, the newborns cannot fend for themselves? What if they are stolen by sanguine villains? What is to protect them?”
^[22]

“It is true,” said the angel, “that a child enters the world as a blank slate, stripped of all that came before, in order to begin anew. For, indeed you do not ask the full question—what came
before?

“In this world it is possible to grasp only what can be ascertained by mortal senses in the present span of a lifetime. Much is speculated as to what comes
after
a life ends, but it is almost never spoken of what comes
before
. And yet, it is such an easy notion to consider, if one is but to look at anything else—take for example the baking of bread.

“Bread is not brought out of nothing into sudden being, to be eaten and enjoyed—verily, not even manna from heaven (which has its definite origins, i.e. heaven). Bread is baked from dough, which in turn is formed out of living yeasts and flours of wheat and other grains and water. And before that, the yeasts are cultivated and the grains themselves are grown and harvested from other living matter, with its own history of
being
(in whatever basic form) that stretches as long going back as it does going forward. Each loaf you eat has a history as far back as there are stars upon the firmament of heaven. You might ask, at what precise moment does a loaf
become
a loaf—become itself, that precise
thing
known as bread—and when does it
stop
being itself, and becomes something else in its eternal journey of existence?

“And, if not ordinary daily bread, then why not a human child? What defines
it,
and what defines its innocence? Its flesh comes from the flesh of its parents, and it in itself is a living spark of divine energy that has its own source of
previous experience
from
somewhere else
. Innocence is a relative notion of this material world. It is a property of finite judgment—but mortal judgment can only go so far as to span that what is mortally known (though, often far less; if the mortal judge in question has had the misfortune to occupy a lofty court bench for a span of years sufficient to absorb enough law to have
become
the bench—hard; oft vacant, and when not, oft legally pugnacious; and always made of the same old wood
^[23]
). Who, indeed, knows everything, but the One?

“And as for our newborn, the child indeed cannot make choices until it is self-aware enough to recognize the existence of such—at which point innocence ends and
responsibility
takes over. But, you ask, what of that moment of true innocence when the babe is still blameless and incapable, as far as
this
existence? The truth is—even with eyes closed against one’s will, arms bound, feet restrained, one can still walk off a cliff or be carried over it by others whose choices are more unfettered. The child is exactly in such a vulnerable position. So many others can choose its fate. The child’s mother, for example; others who care for the child—or who
neglect
it.

“The child has done nothing wrong yet it suffers, because it—and everything that comprises it: flesh, spirit, ancestral past, an existential chain of being, components from the stars themselves; all these things put together—is in a unique place and time—
a cosmic coordinate where suffering is to be found
—that is the end result of many ‘someones’ and their various choices.

“The angels cannot protect or guard where there are no choices to be found or made. And the secret truth is,
we are not guardians of the flesh but of the spirit
. We only guard that which can be guarded, the kernel that is everlasting. All else is ephemeral clamor, and fades away to dust, as the world turns.

“Indeed, the world is nothing but a sum total of eternally cascading and intermingling choices made by
all
of us—human beings, living creatures, angels, seraphim, and the fallen ones.

“The entire world has been thusly made—as a
one thing
of perfect balance. And, being a One Perfect Thing, its individual living components, each imbued with free will, are yet bound by the limits of this Original Framework to maintain this
perfection
at whatever cost to themselves.

“Through the very nature of our original creation, we are all inexplicably bound
together
. We are constrained by creation’s rules and physical limitations—which include personal inconveniences, loss, dire harm, and blatant idiocy—and we are bound through the
collective choices
of ourselves and others.

“Choices—even seemingly neutral ones such as whether to smile at someone, or drink a cup of tea, or take a turn into this dark street, or step with your left foot or right (or another arrangement, such as a walking-shovel)—all have natural consequences. And consciously selfish or wicked choices, (made by the Udolpho villains, or the fallen ones, who had chosen not for the
common ‘all’ together,
but for
themselves alone
) adversely affect everyone else.

“But in that same perfect Original Framework of interconnectedness, lies hope and ultimate salvation—there is
always
free will to make the
best
choice for as long as you can: even under duress; even when you are thrust into a horrid novel . . . and choice is immortal.

“Thus, be not afraid or surprised to consider that
choices
existed before a moment of perfect innocence that is known as birth, and will continue long after the soul is taken by death to
reside
with God.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Catherine, enthralled. “What happens when the soul is taken to reside with God?”

But the angel (it was Lawrence), so grave and dignified only moments before, suddenly smiled almost in mischief, and continued in a voice as light as air. “Why, dear, just think of what happens to a loaf of bread after it is eaten. And remember, that, just as the immortal soul, it too has a long eternal history
after!
”

T
he angelic discourse and instruction slipped into a nonsensical daydream. Catherine roused herself from this reverie—of choices, cosmic coordinates, baking bread, infants, and villains—with a start and again glanced about the apartment.

It was by no means unreasonably large, and contained neither tapestry nor velvet. The walls were papered, the floor carpeted; the windows similar to those of the drawing-room below. The furniture, though not of the latest fashion, was handsome and comfortable, and the air of the room altogether far from uncheerful.

Her heart sufficiently at ease on this point, she resolved to lose no time in particular examination of anything, as she greatly dreaded disobliging the general by any delay.

Her habit therefore was thrown off with all possible haste. She was preparing to unpin the linen package (which the chaise-seat had conveyed for her immediate accommodation), when her eye suddenly fell on a large high
chest,
standing back in a deep recess on one side of the fireplace.

The sight of it made her start. And, forgetting everything else, she stood gazing on it in motionless wonder, while these thoughts crossed her:

“This is strange indeed! I did not expect such a sight as this! An immense heavy chest! What can it hold?
Oh dear!
Why should it be placed here? Pushed back too, as if meant to be
out of sight!
I will look into it—cost me what it may—and directly too—by daylight. If I stay till evening my candle may go out.”

She advanced and examined it closely. It was of cedar, curiously inlaid
^[24]
with some darker wood, and raised, about a foot from the ground, on a carved stand of the same.

The lock was silver, though tarnished from age. At each end were the imperfect remains of handles also of silver, broken perhaps prematurely by some strange
violence.
And, on the centre of the lid, was a mysterious
cipher,
in the same metal.

Oh Dear God! Could this be the Udolpho Code?!
A lightning thought struck her.

And immediately inflamed with entirely rabid pangs of imagination, Catherine bent over it intently, but without being able to distinguish anything with
certainty
.

She could not, in whatever direction she took it, believe the last letter to be a T . . . And yet that it should be anything else in that house was a circumstance to raise no common degree of astonishment. And even if indeed it
was
a T—What if it were missing the initial three letters before it, so that in fact it was R-O-O-T? Which then properly scrambled would be “Orphan of the Rhine?”

Oh Dear God!

Catherine was shaken to the foundation. Surely, here it was! The secret code barely touched upon by Mrs. Radcliffe, possibly locked away in other dire and horrid details, to be found inside this chest! What was
inside
this chest? For that matter, what
was
this chest? Whose? If not originally theirs, by what strange events could it have fallen into the Tilney family?

Her fearful curiosity was every moment growing greater, turning to agony of a Need to Know. Seizing, with trembling hands, the hasp of the lock, she resolved at all hazards to satisfy herself at least as to its
contents
.

“Dear child, beware! It is highly advised that you do
not
open anything that you do not know—”
tried Lawrence, flying gently overhead, and Terence and Clarence echoed in sonorous harmony, from either side near her ears.

But Catherine ignored the angels and proceeded—with difficulty—for something seemed to resist her efforts; indeed, something was almost
pulsing
and
humming
on the inside, the closer she drew to it with her ear. She raised the lid a few inches (while the terrible strange humming continued, and verily grew in volume, beginning to remind Catherine of the sound of distant angry bees gathering).

But at that moment a sudden knocking at the door of the room made her, starting, quit her hold . . . and instantly the lid closed with alarming
violence
.

This ill-timed intruder was Miss Tilney’s maid, sent by her mistress to be of use to Miss Morland.