Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons (43 page)

Oh dear!
thought Catherine, knowing exactly the kind of awful boasting exaggeration the ogre was capable of.

With whomsoever Thorpe was (or was likely to be) connected, his own consequence always required that theirs should be great. And as his intimacy with any acquaintance grew, so regularly grew their fortune—doubled, quadrupled, reached the sky!

Since Thorpe’s expectations of his friend Morland’s fortune were already overrated, it was easy to double what he thought was the amount of Mr. Morland’s preferment, trebling his private fortune, bestowing a rich aunt, and sinking half the children. Thus he was able to represent the whole family to the general in a most respectable light.

For Catherine, however (the object of the general’s dragon curiosity, and his own speculations), he had yet something more in reserve. The ten or fifteen thousand pounds her father could give her would be a pretty addition to Mr. Allen’s estate. Surely her intimacy with the Allens made her handsomely legacied hereafter. And from that it was easy to speak of her as the almost acknowledged future heiress of Fullerton, with hundreds of thousands, nay, millions at her disposal—a
treasure hoard!

Upon such intelligence the dragon general had proceeded; for never had it occurred to him to doubt its authority. In addition, there were the absolute facts of the Allens being wealthy and childless, of Miss Morland’s being under their care, and of their treating her with parental kindness.

His resolution was soon formed. Already had he discerned a
liking
towards Miss Morland in the countenance of his son. And there was a certain peculiar
wondrous
air about her that he sensed on a supernatural level, being a supernatural (albeit damaged) creature himself.

In short, Henry was so convinced of his father’s entirely believing it to be an advantageous connection, that it was not till her expulsion from Northanger that they had the smallest idea of the false calculations which had hurried him on.

That they were false, the general had learnt from the very person who had suggested them—from Thorpe himself!

“Oh!” cried Catherine, interrupting again. “I knew there was a perfectly good reason I could not stand him beyond his infernal nephilim ogre manners!”

“Nephilim? Ogre?” said Henry, then added cleverly in his usual manner: “Has Thorpe in fact eaten anyone? Has it been documented? And if not—Precision of words is to be observed always, else one might come to the wrong conclusions.”

And Catherine burst out laughing then hastily explained both John and Isabella, altogether with their various subtle and crude attempts to acquire her soul, spirit, person, dowry, and verily the entire family (for the nephilim also sought treasure of all kinds), their horrid true inner visage (visible only to one such as herself) and their hot and cold weather fronts.

“Well then!” said Henry, “so
that
is what they are! I knew them to be other than ordinary human mortals. And yes, I
had
noted the so-called climate. But you must later tell me more.”

And then he resumed the present explanation about Thorpe. Apparently on that very recent and fateful trip from Northanger, General Tilney had chanced to meet John Thorpe again in town. This time, Thorpe was under the influence of exactly opposite feelings. He was irritated by Catherine’s refusal, and even more by the failure to accomplish a reconciliation between Morland and Isabella. Convinced that an association with the Morlands was no longer serviceable, he hastened to contradict to the general all that he had told him before in their praise, and now made up a profusion of defects—poverty, avarice, inability of giving the young people even a decent support. According to Thorpe the Morlands were a necessitous and numerous family, by no means respected in their own neighbourhood, aiming at a lifestyle beyond their fortune; seeking to better themselves by wealthy connections—a forward, bragging, scheming race!

The terrified general pronounced the name of Allen with an inquiring look; and here too Thorpe had painted a horrid picture. The Allens, he believed, had lived near them too long, and he knew the young man on whom the Fullerton estate must devolve—and it was
not
James Morland.

The general needed no more. The dragon was enraged—with almost everybody in the world but himself. And he set out the next day for the abbey, where Catherine was met with such a cruel and unjust expulsion.

Henry, in having such things to relate of his father, was almost as pitiable as in their first avowal to himself. He blushed for the narrow-minded counsel which he was obliged to expose. And he grieved for the old dragon’s dark nature that had taken his heart further along the path of gold—advancing it deeper in its chosen journey toward lifeless metal and eternity
alone
.

And yet, Henry had been indignant enough to oppose the old dragon directly—all because of
her
. And in doing so, his own heart had swelled with love, and it called forth his own dragon nature.

“I admit,” he said softly, “that before yesterday I had not known myself, had not known
what
I also was. It does not always run in the family, this thing. Dragons are made, not born. (My brother Frederick, for example, has no dragon in him—at least not at present, even though he seems to have the prideful airs of one.) But when our father had taken off from Northanger, following you, for the first time I had
sensed
the dragon—heard and felt him coming at a distance. And in an instant I knew exactly all that had transpired with you, having
read
his mind. And when your carriage was passing closest to me, I was pulled from within, twisted, uprooted—impossible to describe what it is that happened to me—and I
turned
, for the first time, and I came for you.”

“I saw you flying!” said Catherine. “I watched and I did not know. But strangely, I could somehow
feel
myself flying alongside you, all those many miles.”

“Ah, Catherine,” Henry exclaimed, “if only you realized what you can do, the power that you hold over the unseen world. Look what effect you have had upon an entire town of Bath, and then, you woke Northanger to its ancient ways.”

“You have no idea,” said Catherine smartly. “One of these days I must tell you of the chest and the cabinet in the apartment I had been staying in. And what manner of horrid
things
it had released—”

And he laughed and then told her how much happiness it was for him to see her thus, and that he hoped his earlier teasing of her love for
Udolpho
did not discompose her too much. “I had not suspected then, to what extent the delightful secrets you talked and dreamed about were in fact real—not only to you but to the world around you. Will you forgive me?”

“Goodness, for what? For keeping me balanced and sane and bringing my imagination back to the realm of common sense? It is only recently that I realize that I had not just imagined those terrible things, but I had in fact wished for them and made them happen!”

“Such is the power of the human
treasure,
” he replied. And then again he drew closer to her in an embrace.

“There are angels about us now, are there not?” Henry whispered.

“Oh yes,” she replied. “Over a dozen, two near your nose, and one of them is your own. He wants me to tell you to fix your cravat a bit, it has gotten somewhat in disarray since you have been a dragon—but never mind, I can do it myself on your behalf.”

Henry laughed again.

And then Catherine remembered. “Oh, wait! I do not think your father has an angel of his own about him. At least, I had never seen one with him. Why is that so? And yet,
you
do.”

Henry thought for a long moment. “I do not know for certain, he said with gravity, “but it might be that, as a Dragon of Love, I am still in the light. His angel—it is not lost, I dare hope, and I expect it is somewhere out there, waiting for him to return one day to a choice of mortal humanity. For that is one hope I will never relinquish on my father’s behalf.”

And with those words they had come to the Morland house and entered together.

M
r. and Mrs. Morland’s surprise on being applied to by Mr. Tilney for their consent to his marrying their daughter was, for a few minutes, considerable.

It had never entered their heads to suspect an attachment on either side. But since nothing could be more natural than Catherine’s being
beloved,
they soon came to view it with happy agitation and gratified pride.

As far as
they
alone were concerned, there could not be a single objection. His pleasing manners and good sense were self-evident recommendations. And having never heard evil of him, goodwill supplied the place of experience, and his character needed no attestation.

“Catherine would make a sad, heedless young housekeeper, to be sure. You do realize, she is far more likely to
converse
with the mantelpiece than dust it?” was her mother’s foreboding remark; but quick was the consolation of there being nothing like practice.

“Mrs. Morland,” said Henry, “she is free to recite poetry to every chest and cabinet in the domicile, if that is what she desires.”

And with such charming words, no one could help but be perfectly satisfied.

There was but
one obstacle
remaining to their perfect happiness. And till that one was removed, it must be impossible for Mr. and Mrs. Morland to sanction the engagement. Their tempers were mild, but their principles were steady, and while
his parent
so expressly
forbade
the connection, they could not allow themselves to encourage it.

They did not expect or insist that the general should actively come forward to solicit the alliance, or very heartily approve it, but there must be at least a decent appearance of consent obtained from him. His
simple consent
—not money or fortune—was all that they wished for, and their own willing approbation was instantly to follow.

The young people were at first crestfallen.

“The old dragon will never consent,” mourned Catherine to her beloved. “I am afraid it is of no use appealing to his better nature.”

“If needed, I will
force
him to it,” said Henry in a voice like steel, with an amber-golden glint in his eyes.

“No,” she replied gently. “Please, let us wait.”

Only, what could ever induce such an impossible change of heart in the general, in him whose heart was already on its way to turning into metal and his flesh to stone?

But Henry heeded his treasure. Thus, for the moment, he returned to what was now his only home, to watch over his young plantations, and extend his improvements for
her
sake, to whose share in them he looked anxiously forward.

And Catherine remained at Fullerton to cry. Whether the torments of such enforced absence were softened by a clandestine correspondence between the lovers, perhaps employing some form of secret
encryption
in Capital Letters using the Udolpho Code, dear Reader, let us not inquire. Mr. and Mrs. Morland never did—they had been too kind to exact any promise otherwise. And whenever Catherine received a letter (quite often) they always looked another way.

The anxiety, which in this state of their attachment must be the portion of Henry and Catherine, was eventually resolved to everyone’s satisfaction and their eventual blissful matrimony.

The circumstance which helped immensely was the marriage of the general’s daughter with a man of fortune and consequence, which took place in the course of the summer—an accession of dignity that threw the imbalanced dragon into a fit of good humour, from which he did not recover till after Eleanor had obtained his forgiveness of Henry, and his permission for him “to be a fool if he liked it!”

The marriage of long-suffering Eleanor Tilney, and her eventual happy removal from all the evils of her father and Northanger, to the home of her choice and the man of her choice, was an event blessed by fortune and felicity. Eleanor’s partiality for this gentleman was not of recent origin; and the only thing preventing their union had been the inferiority of his situation. His unexpected accession to title and fortune had removed all his difficulties; and never had the general loved his daughter so well as when he first hailed her “Your Ladyship!”