Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons (10 page)

It must be said that, to anyone else who did not have the metaphysical visual acuity of Catherine, this is what they saw when they observed John Thorpe—a stout young man of middling height, who, with a plain face and ungraceful form, seemed fearful of being too handsome unless he wore the dress of a groom, and too much like a gentleman unless he were easy where he ought to be civil, and impudent where he might be allowed to be easy.

He took out his watch: “How long do you think we have been running it from Tetbury, Miss Morland?”

Catherine still recovering from the amazement, took several additional moments to gather her mind in reply. “I do not know the distance.”

Her brother—flushed in the face as though he’d been working a smithy’s bellows—told her that it was twenty-three miles.

“Three and twenty!” cried Thorpe—and his voice sounded like a foghorn to Catherine. “Five and twenty if it is an inch.”

And then the two gentlemen meaningfully argued meaningless distances. “I defy any man in England to make my horse go less than ten miles an hour in harness,” ended Thorpe on an uproar.

“You have lost an hour,” said Morland; “it was only ten o’clock when we came from Tetbury.”

“Ten o’clock! It was eleven, upon my soul! This brother of yours would persuade me out of my senses, Miss Morland; do but look at my horse; did you ever see an animal so made for speed in your life?” (The servant, also red in the face from being in the
scalding
gentleman’s company had just mounted the carriage and was driving off.)

“He
does
look very
hot,
to be sure,” said Catherine, glancing in their wake, feeling rather heated herself (and in a not-so-good way), in John Thorpe’s proximity. She wondered about the poor horse having had to endure such ghastly atmosphere for so many miles. Not to mention, her poor brother!

James did appear to be sweating at the temples, and his pleasant countenance was ruddier than usual—but was cooling down rapidly in the icy proximity of arctic Isabella.

In all this, the angels were making haste in moving back and forth between their Morland sibling charges, in some distress, trying to cool one down and warm the other by fanning the air with their bright wings, this way and that way . . . and this way and that way . . . and—

“Hot!” exclaimed Thorpe meanwhile, unable to forget his horse. “Why, he had not turned a hair till we came to Walcot Church; but look at his forehand! Look at his loins!”

“Dearest John, there is hardly any need for Miss Morland to look at his loins,” put in Isabella.

“—only see how he moves; that horse cannot go less than ten miles an hour: tie his legs and he will get on—” John Thorpe was not to be silenced. That is until he himself changed the topic: “What do you think of my gig, Miss Morland? A neat one, is not it? Well hung; town-built—” his voice roared and ripped the air, modulating in ogrish crescendos, and would have been audible as a hellish monstrosity far across Cheap Street to anyone who was as metaphysically attuned as Catherine (all others merely heard a horrid foghorn).

“And how much do you think he asked for it, Miss Morland?” he finished at last, after describing a tedious purchase transaction.

“I am sure I cannot guess at all.”

“He asked fifty guineas; I threw down the money, and the carriage was mine!”

“And I am sure,” said Catherine, “I know so little of such things that I cannot judge whether it was cheap or dear.”

“Neither one nor t’other; I might have got it for less; but I hate haggling, and the poor fellow wanted cash.”

“That was very good-natured of you,” said Catherine, quite pleased to be able to say something relevant and even minimally positive in light of so much
heat
.

“Oh! D—— it, when one has the means of doing a kind thing by a friend, I hate to be pitiful.”

“Do not believe it, Catherine!”
the angels clamored. “All kindness of
his
kind has ulterior motives!”

“Yes, I am not all daft, thank you!” she replied smartly, rather aggrieved by the heat and the cold in the vicinity, and then coughed profusely to make up for her mumble.

“Gracious! My sweet, I do hope you are not developing a sore throat,” announced Isabella, in her honey intonations, but with just a hint of solemn
meaning
. “Or was it something you said? I did not quite catch, with all your coughing.”

“Oh no, I am quite fine—that is, ’tis nothing, cough cough!” said Catherine, while a chill of another sort came to her. What if horrid Isabella and her dreadful ogre brother—being what they were,
unnatural
—could see the angels too? Or at least be aware of them somehow?

Did they know what
she
could see? And did they perchance know she could
see them?

While our heroine was beset by these new alarms, it was decided that the gentlemen should accompany the young ladies to Edgar’s Buildings, and pay their respects to Mrs. Thorpe.

James and Isabella led the way, moving along the street like an arctic cold front. And so well satisfied was Isabella with her lot, so content to ensure a pleasant walk for her brother’s friend, and her friend’s brother, so pure and uncoquettish were her feelings, that—though they passed certain two young men—she paid them no notice whatsoever and looked back at them only three times.

John Thorpe kept of course with Catherine, following up the cold front with a major heat wave. After a few minutes’ silence, he renewed the conversation about his gig. “Miss Morland, it would be reckoned a cheap thing by some. I might have sold it for ten guineas more the next day! Morland was with me at the time.”

“Yes,” said Morland, who overheard this; “but you forget that your horse was included.”

“My horse! Oh, d—— it! I would not sell my horse for a hundred. Are you fond of an open carriage, Miss Morland?”

Catherine spoke, glancing as little as possible at the lumbering ogre at her side. “Yes, very; I have hardly ever an opportunity of being in one; but I am particularly fond of it.”

“I am glad of it; I will drive you out in mine every day.”

“Thank you,” said Catherine, in some distress, from a doubt of the propriety of accepting such an offer, and from the small matter of
whom
the offer came from.

“I will drive you up Lansdown Hill tomorrow.”

“No! No! No!”

The angelic chorus of protest was so loud that it eclipsed all other street noises.

“Oh, hush!—choo!” sneezed Catherine, and widened her eyes meaningfully at the darting figures of Lawrence, inches from her nose, and Clarence and Terence at both her ears, plus a dozen or so unnamed seraphs pulling at her hair and bonnet and petticoats.

“Thank you; but will not your horse want rest?” she then managed to utter.

“Rest! He has only come three and twenty miles today; all nonsense; nothing ruins horses so much as rest; nothing knocks them up so soon. No, no; I shall exercise mine at the average of four hours every day while I am here.” As Thorpe spoke with animation, the heat in his immediate vicinity shot up at least five more degrees.

“Shall you indeed!” said Catherine very seriously, removing a handkerchief to wipe her brow and the tip of her nose. “That will be forty miles a day.”

“Forty! Aye, fifty, for what I care. Maybe even sixty! Nay, why stop there—seventy! Well, I will drive you up Lansdown tomorrow; mind, I am engaged.”

“How delightful that will be!” cried Isabella, turning round, and bringing a much-needed cooling weather front, which Catherine momentarily appreciated—that is, before she felt her moist brow start to rime over. “My dearest Catherine, I quite envy you; but I am afraid, brother, you will not have room for a third.”

“A third indeed! No, no; I did not come to Bath to drive my sisters about; that would be a good joke, faith! Morland must take care of you.”

Angels were verily colliding in the air between them all.

James Morland, meanwhile, pulled out his own handkerchief, and started to mutter about blasted unseasonable cold and rotten heat at this time of the year, and how, dare say, one could hardly keep up with the flux of it all, in the span of minutes, it seemed . . .

This was followed by a dialogue of civilities between James and Isabella, as they now all milled about in one grouping. And it started to rain yet again, so that even the passerby stared at the precipitation of about three feet in diameter, as if a single watering pail was being emptied from far up in the heavens directly over their spot. One matron stopped, saying, “Upon my word, one sees it all in Bath!” and graciously offered them her umbrella.

But Catherine heard neither the particulars nor the result. As they resumed walking, distancing the two nephilim from each other, the rain ceased. And Catherine’s brutish companion’s discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated thunder-and-brimstone pitch to nothing more than grunts of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman they met.

And Catherine—after listening and agreeing as long as she could, with all the civil deference of the youthful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opposite opinion to a large-toothed ogre—ventured at last to vary the tedious subject to one uppermost in her thoughts: “Have you ever read
Udolpho,
Mr. Thorpe?”

“
Udolpho!
Oh, Lord! Not I; I never read novels; I have something else to do.”

Catherine, humbled and ashamed, was going to apologize for her question, but she received angelic succor.

“Fie! One might wonder, dear child, if this one ever reads at all!” said Clarence, or maybe Terence.

And Thorpe prevented her by saying, “Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since
Tom Jones
, except
The Monk;
I read that t’other day; but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation.”

“I think you must like
Udolpho,
if you were to read it; it is so very interesting.” Catherine was emboldened by her favorite subject.

“Not I, faith! No, if I read any, it shall be Mrs. Radcliffe’s; her novels are amusing enough; they are worth reading. Some fun and nature in them, not to mention, the secret to hidden treasure—”

“Ahem!” came a loud meaningful cough from Isabella up ahead.

“
Udolpho
was written by Mrs. Radcliffe,” said Catherine, with some hesitation, from fear of mortifying him into raising the immediate temperature even further.

“Not sure; was it? Aye, I remember, so it was. I was thinking of that other stupid book, written by that woman who married the French emigrant.”

“I suppose you mean
Camilla?
”

“Yes, that’s the book; such unnatural stuff! An old man playing at see-saw.”

“I have never read it.”

“You had no loss, I assure you; the horridest nonsense you can imagine; nothing but an old man’s playing at see-saw and learning Latin; upon my soul there is not . . .”

Catherine wiped her brow and wisely endured.

This brought them to the door of Mrs. Thorpe’s lodgings. “Ah, Mother! How do you do?” said the dutiful and affectionate son, giving her a hearty shake of the hand (and possibly some heat blisters, but the dear mother was surely used to it). “Where did you get that quiz of a hat? It makes you look like an old witch.” And a wicked yellowish glow came to the monstrous creature’s eyes.

Poor Mrs. Thorpe, thought Catherine, surely did not deserve such unfounded commentary, in light of having borne such offspring and thus performed her required Herculean Labors upon this earth.

The offspring continued: “Here is Morland and I come to stay a few days with you, so you must look out for a couple of good beds somewhere near.”

And this address seemed to satisfy all the fondest wishes of the mother’s heart, for she received him with the most delighted and exulting affection. It occurred to Catherine that Mrs. Thorpe had
no idea
—which was surely for the best.

On his two younger sisters Thorpe bestowed an equal portion of his fraternal tenderness. He asked each of them how they did, and observed that they both looked very ugly.

Such manners heartily repulsed Catherine; but he was James’s friend—she could not very well tell her brother she routinely witnessed angels, and now—demonic ogres.

Her judgment was further confounded by Isabella’s assuring her, when they withdrew to see the new hat, that John thought her the most charming girl in the world. And before they parted, John engaged her to dance with him that evening.

Had Catherine been older or vainer, such attacks might have done little. But youth requires uncommon steadiness to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world—even by demonic nephilim with large carnivore teeth—and of being so very early engaged as a partner.

As a consequence, when the two Morlands, after sitting an hour with the Thorpes, set off to walk together to Mr. Allen’s, and James said, “Well, Catherine, how do you like my friend Thorpe?” instead of answering plainly,
“I do not like him at all, he is a drooling ogre, and his sister a man-luring harpy,”
she carefully replied, “I like him very much; he seems very agreeable.”