The night was stormy;the wind had been rising at intervals the whole afternoon;and by the time the party broke up,it blew and rained violently.Catherine,as she crossed the hall,listened to the tempest with sensations of awe;and,when she heard it rage round a corner of the ancient building and close with sudden fury a distant door,felt for the first time that she was really in an Abbey. Yes,these were characteristic sounds; they brought to her recollection a countless variety of dreadful situations and horrid scenes,which such buildings had witnessed,and such storms ushered in;and most heartily did she rejoice in the happier circumstances attending her entrance within walls so solemn! She had nothing to dread from midnight assassins or drunken gallants.Henry had certainly been only in jest in what he had told her that morning.In a house so furnished,and so guarded,she could have nothing to explore or to suffer;and might go to her bedroom as securely as if it had been her own chamber at Fullerton.Thus wisely fortifying her mind,as she proceeded upstairs,she was enabled,especially on perceiving that Miss Tilney slept only two doors from her,to enter her room with a tolerably stout heart;and her spirits were immediately assisted by the cheerful blaze of a wood fire.‘How much better is this,’said she,as she walked to the fender ‘how much better to find a fire ready lit,than to have to wait shivering in the cold till all the family are in bed,as so many poor girls have been obliged to do,and then to have a faithful old servant frightening one by coming in with a faggot!How glad I am that Northanger is what it is!If it had been like some other places,I do not know that,in such a night as this,I could have answered for my courage: but now,to be sure,there is nothing to alarm one.’
She looked round the room.The window curtains seemed in motion.It could be nothing but the violence of the wind penetrating through the divisions of the shutters;and she stepped boldly forward,carelessly humming a tune,to assure herself of its being so,peeped courageously behind each curtain,saw nothing on either low window seat to scare her,and on placing a hand against the shutter,felt the strongest conviction of the wind's force.A glance at the old chest,as she turned away from this examination,was not without its use;she scorned the causeless fears of an idle fancy,and began with a most happy indifference to prepare herself for bed.‘She should take her time;she should not hurry herself;she did not care if she were the last person up in the house.But she would not make up her fire;that would seem cowardly,as if she wished for the protection of light after she were in bed.’The fire therefore died away,and Catherine,having spent the best part of an hour in her arrangements,was beginning to think of stepping into bed,when,on giving a parting glance round the room,she was struck by the appearance of a high,old fashioned black cabinet,which,though in a situation conspicuous enough,had never caught her notice before.Henry's words,his deion of the ebony cabinet which was to escape her observation at first,immediately rushed across her;and though there could be nothing really in it,there was something whimsical,it was certainly a very remarkable coincidence!She took her candle and looked closely at the cabinet.It was not absolutely ebony and gold;but it was Japan,black and yellow Japan of the handsomest kind;and as she held her candle,the yellow had very much the effect of gold.The key was in the door,and she had a strange fancy to look into it;not however with the smallest expectation of finding anything,but it was so very odd,after what Henry had said.In short,she could not sleep till she had examined it.So,placing the candle with great caution on a chair,she seized the key with a very tremulous hand and tried to turn it;but it resisted her utmost strength.Alarmed,but not discouraged,she tried it another way;a bolt flew,and she believed herself successful;but how strangely mysterious! the door was still immoveable.She paused a moment in breathless wonder.The wind roared down the chimney,the rain beat in torrents against the windows,and everything seemed to speak the awfulness of her situation.To retire to bed,however,unsatisfied on such a point,would be vain,since sleep must be impossible with the consciousness of a cabinet so mysteriously closed in her immediate vicinity.Again therefore she applied herself to the key,and after moving it in every possible way for some instants with the determined celerity of hope's last effort,the door suddenly yielded to her hand:her heart leaped with exultation at such a victory,and having thrown open each folding door,the second being secured only by bolts of less wonderful construction than the lock,though in that her eye could not discern anything unusual,a double range of small drawers appeared in view,with some larger drawers above and below them;and in the centre,a small door,closed also with a lock and key,secured in all probability a cavity of importance.
