From Saturday to Wednesday,however,they were now to be without Henry.This was the sad finale of every reflection: and Captain Tilney's letter would certainly come in his absence;and Wednesday she was very sure would be wet.The past,present,and future,were all equally in gloom.Her brother so unhappy,and her loss in Isabella so great;and Eleanor's spirits always affected by Henry's absence!What was there to interest or amuse her?She was tired of the woods and the shrubberies always so smooth and so dry;and the Abbey in itself was no more to her now than any other house.The painful remembrance of the folly it had helped to nourish and perfect,was the only emotion which could spring from a consideration of the building.What a revolution in her ideas!She,who had so longed to be in an abbey!Now,there was nothing so charming to her imagination as the unpretending comfort of a well connected parsonage,something like Fullerton,but better:Fullerton had its faults,but Woodston probably had none. If Wednesday should ever come!
It did come,and exactly when it might be reasonably looked for.It came it was fine and Catherine trod on air.By ten o'clock ,the chaise and four conveyed the trio from the Abbey;and,after an agreeable drive of almost twenty miles,they entered Woodston,a large and populous village,in a situation not unpleasant.Catherine was ashamed to say how pretty she thought it,as the General seemed to think an apology necessary for the flatness of the country,and the size of the village;but in her heart she preferred it to any place she had ever been at,and looked with great admiration at every neat house above the rank of a cottage,and at all the little chandler's shops which they passed.At the further end of the village,and tolerably disengaged from the rest of it,stood the parsonage,a new built substantial stone house,with its semi circular sweep and green gates;and,as they drove up to the door,Henry,with the friends of his solitude,a large Newfoundland puppy and two or three terriers,was ready to receive and make much of them.
Catherine's mind was too full,as she entered the house,for her either to observe or to say a great deal;and,till called on by the General for her opinion of it,she had very little idea of the room in which she was sitting.Upon looking round it then,she perceived in a moment that it was the most comfortable room in the world;but she was too guarded to say so,and the coldness of her praise disappointed him.
‘We are not calling it a good house,’said he. ‘We are not comparing it with Fullerton and Northanger We are considering it as a mere parsonage,small and confined,we allow,but decent perhaps,and habitable;and altogether not inferior to the generality, or,in other words,I believe there are few country parsonages in England half so good.It may admit of improvement,however.Far be it from me to say otherwise;and anything in reason a bow thrown out,perhaps though,between ourselves,if there is one thing more than another my aversion,it is a patched on bow.’
Catherine did not hear enough of this speech to understand or be pained by it;and other subjects being studiously brought forward and supported by Henry,at the same time that a tray full of refreshments was introduced by his servant,the General was shortly restored to his complacency,and Catherine to all her usual ease of spirits.
The room in question was of a commodious,well proportioned size,and handsomely fitted up as a dining parlour;and on their quitting it to walk round the grounds,she was shown,first into a smaller apartment,belonging peculiarly to the master of the house,and made unusually tidy on the occasion;and afterwards into what was to be the drawing room,with the appearance of which,though unfurnished,Catherine was delighted enough even to satisfy the General.It was a prettily shaped room,the windows reaching to the ground,and the view from them pleasant,though only over green meadows;and she expressed her admiration at the moment with all the honest simplicity with which she felt it.‘Oh!Why do not you fit up this room,Mr Tilney?What a pity not to have it fitted up!It is the prettiest room I ever saw; it is the prettiest room in the world!’
‘I trust,’said the General,with a most satisfied smile,‘that it will very speedily be furnished:it waits only for a lady's taste!’
‘Well,if it was my house,I should never sit anywhere else.Oh!What a sweet little cottage there is among the trees apple trees too!It is the prettiest cottage!’
‘You like it you approve it as an object; it is enough.Henry,remember that Robinson is spoken to about it.The cottage remains.’
Such a compliment recalled all Catherine's consciousness,and silenced her directly;and,though pointedly applied to by the General for her choice of the prevailing colour of the paper and hangings,nothing like an opinion on the subject could be drawn from her.The influence of fresh objects and fresh air,however,was of great use in dissipating these embarrassing associations;and,having reached the ornamental part of the premises,consisting of a walk round two sides of a meadow,on which Henry's genius had begun to act about half a year ago,she was sufficiently recovered to think it prettier than any pleasure ground she had ever been in before,though there was not a shrub in it higher than the green bench in the corner.
A saunter into other meadows,and through part of the village,with a visit to the stables to examine some improvements,and a charming game of play with a litter of puppies just able to roll about,brought them to four o'clock ,when Catherine scarcely thought it could be three.At four they were to dine,and at six to set off on their return.Never had any day passed so quickly!
