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There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.
Close your eyes and feel yourself sink into the support beneath you and let all the worries of the day drift away.
This is your time and your space.
Take a deep breath in through your nose and let it out with a long sigh.
There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.
Happy listening.
Chapter 23 continued.
Katherine ventured when next alone with Eleanor to express her wish of being permitted to see her mother's room,
As well as all the rest of that side of the house,
And Eleanor promised to attend her there whenever they should have a convenient hour.
The general must be watched from home before that room could be entered.
It remains as it was,
I suppose,
Said she in a tone of feeling.
Yes,
Entirely.
And how long ago may it be that your mother died?
She's been dead these nine years.
And nine years,
Katherine knew,
Was a trifle of time compared with what generally elapsed after the death of an injured wife before her room was put to rights.
You were with her,
I suppose,
To the last?
No,
I was unfortunately from home.
Her illness was sudden and short and before I arrived,
It was all over.
Katherine's blood ran cold with the horrid suggestions which naturally sprang from these words.
Could it be possible?
Could Henry's father?
And yet how many were the examples to justify even the blackest suspicions?
And when she saw him in the evening,
While she worked with her friend,
Slowly pacing the drawing room for an hour together,
With downcast eyes and contracted brow,
She felt secure from all possibility of wronging him.
It was the air and attitude of a Montoni,
What could more plainly speak the gloomy workings of a mind,
Not wholly debt to every sense of humanity,
In its fearful review of past scenes of guilt.
Unhappy man.
And the anxiousness of her spirits directed her eyes towards his figure so repeatedly as to catch Miss Tilney's notice.
My father,
She whispered,
Often walks about the room in this way,
Is nothing unusual.
So much the worse,
Thought Katherine.
Such ill-timed exercise was of a piece with the strange unseasonableness of his morning walks,
And Bo did nothing good.
After an evening,
The little variety in seeming length of which made her peculiarly sensible of Henry's importance among them,
She was heartily glad to be dismissed,
Though it was a look from the general not designed for her observation,
Which sent his daughter to the bell.
When the butler would have lit his master's candle,
However,
He was forbidden.
The latter was not going to retire.
I have many pamphlets to finish,
He said to Katherine,
Before I can close my eyes,
And perhaps may be poring over the affairs of the nation for hours after your sleep.
Can either of us be more meekly employed?
My eyes will be blinding for the good of others,
And yours preparing by rest for future mischief.
But neither the business alleged nor the magnificent compliment could win Katherine from thinking that some very different object must occasion so serious a delay of proper repose.
To be kept up for hours after the family were in bed by stupid pamphlets was not very likely.
There must be some deeper cause.
Something was to be done,
Which could be done only while the household slept,
And the probability that Mrs Tilney yet lived,
Shut up for causes unknown,
And receiving from the pitiless hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food,
Was a conclusion which necessarily followed.
Shocking as was the idea,
It was at least better than a death unfairly hastened,
As in the natural course of things she must ere long be released.
The suddenness of her reputed illness,
The absence of her daughter,
And probably of her other children at the time,
All favoured the supposition of her imprisonment.
Its origin,
Jealousy perhaps,
Or wanton cruelty,
Was yet to be unravelled.
In revolving these matters while Katherine undressed,
It suddenly struck her as not likely that she might that morning have passed near the very spot of this unfortunate woman's confinement,
Might have been within a few paces of the cell in which she languished out her days.
For what part of the abbey could be more fitted for the purpose than that which yet bore the traces of monastic division?
In the high arched passage,
Paved with stone,
Which already she had trodden with peculiar awe,
She well remembered the doors of which the general had given no account.
To what might not those doors lead?
In support of the plausibility of this conjecture,
It further occurred to her the forbidden gallery in which lay the apartments of the unfortunate Mrs Tilney must be,
As certainly as her memory could guide her,
Exactly over the suspected range of cells,
And the staircase by the side of those apartments,
Of which she had caught a transient glimpse,
Communicating by some secret means within those cells,
Might have well favoured the barbarous proceedings of her husband.
Down that staircase she had perhaps been conveyed in a state of well-prepared insensibility.
Catherine sometimes started at the boldness of her own surmises,
And sometimes hoped or feared she had gone too far,
But they were supported by such appearances as made their dismissal impossible.
The side of the quadrangle in which she supposed the guilty seemed to be acting,
Being,
According to her belief,
Just opposite her own,
It struck her that,
If judiciously watched,
Some rays of light from the general's lamp might glimmer through the lower windows as he passed to the prison of his wife.
And twice before she stepped into bed,
Catherine strolled gently from her room to the corresponding window in the gallery,
To see if it appeared.
But all abroad was dark and it must yet be too early.
The various ascending noises convinced her the servants must still be up.
Till midnight she supposed it would be in vain to watch,
But then when the clock had struck twelve and all was quiet,
She would,
If not quite appalled by darkness,
Steal out and look once more.
The clock struck twelve and Catherine had been half an hour asleep.
Chapter 24 The next day afforded no opportunity for the proposed examination of the mysterious apartments.
It was Sunday and the whole time between morning and afternoon service was required by the general in exercise abroad or eating cold meat at home,
And great as was Catherine's curiosity,
Her courage was not equal to a wish of exploring them after dinner,
Either by the fading light or the sky between six and seven o'clock,
Or by the yet more partial,
Though stronger illumination of a treacherous lamp.
The day was unmarked therefore by anything to interest her imagination beyond the sight of a very elegant monument to the memory of Mrs Tilney,
Which immediately fronted the family pew.
By that her eye was instantly caught and long retained,
And the perusal of the highly strained epitaph,
In which every virtue was ascribed to her by the inconsolable husband,
Who must have been in some way or other her destroyer,
Affected Catherine even to tears.
That the general having erected such a monument should be able to face it was not perhaps very strange,
And yet that he could sit so boldly collected within its view,
Maintain so elevated an air,
Look so fearlessly around,
Nay,
That he should even enter the church seemed wonderful to her.
It was,
However,
That many instances of beings equally hardened in guilt might not be produced.
She could remember dozens who had persevered in every possible vice,
Going on from crime to crime,
Murdering whomsoever they chose,
Without any feeling of humanity or remorse,
Till a violent death or a religious retirement closed their black career.
The erection of the monument herself could not in the smallest degree affect her doubts of Mrs Tilney's actual decease.
Were she even to descend into the family vault where her ashes were supposed to slumber?
Were she to behold the coffin in which they were said to be enclosed?
What could it avail in such a case?
Catherine had read too much not to be perfectly aware of the ease with which a waxen figure might be introduced,
And a suppositious funeral carried on.
