Part 53: Hopes and Fears

The last day of the year was not usually so portentous a one in the Morland household. The requirements of the parish extended well past to Epiphany, and there was always plenty to do for their neighbours and friends. Catherine had never thought overly much about the passage of one year to the next; after all, they were very much the same in Fullerton.

But whereas the previous months had seemed to crawl with a distressing elongation, the days now passed far too swiftly. She was not unhappy, far from it; she was joyous, excited, almost bursting with the knowledge that in very little time she would become Mrs. Henry Tilney, a name considered long before it was made an approachable reality, and practised in secret whenever she grew overeager for their joining, as she was determined not to mar her new name in her first letters home as her old had been so many times in the same correspondence. Everyone in their circle was as felicitous. It was the warmest Christmas season imaginable despite the ill weather.

Perhaps it was the continued snow piling in drifts about the lane, or the dark dreariness of the day with overcast clouds, but Catherine found herself pensive that morning. She reread some of her last treasured letters, which always helped. She kept busy with the little ones, which made her smile. She was not necessarily sad, she did not think, but she felt like crying at odd times all the same. It was a strange feeling sifting deep in her heart. She looked about the familiar house and while she longed to see a different one, remembered fondly with apple trees just budding, this little room would soon be as missed as the other had been. Even when she returned one day it would not be her home ever again, not really, not as it was now.

Eleanor never wrote of missing her home, and little wonder; it could only be a relief to leave Northanger Abbey. Her mother had not moved beyond the length of a county road on her marriage and never thought to stray farther. Mrs. Allen occasionally discussed the house of her girlhood but they travelled often, it was not as if she could not go there if she wished, and she was more likely to want company when somewhere fashionable. Everyone Catherine knew appeared very content right where they were.

There was, of course, Mrs. Tilney, whose portrait now hung in a place of honour in Eleanor's grand new chambers, and whose memorial still proclaimed her worth back in Gloucestershire. In all Catherine's previous musings about this lady she had never considered where she came from. Had she been a hopeful bride once? Were she and the general very much in love in their youth? And had she been both nervous but happy all the same? What, indeed, would she think of the girl taking that same name?

She started to write Henry, as was her habit now whenever she wanted to think through a matter, and found she could not decide how to phrase her questions. Or rather, she did not want to think through it so very hard, but rather speak to him herself, and see his eyes as they looked at her, and feel his hand and even smell him (though hopefully after they had both bathed, which would be far better than not). Oh, how wonderful, that there was a date in sight, and neither of them need wait another year but might start the next together. They would need to practice a different communion, true, but she doubted not it would come as surely as her stitching continued apace. Mrs. Catherine Tilney would not be at all like those that came before her; she would not be at all like she herself had been either. She would be the same and new all at once, like fresh snow flakes or flower petals unfurled, the leaves and twigs and every other natural thing in her world that must also be part of the one she was to inhabit later.

It was like a novel, in fact, all the pages turning until the last, and yet was there ever truly an end to a good story? There, that was how she would discuss it with Henry, that would be exactly the way to start. Catherine smiled by the window, her feelings writ across her countenance but her musings very much her own, and if there was still an occasional tear in the next week it was not to be mourned. She was as ready as anyone could be to put down the first volume of this tale and explore every ordinary yet wondrous detail of the next.

Title from Chapter 13 of of Northanger Abbey: "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday have now passed in review before the reader; the events of each day, its hopes and fears, mortifications and pleasures, have been separately stated, and the pangs of Sunday only now remain to be described, and close the week."