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Title: Washington Square
Author: Henry James
Release Date: October, 2001 [Etext #2870]
Edition: 10
The Project Gutenberg Etext of Washington Square, by Henry James
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WASHINGTON SQUARE
by Henry James
CHAPTER I
During a portion of the first half of the present century, and more
particularly during the latter part of it, there flourished and
practised in the city of New York a physician who enjoyed perhaps an
exceptional share of the consideration which, in the United States,
has always been bestowed upon distinguished members of the medical
profession. This profession in America has constantly been held in
honour, and more successfully than elsewhere has put forward a claim
to the epithet of "liberal." In a country in which, to play a social
part, you must either earn your income or make believe that you earn
it, the healing art has appeared in a high degree to combine two
recognised sources of credit. It belongs to the realm of the
practical, which in the United States is a great recommendation; and
it is touched by the light of science--a merit appreciated in a
community in which the love of knowledge has not always been
accompanied by leisure and opportunity. It was an element in Dr.
Sloper's reputation that his learning and his skill were very evenly
balanced; he was what you might call a scholarly doctor, and yet
there was nothing abstract in his remedies--he always ordered you to
take something. Though he was felt to be extremely thorough, he was
not uncomfortably theoretic, and if he sometimes explained matters
rather more minutely than might seem of use to the patient, he never
went so far (like some practitioners one has heard of) as to trust to
the explanation alone, but always left behind him an inscrutable
prescription. There were some doctors that left the prescription
without offering any explanation at all; and he did not belong to
that class either, which was, after all, the most vulgar. It will be
seen that I am describing a clever man; and this is really the reason
why Dr. Sloper had become a local celebrity. At the time at which we
are chiefly concerned with him, he was some fifty years of age, and
his popularity was at its height. He was very witty, and he passed
in the best society of New York for a man of the world--which,
indeed, he was, in a very sufficient degree. I hasten to add, to
anticipate possible misconception, that he was not the least of a
charlatan. He was a thoroughly honest man--honest in a degree of
which he had perhaps lacked the opportunity to give the complete
measure; and, putting aside the great good-nature of the circle in
which he practised, which was rather fond of boasting that it
possessed the "brightest" doctor in the country, he daily justified
his claim to the talents attributed to him by the popular voice. He
was an observer, even a philosopher, and to be bright was so natural
to him, and (as the popular voice said) came so easily, that he never
aimed at mere effect, and had none of the little tricks and
pretensions of second-rate reputations. It must be confessed that
fortune had favoured him, and that he had found the path to
prosperity very soft to his tread. He had married at the age of
twenty-seven, for love, a very charming girl, Miss Catherine
Harrington, of New York, who, in addition to her charms, had brought
him a solid dowry. Mrs. Sloper was amiable, graceful, accomplished,
elegant, and in 1820 she had been one of the pretty girls of the
small but promising capital which clustered about the Battery and
overlooked the Bay, and of which the uppermost boundary was indicated
by the grassy waysides of Canal Street. Even at the age of twenty-
seven Austin Sloper had made his mark sufficiently to mitigate the
anomaly of his having been chosen among a dozen suitors by a young
woman of high fashion, who had ten thousand dollars of income and the
most charming eyes in the island of Manhattan. These eyes, and some
of their accompaniments, were for about five years a source of
extreme satisfaction to the young physician, who was both a devoted
and a very happy husband. The fact of his having married a rich
woman made no difference in the line he had traced for himself, and
he cultivated his profession with as definite a purpose as if he
still had no other resources than his fraction of the modest
patrimony which on his father's death he had shared with his brothers
and sisters. This purpose had not been preponderantly to make money-
-it had been rather to learn something and to do something. To learn
something interesting, and to do something useful--this was, roughly
speaking, the programme he had sketched, and of which the accident of
his wife having an income appeared to him in no degree to modify the
validity. He was fond of his practice, and of exercising a skill of
which he was agreeably conscious, and it was so patent a truth that
if he were not a doctor there was nothing else he could be, that a
doctor he persisted in being, in the best possible conditions. Of
course his easy domestic situation saved him a good deal of drudgery,
and his wife's affiliation to the "best people" brought him a good
many of those patients whose symptoms are, if not more interesting in
themselves than those of the lower orders, at least more consistently
displayed. He desired experience, and in the course of twenty years
he got a great deal. It must be added that it came to him in some
forms which, whatever might have been their intrinsic value, made it
the reverse of welcome. His first child, a little boy of
extraordinary promise, as the Doctor, who was not addicted to easy
enthusiasms, firmly believed, died at three years of age, in spite of
everything that the mother's tenderness and the father's science
could invent to save him. Two years later Mrs. Sloper gave birth to
a second infant--an infant of a sex which rendered the poor child, to
the Doctor's sense, an inadequate substitute for his lamented first-
born, of whom he had promised himself to make an admirable man. The
little girl was a disappointment; but this was not the worst. A week
after her birth the young mother, who, as the phrase is, had been
doing well, suddenly betrayed alarming symptoms, and before another
week had elapsed Austin Sloper was a widower.
For a man whose trade was to keep people alive, he had certainly done
poorly in his own family; and a bright doctor who within three years
loses his wife and his little boy should perhaps be prepared to see
either his skill or his affection impugned. Our friend, however,
escaped criticism: that is, he escaped all criticism but his own,
which was much the most competent and most formidable. He walked
under the weight of this very private censure for the rest of his
days, and bore for ever the scars of a castigation to which the
strongest hand he knew had treated him on the night that followed his
wife's death. The world, which, as I have said, appreciated him,
pitied him too much to be ironical; his misfortune made him more
interesting, and even helped him to be the fashion. It was observed
that even medical families cannot escape the more insidious forms of
disease, and that, after all, Dr. Sloper had lost other patients
beside the two I have mentioned; which constituted an honourable
precedent. His little girl remained to him, and though she was not
what he had desired, he proposed to himself to make the best of her.
He had on hand a stock of unexpended authority, by which the child,
in its early years, profited largely. She had been named, as a
matter of course, after her poor mother, and even in her most
diminutive babyhood the Doctor never called her anything but
Catherine. She grew up a very robust and healthy child, and her
father, as he looked at her, often said to himself that, such as she
was, he at least need have no fear of losing her. I say "such as she
was," because, to tell the truth--But this is a truth of which I will
defer the telling.
CHAPTER II
When the child was about ten years old, he invited his sister, Mrs.
Penniman, to come and stay with him. The Miss Slopers had been but
two in number, and both of them had married early in life. The
younger, Mrs. Almond by name, was the wife of a prosperous merchant,
and the mother of a blooming family. She bloomed herself, indeed,
and was a comely, comfortable, reasonable woman, and a favourite with
her clever brother, who, in the matter of women, even when they were
nearly related to him, was a man of distinct preferences. He
preferred Mrs. Almond to his sister Lavinia, who had married a poor
clergyman, of a sickly constitution and a flowery style of eloquence,
and then, at the age of thirty-three, had been left a widow, without
children, without fortune--with nothing but the memory of Mr.
Penniman's flowers of speech, a certain vague aroma of which hovered
about her own conversation. Nevertheless he had offered her a home
under his own roof, which Lavinia accepted with the alacrity of a
woman who had spent the ten years of her married life in the town of
Poughkeepsie. The Doctor had not proposed to Mrs. Penniman to come
and live with him indefinitely; he had suggested that she should make
an asylum of his house while she looked about for unfurnished
lodgings. It is uncertain whether Mrs. Penniman ever instituted a
search for unfurnished lodgings, but it is beyond dispute that she
never found them. She settled herself with her brother and never
went away, and when Catherine was twenty years old her Aunt Lavinia
was still one of the most striking features of her immediate
entourage. Mrs. Penniman's own account of the matter was that she
had remained to take charge of her niece's education. She had given
this account, at least, to every one but the Doctor, who never asked
for explanations which he could entertain himself any day with
inventing. Mrs. Penniman, moreover, though she had a good deal of a
certain sort of artificial assurance, shrank, for indefinable
reasons, from presenting herself to her brother as a fountain of
instruction. She had not a high sense of humour, but she had enough
to prevent her from making this mistake; and her brother, on his
side, had enough to excuse her, in her situation, for laying him
under contribution during a considerable part of a lifetime. He
therefore assented tacitly to the proposition which Mrs. Penniman had
tacitly laid down, that it was of importance that the poor motherless
girl should have a brilliant woman near her. His assent could only
be tacit, for he had never been dazzled by his sister's intellectual
lustre. Save when he fell in love with Catherine Harrington, he had
never been dazzled, indeed, by any feminine characteristics whatever;
and though he was to a certain extent what is called a ladies'
doctor, his private opinion of the more complicated sex was not
exalted. He regarded its complications as more curious than
edifying, and he had an idea of the beauty of REASON, which was, on
the whole, meagrely gratified by what he observed in his female
patients. His wife had been a reasonable woman, but she was a bright
exception; among several things that he was sure of, this was perhaps
the principal. Such a conviction, of course, did little either to
mitigate or to abbreviate his widowhood; and it set a limit to his
recognition, at the best, of Catherine's possibilities and of Mrs.
Penniman's ministrations. He, nevertheless, at the end of six
months, accepted his sister's permanent presence as an accomplished
fact, and as Catherine grew older perceived that there were in effect
good reasons why she should have a companion of her own imperfect
sex. He was extremely polite to Lavinia, scrupulously, formally
polite; and she had never seen him in anger but once in her life,
when he lost his temper in a theological discussion with her late
husband. With her he never discussed theology, nor, indeed,
discussed anything; he contented himself with making known, very
distinctly, in the form of a lucid ultimatum, his wishes with regard
to Catherine.
Once, when the girl was about twelve years old, he had said to her:
"Try and make a clever woman of her, Lavinia; I should like her to be
a clever woman."
Mrs. Penniman, at this, looked thoughtful a moment. "My dear
Austin," she then inquired, "do you think it is better to be clever
than to be good?"
"Good for what?" asked the Doctor. "You are good for nothing unless
you are clever."
From this assertion Mrs. Penniman saw no reason to dissent; she
possibly reflected that her own great use in the world was owing to
her aptitude for many things.
"Of course I wish Catherine to be good," the Doctor said next day;
"but she won't be any the less virtuous for not being a fool. I am
not afraid of her being wicked; she will never have the salt of
malice in her character. She is as good as good bread, as the French
say; but six years hence I don't want to have to compare her to good
bread and butter."
"Are you afraid she will turn insipid? My dear brother, it is I who
supply the butter; so you needn't fear!" said Mrs. Penniman, who had
taken in hand the child's accomplishments, overlooking her at the
piano, where Catherine displayed a certain talent, and going with her
to the dancing-class, where it must be confessed that she made but a
modest figure.
Mrs. Penniman was a tall, thin, fair, rather faded woman, with a
perfectly amiable disposition, a high standard of gentility, a taste
for light literature, and a certain foolish indirectness and
obliquity of character. She was romantic, she was sentimental, she
had a passion for little secrets and mysteries--a very innocent
passion, for her secrets had hitherto always been as unpractical as
addled eggs. She was not absolutely veracious; but this defect was
of no great consequence, for she had never had anything to conceal.
She would have liked to have a lover, and to correspond with him
under an assumed name in letters left at a shop; I am bound to say
that her imagination never carried the intimacy farther than this.
Mrs. Penniman had never had a lover, but her brother, who was very
shrewd, understood her turn of mind. "When Catherine is about
seventeen," he said to himself, "Lavinia will try and persuade her
that some young man with a moustache is in love with her. It will be
quite untrue; no young man, with a moustache or without, will ever be
in love with Catherine. But Lavinia will take it up, and talk to her
about it; perhaps, even, if her taste for clandestine operations
doesn't prevail with her, she will talk to me about it. Catherine
won't see it, and won't believe it, fortunately for her peace of
mind; poor Catherine isn't romantic."
She was a healthy well-grown child, without a trace of her mother's
beauty. She was not ugly; she had simply a plain, dull, gentle
countenance. The most that had ever been said for her was that she
had a "nice" face, and, though she was an heiress, no one had ever
thought of regarding her as a belle. Her father's opinion of her
moral purity was abundantly justified; she was excellently,
imperturbably good; affectionate, docile, obedient, and much addicted
to speaking the truth. In her younger years she was a good deal of a
romp, and, though it is an awkward confession to make about one's
heroine, I must add that she was something of a glutton. She never,
that I know of, stole raisins out of the pantry; but she devoted her
pocket-money to the purchase of cream-cakes. As regards this,
however, a critical attitude would be inconsistent with a candid
reference to the early annals of any biographer. Catherine was
decidedly not clever; she was not quick with her book, nor, indeed,
with anything else. She was not abnormally deficient, and she
mustered learning enough to acquit herself respectably in
conversation with her contemporaries, among whom it must be avowed,
however, that she occupied a secondary place. It is well known that
in New York it is possible for a young girl to occupy a primary one.
Catherine, who was extremely modest, had no desire to shine, and on
most social occasions, as they are called, you would have found her
lurking in the background. She was extremely fond of her father, and
very much afraid of him; she thought him the cleverest and handsomest
and most celebrated of men. The poor girl found her account so
completely in the exercise of her affections that the little tremor
of fear that mixed itself with her filial passion gave the thing an
extra relish rather than blunted its edge. Her deepest desire was to
please him, and her conception of happiness was to know that she had
succeeded in pleasing him. She had never succeeded beyond a certain
point. Though, on the whole, he was very kind to her, she was
perfectly aware of this, and to go beyond the point in question
seemed to her really something to live for. What she could not know,
of course, was that she disappointed him, though on three or four
occasions the Doctor had been almost frank about it. She grew up
peacefully and prosperously, but at the age of eighteen Mrs. Penniman
had not made a clever woman of her. Dr. Sloper would have liked to
be proud of his daughter; but there was nothing to be proud of in
poor Catherine. There was nothing, of course, to be ashamed of; but
this was not enough for the Doctor, who was a proud man and would
have enjoyed being able to think of his daughter as an unusual girl.
There would have been a fitness in her being pretty and graceful,
intelligent and distinguished; for her mother had been the most
charming woman of her little day, and as regards her father, of
course he knew his own value. He had moments of irritation at having
produced a commonplace child, and he even went so far at times as to
take a certain satisfaction in the thought that his wife had not
lived to find her out. He was naturally slow in making this
discovery himself, and it was not till Catherine had become a young
lady grown that he regarded the matter as settled. He gave her the
benefit of a great many doubts; he was in no haste to conclude. Mrs.
Penniman frequently assured him that his daughter had a delightful
nature; but he knew how to interpret this assurance. It meant, to
his sense, that Catherine was not wise enough to discover that her
aunt was a goose--a limitation of mind that could not fail to be
agreeable to Mrs. Penniman. Both she and her brother, however,
exaggerated the young girl's limitations; for Catherine, though she
was very fond of her aunt, and conscious of the gratitude she owed
her, regarded her without a particle of that gentle dread which gave
its stamp to her admiration of her father. To her mind there was
nothing of the infinite about Mrs. Penniman; Catherine saw her all at
once, as it were, and was not dazzled by the apparition; whereas her
father's great faculties seemed, as they stretched away, to lose
themselves in a sort of luminous vagueness, which indicated, not that
they stopped, but that Catherine's own mind ceased to follow them.
It must not be supposed that Dr. Sloper visited his disappointment
upon the poor girl, or ever let her suspect that she had played him a
trick. On the contrary, for fear of being unjust to her, he did his
duty with exemplary zeal, and recognised that she was a faithful and
affectionate child. Besides, he was a philosopher; he smoked a good
many cigars over his disappointment, and in the fulness of time he
got used to it. He satisfied himself that he had expected nothing,
though, indeed, with a certain oddity of reasoning. "I expect
nothing," he said to himself, "so that if she gives me a surprise, it
will be all clear again. If she doesn't, it will be no loss." This
was about the time Catherine had reached her eighteenth year, so that
it will be seen her father had not been precipitate. At this time
she seemed not only incapable of giving surprises; it was almost a
question whether she could have received one--she was so quiet and
irresponsive. People who expressed themselves roughly called her
stolid. But she was irresponsive because she was shy, uncomfortably,
painfully shy. This was not always understood, and she sometimes
produced an impression of insensibility. In reality she was the
softest creature in the world.
CHAPTER III
As a child she had promised to be tall, but when she was sixteen she
ceased to grow, and her stature, like most other points in her
composition, was not unusual. She was strong, however, and properly
made, and, fortunately, her health was excellent. It has been noted
that the Doctor was a philosopher, but I would not have answered for
his philosophy if the poor girl had proved a sickly and suffering
person. Her appearance of health constituted her principal claim to
beauty, and her clear, fresh complexion, in which white and red were
very equally distributed, was, indeed, an excellent thing to see.
Her eye was small and quiet, her features were rather thick, her
tresses brown and smooth. A dull, plain girl she was called by
rigorous critics--a quiet, ladylike girl by those of the more
imaginative sort; but by neither class was she very elaborately
discussed. When it had been duly impressed upon her that she was a
young lady--it was a good while before she could believe it--she
suddenly developed a lively taste for dress: a lively taste is quite
the expression to use. I feel as if I ought to write it very small,
her judgement in this matter was by no means infallible; it was
liable to confusions and embarrassments. Her great indulgence of it
was really the desire of a rather inarticulate nature to manifest
itself; she sought to be eloquent in her garments, and to make up for
her diffidence of speech by a fine frankness of costume. But if she
expressed herself in her clothes it is certain that people were not
to blame for not thinking her a witty person. It must be added that
though she had the expectation of a fortune--Dr. Sloper for a long
time had been making twenty thousand dollars a year by his
profession, and laying aside the half of it--the amount of money at
her disposal was not greater than the allowance made to many poorer
girls. In those days in New York there were still a few altar-fires
flickering in the temple of Republican simplicity, and Dr. Sloper
would have been glad to see his daughter present herself, with a
classic grace, as a priestess of this mild faith. It made him fairly
grimace, in private, to think that a child of his should be both ugly
and overdressed. For himself, he was fond of the good things of
life, and he made a considerable use of them; but he had a dread of
vulgarity, and even a theory that it was increasing in the society
that surrounded him. Moreover, the standard of luxury in the United
States thirty years ago was carried by no means so high as at
present, and Catherine's clever father took the old-fashioned view of
the education of young persons. He had no particular theory on the
subject; it had scarcely as yet become a necessity of self-defence to
have a collection of theories. It simply appeared to him proper and
reasonable that a well-bred young woman should not carry half her
fortune on her back. Catherine's back was a broad one, and would
have carried a good deal; but to the weight of the paternal
displeasure she never ventured to expose it, and our heroine was
twenty years old before she treated herself, for evening wear, to a
red satin gown trimmed with gold fringe; though this was an article
which, for many years, she had coveted in secret. It made her look,
when she sported it, like a woman of thirty; but oddly enough, in
spite of her taste for fine clothes, she had not a grain of coquetry,
and her anxiety when she put them on was as to whether they, and not
she, would look well. It is a point on which history has not been
explicit, but the assumption is warrantable; it was in the royal
raiment just mentioned that she presented herself at a little
entertainment given by her aunt, Mrs. Almond. The girl was at this
time in her twenty-first year, and Mrs. Almond's party was the
beginning of something very important.
Some three or four years before this Dr. Sloper had moved his
household gods up town, as they say in New York. He had been living
ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite
copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standing in a street
within five minutes' walk of the City Hall, which saw its best days
(from the social point of view) about 1820. After this, the tide of
fashion began to set steadily northward, as, indeed, in New York,
thanks to the narrow channel in which it flows, it is obliged to do,
and the great hum of traffic rolled farther to the right and left of
Broadway. By the time the Doctor changed his residence the murmur of
trade had become a mighty uproar, which was music in the ears of all
good citizens interested in the commercial development, as they
delighted to call it, of their fortunate isle. Dr. Sloper's interest
in this phenomenon was only indirect--though, seeing that, as the
years went on, half his patients came to be overworked men of
business, it might have been more immediate--and when most of his
neighbours' dwellings (also ornamented with granite copings and large
fanlights) had been converted into offices, warehouses, and shipping
agencies, and otherwise applied to the base uses of commerce, he
determined to look out for a quieter home. The ideal of quiet and of
genteel retirement, in 1835, was found in Washington Square, where
the Doctor built himself a handsome, modern, wide-fronted house, with
a big balcony before the drawing-room windows, and a flight of marble
steps ascending to a portal which was also faced with white marble.
This structure, and many of its neighbours, which it exactly
resembled, were supposed, forty years ago, to embody the last results
of architectural science, and they remain to this day very solid and
honourable dwellings. In front of them was the Square, containing a
considerable quantity of inexpensive vegetation, enclosed by a wooden
paling, which increased its rural and accessible appearance; and
round the corner was the more august precinct of the Fifth Avenue,
taking its origin at this point with a spacious and confident air
which already marked it for high destinies. I know not whether it is
owing to the tenderness of early associations, but this portion of
New York appears to many persons the most delectable. It has a kind
of established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in other
quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a riper, richer, more
honourable look than any of the upper ramifications of the great
longitudinal thoroughfare--the look of having had something of a
social history. It was here, as you might have been informed on good
authority, that you had come into a world which appeared to offer a
variety of sources of interest; it was here that your grandmother
lived, in venerable solitude, and dispensed a hospitality which
commended itself alike to the infant imagination and the infant
palate; it was here that you took your first walks abroad, following
the nursery-maid with unequal step and sniffing up the strange odour
of the ailantus-trees which at that time formed the principal umbrage
of the Square, and diffused an aroma that you were not yet critical
enough to dislike as it deserved; it was here, finally, that your
first school, kept by a broad-bosomed, broad-based old lady with a
ferule, who was always having tea in a blue cup, with a saucer that
didn't match, enlarged the circle both of your observations and your
sensations. It was here, at any rate, that my heroine spent many
years of her life; which is my excuse for this topographical
parenthesis.
Mrs. Almond lived much farther up town, in an embryonic street with a
high number--a region where the extension of the city began to assume
a theoretic air, where poplars grew beside the pavement (when there
was one), and mingled their shade with the steep roofs of desultory
Dutch houses, and where pigs and chickens disported themselves in the
gutter. These elements of rural picturesqueness have now wholly
departed from New York street scenery; but they were to be found
within the memory of middle-aged persons, in quarters which now would
blush to be reminded of them. Catherine had a great many cousins,
and with her Aunt Almond's children, who ended by being nine in
number, she lived on terms of considerable intimacy. When she was
younger they had been rather afraid of her; she was believed, as the
phrase is, to be highly educated, and a person who lived in the
intimacy of their Aunt Penniman had something of reflected grandeur.
Mrs. Penniman, among the little Almonds, was an object of more
admiration than sympathy. Her manners were strange and formidable,
and her mourning robes--she dressed in black for twenty years after
her husband's death, and then suddenly appeared one morning with pink
roses in her cap--were complicated in odd, unexpected places with
buckles, bugles, and pins, which discouraged familiarity. She took
children too hard, both for good and for evil, and had an oppressive
air of expecting subtle things of them, so that going to see her was
a good deal like being taken to church and made to sit in a front
pew. It was discovered after a while, however, that Aunt Penniman
was but an accident in Catherine's existence, and not a part of its
essence, and that when the girl came to spend a Saturday with her
cousins, she was available for "follow-my-master," and even for
leapfrog. On this basis an understanding was easily arrived at, and
for several years Catherine fraternised with her young kinsmen. I
say young kinsmen, because seven of the little Almonds were boys, and
Catherine had a preference for those games which are most
conveniently played in trousers. By degrees, however, the little
Almonds' trousers began to lengthen, and the wearers to disperse and
settle themselves in life. The elder children were older than
Catherine, and the boys were sent to college or placed in counting-
rooms. Of the girls, one married very punctually, and the other as
punctually became engaged. It was to celebrate this latter event
that Mrs. Almond gave the little party I have mentioned. Her
daughter was to marry a stout young stockbroker, a boy of twenty; it
was thought a very good thing.
CHAPTER IV
Mrs. Penniman, with more buckles and bangles than ever, came, of
course, to the entertainment, accompanied by her niece; the Doctor,
too, had promised to look in later in the evening. There was to be a
good deal of dancing, and before it had gone very far, Marian Almond
came up to Catherine, in company with a tall young man. She
introduced the young man as a person who had a great desire to make
our heroine's acquaintance, and as a cousin of Arthur Townsend, her
own intended.
Marian Almond was a pretty little person of seventeen, with a very
small figure and a very big sash, to the elegance of whose manners
matrimony had nothing to add. She already had all the airs of a
hostess, receiving the company, shaking her fan, saying that with so
many people to attend to she should have no time to dance. She made
a long speech about Mr. Townsend's cousin, to whom she administered a
tap with her fan before turning away to other cares. Catherine had
not understood all that she said; her attention was given to enjoying
Marian's ease of manner and flow of ideas, and to looking at the
young man, who was remarkably handsome. She had succeeded, however,
as she often failed to do when people were presented to her, in
catching his name, which appeared to be the same as that of Marian's
little stockbroker. Catherine was always agitated by an
introduction; it seemed a difficult moment, and she wondered that
some people--her new acquaintance at this moment, for instance--
should mind it so little. She wondered what she ought to say, and
what would be the consequences of her saying nothing. The
consequences at present were very agreeable. Mr. Townsend, leaving
her no time for embarrassment, began to talk with an easy smile, as
if he had known her for a year.
"What a delightful party! What a charming house! What an
interesting family! What a pretty girl your cousin is!"
These observations, in themselves of no great profundity, Mr.
Townsend seemed to offer for what they were worth, and as a
contribution to an acquaintance. He looked straight into Catherine's
eyes. She answered nothing; she only listened, and looked at him;
and he, as if he expected no particular reply, went on to say many
other things in the same comfortable and natural manner. Catherine,
though she felt tongue-tied, was conscious of no embarrassment; it
seemed proper that he should talk, and that she should simply look at
him. What made it natural was that he was so handsome, or rather, as
she phrased it to herself, so beautiful. The music had been silent
for a while, but it suddenly began again; and then he asked her, with
a deeper, intenser smile, if she would do him the honour of dancing
with him. Even to this inquiry she gave no audible assent; she
simply let him put his arm round her waist--as she did so it occurred
to her more vividly than it had ever done before, that this was a
singular place for a gentleman's arm to be--and in a moment he was
guiding her round the room in the harmonious rotation of the polka.
When they paused she felt that she was red; and then, for some
moments, she stopped looking at him. She fanned herself, and looked
at the flowers that were painted on her fan. He asked her if she
would begin again, and she hesitated to answer, still looking at the
flowers.
"Does it make you dizzy?" he asked, in a tone of great kindness.
Then Catherine looked up at him; he was certainly beautiful, and not
at all red. "Yes," she said; she hardly knew why, for dancing had
never made her dizzy.
"Ah, well, in that case," said Mr. Townsend, "we will sit still and
talk. I will find a good place to sit."
He found a good place--a charming place; a little sofa that seemed
meant only for two persons. The rooms by this time were very full;
the dancers increased in number, and people stood close in front of
them, turning their backs, so that Catherine and her companion seemed
secluded and unobserved. "WE will talk," the young man had said; but
he still did all the talking. Catherine leaned back in her place,
with her eyes fixed upon him, smiling and thinking him very clever.
He had features like young men in pictures; Catherine had never seen
such features--so delicate, so chiselled and finished--among the
young New Yorkers whom she passed in the streets and met at parties.
He was tall and slim, but he looked extremely strong. Catherine
thought he looked like a statue. But a statue would not talk like
that, and, above all, would not have eyes of so rare a colour. He
had never been at Mrs. Almond's before; he felt very much like a
stranger; and it was very kind of Catherine to take pity on him. He
was Arthur Townsend's cousin--not very near; several times removed--
and Arthur had brought him to present him to the family. In fact, he
was a great stranger in New York. It was his native place; but he
had not been there for many years. He had been knocking about the
world, and living in far-away lands; he had only come back a month or
two before. New York was very pleasant, only he felt lonely.
"You see, people forget you," he said, smiling at Catherine with his
delightful gaze, while he leaned forward obliquely, turning towards
her, with his elbows on his knees.
It seemed to Catherine that no one who had once seen him would ever
forget him; but though she made this reflexion she kept it to
herself, almost as you would keep something precious.
They sat there for some time. He was very amusing. He asked her
about the people that were near them; he tried to guess who some of
them were, and he made the most laughable mistakes. He criticised
them very freely, in a positive, off-hand way. Catherine had never
heard any one--especially any young man--talk just like that. It was
the way a young man might talk in a novel; or better still, in a
play, on the stage, close before the footlights, looking at the
audience, and with every one looking at him, so that you wondered at
his presence of mind. And yet Mr. Townsend was not like an actor; he
seemed so sincere, so natural. This was very interesting; but in the
midst of it Marian Almond came pushing through the crowd, with a
little ironical cry, when she found these young people still
together, which made every one turn round, and cost Catherine a
conscious blush. Marian broke up their talk, and told Mr. Townsend--
whom she treated as if she were already married, and he had become
her cousin--to run away to her mother, who had been wishing for the
last half-hour to introduce him to Mr. Almond.
"We shall meet again!" he said to Catherine as he left her, and
Catherine thought it a very original speech.
Her cousin took her by the arm, and made her walk about. "I needn't
ask you what you think of Morris!" the young girl exclaimed.
"Is that his name?"
"I don't ask you what you think of his name, but what you think of
himself," said Marian.
"Oh, nothing particular!" Catherine answered, dissembling for the
first time in her life.
"I have half a mind to tell him that!" cried Marian. "It will do him
good. He's so terribly conceited."
"Conceited?" said Catherine, staring.
"So Arthur says, and Arthur knows about him."
"Oh, don't tell him!" Catherine murmured imploringly.
"Don't tell him he's conceited? I have told him so a dozen times."
At this profession of audacity Catherine looked down at her little
companion in amazement. She supposed it was because Marian was going
to be married that she took so much on herself; but she wondered too,
whether, when she herself should become engaged, such exploits would
be expected of her.
Half an hour later she saw her Aunt Penniman sitting in the embrasure
of a window, with her head a little on one side, and her gold eye-
glass raised to her eyes, which were wandering about the room. In
front of her was a gentleman, bending forward a little, with his back
turned to Catherine. She knew his back immediately, though she had
never seen it; for when he had left her, at Marian's instigation, he
had retreated in the best order, without turning round. Morris
Townsend--the name had already become very familiar to her, as if
some one had been repeating it in her ear for the last half-hour--
Morris Townsend was giving his impressions of the company to her
aunt, as he had done to herself; he was saying clever things, and
Mrs. Penniman was smiling, as if she approved of them. As soon as
Catherine had perceived this she moved away; she would not have liked
him to turn round and see her. But it gave her pleasure--the whole
thing. That he should talk with Mrs. Penniman, with whom she lived
and whom she saw and talked with every day--that seemed to keep him
near her, and to make him even easier to contemplate than if she
herself had been the object of his civilities; and that Aunt Lavinia
should like him, should not be shocked or startled by what he said,
this also appeared to the girl a personal gain; for Aunt Lavinia's
standard was extremely high, planted as it was over the grave of her
late husband, in which, as she had convinced every one, the very
genius of conversation was buried. One of the Almond boys, as
Catherine called him, invited our heroine to dance a quadrille, and
for a quarter of an hour her feet at least were occupied. This time
she was not dizzy; her head was very clear. Just when the dance was
over, she found herself in the crowd face to face with her father.
Dr. Sloper had usually a little smile, never a very big one, and with
his little smile playing in his clear eyes and on his neatly-shaved
lips, he looked at his daughter's crimson gown.
"Is it possible that this magnificent person is my child?" he said.
You would have surprised him if you had told him so; but it is a
literal fact that he almost never addressed his daughter save in the
ironical form. Whenever he addressed her he gave her pleasure; but
she had to cut her pleasure out of the piece, as it were. There were
portions left over, light remnants and snippets of irony, which she
never knew what to do with, which seemed too delicate for her own
use; and yet Catherine, lamenting the limitations of her
understanding, felt that they were too valuable to waste and had a
belief that if they passed over her head they yet contributed to the
general sum of human wisdom.
"I am not magnificent," she said mildly, wishing that she had put on
another dress.
"You are sumptuous, opulent, expensive," her father rejoined. "You
look as if you had eighty thousand a year."
"Well, so long as I haven't--" said Catherine illogically. Her
conception of her prospective wealth was as yet very indefinite.
"So long as you haven't you shouldn't look as if you had. Have you
enjoyed your party?"
Catherine hesitated a moment; and then, looking away, "I am rather
tired," she murmured. I have said that this entertainment was the
beginning of something important for Catherine. For the second time
in her life she made an indirect answer; and the beginning of a
period of dissimulation is certainly a significant date. Catherine
was not so easily tired as that.
Nevertheless, in the carriage, as they drove home, she was as quiet
as if fatigue had been her portion. Dr. Sloper's manner of
addressing his sister Lavinia had a good deal of resemblance to the
tone he had adopted towards Catherine.
"Who was the young man that was making love to you?" he presently
asked.
"Oh, my good brother!" murmured Mrs. Penniman, in deprecation.
"He seemed uncommonly tender. Whenever I looked at you, for half an
hour, he had the most devoted air."
"The devotion was not to me," said Mrs. Penniman. "It was to
Catherine; he talked to me of her."
Catherine had been listening with all her ears. "Oh, Aunt Penniman!"
she exclaimed faintly.
"He is very handsome; he is very clever; he expressed himself with a
great deal--a great deal of felicity," her aunt went on.
"He is in love with this regal creature, then?" the Doctor inquired
humorously.
"Oh, father," cried the girl, still more faintly, devoutly thankful
the carriage was dark.
"I don't know that; but he admired her dress."
Catherine did not say to herself in the dark, "My dress only?" Mrs.
Penniman's announcement struck her by its richness, not by its
meagreness.
"You see," said her father, "he thinks you have eighty thousand a
year."
"I don't believe he thinks of that," said Mrs. Penniman; "he is too
refined."
"He must be tremendously refined not to think of that!"
"Well, he is!" Catherine exclaimed, before she knew it.
"I thought you had gone to sleep," her father answered. "The hour
has come!" he added to himself. "Lavinia is going to get up a
romance for Catherine. It's a shame to play such tricks on the girl.
What is the gentleman's name?" he went on, aloud.
"I didn't catch it, and I didn't like to ask him. He asked to be
introduced to me," said Mrs. Penniman, with a certain grandeur; "but
you know how indistinctly Jefferson speaks." Jefferson was Mr.
Almond. "Catherine, dear, what was the gentleman's name?"
For a minute, if it had not been for the rumbling of the carriage,
you might have heard a pin drop.
"I don't know, Aunt Lavinia," said Catherine, very softly. And, with
all his irony, her father believed her.
CHAPTER V
He learned what he had asked some three or four days later, after
Morris Townsend, with his cousin, had called in Washington Square.
Mrs. Penniman did not tell her brother, on the drive home, that she
had intimated to this agreeable young man, whose name she did not
know, that, with her niece, she should be very glad to see him; but
she was greatly pleased, and even a little flattered, when, late on a
Sunday afternoon, the two gentlemen made their appearance. His
coming with Arthur Townsend made it more natural and easy; the latter
young man was on the point of becoming connected with the family, and
Mrs. Penniman had remarked to Catherine that, as he was going to
marry Marian, it would be polite in him to call. These events came
to pass late in the autumn, and Catherine and her aunt had been
sitting together in the closing dusk, by the firelight, in the high
back parlour.
Arthur Townsend fell to Catherine's portion, while his companion
placed himself on the sofa, beside Mrs. Penniman. Catherine had
hitherto not been a harsh critic; she was easy to please--she liked
to talk with young men. But Marian's betrothed, this evening, made
her feel vaguely fastidious; he sat looking at the fire and rubbing
his knees with his hands. As for Catherine, she scarcely even
pretended to keep up the conversation; her attention had fixed itself
on the other side of the room; she was listening to what went on
between the other Mr. Townsend and her aunt. Every now and then he
looked over at Catherine herself and smiled, as if to show that what
he said was for her benefit too. Catherine would have liked to
change her place, to go and sit near them, where she might see and
hear him better. But she was afraid of seeming bold--of looking
eager; and, besides, it would not have been polite to Marian's little
suitor. She wondered why the other gentleman had picked out her
aunt--how he came to have so much to say to Mrs. Penniman, to whom,
usually, young men were not especially devoted. She was not at all
jealous of Aunt Lavinia, but she was a little envious, and above all
she wondered; for Morris Townsend was an object on which she found
that her imagination could exercise itself indefinitely. His cousin
had been describing a house that he had taken in view of his union
with Marian, and the domestic conveniences he meant to introduce into
it; how Marian wanted a larger one, and Mrs. Almond recommended a
smaller one, and how he himself was convinced that he had got the
neatest house in New York.
"It doesn't matter," he said; "it's only for three or four years. At
the end of three or four years we'll move. That's the way to live in
New York--to move every three or four years. Then you always get the
last thing. It's because the city's growing so quick--you've got to
keep up with it. It's going straight up town--that's where New
York's going. If I wasn't afraid Marian would be lonely, I'd go up
there--right up to the top--and wait for it. Only have to wait ten
years--they'd all come up after you. But Marian says she wants some
neighbours--she doesn't want to be a pioneer. She says that if she's
got to be the first settler she had better go out to Minnesota. I
guess we'll move up little by little; when we get tired of one street
we'll go higher. So you see we'll always have a new house; it's a
great advantage to have a new house; you get all the latest
improvements. They invent everything all over again about every five
years, and it's a great thing to keep up with the new things. I
always try and keep up with the new things of every kind. Don't you
think that's a good motto for a young couple--to keep 'going higher'?
That's the name of that piece of poetry--what do they call it?--
Excelsior!"
Catherine bestowed on her junior visitor only just enough attention
to feel that this was not the way Mr. Morris Townsend had talked the
other night, or that he was talking now to her fortunate aunt. But
suddenly his aspiring kinsman became more interesting. He seemed to
have become conscious that she was affected by his companion's
presence, and he thought it proper to explain it.
"My cousin asked me to bring him, or I shouldn't have taken the
liberty. He seemed to want very much to come; you know he's awfully
sociable. I told him I wanted to ask you first, but he said Mrs.
Penniman had invited him. He isn't particular what he says when he
wants to come somewhere! But Mrs. Penniman seems to think it's all
right."
"We are very glad to see him," said Catherine. And she wished to
talk more about him; but she hardly knew what to say. "I never saw
him before," she went on presently.
Arthur Townsend stared.
"Why, he told me he talked with you for over half an hour the other
night."
"I mean before the other night. That was the first time."
"Oh, he has been away from New York--he has been all round the world.
He doesn't know many people here, but he's very sociable, and he
wants to know every one."
"Every one?" said Catherine.
"Well, I mean all the good ones. All the pretty young ladies--like
Mrs. Penniman!" and Arthur Townsend gave a private laugh.
"My aunt likes him very much," said Catherine.
"Most people like him--he's so brilliant."
"He's more like a foreigner," Catherine suggested.
"Well, I never knew a foreigner!" said young Townsend, in a tone
which seemed to indicate that his ignorance had been optional.
"Neither have I," Catherine confessed, with more humility. "They say
they are generally brilliant," she added vaguely.
"Well, the people of this city are clever enough for me. I know some
of them that think they are too clever for me; but they ain't!"
"I suppose you can't be too clever," said Catherine, still with
humility.
"I don't know. I know some people that call my cousin too clever."
Catherine listened to this statement with extreme interest, and a
feeling that if Morris Townsend had a fault it would naturally be
that one. But she did not commit herself, and in a moment she asked:
"Now that he has come back, will he stay here always?"
"Ah," said Arthur, "if he can get something to do."
"Something to do?"
"Some place or other; some business."
"Hasn't he got any?" said Catherine, who had never heard of a young
man--of the upper class--in this situation.
"No; he's looking round. But he can't find anything."
"I am very sorry," Catherine permitted herself to observe.
"Oh, he doesn't mind," said young Townsend. "He takes it easy--he
isn't in a hurry. He is very particular."
Catherine thought he naturally would be, and gave herself up for some
moments to the contemplation of this idea, in several of its
bearings.
"Won't his father take him into his business--his office?" she at
last inquired.
"He hasn't got any father--he has only got a sister. Your sister
can't help you much."
It seemed to Catherine that if she were his sister she would disprove
this axiom. "Is she--is she pleasant?" she asked in a moment.
"I don't know--I believe she's very respectable," said young
Townsend. And then he looked across to his cousin and began to
laugh. "Look here, we are talking about you," he added.
Morris Townsend paused in his conversation with Mrs. Penniman, and
stared, with a little smile. Then he got up, as if he were going.
"As far as you are concerned, I can't return the compliment," he said
to Catherine's companion. "But as regards Miss Sloper, it's another
affair."
Catherine thought this little speech wonderfully well turned; but she
was embarrassed by it, and she also got up. Morris Townsend stood
looking at her and smiling; he put out his hand for farewell. He was
going, without having said anything to her; but even on these terms
she was glad to have seen him.
"I will tell her what you have said--when you go!" said Mrs.
Penniman, with an insinuating laugh.
Catherine blushed, for she felt almost as if they were making sport
of her. What in the world could this beautiful young man have said?
He looked at her still, in spite of her blush; but very kindly and
respectfully.
"I have had no talk with you," he said, "and that was what I came
for. But it will be a good reason for coming another time; a little
pretext--if I am obliged to give one. I am not afraid of what your
aunt will say when I go."
With this the two young men took their departure; after which
Catherine, with her blush still lingering, directed a serious and
interrogative eye to Mrs. Penniman. She was incapable of elaborate
artifice, and she resorted to no jocular device--to no affectation of
the belief that she had been maligned--to learn what she desired.
"What did you say you would tell me?" she asked.
Mrs. Penniman came up to her, smiling and nodding a little, looked at
her all over, and gave a twist to the knot of ribbon in her neck.
"It's a great secret, my dear child; but he is coming a-courting!"
Catherine was serious still. "Is that what he told you!"
"He didn't say so exactly. But he left me to guess it. I'm a good
guesser."
"Do you mean a-courting me?"
"Not me, certainly, miss; though I must say he is a hundred times
more polite to a person who has no longer extreme youth to recommend
her than most of the young men. He is thinking of some one else."
And Mrs. Penniman gave her niece a delicate little kiss. "You must
be very gracious to him."
Catherine stared--she was bewildered. "I don't understand you," she
said; "he doesn't know me."
"Oh yes, he does; more than you think. I have told him all about
you."
"Oh, Aunt Penniman!" murmured Catherine, as if this had been a breach
of trust. "He is a perfect stranger--we don't know him." There was
infinite, modesty in the poor girl's "we."
Aunt Penniman, however, took no account of it; she spoke even with a
touch of acrimony. "My dear Catherine, you know very well that you
admire him!"
"Oh, Aunt Penniman!" Catherine could only murmur again. It might
very well be that she admired him--though this did not seem to her a
thing to talk about. But that this brilliant stranger--this sudden
apparition, who had barely heard the sound of her voice--took that
sort of interest in her that was expressed by the romantic phrase of
which Mrs. Penniman had just made use: this could only be a figment
of the restless brain of Aunt Lavinia, whom every one knew to be a
woman of powerful imagination.
CHAPTER VI
Mrs. Penniman even took for granted at times that other people had as
much imagination as herself; so that when, half an hour later, her
brother came in, she addressed him quite on this principle.
"He has just been here, Austin; it's such a pity you missed him."
"Whom in the world have I missed?" asked the Doctor.
"Mr. Morris Townsend; he has made us such a delightful visit."
"And who in the world is Mr. Morris Townsend?"
"Aunt Penniman means the gentleman--the gentleman whose name I
couldn't remember," said Catherine.
"The gentleman at Elizabeth's party who was so struck with
Catherine," Mrs. Penniman added.
"Oh, his name is Morris Townsend, is it? And did he come here to
propose to you?"
"Oh, father," murmured the girl for all answer, turning away to the
window, where the dusk had deepened to darkness.
"I hope he won't do that without your permission," said Mrs.
Penniman, very graciously.
"After all, my dear, he seems to have yours," her brother answered.
Lavinia simpered, as if this might not be quite enough, and
Catherine, with her forehead touching the window-panes, listened to
this exchange of epigrams as reservedly as if they had not each been
a pin-prick in her own destiny.
"The next time he comes," the Doctor added, "you had better call me.
He might like to see me."
Morris Townsend came again, some five days afterwards; but Dr. Sloper
was not called, as he was absent from home at the time. Catherine
was with her aunt when the young man's name was brought in, and Mrs.
Penniman, effacing herself and protesting, made a great point of her
niece's going into the drawing-room alone.
"This time it's for you--for you only," she said. "Before, when he
talked to me, it was only preliminary--it was to gain my confidence.
Literally, my dear, I should not have the COURAGE to show myself to-
day."
And this was perfectly true. Mrs. Penniman was not a brave woman,
and Morris Townsend had struck her as a young man of great force of
character, and of remarkable powers of satire; a keen, resolute,
brilliant nature, with which one must exercise a great deal of tact.
She said to herself that he was "imperious," and she liked the word
and the idea. She was not the least jealous of her niece, and she
had been perfectly happy with Mr. Penniman, but in the bottom of her
heart she permitted herself the observation: "That's the sort of
husband I should have had!" He was certainly much more imperious--
she ended by calling it imperial--than Mr. Penniman.
So Catherine saw Mr. Townsend alone, and her aunt did not come in
even at the end of the visit. The visit was a long one; he sat
there--in the front parlour, in the biggest armchair--for more than
an hour. He seemed more at home this time--more familiar; lounging a
little in the chair, slapping a cushion that was near him with his
stick, and looking round the room a good deal, and at the objects it
contained, as well as at Catherine; whom, however, he also
contemplated freely. There was a smile of respectful devotion in his
handsome eyes which seemed to Catherine almost solemnly beautiful; it
made her think of a young knight in a poem. His talk, however, was
not particularly knightly; it was light and easy and friendly; it
took a practical turn, and he asked a number of questions about
herself--what were her tastes--if she liked this and that--what were
her habits. He said to her, with his charming smile, "Tell me about
yourself; give me a little sketch." Catherine had very little to
tell, and she had no talent for sketching; but before he went she had
confided to him that she had a secret passion for the theatre, which
had been but scantily gratified, and a taste for operatic music--that
of Bellini and Donizetti, in especial (it must be remembered in
extenuation of this primitive young woman that she held these
opinions in an age of general darkness)--which she rarely had an
occasion to hear, except on the hand-organ. She confessed that she
was not particularly fond of literature. Morris Townsend agreed with
her that books were tiresome things; only, as he said, you had to
read a good many before you found it out. He had been to places that
people had written books about, and they were not a bit like the
descriptions. To see for yourself--that was the great thing; he
always tried to see for himself. He had seen all the principal
actors--he had been to all the best theatres in London and Paris.
But the actors were always like the authors--they always exaggerated.
He liked everything to be natural. Suddenly he stopped, looking at
Catherine with his smile.
"That's what I like you for; you are so natural! Excuse me," he
added; "you see I am natural myself!"
And before she had time to think whether she excused him or not--
which afterwards, at leisure, she became conscious that she did--he
began to talk about music, and to say that it was his greatest
pleasure in life. He had heard all the great singers in Paris and
London--Pasta and Rubini and Lablache--and when you had done that,
you could say that you knew what singing was.
"I sing a little myself," he said; "some day I will show you. Not
to-day, but some other time."
And then he got up to go; he had omitted, by accident, to say that he
would sing to her if she would play to him. He thought of this after
he got into the street; but he might have spared his compunction, for
Catherine had not noticed the lapse. She was thinking only that
"some other time" had a delightful sound; it seemed to spread itself
over the future.
This was all the more reason, however, though she was ashamed and
uncomfortable, why she should tell her father that Mr. Morris
Townsend had called again. She announced the fact abruptly, almost
violently, as soon as the Doctor came into the house; and having done
so--it was her duty--she took measures to leave the room. But she
could not leave it fast enough; her father stopped her just as she
reached the door.
"Well, my dear, did he propose to you to-day?" the Doctor asked.
This was just what she had been afraid he would say; and yet she had
no answer ready. Of course she would have liked to take it as a
joke--as her father must have meant it; and yet she would have liked,
also, in denying it, to be a little positive, a little sharp; so that
he would perhaps not ask the question again. She didn't like it--it
made her unhappy. But Catherine could never be sharp; and for a
moment she only stood, with her hand on the door-knob, looking at her
satiric parent, and giving a little laugh.
"Decidedly," said the Doctor to himself, "my daughter is not
brilliant."
But he had no sooner made this reflexion than Catherine found
something; she had decided, on the whole, to take the thing as a
joke.
"Perhaps he will do it the next time!" she exclaimed, with a
repetition of her laugh. And she quickly got out of the room.
The Doctor stood staring; he wondered whether his daughter were
serious. Catherine went straight to her own room, and by the time
she reached it she bethought herself that there was something else--
something better--she might have said. She almost wished, now, that
her father would ask his question again, so that she might reply:
"Oh yes, Mr. Morris Townsend proposed to me, and I refused him!"
The Doctor, however, began to put his questions elsewhere; it
naturally having occurred to him that he ought to inform himself
properly about this handsome young man who had formed the habit of
running in and out of his house. He addressed himself to the younger
of his sisters, Mrs. Almond--not going to her for the purpose; there
was no such hurry as that--but having made a note of the matter for
the first opportunity. The Doctor was never eager, never impatient
nor nervous; but he made notes of everything, and he regularly
consulted his notes. Among them the information he obtained from
Mrs. Almond about Morris Townsend took its place.
"Lavinia has already been to ask me," she said. "Lavinia is most
excited; I don't understand it. It's not, after all, Lavinia that
the young man is supposed to have designs upon. She is very
peculiar."
"Ah, my dear," the Doctor replied, "she has not lived with me these
twelve years without my finding it out!"
"She has got such an artificial mind," said Mrs. Almond, who always
enjoyed an opportunity to discuss Lavinia's peculiarities with her
brother. "She didn't want me to tell you that she had asked me about
Mr. Townsend; but I told her I would. She always wants to conceal
everything."
"And yet at moments no one blurts things out with such crudity. She
is like a revolving lighthouse; pitch darkness alternating with a
dazzling brilliancy! But what did you tell her?" the Doctor asked.
"What I tell you; that I know very little of him."
"Lavinia must have been disappointed at that," said the Doctor; "she
would prefer him to have been guilty of some romantic crime.
However, we must make the best of people. They tell me our gentleman
is the cousin of the little boy to whom you are about to entrust the
future of your little girl."
"Arthur is not a little boy; he is a very old man; you and I will
never be so old. He is a distant relation of Lavinia's protege. The
name is the same, but I am given to understand that there are
Townsends and Townsends. So Arthur's mother tells me; she talked
about 'branches'--younger branches, elder branches, inferior
branches--as if it were a royal house. Arthur, it appears, is of the
reigning line, but poor Lavinia's young man is not. Beyond this,
Arthur's mother knows very little about him; she has only a vague
story that he has been 'wild.' But I know his sister a little, and
she is a very nice woman. Her name is Mrs. Montgomery; she is a
widow, with a little property and five children. She lives in the
Second Avenue."
"What does Mrs. Montgomery say about him?"
"That he has talents by which he might distinguish himself."
"Only he is lazy, eh?"
"She doesn't say so."
"That's family pride," said the Doctor. "What is his profession?"
"He hasn't got any; he is looking for something. I believe he was
once in the Navy."
"Once? What is his age?"
"I suppose he is upwards of thirty. He must have gone into the Navy
very young. I think Arthur told me that he inherited a small
property--which was perhaps the cause of his leaving the Navy--and
that he spent it all in a few years. He travelled all over the
world, lived abroad, amused himself. I believe it was a kind of
system, a theory he had. He has lately come back to America, with
the intention, as he tells Arthur, of beginning life in earnest."
"Is he in earnest about Catherine, then?"
"I don't see why you should be incredulous," said Mrs. Almond. "It
seems to me that you have never done Catherine justice. You must
remember that she has the prospect of thirty thousand a year."
The Doctor looked at his sister a moment, and then, with the
slightest touch of bitterness: "You at least appreciate her," he
said.
Mrs. Almond blushed.
"I don't mean that is her only merit; I simply mean that it is a
great one. A great many young men think so; and you appear to me
never to have been properly aware of that. You have always had a
little way of alluding to her as an unmarriageable girl."
"My allusions are as kind as yours, Elizabeth," said the Doctor
frankly. "How many suitors has Catherine had, with all her
expectations--how much attention has she ever received? Catherine is
not unmarriageable, but she is absolutely unattractive. What other
reason is there for Lavinia being so charmed with the idea that there
is a lover in the house? There has never been one before, and
Lavinia, with her sensitive, sympathetic nature, is not used to the
idea. It affects her imagination. I must do the young men of New
York the justice to say that they strike me as very disinterested.
They prefer pretty girls--lively girls--girls like your own.
Catherine is neither pretty nor lively."
"Catherine does very well; she has a style of her own--which is more
than my poor Marian has, who has no style at all," said Mrs. Almond.
"The reason Catherine has received so little attention is that she
seems to all the young men to be older than themselves. She is so
large, and she dresses--so richly. They are rather afraid of her, I
think; she looks as if she had been married already, and you know
they don't like married women. And if our young men appear
disinterested," the Doctor's wiser sister went on, "it is because
they marry, as a general thing, so young; before twenty-five, at the
age of innocence and sincerity, before the age of calculation. If
they only waited a little, Catherine would fare better."
"As a calculation? Thank you very much," said the Doctor.
"Wait till some intelligent man of forty comes along, and he will be
delighted with Catherine," Mrs. Almond continued.
"Mr. Townsend is not old enough, then; his motives may be pure."
"It is very possible that his motives are pure; I should be very
sorry to take the contrary for granted. Lavinia is sure of it, and,
as he is a very prepossessing youth, you might give him the benefit
of the doubt."
Dr. Sloper reflected a moment.
"What are his present means of subsistence?"
"I have no idea. He lives, as I say, with his sister."
"A widow, with five children? Do you mean he lives UPON her?"
Mrs. Almond got up, and with a certain impatience: "Had you not
better ask Mrs. Montgomery herself?" she inquired.
"Perhaps I may come to that," said the Doctor. "Did you say the
Second Avenue?" He made a note of the Second Avenue.
CHAPTER VII
He was, however, by no means so much in earnest as this might seem to
indicate; and, indeed, he was more than anything else amused with the
whole situation. He was not in the least in a state of tension or of
vigilance with regard to Catherine's prospects he was even on his
guard against the ridicule that might attach itself to the spectacle
of a house thrown into agitation by its daughter and heiress
receiving attentions unprecedented in its annals. More than this, he
went so far as to promise himself some entertainment from the little
drama--if drama it was--of which Mrs. Penniman desired to represent
the ingenious Mr. Townsend as the hero. He had no intention, as yet,
of regulating the denouement. He was perfectly willing, as Elizabeth
had suggested, to give the young man the benefit of every doubt.
There was no great danger in it; for Catherine, at the age of twenty-
two, was, after all, a rather mature blossom, such as could be
plucked from the stem only by a vigorous jerk. The fact that Morris
Townsend was poor--was not of necessity against him; the Doctor had
never made up his mind that his daughter should marry a rich man.
The fortune she would inherit struck him as a very sufficient
provision for two reasonable persons, and if a penniless swain who
could give a good account of himself should enter the lists, he
should be judged quite upon his personal merits. There were other
things besides. The Doctor thought it very vulgar to be precipitate
in accusing people of mercenary motives, inasmuch as his door had as
yet not been in the least besieged by fortune-hunters; and, lastly,
he was very curious to see whether Catherine might really be loved
for her moral worth. He smiled as he reflected that poor Mr.
Townsend had been only twice to the house, and he said to Mrs.
Penniman that the next time he should come she must ask him to
dinner.
He came very soon again, and Mrs. Penniman had of course great
pleasure in executing this mission. Morris Townsend accepted her
invitation with equal good grace, and the dinner took place a few
days later. The Doctor had said to himself, justly enough, that they
must not have the young man alone; this would partake too much of the
nature of encouragement. So two or three other persons were invited;
but Morris Townsend, though he was by no means the ostensible, was
the real, occasion of the feast. There is every reason to suppose
that he desired to make a good impression; and if he fell short of
this result, it was not for want of a good deal of intelligent
effort. The Doctor talked to him very little during dinner; but he
observed him attentively, and after the ladies had gone out he pushed
him the wine and asked him several questions. Morris was not a young
man who needed to be pressed, and he found quite enough encouragement
in the superior quality of the claret. The Doctor's wine was
admirable, and it may be communicated to the reader that while he
sipped it Morris reflected that a cellar-full of good liquor--there
was evidently a cellar-full here--would be a most attractive
idiosyncrasy in a father-in-law. The Doctor was struck with his
appreciative guest; he saw that he was not a commonplace young man.
"He has ability," said Catherine's father, "decided ability; he has a
very good head if he chooses to use it. And he is uncommonly well
turned out; quite the sort of figure that pleases the ladies. But I
don't think I like him." The Doctor, however, kept his reflexions to
himself, and talked to his visitors about foreign lands, concerning
which Morris offered him more information than he was ready, as he
mentally phrased it, to swallow. Dr. Sloper had travelled but
little, and he took the liberty of not believing everything this
anecdotical idler narrated. He prided himself on being something of
a physiognomist, and while the young man, chatting with easy
assurance, puffed his cigar and filled his glass again, the Doctor
sat with his eyes quietly fixed on his bright, expressive face. "He
has the assurance of the devil himself," said Morris's host; "I don't
think I ever saw such assurance. And his powers of invention are
most remarkable. He is very knowing; they were not so knowing as
that in my time. And a good head, did I say? I should think so--
after a bottle of Madeira and a bottle and a half of claret!"
After dinner Morris Townsend went and stood before Catherine, who was
standing before the fire in her red satin gown.
"He doesn't like me--he doesn't like me at all!" said the young man.
"Who doesn't like you?" asked Catherine.
"Your father; extraordinary man!"
"I don't see how you know," said Catherine, blushing.
"I feel; I am very quick to feel."
"Perhaps you are mistaken."
"Ah, well; you ask him and you will see."
"I would rather not ask him, if there is any danger of his saying
what you think."
Morris looked at her with an air of mock melancholy.
"It wouldn't give you any pleasure to contradict him?"
"I never contradict him," said Catherine.
"Will you hear me abused without opening your lips in my defence?"
"My father won't abuse you. He doesn't know you enough."
Morris Townsend gave a loud laugh, and Catherine began to blush
again.
"I shall never mention you," she said, to take refuge from her
confusion.
"That is very well; but it is not quite what I should have liked you
to say. I should have liked you to say: 'If my father doesn't think
well of you, what does it matter?'"
"Ah, but it would matter; I couldn't say that!" the girl exclaimed.
He looked at her for a moment, smiling a little; and the Doctor, if
he had been watching him just then, would have seen a gleam of fine
impatience in the sociable softness of his eye. But there was no
impatience in his rejoinder--none, at least, save what was expressed
in a little appealing sigh. "Ah, well, then, I must not give up the
hope of bringing him round!"
He expressed it more frankly to Mrs. Penniman later in the evening.
But before that he sang two or three songs at Catherine's timid
request; not that he flattered himself that this would help to bring
her father round. He had a sweet, light tenor voice, and when he had
finished every one made some exclamation--every one, that is, save
Catherine, who remained intensely silent. Mrs. Penniman declared
that his manner of singing was "most artistic," and Dr. Sloper said
it was "very taking--very taking indeed"; speaking loudly and
distinctly, but with a certain dryness.
"He doesn't like me--he doesn't like me at all," said Morris
Townsend, addressing the aunt in the same manner as he had done the
niece. "He thinks I'm all wrong."
Unlike her niece, Mrs. Penniman asked for no explanation. She only
smiled very sweetly, as if she understood everything; and, unlike
Catherine too, she made no attempt to contradict him. "Pray, what
does it matter?" she murmured softly.
"Ah, you say the right thing!" said Morris, greatly to the
gratification of Mrs. Penniman, who prided herself on always saying
the right thing.
The Doctor, the next time he saw his sister Elizabeth, let her know
that he had made the acquaintance of Lavinia's protege.
"Physically," he said, "he's uncommonly well set up. As an
anatomist, it is really a pleasure to me to see such a beautiful
structure; although, if people were all like him, I suppose there
would be very little need for doctors."
"Don't you see anything in people but their bones?" Mrs. Almond
rejoined. "What do you think of him as a father?"
"As a father? Thank Heaven I am not his father!"
"No; but you are Catherine's. Lavinia tells me she is in love."
"She must get over it. He is not a gentleman."
"Ah, take care! Remember that he is a branch of the Townsends."
"He is not what I call a gentleman. He has not the soul of one. He
is extremely insinuating; but it's a vulgar nature. I saw through it
in a minute. He is altogether too familiar--I hate familiarity. He
is a plausible coxcomb."
"Ah, well," said Mrs. Almond; "if you make up your mind so easily,
it's a great advantage."
"I don't make up my mind easily. What I tell you is the result of
thirty years of observation; and in order to be able to form that
judgement in a single evening, I have had to spend a lifetime in
study."
"Very possibly you are right. But the thing is for Catherine to see
it."
"I will present her with a pair of spectacles!" said the Doctor.
CHAPTER VIII
If it were true that she was in love, she was certainly very quiet
about it; but the Doctor was of course prepared to admit that her
quietness might mean volumes. She had told Morris Townsend that she
would not mention him to her father, and she saw no reason to retract
this vow of discretion. It was no more than decently civil, of
course, that after having dined in Washington Square, Morris should
call there again; and it was no more than natural that, having been
kindly received on this occasion, he should continue to present
himself. He had had plenty of leisure on his hands; and thirty years
ago, in New York, a young man of leisure had reason to be thankful
for aids to self-oblivion. Catherine said nothing to her father
about these visits, though they had rapidly become the most
important, the most absorbing thing in her life. The girl was very
happy. She knew not as yet what would come of it; but the present
had suddenly grown rich and solemn. If she had been told she was in
love, she would have been a good deal surprised; for she had an idea
that love was an eager and exacting passion, and her own heart was
filled in these days with the impulse of self-effacement and
sacrifice. Whenever Morris Townsend had left the house, her
imagination projected itself, with all its strength, into the idea of
his soon coming back; but if she had been told at such a moment that
he would not return for a year, or even that he would never return,
she would not have complained nor rebelled, but would have humbly
accepted the decree, and sought for consolation in thinking over the
times she had already seen him, the words he had spoken, the sound of
his voice, of his tread, the expression of his face. Love demands
certain things as a right; but Catherine had no sense of her rights;
she had only a consciousness of immense and unexpected favours. Her
very gratitude for these things had hushed itself; for it seemed to
her that there would be something of impudence in making a festival
of her secret. Her father suspected Morris Townsend's visits, and
noted her reserve. She seemed to beg pardon for it; she looked at
him constantly in silence, as if she meant to say that she said
nothing because she was afraid of irritating him. But the poor
girl's dumb eloquence irritated him more than anything else would
have done, and he caught himself murmuring more than once that it was
a grievous pity his only child was a simpleton. His murmurs,
however, were inaudible; and for a while he said nothing to any one.
He would have liked to know exactly how often young Townsend came;
but he had determined to ask no questions of the girl herself--to say
nothing more to her that would show that he watched her. The Doctor
had a great idea of being largely just: he wished to leave his
daughter her liberty, and interfere only when the danger should be
proved. It was not in his manner to obtain information by indirect
methods, and it never even occurred to him to question the servants.
As for Lavinia, he hated to talk to her about the matter; she annoyed
him with her mock romanticism. But he had to come to this. Mrs.
Penniman's convictions as regards the relations of her niece and the
clever young visitor who saved appearances by coming ostensibly for
both the ladies--Mrs. Penniman's convictions had passed into a riper
and richer phase. There was to be no crudity in Mrs. Penniman's
treatment of the situation; she had become as uncommunicative as
Catherine herself. She was tasting of the sweets of concealment; she
had taken up the line of mystery. "She would be enchanted to be able
to prove to herself that she is persecuted," said the Doctor; and
when at last he questioned her, he was sure she would contrive to
extract from his words a pretext for this belief.
"Be so good as to let me know what is going on in the house," he said
to her, in a tone which, under the circumstances, he himself deemed
genial.
"Going on, Austin?" Mrs. Penniman exclaimed. "Why, I am sure I don't
know! I believe that last night the old grey cat had kittens!"
"At her age?" said the Doctor. "The idea is startling--almost
shocking. Be so good as to see that they are all drowned. But what
else has happened?"
"Ah, the dear little kittens!" cried Mrs. Penniman. "I wouldn't have
them drowned for the world!"
Her brother puffed his cigar a few moments in silence. "Your
sympathy with kittens, Lavinia," he presently resumed, "arises from a
feline element in your own character."
"Cats are very graceful, and very clean," said Mrs. Penniman,
smiling.
"And very stealthy. You are the embodiment both of grace and of
neatness; but you are wanting in frankness."
"You certainly are not, dear brother."
"I don't pretend to be graceful, though I try to be neat. Why
haven't you let me know that Mr. Morris Townsend is coming to the
house four times a week?"
Mrs. Penniman lifted her eyebrows. "Four times a week?"
"Five times, if you prefer it. I am away all day, and I see nothing.
But when such things happen, you should let me know."
Mrs. Penniman, with her eyebrows still raised, reflected intently.
"Dear Austin," she said at last, "I am incapable of betraying a
confidence. I would rather suffer anything."
"Never fear; you shall not suffer. To whose confidence is it you
allude? Has Catherine made you take a vow of eternal secrecy?"
"By no means. Catherine has not told me as much as she might. She
has not been very trustful."
"It is the young man, then, who has made you his confidante? Allow
me to say that it is extremely indiscreet of you to form secret
alliances with young men. You don't know where they may lead you."
"I don't know what you mean by an alliance," said Mrs. Penniman. "I
take a great interest in Mr. Townsend; I won't conceal that. But
that's all."
"Under the circumstances, that is quite enough. What is the source
of your interest in Mr. Townsend?"
"Why," said Mrs. Penniman, musing, and then breaking into her smile,
"that he is so interesting!"
The Doctor felt that he had need of his patience. "And what makes
him interesting?--his good looks?"
"His misfortunes, Austin."
"Ah, he has had misfortunes? That, of course, is always interesting.
Are you at liberty to mention a few of Mr. Townsend's?"
"I don't know that he would like it," said Mrs. Penniman. "He has
told me a great deal about himself--he has told me, in fact, his
whole history. But I don't think I ought to repeat those things. He
would tell them to you, I am sure, if he thought you would listen to
him kindly. With kindness you may do anything with him."
The Doctor gave a laugh. "I shall request him very kindly, then, to
leave Catherine alone."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Penniman, shaking her forefinger at her brother, with
her little finger turned out, "Catherine had probably said something
to him kinder than that."
"Said that she loved him? Do you mean that?"
Mrs. Penniman fixed her eyes on the floor. "As I tell you, Austin,
she doesn't confide in me."
"You have an opinion, I suppose, all the same. It is that I ask you
for; though I don't conceal from you that I shall not regard it as
conclusive."
Mrs. Penniman's gaze continued to rest on the carpet; but at last she
lifted it, and then her brother thought it very expressive. "I think
Catherine is very happy; that is all I can say."
"Townsend is trying to marry her--is that what you mean?"
"He is greatly interested in her."
"He finds her such an attractive girl?"
"Catherine has a lovely nature, Austin," said Mrs. Penniman, "and Mr.
Townsend has had the intelligence to discover that."
"With a little help from you, I suppose. My dear Lavinia," cried the
Doctor, "you are an admirable aunt!"
"So Mr. Townsend says," observed Lavinia, smiling.
"Do you think he is sincere?" asked her brother.
"In saying that?"
"No; that's of course. But in his admiration for Catherine?"
"Deeply sincere. He has said to me the most appreciative, the most
charming things about her. He would say them to you, if he were sure
you would listen to him--gently."
"I doubt whether I can undertake it. He appears to require a great
deal of gentleness."
"He is a sympathetic, sensitive nature," said Mrs. Penniman.
Her brother puffed his cigar again in silence. "These delicate
qualities have survived his vicissitudes, eh? All this while you
haven't told me about his misfortunes."
"It is a long story," said Mrs. Penniman, "and I regard it as a
sacred trust. But I suppose there is no objection to my saying that
he has been wild--he frankly confesses that. But he has paid for
it."
"That's what has impoverished him, eh?"
"I don't mean simply in money. He is very much alone in the world."
"Do you mean that he has behaved so badly that his friends have given
him up?"
"He has had false friends, who have deceived and betrayed him."
"He seems to have some good ones too. He has a devoted sister, and
half-a-dozen nephews and nieces."
Mrs. Penniman was silent a minute. "The nephews and nieces are
children, and the sister is not a very attractive person."
"I hope he doesn't abuse her to you," said the Doctor; "for I am told
he lives upon her."
"Lives upon her?"
"Lives with her, and does nothing for himself; it is about the same
thing."
"He is looking for a position--most earnestly," said Mrs. Penniman.
"He hopes every day to find one."
"Precisely. He is looking for it here--over there in the front
parlour. The position of husband of a weak-minded woman with a large
fortune would suit him to perfection!"
Mrs. Penniman was truly amiable, but she now gave signs of temper.
She rose with much animation, and stood for a moment looking at her
brother. "My dear Austin," she remarked, "if you regard Catherine as
a weak-minded woman, you are particularly mistaken!" And with this
she moved majestically away.
CHAPTER IX
It was a regular custom with the family in Washington Square to go
and spend Sunday evening at Mrs. Almond's. On the Sunday after the
conversation I have just narrated, this custom was not intermitted
and on this occasion, towards the middle of the evening, Dr. Sloper
found reason to withdraw to the library, with his brother-in-law, to
talk over a matter of business. He was absent some twenty minutes,
and when he came back into the circle, which was enlivened by the
presence of several friends of the family, he saw that Morris
Townsend had come in and had lost as little time as possible in
seating himself on a small sofa, beside Catherine. In the large
room, where several different groups had been formed, and the hum of
voices and of laughter was loud, these two young persons might
confabulate, as the Doctor phrased it to himself, without attracting
attention. He saw in a moment, however, that his daughter was
painfully conscious of his own observation. She sat motionless, with
her eyes bent down, staring at her open fan, deeply flushed,
shrinking together as if to minimise the indiscretion of which she
confessed herself guilty.
The Doctor almost pitied her. Poor Catherine was not defiant; she
had no genius for bravado; and as she felt that her father viewed her
companion's attentions with an unsympathising eye, there was nothing
but discomfort for her in the accident of seeming to challenge him.
The Doctor felt, indeed, so sorry for her that he turned away, to
spare her the sense of being watched; and he was so intelligent a man
that, in his thoughts, he rendered a sort of poetic justice to her
situation.
"It must be deucedly pleasant for a plain inanimate girl like that to
have a beautiful young fellow come and sit down beside her and
whisper to her that he is her slave--if that is what this one
whispers. No wonder she likes it, and that she thinks me a cruel
tyrant; which of course she does, though she is afraid--she hasn't
the animation necessary--to admit it to herself. Poor old
Catherine!" mused the Doctor; "I verily believe she is capable of
defending me when Townsend abuses me!"
And the force of this reflexion, for the moment, was such in making
him feel the natural opposition between his point of view and that of
an infatuated child, that he said to himself that he was perhaps,
after all, taking things too hard and crying out before he was hurt.
He must not condemn Morris Townsend unheard. He had a great aversion
to taking things too hard; he thought that half the discomfort and
many of the disappointments of life come from it; and for an instant
he asked himself whether, possibly, he did not appear ridiculous to
this intelligent young man, whose private perception of incongruities
he suspected of being keen. At the end of a quarter of an hour
Catherine had got rid of him, and Townsend was now standing before
the fireplace in conversation with Mrs. Almond.
"We will try him again," said the Doctor. And he crossed the room
and joined his sister and her companion, making her a sign that she
should leave the young man to him. She presently did so, while
Morris looked at him, smiling, without a sign of evasiveness in his
affable eye.
"He's amazingly conceited!" thought the Doctor; and then he said
aloud: "I am told you are looking out for a position."
"Oh, a position is more than I should presume to call it," Morris
Townsend answered. "That sounds so fine. I should like some quiet
work--something to turn an honest penny."
"What sort of thing should you prefer?"
"Do you mean what am I fit for? Very little, I am afraid. I have
nothing but my good right arm, as they say in the melodramas."
"You are too modest," said the Doctor. "In addition to your good
right arm, you have your subtle brain. I know nothing of you but
what I see; but I see by your physiognomy that you are extremely
intelligent."
"Ah," Townsend murmured, "I don't know what to answer when you say
that! You advise me, then, not to despair?"
And he looked at his interlocutor as if the question might have a
double meaning. The Doctor caught the look and weighed it a moment
before he replied. "I should be very sorry to admit that a robust
and well-disposed young man need ever despair. If he doesn't succeed
in one thing, he can try another. Only, I should add, he should
choose his line with discretion."
"Ah, yes, with discretion," Morris Townsend repeated sympathetically.
"Well, I have been indiscreet, formerly; but I think I have got over
it. I am very steady now." And he stood a moment, looking down at
his remarkably neat shoes. Then at last, "Were you kindly intending
to propose something for my advantage?" he inquired, looking up and
smiling.
"Damn his impudence!" the Doctor exclaimed privately. But in a
moment he reflected that he himself had, after all, touched first
upon this delicate point, and that his words might have been
construed as an offer of assistance. "I have no particular proposal
to make," he presently said; "but it occurred to me to let you know
that I have you in my mind. Sometimes one hears of opportunities.
For instance--should you object to leaving New York--to going to a
distance?"
"I am afraid I shouldn't be able to manage that. I must seek my
fortune here or nowhere. You see," added Morris Townsend, "I have
ties--I have responsibilities here. I have a sister, a widow, from
whom I have been separated for a long time, and to whom I am almost
everything. I shouldn't like to say to her that I must leave her.
She rather depends upon me, you see."
"Ah, that's very proper; family feeling is very proper," said Dr.
Sloper. "I often think there is not enough of it in our city. I
think I have heard of your sister."
"It is possible, but I rather doubt it; she lives so very quietly."
"As quietly, you mean," the Doctor went on, with a short laugh, "as a
lady may do who has several young children."
"Ah, my little nephews and nieces--that's the very point! I am
helping to bring them up," said Morris Townsend. "I am a kind of
amateur tutor; I give them lessons."
"That's very proper, as I say; but it is hardly a career."
"It won't make my fortune!" the young man confessed.
"You must not be too much bent on a fortune," said the Doctor. "But
I assure you I will keep you in mind; I won't lose sight of you!"
"If my situation becomes desperate I shall perhaps take the liberty
of reminding you!" Morris rejoined, raising his voice a little, with
a brighter smile, as his interlocutor turned away.
Before he left the house the Doctor had a few words with Mrs. Almond.
"I should like to see his sister," he said. "What do you call her?
Mrs. Montgomery. I should like to have a little talk with her."
"I will try and manage it," Mrs. Almond responded. "I will take the
first opportunity of inviting her, and you shall come and meet her.
Unless, indeed," Mrs. Almond added, "she first takes it into her head
to be sick and to send for you."
"Ah no, not that; she must have trouble enough without that. But it
would have its advantages, for then I should see the children. I
should like very much to see the children."
"You are very thorough. Do you want to catechise them about their
uncle!"
"Precisely. Their uncle tells me he has charge of their education,
that he saves their mother the expense of school-bills. I should
like to ask them a few questions in the commoner branches."
"He certainly has not the cut of a schoolmaster!" Mrs. Almond said to
herself a short time afterwards, as she saw Morris Townsend in a
corner bending over her niece, who was seated.
And there was, indeed, nothing in the young man's discourse at this
moment that savoured of the pedagogue.
"Will you meet me somewhere to-morrow or next day?" he said, in a low
tone, to Catherine.
"Meet you?" she asked, lifting her frightened eyes.
"I have something particular to say to you--very particular."
"Can't you come to the house? Can't you say it there?"
Townsend shook his head gloomily. "I can't enter your doors again!"
"Oh, Mr. Townsend!" murmured Catherine. She trembled as she wondered
what had happened, whether her father had forbidden it.
"I can't in self-respect," said the young man. "Your father has
insulted me."
"Insulted you!"
"He has taunted me with my poverty."
"Oh, you are mistaken--you misunderstood him!" Catherine spoke with
energy, getting up from her chair.
"Perhaps I am too proud--too sensitive. But would you have me
otherwise?" he asked tenderly.
"Where my father is concerned, you must not be sure. He is full of
goodness," said Catherine.
"He laughed at me for having no position! I took it quietly; but
only because he belongs to you."
"I don't know," said Catherine; "I don't know what he thinks. I am
sure he means to be kind. You must not be too proud."
"I will be proud only of you," Morris answered. "Will you meet me in
the Square in the afternoon?"
A great blush on Catherine's part had been the answer to the
declaration I have just quoted. She turned away, heedless of his
question.
"Will you meet me?" he repeated. "It is very quiet there; no one
need see us--toward dusk?"
"It is you who are unkind, it is you who laugh, when you say such
things as that."
"My dear girl!" the young man murmured.
"You know how little there is in me to be proud of. I am ugly and
stupid."
Morris greeted this remark with an ardent murmur, in which she
recognised nothing articulate but an assurance that she was his own
dearest.
But she went on. "I am not even--I am not even--" And she paused a
moment.
"You are not what?"
"I am not even brave."
"Ah, then, if you are afraid, what shall we do?"
She hesitated a while; then at last--"You must come to the house,"
she said; "I am not afraid of that."
"I would rather it were in the Square," the young man urged. "You
know how empty it is, often. No one will see us."
"I don't care who sees us! But leave me now."
He left her resignedly; he had got what he wanted. Fortunately he
was ignorant that half an hour later, going home with her father and
feeling him near, the poor girl, in spite of her sudden declaration
of courage, began to tremble again. Her father said nothing; but she
had an idea his eyes were fixed upon her in the darkness. Mrs.
Penniman also was silent; Morris Townsend had told her that her niece
preferred, unromantically, an interview in a chintz-covered parlour
to a sentimental tryst beside a fountain sheeted with dead leaves,
and she was lost in wonderment at the oddity--almost the perversity--
of the choice.
CHAPTER X
Catherine received the young man the next day on the ground she had
chosen--amid the chaste upholstery of a New York drawing-room
furnished in the fashion of fifty years ago. Morris had swallowed
his pride and made the effort necessary to cross the threshold of her
too derisive parent--an act of magnanimity which could not fail to
render him doubly interesting.
"We must settle something--we must take a line," he declared, passing
his hand through his hair and giving a glance at the long narrow
mirror which adorned the space between the two windows, and which had
at its base a little gilded bracket covered by a thin slab of white
marble, supporting in its turn a backgammon board folded together in
the shape of two volumes, two shining folios inscribed in letters of
greenish gilt, History of England. If Morris had been pleased to
describe the master of the house as a heartless scoffer, it is
because he thought him too much on his guard, and this was the
easiest way to express his own dissatisfaction--a dissatisfaction
which he had made a point of concealing from the Doctor. It will
probably seem to the reader, however, that the Doctor's vigilance was
by no means excessive, and that these two young people had an open
field. Their intimacy was now considerable, and it may appear that
for a shrinking and retiring person our heroine had been liberal of
her favours. The young man, within a few days, had made her listen
to things for which she had not supposed that she was prepared;
having a lively foreboding of difficulties, he proceeded to gain as
much ground as possible in the present. He remembered that fortune
favours the brave, and even if he had forgotten it, Mrs. Penniman
would have remembered it for him. Mrs. Penniman delighted of all
things in a drama, and she flattered herself that a drama would now
be enacted. Combining as she did the zeal of the prompter with the
impatience of the spectator, she had long since done her utmost to
pull up the curtain. She too expected to figure in the performance--
to be the confidante, the Chorus, to speak the epilogue. It may even
be said that there were times when she lost sight altogether of the
modest heroine of the play, in the contemplation of certain great
passages which would naturally occur between the hero and herself.
What Morris had told Catherine at last was simply that he loved her,
or rather adored her. Virtually, he had made known as much already--
his visits had been a series of eloquent intimations of it. But now
he had affirmed it in lover's vows, and, as a memorable sign of it,
he had passed his arm round the girl's waist and taken a kiss. This
happy certitude had come sooner than Catherine expected, and she had
regarded it, very naturally, as a priceless treasure. It may even be
doubted whether she had ever definitely expected to possess it; she
had not been waiting for it, and she had never said to herself that
at a given moment it must come. As I have tried to explain, she was
not eager and exacting; she took what was given her from day to day;
and if the delightful custom of her lover's visits, which yielded her
a happiness in which confidence and timidity were strangely blended,
had suddenly come to an end, she would not only not have spoken of
herself as one of the forsaken, but she would not have thought of
herself as one of the disappointed. After Morris had kissed her, the
last time he was with her, as a ripe assurance of his devotion, she
begged him to go away, to leave her alone, to let her think. Morris
went away, taking another kiss first. But Catherine's meditations
had lacked a certain coherence. She felt his kisses on her lips and
on her cheeks for a long time afterwards; the sensation was rather an
obstacle than an aid to reflexion. She would have liked to see her
situation all clearly before her, to make up her mind what she should
do if, as she feared, her father should tell her that he disapproved
of Morris Townsend. But all that she could see with any vividness
was that it was terribly strange that anyone should disapprove of
him; that there must in that case be some mistake, some mystery,
which in a little while would be set at rest. She put off deciding
and choosing; before the vision of a conflict with her father she
dropped her eyes and sat motionless, holding her breath and waiting.
It made her heart beat, it was intensely painful. When Morris kissed
her and said these things--that also made her heart beat; but this
was worse, and it frightened her. Nevertheless, to-day, when the
young man spoke of settling something, taking a line, she felt that
it was the truth, and she answered very simply and without
hesitating.
"We must do our duty," she said; "we must speak to my father. I will
do it to-night; you must do it to-morrow"
"It is very good of you to do it first," Morris answered. "The young
man--the happy lover--generally does that. But just as you please!"
It pleased Catherine to think that she should be brave for his sake,
and in her satisfaction she even gave a little smile. "Women have
more tact," she said "they ought to do it first. They are more
conciliating; they can persuade better."
"You will need all your powers of persuasion. But, after all,"
Morris added, "you are irresistible."
"Please don't speak that way--and promise me this. To-morrow, when
you talk with father, you will be very gentle and respectful."
"As much so as possible," Morris promised. "It won't be much use,
but I shall try. I certainly would rather have you easily than have
to fight for you."
"Don't talk about fighting; we shall not fight."
"Ah, we must be prepared," Morris rejoined; "you especially, because
for you it must come hardest. Do you know the first thing your
father will say to you?"
"No, Morris; please tell me."
"He will tell you I am mercenary."
"Mercenary?"
"It's a big word; but it means a low thing. It means that I am after
your money."
"Oh!" murmured Catherine softly.
The exclamation was so deprecating and touching that Morris indulged
in another little demonstration of affection. "But he will be sure
to say it," he added.
"It will be easy to be prepared for that," Catherine said. "I shall
simply say that he is mistaken--that other men may be that way, but
that you are not."
"You must make a great point of that, for it will be his own great
point."
Catherine looked at her lover a minute, and then she said, "I shall
persuade him. But I am glad we shall be rich," she added.
Morris turned away, looking into the crown of his hat. "No, it's a
misfortune," he said at last. "It is from that our difficulty will
come."
"Well, if it is the worst misfortune, we are not so unhappy. Many
people would not think it so bad. I will persuade him, and after
that we shall be very glad we have money."
Morris Townsend listened to this robust logic in silence. "I will
leave my defence to you; it's a charge that a man has to stoop to
defend himself from."
Catherine on her side was silent for a while; she was looking at him
while he looked, with a good deal of fixedness, out of the window.
"Morris," she said abruptly, "are you very sure you love me?"
He turned round, and in a moment he was bending over her. "My own
dearest, can you doubt it?"
"I have only known it five days," she said; "but now it seems to me
as if I could never do without it."
"You will never be called upon to try!" And he gave a little tender,
reassuring laugh. Then, in a moment, he added, "There is something
you must tell me, too." She had closed her eyes after the last word
she uttered, and kept them closed; and at this she nodded her head,
without opening them. "You must tell me," he went on, "that if your
father is dead against me, if he absolutely forbids our marriage, you
will still be faithful."
Catherine opened her eyes, gazing at him, and she could give no
better promise than what he read there.
"You will cleave to me?" said Morris. "You know you are your own
mistress--you are of age."
"Ah, Morris!" she murmured, for all answer. Or rather not for all;
for she put her hand into his own. He kept it a while, and presently
he kissed her again. This is all that need be recorded of their
conversation; but Mrs. Penniman, if she had been present, would
probably have admitted that it was as well it had not taken place
beside the fountain in Washington Square.
CHAPTER XI
Catherine listened for her father when he came in that evening, and
she heard him go to his study. She sat quiet, though her heart was
beating fast, for nearly half an hour; then she went and knocked at
his door--a ceremony without which she never crossed the threshold of
this apartment. On entering it now she found him in his chair beside
the fire, entertaining himself with a cigar and the evening paper.
"I have something to say to you," she began very gently; and she sat
down in the first place that offered.
"I shall be very happy to hear it, my dear," said her father. He
waited--waited, looking at her, while she stared, in a long silence,
at the fire. He was curious and impatient, for he was sure she was
going to speak of Morris Townsend; but he let her take her own time,
for he was determined to be very mild.
"I am engaged to be married!" Catherine announced at last, still
staring at the fire.
The Doctor was startled; the accomplished fact was more than he had
expected. But he betrayed no surprise. "You do right to tell me,"
he simply said. "And who is the happy mortal whom you have honoured
with your choice?"
"Mr. Morris Townsend." And as she pronounced her lover's name,
Catherine looked at him. What she saw was her father's still grey
eye and his clear-cut, definite smile. She contemplated these
objects for a moment, and then she looked back at the fire; it was
much warmer.
"When was this arrangement made?" the Doctor asked.
"This afternoon--two hours ago."
"Was Mr. Townsend here?"
"Yes, father; in the front parlour." She was very glad that she was
not obliged to tell him that the ceremony of their betrothal had
taken place out there under the bare ailantus-trees.
"Is it serious?" said the Doctor.
"Very serious, father."
Her father was silent a moment. "Mr. Townsend ought to have told
me."
"He means to tell you to-morrow."
"After I know all about it from you? He ought to have told me
before. Does he think I didn't care--because I left you so much
liberty?"
"Oh no," said Catherine; "he knew you would care. And we have been
so much obliged to you for--for the liberty."
The Doctor gave a short laugh. "You might have made a better use of
it, Catherine."
"Please don't say that, father," the girl urged softly, fixing her
dull and gentle eyes upon him.
He puffed his cigar awhile, meditatively. "You have gone very fast,"
he said at last.
"Yes," Catherine answered simply; "I think we have."
Her father glanced at her an instant, removing his eyes from the
fire. "I don't wonder Mr. Townsend likes you. You are so simple and
so good."
"I don't know why it is--but he DOES like me. I am sure of that."
"And are you very fond of Mr. Townsend?"
"I like him very much, of course--or I shouldn't consent to marry
him."
"But you have known him a very short time, my dear."
"Oh," said Catherine, with some eagerness, "it doesn't take long to
like a person--when once you begin."
"You must have begun very quickly. Was it the first time you saw
him--that night at your aunt's party?"
"I don't know, father," the girl answered. "I can't tell you about
that."
"Of course; that's your own affair. You will have observed that I
have acted on that principle. I have not interfered, I have left you
your liberty, I have remembered that you are no longer a little girl-
-that you have arrived at years of discretion."
"I feel very old--and very wise," said Catherine, smiling faintly.
"I am afraid that before long you will feel older and wiser yet. I
don't like your engagement."
"Ah!" Catherine exclaimed softly, getting up from her chair.
"No, my dear. I am sorry to give you pain; but I don't like it. You
should have consulted me before you settled it. I have been too easy
with you, and I feel as if you had taken advantage of my indulgence.
Most decidedly, you should have spoken to me first."
Catherine hesitated a moment, and then--"It was because I was afraid
you wouldn't like it!" she confessed.
"Ah, there it is! You had a bad conscience."
"No, I have not a bad conscience, father!" the girl cried out, with
considerable energy. "Please don't accuse me of anything so
dreadful." These words, in fact, represented to her imagination
something very terrible indeed, something base and cruel, which she
associated with malefactors and prisoners. "It was because I was
afraid--afraid--" she went on.
"If you were afraid, it was because you had been foolish!"
"I was afraid you didn't like Mr. Townsend."
"You were quite right. I don't like him."
"Dear father, you don't know him," said Catherine, in a voice so
timidly argumentative that it might have touched him.
"Very true; I don't know him intimately. But I know him enough. I
have my impression of him. You don't know him either."
She stood before the fire, with her hands lightly clasped in front of
her; and her father, leaning back in his chair and looking up at her,
made this remark with a placidity that might have been irritating.
I doubt, however, whether Catherine was irritated, though she broke
into a vehement protest. "I don't know him?" she cried. "Why, I
know him--better than I have ever known any one!"
"You know a part of him--what he has chosen to show you. But you
don't know the rest."
"The rest? What is the rest?"
"Whatever it may be. There is sure to be plenty of it."
"I know what you mean," said Catherine, remembering how Morris had
forewarned her. "You mean that he is mercenary."
Her father looked up at her still, with his cold, quiet reasonable
eye. "If I meant it, my dear, I should say it! But there is an
error I wish particularly to avoid--that of rendering Mr. Townsend
more interesting to you by saying hard things about him."
"I won't think them hard if they are true," said Catherine.
"If you don't, you will be a remarkably sensible young woman!"
"They will be your reasons, at any rate, and you will want me to hear
your reasons."
The Doctor smiled a little. "Very true. You have a perfect right to
ask for them." And he puffed his cigar a few moments. "Very well,
then, without accusing Mr. Townsend of being in love only with your
fortune--and with the fortune that you justly expect--I will say that
there is every reason to suppose that these good things have entered
into his calculation more largely than a tender solicitude for your
happiness strictly requires. There is, of course, nothing impossible
in an intelligent young man entertaining a disinterested affection
for you. You are an honest, amiable girl, and an intelligent young
man might easily find it out. But the principal thing that we know
about this young man--who is, indeed, very intelligent--leads us to
suppose that, however much he may value your personal merits, he
values your money more. The principal thing we know about him is
that he has led a life of dissipation, and has spent a fortune of his
own in doing so. That is enough for me, my dear. I wish you to
marry a young man with other antecedents--a young man who could give
positive guarantees. If Morris Townsend has spent his own fortune in
amusing himself, there is every reason to believe that he would spend
yours."
The Doctor delivered himself of these remarks slowly, deliberately,
with