XV
He had been puzzled by the way that Catherine carried herself; her attitude at this sentimental crisis seemed to him unnaturally passive. She had not spoken to him again after that scene in the library, the day before his interview with Morris; and a week had elapsed without making any change in her manner. There was nothing in it that appealed for pity, and he was even a little disappointed at her not giving him an opportunity to make up for his harshness by some manifestation of liberality which should operate as a compensation. He thought a little of offering to take her for a tour in Europe; but he was determined to do this only in case she should seem mutely to reproach him. He had an idea that she would display a talent for mute reproaches, and he was surprised at not finding himself exposed to these silent batteries. She said nothing, either tacitly or explicitly, and as she was never very talkative, there was now no especial eloquence in her reserve. And poor Catherine was not sulky—a style of behaviour for which she had too little histrionic talent; she was simply very patient. Of course she was thinking over her situation, and she was apparently doing so in a deliberate and unimpassioned manner, with a view of making the best of it.
“She will do as I have bidden her,” said the Doctor, and he made the further reflexion that his daughter was not a woman of a great spirit. I know not whether he had hoped for a little more resistance for the sake of a little more entertainment; but he said to himself, as he had said before, that though it might have its momentary alarms, paternity was, after all, not an exciting vocation.
Catherine, meanwhile, had made a discovery of a very different sort; it had become vivid to her that there was a great excitement in trying to be a good daughter. She had an entirely new feeling, which may be described as a state of expectant suspense about her own actions. She watched herself as she would have watched another person, and wondered what she would do. It was as if this other person, who was both herself and not herself, had suddenly sprung into being, inspiring her with a natural curiosity as to the performance of untested functions.
“I am glad I have such a good daughter,” said her father, kissing her, after the lapse of several days.
“I am trying to be good,” she answered, turning away, with a conscience not altogether clear.
“If there is anything you would like to say to me, you know you must not hesitate. You needn’t feel obliged to be so quiet. I shouldn’t care that Mr. Townsend should be a frequent topic of conversation, but whenever you have anything particular to say about him I shall be very glad to hear it.”
“Thank you,” said Catherine; “I have nothing particular at present.”
He never asked her whether she had seen Morris again, because he was sure that if this had been the case she would tell him. She had, in fact, not seen him, she had only written him a long letter. The letter at least was long for her; and, it may be added, that it was long for Morris; it consisted of five pages, in a remarkably neat and handsome hand. Catherine’s handwriting was beautiful, and she was even a little proud of it; she was extremely fond of copying, and possessed volumes of extracts which testified to this accomplishment; volumes which she had exhibited one day to her lover, when the bliss of feeling that she was important in his eyes was exceptionally keen. She told Morris in writing that her father had expressed the wish that she should not see him again, and that she begged he would not come to the house until she should have “made up her mind.” Morris replied with a passionate epistle, in which he asked to what, in Heaven’s name, she wished to make up her mind. Had not her mind been made up two weeks before, and could it be possible that she entertained the idea of throwing him off? Did she mean to break down at the very beginning of their ordeal, after all the promises of fidelity she had both given and extracted? And he gave an account of his own interview with her father—an account not identical at all points with that offered in these pages. “He was terribly violent,” Morris wrote; “but you know my self-control. I have need of it all when I remember that I have it in my power to break in upon your cruel captivity.” Catherine sent him, in answer to this, a note of three lines. “I am in great trouble; do not doubt of my affection, but let me wait a little and think.” The idea of a struggle with her father, of setting up her will against his own, was heavy on her soul, and it kept her formally submissive, as a great physical weight keeps us motionless. It never entered into her mind to throw her lover off; but from the first she tried to assure herself that there would be a peaceful way out of their difficulty. The assurance was vague, for it contained no element of positive conviction that her father would change his mind. She only had an idea that if she should be very good, the situation would in some mysterious manner improve. To be good, she must be patient, respectful, abstain from judging her father too harshly, and from committing any act of open defiance. He was perhaps right, after all, to think as he did; by which Catherine meant not in the least that his judgement of Morris’s motives in seeking to marry her was perhaps a just one, but that it was probably natural and proper that conscientious parents should be suspicious and even unjust. There were probably people in the world as bad as her father supposed Morris to be, and if there were the slightest chance of Morris being one of these sinister persons, the Doctor was right in taking it into account. Of course he could not know what she knew, how the purest love and truth were seated in the young man’s eyes; but Heaven, in its time, might appoint a way of bringing him to such knowledge. Catherine expected a good deal of Heaven, and referred to the skies the initiative, as the French say, in dealing with her dilemma. She could not imagine herself imparting any kind of knowledge to her father, there was something superior even in his injustice and absolute in his mistakes. But she could at least be good, and if she were only good enough, Heaven would invent some way of reconciling all things—the dignity of her father’s errors and the sweetness of her own confidence, the strict performance of her filial duties and the enjoyment of Morris Townsend’s affection. Poor Catherine would have been glad to regard Mrs. Penniman as an illuminating agent, a part which this lady herself indeed was but imperfectly prepared to play. Mrs. Penniman took too much satisfaction in the sentimental shadows of this little drama to have, for the moment, any great interest in dissipating them. She wished the plot to thicken, and the advice that she gave her niece tended, in her own imagination, to produce this result. It was rather incoherent counsel, and from one day to another it contradicted itself; but it was pervaded by an earnest desire that Catherine should do something striking. “You must act, my dear; in your situation the great thing is to act,” said Mrs. Penniman, who found her niece altogether beneath her opportunities. Mrs. Penniman’s real hope was that the girl would make a secret marriage, at which she should officiate as brideswoman or duenna. She had a vision of this ceremony being performed in some subterranean chapel—subterranean chapels in New York were not frequent, but Mrs. Penniman’s imagination was not chilled by trifles—and of the guilty couple—she liked to think of poor Catherine and her suitor as the guilty couple—being shuffled away in a fast-whirling vehicle to some obscure lodging in the suburbs, where she would pay them (in a thick veil) clandestine visits, where they would endure a period of romantic privation, and where ultimately, after she should have been their earthly providence, their intercessor, their advocate, and their medium of communication with the world, they should be reconciled to her brother in an artistic tableau, in which she herself should be somehow the central figure. She hesitated as yet to recommend this course to Catherine, but she attempted to draw an attractive picture of it to Morris Townsend. She was in daily communication with the young man, whom she kept informed by letters of the state of affairs in Washington Square. As he had been banished, as she said, from the house, she no longer saw him; but she ended by writing to him that she longed for an interview. This interview could take place only on neutral ground, and she bethought herself greatly before selecting a place of meeting. She had an inclination for Greenwood Cemetery, but she gave it up as too distant; she could not absent herself for so long, as she said, without exciting suspicion. Then she thought of the Battery, but that was rather cold and windy, besides one’s being exposed to intrusion from the Irish emigrants who at this point alight, with large appetites, in the New World and at last she fixed upon an oyster saloon in the Seventh Avenue, kept by a negro—an establishment of which she knew nothing save that she had noticed it in passing. She made an appointment with Morris Townsend to meet him there, and she went to the tryst at dusk, enveloped in an impenetrable veil. He kept her waiting for half an hour—he had almost the whole width of the city to traverse—but she liked to wait, it seemed to intensify the situation. She ordered a cup of tea, which proved excessively bad, and this gave her a sense that she was suffering in a romantic cause. When Morris at last arrived, they sat together for half an hour in the duskiest corner of a back shop; and it is hardly too much to say that this was the happiest half-hour that Mrs. Penniman had known for years. The situation was really thrilling, and it scarcely seemed to her a false note when her companion asked for an oyster stew, and proceeded to consume it before her eyes. Morris, indeed, needed all the satisfaction that stewed oysters could give him, for it may be intimated to the reader that he regarded Mrs. Penniman in the light of a fifth wheel to his coach. He was in a state of irritation natural to a gentleman of fine parts who had been snubbed in a benevolent attempt to confer a distinction upon a young woman of inferior characteristics, and the insinuating sympathy of this somewhat desiccated matron appeared to offer him no practical relief. He thought her a humbug, and he judged of humbugs with a good deal of confidence. He had listened and made himself agreeable to her at first, in order to get a footing in Washington Square; and at present he needed all his self-command to be decently civil. It would have gratified him to tell her that she was a fantastic old woman, and that he should like to put her into an omnibus and send her home. We know, however, that Morris possessed the virtue of self-control, and he had, moreover, the constant habit of seeking to be agreeable; so that, although Mrs. Penniman’s demeanour only exasperated his already unquiet nerves, he listened to her with a sombre deference in which she found much to admire.
XVI
They had of course immediately spoken of Catherine. “Did she send me a message, or—or anything?” Morris asked. He appeared to think that she might have sent him a trinket or a lock of her hair.
Mrs. Penniman was slightly embarrassed, for she had not told her niece of her intended expedition. “Not exactly a message,” she said; “I didn’t ask her for one, because I was afraid to—to excite her.”
“I am afraid she is not very excitable!” And Morris gave a smile of some bitterness.
“She is better than that. She is steadfast—she is true!”
“Do you think she will hold fast, then?”
“To the death!”
“Oh, I hope it won’t come to that,” said Morris.
“We must be prepared for the worst, and that is what I wish to speak to you about.”
“What do you call the worst?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Penniman, “my brother’s hard, intellectual nature.”
“Oh, the devil!”
“He is impervious to pity,” Mrs. Penniman added, by way of explanation.
“Do you mean that he won’t come round?”
“He will never be vanquished by argument. I have studied him. He will be vanquished only by the accomplished fact.”
“The accomplished fact?”
“He will come round afterwards,” said Mrs. Penniman, with extreme significance. “He cares for nothing but facts; he must be met by facts!”
“Well,” rejoined Morris, “it is a fact that I wish to marry his daughter. I met him with that the other day, but he was not at all vanquished.”
Mrs. Penniman was silent a little, and her smile beneath the shadow of her capacious bonnet, on the edge of which her black veil was arranged curtain-wise, fixed itself upon Morris’s face with a still more tender brilliancy. “Marry Catherine first and meet him afterwards!” she exclaimed.
“Do you recommend that?” asked the young man, frowning heavily.
She was a little frightened, but she went on with considerable boldness. “That is the way I see it: a private marriage—a private marriage.” She repeated the phrase because she liked it.
“Do you mean that I should carry Catherine off? What do they call it—elope with her?”
“It is not a crime when you are driven to it,” said Mrs. Penniman. “My husband, as I have told you, was a distinguished clergyman; one of the most eloquent men of his day. He once married a young couple that had fled from the house of the young lady’s father. He was so interested in their story. He had no hesitation, and everything came out beautifully. The father was afterwards reconciled, and thought everything of the young man. Mr. Penniman married them in the evening, about seven o’clock. The church was so dark, you could scarcely see; and Mr. Penniman was intensely agitated; he was so sympathetic. I don’t believe he could have done it again.”
“Unfortunately Catherine and I have not Mr. Penniman to marry us,” said Morris.
“No, but you have me!” rejoined Mrs. Penniman expressively. “I can’t perform the ceremony, but I can help you. I can watch.”
“The woman’s an idiot,” thought Morris; but he was obliged to say something different. It was not, however, materially more civil. “Was it in order to tell me this that you requested I would meet you here?”
Mrs. Penniman had been conscious of a certain vagueness in her errand, and of not being able to offer him any very tangible reward for his long walk. “I thought perhaps you would like to see one who is so near to Catherine,” she observed, with considerable majesty. “And also,” she added, “that you would value an opportunity of sending her something.”
Morris extended his empty hands with a melancholy smile. “I am greatly obliged to you, but I have nothing to send.”
“Haven’t you a word?” asked his companion, with her suggestive smile coming back.
Morris frowned again. “Tell her to hold fast,” he said rather curtly.
“That is a good word—a noble word. It will make her happy for many days. She is very touching, very brave,” Mrs. Penniman went on, arranging her mantle and preparing to depart. While she was so engaged she had an inspiration. She found the phrase that she could boldly offer as a vindication of the step she had taken. “If you marry Catherine at all risks” she said, “you will give my brother a proof of your being what he pretends to doubt.”
“What he pretends to doubt?”
“Don’t you know what that is?” Mrs. Penniman asked almost playfully.
“It does not concern me to know,” said Morris grandly.
“Of course it makes you angry.”
“I despise it,” Morris declared.
“Ah, you know what it is, then?” said Mrs. Penniman, shaking her finger at him. “He pretends that you like—you like the money.”
Morris hesitated a moment; and then, as if he spoke advisedly—“I do like the money!”
“Ah, but not—but not as he means it. You don’t like it more than Catherine?”
He leaned his elbows on the table and buried his head in his hands. “You torture me!” he murmured. And, indeed, this was almost the effect of the poor lady’s too importunate interest in his situation.
But she insisted on making her point. “If you marry her in spite of him, he will take for granted that you expect nothing of him, and are prepared to do without it. And so he will see that you are disinterested.”
Morris raised his head a little, following this argument, “And what shall I gain by that?”
“Why, that he will see that he has been wrong in thinking that you wished to get his money.”
“And seeing that I wish he would go to the deuce with it, he will leave it to a hospital. Is that what you mean?” asked Morris.
“No, I don’t mean that; though that would be very grand!” Mrs. Penniman quickly added. “I mean that having done you such an injustice, he will think it his duty, at the end, to make some amends.”
Morris shook his head, though it must be confessed he was a little struck with this idea. “Do you think he is so sentimental?”
“He is not sentimental,” said Mrs. Penniman; “but, to be perfectly fair to him, I think he has, in his own narrow way, a certain sense of duty.”
There passed through Morris Townsend’s mind a rapid wonder as to what he might, even under a remote contingency, be indebted to from the action of this principle in Dr. Sloper’s breast, and the inquiry exhausted itself in his sense of the ludicrous. “Your brother has no duties to me,” he said presently, “and I none to him.”
“Ah, but he has duties to Catherine.”
“Yes, but you see that on that principle Catherine has duties to him as well.”
Mrs. Penniman got up, with a melancholy sigh, as if she thought him very unimaginative. “She has always performed them faithfully; and now, do you think she has no duties to you?” Mrs. Penniman always, even in conversation, italicised her personal pronouns.
“It would sound harsh to say so! I am so grateful for her love,” Morris added.
“I will tell her you said that! And now, remember that if you need me, I am there.” And Mrs. Penniman, who could think of nothing more to say, nodded vaguely in the direction of Washington Square.
Morris looked some moments at the sanded floor of the shop; he seemed to be disposed to linger a moment. At last, looking up with a certain abruptness, “It is your belief that if she marries me he will cut her off?” he asked.
Mrs. Penniman stared a little, and smiled. “Why, I have explained to you what I think would happen—that in the end it would be the best thing to do.”
“You mean that, whatever she does, in the long run she will get the money?”
“It doesn’t depend upon her, but upon you. Venture to appear as disinterested as you are!” said Mrs. Penniman ingeniously. Morris dropped his eyes on the sanded floor again, pondering this; and she pursued. “Mr. Penniman and I had nothing, and we were very happy. Catherine, moreover, has her mother’s fortune, which, at the time my sister-in-law married, was considered a very handsome one.”
“Oh, don’t speak of that!” said Morris; and, indeed, it was quite superfluous, for he had contemplated the fact in all its lights.
“Austin married a wife with money—why shouldn’t you?”
“Ah! but your brother was a doctor,” Morris objected.
“Well, all young men can’t be doctors!”
“I should think it an extremely loathsome profession,” said Morris, with an air of intellectual independence. Then in a moment, he went on rather inconsequently, “Do you suppose there is a will already made in Catherine’s favour?”
“I suppose so—even doctors must die; and perhaps a little in mine,” Mrs. Penniman frankly added.
“And you believe he would certainly change it—as regards Catherine?”
“Yes; and then change it back again.”
“Ah, but one can’t depend on that!” said Morris.
“Do you want to depend on it?” Mrs. Penniman asked.
Morris blushed a little. “Well, I am certainly afraid of being the cause of an injury to Catherine.”
“Ah! you must not be afraid. Be afraid of nothing, and everything will go well!”
And then Mrs. Penniman paid for her cup of tea, and Morris paid for his oyster stew, and they went out together into the dimly-lighted wilderness of the Seventh Avenue. The dusk had closed in completely and the street lamps were separated by wide intervals of a pavement in which cavities and fissures played a disproportionate part. An omnibus, emblazoned with strange pictures, went tumbling over the dislocated cobble-stones.
“How will you go home?” Morris asked, following this vehicle with an interested eye. Mrs. Penniman had taken his arm.
She hesitated a moment. “I think this manner would be pleasant,” she said; and she continued to let him feel the value of his support.
So he walked with her through the devious ways of the west side of the town, and through the bustle of gathering nightfall in populous streets, to the quiet precinct of Washington Square. They lingered a moment at the foot of Dr. Sloper’s white marble steps, above which a spotless white door, adorned with a glittering silver plate, seemed to figure, for Morris, the closed portal of happiness; and then Mrs. Penniman’s companion rested a melancholy eye upon a lighted window in the upper part of the house.
“That is my room—my dear little room!” Mrs. Penniman remarked.
Morris started. “Then I needn’t come walking round the Square to gaze at it.”
“That’s as you please. But Catherine’s is behind; two noble windows on the second floor. I think you can see them from the other street.”
“I don’t want to see them, ma’am!” And Morris turned his back to the house.
“I will tell her you have been here, at any rate,” said Mrs. Penniman, pointing to the spot where they stood; “and I will give her your message—that she is to hold fast!”
“Oh, yes! of course. You know I write her all that.”
“It seems to say more when it is spoken! And remember, if you need me, that I am there”; and Mrs. Penniman glanced at the third floor.
On this they separated, and Morris, left to himself, stood looking at the house a moment; after which he turned away, and took a gloomy walk round the Square, on the opposite side, close to the wooden fence. Then he came back, and paused for a minute in front of Dr. Sloper’s dwelling. His eyes travelled over it; they even rested on the ruddy windows of Mrs. Penniman’s apartment. He thought it a devilish comfortable house.