Chapter 5
“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.
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.
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 occasional pauses and prolongations of accent, which made no great allowance for poor Catherine’s suspense as to his conclusion. She sat down at last, with her head bent and her eyes still fixed upon him; and strangely enough—I hardly know how to tell it—even while she felt that what he said went so terribly against her, she admired his neatness and nobleness of expression. There was something hopeless and oppressive in having to argue with her father; but she too, on her side, must try to be clear. He was so quiet; he was not at all angry; and she too must be quiet. But her very effort to be quiet made her tremble.
“That is not the principal thing we know about him,” she said; and there was a touch of her tremor in her voice. “There are other things—many other things. He has very high abilities—he wants so much to do something. He is kind, and generous, and true,” said poor Catherine, who had not suspected hitherto the resources of her eloquence. “And his fortune—his fortune that he spent—was very small!”
“All the more reason he shouldn’t have spent it,” cried the Doctor, getting up, with a laugh. Then as Catherine, who had also risen to her feet again, stood there in her rather angular earnestness, wishing so much and expressing so little, he drew her towards him and kissed her. “You won’t think me cruel?” he said, holding her a moment.
This question was not reassuring; it seemed to Catherine, on the contrary, to suggest possibilities which made her feel sick. But she answered coherently enough—“No, dear father; because if you knew how I feel—and you must know, you know everything—you would be so kind, so gentle.”
“Yes, I think I know how you feel,” the Doctor said. “I will be very kind—be sure of that. And I will see Mr. Townsend to-morrow. Meanwhile, and for the present, be so good as to mention to no one that you are engaged.”
XII
ON the morrow, in the afternoon, he stayed at home, awaiting Mr. Townsend’s call—a proceeding by which it appeared to him (justly perhaps, for he was a very busy man) that he paid Catherine’s suitor great honour, and gave both these young people so much the less to complain of. Morris presented himself with a countenance sufficiently serene—he appeared to have forgotten the “insult” for which he had solicited Catherine’s sympathy two evenings before, and Dr. Sloper lost no time in letting him know that he had been prepared for his visit.
“Catherine told me yesterday what has been going on between you,” he said. “You must allow me to say that it would have been becoming of you to give me notice of your intentions before they had gone so far.”
“I should have done so,” Morris answered, “if you had not had so much the appearance of leaving your daughter at liberty. She seems to me quite her own mistress.”
“Literally, she is. But she has not emancipated herself morally quite so far, I trust, as to choose a husband without consulting me. I have left her at liberty, but I have not been in the least indifferent. The truth is that your little affair has come to a head with a rapidity that surprises me. It was only the other day that Catherine made your acquaintance.”