Washington Square (5 page)

C
HAPTER
9

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, toward the middle of the evening, Doctor 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 minimize 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 unsympathizing 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 reflection, 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.

“D—n 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 Doctor 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 catechize 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 afterward, 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 savored of the pedagogue.

“Will you meet me somewhere tomorrow 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 recognized 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 awhile; 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 parlor 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.

C
HAPTER
10

Catherine received the young man the next day on the ground she had chosen—amidst 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 greenish-gilt letters,
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 favors. 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 favors 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 promoter 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 scenes 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 afterward; the sensation was rather an obstacle than an aid to reflection. 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, today, 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 tonight; you must do it tomorrow.”

“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: Tomorrow, 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 defense to you; it's a charge that a man has to stoop to defend himself from.”

Catherine on her side was silent for awhile; 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 words 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 at all, for she put her hand into his own. He kept it awhile, 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.