Washington Square

“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.

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.

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.”