by Henry James
XXXII
OUR story has hitherto moved with very short steps, but as it approachesits termination it must take a long stride. As time went on, it mighthave appeared to the Doctor that his daughter’s account of her rupturewith Morris Townsend, mere bravado as he had deemed it, was in somedegree justified by the sequel. Morris remained as rigidly andunremittingly absent as if he had died of a broken heart, and Catherinehad apparently buried the memory of this fruitless episode as deep as ifit had terminated by her own choice. We know that she had been deeplyand incurably wounded, but the Doctor had no means of knowing it. He wascertainly curious about it, and would have given a good deal to discoverthe exact truth; but it was his punishment that he never knew—hispunishment, I mean, for the abuse of sarcasm in his relations with hisdaughter. There was a good deal of effective sarcasm in her keeping himin the dark, and the rest of the world conspired with her, in this sense,to be sarcastic. Mrs. Penniman told him nothing, partly because he neverquestioned her—he made too light of Mrs. Penniman for that—and partlybecause she flattered herself that a tormenting reserve, and a sereneprofession of ignorance, would avenge her for his theory that she hadmeddled in the matter. He went two or three times to see Mrs.Montgomery, but Mrs. Montgomery had nothing to impart. She simply knewthat her brother’s engagement was broken off, and now that Miss Sloperwas out of danger she preferred not to bear witness in any way againstMorris. She had done so before—however unwillingly—because she was sorryfor Miss Sloper; but she was not sorry for Miss Sloper now—not at allsorry. Morris had told her nothing about his relations with Miss Sloperat the time, and he had told her nothing since. He was always away, andhe very seldom wrote to her; she believed he had gone to California.Mrs. Almond had, in her sister’s phrase, “taken up” Catherine violentlysince the recent catastrophe; but though the girl was very grateful toher for her kindness, she revealed no secrets, and the good lady couldgive the Doctor no satisfaction. Even, however, had she been able tonarrate to him the private history of his daughter’s unhappy love affair,it would have given her a certain comfort to leave him in ignorance; forMrs. Almond was at this time not altogether in sympathy with her brother.She had guessed for herself that Catherine had been cruelly jilted—sheknew nothing from Mrs. Penniman, for Mrs. Penniman had not ventured tolay the famous explanation of Morris’s motives before Mrs. Almond, thoughshe had thought it good enough for Catherine—and she pronounced herbrother too consistently indifferent to what the poor creature must havesuffered and must still be suffering. Dr. Sloper had his theory, and herarely altered his theories. The marriage would have been an abominableone, and the girl had had a blessed escape. She was not to be pitied forthat, and to pretend to condole with her would have been to makeconcessions to the idea that she had ever had a right to think of Morris.
“I put my foot on this idea from the first, and I keep it there now,”said the Doctor. “I don’t see anything cruel in that; one can’t keep itthere too long.” To this Mrs. Almond more than once replied that ifCatherine had got rid of her incongruous lover, she deserved the creditof it, and that to bring herself to her father’s enlightened view of thematter must have cost her an effort that he was bound to appreciate.
“I am by no means sure she has got rid of him,” the Doctor said. “Thereis not the smallest probability that, after having been as obstinate as amule for two years, she suddenly became amenable to reason. It isinfinitely more probable that he got rid of her.”
“All the more reason you should be gentle with her.”
“I _am_ gentle with her. But I can’t do the pathetic; I can’t pump uptears, to look graceful, over the most fortunate thing that ever happenedto her.”
“You have no sympathy,” said Mrs. Almond; “that was never your strongpoint. You have only to look at her to see that, right or wrong, andwhether the rupture came from herself or from him, her poor little heartis grievously bruised.”
“Handling bruises—and even dropping tears on them—doesn’t make them anybetter! My business is to see she gets no more knocks, and that I shallcarefully attend to. But I don’t at all recognise your description ofCatherine. She doesn’t strike me in the least as a young woman goingabout in search of a moral poultice. In fact, she seems to me muchbetter than while the fellow was hanging about. She is perfectlycomfortable and blooming; she eats and sleeps, takes her usual exercise,and overloads herself, as usual, with finery. She is always knittingsome purse or embroidering some handkerchief, and it seems to me sheturns these articles out about as fast as ever. She hasn’t much to say;but when had she anything to say? She had her little dance, and now sheis sitting down to rest. I suspect that, on the whole, she enjoys it.”
“She enjoys it as people enjoy getting rid of a leg that has beencrushed. The state of mind after amputation is doubtless one ofcomparative repose.”
“If your leg is a metaphor for young Townsend, I can assure you he hasnever been crushed. Crushed? Not he! He is alive and perfectly intact,and that’s why I am not satisfied.”
“Should you have liked to kill him?” asked Mrs. Almond.
“Yes, very much. I think it is quite possible that it is all a blind.”
“A blind?”
“An arrangement between them. _Il fait le mort_, as they say in France;but he is looking out of the corner of his eye. You can depend upon ithe has not burned his ships; he has kept one to come back in. When I amdead, he will set sail again, and then she will marry him.”
“It is interesting to know that you accuse your only daughter of beingthe vilest of hypocrites,” said Mrs. Almond.
“I don’t see what difference her being my only daughter makes. It isbetter to accuse one than a dozen. But I don’t accuse any one. There isnot the smallest hypocrisy about Catherine, and I deny that she evenpretends to be miserable.”
The Doctor’s idea that the thing was a “blind” had its intermissions andrevivals; but it may be said on the whole to have increased as he grewolder; together with his impression of Catherine’s blooming andcomfortable condition. Naturally, if he had not found grounds forviewing her as a lovelorn maiden during the year or two that followed hergreat trouble, he found none at a time when she had completely recoveredher self-possession. He was obliged to recognise the fact that if thetwo young people were waiting for him to get out of the way, they were atleast waiting very patiently. He had heard from time to time that Morriswas in New York; but he never remained there long, and, to the best ofthe Doctor’s belief, had no communication with Catherine. He was surethey never met, and he had reason to suspect that Morris never wrote toher. After the letter that has been mentioned, she heard from him twiceagain, at considerable intervals; but on none of these occasions did shewrite herself. On the other hand, as the Doctor observed, she avertedherself rigidly from the idea of marrying other people. Heropportunities for doing so were not numerous, but they occurred oftenenough to test her disposition. She refused a widower, a man with agenial temperament, a handsome fortune, and three little girls (he hadheard that she was very fond of children, and he pointed to his own withsome confidence); and she turned a deaf ear to the solicitations of aclever young lawyer, who, with the prospect of a great practice, and thereputation of a most agreeable man, had had the shrewdness, when he cameto look about him for a wife, to believe that she would suit him betterthan several younger and prettier girls. Mr. Macalister, the widower,had desired to make a marriage of reason, and had chosen Catherine forwhat he supposed to be her latent matronly qualities; but John Ludlow,who was a year the girl’s junior, and spoken of always as a young man whomight have his “pick,” was seriously in love with her. Catherine,however, would never look at him; she made it plain to him that shethought he came to see her too often. He afterwards consoled himself,and married a very different person, little Miss Sturtevant, whoseattractions were obvious to the dullest comprehension. Catherine, at thetime of these events, had left her thirtieth year well behind her, andhad qu
ite taken her place as an old maid. Her father would havepreferred she should marry, and he once told her that he hoped she wouldnot be too fastidious. “I should like to see you an honest man’s wifebefore I die,” he said. This was after John Ludlow had been compelled togive it up, though the Doctor had advised him to persevere. The Doctorexercised no further pressure, and had the credit of not “worrying” atall over his daughter’s singleness. In fact he worried rather more thanappeared, and there were considerable periods during which he felt surethat Morris Townsend was hidden behind some door. “If he is not, whydoesn’t she marry?” he asked himself. “Limited as her intelligence maybe, she must understand perfectly well that she is made to do the usualthing.” Catherine, however, became an admirable old maid. She formedhabits, regulated her days upon a system of her own, interested herselfin charitable institutions, asylums, hospitals, and aid societies; andwent generally, with an even and noiseless step, about the rigid businessof her life. This life had, however, a secret history as well as apublic one—if I may talk of the public history of a mature and diffidentspinster for whom publicity had always a combination of terrors. Fromher own point of view the great facts of her career were that MorrisTownsend had trifled with her affection, and that her father had brokenits spring. Nothing could ever alter these facts; they were alwaysthere, like her name, her age, her plain face. Nothing could ever undothe wrong or cure the pain that Morris had inflicted on her, and nothingcould ever make her feel towards her father as she felt in her youngeryears. There was something dead in her life, and her duty was to try andfill the void. Catherine recognised this duty to the utmost; she had agreat disapproval of brooding and moping. She had, of course, no facultyfor quenching memory in dissipation but she mingled freely in the usualgaieties of the town, and she became at last an inevitable figure at allrespectable entertainments. She was greatly liked, and as time went onshe grew to be a sort of kindly maiden aunt to the younger portion ofsociety. Young girls were apt to confide to her their love affairs(which they never did to Mrs. Penniman), and young men to be fond of herwithout knowing why. She developed a few harmless eccentricities; herhabits, once formed, were rather stiffly maintained; her opinions, on allmoral and social matters, were extremely conservative; and before she wasforty she was regarded as an old-fashioned person, and an authority oncustoms that had passed away. Mrs. Penniman, in comparison, was quite agirlish figure; she grew younger as she advanced in life. She lost noneof her relish for beauty and mystery, but she had little opportunity toexercise it. With Catherine’s later wooers she failed to establishrelations as intimate as those which had given her so many interestinghours in the society of Morris Townsend. These gentlemen had anindefinable mistrust of her good offices, and they never talked to herabout Catherine’s charms. Her ringlets, her buckles and bangles,glistened more brightly with each succeeding year, and she remained quitethe same officious and imaginative Mrs. Penniman, and the odd mixture ofimpetuosity and circumspection, that we have hitherto known. As regardsone point, however, her circumspection prevailed, and she must be givendue credit for it. For upwards of seventeen years she never mentionedMorris Townsend’s name to her niece. Catherine was grateful to her, butthis consistent silence, so little in accord with her aunt’s character,gave her a certain alarm, and she could never wholly rid herself of asuspicion that Mrs. Penniman sometimes had news of him.