by Henry James
XXXIII
LITTLE by little Dr. Sloper had retired from his profession he visitedonly those patients in whose symptoms he recognised a certainoriginality. He went again to Europe, and remained two years; Catherinewent with him, and on this occasion Mrs. Penniman was of the party.Europe apparently had few surprises for Mrs. Penniman, who frequentlyremarked, in the most romantic sites—“You know I am very familiar withall this.” It should be added that such remarks were usually notaddressed to her brother, or yet to her niece, but to fellow-tourists whohappened to be at hand, or even to the cicerone or the goat-herd in theforeground.
One day, after his return from Europe, the Doctor said something to hisdaughter that made her start—it seemed to come from so far out of thepast.
“I should like you to promise me something before I die.”
“Why do you talk about your dying?” she asked.
“Because I am sixty-eight years old.”
“I hope you will live a long time,” said Catherine.
“I hope I shall! But some day I shall take a bad cold, and then it willnot matter much what any one hopes. That will be the manner of my exit,and when it takes place, remember I told you so. Promise me not to marryMorris Townsend after I am gone.”
This was what made Catherine start, as I have said; but her start was asilent one, and for some moments she said nothing. “Why do you speak ofhim?” she asked at last.
“You challenge everything I say. I speak of him because he’s a topic,like any other. He’s to be seen, like any one else, and he is stilllooking for a wife—having had one and got rid of her, I don’t know bywhat means. He has lately been in New York, and at your cousin Marian’shouse; your Aunt Elizabeth saw him there.”
“They neither of them told me,” said Catherine.
“That’s their merit; it’s not yours. He has grown fat and bald, and hehas not made his fortune. But I can’t trust those facts alone to steelyour heart against him, and that’s why I ask you to promise.”
“Fat and bald”: these words presented a strange image to Catherine’smind, out of which the memory of the most beautiful young man in theworld had never faded. “I don’t think you understand,” she said. “Ivery seldom think of Mr. Townsend.”
“It will be very easy for you to go on, then. Promise me, after mydeath, to do the same.”
Again, for some moments, Catherine was silent; her father’s requestdeeply amazed her; it opened an old wound and made it ache afresh. “Idon’t think I can promise that,” she answered.
“It would be a great satisfaction,” said her father.
“You don’t understand. I can’t promise that.”
The Doctor was silent a minute. “I ask you for a particular reason. Iam altering my will.”
This reason failed to strike Catherine; and indeed she scarcelyunderstood it. All her feelings were merged in the sense that he wastrying to treat her as he had treated her years before. She had sufferedfrom it then; and now all her experience, all her acquired tranquillityand rigidity, protested. She had been so humble in her youth that shecould now afford to have a little pride, and there was something in thisrequest, and in her father’s thinking himself so free to make it, thatseemed an injury to her dignity. Poor Catherine’s dignity was notaggressive; it never sat in state; but if you pushed far enough you couldfind it. Her father had pushed very far.
“I can’t promise,” she simply repeated.
“You are very obstinate,” said the Doctor.
“I don’t think you understand.”
“Please explain, then.”
“I can’t explain,” said Catherine. “And I can’t promise.”
“Upon my word,” her father explained, “I had no idea how obstinate youare!”
She knew herself that she was obstinate, and it gave her a certain joy.She was now a middle-aged woman.
About a year after this, the accident that the Doctor had spoken ofoccurred; he took a violent cold. Driving out to Bloomingdale one Aprilday to see a patient of unsound mind, who was confined in a privateasylum for the insane, and whose family greatly desired a medical opinionfrom an eminent source, he was caught in a spring shower, and being in abuggy, without a hood, he found himself soaked to the skin. He came homewith an ominous chill, and on the morrow he was seriously ill. “It iscongestion of the lungs,” he said to Catherine; “I shall need very goodnursing. It will make no difference, for I shall not recover; but I wisheverything to be done, to the smallest detail, as if I should. I hate anill-conducted sick-room; and you will be so good as to nurse me on thehypothesis that I shall get well.” He told her which of hisfellow-physicians to send for, and gave her a multitude of minutedirections; it was quite on the optimistic hypothesis that she nursedhim. But he had never been wrong in his life, and he was not wrong now.He was touching his seventieth year, and though he had a verywell-tempered constitution, his hold upon life had lost its firmness. Hedied after three weeks’ illness, during which Mrs. Penniman, as well ashis daughter, had been assiduous at his bedside.
On his will being opened after a decent interval, it was found to consistof two portions. The first of these dated from ten years back, andconsisted of a series of dispositions by which he left the great mass ofproperty to his daughter, with becoming legacies to his two sisters. Thesecond was a codicil, of recent origin, maintaining the annuities to Mrs.Penniman and Mrs. Almond, but reducing Catherine’s share to a fifth ofwhat he had first bequeathed her. “She is amply provided for from hermother’s side,” the document ran, “never having spent more than afraction of her income from this source; so that her fortune is alreadymore than sufficient to attract those unscrupulous adventurers whom shehas given me reason to believe that she persists in regarding as aninteresting class.” The large remainder of his property, therefore, Dr.Sloper had divided into seven unequal parts, which he left, asendowments, to as many different hospitals and schools of medicine, invarious cities of the Union.
To Mrs. Penniman it seemed monstrous that a man should play such trickswith other people’s money; for after his death, of course, as she said,it was other people’s. “Of course, you will dispute the will,” sheremarked, fatuously, to Catherine.
“Oh no,” Catherine answered, “I like it very much. Only I wish it hadbeen expressed a little differently!”