The Complete Works of Henry James

by Henry James

  “Unfortunately Catherine and I have not Mr. Penniman to marry us,” said Morris.

  “No, but you have me!” rejoined Mrs. Penniman expressively. “I can’t perform the ceremony, but I can help you. I can watch.”

  “The woman’s an idiot,” thought Morris; but he was obliged to say something different. It was not, however, materially more civil. “Was it in order to tell me this that you requested I would meet you here?”

  Mrs. Penniman had been conscious of a certain vagueness in her errand, and of not being able to offer him any very tangible reward for his long walk. “I thought perhaps you would like to see one who is so near to Catherine,” she observed, with considerable majesty. “And also,” she added, “that you would value an opportunity of sending her something.”

  Morris extended his empty hands with a melancholy smile. “I am greatly obliged to you, but I have nothing to send.”

  “Haven’t you a WORD?” asked his companion, with her suggestive smile coming back.

  Morris frowned again. “Tell her to hold fast,” he said rather curtly.

  “That is a good word—a noble word. It will make her happy for many days. She is very touching, very brave,” Mrs. Penniman went on, arranging her mantle and preparing to depart. While she was so engaged she had an inspiration. She found the phrase that she could boldly offer as a vindication of the step she had taken. “If you marry Catherine at all risks” she said, “you will give my brother a proof of your being what he pretends to doubt.”

  “What he pretends to doubt?”

  “Don’t you know what that is?” Mrs. Penniman asked almost playfully.

  “It does not concern me to know,” said Morris grandly.

  “Of course it makes you angry.”

  “I despise it,” Morris declared.

  “Ah, you know what it is, then?” said Mrs. Penniman, shaking her finger at him. “He pretends that you like—you like the money.”

  Morris hesitated a moment; and then, as if he spoke advisedly—”I DO like the money!”

  “Ah, but not—but not as he means it. You don’t like it more than Catherine?”

  He leaned his elbows on the table and buried his head in his hands. “You torture me!” he murmured. And, indeed, this was almost the effect of the poor lady’s too importunate interest in his situation.

  But she insisted on making her point. “If you marry her in spite of him, he will take for granted that you expect nothing of him, and are prepared to do without it. And so he will see that you are disinterested.”

  Morris raised his head a little, following this argument, “And what shall I gain by that?”

  “Why, that he will see that he has been wrong in thinking that you wished to get his money.”

  “And seeing that I wish he would go to the deuce with it, he will leave it to a hospital. Is that what you mean?” asked Morris.

  “No, I don’t mean that; though that would be very grand!” Mrs. Penniman quickly added. “I mean that having done you such an injustice, he will think it his duty, at the end, to make some amends.”

  Morris shook his head, though it must be confessed he was a little struck with this idea. “Do you think he is so sentimental?”

  “He is not sentimental,” said Mrs. Penniman; “but, to be perfectly fair to him, I think he has, in his own narrow way, a certain sense of duty.”

  There passed through Morris Townsend’s mind a rapid wonder as to what he might, even under a remote contingency, be indebted to from the action of this principle in Dr. Sloper’s breast, and the inquiry exhausted itself in his sense of the ludicrous. “Your brother has no duties to me,” he said presently, “and I none to him.”

  “Ah, but he has duties to Catherine.”

  “Yes, but you see that on that principle Catherine has duties to him as well.”

  Mrs. Penniman got up, with a melancholy sigh, as if she thought him very unimaginative. “She has always performed them faithfully; and now, do you think she has no duties to YOU?” Mrs. Penniman always, even in conversation, italicised her personal pronouns.

  “It would sound harsh to say so! I am so grateful for her love,” Morris added.

  “I will tell her you said that! And now, remember that if you need me, I am there.” And Mrs. Penniman, who could think of nothing more to say, nodded vaguely in the direction of Washington Square.

  Morris looked some moments at the sanded floor of the shop; he seemed to be disposed to linger a moment. At last, looking up with a certain abruptness, “It is your belief that if she marries me he will cut her off?” he asked.

  Mrs. Penniman stared a little, and smiled. “Why, I have explained to you what I think would happen—that in the end it would be the best thing to do.”

  “You mean that, whatever she does, in the long run she will get the money?”

  “It doesn’t depend upon her, but upon you. Venture to appear as disinterested as you are!” said Mrs. Penniman ingeniously. Morris dropped his eyes on the sanded floor again, pondering this; and she pursued. “Mr. Penniman and I had nothing, and we were very happy. Catherine, moreover, has her mother’s fortune, which, at the time my sister-in-law married, was considered a very handsome one.”

  “Oh, don’t speak of that!” said Morris; and, indeed, it was quite superfluous, for he had contemplated the fact in all its lights.

  “Austin married a wife with money—why shouldn’t you?”

  “Ah! but your brother was a doctor,” Morris objected.

  “Well, all young men can’t be doctors!”

  “I should think it an extremely loathsome profession,” said Morris, with an air of intellectual independence. Then in a moment, he went on rather inconsequently, “Do you suppose there is a will already made in Catherine’s favour?”

  “I suppose so—even doctors must die; and perhaps a little in mine,” Mrs. Penniman frankly added.

  “And you believe he would certainly change it—as regards Catherine?”

  “Yes; and then change it back again.”

  “Ah, but one can’t depend on that!” said Morris.

  “Do you want to DEPEND on it?” Mrs. Penniman asked.

  Morris blushed a little. “Well, I am certainly afraid of being the cause of an injury to Catherine.”

  “Ah! you must not be afraid. Be afraid of nothing, and everything will go well!”

  And then Mrs. Penniman paid for her cup of tea, and Morris paid for his oyster stew, and they went out together into the dimly-lighted wilderness of the Seventh Avenue. The dusk had closed in completely and the street lamps were separated by wide intervals of a pavement in which cavities and fissures played a disproportionate part. An omnibus, emblazoned with strange pictures, went tumbling over the dislocated cobble-stones.

  “How will you go home?” Morris asked, following this vehicle with an interested eye. Mrs. Penniman had taken his arm.

  She hesitated a moment. “I think this manner would be pleasant,” she said; and she continued to let him feel the value of his support.

  So he walked with her through the devious ways of the west side of the town, and through the bustle of gathering nightfall in populous streets, to the quiet precinct of Washington Square. They lingered a moment at the foot of Dr. Sloper’s white marble steps, above which a spotless white door, adorned with a glittering silver plate, seemed to figure, for Morris, the closed portal of happiness; and then Mrs. Penniman’s companion rested a melancholy eye upon a lighted window in the upper part of the house.

  “That is my room—my dear little room!” Mrs. Penniman remarked.

  Morris started. “Then I needn’t come walking round the Square to gaze at it.”

  “That’s as you please. But Catherine’s is behind; two noble windows on the second floor. I think you can see them from the other street.”

  “I don’t want to see them, ma’am!” And Morris turned his back to the house.

  “I will tell her you have been HERE, at any rate,” said Mrs. Penniman, pointing to the
spot where they stood; “and I will give her your message—that she is to hold fast!”

  “Oh, yes! of course. You know I write her all that.”

  “It seems to say more when it is spoken! And remember, if you need me, that I am THERE”; and Mrs. Penniman glanced at the third floor.

  On this they separated, and Morris, left to himself, stood looking at the house a moment; after which he turned away, and took a gloomy walk round the Square, on the opposite side, close to the wooden fence. Then he came back, and paused for a minute in front of Dr. Sloper’s dwelling. His eyes travelled over it; they even rested on the ruddy windows of Mrs. Penniman’s apartment. He thought it a devilish comfortable house.

  CHAPTER 17

  Mrs. Penniman told Catherine that evening—the two ladies were sitting in the back parlour—that she had had an interview with Morris Townsend; and on receiving this news the girl started with a sense of pain. She felt angry for the moment; it was almost the first time she had ever felt angry. It seemed to her that her aunt was meddlesome; and from this came a vague apprehension that she would spoil something.

  “I don’t see why you should have seen him. I don’t think it was right,” Catherine said.

  “I was so sorry for him—it seemed to me some one ought to see him.”

  “No one but I,” said Catherine, who felt as if she were making the most presumptuous speech of her life, and yet at the same time had an instinct that she was right in doing so.

  “But you wouldn’t, my dear,” Aunt Lavinia rejoined; “and I didn’t know what might have become of him.”

  “I have not seen him, because my father has forbidden it,” Catherine said very simply.

  There was a simplicity in this, indeed, which fairly vexed Mrs. Penniman. “If your father forbade you to go to sleep, I suppose you would keep awake!” she commented.

  Catherine looked at her. “I don’t understand you. You seem to be very strange.”

  “Well, my dear, you will understand me some day!” And Mrs. Penniman, who was reading the evening paper, which she perused daily from the first line to the last, resumed her occupation. She wrapped herself in silence; she was determined Catherine should ask her for an account of her interview with Morris. But Catherine was silent for so long, that she almost lost patience; and she was on the point of remarking to her that she was very heartless, when the girl at last spoke.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  “He said he is ready to marry you any day, in spite of everything.”

  Catherine made no answer to this, and Mrs. Penniman almost lost patience again; owing to which she at last volunteered the information that Morris looked very handsome, but terribly haggard.

  “Did he seem sad?” asked her niece.

  “He was dark under the eyes,” said Mrs. Penniman. “So different from when I first saw him; though I am not sure that if I had seen him in this condition the first time, I should not have been even more struck with him. There is something brilliant in his very misery.”

  This was, to Catherine’s sense, a vivid picture, and though she disapproved, she felt herself gazing at it. “Where did you see him?” she asked presently.

  “In—in the Bowery; at a confectioner’s,” said Mrs. Penniman, who had a general idea that she ought to dissemble a little.

  “Whereabouts is the place?” Catherine inquired, after another pause.

  “Do you wish to go there, my dear?” said her aunt.

  “Oh no!” And Catherine got up from her seat and went to the fire, where she stood looking a while at the glowing coals.

  “Why are you so dry, Catherine?” Mrs. Penniman said at last.

  “So dry?”

  “So cold—so irresponsive.”

  The girl turned very quickly. “Did HE say that?”

  Mrs. Penniman hesitated a moment. “I will tell you what he said. He said he feared only one thing—that you would be afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Afraid of your father.”

  Catherine turned back to the fire again, and then, after a pause, she said—”I AM afraid of my father.”

  Mrs. Penniman got quickly up from her chair and approached her niece. “Do you mean to give him up, then?”

  Catherine for some time never moved; she kept her eyes on the coals. At last she raised her head and looked at her aunt. “Why do you push me so?” she asked.

  “I don’t push you. When have I spoken to you before?”

  “It seems to me that you have spoken to me several times.”

  “I am afraid it is necessary, then, Catherine,” said Mrs. Penniman, with a good deal of solemnity. “I am afraid you don’t feel the importance—” She paused a little; Catherine was looking at her. “The importance of not disappointing that gallant young heart!” And Mrs. Penniman went back to her chair, by the lamp, and, with a little jerk, picked up the evening paper again.

  Catherine stood there before the fire, with her hands behind her, looking at her aunt, to whom it seemed that the girl had never had just this dark fixedness in her gaze. “I don’t think you understand- -or that you know me,” she said.

  “If I don’t, it is not wonderful; you trust me so little.”

  Catherine made no attempt to deny this charge, and for some time more nothing was said. But Mrs. Penniman’s imagination was restless, and the evening paper failed on this occasion to enchain it.

  “If you succumb to the dread of your father’s wrath,” she said, “I don’t know what will become of us.”

  “Did HE tell you to say these things to me?”

  “He told me to use my influence.”

  “You must be mistaken,” said Catherine. “He trusts me.”

  “I hope he may never repent of it!” And Mrs. Penniman gave a little sharp slap to her newspaper. She knew not what to make of her niece, who had suddenly become stern and contradictious.

  This tendency on Catherine’s part was presently even more apparent. “You had much better not make any more appointments with Mr. Townsend,” she said. “I don’t think it is right.”

  Mrs. Penniman rose with considerable majesty. “My poor child, are you jealous of me?” she inquired.

  “Oh, Aunt Lavinia!” murmured Catherine, blushing.

  “I don’t think it is your place to teach me what is right.”

  On this point Catherine made no concession. “It can’t be right to deceive.”

  “I certainly have not deceived YOU!”

  “Yes; but I promised my father—”

  “I have no doubt you promised your father. But I have promised him nothing!”

  Catherine had to admit this, and she did so in silence. “I don’t believe Mr. Townsend himself likes it,” she said at last.

  “Doesn’t like meeting me?”

  “Not in secret.”

  “It was not in secret; the place was full of people.”

  “But it was a secret place—away off in the Bowery.”

  Mrs. Penniman flinched a little. “Gentlemen enjoy such things,” she remarked presently. “I know what gentlemen like.”

  “My father wouldn’t like it, if he knew.”

  “Pray, do you propose to inform him?” Mrs. Penniman inquired.

  “No, Aunt Lavinia. But please don’t do it again.”

  “If I do it again, you will inform him: is that what you mean? I do not share your dread of my brother; I have always known how to defend my own position. But I shall certainly never again take any step on your behalf; you are much too thankless. I knew you were not a spontaneous nature, but I believed you were firm, and I told your father that he would find you so. I am disappointed—but your father will not be!” And with this, Mrs. Penniman offered her niece a brief good-night, and withdrew to her own apartment.

  CHAPTER 18

  Catherine sat alone by the parlour fire—sat there for more than an hour, lost in her meditations. Her aunt seemed to her aggressive and foolish, and to see it so clearly—to judge Mrs. Penniman so
positively—made her feel old and grave. She did not resent the imputation of weakness; it made no impression on her, for she had not the sense of weakness, and she was not hurt at not being appreciated. She had an immense respect for her father, and she felt that to displease him would be a misdemeanour analogous to an act of profanity in a great temple; but her purpose had slowly ripened, and she believed that her prayers had purified it of its violence. The evening advanced, and the lamp burned dim without her noticing it; her eyes were fixed upon her terrible plan. She knew her father was in his study—that he had been there all the evening; from time to time she expected to hear him move. She thought he would perhaps come, as he sometimes came, into the parlour. At last the clock struck eleven, and the house was wrapped in silence; the servants had gone to bed. Catherine got up and went slowly to the door of the library, where she waited a moment, motionless. Then she knocked, and then she waited again. Her father had answered her, but she had not the courage to turn the latch. What she had said to her aunt was true enough—she was afraid of him; and in saying that she had no sense of weakness she meant that she was not afraid of herself. She heard him move within, and he came and opened the door for her.

  “What is the matter?” asked the Doctor. “You are standing there like a ghost.”

  She went into the room, but it was some time before she contrived to say what she had come to say. Her father, who was in his dressing- gown and slippers, had been busy at his writing-table, and after looking at her for some moments, and waiting for her to speak, he went and seated himself at his papers again. His back was turned to her—she began to hear the scratching of his pen. She remained near the door, with her heart thumping beneath her bodice; and she was very glad that his back was turned, for it seemed to her that she could more easily address herself to this portion of his person than to his face. At last she began, watching it while she spoke.