Washington Square

She had risked it, but her brother gave her such a terribly incisive look—a look so like a surgeon’s lancet—that she was frightened at her courage.  And he answered her in words that corresponded to the look: “It may not prevent me, either, from losing the society of still another.”

Mrs. Penniman took herself off, with whatever air of depreciated merit was at her command, and repaired to Catherine’s room, where the poor girl was closeted.  She knew all about her dreadful night, for the two had met again, the evening before, after Catherine left her father.  Mrs. Penniman was on the landing of the second floor when her niece came upstairs.  It was not remarkable that a person of so much subtlety should have discovered that Catherine had been shut up with the Doctor.  It was still less remarkable that she should have felt an extreme curiosity to learn the result of this interview, and that this sentiment, combined with her great amiability and generosity, should have prompted her to regret the sharp words lately exchanged between her niece and herself.  As the unhappy girl came into sight, in the dusky corridor, she made a lively demonstration of sympathy.  Catherine’s bursting heart was equally oblivious.  She only knew that her aunt was taking her into her arms.  Mrs. Penniman drew her into Catherine’s own room, and the two women sat there together, far into the small hours; the younger one with her head on the other’s lap, sobbing and sobbing at first in a soundless, stifled manner, and then at last perfectly still.  It gratified Mrs. Penniman to be able to feel conscientiously that this scene virtually removed the interdict which Catherine had placed upon her further communion with Morris Townsend.  She was not gratified, however, when, in coming back to her niece’s room before breakfast, she found that Catherine had risen and was preparing herself for this meal.

“You should not go to breakfast,” she said; “you are not well enough, after your fearful night.”

“Yes, I am very well, and I am only afraid of being late.”

“I can’t understand you!” Mrs. Penniman cried.  “You should stay in bed for three days.”

“Oh, I could never do that!” said Catherine, to whom this idea presented no attractions.

Mrs. Penniman was in despair, and she noted, with extreme annoyance, that the trace of the night’s tears had completely vanished from Catherine’s eyes.  She had a most impracticable physique.  “What effect do you expect to have upon your father,” her aunt demanded, “if you come plumping down, without a vestige of any sort of feeling, as if nothing in the world had happened?”

“He would not like me to lie in bed,” said Catherine simply.

“All the more reason for your doing it.  How else do you expect to move him?”

Catherine thought a little.  “I don’t know how; but not in that way.  I wish to be just as usual.”  And she finished dressing, and, according to her aunt’s expression, went plumping down into the paternal presence.  She was really too modest for consistent pathos.

And yet it was perfectly true that she had had a dreadful night.  Even after Mrs. Penniman left her she had had no sleep.  She lay staring at the uncomforting gloom, with her eyes and ears filled with the movement with which her father had turned her out of his room, and of the words in which he had told her that she was a heartless daughter.  Her heart was breaking.  She had heart enough for that.  At moments it seemed to her that she believed him, and that to do what she was doing, a girl must indeed be bad.  She was bad; but she couldn’t help it.  She would try to appear good, even if her heart were perverted; and from time to time she had a fancy that she might accomplish something by ingenious concessions to form, though she should persist in caring for Morris.  Catherine’s ingenuities were indefinite, and we are not called upon to expose their hollowness.  The best of them perhaps showed itself in that freshness of aspect which was so discouraging to Mrs. Penniman, who was amazed at the absence of haggardness in a young woman who for a whole night had lain quivering beneath a father’s curse.  Poor Catherine was conscious of her freshness; it gave her a feeling about the future which rather added to the weight upon her mind.  It seemed a proof that she was strong and solid and dense, and would live to a great age—longer than might be generally convenient; and this idea was depressing, for it appeared to saddle her with a pretension the more, just when the cultivation of any pretension was inconsistent with her doing right.  She wrote that day to Morris Townsend, requesting him to come and see her on the morrow; using very few words, and explaining nothing.  She would explain everything face to face.

XX

On the morrow, in the afternoon, she heard his voice at the door, and his step in the hall.  She received him in the big, bright front parlour, and she instructed the servant that if any one should call she was particularly engaged.  She was not afraid of her father’s coming in, for at that hour he was always driving about town.  When Morris stood there before her, the first thing that she was conscious of was that he was even more beautiful to look at than fond recollection had painted him; the next was that he had pressed her in his arms.  When she was free again it appeared to her that she had now indeed thrown herself into the gulf of defiance, and even, for an instant, that she had been married to him.

He told her that she had been very cruel, and had made him very unhappy; and Catherine felt acutely the difficulty of her destiny, which forced her to give pain in such opposite quarters.  But she wished that, instead of reproaches, however tender, he would give her help; he was certainly wise enough, and clever enough, to invent some issue from their troubles.  She expressed this belief, and Morris received the assurance as if he thought it natural; but he interrogated, at first—as was natural too—rather than committed himself to marking out a course.

“You should not have made me wait so long,” he said.  “I don’t know how I have been living; every hour seemed like years.  You should have decided sooner.”

“Decided?” Catherine asked.

“Decided whether you would keep me or give me up.”

“Oh, Morris,” she cried, with a long tender murmur, “I never thought of giving you up!”

“What, then, were you waiting for?”  The young man was ardently logical.

“I thought my father might—might—” and she hesitated.

“Might see how unhappy you were?”

“Oh no!  But that he might look at it differently.”

“And now you have sent for me to tell me that at last he does so.  Is that it?”

This hypothetical optimism gave the poor girl a pang.  “No, Morris,” she said solemnly, “he looks at it still in the same way.”

“Then why have you sent for me?”

“Because I wanted to see you!” cried Catherine piteously.

“That’s an excellent reason, surely.  But did you want to look at me only?  Have you nothing to tell me?”

His beautiful persuasive eyes were fixed upon her face, and she wondered what answer would be noble enough to make to such a gaze as that.  For a moment her own eyes took it in, and then—“I did want to look at you!” she said gently.  But after this speech, most inconsistently, she hid her face.

Morris watched her for a moment, attentively.  “Will you marry me to-morrow?” he asked suddenly.

“To-morrow?”

“Next week, then.  Any time within a month.”

“Isn’t it better to wait?” said Catherine.

“To wait for what?”

She hardly knew for what; but this tremendous leap alarmed her.  “Till we have thought about it a little more.”

He shook his head, sadly and reproachfully.  “I thought you had been thinking about it these three weeks.  Do you want to turn it over in your mind for five years?  You have given me more than time enough.  My poor girl,” he added in a moment, “you are not sincere!”

Catherine coloured from brow to chin, and her eyes filled with tears.  “Oh, how can you say that?” she murmured.

“Why, you must take me or leave me,” said Morris, very reasonably.  “You can’t please your father and me both; you must choose between us.”

“I have chosen you!” she said passionately.

“Then marry me next week.”

She stood gazing at him.  “Isn’t there any other way?”

“None that I know of for arriving at the same result.  If there is, I should be happy to hear of it.”

Catherine could think of nothing of the kind, and Morris’s luminosity seemed almost pitiless.  The only thing she could think of was that her father might, after all, come round, and she articulated, with an awkward sense of her helplessness in doing so, a wish that this miracle might happen.

“Do you think it is in the least degree likely?” Morris asked.

“It would be, if he could only know you!”

“He can know me if he will.  What is to prevent it?”

“His ideas, his reasons,” said Catherine.  “They are so—so terribly strong.”  She trembled with the recollection of them yet.

“Strong?” cried Morris.  “I would rather you should think them weak.”

“Oh, nothing about my father is weak!” said the girl.

Morris turned away, walking to the window, where he stood looking out.  “You are terribly afraid of him!” he remarked at last.

She felt no impulse to deny it, because she had no shame in it; for if it was no honour to herself, at least it was an honour to him.  “I suppose I must be,” she said simply.