Washington Square

“Oh, he doesn’t mind,” said young Townsend.  “He takes it easy—he isn’t in a hurry.  He is very particular.”

Catherine thought he naturally would be, and gave herself up for some moments to the contemplation of this idea, in several of its bearings.

“Won’t his father take him into his business—his office?” she at last inquired.

“He hasn’t got any father—he has only got a sister.  Your sister can’t help you much.”

It seemed to Catherine that if she were his sister she would disprove this axiom.  “Is she—is she pleasant?” she asked in a moment.

“I don’t know—I believe she’s very respectable,” said young Townsend.  And then he looked across to his cousin and began to laugh.  “Look here, we are talking about you,” he added.

Morris Townsend paused in his conversation with Mrs. Penniman, and stared, with a little smile.  Then he got up, as if he were going.

“As far as you are concerned, I can’t return the compliment,” he said to Catherine’s companion.  “But as regards Miss Sloper, it’s another affair.”

Catherine thought this little speech wonderfully well turned; but she was embarrassed by it, and she also got up.  Morris Townsend stood looking at her and smiling; he put out his hand for farewell.  He was going, without having said anything to her; but even on these terms she was glad to have seen him.

“I will tell her what you have said—when you go!” said Mrs. Penniman, with an insinuating laugh.

Catherine blushed, for she felt almost as if they were making sport of her.  What in the world could this beautiful young man have said?  He looked at her still, in spite of her blush; but very kindly and respectfully.

“I have had no talk with you,” he said, “and that was what I came for.  But it will be a good reason for coming another time; a little pretext—if I am obliged to give one.  I am not afraid of what your aunt will say when I go.”

With this the two young men took their departure; after which Catherine, with her blush still lingering, directed a serious and interrogative eye to Mrs. Penniman.  She was incapable of elaborate artifice, and she resorted to no jocular device—to no affectation of the belief that she had been maligned—to learn what she desired.

“What did you say you would tell me?” she asked.

Mrs. Penniman came up to her, smiling and nodding a little, looked at her all over, and gave a twist to the knot of ribbon in her neck.  “It’s a great secret, my dear child; but he is coming a-courting!”

Catherine was serious still.  “Is that what he told you!”

“He didn’t say so exactly.  But he left me to guess it.  I’m a good guesser.”

“Do you mean a-courting me?”

“Not me, certainly, miss; though I must say he is a hundred times more polite to a person who has no longer extreme youth to recommend her than most of the young men.  He is thinking of some one else.”  And Mrs. Penniman gave her niece a delicate little kiss.  “You must be very gracious to him.”

Catherine stared—she was bewildered.  “I don’t understand you,” she said; “he doesn’t know me.”

“Oh yes, he does; more than you think.  I have told him all about you.”

“Oh, Aunt Penniman!” murmured Catherine, as if this had been a breach of trust.  “He is a perfect stranger—we don’t know him.”  There was infinite, modesty in the poor girl’s “we.”

Aunt Penniman, however, took no account of it; she spoke even with a touch of acrimony.  “My dear Catherine, you know very well that you admire him!”

“Oh, Aunt Penniman!” Catherine could only murmur again.  It might very well be that she admired him—though this did not seem to her a thing to talk about.  But that this brilliant stranger—this sudden apparition, who had barely heard the sound of her voice—took that sort of interest in her that was expressed by the romantic phrase of which Mrs. Penniman had just made use: this could only be a figment of the restless brain of Aunt Lavinia, whom every one knew to be a woman of powerful imagination.

VI

Mrs. Penniman even took for granted at times that other people had as much imagination as herself; so that when, half an hour later, her brother came in, she addressed him quite on this principle.

“He has just been here, Austin; it’s such a pity you missed him.”

“Whom in the world have I missed?” asked the Doctor.

“Mr. Morris Townsend; he has made us such a delightful visit.”

“And who in the world is Mr. Morris Townsend?”

“Aunt Penniman means the gentleman—the gentleman whose name I couldn’t remember,” said Catherine.

“The gentleman at Elizabeth’s party who was so struck with Catherine,” Mrs. Penniman added.

“Oh, his name is Morris Townsend, is it?  And did he come here to propose to you?”

“Oh, father,” murmured the girl for all answer, turning away to the window, where the dusk had deepened to darkness.

“I hope he won’t do that without your permission,” said Mrs. Penniman, very graciously.

“After all, my dear, he seems to have yours,” her brother answered.

Lavinia simpered, as if this might not be quite enough, and Catherine, with her forehead touching the window-panes, listened to this exchange of epigrams as reservedly as if they had not each been a pin-prick in her own destiny.

“The next time he comes,” the Doctor added, “you had better call me.  He might like to see me.”

Morris Townsend came again, some five days afterwards; but Dr. Sloper was not called, as he was absent from home at the time.  Catherine was with her aunt when the young man’s name was brought in, and Mrs. Penniman, effacing herself and protesting, made a great point of her niece’s going into the drawing-room alone.

“This time it’s for you—for you only,” she said.  “Before, when he talked to me, it was only preliminary—it was to gain my confidence.  Literally, my dear, I should not have the courage to show myself to-day.”

And this was perfectly true.  Mrs. Penniman was not a brave woman, and Morris Townsend had struck her as a young man of great force of character, and of remarkable powers of satire; a keen, resolute, brilliant nature, with which one must exercise a great deal of tact.  She said to herself that he was “imperious,” and she liked the word and the idea.  She was not the least jealous of her niece, and she had been perfectly happy with Mr. Penniman, but in the bottom of her heart she permitted herself the observation: “That’s the sort of husband I should have had!”  He was certainly much more imperious—she ended by calling it imperial—than Mr. Penniman.

So Catherine saw Mr. Townsend alone, and her aunt did not come in even at the end of the visit.  The visit was a long one; he sat there—in the front parlour, in the biggest armchair—for more than an hour.  He seemed more at home this time—more familiar; lounging a little in the chair, slapping a cushion that was near him with his stick, and looking round the room a good deal, and at the objects it contained, as well as at Catherine; whom, however, he also contemplated freely.  There was a smile of respectful devotion in his handsome eyes which seemed to Catherine almost solemnly beautiful; it made her think of a young knight in a poem.  His talk, however, was not particularly knightly; it was light and easy and friendly; it took a practical turn, and he asked a number of questions about herself—what were her tastes—if she liked this and that—what were her habits.  He said to her, with his charming smile, “Tell me about yourself; give me a little sketch.”  Catherine had very little to tell, and she had no talent for sketching; but before he went she had confided to him that she had a secret passion for the theatre, which had been but scantily gratified, and a taste for operatic music—that of Bellini and Donizetti, in especial (it must be remembered in extenuation of this primitive young woman that she held these opinions in an age of general darkness)—which she rarely had an occasion to hear, except on the hand-organ.  She confessed that she was not particularly fond of literature.  Morris Townsend agreed with her that books were tiresome things; only, as he said, you had to read a good many before you found it out.  He had been to places that people had written books about, and they were not a bit like the descriptions.  To see for yourself—that was the great thing; he always tried to see for himself.  He had seen all the principal actors—he had been to all the best theatres in London and Paris.  But the actors were always like the authors—they always exaggerated.  He liked everything to be natural.  Suddenly he stopped, looking at Catherine with his smile.

“That’s what I like you for; you are so natural!  Excuse me,” he added; “you see I am natural myself!”

And before she had time to think whether she excused him or not—which afterwards, at leisure, she became conscious that she did—he began to talk about music, and to say that it was his greatest pleasure in life.  He had heard all the great singers in Paris and London—Pasta and Rubini and Lablache—and when you had done that, you could say that you knew what singing was.

“I sing a little myself,” he said; “some day I will show you.  Not to-day, but some other time.”

And then he got up to go; he had omitted, by accident, to say that he would sing to her if she would play to him.  He thought of this after he got into the street; but he might have spared his compunction, for Catherine had not noticed the lapse.  She was thinking only that “some other time” had a delightful sound; it seemed to spread itself over the future.

This was all the more reason, however, though she was ashamed and uncomfortable, why she should tell her father that Mr. Morris Townsend had called again.  She announced the fact abruptly, almost violently, as soon as the Doctor came into the house; and having done so—it was her duty—she took measures to leave the room.  But she could not leave it fast enough; her father stopped her just as she reached the door.

“Well, my dear, did he propose to you to-day?” the Doctor asked.

This was just what she had been afraid he would say; and yet she had no answer ready.  Of course she would have liked to take it as a joke—as her father must have meant it; and yet she would have liked, also, in denying it, to be a little positive, a little sharp; so that he would perhaps not ask the question again.  She didn’t like it—it made her unhappy.  But Catherine could never be sharp; and for a moment she only stood, with her hand on the door-knob, looking at her satiric parent, and giving a little laugh.

“Decidedly,” said the Doctor to himself, “my daughter is not brilliant.”