Washington Square (15 page)

C
HAPTER
28

The letter was a word of warning; it informed him that the doctor had come home more impracticable than ever. She might have reflected that Catherine would supply him with all the information he needed on this point; but we know that Mrs. Penniman's reflections were rarely just; and, moreover, she felt that it was not for her to depend on what Catherine might do. She was to do her duty, quite irrespective of Catherine. I have said that her young friend took his ease with her, and it is an illustration of the fact that he made no answer to her letter. He took note of it amply; but he lighted his cigar with it, and he waited, in tranquil confidence that he should receive another. “His state of mind really freezes my blood,” Mrs. Penniman had written, alluding to her brother; and it would have seemed that upon this statement she could hardly improve. Nevertheless, she wrote again, expressing herself with the aid of a different figure. “His hatred of you burns with a lurid flame—the flame that never dies,” she wrote. “But it doesn't light up the darkness of your future. If my affection could do so, all the years of your life would be an eternal sunshine. I can extract nothing from C.; she is so terribly secretive, like her father. She seems to expect to be married very soon, and has evidently made preparations in Europe—quantities of clothing, ten pairs of shoes, etc. My dear friend, you cannot set up in married life simply with a few pairs of shoes, can you? Tell me what you think of this. I am intensely anxious to see you, I have so much to say. I miss you dreadfully; the house seems so empty without you. What is the news downtown? Is the business extending? That dear little business: I think it's so brave of you! Couldn't I come to your office—just for three minutes? I might pass for a customer—is that what you call them? I might come in to buy something—some shares or some railroad things.
Tell me what you think of this plan
. I would carry a little reticule, like a woman of the people.”

In spite of the suggestion about the reticule, Morris appeared to think poorly of the plan, for he gave Mrs. Penniman no encouragement whatever to visit his office, which he had already represented to her as a place peculiarly and unnaturally difficult to find. But as she persisted in desiring an interview—up to the last, after months of intimate colloquy, she called these meetings “interviews”—he agreed that they should take a walk together, and was even kind enough to leave his office for this purpose during the hours at which business might have been supposed to be liveliest. It was no surprise to him, when they met at a street corner, in a region of empty lots and undeveloped pavements (Mrs. Penniman being attired as much as possible like a “woman of the people”), to find that, in spite of her urgency, what she chiefly had to convey to him was the assurance of her sympathy. Of such assurances, however, he had already a voluminous collection, and it would not have been worth his while to forsake a fruitful avocation merely to hear Mrs. Penniman say, for the thousandth time, that she had made his cause her own. Morris had something of his own to say. It was not an easy thing to bring out, and while he turned it over, the difficulty made him acrimonious.

“Oh yes, I know perfectly that he combines the properties of a lump of ice and a red-hot coal,” he observed. “Catherine has made it thoroughly clear, and you have told me so till I am sick of it. You needn't tell me again; I am perfectly satisfied. He will never give us a penny; I regard that as mathematically proved.”

Mrs. Penniman at this point had an inspiration.

“Couldn't you bring a lawsuit against him?” She wondered that this simple expedient had never occurred to her before.

“I will bring a lawsuit against
you
,” said Morris, “if you ask me any more such aggravating questions. A man should know when he is beaten,” he added, in a moment. “I must give her up!”

Mrs. Penniman received this declaration in silence, though it made her heart beat a little. It found her by no means unprepared, for she had accustomed herself to the thought that, if Morris should decidedly not be able to get her brother's money, it would not do for him to marry Catherine without it. “It would not do,” was a vague way of putting the thing; but Mrs. Penniman's natural affection completed the idea, which, though it had not as yet been so crudely expressed between them as in the form that Morris had just given it, had nevertheless been implied so often, in certain easy intervals of talk, as he sat stretching his legs in the doctor's well-stuffed armchairs, that she had grown first to regard it with an emotion which she flattered herself was philosophic, and then to have a secret tenderness for it. The fact that she kept her tenderness secret proves, of course, that she was ashamed of it; but she managed to blink her shame by reminding herself that she was, after all, the official protector of her niece's marriage. Her logic would scarcely have passed muster with the doctor. In the first place, Morris
must
get the money, and she would help him to it. In the second, it was plain it would never come to him, and it would be a grievous pity he should marry without it—a young man who might so easily find something better. After her brother had delivered himself, on his return from Europe, of that incisive little address that has been quoted, Morris's cause seemed so hopeless that Mrs. Penniman fixed her attention exclusively upon the latter branch of her argument. If Morris had been her son, she would certainly have sacrificed Catherine to a superior conception of his future; and to be ready to do so, as the case stood, was therefore even a finer degree of devotion. Nevertheless, it checked her breath a little to have the sacrificial knife, as it were, suddenly thrust into her hand.

Morris walked along a moment, and then he repeated, harshly, “I must give her up!”

“I think I understand you,” said Mrs. Penniman, gently.

“I certainly say it distinctly enough—brutally and vulgarly enough.”

He was ashamed of himself, and his shame was uncomfortable; and as he was extremely intolerant of discomfort, he felt vicious and cruel. He wanted to abuse somebody, and he began, cautiously—for he was always cautious—with himself.

“Couldn't you take her down a little?” he asked.

“Take her down?”

“Prepare her—try and ease me off.”

Mrs. Penniman stopped, looking at him very solemnly.

“My poor Morris, do you know how much she loves you?”

“No, I don't. I don't want to know. I have always tried to keep from knowing. It would be too painful.”

“She will suffer much,” said Mrs. Penniman.

“You must console her. If you are as good a friend to me as you pretend to be, you will manage it.”

Mrs. Penniman shook her head sadly.

“You talk of my ‘pretending' to like you; but I can't pretend to hate you. I can only tell her I think very highly of you; and how will that console her for losing you?”

“The doctor will help you. He will be delighted at the thing being broken off; and as he is a knowing fellow, he will invent something to comfort her.”

“He will invent a new torture,” cried Mrs. Penniman. “Heaven deliver her from her father's comfort! It will consist of his crowing over her, and saying, ‘I always told you so!' ”

Morris colored a most uncomfortable red.

“If you don't console her any better than you console me, you certainly won't be of much use. It's a damned disagreeable necessity; I feel it extremely, and you ought to make it easy for me.”

“I will be your friend for life,” Mrs. Penniman declared.

“Be my friend
now
!” and Morris walked on.

She went with him; she was almost trembling.

“Should you like me to tell her?” she asked.

“You mustn't tell her, but you can—you can—” And he hesitated, trying to think what Mrs. Penniman could do.

“You can explain to her why it is. It's because I can't bring myself to step in between her and her father—to give him the pretext he grasps at so eagerly (it's a hideous sight!) for depriving her of her rights.”

Mrs. Penniman felt with remarkable promptitude the charm of this formula.

“That's so like you,” she said. “It's so finely felt.”

Morris gave his stick an angry swing.

“Oh damnation!” he exclaimed, perversely.

Mrs. Penniman, however, was not discouraged.

“It may turn out better than you think. Catherine is, after all, so very peculiar.” And she thought she might take it upon herself to assure him that, whatever happened, the girl would be very quiet—she wouldn't make a noise. They extended their walk, and while they proceeded Mrs. Penniman took upon herself other things besides, and ended by having assumed a considerable burden; Morris being ready enough, as may be imagined, to put everything off upon her. But he was not for a single instant the dupe of her blundering alacrity; he knew that of what she promised she was competent to perform but an insignificant fraction, and the more she professed her willingness to serve him, the greater fool he thought her.

“What will you do if you don't marry her?” she ventured to inquire in the course of this conversation.

“Something brilliant,” said Morris. “Shouldn't you like me to do something brilliant?”

The idea gave Mrs. Penniman exceeding pleasure.

“I shall feel sadly taken in if you don't.”

“I shall have to, to make up for this. This isn't at all brilliant, you know.”

Mrs. Penniman mused a little, as if there might be some way of making out that it was; but she had to give up the attempt, and, to carry off the awkwardness of failure, she risked a new inquiry.

“Do you mean—do you mean another marriage?”

Morris greeted this question with a reflection which was hardly the less impudent from being inaudible. “Surely women are more crude than men!” And then he answered, audibly, “Never in the world!”

Mrs. Penniman felt disappointed and snubbed, and she relieved herself in a little vaguely sarcastic cry. He was certainly perverse.

“I give her up, not for another woman, but for a wider career,” Morris announced.

This was very grand; but still Mrs. Penniman, who felt that she had exposed herself, was faintly rancorous.

“Do you mean never to come to see her again?” she asked, with some sharpness.

“Oh no, I shall come again; but what is the use of dragging it out? I have been four times since she came back, and it's terribly awkward work. I can't keep it up indefinitely; she oughtn't to expect that, you know. A woman should never keep a man dangling,” he added, finely.

“Ah, but you must have your last parting!” urged his companion, in whose imagination the idea of last partings occupied a place inferior in dignity only to that of first meetings.

C
HAPTER
29

He came again, without managing the last parting; and again and again, without finding that Mrs. Penniman had as yet done much to pave the path of retreat with flowers. It was devilish awkward, as he said, and he felt a lively animosity for Catherine's aunt, who, as he had now quite formed the habit of saying to himself, had dragged him into the mess, and was bound in common charity to get him out of it. Mrs. Penniman, to tell the truth, had, in the seclusion of her own apartment—and, I may add, amid the suggestiveness of Catherine's, which wore in those days the appearance of that of a young lady laying out her trousseau—Mrs. Penniman had measured her responsibilities, and taken fright at their magnitude. The task of preparing Catherine and easing off Morris presented difficulties which increased in the execution, and even led the impulsive Lavinia to ask herself whether the modification of the young man's original project had been conceived in a happy spirit. A brilliant future, a wider career, a conscience exempt from the reproach of interference between a young lady and her natural rights—these excellent things might be too troublesomely purchased. From Catherine herself Mrs. Penniman received no assistance whatever; the poor girl was apparently without suspicion of her danger. She looked at her lover with eyes of undiminished trust, and though she had less confidence in her aunt than in a young man with whom she had exchanged so many tender vows, she gave her no handle for explaining or confessing. Mrs. Penniman, faltering and wavering, declared Catherine was very stupid, put off the great scene, as she would have called it, from day to day, and wandered about, very uncomfortably, with her unexploded bomb in her hands. Morris's own scenes were very small ones just now; but even these were beyond his strength. He made his visits as brief as possible, and, while he sat with his mistress, found terribly little to talk about. She was waiting for him, in vulgar parlance, to name the day; and so long as he was unprepared to be explicit on this point, it seemed a mockery to pretend to talk about matters more abstract. She had no airs and no arts; she never attempted to disguise her expectancy. She was waiting on his good pleasure, and would wait modestly and patiently; his hanging back at this supreme time might appear strange, but of course he must have a good reason for it. Catherine would have made a wife of the gentle, old-fashioned pattern—regarding reasons as favors and windfalls, but no more expecting one every day than she would have expected a bouquet of camellias. During the period of her engagement, however, a young lady even of the most slender pretensions counts upon more bouquets than at other times; and there was a want of perfume in the air at this moment which at last excited the girl's alarm.

“Are you sick?” she asked of Morris. “You seem so restless, and you look pale.”

“I am not at all well,” said Morris; and it occurred to him that, if he could only make her pity him enough, he might get off.

“I am afraid you are overworked; you oughtn't to work so much.”

“I must do that.” And then he added, with a sort of calculated brutality, “I don't want to owe you everything.”

“Ah, how can you say that?”

“I am too proud,” said Morris.

“Yes—you are too proud.”

“Well, you must take me as I am,” he went on. “You can never change me.”

“I don't want to change you,” she said, gently. “I will take you as you are.” And she stood looking at him.

“You know people talk tremendously about a man's marrying a rich girl,” Morris remarked. “It's excessively disagreeable.”

“But I am not rich,” said Catherine.

“You are rich enough to make me talked about.”

“Of course you are talked about. It's an honor.”

“It's an honor I could easily dispense with.”

She was on the point of asking him whether it was not a compensation for this annoyance that the poor girl who had the misfortune to bring it upon him loved him so dearly and believed in him so truly; but she hesitated, thinking that this would perhaps seem an exacting speech, and while she hesitated, he suddenly left her.

The next time he came, however, she brought it out, and she told him again that he was too proud. He repeated that he couldn't change, and this time she felt the impulse to say that with a little effort he might change.

Sometimes he thought that if he could only make a quarrel with her it might help him; but the question was how to quarrel with a young woman who had such treasures of concession. “I suppose you think the effort is all on your side,” he broke out. “Don't you believe that I have my own effort to make?”

“It's all yours now,” she said. “My effort is finished and done with.”

“Well, mine is not.”

“We must bear things together,” said Catherine. “That's what we ought to do.”

Morris attempted a natural smile. “There are some things which we can't very well bear together—for instance, separation.”

“Why do you speak of separation?”

“Ah, you don't like it; I knew you wouldn't.”

“Where are you going, Morris?” she suddenly asked.

He fixed his eye on her a moment, and for a part of that moment she was afraid of it. “Will you promise not to make a scene?”

“A scene—do I make scenes?”

“All women do!” said Morris, with the tone of large experience.

“I don't. Where are you going?”

“If I should say I was going away on business, should you think it very strange?”

She wondered a moment, gazing at him. “Yes—no. Not if you will take me with you.”

“Take you with me—on business?”

“What is your business? Your business is to be with me.”

“I don't earn my living with you,” said Morris. “Or, rather,” he cried, with a sudden inspiration, “that's just what I do—or what the world says I do!”

This ought perhaps to have been a great stroke, but it miscarried. “Where are you going?” Catherine simply repeated.

“To New Orleans—about buying some cotton.”

“I am perfectly willing to go to New Orleans,” Catherine said.

“Do you suppose I would take you to a nest of yellow fever?” cried Morris. “Do you suppose I would expose you at such a time as this?”

“If there is yellow fever, why should you go? Morris, you must not go.”

“It is to make six thousand dollars,” said Morris. “Do you grudge me that satisfaction?”

“We have no need of six thousand dollars. You think too much about money.”

“You can afford to say that. This is a great chance; we heard of it last night.” And he explained to her in what the chance consisted; and told her a long story, going over more than once several of the details, about the remarkable stroke of business which he and his partner had planned between them.

But Catherine's imagination, for reasons best known to herself, absolutely refused to be fired. “If you can go to New Orleans, I can go,” she said. “Why shouldn't you catch yellow fever quite as easily as I? I am every bit as strong as you, and not in the least afraid of any fever. When we were in Europe we were in very unhealthy places; my father used to make me take some pills. I never caught anything, and I never was nervous. What will be the use of six thousand dollars if you die of a fever? When persons are going to be married they oughtn't to think so much about business. You shouldn't think about cotton; you should think about me. You can go to New Orleans some other time—there will always be plenty of cotton. It isn't the moment to choose: We have waited too long already.” She spoke more forcibly and volubly than he had ever heard her, and she held his arm in her two hands.

“You said you wouldn't make a scene,” cried Morris. “I call this a scene.”

“It's you that are making it. I have never asked you anything before. We have waited too long already.” And it was a comfort to her to think that she had hitherto asked so little; it seemed to make her right to insist the greater now.

Morris bethought himself a little. “Very well, then; we won't talk about it anymore. I will transact my business by letter.” And he began to smooth his hat, as if to take leave.

“You won't go?” and she stood looking up at him.

He could not give up his idea of provoking a quarrel; it was so much the simplest way. He bent his eyes on her upturned face with the darkest frown he could achieve. “You are not discreet; you mustn't bully me.”

But, as usual, she conceded everything. “No, I am not discreet; I know I am too pressing. But isn't it natural? It is only for a moment.”

“In a moment you may do a great deal of harm. Try and be calmer the next time I come.”

“When will you come?”

“Do you want to make conditions?” Morris asked. “I will come next Saturday.”

“Come tomorrow,” Catherine begged. “I want you to come tomorrow. I will be very quiet,” she added; and her agitation had by this time become so great that the assurance was not unbecoming. A sudden fear had come over her; it was like the solid conjunction of a dozen disembodied doubts, and her imagination, at a single bound, had traversed an enormous distance. All her being, for the moment, was centered in the wish to keep him in the room.

Morris bent his head and kissed her forehead. “When you are quiet, you are perfection,” he said, “but when you are violent, you are not in character.”

It was Catherine's wish that there should be no violence about her save the beating of her heart, which she could not help; and she went on, as gently as possible, “Will you promise to come tomorrow?”

“I said Saturday!” Morris answered, smiling. He tried a frown at one moment, a smile at another; he was at his wit's end.

“Yes, Saturday too,” she answered, trying to smile. “But tomorrow first.” He was going to the door, and she went with him quickly. She leaned her shoulder against it; it seemed to her that she would do anything to keep him.

“If I am prevented from coming tomorrow, you will say I have deceived you,” he said.

“How can you be prevented? You can come if you will.”

“I am a busy man—I am not a dangler!” cried Morris, sternly.

His voice was so hard and unnatural that, with a helpless look at him, she turned away; and then he quickly laid his hand on the doorknob. He felt as if he were absolutely running away from her. But in an instant she was close to him again, and murmuring in a tone none the less penetrating for being low, “Morris, you are going to leave me.”

“Yes, for a little while.”

“For how long?”

“Till you are reasonable again.”

“I shall never be reasonable, in that way.” And she tried to keep him longer; it was almost a struggle. “Think of what I have done!” she broke out. “Morris, I have given up everything.”

“You shall have everything back.”

“You wouldn't say that if you didn't mean something. What is it? What has happened? What have I done? What
has changed you?”

“I will write to you—that is better,” Morris stammered.

“Ah, you won't come back!” she cried, bursting into tears.

“Dear Catherine,” he said, “don't believe that. I promise you that you shall see me again.” And he managed to get away, and to close the door behind him.