Washington Square

  XXX

  IT was almost her last outbreak of passive grief; at least, she neverindulged in another that the world knew anything about. But this one waslong and terrible; she flung herself on the sofa and gave herself up toher misery. She hardly knew what had happened; ostensibly she had onlyhad a difference with her lover, as other girls had had before, and thething was not only not a rupture, but she was under no obligation toregard it even as a menace. Nevertheless, she felt a wound, even if hehad not dealt it; it seemed to her that a mask had suddenly fallen fromhis face. He had wished to get away from her; he had been angry andcruel, and said strange things, with strange looks. She was smotheredand stunned; she buried her head in the cushions, sobbing and talking toherself. But at last she raised herself, with the fear that either herfather or Mrs. Penniman would come in; and then she sat there, staringbefore her, while the room grew darker. She said to herself that perhapshe would come back to tell her he had not meant what he said; and shelistened for his ring at the door, trying to believe that this wasprobable. A long time passed, but Morris remained absent; the shadowsgathered; the evening settled down on the meagre elegance of the light,clear-coloured room; the fire went out. When it had grown dark,Catherine went to the window and looked out; she stood there for half anhour, on the mere chance that he would come up the steps. At last sheturned away, for she saw her father come in. He had seen her at thewindow looking out, and he stopped a moment at the bottom of the whitesteps, and gravely, with an air of exaggerated courtesy, lifted his hatto her. The gesture was so incongruous to the condition she was in, thisstately tribute of respect to a poor girl despised and forsaken was soout of place, that the thing gave her a kind of horror, and she hurriedaway to her room. It seemed to her that she had given Morris up.

  She had to show herself half an hour later, and she was sustained attable by the immensity of her desire that her father should not perceivethat anything had happened. This was a great help to her afterwards, andit served her (though never as much as she supposed) from the first. Onthis occasion Dr. Sloper was rather talkative. He told a great manystories about a wonderful poodle that he had seen at the house of an oldlady whom he visited professionally. Catherine not only tried to appearto listen to the anecdotes of the poodle, but she endeavoured to interestherself in them, so as not to think of her scene with Morris. Thatperhaps was an hallucination he was mistaken, she was jealous; peopledidn’t change like that from one day to another. Then she knew that shehad had doubts before—strange suspicions, that were at once vague andacute—and that he had been different ever since her return from Europe:whereupon she tried again to listen to her father, who told a story soremarkably well. Afterwards she went straight to her own room; it wasbeyond her strength to undertake to spend the evening with her aunt. Allthe evening, alone, she questioned herself. Her trouble was terrible;but was it a thing of her imagination, engendered by an extravagantsensibility, or did it represent a clear-cut reality, and had the worstthat was possible actually come to pass? Mrs. Penniman, with a degree oftact that was as unusual as it was commendable, took the line of leavingher alone. The truth is, that her suspicions having been aroused, sheindulged a desire, natural to a timid person, that the explosion shouldbe localised. So long as the air still vibrated she kept out of the way.

  She passed and repassed Catherine’s door several times in the course ofthe evening, as if she expected to hear a plaintive moan behind it. Butthe room remained perfectly still; and accordingly, the last thing beforeretiring to her own couch, she applied for admittance. Catherine wassitting up, and had a book that she pretended to be reading. She had nowish to go to bed, for she had no expectation of sleeping. After Mrs.Penniman had left her she sat up half the night, and she offered hervisitor no inducement to remain. Her aunt came stealing in very gently,and approached her with great solemnity.

  “I am afraid you are in trouble, my dear. Can I do anything to helpyou?”

  “I am not in any trouble whatever, and do not need any help,” saidCatherine, fibbing roundly, and proving thereby that not only our faults,but our most involuntary misfortunes, tend to corrupt our morals.

  “Has nothing happened to you?”

  “Nothing whatever.”

  “Are you very sure, dear?”

  “Perfectly sure.”

  “And can I really do nothing for you?”

  “Nothing, aunt, but kindly leave me alone,” said Catherine.

  Mrs. Penniman, though she had been afraid of too warm a welcome before,was now disappointed at so cold a one; and in relating afterwards, as shedid to many persons, and with considerable variations of detail, thehistory of the termination of her niece’s engagement, she was usuallycareful to mention that the young lady, on a certain occasion, had“hustled” her out of the room. It was characteristic of Mrs. Pennimanthat she related this fact, not in the least out of malignity toCatherine, whom she very sufficiently pitied, but simply from a naturaldisposition to embellish any subject that she touched.

  Catherine, as I have said, sat up half the night, as if she stillexpected to hear Morris Townsend ring at the door. On the morrow thisexpectation was less unreasonable; but it was not gratified by thereappearance of the young man. Neither had he written; there was not aword of explanation or reassurance. Fortunately for Catherine she couldtake refuge from her excitement, which had now become intense, in herdetermination that her father should see nothing of it. How well shedeceived her father we shall have occasion to learn; but her innocentarts were of little avail before a person of the rare perspicacity ofMrs. Penniman. This lady easily saw that she was agitated, and if therewas any agitation going forward, Mrs. Penniman was not a person toforfeit her natural share in it. She returned to the charge the nextevening, and requested her niece to lean upon her—to unburden her heart.Perhaps she should be able to explain certain things that now seemeddark, and that she knew more about than Catherine supposed. If Catherinehad been frigid the night before, to-day she was haughty.

  “You are completely mistaken, and I have not the least idea what youmean. I don’t know what you are trying to fasten on me, and I have neverhad less need of any one’s explanations in my life.”

  In this way the girl delivered herself, and from hour to hour kept heraunt at bay. From hour to hour Mrs. Penniman’s curiosity grew. Shewould have given her little finger to know what Morris had said and done,what tone he had taken, what pretext he had found. She wrote to him,naturally, to request an interview; but she received, as naturally, noanswer to her petition. Morris was not in a writing mood; for Catherinehad addressed him two short notes which met with no acknowledgment.These notes were so brief that I may give them entire. “Won’t you giveme some sign that you didn’t mean to be so cruel as you seemed onTuesday?”—that was the first; the other was a little longer. “If I wasunreasonable or suspicious on Tuesday—if I annoyed you or troubled you inany way—I beg your forgiveness, and I promise never again to be sofoolish. I am punished enough, and I don’t understand. Dear Morris, youare killing me!” These notes were despatched on the Friday and Saturday;but Saturday and Sunday passed without bringing the poor girl thesatisfaction she desired. Her punishment accumulated; she continued tobear it, however, with a good deal of superficial fortitude. On Saturdaymorning the Doctor, who had been watching in silence, spoke to his sisterLavinia.

  “The thing has happened—the scoundrel has backed out!”

  “Never!” cried Mrs. Penniman, who had bethought herself what she shouldsay to Catherine, but was not provided with a line of defence against herbrother, so that indignant negation was the only weapon in her hands.

  “He has begged for a reprieve, then, if you like that better!”

  “It seems to make you very happy that your daughter’s affections havebeen trifled with.”

  “It does,” said the Doctor; ‘“for I had foretold it! It’s a greatpleasure to be in the right.”

  “Your pleasures make one shudder!”
his sister exclaimed.

  Catherine went rigidly through her usual occupations; that is, up to thepoint of going with her aunt to church on Sunday morning. She generallywent to afternoon service as well; but on this occasion her couragefaltered, and she begged of Mrs. Penniman to go without her.

  “I am sure you have a secret,” said Mrs. Penniman, with greatsignificance, looking at her rather grimly.

  “If I have, I shall keep it!” Catherine answered, turning away.

  Mrs. Penniman started for church; but before she had arrived, she stoppedand turned back, and before twenty minutes had elapsed she re-entered thehouse, looked into the empty parlours, and then went upstairs and knockedat Catherine’s door. She got no answer; Catherine was not in her room,and Mrs. Penniman presently ascertained that she was not in the house.“She has gone to him, she has fled!” Lavinia cried, clasping her handswith admiration and envy. But she soon perceived that Catherine hadtaken nothing with her—all her personal property in her room wasintact—and then she jumped at the hypothesis that the girl had goneforth, not in tenderness, but in resentment. “She has followed him tohis own door—she has burst upon him in his own apartment!” It was inthese terms that Mrs. Penniman depicted to herself her niece’s errand,which, viewed in this light, gratified her sense of the picturesque onlya shade less strongly than the idea of a clandestine marriage. To visitone’s lover, with tears and reproaches, at his own residence, was animage so agreeable to Mrs. Penniman’s mind that she felt a sort ofæsthetic disappointment at its lacking, in this case, the harmoniousaccompaniments of darkness and storm. A quiet Sunday afternoon appearedan inadequate setting for it; and, indeed, Mrs. Penniman was quite out ofhumour with the conditions of the time, which passed very slowly as shesat in the front parlour in her bonnet and her cashmere shawl, awaitingCatherine’s return.

  This event at last took place. She saw her—at the window—mount thesteps, and she went to await her in the hall, where she pounced upon heras soon as she had entered the house, and drew her into the parlour,closing the door with solemnity. Catherine was flushed, and her eye wasbright. Mrs. Penniman hardly knew what to think.

  “May I venture to ask where you have been?” she demanded.

  “I have been to take a walk,” said Catherine. “I thought you had gone tochurch.”

  “I did go to church; but the service was shorter than usual. And pray,where did you walk?”

  “I don’t know!” said Catherine.

  “Your ignorance is most extraordinary! Dear Catherine, you can trustme.”

  “What am I to trust you with?”

  “With your secret—your sorrow.”

  “I have no sorrow!” said Catherine fiercely.

  “My poor child,” Mrs. Penniman insisted, “you can’t deceive me. I knoweverything. I have been requested to—a—to converse with you.”

  “I don’t want to converse!”

  “It will relieve you. Don’t you know Shakespeare’s lines?—‘the griefthat does not speak!’ My dear girl, it is better as it is.”

  “What is better?” Catherine asked.

  She was really too perverse. A certain amount of perversity was to beallowed for in a young lady whose lover had thrown her over; but not suchan amount as would prove inconvenient to his apologists. “That youshould be reasonable,” said Mrs. Penniman, with some sternness. “Thatyou should take counsel of worldly prudence, and submit to practicalconsiderations. That you should agree to—a—separate.”

  Catherine had been ice up to this moment, but at this word she flamed up.“Separate? What do you know about our separating?”

  Mrs. Penniman shook her head with a sadness in which there was almost asense of injury. “Your pride is my pride, and your susceptibilities aremine. I see your side perfectly, but I also”—and she smiled withmelancholy suggestiveness—“I also see the situation as a whole!”

  This suggestiveness was lost upon Catherine, who repeated her violentinquiry. “Why do you talk about separation what do you know about it?”

  “We must study resignation,” said Mrs. Penniman, hesitating, butsententious at a venture.

  “Resignation to what?”

  “To a change of—of our plans.”

  “My plans have not changed!” said Catherine, with a little laugh.

  “Ah, but Mr. Townsend’s have,” her aunt answered very gently.

  “What do you mean?”

  There was an imperious brevity in the tone of this inquiry, against whichMrs. Penniman felt bound to protest; the information with which she hadundertaken to supply her niece was, after all, a favour. She had triedsharpness, and she had tried sternness: but neither would do; she wasshocked at the girl’s obstinacy. “Ah, well,” she said, “if he hasn’ttold you! . . . ” and she turned away.

  Catherine watched her a moment in silence; then she hurried after her,stopping her before she reached the door. “Told me what? What do youmean? What are you hinting at and threatening me with?”

  “Isn’t it broken off?” asked Mrs. Penniman.

  “My engagement? Not in the least!”

  “I beg your pardon in that case. I have spoken too soon!”

  “Too soon! Soon or late,” Catherine broke out, “you speak foolishly andcruelly!”

  “What has happened between you, then?” asked her aunt, struck by thesincerity of this cry. “For something certainly has happened.”

  “Nothing has happened but that I love him more and more!”

  Mrs. Penniman was silent an instant. “I suppose that’s the reason youwent to see him this afternoon.”

  Catherine flushed as if she had been struck. “Yes, I did go to see him!But that’s my own business.”

  “Very well, then; we won’t talk about it.” And Mrs. Penniman movedtowards the door again. But she was stopped by a sudden imploring cryfrom the girl.

  “Aunt Lavinia, _where_ has he gone?”

  “Ah, you admit, then, that he has gone away? Didn’t they know at hishouse?”

  “They said he had left town. I asked no more questions; I was ashamed,”said Catherine, simply enough.

  “You needn’t have taken so compromising a step if you had had a littlemore confidence in me,” Mrs. Penniman observed, with a good deal ofgrandeur.

  “Is it to New Orleans?” Catherine went on irrelevantly.

  It was the first time Mrs. Penniman had heard of New Orleans in thisconnexion but she was averse to letting Catherine know that she was inthe dark. She attempted to strike an illumination from the instructionsshe had received from Morris. “My dear Catherine,” she said, “when aseparation has been agreed upon, the farther he goes away the better.”

  “Agreed upon? Has he agreed upon it with you?” A consummate sense ofher aunt’s meddlesome folly had come over her during the last fiveminutes, and she was sickened at the thought that Mrs. Penniman had beenlet loose, as it were, upon her happiness.

  “He certainly has sometimes advised with me,” said Mrs. Penniman.

  “Is it you, then, that have changed him and made him so unnatural?”Catherine cried. “Is it you that have worked on him and taken him fromme? He doesn’t belong to you, and I don’t see how you have anything todo with what is between us! Is it you that have made this plot and toldhim to leave me? How could you be so wicked, so cruel? What have I everdone to you; why can’t you leave me alone? I was afraid you would spoileverything; for you _do_ spoil everything you touch; I was afraid of youall the time we were abroad; I had no rest when I thought that you werealways talking to him.” Catherine went on with growing vehemence,pouring out in her bitterness and in the clairvoyance of her passion(which suddenly, jumping all processes, made her judge her aunt finallyand without appeal) the uneasiness which had lain for so many months uponher heart.

  Mrs. Penniman was scared and bewildered; she saw no prospect ofintroducing her little account of the purity of Morris’s motives. “Youare a most ungrateful girl!” she cried. “Do you scold
me for talkingwith him? I am sure we never talked of anything but you!”

  “Yes; and that was the way you worried him; you made him tired of my veryname! I wish you had never spoken of me to him; I never asked yourhelp!”

  “I am sure if it hadn’t been for me he would never have come to thehouse, and you would never have known what he thought of you,” Mrs.Penniman rejoined, with a good deal of justice.

  “I wish he never had come to the house, and that I never had known it!That’s better than this,” said poor Catherine.

  “You are a very ungrateful girl,” Aunt Lavinia repeated.

  Catherine’s outbreak of anger and the sense of wrong gave her, while theylasted, the satisfaction that comes from all assertion of force; theyhurried her along, and there is always a sort of pleasure in cleaving theair. But at the bottom she hated to be violent, and she was conscious ofno aptitude for organised resentment. She calmed herself with a greateffort, but with great rapidity, and walked about the room a few moments,trying to say to herself that her aunt had meant everything for the best.She did not succeed in saying it with much conviction, but after a littleshe was able to speak quietly enough.

  “I am not ungrateful, but I am very unhappy. It’s hard to be gratefulfor that,” she said. “Will you please tell me where he is?”

  “I haven’t the least idea; I am not in secret correspondence with him!”And Mrs. Penniman wished indeed that she were, so that she might let himknow how Catherine abused her, after all she had done.

  “Was it a plan of his, then, to break off—?” By this time Catherine hadbecome completely quiet.

  Mrs. Penniman began again to have a glimpse of her chance for explaining.“He shrank—he shrank,” she said. “He lacked courage, but it was thecourage to injure you! He couldn’t bear to bring down on you yourfather’s curse.”

  Catherine listened to this with her eyes fixed upon her aunt, andcontinued to gaze at her for some time afterwards. “Did he tell you tosay that?”

  “He told me to say many things—all so delicate, so discriminating. Andhe told me to tell you he hoped you wouldn’t despise him.”

  “I don’t,” said Catherine. And then she added: “And will he stay awayfor ever?”

  “Oh, for ever is a long time. Your father, perhaps, won’t live forever.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “I am sure you appreciate—you understand—even though your heart bleeds,”said Mrs. Penniman. “You doubtless think him too scrupulous. So do I,but I respect his scruples. What he asks of you is that you should dothe same.”

  Catherine was still gazing at her aunt, but she spoke at last, as if shehad not heard or not understood her. “It has been a regular plan, then.He has broken it off deliberately; he has given me up.”

  “For the present, dear Catherine. He has put it off only.”

  “He has left me alone,” Catherine went on.

  “Haven’t you _me_?” asked Mrs. Penniman, with much expression.

  Catherine shook her head slowly. “I don’t believe it!” and she left theroom.