CHAPTER XXII
He had slightly misrepresented the matter in saying that Catherine
had consented to take the great step. We left her just now declaring
that she would burn her ships behind her; but Morris, after having
elicited this declaration, had become conscious of good reasons for
not taking it up. He avoided, gracefully enough, fixing a day,
though he left her under the impression that he had his eye on one.
Catherine may have had her difficulties; but those of her circumspect
suitor are also worthy of consideration. The prize was certainly
great; but it was only to be won by striking the happy mean between
precipitancy and caution. It would be all very well to take one's
jump and trust to Providence; Providence was more especially on the
side of clever people, and clever people were known by an
indisposition to risk their bones. The ultimate reward of a union
with a young woman who was both unattractive and impoverished ought
to be connected with immediate disadvantages by some very palpable
chain. Between the fear of losing Catherine and her possible fortune
altogether, and the fear of taking her too soon and finding this
possible fortune as void of actuality as a collection of emptied
bottles, it was not comfortable for Morris Townsend to choose; a fact
that should be remembered by readers disposed to judge harshly of a
young man who may have struck them as making but an indifferently
successful use of fine natural parts. He had not forgotten that in
any event Catherine had her own ten thousand a year; he had devoted
an abundance of meditation to this circumstance. But with his fine
parts he rated himself high, and he had a perfectly definite
appreciation of his value, which seemed to him inadequately
represented by the sum I have mentioned. At the same time he
reminded himself that this sum was considerable, that everything is
relative, and that if a modest income is less desirable than a large
one, the complete absence of revenue is nowhere accounted an
advantage. These reflexions gave him plenty of occupation, and made
it necessary that he should trim his sail. Dr. Sloper's opposition
was the unknown quantity in the problem he had to work out. The
natural way to work it out was by marrying Catherine; but in
mathematics there are many short cuts, and Morris was not without a
hope that he should yet discover one. When Catherine took him at his
word and consented to renounce the attempt to mollify her father, he
drew back skilfully enough, as I have said, and kept the wedding-day
still an open question. Her faith in his sincerity was so complete
that she was incapable of suspecting that he was playing with her;
her trouble just now was of another kind. The poor girl had an
admirable sense of honour; and from the moment she had brought
herself to the point of violating her father's wish, it seemed to her
that she had no right to enjoy his protection. It was on her
conscience that she ought to live under his roof only so long as she
conformed to his wisdom. There was a great deal of glory in such a
position, but poor Catherine felt that she had forfeited her claim to
it. She had cast her lot with a young man against whom he had
solemnly warned her, and broken the contract under which he provided
her with a happy home. She could not give up the young man, so she
must leave the home; and the sooner the object of her preference
offered her another the sooner her situation would lose its awkward
twist. This was close reasoning; but it was commingled with an
infinite amount of merely instinctive penitence. Catherine's days at
this time were dismal, and the weight of some of her hours was almost
more than she could bear. Her father never looked at her, never
spoke to her. He knew perfectly what he was about, and this was part
of a plan. She looked at him as much as she dared (for she was
afraid of seeming to offer herself to his observation), and she
pitied him for the sorrow she had brought upon him. She held up her
head and busied her hands, and went about her daily occupations; and
when the state of things in Washington Square seemed intolerable, she
closed her eyes and indulged herself with an intellectual vision of
the man for whose sake she had broken a sacred law. Mrs. Penniman,
of the three persons in Washington Square, had much the most of the
manner that belongs to a great crisis. If Catherine was quiet, she
was quietly quiet, as I may say, and her pathetic effects, which
there was no one to notice, were entirely unstudied and unintended.
If the Doctor was stiff and dry and absolutely indifferent to the
presence of his companions, it was so lightly, neatly, easily done,
that you would have had to know him well to discover that, on the
whole, he rather enjoyed having to be so disagreeable. But Mrs.
Penniman was elaborately reserved and significantly silent; there was
a richer rustle in the very deliberate movements to which she
confined herself, and when she occasionally spoke, in connexion with
some very trivial event, she had the air of meaning something deeper
than what she said. Between Catherine and her father nothing had
passed since the evening she went to speak to him in his study. She
had something to say to him--it seemed to her she ought to say it;
but she kept it back, for fear of irritating him. He also had
something to say to her; but he was determined not to speak first.
He was interested, as we know, in seeing how, if she were left to
herself, she would "stick." At last she told him she had seen Morris
Townsend again, and that their relations remained quite the same.
"I think we shall marry--before very long. And probably, meanwhile,
I shall see him rather often; about once a week, not more."
The Doctor looked at her coldly from head to foot, as if she had been
a stranger. It was the first time his eyes had rested on her for a
week, which was fortunate, if that was to be their expression. "Why
not three times a day?" he asked. "What prevents your meeting as
often as you choose?"
She turned away a moment; there were tears in her eyes. Then she
said, "It is better once a week."
"I don't see how it is better. It is as bad as it can be. If you
flatter yourself that I care for little modifications of that sort,
you are very much mistaken. It is as wrong of you to see him once a
week as it would be to see him all day long. Not that it matters to
me, however."
Catherine tried to follow these words, but they seemed to lead
towards a vague horror from which she recoiled. "I think we shall
marry pretty soon," she repeated at last.
Her father gave her his dreadful look again, as if she were some one
else. "Why do you tell me that? It's no concern of mine."
"Oh, father!" she broke out, "don't you care, even if you do feel
so?"
"Not a button. Once you marry, it's quite the same to me when or
where or why you do it; and if you think to compound for your folly
by hoisting your flag in this way, you may spare yourself the
trouble."
With this he turned away. But the next day he spoke to her of his
own accord, and his manner was somewhat changed. "Shall you be
married within the next four or five months?" he asked.
"I don't know, father," said Catherine. "It is not very easy for us
to make up our minds."
"Put it off, then, for six months, and in the meantime I will take
you to Europe. I should like you very much to go."
It gave her such delight, after his words of the day before, to hear
that he should "like" her to do something, and that he still had in
his heart any of the tenderness of preference, that she gave a little
exclamation of joy. But then she became conscious that Morris was
not included in this proposal, and that--as regards really going--she
would greatly prefer to remain at home with him. But she blushed,
none the less, more comfortably than she had done of late. "It would
be delightful to go to Europe," she remarked, with a sense that the
idea was not original, and that her tone was not all it might be.
"Very well, then, we will go. Pack up your clothes."
"I had better tell Mr. Townsend," said Catherine.
Her father fixed his cold eyes upon her. "If you mean that you had
better ask his leave, all that remains to me is to hope he will give
it."
The girl was sharply touched by the pathetic ring of the words; it
was the most calculated, the most dramatic little speech the Doctor
had ever uttered. She felt that it was a great thing for her, under
the circumstances, to have this fine opportunity of showing him her
respect; and yet there was something else that she felt as well, and
that she presently expressed. "I sometimes think that if I do what
you dislike so much, I ought not to stay with you."
"To stay with me?"
"If I live with you, I ought to obey you."
"If that's your theory, it's certainly mine," said the Doctor, with a
dry laugh.
"But if I don't obey you, I ought not to live with you--to enjoy your
kindness and protection."
This striking argument gave the Doctor a sudden sense of having
underestimated his daughter; it seemed even more than worthy of a
young woman who had revealed the quality of unaggressive obstinacy.
But it displeased him--displeased him deeply, and he signified as
much. "That idea is in very bad taste," he said. "Did you get it
from Mr. Townsend?"
"Oh no; it's my own!" said Catherine eagerly.
"Keep it to yourself, then," her father answered, more than ever
determined she should go to Europe.
