CHAPTER XXVII
The Doctor, of course, on his return, had a good deal of talk with
his sisters. He was at no great pains to narrate his travels or to
communicate his impressions of distant lands to Mrs. Penniman, upon
whom he contented himself with bestowing a memento of his enviable
experience, in the shape of a velvet gown. But he conversed with her
at some length about matters nearer home, and lost no time in
assuring her that he was still an inflexible father.
"I have no doubt you have seen a great deal of Mr. Townsend, and done
your best to console him for Catherine's absence," he said. "I don't
ask you, and you needn't deny it. I wouldn't put the question to you
for the world, and expose you to the inconvenience of having to--a--
excogitate an answer. No one has betrayed you, and there has been no
spy upon your proceedings. Elizabeth has told no tales, and has
never mentioned you except to praise your good looks and good
spirits. The thing is simply an inference of my own--an induction,
as the philosophers say. It seems to me likely that you would have
offered an asylum to an interesting sufferer. Mr. Townsend has been
a good deal in the house; there is something in the house that tells
me so. We doctors, you know, end by acquiring fine perceptions, and
it is impressed upon my sensorium that he has sat in these chairs, in
a very easy attitude, and warmed himself at that fire. I don't
grudge him the comfort of it; it is the only one he will ever enjoy
at my expense. It seems likely, indeed, that I shall be able to
economise at his own. I don't know what you may have said to him, or
what you may say hereafter; but I should like you to know that if you
have encouraged him to believe that he will gain anything by hanging
on, or that I have budged a hair's-breadth from the position I took
up a year ago, you have played him a trick for which he may exact
reparation. I'm not sure that he may not bring a suit against you.
Of course you have done it conscientiously; you have made yourself
believe that I can be tired out. This is the most baseless
hallucination that ever visited the brain of a genial optimist. I am
not in the least tired; I am as fresh as when I started; I am good
for fifty years yet. Catherine appears not to have budged an inch
either; she is equally fresh; so we are about where we were before.
This, however, you know as well as I. What I wish is simply to give
you notice of my own state of mind! Take it to heart, dear Lavinia.
Beware of the just resentment of a deluded fortune-hunter!"
"I can't say I expected it," said Mrs. Penniman. "And I had a sort
of foolish hope that you would come home without that odious ironical
tone with which you treat the most sacred subjects."
"Don't undervalue irony, it is often of great use. It is not,
however, always necessary, and I will show you how gracefully I can
lay it aside. I should like to know whether you think Morris
Townsend will hang on."
"I will answer you with your own weapons," said Mrs. Penniman. "You
had better wait and see!"
"Do you call such a speech as that one of my own weapons? I never
said anything so rough."
"He will hang on long enough to make you very uncomfortable, then."
"My dear Lavinia," exclaimed the Doctor, "do you call that irony? I
call it pugilism."
Mrs. Penniman, however, in spite of her pugilism, was a good deal
frightened, and she took counsel of her fears. Her brother meanwhile
took counsel, with many reservations, of Mrs. Almond, to whom he was
no less generous than to Lavinia, and a good deal more communicative.
"I suppose she has had him there all the while," he said. "I must
look into the state of my wine! You needn't mind telling me now; I
have already said all I mean to say to her on the subject."
"I believe he was in the house a good deal," Mrs. Almond answered.
"But you must admit that your leaving Lavinia quite alone was a great
change for her, and that it was natural she should want some
society."
"I do admit that, and that is why I shall make no row about the wine;
I shall set it down as compensation to Lavinia. She is capable of
telling me that she drank it all herself. Think of the inconceivable
bad taste, in the circumstances, of that fellow making free with the
house--or coming there at all! If that doesn't describe him, he is
indescribable."
"His plan is to get what he can. Lavinia will have supported him for
a year," said Mrs. Almond. "It's so much gained."
"She will have to support him for the rest of his life, then!" cried
the Doctor. "But without wine, as they say at the tables d'hote."
"Catherine tells me he has set up a business, and is making a great
deal of money."
The Doctor stared. "She has not told me that--and Lavinia didn't
deign. Ah!" he cried, "Catherine has given me up. Not that it
matters, for all that the business amounts to."
"She has not given up Mr. Townsend," said Mrs. Almond. "I saw that
in the first half minute. She has come home exactly the same."
"Exactly the same; not a grain more intelligent. She didn't notice a
stick or a stone all the while we were away--not a picture nor a
view, not a statue nor a cathedral."
"How could she notice? She had other things to think of; they are
never for an instant out of her mind. She touches me very much."
"She would touch me if she didn't irritate me. That's the effect she
has upon me now. I have tried everything upon her; I really have
been quite merciless. But it is of no use whatever; she is
absolutely GLUED. I have passed, in consequence, into the
exasperated stage. At first I had a good deal of a certain genial
curiosity about it; I wanted to see if she really would stick. But,
good Lord, one's curiosity is satisfied! I see she is capable of it,
and now she can let go."
"She will never let go," said Mrs. Almond.
"Take care, or you will exasperate me too. If she doesn't let go,
she will be shaken off--sent tumbling into the dust! That's a nice
position for my daughter. She can't see that if you are going to be
pushed you had better jump. And then she will complain of her
bruises."
"She will never complain," said Mrs. Almond.
"That I shall object to even more. But the deuce will be that I
can't prevent anything."
"If she is to have a fall," said Mrs. Almond, with a gentle laugh,
"we must spread as many carpets as we can." And she carried out this
idea by showing a great deal of motherly kindness to the girl.
Mrs. Penniman immediately wrote to Morris Townsend. The intimacy
between these two was by this time consummate, but I must content
myself with noting but a few of its features. Mrs. Penniman's own
share in it was a singular sentiment, which might have been
misinterpreted, but which in itself was not discreditable to the poor
lady. It was a romantic interest in this attractive and unfortunate
young man, and yet it was not such an interest as Catherine might
have been jealous of. Mrs. Penniman had not a particle of jealousy
of her niece. For herself, she felt as if she were Morris's mother
or sister--a mother or sister of an emotional temperament--and she
had an absorbing desire to make him comfortable and happy. She had
striven to do so during the year that her brother left her an open
field, and her efforts had been attended with the success that has
been pointed out. She had never had a child of her own, and
Catherine, whom she had done her best to invest with the importance
that would naturally belong to a youthful Penniman, had only partly
rewarded her zeal. Catherine, as an object of affection and
solicitude, had never had that picturesque charm which (as it seemed
to her) would have been a natural attribute of her own progeny. Even
the maternal passion in Mrs. Penniman would have been romantic and
factitious, and Catherine was not constituted to inspire a romantic
passion. Mrs. Penniman was as fond of her as ever, but she had grown
to feel that with Catherine she lacked opportunity. Sentimentally
speaking, therefore, she had (though she had not disinherited her
niece) adopted Morris Townsend, who gave her opportunity in
abundance. She would have been very happy to have a handsome and
tyrannical son, and would have taken an extreme interest in his love
affairs. This was the light in which she had come to regard Morris,
who had conciliated her at first, and made his impression by his
delicate and calculated deference--a sort of exhibition to which Mrs.
Penniman was particularly sensitive. He had largely abated his
deference afterwards, for he economised his resources, but the
impression was made, and the young man's very brutality came to have
a sort of filial value. If Mrs. Penniman had had a son, she would
probably have been afraid of him, and at this stage of our narrative
she was certainly afraid of Morris Townsend. This was one of the
results of his domestication in Washington Square. He took his ease
with her--as, for that matter, he would certainly have done with his
own mother.
