Washington Square

Catherine thought a little.  “I don’t know how; but not in that way.  I wish to be just as usual.”  And she finished dressing, and, according to her aunt’s expression, went plumping down into the paternal presence.  She was really too modest for consistent pathos.

And yet it was perfectly true that she had had a dreadful night.  Even after Mrs. Penniman left her she had had no sleep.  She lay staring at the uncomforting gloom, with her eyes and ears filled with the movement with which her father had turned her out of his room, and of the words in which he had told her that she was a heartless daughter.  Her heart was breaking.  She had heart enough for that.  At moments it seemed to her that she believed him, and that to do what she was doing, a girl must indeed be bad.  She was bad; but she couldn’t help it.  She would try to appear good, even if her heart were perverted; and from time to time she had a fancy that she might accomplish something by ingenious concessions to form, though she should persist in caring for Morris.  Catherine’s ingenuities were indefinite, and we are not called upon to expose their hollowness.  The best of them perhaps showed itself in that freshness of aspect which was so discouraging to Mrs. Penniman, who was amazed at the absence of haggardness in a young woman who for a whole night had lain quivering beneath a father’s curse.  Poor Catherine was conscious of her freshness; it gave her a feeling about the future which rather added to the weight upon her mind.  It seemed a proof that she was strong and solid and dense, and would live to a great age—longer than might be generally convenient; and this idea was depressing, for it appeared to saddle her with a pretension the more, just when the cultivation of any pretension was inconsistent with her doing right.  She wrote that day to Morris Townsend, requesting him to come and see her on the morrow; using very few words, and explaining nothing.  She would explain everything face to face.

XX

On the morrow, in the afternoon, she heard his voice at the door, and his step in the hall.  She received him in the big, bright front parlour, and she instructed the servant that if any one should call she was particularly engaged.  She was not afraid of her father’s coming in, for at that hour he was always driving about town.  When Morris stood there before her, the first thing that she was conscious of was that he was even more beautiful to look at than fond recollection had painted him; the next was that he had pressed her in his arms.  When she was free again it appeared to her that she had now indeed thrown herself into the gulf of defiance, and even, for an instant, that she had been married to him.

He told her that she had been very cruel, and had made him very unhappy; and Catherine felt acutely the difficulty of her destiny, which forced her to give pain in such opposite quarters.  But she wished that, instead of reproaches, however tender, he would give her help; he was certainly wise enough, and clever enough, to invent some issue from their troubles.  She expressed this belief, and Morris received the assurance as if he thought it natural; but he interrogated, at first—as was natural too—rather than committed himself to marking out a course.

“You should not have made me wait so long,” he said.  “I don’t know how I have been living; every hour seemed like years.  You should have decided sooner.”

“Decided?” Catherine asked.

“Decided whether you would keep me or give me up.”

“Oh, Morris,” she cried, with a long tender murmur, “I never thought of giving you up!”

“What, then, were you waiting for?”  The young man was ardently logical.

“I thought my father might—might—” and she hesitated.

“Might see how unhappy you were?”

“Oh no!  But that he might look at it differently.”

“And now you have sent for me to tell me that at last he does so.  Is that it?”

This hypothetical optimism gave the poor girl a pang.  “No, Morris,” she said solemnly, “he looks at it still in the same way.”

“Then why have you sent for me?”

“Because I wanted to see you!” cried Catherine piteously.

“That’s an excellent reason, surely.  But did you want to look at me only?  Have you nothing to tell me?”

His beautiful persuasive eyes were fixed upon her face, and she wondered what answer would be noble enough to make to such a gaze as that.  For a moment her own eyes took it in, and then—“I did want to look at you!” she said gently.  But after this speech, most inconsistently, she hid her face.

Morris watched her for a moment, attentively.  “Will you marry me to-morrow?” he asked suddenly.

“To-morrow?”

“Next week, then.  Any time within a month.”

“Isn’t it better to wait?” said Catherine.

“To wait for what?”

She hardly knew for what; but this tremendous leap alarmed her.  “Till we have thought about it a little more.”