Washington Square

One day at the end of the summer, the two travellers found themselves in a lonely valley of the Alps.  They were crossing one of the passes, and on the long ascent they had got out of the carriage and had wandered much in advance.  After a while the Doctor descried a footpath which, leading through a transverse valley, would bring them out, as he justly supposed, at a much higher point of the ascent.  They followed this devious way, and finally lost the path; the valley proved very wild and rough, and their walk became rather a scramble.  They were good walkers, however, and they took their adventure easily; from time to time they stopped, that Catherine might rest; and then she sat upon a stone and looked about her at the hard-featured rocks and the glowing sky.  It was late in the afternoon, in the last of August; night was coming on, and, as they had reached a great elevation, the air was cold and sharp.  In the west there was a great suffusion of cold, red light, which made the sides of the little valley look only the more rugged and dusky.  During one of their pauses, her father left her and wandered away to some high place, at a distance, to get a view.  He was out of sight; she sat there alone, in the stillness, which was just touched by the vague murmur, somewhere, of a mountain brook.  She thought of Morris Townsend, and the place was so desolate and lonely that he seemed very far away.  Her father remained absent a long time; she began to wonder what had become of him.  But at last he reappeared, coming towards her in the clear twilight, and she got up, to go on.  He made no motion to proceed, however, but came close to her, as if he had something to say.  He stopped in front of her and stood looking at her, with eyes that had kept the light of the flushing snow-summits on which they had just been fixed.  Then, abruptly, in a low tone, he asked her an unexpected question:

“Have you given him up?”

The question was unexpected, but Catherine was only superficially unprepared.

“No, father!” she answered.

He looked at her again for some moments, without speaking.

“Does he write to you?” he asked.

“Yes—about twice a month.”

The Doctor looked up and down the valley, swinging his stick; then he said to her, in the same low tone:

“I am very angry.”

She wondered what he meant—whether he wished to frighten her.  If he did, the place was well chosen; this hard, melancholy dell, abandoned by the summer light, made her feel her loneliness.  She looked around her, and her heart grew cold; for a moment her fear was great.  But she could think of nothing to say, save to murmur gently, “I am sorry.”

“You try my patience,” her father went on, “and you ought to know what I am, I am not a very good man.  Though I am very smooth externally, at bottom I am very passionate; and I assure you I can be very hard.”

She could not think why he told her these things.  Had he brought her there on purpose, and was it part of a plan?  What was the plan?  Catherine asked herself.  Was it to startle her suddenly into a retractation—to take an advantage of her by dread?  Dread of what?  The place was ugly and lonely, but the place could do her no harm.  There was a kind of still intensity about her father, which made him dangerous, but Catherine hardly went so far as to say to herself that it might be part of his plan to fasten his hand—the neat, fine, supple hand of a distinguished physician—in her throat.  Nevertheless, she receded a step.  “I am sure you can be anything you please,” she said.  And it was her simple belief.

“I am very angry,” he replied, more sharply.

“Why has it taken you so suddenly?”

“It has not taken me suddenly.  I have been raging inwardly for the last six months.  But just now this seemed a good place to flare out.  It’s so quiet, and we are alone.”

“Yes, it’s very quiet,” said Catherine vaguely, looking about her.  “Won’t you come back to the carriage?”

“In a moment.  Do you mean that in all this time you have not yielded an inch?”

“I would if I could, father; but I can’t.”

The Doctor looked round him too.  “Should you like to be left in such a place as this, to starve?”

“What do you mean?” cried the girl.

“That will be your fate—that’s how he will leave you.”

He would not touch her, but he had touched Morris.  The warmth came back to her heart.  “That is not true, father,” she broke out, “and you ought not to say it!  It is not right, and it’s not true!”

He shook his head slowly.  “No, it’s not right, because you won’t believe it.  But it is true.  Come back to the carriage.”