Part 25

“It doesn’t depend upon her, but upon you. Venture to appear as disinterested as you are!” said Mrs. Penniman ingeniously. Morris dropped his eyes on the sanded floor again, pondering this; and she pursued. “Mr. Penniman and I had nothing, and we were very happy. Catherine, moreover, has her mother’s fortune, which, at the time my sister-in-law married, was considered a very handsome one.”

“Oh, don’t speak of that!” said Morris; and, indeed, it was quite superfluous, for he had contemplated the fact in all its lights.

“Austin married a wife with money—why shouldn’t you?”

“Ah! but your brother was a doctor,” Morris objected.

“Well, all young men can’t be doctors!”

“I should think it an extremely loathsome profession,” said Morris, with an air of intellectual independence. Then in a moment, he went on rather inconsequently, “Do you suppose there is a will already made in Catherine’s favour?”

“I suppose so—even doctors must die; and perhaps a little in mine,” Mrs. Penniman frankly added.

“And you believe he would certainly change it—as regards Catherine?”

“Yes; and then change it back again.”

“Ah, but one can’t depend on that!” said Morris.

“Do you want to depend on it?” Mrs. Penniman asked.

Morris blushed a little. “Well, I am certainly afraid of being the cause of an injury to Catherine.”

“Ah! you must not be afraid. Be afraid of nothing, and everything will go well!”

And then Mrs. Penniman paid for her cup of tea, and Morris paid for his oyster stew, and they went out together into the dimly-lighted wilderness of the Seventh Avenue. The dusk had closed in completely and the street lamps were separated by wide intervals of a pavement in which cavities and fissures played a disproportionate part. An omnibus, emblazoned with strange pictures, went tumbling over the dislocated cobble-stones.

“How will you go home?” Morris asked, following this vehicle with an interested eye. Mrs. Penniman had taken his arm.

She hesitated a moment. “I think this manner would be pleasant,” she said; and she continued to let him feel the value of his support.

So he walked with her through the devious ways of the west side of the town, and through the bustle of gathering nightfall in populous streets, to the quiet precinct of Washington Square. They lingered a moment at the foot of Dr. Sloper’s white marble steps, above which a spotless white door, adorned with a glittering silver plate, seemed to figure, for Morris, the closed portal of happiness; and then Mrs. Penniman’s companion rested a melancholy eye upon a lighted window in the upper part of the house.

“That is my room—my dear little room!” Mrs. Penniman remarked.

Morris started. “Then I needn’t come walking round the Square to gaze at it.”

“That’s as you please. But Catherine’s is behind; two noble windows on the second floor. I think you can see them from the other street.”

“I don’t want to see them, ma’am!” And Morris turned his back to the house.

“I will tell her you have been here, at any rate,” said Mrs. Penniman, pointing to the spot where they stood; “and I will give her your message—that she is to hold fast!”

“Oh, yes! of course. You know I write her all that.”

“It seems to say more when it is spoken! And remember, if you need me, that I am there”; and Mrs. Penniman glanced at the third floor.

On this they separated, and Morris, left to himself, stood looking at the house a moment; after which he turned away, and took a gloomy walk round the Square, on the opposite side, close to the wooden fence. Then he came back, and paused for a minute in front of Dr. Sloper’s dwelling. His eyes travelled over it; they even rested on the ruddy windows of Mrs. Penniman’s apartment. He thought it a devilish comfortable house.

XVII

MRS. PENNIMAN told Catherine that evening—the two ladies were sitting in the back parlour—that she had had an interview with Morris Townsend; and on receiving this news the girl started with a sense of pain. She felt angry for the moment; it was almost the first time she had ever felt angry. It seemed to her that her aunt was meddlesome; and from this came a vague apprehension that she would spoil something.

“I don’t see why you should have seen him. I don’t think it was right,” Catherine said.