Part 45

“Oh, botheration!” he exclaimed perversely.

Mrs. Penniman, however, was not discouraged.

“It may turn out better than you think. Catherine is, after all, so very peculiar.” And she thought she might take it upon herself to assure him that, whatever happened, the girl would be very quiet—she wouldn’t make a noise. They extended their walk, and, while they proceeded, Mrs. Penniman took upon herself other things besides, and ended by having assumed a considerable burden; Morris being ready enough, as may be imagined, to put everything off upon her. But he was not for a single instant the dupe of her blundering alacrity; he knew that of what she promised she was competent to perform but an insignificant fraction, and the more she professed her willingness to serve him, the greater fool he thought her.

“What will you do if you don’t marry her?” she ventured to inquire in the course of this conversation.

“Something brilliant,” said Morris. “Shouldn’t you like me to do something brilliant?”

The idea gave Mrs. Penniman exceeding pleasure.

“I shall feel sadly taken in if you don’t.”

“I shall have to, to make up for this. This isn’t at all brilliant, you know.”

Mrs. Penniman mused a little, as if there might be some way of making out that it was; but she had to give up the attempt, and, to carry off the awkwardness of failure, she risked a new inquiry.

“Do you mean—do you mean another marriage?”

Morris greeted this question with a reflexion which was hardly the less impudent from being inaudible. “Surely, women are more crude than men!” And then he answered audibly:

“Never in the world!”

Mrs. Penniman felt disappointed and snubbed, and she relieved herself in a little vaguely-sarcastic cry. He was certainly perverse.

“I give her up, not for another woman, but for a wider career!” Morris announced.

This was very grand; but still Mrs. Penniman, who felt that she had exposed herself, was faintly rancorous.

“Do you mean never to come to see her again?” she asked, with some sharpness.

“Oh no, I shall come again; but what is the use of dragging it out? I have been four times since she came back, and it’s terribly awkward work. I can’t keep it up indefinitely; she oughtn’t to expect that, you know. A woman should never keep a man dangling!” he added finely.

“Ah, but you must have your last parting!” urged his companion, in whose imagination the idea of last partings occupied a place inferior in dignity only to that of first meetings.

XXIX

HE came again, without managing the last parting; and again and again, without finding that Mrs. Penniman had as yet done much to pave the path of retreat with flowers. It was devilish awkward, as he said, and he felt a lively animosity for Catherine’s aunt, who, as he had now quite formed the habit of saying to himself, had dragged him into the mess and was bound in common charity to get him out of it. Mrs. Penniman, to tell the truth, had, in the seclusion of her own apartment—and, I may add, amid the suggestiveness of Catherine’s, which wore in those days the appearance of that of a young lady laying out her trousseau—Mrs. Penniman had measured her responsibilities, and taken fright at their magnitude. The task of preparing Catherine and easing off Morris presented difficulties which increased in the execution, and even led the impulsive Lavinia to ask herself whether the modification of the young man’s original project had been conceived in a happy spirit. A brilliant future, a wider career, a conscience exempt from the reproach of interference between a young lady and her natural rights—these excellent things might be too troublesomely purchased. From Catherine herself Mrs. Penniman received no assistance whatever; the poor girl was apparently without suspicion of her danger. She looked at her lover with eyes of undiminished trust, and though she had less confidence in her aunt than in a young man with whom she had exchanged so many tender vows, she gave her no handle for explaining or confessing. Mrs. Penniman, faltering and wavering, declared Catherine was very stupid, put off the great scene, as she would have called it, from day to day, and wandered about very uncomfortably, primed, to repletion, with her apology, but unable to bring it to the light. Morris’s own scenes were very small ones just now; but even these were beyond his strength. He made his visits as brief as possible, and while he sat with his mistress, found terribly little to talk about. She was waiting for him, in vulgar parlance, to name the day; and so long as he was unprepared to be explicit on this point it seemed a mockery to pretend to talk about matters more abstract. She had no airs and no arts; she never attempted to disguise her expectancy. She was waiting on his good pleasure, and would wait modestly and patiently; his hanging back at this supreme time might appear strange, but of course he must have a good reason for it. Catherine would have made a wife of the gentle old-fashioned pattern—regarding reasons as favours and windfalls, but no more expecting one every day than she would have expected a bouquet of camellias. During the period of her engagement, however, a young lady even of the most slender pretensions counts upon more bouquets than at other times; and there was a want of perfume in the air at this moment which at last excited the girl’s alarm.

“Are you sick?” she asked of Morris. “You seem so restless, and you look pale.”

“I am not at all well,” said Morris; and it occurred to him that, if he could only make her pity him enough, he might get off.

“I am afraid you are overworked; you oughtn’t to work so much.”

“I must do that.” And then he added, with a sort of calculated brutality, “I don’t want to owe you everything!”

“Ah, how can you say that?”

“I am too proud,” said Morris.

“Yes—you are too proud!”

“Well, you must take me as I am,” he went on, “you can never change me.”