Washington Square

by Henry James

  XV

  HE had been puzzled by the way that Catherine carried herself; herattitude at this sentimental crisis seemed to him unnaturally passive.She had not spoken to him again after that scene in the library, the daybefore his interview with Morris; and a week had elapsed without makingany change in her manner. There was nothing in it that appealed forpity, and he was even a little disappointed at her not giving him anopportunity to make up for his harshness by some manifestation ofliberality which should operate as a compensation. He thought a littleof offering to take her for a tour in Europe; but he was determined to dothis only in case she should seem mutely to reproach him. He had an ideathat she would display a talent for mute reproaches, and he was surprisedat not finding himself exposed to these silent batteries. She saidnothing, either tacitly or explicitly, and as she was never verytalkative, there was now no especial eloquence in her reserve. And poorCatherine was not sulky—a style of behaviour for which she had too littlehistrionic talent; she was simply very patient. Of course she wasthinking over her situation, and she was apparently doing so in adeliberate and unimpassioned manner, with a view of making the best ofit.

  “She will do as I have bidden her,” said the Doctor, and he made thefurther reflexion that his daughter was not a woman of a great spirit. Iknow not whether he had hoped for a little more resistance for the sakeof a little more entertainment; but he said to himself, as he had saidbefore, that though it might have its momentary alarms, paternity was,after all, not an exciting vocation.

  Catherine, meanwhile, had made a discovery of a very different sort; ithad become vivid to her that there was a great excitement in trying to bea good daughter. She had an entirely new feeling, which may be describedas a state of expectant suspense about her own actions. She watchedherself as she would have watched another person, and wondered what shewould do. It was as if this other person, who was both herself and notherself, had suddenly sprung into being, inspiring her with a naturalcuriosity as to the performance of untested functions.

  “I am glad I have such a good daughter,” said her father, kissing her,after the lapse of several days.

  “I am trying to be good,” she answered, turning away, with a consciencenot altogether clear.

  “If there is anything you would like to say to me, you know you must nothesitate. You needn’t feel obliged to be so quiet. I shouldn’t carethat Mr. Townsend should be a frequent topic of conversation, butwhenever you have anything particular to say about him I shall be veryglad to hear it.”

  “Thank you,” said Catherine; “I have nothing particular at present.”

  He never asked her whether she had seen Morris again, because he was surethat if this had been the case she would tell him. She had, in fact, notseen him, she had only written him a long letter. The letter at leastwas long for her; and, it may be added, that it was long for Morris; itconsisted of five pages, in a remarkably neat and handsome hand.Catherine’s handwriting was beautiful, and she was even a little proud ofit; she was extremely fond of copying, and possessed volumes of extractswhich testified to this accomplishment; volumes which she had exhibitedone day to her lover, when the bliss of feeling that she was important inhis eyes was exceptionally keen. She told Morris in writing that herfather had expressed the wish that she should not see him again, and thatshe begged he would not come to the house until she should have “made upher mind.” Morris replied with a passionate epistle, in which he askedto what, in Heaven’s name, she wished to make up her mind. Had not hermind been made up two weeks before, and could it be possible that sheentertained the idea of throwing him off? Did she mean to break down atthe very beginning of their ordeal, after all the promises of fidelityshe had both given and extracted? And he gave an account of his owninterview with her father—an account not identical at all points withthat offered in these pages. “He was terribly violent,” Morris wrote;“but you know my self-control. I have need of it all when I rememberthat I have it in my power to break in upon your cruel captivity.”Catherine sent him, in answer to this, a note of three lines. “I am ingreat trouble; do not doubt of my affection, but let me wait a little andthink.” The idea of a struggle with her father, of setting up her willagainst his own, was heavy on her soul, and it kept her formallysubmissive, as a great physical weight keeps us motionless. It neverentered into her mind to throw her lover off; but from the first shetried to assure herself that there would be a peaceful way out of theirdifficulty. The assurance was vague, for it contained no element ofpositive conviction that her father would change his mind. She only hadan idea that if she should be very good, the situation would in somemysterious manner improve. To be good, she must be patient, respectful,abstain from judging her father too harshly, and from committing any actof open defiance. He was perhaps right, after all, to think as he did;by which Catherine meant not in the least that his judgement of Morris’smotives in seeking to marry her was perhaps a just one, but that it wasprobably natural and proper that conscientious parents should besuspicious and even unjust. There were probably people in the world asbad as her father supposed Morris to be, and if there were the slightestchance of Morris being one of these sinister persons, the Doctor wasright in taking it into account. Of course he could not know what sheknew, how the purest love and truth were seated in the young man’s eyes;but Heaven, in its time, might appoint a way of bringing him to suchknowledge. Catherine expected a good deal of Heaven, and referred to theskies the initiative, as the French say, in dealing with her dilemma.She could not imagine herself imparting any kind of knowledge to herfather, there was something superior even in his injustice and absolutein his mistakes. But she could at least be good, and if she were onlygood enough, Heaven would invent some way of reconciling all things—thedignity of her father’s errors and the sweetness of her own confidence,the strict performance of her filial duties and the enjoyment of MorrisTownsend’s affection. Poor Catherine would have been glad to regard Mrs.Penniman as an illuminating agent, a part which this lady herself indeedwas but imperfectly prepared to play. Mrs. Penniman took too muchsatisfaction in the sentimental shadows of this little drama to have, forthe moment, any great interest in dissipating them. She wished the plotto thicken, and the advice that she gave her niece tended, in her ownimagination, to produce this result. It was rather incoherent counsel,and from one day to another it contradicted itself; but it was pervadedby an earnest desire that Catherine should do something striking. “Youmust _act_, my dear; in your situation the great thing is to act,” saidMrs. Penniman, who found her niece altogether beneath her opportunities.Mrs. Penniman’s real hope was that the girl would make a secret marriage,at which she should officiate as brideswoman or duenna. She had a visionof this ceremony being performed in some subterranean chapel—subterraneanchapels in New York were not frequent, but Mrs. Penniman’s imaginationwas not chilled by trifles—and of the guilty couple—she liked to think ofpoor Catherine and her suitor as the guilty couple—being shuffled away ina fast-whirling vehicle to some obscure lodging in the suburbs, where shewould pay them (in a thick veil) clandestine visits, where they wouldendure a period of romantic privation, and where ultimately, after sheshould have been their earthly providence, their intercessor, theiradvocate, and their medium of communication with the world, they shouldbe reconciled to her brother in an artistic tableau, in which she herselfshould be somehow the central figure. She hesitated as yet to recommendthis course to Catherine, but she attempted to draw an attractive pictureof it to Morris Townsend. She was in daily communication with the youngman, whom she kept informed by letters of the state of affairs inWashington Square. As he had been banished, as she said, from the house,she no longer saw him; but she ended by writing to him that she longedfor an interview. This interview could take place only on neutralground, and she bethought herself greatly before selecting a place ofmeeting. She had an inclination for Greenwood Cemetery, but she gave itup as too distant; she could not absent herself for so long, as she said,wi
thout exciting suspicion. Then she thought of the Battery, but thatwas rather cold and windy, besides one’s being exposed to intrusion fromthe Irish emigrants who at this point alight, with large appetites, inthe New World and at last she fixed upon an oyster saloon in the SeventhAvenue, kept by a negro—an establishment of which she knew nothing savethat she had noticed it in passing. She made an appointment with MorrisTownsend to meet him there, and she went to the tryst at dusk, envelopedin an impenetrable veil. He kept her waiting for half an hour—he hadalmost the whole width of the city to traverse—but she liked to wait, itseemed to intensify the situation. She ordered a cup of tea, whichproved excessively bad, and this gave her a sense that she was sufferingin a romantic cause. When Morris at last arrived, they sat together forhalf an hour in the duskiest corner of a back shop; and it is hardly toomuch to say that this was the happiest half-hour that Mrs. Penniman hadknown for years. The situation was really thrilling, and it scarcelyseemed to her a false note when her companion asked for an oyster stew,and proceeded to consume it before her eyes. Morris, indeed, needed allthe satisfaction that stewed oysters could give him, for it may beintimated to the reader that he regarded Mrs. Penniman in the light of afifth wheel to his coach. He was in a state of irritation natural to agentleman of fine parts who had been snubbed in a benevolent attempt toconfer a distinction upon a young woman of inferior characteristics, andthe insinuating sympathy of this somewhat desiccated matron appeared tooffer him no practical relief. He thought her a humbug, and he judged ofhumbugs with a good deal of confidence. He had listened and made himselfagreeable to her at first, in order to get a footing in WashingtonSquare; and at present he needed all his self-command to be decentlycivil. It would have gratified him to tell her that she was a fantasticold woman, and that he should like to put her into an omnibus and sendher home. We know, however, that Morris possessed the virtue ofself-control, and he had, moreover, the constant habit of seeking to beagreeable; so that, although Mrs. Penniman’s demeanour only exasperatedhis already unquiet nerves, he listened to her with a sombre deference inwhich she found much to admire.