He let her alone for six months more—six months during which she accommodated herself without a protest to the extension of their tour. But he spoke again at the end of this time; it was at the very last, the night before they embarked for New York, in the hotel at Liverpool. They had been dining together in a great dim, musty sitting-room; and then the cloth had been removed, and the Doctor walked slowly up and down. Catherine at last took her candle to go to bed, but her father motioned her to stay.
'What do you mean to do when you get home?' he asked, while she stood there with her candle in her hand.
'Do you mean about Mr. Townsend?'
'About Mr. Townsend.'
'We shall probably marry.'
The Doctor took several turns again while she waited. 'Do you hear from him as much as ever?'
'Yes; twice a month,' said Catherine promptly.
'And does he always talk about marriage?'
'Oh yes! That is, he talks about other things too, but he always says something about that.'
'I am glad to hear he varies his subjects; his letters might otherwise be monotonous.'
'He writes beautifully,' said Catherine, who was very glad of a chance to say it.
'They always write beautifully. However, in a given case that doesn't diminish the merit. So, as soon as you arrive, you are going off with him?'
This seemed a rather gross way of putting it, and something that there was of dignity in Catherine resented it. 'I cannot tell you till we arrive,' she said.
'That's reasonable enough,' her father answered. 'That's all I ask of you—that you DO tell me, that you give me definite notice. When a poor man is to lose his only child, he likes to have an inkling of it beforehand.'
'Oh, father, you will not lose me!' Catherine said, spilling her candle-wax.
'Three days before will do,' he went on, 'if you are in a position to be positive then. He ought to be very thankful to me, do you know. I have done a mighty good thing for him in taking you abroad; your value is twice as great, with all the knowledge and taste that you have acquired. A year ago, you were perhaps a little limited—a little rustic; but now you have seen everything, and appreciated everything, and you will be a most entertaining companion. We have fattened the sheep for him before he kills it!' Catherine turned away, and stood staring at the blank door. 'Go to bed,' said her father; 'and, as we don't go aboard till noon, you may sleep late. We shall probably have a most uncomfortable voyage.'
CHAPTER XXV
The voyage was indeed uncomfortable, and Catherine, on arriving in New York, had not the compensation of 'going off,' in her father's phrase, with Morris Townsend. She saw him, however, the day after she landed; and, in the meantime, he formed a natural subject of conversation between our heroine and her Aunt Lavinia, with whom, the night she disembarked, the girl was closeted for a long time before either lady retired to rest.
'I have seen a great deal of him,' said Mrs. Penniman. 'He is not very easy to know. I suppose you think you know him; but you don't, my dear. You will some day; but it will only be after you have lived with him. I may almost say
Catherine listened with a mixture of interest and apprehension. Aunt Lavinia was intensely sympathetic, and Catherine, for the past year, while she wandered through foreign galleries and churches, and rolled over the smoothness of posting roads, nursing the thoughts that never passed her lips, had often longed for the company of some intelligent person of her own sex. To tell her story to some kind woman—at moments it seemed to her that this would give her comfort, and she had more than once been on the point of taking the landlady, or the nice young person from the dressmaker's, into her confidence. If a woman had been near her she would on certain occasions have treated such a companion to a fit of weeping; and she had an apprehension that, on her return, this would form her response to Aunt Lavinia's first embrace. In fact, however, the two ladies had met, in Washington Square, without tears, and when they found themselves alone together a certain dryness fell upon the girl's emotion. It came over her with a greater force that Mrs. Penniman had enjoyed a whole year of her lover's society, and it was not a pleasure to her to hear her aunt explain and interpret the young man, speaking of him as if her own knowledge of him were supreme. It was not that Catherine was jealous; but her sense of Mrs. Penniman's innocent falsity, which had lain dormant, began to haunt her again, and she was glad that she was safely at home. With this, however, it was a blessing to be able to talk of Morris, to sound his name, to be with a person who was not unjust to him.
'You have been very kind to him,' said Catherine. 'He has written me that, often. I shall never forget that, Aunt Lavinia.'
'I have done what I could; it has been very little. To let him come and talk to me, and give him his cup of tea —that was all. Your Aunt Almond thought it was too much, and used to scold me terribly; but she promised me, at least, not to betray me.'
'To betray you?'
'Not to tell your father. He used to sit in your father's study!' said Mrs. Penniman, with a little laugh.
Catherine was silent a moment. This idea was disagreeable to her, and she was reminded again, with pain, of her aunt's secretive habits. Morris, the reader may be informed, had had the tact not to tell her that he sat in her father's study. He had known her but for a few months, and her aunt had known her for fifteen years; and yet he would not have made the mistake of thinking that Catherine would see the joke of the thing. 'I am sorry you made him go into father's room,' she said, after a while.
'I didn't make him go; he went himself. He liked to look at the books, and all those things in the glass cases. He knows all about them; he knows all about everything.'
Catherine was silent again; then, 'I wish he had found some employment,' she said.
'He has found some employment! It's beautiful news, and he told me to tell you as soon as you arrived. He has gone into partnership with a commission merchant. It was all settled, quite suddenly, a week ago.'
