“I am afraid the frankness will be chiefly on your side. The poor little woman will stand up for her brother, whatever he may be.”
“Whatever he may be? I doubt that. People are not always so fond of their brothers.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Almond, “when it’s a question of thirty thousand a year coming into a family—”
“If she stands up for him on account of the money, she will be a humbug. If she is a humbug I shall see it. If I see it, I won’t waste time with her.”
“She is not a humbug—she is an exemplary woman. She will not wish to play her brother a trick simply because he is selfish.”
“If she is worth talking to, she will sooner play him a trick than that he should play Catherine one. Has she seen Catherine, by the way—does she know her?”
“Not to my knowledge. Mr. Townsend can have had no particular interest in bringing them together.”
“If she is an exemplary woman, no. But we shall see to what extent she answers your description.”
“I shall be curious to hear her description of you!” said Mrs. Almond, with a laugh. “And, meanwhile, how is Catherine taking it?”
“As she takes everything—as a matter of course.”
“Doesn’t she make a noise? Hasn’t she made a scene?”
“She is not scenic.”
“I thought a lovelorn maiden was always scenic.”
“A fantastic widow is more so. Lavinia has made me a speech; she thinks me very arbitrary.”
“She has a talent for being in the wrong,” said Mrs. Almond. “But I am very sorry for Catherine, all the same.”
“So am I. But she will get over it.”
“You believe she will give him up?”
“I count upon it. She has such an admiration for her father.”
“Oh, we know all about that! But it only makes me pity her the more. It makes her dilemma the more painful, and the effort of choosing between you and her lover almost impossible.”
“If she can’t choose, all the better.”
“Yes, but he will stand there entreating her to choose, and Lavinia will pull on that side.”
“I am glad she is not on my side; she is capable of ruining an excellent cause. The day Lavinia gets into your boat it capsizes. But she had better be careful,” said the Doctor. “I will have no treason in my house!”
“I suspect she will be careful; for she is at bottom very much afraid of you.”
“They are both afraid of me—harmless as I am!” the Doctor answered. “And it is on that that I build—on the salutary terror I inspire!”
XIV
He wrote his frank letter to Mrs. Montgomery, who punctually answered it, mentioning an hour at which he might present himself in the Second Avenue. She lived in a neat little house of red brick, which had been freshly painted, with the edges of the bricks very sharply marked out in white. It has now disappeared, with its companions, to make room for a row of structures more majestic. There were green shutters upon the windows, without slats, but pierced with little holes, arranged in groups; and before the house was a diminutive yard, ornamented with a bush of mysterious character, and surrounded by a low wooden paling, painted in the same green as the shutters. The place looked like a magnified baby-house, and might have been taken down from a shelf in a toyshop. Dr. Sloper, when he went to call, said to himself, as he glanced at the objects I have enumerated, that Mrs. Montgomery was evidently a thrifty and self-respecting little person—the modest proportions of her dwelling seemed to indicate that she was of small stature—who took a virtuous satisfaction in keeping herself tidy, and had resolved that, since she might not be splendid, she would at least be immaculate. She received him in a little parlour, which was precisely the parlour he had expected: a small unspeckled bower, ornamented with a desultory foliage of tissue-paper, and with clusters of glass drops, amid which—to carry out the analogy—the temperature of the leafy season was maintained by means of a cast-iron stove, emitting a dry blue flame, and smelling strongly of varnish. The walls were embellished with engravings swathed in pink gauze, and the tables ornamented with volumes of extracts from the poets, usually bound in black cloth stamped with florid designs in jaundiced gilt. The Doctor had time to take cognisance of these details, for Mrs. Montgomery, whose conduct he pronounced under the circumstances inexcusable, kept him waiting some ten minutes before she appeared. At last, however, she rustled in, smoothing down a stiff poplin dress, with a little frightened flush in a gracefully-rounded cheek.
She was a small, plump, fair woman, with a bright, clear eye, and an extraordinary air of neatness and briskness. But these qualities were evidently combined with an unaffected humility, and the Doctor gave her his esteem as soon as he had looked at her. A brave little person, with lively perceptions, and yet a disbelief in her own talent for social, as distinguished from practical, affairs—this was his rapid mental résumé of Mrs. Montgomery, who, as he saw, was flattered by what she regarded as the honour of his visit. Mrs. Montgomery, in her little red house in the Second Avenue, was a person for whom Dr. Sloper was one of the great men, one of the fine gentlemen of New York; and while she fixed her agitated eyes upon him, while she clasped her mittened hands together in her glossy poplin lap, she
