“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 cobblestones.
“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.
“I was so sorry for him—it seemed to me someone ought to see him.”
“No one but I,” said Catherine, who felt as if she were making the most presumptuous speech of her life, and yet at the same time had an instinct that she was right in doing so.
“But you wouldn’t, my dear,” Aunt Lavinia rejoined; “and I didn’t know what might have become of him.”
“I have not seen him, because my father has forbidden it,” Catherine said very simply.
There was a simplicity in this, indeed, which fairly vexed Mrs. Penniman. “If your father forbade you to go to sleep, I suppose you would keep awake!” she commented.
Catherine looked at her. “I don’t understand you. You seem to be very strange.”
“Well, my dear, you will understand me some day!” And Mrs. Penniman, who was reading the evening paper, which she perused daily from the first line to the last, resumed her occupation. She wrapped herself in silence; she was determined Catherine should ask her for an account of her interview with Morris. But Catherine was silent for so long, that she almost lost patience; and she was on the point of remarking to her that she was very heartless, when the girl at last spoke.
“What did he say?” she asked.
“He said he is ready to marry you any day, in spite of everything.”
Catherine made no answer to this, and Mrs. Penniman almost lost patience again; owing to which she at last volunteered the information that Morris looked very handsome, but terribly haggard.
“Did he seem sad?” asked her niece.
“He was dark under the eyes,” said Mrs. Penniman. “So different from when I first saw him; though I am not sure that if I had seen him in this condition the first time, I should not have been even more struck with him. There is something brilliant in his very misery.”
This was, to Catherine’s sense, a vivid picture, and though she disapproved, she felt herself gazing at it. “Where did you see him?” she asked presently.
“In—in the Bowery; at a confectioner’s,” said Mrs. Penniman, who had a general idea that she ought to dissemble a little.
“Whereabouts is the place?” Catherine inquired, after another pause.
“Do you wish to go there, my dear?” said her aunt.
“Oh no!” And Catherine got up from her seat and went to the fire, where she stood looking a while at the glowing coals.
“Why are you so dry, Catherine?” Mrs. Penniman said at last.
“So dry?”
“So cold—so irresponsive.”
The girl turned very quickly. “Did he say that?”
Mrs. Penniman hesitated a moment. “I will tell you what he said. He said he feared only one thing—that you would be afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid of your father.”
Catherine turned back to the fire again, and then, after a pause, she said—“I am afraid of my father.”
Mrs. Penniman got quickly up from her chair and approached her niece. “Do you mean to give him up, then?”
Catherine for some time never moved; she kept her eyes
