Morris was not in high good-humour, and his response to this speech was not particularly gallant. “I don’t flatter myself we shall be much observed anywhere.” Then he turned recklessly toward the centre of the town. “I hope you have come to tell me that he has knocked under,” he went on.
“I am afraid I am not altogether a harbinger of good; and yet, too, I am to a certain extent a messenger of peace. I have been thinking a great deal, Mr. Townsend,” said Mrs. Penniman.
“You think too much.”
“I suppose I do; but I can’t help it, my mind is so terribly active. When I give myself, I give myself. I pay the penalty in my headaches, my famous headaches—a perfect circlet of pain! But I carry it as a queen carries her crown. Would you believe that I have one now? I wouldn’t, however, have missed our rendezvous for anything. I have something very important to tell you.”
“Well, let’s have it,” said Morris.
“I was perhaps a little headlong the other day in advising you to marry immediately. I have been thinking it over, and now I see it just a little differently.”
“You seem to have a great many different ways of seeing the same object.”
“Their number is infinite!” said Mrs. Penniman, in a tone which seemed to suggest that this convenient faculty was one of her brightest attributes.
“I recommend you to take one way and stick to it,” Morris replied.
“Ah! but it isn’t easy to choose. My imagination is never quiet, never satisfied. It makes me a bad adviser, perhaps; but it makes me a capital friend!”
“A capital friend who gives bad advice!” said Morris.
“Not intentionally—and who hurries off, at every risk, to make the most humble excuses!”
“Well, what do you advise me now?”
“To be very patient; to watch and wait.”
“And is that bad advice or good?”
“That is not for me to say,” Mrs. Penniman rejoined, with some dignity. “I only pretend it’s sincere.”
“And will you come to me next week and recommend something different and equally sincere?”
“I may come to you next week and tell you that I am in the streets!”
“In the streets?”
“I have had a terrible scene with my brother, and he threatens, if anything happens, to turn me out of the house. You know I am a poor woman.”
Morris had a speculative idea that she had a little property; but he naturally did not press this.
“I should be very sorry to see you suffer martyrdom for me,” he said. “But you make your brother out a regular Turk.”
Mrs. Penniman hesitated a little.
“I certainly do not regard Austin as a satisfactory Christian.”
“And am I to wait till he is converted?”
“Wait, at any rate, till he is less violent. Bide your time, Mr. Townsend; remember the prize is great!”
Morris walked along some time in silence, tapping the railings and gateposts very sharply with his stick.
“You certainly are devilish inconsistent!” he broke out at last. “I have already got Catherine to consent to a private marriage.”
Mrs. Penniman was indeed inconsistent, for at this news she gave a little jump of gratification.
“Oh! when and where?” she cried. And then she stopped short.
Morris was a little vague about this.
“That isn’t fixed; but she consents. It’s deuced awkward, now, to back out.”
Mrs. Penniman, as I say, had stopped short; and she stood there with her eyes fixed brilliantly on her companion.
“Mr. Townsend,” she proceeded, “shall I tell you something? Catherine loves you so much that you may do anything.”
This declaration was slightly ambiguous, and Morris opened his eyes.
“I am happy to hear it! But what do you mean by ‘anything’?”
“You may postpone—you may change about; she won’t think the worse of you.”
Morris stood there still, with his raised eyebrows; then he said simply and rather dryly—“Ah!” After this he remarked to Mrs. Penniman that if she walked so slowly she would attract notice, and he succeeded, after a fashion, in hurrying her back to the domicile of which her tenure had become so insecure.
XXII
He had slightly misrepresented the matter in saying that Catherine had consented to take the great step. We left her just now declaring that she would burn her ships behind her; but Morris, after having elicited this declaration, had become conscious of good reasons for not taking it up. He avoided, gracefully enough, fixing a day, though he left her under the impression that he had his eye on one. Catherine may have had her difficulties; but those of her circumspect suitor are also worthy of consideration. The prize was certainly great; but it was only to be won by striking the happy mean between precipitancy and caution. It would be all very well to take one’s jump and trust to Providence; Providence was more especially on the side of clever people, and clever people were known by an indisposition to risk their bones. The ultimate reward of a union with a young woman who was both unattractive and impoverished ought to be connected with immediate disadvantages by some very palpable chain. Between the fear of losing Catherine and her possible fortune altogether, and the fear of taking her too soon and finding this possible fortune as void of actuality as a collection of emptied bottles, it was not comfortable for Morris Townsend to choose; a fact that should be remembered by readers disposed to judge harshly of a young man who may have struck them as making but an indifferently successful use of fine natural parts. He had not forgotten that in any event Catherine had her own ten thousand a year; he had devoted an abundance of meditation to this circumstance.
