"If my situation becomes desperate I shall perhaps take the liberty of reminding you!" Morris rejoined, raising his voice a little, with a brighter smile, as his interlocutor turned away.
Before he left the house the Doctor had a few words with Mrs. Almond.
"I should like to see his sister," he said. "What do you call her?
Mrs. Montgomery. I should like to have a little talk with her."
"I will try and manage it," Mrs. Almond responded. "I will take the first opportunity of inviting her, and you shall come and meet her.
Unless, indeed," Mrs. Almond added, "she first takes it into her head to be sick and to send for you."
"Ah no, not that; she must have trouble enough without that. But it would have its advantages, for then I should see the children. I should like very much to see the children."
"You are very thorough. Do you want to catechise them about their uncle!"
"Precisely. Their uncle tells me he has charge of their education, that he saves their mother the expense of school-bills. I should like to ask them a few questions in the commoner branches."
"He certainly has not the cut of a schoolmaster!" Mrs. Almond said to herself a short time afterwards, as she saw Morris Townsend in a corner bending over her niece, who was seated.
And there was, indeed, nothing in the young man"s discourse at this moment that savoured of the pedagogue.
"Will you meet me somewhere to-morrow or next day?" he said, in a low tone, to Catherine.
"Meet you?" she asked, lifting her frightened eyes.
"I have something particular to say to you--very particular."
"Can"t you come to the house? Can"t you say it there?"
Townsend shook his head gloomily. "I can"t enter your doors again!"
"Oh, Mr. Townsend!" murmured Catherine. She trembled as she wondered what had happened, whether her father had forbidden it.
"I can"t in self-respect," said the young man. "Your father has insulted me."
"Insulted you!"
"He has taunted me with my poverty."
"Oh, you are mistaken--you misunderstood him!" Catherine spoke with energy, getting up from her chair.
"Perhaps I am too proud--too sensitive. But would you have me otherwise?" he asked tenderly.
"Where my father is concerned, you must not be sure. He is full of goodness," said Catherine.
"He laughed at me for having no position! I took it quietly; but only because he belongs to you."
"I don"t know," said Catherine; "I don"t know what he thinks. I am sure he means to be kind. You must not be too proud."
"I will be proud only of you," Morris answered. "Will you meet me in the Square in the afternoon?"
A great blush on Catherine"s part had been the answer to the declaration I have just quoted. She turned away, heedless of his question.
"Will you meet me?" he repeated. "It is very quiet there; no one need see us--toward dusk?"
"It is you who are unkind, it is you who laugh, when you say such things as that."
"My dear girl!" the young man murmured.
"You know how little there is in me to be proud of. I am ugly and stupid."
Morris greeted this remark with an ardent murmur, in which she recognised nothing articulate but an a.s.surance that she was his own dearest.
But she went on. "I am not even--I am not even--" And she paused a moment.
"You are not what?"
"I am not even brave."
"Ah, then, if you are afraid, what shall we do?"
She hesitated a while; then at last--"You must come to the house,"
she said; "I am not afraid of that."
"I would rather it were in the Square," the young man urged. "You know how empty it is, often. No one will see us."
"I don"t care who sees us! But leave me now."
He left her resignedly; he had got what he wanted. Fortunately he was ignorant that half an hour later, going home with her father and feeling him near, the poor girl, in spite of her sudden declaration of courage, began to tremble again. Her father said nothing; but she had an idea his eyes were fixed upon her in the darkness. Mrs.
Penniman also was silent; Morris Townsend had told her that her niece preferred, unromantically, an interview in a chintz-covered parlour to a sentimental tryst beside a fountain sheeted with dead leaves, and she was lost in wonderment at the oddity--almost the perversity-- of the choice.
CHAPTER X
Catherine received the young man the next day on the ground she had chosen--amid the chaste upholstery of a New York drawing-room furnished in the fashion of fifty years ago. Morris had swallowed his pride and made the effort necessary to cross the threshold of her too derisive parent--an act of magnanimity which could not fail to render him doubly interesting.
"We must settle something--we must take a line," he declared, pa.s.sing his hand through his hair and giving a glance at the long narrow mirror which adorned the s.p.a.ce between the two windows, and which had at its base a little gilded bracket covered by a thin slab of white marble, supporting in its turn a backgammon board folded together in the shape of two volumes, two shining folios inscribed in letters of greenish gilt, History of England. If Morris had been pleased to describe the master of the house as a heartless scoffer, it is because he thought him too much on his guard, and this was the easiest way to express his own dissatisfaction--a dissatisfaction which he had made a point of concealing from the Doctor. It will probably seem to the reader, however, that the Doctor"s vigilance was by no means excessive, and that these two young people had an open field. Their intimacy was now considerable, and it may appear that for a shrinking and retiring person our heroine had been liberal of her favours. The young man, within a few days, had made her listen to things for which she had not supposed that she was prepared; having a lively foreboding of difficulties, he proceeded to gain as much ground as possible in the present. He remembered that fortune favours the brave, and even if he had forgotten it, Mrs. Penniman would have remembered it for him. Mrs. Penniman delighted of all things in a drama, and she flattered herself that a drama would now be enacted. Combining as she did the zeal of the prompter with the impatience of the spectator, she had long since done her utmost to pull up the curtain. She too expected to figure in the performance-- to be the confidante, the Chorus, to speak the epilogue. It may even be said that there were times when she lost sight altogether of the modest heroine of the play, in the contemplation of certain great pa.s.sages which would naturally occur between the hero and herself.
What Morris had told Catherine at last was simply that he loved her, or rather adored her. Virtually, he had made known as much already-- his visits had been a series of eloquent intimations of it. But now he had affirmed it in lover"s vows, and, as a memorable sign of it, he had pa.s.sed his arm round the girl"s waist and taken a kiss. This happy cert.i.tude had come sooner than Catherine expected, and she had regarded it, very naturally, as a priceless treasure. It may even be doubted whether she had ever definitely expected to possess it; she had not been waiting for it, and she had never said to herself that at a given moment it must come. As I have tried to explain, she was not eager and exacting; she took what was given her from day to day; and if the delightful custom of her lover"s visits, which yielded her a happiness in which confidence and timidity were strangely blended, had suddenly come to an end, she would not only not have spoken of herself as one of the forsaken, but she would not have thought of herself as one of the disappointed. After Morris had kissed her, the last time he was with her, as a ripe a.s.surance of his devotion, she begged him to go away, to leave her alone, to let her think. Morris went away, taking another kiss first. But Catherine"s meditations had lacked a certain coherence. She felt his kisses on her lips and on her cheeks for a long time afterwards; the sensation was rather an obstacle than an aid to reflexion. She would have liked to see her situation all clearly before her, to make up her mind what she should do if, as she feared, her father should tell her that he disapproved of Morris Townsend. But all that she could see with any vividness was that it was terribly strange that anyone should disapprove of him; that there must in that case be some mistake, some mystery, which in a little while would be set at rest. She put off deciding and choosing; before the vision of a conflict with her father she dropped her eyes and sat motionless, holding her breath and waiting.
It made her heart beat, it was intensely painful. When Morris kissed her and said these things--that also made her heart beat; but this was worse, and it frightened her. Nevertheless, to-day, when the young man spoke of settling something, taking a line, she felt that it was the truth, and she answered very simply and without hesitating.
"We must do our duty," she said; "we must speak to my father. I will do it to-night; you must do it to-morrow"
"It is very good of you to do it first," Morris answered. "The young man--the happy lover--generally does that. But just as you please!"
It pleased Catherine to think that she should be brave for his sake, and in her satisfaction she even gave a little smile. "Women have more tact," she said "they ought to do it first. They are more conciliating; they can persuade better."
"You will need all your powers of persuasion. But, after all,"