"Very well, then; we won"t talk about it." And Mrs. Penniman moved towards the door again. But she was stopped by a sudden imploring cry from the girl.
"Aunt Lavinia, WHERE has he gone?"
"Ah, you admit, then, that he has gone away? Didn"t they know at his house?"
"They said he had left town. I asked no more questions; I was ashamed," said Catherine, simply enough.
"You needn"t have taken so compromising a step if you had had a little more confidence in me," Mrs. Penniman observed, with a good deal of grandeur.
"Is it to New Orleans?" Catherine went on irrelevantly.
It was the first time Mrs. Penniman had heard of New Orleans in this connexion; but she was averse to letting Catherine know that she was in the dark. She attempted to strike an illumination from the instructions she had received from Morris. "My dear Catherine," she said, "when a separation has been agreed upon, the farther he goes away the better."
"Agreed upon? Has he agreed upon it with you?" A consummate sense of her aunt"s meddlesome folly had come over her during the last five minutes, and she was sickened at the thought that Mrs. Penniman had been let loose, as it were, upon her happiness.
"He certainly has sometimes advised with me," said Mrs. Penniman.
"Is it you, then, that have changed him and made him so unnatural?"
Catherine cried. "Is it you that have worked on him and taken him from me? He doesn"t belong to you, and I don"t see how you have anything to do with what is between us! Is it you that have made this plot and told him to leave me? How could you be so wicked, so cruel? What have I ever done to you; why can"t you leave me alone?
I was afraid you would spoil everything; for you DO spoil everything you touch; I was afraid of you all the time we were abroad; I had no rest when I thought that you were always talking to him." Catherine went on with growing vehemence, pouring out in her bitterness and in the clairvoyance of her pa.s.sion (which suddenly, jumping all processes, made her judge her aunt finally and without appeal) the uneasiness which had lain for so many months upon her heart.
Mrs. Penniman was scared and bewildered; she saw no prospect of introducing her little account of the purity of Morris"s motives.
"You are a most ungrateful girl!" she cried. "Do you scold me for talking with him? I am sure we never talked of anything but you!"
"Yes; and that was the way you worried him; you made him tired of my very name! I wish you had never spoken of me to him; I never asked your help!"
"I am sure if it hadn"t been for me he would never have come to the house, and you would never have known what he thought of you," Mrs.
Penniman rejoined, with a good deal of justice.
"I wish he never had come to the house, and that I never had known it! That"s better than this," said poor Catherine.
"You are a very ungrateful girl," Aunt Lavinia repeated.
Catherine"s outbreak of anger and the sense of wrong gave her, while they lasted, the satisfaction that comes from all a.s.sertion of force; they hurried her along, and there is always a sort of pleasure in cleaving the air. But at the bottom she hated to be violent, and she was conscious of no apt.i.tude for organised resentment. She calmed herself with a great effort, but with great rapidity, and walked about the room a few moments, trying to say to herself that her aunt had meant everything for the best. She did not succeed in saying it with much conviction, but after a little she was able to speak quietly enough.
"I am not ungrateful, but I am very unhappy. It"s hard to be grateful for that," she said. "Will you please tell me where he is?"
"I haven"t the least idea; I am not in secret correspondence with him!" And Mrs. Penniman wished indeed that she were, so that she might let him know how Catherine abused her, after all she had done.
"Was it a plan of his, then, to break off--?" By this time Catherine had become completely quiet.
Mrs. Penniman began again to have a glimpse of her chance for explaining. "He shrank--he shrank," she said. "He lacked courage, but it was the courage to injure you! He couldn"t bear to bring down on you your father"s curse."
Catherine listened to this with her eyes fixed upon her aunt, and continued to gaze at her for some time afterwards. "Did he tell you to say that?"
"He told me to say many things--all so delicate, so discriminating.
And he told me to tell you he hoped you wouldn"t despise him."
"I don"t," said Catherine. And then she added: "And will he stay away for ever?"
"Oh, for ever is a long time. Your father, perhaps, won"t live for ever."
"Perhaps not."
"I am sure you appreciate--you understand--even though your heart bleeds," said Mrs. Penniman. "You doubtless think him too scrupulous. So do I, but I respect his scruples. What he asks of you is that you should do the same."
Catherine was still gazing at her aunt, but she spoke at last, as if she had not heard or not understood her. "It has been a regular plan, then. He has broken it off deliberately; he has given me up."
"For the present, dear Catherine. He has put it off only."
"He has left me alone," Catherine went on.
"Haven"t you ME?" asked Mrs. Penniman, with much expression.
Catherine shook her head slowly. "I don"t believe it!" and she left the room.
CHAPTER x.x.xI
Though she had forced herself to be calm, she preferred practising this virtue in private, and she forbore to show herself at tea--a repast which, on Sundays, at six o"clock, took the place of dinner.
Dr. Sloper and his sister sat face to face, but Mrs. Penniman never met her brother"s eye. Late in the evening she went with him, but without Catherine, to their sister Almond"s, where, between the two ladies, Catherine"s unhappy situation was discussed with a frankness that was conditioned by a good deal of mysterious reticence on Mrs.
Penniman"s part.
"I am delighted he is not to marry her," said Mrs. Almond, "but he ought to be horsewhipped all the same."
Mrs. Penniman, who was shocked at her sister"s coa.r.s.eness, replied that he had been actuated by the n.o.blest of motives--the desire not to impoverish Catherine.
"I am very happy that Catherine is not to be impoverished--but I hope he may never have a penny too much! And what does the poor girl say to YOU?" Mrs. Almond asked.
"She says I have a genius for consolation," said Mrs. Penniman.
This was the account of the matter that she gave to her sister, and it was perhaps with the consciousness of genius that, on her return that evening to Washington Square, she again presented herself for admittance at Catherine"s door. Catherine came and opened it; she was apparently very quiet.
"I only want to give you a little word of advice," she said. "If your father asks you, say that everything is going on."
Catherine stood there, with her hand on the k.n.o.b looking at her aunt, but not asking her to come in. "Do you think he will ask me?"
"I am sure he will. He asked me just now, on our way home from your Aunt Elizabeth"s. I explained the whole thing to your Aunt Elizabeth. I said to your father I know nothing about it."
"Do you think he will ask me when he sees--when he sees--?" But here Catherine stopped.
"The more he sees the more disagreeable he will be," said her aunt.
"He shall see as little as possible!" Catherine declared.