"So Mr. Townsend says," observed Lavinia, smiling.
"Do you think he is sincere?" asked her brother.
"In saying that?"
"No; that"s of course. But in his admiration for Catherine?"
"Deeply sincere. He has said to me the most appreciative, the most charming things about her. He would say them to you, if he were sure you would listen to him--gently."
"I doubt whether I can undertake it. He appears to require a great deal of gentleness."
"He is a sympathetic, sensitive nature," said Mrs. Penniman.
Her brother puffed his cigar again in silence. "These delicate qualities have survived his vicissitudes, eh? All this while you haven"t told me about his misfortunes."
"It is a long story," said Mrs. Penniman, "and I regard it as a sacred trust. But I suppose there is no objection to my saying that he has been wild--he frankly confesses that. But he has paid for it."
"That"s what has impoverished him, eh?"
"I don"t mean simply in money. He is very much alone in the world."
"Do you mean that he has behaved so badly that his friends have given him up?"
"He has had false friends, who have deceived and betrayed him."
"He seems to have some good ones too. He has a devoted sister, and half-a-dozen nephews and nieces."
Mrs. Penniman was silent a minute. "The nephews and nieces are children, and the sister is not a very attractive person."
"I hope he doesn"t abuse her to you," said the Doctor; "for I am told he lives upon her."
"Lives upon her?"
"Lives with her, and does nothing for himself; it is about the same thing."
"He is looking for a position--most earnestly," said Mrs. Penniman.
"He hopes every day to find one."
"Precisely. He is looking for it here--over there in the front parlour. The position of husband of a weak-minded woman with a large fortune would suit him to perfection!"
Mrs. Penniman was truly amiable, but she now gave signs of temper.
She rose with much animation, and stood for a moment looking at her brother. "My dear Austin," she remarked, "if you regard Catherine as a weak-minded woman, you are particularly mistaken!" And with this she moved majestically away.
CHAPTER IX
It was a regular custom with the family in Washington Square to go and spend Sunday evening at Mrs. Almond"s. On the Sunday after the conversation I have just narrated, this custom was not intermitted and on this occasion, towards the middle of the evening, Dr. Sloper found reason to withdraw to the library, with his brother-in-law, to talk over a matter of business. He was absent some twenty minutes, and when he came back into the circle, which was enlivened by the presence of several friends of the family, he saw that Morris Townsend had come in and had lost as little time as possible in seating himself on a small sofa, beside Catherine. In the large room, where several different groups had been formed, and the hum of voices and of laughter was loud, these two young persons might confabulate, as the Doctor phrased it to himself, without attracting attention. He saw in a moment, however, that his daughter was painfully conscious of his own observation. She sat motionless, with her eyes bent down, staring at her open fan, deeply flushed, shrinking together as if to minimise the indiscretion of which she confessed herself guilty.
The Doctor almost pitied her. Poor Catherine was not defiant; she had no genius for bravado; and as she felt that her father viewed her companion"s attentions with an unsympathising eye, there was nothing but discomfort for her in the accident of seeming to challenge him.
The Doctor felt, indeed, so sorry for her that he turned away, to spare her the sense of being watched; and he was so intelligent a man that, in his thoughts, he rendered a sort of poetic justice to her situation.
"It must be deucedly pleasant for a plain inanimate girl like that to have a beautiful young fellow come and sit down beside her and whisper to her that he is her slave--if that is what this one whispers. No wonder she likes it, and that she thinks me a cruel tyrant; which of course she does, though she is afraid--she hasn"t the animation necessary--to admit it to herself. Poor old Catherine!" mused the Doctor; "I verily believe she is capable of defending me when Townsend abuses me!"
And the force of this reflexion, for the moment, was such in making him feel the natural opposition between his point of view and that of an infatuated child, that he said to himself that he was perhaps, after all, taking things too hard and crying out before he was hurt.
He must not condemn Morris Townsend unheard. He had a great aversion to taking things too hard; he thought that half the discomfort and many of the disappointments of life come from it; and for an instant he asked himself whether, possibly, he did not appear ridiculous to this intelligent young man, whose private perception of incongruities he suspected of being keen. At the end of a quarter of an hour Catherine had got rid of him, and Townsend was now standing before the fireplace in conversation with Mrs. Almond.
"We will try him again," said the Doctor. And he crossed the room and joined his sister and her companion, making her a sign that she should leave the young man to him. She presently did so, while Morris looked at him, smiling, without a sign of evasiveness in his affable eye.
"He"s amazingly conceited!" thought the Doctor; and then he said aloud: "I am told you are looking out for a position."
"Oh, a position is more than I should presume to call it," Morris Townsend answered. "That sounds so fine. I should like some quiet work--something to turn an honest penny."
"What sort of thing should you prefer?"
"Do you mean what am I fit for? Very little, I am afraid. I have nothing but my good right arm, as they say in the melodramas."
"You are too modest," said the Doctor. "In addition to your good right arm, you have your subtle brain. I know nothing of you but what I see; but I see by your physiognomy that you are extremely intelligent."
"Ah," Townsend murmured, "I don"t know what to answer when you say that! You advise me, then, not to despair?"
And he looked at his interlocutor as if the question might have a double meaning. The Doctor caught the look and weighed it a moment before he replied. "I should be very sorry to admit that a robust and well-disposed young man need ever despair. If he doesn"t succeed in one thing, he can try another. Only, I should add, he should choose his line with discretion."
"Ah, yes, with discretion," Morris Townsend repeated sympathetically.
"Well, I have been indiscreet, formerly; but I think I have got over it. I am very steady now." And he stood a moment, looking down at his remarkably neat shoes. Then at last, "Were you kindly intending to propose something for my advantage?" he inquired, looking up and smiling.
"d.a.m.n his impudence!" the Doctor exclaimed privately. But in a moment he reflected that he himself had, after all, touched first upon this delicate point, and that his words might have been construed as an offer of a.s.sistance. "I have no particular proposal to make," he presently said; "but it occurred to me to let you know that I have you in my mind. Sometimes one hears of opportunities.
For instance--should you object to leaving New York--to going to a distance?"
"I am afraid I shouldn"t be able to manage that. I must seek my fortune here or nowhere. You see," added Morris Townsend, "I have ties--I have responsibilities here. I have a sister, a widow, from whom I have been separated for a long time, and to whom I am almost everything. I shouldn"t like to say to her that I must leave her.
She rather depends upon me, you see."
"Ah, that"s very proper; family feeling is very proper," said Dr.
Sloper. "I often think there is not enough of it in our city. I think I have heard of your sister."
"It is possible, but I rather doubt it; she lives so very quietly."
"As quietly, you mean," the Doctor went on, with a short laugh, "as a lady may do who has several young children."
"Ah, my little nephews and nieces--that"s the very point! I am helping to bring them up," said Morris Townsend. "I am a kind of amateur tutor; I give them lessons."
"That"s very proper, as I say; but it is hardly a career."
"It won"t make my fortune!" the young man confessed.
"You must not be too much bent on a fortune," said the Doctor. "But I a.s.sure you I will keep you in mind; I won"t lose sight of you!"