Washington Square

was for reasons connected with this determination that on the morrow
he sought a few words of private conversation with Mrs. Penniman. He
sent for her to the library, and he there informed her that he hoped very
much that, as regarded this affair of Catherine’s, she would mind her
p’s and q’s.

“I don’t know what you mean by such an expression,” said his sister.
“You speak as if I were learning the alphabet.”

“The alphabet of common sense is something you will never learn,” the
Doctor permitted himself to respond.

“Have you called me here to insult me?” Mrs. Penniman inquired.

“Not at all. Simply to advise you. You have taken up young Townsend;
that’s your own affair. I have nothing to do with your sentiments, your
fancies, your affections, your delusions; but what I request of you is
that you will keep these things to yourself. I have explained my views
to Catherine; she understands them perfectly, and anything that she does
further in the way of encouraging Mr. Townsend’s attentions will be in
deliberate opposition to my wishes. Anything that you should do in the
way of giving her aid and comfort will be—permit me the
expression—distinctly treasonable. You know high treason is a capital
offence; take care how you incur the penalty.”

Mrs. Penniman threw back her head, with a certain expansion of the eye
which she occasionally practised. “It seems to me that you talk like a
great autocrat.”

“I talk like my daughter’s father.”

“Not like your sister’s brother!” cried Lavinia. “My dear Lavinia,” said
the Doctor, “I sometimes wonder whether I am your brother. We are so
extremely different. In spite of differences, however, we can, at a
pinch, understand each other; and that is the essential thing just now.
Walk straight with regard to Mr. Townsend; that’s all I ask. It is
highly probable you have been corresponding with him for the last three
weeks—perhaps even seeing him. I don’t ask you—you needn’t tell me.” He
had a moral conviction that she would contrive to tell a fib about the
matter, which it would disgust him to listen to. “Whatever you have
done, stop doing it. That’s all I wish.”

“Don’t you wish also by chance to murder our child?” Mrs. Penniman
inquired.

“On the contrary, I wish to make her live and be happy.”

“You will kill her; she passed a dreadful night.”

“She won’t die of one dreadful night, nor of a dozen. Remember that I am
a distinguished physician.”

Mrs. Penniman hesitated a moment. Then she risked her retort. “Your
being a distinguished physician has not prevented you from already losing
two members of your family!”

She had risked it, but her brother gave her such a terribly incisive
look—a look so like a surgeon’s lancet—that she was frightened at her
courage. And he answered her in words that corresponded to the look: “It
may not prevent me, either, from losing the society of still another.”

Mrs. Penniman took herself off, with whatever air of depreciated merit
was at her command, and repaired to Catherine’s room, where the poor girl
was closeted. She knew all about her dreadful night, for the two had met
again, the evening before, after Catherine left her father. Mrs.
Penniman was on the landing of the second floor when her niece came
upstairs. It was not remarkable that a person of so much subtlety should
have discovered that Catherine had been shut up with the Doctor. It was
still less remarkable that she should have felt an extreme curiosity to
learn the result of this interview, and that this sentiment, combined
with her great amiability and generosity, should have prompted her to
regret the sharp words lately exchanged between her niece and herself.
As the unhappy girl came into sight, in the dusky corridor, she made a
lively demonstration of sympathy. Catherine’s bursting heart was equally
oblivious. She only knew that her aunt was taking her into her arms.
Mrs. Penniman drew her into Catherine’s own room, and the two women sat
there together, far into the small hours; the younger one with her head
on the other’s lap, sobbing and sobbing at first in a soundless, stifled
manner, and then at last perfectly still. It gratified Mrs. Penniman to
be able to feel conscientiously that this scene virtually removed the
interdict which Catherine had placed upon her further communion with
Morris Townsend. She was not gratified, however, when, in coming back to
her niece’s room before breakfast, she found that Catherine had risen and
was preparing herself for this meal.

“You should not go to breakfast,” she said; “you are not well enough,
after your fearful night.”

“Yes, I am very well, and I am only afraid of being late.”

“I can’t understand you!” Mrs. Penniman cried. “You should stay in bed
for three days.”

“Oh, I could never do that!” said Catherine, to whom this idea presented
no attractions.

Mrs. Penniman was in despair, and she noted, with extreme annoyance, that
the trace of the night’s tears had completely vanished from Catherine’s
eyes. She had a most impracticable physique. “What effect do you
expect to have upon your father,” her aunt demanded, “if you come
plumping down, without a vestige of any sort of feeling, as if nothing in
the world had happened?”

“He would not like me to lie in bed,” said Catherine simply.

“All the more reason for your doing it. How else do you expect to move
him?”

Catherine thought a little. “I don’t know how; but not in that way. I
wish to be just as usual.” And she finished dressing, and, according to
her aunt’s expression, went plumping down into the paternal presence.
She was really too modest for consistent pathos.

And yet it was perfectly true that she had had a dreadful night. Even
after Mrs. Penniman left her she had had no sleep. She lay staring at
the uncomforting gloom, with her eyes and ears filled with the movement
with which her father had turned her out of his room, and of the words in
which he had told her that she was a heartless daughter. Her heart was
breaking. She had heart enough for that. At moments it seemed to her
that she believed him, and that to do what she was doing, a girl must
indeed be bad. She was bad; but she couldn’t help it. She would try
to appear good, even if her heart were perverted; and from time to time
she had a fancy that she might accomplish something by ingenious
concessions to form, though she should persist in caring for Morris.
Catherine’s ingenuities were indefinite, and we are not called upon to
expose their hollowness. The best of them perhaps showed itself in that
freshness of aspect which was so discouraging to Mrs. Penniman, who was
amazed at the absence of haggardness in a young woman who for a whole
night had lain quivering beneath a father’s curse. Poor Catherine was
conscious of her freshness; it gave her a feeling about the future which
rather added to the weight upon her mind. It seemed a proof that she was
strong and solid and dense, and would live to a great age—longer than
might be generally convenient; and this idea was depressing, for it
appeared to saddle her with a pretension the more, just when the
cultivation of any pretension was inconsistent with her doing right. She
wrote that day to Morris Townsend, requesting him to come and see her on
the morrow; using very few words, and explaining nothing. She would
explain everything face to face.