IV

MRS. PENNIMAN, with more buckles and bangles than ever, came, of course,

to the entertainment, accompanied by her niece; the Doctor, too, had

promised to look in later in the evening. There was to be a good deal of

dancing, and before it had gone very far, Marian Almond came up to

Catherine, in company with a tall young man. She introduced the young

man as a person who had a great desire to make our heroine’s

acquaintance, and as a cousin of Arthur Townsend, her own intended.

Marian Almond was a pretty little person of seventeen, with a very small

figure and a very big sash, to the elegance of whose manners matrimony

had nothing to add. She already had all the airs of a hostess, receiving

the company, shaking her fan, saying that with so many people to attend

to she should have no time to dance. She made a long speech about Mr.

Townsend’s cousin, to whom she administered a tap with her fan before

turning away to other cares. Catherine had not understood all that she

said; her attention was given to enjoying Marian’s ease of manner and

flow of ideas, and to looking at the young man, who was remarkably

handsome. She had succeeded, however, as she often failed to do when

people were presented to her, in catching his name, which appeared to be

the same as that of Marian’s little stockbroker. Catherine was always

agitated by an introduction; it seemed a difficult moment, and she

wondered that some people—her new acquaintance at this moment, for

instance—should mind it so little. She wondered what she ought to say,

and what would be the consequences of her saying nothing. The

consequences at present were very agreeable. Mr. Townsend, leaving her

no time for embarrassment, began to talk with an easy smile, as if he had

known her for a year.

“What a delightful party! What a charming house! What an interesting

family! What a pretty girl your cousin is!”

These observations, in themselves of no great profundity, Mr. Townsend

seemed to offer for what they were worth, and as a contribution to an

acquaintance. He looked straight into Catherine’s eyes. She answered

nothing; she only listened, and looked at him; and he, as if he expected

no particular reply, went on to say many other things in the same

comfortable and natural manner. Catherine, though she felt tongue-tied,

was conscious of no embarrassment; it seemed proper that he should talk,

and that she should simply look at him. What made it natural was that he

was so handsome, or rather, as she phrased it to herself, so beautiful.

The music had been silent for a while, but it suddenly began again; and

then he asked her, with a deeper, intenser smile, if she would do him the

honour of dancing with him. Even to this inquiry she gave no audible

assent; she simply let him put his arm round her waist—as she did so it

occurred to her more vividly than it had ever done before, that this was

a singular place for a gentleman’s arm to be—and in a moment he was

guiding her round the room in the harmonious rotation of the polka. When

they paused she felt that she was red; and then, for some moments, she

stopped looking at him. She fanned herself, and looked at the flowers

that were painted on her fan. He asked her if she would begin again, and

she hesitated to answer, still looking at the flowers.

“Does it make you dizzy?” he asked, in a tone of great kindness.

Then Catherine looked up at him; he was certainly beautiful, and not at

all red. “Yes,” she said; she hardly knew why, for dancing had never

made her dizzy.

“Ah, well, in that case,” said Mr. Townsend, “we will sit still and talk.

I will find a good place to sit.”

He found a good place—a charming place; a little sofa that seemed meant

only for two persons. The rooms by this time were very full; the dancers

increased in number, and people stood close in front of them, turning

their backs, so that Catherine and her companion seemed secluded and

unobserved. “_We_ will talk,” the young man had said; but he still did

all the talking. Catherine leaned back in her place, with her eyes fixed

upon him, smiling and thinking him very clever. He had features like

young men in pictures; Catherine had never seen such features—so

delicate, so chiselled and finished—among the young New Yorkers whom she

passed in the streets and met at parties. He was tall and slim, but he

looked extremely strong. Catherine thought he looked like a statue. But

a statue would not talk like that, and, above all, would not have eyes of

so rare a colour. He had never been at Mrs. Almond’s before; he felt

very much like a stranger; and it was very kind of Catherine to take pity

on him. He was Arthur Townsend’s cousin—not very near; several times

removed—and Arthur had brought him to present him to the family. In

fact, he was a great stranger in New York. It was his native place; but

he had not been there for many years. He had been knocking about the

world, and living in far-away lands; he had only come back a month or two

before. New York was very pleasant, only he felt lonely.

“You see, people forget you,” he said, smiling at Catherine with his

delightful gaze, while he leaned forward obliquely, turning towards her,

with his elbows on his knees.

It seemed to Catherine that no one who had once seen him would ever

forget him; but though she made this reflexion she kept it to herself,

almost as you would keep something precious.

They sat there for some time. He was very amusing. He asked her about

the people that were near them; he tried to guess who some of them were,

and he made the most laughable mistakes. He criticised them very freely,

in a positive, off-hand way. Catherine had never heard any

one—especially any young man—talk just like that. It was the way a young

man might talk in a novel; or better still, in a play, on the stage,

close before the footlights, looking at the audience, and with every one

looking at him, so that you wondered at his presence of mind. And yet

Mr. Townsend was not like an actor; he seemed so sincere, so natural.

This was very interesting; but in the midst of it Marian Almond came

pushing through the crowd, with a little ironical cry, when she found

these young people still together, which made every one turn round, and

cost Catherine a conscious blush. Marian broke up their talk, and told

Mr. Townsend—whom she treated as if she were already married, and he had

become her cousin—to run away to her mother, who had been wishing for the

last half-hour to introduce him to Mr. Almond.

“We shall meet again!” he said to Catherine as he left her, and Catherine

thought it a very original speech.

Her cousin took her by the arm, and made her walk about. “I needn’t ask

you what you think of Morris!” the young girl exclaimed.

“Is that his name?”

“I don’t ask you what you think of his name, but what you think of

himself,” said Marian.

“Oh, nothing particular!” Catherine answered, dissembling for the first

time in her life.

“I have half a mind to tell him that!” cried Marian. “It will do him

good. He’s so terribly conceited.”

“Conceited?” said Catherine, staring.

“So Arthur says, and Arthur knows about him.”

“Oh, don’t tell him!” Catherine murmured imploringly.

“Don’t tell him he’s conceited? I have told him so a dozen times.”

At this profession of audacity Catherine looked down at her little

companion in amazement. She supposed it was because Marian was going to

be married that she took so much on herself; but she wondered too,

whether, when she herself should become engaged, such exploits would be

expected of her.

Half an hour later she saw her Aunt Penniman sitting in the embrasure of

a window, with her head a little on one side, and her gold eye-glass

raised to her eyes, which were wandering about the room. In front of her

was a gentleman, bending forward a little, with his back turned to

Catherine. She knew his back immediately, though she had never seen it;

for when he had left her, at Marian’s instigation, he had retreated in

the best order, without turning round. Morris Townsend—the name had

already become very familiar to her, as if some one had been repeating it

in her ear for the last half-hour—Morris Townsend was giving his

impressions of the company to her aunt, as he had done to herself; he was

saying clever things, and Mrs. Penniman was smiling, as if she approved

of them. As soon as Catherine had perceived this she moved away; she

would not have liked him to turn round and see her. But it gave her

pleasure—the whole thing. That he should talk with Mrs. Penniman, with

whom she lived and whom she saw and talked with every day—that seemed to

keep him near her, and to make him even easier to contemplate than if she

herself had been the object of his civilities; and that Aunt Lavinia

should like him, should not be shocked or startled by what he said, this

also appeared to the girl a personal gain; for Aunt Lavinia’s standard

was extremely high, planted as it was over the grave of her late husband,

in which, as she had convinced every one, the very genius of conversation

was buried. One of the Almond boys, as Catherine called him, invited our

heroine to dance a quadrille, and for a quarter of an hour her feet at

least were occupied. This time she was not dizzy; her head was very

clear. Just when the dance was over, she found herself in the crowd face

to face with her father. Dr. Sloper had usually a little smile, never a

very big one, and with his little smile playing in his clear eyes and on

his neatly-shaved lips, he looked at his daughter’s crimson gown.

“Is it possible that this magnificent person is my child?” he said.

You would have surprised him if you had told him so; but it is a literal

fact that he almost never addressed his daughter save in the ironical

form. Whenever he addressed her he gave her pleasure; but she had to cut

her pleasure out of the piece, as it were. There were portions left

over, light remnants and snippets of irony, which she never knew what to

do with, which seemed too delicate for her own use; and yet Catherine,

lamenting the limitations of her understanding, felt that they were too

valuable to waste and had a belief that if they passed over her head they

yet contributed to the general sum of human wisdom.

“I am not magnificent,” she said mildly, wishing that she had put on

another dress.

“You are sumptuous, opulent, expensive,” her father rejoined. “You look

as if you had eighty thousand a year.”

“Well, so long as I haven’t—” said Catherine illogically. Her conception

of her prospective wealth was as yet very indefinite.

“So long as you haven’t you shouldn’t look as if you had. Have you

enjoyed your party?”

Catherine hesitated a moment; and then, looking away, “I am rather

tired,” she murmured. I have said that this entertainment was the

beginning of something important for Catherine. For the second time in

her life she made an indirect answer; and the beginning of a period of

dissimulation is certainly a significant date. Catherine was not so

easily tired as that.

Nevertheless, in the carriage, as they drove home, she was as quiet as if

fatigue had been her portion. Dr. Sloper’s manner of addressing his

sister Lavinia had a good deal of resemblance to the tone he had adopted

towards Catherine.

“Who was the young man that was making love to you?” he presently asked.

“Oh, my good brother!” murmured Mrs. Penniman, in deprecation.

“He seemed uncommonly tender. Whenever I looked at you, for half an

hour, he had the most devoted air.”

“The devotion was not to me,” said Mrs. Penniman. “It was to Catherine;

he talked to me of her.”

Catherine had been listening with all her ears. “Oh, Aunt Penniman!” she

exclaimed faintly.

“He is very handsome; he is very clever; he expressed himself with a

great deal—a great deal of felicity,” her aunt went on.

“He is in love with this regal creature, then?” the Doctor inquired

humorously.

“Oh, father,” cried the girl, still more faintly, devoutly thankful the

carriage was dark.

“I don’t know that; but he admired her dress.”

Catherine did not say to herself in the dark, “My dress only?” Mrs.

Penniman’s announcement struck her by its richness, not by its

meagreness.

“You see,” said her father, “he thinks you have eighty thousand a year.”

“I don’t believe he thinks of that,” said Mrs. Penniman; “he is too

refined.”

“He must be tremendously refined not to think of that!”

“Well, he is!” Catherine exclaimed, before she knew it.

“I thought you had gone to sleep,” her father answered. “The hour has

come!” he added to himself. “Lavinia is going to get up a romance for

Catherine. It’s a shame to play such tricks on the girl. What is the

gentleman’s name?” he went on, aloud.

“I didn’t catch it, and I didn’t like to ask him. He asked to be

introduced to me,” said Mrs. Penniman, with a certain grandeur; “but you

know how indistinctly Jefferson speaks.” Jefferson was Mr. Almond.

“Catherine, dear, what was the gentleman’s name?”

For a minute, if it had not been for the rumbling of the carriage, you

might have heard a pin drop.

“I don’t know, Aunt Lavinia,” said Catherine, very softly. And, with all

his irony, her father believed her.

V

HE learned what he had asked some three or four days later, after Morris

Townsend, with his cousin, had called in Washington Square. Mrs.

Penniman did not tell her brother, on the drive home, that she had

intimated to this agreeable young man, whose name she did not know, that,

with her niece, she should be very glad to see him; but she was greatly

pleased, and even a little flattered, when, late on a Sunday afternoon,

the two gentlemen made their appearance. His coming with Arthur Townsend

made it more natural and easy; the latter young man was on the point of

becoming connected with the family, and Mrs. Penniman had remarked to

Catherine that, as he was going to marry Marian, it would be polite in

him to call. These events came to pass late in the autumn, and Catherine

and her aunt had been sitting together in the closing dusk, by the

firelight, in the high back parlour.

Arthur Townsend fell to Catherine’s portion, while his companion placed

himself on the sofa, beside Mrs. Penniman. Catherine had hitherto not

been a harsh critic; she was easy to please—she liked to talk with young

men. But Marian’s betrothed, this evening, made her feel vaguely

fastidious; he sat looking at the fire and rubbing his knees with his

hands. As for Catherine, she scarcely even pretended to keep up the

conversation; her attention had fixed itself on the other side of the

room; she was listening to what went on between the other Mr. Townsend

and her aunt. Every now and then he looked over at Catherine herself and

smiled, as if to show that what he said was for her benefit too.

Catherine would have liked to change her place, to go and sit near them,

where she might see and hear him better. But she was afraid of seeming

bold—of looking eager; and, besides, it would not have been polite to

Marian’s little suitor. She wondered why the other gentleman had picked

out her aunt—how he came to have so much to say to Mrs. Penniman, to

whom, usually, young men were not especially devoted. She was not at all

jealous of Aunt Lavinia, but she was a little envious, and above all she

wondered; for Morris Townsend was an object on which she found that her

imagination could exercise itself indefinitely. His cousin had been

describing a house that he had taken in view of his union with Marian,

and the domestic conveniences he meant to introduce into it; how Marian

wanted a larger one, and Mrs. Almond recommended a smaller one, and how

he himself was convinced that he had got the neatest house in New York.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said; “it’s only for three or four years. At the

end of three or four years we’ll move. That’s the way to live in New

York—to move every three or four years. Then you always get the last

thing. It’s because the city’s growing so quick—you’ve got to keep up

with it. It’s going straight up town—that’s where New York’s going. If

I wasn’t afraid Marian would be lonely, I’d go up there—right up to the

top—and wait for it. Only have to wait ten years—they’d all come up

after you. But Marian says she wants some neighbours—she doesn’t want to

be a pioneer. She says that if she’s got to be the first settler she had

better go out to Minnesota. I guess we’ll move up little by little; when

we get tired of one street we’ll go higher. So you see we’ll always have

a new house; it’s a great advantage to have a new house; you get all the

latest improvements. They invent everything all over again about every

five years, and it’s a great thing to keep up with the new things. I

always try and keep up with the new things of every kind. Don’t you

think that’s a good motto for a young couple—to keep ‘going higher’?

That’s the name of that piece of poetry—what do they call

it?—_Excelsior_!”

Catherine bestowed on her junior visitor only just enough attention to

feel that this was not the way Mr. Morris Townsend had talked the other

night, or that he was talking now to her fortunate aunt. But suddenly

his aspiring kinsman became more interesting. He seemed to have become

conscious that she was affected by his companion’s presence, and he

thought it proper to explain it.

“My cousin asked me to bring him, or I shouldn’t have taken the liberty.

He seemed to want very much to come; you know he’s awfully sociable. I

told him I wanted to ask you first, but he said Mrs. Penniman had invited

him. He isn’t particular what he says when he wants to come somewhere!

But Mrs. Penniman seems to think it’s all right.”

“We are very glad to see him,” said Catherine. And she wished to talk

more about him; but she hardly knew what to say. “I never saw him

before,” she went on presently.

Arthur Townsend stared.

“Why, he told me he talked with you for over half an hour the other

night.”

“I mean before the other night. That was the first time.”

“Oh, he has been away from New York—he has been all round the world. He

doesn’t know many people here, but he’s very sociable, and he wants to

know every one.”

“Every one?” said Catherine.

“Well, I mean all the good ones. All the pretty young ladies—like Mrs.

Penniman!” and Arthur Townsend gave a private laugh.

“My aunt likes him very much,” said Catherine.

“Most people like him—he’s so brilliant.”

“He’s more like a foreigner,” Catherine suggested.

“Well, I never knew a foreigner!” said young Townsend, in a tone which

seemed to indicate that his ignorance had been optional.

“Neither have I,” Catherine confessed, with more humility. “They say

they are generally brilliant,” she added vaguely.

“Well, the people of this city are clever enough for me. I know some of

them that think they are too clever for me; but they ain’t!”

“I suppose you can’t be too clever,” said Catherine, still with humility.

“I don’t know. I know some people that call my cousin too clever.”

Catherine listened to this statement with extreme interest, and a feeling

that if Morris Townsend had a fault it would naturally be that one. But

she did not commit herself, and in a moment she asked: “Now that he has

come back, will he stay here always?”

“Ah,” said Arthur, “if he can get something to do.”

“Something to do?”

“Some place or other; some business.”

“Hasn’t he got any?” said Catherine, who had never heard of a young

man—of the upper class—in this situation.

“No; he’s looking round. But he can’t find anything.”

“I am very sorry,” Catherine permitted herself to observe.

“Oh, he doesn’t mind,” said young Townsend. “He takes it easy—he isn’t

in a hurry. He is very particular.”

Catherine thought he naturally would be, and gave herself up for some

moments to the contemplation of this idea, in several of its bearings.

“Won’t his father take him into his business—his office?” she at last

inquired.

“He hasn’t got any father—he has only got a sister. Your sister can’t

help you much.”

It seemed to Catherine that if she were his sister she would disprove

this axiom. “Is she—is she pleasant?” she asked in a moment.

“I don’t know—I believe she’s very respectable,” said young Townsend.

And then he looked across to his cousin and began to laugh. “Look here,

we are talking about you,” he added.

Morris Townsend paused in his conversation with Mrs. Penniman, and

stared, with a little smile. Then he got up, as if he were going.

“As far as you are concerned, I can’t return the compliment,” he said to

Catherine’s companion. “But as regards Miss Sloper, it’s another

affair.”

Catherine thought this little speech wonderfully well turned; but she was

embarrassed by it, and she also got up. Morris Townsend stood looking at

her and smiling; he put out his hand for farewell. He was going, without

having said anything to her; but even on these terms she was glad to have

seen him.

“I will tell her what you have said—when you go!” said Mrs. Penniman,

with an insinuating laugh.

Catherine blushed, for she felt almost as if they were making sport of

her. What in the world could this beautiful young man have said? He

looked at her still, in spite of her blush; but very kindly and

respectfully.

“I have had no talk with you,” he said, “and that was what I came for.

But it will be a good reason for coming another time; a little pretext—if

I am obliged to give one. I am not afraid of what your aunt will say

when I go.”

With this the two young men took their departure; after which Catherine,

with her blush still lingering, directed a serious and interrogative eye

to Mrs. Penniman. She was incapable of elaborate artifice, and she

resorted to no jocular device—to no affectation of the belief that she

had been maligned—to learn what she desired.

“What did you say you would tell me?” she asked.

Mrs. Penniman came up to her, smiling and nodding a little, looked at her

all over, and gave a twist to the knot of ribbon in her neck. “It’s a

great secret, my dear child; but he is coming a-courting!”

Catherine was serious still. “Is that what he told you!”

“He didn’t say so exactly. But he left me to guess it. I’m a good

guesser.”

“Do you mean a-courting me?”

“Not me, certainly, miss; though I must say he is a hundred times more

polite to a person who has no longer extreme youth to recommend her than

most of the young men. He is thinking of some one else.” And Mrs.

Penniman gave her niece a delicate little kiss. “You must be very

gracious to him.”

Catherine stared—she was bewildered. “I don’t understand you,” she said;

“he doesn’t know me.”

“Oh yes, he does; more than you think. I have told him all about you.”

“Oh, Aunt Penniman!” murmured Catherine, as if this had been a breach of

trust. “He is a perfect stranger—we don’t know him.” There was

infinite, modesty in the poor girl’s “we.”

Aunt Penniman, however, took no account of it; she spoke even with a

touch of acrimony. “My dear Catherine, you know very well that you

admire him!”

“Oh, Aunt Penniman!” Catherine could only murmur again. It might very

well be that she admired him—though this did not seem to her a thing to

talk about. But that this brilliant stranger—this sudden apparition, who

had barely heard the sound of her voice—took that sort of interest in her

that was expressed by the romantic phrase of which Mrs. Penniman had just

made use: this could only be a figment of the restless brain of Aunt

Lavinia, whom every one knew to be a woman of powerful imagination.