Mrs. Penniman

“ Penniman had not a particle of jealousy of her niece. For herself, she felt as if she were Morris’s mother or sister—a mother or sister of an emotional temperament—and she had an absorbing desire to make him comfortable and happy. She had striven to do so during the year that her brother left her an open field, and her efforts had been attended with the success that has been pointed out. She had never had a child of her own, and Catherine, whom she had done her best to invest with the importance that would naturally belong to a youthful Penniman, had only partly rewarded her zeal. ”

“ Penniman, with extreme significance. “He cares for nothing but facts; he must be met by facts!”
“Well,” rejoined Morris, “it is a fact that I wish to marry his daughter. I met him with that the other day, but he was not at all vanquished.”
Mrs. Penniman was silent a little, and her smile beneath the shadow of her capacious bonnet, on the edge of which her black veil was arranged curtain-wise, fixed itself upon Morris’s face with a still more tender brilliancy. “Marry Catherine first and meet him afterwards!” ”

“ She wondered that this simple expedient had never occurred to her before.
“I will bring a lawsuit against you,” said Morris, “if you ask me any more such aggravating questions. A man should know when he is beaten,” he added, in a moment. “I must give her up!”
Mrs. Penniman received this declaration in silence, though it made her heart beat a little. It found her by no means unprepared, for she had accustomed herself to the thought that, if Morris should decidedly not be able to get her brother’s money, it would not do for him to marry Catherine without it. ”

“ A brilliant future, a wider career, a conscience exempt from the reproach of interference between a young lady and her natural rights—these excellent things might be too troublesomely purchased. From Catherine herself Mrs. Penniman received no assistance whatever; the poor girl was apparently without suspicion of her danger. She looked at her lover with eyes of undiminished trust, and though she had less confidence in her aunt than in a young man with whom she had exchanged so many tender vows, she gave her no handle for explaining or confessing. ”

“ It would have gratified him to tell her that she was a fantastic old woman, and that he should like to put her into an omnibus and send her home. We know, however, that Morris possessed the virtue of self-control, and he had, moreover, the constant habit of seeking to be agreeable; so that, although Mrs. Penniman’s demeanour only exasperated his already unquiet nerves, he listened to her with a sombre deference in which she found much to admire. ”

“ 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 passion (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. ”

“ The superintendent of schools and Winona and the judge and Mrs. Penniman seemed to be tightly wound up with expectancy about him, yet lived their own lives not too tensely. The superintendent of schools was not inspiring as a model; the judge, for all his talk, lived a life of fat idleness, with convenient maladies when the Penniman lawn needed mowing. Mrs. Penniman, it is true, fought the battle of life steadily with her plain and fancy dressmaking, but with no visible glory; and Winona herself was becoming a drab, sedate spinster, troubled about many things. ”

“ To her mind there was nothing of the infinite about Mrs. Penniman; Catherine saw her all at once, as it were, and was not dazzled by the apparition; whereas her father’s great faculties seemed, as they stretched away, to lose themselves in a sort of luminous vagueness, which indicated, not that they stopped, but that Catherine’s own mind ceased to follow them. ”

“ Penniman. Mrs. Penniman was perfectly aware that her brother’s motive in undertaking a foreign tour was to lay a trap for Catherine’s constancy; and she imparted this conviction very frankly to her niece.
“He thinks it will make you forget Morris,” she said (she always called the young man “Morris” now) ; “out of sight, out of mind, you know. He thinks that all the things you will see over there will drive him out of your thoughts.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ She paused a little; Catherine was looking at her. “The importance of not disappointing that gallant young heart!” And Mrs. Penniman went back to her chair, by the lamp, and, with a little jerk, picked up the evening paper again.
Catherine stood there before the fire, with her hands behind her, looking at her aunt, to whom it seemed that the girl had never had just this dark fixedness in her gaze. “I don’t think you understand—or that you know me,” she said.
“If I don’t, it is not wonderful; you trust me so little.” ”

“ Lavinia cried, clasping her hands with admiration and envy. But she soon perceived that Catherine had taken nothing with her—all her personal property in her room was intact—and then she jumped at the hypothesis that the girl had gone forth, not in tenderness, but in resentment. “She has followed him to his own door—she has burst upon him in his own apartment!” It was in these terms that Mrs. Penniman depicted to herself her niece’s errand, which, viewed in this light, gratified her sense of the picturesque only a shade less strongly than the idea of a clandestine marriage. ”

“ Her aunt had never seen her with just this manner, and Mrs. Penniman, observing her, set it down to foreign travel, which had made her more positive, more mature. She thought also that Catherine had improved in appearance; she looked rather handsome. Mrs. Penniman wondered whether Morris Townsend would be struck with that. While she was engaged in this speculation, Catherine broke out, with a certain sharpness, “Why are you so contradictory, Aunt Penniman? You seem to think one thing at one time, and another at another. ”

“ Sloper had divided into seven unequal parts, which he left, as endowments, to as many different hospitals and schools of medicine, in various cities of the Union.
To Mrs. Penniman it seemed monstrous that a man should play such tricks with other people’s money; for after his death, of course, as she said, it was other people’s. “Of course, you will dispute the will,” she remarked, fatuously, to Catherine.
“Oh no,” Catherine answered, “I like it very much. Only I wish it had been expressed a little differently!” ”

“ Penniman was particularly sensitive. He had largely abated his deference afterwards, for he economised his resources, but the impression was made, and the young man’s very brutality came to have a sort of filial value. If Mrs. Penniman had had a son, she would probably have been afraid of him, and at this stage of our narrative she was certainly afraid of Morris Townsend. This was one of the results of his domestication in Washington Square. ”

“ This seemed to Catherine indeed beautiful news; it had a fine prosperous air. “Oh, I’m so glad!” she said; and now, for a moment, she was disposed to throw herself on Aunt Lavinia’s neck.
“It’s much better than being under some one; and he has never been used to that,” Mrs. Penniman went on. “He is just as good as his partner—they are perfectly equal! You see how right he was to wait. I should like to know what your father can say now! They have got an office in Duane Street, and little printed cards; he brought me one to show me. I have got it in my room, and you shall see it to-morrow. ”

“ Her aunt seemed to her aggressive and foolish, and to see it so clearly—to judge Mrs. Penniman so positively—made her feel old and grave. She did not resent the imputation of weakness; it made no impression on her, for she had not the sense of weakness, and she was not hurt at not being appreciated. She had an immense respect for her father, and she felt that to displease him would be a misdemeanour analogous to an act of profanity in a great temple; but her purpose had slowly ripened, and she believed that her prayers had purified it of its violence. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Penniman, though he may be a little wild sometimes.”
“There isn’t a bigger liar in town,” said I, very imprudently.
“Do you hear that, marm?” snapped the colonel. “Didn’t my son confess that he had a hand in the mischief? Doesn’t that show that he is a truthful boy? Wolf is violent and abusive. I have done what I could for your family, Mrs. Penniman.”
“I know you have, Mr. Wimpleton, and we are all very grateful to you,” replied my trembling mother. ”

“ It became for him a club with a single member. Mrs. Penniman saw much less of her sister than while the Doctor was at home; for Mrs. Almond had felt moved to tell her that she disapproved of her relations with Mr. Townsend. She had no business to be so friendly to a young man of whom their brother thought so meanly, and Mrs. Almond was surprised at her levity in foisting a most deplorable engagement upon Catherine.
“Deplorable?” cried Lavinia. “He will make her a lovely husband!” ”

“ Perhaps the war has confused my sense of spiritual values. War is such a mistake!"
It was a flushed and sparkling Winona who later fluttered down the dull old stairs of the respectable Penniman home at the call of the waiting Wilbur Cowan. Her dark hair was still plainly, though rather effectively, drawn about her small head—she had definitely rebuffed the suggestion of her mother that it be marcelled—but her wisp of a frock of bronze gossamer was revolutionary in the extreme. Mrs. Penniman had at last been fancy in her dressmaking for her child, and now stood by to exclaim at her handiwork. ”

“ I don’t suppose he is sufficiently plodding, and that, after all, is what succeeds in this world.” Mrs. Penniman had not mentioned Morris Townsend’s name to her niece for upwards of the fifth of a century; but now that she had broken the spell, she seemed to wish to make up for lost time, as if there had been a sort of exhilaration in hearing herself talk of him. She proceeded, however, with considerable caution, pausing occasionally to let Catherine give some sign. Catherine gave no other sign than to stop the rocking of her chair and the swaying of her fan ”

“ She would have liked to have a lover, and to correspond with him under an assumed name in letters left at a shop; I am bound to say that her imagination never carried the intimacy farther than this. Mrs. Penniman had never had a lover, but her brother, who was very shrewd, understood her turn of mind. “When Catherine is about seventeen,” he said to himself, “Lavinia will try and persuade her that some young man with a moustache is in love with her. It will be quite untrue; no young man, with a moustache or without, will ever be in love with Catherine. ”

“ Townsend’s have,” her aunt answered very gently.
“What do you mean?”
There was an imperious brevity in the tone of this inquiry, against which Mrs. Penniman felt bound to protest; the information with which she had undertaken to supply her niece was, after all, a favour. She had tried sharpness, and she had tried sternness: but neither would do; she was shocked at the girl’s obstinacy. “Ah, well,” she said, “if he hasn’t told you! . . . ” and she turned away.
Catherine watched her a moment in silence; then she hurried after her, stopping her before she reached the door. ”

“ Sloper’s dwelling. His eyes travelled over it; they even rested on the ruddy windows of Mrs. Penniman’s apartment. He thought it a devilish comfortable house.
p. 110XVII
Mrs. Penniman told Catherine that evening—the two ladies were sitting in the back parlour—that she had had an interview with Morris Townsend; and on receiving this news the girl started with a sense of pain. She felt angry for the moment; it was almost the first time she had ever felt angry. It seemed to her that her aunt was meddlesome; and from this came a vague apprehension that she would spoil something. ”

“ Morris, indeed, needed all the satisfaction that stewed oysters could give him, for it may be intimated to the reader that he regarded Mrs. Penniman in the light of a fifth wheel to his coach. He was in a state of irritation natural to a gentleman of fine parts who had been snubbed in a benevolent attempt to confer a distinction upon a young woman of inferior characteristics, and the insinuating sympathy of this somewhat desiccated matron appeared to offer him no practical relief. ”