_ VOLUME I. BOOK FIRST. CHAPTER XII.
Verena recognised him; she had seen him the night before at Miss
Birdseye's, and she said to her hostess, "Now I must go--you have got
another caller!" It was Verena's belief that in the fashionable world
(like Mrs. Farrinder, she thought Miss Chancellor belonged to
it--thought that, in standing there, she herself was in it)--in the
highest social walks it was the custom of a prior guest to depart when
another friend arrived. She had been told at people's doors that she
could not be received because the lady of the house had a visitor, and
she had retired on these occasions with a feeling of awe much more than
a sense of injury. They had not been the portals of fashion, but in this
respect, she deemed, they had emulated such bulwarks. Olive Chancellor
offered Basil Ransom a greeting which she believed to be consummately
lady-like, and which the young man, narrating the scene several months
later to Mrs. Luna, whose susceptibilities he did not feel himself
obliged to consider (she considered his so little), described by saying
that she glared at him. Olive had thought it very possible he would come
that day if he was to leave Boston; though she was perfectly mindful
that she had given him no encouragement at the moment they separated. If
he should not come she should be annoyed, and if he should come she
should be furious; she was also sufficiently mindful of that. But she
had a foreboding that, of the two grievances, fortune would confer upon
her only the less; the only one she had as yet was that he had responded
to her letter--a complaint rather wanting in richness. If he came, at
any rate, he would be likely to come shortly before dinner, at the same
hour as yesterday. He had now anticipated this period considerably, and
it seemed to Miss Chancellor that he had taken a base advantage of her,
stolen a march upon her privacy. She was startled, disconcerted, but as
I have said, she was rigorously lady-like. She was determined not again
to be fantastic, as she had been about his coming to Miss Birdseye's.
The strange dread associating itself with that was something which, she
devoutly trusted, she had felt once for all. She didn't know what he
could do to her; he hadn't prevented, on the spot though he was, one of
the happiest things that had befallen her for so long--this quick,
confident visit of Verena Tarrant. It was only just at the last that he
had come in, and Verena must go now; Olive's detaining hand immediately
relaxed itself.
It is to be feared there was no disguise of Ransom's satisfaction at
finding himself once more face to face with the charming creature with
whom he had exchanged that final speechless smile the evening before. He
was more glad to see her than if she had been an old friend, for it
seemed to him that she had suddenly become a new one. "The delightful
girl," he said to himself; "she smiles at me as if she liked me!" He
could not know that this was fatuous, that she smiled so at every one;
the first time she saw people she treated them as if she recognised
them. Moreover, she did not seat herself again in his honour; she let it
be seen that she was still going. The three stood there together in the
middle of the long, characteristic room, and, for the first time in her
life, Olive Chancellor chose not to introduce two persons who met under
her roof. She hated Europe, but she could be European if it were
necessary. Neither of her companions had an idea that in leaving them
simply planted face to face (the terror of the American heart) she had
so high a warrant; and presently Basil Ransom felt that he didn't care
whether he were introduced or not, for the greatness of an evil didn't
matter if the remedy were equally great.
"Miss Tarrant won't be surprised if I recognise her--if I take the
liberty to speak to her. She is a public character; she must pay the
penalty of her distinction." These words he boldly addressed to the
girl, with his most gallant Southern manner, saying to himself meanwhile
that she was prettier still by daylight.
"Oh, a great many gentlemen have spoken to me," Verena said. "There were
quite a number at Topeka----" And her phrase lost itself in her look at
Olive, as if she were wondering what was the matter with her.
"Now, I am afraid you are going the very moment I appear," Ransom went
on. "Do you know that's very cruel to me? I know what your ideas
are--you expressed them last night in such beautiful language; of course
you convinced me. I am ashamed of being a man; but I am, and I can't
help it, and I'll do penance any way you may prescribe. _Must_ she go,
Miss Olive?" he asked of his cousin. "Do you flee before the individual
male?" And he turned to Verena.
This young lady gave a laugh that resembled speech in liquid fusion. "Oh
no; I like the individual!"
As an incarnation of a "movement," Ransom thought her more and more
singular, and he wondered how she came to be closeted so soon with his
kinswoman, to whom, only a few hours before, she had been a complete
stranger. These, however, were doubtless the normal proceedings of
women. He begged her to sit down again; he was sure Miss Chancellor
would be sorry to part with her. Verena, looking at her friend, not for
permission, but for sympathy, dropped again into a chair, and Ransom
waited to see Miss Chancellor do the same. She gratified him after a
moment, because she could not refuse without appearing to put a hurt
upon Verena; but it went hard with her, and she was altogether
discomposed. She had never seen any one so free in her own drawing-room
as this loud Southerner, to whom she had so rashly offered a footing; he
extended invitations to her guests under her nose. That Verena should do
as he asked her was a signal sign of the absence of that "home-culture"
(it was so that Miss Chancellor expressed the missing quality) which she
never supposed the girl possessed: fortunately, as it would be supplied
to her in abundance in Charles Street. (Olive of course held that
home-culture was perfectly compatible with the widest emancipation.) It
was with a perfectly good conscience that Verena complied with Basil
Ransom's request; but it took her quick sensibility only a moment to
discover that her friend was not pleased. She scarcely knew what had
ruffled her, but at the same instant there passed before her the vision
of the anxieties (of this sudden, unexplained sort, for instance, and
much worse) which intimate relations with Miss Chancellor might entail.
"Now, I want you to tell me this," Basil Ransom said, leaning forward
towards Verena, with his hands on his knees, and completely oblivious to
his hostess. "Do you really believe all that pretty moonshine you talked
last night? I could have listened to you for another hour; but I never
heard such monstrous sentiments, I must protest--I must, as a
calumniated, misrepresented man. Confess you meant it as a kind of
_reductio ad absurdum_--a satire on Mrs. Farrinder?" He spoke in a tone
of the freest pleasantry, with his familiar, friendly Southern cadence.
Verena looked at him with eyes that grew large. "Why, you don't mean to
say you don't believe in our cause?"
"Oh, it won't do--it won't do!" Ransom went on, laughing. "You are on
the wrong tack altogether. Do you really take the ground that your sex
has been without influence? Influence? Why, you have led us all by the
nose to where we are now! Wherever we are, it's all you. You are at the
bottom of everything."
"Oh yes, and we want to be at the top," said Verena.
"Ah, the bottom is a better place, depend on it, when from there you
move the whole mass! Besides, you are on the top as well; you are
everywhere, you are everything. I am of the opinion of that historical
character--wasn't he some king?--who thought there was a lady behind
everything. Whatever it was, he held, you have only to look for her; she
is the explanation. Well, I always look for her, and I always find her;
of course, I am always delighted to do so; but it proves she is the
universal cause. Now, you don't mean to deny that power, the power of
setting men in motion. You are at the bottom of all the wars."
"Well, I am like Mrs. Farrinder; I like opposition," Verena exclaimed,
with a happy smile.
"That proves, as I say, how in spite of your expressions of horror you
delight in the shock of battle. What do you say to Helen of Troy and the
fearful carnage she excited? It is well known that the Empress of France
was at the bottom of the last war in that country. And as for our four
fearful years of slaughter, of course, you won't deny that there the
ladies were the great motive power. The Abolitionists brought it on, and
were not the Abolitionists principally females? Who was that celebrity
that was mentioned last night?--Eliza P. Moseley. I regard Eliza as the
cause of the biggest war of which history preserves the record."
Basil Ransom enjoyed his humour the more because Verena appeared to
enjoy it; and the look with which she replied to him, at the end of this
little tirade, "Why, sir, you ought to take the platform too; we might
go round together as poison and antidote!"--this made him feel that he
had convinced her, for the moment, quite as much as it was important he
should. In Verena's face, however, it lasted but an instant--an instant
after she had glanced at Olive Chancellor, who, with her eyes fixed
intently on the ground (a look she was to learn to know so well), had a
strange expression. The girl slowly got up; she felt that she must go.
She guessed Miss Chancellor didn't like this handsome joker (it was so
that Basil Ransom struck her); and it was impressed upon her ("in time,"
as she thought) that her new friend would be more serious even than she
about the woman-question, serious as she had hitherto believed herself
to be.
"I should like so much to have the pleasure of seeing you again," Ransom
continued. "I think I should be able to interpret history for you by a
new light."
"Well, I should be very happy to see you in my home." These words had
barely fallen from Verena's lips (her mother told her they were, in
general, the proper thing to say when people expressed such a desire as
that; she must not let it be assumed that she would come first to
them)--she had hardly uttered this hospitable speech when she felt the
hand of her hostess upon her arm and became aware that a passionate
appeal sat in Olive's eyes.
"You will just catch the Charles Street car," that young woman murmured,
with muffled sweetness.
Verena did not understand further than to see that she ought already to
have departed; and the simplest response was to kiss Miss Chancellor, an
act which she briefly performed. Basil Ransom understood still less, and
it was a melancholy commentary on his contention that men are not
inferior, that this meeting could not come, however rapidly, to a close
without his plunging into a blunder which necessarily aggravated those
he had already made. He had been invited by the little prophetess, and
yet he had not been invited; but he did not take that up, because he
must absolutely leave Boston on the morrow, and, besides, Miss
Chancellor appeared to have something to say to it. But he put out his
hand to Verena and said, "Good-bye, Miss Tarrant; are we not to have the
pleasure of hearing you in New York? I am afraid we are sadly sunk."
"Certainly, I should like to raise my voice in the biggest city," the
girl replied.
"Well, try to come on. I won't refute you. It would be a very stupid
world, after all, if we always knew what women were going to say."
Verena was conscious of the approach of the Charles Street car, as well
as of the fact that Miss Chancellor was in pain; but she lingered long
enough to remark that she could see he had the old-fashioned ideas--he
regarded woman as the toy of man.
"Don't say the toy--say the joy!" Ransom exclaimed. "There is one
statement I will venture to advance; I am quite as fond of you as you
are of each other!"
"Much he knows about that!" said Verena, with a side-long smile at Olive
Chancellor.
For Olive, it made her more beautiful than ever; still, there was no
trace of this mere personal elation in the splendid sententiousness with
which, turning to Mr. Ransom, she remarked: "What women may be, or may
not be, to each other, I won't attempt just now to say; but what _the
truth_ may be to a human soul, I think perhaps even a woman may faintly
suspect!"
"The truth? My dear cousin, your truth is a most vain thing!"
"Gracious me!" cried Verena Tarrant; and the gay vibration of her voice
as she uttered this simple ejaculation was the last that Ransom heard of
her. Miss Chancellor swept her out of the room, leaving the young man to
extract a relish from the ineffable irony with which she uttered the
words "even a woman." It was to be supposed, on general grounds, that
she would reappear, but there was nothing in the glance she gave him, as
she turned her back, that was an earnest of this. He stood there a
moment, wondering; then his wonder spent itself on the page of a book
which, according to his habit at such times, he had mechanically taken
up, and in which he speedily became interested. He read it for five
minutes in an uncomfortable-looking attitude, and quite forgot that he
had been forsaken. He was recalled to this fact by the entrance of Mrs.
Luna, arrayed as if for the street, and putting on her gloves again--she
seemed always to be putting on her gloves. She wanted to know what in
the world he was doing there alone--whether her sister had not been
notified.
"Oh yes," said Ransom, "she has just been with me, but she has gone
downstairs with Miss Tarrant."
"And who in the world is Miss Tarrant?"
Ransom was surprised that Mrs. Luna should not know of the intimacy of
the two young ladies, in spite of the brevity of their acquaintance,
being already so great. But, apparently, Miss Olive had not mentioned
her new friend. "Well, she is an inspirational speaker--the most
charming creature in the world!"
Mrs. Luna paused in her manipulations, gave an amazed, amused stare,
then caused the room to ring with her laughter. "You don't mean to say
you are converted--already?"
"Converted to Miss Tarrant, decidedly."
"You are not to belong to any Miss Tarrant; you are to belong to me,"
Mrs. Luna said, having thought over her Southern kinsman during the
twenty-four hours, and made up her mind that he would be a good man for
a lone woman to know. Then she added: "Did you come here to meet
her--the inspirational speaker?"
"No; I came to bid your sister good-bye."
"Are you really going? I haven't made you promise half the things I want
yet. But we will settle that in New York. How do you get on with Olive
Chancellor?" Mrs. Luna continued, making her points, as she always did,
with eagerness, though her roundness and her dimples had hitherto
prevented her from being accused of that vice. It was her practice to
speak of her sister by her whole name, and you would have supposed, from
her usual manner of alluding to her, that Olive was much the older,
instead of having been born ten years later than Adeline. She had as
many ways as possible of marking the gulf that divided them; but she
bridged it over lightly now by saying to Basil Ransom; "Isn't she a dear
old thing?"
This bridge, he saw, would not bear his weight, and her question seemed
to him to have more audacity than sense. Why should she be so insincere?
She might know that a man couldn't recognise Miss Chancellor in such a
description as that. She was not old--she was sharply young; and it was
inconceivable to him, though he had just seen the little prophetess kiss
her, that she should ever become any one's "dear." Least of all was she
a "thing"; she was intensely, fearfully, a person. He hesitated a
moment, and then he replied: "She's a very remarkable woman."
"Take care--don't be reckless!" cried Mrs. Luna. "Do you think she is
very dreadful?"
"Don't say anything against my cousin," Basil answered; and at that
moment Miss Chancellor re-entered the room. She murmured some request
that he would excuse her absence, but her sister interrupted her with an
inquiry about Miss Tarrant.
"Mr. Ransom thinks her wonderfully charming. Why didn't you show her to
me? Do you want to keep her all to yourself?"
Olive rested her eyes for some moments upon Mrs. Luna, without speaking.
Then she said: "Your veil is not put on straight, Adeline."
"I look like a monster--that, evidently, is what you mean!" Adeline
exclaimed, going to the mirror to rearrange the peccant tissue.
Miss Chancellor did not again ask Ransom to be seated; she appeared to
take it for granted that he would leave her now. But instead of this he
returned to the subject of Verena; he asked her whether she supposed the
girl would come out in public--would go about like Mrs. Farrinder?
"Come out in public!" Olive repeated; "in public? Why, you don't imagine
that pure voice is to be hushed?"
"Oh, hushed, no! it's too sweet for that. But not raised to a scream;
not forced and cracked and ruined. She oughtn't to become like the
others. She ought to remain apart."
"Apart--_apart_?" said Miss Chancellor; "when we shall all be looking to
her, gathering about her, praying for her!" There was an exceeding scorn
in her voice. "If _I_ can help her, she shall be an immense power for
good."
"An immense power for quackery, my dear Miss Olive!" This broke from
Basil's lips in spite of a vow he had just taken not to say anything
that should "aggravate" his hostess, who was in a state of tension it
was not difficult to detect. But he had lowered his tone to friendly
pleading, and the offensive word was mitigated by his smile.
She moved away from him, backwards, as if he had given her a push. "Ah,
well, now you are reckless," Mrs. Luna remarked, drawing out her ribbons
before the mirror.
"I don't think you would interfere if you knew how little you understand
us," Miss Chancellor said to Ransom.
"Whom do you mean by 'us'--your whole delightful sex? I don't understand
_you_, Miss Olive."
"Come away with me, and I'll explain her as we go," Mrs. Luna went on,
having finished her toilet.
Ransom offered his hand in farewell to his hostess; but Olive found it
impossible to do anything but ignore the gesture. She could not have let
him touch her. "Well, then, if you must exhibit her to the multitude,
bring her on to New York," he said, with the same attempt at a light
treatment.
"You'll have _me_ in New York--you don't want any one else!" Mrs. Luna
ejaculated, coquettishly. "I have made up my mind to winter there now."
Olive Chancellor looked from one to the other of her two relatives, one
near and the other distant, but each so little in sympathy with her, and
it came over her that there might be a kind of protection for her in
binding them together, entangling them with each other. She had never
had an idea of that kind in her life before, and that this sudden
subtlety should have gleamed upon her as a momentary talisman gives the
measure of her present nervousness.
"If I could take her to New York, I would take her farther," she
remarked, hoping she was enigmatical.
"You talk about 'taking' her, as if you were a lecture-agent. Are you
going into that business?" Mrs. Luna asked.
Ransom could not help noticing that Miss Chancellor would not shake
hands with him, and he felt, on the whole, rather injured. He paused a
moment before leaving the room--standing there with his hand on the knob
of the door. "Look here, Miss Olive, what did you write to me to come
and see you for?" He made this inquiry with a countenance not destitute
of gaiety, but his eyes showed something of that yellow light--just
momentarily lurid--of which mention has been made. Mrs. Luna was on her
way downstairs, and her companions remained face to face.
"Ask my sister--I think she will tell you," said Olive, turning away
from him and going to the window. She remained there, looking out; she
heard the door of the house close, and saw the two cross the street
together. As they passed out of sight her fingers played, softly, a
little air upon the pane; it seemed to her that she had had an
inspiration.
Basil Ransom, meanwhile, put the question to Mrs. Luna. "If she was not
going to like me, why in the world did she write to me?"
"Because she wanted you to know me--she thought _I_ would like you!" And
apparently she had not been wrong; for Mrs. Luna, when they reached
Beacon Street, would not hear of his leaving her to go her way alone,
would not in the least admit his plea that he had only an hour or two
more in Boston (he was to travel, economically, by the boat) and must
devote the time to his business. She appealed to his Southern chivalry,
and not in vain; practically, at least, he admitted the rights of women. _