_ VOLUME I. BOOK FIRST. CHAPTER XV.
Tarrant, however, kept an eye in that direction; he was solemnly civil
to Miss Chancellor, handed her the dishes at table over and over again,
and ventured to intimate that the apple-fritters were very fine; but,
save for this, alluded to nothing more trivial than the regeneration of
humanity and the strong hope he felt that Miss Birdseye would again have
one of her delightful gatherings. With regard to this latter point he
explained that it was not in order that he might again present his
daughter to the company, but simply because on such occasions there was
a valuable interchange of hopeful thought, a contact of mind with mind.
If Verena had anything suggestive to contribute to the social problem,
the opportunity would come--that was part of their faith. They couldn't
reach out for it and try and push their way; if they were wanted, their
hour would strike; if they were not, they would just keep still and let
others press forward who seemed to be called. If they were called, they
would know it; and if they weren't, they could just hold on to each
other as they had always done. Tarrant was very fond of alternatives,
and he mentioned several others; it was never his fault if his listeners
failed to think him impartial. They hadn't much, as Miss Chancellor
could see; she could tell by their manner of life that they hadn't raked
in the dollars; but they had faith that, whether one raised one's voice
or simply worked on in silence, the principal difficulties would
straighten themselves out; and they had also a considerable experience
of great questions. Tarrant spoke as if, as a family, they were prepared
to take charge of them on moderate terms. He always said "ma'am" in
speaking to Olive, to whom, moreover, the air had never been so filled
with the sound of her own name. It was always in her ear, save when Mrs.
Tarrant and Verena conversed in prolonged and ingenuous asides; this was
still for her benefit, but the pronoun sufficed them. She had wished to
judge Doctor Tarrant (not that she believed he had come honestly by his
title), to make up her mind. She had done these things now, and she
expressed to herself the kind of man she believed him to be in
reflecting that if she should offer him ten thousand dollars to renounce
all claim to Verena, keeping--he and his wife--clear of her for the rest
of time, he would probably say, with his fearful smile, "Make it twenty,
money down, and I'll do it." Some image of this transaction, as one of
the possibilities of the future, outlined itself for Olive among the
moral incisions of that evening. It seemed implied in the very place,
the bald bareness of Tarrant's temporary lair, a wooden cottage, with a
rough front yard, a little naked piazza, which seemed rather to expose
than to protect, facing upon an unpaved road, in which the footway was
overlaid with a strip of planks. These planks were embedded in ice or in
liquid thaw, according to the momentary mood of the weather, and the
advancing pedestrian traversed them in the attitude, and with a good
deal of the suspense, of a rope-dancer. There was nothing in the house
to speak of; nothing, to Olive's sense, but a smell of kerosene; though
she had a consciousness of sitting down somewhere--the object creaked
and rocked beneath her--and of the table at tea being covered with a
cloth stamped in bright colours.
As regards the pecuniary transaction with Selah, it was strange how she
should have seen it through the conviction that Verena would never give
up her parents. Olive was sure that she would never turn her back upon
them, would always share with them. She would have despised her had she
thought her capable of another course; yet it baffled her to understand
why, when parents were so trashy, this natural law should not be
suspended. Such a question brought her back, however, to her perpetual
enigma, the mystery she had already turned over in her mind for hours
together--the wonder of such people being Verena's progenitors at all.
She had explained it, as we explain all exceptional things, by making
the part, as the French say, of the miraculous. She had come to consider
the girl as a wonder of wonders, to hold that no human origin, however
congruous it might superficially appear, would sufficiently account for
her; that her springing up between Selah and his wife was an exquisite
whim of the creative force; and that in such a case a few shades more or
less of the inexplicable didn't matter. It was notorious that great
beauties, great geniuses, great characters, take their own times and
places for coming into the world, leaving the gaping spectators to make
them "fit in," and holding from far-off ancestors, or even, perhaps,
straight from the divine generosity, much more than from their ugly or
stupid progenitors. They were incalculable phenomena, anyway, as Selah
would have said. Verena, for Olive, was the very type and model of the
"gifted being"; her qualities had not been bought and paid for; they
were like some brilliant birthday-present, left at the door by an
unknown messenger, to be delightful for ever as an inexhaustible legacy,
and amusing for ever from the obscurity of its source. They were
superabundantly crude as yet--happily for Olive, who promised herself,
as we know, to train and polish them--but they were as genuine as fruit
and flowers, as the glow of the fire or the plash of water. For her
scrutinising friend Verena had the disposition of the artist, the spirit
to which all charming forms come easily and naturally. It required an
effort at first to imagine an artist so untaught, so mistaught, so poor
in experience; but then it required an effort also to imagine people
like the old Tarrants, or a life so full as her life had been of ugly
things. Only an exquisite creature could have resisted such
associations, only a girl who had some natural light, some divine spark
of taste. There were people like that, fresh from the hand of
Omnipotence; they were far from common, but their existence was as
incontestable as it was beneficent.
Tarrant's talk about his daughter, her prospects, her enthusiasm, was
terribly painful to Olive; it brought back to her what she had suffered
already from the idea that he laid his hands upon her to make her speak.
That he should be mixed up in any way with this exercise of her genius
was a great injury to the cause, and Olive had already determined that
in future Verena should dispense with his co-operation. The girl had
virtually confessed that she lent herself to it only because it gave him
pleasure, and that anything else would do as well, anything that would
make her quiet a little before she began to "give out." Olive took upon
herself to believe that _she_ could make her quiet, though, certainly,
she had never had that effect upon any one; she would mount the platform
with Verena if necessary, and lay her hands upon her head. Why in the
world had a perverse fate decreed that Tarrant should take an interest
in the affairs of Woman--as if she wanted _his_ aid to arrive at her
goal; a charlatan of the poor, lean, shabby sort, without the humour,
brilliancy, prestige, which sometimes throw a drapery over shallowness?
Mr. Pardon evidently took an interest as well, and there was something
in his appearance that seemed to say that his sympathy would not be
dangerous. He was much at his ease, plainly, beneath the roof of the
Tarrants, and Olive reflected that though Verena had told her much about
him, she had not given her the idea that he was as intimate as that.
What she had mainly said was that he sometimes took her to the theatre.
Olive could enter, to a certain extent, into that; she herself had had a
phase (some time after her father's death--her mother's had preceded
his--when she bought the little house in Charles Street and began to
live alone), during which she accompanied gentlemen to respectable
places of amusement. She was accordingly not shocked at the idea of such
adventures on Verena's part; than which, indeed, judging from her own
experience, nothing could well have been less adventurous. Her
recollections of these expeditions were as of something solemn and
edifying--of the earnest interest in her welfare exhibited by her
companion (there were few occasions on which the young Bostonian
appeared to more advantage), of the comfort of other friends sitting
near, who were sure to know whom she was with, of serious discussion
between the acts in regard to the behaviour of the characters in the
piece, and of the speech at the end with which, as the young man quitted
her at her door, she rewarded his civility--"I must thank you for a very
pleasant evening." She always felt that she made that too prim; her lips
stiffened themselves as she spoke. But the whole affair had always a
primness; this was discernible even to Olive's very limited sense of
humour. It was not so religious as going to evening-service at King's
Chapel; but it was the next thing to it. Of course all girls didn't do
it; there were families that viewed such a custom with disfavour. But
this was where the girls were of the romping sort; there had to be some
things they were known not to do. As a general thing, moreover, the
practice was confined to the decorous; it was a sign of culture and
quiet tastes. All this made it innocent for Verena, whose life had
exposed her to much worse dangers; but the thing referred itself in
Olive's mind to a danger which cast a perpetual shadow there--the
possibility of the girl's embarking with some ingenuous youth on an
expedition that would last much longer than an evening. She was haunted,
in a word, with the fear that Verena would marry, a fate to which she
was altogether unprepared to surrender her; and this made her look with
suspicion upon all male acquaintance.
Mr. Pardon was not the only one she knew; she had an example of the rest
in the persons of two young Harvard law-students, who presented
themselves after tea on this same occasion. As they sat there Olive
wondered whether Verena had kept something from her, whether she were,
after all (like so many other girls in Cambridge), a college-"belle," an
object of frequentation to undergraduates. It was natural that at the
seat of a big university there should be girls like that, with students
dangling after them, but she didn't want Verena to be one of them. There
were some that received the Seniors and Juniors; others that were
accessible to Sophomores and Freshmen. Certain young ladies
distinguished the professional students; there was a group, even, that
was on the best terms with the young men who were studying for the
Unitarian ministry in that queer little barrack at the end of Divinity
Avenue. The advent of the new visitors made Mrs. Tarrant bustle
immensely; but after she had caused every one to change places two or
three times with every one else the company subsided into a circle which
was occasionally broken by wandering movements on the part of her
husband, who, in the absence of anything to say on any subject whatever,
placed himself at different points in listening attitudes, shaking his
head slowly up and down, and gazing at the carpet with an air of
supernatural attention. Mrs. Tarrant asked the young men from the Law
School about their studies, and whether they meant to follow them up
seriously; said she thought some of the laws were very unjust, and she
hoped they meant to try and improve them. She had suffered by the laws
herself, at the time her father died; she hadn't got half the prop'ty
she should have got if they had been different. She thought they should
be for public matters, not for people's private affairs; the idea always
seemed to her to keep you down if you _were_ down, and to hedge you in
with difficulties. Sometimes she thought it was a wonder how she had
developed in the face of so many; but it was a proof that freedom was
everywhere, if you only knew how to look for it.
The two young men were in the best humour; they greeted these sallies
with a merriment of which, though it was courteous in form, Olive was by
no means unable to define the spirit. They talked naturally more with
Verena than with her mother; and while they were so engaged Mrs. Tarrant
explained to her who they were, and how one of them, the smaller, who
was not quite so spruce, had brought the other, his particular friend,
to introduce him. This friend, Mr. Burrage, was from New York; he was
very fashionable, he went out a great deal in Boston ("I have no doubt
you know some of the places," said Mrs. Tarrant); his "fam'ly" was very
rich.
"Well, he knows plenty of that sort," Mrs. Tarrant went on, "but he felt
unsatisfied; he didn't know any one like _us_. He told Mr. Gracie
(that's the little one) that he felt as if he _must_; it seemed as if he
couldn't hold out. So we told Mr. Gracie, of course, to bring him right
round. Well, I hope he'll get something from us, I'm sure. He has been
reported to be engaged to Miss Winkworth; I have no doubt you know who I
mean. But Mr. Gracie says he hasn't looked at her more than twice.
That's the way rumours fly round in that set, I presume. Well, I am glad
we are not in it, wherever we are! Mr. Gracie is very different; he is
intensely plain, but I believe he is very learned. You don't think him
plain? Oh, you don't know? Well, I suppose you don't care, you must see
so many. But I must say, when a young man looks like that, I call him
painfully plain. I heard Doctor Tarrant make the remark the last time he
was here. I don't say but what the plainest are the best. Well, I had no
idea we were going to have a party when I asked you. I wonder whether
Verena hadn't better hand the cake; we generally find the students enjoy
it so much."
This office was ultimately delegated to Selah, who, after a considerable
absence, reappeared with a dish of dainties, which he presented
successively to each member of the company. Olive saw Verena lavish her
smiles on Mr. Gracie and Mr. Burrage; the liveliest relation had
established itself, and the latter gentleman in especial abounded in
appreciative laughter. It might have been fancied, just from looking at
the group, that Verena's vocation was to smile and talk with young men
who bent towards her; might have been fancied, that is, by a person less
sure of the contrary than Olive, who had reason to know that a "gifted
being" is sent into the world for a very different purpose, and that
making the time pass pleasantly for conceited young men is the last duty
you are bound to think of if you happen to have a talent for embodying a
cause. Olive tried to be glad that her friend had the richness of nature
that makes a woman gracious without latent purposes; she reflected that
Verena was not in the smallest degree a flirt, that she was only
enchantingly and universally genial, that nature had given her a
beautiful smile, which fell impartially on every one, man and woman,
alike. Olive may have been right, but it shall be confided to the reader
that in reality she never knew, by any sense of her own, whether Verena
were a flirt or not. This young lady could not possibly have told her
(even if she herself knew, which she didn't), and Olive, destitute of
the quality, had no means of taking the measure in another of the subtle
feminine desire to please. She could see the difference between Mr.
Gracie and Mr. Burrage; her being bored by Mrs. Tarrant's attempting to
point it out is perhaps a proof of that. It was a curious incident of
her zeal for the regeneration of her sex that manly things were, perhaps
on the whole, what she understood best. Mr. Burrage was rather a
handsome youth, with a laughing, clever face, a certain sumptuosity of
apparel, an air of belonging to the "fast set"--a precocious,
good-natured man of the world, curious of new sensations and containing,
perhaps, the making of a _dilettante_. Being, doubtless, a little
ambitious, and liking to flatter himself that he appreciated worth in
lowly forms, he had associated himself with the ruder but at the same
time acuter personality of a genuine son of New England, who had a
harder head than his own and a humour in reality more cynical, and who,
having earlier knowledge of the Tarrants, had undertaken to show him
something indigenous and curious, possibly even fascinating. Mr. Gracie
was short, with a big head; he wore eye-glasses, looked unkempt, almost
rustic, and said good things with his ugly lips. Verena had replies for
a good many of them, and a pretty colour came into her face as she
talked. Olive could see that she produced herself quite as well as one
of these gentlemen had foretold the other that she would. Miss
Chancellor knew what had passed between them as well as if she had heard
it; Mr. Gracie had promised that he would lead her on, that she should
justify his description and prove the raciest of her class. They would
laugh about her as they went away, lighting their cigars, and for many
days afterwards their discourse would be enlivened with quotations from
the "women's rights girl."
It was amazing how many ways men had of being antipathetic; these two
were very different from Basil Ransom, and different from each other,
and yet the manner of each conveyed an insult to one's womanhood. The
worst of the case was that Verena would be sure not to perceive this
outrage--not to dislike them in consequence. There were so many things
that she hadn't yet learned to dislike, in spite of her friend's earnest
efforts to teach her. She had the idea vividly (that was the marvel) of
the cruelty of man, of his immemorial injustice; but it remained
abstract, platonic; she didn't detest him in consequence. What was the
use of her having that sharp, inspired vision of the history of the sex
(it was, as she had said herself, exactly like Joan of Arc's absolutely
supernatural apprehension of the state of France) if she wasn't going to
carry it out, if she was going to behave as the ordinary pusillanimous,
conventional young lady? It was all very well for her to have said that
first day that she would renounce: did she look, at such a moment as
this, like a young woman who had renounced? Suppose this glittering,
laughing Burrage youth, with his chains and rings and shining shoes,
should fall in love with her and try to bribe her, with his great
possessions, to practise renunciations of another kind--to give up her
holy work and to go with him to New York, there to live as his wife,
partly bullied, partly pampered, in the accustomed Burrage manner? There
was as little comfort for Olive as there had been on the whole alarm in
the recollection of that off-hand speech of Verena's about her
preference for "free unions." This had been mere maiden flippancy; she
had not known the meaning of what she said. Though she had grown up
among people who took for granted all sorts of queer laxities, she had
kept the consummate innocence of the American girl, that innocence which
was the greatest of all, for it had survived the abolition of walls and
locks; and of the various remarks that had dropped from Verena
expressing this quality that startling observation certainly expressed
it most. It implied, at any rate, that unions of some kind or other had
her approval, and did not exclude the dangers that might arise from
encounters with young men in search of sensations. _