The Bostonians (36 page)

“Are you a member?” one of the ladies said to the other. “I didn’t know you had joined.”

“Oh, I haven’t; nothing would induce me.”

“That’s not fair; you have all the fun and none of the responsibility.”

“Oh, the fun—the fun!” exclaimed the second lady.

“You needn’t abuse us, or I will never invite you,” said the first.

“Well, I thought it was meant to be improving; that’s all I mean; very good for the mind. Now, this woman to-night; isn’t she from Boston?”

“Yes, I believe they have brought her on, just for this.”

“Well, you must be pretty desperate when you have got to go to Boston for your entertainment.”

“Well, there’s a similar society there, and I never heard of their sending to New York.”

“Of course not, they think they have got everything. But doesn’t it make your life a burden, thinking what you can possibly have?”

“Oh dear, no. I am going to have Professor Gougenheim—all about the Talmud.
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You must come.”

“Well, I’ll come,” said the second lady; “but nothing would induce me to be a regular member.”

Whatever the mystic circle might be, Ransom agreed with the second lady that regular membership must have terrors, and he admired her independence in such an artificial world. A considerable part of the company had now directed itself to the further apartment—people had begun to occupy the chairs, to confront the empty platform. He reached the wide doors, and saw that the place was a spacious music-room, decorated in white and gold, with a polished floor and marble busts of composers, on brackets attached to the delicate panels. He forbore to enter, however, being shy about taking a seat, and seeing that the ladies were arranging themselves first. He turned back into the first room, to wait till the audience had massed itself, conscious that even if he were behind every one he should be able to make a long neck; and here, suddenly, in a corner, his eyes rested upon Olive Chancellor. She was seated a little apart, in an angle of the room, and she was looking straight at him; but as soon as she perceived that he saw her she dropped her eyes, giving no sign of recognition. Ransom hesitated a moment, but the next he went straight over to her. It had been in his mind that if Verena Tarrant was there,
she
would be there; an instinct told him that Miss Chancellor would not allow her dear friend to come to New York without her. It was very possible she meant to “cut” him—especially if she knew of his having cut her, the other week, in Boston; but it was his duty to take for granted she would speak to him, until the contrary should be definitely proved. Though he had seen her only twice he remembered well how acutely shy she was capable of being, and he thought it possible one of these spasms had seized her at the present time.

When he stood before her he found his conjecture perfectly just; she was white with the intensity of her self-consciousness; she was altogether in a very uncomfortable state. She made no response to his offer to shake hands with her, and he saw that she would never go through that ceremony again. She looked up at him when he spoke to her, and her lips moved; but her face was intensely grave and her eye had almost a feverish light. She had evidently got into her corner to be out of the way; he recognised in her the air of an interloper, as he had felt it in himself. The small sofa on which she had placed herself had the form to which the French give the name of
causeuse;
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there was room on it for just another person, and Ransom asked her, with a cheerful accent, if he might sit down beside her. She turned towards him when he had done so, turned everything but her eyes, and opened and shut her fan while she waited for her fit of diffidence to pass away. Ransom himself did not wait; he took a jocular tone about their encounter, asking her if she had come to New York to rouse the people. She glanced round the room; the backs of Mrs. Burrage’s guests, mainly, were presented to them, and their position was partly masked by a pyramid of flowers which rose from a pedestal close to Olive’s end of the sofa and diffused a fragrance in the air.

“Do you call these the ‘people’?” she asked.

“I haven’t the least idea. I don’t know who any of them are, not even who Mrs. Henry Burrage is. I simply received an invitation.”

Miss Chancellor gave him no information on the point he had mentioned; she only said, in a moment: “Do you go wherever you are invited?”

“Why, I go if I think I may find you there,” the young man replied, gallantly. “My card mentioned that Miss Tarrant would give an address, and I knew that wherever she is you are not far off. I have heard you are inseparable, from Mrs. Luna.”

“Yes, we are inseparable. That is exactly why I am here.”

“It’s the fashionable world, then, you are going to stir up.”

Olive remained for some time with her eyes fastened to the floor; then she flashed them up at her interlocutor. “It’s a part of our life to go anywhere—to carry our work where it seems most needed. We have taught ourselves to stifle repulsion, distaste.”

“Oh, I think this is very amusing,” said Ransom. “It’s a beautiful house, and there are some very pretty faces. We haven’t anything so brilliant in Mississippi.”

To everything he said Olive offered at first a momentary silence, but the worst of her shyness was apparently leaving her.

“Are you successful in New York? do you like it?” she presently asked, uttering the inquiry in a tone of infinite melancholy, as if the eternal sense of duty forced it from her lips.

“Oh, successful! I am not successful as you and Miss Tarrant are; for (to my barbaric eyes) it is a great sign of prosperity to be the heroines of an occasion like this.”

“Do I look like the heroine of an occasion?” asked Olive Chancellor, without an intention of humour, but with an effect that was almost comical.

“You would if you didn’t hide yourself away. Are you not going into the other room to hear the speech? Everything is prepared.”

“I am going when I am notified—when I am invited.”

There was considerable majesty in her tone, and Ransom saw that something was wrong, that she felt neglected. To see that she was as ticklish with others as she had been with him made him feel forgiving, and there was in his manner a perfect disposition to forget their differences as he said, “Oh, there is plenty of time; the place isn’t half full yet.”

She made no direct rejoinder to this, but she asked him about his mother and sisters, what news he received from the South. “Have they any happiness?” she inquired, rather as if she warned him to take care not to pretend they had. He neglected her warning to the point of saying that there was one happiness they always had—that of having learned not to think about it too much, and to make the best of their circumstances. She listened to this with an air of great reserve, and apparently thought he had wished to give her a lesson; for she suddenly broke out, “You mean that you have traced a certain line for them, and that that’s all you know about it!”

Ransom stared at her, surprised; he felt, now, that she would always surprise him. “Ah, don’t be rough with me,” he said, in his soft Southern voice; “don’t you remember how you knocked me about when I called on you in Boston?”

“You hold us in chains, and then, when we writhe in our agony, you say we don’t behave prettily!” These words, which did not lessen Ransom’s wonderment, were the young lady’s answer to his deprecatory speech. She saw that he was honestly bewildered and that in a moment more he would laugh at her, as he had done a year and a half before (she remembered it as if it had been yesterday); and to stop that off, at any cost, she went on hurriedly—“If you listen to Miss Tarrant, you will know what I mean.”

“Oh, Miss Tarrant—Miss Tarrant!” And Basil Ransom’s laughter came.

She had not escaped that mockery, after all, and she looked at him sharply now, her embarrassment having quite cleared up. “What do you know about her? What observation have you had?”

Ransom met her eye, and for a moment they scrutinised each other. Did she know of his interview with Verena a month before, and was her reserve simply the wish to place on him the burden of declaring that he had been to Boston since they last met, and yet had not called in Charles Street? He thought there was suspicion in her face; but in regard to Verena she would always be suspicious. If he had done at that moment just what would gratify him he would have said to her that he knew a great deal about Miss Tarrant, having lately had a long walk and talk with her; but he checked himself, with the reflection that if Verena had not betrayed him it would be very wrong in him to betray her. The sweetness of the idea that she should have thought the episode of his visit to Monadnoc Place worth placing under the rose,
^bi
was quenched for the moment in his regret at not being able to let his disagreeable cousin know that he had passed
her
over. “Don’t you remember my hearing her speak that night at Miss Birdseye’s?” he said, presently. “And I met her the next day at your house, you know.”

“She has developed greatly since then,” Olive remarked drily; and Ransom felt sure that Verena had held her tongue.

At this moment a gentleman made his way through the clusters of Mrs. Burrage’s guests and presented himself to Olive. “If you will do me the honour to take my arm I will find a good seat for you in the other room. It’s getting to be time for Miss Tarrant to reveal herself. I have been taking her into the picture-room; there were some things she wanted to see. She is with my mother now,” he added, as if Miss Chancellor’s grave face constituted a sort of demand for an explanation of her friend’s absence. “She said she was a little nervous; so I thought we would just move about.”

“It’s the first time I have ever heard of that!” said Olive Chancellor, preparing to surrender herself to the young man’s guidance. He told her that he had reserved the best seat for her; it was evidently his desire to conciliate her, to treat her as a person of importance. Before leading her away, he shook hands with Ransom and remarked that he was very glad to see him; and Ransom saw that he must be the master of the house, though he could scarcely be the son of the stout lady in the doorway. He was a fresh, pleasant, handsome young man, with a bright friendly manner; he recommended Ransom to take a seat in the other room, without delay; if he had never heard Miss Tarrant he would have one of the greatest pleasures of his life.

“Oh, Mr. Ransom only comes to ventilate his prejudices,” Miss Chancellor said, as she turned her back to her kinsman. He shrank from pushing into the front of the company, which was now rapidly filling the music-room, and contented himself with lingering in the doorway, where several gentlemen were stationed. The seats were all occupied; all, that is, save one, towards which he saw Miss Chancellor and her companion direct themselves, squeezing and edging past the people who were standing up against the walls. This was quite in front, close to the little platform; every one noticed Olive as she went, and Ransom heard a gentleman near him say to another—“I guess she’s one of the same kind.” He looked for Verena, but she was apparently keeping out of sight. Suddenly he felt himself smartly tapped on the back, and, turning round, perceived Mrs. Luna, who had been prodding him with her fan.

XXVII

Y
ou won’t speak to me in my own house—that I have almost grown used to; but if you are going to pass me over in public I think you might give me warning first.” This was only her archness, and he knew what to make of that now; she was dressed in yellow and looked very plump and gay. He wondered at the unerring instinct by which she had discovered his exposed quarter. The outer room was completely empty; she had come in at the further door and found the field free for her operations. He offered to find her a place where she could see and hear Miss Tarrant, to get her a chair to stand on, even, if she wished to look over the heads of the gentlemen in the doorway; a proposal which she greeted with the inquiry—“Do you suppose I came here for the sake of that chatterbox? haven’t I told you what I think of her?”

“Well, you certainly did not come here for my sake,” said Ransom, anticipating this insinuation; “for you couldn’t possibly have known I was coming.”

“I guessed it—a presentiment told me!” Mrs. Luna declared; and she looked up at him with searching, accusing eyes. “I know what you have come for,” she cried in a moment. “You never mentioned to me that you knew Mrs. Burrage!”

“I don’t—I never had heard of her till she asked me.”

“Then why in the world
did
she ask you?”

Ransom had spoken a trifle rashly; it came over him, quickly, that there were reasons why he had better not have said that. But almost as quickly he covered up his mistake. “I suppose your sister was so good as to ask for a card for me.”

“My sister? My grandmother! I know how Olive loves you. Mr. Ransom, you are very deep.” She had drawn him well into the room, out of earshot of the group in the doorway, and he felt that if she should be able to compass her wish she would organise a little entertainment for herself, in the outer drawing-room, in opposition to Miss Tarrant’s address. “Please come and sit down here a moment; we shall be quite undisturbed. I have something very particular to say to you.” She led the way to the little sofa in the corner, where he had been talking with Olive a few minutes before, and he accompanied her, with extreme reluctance, grudging the moments that he should be obliged to give to her. He had quite forgotten that he once had a vision of spending his life in her society, and he looked at his watch as he made the observation:

“I haven’t the least idea of losing any of the sport in there, you know.”

He felt, the next instant, that he oughtn’t to have said that either; but he was irritated, disconcerted, and he couldn’t help it. It was in the nature of a gallant Mississippian to do everything a lady asked him, and he had never, remarkable as it may appear, been in the position of finding such a request so incompatible with his own desires as now. It was a new predicament, for Mrs. Luna evidently meant to keep him if she could. She looked round the room, more and more pleased at their having it to themselves, and for the moment said nothing more about the singularity of his being there. On the contrary, she became freshly jocular, remarked that now they had got hold of him they wouldn’t easily let him go, they would make him entertain them, induce him to give a lecture—on the “Lights and Shadows of Southern Life,” or the “Social Peculiarities of Mississippi”—before the Wednesday Club.