"You 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.
"And what in the world is the Wednesday Club? I suppose it's what those
ladies were talking about," Ransom said.
"I don't know your ladies, but the Wednesday Club is this thing. I don't
mean you and me here together, but all those deluded beings in the other
room. It is New York trying to be like Boston. It is the culture, the
good form, of the metropolis. You might not think it, but it is. It's
the 'quiet set'; they _are_ quiet enough; you might hear a pin drop, in
there. Is some one going to offer up a prayer? How happy Olive must be,
to be taken so seriously! They form an association for meeting at each
other's houses, every week, and having some performance, or some paper
read, or some subject explained. The more dreary it is and the more
fearful the subject, the more they think it is what it ought to be. They
have an idea this is the way to make New York society intellectual.
There's a sumptuary law--isn't that what you call it?--about suppers,
and they restrict themselves to a kind of Spartan broth. When it's made
by their French cooks it isn't bad. Mrs. Burrage is one of the principal
members--one of the founders, I believe; and when her turn has come
round, formerly--it comes only once in the winter for each--I am told
she has usually had very good music. But that is thought rather a base
evasion, a begging of the question; the vulgar set can easily keep up
with them on music. So Mrs. Burrage conceived the extraordinary
idea"--and it was wonderful to hear how Mrs. Luna pronounced that
adjective--"of sending on to Boston for that girl. It was her son, of
course, who put it into her head; he has been at Cambridge for some
years--that's where Verena lived, you know--and he was as thick with her
as you please out there. Now that he is no longer there it suits him
very well to have her here. She is coming on a visit to his mother when
Olive goes. I asked them to stay with me, but Olive declined,
majestically; she said they wished to be in some place where they would
be free to receive 'sympathising friends.' So they are staying at some
extraordinary kind of New Jerusalem boarding-house, in Tenth Street;
Olive thinks it's her duty to go to such places. I was greatly surprised
that she should let Verena be drawn into such a worldly crowd as this;
but she told me they had made up their minds not to let _any_ occasion
slip, that they could sow the seed of truth in drawing-rooms as well as
in workshops, and that if a single person was brought round to their
ideas they should have been justified in coming on. That's what they are
doing in there--sowing the seed; but you shall not be the one that's
brought round, I shall take care of that. Have you seen my delightful
sister yet? The way she _does_ arrange herself when she wants to protest
against frills! She looks as if she thought it pretty barren ground
round here, now she has come to see it. I don't think she thinks you can
be saved in a French dress, anyhow. I must say I call it a _very_ base
evasion of Mrs. Burrage's, producing Verena Tarrant; it's worse than the
meretricious music. Why didn't she honestly send for a _ballerina_ from
Niblo's--if she wanted a young woman capering about on a platform? They
don't care a fig about poor Olive's ideas; it's only because Verena has
strange hair, and shiny eyes, and gets herself up like a
prestidigitator's assistant. I have never understood how Olive can
reconcile herself to Verena's really low style of dress. I suppose it's
only because her clothes are so fearfully made. You look as if you
didn't believe me--but I assure you that the cut is revolutionary; and
that's a salve to Olive's conscience."
Ransom was surprised to hear that he looked as if he didn't believe her,
for he had found himself, after his first uneasiness, listening with
considerable interest to her account of the circumstances under which
Miss Tarrant was visiting New York. After a moment, as the result of
some private reflexion, he propounded this question: "Is the son of the
lady of the house a handsome young man, very polite, in a white vest?"
"I don't know the colour of his vest--but he has a kind of fawning
manner. Verena judges from that that he is in love with her."
"Perhaps he is," said Ransom. "You say it was his idea to get her to
come on."
"Oh, he likes to flirt; that is highly probable."
"Perhaps she has brought him round."
"Not to where she wants, I think. The property is very large; he will
have it all one of these days."
"Do you mean she wishes to impose on him the yoke of matrimony?" Ransom
asked, with Southern languor.
"I believe she thinks matrimony an exploded superstition; but there is
here and there a case in which it is still the best thing; when the
gentleman's name happens to be Burrage and the young lady's Tarrant. I
don't admire 'Burrage' so much myself. But I think she would have
captured this present scion if it hadn't been for Olive. Olive stands
between them--she wants to keep her in the single sisterhood; to keep
her, above all, for herself. Of course she won't listen to her marrying,
and she has put a spoke in the wheel. She has brought her to New York;
that may seem against what I say; but the girl pulls hard, she has to
humour her, to give her her head sometimes, to throw something
overboard, in short, to save the rest. You may say, as regards Mr.
Burrage, that it's a queer taste in a gentleman; but there is no arguing
about that. It's queer taste in a lady, too; for she is a lady, poor
Olive. You can see that to-night. She is dressed like a book-agent, but
she is more distinguished than any one here. Verena, beside her, looks
like a walking advertisement."
When Mrs. Luna paused, Basil Ransom became aware that, in the other
room, Verena's address had begun; the sound of her clear, bright,
ringing voice, an admirable voice for public uses, came to them from the
distance. His eagerness to stand where he could hear her better, and see
her into the bargain, made him start in his place, and this movement
produced an outgush of mocking laughter on the part of his companion.
But she didn't say--"Go, go, deluded man, I take pity on you!" she only
remarked, with light impertinence, that he surely wouldn't be so wanting
in gallantry as to leave a lady absolutely alone in a public place--it
was so Mrs. Luna was pleased to qualify Mrs. Burrage's drawing-room--in
the face of her entreaty that he would remain with her. She had the
better of poor Ransom, thanks to the superstitions of Mississippi. It
was in his simple code a gross rudeness to withdraw from conversation
with a lady at a party before another gentleman should have come to take
one's place; it was to inflict on the lady a kind of outrage. The other
gentlemen, at Mrs. Burrage's, were all too well occupied; there was not
the smallest chance of one of them coming to his rescue. He couldn't
leave Mrs. Luna, and yet he couldn't stay with her and lose the only
thing he had come so much out of his way for. "Let me at least find you
a place over there, in the doorway. You can stand upon a chair--you can
lean on me."
"Thank you very much; I would much rather lean on this sofa. And I am
much too tired to stand on chairs. Besides, I wouldn't for the world
that either Verena or Olive should see me craning over the heads of the
crowd--as if I attached the smallest importance to their perorations!"
"It isn't time for the peroration yet," Ransom said, with savage
dryness; and he sat forward, with his elbow on his knees, his eyes on
the ground, a flush in his sallow cheek.
"It's never time to say such things as those," Mrs. Luna remarked,
arranging her laces.
"How do you know what she is saying?"
"I can tell by the way her voice goes up and down. It sounds so silly."
Ransom sat there five minutes longer--minutes which, he felt, the
recording angel ought to write down to his credit--and asked himself how
Mrs. Luna could be such a goose as not to see that she was making him
hate her. But she was goose enough for anything. He tried to appear
indifferent, and it occurred to him to doubt whether the Mississippi
system could be right, after all. It certainly hadn't foreseen such a
case as this. "It's as plain as day that Mr. Burrage intends to marry
her--if he can," he said in a minute; that remark being better
calculated than any other he could think of to dissimulate his real
state of mind.
It drew no rejoinder from his companion, and after an instant he turned
his head a little and glanced at her. The result of something that
silently passed between them was to make her say, abruptly: "Mr. Ransom,
my sister never sent you an invitation to this place. Didn't it come
from Verena Tarrant?"
"I haven't the least idea."
"As you hadn't the least acquaintance with Mrs. Burrage, who else could
it have come from?"
"If it came from Miss Tarrant, I ought at least to recognise her
courtesy by listening to her."
"If you rise from this sofa I will tell Olive what I suspect. She will
be perfectly capable of carrying Verena off to China--or anywhere out of
your reach."
"And pray what is it you suspect?"
"That you two have been in correspondence."
"Tell her whatever you like, Mrs. Luna," said the young man, with the
grimness of resignation.
"You are quite unable to deny it, I see."
"I never contradict a lady."
"We shall see if I can't make you tell a fib. Haven't you been seeing
Miss Tarrant, too?"
"Where should I have seen her? I can't see all the way to Boston, as you
said the other day."
"Haven't you been there--on secret visits?"
Ransom started just perceptibly; but to conceal it, the next instant, he
stood up.
"They wouldn't be secret if I were to tell you."
Looking down at her he saw that her words were a happy hit, not the
result of definite knowledge. But she appeared to him vain, egotistical,
grasping, odious.
"Well, I shall give the alarm," she went on; "that is, I will if you
leave me. Is that the way a Southern gentleman treats a lady? Do as I
wish, and I will let you off!"
"You won't let me off from staying with you."
"Is it such a _corvée_? I never heard of such rudeness!" Mrs. Luna
cried. "All the same, I am determined to keep you if I can!"
Ransom felt that she must be in the wrong, and yet superficially she
seemed (and it was quite intolerable) to have right on her side. All
this while Verena's golden voice, with her words indistinct, solicited,
tantalised his ear. The question had evidently got on Mrs. Luna's
nerves; she had reached that point of feminine embroilment when a woman
is perverse for the sake of perversity, and even with a clear vision of
bad consequences.
"You have lost your head," he relieved himself by saying, as he looked
down at her.
"I wish you would go and get me some tea."
"You say that only to embarrass me." He had hardly spoken when a great
sound of applause, the clapping of many hands, and the cry from fifty
throats of "Brava, brava!" floated in and died away. All Ransom's pulses
throbbed, he flung his scruples to the winds, and after remarking to
Mrs. Luna--still with all due ceremony--that he feared he must resign
himself to forfeiting her good opinion, turned his back upon her and
strode away to the open door of the music-room. "Well, I have never been
so insulted!" he heard her exclaim, with exceeding sharpness, as he left
her; and, glancing back at her, as he took up his position, he saw her
still seated on her sofa--alone in the lamp-lit desert--with her eyes
making, across the empty space, little vindictive points. Well, she
could come where he was, if she wanted him so much; he would support her
on an ottoman, and make it easy for her to see. But Mrs. Luna was
uncompromising; he became aware, after a minute, that she had withdrawn,
majestically, from the place, and he did not see her again that evening.