Mrs. Luna was early in the field the next day, and her sister wondered
to what she owed the honour of a visit from her at eleven o'clock in the
morning. She very soon saw, when Adeline asked her whether it had been
she who procured for Basil Ransom an invitation to Mrs. Burrage's.
"Me--why in the world should it have been me?" Olive asked, feeling
something of a pang at the implication that it had not been Adeline, as
she supposed.
"I didn't know--but you took him up so."
"Why, Adeline Luna, when did I ever----?" Miss Chancellor exclaimed,
staring and intensely grave.
"You don't mean to say you have forgotten how you brought him on to see
you, a year and a half ago!"
"I didn't bring him on--I said if he happened to be there."
"Yes, I remember how it was: he did happen, and then you happened to
hate him, and tried to get out of it."
Miss Chancellor saw, I say, why Adeline had come to her at the hour she
knew she was always writing letters, after having given her all the
attention that was necessary the day before; she had come simply to make
herself disagreeable, as Olive knew, of old, the spirit sometimes moved
her irresistibly to do. It seemed to her that Adeline had been
disagreeable enough in not having beguiled Basil Ransom into a marriage,
according to that memorable calculation of probabilities in which she
indulged (with a licence that she scarcely liked definitely to recall)
when the pair made acquaintance under her eyes in Charles Street, and
Mrs. Luna seemed to take to him as much as she herself did little. She
would gladly have accepted him as a brother-in-law, for the harm such a
relation could do one was limited and definite; whereas in his general
capacity of being at large in her life the ability of the young
Mississippian to injure her seemed somehow immense. "I wrote to
him--that time--for a perfectly definite reason," she said. "I thought
mother would have liked us to know him. But it was a mistake."
"How do you know it was a mistake? Mother would have liked him, I
daresay."
"I mean my acting as I did; it was a theory of duty which I allowed to
press me too much. I always do. Duty should be obvious; one shouldn't
hunt round for it."
"Was it very obvious when it brought you on here?" asked Mrs. Luna, who
was distinctly out of humour.
Olive looked for a moment at the toe of her shoe. "I had an idea that
you would have married him by this time," she presently remarked.
"Marry him yourself, my dear! What put such an idea into your head?"
"You wrote to me at first so much about him. You told me he was
tremendously attentive, and that you liked him."
"His state of mind is one thing and mine is another. How can I marry
every man that hangs about me--that dogs my footsteps? I might as well
become a Mormon at once!" Mrs. Luna delivered herself of this argument
with a certain charitable air, as if her sister could not be expected to
understand such a situation by her own light.
Olive waived the discussion, and simply said: "I took for granted _you_
had got him the invitation."
"I, my dear? That would be quite at variance with my attitude of
discouragement."
"Then she simply sent it herself."
"Whom do you mean by 'she'?"
"Mrs. Burrage, of course."
"I thought that you might mean Verena," said Mrs. Luna casually.
"Verena--to him? Why in the world----?" And Olive gave the cold glare
with which her sister was familiar.
"Why in the world not--since she knows him?"
"She had seen him twice in her life before last night, when she met him
for the third time and spoke to him."
"Did she tell you that?"
"She tells me everything."
"Are you very sure?"
"Adeline Luna, what _do_ you mean?" Miss Chancellor murmured.
"Are you very sure that last night was only the third time?" Mrs. Luna
went on.
Olive threw back her head and swept her sister from her bonnet to her
lowest flounce. "You have no right to hint at such a thing as that
unless you know!"
"Oh, I know--I know, at any rate, more than you do!" And then Mrs. Luna,
sitting with her sister, much withdrawn, in one of the windows of the
big, hot, faded parlour of the boarding-house in Tenth Street, where
there was a rug before the chimney representing a Newfoundland dog
saving a child from drowning, and a row of chromo-lithographs on the
walls, imparted to her the impression she had received the evening
before--the impression of Basil Ransom's keen curiosity about Verena
Tarrant. Verena must have asked Mrs. Burrage to send him a card, and
asked it without mentioning the fact to Olive--for wouldn't Olive
certainly have remembered it? It was no use her saying that Mrs. Burrage
might have sent it of her own movement, because she wasn't aware of his
existence, and why should she be? Basil Ransom himself had told her he
didn't know Mrs. Burrage. Mrs. Luna knew whom he knew and whom he
didn't, or at least the sort of people, and they were not the sort that
belonged to the Wednesday Club. That was one reason why she didn't care
about him for any intimate relation--that he didn't seem to have any
taste for making nice friends. Olive would know what _her_ taste was in
this respect, though it wasn't that young woman's own any more than his.
It was positive that the suggestion about the card could only have come
from Verena. At any rate Olive could easily ask, or if she was afraid of
her telling a fib she could ask Mrs. Burrage. It was true Mrs. Burrage
might have been put on her guard by Verena, and would perhaps invent
some other account of the matter; therefore Olive had better just
believe what _she_ believed, that Verena had secured his presence at the
party and had had private reasons for doing so. It is to be feared that
Ransom's remark to Mrs. Luna the night before about her having lost her
head was near to the mark; for if she had not been blinded by her
rancour she would have guessed the horror with which she inspired her
sister when she spoke in that offhand way of Verena's lying and Mrs.
Burrage's lying. Did people lie like that in Mrs. Luna's set? It was
Olive's plan of life not to lie, and attributing a similar disposition
to people she liked, it was impossible for her to believe that Verena
had had the intention of deceiving her. Mrs. Luna, in a calmer hour,
might also have divined that Olive would make her private comments on
the strange story of Basil Ransom's having made up to Verena out of
pique at Adeline's rebuff; for this was the account of the matter that
she now offered to Miss Chancellor. Olive did two things: she listened
intently and eagerly, judging there was distinct danger in the air
(which, however, she had not wanted Mrs. Luna to tell her, having
perceived it for herself the night before); and she saw that poor
Adeline was fabricating fearfully, that the "rebuff" was altogether an
invention. Mr. Ransom was evidently preoccupied with Verena, but he had
not needed Mrs. Luna's cruelty to make him so. So Olive maintained an
attitude of great reserve; she did not take upon herself to announce
that her own version was that Adeline, for reasons absolutely
imperceptible to others, had tried to catch Basil Ransom, had failed in
her attempt, and, furious at seeing Verena preferred to a person of her
importance (Olive remembered the _spretae injuria formae_), now wished
to do both him and the girl an ill turn. This would be accomplished if
she could induce Olive to interfere. Miss Chancellor was conscious of an
abundant readiness to interfere, but it was not because she cared for
Adeline's mortification. I am not sure, even, that she did not think her
_fiasco_ but another illustration of her sister's general uselessness,
and rather despise her for it; being perfectly able at once to hold that
nothing is baser than the effort to entrap a man, and to think it very
ignoble to have to renounce it because you can't. Olive kept these
reflexions to herself, but she went so far as to say to her sister that
she didn't see where the "pique" came in. How could it hurt Adeline that
he should turn his attention to Verena? What was Verena to her?
"Why, Olive Chancellor, how can you ask?" Mrs. Luna boldly responded.
"Isn't Verena everything to you, and aren't you everything to me, and
wouldn't an attempt--a successful one--to take Verena away from you
knock you up fearfully, and shouldn't I suffer, as you know I suffer, by
sympathy?"
I have said that it was Miss Chancellor's plan of life not to lie, but
such a plan was compatible with a kind of consideration for the truth
which led her to shrink from producing it on poor occasions. So she
didn't say, "Dear me, Adeline, what humbug! you know you hate Verena and
would be very glad if she were drowned!" She only said, "Well, I see;
but it's very roundabout." What she did see was that Mrs. Luna was eager
to help her to stop off Basil Ransom from "making head," as the phrase
was; and the fact that her motive was spite, and not tenderness for the
Bostonians, would not make her assistance less welcome if the danger
were real. She herself had a nervous dread, but she had that about
everything; still, Adeline had perhaps seen something, and what in the
world did she mean by her reference to Verena's having had secret
meetings? When pressed on this point, Mrs. Luna could only say that she
didn't pretend to give definite information, and she wasn't a spy
anyway, but that the night before he had positively flaunted in her face
his admiration for the girl, his enthusiasm for her way of standing up
there. Of course he hated her ideas, but he was quite conceited enough
to think she would give them up. Perhaps it was all directed at
_her_--as if she cared! It would depend a good deal on the girl herself;
certainly, if there was any likelihood of Verena's being affected, she
should advise Olive to look out. She knew best what to do; it was only
Adeline's duty to give her the benefit of her own impression, whether
she was thanked for it or not. She only wished to put her on her guard,
and it was just like Olive to receive such information so coldly; she
was the most disappointing woman she knew.
Miss Chancellor's coldness was not diminished by this rebuke; for it had
come over her that, after all, she had never opened herself at that rate
to Adeline, had never let her see the real intensity of her desire to
keep the sort of danger there was now a question of away from Verena,
had given her no warrant for regarding her as her friend's keeper; so
that she was taken aback by the flatness of Mrs. Luna's assumption that
she was ready to enter into a conspiracy to circumvent and frustrate the
girl. Olive put on all her majesty to dispel this impression, and if she
could not help being aware that she made Mrs. Luna still angrier, on the
whole, than at first, she felt that she would much rather disappoint her
than give herself away to her--especially as she was intensely eager to
profit by her warning!