Mrs. Luna would have been still less satisfied with the manner in which
Olive received her proffered assistance had she known how many
confidences that reticent young woman might have made her in return.
Olive's whole life now was a matter for whispered communications; she
felt this herself, as she sought the privacy of her own apartment after
her interview with her sister. She had for the moment time to think;
Verena having gone out with Mr. Burrage, who had made an appointment the
night before to call for her to drive at that early hour. They had other
engagements in the afternoon--the principal of which was to meet a group
of earnest people at the house of one of the great local promoters.
Olive would whisk Verena off to these appointments directly after lunch;
she flattered herself that she could arrange matters so that there would
not be half an hour in the day during which Basil Ransom, complacently
calling, would find the Bostonians in the house. She had had this well
in mind when, at Mrs. Burrage's, she was driven to give him their
address; and she had had it also in mind that she would ask Verena, as a
special favour, to accompany her back to Boston on the next day but one,
which was the morning of the morrow. There had been considerable talk of
her staying a few days with Mrs. Burrage--staying on after her own
departure; but Verena backed out of it spontaneously, seeing how the
idea worried her friend. Olive had accepted the sacrifice, and their
visit to New York was now cut down, in intention, to four days, one of
which, the moment she perceived whither Basil Ransom was tending, Miss
Chancellor promised herself also to suppress. She had not mentioned that
to Verena yet; she hesitated a little, having a slightly bad conscience
about the concessions she had already obtained from her friend. Verena
made such concessions with a generosity which caused one's heart to ache
for admiration, even while one asked for them; and never once had Olive
known her to demand the smallest credit for any virtue she showed in
this way, or to bargain for an instant about any effort she made to
oblige. She had been delighted with the idea of spending a week under
Mrs. Burrage's roof; she had said, too, that she believed her mother
would die happy (not that there was the least prospect of Mrs. Tarrant's
dying) if she could hear of her having such an experience as that; and
yet, perceiving how solemn Olive looked about it, how she blanched and
brooded at the prospect, she had offered to give it up, with a smile
sweeter, if possible, than any that had ever sat in her eyes. Olive knew
what that meant for her, knew what a power of enjoyment she still had,
in spite of the tension of their common purpose, their vital work, which
had now, as they equally felt, passed into the stage of realisation, of
fruition; and that is why her conscience rather pricked her for
consenting to this further act of renunciation, especially as their
position seemed really so secure, on the part of one who had already
given herself away so sublimely.
Secure as their position might be, Olive called herself a blind idiot
for having, in spite of all her first shrinkings, agreed to bring Verena
to New York. Verena had jumped at the invitation, the very
unexpectedness of which on Mrs. Burrage's part--it was such an odd idea
to have come to a mere worldling--carried a kind of persuasion with it.
Olive's immediate sentiment had been an instinctive general fear; but,
later, she had dismissed that as unworthy; she had decided (and such a
decision was nothing new) that where their mission was concerned they
ought to face everything. Such an opportunity would contribute too much
to Verena's reputation and authority to justify a refusal at the bidding
of apprehensions which were after all only vague. Olive's specific
terrors and dangers had by this time very much blown over; Basil Ransom
had given no sign of life for ages, and Henry Burrage had certainly got
his quietus before they went to Europe. If it had occurred to his mother
that she might convert Verena into the animating principle of a big
soiree, she was at least acting in good faith, for it could be no more
her wish to-day that he should marry Selah Tarrant's daughter than it
was her wish a year before. And then they should do some good to the
benighted, the most benighted, the fashionable benighted; they should
perhaps make them furious--there was always some good in that. Lastly,
Olive was conscious of a personal temptation in the matter; she was not
insensible to the pleasure of appearing in a distinguished New York
circle as a representative woman, an important Bostonian, the prompter,
colleague, associate of one of the most original girls of the time.
Basil Ransom was the person she had least expected to meet at Mrs.
Burrage's; it had been her belief that they might easily spend four days
in a city of more than a million of inhabitants without that
disagreeable accident. But it had occurred; nothing was wanting to make
it seem serious; and, setting her teeth, she shook herself, morally,
hard, for having fallen into the trap of fate. Well, she would scramble
out, with only a scare, probably. Henry Burrage was very attentive, but
somehow she didn't fear him now; and it was only natural he should feel
that he couldn't be polite enough, after they had consented to be
exploited in that worldly way by his mother. The other danger was the
worst; the palpitation of her strange dread, the night of Miss
Birdseye's party, came back to her. Mr. Burrage seemed, indeed, a
protection; she reflected, with relief, that it had been arranged that
after taking Verena to drive in the Park and see the Museum of Art in
the morning, they should in the evening dine with him at Delmonico's (he
was to invite another gentleman), and go afterwards to the German opera.
Olive had kept all this to herself, as I have said; revealing to her
sister neither the vividness of her prevision that Basil Ransom would
look blank when he came down to Tenth Street and learned they had
flitted, nor the eagerness of her desire just to find herself once more
in the Boston train. It had been only this prevision that sustained her
when she gave Mr. Ransom their number.
Verena came to her room shortly before luncheon, to let her know she had
returned; and while they sat there, waiting to stop their ears when the
gong announcing the repast was beaten, at the foot of the stairs, by a
negro in a white jacket, she narrated to her friend her adventures with
Mr. Burrage--expatiated on the beauty of the park, the splendour and
interest of the Museum, the wonder of the young man's acquaintance with
everything it contained, the swiftness of his horses, the softness of
his English cart, the pleasure of rolling at that pace over roads as
firm as marble, the entertainment he promised them for the evening.
Olive listened in serious silence; she saw Verena was quite carried
away; of course she hadn't gone so far with her without knowing that
phase.
"Did Mr. Burrage try to make love to you?" Miss Chancellor inquired at
last, without a smile.
Verena had taken off her hat to arrange her feather, and as she placed
it on her head again, her uplifted arms making a frame for her face, she
said: "Yes, I suppose it was meant for love."
Olive waited for her to tell more, to tell how she had treated him, kept
him in his place, made him feel that that question was over long ago;
but as Verena gave her no further information she did not insist,
conscious as she always was that in such a relation as theirs there
should be a great respect on either side for the liberty of each. She
had never yet infringed on Verena's, and of course she wouldn't begin
now. Moreover, with the request that she meant presently to make of her
she felt that she must be discreet. She wondered whether Henry Burrage
were really going to begin again; whether his mother had only been
acting in his interest in getting them to come on. Certainly, the bright
spot in such a prospect was that if she listened to him she couldn't
listen to Basil Ransom; and he _had_ told Olive herself last night, when
he put them into their carriage, that he hoped to prove to her yet that
he had come round to her gospel. But the old sickness stole upon her
again, the faintness of discouragement, as she asked herself why in the
name of pity Verena should listen to any one at all but Olive
Chancellor. Again it came over her, when she saw the brightness, the
happy look, the girl brought back, as it had done in the earlier months,
that the great trouble was that weak spot of Verena's, that sole
infirmity and subtle flaw, which she had expressed to her very soon
after they began to live together, in saying (she remembered it through
the ineffaceable impression made by her friend's avowal), "I'll tell you
what is the matter with you--you don't dislike men as a class!" Verena
had replied on this occasion, "Well, no, I don't dislike them when they
are pleasant!" As if organised atrociousness could ever be pleasant!
Olive disliked them most when they were least unpleasant. After a
little, at present, she remarked, referring to Henry Burrage: "It is not
right of him, not decent, after your making him feel how, while he was
at Cambridge, he wearied you, tormented you."
"Oh, I didn't show anything," said Verena gaily. "I am learning to
dissimulate," she added in a moment. "I suppose you have to as you go
along. I pretend not to notice."
At this moment the gong sounded for luncheon, and the two young women
covered up their ears, face to face, Verena with her quick smile, Olive
with her pale patience. When they could hear themselves speak, the
latter said abruptly:
"How did Mrs. Burrage come to invite Mr. Ransom to her party? He told
Adeline he had never seen her before."
"Oh, I asked her to send him an invitation--after she had written to me,
to thank me, when it was definitely settled we should come on. She asked
me in her letter if there were any friends of mine in the city to whom I
should like her to send cards, and I mentioned Mr. Ransom."
Verena spoke without a single instant's hesitation, and the only sign of
embarrassment she gave was that she got up from her chair, passing in
this manner a little out of Olive's scrutiny. It was easy for her not to
falter, because she was glad of the chance. She wanted to be very simple
in all her relations with her friend, and of course it was not simple so
soon as she began to keep things back. She could at any rate keep back
as little as possible, and she felt as if she were making up for a
dereliction when she answered Olive's inquiry so promptly.
"You never told me of that," Miss Chancellor remarked, in a low tone.
"I didn't want to. I know you don't like him, and I thought it would
give you pain. Yet I wanted him to be there--I wanted him to hear."
"What does it matter--why should you care about him?"
"Well, because he is so awfully opposed!"
"How do you know that, Verena?"
At this point Verena began to hesitate. It was not, after all, so easy
to keep back only a little; it appeared rather as if one must either
tell everything or hide everything. The former course had already
presented itself to her as unduly harsh; it was because it seemed so
that she had ended by keeping the incident of Basil Ransom's visit to
Monadnoc Place buried in unspoken, in unspeakable, considerations, the
only secret she had in the world--the only thing that was all her own.
She was so glad to say what she could without betraying herself that it
was only after she had spoken that she perceived there was a danger of
Olive's pushing the inquiry to the point where, to defend herself as it
were, she should be obliged to practise a positive deception; and she
was conscious at the same time that the moment her secret was threatened
it became dearer to her. She began to pray silently that Olive might not
push; for it would be odious, it would be impossible, to defend herself
by a lie. Meanwhile, however, she had to answer, and the way she
answered was by exclaiming, much more quickly than the reflexions I note
might have appeared to permit, "Well, if you can't tell from his
appearance! He's the type of the reactionary."
Verena went to the toilet-glass to see that she had put on her hat
properly, and Olive slowly got up, in the manner of a person not in the
least eager for food. "Let him react as he likes--for heaven's sake
don't mind him!" That was Miss Chancellor's rejoinder, and Verena felt
that it didn't say all that was in her mind. She wished she would come
down to luncheon, for she, at least, was honestly hungry. She even
suspected Olive had an idea she was afraid to express, such distress it
would bring with it. "Well, you know, Verena, this isn't our _real_
life--it isn't our work," Olive went on.
"Well, no, it isn't, certainly," said Verena, not pretending at first
that she did not know what Olive meant. In a moment, however, she added,
"Do you refer to this social intercourse with Mr. Burrage?"
"Not to that only." Then Olive asked abruptly, looking at her, "How did
you know his address?"
"His address?"
"Mr. Ransom's--to enable Mrs. Burrage to invite him?"
They stood for a moment interchanging a gaze. "It was in a letter I got
from him."
At these words there came into Olive's face an expression which made her
companion cross over to her directly and take her by the hand. But the
tone was different from what Verena expected, when she said, with cold
surprise: "Oh, you are in correspondence!" It showed an immense effort
of self-control.
"He wrote to me once--I never told you," Verena rejoined, smiling. She
felt that her friend's strange, uneasy eyes searched very far; a little
more and they would go to the very bottom. Well, they might go if they
would; she didn't, after all, care so much about her secret as that. For
the moment, however, Verena did not learn what Olive had discovered,
inasmuch as she only remarked presently that it was really time to go
down. As they descended the staircase she put her arm into Miss
Chancellor's and perceived that she was trembling.
Of course there were plenty of people in New York interested in the
uprising, and Olive had made appointments, in advance, which filled the
whole afternoon. Everybody wanted to meet them, and wanted everybody
else to do so, and Verena saw they could easily have quite a vogue, if
they only chose to stay and work that vein. Very likely, as Olive said,
it wasn't their real life, and people didn't seem to have such a grip of
the movement as they had in Boston; but there was something in the air
that carried one along, and a sense of vastness and variety, of the
infinite possibilities of a great city, which--Verena hardly knew
whether she ought to confess it to herself--might in the end make up for
the want of the Boston earnestness. Certainly, the people seemed very
much alive, and there was no other place where so many cheering reports
could flow in, owing to the number of electric feelers that stretched
away everywhere. The principal centre appeared to be Mrs. Croucher's, on
Fifty-sixth Street, where there was an informal gathering of
sympathisers who didn't seem as if they could forgive her when they
learned that she had been speaking the night before in a circle in which
none of them were acquainted. Certainly, they were very different from
the group she had addressed at Mrs. Burrage's, and Verena heaved a thin,
private sigh, expressive of some helplessness, as she thought what a
big, complicated world it was, and how it evidently contained a little
of everything. There was a general demand that she should repeat her
address in a more congenial atmosphere; to which she replied that Olive
made her engagements for her, and that as the address had been intended
just to lead people on, perhaps she would think Mrs. Croucher's friends
had reached a higher point. She was as cautious as this because she saw
that Olive was now just straining to get out of the city; she didn't
want to say anything that would tie them. When she felt her trembling
that way before luncheon it made her quite sick to realise how much her
friend was wrapped up in her--how terribly she would suffer from the
least deviation. After they had started for their round of engagements
the very first thing Verena spoke of in the carriage (Olive had taken
one, in her liberal way, for the whole time) was the fact that her
correspondence with Mr. Ransom, as her friend had called it, had
consisted on his part of only one letter. It was a very short one, too;
it had come to her a little more than a month before. Olive knew she got
letters from gentlemen; she didn't see why she should attach such
importance to this one. Miss Chancellor was leaning back in the
carriage, very still, very grave, with her head against the cushioned
surface, only turning her eyes towards the girl.
"You attach importance yourself; otherwise you would have told me."
"I knew you wouldn't like it--because you don't like _him_."
"I don't think of him," said Olive; "he's nothing to me." Then she
added, suddenly, "Have you noticed that I am afraid to face what I don't
like?"
Verena could not say that she had, and yet it was not just on Olive's
part to speak as if she were an easy person to tell such a thing to: the
way she lay there, white and weak, like a wounded creature, sufficiently
proved the contrary. "You have such a fearful power of suffering," she
replied in a moment.
To this at first Miss Chancellor made no rejoinder; but after a little
she said, in the same attitude, "Yes, _you_ could make me."
Verena took her hand and held it awhile. "I never will, till I have been
through everything myself."
"_You_ were not made to suffer--you were made to enjoy," Olive said, in
very much the same tone in which she had told her that what was the
matter with her was that she didn't dislike men as a class--a tone which
implied that the contrary would have been much more natural and perhaps
rather higher. Perhaps it would; but Verena was unable to rebut the
charge; she felt this, as she looked out of the window of the carriage
at the bright, amusing city, where the elements seemed so numerous, the
animation so immense, the shops so brilliant, the women so strikingly
dressed, and knew that these things quickened her curiosity, all her
pulses.
"Well, I suppose I mustn't presume on it," she remarked, glancing back
at Olive with her natural sweetness, her uncontradicting grace.
That young lady lifted her hand to her lips--held it there a moment; the
movement seemed to say, "When you are so divinely docile, how can I help
the dread of losing you?" This idea, however, was unspoken, and Olive
Chancellor's uttered words, as the carriage rolled on, were different.
"Verena, I don't understand why he wrote to you."
"He wrote to me because he likes me. Perhaps you'll say you don't
understand why he likes me," the girl continued, laughing. "He liked me
the first time he saw me."
"Oh, that time!" Olive murmured.
"And still more the second."
"Did he tell you that in his letter?" Miss Chancellor inquired.
"Yes, my dear, he told me that. Only he expressed it more gracefully."
Verena was very happy to say that; a written phrase of Basil Ransom's
sufficiently justified her.
"It was my intuition--it was my foreboding!" Olive exclaimed, closing
her eyes.
"I thought you said you didn't dislike him."
"It isn't dislike--it's simple dread. Is that all there is between you?"
"Why, Olive Chancellor, what do you think?" Verena asked, feeling now
distinctly like a coward. Five minutes afterwards she said to Olive that
if it would give her pleasure they would leave New York on the morrow,
without taking a fourth day; and as soon as she had done so she felt
better, especially when she saw how gratefully Olive looked at her for
the concession, how eagerly she rose to the offer in saying, "Well, if
you _do_ feel that it isn't our own life--our very own!" It was with
these words, and others besides, and with an unusually weak, indefinite
kiss, as if she wished to protest that, after all, a single day didn't
matter, and yet accepted the sacrifice and was a little ashamed of
it--it was in this manner that the agreement as to an immediate retreat
was sealed. Verena could not shut her eyes to the fact that for a month
she had been less frank, and if she wished to do penance this
abbreviation of their pleasure in New York, even if it made her almost
completely miss Basil Ransom, was easier than to tell Olive just now
that the letter was _not_ all, that there had been a long visit, a talk,
and a walk besides, which she had been covering up for ever so many
weeks. And of what consequence, anyway, was the missing? Was it such a
pleasure to converse with a gentleman who only wanted to let you
know--and why he should want it so much Verena couldn't guess--that he
thought you quite preposterous? Olive took her from place to place, and
she ended by forgetting everything but the present hour, and the bigness
and variety of New York, and the entertainment of rolling about in a
carriage with silk cushions, and meeting new faces, new expressions of
curiosity and sympathy, assurances that one was watched and followed.
Mingled with this was a bright consciousness, sufficient for the moment,
that one was moreover to dine at Delmonico's and go to the German opera.
There was enough of the epicurean in Verena's composition to make it
easy for her in certain conditions to live only for the hour.