Basil Ransom spent nearly a month at Marmion; in announcing this fact I
am very conscious of its extraordinary character. Poor Olive may well
have been thrown back into her alarms by his presenting himself there;
for after her return from New York she took to her soul the conviction
that she had really done with him. Not only did the impulse of revulsion
under which Verena had demanded that their departure from Tenth Street
should be immediate appear to her a proof that it had been sufficient
for her young friend to touch Mr. Ransom's moral texture with her
finger, as it were, in order to draw back for ever; but what she had
learned from her companion of his own manifestations, his apparent
disposition to throw up the game, added to her feeling of security. He
had spoken to Verena of their little excursion as his last opportunity,
let her know that he regarded it not as the beginning of a more intimate
acquaintance but as the end even of such relations as already existed
between them. He gave her up, for reasons best known to himself; if he
wanted to frighten Olive he judged that he had frightened her enough:
his Southern chivalry suggested to him perhaps that he ought to let her
off before he had worried her to death. Doubtless, too, he had perceived
how vain it was to hope to make Verena abjure a faith so solidly
founded; and though he admired her enough to wish to possess her on his
own terms, he shrank from the mortification which the future would have
in keeping for him--that of finding that, after six months of courting
and in spite of all her sympathy, her desire to do what people expected
of her, she despised his opinions as much as the first day. Olive
Chancellor was able to a certain extent to believe what she wished to
believe, and that was one reason why she had twisted Verena's flight
from New York, just after she let her friend see how much she should
like to drink deeper of the cup, into a warrant for living in a fool's
paradise. If she had been less afraid, she would have read things more
clearly; she would have seen that we don't run away from people unless
we fear them and that we don't fear them unless we know that we are
unarmed. Verena feared Basil Ransom now (though this time she declined
to run); but now she had taken up her weapons, she had told Olive she
was exposed, she had asked _her_ to be her defence. Poor Olive was
stricken as she had never been before, but the extremity of her danger
gave her a desperate energy. The only comfort in her situation was that
this time Verena had confessed her peril, had thrown herself into her
hands. "I like him--I can't help it--I do like him. I don't want to
marry him, I don't want to embrace his ideas, which are unspeakably
false and horrible; but I like him better than any gentleman I have
seen." So much as this the girl announced to her friend as soon as the
conversation of which I have just given a sketch was resumed, as it was
very soon, you may be sure, and very often, in the course of the next
few days. That was her way of saying that a great crisis had arrived in
her life, and the statement needed very little amplification to stand as
a shy avowal that she too had succumbed to the universal passion. Olive
had had her suspicions, her terrors, before; but she perceived now how
idle and foolish they had been, and that this was a different affair
from any of the "phases" of which she had hitherto anxiously watched the
development. As I say, she felt it to be a considerable mercy that
Verena's attitude was frank, for it gave her something to take hold of;
she could no longer be put off with sophistries about receiving visits
from handsome and unscrupulous young men for the sake of the
opportunities it gave one to convert them. She took hold, accordingly,
with passion, with fury; after the shock of Ransom's arrival had passed
away she determined that he should not find her chilled into dumb
submission. Verena had told her that she wanted her to hold her tight,
to rescue her; and there was no fear that, for an instant, she should
sleep at her post.
"I like him--I like him; but I want to hate----"
"You want to hate him!" Olive broke in.
"No, I want to hate my liking. I want you to keep before me all the
reasons why I should--many of them so fearfully important. Don't let me
lose sight of anything! Don't be afraid I shall not be grateful when you
remind me."
That was one of the singular speeches that Verena made in the course of
their constant discussion of the terrible question, and it must be
confessed that she made a great many. The strangest of all was when she
protested, as she did again and again to Olive, against the idea of
their seeking safety in retreat. She said there was a want of dignity in
it--that she had been ashamed, afterwards, of what she had done in
rushing away from New York. This care for her moral appearance was, on
Verena's part, something new; inasmuch as, though she had struck that
note on previous occasions--had insisted on its being her duty to face
the accidents and alarms of life--she had never erected such a standard
in the face of a disaster so sharply possible. It was not her habit
either to talk or to think about her dignity, and when Olive found her
taking that tone she felt more than ever that the dreadful, ominous,
fatal part of the situation was simply that now, for the first time in
all the history of their sacred friendship, Verena was not sincere. She
was not sincere when she told her that she wanted to be helped against
Mr. Ransom--when she exhorted her, that way, to keep everything that was
salutary and fortifying before her eyes. Olive did not go so far as to
believe that she was playing a part and putting her off with words
which, glossing over her treachery, only made it more cruel; she would
have admitted that that treachery was as yet unwitting, that Verena
deceived herself first of all, thinking she really wished to be saved.
Her phrases about her dignity were insincere, as well as her pretext
that they must stay to look after Miss Birdseye: as if Doctor Prance
were not abundantly able to discharge that function and would not be
enchanted to get them out of the house! Olive had perfectly divined by
this time that Doctor Prance had no sympathy with their movement, no
general ideas; that she was simply shut up to petty questions of
physiological science and of her own professional activity. She would
never have invited her down if she had realised this in advance so much
as the doctor's dry detachment from all their discussions, their
readings and practisings, her constant expeditions to fish and botanise,
subsequently enabled her to do. She was very narrow, but it did seem as
if she knew more about Miss Birdseye's peculiar physical
conditions--they were _very_ peculiar--than any one else, and this was a
comfort at a time when that admirable woman seemed to be suffering a
loss of vitality.
"The great point is that it must be met some time, and it will be a
tremendous relief to have it over. He is determined to have it out with
me, and if the battle doesn't come off to-day we shall have to fight it
to-morrow. I don't see why this isn't as good a time as any other. My
lecture for the Music Hall is as good as finished, and I haven't got
anything else to do; so I can give all my attention to our personal
struggle. It requires a good deal, you would admit, if you knew how
wonderfully he can talk. If we should leave this place to-morrow he
would come after us to the very next one. He would follow us everywhere.
A little while ago we could have escaped him, because he says that then
he had no money. He hasn't got much now, but he has got enough to pay
his way. He is so encouraged by the reception of his article by the
editor of the _Rational Review_, that he is sure that in future his pen
will be a resource."
These remarks were uttered by Verena after Basil Ransom had been three
days at Marmion, and when she reached this point her companion
interrupted her with the inquiry, "Is that what he proposes to support
you with--his pen?"
"Oh yes; of course he admits we should be terribly poor."
"And this vision of a literary career is based entirely upon an article
that hasn't yet seen the light? I don't see how a man of any refinement
can approach a woman with so beggarly an account of his position in
life."
"He says he wouldn't--he would have been ashamed--three months ago; that
was why, when we were in New York, and he felt, even then--well (so he
says) all he feels now, he made up his mind not to persist, to let me
go. But just lately a change has taken place; his state of mind altered
completely, in the course of a week, in consequence of the letter that
editor wrote him about his contribution, and his paying for it right
off. It was a remarkably flattering letter. He says he believes in his
future now; he has before him a vision of distinction, of influence, and
of fortune, not great, perhaps, but sufficient to make life tolerable.
He doesn't think life is very delightful, in the nature of things; but
one of the best things a man can do with it is to get hold of some woman
(of course, she must please him very much, to make it worth while) whom
he may draw close to him."
"And couldn't he get hold of any one but you--among all the exposed
millions of our sex?" poor Olive groaned. "Why must he pick you out,
when everything he knew about you showed you to be, exactly, the very
last?"
"That's just what I have asked him, and he only remarks that there is no
reasoning about such things. He fell in love with me that first evening,
at Miss Birdseye's. So you see there was some ground for that mystic
apprehension of yours. It seems as if I pleased him more than any one."
Olive flung herself over on the couch, burying her face in the cushions,
which she tumbled in her despair, and moaning out that he didn't love
Verena, he never had loved her, it was only his hatred of their cause
that made him pretend it; he wanted to do that an injury, to do it the
worst he could think of. He didn't love her, he hated her, he only
wanted to smother her, to crush her, to kill her--as she would
infallibly see that he would if she listened to him. It was because he
knew that her voice had magic in it, and from the moment he caught its
first note he had determined to destroy it. It was not tenderness that
moved him--it was devilish malignity; tenderness would be incapable of
requiring the horrible sacrifice that he was not ashamed to ask, of
requiring her to commit perjury and blasphemy, to desert a work, an
interest, with which her very heart-strings were interlaced, to give the
lie to her whole young past, to her purest, holiest ambitions. Olive put
forward no claim of her own, breathed, at first, at least, not a word of
remonstrance in the name of her personal loss, of their blighted union;
she only dwelt upon the unspeakable tragedy of a defection from their
standard, of a failure on Verena's part to carry out what she had
undertaken, of the horror of seeing her bright career blotted out with
darkness and tears, of the joy and elation that would fill the breast of
all their adversaries at this illustrious, consummate proof of the
fickleness, the futility, the predestined servility, of women. A man had
only to whistle for her, and she who had pretended most was delighted to
come and kneel at his feet. Olive's most passionate protest was summed
up in her saying that if Verena were to forsake them it would put back
the emancipation of women a hundred years. She did not, during these
dreadful days, talk continuously; she had long periods of pale,
intensely anxious, watchful silence, interrupted by outbreaks of
passionate argument, entreaty, invocation. It was Verena who talked
incessantly, Verena who was in a state entirely new to her, and, as any
one could see, in an attitude entirely unnatural and overdone. If she
was deceiving herself, as Olive said, there was something very affecting
in her effort, her ingenuity. If she tried to appear to Olive impartial,
coldly judicious, in her attitude with regard to Basil Ransom, and only
anxious to see, for the moral satisfaction of the thing, how good a
case, as a lover, he might make out for himself and how much he might
touch her susceptibilities, she endeavoured, still more earnestly, to
practise this fraud upon her own imagination. She abounded in every
proof that she should be in despair if she should be overborne, and she
thought of arguments even more convincing, if possible, than Olive's,
why she should hold on to her old faith, why she should resist even at
the cost of acute temporary suffering. She was voluble, fluent,
feverish; she was perpetually bringing up the subject, as if to
encourage her friend, to show how she kept possession of her judgement,
how independent she remained.
No stranger situation can be imagined than that of these extraordinary
young women at this juncture; it was so singular on Verena's part, in
particular, that I despair of presenting it to the reader with the air
of reality. To understand it, one must bear in mind her peculiar
frankness, natural and acquired, her habit of discussing questions,
sentiments, moralities, her education, in the atmosphere of
lecture-rooms, of _séances_, her familiarity with the vocabulary of
emotion, the mysteries of "the spiritual life." She had learned to
breathe and move in a rarefied air, as she would have learned to speak
Chinese if her success in life had depended upon it; but this dazzling
trick, and all her artlessly artful facilities, were not a part of her
essence, an expression of her innermost preferences. What _was_ a part
of her essence was the extraordinary generosity with which she could
expose herself, give herself away, turn herself inside out, for the
satisfaction of a person who made demands of her. Olive, as we know, had
made the reflexion that no one was naturally less preoccupied with the
idea of her dignity, and though Verena put it forward as an excuse for
remaining where they were, it must be admitted that in reality she was
very deficient in the desire to be consistent with herself. Olive had
contributed with all her zeal to the development of Verena's gift; but I
scarcely venture to think now, what she may have said to herself, in the
secrecy of deep meditation, about the consequences of cultivating an
abundant eloquence. Did she say that Verena was attempting to smother
her now in her own phrases? did she view with dismay the fatal effect of
trying to have an answer for everything? From Olive's condition during
these lamentable weeks there is a certain propriety--a delicacy enjoined
by the respect for misfortune--in averting our head. She neither ate nor
slept; she could scarcely speak without bursting into tears; she felt so
implacably, insidiously baffled. She remembered the magnanimity with
which she had declined (the winter before the last) to receive the vow
of eternal maidenhood which she had at first demanded and then put by as
too crude a test, but which Verena, for a precious hour, for ever flown,
would _then_ have been willing to take. She repented of it with
bitterness and rage; and then she asked herself, more desperately still,
whether even if she held that pledge she should be brave enough to
enforce it in the face of actual complications. She believed that if it
were in her power to say, "No, I won't let you off; I have your solemn
word, and I won't!" Verena would bow to that decree and remain with her;
but the magic would have passed out of her spirit for ever, the
sweetness out of their friendship, the efficacy out of their work. She
said to her again and again that she had utterly changed since that hour
she came to her, in New York, after her morning with Mr. Ransom, and
sobbed out that they must hurry away. Then she had been wounded,
outraged, sickened, and in the interval nothing had happened, nothing
but that one exchange of letters, which she knew about, to bring her
round to a shameless tolerance. Shameless Verena admitted it to be; she
assented over and over to this proposition, and explained, as eagerly
each time as if it were the first, what it was that had come to pass,
what it was that had brought her round. It had simply come over her that
she liked him, that this was the true point of view, the only one from
which one could consider the situation in a way that would lead to what
she called a _real_ solution--a permanent rest. On this particular point
Verena never responded, in the liberal way I have mentioned, without
asseverating at the same time that what she desired most in the world
was to prove (the picture Olive had held up from the first) that a woman
_could_ live on persistently, clinging to a great, vivifying, redemptory
idea, without the help of a man. To testify to the end against the stale
superstition--mother of every misery--that those gentry were as
indispensable as they had proclaimed themselves on the house-tops--that,
she passionately protested, was as inspiring a thought in the present
poignant crisis as it had ever been.
The one grain of comfort that Olive extracted from the terrors that
pressed upon her was that now she knew the worst; she knew it since
Verena had told her, after so long and so ominous a reticence, of the
detestable episode at Cambridge. That seemed to her the worst, because
it had been thunder in a clear sky; the incident had sprung from a
quarter from which, months before, all symptoms appeared to have
vanished. Though Verena had now done all she could to make up for her
perfidious silence by repeating everything that passed between them as
she sat with Mr. Ransom in Monadnoc Place or strolled with him through
the colleges, it imposed itself upon Olive that that occasion was the
key of all that had happened since, that he had then obtained an
irremediable hold upon her. If Verena had spoken at the time, she would
never have let her go to New York; the sole compensation for that
hideous mistake was that the girl, recognising it to the full, evidently
deemed now that she couldn't be communicative enough. There were certain
afternoons in August, long, beautiful and terrible, when one felt that
the summer was rounding its curve, and the rustle of the full-leaved
trees in the slanting golden light, in the breeze that ought to be
delicious, seemed the voice of the coming autumn, of the warnings and
dangers of life--portentous, insufferable hours when, as she sat under
the softly swaying vine-leaves of the trellis with Miss Birdseye and
tried, in order to still her nerves, to read something aloud to her
guest, the sound of her own quavering voice made her think more of that
baleful day at Cambridge than even of the fact that at that very moment
Verena was "off" with Mr. Ransom--had gone to take the little daily walk
with him to which it had been arranged that their enjoyment of each
other's society should be reduced. Arranged, I say; but that is not
exactly the word to describe the compromise arrived at by a kind of
tacit exchange of tearful entreaty and tightened grasp, after Ransom had
made it definite to Verena that he was indeed going to stay a month and
she had promised that she would not resort to base evasions, to flight
(which would avail her nothing, he notified her), but would give him a
chance, would listen to him a few minutes every day. He had insisted
that the few minutes should be an hour, and the way to spend it was
obvious. They wandered along the waterside to a rocky, shrub-covered
point, which made a walk of just the right duration. Here all the homely
languor of the region, the mild, fragrant Cape-quality, the sweetness of
white sands, quiet waters, low promontories where there were paths among
the barberries and tidal pools gleamed in the sunset--here all the
spirit of a ripe summer afternoon seemed to hang in the air. There were
wood-walks too; they sometimes followed bosky uplands, where accident
had grouped the trees with odd effects of "style," and where in grassy
intervals and fragrant nooks of rest they came out upon sudden patches
of Arcady. In such places Verena listened to her companion with her
watch in her hand, and she wondered, very sincerely, how he could care
for a girl who made the conditions of courtship so odious. He had
recognised, of course, at the very first, that he could not inflict
himself again upon Miss Chancellor, and after that awkward morning-call
I have described he did not again, for the first three weeks of his stay
at Marmion, penetrate into the cottage whose back windows overlooked the
deserted shipyard. Olive, as may be imagined, made, on this occasion, no
protest for the sake of being ladylike or of preventing him from putting
her apparently in the wrong. The situation between them was too grim; it
was war to the knife, it was a question of which should pull hardest. So
Verena took a tryst with the young man as if she had been a maid-servant
and Basil Ransom a "follower." They met a little way from the house;
beyond it, outside the village.