"Your charming frankness, then, has its limits! My poor cousin, you are
really too _naïf_. Do you suppose it matters a straw to me?"
Ransom made no answer to this appeal, but after an instant he broke out:
"Honestly, Mrs. Luna, can you give me no clue?"
"Lord, what terrible eyes you make, and what terrible words you use!
'Honestly,' quoth he! Do you think I am so fond of the creature that I
want to keep her all to myself?"
"I don't know; I don't understand," said Ransom, slowly and softly, but
still with his terrible eyes.
"And do you think I understand any better? You are not a very edifying
young man," Mrs. Luna went on; "but I really think you have deserved a
better fate than to be jilted and thrown over by a girl of that class."
"I haven't been jilted. I like her very much, but she never encouraged
me."
At this Mrs. Luna broke again into articulate scoffing. "It is very odd
that at your age you should be so little a man of the world!"
Ransom made her no other answer than to remark, thoughtfully and rather
absently: "Your sister is really very clever."
"By which you mean, I suppose, that I am not!" Mrs. Luna suddenly
changed her tone, and said, with the greatest sweetness and humility:
"God knows, I have never pretended to be!"
Ransom looked at her a moment, and guessed the meaning of this altered
note. It had suddenly come over her that with her portrait in half the
shop-fronts, her advertisement on all the fences, and the great occasion
on which she was to reveal herself to the country at large close at
hand, Verena had become so conscious of high destinies that her dear
friend's Southern kinsman really appeared to her very small game, and
she might therefore be regarded as having cast him off. If this were the
case, it would perhaps be well for Mrs. Luna still to hold on. Basil's
induction was very rapid, but it gave him time to decide that the best
thing to say to his interlocutress was: "On what day do you sail for
Europe?"
"Perhaps I shall not sail at all," Mrs. Luna replied, looking out of the
window.
"And in that case--poor Newton's education?"
"I should try to content myself with a country which has given you
yours."
"Don't you want him, then, to be a man of the world?"
"Ah, the world, the world!" she murmured, while she watched, in the
deepening dusk, the lights of the town begin to reflect themselves in
the Back Bay. "Has it been such a source of happiness to me that I
belong to it?"
"Perhaps, after all, I shall be able to go to Florence!" said Ransom,
laughing.
She faced him once more, this time slowly, and declared that she had
never known anything so strange as his state of mind--she would be so
glad to have an explanation of it. With the opinions he professed (it
was for them she had liked him--she didn't like his character), why on
earth should he be running after a little fifth-rate _poseuse_, and in
such a frenzy to get hold of her? He might say it was none of her
business, and of course she would have no answer to that; therefore she
admitted that she asked simply out of intellectual curiosity, and
because one always was tormented at the sight of a painful
contradiction. With the things she had heard him say about his
convictions and theories, his view of life and the great questions of
the future, she should have thought he would find Miss Tarrant's
attitudinising absolutely nauseous. Were not her views the same as
Olive's and hadn't Olive and he signally failed to hit it off together?
Mrs. Luna only asked because she was really quite puzzled. "Don't you
know that some minds, when they see a mystery, can't rest till they
clear it up?"
"You can't be more puzzled than I am," said Ransom. "Apparently the
explanation is to be found in a sort of reversal of the formula you were
so good, just now, as to apply to me. You like my opinions, but you
entertain a different sentiment for my character. I deplore Miss
Tarrant's opinions, but her character--well, her character pleases me."
Mrs. Luna stared, as if she were waiting, the explanation surely not
being complete. "But as much as that?" she inquired.
"As much as what?" said Ransom, smiling. Then he added, "Your sister has
beaten me."
"I thought she had beaten some one of late; she has seemed so gay and
happy. I didn't suppose it was _all_ because I was going away."
"Has she seemed very gay?" Ransom inquired, with a sinking of the heart.
He wore such a long face, as he asked this question, that Mrs. Luna was
again moved to audible mirth, after which she explained:
"Of course I mean gay for her. Everything is relative. With her
impatience for this lecture of her friend's to-night, she's in an
unspeakable state! She can't sit still for three minutes, she goes out
fifteen times a day, and there has been enough arranging and
interviewing, and discussing and telegraphing and advertising, enough
wire-pulling and rushing about, to put an army in the field. What is it
they are always doing to the armies in Europe?--mobilising them? Well,
Verena has been mobilised, and this has been headquarters."
"And shall you go to the Music Hall to-night?"
"For what do you take me? I have no desire to be shrieked at for an
hour."
"No doubt, no doubt, Miss Olive must be in a state," Ransom went on,
rather absently. Then he said, with abruptness, in a different tone: "If
this house has been, as you say, headquarters, how comes it you haven't
seen her?"
"Seen Olive? I have seen nothing else!"
"I mean Miss Tarrant. She must be somewhere--in the place--if she's to
speak to-night."
"Should you like me to go out and look for her? _Il ne manquerait plus
que cela!_" cried Mrs. Luna. "What's the matter with you, Basil Ransom,
and what are you after?" she demanded, with considerable sharpness. She
had tried haughtiness and she had tried humility, but they brought her
equally face to face with a competitor whom she couldn't take seriously,
yet who was none the less objectionable for all that.
I know not whether Ransom would have attempted to answer her question
had an obstacle not presented itself; at any rate, at the moment she
spoke, the curtain in the doorway was pushed aside, and a visitor
crossed the threshold. "Mercy! how provoking!" Mrs. Luna exclaimed,
audibly enough; and without moving from her place she bent an
uncharitable eye upon the invader, a gentleman whom Ransom had the sense
of having met before. He was a young man with a fresh face and abundant
locks, prematurely white; he stood smiling at Mrs. Luna, quite undaunted
by the absence of any demonstration in his favour. She looked as if she
didn't know him, while Ransom prepared to depart, leaving them to settle
it together.
"I'm afraid you don't remember me, though I have seen you before," said
the young man, very amiably. "I was here a week ago, and Miss Chancellor
presented me to you."
"Oh yes; she's not at home now," Mrs. Luna returned vaguely.
"So I was told--but I didn't let that prevent me." And the young man
included Basil Ransom in the smile with which he made himself more
welcome than Mrs. Luna appeared disposed to make him, and by which he
seemed to call attention to his superiority. "There is a matter on which
I want very much to obtain some information, and I have no doubt you
will be so good as to give it to me."
"It comes back to me--you have something to do with the newspapers,"
said Mrs. Luna; and Ransom too, by this time, had placed the young man
among his reminiscences. He had been at Miss Birdseye's famous party,
and Doctor Prance had there described him as a brilliant journalist.
It was quite with the air of such a personage that he accepted Mrs.
Luna's definition, and he continued to radiate towards Ransom (as if, in
return, he remembered _his_ face), while he dropped, confidentially, the
word that expressed everything--"The _Vesper_, don't you know?" Then he
went on: "Now, Mrs. Luna, I don't care, I'm not going to let you off! We
want the last news about Miss Verena, and it has got to come out of this
house."
"Oh murder!" Ransom muttered, beneath his breath, taking up his hat.
"Miss Chancellor has hidden her away; I have been scouring the city in
search of her, and her own father hasn't seen her for a week. We have
got his ideas; they are very easy to get, but that isn't what we want."
"And what do you want?" Ransom was now impelled to inquire, as Mr.
Pardon (even the name at present came back to him) appeared sufficiently
to have introduced himself.
"We want to know how she feels about to-night; what report she makes of
her nerves, her anticipations; how she looked, what she had on, up to
six o'clock. Gracious! if I could see her I should know what I wanted,
and so would she, I guess!" Mr. Pardon exclaimed. "You must know
something, Mrs. Luna; it isn't natural you shouldn't. I won't inquire
any further where she is, because that might seem a little pushing, if
she does wish to withdraw herself--though I am bound to say I think she
makes a mistake; we could work up these last hours for her! But can't
you tell me any little personal items--the sort of thing the people
like? What is she going to have for supper? or is she going to
speak--a--without previous nourishment?"
"Really, sir, I don't know, and I don't in the least care; I have
nothing to do with the business!" Mrs. Luna cried angrily.
The reporter stared; then, eagerly, "You have nothing to do with it--you
take an unfavourable view, you protest?" And he was already feeling in a
side-pocket for his notebook.
"Mercy on us! are you going to put _that_ in the paper?" Mrs. Luna
exclaimed; and in spite of the sense, detestable to him, that everything
he wished most to avert was fast closing over the girl, Ransom broke
into cynical laughter.
"Ah, but do protest, madam; let us at least have that fragment!" Mr.
Pardon went on. "A protest from this house would be a charming note. We
_must_ have it--we've got nothing else! The public are almost as much
interested in your sister as they are in Miss Verena; they know to what
extent she has backed her: and I should be so delighted (I see the
heading, from here, so attractive!) just to take down 'What Miss
Chancellor's Family Think about It!'"
Mrs. Luna sank into the nearest chair, with a groan, covering her face
with her hands. "Heaven help me, I am glad I am going to Europe!"
"That is another little item--everything counts," said Matthias Pardon,
making a rapid entry in his tablets. "May I inquire whether you are
going to Europe in consequence of your disapproval of your sister's
views?"
Mrs. Luna sprang up again, almost snatching the memoranda out of his
hand. "If you have the impertinence to publish a word about me, or to
mention my name in print, I will come to your office and make such a
scene!"
"Dearest lady, that would be a godsend!" Mr. Pardon cried
enthusiastically; but he put his notebook back into his pocket.
"Have you made an exhaustive search for Miss Tarrant?" Basil Ransom
asked of him. Mr. Pardon, at this inquiry, eyed him with a sudden,
familiar archness, expressive of the idea of competition; so that Ransom
added: "You needn't be afraid, I'm not a reporter."
"I didn't know but what you had come on from New York."
"So I have--but not as the representative of a newspaper."
"Fancy his taking you----" Mrs. Luna murmured, with indignation.
"Well, I have been everywhere I could think of," Mr. Pardon remarked. "I
have been hunting round after your sister's agent, but I haven't been
able to catch up with him; I suppose he has been hunting on his side.
Miss Chancellor told me--Mrs. Luna may remember it--that she shouldn't
be here at all during the week, and that she preferred not to tell me
either where or how she was to spend her time until the momentous
evening. Of course I let her know that I should find out if I could, and
you may remember," he said to Mrs. Luna, "the conversation we had on the
subject. I remarked, candidly, that if they didn't look out they would
overdo the quietness. Doctor Tarrant has felt very low about it.
However, I have done what I could with the material at my command, and
the _Vesper_ has let the public know that her whereabouts was the
biggest mystery of the season. It's difficult to get round the
_Vesper_."
"I am almost afraid to open my lips in your presence," Mrs. Luna broke
in, "but I must say that I think my sister was strangely communicative.
She told you ever so much that I wouldn't have breathed."
"I should like to try you with something you know!" Matthias Pardon
returned imperturbably. "This isn't a fair trial, because you don't
know. Miss Chancellor came round--came round considerably, there's no
doubt of that; because a year or two ago she was terribly
unapproachable. If I have mollified her, madam, why shouldn't I mollify
you? She realises that I can help her now, and as I ain't rancorous I am
willing to help her all she'll let me. The trouble is, she won't let me
enough, yet; it seems as if she couldn't believe it of me. At any rate,"
he pursued, addressing himself more particularly to Ransom, "half an
hour ago, at the Hall, they knew nothing whatever about Miss Tarrant,
beyond the fact that about a month ago she came there, with Miss
Chancellor, to try her voice, which rang all over the place, like
silver, and that Miss Chancellor guaranteed her absolute punctuality
to-night."
"Well, that's all that is required," said Ransom, at hazard; and he put
out his hand, in farewell, to Mrs. Luna.
"Do you desert me already?" she demanded, giving him a glance which
would have embarrassed any spectator but a reporter of the _Vesper_.
"I have fifty things to do; you must excuse me." He was nervous,
restless, his heart was beating much faster than usual; he couldn't
stand still, and he had no compunction whatever about leaving her to get
rid, by herself, of Mr. Pardon.
This gentleman continued to mix in the conversation, possibly from the
hope that if he should linger either Miss Tarrant or Miss Chancellor
would make her appearance. "Every seat in the Hall is sold; the crowd is
expected to be immense. When our Boston public _does_ take an idea!" Mr.
Pardon exclaimed.
Ransom only wanted to get away, and in order to facilitate his release
by implying that in such a case he should see her again, he said to Mrs.
Luna, rather hypocritically, from the threshold, "You had really better
come to-night."
"I am not like the Boston public--I don't take an idea!" she replied.
"Do you mean to say you are not going?" cried Mr. Pardon, with widely
open eyes, clapping his hand again to his pocket. "Don't you regard her
as a wonderful genius?"
Mrs. Luna was sorely tried, and the vexation of seeing Ransom slip away
from her with his thoughts visibly on Verena, leaving her face to face
with the odious newspaper man, whose presence made passionate protest
impossible--the annoyance of seeing everything and every one mock at her
and fail to compensate her was such that she lost her head, while
rashness leaped to her lips and jerked out the answer--"No indeed; I
think her a vulgar idiot!"
"Ah, madam, I should never permit myself to print that!" Ransom heard
Mr. Pardon rejoin reproachfully, as he dropped the _portière_ of the
drawing-room.