He walked about for the next two hours, walked all over Boston, heedless
of his course, and conscious only of an unwillingness to return to his
hotel and an inability to eat his dinner or rest his weary legs. He had
been roaming in very much the same desperate fashion, at once eager and
purposeless, for many days before he left New York, and he knew that his
agitation and suspense must wear themselves out. At present they pressed
him more than ever; they had become tremendously acute. The early dusk
of the last half of November had gathered thick, but the evening was
fine and the lighted streets had the animation and variety of a winter
that had begun with brilliancy. The shop-fronts glowed through frosty
panes, the passers bustled on the pavement, the bells of the street-cars
jangled in the cold air, the newsboys hawked the evening papers, the
vestibules of the theatres, illuminated and flanked with coloured
posters and the photographs of actresses, exhibited seductively their
swinging doors of red leather or baize, spotted with little brass nails.
Behind great plates of glass the interior of the hotels became visible,
with marble-paved lobbies, white with electric lamps, and columns, and
Westerners on divans stretching their legs, while behind a counter, set
apart and covered with an array of periodicals and novels in paper
covers, little boys, with the faces of old men, showing plans of the
play-houses and offering librettos, sold orchestra-chairs at a premium.
When from time to time Ransom paused at a corner, hesitating which way
to drift, he looked up and saw the stars, sharp and near, scintillating
over the town. Boston seemed to him big and full of nocturnal life, very
much awake and preparing for an evening of pleasure.
He passed and repassed the Music Hall, saw Verena immensely advertised,
gazed down the vista, the approach for pedestrians, which leads out of
School Street, and thought it looked expectant and ominous. People had
not begun to enter yet, but the place was ready, lighted and open, and
the interval would be only too short. So it appeared to Ransom, while at
the same time he wished immensely the crisis were over. Everything that
surrounded him referred itself to the idea with which his mind was
palpitating, the question whether he might not still intervene as
against the girl's jump into the abyss. He believed that all Boston was
going to hear her, or that at least every one was whom he saw in the
streets; and there was a kind of incentive and inspiration in this
thought. The vision of wresting her from the mighty multitude set him
off again, to stride through the population that would fight for her. It
was not too late, for he felt strong; it would not be too late even if
she should already stand there before thousands of converging eyes. He
had had his ticket since the morning, and now the time was going on. He
went back to his hotel at last for ten minutes, and refreshed himself by
dressing a little and by drinking a glass of wine. Then he took his way
once more to the Music Hall, and saw that people were beginning to go
in--the first drops of the great stream, among whom there were many
women. Since seven o'clock the minutes had moved fast--before that they
had dragged--and now there was only half an hour. Ransom passed in with
the others; he knew just where his seat was; he had chosen it, on
reaching Boston, from the few that were left, with what he believed to
be care. But now, as he stood beneath the far-away panelled roof,
stretching above the line of little tongues of flame which marked its
junction with the walls, he felt that this didn't matter much, since he
certainly was not going to subside into his place. He was not one of the
audience; he was apart, unique, and had come on a business altogether
special. It wouldn't have mattered if, in advance, he had got no place
at all and had just left himself to pay for standing-room at the last.
The people came pouring in, and in a very short time there would only be
standing-room left. Ransom had no definite plan; he had mainly wanted to
get inside of the building, so that, on a view of the field, he might
make up his mind. He had never been in the Music Hall before, and its
lofty vaults and rows of overhanging balconies made it to his
imagination immense and impressive. There were two or three moments
during which he felt as he could imagine a young man to feel who,
waiting in a public place, has made up his mind, for reasons of his own,
to discharge a pistol at the king or the president.
The place struck him with a kind of Roman vastness; the doors which
opened out of the upper balconies, high aloft, and which were constantly
swinging to and fro with the passage of spectators and ushers, reminded
him of the _vomitoria_ that he had read about in descriptions of the
Colosseum. The huge organ, the background of the stage--a stage occupied
with tiers of seats for choruses and civic worthies--lifted to the dome
its shining pipes and sculptured pinnacles, and some genius of music or
oratory erected himself in monumental bronze at the base. The hall was
so capacious and serious, and the audience increased so rapidly without
filling it, giving Ransom a sense of the numbers it would contain when
it was packed, that the courage of the two young women, face to face
with so tremendous an ordeal, hovered before him as really sublime,
especially the conscious tension of poor Olive, who would have been
spared none of the anxieties and tremors, none of the previsions of
accident or calculations of failure. In the front of the stage was a
slim, high desk, like a music-stand, with a cover of red velvet, and
near it was a light ornamental chair, on which he was sure Verena would
not seat herself, though he could fancy her leaning at moments on the
back. Behind this was a kind of semicircle of a dozen arm-chairs, which
had evidently been arranged for the friends of the speaker, her sponsors
and patrons. The hall was more and more full of premonitory sounds;
people making a noise as they unfolded, on hinges, their seats, and
itinerant boys, whose voices as they cried out "Photographs of Miss
Tarrant--sketch of her life!" or "Portraits of the Speaker--story of her
career!" sounded small and piping in the general immensity. Before
Ransom was aware of it several of the arm-chairs, in the row behind the
lecturer's desk, were occupied, with gaps, and in a moment he
recognised, even across the interval, three of the persons who had
appeared. The straight-featured woman with bands of glossy hair and
eyebrows that told at a distance, could only be Mrs. Farrinder, just as
the gentleman beside her, in a white overcoat, with an umbrella and a
vague face, was probably her husband Amariah. At the opposite end of the
row were another pair, whom Ransom, unacquainted with certain chapters
of Verena's history, perceived without surprise to be Mrs. Burrage and
her insinuating son. Apparently their interest in Miss Tarrant was more
than a momentary fad, since--like himself--they had made the journey
from New York to hear her. There were other figures, unknown to our
young man, here and there, in the semicircle; but several places were
still empty (one of which was of course reserved for Olive), and it
occurred to Ransom, even in his preoccupation, that one of them ought to
remain so--ought to be left to symbolise the presence, in the spirit, of
Miss Birdseye.
He bought one of the photographs of Verena, and thought it shockingly
bad, and bought also the sketch of her life, which many people seemed to
be reading, but crumpled it up in his pocket for future consideration.
Verena was not in the least present to him in connexion with this
exhibition of enterprise and puffery; what he saw was Olive, struggling
and yielding, making every sacrifice of taste for the sake of the
largest hearing, and conforming herself to a great popular system.
Whether she had struggled or not, there was a catch-penny effect about
the whole thing which added to the fever in his cheek and made him wish
he had money to buy up the stock of the vociferous little boys. Suddenly
the notes of the organ rolled out into the hall, and he became aware
that the overture or prelude had begun. This, too, seemed to him a piece
of claptrap, but he didn't wait to think of it; he instantly edged out
of his place, which he had chosen near the end of a row, and reached one
of the numerous doors. If he had had no definite plan he now had at
least an irresistible impulse, and he felt the prick of shame at having
faltered for a moment. It had been his tacit calculation that Verena,
still enshrined in mystery by her companion, would not have reached the
scene of her performance till within a few minutes of the time at which
she was to come forth; so that he had lost nothing by waiting, up to
this moment, before the platform. But now he must overtake his
opportunity. Before passing out of the hall into the lobby he paused,
and with his back to the stage, gave a look at the gathered auditory. It
had become densely numerous, and, suffused with the evenly distributed
gaslight, which fell from a great elevation, and the thick atmosphere
that hangs for ever in such places, it appeared to pile itself high and
to look dimly expectant and formidable. He had a throb of uneasiness at
his private purpose of balking it of its entertainment, its victim--a
glimpse of the ferocity that lurks in a disappointed mob. But the
thought of that danger only made him pass more quickly through the ugly
corridors; he felt that his plan was definite enough now, and he found
that he had no need even of asking the way to a certain small door (one
or more of them), which he meant to push open. In taking his place in
the morning he had assured himself as to the side of the house on which
(with its approach to the platform) the withdrawing room of singers and
speakers was situated; he had chosen his seat in that quarter, and he
now had not far to go before he reached it. No one heeded or challenged
him; Miss Tarrant's auditors were still pouring in (the occasion was
evidently to have been an unprecedented success of curiosity), and had
all the attention of the ushers. Ransom opened a door at the end of the
passage, and it admitted him into a sort of vestibule, quite bare save
that at a second door, opposite to him, stood a figure at the sight of
which he paused for a moment in his advance.
The figure was simply that of a robust policeman, in his helmet and
brass buttons--a policeman who was expecting him--Ransom could see that
in a twinkling. He judged in the same space of time that Olive
Chancellor had heard of his having arrived and had applied for the
protection of this functionary, who was now simply guarding the ingress
and was prepared to defend it against all comers. There was a slight
element of surprise in this, as he had reasoned that his nervous
kinswoman was absent from her house for the day--had been spending it
all in Verena's retreat, wherever that was. The surprise was not great
enough, however, to interrupt his course for more than an instant, and
he crossed the room and stood before the belted sentinel. For a moment
neither spoke; they looked at each other very hard in the eyes, and
Ransom heard the organ, beyond partitions, launching its waves of sound
through the hall. They seemed to be very near it, and the whole place
vibrated. The policeman was a tall, lean-faced, sallow man, with a stoop
of the shoulders, a small, steady eye, and something in his mouth which
made a protuberance in his cheek. Ransom could see that he was very
strong, but he believed that he himself was not materially less so.
However, he had not come there to show physical fight--a public tussle
about Verena was not an attractive idea, except perhaps, after all, if
he should get the worst of it, from the point of view of Olive's new
system of advertising; and, moreover, it would not be in the least
necessary. Still he said nothing, and still the policeman remained dumb,
and there was something in the way the moments elapsed and in our young
man's consciousness that Verena was separated from him only by a couple
of thin planks, which made him feel that she too expected him, but in
another sense; that she had nothing to do with this parade of
resistance, that she would know in a moment, by quick intuition, that he
was there, and that she was only praying to be rescued, to be saved.
Face to face with Olive she hadn't the courage, but she would have it
with her hand in his. It came to him that there was no one in the world
less sure of her business just at that moment than Olive Chancellor; it
was as if he could see, through the door, the terrible way her eyes were
fixed on Verena while she held her watch in her hand and Verena looked
away from her. Olive would have been so thankful that she should begin
before the hour, but of course that was impossible. Ransom asked no
questions--that seemed a waste of time; he only said, after a minute, to
the policeman:
"I should like very much to see Miss Tarrant, if you will be so good as
to take in my card."
The guardian of order, well planted just between him and the handle of
the door, took from Ransom the morsel of pasteboard which he held out to
him, read slowly the name inscribed on it, turned it over and looked at
the back, then returned it to his interlocutor. "Well, I guess it ain't
much use," he remarked.
"How can you know that? You have no business to decline my request."
"Well, I guess I have about as much business as you have to make it."
Then he added, "You are just the very man she wants to keep out."
"I don't think Miss Tarrant wants to keep me out," Ransom returned.
"I don't know much about her, she hasn't hired the hall. It's the other
one--Miss Chancellor; it's her that runs this lecture."
"And she has asked you to keep me out? How absurd!" exclaimed Ransom
ingeniously.
"She tells me you're none too fit to be round alone; you have got this
thing on the brain. I guess you'd better be quiet," said the policeman.
"Quiet? Is it possible to be more quiet than I am?"
"Well, I've seen crazy folks that were a good deal like you. If you want
to see the speaker why don't you go and set round in the hall, with the
rest of the public?" And the policeman waited, in an immovable,
ruminating, reasonable manner, for an answer to this inquiry.
Ransom had one, on the instant, at his service. "Because I don't want
simply to see her; I want also to speak to her--in private."
"Yes--it's always intensely private," said the policeman. "Now I
wouldn't lose the lecture if I was you. I guess it will do you good."
"The lecture?" Ransom repeated, laughing. "It won't take place."
"Yes it will--as quick as the organ stops." Then the policeman added, as
to himself, "Why the devil don't it?"
"Because Miss Tarrant has sent up to the organist to tell him to keep
on."
"Who has she sent, do you s'pose?" And Ransom's new acquaintance entered
into his humour. "I guess Miss Chancellor isn't her nigger."
"She has sent her father, or perhaps even her mother. They are in there
too."
"How do you know that?" asked the policeman consideringly.
"Oh, I know everything," Ransom answered, smiling.
"Well, I guess they didn't come here to listen to that organ. We'll hear
something else before long, if he doesn't stop."
"You will hear a good deal, very soon," Ransom remarked.
The serenity of his self-confidence appeared at last to make an
impression on his antagonist, who lowered his head a little, like some
butting animal, and looked at the young man from beneath bushy eyebrows.
"Well, I _have_ heard a good deal, since I've been in Boston."
"Oh, Boston's a great place," Ransom rejoined inattentively. He was not
listening to the policeman or to the organ now, for the sound of voices
had reached him from the other side of the door. The policeman took no
further notice of it than to lean back against the panels, with folded
arms; and there was another pause, between them, during which the
playing of the organ ceased.
"I will just wait here, with your permission," said Ransom, "and
presently I shall be called."
"Who do you s'pose will call you?"
"Well, Miss Tarrant, I hope."
"She'll have to square the other one first."
Ransom took out his watch, which he had adapted, on purpose, several
hours before, to Boston time, and saw that the minutes had sped with
increasing velocity during this interview, and that it now marked five
minutes past eight. "Miss Chancellor will have to square the public," he
said in a moment; and the words were far from being an empty profession
of security, for the conviction already in possession of him, that a
drama in which he, though cut off, was an actor, had been going on for
some time in the apartment he was prevented from entering, that the
situation was extraordinarily strained there, and that it could not come
to an end without an appeal to him--this transcendental assumption
acquired an infinitely greater force the instant he perceived that
Verena was even now keeping her audience waiting. Why didn't she go on?
Why, except that she knew he was there, and was gaining time?
"Well, I guess she has shown herself," said the door-keeper, whose
discussion with Ransom now appeared to have passed, on his own part, and
without the slightest prejudice to his firmness, into a sociable,
gossiping phase.
"If she had shown herself, we should hear the reception, the applause."
"Well, there they air; they are going to give it to her," the policeman
announced.
He had an odious appearance of being in the right, for there indeed they
seemed to be--they were giving it to her. A general hubbub rose from the
floor and the galleries of the hall--the sound of several thousand
people stamping with their feet and rapping with their umbrellas and
sticks. Ransom felt faint, and for a little while he stood with his gaze
interlocked with that of the policeman. Then suddenly a wave of coolness
seemed to break over him, and he exclaimed: "My dear fellow, that isn't
applause--it's impatience. It isn't a reception, it's a call!"
The policeman neither assented to this proposition nor denied it; he
only transferred the protuberance in his cheek to the other side, and
observed:
"I guess she's sick."
"Oh, I hope not!" said Ransom, very gently. The stamping and rapping
swelled and swelled for a minute, and then it subsided; but before it
had done so Ransom's definition of it had plainly become the true one.
The tone of the manifestation was good-humoured, but it was not
gratulatory. He looked at his watch again, and saw that five minutes
more had elapsed, and he remembered what the newspaperman in Charles
Street had said about Olive's guaranteeing Verena's punctuality. Oddly
enough, at the moment the image of this gentleman recurred to him, the
gentleman himself burst through the other door, in a state of the
liveliest agitation.
"Why in the name of goodness don't she go on? If she wants to make them
call her, they've done it about enough!" Mr. Pardon turned, pressingly,
from Ransom to the policeman and back again, and in his preoccupation
gave no sign of having met the Mississippian before.
"I guess she's sick," said the policeman.
"The public'll be sick!" cried the distressed reporter. "If she's sick,
why doesn't she send for a doctor? All Boston is packed into this house,
and she has got to talk to it. I want to go in and see."
"You can't go in," said the policeman drily.
"Why can't I go in, I should like to know? I want to go in for the
_Vesper_"!
"You can't go in for anything. I'm keeping this man out, too," the
policeman added genially, as if to make Mr. Pardon's exclusion appear
less invidious.
"Why, they'd ought to let _you_ in," said Matthias, staring a moment at
Ransom.
"May be they'd ought, but they won't," the policeman remarked.
"Gracious me!" panted Mr. Pardon; "I knew from the first Miss Chancellor
would make a mess of it! Where's Mr. Filer?" he went on eagerly,
addressing himself apparently to either of the others, or to both.
"I guess he's at the door, counting the money," said the policeman.
"Well, he'll have to give it back if he don't look out!"
"Maybe he will. I'll let _him_ in if he comes, but he's the only one.
She is on now," the policeman added, without emotion.
His ear had caught the first faint murmur of another explosion of sound.
This time, unmistakably, it was applause--the clapping of multitudinous
hands, mingled with the noise of many throats. The demonstration,
however, though considerable, was not what might have been expected, and
it died away quickly. Mr. Pardon stood listening, with an expression of
some alarm. "Merciful fathers! can't they give her more than that?" he
cried. "I'll just fly round and see!"
When he had hurried away again, Ransom said to the policeman--"Who is
Mr. Filer?"
"Oh, he's an old friend of mine. He's the man that runs Miss
Chancellor."
"That runs her?"
"Just the same as she runs Miss Tarrant. He runs the pair, as you might
say. He's in the lecture-business."
"Then he had better talk to the public himself."
"Oh, _he_ can't talk; he can only boss!"
The opposite door at this moment was pushed open again, and a large,
heated-looking man, with a little stiff beard on the end of his chin and
his overcoat flying behind him, strode forward with an imprecation.
"What the h---- are they doing in the parlour? This sort of thing's
about played out!"
"Ain't she up there now?" the policeman asked.
"It's not Miss Tarrant," Ransom said, as if he knew all about it. He
perceived in a moment that this was Mr. Filer, Olive Chancellor's agent;
an inference instantly followed by the reflexion that such a personage
would have been warned against him by his kinswoman and would doubtless
attempt to hold him, or his influence, accountable for Verena's
unexpected delay. Mr. Filer only glanced at him, however, and to
Ransom's surprise appeared to have no theory of his identity; a fact
implying that Miss Chancellor had considered that the greater discretion
was (except to the policeman) to hold her tongue about him altogether.
"Up there? It's her jackass of a father that's up there!" cried Mr.
Filer, with his hand on the latch of the door, which the policeman had
allowed him to approach.
"Is he asking for a doctor?" the latter inquired dispassionately.
"You're the sort of doctor he'll want, if he doesn't produce the girl!
You don't mean to say they've locked themselves in? What the plague are
they after?"
"They've got the key on that side," said the policeman, while Mr. Filer
discharged at the door a volley of sharp knocks, at the same time
violently shaking the handle.
"If the door was locked, what was the good of your standing before it?"
Ransom inquired.
"So as you couldn't do that"; and the policeman nodded at Mr. Filer.
"You see your interference has done very little good."
"I dunno; she has got to come out yet."
Mr. Filer meanwhile had continued to thump and shake, demanding instant
admission and inquiring if they were going to let the audience pull the
house down. Another round of applause had broken out, directed
perceptibly to some apology, some solemn circumlocution, of Selah
Tarrant's; this covered the sound of the agent's voice, as well as that
of a confused and divided response, proceeding from the parlour. For a
minute nothing definite was audible; the door remained closed, and
Matthias Pardon reappeared in the vestibule.
"He says she's just a little faint--from nervousness. She'll be all
ready in about three minutes." This announcement was Mr. Pardon's
contribution to the crisis; and he added that the crowd was a lovely
crowd, it was a real Boston crowd, it was perfectly good-humoured.
"There's a lovely crowd, and a real Boston one too, I guess, in here!"
cried Mr. Filer, now banging very hard. "I've handled prima donnas, and
I've handled natural curiosities, but I've never seen anything up to
this. Mind what I say, ladies; if you don't let me in, I'll smash down
the door!"
"Don't seem as if _you_ could make it much worse, does it?" the
policeman observed to Ransom, strolling aside a little, with the air of
being superseded.