When he had told her that if she would take him as he was he should be
very happy to dine with her, she excused herself a moment and went to
give an order in the dining-room. The young man, left alone, looked
about the parlour--the two parlours which, in their prolonged, adjacent
narrowness, formed evidently one apartment--and wandered to the windows
at the back, where there was a view of the water; Miss Chancellor having
the good fortune to dwell on that side of Charles Street toward which,
in the rear, the afternoon sun slants redly, from an horizon indented at
empty intervals with wooden spires, the masts of lonely boats, the
chimneys of dirty "works," over a brackish expanse of anomalous
character, which is too big for a river and too small for a bay. The
view seemed to him very picturesque, though in the gathered dusk little
was left of it save a cold yellow streak in the west, a gleam of brown
water, and the reflexion of the lights that had begun to show themselves
in a row of houses, impressive to Ransom in their extreme modernness,
which overlooked the same lagoon from a long embankment on the left,
constructed of stones roughly piled. He thought this prospect, from a
city-house, almost romantic; and he turned from it back to the interior
illuminated now by a lamp which the parlour-maid had placed on a table
while he stood at the window as to something still more genial and
interesting. The artistic sense in Basil Ransom had not been highly
cultivated; neither (though he had passed his early years as the son of
a rich man) was his conception of material comfort very definite; it
consisted mainly of the vision of plenty of cigars and brandy and water
and newspapers, and a cane-bottomed arm-chair of the right inclination,
from which he could stretch his legs. Nevertheless it seemed to him he
had never seen an interior that was so much an interior as this queer
corridor-shaped drawing-room of his new-found kinswoman; he had never
felt himself in the presence of so much organised privacy or of so many
objects that spoke of habits and tastes. Most of the people he had
hitherto known had no tastes; they had a few habits, but these were not
of a sort that required much upholstery. He had not as yet been in many
houses in New York, and he had never before seen so many accessories.
The general character of the place struck him as Bostonian; this was, in
fact, very much what he had supposed Boston to be. He had always heard
Boston was a city of culture, and now there was culture in Miss
Chancellor's tables and sofas, in the books that were everywhere, on
little shelves like brackets (as if a book were a statuette), in the
photographs and watercolours that covered the walls, in the curtains
that were festooned rather stiffly in the doorways. He looked at some of
the books and saw that his cousin read German; and his impression of the
importance of this (as a symptom of superiority) was not diminished by
the fact that he himself had mastered the tongue (knowing it contained a
large literature of jurisprudence) during a long, empty, deadly summer
on the plantation. It is a curious proof of a certain crude modesty
inherent in Basil Ransom that the main effect of his observing his
cousin's German books was to give him an idea of the natural energy of
Northerners. He had noticed it often before; he had already told himself
that he must count with it. It was only after much experience he made
the discovery that few Northerners were, in their secret soul, so
energetic as he. Many other persons had made it before that. He knew
very little about Miss Chancellor; he had come to see her only because
she wrote to him; he would never have thought of looking her up, and
since then there had been no one in New York he might ask about her.
Therefore he could only guess that she was a rich young woman; such a
house, inhabited in such a way by a quiet spinster, implied a
considerable income. How much? he asked himself; five thousand, ten
thousand, fifteen thousand a year? There was richness to our panting
young man in the smallest of these figures. He was not of a mercenary
spirit, but he had an immense desire for success, and he had more than
once reflected that a moderate capital was an aid to achievement. He had
seen in his younger years one of the biggest failures that history
commemorates, an immense national _fiasco_, and it had implanted in his
mind a deep aversion to the ineffectual. It came over him, while he
waited for his hostess to reappear, that she was unmarried as well as
rich, that she was sociable (her letter answered for that) as well as
single; and he had for a moment a whimsical vision of becoming a partner
in so flourishing a firm. He ground his teeth a little as he thought of
the contrasts of the human lot; this cushioned feminine nest made him
feel unhoused and underfed. Such a mood, however, could only be
momentary, for he was conscious at bottom of a bigger stomach than all
the culture of Charles Street could fill.
Afterwards, when his cousin had come back and they had gone down to
dinner together, where he sat facing her at a little table decorated in
the middle with flowers, a position from which he had another view,
through a window where the curtain remained undrawn by her direction
(she called his attention to this--it was for his benefit), of the
dusky, empty river, spotted with points of light--at this period, I say,
it was very easy for him to remark to himself that nothing would induce
him to make love to such a type as that. Several months later, in New
York, in conversation with Mrs. Luna, of whom he was destined to see a
good deal, he alluded by chance to this repast, to the way her sister
had placed him at table, and to the remark with which she had pointed
out the advantage of his seat.
"That's what they call in Boston being very 'thoughtful,'" Mrs. Luna
said, "giving you the Back Bay (don't you hate the name?) to look at,
and then taking credit for it."
This, however, was in the future; what Basil Ransom actually perceived
was that Miss Chancellor was a signal old maid. That was her quality,
her destiny; nothing could be more distinctly written. There are women
who are unmarried by accident, and others who are unmarried by option;
but Olive Chancellor was unmarried by every implication of her being.
She was a spinster as Shelley was a lyric poet, or as the month of
August is sultry. She was so essentially a celibate that Ransom found
himself thinking of her as old, though when he came to look at her (as
he said to himself) it was apparent that her years were fewer than his
own. He did not dislike her, she had been so friendly; but, little by
little, she gave him an uneasy feeling--the sense that you could never
be safe with a person who took things so hard. It came over him that it
was because she took things hard she had sought his acquaintance; it had
been because she was strenuous, not because she was genial; she had had
in her eye--and what an extraordinary eye it was!--not a pleasure, but a
duty. She would expect him to be strenuous in return; but he
couldn't--in private life, he couldn't; privacy for Basil Ransom
consisted entirely in what he called "laying off." She was not so plain
on further acquaintance as she had seemed to him at first; even the
young Mississippian had culture enough to see that she was refined. Her
white skin had a singular look of being drawn tightly across her face;
but her features, though sharp and irregular, were delicate in a fashion
that suggested good breeding. Their line was perverse, but it was not
poor. The curious tint of her eyes was a living colour; when she turned
it upon you, you thought vaguely of the glitter of green ice. She had
absolutely no figure, and presented a certain appearance of feeling
cold. With all this, there was something very modern and highly
developed in her aspect; she had the advantages as well as the drawbacks
of a nervous organisation. She smiled constantly at her guest, but from
the beginning to the end of dinner, though he made several remarks that
he thought might prove amusing, she never once laughed. Later, he saw
that she was a woman without laughter; exhilaration, if it ever visited
her, was dumb. Once only, in the course of his subsequent acquaintance
with her, did it find a voice; and then the sound remained in Ransom's
ear as one of the strangest he had heard.
She asked him a great many questions, and made no comment on his
answers, which only served to suggest to her fresh inquiries. Her
shyness had quite left her, it did not come back; she had confidence
enough to wish him to see that she took a great interest in him. Why
should she? he wondered, He couldn't believe he was one of _her_ kind;
he was conscious of much Bohemianism--he drank beer, in New York, in
cellars, knew no ladies, and was familiar with a "variety" actress.
Certainly, as she knew him better, she would disapprove of him, though,
of course, he would never mention the actress, nor even, if necessary,
the beer. Ransom's conception of vice was purely as a series of special
cases, of explicable accidents. Not that he cared; if it were a part of
the Boston character to be inquiring, he would be to the last a
courteous Mississippian. He would tell her about Mississippi as much as
she liked; he didn't care how much he told her that the old ideas in the
South were played out. She would not understand him any the better for
that; she would not know how little his own views could be gathered from
such a limited admission. What her sister imparted to him about her
mania for "reform" had left in his mouth a kind of unpleasant
aftertaste; he felt, at any rate, that if she had the religion of
humanity--Basil Ransom had read Comte, he had read everything--she would
never understand him. He, too, had a private vision of reform, but the
first principle of it was to reform the reformers. As they drew to the
close of a meal which, in spite of all latent incompatibilities, had
gone off brilliantly, she said to him that she should have to leave him
after dinner, unless perhaps he should be inclined to accompany her. She
was going to a small gathering at the house of a friend who had asked a
few people, "interested in new ideas," to meet Mrs. Farrinder.
"Oh, thank you," said Basil Ransom. "Is it a party? I haven't been to a
party since Mississippi seceded."
"No; Miss Birdseye doesn't give parties. She's an ascetic."
"Oh, well, we have had our dinner," Ransom rejoined, laughing.
His hostess sat silent a moment, with her eyes on the ground; she looked
at such times as if she were hesitating greatly between several things
she might say, all so important that it was difficult to choose.
"I think it might interest you," she remarked presently. "You will hear
some discussion, if you are fond of that. Perhaps you wouldn't agree,"
she added, resting her strange eyes on him.
"Perhaps I shouldn't--I don't agree with everything," he said, smiling
and stroking his leg.
"Don't you care for human progress?" Miss Chancellor went on.
"I don't know--I never saw any. Are you going to show me some?"
"I can show you an earnest effort towards it. That's the most one can be
sure of. But I am not sure you are worthy."
"Is it something very Bostonian? I should like to see that," said Basil
Ransom.
"There are movements in other cities. Mrs. Farrinder goes everywhere;
she may speak to-night."
"Mrs. Farrinder, the celebrated----?"
"Yes, the celebrated; the great apostle of the emancipation of women.
She is a great friend of Miss Birdseye."
"And who is Miss Birdseye?"
"She is one of our celebrities. She is the woman in the world, I
suppose, who has laboured most for every wise reform. I think I ought to
tell you," Miss Chancellor went on in a moment, "she was one of the
earliest, one of the most passionate, of the old Abolitionists."
She had thought, indeed, she ought to tell him that, and it threw her
into a little tremor of excitement to do so. Yet, if she had been afraid
he would show some irritation at this news, she was disappointed at the
geniality with which he exclaimed:
"Why, poor old lady--she must be quite mature!"
It was therefore with some severity that she rejoined:
"She will never be old. She is the youngest spirit I know. But if you
are not in sympathy, perhaps you had better not come," she went on.
"In sympathy with what, dear madam?" Basil Ransom asked, failing still,
to her perception, to catch the tone of real seriousness. "If, as you
say, there is to be a discussion, there will be different sides, and of
course one can't sympathise with both."
"Yes, but every one will, in his way--or in her way--plead the cause of
the new truths. If you don't care for them, you won't go with us."
"I tell you I haven't the least idea what they are! I have never yet
encountered in the world any but old truths--as old as the sun and moon.
How can I know? But _do_ take me; it's such a chance to see Boston."
"It isn't Boston--it's humanity!" Miss Chancellor, as she made this
remark, rose from her chair, and her movement seemed to say that she
consented. But before she quitted her kinsman to get ready, she observed
to him that she was sure he knew what she meant; he was only pretending
he didn't.
"Well, perhaps, after all, I have a general idea," he confessed; "but
don't you see how this little reunion will give me a chance to fix it?"
She lingered an instant, with her anxious face. "Mrs. Farrinder will fix
it!" she said; and she went to prepare herself.
It was in this poor young lady's nature to be anxious, to have scruple
within scruple and to forecast the consequences of things. She returned
in ten minutes, in her bonnet, which she had apparently assumed in
recognition of Miss Birdseye's asceticism. As she stood there drawing on
her gloves--her visitor had fortified himself against Mrs. Farrinder by
another glass of wine--she declared to him that she quite repented of
having proposed to him to go; something told her that he would be an
unfavourable element.
"Why, is it going to be a spiritual _séance_?" Basil Ransom asked.
"Well, I have heard at Miss Birdseye's some inspirational speaking."
Olive Chancellor was determined to look him straight in the face as she
said this; her sense of the way it might strike him operated as a
cogent, not as a deterrent, reason.
"Why, Miss Olive, it's just got up on purpose for me!" cried the young
Mississippian, radiant, and clasping his hands. She thought him very
handsome as he said this, but reflected that unfortunately men didn't
care for the truth, especially the new kinds, in proportion as they were
good-looking. She had, however, a moral resource that she could always
fall back upon; it had already been a comfort to her, on occasions of
acute feeling, that she hated men, as a class, anyway. "And I want so
much to see an old Abolitionist; I have never laid eyes on one," Basil
Ransom added.
"Of course you couldn't see one in the South; you were too afraid of
them to let them come there!" She was now trying to think of something
she might say that would be sufficiently disagreeable to make him cease
to insist on accompanying her; for, strange to record--if anything, in a
person of that intense sensibility, be stranger than any other--her
second thought with regard to having asked him had deepened with the
elapsing moments into an unreasoned terror of the effect of his
presence. "Perhaps Miss Birdseye won't like you," she went on, as they
waited for the carriage.
"I don't know; I reckon she will," said Basil Ransom good-humouredly. He
evidently had no intention of giving up his opportunity.
From the window of the dining-room, at that moment, they heard the
carriage drive up. Miss Birdseye lived at the South End; the distance
was considerable, and Miss Chancellor had ordered a hackney-coach, it
being one of the advantages of living in Charles Street that stables
were near. The logic of her conduct was none of the clearest; for if she
had been alone she would have proceeded to her destination by the aid of
the street-car; not from economy (for she had the good fortune not to be
obliged to consult it to that degree), and not from any love of
wandering about Boston at night (a kind of exposure she greatly
disliked), but by reason of a theory she devotedly nursed, a theory
which bade her put off invidious differences and mingle in the common
life. She would have gone on foot to Boylston Street, and there she
would have taken the public conveyance (in her heart she loathed it) to
the South End. Boston was full of poor girls who had to walk about at
night and to squeeze into horse-cars in which every sense was
displeased; and why should she hold herself superior to these? Olive
Chancellor regulated her conduct on lofty principles, and this is why,
having to-night the advantage of a gentleman's protection, she sent for
a carriage to obliterate that patronage. If they had gone together in
the common way she would have seemed to owe it to him that she should be
so daring, and he belonged to a sex to which she wished to be under no
obligations. Months before, when she wrote to him, it had been with the
sense, rather, of putting _him_ in debt. As they rolled toward the South
End, side by side, in a good deal of silence, bouncing and bumping over
the railway-tracks very little less, after all, than if their wheels had
been fitted to them, and looking out on either side at rows of red
houses, dusky in the lamp-light, with protuberant fronts, approached by
ladders of stone; as they proceeded, with these contemplative
undulations, Miss Chancellor said to her companion, with a concentrated
desire to defy him, as a punishment for having thrown her (she couldn't
tell why) into such a tremor:
"Don't you believe, then, in the coming of a better day--in its being
possible to do something for the human race?"
Poor Ransom perceived the defiance, and he felt rather bewildered; he
wondered what type, after all, he _had_ got hold of, and what game was
being played with him. Why had she made advances, if she wanted to pinch
him this way? However, he was good for any game--that one as well as
another--and he saw that he was "in" for something of which he had long
desired to have a nearer view. "Well, Miss Olive," he answered, putting
on again his big hat, which he had been holding in his lap, "what
strikes me most is that the human race has got to bear its troubles."
"That's what men say to women, to make them patient in the position they
have made for them."
"Oh, the position of women!" Basil Ransom exclaimed. "The position of
women is to make fools of men. I would change my position for yours any
day," he went on. "That's what I said to myself as I sat there in your
elegant home."
He could not see, in the dimness of the carriage, that she had flushed
quickly, and he did not know that she disliked to be reminded of certain
things which, for her, were mitigations of the hard feminine lot. But
the passionate quaver with which, a moment later, she answered him
sufficiently assured him that he had touched her at a tender point.
"Do you make it a reproach to me that I happen to have a little money?
The dearest wish of my heart is to do something with it for others--for
the miserable."
Basil Ransom might have greeted this last declaration with the sympathy
it deserved, might have commended the noble aspirations of his
kinswoman. But what struck him, rather, was the oddity of so sudden a
sharpness of pitch in an intercourse which, an hour or two before, had
begun in perfect amity, and he burst once more into an irrepressible
laugh. This made his companion feel, with intensity, how little she was
joking. "I don't know why I should care what you think," she said.
"Don't care--don't care. What does it matter? It is not of the slightest
importance."
He might say that, but it was not true; she felt that there were reasons
why she should care. She had brought him into her life, and she should
have to pay for it. But she wished to know the worst at once. "Are you
against our emancipation?" she asked, turning a white face on him in the
momentary radiance of a street-lamp.
"Do you mean your voting and preaching and all that sort of thing?" He
made this inquiry, but seeing how seriously she would take his answer,
he was almost frightened, and hung fire. "I will tell you when I have
heard Mrs. Farrinder."
They had arrived at the address given by Miss Chancellor to the
coachman, and their vehicle stopped with a lurch. Basil Ransom got out;
he stood at the door with an extended hand, to assist the young lady.
But she seemed to hesitate; she sat there with her spectral face. "You
hate it!" she exclaimed, in a low tone.
"Miss Birdseye will convert me," said Ransom, with intention; for he had
grown very curious, and he was afraid that now, at the last, Miss
Chancellor would prevent his entering the house. She alighted without
his help, and behind her he ascended the high steps of Miss Birdseye's
residence. He had grown very curious, and among the things he wanted to
know was why in the world this ticklish spinster had written to him.