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_ VOLUME I. BOOK FIRST. CHAPTER II.
Whether much or little consideration had been directed to the result,
Miss Chancellor certainly would not have incurred this reproach. She was
habited in a plain dark dress, without any ornaments, and her smooth,
colourless hair was confined as carefully as that of her sister was
encouraged to stray. She had instantly seated herself, and while Mrs.
Luna talked she kept her eyes on the ground, glancing even less toward
Basil Ransom than toward that woman of many words. The young man was
therefore free to look at her; a contemplation which showed him that she
was agitated and trying to conceal it. He wondered why she was agitated,
not foreseeing that he was destined to discover, later, that her nature
was like a skiff in a stormy sea. Even after her sister had passed out
of the room she sat there with her eyes turned away, as if there had
been a spell upon her which forbade her to raise them. Miss Olive
Chancellor, it may be confided to the reader, to whom in the course of
our history I shall be under the necessity of imparting much occult
information, was subject to fits of tragic shyness, during which she was
unable to meet even her own eyes in the mirror. One of these fits had
suddenly seized her now, without any obvious cause, though, indeed, Mrs.
Luna had made it worse by becoming instantly so personal. There was
nothing in the world so personal as Mrs. Luna; her sister could have
hated her for it if she had not forbidden herself this emotion as
directed to individuals. Basil Ransom was a young man of first-rate
intelligence, but conscious of the narrow range, as yet, of his
experience. He was on his guard against generalisations which might be
hasty; but he had arrived at two or three that were of value to a
gentleman lately admitted to the New York bar and looking out for
clients. One of them was to the effect that the simplest division it is
possible to make of the human race is into the people who take things
hard and the people who take them easy. He perceived very quickly that
Miss Chancellor belonged to the former class. This was written so
intensely in her delicate face that he felt an unformulated pity for her
before they had exchanged twenty words. He himself, by nature, took
things easy; if he had put on the screw of late, it was after reflexion,
and because circumstances pressed him close. But this pale girl, with
her light-green eyes, her pointed features and nervous manner, was
visibly morbid; it was as plain as day that she was morbid. Poor Ransom
announced this fact to himself as if he had made a great discovery; but
in reality he had never been so "Boeotian" as at that moment. It proved
nothing of any importance, with regard to Miss Chancellor, to say that
she was morbid; any sufficient account of her would lie very much to the
rear of that. Why was she morbid, and why was her morbidness typical?
Ransom might have exulted if he had gone back far enough to explain that
mystery. The women he had hitherto known had been mainly of his own soft
clime, and it was not often they exhibited the tendency he detected (and
cursorily deplored) in Mrs. Luna's sister. That was the way he liked
them--not to think too much, not to feel any responsibility for the
government of the world, such as he was sure Miss Chancellor felt. If
they would only be private and passive, and have no feeling but for
that, and leave publicity to the sex of tougher hide! Ransom was pleased
with the vision of that remedy; it must be repeated that he was very
provincial.
These considerations were not present to him as definitely as I have
written them here; they were summed up in the vague compassion which his
cousin's figure excited in his mind, and which was yet accompanied with
a sensible reluctance to know her better, obvious as it was that with
such a face as that she must be remarkable. He was sorry for her, but he
saw in a flash that no one could help her: that was what made her
tragic. He had not, seeking his fortune, come away from the blighted
South, which weighed upon his heart, to look out for tragedies; at least
he didn't want them outside of his office in Pine Street. He broke the
silence ensuing upon Mrs. Luna's departure by one of the courteous
speeches to which blighted regions may still encourage a tendency, and
presently found himself talking comfortably enough with his hostess.
Though he had said to himself that no one could help her, the effect of
his tone was to dispel her shyness; it was her great advantage (for the
career she had proposed to herself) that in certain conditions she was
liable suddenly to become bold. She was reassured at finding that her
visitor was peculiar; the way he spoke told her that it was no wonder he
had fought on the Southern side. She had never yet encountered a
personage so exotic, and she always felt more at her ease in the
presence of anything strange. It was the usual things of life that
filled her with silent rage; which was natural enough, inasmuch as, to
her vision, almost everything that was usual was iniquitous. She had no
difficulty in asking him now whether he would not stay to dinner--she
hoped Adeline had given him her message. It had been when she was
upstairs with Adeline, as his card was brought up, a sudden and very
abnormal inspiration to offer him this (for her) really ultimate favour;
nothing could be further from her common habit than to entertain alone,
at any repast, a gentleman she had never seen.
It was the same sort of impulse that had moved her to write to Basil
Ransom, in the spring, after hearing accidentally that he had come to
the North and intended, in New York, to practise his profession. It was
her nature to look out for duties, to appeal to her conscience for
tasks. This attentive organ, earnestly consulted, had represented to her
that he was an offshoot of the old slave-holding oligarchy which, within
her own vivid remembrance, had plunged the country into blood and tears,
and that, as associated with such abominations, he was not a worthy
object of patronage for a person whose two brothers--her only ones--had
given up life for the Northern cause. It reminded her, however, on the
other hand, that he too had been much bereaved, and, moreover, that he
had fought and offered his own life, even if it had not been taken. She
could not defend herself against a rich admiration--a kind of tenderness
of envy--of any one who had been so happy as to have that opportunity.
The most secret, the most sacred hope of her nature was that she might
some day have such a chance, that she might be a martyr and die for
something. Basil Ransom had lived, but she knew he had lived to see
bitter hours. His family was ruined; they had lost their slaves, their
property, their friends and relations, their home; had tasted of all the
cruelty of defeat. He had tried for a while to carry on the plantation
himself, but he had a millstone of debt round his neck, and he longed
for some work which would transport him to the haunts of men. The State
of Mississippi seemed to him the state of despair; so he surrendered the
remnants of his patrimony to his mother and sisters, and, at nearly
thirty years of age, alighted for the first time in New York, in the
costume of his province, with fifty dollars in his pocket and a gnawing
hunger in his heart.
That this incident had revealed to the young man his ignorance of many
things--only, however, to make him say to himself, after the first angry
blush, that here he would enter the game and here he would win it--so
much Olive Chancellor could not know; what was sufficient for her was
that he had rallied, as the French say, had accepted the accomplished
fact, had admitted that North and South were a single, indivisible
political organism. Their cousinship--that of Chancellors and
Ransoms--was not very close; it was the kind of thing that one might
take up or leave alone, as one pleased. It was "in the female line," as
Basil Ransom had written, in answering her letter with a good deal of
form and flourish; he spoke as if they had been royal houses. Her mother
had wished to take it up; it was only the fear of seeming patronising to
people in misfortune that had prevented her from writing to Mississippi.
If it had been possible to send Mrs. Ransom money, or even clothes, she
would have liked that; but she had no means of ascertaining how such an
offering would be taken. By the time Basil came to the North--making
advances, as it were--Mrs. Chancellor had passed away; so it was for
Olive, left alone in the little house in Charles Street (Adeline being
in Europe), to decide.
She knew what her mother would have done, and that helped her decision;
for her mother always chose the positive course. Olive had a fear of
everything, but her greatest fear was of being afraid. She wished
immensely to be generous, and how could one be generous unless one ran a
risk? She had erected it into a sort of rule of conduct that whenever
she saw a risk she was to take it; and she had frequent humiliations at
finding herself safe after all. She was perfectly safe after writing to
Basil Ransom; and, indeed, it was difficult to see what he could have
done to her except thank her (he was only exceptionally superlative) for
her letter, and assure her that he would come and see her the first time
his business (he was beginning to get a little) should take him to
Boston. He had now come, in redemption of his grateful vow, and even
this did not make Miss Chancellor feel that she had courted danger. She
saw (when once she had looked at him) that he would not put those
worldly interpretations on things which, with her, it was both an
impulse and a principle to defy. He was too simple--too
Mississippian--for that; she was almost disappointed. She certainly had
not hoped that she might have struck him as making unwomanly overtures
(Miss Chancellor hated this epithet almost as much as she hated its
opposite); but she had a presentiment that he would be too good-natured,
primitive to that degree. Of all things in the world, contention was
most sweet to her (though why it is hard to imagine, for it always cost
her tears, headaches, a day or two in bed, acute emotion), and it was
very possible Basil Ransom would not care to contend. Nothing could be
more displeasing than this indifference when people didn't agree with
you. That he should agree she did not in the least expect of him; how
could a Mississippian agree? If she had supposed he would agree, she
would not have written to him. _
Read next: Chapter 3
Read previous: Chapter 1 (Volume 1 Book 1)
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