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_ VOLUME I. BOOK FIRST. CHAPTER XIV.
"We ought to have some one to meet her," Mrs. Tarrant said; "I presume
she wouldn't care to come out just to see us." "She," between the mother
and the daughter, at this period, could refer only to Olive Chancellor,
who was discussed in the little house at Cambridge at all hours and from
every possible point of view. It was never Verena now who began, for she
had grown rather weary of the topic; she had her own ways of thinking of
it, which were not her mother's, and if she lent herself to this lady's
extensive considerations it was because that was the best way of keeping
her thoughts to herself.
Mrs. Tarrant had an idea that she (Mrs. Tarrant) liked to study people,
and that she was now engaged in an analysis of Miss Chancellor. It
carried her far, and she came out at unexpected times with her results.
It was still her purpose to interpret the world to the ingenious mind of
her daughter, and she translated Miss Chancellor with a confidence which
made little account of the fact that she had seen her but once, while
Verena had this advantage nearly every day. Verena felt that by this
time she knew Olive very well, and her mother's most complicated
versions of motive and temperament (Mrs. Tarrant, with the most
imperfect idea of the meaning of the term, was always talking about
people's temperament) rendered small justice to the phenomena it was now
her privilege to observe in Charles Street. Olive was much more
remarkable than Mrs. Tarrant suspected, remarkable as Mrs. Tarrant
believed her to be. She had opened Verena's eyes to extraordinary
pictures, made the girl believe that she had a heavenly mission, given
her, as we have seen, quite a new measure of the interest of life. These
were larger consequences than the possibility of meeting the leaders of
society at Olive's house. She had met no one, as yet, but Mrs. Luna; her
new friend seemed to wish to keep her quite for herself. This was the
only reproach that Mrs. Tarrant directed to the new friend as yet; she
was disappointed that Verena had not obtained more insight into the
world of fashion. It was one of the prime articles of her faith that the
world of fashion was wicked and hollow, and, moreover, Verena told her
that Miss Chancellor loathed and despised it. She could not have
informed you wherein it would profit her daughter (for the way those
ladies shrank from any new gospel was notorious); nevertheless she was
vexed that Verena shouldn't come back to her with a little more of the
fragrance of Beacon Street. The girl herself would have been the most
interested person in the world if she had not been the most resigned;
she took all that was given her and was grateful, and missed nothing
that was withheld; she was the most extraordinary mixture of eagerness
and docility. Mrs. Tarrant theorised about temperaments and she loved
her daughter; but she was only vaguely aware of the fact that she had at
her side the sweetest flower of character (as one might say) that had
ever bloomed on earth. She was proud of Verena's brightness, and of her
special talent; but the commonness of her own surface was a
non-conductor of the girl's quality. Therefore she thought that it would
add to her success in life to know a few high-flyers, if only to put
them to shame; as if anything could add to Verena's success, as if it
were not supreme success simply to have been made as she was made.
Mrs. Tarrant had gone into town to call upon Miss Chancellor; she
carried out this resolve, on which she had bestowed infinite
consideration, independently of Verena. She had decided that she had a
pretext; her dignity required one, for she felt that at present the
antique pride of the Greenstreets was terribly at the mercy of her
curiosity. She wished to see Miss Chancellor again, and to see her among
her charming appurtenances, which Verena had described to her with great
minuteness. The pretext that she would have valued most was
wanting--that of Olive's having come out to Cambridge to pay the visit
that had been solicited from the first; so she had to take the next
best--she had to say to herself that it was her duty to see what she
should think of a place where her daughter spent so much time. To Miss
Chancellor she would appear to have come to thank her for her
hospitality; she knew, in advance, just the air she should take (or she
fancied she knew it--Mrs. Tarrant's were not always what she supposed),
just the _nuance_ (she had also an impression she knew a little French)
of her tone. Olive, after the lapse of weeks, still showed no symptoms
of presenting herself, and Mrs. Tarrant rebuked Verena with some
sternness for not having made her feel that this attention was due to
the mother of her friend. Verena could scarcely say to her she guessed
Miss Chancellor didn't think much of that personage, true as it was that
the girl had discerned this angular fact, which she attributed to
Olive's extraordinary comprehensiveness of view. Verena herself did not
suppose that her mother occupied a very important place in the universe;
and Miss Chancellor never looked at anything smaller than that. Nor was
she free to report (she was certainly now less frank at home, and,
moreover, the suspicion was only just becoming distinct to her) that
Olive would like to detach her from her parents altogether, and was
therefore not interested in appearing to cultivate relations with them.
Mrs. Tarrant, I may mention, had a further motive: she was consumed with
the desire to behold Mrs. Luna. This circumstance may operate as a proof
that the aridity of her life was great, and if it should have that
effect I shall not be able to gainsay it. She had seen all the people
who went to lectures, but there were hours when she desired, for a
change, to see some who didn't go; and Mrs. Luna, from Verena's
description of her, summed up the characteristics of this eccentric
class.
Verena had given great attention to Olive's brilliant sister; she had
told her friend everything now--everything but one little secret,
namely, that if she could have chosen at the beginning she would have
liked to resemble Mrs. Luna. This lady fascinated her, carried off her
imagination to strange lands; she should enjoy so much a long evening
with her alone, when she might ask her ten thousand questions. But she
never saw her alone, never saw her at all but in glimpses. Adeline
flitted in and out, dressed for dinners and concerts, always saying
something worldly to the young woman from Cambridge, and something to
Olive that had a freedom which she herself would probably never arrive
at (a failure of foresight on Verena's part). But Miss Chancellor never
detained her, never gave Verena a chance to see her, never appeared to
imagine that she could have the least interest in such a person; only
took up the subject again after Adeline had left them--the subject, of
course, which was always the same, the subject of what they should do
together for their suffering sex. It was not that Verena was not
interested in that--gracious, no; it opened up before her, in those
wonderful colloquies with Olive, in the most inspiring way; but her
fancy would make a dart to right or left when other game crossed their
path, and her companion led her, intellectually, a dance in which her
feet--that is, her head--failed her at times for weariness. Mrs. Tarrant
found Miss Chancellor at home, but she was not gratified by even the
most transient glimpse of Mrs. Luna; a fact which, in her heart, Verena
regarded as fortunate, inasmuch as (she said to herself) if her mother,
returning from Charles Street, began to explain Miss Chancellor to her
with fresh energy, and as if she (Verena) had never seen her, and up to
this time they had had nothing to say about her, to what developments
(of the same sort) would not an encounter with Adeline have given rise?
When Verena at last said to her friend that she thought she ought to
come out to Cambridge--she didn't understand why she didn't--Olive
expressed her reasons very frankly, admitted that she was jealous, that
she didn't wish to think of the girl's belonging to any one but herself.
Mr. and Mrs. Tarrant would have authority, opposed claims, and she
didn't wish to see them, to remember that they existed. This was true,
so far as it went; but Olive could not tell Verena everything--could not
tell her that she hated that dreadful pair at Cambridge. As we know, she
had forbidden herself this emotion as regards individuals; and she
flattered herself that she considered the Tarrants as a type, a
deplorable one, a class that, with the public at large, discredited the
cause of the new truths. She had talked them over with Miss Birdseye
(Olive was always looking after her now and giving her things--the good
lady appeared at this period in wonderful caps and shawls--for she felt
she couldn't thank her enough), and even Doctor Prance's fellow-lodger,
whose animosity to flourishing evils lived in the happiest (though the
most illicit) union with the mania for finding excuses, even Miss
Birdseye was obliged to confess that if you came to examine his record,
poor Selah didn't amount to so very much. How little he amounted to
Olive perceived after she had made Verena talk, as the girl did
immensely, about her father and mother--quite unconscious, meanwhile, of
the conclusions she suggested to Miss Chancellor. Tarrant was a moralist
without moral sense--that was very clear to Olive as she listened to the
history of his daughter's childhood and youth, which Verena related with
an extraordinary artless vividness. This narrative, tremendously
fascinating to Miss Chancellor, made her feel in all sorts of
ways--prompted her to ask herself whether the girl was also destitute of
the perception of right and wrong. No, she was only supremely innocent;
she didn't understand, she didn't interpret nor see the _portee_ of what
she described; she had no idea whatever of judging her parents. Olive
had wished to "realise" the conditions in which her wonderful young
friend (she thought her more wonderful every day) had developed, and to
this end, as I have related, she prompted her to infinite discourse. But
now she was satisfied, the realisation was complete, and what she would
have liked to impose on the girl was an effectual rupture with her past.
That past she by no means absolutely deplored, for it had the merit of
having initiated Verena (and her patroness, through her agency) into the
miseries and mysteries of the People. It was her theory that Verena (in
spite of the blood of the Greenstreets, and, after all, who were they?)
was a flower of the great Democracy, and that it was impossible to have
had an origin less distinguished than Tarrant himself. His birth, in
some unheard-of place in Pennsylvania, was quite inexpressibly low, and
Olive would have been much disappointed if it had been wanting in this
defect. She liked to think that Verena, in her childhood, had known
almost the extremity of poverty, and there was a kind of ferocity in the
joy with which she reflected that there had been moments when this
delicate creature came near (if the pinch had only lasted a little
longer) to literally going without food. These things added to her value
for Olive; they made that young lady feel that their common undertaking
would, in consequence, be so much more serious. It is always supposed
that revolutionists have been goaded, and the goading would have been
rather deficient here were it not for such happy accidents in Verena's
past. When she conveyed from her mother a summons to Cambridge for a
particular occasion, Olive perceived that the great effort must now be
made. Great efforts were nothing new to her--it was a great effort to
live at all--but this one appeared to her exceptionally cruel. She
determined, however, to make it, promising herself that her first visit
to Mrs. Tarrant should also be her last. Her only consolation was that
she expected to suffer intensely; for the prospect of suffering was
always, spiritually speaking, so much cash in her pocket. It was
arranged that Olive should come to tea (the repast that Selah designated
as his supper), when Mrs. Tarrant, as we have seen, desired to do her
honour by inviting another guest. This guest, after much deliberation
between that lady and Verena, was selected, and the first person Olive
saw on entering the little parlour in Cambridge was a young man with
hair prematurely, or, as one felt that one should say, precociously
white, whom she had a vague impression she had encountered before, and
who was introduced to her as Mr. Matthias Pardon.
She suffered less than she had hoped--she was so taken up with the
consideration of Verena's interior. It was as bad as she could have
desired; desired in order to feel that (to take her out of such a
_milieu_ as that) she should have a right to draw her altogether to
herself. Olive wished more and more to extract some definite pledge from
her; she could hardly say what it had best be as yet; she only felt that
it must be something that would have an absolute sanctity for Verena and
would bind them together for life. On this occasion it seemed to shape
itself in her mind; she began to see what it ought to be, though she
also saw that she would perhaps have to wait awhile. Mrs. Tarrant, too,
in her own house, became now a complete figure; there was no manner of
doubt left as to her being vulgar. Olive Chancellor despised vulgarity,
had a scent for it which she followed up in her own family, so that
often, with a rising flush, she detected the taint even in Adeline.
There were times, indeed, when every one seemed to have it, every one
but Miss Birdseye (who had nothing to do with it--she was an antique)
and the poorest, humblest people. The toilers and spinners, the very
obscure, these were the only persons who were safe from it. Miss
Chancellor would have been much happier if the movements she was
interested in could have been carried on only by the people she liked,
and if revolutions, somehow, didn't always have to begin with one's
self--with internal convulsions, sacrifices, executions. A common end,
unfortunately, however fine as regards a special result, does not make
community impersonal.
Mrs. Tarrant, with her soft corpulence, looked to her guest very
bleached and tumid; her complexion had a kind of withered glaze; her
hair, very scanty, was drawn off her forehead _a la Chinoise_; she had
no eyebrows, and her eyes seemed to stare, like those of a figure of
wax. When she talked and wished to insist, and she was always insisting,
she puckered and distorted her face, with an effort to express the
inexpressible, which turned out, after all, to be nothing. She had a
kind of doleful elegance, tried to be confidential, lowered her voice
and looked as if she wished to establish a secret understanding, in
order to ask her visitor if she would venture on an apple-fritter. She
wore a flowing mantle, which resembled her husband's waterproof--a
garment which, when she turned to her daughter or talked about her,
might have passed for the robe of a sort of priestess of maternity. She
endeavoured to keep the conversation in a channel which would enable her
to ask sudden incoherent questions of Olive, mainly as to whether she
knew the principal ladies (the expression was Mrs. Tarrant's), not only
in Boston, but in the other cities which, in her nomadic course, she
herself had visited. Olive knew some of them, and of some of them had
never heard; but she was irritated, and pretended a universal ignorance
(she was conscious that she had never told so many fibs), by which her
hostess was much disconcerted, although her questions had apparently
been questions pure and simple, leading nowhither and without bearings
on any new truth. _
Read next: Chapter 15
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