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_ VOLUME I. BOOK FIRST. CHAPTER XX.
She hoped she should not soon see him again, and there appeared to be no
reason she should, if their intercourse was to be conducted by means of
cheques. The understanding with Verena was, of course, complete; she had
promised to stay with her friend as long as her friend should require
it. She had said at first that she couldn't give up her mother, but she
had been made to feel that there was no question of giving up. She
should be as free as air, to go and come; she could spend hours and days
with her mother, whenever Mrs. Tarrant required her attention; all that
Olive asked of her was that, for the time, she should regard Charles
Street as her home. There was no struggle about this, for the simple
reason that by the time the question came to the front Verena was
completely under the charm. The idea of Olive's charm will perhaps make
the reader smile; but I use the word not in its derived, but in its
literal sense. The fine web of authority, of dependence, that her
strenuous companion had woven about her, was now as dense as a suit of
golden mail; and Verena was thoroughly interested in their great
undertaking; she saw it in the light of an active, enthusiastic faith.
The benefit that her father desired for her was now assured; she
expanded, developed, on the most liberal scale. Olive saw the
difference, and you may imagine how she rejoiced in it; she had never
known a greater pleasure. Verena's former attitude had been girlish
submission, grateful, curious sympathy. She had given herself, in her
young, amused surprise, because Olive's stronger will and the incisive
proceedings with which she pointed her purpose drew her on. Besides, she
was held by hospitality, the vision of new social horizons, the sense of
novelty, and the love of change. But now the girl was disinterestedly
attached to the precious things they were to do together; she cared
about them for themselves, believed in them ardently, had them
constantly in mind. Her share in the union of the two young women was no
longer passive, purely appreciative; it was passionate, too, and it put
forth a beautiful energy. If Olive desired to get Verena into training,
she could flatter herself that the process had already begun, and that
her colleague enjoyed it almost as much as she. Therefore she could say
to herself, without the imputation of heartlessness, that when she left
her mother it was for a noble, a sacred use. In point of fact, she left
her very little, and she spent hours in jingling, aching, jostled
journeys between Charles Street and the stale suburban cottage. Mrs.
Tarrant sighed and grimaced, wrapped herself more than ever in her
mantle, said she didn't know as she was fit to struggle alone, and that,
half the time, if Verena was away, she wouldn't have the nerve to answer
the door-bell; she was incapable, of course, of neglecting such an
opportunity to posture as one who paid with her heart's blood for
leading the van of human progress. But Verena had an inner sense (she
judged her mother now, a little, for the first time) that she would be
sorry to be taken at her word, and that she felt safe enough in trusting
to her daughter's generosity. She could not divest herself of the
faith--even now that Mrs. Luna was gone, leaving no trace, and the grey
walls of a sedentary winter were apparently closing about the two young
women--she could not renounce the theory that a residence in Charles
Street must at least produce some contact with the brilliant classes.
She was vexed at her daughter's resignation to not going to parties and
to Miss Chancellor's not giving them; but it was nothing new for her to
have to practise patience, and she could feel, at least, that it was
just as handy for Mr. Burrage to call on the child in town, where he
spent half his time, sleeping constantly at Parker's.
It was a fact that this fortunate youth called very often, and Verena
saw him with Olive's full concurrence whenever she was at home. It had
now been quite agreed between them that no artificial limits should be
set to the famous phase; and Olive had, while it lasted, a sense of real
heroism in steeling herself against uneasiness. It seemed to her,
moreover, only justice that she should make some concession; if Verena
made a great sacrifice of filial duty in coming to live with her (this,
of course, should be permanent--she would buy off the Tarrants from year
to year), she must not incur the imputation (the world would judge her,
in that case, ferociously) of keeping her from forming common social
ties. The friendship of a young man and a young woman was, according to
the pure code of New England, a common social tie; and as the weeks
elapsed Miss Chancellor saw no reason to repent of her temerity. Verena
was not falling in love; she felt that she should know it, should guess
it on the spot. Verena was fond of human intercourse; she was
essentially a sociable creature; she liked to shine and smile and talk
and listen; and so far as Henry Burrage was concerned he introduced an
element of easy and convenient relaxation into a life now a good deal
stiffened (Olive was perfectly willing to own it) by great civic
purposes. But the girl was being saved, without interference, by the
simple operation of her interest in those very designs. From this time
there was no need of putting pressure on her; her own springs were
working; the fire with which she glowed came from within. Sacredly,
brightly single she would remain; her only espousals would be at the
altar of a great cause. Olive always absented herself when Mr. Burrage
was announced; and when Verena afterwards attempted to give some account
of his conversation she checked her, said she would rather know nothing
about it--all with a very solemn mildness; this made her feel very
superior, truly noble. She knew by this time (I scarcely can tell how,
since Verena could give her no report) exactly what sort of a youth Mr.
Burrage was: he was weakly pretentious, softly original, cultivated
eccentricity, patronised progress, liked to have mysteries, sudden
appointments to keep, anonymous persons to visit, the air of leading a
double life, of being devoted to a girl whom people didn't know, or at
least didn't meet. Of course he liked to make an impression on Verena;
but what he mainly liked was to play her off upon the other girls, the
daughters of fashion, with whom he danced at Papanti's. Such were the
images that proceeded from Olive's rich moral consciousness. "Well, he
_is_ greatly interested in our movement": so much Verena once managed to
announce; but the words rather irritated Miss Chancellor, who, as we
know, did not care to allow for accidental exceptions in the great
masculine conspiracy.
In the month of March Verena told her that Mr. Burrage was offering
matrimony--offering it with much insistence, begging that she would at
least wait and think of it before giving him a final answer. Verena was
evidently very glad to be able to say to Olive that she had assured him
she couldn't think of it, and that if he expected this he had better not
come any more. He continued to come, and it was therefore to be supposed
that he had ceased to count on such a concession; it was now Olive's
opinion that he really didn't desire it. She had a theory that he
proposed to almost any girl who was not likely to accept him--did it
because he was making a collection of such episodes--a mental album of
declarations, blushes, hesitations, refusals that just missed imposing
themselves as acceptances, quite as he collected enamels and Cremona
violins. He would be very sorry indeed to ally himself to the house of
Tarrant; but such a fear didn't prevent him from holding it becoming in
a man of taste to give that encouragement to low-born girls who were
pretty, for one looked out for the special cases in which, for reasons
(even the lowest might have reasons), they wouldn't "rise." "I told you
I wouldn't marry him, and I won't," Verena said, delightedly, to her
friend; her tone suggested that a certain credit belonged to her for the
way she carried out her assurance. "I never thought you would, if you
didn't want to," Olive replied to this; and Verena could have no
rejoinder but the good-humour that sat in her eyes, unable as she was to
say that she had wanted to. They had a little discussion, however, when
she intimated that she pitied him for his discomfiture, Olive's
contention being that, selfish, conceited, pampered and insincere, he
might properly be left now to digest his affront. Miss Chancellor felt
none of the remorse now that she would have felt six months before at
standing in the way of such a chance for Verena, and she would have been
very angry if any one had asked her if she were not afraid of taking too
much upon herself. She would have said, moreover, that she stood in no
one's way, and that even if she were not there Verena would never think
seriously of a frivolous little man who fiddled while Rome was burning.
This did not prevent Olive from making up her mind that they had better
go to Europe in the spring; a year's residence in that quarter of the
globe would be highly agreeable to Verena, and might even contribute to
the evolution of her genius. It cost Miss Chancellor an effort to admit
that any virtue still lingered in the elder world, and that it could
have any important lesson for two such good Americans as her friend and
herself; but it suited her just then to make this assumption, which was
not altogether sincere. It was recommended by the idea that it would get
her companion out of the way--out of the way of officious
fellow-citizens--till she should be absolutely firm on her feet, and
would also give greater intensity to their own long conversation. On
that continent of strangers they would cleave more closely still to each
other. This, of course, would be to fly before the inevitable "phase,"
much more than to face it; but Olive decided that if they should reach
unscathed the term of their delay (the first of July) she should have
faced it as much as either justice or generosity demanded. I may as well
say at once that she traversed most of this period without further
serious alarms and with a great many little thrills of bliss and hope.
Nothing happened to dissipate the good omens with which her partnership
with Verena Tarrant was at present surrounded. They threw themselves
into study; they had innumerable big books from the Athenaeum, and
consumed the midnight oil. Henry Burrage, after Verena had shaken her
head at him so sweetly and sadly, returned to New York, giving no sign;
they only heard that he had taken refuge under the ruffled maternal
wing. (Olive, at least, took for granted the wing was ruffled; she could
fancy how Mrs. Burrage would be affected by the knowledge that her son
had been refused by the daughter of a mesmeric healer. She would be
almost as angry as if she had learnt that he had been accepted.)
Matthias Pardon had not yet taken his revenge in the newspapers; he was
perhaps nursing his thunderbolts; at any rate, now that the operatic
season had begun, he was much occupied in interviewing the principal
singers, one of whom he described in one of the leading journals (Olive,
at least, was sure it was only he who could write like that) as "a dear
little woman with baby dimples and kittenish movements." The Tarrants
were apparently given up to a measure of sensual ease with which they
had not hitherto been familiar, thanks to the increase of income that
they drew from their eccentric protectress. Mrs. Tarrant now enjoyed the
ministrations of a "girl"; it was partly her pride (at any rate, she
chose to give it this turn) that her house had for many years been
conducted without the element--so debasing on both sides--of servile,
mercenary labour. She wrote to Olive (she was perpetually writing to her
now, but Olive never answered) that she was conscious of having fallen
to a lower plane, but she admitted that it was a prop to her wasted
spirit to have some one to converse with when Selah was off. Verena, of
course, perceived the difference, which was inadequately explained by
the theory of a sudden increase of her father's practice (nothing of her
father's had ever increased like that), and ended by guessing the cause
of it--a discovery which did not in the least disturb her equanimity.
She accepted the idea that her parents should receive a pecuniary
tribute from the extraordinary friend whom she had encountered on the
threshold of womanhood, just as she herself accepted that friend's
irresistible hospitality. She had no worldly pride, no traditions of
independence, no ideas of what was done and what was not done; but there
was only one thing that equalled this perfectly gentle and natural
insensibility to favours--namely, the inveteracy of her habit of not
asking them. Olive had had an apprehension that she would flush a little
at learning the terms on which they should now be able to pursue their
career together; but Verena never changed colour; it was either not new
or not disagreeable to her that the authors of her being should be
bought off, silenced by money, treated as the troublesome of the lower
orders are treated when they are not locked up; so that her friend had a
perception, after this, that it would probably be impossible in any way
ever to offend her. She was too rancourless, too detached from
conventional standards, too free from private self-reference. It was too
much to say of her that she forgave injuries, since she was not
conscious of them; there was in forgiveness a certain arrogance of which
she was incapable, and her bright mildness glided over the many traps
that life sets for our consistency. Olive had always held that pride was
necessary to character, but there was no peculiarity of Verena's that
could make her spirit seem less pure. The added luxuries in the little
house at Cambridge, which even with their help was still such a penal
settlement, made her feel afresh that before she came to the rescue the
daughter of that house had traversed a desert of sordid misery. She had
cooked and washed and swept and stitched; she had worked harder than any
of Miss Chancellor's servants. These things had left no trace upon her
person or her mind; everything fresh and fair renewed itself in her with
extraordinary facility, everything ugly and tiresome evaporated as soon
as it touched her; but Olive deemed that, being what she was, she had a
right to immense compensations. In the future she should have exceeding
luxury and ease, and Miss Chancellor had no difficulty in persuading
herself that persons doing the high intellectual and moral work to which
the two young ladies in Charles Street were now committed owed it to
themselves, owed it to the groaning sisterhood, to cultivate the best
material conditions. She herself was nothing of a sybarite, and she had
proved, visiting the alleys and slums of Boston in the service of the
Associated Charities, that there was no foulness of disease or misery
she feared to look in the face; but her house had always been thoroughly
well regulated, she was passionately clean, and she was an excellent
woman of business. Now, however, she elevated daintiness to a religion;
her interior shone with superfluous friction, with punctuality, with
winter roses. Among these soft influences Verena herself bloomed like
the flower that attains such perfection in Boston. Olive had always
rated high the native refinement of her country-women, their latent
"adaptability," their talent for accommodating themselves at a glance to
changed conditions; but the way her companion rose with the level of the
civilisation that surrounded her, the way she assimilated all delicacies
and absorbed all traditions, left this friendly theory halting behind.
The winter days were still, indoors, in Charles Street, and the winter
nights secure from interruption. Our two young women had plenty of
duties, but Olive had never favoured the custom of running in and out.
Much conference on social and reformatory topics went forward under her
roof, and she received her colleagues--she belonged to twenty
associations and committees--only at pre-appointed hours, which she
expected them to observe rigidly. Verena's share in these proceedings
was not active; she hovered over them, smiling, listening, dropping
occasionally a fanciful though never an idle word, like some gently
animated image placed there for good omen. It was understood that her
part was before the scenes, not behind; that she was not a prompter, but
(potentially, at least) a "popular favourite," and that the work over
which Miss Chancellor presided so efficiently was a general preparation
of the platform on which, later, her companion would execute the most
striking steps.
The western windows of Olive's drawing-room, looking over the water,
took in the red sunsets of winter; the long, low bridge that crawled, on
its staggering posts, across the Charles; the casual patches of ice and
snow; the desolate suburban horizons, peeled and made bald by the rigour
of the season; the general hard, cold void of the prospect; the
extrusion, at Charlestown, at Cambridge, of a few chimneys and steeples,
straight, sordid tubes of factories and engine-shops, or spare,
heavenward finger of the New England meeting-house. There was something
inexorable in the poverty of the scene, shameful in the meanness of its
details, which gave a collective impression of boards and tin and frozen
earth, sheds and rotting piles, railway-lines striding flat across a
thoroughfare of puddles, and tracks of the humbler, the universal
horse-car, traversing obliquely this path of danger; loose fences,
vacant lots, mounds of refuse, yards bestrewn with iron pipes, telegraph
poles, and bare wooden backs of places. Verena thought such a view
lovely, and she was by no means without excuse when, as the afternoon
closed, the ugly picture was tinted with a clear, cold rosiness. The
air, in its windless chill, seemed to tinkle like a crystal, the
faintest gradations of tone were perceptible in the sky, the west became
deep and delicate, everything grew doubly distinct before taking on the
dimness of evening. There were pink flushes on snow, "tender" reflexions
in patches of stiffened marsh, sounds of car-bells, no longer vulgar,
but almost silvery, on the long bridge, lonely outlines of distant dusky
undulations against the fading glow. These agreeable effects used to
light up that end of the drawing-room, and Olive often sat at the window
with her companion before it was time for the lamp. They admired the
sunsets, they rejoiced in the ruddy spots projected upon the
parlour-wall, they followed the darkening perspective in fanciful
excursions. They watched the stellar points come out at last in a colder
heaven, and then, shuddering a little, arm in arm, they turned away,
with a sense that the winter night was even more cruel than the tyranny
of men--turned back to drawn curtains and a brighter fire and a
glittering tea-tray and more and more talk about the long martyrdom of
women, a subject as to which Olive was inexhaustible and really most
interesting. There were some nights of deep snowfall, when Charles
Street was white and muffled and the door-bell foredoomed to silence,
which seemed little islands of lamp-light, of enlarged and intensified
vision. They read a great deal of history together, and read it ever
with the same thought--that of finding confirmation in it for this idea
that their sex had suffered inexpressibly, and that at any moment in the
course of human affairs the state of the world would have been so much
less horrible (history seemed to them in every way horrible) if women
had been able to press down the scale. Verena was full of suggestions
which stimulated discussions; it was she, oftenest, who kept in view the
fact that a good many women in the past had been entrusted with power
and had not always used it amiably, who brought up the wicked queens,
the profligate mistresses of kings. These ladies were easily disposed of
between the two, and the public crimes of Bloody Mary, the private
misdemeanours of Faustina, wife of the pure Marcus Aurelius, were very
satisfactorily classified. If the influence of women in the past
accounted for every act of virtue that men had happened to achieve, it
only made the matter balance properly that the influence of men should
explain the casual irregularities of the other sex. Olive could see how
few books had passed through Verena's hands, and how little the home of
the Tarrants had been a house of reading; but the girl now traversed the
fields of literature with her characteristic lightness of step.
Everything she turned to or took up became an illustration of the
facility, the "giftedness," which Olive, who had so little of it, never
ceased to wonder at and prize. Nothing frightened her; she always smiled
at it, she could do anything she tried. As she knew how to do other
things, she knew how to study; she read quickly and remembered
infallibly; could repeat, days afterward, passages that she appeared
only to have glanced at. Olive, of course, was more and more happy to
think that their cause should have the services of an organisation so
rare.
All this doubtless sounds rather dry, and I hasten to add that our
friends were not always shut up in Miss Chancellor's strenuous parlour.
In spite of Olive's desire to keep her precious inmate to herself and to
bend her attention upon their common studies, in spite of her constantly
reminding Verena that this winter was to be purely educative and that
the platitudes of the satisfied and unregenerate would have little to
teach her, in spite, in short, of the severe and constant duality of our
young women, it must not be supposed that their life had not many
personal confluents and tributaries. Individual and original as Miss
Chancellor was universally acknowledged to be, she was yet a typical
Bostonian, and as a typical Bostonian she could not fail to belong in
some degree to a "set." It had been said of her that she was in it but
not of it; but she was of it enough to go occasionally into other houses
and to receive their occupants in her own. It was her belief that she
filled her tea-pot with the spoon of hospitality, and made a good many
select spirits feel that they were welcome under her roof at convenient
hours. She had a preference for what she called _real_ people, and there
were several whose reality she had tested by arts known to herself. This
little society was rather suburban and miscellaneous; it was prolific in
ladies who trotted about, early and late, with books from the Athenaeum
nursed behind their muff, or little nosegays of exquisite flowers that
they were carrying as presents to each other. Verena, who, when Olive
was not with her, indulged in a good deal of desultory contemplation at
the window, saw them pass the house in Charles Street, always apparently
straining a little, as if they might be too late for something. At
almost any time, for she envied their preoccupation, she would have
taken the chance with them. Very often, when she described them to her
mother, Mrs. Tarrant didn't know who they were; there were even days
(she had so many discouragements) when it seemed as if she didn't want
to know. So long as they were not some one else, it seemed to be no use
that they were themselves; whoever they were, they were sure to have
that defect. Even after all her mother's disquisitions Verena had but
vague ideas as to whom she would have liked them to be; and it was only
when the girl talked of the concerts, to all of which Olive subscribed
and conducted her inseparable friend, that Mrs. Tarrant appeared to feel
in any degree that her daughter was living up to the standard formed for
her in their Cambridge home. As all the world knows, the opportunities
in Boston for hearing good music are numerous and excellent, and it had
long been Miss Chancellor's practice to cultivate the best. She went in,
as the phrase is, for the superior programmes, and that high, dim,
dignified Music Hall, which has echoed in its time to so much eloquence
and so much melody, and of which the very proportions and colour seem to
teach respect and attention, shed the protection of its illuminated
cornice, this winter, upon no faces more intelligently upturned than
those of the young women for whom Bach and Beethoven only repeated, in a
myriad forms, the idea that was always with them. Symphonies and fugues
only stimulated their convictions, excited their revolutionary passion,
led their imagination further in the direction in which it was always
pressing. It lifted them to immeasurable heights; and as they sat
looking at the great florid, sombre organ, overhanging the bronze statue
of Beethoven, they felt that this was the only temple in which the
votaries of their creed could worship.
And yet their music was not their greatest joy, for they had two others
which they cultivated at least as zealously. One of these was simply the
society of old Miss Birdseye, of whom Olive saw more this winter than
she had ever seen before. It had become apparent that her long and
beautiful career was drawing to a close, her earnest, unremitting work
was over, her old-fashioned weapons were broken and dull. Olive would
have liked to hang them up as venerable relics of a patient fight, and
this was what she seemed to do when she made the poor lady relate her
battles--never glorious and brilliant, but obscure and wastefully
heroic--call back the figures of her companions in arms, exhibit her
medals and scars. Miss Birdseye knew that her uses were ended; she might
pretend still to go about the business of unpopular causes, might fumble
for papers in her immemorial satchel and think she had important
appointments, might sign petitions, attend conventions, say to Doctor
Prance that if she would only make her sleep she should live to see a
great many improvements yet; she ached and was weary, growing almost as
glad to look back (a great anomaly for Miss Birdseye) as to look
forward. She let herself be coddled now by her friends of the new
generation; there were days when she seemed to want nothing better than
to sit by Olive's fire and ramble on about the old struggles, with a
vague, comfortable sense--no physical rapture of Miss Birdseye's could
be very acute--of immunity from wet feet, from the draughts that prevail
at thin meetings, of independence of street-cars that would probably
arrive overflowing; and also a pleased perception, not that she was an
example to these fresh lives which began with more advantages than hers,
but that she was in some degree an encouragement, as she helped them to
measure the way the new truths had advanced--being able to tell them of
such a different state of things when she was a young lady, the daughter
of a very talented teacher (indeed her mother had been a teacher too),
down in Connecticut. She had always had for Olive a kind of aroma of
martyrdom, and her battered, unremunerated, un-pensioned old age brought
angry tears, springing from depths of outraged theory, into Miss
Chancellor's eyes. For Verena, too, she was a picturesque humanitary
figure. Verena had been in the habit of meeting martyrs from her
childhood up, but she had seen none with so many reminiscences as Miss
Birdseye, or who had been so nearly scorched by penal fires. She had had
escapes, in the early days of abolitionism, which it was a marvel she
could tell with so little implication that she had shown courage. She
had roamed through certain parts of the South, carrying the Bible to the
slave; and more than one of her companions, in the course of these
expeditions, had been tarred and feathered. She herself, at one season,
had spent a month in a Georgian jail. She had preached temperance in
Irish circles where the doctrine was received with missiles; she had
interfered between wives and husbands mad with drink; she had taken
filthy children, picked up in the street, to her own poor rooms, and had
removed their pestilent rags and washed their sore bodies with slippery
little hands. In her own person she appeared to Olive and Verena a
representative of suffering humanity; the pity they felt for her was
part of their pity for all who were weakest and most hardly used; and it
struck Miss Chancellor (more especially) that this frumpy little
missionary was the last link in a tradition, and that when she should be
called away the heroic age of New England life--the age of plain living
and high thinking, of pure ideals and earnest effort, of moral passion
and noble experiment--would effectually be closed. It was the perennial
freshness of Miss Birdseye's faith that had had such a contagion for
these modern maidens, the unquenched flame of her transcendentalism, the
simplicity of her vision, the way in which, in spite of mistakes,
deceptions, the changing fashions of reform, which make the remedies of
a previous generation look as ridiculous as their bonnets, the only
thing that was still actual for her was the elevation of the species by
the reading of Emerson and the frequentation of Tremont Temple. Olive
had been active enough, for years, in the city-missions; she too had
scoured dirty children, and, in squalid lodging-houses, had gone into
rooms where the domestic situation was strained and the noises made the
neighbours turn pale. But she reflected that after such exertions she
had the refreshment of a pretty house, a drawing-room full of flowers, a
crackling hearth, where she threw in pine-cones and made them snap, an
imported tea-service, a Chickering piano, and the _Deutsche Rundschau_;
whereas Miss Birdseye had only a bare, vulgar room, with a hideous
flowered carpet (it looked like a dentist's), a cold furnace, the
evening paper, and Doctor Prance. Olive and Verena were present at
another of her gatherings before the winter ended; it resembled the
occasion that we described at the beginning of this history, with the
difference that Mrs. Farrinder was not there to oppress the company with
her greatness, and that Verena made a speech without the co-operation of
her father. This young lady had delivered herself with even finer effect
than before, and Olive could see how much she had gained, in confidence
and range of allusion, since the educative process in Charles Street
began. Her _motif_ was now a kind of unprepared tribute to Miss
Birdseye, the fruit of the occasion and of the unanimous tenderness of
the younger members of the circle, which made her a willing mouthpiece.
She pictured her laborious career, her early associates (Eliza P.
Moseley was not neglected as Verena passed), her difficulties and
dangers and triumphs, her humanising effect upon so many, her serene and
honoured old age--expressed, in short, as one of the ladies said, just
the very way they all felt about her. Verena's face brightened and grew
triumphant as she spoke, but she brought tears into the eyes of most of
the others. It was Olive's opinion that nothing could be more graceful
and touching, and she saw that the impression made was now deeper than
on the former evening. Miss Birdseye went about with her eighty years of
innocence, her undiscriminating spectacles, asking her friends if it
wasn't perfectly splendid; she took none of it to herself, she regarded
it only as a brilliant expression of Verena's gift. Olive thought,
afterwards, that if a collection could only be taken up on the spot, the
good lady would be made easy for the rest of her days; then she
remembered that most of her guests were as impecunious as herself.
I have intimated that our young friends had a source of fortifying
emotion which was distinct from the hours they spent with Beethoven and
Bach, or in hearing Miss Birdseye describe Concord as it used to be.
This consisted in the wonderful insight they had obtained into the
history of feminine anguish. They perused that chapter perpetually and
zealously, and they derived from it the purest part of their mission.
Olive had pored over it so long, so earnestly, that she was now in
complete possession of the subject; it was the one thing in life which
she felt she had really mastered. She was able to exhibit it to Verena
with the greatest authority and accuracy, to lead her up and down, in
and out, through all the darkest and most tortuous passages. We know
that she was without belief in her own eloquence, but she was very
eloquent when she reminded Verena how the exquisite weakness of women
had never been their defence, but had only exposed them to sufferings
more acute than masculine grossness can conceive. Their odious partner
had trampled upon them from the beginning of time, and their tenderness,
their abnegation, had been his opportunity. All the bullied wives, the
stricken mothers, the dishonoured, deserted maidens who have lived on
the earth and longed to leave it, passed and repassed before her eyes,
and the interminable dim procession seemed to stretch out a myriad hands
to her. She sat with them at their trembling vigils, listened for the
tread, the voice, at which they grew pale and sick, walked with them by
the dark waters that offered to wash away misery and shame, took with
them, even, when the vision grew intense, the last shuddering leap. She
had analysed to an extraordinary fineness their susceptibility, their
softness; she knew (or she thought she knew) all the possible tortures
of anxiety, of suspense and dread; and she had made up her mind that it
was women, in the end, who had paid for everything. In the last resort
the whole burden of the human lot came upon them; it pressed upon them
far more than on the others, the intolerable load of fate. It was they
who sat cramped and chained to receive it; it was they who had done all
the waiting and taken all the wounds. The sacrifices, the blood, the
tears, the terrors were theirs. Their organism was in itself a challenge
to suffering, and men had practised upon it with an impudence that knew
no bounds. As they were the weakest most had been wrung from them, and
as they were the most generous they had been most deceived. Olive
Chancellor would have rested her case, had it been necessary, on those
general facts; and her simple and comprehensive contention was that the
peculiar wretchedness which had been the very essence of the feminine
lot was a monstrous artificial imposition, crying aloud for redress. She
was willing to admit that women, too, could be bad; that there were many
about the world who were false, immoral, vile. But their errors were as
nothing to their sufferings; they had expiated, in advance, an eternity,
if need be, of misconduct. Olive poured forth these views to her
listening and responsive friend; she presented them again and again, and
there was no light in which they did not seem to palpitate with truth.
Verena was immensely wrought upon; a subtle fire passed into her; she
was not so hungry for revenge as Olive, but at the last, before they
went to Europe (I shall take no place to describe the manner in which
she threw herself into that project), she quite agreed with her
companion that after so many ages of wrong (it would also be after the
European journey) men must take _their_ turn, men must pay! _
Read next: Chapter 21 (Volume 1 Book 2)
Read previous: Chapter 19
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