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_ VOLUME I. BOOK SECOND. CHAPTER XXIII.
Three weeks afterward he stood in front of Olive Chancellor's house,
looking up and down the street and hesitating. He had told Mrs. Luna
that he should like nothing better than to make another journey to
Boston; and it was not simply because he liked it that he had come. I
was on the point of saying that a happy chance had favoured him, but it
occurs to me that one is under no obligation to call chances by
nattering epithets when they have been waited for so long. At any rate,
the darkest hour is before the dawn; and a few days after that
melancholy evening I have described, which Ransom spent in his German
beer-cellar, before a single glass, soon emptied, staring at his future
with an unremunerated eye, he found that the world appeared to have need
of him yet. The "party," as he would have said (I cannot pretend that
his speech was too heroic for that), for whom he had transacted business
in Boston so many months before, and who had expressed at the time but a
limited appreciation of his services (there had been between the lawyer
and his client a divergence of judgement), observing, apparently, that
they proved more fruitful than he expected, had reopened the affair and
presently requested Ransom to transport himself again to the sister
city. His errand demanded more time than before, and for three days he
gave it his constant attention. On the fourth he found he was still
detained; he should have to wait till the evening--some important papers
were to be prepared. He determined to treat the interval as a holiday,
and he wondered what one could do in Boston to give one's morning a
festive complexion. The weather was brilliant enough to minister to any
illusion, and he strolled along the streets, taking it in. In front of
the Music Hall and of Tremont Temple he stopped, looking at the posters
in the doorway; for was it not possible that Miss Chancellor's little
friend might be just then addressing her fellow-citizens? Her name was
absent, however, and this resource seemed to mock him. He knew no one in
the place but Olive Chancellor, so there was no question of a visit to
pay. He was perfectly resolved that he would never go near _her_ again;
she was doubtless a very superior being, but she had been too rough with
him to tempt him further. Politeness, even a largely-interpreted
"chivalry", required nothing more than he had already done; he had
quitted her, the other year, without telling her that she was a vixen,
and that reticence was chivalrous enough. There was also Verena Tarrant,
of course; he saw no reason to dissemble when he spoke of her to
himself, and he allowed himself the entertainment of feeling that he
should like very much to see her again. Very likely she wouldn't seem to
him the same; the impression she had made upon him was due to some
accident of mood or circumstance; and, at any rate, any charm she might
have exhibited then had probably been obliterated by the coarsening
effect of publicity and the tonic influence of his kinswoman. It will be
observed that in this reasoning of Basil Ransom's the impression was
freely recognised, and recognised as a phenomenon still present. The
attraction might have vanished, as he said to himself, but the mental
picture of it was yet vivid. The greater the pity that he couldn't call
upon Verena (he called her by her name in his thoughts, it was so
pretty) without calling upon Olive, and that Olive was so disagreeable
as to place that effort beyond his strength. There was another
consideration, with Ransom, which eminently belonged to the man; he
believed that Miss Chancellor had conceived, in the course of those few
hours, and in a manner that formed so absurd a sequel to her having gone
out of her way to make his acquaintance, such a dislike to him that it
would be odious to her to see him again within her doors; and he would
have felt indelicate in taking warrant from her original invitation
(before she had seen him) to inflict on her a presence which he had no
reason to suppose the lapse of time had made less offensive. She had
given him no sign of pardon or penitence in any of the little ways that
are familiar to women--by sending him a message through her sister, or
even a book, a photograph, a Christmas card, or a newspaper, by the
post. He felt, in a word, not at liberty to ring at her door; he didn't
know what kind of a fit the sight of his long Mississippian person would
give her, and it was characteristic of him that he should wish so to
spare the sensibilities of a young lady whom he had not found tender;
being ever as willing to let women off easily in the particular case as
he was fixed in the belief that the sex in general requires watching.
Nevertheless, he found himself, at the end of half an hour, standing on
the only spot in Charles Street which had any significance for him. It
had occurred to him that if he couldn't call upon Verena without calling
upon Olive, he should be exempt from that condition if he called upon
Mrs. Tarrant. It was not her mother, truly, who had asked him, it was
the girl herself; and he was conscious, as a candid young American, that
a mother is always less accessible, more guarded by social prejudice,
than a daughter. But he was at a pass in which it was permissible to
strain a point, and he took his way in the direction in which he knew
that Cambridge lay, remembering that Miss Tarrant's invitation had
reference to that quarter and that Mrs. Luna had given him further
evidence. Had she not said that Verena often went back there for visits
of several days--that her mother had been ill and she gave her much
care? There was nothing inconceivable in her being engaged at that hour
(it was getting to be one o'clock) in one of those expeditions--nothing
impossible in the chance that he might find her in Cambridge. The
chance, at any rate, was worth taking; Cambridge, moreover, was worth
seeing, and it was as good a way as another of keeping his holiday. It
occurred to him, indeed, that Cambridge was a big place, and that he had
no particular address. This reflexion overtook him just as he reached
Olive's house, which, oddly enough, he was obliged to pass on his way to
the mysterious suburb. That is partly why he paused there; he asked
himself for a moment why he shouldn't ring the bell and obtain his
needed information from the servant, who would be sure to be able to
give it to him. He had just dismissed this method, as of questionable
taste, when he heard the door of the house open, within the deep
embrasure in which, in Charles Street, the main portals are set, and
which are partly occupied by a flight of steps protected at the bottom
by a second door, whose upper half, in either wing, consists of a sheet
of glass. It was a minute before he could see who had come out, and in
that minute he had time to turn away and then to turn back again, and to
wonder which of the two inmates would appear to him, or whether he
should behold neither or both.
The person who had issued from the house descended the steps very
slowly, as if on purpose to give him time to escape; and when at last
the glass doors were divided they disclosed a little old lady. Ransom
was disappointed; such an apparition was so scantily to his purpose. But
the next minute his spirits rose again, for he was sure that he had seen
the little old lady before. She stopped on the side-walk, and looked
vaguely about her, in the manner of a person waiting for an omnibus or a
street-car; she had a dingy, loosely-habited air, as if she had worn her
clothes for many years and yet was even now imperfectly acquainted with
them; a large, benignant face, caged in by the glass of her spectacles,
which seemed to cover it almost equally everywhere, and a fat, rusty
satchel, which hung low at her side, as if it wearied her to carry it.
This gave Ransom time to recognise her; he knew in Boston no such figure
as that save Miss Birdseye. Her party, her person, the exalted account
Miss Chancellor gave of her, had kept a very distinct place in his mind;
and while she stood there in dim circumspection she came back to him as
a friend of yesterday. His necessity gave a point to the reminiscences
she evoked; it took him only a moment to reflect that she would be able
to tell him where Verena Tarrant was at that particular time, and where,
if need be, her parents lived. Her eyes rested on him, and as she saw
that he was looking at her she didn't go through the ceremony (she had
broken so completely with all conventions) of removing them; he
evidently represented nothing to her but a sentient fellow-citizen in
the enjoyment of his rights, which included that of staring. Miss
Birdseye's modesty had never pretended that it was not to be publicly
challenged; there were so many bright new motives and ideas in the world
that there might even be reasons for looking at her. When Ransom
approached her and, raising his hat with a smile, said, "Shall I stop
this car for you, Miss Birdseye?" she only looked at him more vaguely,
in her complete failure to seize the idea that this might be simply
Fame. She had trudged about the streets of Boston for fifty years, and
at no period had she received that amount of attention from dark-eyed
young men. She glanced, in an unprejudiced way, at the big
parti-coloured human van which now jingled, toward them from out of the
Cambridge road. "Well, I should like to get into it, if it will take me
home," she answered. "Is this a South End car?"
The vehicle had been stopped by the conductor, on his perceiving Miss
Birdseye; he evidently recognised her as a frequent passenger. He went,
however, through none of the forms of reassurance beyond remarking, "You
want to get right in here--quick," but stood with his hand raised, in a
threatening way, to the cord of his signal-bell.
"You must allow me the honour of taking you home, madam; I will tell you
who I am," Basil Ransom said, in obedience to a rapid reflexion. He
helped her into the car, the conductor pressed a fraternal hand upon her
back, and in a moment the young man was seated beside her, and the
jingling had recommenced. At that hour of the day the car was almost
empty, and they had it virtually to themselves.
"Well, I know you are some one; I don't think you belong round here,"
Miss Birdseye declared, as they proceeded.
"I was once at your house--on a very interesting occasion. Do you
remember a party you gave, a year ago last October, to which Miss
Chancellor came, and another young lady, who made a wonderful speech?"
"Oh yes! when Verena Tarrant moved us all so! There were a good many
there; I don't remember all."
"I was one of them," Basil Ransom said; "I came with Miss Chancellor,
who is a kind of relation of mine, and you were very good to me."
"What did I do?" asked Miss Birdseye candidly. Then, before he could
answer her, she recognised him. "I remember you now, and Olive bringing
you! You're a Southern gentleman--she told me about you afterwards. You
don't approve of our great struggle--you want us to be kept down." The
old lady spoke with perfect mildness, as if she had long ago done with
passion and resentment. Then she added, "Well, I presume we can't have
the sympathy of all."
"Doesn't it look as if you had my sympathy, when I get into a car on
purpose to see you home--one of the principal agitators?" Ransom
inquired, laughing.
"Did you get in on purpose?"
"Quite on purpose. I am not so bad as Miss Chancellor thinks me."
"Oh, I presume you have your ideas," said Miss Birdseye. "Of course,
Southerners have peculiar views. I suppose they retain more than one
might think. I hope you won't ride too far--I know my way round Boston."
"Don't object to me, or think me officious," Ransom replied. "I want to
ask you something."
Miss Birdseye looked at him again. "Oh yes, I place you now; you
conversed some with Doctor Prance."
"To my great edification!" Ransom exclaimed. "And I hope Doctor Prance
is well."
"She looks after every one's health but her own," said Miss Birdseye,
smiling. "When I tell her that, she says she hasn't got any to look
after. She says she's the only woman in Boston that hasn't got a doctor.
She was determined she wouldn't be a patient, and it seemed as if the
only way not to be one was to be a doctor. She is trying to make me
sleep; that's her principal occupation."
"Is it possible you don't sleep yet?" Ransom asked, almost tenderly.
"Well, just a little. But by the time I get to sleep I have to get up. I
can't sleep when I want to live."
"You ought to come down South," the young man suggested. "In that
languid air you would doze deliciously!"
"Well, I don't want to be languid," said Miss Birdseye. "Besides, I have
been down South, in the old times, and I can't say they let me sleep
very much; they were always round after me!"
"Do you mean on account of the negroes?"
"Yes, I couldn't think of anything else then. I carried them the Bible."
Ransom was silent a moment; then he said, in a tone which evidently was
carefully considerate, "I should like to hear all about that!"
"Well, fortunately, we are not required now; we are required for
something else." And Miss Birdseye looked at him with a wandering,
tentative humour, as if he would know what she meant.
"You mean for the other slaves!" he exclaimed, with a laugh. "You can
carry them all the Bibles you want."
"I want to carry them the Statute-book; that must be our Bible now."
Ransom found himself liking Miss Birdseye very much, and it was quite
without hypocrisy or a tinge too much of the local quality in his speech
that he said: "Wherever you go, madam, it will matter little what you
carry. You will always carry your goodness."
For a minute she made no response. Then she murmured: "That's the way
Olive Chancellor told me you talked."
"I am afraid she has told you little good of me."
"Well, I am sure she thinks she is right."
"Thinks it?" said Ransom. "Why, she knows it, with supreme certainty! By
the way, I hope she is well."
Miss Birdseye stared again. "Haven't you seen her? Are you not
visiting?"
"Oh no, I am not visiting! I was literally passing her house when I met
you."
"Perhaps you live here now," said Miss Birdseye. And when he had
corrected this impression, she added, in a tone which showed with what
positive confidence he had now inspired her, "Hadn't you better drop
in?"
"It would give Miss Chancellor no pleasure," Basil Ransom rejoined. "She
regards me as an enemy in the camp."
"Well, she is very brave."
"Precisely. And I am very timid."
"Didn't you fight once?"
"Yes; but it was in such a good cause!"
Ransom meant this allusion to the great Secession and, by comparison, to
the attitude of the resisting male (laudable even as that might be), to
be decently jocular; but Miss Birdseye took it very seriously, and sat
there for a good while as speechless as if she meant to convey that she
had been going on too long now to be able to discuss the propriety of
the late rebellion. The young man felt that he had silenced her, and he
was very sorry; for, with all deference to the disinterested Southern
attitude toward the unprotected female, what he had got into the car
with her for was precisely to make her talk. He had wished for general,
as well as for particular, news of Verena Tarrant; it was a topic on
which he had proposed to draw Miss Birdseye out. He preferred not to
broach it himself, and he waited awhile for another opening. At last,
when he was on the point of exposing himself by a direct inquiry (he
reflected that the exposure would in any case not be long averted), she
anticipated him by saying, in a manner which showed that her thoughts
had continued in the same train, "I wonder very much that Miss Tarrant
didn't affect you that evening!"
"Ah, but she did!" Ransom said, with alacrity. "I thought her very
charming!"
"Didn't you think her very reasonable?"
"God forbid, madam! I consider women have no business to be reasonable."
His companion turned upon him, slowly and mildly, and each of her
glasses, in her aspect of reproach, had the glitter of an enormous tear.
"Do you regard us, then, simply as lovely baubles?"
The effect of this question, as coming from Miss Birdseye, and referring
in some degree to her own venerable identity, was such as to move him to
irresistible laughter. But he controlled himself quickly enough to say,
with genuine expression, "I regard you as the dearest thing in life, the
only thing which makes it worth living!"
"Worth living for--you! But for us?" suggested Miss Birdseye.
"It's worth any woman's while to be admired as I admire you. Miss
Tarrant, of whom we were speaking, affected me, as you say, in this
way--that I think more highly still, if possible, of the sex which
produced such a delightful young lady."
"Well, we think everything of her here," said Miss Birdseye. "It seems
as if it were a real gift."
"Does she speak often--is there any chance of my hearing her now?"
"She raises her voice a good deal in the places round--like Framingham
and Billerica. It seems as if she were gathering strength, just to break
over Boston like a wave. In fact she did break, last summer. She is a
growing power since her great success at the convention."
"Ah! her success at the convention was very great?" Ransom inquired,
putting discretion into his voice.
Miss Birdseye hesitated a moment, in order to measure her response by
the bounds of righteousness. "Well," she said, with the tenderness of a
long retrospect, "I have seen nothing like it since I last listened to
Eliza P. Moseley."
"What a pity she isn't speaking somewhere to-night!" Ransom exclaimed.
"Oh, to-night she's out in Cambridge. Olive Chancellor mentioned that."
"Is she making a speech there?"
"No; she's visiting her home."
"I thought her home was in Charles Street?"
"Well, no; that's her residence--her principal one--since she became so
united to your cousin. Isn't Miss Chancellor your cousin?"
"We don't insist on the relationship," said Ransom, smiling. "Are they
very much united, the two young ladies?"
"You would say so if you were to see Miss Chancellor when Verena rises
to eloquence. It's as if the chords were strung across her own heart;
she seems to vibrate, to echo with every word. It's a very close and
very beautiful tie, and we think everything of it here. They will work
together for a great good!"
"I hope so," Ransom remarked. "But in spite of it Miss Tarrant spends a
part of her time with her father and mother."
"Yes, she seems to have something for every one. If you were to see her
at home, you would think she was all the daughter. She leads a lovely
life!" said Miss Birdseye.
"See her at home? That's exactly what I want!" Ransom rejoined, feeling
that if he was to come to this he needn't have had scruples at first. "I
haven't forgotten that she invited me, when I met her."
"Oh, of course she attracts many visitors," said Miss Birdseye, limiting
her encouragement to this statement.
"Yes; she must be used to admirers. And where, in Cambridge, do her
family live?"
"Oh, it's on one of those little streets that don't seem to have very
much of a name. But they do call it--they do call it----" she meditated
audibly.
This process was interrupted by an abrupt allocution from the conductor.
"I guess you change here for _your_ place. You want one of them blue
cars."
The good lady returned to a sense of the situation, and Ransom helped
her out of the vehicle, with the aid, as before, of a certain amount of
propulsion from the conductor. Her road branched off to the right, and
she had to wait on the corner of a street, there being as yet no blue
car within hail. The corner was quiet and the day favourable to
patience--a day of relaxed rigour and intense brilliancy. It was as if
the touch of the air itself were gloved, and the street-colouring had
the richness of a superficial thaw. Ransom, of course, waited with his
philanthropic companion, though she now protested more vigorously
against the idea that a gentleman from the South should pretend to teach
an old abolitionist the mysteries of Boston. He promised to leave her
when he should have consigned her to the blue car; and meanwhile they
stood in the sun, with their backs against an apothecary's window, and
she tried again, at his suggestion, to remember the name of Doctor
Tarrant's street. "I guess if you ask for Doctor Tarrant, any one can
tell you," she said; and then suddenly the address came to her--the
residence of the mesmeric healer was in Monadnoc Place.
"But you'll have to ask for that, so it comes to the same," she went on.
After this she added, with a friendliness more personal, "Ain't you
going to see your cousin too?"
"Not if I can help it!"
Miss Birdseye gave a little ineffectual sigh. "Well, I suppose every one
must act out their ideal. That's what Olive Chancellor does. She's a
very noble character."
"Oh yes, a glorious nature."
"You know their opinions are just the same--hers and Verena's," Miss
Birdseye placidly continued. "So why should you make a distinction?"
"My dear madam," said Ransom, "does a woman consist of nothing but her
opinions? I like Miss Tarrant's lovely face better, to begin with."
"Well, she _is_ pretty-looking." And Miss Birdseye gave another sigh, as
if she had had a theory submitted to her--that one about a lady's
opinions--which, with all that was unfamiliar and peculiar lying behind
it, she was really too old to look into much. It might have been the
first time she really felt her age. "There's a blue car," she said, in a
tone of mild relief.
"It will be some moments before it gets here. Moreover, I don't believe
that at bottom they _are_ Miss Tarrant's opinions," Ransom added.
"You mustn't think she hasn't a strong hold of them," his companion
exclaimed, more briskly. "If you think she is not sincere, you are very
much mistaken. Those views are just her life."
"Well, _she_ may bring me round to them," said Ransom, smiling.
Miss Birdseye had been watching her blue car, the advance of which was
temporarily obstructed. At this, she transferred her eyes to him, gazing
at him solemnly out of the pervasive window of her spectacles. "Well, I
shouldn't wonder if she did! Yes, that will be a good thing. I don't see
how you can help being a good deal shaken by her. She has acted on so
many."
"I see: no doubt she will act on me." Then it occurred to Ransom to add:
"By the way, Miss Birdseye, perhaps you will be so kind as not to
mention this meeting of ours to my cousin, in case of your seeing her
again. I have a perfectly good conscience in not calling upon her, but I
shouldn't like her to think that I announced my slighting intention all
over the town. I don't want to offend her, and she had better not know
that I have been in Boston. If you don't tell her, no one else will."
"Do you wish me to conceal----?" murmured Miss Birdseye, panting a
little.
"No, I don't want you to conceal anything. I only want you to let this
incident pass--to say nothing."
"Well, I never did anything of that kind."
"Of what kind?" Ransom was half vexed, half touched by her inability to
enter into his point of view, and her resistance made him hold to his
idea the more. "It is very simple, what I ask of you. You are under no
obligation to tell Miss Chancellor everything that happens to you, are
you?"
His request seemed still something of a shock to the poor old lady's
candour. "Well, I see her very often, and we talk a great deal. And
then--won't Verena tell her?"
"I have thought of that--but I hope not."
"She tells her most everything. Their union is so close."
"She won't want her to be wounded," Ransom said ingeniously.
"Well, you _are_ considerate." And Miss Birdseye continued to gaze at
him. "It's a pity you can't sympathise."
"As I tell you, perhaps Miss Tarrant will bring me round. You have
before you a possible convert," Ransom went on, without, I fear, putting
up the least little prayer to heaven that his dishonesty might be
forgiven.
"I should be very happy to think that--after I have told you her address
in this secret way." A smile of infinite mildness glimmered in Miss
Birdseye's face, and she added: "Well, I guess that will be your fate.
She _has_ affected so many. I would keep very quiet if I thought that.
Yes, she will bring you round."
"I will let you know as soon as she does," Basil Ransom said. "Here is
your car at last."
"Well, I believe in the victory of the truth. I won't say anything." And
she suffered the young man to lead her to the car, which had now stopped
at their corner.
"I hope very much I shall see you again," he remarked, as they went.
"Well, I am always round the streets, in Boston." And while, lifting and
pushing, he was helping again to insert her into the oblong receptacle,
she turned a little and repeated, "She _will_ affect you! If that's to
be your secret, I will keep it," Ransom heard her subjoin. He raised his
hat and waved her a farewell, but she didn't see him; she was squeezing
further into the car and making the discovery that this time it was full
and there was no seat for her. Surely, however, he said to himself,
every man in the place would offer his own to such an innocent old dear. _
Read next: Chapter 24 (Volume 2 Book 2)
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