by Henry James
“You attach importance yourself; otherwise you would have told me.”
“I knew you wouldn’t like it—because you don’t like him.”
“I don’t think of him,” said Olive; “he’s nothing to me.” Then she added, suddenly, “Have you noticed that I am afraid to face what I don’t like?”
Verena could not say that she had, and yet it was not just on Olive’s part to speak as if she were an easy person to tell such a thing to: the way she lay there, white and weak, like a wounded creature, sufficiently proved the contrary. “You have such a fearful power of suffering,” she replied in a moment.
To this at first Miss Chancellor made no rejoinder; but after a little she said, in the same attitude, “Yes, you could make me.”
Verena took her hand and held it awhile. “I never will, till I have been through everything myself.”
“You were not made to suffer—you were made to enjoy,” Olive said, in very much the same tone in which she had told her that what was the matter with her was that she didn’t dislike men as a class—a tone which implied that the contrary would have been much more natural and perhaps rather higher. Perhaps it would; but Verena was unable to rebut the charge; she felt this, as she looked out of the window of the carriage at the bright, amusing city, where the elements seemed so numerous, the animation so immense, the shops so brilliant, the women so strikingly dressed, and knew that these things quickened her curiosity, all her pulses.
“Well, I suppose I mustn’t presume on it,” she remarked, glancing back at Olive with her natural sweetness, her uncontradicting grace.
That young lady lifted her hand to her lips—held it there a moment; the movement seemed to say, “When you are so divinely docile, how can I help the dread of losing you?” This idea, however, was unspoken, and Olive Chancellor’s uttered words, as the carriage rolled on, were different.
“Verena, I don’t understand why he wrote to you.”
“He wrote to me because he likes me. Perhaps you’ll say you don’t understand why he likes me,” the girl continued, laughing. “He liked me the first time he saw me.”
“Oh, that time!” Olive murmured.
“And still more the second.”
“Did he tell you that in his letter?” Miss Chancellor inquired.
“Yes, my dear, he told me that. Only he expressed it more gracefully.” Verena was very happy to say that; a written phrase of Basil Ransom’s sufficiently justified her.
“It was my intuition—it was my foreboding!” Olive exclaimed, closing her eyes.
“I thought you said you didn’t dislike him.”
“It isn’t dislike—it’s simple dread. Is that all there is between you?”
“Why, Olive Chancellor, what do you think?” Verena asked, feeling now distinctly like a coward. Five minutes afterwards she said to Olive that if it would give her pleasure they would leave New York on the morrow, without taking a fourth day; and as soon as she had done so she felt better, especially when she saw how gratefully Olive looked at her for the concession, how eagerly she rose to the offer in saying, “Well, if you do feel that it isn’t our own life—our very own!” It was with these words, and others besides, and with an unusually weak, indefinite kiss, as if she wished to protest that, after all, a single day didn’t matter, and yet accepted the sacrifice and was a little ashamed of it—it was in this manner that the agreement as to an immediate retreat was sealed. Verena could not shut her eyes to the fact that for a month she had been less frank, and if she wished to do penance this abbreviation of their pleasure in New York, even if it made her almost completely miss Basil Ransom, was easier than to tell Olive just now that the letter was not all, that there had been a long visit, a talk, and a walk besides, which she had been covering up for ever so many weeks. And of what consequence, anyway, was the missing? Was it such a pleasure to converse with a gentleman who only wanted to let you know—and why he should want it so much Verena couldn’t guess—that he thought you quite preposterous? Olive took her from place to place, and she ended by forgetting everything but the present hour, and the bigness and variety of New York, and the entertainment of rolling about in a carriage with silk cushions, and meeting new faces, new expressions of curiosity and sympathy, assurances that one was watched and followed. Mingled with this was a bright consciousness, sufficient for the moment, that one was moreover to dine at Delmonico’s and go to the German opera. There was enough of the epicurean in Verena’s composition to make it easy for her in certain conditions to live only for the hour.
XXXI
When she returned with her companion to the establishment in Tenth Street she saw two notes lying on the table in the hall; one of which she perceived to be addressed to Miss Chancellor, the other to herself. The hand was different, but she recognised both. Olive was behind her on the steps, talking to the coachman about sending another carriage for them in half an hour (they had left themselves but just time to dress); so that she simply possessed herself of her own note and ascended to her room. As she did so she felt that all the while she had known it would be there, and was conscious of a kind of treachery, an unfriendly wilfulness, in not being more prepared for it. If she could roll about New York the whole afternoon and forget that there might be difficulties ahead, that didn’t alter the fact that there were difficulties, and that they might even become considerable—might not be settled by her simply going back to Boston. Half an hour later, as she drove up the Fifth Avenue with Olive (there seemed to be so much crowded into that one day), smoothing her light gloves, wishing her fan were a little nicer, and proving by the answering, familiar brightness with which she looked out on the lamp-lighted streets that, whatever theory might be entertained as to the genesis of her talent and her personal nature, the blood of the lecture-going, night-walking Tarrants did distinctly flow in her veins; as the pair proceeded, I say, to the celebrated restaurant, at the door of which Mr. Burrage had promised to be in vigilant expectancy of their carriage, Verena found a sufficiently gay and natural tone of voice for remarking to her friend that Mr. Ransom had called upon her while they were out, and had left a note in which there were many compliments for Miss Chancellor.
“That’s wholly your own affair, my dear,” Olive replied, with a melancholy sigh, gazing down the vista of Fourteenth Street (which they happened just then to be traversing, with much agitation), toward the queer barrier of the elevated railway.
It was nothing new to Verena that if the great striving of Olive’s life was for justice she yet sometimes failed to arrive at it in particular cases; and she reflected that it was rather late for her to say, like that, that Basil Ransom’s letters were only his correspondent’s business. Had not his kinswoman quite made the subject her own during their drive that afternoon? Verena determined now that her companion should hear all there was to be heard about the letter; asking herself whether, if she told her at present more than she cared to know, it wouldn’t make up for her hitherto having told her less. “He brought it with him, written, in case I should be out. He wants to see me to-morrow—he says he has ever so much to say to me. He proposes an hour—says he hopes it won’t be inconvenient for me to see him about eleven in the morning; thinks I may have no other engagement so early as that. Of course our return to Boston settles it,” Verena added, with serenity.
Miss Chancellor said nothing for a moment; then she replied, “Yes, unless you invite him to come on with you in the train.”
“Why, Olive, how bitter you are!” Verena exclaimed, in genuine surprise.
Olive could not justify her bitterness by saying that her companion had spoken as if she were disappointed, because Verena had not. So she simply remarked, “I don’t see what he can have to say to you—that would be worth your hearing.”
“Well, of course, it’s the other side. He has got it on the brain!” said Verena, with a laugh which seemed to relegate the whole matter to the category of the unimportant.
“If we should stay, would you see h
im—at eleven o’clock?” Olive inquired.
“Why do you ask that—when I have given it up?”
“Do you consider it such a tremendous sacrifice?”
“No,” said Verena good-naturedly; “but I confess I am curious.”
“Curious—how do you mean?”
“Well, to hear the other side.”
“Oh heaven!” Olive Chancellor murmured, turning her face upon her.
“You must remember I have never heard it.” And Verena smiled into her friend’s wan gaze.
“Do you want to hear all the infamy that is in the world?”
“No, it isn’t that; but the more he should talk the better chance he would give me. I guess I can meet him.”
“Life is too short. Leave him as he is.”
“Well,” Verena went on, “there are many I haven’t cared to move at all, whom I might have been more interested in than in him. But to make him give in just at two or three points—that I should like better than anything I have done.”
“You have no business to enter upon a contest that isn’t equal; and it wouldn’t be, with Mr. Ransom.”
“The inequality would be that I have right on my side.”
“What is that—for a man? For what was their brutality given them, but to make that up?”
“I don’t think he’s brutal; I should like to see,” said Verena gaily.
Olive’s eyes lingered a little on her own; then they turned away, vaguely, blindly, out of the carriage-window, and Verena made the reflexion that she looked strangely little like a person who was going to dine at Delmonico’s. How terribly she worried about everything, and how tragical was her nature; how anxious, suspicious, exposed to subtle influences! In their long intimacy Verena had come to revere most of her friend’s peculiarities; they were a proof of her depth and devotion, and were so bound up with what was noble in her that she was rarely provoked to criticise them separately. But at present, suddenly, Olive’s earnestness began to appear as inharmonious with the scheme of the universe as if it had been a broken saw; and she was positively glad she had not told her about Basil Ransom’s appearance in Monadnoc Place. If she worried so about what she knew, how much would she not have worried about the rest! Verena had by this time made up her mind that her acquaintance with Mr. Ransom was the most episodical, most superficial, most unimportant of all possible relations.
Olive Chancellor watched Henry Burrage very closely that evening; she had a special reason for doing so, and her entertainment, during the successive hours, was derived much less from the delicate little feast over which this insinuating proselyte presided, in the brilliant public room of the establishment, where French waiters flitted about on deep carpets and parties at neighbouring tables excited curiosity and conjecture, or even from the magnificent music of Lohengrin, than from a secret process of comparison and verification, which shall presently be explained to the reader. As some discredit has possibly been thrown upon her impartiality it is a pleasure to be able to say that on her return from the opera she took a step dictated by an earnest consideration of justice—of the promptness with which Verena had told her of the note left by Basil Ransom in the afternoon. She drew Verena into her room with her. The girl, on the way back to Tenth Street, had spoken only of Wagner’s music, of the singers, the orchestra, the immensity of the house, her tremendous pleasure. Olive could see how fond she might become of New York, where that kind of pleasure was so much more in the air.
“Well, Mr. Burrage was certainly very kind to us—no one could have been more thoughtful,” Olive said; and she coloured a little at the look with which Verena greeted this tribute of appreciation from Miss Chancellor to a single gentleman.
“I am so glad you were struck with that, because I do think we have been a little rough to him.” Verena’s we was angelic. “He was particularly attentive to you, my dear; he has got over me. He looked at you so sweetly. Dearest Olive, if you marry him–-!” And Miss Tarrant, who was in high spirits, embraced her companion, to check her own silliness.
“He wants you to stay there, all the same. They haven’t given that up,” Olive remarked, turning to a drawer, out of which she took a letter.
“Did he tell you that, pray? He said nothing more about it to me.”
“When we came in this afternoon I found this note from Mrs. Burrage. You had better read it.” And she presented the document, open, to Verena.
The purpose of it was to say that Mrs. Burrage could really not reconcile herself to the loss of Verena’s visit, on which both she and her son had counted so much. She was sure they would be able to make it as interesting to Miss Tarrant as it would be to themselves. She, Mrs. Burrage, moreover, felt as if she hadn’t heard half she wanted about Miss Tarrant’s views, and there were so many more who were present at the address, who had come to her that afternoon (losing not a minute, as Miss Chancellor could see) to ask how in the world they too could learn more—how they could get at the fair speaker and question her about certain details. She hoped so much, therefore, that even if the young ladies should be unable to alter their decision about the visit they might at least see their way to staying over long enough to allow her to arrange an informal meeting for some of these poor thirsty souls. Might she not at least talk over the question with Miss Chancellor? She gave her notice that she would attack her on the subject of the visit too. Might she not see her on the morrow, and might she ask of her the very great favour that the interview should be at Mrs. Burrage’s own house? She had something very particular to say to her, as regards which perfect privacy was a great consideration, and Miss Chancellor would doubtless recognise that this would be best secured under Mrs. Burrage’s roof. She would therefore send her carriage for Miss Chancellor at any hour that would be convenient to the latter. She really thought much good might come from their having a satisfactory talk.
Verena read this epistle with much deliberation; it seemed to her mysterious, and confirmed the idea she had received the night before—the idea that she had not got quite a correct impression of this clever, worldly, curious woman on the occasion of her visit to Cambridge, when they met her at her son’s rooms. As she gave the letter back to Olive she said, “That’s why he didn’t seem to believe we are really leaving to-morrow. He knows she had written that, and he thinks it will keep us.”
“Well, if I were to say it may—should you think me too miserably changeful?”
Verena stared, with all her candour, and it was so very queer that Olive should now wish to linger that the sense of it, for the moment, almost covered the sense of its being pleasant. But that came out after an instant, and she said, with great honesty, “You needn’t drag me away for consistency’s sake. It would be absurd for me to pretend that I don’t like being here.”