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_ VOLUME I. BOOK FIRST. CHAPTER XIX.
This idea of their triumph, a triumph as yet ultimate and remote, but
preceded by the solemn vista of an effort so religious as never to be
wanting in ecstasy, became tremendously familiar to the two friends, but
especially to Olive, during the winter of 187-, a season which ushered
in the most momentous period of Miss Chancellor's life. About Christmas
a step was taken which advanced her affairs immensely, and put them, to
her apprehension, on a regular footing. This consisted in Verena's
coming in to Charles Street to stay with her, in pursuance of an
arrangement on Olive's part with Selah Tarrant and his wife that she
should remain for many months. The coast was now perfectly clear. Mrs.
Farrinder had started on her annual grand tour; she was rousing the
people, from Maine to Texas; Matthias Pardon (it was to be supposed) had
received, temporarily at least, his quietus; and Mrs. Luna was
established in New York, where she had taken a house for a year, and
whence she wrote to her sister that she was going to engage Basil Ransom
(with whom she was in communication for this purpose) to do her
law-business. Olive wondered what law-business Adeline could have, and
hoped she would get into a pickle with her landlord or her milliner, so
that repeated interviews with Mr. Ransom might become necessary. Mrs.
Luna let her know very soon that these interviews had begun; the young
Mississippian had come to dine with her; he hadn't got started much, by
what she could make out, and she was even afraid that he didn't dine
every day. But he wore a tall hat now, like a Northern gentleman, and
Adeline intimated that she found him really attractive. He had been very
nice to Newton, told him all about the war (quite the Southern version,
of course, but Mrs. Luna didn't care anything about American politics,
and she wanted her son to know all sides), and Newton did nothing but
talk about him, calling him "Rannie," and imitating his pronunciation of
certain words. Adeline subsequently wrote that she had made up her mind
to put her affairs into his hands (Olive sighed, not unmagnanimously, as
she thought of her sister's "affairs"), and later still she mentioned
that she was thinking strongly of taking him to be Newton's tutor. She
wished this interesting child to be privately educated, and it would be
more agreeable to have in that relation a person who was already, as it
were, a member of the family. Mrs. Luna wrote as if he were prepared to
give up his profession to take charge of her son, and Olive was pretty
sure that this was only a part of her grandeur, of the habit she had
contracted, especially since living in Europe, of speaking as if in
every case she required special arrangements.
In spite of the difference in their age, Olive had long since judged
her, and made up her mind that Adeline lacked every quality that a
person needed to be interesting in her eyes. She was rich (or
sufficiently so), she was conventional and timid, very fond of
attentions from men (with whom indeed she was reputed bold, but Olive
scorned such boldness as that), given up to a merely personal,
egotistical, instinctive life, and as unconscious of the tendencies of
the age, the revenges of the future, the new truths and the great social
questions, as if she had been a mere bundle of dress-trimmings, which
she very nearly was. It was perfectly observable that she had no
conscience, and it irritated Olive deeply to see how much trouble a
woman was spared when she was constructed on that system. Adeline's
"affairs," as I have intimated, her social relations, her views of
Newton's education, her practice and her theory (for she had plenty of
that, such as it was, heaven save the mark!), her spasmodic disposition
to marry again, and her still sillier retreats in the presence of danger
(for she had not even the courage of her frivolity), these things had
been a subject of tragic consideration to Olive ever since the return of
the elder sister to America. The tragedy was not in any particular harm
that Mrs. Luna could do her (for she did her good, rather, that is, she
did her honour by laughing at her), but in the spectacle itself, the
drama, guided by the hand of fate, of which the small, ignoble scenes
unrolled themselves so logically. The _denouement_ would of course be in
keeping, and would consist simply of the spiritual death of Mrs. Luna,
who would end by understanding no common speech of Olive's at all, and
would sink into mere worldly plumpness, into the last complacency, the
supreme imbecility, of petty, genteel conservatism. As for Newton, he
would be more utterly odious, if possible, as he grew up, than he was
already; in fact, he would not grow up at all, but only grow down, if
his mother should continue her infatuated system with him. He was
insufferably forward and selfish; under the pretext of keeping him, at
any cost, refined, Adeline had coddled and caressed him, having him
always in her petticoats, remitting his lessons when he pretended he had
an earache, drawing him into the conversation, letting him answer her
back, with an impertinence beyond his years, when she administered the
smallest check. The place for him, in Olive's eyes, was one of the
public schools, where the children of the people would teach him his
small importance, teach it, if necessary, by the aid of an occasional
drubbing; and the two ladies had a grand discussion on this point before
Mrs. Luna left Boston--a scene which ended in Adeline's clutching the
irrepressible Newton to her bosom (he came in at the moment), and
demanding of him a vow that he would live and die in the principles of
his mother. Mrs. Luna declared that if she must be trampled upon--and
very likely it was her fate!--she would rather be trampled upon by men
than by women, and that if Olive and her friends should get possession
of the government they would be worse despots than those who were
celebrated in history. Newton took an infant oath that he would never be
a destructive, impious radical, and Olive felt that after this she
needn't trouble herself any more about her sister, whom she simply
committed to her fate. That fate might very properly be to marry an
enemy of her country, a man who, no doubt, desired to treat women with
the lash and manacles, as he and his people had formerly treated the
wretched coloured race. If she was so fond of the fine old institutions
of the past, he would supply them to her in abundance; and if she wanted
so much to be a conservative, she could try first how she liked being a
conservative's wife. If Olive troubled herself little about Adeline, she
troubled herself more about Basil Ransom; she said to herself that since
he hated women who respected themselves (and each other), destiny would
use him rightly in hanging a person like Adeline round his neck. That
would be the way poetic justice ought to work, for him--and the law that
our prejudices, when they act themselves out, punish us in doing so.
Olive considered all this, as it was her effort to consider everything,
from a very high point of view, and ended by feeling sure it was not for
the sake of any nervous personal security that she desired to see her
two relations in New York get mixed up together. If such an event as
their marriage would gratify her sense of fitness, it would be simply as
an illustration of certain laws. Olive, thanks to the philosophic cast
of her mind, was exceedingly fond of illustrations of laws.
I hardly know, however, what illumination it was that sprang from her
consciousness (now a source of considerable comfort) that Mrs. Farrinder
was carrying the war into distant territories, and would return to
Boston only in time to preside at a grand Female Convention, already
advertised to take place in Boston in the month of June. It was
agreeable to her that this imperial woman should be away; it made the
field more free, the air more light; it suggested an exemption from
official criticism. I have not taken space to mention certain episodes
of the more recent intercourse of these ladies, and must content myself
with tracing them, lightly, in their consequences. These may be summed
up in the remark, which will doubtless startle no one by its freshness,
that two imperial women are scarcely more likely to hit it off together,
as the phrase is, than two imperial men. Since that party at Miss
Birdseye's, so important in its results for Olive, she had had occasion
to approach Mrs. Farrinder more nearly, and those overtures brought
forth the knowledge that the great leader of the feminine revolution was
the one person (in that part of the world) more concentrated, more
determined, than herself. Miss Chancellor's aspirations, of late, had
been immensely quickened; she had begun to believe in herself to a
livelier tune than she had ever listened to before; and she now
perceived that when spirit meets spirit there must either be mutual
absorption or a sharp concussion. It had long been familiar to her that
she should have to count with the obstinacy of the world at large, but
she now discovered that she should have to count also with certain
elements in the feminine camp. This complicated the problem, and such a
complication, naturally, could not make Mrs. Farrinder appear more easy
to assimilate. If Olive's was a high nature and so was hers, the fault
was in neither; it was only an admonition that they were not needed as
landmarks in the same part of the field. If such perceptions are
delicate as between men, the reader need not be reminded of the
exquisite form they may assume in natures more refined. So it was that
Olive passed, in three months, from the stage of veneration to that of
competition; and the process had been accelerated by the introduction of
Verena into the fold. Mrs. Farrinder had behaved in the strangest way
about Verena. First she had been struck with her, and then she hadn't;
first she had seemed to want to take her in, then she had shied at her
unmistakably--intimating to Olive that there were enough of that kind
already. Of "that kind" indeed!--the phrase reverberated in Miss
Chancellor's resentful soul. Was it possible she didn't know the kind
Verena was of, and with what vulgar aspirants to notoriety did she
confound her? It had been Olive's original desire to obtain Mrs.
Farrinder's stamp for her _protegee_; she wished her to hold a
commission from the commander-in-chief. With this view the two young
women had made more than one pilgrimage to Roxbury, and on one of these
occasions the sibylline mood (in its most charming form) had descended
upon Verena. She had fallen into it, naturally and gracefully, in the
course of talk, and poured out a stream of eloquence even more touching
than her regular discourse at Miss Birdseye's. Mrs. Farrinder had taken
it rather dryly, and certainly it didn't resemble her own style of
oratory, remarkable and cogent as this was. There had been considerable
question of her writing a letter to the New York _Tribune_, the effect
of which should be to launch Miss Tarrant into renown; but this
beneficent epistle never appeared, and now Olive saw that there was no
favour to come from the prophetess of Roxbury. There had been
primnesses, pruderies, small reserves, which ended by staying her pen.
If Olive didn't say at once that she was jealous of Verena's more
attractive manner, it was only because such a declaration was destined
to produce more effect a little later. What she did say was that
evidently Mrs. Farrinder wanted to keep the movement in her own
hands--viewed with suspicion certain romantic, esthetic elements which
Olive and Verena seemed to be trying to introduce into it. They insisted
so much, for instance, on the historic unhappiness of women; but Mrs.
Farrinder didn't appear to care anything for that, or indeed to know
much about history at all. She seemed to begin just to-day, and she
demanded their rights for them whether they were unhappy or not. The
upshot of this was that Olive threw herself on Verena's neck with a
movement which was half indignation, half rapture; she exclaimed that
they would have to fight the battle without human help, but, after all,
it was better so. If they were all in all to each other, what more could
they want? They would be isolated, but they would be free; and this view
of the situation brought with it a feeling that they had almost already
begun to be a force. It was not, indeed, that Olive's resentment faded
quite away; for not only had she the sense, doubtless very presumptuous,
that Mrs. Farrinder was the only person thereabouts of a stature to
judge her (a sufficient cause of antagonism in itself, for if we like to
be praised by our betters we prefer that censure should come from the
other sort), but the kind of opinion she had unexpectedly betrayed,
after implying such esteem in the earlier phase of their intercourse,
made Olive's cheeks occasionally flush. She prayed heaven that _she_
might never become so personal, so narrow. She was frivolous, worldly,
an amateur, a trifler, a frequenter of Beacon Street; her taking up
Verena Tarrant was only a kind of elderly, ridiculous doll-dressing:
this was the light in which Miss Chancellor had reason to believe that
it now suited Mrs. Farrinder to regard her! It was fortunate, perhaps,
that the misrepresentation was so gross; yet, none the less, tears of
wrath rose more than once to Olive's eyes when she reflected that this
particular wrong had been put upon her. Frivolous, worldly, Beacon
Street! She appealed to Verena to share in her pledge that the world
should know in due time how much of that sort of thing there was about
her. As I have already hinted, Verena at such moments quite rose to the
occasion; she had private pangs at committing herself to give the cold
shoulder to Beacon Street for ever; but she was now so completely in
Olive's hands that there was no sacrifice to which she would not have
consented in order to prove that her benefactress was not frivolous.
The matter of her coming to stay for so long in Charles Street was
arranged during a visit that Selah Tarrant paid there at Miss
Chancellor's request. This interview, which had some curious features,
would be worth describing but I am forbidden to do more than mention the
most striking of these. Olive wished to have an understanding with him;
wished the situation to be clear, so that, disagreeable as it would be
to her to receive him, she sent him a summons for a certain hour--an
hour at which she had planned that Verena should be out of the house.
She withheld this incident from the girl's knowledge, reflecting with
some solemnity that it was the first deception (for Olive her silence
was a deception) that she had yet practised on her friend, and wondering
whether she should have to practise others in the future. She then and
there made up her mind that she would not shrink from others should they
be necessary. She notified Tarrant that she should keep Verena a long
time, and Tarrant remarked that it was certainly very pleasant to see
her so happily located. But he also intimated that he should like to
know what Miss Chancellor laid out to do with her; and the tone of this
suggestion made Olive feel how right she had been to foresee that their
interview would have the stamp of business. It assumed that complexion
very definitely when she crossed over to her desk and wrote Mr. Tarrant
a cheque for a very considerable amount. "Leave us alone--entirely
alone--for a year, and then I will write you another": it was with these
words she handed him the little strip of paper that meant so much,
feeling, as she did so, that surely Mrs. Farrinder herself could not be
less amateurish than that. Selah looked at the cheque, at Miss
Chancellor, at the cheque again, at the ceiling, at the floor, at the
clock, and once more at his hostess; then the document disappeared
beneath the folds of his waterproof, and she saw that he was putting it
into some queer place on his queer person. "Well, if I didn't believe
you were going to help her to develop," he remarked; and he stopped,
while his hands continued to fumble, out of sight, and he treated Olive
to his large joyless smile. She assured him that he need have no fear on
that score; Verena's development was the thing in the world in which she
took most interest; she should have every opportunity for a free
expansion. "Yes, that's the great thing," Selah said; "it's more
important than attracting a crowd. That's all we shall ask of you; let
her act out her nature. Don't all the trouble of humanity come from our
being pressed back? Don't shut down the cover, Miss Chancellor; just let
her overflow!" And again Tarrant illuminated his inquiry, his metaphor,
by the strange and silent lateral movement of his jaws. He added,
presently, that he supposed he should have to fix it with Mis' Tarrant;
but Olive made no answer to that; she only looked at him with a face in
which she intended to express that there was nothing that need detain
him longer. She knew it had been fixed with Mrs. Tarrant; she had been
over all that with Verena, who had told her that her mother was willing
to sacrifice her for her highest good. She had reason to know (not
through Verena, of course) that Mrs. Tarrant had embraced, tenderly, the
idea of a pecuniary compensation, and there was no fear of her making a
scene when Tarrant should come back with a cheque in his pocket. "Well,
I trust she _may_ develop, richly, and that you may accomplish what you
desire; it seems as if we had only a little way to go further," that
worthy observed, as he erected himself for departure.
"It's not a little way; it's a very long way," Olive replied, rather
sternly.
Tarrant was on the threshold; he lingered a little, embarrassed by her
grimness, for he himself had always inclined to rose-coloured views of
progress, of the march of truth. He had never met any one so much in
earnest as this definite, literal young woman, who had taken such an
unhoped-for fancy to his daughter; whose longing for the new day had
such perversities of pessimism, and who, in the midst of something that
appeared to be terribly searching in her honesty, was willing to corrupt
him, as a father, with the most extravagant orders on her bank. He
hardly knew in what language to speak to her; it seemed as if there was
nothing soothing enough, when a lady adopted that tone about a movement
which was thought by some of the brightest to be so promising. "Oh,
well, I guess there's some kind of mysterious law...." he murmured,
almost timidly; and so he passed from Miss Chancellor's sight. _
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