'I have neither seen her nor heard of her for the last ten weeks; Miss Chancellor has hidden her away.'

'Hidden her away, with all the walls and fences of Boston flaming to-day with her name?'

'Oh yes, I have noticed that, and I have no doubt that by waiting till this evening I shall be able to see her. But I don't want to wait till this evening; I want to see her now, and not in public—in private.'

'Do you indeed?—how interesting!' cried Mrs. Luna, with rippling laughter. 'And pray what do you want to do with her?'

Ransom hesitated a little. 'I think I would rather not tell you.'

'Your charming frankness, then, has its limits! My poor cousin, you are really too naif. Do you suppose it matters a straw to me?'

Ransom made no answer to this appeal, but after an instant he broke out: 'Honestly, Mrs. Luna, can you give me no clue?'

'Lord, what terrible eyes you make, and what terrible words you use! 'Honestly,' quoth he! Do you think I am so fond of the creature that I want to keep her all to myself?'

'I don't know; I don't understand,' said Ransom, slowly and softly, but still with his terrible eyes.

'And do you think I understand any better? You are not a very edifying young man,' Mrs. Luna went on; 'but I really think you have deserved a better fate than to be jilted and thrown over by a girl of that class.'

'I haven't been jilted. I like her very much, but she never encouraged me.'

At this Mrs. Luna broke again into articulate scoffing. 'It is very odd that at your age you should be so little a man of the world!'

Ransom made her no other answer than to remark, thoughtfully and rather absently: 'Your sister is really very clever.'

'By which you mean, I suppose, that I am not!' Mrs. Luna suddenly changed her tone, and said, with the greatest sweetness and humility: 'God knows, I have never pretended to be!'

Ransom looked at her a moment, and guessed the meaning of this altered note. It had suddenly come over her that with her portrait in half the shop-fronts, her advertisement on all the fences, and the great occasion on which she was to reveal herself to the country at large close at hand, Verena had become so conscious of high destinies that her dear friend's Southern kinsman really appeared to her very small game, and she might therefore be regarded as having cast him off. If this were the case, it would perhaps be well for Mrs. Luna still to hold on. Basil's induction was very rapid, but it gave him time to decide that the best thing to say to his interlocutress was: 'On what day do you sail for Europe?'

'Perhaps I shall not sail at all,' Mrs. Luna replied, looking out of the window.

'And in that case—poor Newton's education?'

'I should try to content myself with a country which has given you yours.'

'Don't you want him, then, to be a man of the world?'

'Ah, the world, the world!' she murmured, while she watched, in the deepening dusk, the lights of the town begin to reflect themselves in the Back Bay. 'Has it been such a source of happiness to me that I belong to it?'

'Perhaps, after all, I shall be able to go to Florence!' said Ransom, laughing.

She faced him once more, this time slowly, and declared that she had never known anything so strange as his state of mind—she would be so glad to have an explanation of it. With the opinions he professed (it was for them she had liked him—she didn't like his character), why on earth should he be running after a little fifth-rate poseuse, and in such a frenzy to get hold of her? He might say it was none of her business, and of course she would have no answer to that; therefore she admitted that she asked simply out of intellectual curiosity, and because one always was tormented at the sight of a painful contradiction. With the things she had heard him say about his convictions and theories, his view of life and the great questions of the future, she should have thought he would find Miss Tarrant's attitudinising absolutely nauseous. Were not her views the same as Olive's and hadn't Olive and he signally failed to hit it off together? Mrs. Luna only asked because she was really quite puzzled. 'Don't you know that some minds, when they see a mystery, can't rest till they clear it up?'

'You can't be more puzzled than I am,' said Ransom. 'Apparently the explanation is to be found in a sort of reversal of the formula you were so good, just now, as to apply to me. You like my opinions, but you entertain a different sentiment for my character. I deplore Miss Tarrant's opinions, but her character—well, her character pleases me.'

Mrs. Luna stared, as if she were waiting, the explanation surely not being complete. 'But as much as that?' she inquired.

'As much as what?' said Ransom, smiling. Then he added, 'Your sister has beaten me.'

'I thought she had beaten some one of late; she has seemed so gay and happy. I didn't suppose it was all because I was going away.'

'Has she seemed very gay?' Ransom inquired, with a sinking of the heart. He wore such a long face, as he asked this question, that Mrs. Luna was again moved to audible mirth, after which she explained:

'Of course I mean gay for her. Everything is relative. With her impatience for this lecture of her friend's to- night, she's in an unspeakable state! She can't sit still for three minutes, she goes out fifteen times a day, and there has been enough arranging and interviewing, and discussing and telegraphing and advertising, enough wire-pulling and rushing about, to put an army in the field. What is it they are always doing to the armies in Europe?—mobilising them? Well, Verena has been mobilised, and this has been headquarters.'

'And shall you go to the Music Hall to-night?'

'For what do you take me? I have no desire to be shrieked at for an hour.'

'No doubt, no doubt, Miss Olive must be in a state,' Ransom went on, rather absently. Then he said, with abruptness, in a different tone: 'If this house has been, as you say, headquarters, how comes it you haven't seen her?'

Вы читаете The Bostonians, Vol. II
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