The Bostonians, Vol. II

Ransom had one, on the instant, at his service. 'Because I don't want simply to see her; I want also to speak to her—in private.'

'Yes—it's always intensely private,' said the policeman. 'Now I wouldn't lose the lecture if I was you. I guess it will do you good.'

'The lecture?' Ransom repeated, laughing. 'It won't take place.'

'Yes it will—as quick as the organ stops.' Then the policeman added, as to himself, 'Why the devil don't it?'

'Because Miss Tarrant has sent up to the organist to tell him to keep on.'

'Who has she sent, do you s'pose?' And Ransom's new acquaintance entered into his humour. 'I guess Miss Chancellor isn't her nigger.'

'She has sent her father, or perhaps even her mother. They are in there too.'

'How do you know that?' asked the policeman consideringly.

'Oh, I know everything,' Ransom answered, smiling.

'Well, I guess they didn't come here to listen to that organ. We'll hear something else before long, if he doesn't stop.'

'You will hear a good deal, very soon,' Ransom remarked.

The serenity of his self-confidence appeared at last to make an impression on his antagonist, who lowered his head a little, like some butting animal, and looked at the young man from beneath bushy eyebrows. 'Well, I have heard a good deal, since I've been in Boston.'

'Oh, Boston's a great place,' Ransom rejoined inattentively. He was not listening to the policeman or to the organ now, for the sound of voices had reached him from the other side of the door. The policeman took no further notice of it than to lean back against the panels, with folded arms; and there was another pause, between them, during which the playing of the organ ceased.

'I will just wait here, with your permission,' said Ransom, 'and presently I shall be called.'

'Who do you s'pose will call you?'

'Well, Miss Tarrant, I hope.'

'She'll have to square the other one first.'

Ransom took out his watch, which he had adapted, on purpose, several hours before, to Boston time, and saw that the minutes had sped with increasing velocity during this interview, and that it now marked five minutes past eight. 'Miss Chancellor will have to square the public,' he said in a moment; and the words were far from being an empty profession of security, for the conviction already in possession of him, that a drama in which he, though cut off, was an actor, had been going on for some time in the apartment he was prevented from entering, that the situation was extraordinarily strained there, and that it could not come to an end without an appeal to him—this transcendental assumption acquired an infinitely greater force the instant he perceived that Verena was even now keeping her audience waiting. Why didn't she go on? Why, except that she knew he was there, and was gaining time?

'Well, I guess she has shown herself,' said the door-keeper, whose discussion with Ransom now appeared to have passed, on his own part, and without the slightest prejudice to his firmness, into a sociable, gossiping phase.

'If she had shown herself, we should hear the reception, the applause.'

'Well, there they air; they are going to give it to her,' the policeman announced.

He had an odious appearance of being in the right, for there indeed they seemed to be—they were giving it to her. A general hubbub rose from the floor and the galleries of the hall—the sound of several thousand people stamping with their feet and rapping with their umbrellas and sticks. Ransom felt faint, and for a little while he stood with his gaze interlocked with that of the policeman. Then suddenly a wave of coolness seemed to break over him, and he exclaimed: 'My dear fellow, that isn't applause—it's impatience. It isn't a reception, it's a call!'

The policeman neither assented to this proposition nor denied it; he only transferred the protuberance in his cheek to the other side, and observed:

'I guess she's sick.'

'Oh, I hope not!' said Ransom, very gently. The stamping and rapping swelled and swelled for a minute, and then it subsided; but before it had done so Ransom's definition of it had plainly become the true one. The tone of the manifestation was good-humoured, but it was not gratulatory. He looked at his watch again, and saw that five minutes more had elapsed, and he remembered what the newspaperman in Charles Street had said about Olive's guaranteeing Verena's punctuality. Oddly enough, at the moment the image of this gentleman recurred to him, the gentleman himself burst through the other door, in a state of the liveliest agitation.

'Why in the name of goodness don't she go on? If she wants to make them call her, they've done it about enough!' Mr. Pardon turned, pressingly, from Ransom to the policeman and back again, and in his preoccupation gave no sign of having met the Mississippian before.

'I guess she's sick,' said the policeman.

'The public'll be sick!' cried the distressed reporter. 'If she's sick, why doesn't she send for a doctor? All Boston is packed into this house, and she has got to talk to it. I want to go in and see.'

'You can't go in,' said the policeman drily.

'Why can't I go in, I should like to know? I want to go in for the Vesper'!

'You can't go in for anything. I'm keeping this man out, too,' the policeman added genially, as if to make Mr. Pardon's exclusion appear less invidious.

'Why, they'd ought to let you in,' said Matthias, staring a moment at Ransom.

'May be they'd ought, but they won't,' the policeman remarked.