The Bostonians, Vol. II

'Gracious me!' panted Mr. Pardon; 'I knew from the first Miss Chancellor would make a mess of it! Where's Mr. Filer?' he went on eagerly, addressing himself apparently to either of the others, or to both.

'I guess he's at the door, counting the money,' said the policeman.

'Well, he'll have to give it back if he don't look out!'

'Maybe he will. I'll let him in if he comes, but he's the only one. She is on now,' the policeman added, without emotion.

His ear had caught the first faint murmur of another explosion of sound. This time, unmistakably, it was applause—the clapping of multitudinous hands, mingled with the noise of many throats. The demonstration, however, though considerable, was not what might have been expected, and it died away quickly. Mr. Pardon stood listening, with an expression of some alarm. 'Merciful fathers! can't they give her more than that?' he cried. 'I'll just fly round and see!'

When he had hurried away again, Ransom said to the policeman—'Who is Mr. Filer?'

'Oh, he's an old friend of mine. He's the man that runs Miss Chancellor.'

'That runs her?'

'Just the same as she runs Miss Tarrant. He runs the pair, as you might say. He's in the lecture- business.'

'Then he had better talk to the public himself.'

'Oh, he can't talk; he can only boss!'

The opposite door at this moment was pushed open again, and a large, heated-looking man, with a little stiff beard on the end of his chin and his overcoat flying behind him, strode forward with an imprecation. 'What the h —— are they doing in the parlour? This sort of thing's about played out!'

'Ain't she up there now?' the policeman asked.

'It's not Miss Tarrant,' Ransom said, as if he knew all about it. He perceived in a moment that this was Mr. Filer, Olive Chancellor's agent; an inference instantly followed by the reflexion that such a personage would have been warned against him by his kinswoman and would doubtless attempt to hold him, or his influence, accountable for Verena's unexpected delay. Mr. Filer only glanced at him, however, and to Ransom's surprise appeared to have no theory of his identity; a fact implying that Miss Chancellor had considered that the greater discretion was (except to the policeman) to hold her tongue about him altogether.

'Up there? It's her jackass of a father that's up there!' cried Mr. Filer, with his hand on the latch of the door, which the policeman had allowed him to approach.

'Is he asking for a doctor?' the latter inquired dispassionately.

'You're the sort of doctor he'll want, if he doesn't produce the girl! You don't mean to say they've locked themselves in? What the plague are they after?'

'They've got the key on that side,' said the policeman, while Mr. Filer discharged at the door a volley of sharp knocks, at the same time violently shaking the handle.

'If the door was locked, what was the good of your standing before it?' Ransom inquired.

'So as you couldn't do that'; and the policeman nodded at Mr. Filer.

'You see your interference has done very little good.'

'I dunno; she has got to come out yet.'

Mr. Filer meanwhile had continued to thump and shake, demanding instant admission and inquiring if they were going to let the audience pull the house down. Another round of applause had broken out, directed perceptibly to some apology, some solemn circumlocution, of Selah Tarrant's; this covered the sound of the agent's voice, as well as that of a confused and divided response, proceeding from the parlour. For a minute nothing definite was audible; the door remained closed, and Matthias Pardon reappeared in the vestibule.

'He says she's just a little faint—from nervousness. She'll be all ready in about three minutes.' This announcement was Mr. Pardon's contribution to the crisis; and he added that the crowd was a lovely crowd, it was a real Boston crowd, it was perfectly good-humoured.

'There's a lovely crowd, and a real Boston one too, I guess, in here!' cried Mr. Filer, now banging very hard. 'I've handled prima donnas, and I've handled natural curiosities, but I've never seen anything up to this. Mind what I say, ladies; if you don't let me in, I'll smash down the door!'

'Don't seem as if you could make it much worse, does it?' the policeman observed to Ransom, strolling aside a little, with the air of being superseded.

XLII

Ransom made no reply; he was watching the door, which at that moment gave way from within. Verena stood there—it was she, evidently, who had opened it—and her eyes went straight to his. She was dressed in white, and her face was whiter than her garment; above it her hair seemed to shine like fire. She took a step forward; but before she could take another he had come down to her, on the threshold of the room. Her face was full of suffering, and he did not attempt—before all those eyes—to take her hand; he only said in a low tone, 'I have been waiting for you—a long time!'

'I know it—I saw you in your seat—I want to speak to you.'

'Well, Miss Tarrant, don't you think you'd better be on the platform?' cried Mr. Filer, making with both his arms a movement as if to sweep her before him, through the waiting-room, up into the presence of the public.

'In a moment I shall be ready. My father is making that all right.' And, to Ransom's surprise, she smiled, with all her sweetness, at the irrepressible agent; appeared to wish genuinely to reassure him.

The three had moved together into the waiting-room, and there at the farther end of it, beyond the vulgar, perfunctory chairs and tables, under the flaring gas, he saw Mrs. Tarrant sitting upright on a sofa, with immense rigidity, and a large flushed visage, full of suppressed distortion, and beside her prostrate, fallen over, her head buried in the lap of Verena's mother, the tragic figure of Olive Chancellor. Ransom could scarcely know how much