Volume Ii Part 16 (1/2)
Olive lay back in her chair, with dilated eyes and parted lips. ”Verena Tarrant, what _is_ there between you? what _can_ I hold on to, what _can_ I believe? Two hours, in Cambridge, before we went to New York?”
The sense that Verena had been perfidious there--perfidious in her reticence--now began to roll over her. ”Mercy of heaven, how you did act!”
”Olive, it was to spare you.”
”To spare me? If you really wished to spare me he wouldn't be here now!”
Miss Chancellor flashed this out with a sudden violence, a spasm which threw Verena off and made her rise to her feet. For an instant the two young women stood confronted, and a person who had seen them at that moment might have taken them for enemies rather than friends. But any such opposition could last but a few seconds. Verena replied, with a tremor in her voice which was not that of pa.s.sion, but of charity: ”Do you mean that I expected him, that I brought him? I never in my life was more surprised at anything than when I saw him there.”
”Hasn't he the delicacy of one of his own slave-drivers? Doesn't he know you loathe him?”
Verena looked at her friend with a degree of majesty which, with her, was rare. ”I don't loathe him--I only dislike his opinions.”
”Dislike! Oh, misery!” And Olive turned away to the open window, leaning her forehead against the lifted sash.
Verena hesitated, then went to her, pa.s.sing her arm round her. ”Don't scold me! help me--help me!” she murmured.
Olive gave her a sidelong look; then, catching her up and facing her again--”Will you come away, now, by the next train?”
”Flee from him again, as I did in New York? No, no, Olive Chancellor, that's not the way,” Verena went on, reasoningly, as if all the wisdom of the ages were seated on her lips. ”Then how can we leave Miss Birdseye, in her state? We must stay here--we must fight it out here.”
”Why not be honest, if you have been false--really honest, not only half so? Why not tell him plainly that you love him?”
”Love him, Olive? why, I scarcely know him.”
”You'll have a chance, if he stays a month!”
”I don't dislike him, certainly, as you do. But how can I love him when he tells me he wants me to give up everything, all our work, our faith, our future, never to give another address, to open my lips in public?
How can I consent to that?” Verena went on, smiling strangely.
”He asks you that, just that way?”
”No; it's not that way. It's very kindly.”
”Kindly? Heaven help you, don't grovel! Doesn't he know it's my house?”
Olive added, in a moment.
”Of course he won't come into it, if you forbid him.”
”So that you may meet him in other places--on the sh.o.r.e, in the country?”
”I certainly shan't avoid him, hide away from him,” said Verena proudly.
”I thought I made you believe, in New York, that I really cared for our aspirations. The way for me then is to meet him, feeling conscious of my strength. What if I do like him? what does it matter? I like my work in the world, I like everything I believe in, better.”
Olive listened to this, and the memory of how, in the house in Tenth Street, Verena had rebuked her doubts, professed her own faith anew, came back to her with a force which made the present situation appear slightly less terrific. Nevertheless, she gave no a.s.sent to the girl's logic; she only replied: ”But you didn't meet him there; you hurried away from New York, after I was willing you should stay. He affected you very much there; you were not so calm when you came back to me from your expedition to the park as you pretend to be now. To get away from him you gave up all the rest.”
”I know I wasn't so calm. But now I have had three months to think about it--about the way he affected me there. I take it very quietly.”