Volume Ii Part 20 (1/2)
”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 att.i.tudinising 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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?”
”Seen Olive? I have seen nothing else!”
”I mean Miss Tarrant. She must be somewhere--in the place--if she's to speak to-night.”
”Should you like me to go out and look for her? _Il ne manquerait plus que cela!_” cried Mrs. Luna. ”What's the matter with you, Basil Ransom, and what are you after?” she demanded, with considerable sharpness. She had tried haughtiness and she had tried humility, but they brought her equally face to face with a compet.i.tor whom she couldn't take seriously, yet who was none the less objectionable for all that.
I know not whether Ransom would have attempted to answer her question had an obstacle not presented itself; at any rate, at the moment she spoke, the curtain in the doorway was pushed aside, and a visitor crossed the threshold. ”Mercy! how provoking!” Mrs. Luna exclaimed, audibly enough; and without moving from her place she bent an uncharitable eye upon the invader, a gentleman whom Ransom had the sense of having met before. He was a young man with a fresh face and abundant locks, prematurely white; he stood smiling at Mrs. Luna, quite undaunted by the absence of any demonstration in his favour. She looked as if she didn't know him, while Ransom prepared to depart, leaving them to settle it together.
”I'm afraid you don't remember me, though I have seen you before,” said the young man, very amiably. ”I was here a week ago, and Miss Chancellor presented me to you.”
”Oh yes; she's not at home now,” Mrs. Luna returned vaguely.
”So I was told--but I didn't let that prevent me.” And the young man included Basil Ransom in the smile with which he made himself more welcome than Mrs. Luna appeared disposed to make him, and by which he seemed to call attention to his superiority. ”There is a matter on which I want very much to obtain some information, and I have no doubt you will be so good as to give it to me.”
”It comes back to me--you have something to do with the newspapers,”
said Mrs. Luna; and Ransom too, by this time, had placed the young man among his reminiscences. He had been at Miss Birdseye's famous party, and Doctor Prance had there described him as a brilliant journalist.
It was quite with the air of such a personage that he accepted Mrs.
Luna's definition, and he continued to radiate towards Ransom (as if, in return, he remembered _his_ face), while he dropped, confidentially, the word that expressed everything--”The _Vesper_, don't you know?” Then he went on: ”Now, Mrs. Luna, I don't care, I'm not going to let you off! We want the last news about Miss Verena, and it has got to come out of this house.”
”Oh murder!” Ransom muttered, beneath his breath, taking up his hat.