THE BOSTONIANS. Генри Джеймс

She was not a quiet girl; she fidgeted, was restless, while she talked, and had the air of a person who, whatever she might be doing, would wish to be doing something else. If people watched her a good deal, she also returned their contemplation, and her charming eyes had several times encountered those of Basil Ransom. But they wandered mainly in the direction of Mrs. Farrinder — they lingered upon the serene solidity of the great oratress. It was easy to see that the girl admired this beneficent woman, and felt it a privilege to be near her. It was apparent, indeed, that she was excited by the company in which she found herself; a fact to be explained by a reference to that recent period of exile in the West, of which we have had a hint, and in consequence of which the present occasion may have seemed to her a return to intellectual life. Ransom secretly wished that his cousin — since fate was to reserve for him a cousin in Boston — had been more like that.

      By this time a certain agitation was perceptible; several ladies, impatient of vain delay, had left their places, to appeal personally to Mrs. Farrinder, who was presently surrounded with sympathetic remonstrants. Miss Birdseye had given her up; it had been enough for Miss Birdseye that she should have said, when pressed (so far as her hostess, muffled in laxity, could press) on the subject of the general expectation, that she could only deliver her message to an audience which she felt to be partially hostile. There was no hostility there; they were all only too much in sympathy. “I don’t require sympathy,” she said, with a tranquil smile, to Olive Chancellor; “I am only myself, I only rise to the occasion, when I see prejudice, when I see bigotry, when I see injustice, when I see conservatism, massed before me like an army. Then I feel — I feel as I imagine Napoleon Bonaparte to have felt on the eve of one of his great victories. I must have unfriendly elements — I like to win them over.”

      Olive thought of Basil Ransom, and wondered whether he would do for an unfriendly element. She mentioned him to Mrs. Farrinder, who expressed an earnest hope that if he were opposed to the principles which were so dear to the rest of them, he might be induced to take the floor and testify on his own account. “I should be so happy to answer him,” said Mrs. Farrinder, with supreme softness. “I should be so glad, at any rate, to exchange ideas with him.” Olive felt a deep alarm at the idea of a public dispute between these two vigorous people (she had a perception that Ransom would be vigorous), not because she doubted of the happy issue, but because she herself would be in a false position, as having brought the offensive young man, and she had a horror of false positions. Miss Birdseye was incapable of resentment; she had invited forty people to hear Mrs. Farrinder speak, and now Mrs. Farrinder wouldn’t speak. But she had such a beautiful reason for it! There was something martial and heroic in her pretext, and, besides, it was so characteristic, so free, that Miss Birdseye was quite consoled, and wandered away, looking at her other guests vaguely, as if she didn’t know them from each other, while she mentioned to them, at a venture, the excuse for their disappointment, confident, evidently, that they would agree with her it was very fine. “But we can’t pretend to be on the other side, just to start her up, can we?” she asked of Mr. Tarrant, who sat there beside his wife with a rather conscious but by no means complacent air of isolation from the rest of the company.

      “Well, I don’t know — I guess we are all solid here,” this gentleman replied, looking round him with a slow, deliberate smile, which made his mouth enormous, developed two wrinkles, as long as the wings of a bat, on either side of it, and showed a set of big, even, carnivorous teeth.

      “Selah,” said his wife, laying her hand on the sleeve of his waterproof, “I wonder whether Miss Birdseye would be interested to hear Verena.”

      “Well, if you mean she sings, it’s a shame I haven’t got a piano,” Miss Birdseye took upon herself to respond. It came back to her that the girl had a gift.

      “She doesn’t want a piano — she doesn’t want anything,” Selah remarked, giving no apparent attention to his wife. It was a part of his attitude in life never to appear to be indebted to another person for a suggestion, never to be surprised or unprepared.

      “Well, I don’t know that the interest in singing is so general,” said Miss Birdseye, quite unconscious of any slackness in preparing a substitute for the entertainment that had failed her.

      “It isn’t singing, you’ll see,” Mrs. Tarrant declared.

      “What is it, then?”

      Mr. Tarrant unfurled his wrinkles, showed his back teeth. “It’s inspirational.”

      Miss Birdseye gave a small, vague, unsceptical laugh. “Well, if you can guarantee that — — “

      “I think it would be acceptable,” said Mrs. Tarrant; and putting up a half-gloved, familiar hand, she drew Miss Birdseye down to her, and the pair explained in alternation what it was their child could do.

      Meanwhile, Basil Ransom confessed to Doctor Prance that he was, after all, rather disappointed. He had expected more of a programme; he wanted to hear some of the new truths. Mrs. Farrinder, as he said, remained within her tent, and he had hoped not only to see these distinguished people but also to listen to them.

      “Well, I ain’t disappointed,” the sturdy little doctress replied. “If any question had been opened, I suppose I should have had to stay.”

      “But I presume you don’t propose to retire.”

      “Well, I’ve got to pursue my studies some time. I don’t want the gentlemen-doctors to get ahead of me.”

      “Oh, no one will ever get ahead of you, I’m very sure. And there is that pretty young lady going over to speak to Mrs. Farrinder. She’s going to beg her for a speech — Mrs. Farrinder can’t resist that.”

      “Well, then, I’ll just trickle out before she begins. Goodnight, sir,” said Doctor Prance, who by this time had begun to appear to Ransom more susceptible of domestication, as if she had been a small forest-creature, a catamount or a ruffled doe, that had learned to stand still while you stroked it, or even to extend a paw. She ministered to health, and she was healthy herself; if his cousin could have been even of this type Basil would have felt himself more fortunate.

      “Goodnight, Doctor,” he replied. “You haven’t told me, after all, your opinion of the capacity of the ladies.”

      “Capacity for what?” said Doctor Prance. “They’ve got a capacity for making people waste time. All I know is that I don’t want any one to tell me what a lady can do!” And she edged away from him softly, as if she had been traversing a hospital-ward, and presently he saw her reach the door, which, with the arrival of the later comers, had remained open. She stood there an instant, turning over the whole assembly a glance like the flash of a watchman’s bull’s-eye, and then quickly passed out. Ransom could see that she was impatient of the general question and bored with being reminded, even for the sake of her rights, that she was a woman — a detail that she was in the habit of forgetting, having as many rights as she had time for. It was certain that whatever might become of the movement at large, Doctor Prance’s own little revolution was a success.

Chapter VII

       Table of Contents

      She had no sooner left him than Olive Chancellor came towards him with eyes that seemed to say, “I don’t care whether you are here now or not — I’m all right!” But what her lips said was much more gracious; she asked him if she mightn’t have the pleasure of introducing him to Mrs. Farrinder. Ransom consented, with a little of his Southern flourish, and in a moment the lady got up to receive him from the midst of the circle that now surrounded her. It was an occasion for her to justify her reputation of an elegant manner, and it must be impartially related that she struck Ransom as having a dignity in conversation and a command of the noble style which could not have been surpassed by a daughter — one of the most accomplished, most far-descended daughters — of his own latitude. It was as if she had known that he was not eager for the changes she advocated, and wished to show him that, especially to a Southerner who had bitten the dust, her sex could be magnanimous.