The Bostonians by Henry James Page B

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,