Tarrant

“ A temporary parting might mature in the hearts of both that affection of which the seed was undeniably planted. With passion they had done; the enduring tenderness of a reasonable love must now unite them, were they to be united at all. And to give such love a chance of growing in him, Tarrant felt that he must lose sight of Nancy until her child was born. ”

“ In the dining-room below the resemblance to a mission tea was increased by the exceedingly heated atmosphere, the babel of conversation, and the curious inequalities of the cutlery. Miss Tarrant secured seats at a rather crumby table near the serving-hatch, and Peter wedged himself in with some difficulty next to a very large, curly-haired man in a velvet coat, who was earnestly conversing with a thin, eager young woman in a Russian blouse, Venetian beads, a Hungarian shawl and a Spanish comb, looking like a personification of the United Front of the "Internationale." ”

“ A vivid contrast was presented by Tarrant and Stone. With popular taste they were both equally unconcerned. Relative merit interested them not at all; their standards were deep-laid and inelastic.
Tarrant usually appeared in the Alcove at about one o’clock, and observed a ritual that would with any one else have savoured of affectation, but was with him perfectly{180} natural. Nature had endowed him with generous proportions, more built for comfort than for speed; and he accentuated the natural roll of his gait by his strange footwear. ”

“ It seemed implied in the very place, the bald bareness of Tarrant's temporary lair, a wooden cottage, with a rough front yard, a little naked piazza, which seemed rather to expose than to protect, facing upon an unpaved road, in which the footway was overlaid with a strip of planks. These planks were embedded in ice or in liquid thaw, according to the momentary mood of the weather, and the advancing pedestrian traversed them in the attitude, and with a good deal of the suspense, of a rope-dancer. There was nothing in the house to speak of; nothing, to Olive's sense, but a smell of kerosene ”

“ All the same, we are friends, because each has the other’s interest at heart, and each would be ashamed to doubt the other’s loyalty.’
The latter part of the evening they spent with Mary, in whom Tarrant always found something new to admire. He regarded her as the most wonderful phenomenon in nature—an uneducated woman who was neither vulgar nor foolish.
Baby slept in a cot beside Nancy’s bed. For fear of waking him, the wedded lovers entered their room very softly, with a shaded candle. Tarrant looked at the curly little head, the little clenched hand, and gave a silent laugh of pleasure. ”

“ Tarrant could give of her appreciation of a "gentleman-caller." They knew everything about him by this time; that his father was dead, his mother very fashionable and prominent, and he himself in possession of a handsome patrimony. They thought ever so much of him in New York. He collected beautiful things, pictures and antiques and objects that he sent for to Europe on purpose, many of which were arranged in his rooms at Cambridge. ”

“ 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 attitudinising 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. ”

“ Voice and countenance joined in utter dismay.
‘It doesn’t seem to me,’ said Tarrant slowly, ‘a downright impossibility. It might be managed, with the help of your friend Mary, and granting that you yourself have the courage. But’—he made a large gesture—‘of course I can’t exact any such thing of you. It must seem practicable to you yourself.’
‘What are we to do if my money is lost?’
‘Don’t say we.’ He smiled generously, perhaps too generously. ‘A man must support his wife. I shall arrange it somehow, of course, so that you have no anxiety. ”

“ He’s a man of business. My nephew, Mr. Horace Lord, is shortly to be in partnership with him.’
‘Crewe? No, the name is quite strange to me.’
Tarrant’s countenance darkened; he paused for an instant, then added impatiently:
‘You say he had “all the particulars.” What were they, these particulars?’
‘Will one be enough? A child was born at Falmouth, and is now at a place just outside London, in the care of some stranger.’
The source of this information might, or might not, be Nancy herself. ”

“ It isn't you, the least in the world, but an inflated little figure (very remarkable in its way too) whom you have invented and set on its feet, pulling strings, behind it, to make it move and speak, while you try to conceal and efface yourself there. Ah, Miss Tarrant, if it's a question of pleasing, how much you might please some one else by tipping your preposterous puppet over and standing forth in your freedom as well as in your loveliness!"
While Basil Ransom spoke—and he had not spoken just that way yet—Verena sat there deeply attentive, with her eyes on the ground ”

“ A thin and slippery mud smeared the pavement. Tarrant had walked mechanically as far as to the top of Park Lane before he began to consider his immediate course. Among the people who stood waiting for omnibuses, he meditated thus:
‘She may not get home until seven or half-past; then she will have a meal. ”

“ Since her spirited appearance in the Coroner's Court, her inter-prandial addresses were confined to two themes—the ineptitude of the law and the high character of her employer. She was wearisome, but she was very soothing to the injured pride of a shy man who conceived himself as the detested byword of West London.
There was one other spark of comfort. The Tarrants were away in the country and had missed all this. But Mrs. Vincent was a friend of Mrs. Tarrant and would no doubt write to her. John wondered whether he ought to write to Muriel Tarrant. He did not think so. ”

“ It was Tarrant's conviction that if Matthias Pardon should seek Verena in marriage, it would be with a view to producing her in public; and the advantage for the girl of having a husband who was at the same time reporter, interviewer, manager, agent, who had the command of the principal "dailies," would write her up and work her, as it were, scientifically—the attraction of all this was too obvious to be insisted on. Matthias had a mean opinion of Tarrant, thought him quite second-rate, a votary of played-out causes. ”

“ At first Tarrant wrote as frequently as he had promised. She learnt speedily of his arrival at New York, then that he had reached Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, then that he was with his friend Sutherland on the little island amid the coral reefs. Subsequent letters, written in buoyant spirits, contained long descriptions of the scenery about him, and of the life he led. He expressed a firm confidence in Sutherland’s enterprises; beyond a doubt, there was no end of money to be made by an energetic man ”

“ It was a battle to haunt and debase a watcher’s brain.
“I did not know Tarrant’s prowess until that day. One man might falter in his command, but the lines were rigid as steel. His trumpeter interpreted every movement of the commander’s lips. I pawed the matting of the hut, but could not lift the anchorage of [27] my hips. Rawder stood above me, watching, the lines of his sweating face weaving with sorrow. ”

“ Correction involved much labour. At the end of the sentence he might have noted down 277 words. Then he would revise; half a clause consisting of eight words would be omitted, and on the slip of paper down went 269. Then a celibate noun called for{183} an adjectival mate, and 270 was hoisted amid applause. It was an amusing game, but it took up a great deal of time. Very rarely did Tarrant produce more than 400 words as the result of three hours’ work, and his absolute maximum for a day was 1100.
“All great men work slowly,” he said. ”

“ No one heeded or challenged him; Miss Tarrant's auditors were still pouring in (the occasion was evidently to have been an unprecedented success of curiosity) , and had all the attention of the ushers. Ransom opened a door at the end of the passage, and it admitted him into a sort of vestibule, quite bare save that at a second door, opposite to him, stood a figure at the sight of which he paused for a moment in his advance. ”

“ Yes, the poor vermin perish to the last one; then their black tomb goes whirling on until it shall be allowed to meet another like itself, when a new sun shines in heaven and space is the richer by one more star."
"May God forgive you for your profanity, John Barren," said Tarrant. "That He places in your hand such power and suffers your brain to breed the devil's dung that fills it, is to me a mystery. May you live to learn your errors and regret them."
He turned away and two men followed him. Conversation among those who remained reverted to the picture ”

“ Tarrant.
"Selfishness! Mrs. Tarrant, do you suppose I pretend not to be selfish?"
"Do you want us all murdered by the mob, then?"
"They can have their money—can't you give them back their money?" cried Verena, turning frantically round the circle.
"Verena Tarrant, you don't mean to say you are going to back down?" her mother shrieked.
"Good God! that I should make her suffer like this!" said Ransom to himself; and to put an end to the odious scene he would have seized Verena in his arms and broken away into the outer world, if Olive, who at Mrs. ”

“ He was a fresh, pleasant, handsome young man, with a bright friendly manner; he recommended Ransom to take a seat in the other room, without delay; if he had never heard Miss Tarrant he would have one of the greatest pleasures of his life.
"Oh, Mr. Ransom only comes to ventilate his prejudices," Miss Chancellor said, as she turned her back to her kinsman. He shrank from pushing into the front of the company, which was now rapidly filling the music-room, and contented himself with lingering in the doorway, where several gentlemen were stationed. ”

“ I remembered what Miss Tarrant had said in her note, that it was a place where people could lie on the ground and wear their old clothes. I delight to lie on the ground, and all my clothes are old. I hope to be able to stay three or four weeks."
Olive listened till he had done speaking; she stood a single moment longer, and then, without a word, a glance, she rushed into the house. Ransom saw that Miss Birdseye was immersed in her letters; so he went straight to Verena and stood before her, looking far into her eyes. He was not smiling now, as he had been in speaking to Olive. ”

“ The straight-featured woman with bands of glossy hair and eyebrows that told at a distance, could only be Mrs. Farrinder, just as the gentleman beside her, in a white overcoat, with an umbrella and a vague face, was probably her husband Amariah. At the opposite end of the row were another pair, whom Ransom, unacquainted with certain chapters of Verena's history, perceived without surprise to be Mrs. Burrage and her insinuating son. Apparently their interest in Miss Tarrant was more than a momentary fad, since—like himself—they had made the journey from New York to hear her. ”

“ One evening, as Jessica returned from a ramble with the children, they encountered a young man who was greeted, without much fervour, as ‘cousin Lionel.’ Mr. Tarrant professed himself merely a passing visitant; he had come to inquire after the health of his grandmother, and in a day or two must keep an appointment with friends elsewhere. Notwithstanding this announcement, he remained at Teignmouth for a fortnight, exhibiting a pious assiduity in his attendance upon the old lady. Naturally, he made acquaintance with Miss. ”

“ The hall was more and more full of premonitory sounds; people making a noise as they unfolded, on hinges, their seats, and itinerant boys, whose voices as they cried out "Photographs of Miss Tarrant—sketch of her life!" or "Portraits of the Speaker—story of her career!" sounded small and piping in the general immensity. Before Ransom was aware of it several of the arm-chairs, in the row behind the lecturer's desk, were occupied, with gaps, and in a moment he recognised, even across the interval, three of the persons who had appeared. ”

“ She realises that I can help her now, and as I ain't rancorous I am willing to help her all she'll let me. The trouble is, she won't let me enough, yet; it seems as if she couldn't believe it of me. At any rate," he pursued, addressing himself more particularly to Ransom, "half an hour ago, at the Hall, they knew nothing whatever about Miss Tarrant, beyond the fact that about a month ago she came there, with Miss Chancellor, to try her voice, which rang all over the place, like silver, and that Miss Chancellor guaranteed her absolute punctuality to-night." ”

“ Basil Ransom's emotions were peculiar while his hostess delivered herself, in a manner at once casual and emphatic, of these rather insidious remarks. He took them all in, for they represented to him certain very interesting facts; but he perceived at the same time that Mrs. Luna didn't know what she was talking about. He had seen Verena Tarrant only twice in his life, but it was no use telling him that she was an adventuress—though, certainly, it was very likely she would end by giving Miss Chancellor a cut. He chuckled, with a certain grimness, as this image passed before him ”