Through the Eye of the Needle

W >> W. D. Howells >> Through the Eye of the Needle

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

The captain gave a kind of sobbing laugh, and went on in a lower tone.
"Well, I know you ain't going back. I guess I didn't expect it much from
the start, and I guess I'm not surprised." Then he lifted his head and
shouted, "And do you suppose _I_ want to go back? Don't you suppose _I_
would like to spend the rest of my days, too, among _white_ people,
people that _use_ each other white, as you say, and where there ain't
any want or, what's worse, _fear_ of want? Men! There ain't a day, or an
hour, or a minute, when I don't think how awful it is over there, where I
got to be either some man's slave or some man's master, as much so as if
it was down in the ship's articles. My wife ain't so, because she ain't
been ashore here. I wouldn't let her; I was afraid to let her see what a
white man's country really was, because I felt so weak about it myself,
and I didn't want to put the trial on her, too. And do you know _why_
we're going back, or want to go? I guess some of you know, but I want to
tell these folks here so they'll understand, and I want you, Mr. Homos,"
he called to my husband, "to get it down straight. It's because we've got
two little children over there, that we left with their grandmother when
my wife come with me this voyage because she had lung difficulty and
wanted to see whether she could get her health back. Nothing else on
God's green earth could take me back to America, and I guess it couldn't
my wife if she knew what Altruria was as well as I do. But when I went
around here and saw how everything was, and remembered how it was at
home, I just said, 'She'll stay on the ship.' Now, that's all I got to
say, though I thought I had a lot more. I guess it'll be enough for these
folks, and they can judge between us." Then the captain sat down, and to
make a long story short, the facts of the hearing were repeated in
Altrurian the next day by megaphone, and when the translation was
finished there was a general rush for the captain. He plainly expected to
be lynched, and his wife screamed out, "Oh, don't hurt him! He isn't a
bad man!" But it was only the Altrurian way with a guilty person: they
wanted to let him know how sorry they were for him, and since his sin had
found him out how hopeful they were for his redemption. I had to explain
it to the sailors as well as to the captain and his wife, but I don't
believe any of them quite accepted the fact.

The third day of the hearing was for the rendering of the decision, first
in Altrurian, and then in English. The verdict of the magistrates had to
he confirmed by a standing vote of the people, and of course the women
voted as well as the men. The decision was that the sailors should be
absolutely free to go or stay, but they took into account the fact that
it would be cruel to keep the captain and his wife away from their little
ones, and the sailors might wish to consider this. If they still remained
true to their love of Altruria they could find some means of returning.

When the translator came to this point their spokesman jumped to his feet
and called out to the captain, "Will you _do_ it?" "Do what?" he asked,
getting slowly to his own feet. "Come back with us after you have seen
the kids?" The captain shook his fist at the sailors; it seemed to be the
only gesture he had with them. "Give me the _chance!_ All I want is to
see the children and bring them out with me to Altruria, and the old
folks with them." "Will you _swear_ it? Will you say, 'I hope I may find
the kids dead and buried when I get home if I don't do it'?" "I'll take
that oath, or any oath you want me to." "Shake hands on it, then."

The two men met in front of the tribunal and clasped hands there, and
their reconciliation did not need translation. Such a roar of cheers went
up! And then the whole assembly burst out in the national Altrurian
anthem, "Brothers All." I wish you could have heard it! But when the
terms of the agreement were explained, the cheering that had gone before
was a mere whisper to what followed. One orator after another rose and
praised the self-sacrifice of the sailors. I was the proudest when the
last of them referred to Aristides and the reports which he had sent home
from America, and said that without some such study as he had made of
the American character they never could have understood such an act as
they were now witnessing. Illogical and insensate as their system was,
their character sometimes had a beauty, a sublimity which was not
possible to Altrurians even, for it was performed in the face of risks
and chances which their happy conditions relieved them from. At the same
time, the orator wished his hearers to consider the essential immorality
of the act. He said that civilized men had no right to take these risks
and chances. The sailors were perhaps justified, in so far as they were
homeless, wifeless, and childless men; but it must not be forgotten that
their heroism was like the reckless generosity of savages.

The men have gone back to the ship, and she sails this afternoon. I have
persuaded the captain to let his wife stay to lunch with me at our
Refectory, where the ladies wish to bid her good-bye, and I am hurrying
forward this letter so that she can take it on board with her this
afternoon. She has promised to post it on the first Pacific steamer they
meet, or if they do not meet any to send it forward to you with a
special-delivery stamp as soon as they reach Boston. She will also
forward by express an Altrurian costume, such as I am now wearing,
sandals and all! Do put it on, Dolly, dear, for my sake, and realize what
it is for once in your life to be a _free_ woman.

Heaven knows when I shall have another chance of getting letters to you.
But I shall live in hopes, and I shall set down my experiences here for
your benefit, not perhaps as I meet them, but as I think of them, and
you must not mind having a rather cluttered narrative. To-morrow we are
setting off on our round of the capitals, where Aristides is to make a
sort of public report to the people of the different Regions on the
working of the capitalistic conditions as he observed them among us. But
I don't expect to send you a continuous narrative of our adventures.
Good-bye, dearest, with my mother's love, and my husband's as well as my
own, to both of you; think of me as needing nothing but a glimpse of you
to complete my happiness. How I should like to tell you fully about it!
You _must_ come to Altruria!

I came near letting this go without telling you of one curious incident
of the affair between the captain and his men. Before the men returned to
the ship they came with their spokesman to say good-bye to Aristides and
me, and he remarked casually that it was just as well, maybe, to be going
back, because, for one thing, they would know then whether it was real or
not. I asked him what he meant, and he said, "Well, you know, some of the
mates think it's a dream here, or it's too good to be true. As far forth
as I go, I'd be willing to have it a dream that I didn't ever have to
wake up from. It ain't any too good to be true for me. Anyway, I'm going
to get back somehow, and give it another chance to be a fact." Wasn't
that charming? It had a real touch of poetry in it, but it was prose that
followed. I couldn't help asking him whether there had been nothing to
mar the pleasure of their stay in Altruria, and he answered: "Well, I
don't know as you could rightly say _mar;_ it hadn't ought to have. You
see, it was like this. You see, some of the mates wanted to lay off and
have a regular bange, but that don't seem to be the idea here. After we
had been ashore a day or two they set us to work at different jobs, or
wanted to. The mates didn't take hold very lively, and some of 'em didn't
take hold a bit. But after that went on a couple of days, there wa'n't
any breakfast one morning, and come noontime there wa'n't any dinner, and
as far forth as they could make out they had to go to bed without supper.
Then they called a halt, and tackled one of your head men here that could
speak some English. He didn't answer them right off the reel, but he
got out his English Testament and he read 'em a verse that said, 'For
even when we were with you this we commanded you, that if any one would
not work neither should he eat.' That kind of fetched 'em, and after
that there wa'n't any sojerin', well not to speak of. They saw he meant
business. I guess it did more than any one thing to make 'em think they
wa'n't dreamin'."

IV

You must not think, Dolly, from anything I have been telling you that the
Altrurians are ever harsh. Sometimes they cannot realize how things
really are with us, and how what seems grotesque and hideous to them
seems charming and beautiful, or at least _chic_, to us. But they are
wonderfully quick to see when they have hurt you the least, and in the
little sacrifices I have made of my wardrobe to the cause of general
knowledge there has not been the least urgence from them. When I now look
at the things I used to wear, where they have been finally placed in the
ethnological department of the Museum, along with the Esquiman kyaks
and the Thlinkeet totems, they seem like things I wore in some
prehistoric age--

"When wild in woods the noble savage ran."

Now, am I being unkind? Well, you mustn't mind me, Dolly. You must just
say, "She _has_ got it bad," and go on and learn as much about Altruria
as you can from me. Some of the things were hard to get used to, and at
first seemed quite impossible. For one thing, there was the matter of
service, which is dishonorable with us, and honorable with the
Altrurians: I was a long time getting to understand that, though I knew
it perfectly well from hearing my husband talk about it in New York. I
believe he once came pretty near offending you by asking why you did not
do your own work, or something like that; he has confessed as much, and I
could not wonder at you in your conditions. Why, when we first went to
the guest-house, and the pretty young girls who brought in lunch sat down
at table to eat it with us, I felt the indignation making me hot all
over. You know how democratic I am, and I did not mind those great,
splendid boat-girls hugging and kissing me, but I instinctively drew the
line at cooks and waitresses. In New York, you know, I always tried to be
kind to my servants, but as for letting one of them sit down in my
presence, much less sit down at table with me, I never dreamed of such a
thing in my most democratic moments. Luckily I drew the line subjectively
here, and later I found that these young ladies were daughters of some of
the most distinguished men and women on the continent, though you must
not understand distinction as giving any sort of social primacy; that
sort of thing is not allowed in Altruria. They had drawn lots with the
girls in the Regionic school here, and were proud of having won the honor
of waiting on us. Of course, I needn't say they were what we would have
felt to be ladies anywhere, and their manners were exquisite, even to
leaving us alone together as soon as we had finished luncheon. The meal
itself was something I shall always remember for its delicious cooking of
the different kinds of mushrooms which took the place of meat, and the
wonderful salads, and the temperate and tropical fruits which we had for
dessert.

They had to talk mostly with my husband, of course, and when they did
talk to me it was through him. They were very intelligent about our
world, much more than we are about Altruria, though, of course, it was by
deduction from premises rather than specific information, and they wanted
to ask a thousand questions; but they saw the joke of it, and laughed
with us when Aristides put them off with a promise that if they would
have a public meeting appointed we would appear and answer all the
questions anybody could think of; we were not going to waste our answers
on them the first day. He wanted them to let us go out and help wash the
dishes, but they would not hear of it. I confess I was rather glad of
that, for it seemed a lower depth to which I could not descend, even
after eating with them. But they invited us out to look at the kitchen,
after they had got it in order a little, and when we joined them there,
whom should I see but my own dear old mother, with an apron up to her
chin, wiping the glass and watching carefully through her dear old
spectacles that she got everything bright! You know she was of a simpler
day than ours, and when she was young she used to do her own work, and
she and my father always washed the dishes together after they had
company. I merely said, "_Well_, mother!" and she laughed and colored,
and said she guessed she should like it in Altruria, for it took her back
to the America she used to know.

I must mention things as they come into my head, and not in any
regular order; there are too many of them. One thing is that I did
not notice till afterwards that we had had no meat that first day at
luncheon--the mushrooms were so delicious, and you know I never was much
of a meat-eater. It was not till we began to make our present tour of the
Regionic capitals, where Aristides has had to repeat his account of
American civilization until I am sick as well as ashamed of America, that
I first felt a kind of famine which I kept myself from recognizing as
long as I could. Then I had to own to myself, long before I owned it to
him, that I was hungry for _meat_--for roast, for broiled, for fried, for
hashed. I did not actually tell him, but he found it out, and I could not
deny it, though I felt such an ogre in it. He was terribly grieved, and
blamed himself for not having thought of it, and wished he had got some
canned meats from the trader before she left the port. He was really in
despair, for nobody since the old capitalistic times had thought of
killing sheep or cattle for food; they have them for wool and milk and
butter; and of course when I looked at them in the fields it did seem
rather formidable. You are so used to seeing them in the butchers' shops,
ready for the range, that you never think of what they have to _go
through_ before that. But at last I managed to gasp out, one day, "If I
could only have a chicken!" and he seemed to think that it could be
managed. I don't know how he made interest with the authorities, or how
the authorities prevailed on a farmer to part with one of his precious
pullets; but the thing was done somehow, and two of the farmer's children
brought it to us at one of the guest-houses where we were staying, and
then fled howling. That was bad enough, but what followed was worse. I
went another day on mushrooms before I had the heart to say chicken again
and suggest that Aristides should get it killed and dressed. The poor
fellow did try, I believe, but we had to fall back upon ourselves for the
murderous deed, and--Did you ever see a chicken have its head cut off,
and how hideously it behaves? It made us both wish we were dead; and the
sacrifice of that one pullet was quite enough for me. We buried the poor
thing under the flowers of the guest-house garden, and I went back to
my mushrooms after a visit of contrition to the farmer and many attempts
to bring his children to forgiveness. After all, the Altrurian mushrooms
are wonderfully nourishing, and they are in such variety that, what with
other succulent vegetables and the endless range of fruits and nuts, one
does not wish for meat--meat that one has killed one's self!

V

I wish you could be making tour of the Regionic capitals with us, Dolly!
There are swift little one-rail electric expresses running daily from one
capital to another, but these are used only when speed is required, and
we are confessedly in no hurry: Aristides wanted me to see as much of the
country as possible, and I am as eager as he. The old steam-roads of the
capitalistic epoch have been disused for generations, and their beds are
now the country roads, which are everywhere kept in beautiful repair.
There are no horse vehicles (the electric motors are employed in the
towns), though some people travel on horseback, but the favorite means of
conveyance is by electric van, which any citizen may have on proof of his
need of it; and it is comfortable beyond compare--mounted on easy
springs, and curtained and cushioned like those gypsy vans we see in the
country at home. Aristides drives himself, and sometimes we both get out
and walk, for there is plenty of time.

I don't know whether I can make you understand how everything has tended
to simplification here. They have disused the complicated facilities and
conveniences of the capitalistic epoch, which we are so proud of, and
have got back as close as possible to nature. People stay at home a great
deal more than with us, though if any one likes to make a journey or to
visit the capitals he is quite free to do it, and those who have some
useful or beautiful object in view make the sacrifice, as they feel it,
to leave their villages every day and go to the nearest capital to carry
on their studies or experiments. What we consider modern conveniences
they would consider a superfluity of naughtiness for the most part. As
_work_ is the ideal, they do not believe in what we call labor-saving
devices.

When we approach a village on our journey, one of the villagers,
sometimes a young man, and sometimes a girl, comes out to meet us, and
when we pass through they send some one with us on the way a little. The
people have a perfect inspiration for hospitality: they not only know
when to do and how much to do, but how little and when not at all. I
can't remember that we have ever once been bored by those nice young
things that welcomed us or speeded us on our way, and when we have
stopped in a village they have shown a genius for leaving us alone, after
the first welcome, that is beautiful. They are so regardful of our
privacy, in fact, that if it had not been for Aristides, who explained
their ideal to me, I should have felt neglected sometimes, and should
have been shy of letting them know that we would like their company. But
he understood it, and I must say that I have never enjoyed people and
their ways so much. Their hospitality is a sort of compromise between
that of the English houses where you are left free at certain houses to
follow your own devices absolutely, and that Spanish splendor which
assures you that the host's house is yours without meaning it. In fact,
the guest-house, wherever we go, _is_ ours, for it belongs to the
community, and it is absolutely a home to us for the time being. It is
usually the best house in the village, the prettiest and cosiest, where
all the houses are so pretty and cosey. There is always another building
for public meetings, called the temple, which is the principal edifice,
marble and classic and tasteful, which we see almost as much of as the
guest-house, for the news of the Emissary's return has preceded him, and
everybody is alive with curiosity, and he has to stand and deliver in the
village temples everywhere. Of course I am the great attraction, and
after being scared by it at first I have rather got to like it; the
people are so kind, and unaffected, and really delicate.

You mustn't get the notion that the Altrurians are a solemn people at
all; they are rather gay, and they like other people's jokes as well as
their own; I am sure Mr. Makely, with his sense of humor, would be at
home with them at once. The one thing that more than any other has helped
them to conceive of the American situation is its being the gigantic joke
which we often feel it to be; I don't know but it appears to them more
grotesque than it does to us even. At first, when Aristides would explain
some peculiarity of ours, they would receive him with a gale of laughing,
but this might change into cries of horror and pity later. One of the
things that amused and then revolted them most was our patriotism. They
thought it the drollest thing in the world that men should be willing to
give their own lives and take the lives of other men for the sake of a
country which assured them no safety from want, and did not even assure
them work, and in which they had no more logical interest than the
country they were going to fight. They could understand how a rich man
might volunteer for one of our wars, but when they were told that most of
our volunteers were poor men, who left their mothers and sisters, or
their wives and children, without any means of support, except their
meagre pay, they were quite bewildered and stopped laughing, as if the
thing had passed a joke. They asked, "How if one of these citizen
soldiers was killed?" and they seemed to suppose that in this case the
country would provide for his family and give them work, or if the
children were too young would support them at the public expense. It
made me creep a little when my husband answered that the family of a
crippled or invalided soldier would have a pension of eight or ten or
fifteen dollars a month; and when they came back with the question why
the citizens of such a country should love it enough to die for it, I
could not have said why for the life of me. But Aristides, who is so
magnificently generous, tried to give them a notion of the sublimity
which is at the bottom of our illogicality and which adjusts so many
apparently hopeless points of our anomaly. They asked how this sublimity
differed from that of the savage who brings in his game and makes a feast
for the whole tribe, and leaves his wife and children without provision
against future want; but Aristides told them that there were essential
differences between the Americans and savages, which arose from the fact
that the savage condition was permanent and the American conditions were
unconsciously provisional.

They are quite well informed about our life in some respects, but they
wished to hear at first hand whether certain things were really so or
not. For instance, they wanted to know whether people were allowed to
marry and bring children into the world if they had no hopes of
supporting them or educating them, or whether diseased people were
allowed to become parents. In Altruria, you know, the families are
generally small, only two or three children at the most, so that the
parents can devote themselves to them the more fully; and as there is no
fear of want here, the state interferes only when the parents are
manifestly unfit to bring the little ones up. They imagined that there
was something of that kind with us, but when they heard that the state
interfered in the family only when the children were unruly, and then it
punished the children by sending them to a reform school and disgracing
them for life, instead of holding the parents accountable, they seemed
to think that it was one of the most anomalous features of our great
anomaly. Here, when the father and mother are always quarrelling, the
children are taken from them, and the pair are separated, at first for a
time, but after several chances for reform they are parted permanently.

But I must not give you the notion that all our conferences are so
serious. Many have merely the character of social entertainments, which
are not made here for invited guests, but for any who choose to come;
all are welcome. At these there are often plays given by amateurs, and
improvised from plots which supply the outline, while the performers
supply the dialogue and action, as in the old Italian comedies. The
Altrurians are so quick and fine, in fact, that they often remind me of
the Italians more than any other people. One night there was for my
benefit an American play, as the Altrurians imagined it from what they
had read about us, and they had costumed it from the pictures of us they
had seen in the newspapers Aristides had sent home while he was with us.
The effect was a good deal like that American play which the Japanese
company of Sada Yacco gave while it was in New York. It was all about a
millionaire's daughter, who was loved by a poor young man and escaped
with him to Altruria in an open boat from New York. The millionaire could
be distinctly recognized by the dollar-marks which covered him all over,
as they do in the caricatures of rich men in our yellow journals. It was
funny to the last degree. In the last act he was seen giving his millions
away to poor people, whose multitude was represented by the continually
coming and going of four or five performers in and out of the door, in
outrageously ragged clothes. The Altrurians have not yet imagined the
nice degrees of poverty which we have achieved, and they could not have
understood that a man with a hundred thousand dollars would have seemed
poor to that multi-millionaire. In fact, they do not grasp the idea of
money at all. I heard afterwards that in the usual version the
millionaire commits suicide in despair, but the piece had been given a
happy ending out of kindness to me. I must say that in spite of the
monstrous misconception the acting was extremely good, especially that of
some comic characters.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15