Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance

by William Dean Howells

  XX

  While Mrs. Strange talked on, her mother listened quietly, with a dim,submissive smile and her hands placidly crossed in her lap. She now said:"It seems to be very different now from what it was in my time. There arecertainly a great many beggars, and we used never to have one. Childrengrew up, and people lived and died, in large towns, without ever seeingone. I remember, when my husband first took me abroad, how astonished wewere at the beggars. Now I meet as many in New York as I met in London orin Rome. But if you don't do charity, what can you do? Christ enjoinedit, and Paul says--"

  "Oh, people _never_ do the charity that Christ meant," said Mrs.Strange; "and, as things are now, how _could_ they? Who would dreamof dividing half her frocks and wraps with poor women, or selling_all_ and giving to the poor? That is what makes it so hopeless. We_know_ that Christ was perfectly right, and that He was perfectlysincere in what He said to the good young millionaire; but we all go awayexceeding sorrowful, just as the good young millionaire did. We have to,if we don't want to come on charity ourselves. How do _you_ manageabout that?" she asked me; and then she added, "But, of course, I forgotthat you have no need of charity."

  "Oh yes, we have," I returned; and I tried, once more, as I have tried sooften with Americans, to explain how the heavenly need of giving the selfcontinues with us, but on terms that do not harrow the conscience of thegiver, as self-sacrifice always must here, at its purest and noblest. Isought to make her conceive of our nation as a family, where every onewas secured against want by the common provision, and against thedegrading and depraving inequality which comes from want. The "dead-levelof equality" is what the Americans call the condition in which all wouldbe as the angels of God, and they blasphemously deny that He ever meantHis creatures to be alike happy, because some, through a long successionof unfair advantages, have inherited more brain or brawn or beauty thanothers. I found that this gross and impious notion of God darkened eventhe clear intelligence of a woman like Mrs. Strange; and, indeed, itprevails here so commonly that it is one of the first things advanced asan argument against the Altrurianization of America.

  I believe I did, at last, succeed in showing her how charity stillcontinues among us, but in forms that bring neither a sense ofinferiority to him who takes nor anxiety to him who gives. I said thatbenevolence here often seemed to involve, essentially, some such risk asa man should run if he parted with a portion of the vital air whichbelonged to himself and his family, in succoring a fellow-being fromsuffocation; but that with us, where it was no more possible for one todeprive himself of his share of the common food, shelter, and clothing,than of the air he breathed, one could devote one's self utterly toothers without that foul alloy of fear which I thought must baselyqualify every good deed in plutocratic conditions.

  She said that she knew what I meant, and that I was quite right in myconjecture, as regarded men, at least; a man who did not stop to thinkwhat the effect, upon himself and his own, his giving must have, would bea fool or a madman; but women could often give as recklessly as theyspent, without any thought of consequences, for they did not know howmoney came.

  "Women," I said, "are exterior to your conditions, and they can sacrificethemselves without wronging any one."

  "Or, rather," she continued, "without the sense of wronging any one. Ourmen like to keep us in that innocence or ignorance; they think it ispretty, or they think it is funny; and as long as a girl is in herfather's house, or a wife is in her husband's, she knows no more ofmoney-earning or money-making than a child. Most grown women among us,if they had a sum of money in the bank, would not know how to get itout. They would not know how to indorse a check, much less draw one. Butthere are plenty of women who are inside the conditions, as much as menare--poor women who have to earn their bread, and rich-women who have tomanage their property. I can't speak for the poor women; but I can speakfor the rich, and I can confess for them that what you imagine is true.The taint of unfaith and distrust is on every dollar that you dole out,so that, as far as the charity of the rich is concerned, I would readShakespeare:

  'It curseth him that gives, and him that takes.'"

  "Perhaps that is why the rich give comparatively so little. The poor cannever understand how much the rich value their money, how much the ownerof a great fortune dreads to see it less. If it were not so, they wouldsurely give more than they do; for a man who has ten millions could giveeight of them without feeling the loss; the man with a hundred could giveninety and be no nearer want. Ah, it's a strange mystery! My poor husbandand I used to talk of it a great deal, in the long year that he laydying; and I think I hate my superfluity the more because I know he hatedit so much."

  A little trouble had stolen into her impassioned tones, and there was agleam, as of tears, in the eyes she dropped for a moment. They wereshining still when she lifted them again to mine.

  "I suppose," she said, "that Mrs. Makely told you something of mymarriage?"

  "Eveleth!" her mother protested, with a gentle murmur.

  "Oh, I think I can be frank with Mr. Homos. He is not an American, and hewill understand, or, at least, he will not misunderstand. Besides, I daresay I shall not say anything worse than Mrs. Makely has said already. Myhusband was much older than I, and I ought not to have married him; ayoung girl ought never to marry an old man, or even a man who is onlya good many years her senior. But we both faithfully tried to make thebest of our mistake, not the worst, and I think this effort helped us torespect each other, when there couldn't be any question of more. He wasa rich man, and he had made his money out of nothing, or, at least, froma beginning of utter poverty. But in his last years he came to a sense ofits worthlessness, such as few men who have made their money ever have.He was a common man, in a great many ways; he was imperfectly educated,and he was ungrammatical, and he never was at home in society; but he hada tender heart and an honest nature, and I revere his memory, as no onewould believe I could without knowing him as I did. His money became aburden and a terror to him; he did not know what to do with it, and hewas always morbidly afraid of doing harm with it; he got to thinking thatmoney was an evil in itself."

  "That is what we think," I ventured.

  "Yes, I know. But he had thought this out for himself, and yet he hadtimes when his thinking about it seemed to him a kind of craze, and, atany rate, he distrusted himself so much that he died leaving it allto me. I suppose he thought that perhaps I could learn how to give itwithout hurting; and then he knew that, in our state of things, I musthave some money to keep the wolf from the door. And I am afraid to partwith it, too. I have given and given; but there seems some evil spell onthe principal that guards it from encroachment, so that it remains thesame, and, if I do not watch, the interest grows in the bank, with thatfrightful life dead money seems endowed with, as the hair of dead, peoplegrows in the grave."

  "Eveleth!" her mother murmured again.

  "Oh yes," she answered, "I dare say my words are wild. I dare say theyonly mean that I loathe my luxury from the bottom of my soul, and long tobe rid of it, if I only could, without harm to others and with safety tomyself."