Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance

by William Dean Howells

  VI

  But I must not get away from my personal experiences in theseinternational statistics. Sometimes, when night overtakes us, we stopand camp beside the road, and set about getting our supper of eggs andbread and butter and cheese, or the fruits that are ripening all roundus. Since my experience with that pullet I go meekly mushrooming inthe fields and pastures; and when I have set the mushrooms stewing overan open fire, Aristides makes the coffee, and in a little while wehave a banquet fit for kings--or for the poor things in every grade belowthem that serve kings, political or financial or industrial. There isalways water, for it is brought down from the snow-fields of themountains--there is not much rainfall--and carried in little concretechannels along the road--side from village to village, something likethose conduits the Italian peasants use to bring down the water from theMaritime Alps to their fields and orchards; and you hear the soft gurgleof it the whole night long, and day long, too, whenever you stop. Aftersupper we can read awhile by our electric lamp (we tap the current in thetelephone wires anywhere), or Aristides sacrifices himself to me in alesson of Altrurian grammar. Then we creep back into our van and fallasleep with the Southern Cross glittering over our heads. It is perfectlysafe, though it was a long time before I could imagine the perfect safetyof it. In a country where there are no thieves, because a thief herewould not know what to do with his booty, we are secure from humanmolestation, and the land has long been cleared of all sorts of wildbeasts, without being unpleasantly tamed. It is like England in that, andyet it has a touch of the sylvan, which you feel nowhere as you do in ourdear New England hill country. There was one night, however, when we werelured on and on, and did not stop to camp till fairly in the dusk. Thenwe went to sleep without supper, for we had had rather a late lunch andwere not hungry, and about one o'clock in the morning I was awakened byvoices speaking Altrurian together. I recognized my husband's voice,which is always so kind, but which seemed to have a peculiarly tender andcompassionate note in it now. The other was lower and of a sadness whichwrung my heart, though I did not know in the least what the person wassaying. The talk went on a long time, at first about some matter ofimmediate interest, as I fancied, and then apparently it branched offon some topic which seemed to concern the stranger, whoever he was. Thenit seemed to get more indistinct, as if the stranger were leaving us andAristides were going a little way with him. Presently I heard him comingback, and he put his head in at the van curtains, as if to see whether Iwas asleep.

  "Well?" I said, and he said how sorry he was for having waked me. "Oh, Idon't mind," I said. "Whom were you talking with? He had the saddestvoice I ever heard. What did he want?"

  "Oh, it seems that we are not far from the ruins of one of the oldcapitalistic cities, which have been left for a sort of warning againstthe former conditions, and he wished to caution us against the malarialinfluences from it. I think perhaps we had better push on a little way,if you don't mind."

  The moon was shining clearly, and of course I did not mind, and Aristidesgot his hand on the lever, and we were soon getting out of the dangerouszone. "I think," he said, "they ought to abolish that pest-hole. I doubtif it serves any good purpose, now, though it has been useful in timespast as an object-lesson."

  "But who was your unknown friend?" I asked, a great deal more curiousabout him than about the capitalistic ruin.

  "Oh, just a poor murderer," he answered easily, and I shuddered back:"A murderer!"

  "Yes. He killed his friend some fifteen years ago in a jealous rage, andhe is pursued by remorse that gives him no peace."

  "And is the remorse his only punishment?" I asked, rather indignantly.

  "Isn't that enough? God seemed to think it was, in the case of the firstmurderer, who killed his brother. All that he did to Cain was to set amark on him. But we have not felt sure that we have the right to do this.We let God mark him, and He has done it with this man in the sorrow ofhis face. I was rather glad you, couldn't see him, my dear. It is anawful face."

  I confess that this sounded like mere sentimentalism to me, and I said,"Really, Aristides, I can't follow you. How are innocent people to beprotected against this wretch, if he wanders about among them at will?"

  "They are as safe from him as from any other man in Altruria. His casewas carefully looked into by the medical authorities, and it was decidedthat he was perfectly sane, so that he could be safely left at large, toexpiate his misdeed in the only possible way that such a misdeed can beexpiated--by doing good to others. What would you have had us do withhim?"

  The question rather staggered me, but I said, "He ought to have beenimprisoned at least a year for manslaughter."

  "Cain was not imprisoned an hour."

  "That was a very different thing. But suppose you let a man go at largewho has killed his friend in a jealous rage, what do you do with othermurderers?"

  "In Altruria there can be no other murderers. People cannot kill here formoney, which prompts every other kind of murder in capitalisticcountries, as well as every other kind of crime. I know, my dear, thatthis seems very strange to you, but you will accustom yourself to theidea, and then you will see the reasonableness of the Altrurian plan. Onthe whole, I am sorry you could not have seen that hapless man, andheard him. He had a face like death--"

  "And a voice like death, too!" I put in.

  "You noticed that? He wanted to talk about his crime with me. He wants totalk about it with any one who will listen to him. He is consumed with anundying pity for the man he slew. That is the first thing, the onlything, in his mind. If he could, I believe he would give his life for thelife he took at any moment. But you cannot recreate one life bydestroying another. There is no human means of ascertaining justice, butwe can always do mercy with divine omniscience." As he spoke the sunpierced the edge of the eastern horizon, and lit up the marble walls androofs of the Regionic capital which we were approaching.

  At the meeting we had there in the afternoon, Aristides reported ourhaving been warned against our danger in the night by that murderer, andpublic record of the fact was made. The Altrurians consider any sort ofpunishment which is not expiation a far greater sin than the wrong itvisits, and altogether barren and useless. After the record in this casehad been made, the conference naturally turned upon what Aristides hadseen of the treatment of criminals in America, and when, he told of ourprisons, where people merely arrested and not yet openly accused arekept, I did not know which way to look, for you know I am still anAmerican at heart, Dolly. Did you ever see the inside of one of ourpolice-stations at night? Or smell it? I did, once, when I went to givebail for a wretched girl who had been my servant, and had gone wrong, buthad been arrested for theft, and I assure you that the sight and thesmell woke me in the night for a month afterwards, and I have never quiteceased to dream about it.

  The Altrurians listened in silence, and I hoped they could not realizethe facts, though the story was every word true; but what seemed to makethem the most indignant was the treatment of the families of theprisoners in what we call our penitentiaries and reformatories. At firstthey did not conceive of it, apparently, because it was so stupidlybarbarous; they have no patience with stupidity; and when Aristides hadcarefully explained, it seemed as if they could not believe it. Theythought it right that the convicts should be made to work, but they couldnot understand that the state really took away their wages, and lefttheir families to suffer for want of the support which it had deprivedthem of. They said this was punishing the mothers and sisters, the wivesand children of the prisoners, and was like putting out the eyes of anoffender's innocent relatives as they had read was done in Orientalcountries. They asked if there was never any sort of protest against suchan atrocious perversion of justice, and when the question was put to meI was obliged to own that I had never heard the system even criticised.Perhaps it has been, but I spoke only from my own knowledge.