Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  After I last wrote you, a series of accidents, or what appeared so, threw me more and more constantly into the society of Mrs. Strange. We began to laugh at the fatality with which we met everywhere, at teas, at lunches, at dinners, at evening receptions, and even at balls, where I have been a great deal, because, with all my thirty-five years, I have not yet outlived that fondness for dancing which has so often amused you in me. Wherever my acquaintance widened among cultivated people, they had no inspiration but to ask us to meet each other, as if there were really no other woman in New York who could be expected to understand me. “You must come to lunch (or tea, or dinner, whichever it might be), and we will have her. She will be so much interested to meet you.”

  But perhaps we should have needed none of these accidents to bring us together. I, at least, can look back, and see that, when none of them happened, I sought occasions for seeing her, and made excuses of our common interest in this matter and in that, to go to her. As for her, I can only say that I seldom failed to find her at home, whether I called upon her nominal day or not, and more than once the man who let me in said he had been charged by Mrs. Strange to say that, if I called, she was to be back very soon; or, else, he made free to suggest that, though Mrs. Strange was not at home, Mrs. Gray was; and then I found it easy to stay until Mrs. Strange returned. The good old lady had an insatiable curiosity about Altruria, and, though I do not think she ever quite believed in our reality, she at least always treated me kindly, as if I were the victim of an illusion that was thoroughly benign.

  I think she had some notion that your letters, which I used often to take with me, and read to Mrs. Strange and herself, were inventions of mine; and the fact that they bore only an English postmark, confirmed her in this notion, though I explained that in our present passive attitude toward the world outside, we had yet no postal relations with other countries, and, as all our communication at home was by electricity, that we had no letter post of our own. The very fact that she belonged to a purer and better age in America disqualified her to conceive of Altruria; her daughter, who had lived into a full recognition of the terrible anarchy in which the conditions have ultimated here, could far more vitally imagine us, and to her, I believe, we were at once a living reality. Her perception, her sympathy, her intelligence, became more and more to me, and I escaped to them oftener and oftener, from a world where any Altrurian must be so painfully at odds. In all companies here, I am aware that I have been regarded either as a good joke, or a bad joke, according to the humor of the listener, and it was grateful to be taken seriously.

  From the first, I was sensible of a charm in her, different from that I felt in other American women, and impossible in our Altrurian women. She had a deep and almost tragical seriousness, masked with a most winning gaiety, a light irony, a fine scorn that was rather for herself than for others. She had thought herself out of all sympathy with her environment,; she knew its falsehood, its vacuity, its hopelessness; but she necessarily remained in it, and of it. She was as much at odds in it as I was, without my poor privilege of criticism and protest, for, as she said, she could not set herself up as censor of things that she must keep on doing as other people did. She could have renounced the world, as there are ways and means of doing, here; but she had no vocation to the religious life, and she could not feign it, without a sense of sacrilege. In fact, this generous, and magnanimous, and gifted woman was without that faith, that trust in God, which comes to us from living His law, and which I wonder any American can keep. She denied nothing; but she had lost the strength to affirm anything. She no longer tried to do good from her heart, though she kept on doing charity in what she said was a mere mechanical impulse from the belief of other days, but always with the ironical doubt that she was doing harm. Women are nothing by halves, as men can be, and she was in a despair which no man can realize, for we have always some if or and, which a woman of the like mood casts from her in wild rejection. Where, she could not clearly see her way to a true life, it was the same to her as an impenetrable darkness.

  You will have inferred something of all this, from what I have written of her before, and from words of hers that I have reported to you. Do you think it so wonderful, then, that in the joy I felt at the hope, the solace which my story of our life seemed to give her, she should become more and more precious to me? It was not wonderful, either, I think, that she should identify me with that hope, that solace, and should suffer herself to lean upon me, in a reliance infinitely sweet and endearing. But what a fantastic dream it now appears!

  I can hardly tell you just how we came to own our love to each other; but one day I found myself alone with her mother, with the sense that Eveleth had suddenly withdrawn from the room, at the knowledge of my approach Mrs. Gray was strongly moved by something; but she governed herself, and, after giving me a tremulous hand, bade me sit.

  “Will you excuse me, Mr. Homos,” she began, “if I ask you whether you intend to make America your home, after this?”

  “Oh, no!” I answered, and I tried to keep out of my voice the despair with which the notion filled me. I have sometimes had nightmares, here, in which I thought that I was an American by choice, and I can give you no conception of the rapture of awakening to the fact that I could still go back to Altruria, that I had not cast my lot with this wretched people. “How could I do that?” I faltered; and I was glad to perceive that I had imparted to her no hint of the misery which I had felt at such a notion.

  “I mean, by getting naturalized, and becoming a citizen, and taking up your residence amongst us.”

  “No,” I answered, as quietly as I could, “I had not thought of that.”

  “And you still intend to go back to Altruria?”

  “I hope so; I ought to have gone back long ago, and if I had not met the friends I have in this house—” I stopped, for I did not know how I should end what I had begun to say.

  “I am glad you think we are your friends,” said the lady, “for we have tried to show ourselves your friends. I feel as if this had given me the right to say something to you, that you may think very odd.”

  “Say anything to me, dear lady,” I returned. “I shall not think it unkind, no matter how odd it is.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. It’s merely that — that when you are not here with us, I lose my grasp on Altruria; and — and I begin to doubt—”

  I smiled. “I know! People here have often hinted something of that kind to me. Tell me, Mrs. Gray, do Americans generally take me for an impostor?”

  “Oh, no!” she answered, fervently. “Everybody that I have heard speak of you has the highest regard for you, and believes you perfectly sincere. But—”

  “But what?” I entreated.

  “They think you may be mistaken.”

  “Then they think I am out of my wits — that I am in an hallucination!”

  “No, not that,” she returned. “But it is so very difficult for us to conceive of a whole nation living, as you say you do, on the same terms as one family, and no one trying to get ahead of another, or richer, and having neither inferiors nor superiors, but just one dead level of equality, where there is no distinction, except by natural gifts, and good deeds, or beautiful works. It seems impossible, it seems ridiculous.”

  “Yes,” I confessed, “I know that it seems so to the Americans.”

  “And I must tell you something else, Mr. Homos, and I hope you won’t take it amiss. The first night when you talked about Altruria, here, and showed us how you had come, by way of England, and the place where Altruria ought to be on our maps, I looked them over, after you were gone, and I could make nothing of it. As far as I could see, Australia and New Zealand occupied the place that Altruria ought to have had on the map.”

  “Australia and New Zealand are more like Altruria than any other countries of the plutocratic world, in their constitution,” I said, “and perhaps that was what made them seem to occupy our place.”

  “No, it wasn’t that; it couldn’t have
been, for I didn’t know that they were like Altruria. I can’t explain it — I never could. I have often looked at the map since, but it was no use.”

  “Why,” I said, “if you will let me have your atlas—”

  She shook her head. “It would be the same again, as soon as you went away.” I could not conceal my distress, and she went on: “Now, you mustn’t mind what I say. I’m nothing but a silly old woman, and Eveleth would never forgive me if she could know what I’ve been saying.”

  “Then Mrs. Strange isn’t troubled, as you are, concerning me?” I asked, and I confess my anxiety attenuated my voice almost to a whisper.

  Mrs. Gray shook her head vaguely. “She won’t admit that she is. It might be better for her if she would. But Eveleth is very true to her friends, and that — that makes me all the more anxious that she should not deceive herself.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Gray!” I could not keep a certain tone of reproach out of my words.

  She began to weep. “There! I knew I should hurt your feelings. But you mustn’t mind what I say. I beg your pardon! I take it all back—”

  “Ah, I don’t want you to take it back! But what proof shall I give you that there is such a land as Altruria! If the darkness implies the day, America must imply Altruria. In what way do I seem false, or mad, except that I claim to be the citizen of a country where people love One another as the first Christians did?”

  “That is just it,” she returned. “Nobody can imagine the first Christians, and do you think we can imagine anything like them in our own day?”

  “But Mrs. Strange — she imagines us, you say?”

  “She thinks she does; but I am afraid she only thinks so, and I know her better than you do, Mr. Homos. I know how enthusiastic she always was, and how unhappy she has been since she has lost her hold on faith, and how eagerly she has caught at the hope you have given her of a higher life on earth than we live here. If she should ever find out that she was wrong, I don’t know what would become of her. You mustn’t mind me; you mustn’t let me wound you by what I say!”

  “You don’t wound me, and I only thank you for what you say; but I entreat you to believe in me. Mrs. Strange has not deceived herself, and I have not deceived her. Shall I protest to you, by all that is sacred, that I am really what I told you I was; that I am not less, and that Altruria is infinitely more, happier, better, gladder, than any words of mine can say? Shall I not have the happiness to see your daughter to-day? I had something to say to her, something — and now I have so much more! If she is in the house, will not you send to her? I can make her understand—”

  I stopped at a certain expression which I fancied I saw in Mrs. Gray’s face.

  “Mr. Homos,” she began, so very seriously that my heart trembled with a vague misgiving, “sometimes I think you had better not see my daughter any more.”

  “Not see her any more?” I gasped.

  “Yes; I don’t see what good can come of it, and it’s all very strange, and uncanny. I don’t know how to explain it; but, indeed, it isn’t anything personal. It’s because you are of a state of things so utterly opposed to human nature, that I don’t see how — I am afraid that—”

  “But I am not uncanny to her?” I entreated. “I am not unnatural, not incredible—”

  “Oh, no; that is the worst of it. But I have said too much; I have said a great deal more than I ought. But you must excuse it: I am an old woman. I am not very well, and I suppose it’s that makes me talk so much.”

  She rose from her chair, and I perforce rose from mine, and made a movement toward her.

  “No, no,” she said, “I don’t need any help. You must come again soon, and see us, and show that you’ve forgotten what I’ve said.” She gave me her hand, and I could not help bending over it, and kissing it. She gave a little, pathetic whimper. “Oh, I know I’ve said the most dreadful things to you.”

  “You haven’t said anything that takes your friendship from me, Mrs. Gray, and that is what I care for.” My own eyes filled with tears, I do not know why, and I groped my way from the room. Without seeing any one in the obscurity of the hallway, where I found myself, I was aware of some one there, by that sort of fine perception that makes us know the presence of a spirit.

  “You are going?” a whisper said.

  “Why are you going?” And Eveleth had me by the hand, and was drawing me gently into the dim drawing-room that opened from the place. “I don’t know all my mother has been saying to you. I had to let her say something; she thought she ought. I knew you would know how to excuse it.”

  “Oh, my dearest!” I said, and why I said this I do not know, or how we found ourselves in each other’s arms.

  “What are we doing?” she murmured.

  “You don’t believe I am an impostor, an illusion, a visionary!” I besought her straining her closer to my heart.

  “I believe in you, with all my soul!” she answered.

  We sat down, side by side, and talked long. I did not go away the whole day. With a high disdain of convention, she made me stay. Her mother sent word that she would not be able to come to dinner, and we were alone together at table, in an image of what our united lives should be. We spent the evening in that happy interchange of trivial confidences that lovers use in symbol of the unutterable raptures that fill them. We were there in what seemed an infinite present, without a past, without a future.

  Society had to be taken into our confidence, and Mrs. Makely saw to it that there were no reserves with society. Our engagement was not quite like that of two young persons, but people found in our character and circumstance an interest far transcending that felt in the engagement of the most romantic lovers. Some note of the fact came to us by accident, as one evening when we stood near a couple, and heard them talking. “It must be very weird,” the man said; “something like being engaged to a materialization.”

  “Yes,” said the girl, “quite the Demon Lover business, I should think.” She glanced round, as people do, in talking, and, at sight of us, she involuntarily put her hand over her mouth. I looked at Eveleth; there was nothing expressed in her face but a generous anxiety for me. But so far as the open attitude of society toward us was concerned, nothing could have been more flattering. We could hardly have been more asked to meet each other than before; but now there were entertainments in special recognition of our betrothal, which Eveleth said could not be altogether refused, though she found the ordeal as irksome as I did. In America, however, you get used to many things. I do not know why it should have been done, but in the society columns of several of the great newspapers, our likenesses were printed, from photographs procured I cannot guess how, with descriptions of our persons as to those points of coloring, and carriage, and stature, which the pictures could not give, and with biographies such as could be ascertained in her case and imagined in mine. In some of the society papers, paragraphs of a surpassing scurrility appeared, attacking me as an impostor, and aspersing the motives of Eveleth in her former marriage, and treating her as a foolish crank, or an audacious flirt. The goodness of her life, her self-sacrifice and works of benevolence counted for no more against these wanton attacks than the absolute inoffensiveness of my own; the writers knew no harm of her, and they knew nothing at all of me; but they devoted us to the execration of their readers simply because we formed apt and ready themes for paragraphs. You may judge of how wild they were in their aim when some of them denounced me as an Altrurian plutocrat!

  We could not escape this storm of notoriety; we had simply to let it spend its fury. When it began, several reporters of both sexes came to interview me, and questioned me, not only as to all the facts of my past life, and all my purposes in the future, but as to my opinions of hypnotism, eternal punishment, the Ibsen drama, and the tariff reform. I did my best to answer them seriously, and certainly I answered them civilly; but it seemed from what they printed that the answers I gave did not concern them, for they gave others for me. They appeared to me for the most part kindly
and well-meaning young people, though vastly ignorant of vital things. They had apparently visited me with minds made up, or else their reports were revised by some controlling hand, and a quality injected more in the taste of the special journals they represented, than in keeping with the facts. When I realized this, I refused to see any more reporters, or to answer them, and then they printed the questions they had prepared to ask me, in such form that my silence was made of the same damaging effect as a full confession of guilt upon the charges.

  The experience was so strange and new to me that it affected me in a degree I was unwilling to let Eveleth imagine. But she divined my distress, and when she divined that it was chiefly for her, she set herself to console and reassure me. She told me that this was something every one here expected, in coming willingly or unwillingly before the public; and that I must not think of it at all, for certainly no one else would think twice of it. This, I found was really so, for when I ventured tentatively to refer to some of these publications, I found that people, if they had read them, had altogether forgotten them; and that they were, with all the glare of print, of far less effect with our acquaintance, than something said under the breath in a corner. I found that some of our friends had not known the effigies for ours which they had seen in the papers; others made a joke of the whole affair, as the Americans do with so many affairs, and said that they supposed the pictures were those of people who had been cured by some patent medicine, they looked so strong and handsome. This, I think, was a piece of Mr. Makely’s humor in the beginning; but it had a general vogue, long after the interviews and the illustrations were forgotten.

  I linger a little upon these trivial matters because I shrink from what must follow. They were scarcely blots upon our happiness; rather they were motes in the sunshine which had no other cloud. It is true that I was always somewhat puzzled by a certain manner in Mrs. Gray, which certainly was from no unfriendliness for me: she could not have been more affectionate to me, after our engagement, if I had been really her own son; and it was not until after our common kindness had confirmed itself upon the new footing that I felt this perplexing qualification on it. I felt it first one day when I found her alone, and I talked long and freely to her of Eveleth, and opened to her my whole heart of joy in our love. At one point she casually asked me how soon we should expect to return from Altruria after our visit; and at first I did not understand.