Chapter 16
Next morning I rose somewhat before the breakfast hour. As I descendedthe stairs, Edith stepped into the hall from the room which had beenthe scene of the morning interview between us described some chaptersback.
"Ah!" she exclaimed, with a charmingly arch expression, "you thought toslip out unbeknown for another of those solitary morning rambles whichhave such nice effects on you. But you see I am up too early for youthis time. You are fairly caught."
"You discredit the efficacy of your own cure," I said, "by supposingthat such a ramble would now be attended with bad consequences."
"I am very glad to hear that," she said. "I was in here arranging someflowers for the breakfast table when I heard you come down, and fanciedI detected something surreptitious in your step on the stairs."
"You did me injustice," I replied. "I had no idea of going out at all."
Despite her effort to convey an impression that my interception waspurely accidental, I had at the time a dim suspicion of what Iafterwards learned to be the fact, namely, that this sweet creature, inpursuance of her self-assumed guardianship over me, had risen for thelast two or three mornings at an unheard-of hour, to insure against thepossibility of my wandering off alone in case I should be affected ason the former occasion. Receiving permission to assist her in making upthe breakfast bouquet, I followed her into the room from which she hademerged.
"Are you sure," she asked, "that you are quite done with those terriblesensations you had that morning?"
"I can't say that I do not have times of feeling decidedly queer," Ireplied, "moments when my personal identity seems an open question. Itwould be too much to expect after my experience that I should not havesuch sensations occasionally, but as for being carried entirely off myfeet, as I was on the point of being that morning, I think the dangeris past."
"I shall never forget how you looked that morning," she said.
"If you had merely saved my life," I continued, "I might, perhaps, findwords to express my gratitude, but it was my reason you saved, andthere are no words that would not belittle my debt to you." I spokewith emotion, and her eyes grew suddenly moist.
"It is too much to believe all this," she said, "but it is verydelightful to hear you say it. What I did was very little. I was verymuch distressed for you, I know. Father never thinks anything ought toastonish us when it can be explained scientifically, as I suppose thislong sleep of yours can be, but even to fancy myself in your placemakes my head swim. I know that I could not have borne it at all."
"That would depend," I replied, "on whether an angel came to supportyou with her sympathy in the crisis of your condition, as one came tome." If my face at all expressed the feelings I had a right to havetoward this sweet and lovely young girl, who had played so angelic arole toward me, its expression must have been very worshipful justthen. The expression or the words, or both together, caused her now todrop her eyes with a charming blush.
"For the matter of that," I said, "if your experience has not been asstartling as mine, it must have been rather overwhelming to see a manbelonging to a strange century, and apparently a hundred years dead,raised to life."
"It seemed indeed strange beyond any describing at first," she said,"but when we began to put ourselves in your place, and realize how muchstranger it must seem to you, I fancy we forgot our own feelings a gooddeal, at least I know I did. It seemed then not so much astounding asinteresting and touching beyond anything ever heard of before."
"But does it not come over you as astounding to sit at table with me,seeing who I am?"
"You must remember that you do not seem so strange to us as we must toyou," she answered. "We belong to a future of which you could not forman idea, a generation of which you knew nothing until you saw us. Butyou belong to a generation of which our forefathers were a part. Weknow all about it; the names of many of its members are household wordswith us. We have made a study of your ways of living and thinking;nothing you say or do surprises us, while we say and do nothing whichdoes not seem strange to you. So you see, Mr. West, that if you feelthat you can, in time, get accustomed to us, you must not be surprisedthat from the first we have scarcely found you strange at all."
"I had not thought of it in that way," I replied. "There is indeed muchin what you say. One can look back a thousand years easier than forwardfifty. A century is not so very long a retrospect. I might have knownyour great-grand-parents. Possibly I did. Did they live in Boston?"
"I believe so."
"You are not sure, then?"
"Yes," she replied. "Now I think, they did."
"I had a very large circle of acquaintances in the city," I said. "Itis not unlikely that I knew or knew of some of them. Perhaps I may haveknown them well. Wouldn't it be interesting if I should chance to beable to tell you all about your great-grandfather, for instance?"
"Very interesting."
"Do you know your genealogy well enough to tell me who your forbearswere in the Boston of my day?"
"Oh, yes."
"Perhaps, then, you will some time tell me what some of their nameswere."
She was engrossed in arranging a troublesome spray of green, and didnot reply at once. Steps upon the stairway indicated that the othermembers of the family were descending.
"Perhaps, some time," she said.
After breakfast, Dr. Leete suggested taking me to inspect the centralwarehouse and observe actually in operation the machinery ofdistribution, which Edith had described to me. As we walked away fromthe house I said, "It is now several days that I have been living inyour household on a most extraordinary footing, or rather on none atall. I have not spoken of this aspect of my position before becausethere were so many other aspects yet more extraordinary. But now that Iam beginning a little to feel my feet under me, and to realize that,however I came here, I am here, and must make the best of it, I mustspeak to you on this point."
"As for your being a guest in my house," replied Dr. Leete, "I pray younot to begin to be uneasy on that point, for I mean to keep you a longtime yet. With all your modesty, you can but realize that such a guestas yourself is an acquisition not willingly to be parted with."
"Thanks, doctor," I said. "It would be absurd, certainly, for me toaffect any oversensitiveness about accepting the temporary hospitalityof one to whom I owe it that I am not still awaiting the end of theworld in a living tomb. But if I am to be a permanent citizen of thiscentury I must have some standing in it. Now, in my time a person moreor less entering the world, however he got in, would not be noticed inthe unorganized throng of men, and might make a place for himselfanywhere he chose if he were strong enough. But nowadays everybody is apart of a system with a distinct place and function. I am outside thesystem, and don't see how I can get in; there seems no way to get in,except to be born in or to come in as an emigrant from some othersystem."
Dr. Leete laughed heartily.
"I admit," he said, "that our system is defective in lacking provisionfor cases like yours, but you see nobody anticipated additions to theworld except by the usual process. You need, however, have no fear thatwe shall be unable to provide both a place and occupation for you indue time. You have as yet been brought in contact only with the membersof my family, but you must not suppose that I have kept your secret. Onthe contrary, your case, even before your resuscitation, and vastlymore since has excited the profoundest interest in the nation. In viewof your precarious nervous condition, it was thought best that I shouldtake exclusive charge of you at first, and that you should, through meand my family, receive some general idea of the sort of world you hadcome back to before you began to make the acquaintance generally of itsinhabitants. As to finding a function for you in society, there was nohesitation as to what that would be. Few of us have it in our power toconfer so great a service on the nation as you will be able to when youleave my roof, which, however, you must not think of doing for a goodtime yet."
"What can I possibly do?" I asked. "Perhaps you imagine I have sometrade,
or art, or special skill. I assure you I have none whatever. Inever earned a dollar in my life, or did an hour's work. I am strong,and might be a common laborer, but nothing more."
"If that were the most efficient service you were able to render thenation, you would find that avocation considered quite as respectableas any other," replied Dr. Leete; "but you can do something elsebetter. You are easily the master of all our historians on questionsrelating to the social condition of the latter part of the nineteenthcentury, to us one of the most absorbingly interesting periods ofhistory: and whenever in due time you have sufficiently familiarizedyourself with our institutions, and are willing to teach us somethingconcerning those of your day, you will find an historical lectureshipin one of our colleges awaiting you."
"Very good! very good indeed," I said, much relieved by so practical asuggestion on a point which had begun to trouble me. "If your peopleare really so much interested in the nineteenth century, there willindeed be an occupation ready-made for me. I don't think there isanything else that I could possibly earn my salt at, but I certainlymay claim without conceit to have some special qualifications for sucha post as you describe."
Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887 Page 16
