XXI
It seemed to me that I became suddenly sensible of this luxury for thefirst time. I had certainly been aware that I was in a large and statelyhouse, and that I had been served and banqueted with a princely pride andprofusion. But there had, somehow, been through all a sort of simplicity,a sort of quiet, so that I had not thought of the establishment and itsoperation, even so much as I had thought of Mrs. Makely's far inferiorscale of living; or else, what with my going about so much in society, Iwas ceasing to be so keenly observant of the material facts as I had beenat first. But I was better qualified to judge of what I saw, and I hadnow a vivid sense of the costliness of Mrs. Strange's environment. Therewere thousands of dollars in the carpets underfoot; there were tens ofthousands in the pictures on the walls. In a bronze group that withdrewitself into a certain niche, with a faint reluctance, there was the valueof a skilled artisan's wage for five years of hard work; in the bindingsof the books that showed from the library shelves there was almost asmuch money as most of the authors had got for writing them. Everyfixture, every movable, was an artistic masterpiece; a fortune, asfortunes used to be counted even in this land of affluence, had beenlavished in the mere furnishing of a house which the palaces of noblesand princes of other times had contributed to embellish.
"My husband," Mrs. Strange went on, "bought this house for me, and let mefurnish it after my own fancy. After it was all done we neither of usliked it, and when he died I felt as if he had left me in a tomb here."
"Eveleth," said her mother, "you ought not to speak so before Mr. Homos.He will not know what to think of you, and he will go back to Altruriawith a very wrong idea of American women."
At this protest, Mrs. Strange seemed to recover herself a little. "Yes,"she said, "you must excuse me. I have no right to speak so. But one isoften much franker with foreigners than with one's own kind, and,besides, there is something--I don't know what--that will not let me keepthe truth from you."
She gazed at me entreatingly, and then, as if some strong emotion swepther from her own hold, she broke out:
"He thought he would make some sort of atonement to me, as if I owed noneto him! His money was all he had to do it with, and he spent that upon mein every way he could think of, though he knew that money could not buyanything that was really good, and that, if it bought anything beautiful,it uglified it with the sense of cost to every one who could value it indollars and cents. He was a good man, far better than people everimagined, and very simple-hearted and honest, like a child, in hiscontrition for his wealth, which he did not dare to get rid of; andthough I know that, if he were to come back, it would be just as it was,his memory is as dear to me as if--"
She stopped, and pressed in her lip with her teeth, to stay its tremor.I was painfully affected. I knew that she had never meant to be so openwith me, and was shocked and frightened at herself. I was sorry for her,and yet I was glad, for it seemed to me that she had given me a glimpse,not only of the truth in her own heart, but of the truth in the hearts ofa whole order of prosperous people in these lamentable conditions, whom Ishall hereafter be able to judge more leniently, more justly.
I began to speak of Altruria, as if that were what our talk had beenleading up to, and she showed herself more intelligently interestedconcerning us than any one I have yet seen in this country. We appeared,I found, neither incredible nor preposterous to her; our life, in hereyes, had that beauty of right living which the Americans so feeblyimagine or imagine not at all. She asked what route I had come by toAmerica, and she seemed disappointed and aggrieved that we placed therestrictions we have felt necessary upon visitors from the plutocraticworld. Were we afraid, she asked, that they would corrupt our citizens ormar our content with our institutions? She seemed scarcely satisfied whenI explained, as I have explained so often here, that the measures we hadtaken were rather in the interest of the plutocratic world than of theAltrurians; and alleged the fact that no visitor from the outside hadever been willing to go home again, as sufficient proof that we hadnothing to fear from the spread of plutocratic ideals among us. I assuredher, and this she easily imagined, that, the better known these became,the worse they appeared to us; and that the only concern our priors felt,in regard to them, was that our youth could not conceive of them in theirenormity, but, in seeing how estimable plutocratic people often were,they would attribute to their conditions the inherent good of humannature. I said our own life was so directly reasoned from its economicpremises that they could hardly believe the plutocratic life was often anabsolute non sequitur of the plutocratic premises. I confessed that thiserror was at the bottom of my own wish to visit America and study thosepremises.
"And what has your conclusion been?" she said, leaning eagerly towardsme, across the table between us, laden with the maps and charts we hadbeen examining for the verification of the position of Altruria, and myown course here, by way of England.
A slight sigh escaped Mrs. Gray, which I interpreted as an expression offatigue; it was already past twelve o'clock, and I made it the pretextfor escape.
"You have seen the meaning and purport of Altruria so clearly," I said,"that I think I can safely leave you to guess the answer to thatquestion."
She laughed, and did not try to detain me now when I offered my hand forgood-night. I fancied her mother took leave of me coldly, and with acertain effect of inculpation.
Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance Page 22