Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance

by William Dean Howells

  II

  I sent you a short letter from Liverpool, saying that by theunprecedented delays of the _Urania_, which I had taken because it wasthe swiftest boat of the Neptune line, we had failed to pass the old,ten-day, single-screw Galaxy liner which Aristides had sailed in. I hadonly time for a word to you; but a million words could not have told theagonies I suffered, and when I overtook him on board the Orient Pacificsteamer at Plymouth, where she touched, I could just scribble off thecable sent Mr. Makely before our steamer put off again. I am afraid youdid not find my cable very expressive, but I was glad that I did not tryto say more, for if I had tried I should simply have gibbered, at ashilling a gibber. I expected to make amends by a whole volume ofletters, and I did post a dozen under one cover from Colombo. If theynever reached you I am very sorry, for now it is impossible to take upthe threads of that time and weave them into any sort of connectedpattern. You will have to let me off with saying that Aristides waseverything that I believed he would be and was never really afraid hemight not be. From the moment we caught sight of each other at Plymouth,he at the rail of the steamer and I on the deck of the tender, we were ascompletely one as we are now. I never could tell how I got aboard to him;whether he came down and brought me, or whether I was simply rapt throughthe air to his side. It would have been embarrassing if we had nottreated the situation frankly; but such odd things happen among theEnglish going out to their different colonies that our marriage, by amissionary returning to his station, was not even a nine days' wonderwith our fellow-passengers.

  We were a good deal more than nine days on the steamer before we couldget a vessel that would take us on to Altruria; but we overhauled a shipgoing there for provisions at last, and we were all put off on her, bagand baggage, with three cheers from the friends we were leaving; I thinkthey thought we were going to some of the British islands that thePacific is full of. I had been thankful from the first that I had notbrought a maid, knowing the Altrurian prejudice against hireling service,but I never was so glad as I was when we got aboard that vessel, for whenthe captain's wife, who was with him, found that I had no one to lookafter me, she looked after me herself, just for the fun of it, shesaid; but _I_ knew it was the love of it. It was a sort of generaltrading-ship, stopping at the different islands in the South Seas, andhad been a year out from home, where the kind woman had left her littleones; she cried over their photographs to me. Her husband had been inAltruria before, and he and Aristides were old acquaintances and met likebrothers; some of the crew knew him, too, and the captain relaxeddiscipline so far as to let us shake hands with the second-mate as themen's representative.

  I needn't dwell on the incidents of our home-coming--for that was what itseemed for my mother and me as well as for my husband--but I must giveyou one detail of our reception, for I still think it almost theprettiest thing that has happened to us among the millions of prettythings. Aristides had written home of our engagement, and he was expectedwith his American wife; and before we came to anchor the captain ran upthe Emissary's signal, which my husband gave him, and then three boatsleft the shore and pulled rapidly out to us. As they came nearer I sawthe first Altrurian costumes in the lovely colors that the people wearhere, and that make a group of them look like a flower-bed; and then Isaw that the boats were banked with flowers along the gunwales from stemto stern, and that they were each not _manned,_ but _girled_ by sixrowers, who pulled as true a stroke as I ever saw in our boat-races. Whenthey caught sight of us, leaning over the side, and Aristides lifted hishat and waved it to them, they all stood their oars upright, and burstinto a kind of welcome song: I had been dreading one of those stupid,banging salutes of ten or twenty guns, and you can imagine what a reliefit was. They were great, splendid creatures, as tall as our millionaires'tallest daughters, and as strong-looking as any of our college-girlathletes; and when we got down over the ship's side, and Aristides said afew words of introduction for my mother and me, as we stepped into thelargest of the boats, I thought they would crush me, catching me in theirstrong, brown arms, and kissing me on each cheek; they never kiss on themouth in Altruria. The girls in the other boats kissed their hands tomother and me, and shouted to Aristides, and then, when our boat set outfor the shore, they got on each side of us and sang song after song asthey pulled even stroke with our crew. Half-way, we met three otherboats, really _manned,_ these ones, and going out to get our baggage, andthen you ought to have heard the shouting and laughing, that ended inmore singing, when the young fellows' voices mixed with the girls, tillthey were lost in the welcome that came off to us from the crowded quay,where I should have thought half Altruria had gathered to receive us.

  I was afraid it was going to be too much for my mother, but she stood itbravely; and almost at a glance people began to take her intoconsideration, and she was delivered over to two young married ladies,who saw that she was made comfortable, the first of any, in the prettyRegionic guest-house where they put us.

  I wish I could give you a notion of that guest-house, with its cool,quiet rooms, and its lawned and gardened enclosure, and a little fountainpurring away among the flowers! But what astonished me was that therewere no sort of carriages, or wheeled conveyances, which, after ourescort from the ship, I thought might very well have met the returningEmissary and his wife. They made my mother get into a litter, with softcushions and with lilac curtains blowing round it, and six girls carriedher up to the house; but they seemed not to imagine my not walking, and,in fact, I could hardly have imagined it myself, after the first momentof queerness. That walk was full of such rich experience for every one ofthe senses that I would not have missed a step of it; but as soon as Icould get Aristides alone I asked him about horses, and he said thatthough horses were still used in farm work, not a horse was allowed inany city or village of Altruria, because of their filthiness. As forpublic vehicles, they used to have electric trolleys; in the year that hehad been absent they had substituted electric motors; but these were notrunning, because it was a holiday on which we had happened to arrive.

  There was another incident of my first day which I think will amuse you,knowing how I have always shrunk from any sort of public appearances.When Aristides went to make his report to the people assembled in a sortof convention, I had to go too, and take part in the proceedings; forwomen are on an entire equality with the men here, and people would beshocked if husband and wife were separated in their public life. They didnot spare me a single thing. Where Aristides was not very clear, orrather not full enough, in describing America, I was called on tosupplement, and I had to make several speeches. Of course, as I spoke inEnglish, he had to put it into Altrurian for me, and it made the greatestexcitement. The Altrurians are very lively people, and as full of thedesire to hear some new things as Paul said the men of Athens were. Attimes they were in a perfect gale of laughter at what we told them aboutAmerica. Afterwards some of the women confessed to me that they liked tohear us speaking English together; it sounded like the whistling of birdsor the shrilling of locusts. But they were perfectly kind, and thoughthey laughed it was clear that they laughed at what we were saying, andnever at us, or at least never at _me_.

  Of course there was the greatest curiosity to know what Aristides'wife looked like, as well as sounded like; he had written out aboutour engagement before I broke it; and my clothes were of as muchinterest As myself, or more. You know how I had purposely left my latestParis things behind, so as to come as simply as possible to the simplelife of Altruria, but still with my big leg-of-mutton sleeves, and mypicture-hat, and my pinched waist, I felt perfectly grotesque, and I haveno doubt I looked it. They had never seen a lady from the capitalisticworld before, but only now and then a whaling-captain's wife who had comeashore; and I knew they were burning to examine my smart clothes down tothe last button and bit of braid. I had on the short skirts of last year,and I could feel ten thousand eyes fastened on my high-heeled boots,which you know _I_ never went to extremes in. I confess my face burneda little, to realize what a scarecrow I
must look, when I glanced roundat those Altrurian women, whose pretty, classic fashions made the wholeplace like a field of lilacs and irises, and knew that they were ascomfortable as they were beautiful. Do you remember some of thedescriptions of the undergraduate maidens in the "Princess"--I know youhad it at school--where they are sitting in the palace halls together?The effect was something like that.

  You may be sure that I got out of my things as soon as I could borrow anAltrurian costume, and now my Paris confections are already hung up formonuments, as Richard III. says, in the Capitalistic Museum, where peoplefrom the outlying Regions may come and study them as object-lessons inwhat not to wear. (You remember what you said Aristides told you, when hespoke that day at the mountains, about the Regions that Altruria isdivided into? This is the Maritime Region, and the city where we areliving for the present is the capital.) You may think this was ratherhard on me, and at first it did seem pretty intimate, having my things ina long glass case, and it gave me a shock to see them, as if it had beenmy ghost, whenever I passed them. But the fact is I was more ashamed thanhurt--they were so ugly and stupid and useless. I could have borne myParis dress and my picture-hat if it had not been for those ridiculoushigh-heeled, pointed-toe shoes, which the Curatress had stood at thebottom of the skirts. They looked the most frantic things you canimagine, and the mere sight of them made my poor feet _ache_ in thebeautiful sandals I am wearing now; when once you have put on sandals yousay good-bye and good-riddance to shoes. In a single month my feet havegrown almost a tenth as large again as they were, and my friends hereencourage me to believe that they will yet measure nearly the classicsize, though, as you know, I am not in my first youth and can't expectthem to do miracles.

  * * * * *

  I had to leave off abruptly at the last page because Aristides had comein with a piece of news that took my mind off everything else. I amafraid you are not going to get this letter even at the late date I hadset for its reaching you, my dear. It seems that there has been a sort ofmutiny among the crew of our trader, which was to sail next week, and nowthere is no telling when she will sail. Ever since she came the men havebeen allowed their liberty, as they call it, by watches, but the lastwatch came ashore this week before another watch had returned to theship, and now not one of the sailors will go back. They had beenexploring the country by turns, at their leisure, it seems, and theirexcuse is that they like Altruria better than America, which they saythey wish never to see again.

  You know (though I didn't, till Aristides explained to me) that in anyEuropean country the captain in such a case would go to his consul, andthe consul would go to the police, and the police would run the men downand send them back to the ship in irons as deserters, or put them in jailtill the captain was ready to sail, and then deliver them up to him. Butit seems that there is no law in Altruria to do anything of the kind; theonly law here that would touch the case is one which obliges any citizento appear and answer the complaint of any other citizen before theJusticiary Assembly. A citizen cannot be imprisoned for anything but therarest offence, like killing a person in a fit of passion; and as toseizing upon men who are guilty of nothing worse than wanting to be leftto the pursuit of happiness, as all the Altrurians are, there is nostatute and no usage for it. Aristides says that the only thing which canbe done is to ask the captain and the men to come to the Assembly andeach state his case. The Altrurians are not anxious to have the men stay,not merely because they are coarse, rude, or vicious, but because theythink they ought to go home and tell the Americans what they have seenand heard here, and try and get them to found an Altrurian Commonwealthof their own. Still they will not compel them to go, and the magistratesdo not wish to rouse any sort of sentiment against them. They feel thatthe men are standing on their natural rights, which they could notabdicate if they would. I know this will appear perfectly ridiculousto Mr. Makely, and I confess myself that there seems something binding ina contract which ought to act on the men's consciences, at least.