A Traveler from Altruria: Romance Part 10

"Yes," said Mrs. Makely, "it's astonishing how strong and well those women keep, with their great families and their hard work. Sometimes I really envy them."

"Do you suppose," said the Altrurian, "that they are aware of the sacrifices which the ladies of the upper cla.s.ses make in leaving all the work to them, and suffering from the nervous debility which seems to be the outcome of your society life?"

"They have not the remotest idea of it. They have no conception of what a society woman goes through with. They think we do nothing. They envy us, too, and sometimes they're so ungrateful and indifferent, if you try to help them, or get on terms with them, that I believe they hate us."

"But that comes from ignorance?"

"Yes, though I don't know that they are really any more ignorant of us than we are of them. It's the other half on both sides."

"Isn't that a pity, rather?"

"Of course it's a pity, but what can you do? You can't know what people are like unless you live like them, and then the question is whether the game is worth the candle. I should like to know how you manage in Altruria."

"Why, we have solved the problem in the only way, as you say, that it can be solved. We all live alike."

"Isn't that a little, just a very trifling little bit, monotonous?" Mrs.

Makely asked, with a smile. "But there is everything, of course, in being used to it. To an unregenerate spirit--like mine, for example--it seems intolerable."

"But why? When you were younger, before you were married, you all lived at home together--or, perhaps, you were an only child?"

"Oh, no indeed! There were ten of us."

"Then you all lived alike, and shared equally?"

"Yes, but we were a family."

"We do not conceive of the human race except as a family."

"Now, excuse me, Mr. h.o.m.os, that is all nonsense. You cannot have the family feeling without love, and it is impossible to love other people.

That talk about the neighbor, and all that, is all well enough--" She stopped herself, as if she dimly remembered who began that talk, and then went on: "Of course, I accept it as a matter of faith, and the spirit of it, n.o.body denies that; but what I mean is, that you must have frightful quarrels all the time." She tried to look as if this were where she really meant to bring up, and he took her on the ground she had chosen.

"Yes, we have quarrels. Hadn't you at home?"

"We fought like little cats and dogs, at times."

Makely and I burst into a laugh at her magnanimous frankness. The Altrurian remained serious. "But, because you lived alike, you knew each other, and so you easily made up your quarrels. It is quite as simple with us, in our life as a human family."

This notion of a human family seemed to amuse Mrs. Makely more and more; she laughed and laughed again. "You must excuse me," she panted, at last, "but I cannot imagine it! No, it is too ludicrous. Just fancy the jars of an ordinary family multiplied by the population of a whole continent! Why, you must be in a perpetual squabble. You can't have any peace of your lives. It's worse, far worse, than our way."

"But, madam," he began, "you are supposing our family to be made up of people with all the antagonistic interests of your civilization. As a matter of fact--"

"No, no! _I know human nature_, Mr. h.o.m.os!" She suddenly jumped up and gave him her hand. "Good-night," she said, sweetly, and as she drifted off on her husband's arm she looked back at us and nodded in gay triumph.

The Altrurian turned upon me with unabated interest. "And have you no provision in your system for finally making the lower cla.s.ses understand the sufferings and sacrifices of the upper cla.s.ses in their behalf? Do you expect to do nothing to bring them together in mutual kindness?"

"Well, not this evening," I said, throwing the end of my cigar away. "I'm going to bed--aren't you?"

"Not yet."

"Well, good-night. Are you sure you can find your room?"

"Oh yes. Good-night."

VI

I left my guest abruptly, with a feeling of vexation not very easily definable. His repet.i.tion of questions about questions which society has so often answered, and always in the same way, was not so bad in him as it would have been in a person of our civilization; he represented a wholly different state of things, the inversion of our own, and much could be forgiven him for that reason, just as in Russia much could be forgiven to an American if he formulated his curiosity concerning imperialism from a purely republican experience. I knew that in Altruria, for instance, the possession of great gifts, of any kind of superiority, involved the sense of obligation to others, and the wish to identify one's self with the great ma.s.s of men, rather than the ambition to distinguish one's self from them; and that the Altrurians honored their gifted men in the measure they did this. A man reared in such a civilization must naturally find it difficult to get our point of view; with social inclusion as the ideal, he would with difficulty conceive of our ideal of social exclusion; but I think we had all been very patient with him; we should have made short work with an American who had approached us with the same inquiries.

Even from a foreigner, the citizen of a republic founded on the notion, elsewhere exploded ever since Cain, that one is his brother's keeper, the things he asked seemed inoffensive only because they were puerile; but they certainly were puerile. I felt that it ought to have been self-evident to him that when a commonwealth of sixty million Americans based itself upon the great principle of self-seeking, self-seeking was the best thing, and, whatever hardship it seemed to work, it must carry with it unseen blessings in tenfold measure. If a few hundred thousand favored Americans enjoyed the privilege of socially contemning all the rest, it was as clearly right and just that they should do so as that four thousand American millionaires should be richer than all the other Americans put together. Such a status, growing out of our political equality and our material prosperity, must evince a divine purpose to any one intimate with the designs of Providence, and it seemed a kind of impiety to doubt its perfection. I excused the misgivings which I could not help seeing in the Altrurian to his alien traditions, and I was aware that my friends had done so, too. But, if I could judge from myself, he must have left them all sensible of their effort; and this was not pleasant. I could not blink the fact that although I had openly disagreed with him on every point of ethics and economics, I was still responsible for him as a guest. It was as if an English gentleman had introduced a blatant American Democrat into Tory society; or, rather, as if a Southerner of the olden time had harbored a Northern Abolitionist and permitted him to inquire into the workings of slavery among his neighbors.

People would tolerate him as my guest for a time, but there must be an end of their patience with the tacit enmity of his sentiments and the explicit vulgarity of his ideals, and when the end came I must be attainted with him.

I did not like the notion of this, and I meant to escape it if I could. I confess that I would have willingly disowned him, as I had already disavowed his opinions, but there was no way of doing it short of telling him to go away, and I was not ready to do that. Something in the man, I do not know what, mysteriously appealed to me. He was not contemptibly puerile without being lovably childlike, and I could only make up my mind to be more and more frank with him and to try and shield him, as well as myself, from the effects I dreaded.

I fell asleep planning an excursion farther into the mountains, which should take up the rest of the week that I expected him to stay with me, and would keep him from following up his studies of American life where they would be so injurious to both of us as they must in our hotel. A knock at my door roused me, and I sent a drowsy "Come in!" toward it from the bedclothes without looking that way.

"Good-morning!" came back in the rich, gentle voice of the Altrurian. I lifted my head with a jerk from the pillow, and saw him standing against the closed door, with my shoes in his hand. "Oh, I am sorry I waked you. I thought--"

"Not at all, not at all," I said. "It's quite time, I dare say. But you oughtn't to have taken the trouble to bring my shoes in."

"I wasn't altogether disinterested in it," he returned. "I wished you to compliment me on them. Don't you think they are pretty well done, for an amateur?" He came toward my bed, and turned them about in his hands, so that they would catch the light, and smiled down upon me.

"I don't understand," I began.

"Why," he said, "I blacked them, you know."

"You blacked them?"

"Yes," he returned, easily. "I thought I would go into the baggage-room, after we parted last night, to look for a piece of mine that had not been taken to my room, and I found the porter there, with his wrist bound up.

He said he had strained it in handling a lady's Saratoga--he said a Saratoga was a large trunk--and I begged him to let me relieve him at the boots he was blacking. He refused at first, but I insisted upon trying my hand at a pair, and then he let me go on with the men's boots; he said he could varnish the ladies' without hurting his wrist. It needed less skill than I supposed, and after I had done a few pairs he said I could black boots as well as he."

"Did anybody see you?" I gasped, and I felt a cold perspiration break out on me.

"No, we had the whole midnight hour to ourselves. The porter's work with the baggage was all over, and there was nothing to interrupt the delightful chat we fell into. He is a very intelligent man, and he told me all about that custom of feeing which you deprecate. He says that the servants hate it as much as the guests; they have to take the tips now because the landlords figure on them in the wages, and they cannot live without them. He is a fine, manly fellow, and--"

"Mr. h.o.m.os," I broke in, with the strength I found in his a.s.surance that no one had seen him helping the porter black boots, "I want to speak very seriously with you, and I hope you will not be hurt if I speak very plainly about a matter in which I have your good solely at heart." This was not quite true, and I winced inwardly a little when he thanked me with that confounded sincerity of his which was so much like irony; but I went on: "It is my duty to you, as my guest, to tell you that this thing of doing for others is not such a simple matter here, as your peculiar training leads you to think. You have been deceived by a superficial likeness; but, really, I do not understand how you could have read all you have done about us and not realize before coming here that America and Altruria are absolutely distinct and diverse in their actuating principles. They are both republics, I know; but America is a republic where every man is for himself, and you cannot help others as you do at home; it is dangerous--it is ridiculous. You must keep this fact in mind, or you will fall into errors that will be very embarra.s.sing to you in your stay among us, and," I was forced to add, "to all your friends. Now, I certainly hoped, after what I had said to you and what my friends had explained of our civilization, that you would not have done a thing of this kind. I will see the porter, as soon as I am up, and ask him not to mention the matter to any one, but, I confess, I don't like to take an apologetic tone with him; your conditions are so alien to ours that they will seem incredible to him, and he will think I am stuffing him."

"I don't believe he will think that," said the Altrurian, "and I hope you won't find the case so bad as it seems to you. I am extremely sorry to have done wrong--"

"Oh, the thing wasn't wrong in itself. It was only wrong under the circ.u.mstances. Abstractly, it is quite right to help a fellow-being who needs help; no one denies that, even in a country where every one is for himself."

"I am so glad to hear it," said the Altrurian. "Then, at least, I have not gone radically astray; and I do not think you need take the trouble to explain the Altrurian ideas to the porter. I have done that already, and they seemed quite conceivable to him; he said that poor folks had to act upon them, even here, more or less, and that if they did not act upon them there would be no chance for them at all. He says they have to help one another very much as we do at home, and that it is only the rich folks among you who are independent. I really don't think you need speak to him at all, unless you wish; and I was very careful to guard my offer of help at the point where I understood from you and your friends that it might do harm. I asked him if there was not some one who would help him out with his boot-blacking for money, because in that case I should be glad to pay him; but he said there was no one about who would take the job; that he had to agree to black the boots, or else he would not have got the place of porter, but that all the rest of the help would consider it a disgrace, and would not help him for love or money. So it seemed quite safe to offer him my services."

I felt that the matter was almost hopeless, but I asked: "And what he said--didn't that suggest anything else to you?"

"How anything else?" asked the Altrurian, in his turn.

"Didn't it occur to you that if none of his fellow-servants were willing to help him black boots, and if he did it only because he was obliged to, it was hardly the sort of work for you?"