A Traveler from Altruria: Romance Part 14

There was the bed where the invalid lay, and near the head a table with a pile of books and a kerosene-lamp on it, and I decided that she was a good deal wakeful, and that she read by that lamp when she could not sleep at night. Then there were the hard chairs we sat on, and some home-made hooked rugs, in rounds and ovals, scattered about the clean floor; there was a small melodeon pushed against the wall; the windows had paper shades, and I recalled that I had not seen any blinds on the outside of the house. Over the head of the bed hung a cavalryman's sword, with its belt--the sword that Mrs. Makely had spoken of. It struck me as a room where a great many things might have happened, and I said: "You can't think, Mrs. Camp, how glad I am to see the inside of your house. It seems to me so typical."

A pleased intelligence showed itself in her face, and she answered: "Yes, it is a real old-fashioned farmhouse. We have never taken boarders, and so we have kept it as it was built pretty much, and only made such changes in it as we needed or wanted for ourselves."

"It's a pity," I went on, following up what I thought a fortunate lead, "that we city people see so little of the farming life when we come into the country. I have been here now for several seasons, and this is the first time I have been inside a farmer's house."

"Is it possible!" cried the Altrurian, with an air of utter astonishment; and, when I found the fact appeared so singular to him, I began to be rather proud of its singularity.

"Yes, I suppose that most city people come and go, year after year, in the country, and never make any sort of acquaintance with the people who live there the year round. We keep to ourselves in the hotels, or, if we go out at all, it is to make a call upon some city cottager, and so we do not get out of the vicious circle of our own over-intimacy with ourselves and our ignorance of others."

"And you regard that as a great misfortune?" asked the Altrurian.

"Why, it's inevitable. There is nothing to bring us together, unless it's some happy accident, like the present. But we don't have a traveler from Altruria to exploit every day, and so we have no business to come into people's houses."

"You would have been welcome in ours long ago, Mr. Twelvemough," said Mrs.

Camp.

"But, excuse me," said the Altrurian, "what you say really seems dreadful to me. Why, it is as if you were not the same race or kind of men!"

"Yes," I answered. "It has sometimes seemed to me as if our big hotel there were a ship anch.o.r.ed off some strange coast. The inhabitants come out with supplies, and carry on their barter with the ship's steward, and we sometimes see them over the side, but we never speak to them or have anything to do with them. We sail away at the close of the season, and that is the end of it till next summer."

The Altrurian turned to Mrs. Camp. "And how do you look at it? How does it seem to you?"

"I don't believe we have thought about it very much; but, now that Mr.

Twelvemough has spoken of it, I can see that it does look that way. And it seems very strange, doesn't it, for we are all the same people, and have the same language and religion and country--the country that my husband fought for and, I suppose I may say, died for; he was never the same man after the war. It does appear as if we had some interests in common, and might find it out if we ever came together."

"It's a great advantage, the city people going into the country so much as they do now," said Mrs. Makely. "They bring five million dollars into the State of New Hampshire, alone, every summer."

She looked round for the general approval which this fact merited, and young Camp said: "And it shows how worthless the natives are, that they can't make both ends meet, with all that money, but have to give up their farms and go West, after all. I suppose you think it comes from wanting buggies and pianos."

"Well, it certainly comes from something," said Mrs. Makely, with the courage of her convictions.

She was evidently not going to be put down by that sour young fellow, and I was glad of it, though I must say I thought the thing she left to rankle in his mind from our former meeting had not been said in very good taste.

I thought, too, that she would not fare best in any encounter of wits with him, and I rather trembled for the result. I said, to relieve the strained situation: "I wish there was some way of our knowing each other better.

I'm sure there's a great deal of good-will on both sides."

"No, there isn't," said Camp, "or at least I can answer for our side that there isn't. You come into the country to get as much for your money as you can, and we mean to let you have as little as we can. That's the whole story, and if Mr. h.o.m.os believes anything different, he's very much mistaken."

"I hadn't formed any conclusion in regard to the matter, which is quite new to me," said the Altrurian, mildly. "But why is there no basis of mutual kindness between you?"

"Because it's like everything else with us; it's a question of supply and demand, and there is no room for any mutual kindness in a question of that kind. Even if there were, there is another thing that would kill it. The summer folks, as we call them, look down on the natives, as they call us, and we know it."

"Now, Mr. Camp, I am sure that you cannot say _I_ look down on the natives," said Mrs. Makely, with an air of argument.

The young fellow laughed. "Oh yes, you do," he said, not unamiably, and he added, "and you've got the right to. We're not fit to a.s.sociate with you, and you know it, and we know it. You've got more money, and you've got nicer clothes, and you've got prettier manners. You talk about things that most natives never heard of, and you care for things they never saw. I know it's the custom to pretend differently, but I'm not going to pretend differently."

I recalled what my friend the banker said about throwing away cant, and I asked myself if I were in the presence of some such free spirit again. I did not see how young Camp could afford it; but then I reflected that he had really nothing to lose by it, for he did not expect to make anything out of us; Mrs. Makely would probably not give up his sister as seamstress if the girl continued to work so well and so cheaply as she said.

"Suppose," he went on, "that some old native took you at your word, and came to call upon you at the hotel, with his wife, just as one of the city cottagers would do if he wanted to make your acquaintance?"

"I should be perfectly delighted," said Mrs. Makely, "and I should receive them with the greatest possible cordiality."

"The same kind of cordiality that you would show to the cottagers?"

"I suppose that I should feel that I had more in common with the cottagers. We should be interested in the same things, and we should probably know the same people and have more to talk about--"

"You would both belong to the same cla.s.s, and that tells the whole story.

If you were out West, and the owner of one of those big twenty-thousand-acre farms called on you with his wife, would you act toward them as you would toward our natives? You wouldn't. You would all be rich people together, and you would understand one another because you had money."

"Now, that is not so," Mrs. Makely interrupted. "There are plenty of rich people one wouldn't wish to know at all, and who really can't get into society--who are ignorant and vulgar. And then, when you come to money, I don't see but what country people are as glad to get it as anybody."

"Oh, gladder," said the young man.

"Well?" demanded Mrs. Makely, as if this were a final stroke of logic. The young man did not reply, and Mrs. Makely continued: "Now I will appeal to your sister to say whether she has ever seen any difference in my manner toward her from what I show to all the young ladies in the hotel." The young girl flushed and seemed reluctant to answer. "Why, Lizzie!" cried Mrs. Makely, and her tone showed that she was really hurt.

The scene appeared to me rather cruel, and I glanced at Mrs. Camp with an expectation that she would say something to relieve it. But she did not.

Her large, benevolent face expressed only a quiet interest in the discussion.

"You know very well, Mrs. Makely," said the girl, "you don't regard me as you do the young ladies in the hotel."

There was no resentment in her voice or look, but only a sort of regret, as if, but for this grievance, she could have loved the woman from whom she had probably had much kindness. The tears came into Mrs. Makely's eyes, and she turned toward Mrs. Camp. "And is this the way you _all_ feel toward us?" she asked.

"Why shouldn't we?" asked the invalid, in her turn. "But, no, it isn't the way all the country people feel. Many of them feel as you would like to have them feel; but that is because they do not think. When they think, they feel as we do. But I don't blame you. You can't help yourselves any more than we can. We're all bound up together in that, at least."

At this apparent relenting Mrs. Makely tricked her beams a little, and said, plaintively, as if offering herself for further condolence: "Yes, that is what that woman at the little shanty back there said: some have to be rich, and some have to be poor; it takes all kinds to make a world."

"How would you like to be one of those that have to be poor?" asked young Camp, with an evil grin.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Makely, with unexpected spirit; "but I am sure that I should respect the feelings of all, rich or poor."

"I am sorry if we have hurt yours, Mrs. Makely," said Mrs. Camp, with dignity. "You asked us certain questions, and we thought you wished us to reply truthfully. We could not answer you with smooth things."

"But sometimes you do," said Mrs. Makely, and the tears stood in her eyes again. "And you know how fond I am of you all!"

Mrs. Camp wore a bewildered look. "Perhaps we have said more than we ought. But I couldn't help it, and I don't see how the children could, when you asked them here, before Mr. h.o.m.os."

I glanced at the Altrurian, sitting attentive and silent, and a sudden misgiving crossed my mind concerning him. Was he really a man, a human ent.i.ty, a personality like ourselves, or was he merely a sort of spiritual solvent, sent for the moment to precipitate whatever sincerity there was in us, and show us what the truth was concerning our relations to one another? It was a fantastic conception, but I thought it was one that I might employ in some sort of purely romantic design, and I was professionally grateful for it. I said, with a humorous gayety: "Yes, we all seem to have been compelled to be much more honest than we like; and if Mr. h.o.m.os is going to write an account of his travels when he gets home, he can't accuse us of hypocrisy, at any rate. And I always used to think it was one of our virtues! What with Mr. Camp, here, and my friend the banker at the hotel, I don't think he'll have much reason to complain even of our reticence."

"Well, whatever he says of us," sighed Mrs. Makely, with a pious glance at the sword over the bed, "he will have to say that, in spite of our divisions and cla.s.ses, we are all Americans, and, if we haven't the same opinions and ideas on minor matters, we all have the same country."

"I don't know about that," came from Reuben Camp, with shocking promptness. "I don't believe we all have the same country. America is one thing for you, and it's quite another thing for us. America means ease and comfort and amus.e.m.e.nt for you, year in and year out, and if it means work, it's work that you _wish_ to do. For us, America means work that we _have_ to do, and hard work all the time if we're going to make both ends meet.

It means liberty for you; but what liberty has a man got who doesn't know where his next meal is coming from? Once I was in a strike, when I was working on the railroad, and I've seen men come and give up their liberty for a chance to earn their family's living. They knew they were right, and that they ought to have stood up for their rights; but they had to lie down and lick the hand that fed them. Yes, we are all Americans, but I guess we haven't all got the same country, Mrs. Makely. What sort of a country has a blacklisted man got?"

"A blacklisted man?" she repeated. "I don't know what you mean."

"Well, a kind of man I've seen in the mill towns, that the bosses have all got on their books as a man that isn't to be given work on any account; that's to be punished with hunger and cold, and turned into the street, for having offended them; and that's to be made to suffer through his helpless family for having offended them."

"Excuse me, Mr. Camp," I interposed, "but isn't a blacklisted man usually a man who has made himself prominent in some labor trouble?"

"Yes," the young fellow answered, without seeming sensible of the point I had made.