The talk at Mrs. Strange's table took a far wider range than my meagre
notes would intimate, and we sat so long that it was almost eleven
before the men joined the ladies in the drawing-room. You will hardly
conceive of remaining two, three, or four hours at dinner, as one often
does here, in society; out of society the meals are despatched with a
rapidity unknown to the Altrurians. Our habit of listening to lectors,
especially at the evening repast, and then of reasoning upon what we
have heard, prolongs our stay at the board; but the fondest listener,
the greatest talker among us, would be impatient of the delay eked out
here by the great number and the slow procession of the courses served.
Yet the poorest American would find his ideal realized rather in the
long-drawn-out gluttony of the society dinner here than in our temperate
simplicity.
At such a dinner it is very hard to avoid a surfeit, and I have to guard
myself very carefully, lest, in the excitement of the talk, I gorge
myself with everything, in its turn. Even at the best, my overloaded
stomach often joins with my conscience in reproaching me for what you
would think a shameful excess at table. Yet, wicked as my riot is, my
waste is worse, and I have to think, with contrition, not only of what I
have eaten, but of what I have left uneaten, in a city where so many
wake and sleep in hunger.
The ladies made a show of lingering after we joined them in the
drawing-room; but there were furtive glances at the clock, and presently
her guests began to bid Mrs. Strange good-night. When I came up and
offered her my hand, she would not take it, but murmured, with a kind of
passion: “Don't go! I mean it! Stay, and tell us about Altruria--my
mother and me!”
I was by no means loath, for I must confess that all I had seen and heard
of this lady interested me in her more and more. I felt at home with her,
too, as with no other society woman I have met; she seemed to me not only
good, but very sincere, and very good-hearted, in spite of the world she
lived in. Yet I have met so many disappointments here, of the kind that
our civilization wholly fails to prepare us for, that I should not have
been surprised to find that Mrs. Strange had wished me to stay, not that
she might hear me talk about Altruria, but that I might hear her talk
about herself. You must understand that the essential vice of a system
which concentres a human being's thoughts upon his own interests, from
the first moment of responsibility, colors and qualifies every motive
with egotism. All egotists are unconscious, for otherwise they would be
intolerable to themselves; but some are subtler than others; and as most
women have finer natures than most men everywhere, and in America most
women have finer minds than most men, their egotism usually takes the
form of pose. This is usually obvious, but in some cases it is so
delicately managed that you do not suspect it, unless some other woman
gives you a hint of it, and even then you cannot be sure of it, seeing
the self-sacrifice, almost to martyrdom, which the _poseuse_ makes
for it. If Mrs. Makely had not suggested that some people attributed
a pose to Mrs. Strange, I should certainly never have dreamed of looking
for it, and I should have been only intensely interested, when she began,
as soon as I was left alone with her and her mother:
“You may not know how unusual I am in asking this favor of you, Mr.
Homos; but you might as well learn from me as from others that I am
rather unusual in everything. In fact, you can report in Altruria, when
you get home, that you found at least one woman in America whom fortune
had smiled upon in every way, and who hated her smiling fortune almost
as much as she hated herself. I'm quite satisfied,” she went on, with a
sad mockery, “that fortune is a man, and an American; when he has given
you all the materials for having a good time, he believes that you must
be happy, because there is nothing to hinder. It isn't that I want to be
happy in the greedy way that men think we do, for then I could easily be
happy. If you have a soul which is not above buttons, buttons are enough.
But if you expect to be of real use, to help on, and to help out, you
will be disappointed. I have not the faith that they say upholds you
Altrurians in trying to help out, if I don't see my way out. It seems to
me that my reason has some right to satisfaction, and that, if I am a
woman grown, I can't be satisfied with the assurances they would give
to little girls--that everything is going on well. Any one can see that
things are not going on well. There is more and more wretchedness of
every kind, not hunger of body alone, but hunger of soul. If you escape
one, you suffer the other, because, if you _have_ a soul, you must
long to help, not for a time, but for all time. I suppose,” she asked,
abruptly, “that Mrs. Makely has told you something about me?”
“Something,” I admitted.
“I ask,” she went on, “because I don't want to bore you with a statement
of my case, if you know it already. Ever since I heard you were in New
York I have wished to see you, and to talk with you about Altruria; I did
not suppose that there would be any chance at Mrs. Makely's, and there
wasn't; and I did not suppose there would be any chance here, unless I
could take courage to do what I have done now. You must excuse it, if it
seems as extraordinary a proceeding to you as it really is; I wouldn't at
all have you think it is usual for a lady to ask one of her guests to
stay after the rest, in order, if you please, to confess herself to him.
It's a crime without a name.”
She laughed, not gayly, but humorously, and then went on, speaking always
with a feverish eagerness which I find it hard to give you a sense of,
for the women here have an intensity quite beyond our experience of the
sex at home.
“But you are a foreigner, and you come from an order of things so utterly
unlike ours that perhaps you will be able to condone my offence. At any
rate, I have risked it.” She laughed again, more gayly, and recovered
herself in a cheerfuller and easier mood. “Well, the long and the short
of it is that I have come to the end of my tether. I have tried, as truly
as I believe any woman ever did, to do my share, with money and with
work, to help make life better for those whose life is bad; and though
one mustn't boast of good works, I may say that I have been pretty
thorough, and, if I've given up, it's because I see, in our state of
things, _no_ hope of curing the evil. It's like trying to soak up
the drops of a rainstorm. You do dry up a drop here and there; but the
clouds are full of them, and, the first thing you know, you stand, with
your blotting-paper in your hand, in a puddle over your shoe-tops. There
is nothing but charity, and charity is a failure, except for the moment.
If you think of the misery around you, that must remain around you for
ever and ever, as long as you live, you have your choice--to go mad and
be put into an asylum, or go mad and devote yourself to society.”