II

I sent you a short letter from Liverpool, saying that by the

unprecedented delays of the _Urania_, which I had taken because it was

the 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 had

only time for a word to you; but a million words could not have told the

agonies I suffered, and when I overtook him on board the Orient Pacific

steamer at Plymouth, where she touched, I could just scribble off the

cable sent Mr. Makely before our steamer put off again. I am afraid you

did not find my cable very expressive, but I was glad that I did not try

to say more, for if I had tried I should simply have gibbered, at a

shilling a gibber. I expected to make amends by a whole volume of

letters, and I did post a dozen under one cover from Colombo. If they

never reached you I am very sorry, for now it is impossible to take up

the threads of that time and weave them into any sort of connected

pattern. You will have to let me off with saying that Aristides was

everything that I believed he would be and was never really afraid he

might 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 as

completely 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 through

the air to his side. It would have been embarrassing if we had not

treated the situation frankly; but such odd things happen among the

English going out to their different colonies that our marriage, by a

missionary returning to his station, was not even a nine days' wonder

with our fellow-passengers.

We were a good deal more than nine days on the steamer before we could

get a vessel that would take us on to Altruria; but we overhauled a ship

going there for provisions at last, and we were all put off on her, bag

and baggage, with three cheers from the friends we were leaving; I think

they thought we were going to some of the British islands that the

Pacific is full of. I had been thankful from the first that I had not

brought 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 when

the captain's wife, who was with him, found that I had no one to look

after me, she looked after me herself, just for the fun of it, she

said; but _I_ knew it was the love of it. It was a sort of general

trading-ship, stopping at the different islands in the South Seas, and

had been a year out from home, where the kind woman had left her little

ones; she cried over their photographs to me. Her husband had been in

Altruria before, and he and Aristides were old acquaintances and met like

brothers; some of the crew knew him, too, and the captain relaxed

discipline so far as to let us shake hands with the second-mate as the

men's representative.

I needn't dwell on the incidents of our home-coming--for that was what it

seemed for my mother and me as well as for my husband--but I must give

you one detail of our reception, for I still think it almost the

prettiest thing that has happened to us among the millions of pretty

things. Aristides had written home of our engagement, and he was expected

with his American wife; and before we came to anchor the captain ran up

the Emissary's signal, which my husband gave him, and then three boats

left the shore and pulled rapidly out to us. As they came nearer I saw

the first Altrurian costumes in the lovely colors that the people wear

here, and that make a group of them look like a flower-bed; and then I

saw that the boats were banked with flowers along the gunwales from stem

to stern, and that they were each not _manned,_ but _girled_ by six

rowers, who pulled as true a stroke as I ever saw in our boat-races. When

they caught sight of us, leaning over the side, and Aristides lifted his

hat and waved it to them, they all stood their oars upright, and burst

into 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 relief

it was. They were great, splendid creatures, as tall as our millionaires'

tallest daughters, and as strong-looking as any of our college-girl

athletes; and when we got down over the ship's side, and Aristides said a

few words of introduction for my mother and me, as we stepped into the

largest of the boats, I thought they would crush me, catching me in their

strong, brown arms, and kissing me on each cheek; they never kiss on the

mouth in Altruria. The girls in the other boats kissed their hands to

mother and me, and shouted to Aristides, and then, when our boat set out

for the shore, they got on each side of us and sang song after song as

they pulled even stroke with our crew. Half-way, we met three other

boats, really _manned,_ these ones, and going out to get our baggage, and

then you ought to have heard the shouting and laughing, that ended in

more singing, when the young fellows' voices mixed with the girls, till

they 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 it

bravely; and almost at a glance people began to take her into

consideration, and she was delivered over to two young married ladies,

who saw that she was made comfortable, the first of any, in the pretty

Regionic 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 fountain

purring away among the flowers! But what astonished me was that there

were no sort of carriages, or wheeled conveyances, which, after our

escort from the ship, I thought might very well have met the returning

Emissary and his wife. They made my mother get into a litter, with soft

cushions and with lilac curtains blowing round it, and six girls carried

her 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 moment

of queerness. That walk was full of such rich experience for every one of

the senses that I would not have missed a step of it; but as soon as I

could get Aristides alone I asked him about horses, and he said that

though horses were still used in farm work, not a horse was allowed in

any city or village of Altruria, because of their filthiness. As for

public vehicles, they used to have electric trolleys; in the year that he

had been absent they had substituted electric motors; but these were not

running, 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 sort

of convention, I had to go too, and take part in the proceedings; for

women are on an entire equality with the men here, and people would be

shocked if husband and wife were separated in their public life. They did

not spare me a single thing. Where Aristides was not very clear, or

rather not full enough, in describing America, I was called on to

supplement, and I had to make several speeches. Of course, as I spoke in

English, he had to put it into Altrurian for me, and it made the greatest

excitement. The Altrurians are very lively people, and as full of the

desire to hear some new things as Paul said the men of Athens were. At

times they were in a perfect gale of laughter at what we told them about

America. Afterwards some of the women confessed to me that they liked to

hear us speaking English together; it sounded like the whistling of birds

or the shrilling of locusts. But they were perfectly kind, and though

they laughed it was clear that they laughed at what we were saying, and

never 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 about

our engagement before I broke it; and my clothes were of as much

interest As myself, or more. You know how I had purposely left my latest

Paris things behind, so as to come as simply as possible to the simple

life of Altruria, but still with my big leg-of-mutton sleeves, and my

picture-hat, and my pinched waist, I felt perfectly grotesque, and I have

no doubt I looked it. They had never seen a lady from the capitalistic

world before, but only now and then a whaling-captain's wife who had come

ashore; and I knew they were burning to examine my smart clothes down to

the 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 burned

a little, to realize what a scarecrow I must look, when I glanced round

at those Altrurian women, whose pretty, classic fashions made the whole

place like a field of lilacs and irises, and knew that they were as

comfortable as they were beautiful. Do you remember some of the

descriptions of the undergraduate maidens in the “Princess”--I know you

had 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 an

Altrurian costume, and now my Paris confections are already hung up for

monuments, as Richard III. says, in the Capitalistic Museum, where people

from the outlying Regions may come and study them as object-lessons in

what not to wear. (You remember what you said Aristides told you, when he

spoke that day at the mountains, about the Regions that Altruria is

divided into? This is the Maritime Region, and the city where we are

living for the present is the capital.) You may think this was rather

hard on me, and at first it did seem pretty intimate, having my things in

a long glass case, and it gave me a shock to see them, as if it had been

my ghost, whenever I passed them. But the fact is I was more ashamed than

hurt--they were so ugly and stupid and useless. I could have borne my

Paris dress and my picture-hat if it had not been for those ridiculous

high-heeled, pointed-toe shoes, which the Curatress had stood at the

bottom of the skirts. They looked the most frantic things you can

imagine, and the mere sight of them made my poor feet _ache_ in the

beautiful sandals I am wearing now; when once you have put on sandals you

say good-bye and good-riddance to shoes. In a single month my feet have

grown almost a tenth as large again as they were, and my friends here

encourage me to believe that they will yet measure nearly the classic

size, though, as you know, I am not in my first youth and can't expect

them to do miracles.

* * * * *

I had to leave off abruptly at the last page because Aristides had come

in with a piece of news that took my mind off everything else. I am

afraid you are not going to get this letter even at the late date I had

set for its reaching you, my dear. It seems that there has been a sort of

mutiny among the crew of our trader, which was to sail next week, and now

there is no telling when she will sail. Ever since she came the men have

been allowed their liberty, as they call it, by watches, but the last

watch came ashore this week before another watch had returned to the

ship, and now not one of the sailors will go back. They had been

exploring the country by turns, at their leisure, it seems, and their

excuse is that they like Altruria better than America, which they say

they wish never to see again.

You know (though I didn't, till Aristides explained to me) that in any

European country the captain in such a case would go to his consul, and

the consul would go to the police, and the police would run the men down

and send them back to the ship in irons as deserters, or put them in jail

till the captain was ready to sail, and then deliver them up to him. But

it seems that there is no law in Altruria to do anything of the kind; the

only law here that would touch the case is one which obliges any citizen

to appear and answer the complaint of any other citizen before the

Justiciary Assembly. A citizen cannot be imprisoned for anything but the

rarest offence, like killing a person in a fit of passion; and as to

seizing upon men who are guilty of nothing worse than wanting to be left

to the pursuit of happiness, as all the Altrurians are, there is no

statute and no usage for it. Aristides says that the only thing which can

be done is to ask the captain and the men to come to the Assembly and

each state his case. The Altrurians are not anxious to have the men stay,

not merely because they are coarse, rude, or vicious, but because they

think they ought to go home and tell the Americans what they have seen

and heard here, and try and get them to found an Altrurian Commonwealth

of their own. Still they will not compel them to go, and the magistrates

do not wish to rouse any sort of sentiment against them. They feel that

the men are standing on their natural rights, which they could not

abdicate if they would. I know this will appear perfectly ridiculous

to Mr. Makely, and I confess myself that there seems something binding in

a contract which ought to act on the men's consciences, at least.