Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance

  XXII

  It is long since I wrote you, and you have had reason enough to beimpatient of my silence. I submit to the reproaches of your letter, witha due sense of my blame; whether I am altogether to blame, you shall sayafter you have read this.

  I cannot yet decide whether I have lost a great happiness, the greatestthat could come to any man, or escaped the worst misfortune that couldbefall me. But, such as it is, I will try to set the fact honestly down.

  I do not know whether you had any conjecture, from my repeated mention ofa lady whose character greatly interested me, that I was in the way offeeling any other interest in her than my letters expressed. I am nolonger young, though at thirty-five an Altrurian is by no means so old asan American at the same age. The romantic ideals of the American womenwhich I had formed from the American novels had been dissipated; if I hadany sentiment towards them, as a type, it was one of distrust, which myvery sense of the charm in their inconsequence, their beauty, theirbrilliancy, served rather to intensify. I thought myself doubly defendedby that difference between their civilization and ours which forbadereasonable hope of happiness in any sentiment for them tenderer thanthat of the student of strange effects in human nature. But we have notyet, my dear Cyril, reasoned the passions, even in Altruria.

  After I last wrote you, a series of accidents, or what appeared so, threwme more and more constantly into the society of Mrs. Strange. We began tolaugh at the fatality with which we met everywhere--at teas, at lunches,at dinners, at evening receptions, and even at balls, where I have been agreat deal, because, with all my thirty-five years, I have not yetoutlived that fondness for dancing which has so often amused you in me.Wherever my acquaintance widened among cultivated people, they had noinspiration but to ask us to meet each other, as if there were really noother woman in New York who could be expected to understand me. "You mustcome to lunch (or tea, or dinner, whichever it might be), and we willhave her. She will be so much interested to meet you."

  But perhaps we should have needed none of these accidents to bring ustogether. I, at least, can look back and see that, when none of themhappened, I sought occasions for seeing her, and made excuses of ourcommon interest in this matter and in that to go to her. As for her, Ican only say that I seldom failed to find her at home, whether I calledupon her nominal day or not, and more than once the man who let me insaid he had been charged by Mrs. Strange to say that, if I called, shewas to be back very soon; or else he made free to suggest that, thoughMrs. Strange was not at home, Mrs. Gray was; and then I found it easyto stay until Mrs. Strange returned. The good old lady had an insatiablecuriosity about Altruria, and, though I do not think she ever quitebelieved in our reality, she at least always treated me kindly, as if Iwere the victim of an illusion that was thoroughly benign.

  I think she had some notion that your letters, which I used often to takewith me and read to Mrs. Strange and herself, were inventions of mine;and the fact that they bore only an English postmark confirmed her inthis notion, though I explained that in our present passive attitudetowards the world outside we had as yet no postal relations with othercountries, and, as all our communication at home was by electricity, thatwe had no letter-post of our own. The very fact that she belonged to apurer and better age in America disqualified her to conceive of Altruria;her daughter, who had lived into a full recognition of the terribleanarchy in which the conditions have ultimated here, could far morevitally imagine us, and to her, I believe, we were at once a livingreality. Her perception, her sympathy, her intelligence, became more andmore to me, and I escaped to them oftener and oftener, from a world wherean Altrurian must be so painfully at odds. In all companies here I amaware that I have been regarded either as a good joke or a bad joke,according to the humor of the listener, and it was grateful to be takenseriously.

  From the first I was sensible of a charm in her, different from that Ifelt in other American women, and impossible in our Altrurian women. Shehad a deep and almost tragical seriousness, masked with a most winninggayety, a light irony, a fine scorn that was rather for herself than forothers. She had thought herself out of all sympathy with her environment;she knew its falsehood, its vacuity, its hopelessness; but shenecessarily remained in it and of it. She was as much at odds in it as Iwas, without my poor privilege of criticism and protest, for, as shesaid, she could not set herself up as a censor of things that she mustkeep on doing as other people did. She could have renounced the world, asthere are ways and means of doing here; but she had no vocation to thereligious life, and she could not feign it without a sense of sacrilege.In fact, this generous and magnanimous and gifted woman was without thatfaith, that trust in God which comes to us from living His law, andwhich I wonder any American can keep. She denied nothing; but she hadlost the strength to affirm anything. She no longer tried to do good fromher heart, though she kept on doing charity in what she said was a meremechanical impulse from the belief of other days, but always with theironical doubt that she was doing harm. Women are nothing by halves, asmen can be, and she was in a despair which no man can realize, for wehave always some if or and which a woman of the like mood casts from herin wild rejection. Where she could not clearly see her way to a truelife, it was the same to her as an impenetrable darkness.

  You will have inferred something of all this from what I have written ofher before, and from words of hers that I have reported to you. Do youthink it so wonderful, then, that in the joy I felt at the hope, thesolace, which my story of our life seemed to give her, she should becomemore and more precious to me? It was not wonderful, either, I think, thatshe should identify me with that hope, that solace, and should sufferherself to lean upon me, in a reliance infinitely sweet and endearing.But what a fantastic dream it now appears!