Part 8 (1/2)

h.o.m.os about some of the little social peculiarities among us that he finds so hard to understand. He was just now,” the lady continued, ”wanting to know why all the natives out here were not invited to go in and join our young people in the dance, and I've been trying to tell him that we consider it a great favor to let them come and take up so much of the piazza and look in at the windows.”

She gave a little laugh of superiority, and twitched her pretty head in the direction of the young country girls and country fellows who were thronging the place that night in rather unusual numbers. They were well enough looking, and, as it was Sat.u.r.day night, they were in their best. I suppose their dress could have been criticised; the young fellows were clothed by the ready-made clothing-store, and the young girls after their own devices from the fas.h.i.+on papers; but their general effect was good, and their behavior was irreproachable; they were very quiet--if anything, too quiet. They took up a part of the piazza that was yielded them by common usage, and sat watching the hop inside, not so much enviously, I thought, as wistfully; and for the first time it struck me as odd that they should have no part in the gayety. I had often seen them there before, but I had never thought it strange they should be shut out. It had always seemed quite normal, but now, suddenly, for one baleful moment, it seemed abnormal. I suppose it was the talk we had been having about the working-men in society which caused me to see the thing as the Altrurian must have seen it; but I was, nevertheless, vexed with him for having asked such a question, after he had been so fully instructed upon the point. It was malicious of him, or it was stupid. I hardened my heart, and answered: ”You might have told him, for one thing, that they were not dancing because they had not paid the piper.”

”Then the money consideration enters even into your social pleasures?”

asked the Altrurian.

”Very much. Doesn't it with you?”

He evaded this question, as he evaded all straightforward questions concerning his country: ”We have no money consideration, you know. But do I understand that all your social entertainments are paid for by the guests?”

”Oh no, not so bad as that, quite. There are a great many that the host pays for. Even here, in a hotel, the host furnishes the music and the room free to the guests of the house.”

”And none are admitted from the outside?”

”Oh yes, people are welcome from all the other hotels and boarding-houses and the private cottages. The young men are especially welcome; there are not enough young men in the hotel to go round, you see.” In fact, we could see that some of the pretty girls within were dancing with other girls; half-grown boys were dangling from the waists of tall young ladies and waltzing on tiptoe.

”Isn't that rather droll?” asked the Altrurian.

”It's grotesque!” I said, and I felt ashamed of it. ”But what are you to do? The young men are hard at work in the cities, as many as can get work there, and the rest are out West, growing up with the country. There are twenty young girls for every young man at all the summer resorts in the East.”

”But what would happen if these young farmers--I suppose they are farmers--were invited in to take part in the dance?” asked my friend.

”But that is impossible.”

”Why?”

”Really, Mrs. Makely, I think I shall have to give him back to you,” I said.

The lady laughed. ”I am not sure that I want him back.”

”Oh yes,” the Altrurian entreated, with unwonted perception of the humor.

”I know that I must be very trying with my questions; but do not abandon me to the solitude of my own conjectures. They are dreadful!”

”Well, I won't,” said the lady, with another laugh. ”And I will try to tell you what would happen if those farmers, or farm-hands, or whatever they are, were asked in. The mammas would be very indignant, and the young ladies would be scared, and n.o.body would know what to do, and the dance would stop.”

”Then the young ladies prefer to dance with one another and with little boys--”

”No, they prefer to dance with young men of their own station; they would rather not dance at all than dance with people beneath them. I don't say anything against these natives here; they are very civil and decent. But they have not the same social traditions as the young ladies; they would be out of place with them, and they would feel it.”

”Yes, I can see that they are not fit to a.s.sociate with them,” said the Altrurian, with a gleam of commonsense that surprised me, ”and that as long as your present conditions endure they never can be. You must excuse the confusion which the difference between your political ideals and your economic ideals constantly creates in me. I always think of you politically first, and realize you as a perfect democracy; then come these other facts, in which I cannot perceive that you differ from the aristocratic countries of Europe in theory, or practice. It is very puzzling. Am I right in supposing that the effect of your economy is to establish insuperable inequalities among you, and to forbid the hope of the brotherhood which your policy proclaims?”

Mrs. Makely looked at me as if she were helpless to grapple with his meaning, and, for fear of worse, I thought best to evade it. I said: ”I don't believe that anybody is troubled by those distinctions. We are used to them, and everybody acquiesces in them, which is a proof that they are a very good thing.”

Mrs. Makely now came to my support. ”The Americans are very high-spirited, in every cla.s.s, and I don't believe one of those nice farm-boys would like being asked in any better than the young ladies. You can't imagine how proud some of them are.”

”So that they suffer from being excluded as inferiors?”

”Oh, I a.s.sure you they don't feel themselves inferior! They consider themselves as good as anybody. There are some very interesting characters among them. Now, there is a young girl sitting at the first window, with her profile outlined by the light, whom I feel it an honor to speak to.

That's her brother, standing there with her--that tall, gaunt young man with a Roman face; it's such a common type here in the mountains. Their father was a soldier, and he distinguished himself so in one of the last battles that he was promoted. He was badly wounded, but he never took a pension; he just came back to his farm and worked on till he died. Now the son has the farm, and he and his sister live there with their mother. The daughter takes in sewing, and in that way they manage to make both ends meet. The girl is really a first-rate seamstress, and so cheap! I give her a good deal of my work in the summer, and we are quite friends. She's very fond of reading; the mother is an invalid, but she reads aloud while the daughter sews, and you've no idea how many books they get through. When she comes for sewing, I like to talk with her about them; I always have her sit down; it's hard to realize that she isn't a lady. I'm a good deal criticised, I know, and I suppose I do spoil her a little; it puts notions into such people's heads, if you meet them in that way; they're pretty free and independent as it is. But when I'm with Lizzie I forget that there is any difference between us; I can't help loving the child. You must take Mr. h.o.m.os to see them, Mr. Twelvemough. They've got the father's sword hung up over the head of the mother's bed; it's very touching. But the poor little place is so bare!”