Looking Backward: 2000-1887 Page 19

  CHAPTER XVI.

  Next morning I rose somewhat before the breakfast hour. As I descendedthe stairs, Edith stepped into the hall from the room which had beenthe scene of the morning interview between us described some chaptersback.

  "Ah!" she exclaimed, with a charmingly arch expression, "you thoughtto slip out unbeknown for another of those solitary morning rambleswhich have such nice effects on you. But you see I am up too early foryou this time. You are fairly caught."

  "You discredit the efficacy of your own cure," I said, "by supposingthat such a ramble would now be attended with bad consequences."

  "I am very glad to hear that," she said. "I was in here arranging someflowers for the breakfast table when I heard you come down, andfancied I detected something surreptitious in your step on thestairs."

  "You did me injustice," I replied. "I had no idea of going out atall."

  Despite her effort to convey an impression that my interception waspurely accidental, I had at the time a dim suspicion of what Iafterwards learned to be the fact, namely, that this sweet creature,in pursuance of her self-assumed guardianship over me, had risen forthe last two or three mornings at an unheard-of hour, to insureagainst the possibility of my wandering off alone in case I should beaffected as on the former occasion. Receiving permission to assist herin making up the breakfast bouquet, I followed her into the room fromwhich she had emerged.

  "Are you sure," she asked, "that you are quite done with thoseterrible sensations you had that morning?"

  "I can't say that I do not have times of feeling decidedly queer," Ireplied, "moments when my personal identity seems an open question. Itwould be too much to expect after my experience that I should not havesuch sensations occasionally, but as for being carried entirely off myfeet, as I was on the point of being that morning, I think the dangeris past."

  "I shall never forget how you looked that morning," she said.

  "If you had merely saved my life," I continued, "I might, perhaps,find words to express my gratitude, but it was my reason you saved,and there are no words that would not belittle my debt to you." Ispoke with emotion, and her eyes grew suddenly moist.

  "It is too much to believe all this," she said, "but it is verydelightful to hear you say it. What I did was very little. I was verymuch distressed for you, I know. Father never thinks anything ought toastonish us when it can be explained scientifically, as I suppose thislong sleep of yours can be, but even to fancy myself in your placemakes my head swim. I know that I could not have borne it at all."

  "That would depend," I replied, "on whether an angel came to supportyou with her sympathy in the crisis of your condition, as one came tome." If my face at all expressed the feelings I had a right to havetoward this sweet and lovely young girl, who had played so angelic arole toward me, its expression must have been very worshipful justthen. The expression or the words, or both together, caused her now todrop her eyes with a charming blush.

  "For the matter of that," I said, "if your experience has not been asstartling as mine, it must have been rather overwhelming to see a manbelonging to a strange century, and apparently a hundred years dead,raised to life."

  "It seemed indeed strange beyond any describing at first," she said,"but when we began to put ourselves in your place, and realize howmuch stranger it must seem to you, I fancy we forgot our own feelingsa good deal, at least I know I did. It seemed then not so muchastounding as interesting and touching beyond anything ever heard ofbefore."

  "But does it not come over you as astounding to sit at table with me,seeing who I am?"

  "You must remember that you do not seem so strange to us as we must toyou," she answered. "We belong to a future of which you could not forman idea, a generation of which you knew nothing until you saw us. Butyou belong to a generation of which our forefathers were a part. Weknow all about it; the names of many of its members are householdwords with us. We have made a study of your ways of living andthinking; nothing you say or do surprises us, while we say and donothing which does not seem strange to you. So you see, Mr. West, thatif you feel that you can, in time, get accustomed to us, you must notbe surprised that from the first we have scarcely found you strange atall."

  "I had not thought of it in that way," I replied. "There is indeedmuch in what you say. One can look back a thousand years easier thanforward fifty. A century is not so very long a retrospect. I mighthave known your great-grand-parents. Possibly I did. Did they live inBoston?"

  "I believe so."

  "You are not sure, then?"

  "Yes," she replied. "Now I think, they did."

  "I had a very large circle of acquaintances in the city," I said. "Itis not unlikely that I knew or knew of some of them. Perhaps I mayhave known them well. Wouldn't it be interesting if I should chanceto be able to tell you all about your great-grandfather, forinstance?"

  "Very interesting."

  "Do you know your genealogy well enough to tell me who your forbearswere in the Boston of my day?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "Perhaps, then, you will some time tell me what some of their nameswere."

  She was engrossed in arranging a troublesome spray of green, and didnot reply at once. Steps upon the stairway indicated that the othermembers of the family were descending.

  "Perhaps, some time," she said.

  After breakfast, Dr. Leete suggested taking me to inspect the centralwarehouse and observe actually in operation the machinery ofdistribution, which Edith had described to me. As we walked away fromthe house I said, "It is now several days that I have been living inyour household on a most extraordinary footing, or rather on none atall. I have not spoken of this aspect of my position before becausethere were so many other aspects yet more extraordinary. But now thatI am beginning a little to feel my feet under me, and to realize that,however I came here, I am here, and must make the best of it, I mustspeak to you on this point."

  "As for your being a guest in my house," replied Dr. Leete, "I prayyou not to begin to be uneasy on that point, for I mean to keep you along time yet. With all your modesty, you can but realize that such aguest as yourself is an acquisition not willingly to be parted with."

  "Thanks, doctor," I said. "It would be absurd, certainly, for me toaffect any oversensitiveness about accepting the temporary hospitalityof one to whom I owe it that I am not still awaiting the end of theworld in a living tomb. But if I am to be a permanent citizen of thiscentury I must have some standing in it. Now, in my time a person moreor less entering the world, however he got in, would not be noticed inthe unorganized throng of men, and might make a place for himselfanywhere he chose if he were strong enough. But nowadays everybody isa part of a system with a distinct place and function. I am outsidethe system, and don't see how I can get in; there seems no way to getin, except to be born in or to come in as an emigrant from some othersystem."

  Dr. Leete laughed heartily.

  "I admit," he said, "that our system is defective in lacking provisionfor cases like yours, but you see nobody anticipated additions to theworld except by the usual process. You need, however, have no fearthat we shall be unable to provide both a place and occupation for youin due time. You have as yet been brought in contact only with themembers of my family, but you must not suppose that I have kept yoursecret. On the contrary, your case, even before your resuscitation,and vastly more since, has excited the profoundest interest in thenation. In view of your precarious nervous condition, it was thoughtbest that I should take exclusive charge of you at first, and that youshould, through me and my family, receive some general idea of thesort of world you had come back to before you began to make theacquaintance generally of its inhabitants. As to finding a functionfor you in society, there was no hesitation as to what that would be.Few of us have it in our power to confer so great a service on thenation as you will be able to when you leave my roof, which, however,you must not think of doing for a good time yet."

  "What can I possibly do?" I asked. "Perhaps you imagine I have sometrade, or
art, or special skill. I assure you I have none whatever. Inever earned a dollar in my life, or did an hour's work. I am strong,and might be a common laborer, but nothing more."

  "If that were the most efficient service you were able to render thenation, you would find that avocation considered quite as respectableas any other," replied Dr. Leete; "but you can do something elsebetter. You are easily the master of all our historians on questionsrelating to the social condition of the latter part of the nineteenthcentury, to us one of the most absorbingly interesting periods ofhistory; and whenever in due time you have sufficiently familiarizedyourself with our institutions, and are willing to teach us somethingconcerning those of your day, you will find an historical lectureshipin one of our colleges awaiting you."

  "Very good! very good indeed," I said, much relieved by so practical asuggestion on a point which had begun to trouble me. "If your peopleare really so much interested in the nineteenth century, there willindeed be an occupation ready-made for me. I don't think there isanything else that I could possibly earn my salt at, but I certainlymay claim without conceit to have some special qualifications for sucha post as you describe."