| Chapter 16
| 0 | |
| Next morning I rose somewhat before the breakfast hour. As I
descended the stairs, Edith stepped into the hall from the room
which had been the scene of the morning interview between us
described some chapters back.
| 1 | |
| "Ah!" she exclaimed, with a charmingly arch expression, "you
thought to slip out unbeknown for another of those solitary
morning rambles which have such nice effects on you. But you
see I am up too early for you this time. You are fairly caught."
| 2 | |
| "You discredit the efficacy of your own cure," I said, "by
supposing that such a ramble would now be attended with bad
consequences."
| 3 | |
| "I am very glad to hear that," she said. "I was in here
arranging some flowers for the breakfast table when I heard you
come down, and fancied I detected something surreptitious in
your step on the stairs."
| 4 | |
| "You did me injustice," I replied. "I had no idea of going out
at all."
| 5 | |
| Despite her effort to convey an impression that my interception
was purely accidental, I had at the time a dim suspicion of
what I afterwards learned to be the fact, namely, that this sweet
creature, in pursuance of her self-assumed guardianship over me,
had risen for the last two or three mornings at an unheard-of
hour, to insure against the possibility of my wandering off alone
in case I should be affected as on the former occasion. Receiving
permission to assist her in making up the breakfast bouquet, I
followed her into the room from which she had emerged.
| 6 | |
| "Are you sure," she asked, "that you are quite done with those
terrible sensations you had that morning?"
| 7 | |
| "I can't say that I do not have times of feeling decidedly
queer," I replied, "moments when my personal identity seems an
open question. It would be too much to expect after my
experience that I should not have such sensations occasionally,
but as for being carried entirely off my feet, as I was on the point
of being that morning, I think the danger is past."
| 8 | |
| "I shall never forget how you looked that morning," she said.
| 9 | |
| "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." I spoke with emotion, and her eyes grew suddenly
moist.
| 10 | |
| "It is too much to believe all this," she said, "but it is very
delightful to hear you say it. What I did was very little. I was
very much distressed for you, I know. Father never thinks
anything ought to astonish us when it can be explained scientifically,
as I suppose this long sleep of yours can be, but even to
fancy myself in your place makes my head swim. I know that I
could not have borne it at all."
| 11 | |
| "That would depend," I replied, "on whether an angel came
to support you with her sympathy in the crisis of your condition,
as one came to me." If my face at all expressed the feelings I had
a right to have toward this sweet and lovely young girl, who had
played so angelic a role toward me, its expression must have been
very worshipful just then. The expression or the words, or both
together, caused her now to drop her eyes with a charming
blush.
| 12 | |
| "For the matter of that," I said, "if your experience has not
been as startling as mine, it must have been rather overwhelming
to see a man belonging to a strange century, and apparently a
hundred years dead, raised to life."
| 13 | |
| "It seemed indeed strange beyond any describing at first," she
said, "but when we began to put ourselves in your place, and
realize how much stranger it must seem to you, I fancy we forgot
our own feelings a good deal, at least I know I did. It seemed
then not so much astounding as interesting and touching beyond
anything ever heard of before."
| 14 | |
| "But does it not come over you as astounding to sit at table
with me, seeing who I am?"
| 15 | |
| "You must remember that you do not seem so strange to us as
we must to you," she answered. "We belong to a future of which
you could not form an idea, a generation of which you knew
nothing until you saw us. But you belong to a generation of
which our forefathers were a part. We know all about it; the
names of many of its members are household words with us. We
have made a study of your ways of living and thinking; nothing
you say or do surprises us, while we say and do nothing which
does not seem strange to you. So you see, Mr. West, that if you
feel that you can, in time, get accustomed to us, you must not be
surprised that from the first we have scarcely found you strange
at all."
| 16 | |
| "I had not thought of it in that way," I replied. "There is
indeed much in what you say. One can look back a thousand
years easier than forward fifty. A century is not so very long a
retrospect. I might have known your great-grand-parents. Possibly
I did. Did they live in Boston?"
| 17 | |
| "I believe so."
| 18 | |
| "You are not sure, then?"
| 19 | |
| "Yes," she replied. "Now I think, they did."
| 20 | |
| "I had a very large circle of acquaintances in the city," I said.
"It is not unlikely that I knew or knew of some of them. Perhaps
I may have known them well. Wouldn't it be interesting if I
should chance to be able to tell you all about your great-grandfather,
for instance?"
| 21 | |
| "Very interesting."
| 22 | |
| "Do you know your genealogy well enough to tell me who
your forbears were in the Boston of my day?"
| 23 | |
| "Oh, yes."
| 24 | |
| "Perhaps, then, you will some time tell me what some of their
names were."
| 25 | |
| She was engrossed in arranging a troublesome spray of green,
and did not reply at once. Steps upon the stairway indicated that
the other members of the family were descending.
| 26 | |
| "Perhaps, some time," she said.
| 27 | |
| After breakfast, Dr. Leete suggested taking me to inspect the
central warehouse and observe actually in operation the machinery
of distribution, which Edith had described to me. As we
walked away from the house I said, "It is now several days that I
have been living in your household on a most extraordinary
footing, or rather on none at all. I have not spoken of this aspect
of my position before because there were so many other aspects
yet more extraordinary. But now that I 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 must speak to you on
this point."
| 28 | |
| "As for your being a guest in my house," replied Dr. Leete, "I
pray you not to begin to be uneasy on that point, for I mean to
keep you a long time yet. With all your modesty, you can but
realize that such a guest as yourself is an acquisition not willingly
to be parted with."
| 29 | |
| "Thanks, doctor," I said. "It would be absurd, certainly, for
me to affect any oversensitiveness about accepting the temporary
hospitality of one to whom I owe it that I am not still awaiting
the end of the world in a living tomb. But if I am to be a
permanent citizen of this century I must have some standing in
it. Now, in my time a person more or less entering the world,
however he got in, would not be noticed in the unorganized
throng of men, and might make a place for himself anywhere
he chose if he were strong enough. But nowadays everybody is a
part of a system with a distinct place and function. I am outside
the system, and don't see how I can get in; there seems no way
to get in, except to be born in or to come in as an emigrant
from some other system."
| 30 | |
| Dr. Leete laughed heartily.
| 31 | |
| "I admit," he said, "that our system is defective in lacking
provision for cases like yours, but you see nobody anticipated
additions to the world except by the usual process. You need,
however, have no fear that we shall be unable to provide both a
place and occupation for you in due time. You have as yet been
brought in contact only with the members of my family, but you
must not suppose that I have kept your secret. On the contrary,
your case, even before your resuscitation, and vastly more since
has excited the profoundest interest in the nation. In view of
your precarious nervous condition, it was thought best that I
should take exclusive charge of you at first, and that you should,
through me and my family, receive some general idea of the sort
of world you had come back to before you began to make the
acquaintance generally of its inhabitants. As to finding a function
for 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 the nation as you will be able to when you leave my
roof, which, however, you must not think of doing for a good
time yet."
| 32 | |
| "What can I possibly do?" I asked. "Perhaps you imagine I
have some trade, or art, or special skill. I assure you I have none
whatever. I never earned a dollar in my life, or did an hour's
work. I am strong, and might be a common laborer, but nothing
more."
| 33 | |
| "If that were the most efficient service you were able to render
the nation, you would find that avocation considered quite as
respectable as any other," replied Dr. Leete; "but you can do
something else better. You are easily the master of all our
historians on questions relating to the social condition of the
latter part of the nineteenth century, to us one of the most
absorbingly interesting periods of history: and whenever in due
time you have sufficiently familiarized yourself with our institutions,
and are willing to teach us something concerning those of
your day, you will find an historical lectureship in one of our
colleges awaiting you."
| 34 | |
| "Very good! very good indeed," I said, much relieved by so
practical a suggestion on a point which had begun to trouble me.
"If your people are really so much interested in the nineteenth
century, there will indeed be an occupation ready-made for me. I
don't think there is anything else that I could possibly earn my
salt at, but I certainly may claim without conceit to have some
special qualifications for such a post as you describe."
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