EDWARD BELLAMY Sci-Fi Boxed Set. Edward Bellamy
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had not been there to redeem her great-grandmother’s pledge, I really apprehend that Mrs. Leete’s loyalty to me would have suffered a severe strain.”
That evening the garden was bathed in moonlight, and till midnight Edith and I wandered to and fro there, trying to grow accustomed to our happiness.
“What should I have done if you had not cared for me?” she exclaimed. “I was afraid you were not going to. What should I have done then, when I felt I was consecrated to you! As soon as you came back to life, I was as sure as if she had told me that I was to be to you what she could not be, but that could only be if you would let me. Oh, how I wanted to tell you that morning, when you felt so terribly strange among us, who I was, but dared not open my lips about that, or let father or mother ——”
“That must have been what you would not let your father tell me!” I exclaimed, referring to the conversation I had overheard as I came out of my trance.
“Of course it was,” Edith laughed. “Did you only just guess that? Father being only a man, thought that it would make you feel among friends to tell you who we were. He did not think of me at all. But mother knew what I meant, and so I had my way. I could never have looked you in the face if you had known who I was. It would have been forcing myself on you quite too boldly. I am afraid you think I did that today, as it was. I am sure I did not mean to, for I know girls were expected to hide their feelings in your day, and I was dreadfully afraid of shocking you. Ah me, how hard it must have been for them to have always had to conceal their love like a fault. Why did they think it such a shame to love any one till they had been given permission? It is so odd to think of waiting for permission to fall in love. Was it because men in those days were angry when girls loved them? That is not the way women would feel, I am sure, or men either, I think, now. I don’t understand it at all. That will be one of the curious things about the women of those days that you will have to explain to me. I don’t believe Edith Bartlett was so foolish as the others.”
After sundry ineffectual attempts at parting, she finally insisted that we must say good night. I was about to imprint upon her lips the positively last kiss, when she said, with an indescribable archness:
“One thing troubles me. Are you sure that you quite forgive Edith Bartlett for marrying any one else? The books that have come down to us make out lovers of your time more jealous than fond, and that is what makes me ask. It would be a great relief to me if I could feel sure that you were not in the least jealous of my great-grandfather for marrying your sweetheart. May I tell my great-grandmother’s picture when I go to my room that you quite forgive her for proving false to you?”
Will the reader believe it, this coquettish quip, whether the speaker herself had any idea of it or not, actually touched and with the touching cured a preposterous ache of something like jealousy which I had been vaguely conscious of ever since Mrs. Leete had told me of Edith Bartlett’s marriage. Even while I had been holding Edith Bartlett’s great-granddaughter in my arms, I had not, till this moment, so illogical are some of our feelings, distinctly realized that but for that marriage I could not have done so. The absurdity of this frame of mind could only be equalled by the abruptness with which it dissolved as Edith’s roguish query cleared the fog from my perceptions. I laughed as I kissed her.
“You may assure her of my entire forgiveness,” I said, “although if it had been any man but your great-grandfather whom she married, it would have been a very different matter.”
On reaching my chamber that night I did not open the musical telephone that I might be lulled to sleep with soothing tunes, as had become my habit. For once my thoughts made better music than even twentieth century orchestras discourse, and it held me enchanted till well toward morning, when I fell asleep.
Chapter 28
“It’s a little after the time you told me to wake you, sir. You did not come out of it as quick as common, sir.”
The voice was the voice of my man Sawyer. I started bolt upright in bed and stared around. I was in my underground chamber. The mellow light of the lamp which always burned in the room when I occupied it illumined the familiar walls and furnishings. By my bedside, with the glass of sherry in his hand which Dr. Pillsbury prescribed on first rousing from a mesmeric sleep, by way of awakening the torpid physical functions, stood Sawyer.
“Better take this right off, sir,” he said, as I stared blankly at him. “You look kind of flushed like, sir, and you need it.”
I tossed off the liquor and began to realize what had happened to me. It was, of course, very plain. All that about the twentieth century had been a dream. I had but dreamed of that enlightened and care-free race of men and their ingeniously simple institutions, of the glorious new Boston with its domes and pinnacles, its gardens and fountains, and its universal reign of comfort. The amiable family which I had learned to know so well, my genial host and Mentor, Dr. Leete, his wife, and their daughter, the second and more beauteous Edith, my betrothed — these, too, had been but figments of a vision.
For a considerable time I remained in the attitude in which this conviction had come over me, sitting up in bed gazing at vacancy, absorbed in recalling the scenes and incidents of my fantastic experience. Sawyer, alarmed at my looks, was meanwhile anxiously inquiring what was the matter with me. Roused at length by his importunities to a recognition of my surroundings, I pulled myself together with an effort and assured the faithful fellow that I was all right. “I have had an extraordinary dream, that’s all, Sawyer,” I said, “a most-ex-traor-dinary dream.”
I dressed in a mechanical way, feeling light-headed and oddly uncertain of myself, and sat down to the coffee and rolls which Sawyer was in the habit of providing for my refreshment before I left the house. The morning newspaper lay by the plate. I took it up, and my eye fell on the date, May 31, 1887. I had known, of course, from the moment I opened my eyes that my long and detailed experience in another century had been a dream, and yet it was startling to have it so conclusively demonstrated that the world was but a few hours older than when I had lain down to sleep.
Glancing at the table of contents at the head of the paper, which reviewed the news of the morning, I read the following summary:
FOREIGN AFFAIRS. — The impending war between France and Germany. The French Chambers asked for new military credits to meet Germany’s increase of her army. Probability that all Europe will be involved in case of war. — Great suffering among the unemployed in London. They demand work. Monster demonstration to be made. The authorities uneasy. — Great strikes in Belgium. The government preparing to repress outbreaks. Shocking facts in regard to the employment of girls in Belgium coal mines. — Wholesale evictions in Ireland.
“HOME AFFAIRS. — The epidemic of fraud unchecked. Embezzlement of half a million in New York. — Misappropriation of a trust fund by executors. Orphans left penniless. — Clever system of thefts by a bank teller; $50,000 gone. — The coal barons decide to advance the price of coal and reduce production. — Speculators engineering a great wheat corner at Chicago. — A clique forcing up the price of coffee. — Enormous land-grabs of Western syndicates. — Revelations of shocking corruption among Chicago officials. Systematic bribery. — The trials of the Boodle aldermen to go on at New York. — Large failures of business houses. Fears of a business crisis. — A large grist of burglaries and larcenies. — A woman murdered in cold blood for her money at New Haven. — A householder shot by a burglar in this city last night. — A man shoots himself in Worcester because he could not get work. A large family left destitute. — An aged couple in New Jersey commit suicide rather than go to the poor-house. — Pitiable destitution among the women wage-workers in the great cities. — Startling growth of illiteracy in Massachusetts. — More insane asylums wanted. — Decoration Day addresses. Professor Brown’s oration on the moral grandeur of nineteenth century civilization.”
It was indeed the nineteenth century to which I had awaked; there could be no kind of doubt about that. Its complete microcosm this summary of the day’s news had