Through the Eye of the Needle | Page 8

host) in the
apartment I mean to speak of, invited me to explore it one night when I
dined with her, so that I might, as she said, tell my friends when I got
back to Altruria how people lived in America; and I cannot feel that I
am violating her hospitality in telling you now. She is that Mrs. Makely
whom I met last summer in the mountains, and whom you thought so
strange a type from the account of her I gave you, but who is not
altogether uncommon here. I confess that, with all her faults, I like her,
and I like to go to her house. She is, in fact, a very good woman,

perfectly selfish by tradition, as the American women must be, and
wildly generous by nature, as they nearly always are; and infinitely
superior to her husband in cultivation, as is commonly the case with
them. As he knows nothing but business, he thinks it is the only thing
worth knowing, and he looks down on the tastes and interests of her
more intellectual life with amiable contempt, as something almost
comic. She respects business, too, and so she does not despise his
ignorance as you would suppose; it is at least the ignorance of a
business-man, who must have something in him beyond her ken, or
else he would not be able to make money as he does.
With your greater sense of humor, I think you would be amused if you
could see his smile of placid self-satisfaction as he listens to our
discussion of questions and problems which no more enter his daily life
than they enter the daily life of an Eskimo; but I do not find it
altogether amusing myself, and I could not well forgive it, if I did not
know that he was at heart so simple and good, in spite of his
commerciality. But he is sweet and kind, as the American men so often
are, and he thinks his wife is the delightfulest creature in the world, as
the American husband nearly always does. They have several times
asked me to dine with them _en famille;_ and, as a matter of form, he
keeps me a little while with him after dinner, when she has left the
table, and smokes his cigar, after wondering why we do not smoke in
Altruria; but I can see that he is impatient to get to her in their
drawing-room, where we find her reading a book in the crimson light of
the canopied lamp, and where he presently falls silent, perfectly happy
to be near her. The drawing-room is of a good size itself, and it has a
room opening out of it called the library, with a case of books in it, and
Mrs. Makely's piano-forte. The place is rather too richly and densely
rugged, and there is rather more curtaining and shading of the windows
than we should like; but Mrs. Makely is too well up-to-date, as she
would say, to have much of the bric-à-brac about which she tells me
used to clutter people's houses here. There are some pretty good
pictures on the walls, and a few vases and bronzes, and she says she has
produced a greater effect of space by quelling the furniture--she means,
having few pieces and having them as small as possible. There is a little
stand with her afternoon tea-set in one corner, and there is a pretty
writing-desk in the library; I remember a sofa and some easy-chairs,

but not too many of them. She has a table near one of the windows,
with books and papers on it. She tells me that she sees herself that the
place is kept just as she wishes it, for she has rather a passion for
neatness, and you never can trust servants not to stand the books on
their heads or study a vulgar symmetry in the arrangements. She never
allows them in there, she says, except when they are at work under her
eye; and she never allows anybody there except her guests, and her
husband after he has smoked. Of course, her dog must be there; and one
evening after her husband fell asleep in the arm-chair near her, the dog
fell asleep on the fleece at her feet, and we heard them softly breathing
in unison. She made a pretty little mocking mouth when the sound first
became audible, and said that she ought really to have sent Mr. Makely
out with the dog, for the dog ought to have the air every day, and she
had been kept indoors; but sometimes Mr. Makely came home from
business so tired that she hated to send him out, even for the dog's sake,
though he was so apt to