"It is a wonder to me," said Ellador, tenderly, "that you have done as well as you have—with all these awful handicaps. But you—America!—you have a different opportunity. I don't sup- pose you quite realize yourselves what a marvellous difference there is between you and every other people on earth."
Then she pointed out, briefly, how by the start in religious re- bellion we had set free the mind from its heaviest shackles; by throwing off the monarchy and aristocracy we had escaped an- other weight; how our practically unlimited area and fluctuating condition made custom but a name; and how the mixture of races broke the current of heredity.
All this we had gone over on the steamer, sitting by the hour in our long chairs, watching the big smooth swells roll by, and talking of my country.
"You have reason to be proud," she would say. "No people on earth ever had such a chance.
I used to feel misgivings then, especially after Hawaii. I tried to arrange 6ome satisfying defense for our treatment of the Asiatics, the Negroes, Mexico. I thought up all that I could to excuse the open evils that I knew—intemperance, prostitution, graft, lynching. I began to see more holes in the bright fabric of Columbia's robe than I had ever noticed before—and bigger ones. But at that I did not anticipate .
We spent several weeks in California. I took her to see Shasta, the Yosemite, the cedars of Monterey, the Big Trees, the Imperial Valley. All through the country she poured out constant praises of the boundless loveliness of the land, the air, the sunshine, even the rain. Rain did not depress Ellador—she was a forester.
And she read, avidly. She read John Muir with rapture. "How I should have loved him!" she said. She read the brief history of the state, and some books about it—Ramona, for instance. She visited and talked with some leading Japanese— and China- men. And she read steadily, with a fixed non-committal face, the newspapers.
If I asked her anything about it all she would pour forth hon- est delight in the flowers and fruit, the beauty and brightness of the land. If I pressed for more, she would say: "Wait, Van dear— give me time. I've only just come—I don't know enough yet to talk!"
But, I knowing how quickly she learned, and how accurately she related new knowledge to old, watched her face with grow- ing dismay. In Europe I had seen that beautiful face pale with horror; in Asia, sicken with loathing; now, after going around the world; after reaching this youngest land, this land of hope and pride, of wealth and power, I saw that face I loved so well, set in sad lines of disappointment—fairly age before my eyes.
She was still cheerful, with me, still happy out of doors; and her heart rose as I had hoped it would among the mountains,
on the far-spread lustrous deserts, in that wordless wonder, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.
But as she read, as she sat thinking, I could see the light die out of her face and a depressing look creep over it; a look of agonized disappointment, yet of patience too—and a cour- ageous deep determination. It was as if a mother had learned that her baby was an idiot. * * *
As we drew eastward and the cities grew larger, noiser, blacker, her distress increased. She began to urge me to play games with her; to read aloud from books she loved; and espe- cially to talk of Herland.
I was willing; more than willing. As I saw my country through her eyes—as I saw its effect on her—I became less and less in- clined, indeed less able, to discuss with her it. But the tension grew; her suffering increased; until I told her as I had that ter- rible night in Europe, that she must talk to me about it.
"You see you will have to, whether you want to or not," I ar- gued. "You cannot take all America to task about itself—you would get yourself disliked. Besides—if you don't want to tell them about your country—and if you pitch into theirs, they will insist on knowing where you come from, quite naturally. I can't bear to see you getting more and more distressed and saying nothing about it. Besides—it is barely possible that I might of- fer some palliation, or explanation, of some of the worst things."
"What do you consider the worst things'?" she asked casually enough.
But I was already wise enough to see at once that we might not agree on definition.
"Suppose we do this," I suggested. "Here are you, as extra- mundane as a Martian. You are like an Investigating Commit- tee from another world. Quite apart from my love for you, my sympathy with you, my admiration for you—yes, all serious and sincere, my dear—I do appreciate this unparalleled opportunity to get a real outsider's point of view.
"This is something that never happened before, you see; Marco Polo came nearest to it, perhaps, when he went poking into the Asiatic wonderland. But these old adventurers of ours, whatever their hardships, never took it so hard as you do. They enjoyed satisfying their curiosity; they always thought their own birthplace infinitely superior, and the more inferior they found other places the more they enjoyed it. -Now with you—it seems to hurt your feelings most horribly. I wish you could somehow detach yourself from it—so that you could learn, and not suffer."
"You are quite right, dear boy—it is most unphilosophical of me. I suppose it is largely a result of our long period of —lov- ingness—at home, that things strike so harshly on my mind."
"And partly your being a woman, don't you think ?" I urged. "You see yours is a feminine culture and naturally more sensit- ive, isn't it?"
"Perhaps that i s it," she said, pondering. "The very first thing that strikes me in this great rich lovely land of yours is its unmotherliness. We are of course used to seeing everything taken care of."
"But surely, it was worse—far worse —in the other countries wasn't it?"
She smiled tenderly and sadly. "Yes, Van, it was—but here—well, doubtless I expected too much."
"But isn't there some comfort in the contrast?" I asked eagerly. "Here is not the petrified oppression, the degradation of women, that so sickened you in Asia; and here is not the wild brutality of war that so horrified you in Europe."
"No—not either of those," she slowly agreed. "But you see I had warning that Europe was at war, and had read about it a little. It was like going into a— a slaughter-house, for the first time.
"Then all I learned in my studies in Europe prepared me to find what I did find in Asia—Asia was in some ways better than I had been told—in some ways worse. But here! * * * Oh, Van!" That look of gray anguish had settled on her face again. She seized my arms, held me fast, searched my face as if I was withholding something. Big slow tears welled over and dropped. "This is the , top of the tree, Van; this is the last young nation, beginning over again in a New World—a New World! Here was everything to make life richly happy—everything. And you had all the dreadful record of the past to guide you, to teach you at least what not to do. You had courage; you had independence; you had intelligence, educa- tion, opportunity. And such splendid principles to start with—
such high ideals. And then all kinds of people coming! Oh, surely, surely, surely this should be the Crown of the World!
"Why, Van—Europe was like a man with—with delirium tre- mens. Asia was like something gnarled and twisted with hope- less age. But America is a Splendid Child … with … " She covered her face with her hands.
I couldn't stand this. I was an American, and she was my wife. I took her in my arms.
"Look here, you blessed Herlander," I said, "I'm not going to have my country wiped off the map in disgrace. You must re- member that all judgment is comparative. You cannot compare any other country with your country for two reasons; first your long isolation, and second that miraculous manlessness of yours.
"This world of ours has been in more or less intercouse and exchange for many more thousands of years than Herland has lived. We Americans were not a new created race—we were just English and Dutch and French and Scandinavian and Itali- an, and so on—just everybody. We brought with us our inher- ited tendencies, of course—all of them. And while we did make a clean break with some of the old evils, we had no revelation as to a perfect social method. You are expecting too much …
"Don't you see," I went on, for she said nothing, "that a Splendid Child may be a pretty bad child, somtimes, and may have the measles pretty hard—and yet not be hopeless ?"
She rased her wet face from my shoulder and her own warm loving smile illuminated it once more.
"You're right, Van, you're wholly right," she agreed. "I was most unreasonable, most unwise. It is just a piece of the same world—a lot of pieces—mixed samples—on a new piece of ground. And it was a magnificent undertaking—I can see that—and you are young, aren't you? Oh, Van dear, you do make it easier."
I held her very close for awhile. This journey among strange lands had brought me one deep joy. Ellador had grown to need me as she never did in her own peaceful home.
"You see, dearest," I said, "you have a dual mission. You are to study all about the world and take your knowledge back with you—but all you need of it there is to decide whether you'll come out and play with us or not—or let any more of us come in. Then you have what I, as a citizen of the rest of the world— rather the biggest part of it, consider a more important duty. If that Herland mind of yours can find out what ails us —and how we are to mend it; if your little country with its strange experiment can bring aid in solving the problems of the world—that is what I call a Historic Mission! How does that strike you, Mrs. Jennings ?"
It was good to see her rise to it. That wonderful motherheart, which all those women had, seemed to shine out like a sunrise. I went on, delighted with my success.
"I'll just forget I'm an American," I said. "This country is The Child. I'm not its father or anything—I'm just a doctor, a hy- gienist, an investigator. You're another—and a bigger one. Now I understand that you find The Child is in a bad way—worse off than I thought it was. To judge from your ex- pression, dear, on several occasions, you think it is a very dirty child, a careless child, a wasteful child, with a bad temper and no manners—am I right?"
"Not about the temper, dear. Pettish at times, but not vindict- ive, and very, very kind… . Van … I think I've been too hard on The Child 1 I'm quite ashamed. Yes, we are two investigat- ors—I'm so glad there are two !"
She stopped and looked at me with an expression I never saw enough of, that I used to long for in vain, at first; that look as if she needed me.
"No matter what we have in Herland," she said slowly, "we miss this—this united feeling. It grows, Van; I feel more and more as if—somehow or other —we were really blended. We have nothing just like it."
"No, you haven't—with all your Paradise. So let's allow some good things in your 'case', and particularly in this case of the bad child. And we'll pitch in and work out a diagnosis—won't we? And then prescribe."
We pitched in.
First she had insisted on knowing the whole country. We made a sort of spiral, beginning on the outside, and circulated south, east, north, west, and so over again; till we wound ourselves up in Topeka. By that time we had been in every state, in all the principal cities, and in many of those tiny towns which are more truly indicative of the spirit of the community than the larger ones.
When we were interested in a given place we would stay awhile—there was nothing to hurry us; and when Ellador showed signs of wear and tear there was always some sweet wild country to fly to, and rest. She sampled both sea-coasts, the Great Lakes, and some little ones, many a long winding river, mountains wooded and mountains bare; the restful plains, the shadowy cypress swamps.
Her prompt reaction to the beauty of the real country was al- ways beneficial, and, to my great delight she grew to love it, and even to feel a pride in its vast extent and variety—just as I did. We both admitted that it was a most illegitimate ground for pride, but we both felt it.
As she saw more of the cities, and of the people, by mere us- age she grew accustomed to what had grieved her most at first. Also I suggested a method which she gladly used, and found most comforting, in which we classified all the evils as "transient", and concerned ourselves merely with finding out how they came there and how to remove them.
"Some of these things you'll just outgrow," she said re- lievedly. "Some are already outgrown. America is not nearly so—cocky—as Dickens found her. She is now in an almost morbid attitude of selfdistrust and condemnation—but she'll outgrow that too."
It was a great relief to me to have her push through that period of shocked disappointment so readily. But of course the vigor of her mental constitution made it possible for her to throw off a trouble like that more easily than we can do it.
She soon devised methods of her own of acquiring further in- formation. In her capacity of a traveler, and recently come from the seat of war, to say nothing of the Orient, she found frequent opportunity for addressing women's clubs, churches and forums of various -kinds, and so coming in touch with large bodies of people; and their reactions.
"I am learning to realize 'the popular mind'," she said. "I can already distinguish between the different parts of the country. And, oh, Van " she laughed a little, caught her breath over, and added with an odd restraint: "I'm getting to know the—women."
"Why do you say it like that?" I inquired.
She looked at me in what I might describe as "forty ways at once." It was funny. There was such an odd mixture of pride and shame, of hope and disillusionment ; of a high faith and a profound distrust.
"I can stand it," she protested. "The Child is by no means hopeless—in fact I begin to think it is a very promising child, Van. But, oh, how it does behave!"
And she laughed.
I was a little resentful. We were such good chums by this time; we had played together such a lot, and studied together so widely; we had such a safe foundation of mutual experience that I began to dare to make fun of my strange Princess now and then, and she took it most graciously.
