“I don’t mind my dress at all,” said Madame. “It never bothers me. I don’t think about it.”
“But don’t you think about it when your back aches?”
“It never does.”
“I don’t understand it,” says Mary once more.
“I suspect that the reason you American women find your dress such a burden is because you are so weak yourselves,” said Madame.
“American women accomplish as much or more than any others, I should say,” observed Mary.
“Precisely, but not from their muscular strength. They work out of their nerves, and that is why they never last any length of time.”
Madame finished her day’s work at six o’clock, and then walked home humming a German dance tune to herself. Mary Winkle stopped at four o’clock, and dragged herself home to bed with a fearsome headache, still puzzling how it was that her perfect dress had not done better for her in that day’s trial. She did not know that all her scientific dressing was as nothing compared with the robust vitality, which Madame brought with her from another land, and which, running in such vigorous beats through her blood, was inherited from generations of strong healthy ancestors. Madame’s father was a Russian colonel noted for his size and strength and also for his wildness. Her mother was a pretty English girl, who had nothing to bequeath to her daughter but health, personal beauty, and this piece of advice: “Never stake your happiness on any man, it always brings disaster to the woman.” Mary Winkle’s mother, on the other hand, was a nervous invalid at thirty, and her father was a dyspeptic dietetic reformer, who pinned his salvation on never eating salt. Small wonder, therefore, that the daughter of the one pair should be able to plant corn all day long and walk lightly home at evening, while the offspring of the other pair could do only three quarters of a day’s work, after which headache and nervous exhaustion.
CHAPTER VI.
NON-RESISTANCE.
It was the custom of the Pioneers to send once a week to Union Mills in order to do their necessary marketing and to get the post, which came there twice a week from Kansas City by stage-coach. The subject of the post was one that had been rather hotly debated at Perfection City, although to the outsider it would seem a very harmless topic, and not fruitful of division. The fact was, however, that there was only one member of the Community who showed any eagerness about getting letters regularly and often, and that member was Madame. She indeed did receive a most unconscionable number of letters and periodicals, so the other members thought. She got several American Magazines, such as the Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s, but she also received English papers, and French ones, and occasionally German ones as well. The Community thought, but did not dare to give public expression to the thought, that Madame should have rested content with the mental sustenance provided by themselves for home consumption. Brother Wright in particular felt himself equal to the task of providing everybody with all they needed in the way of correct views upon even the highest subjects. But Madame, although she listened with politeness and apparent attention to what he had to say, found this sustenance too meagre for the wants of her nature. Moreover she took a deep interest in the affairs of the outside world, an interest almost offensive to persons who prided themselves upon having risen above the world and all its concerns. It was really humiliating to think that the leading spirit of their Community should occupy her mind with the relations between Prussia and Austria, when such questions as affected the future of humanity and of Perfection City were what filled their souls. She even evinced a keen interest in the career and personality of the Prussian minister, Bismarck, and that, too, when Brother Wright was willing to give her the light of his thoughts upon all really important questions. It was painful to the feeling of the Pioneers, who were all in all to themselves and wished to be so to others, but they had to put up with it, since Madame was their leader and, moreover, the only one who had a purse with some money in it. Ezra was the only member of the Community who sided with Madame in her taste for reading the new books and the latest periodicals. He and she had that taste, with many others, in common, and it drew them together in an especial degree. On his last trip East during the winter, when he had been so unexpectedly delayed, as they now knew, by meeting with his fate in the shape of Olive, one of his commissions had been to bring back a box of books, which were now arranged in neat shelves in Madame’s private sitting-room. And yet notwithstanding all these books, a hundred or more, the steady stream of papers, periodicals, and magazines continued as before, and had to be fetched regularly from Union Mills.