The World of Chance

by William Dean Howells

“He has more use for me here, Peace, because I’m of the earth, earthy, but he’ll want you somewhere else.”

The old man clung to the world with a hope that admitted at least no open question of his living. He said that as soon as the spring fairly opened, and the weather would allow him to go out without taking more cold, he should carry his manuscript about to the different publishers, and offer it personally. He thought his plan carefully out, and talked it over with Ray, whom he showed that his own failure with his novel was from a want of address in these interviews. He proposed to do something for Ray’s novel as soon as he secured a publisher for himself, and again he bade him bring it and read it to him. Ray afterwards realized with shame that he would have consented to this if Hughes had persisted. But the invitation was probably a mere grace of civility with him, an effect of the exuberant faith he had in his own success.

As the season advanced, and the heat within-doors increased, they had to open the windows, and then the infernal uproar of the avenue filled the room, so that they could not hear one another speak till the windows were closed again. But the rush and clank of the elevated trains, the perpetual passage of the surface cars, with the clatter of their horses’ hoofs, and the clash of the air-slitting bells, the grind and jolt of the heavy trucks, the wild clatter of express carts across the rails or up and down the tracks, the sound of feet and voices, the cries of the fruit-venders, and the whiffs of laughter and blasphemy that floated up from the turmoil below like filthy odors, seemed not so keenly to afflict the sick man, or to rend his nerves with the anguish that forced the others to shut it all out, and rather stifle in the heat. Yet, in some sort, he felt it too, for once when Ray spoke of it, he said yes, it was atrocious. “But,” he added, “I am glad I came and placed myself where I could fully realize the hideousness of a competitive metropolis. All these abominations of sight and sound, these horrible discords, that offend every sense, physically express the spiritual principle underlying the whole social framework. It has been immensely instructive to me, and I have got some color of it into my book: not enough, of course, but infinitely more than I could possibly have imagined. No one can imagine the horror, the squalor, the cruel and senseless turpitude which these things typify, except in their presence. I have merely represented the facts in regard to them, and have left the imagination free to deal with the ideal city as a contrast, with its peaceful streets, cleanly and quiet, its stately ranks of beautiful dwellings, its noble piles of civic and religious architecture, its shaded and colonnaded avenues, its parks and gardens, and all planned and built, not from the greed and the fraud of competition, but from the generous and unselfish spirit of emulation, wherein men join to achieve the best instead of separating to get the most. Think of a city operated by science, as every city might be now, without one of the wretched animals tamed by the savage man, and still perpetuated by the savage man for the awkward and imperfect uses of a barbarous society! A city without a horse, where electricity brought every man and everything silently to the door. Jenny! Get me that manuscript, will you? The part I was writing on to-day—in the desk—the middle drawer—I should like to read”—

Mrs. Denton dropped her cat from her lap and ran to get the manuscript. But when she brought it to her father, and he arranged the leaves with fluttering fingers, he could not read. He gasped out a few syllables, and in the paroxysm of coughing which began, he thrust the manuscript toward Ray.

“He wants you to take it,” said Peace. “You can take it home with you. You can give it to me in the morning.”

Ray took it, and stood by, looking on, not knowing how to come to their help for the sick man’s relief, and anxious not to cumber them. When they had got him quiet again, and Ray had once more thrown up the window, and let in the mild night air which came laden with that delirium of the frenzied city, Peace followed him into the little back room, where they stood a moment.

“For Heaven’s sake,” he said, “why don’t you get him away from here, where he could be a little more out of the noise? It’s enough to drive a well man mad.”

“He doesn’t feel it as if he were well,” she answered. “We have tried to get him to let us bring his bed out here. But he won’t. I think,” she added, “that he believes it would be a bad omen to change.”

“Surely,” said Ray, “a man like your father couldn’t care for that ridiculous superstition. What possible connection could his changing to a quieter place have with his living or”—

“It isn’t a matter of reason with him. I can see how he’s gone back to his early life in a great many things in these few days. He hasn’t been so much like himself for a long time as he has to-night.”