The World of Chance

by William Dean Howells

With an impatience whose intensity he began to feel as soon as he permitted himself to indulge it, Ray hurried across to the line of the elevated road. Now he perceived how intolerable it would be to have staid to dinner with the Brandreths. He did not resent the failure of Mr. Brandreth to tell his wife that he had already asked him when she asked him again; he did not even care to know what his reasons or exigencies were; the second invitation had been a chance to get away. From time to time while Mr. Brandreth was showing him the baby, and then while Mrs. Chapley was setting her mind at rest about her husband by her researches into the philosophy and character of Hughes, he had superficially forgotten that the readers’ opinions of his story were in, while his nether thought writhed in anguish around the question of what their opinions were. When at moments this fully penetrated his consciousness, it was like a sort of vertigo, and he was light-headed with it now as he walked, or almost ran, away from Mr. Brandreth’s door. He meant to see Miss Hughes, and beg for a sight of the criticisms; perhaps she might say something that would save him from the worst, if they were very bad. He imagined a perfect interview, in which he met no one but her.

It was Mrs. Denton who stood at the head of the stairs to receive him when the door promptly opened to his ring; she explained that her husband had put the lock in order since she last admitted him. Ray managed to say that he wished merely to see her sister for a moment, and why, and she said that Peace had gone out, but would be at home again very soon. She said her father would be glad to have him sit down with him till Peace came back.

Ray submitted. He found the old man coughing beside the front window, that looked out on the lines of the railroad, and the ugly avenue beneath.

Hughes knew him at once, and called to him: “Well, young man! I am glad to see you! How do you do?” He held out his hand when he was seated, and when Ray had shaken it, he motioned with it to the vacant chair on the other side of the window.

“I hope you are well, sir?” said Ray.

“I’m getting the better of this nasty cough gradually, and I pick up a little new strength every day. Yes, I’m doing very well. For the present I have to keep housed, and that’s tiresome. But it gives me time for a bit of writing that I have in hand; I’m putting together the impressions that this civilization of yours makes on me, in a little book that I call The World Revisited.”

Ray did not see exactly why Hughes should say his civilization, as if he had invented it; but he did not disclaim it; and Hughes went on without interruption from him.

“I hope to get my old friend Chapley to bring it out for me, if I can reconcile him to its radical opinions. He’s timid, Chapley is; and my book’s rather bold.”

Ray’s thought darted almost instantly to his own book, and ran it over in every part, seeking whether there might be something in it that was too bold for a timid publisher, or a timid publisher’s professional readers. He was aware of old Hughes monologuing on with the satisfaction of an author who speaks of his work to a listener he has at his mercy.

“My book is a criticism of modern life in all its aspects, though necessarily as the field is so vast, I can touch on some only in the most cursory fashion. For instance, take this whole architectural nightmare that we call a city. I hold that the average tasteless man has no right to realize his ideas of a house in the presence of a great multitude of his fellow-beings. It is an indecent exposure of his mind, and should not be permitted. All these structural forms about us, which with scarcely an exception are ugly and senseless, I regard as so many immoralities, as deliriums, as imbecilities, which a civilized state would not permit, and I say so in my book. The city should build the city, and provide every denizen with a fit and beautiful habitation to work in and rest in.”