“Why shouldn’t they?” I asked. And she smiled that queer little smile again.
“I mean they go to see them as if they were the Pyramids.”
“I see,” said I. “I might as well prepare for some preposterous nightmare of a world, like—what was that book of Wells’, The Sleeper Awakened?”
“Oh, yes; I remember that book,” she answered, “and a lot of others. People were already guessing about things as they might be, weren’t they? But what never struck any of them was that the people themselves could change.”
“No,” I agreed. “You can’t alter human nature.”
Nellie laughed—laughed out loud. Then she squeezed my hand and patted it.
“You dear!” she said. “You precious old long-lost brother! When you get too utterly upset I’ll wear my hair down, put on a short dress and let you boss me awhile—to keep your spirits up. That was just the phrase, wasn’t it?—‘You can’t alter human nature’!” And she laughed again.
There is something queer about Nellie—very queer. It is not only that she is different from my little sister—that’s natural; but she is different from any woman of forty-eight I ever saw—from any woman of any age I ever saw.
In the first place, she doesn’t look old—not at all. Women of forty, in our region, were old women, and Nellie’s near fifty! Then she isn’t—what shall I call it—dependent; not the least in the world. As soon as I became really conscious, and strong enough to be of any use, and began to offer her those little services and attentions due to a woman, I noticed this difference.
She is brisk, firm, assured—not unpleasantly so; I don’t mean a thing of that sort; but somehow like—almost like a man! No, I certainly don’t mean that. She is not in the least mannish, nor in the least self-assertive; but she takes things so easily—as if she owned them.
I suppose it will be some time before my head is absolutely clear and strong as it used to be. I tire rather easily. Nellie is very reassuring about it. She says it will take about a year to reestablish connections and renew mental processes. She advises me to read and talk only a little every day, to sleep all I can, and not to worry.
“You’ll be all right soon, my dear,” she says, “and plenty of life before you. You seem to have led a very healthy outdoor life. You’re really well and strong—and as good-looking as ever.”
At least she hasn’t forgotten that woman’s chief duty is to please.
“And the world is a much better place to live in than it was,” she assured me. “Things will surprise you, of course—things I have gotten used to and shall forget to tell you about. But the changes are all good ones, and you’ll soon get—acclimated. You’re young yet.”
That’s where Nellie slips up. She cannot help having me in mind as the brave young brother she knew. She forgets that I am an old man now. Finally I told her that.
“No, John Robertson,” she says, “that’s where you are utterly wrong. Of course, you don’t know what we’re doing about age—how differently we feel. As a matter of physiology we find that about one hundred and fifty ought to be our natural limit; and that with proper conditions we can easily get to be a hundred now. Ever so many do.”
“I don’t want to be a hundred,” I protested. “I saw a man of ninety-eight once, and never want to be one.”
“It’s not like that now,” she said. “I mean we live to be a hundred and enjoy life still—‘keep our faculties,’ as they used to put it. Why, the ship’s doctor here is eighty-seven.”
This surprised me a good deal. I had talked a little with this man, and had thought him about sixty.
“Then a man of a hundred, according to your story, would look like—like—”
“Like Grandpa Ely,” she offered.
I remembered my mother’s father—a tall, straight, hale old man of seventy-five. He had a clear eye, a firm step, a rosy color in his face. Well, that wasn’t so bad a prospect.
“I consent to be a hundred—on those terms,” I told her.
She talked to me a good bit, in small daily doses, of the more general changes in the world, showed me new maps, even let me read a little in the current magazines.
“I suppose you have a million of these now,” I said. “There were thousands when I left!”
“No,” she answered. “There are fewer, I believe; but much better.”
I turned over the one in my hand. It was pleasantly light and thin, it opened easily, the paper and presswork were of the best, the price was twenty-five cents.
“Is this a cheap one—at a higher price? or have the best ones come down?”
“It’s a cheap one,” she told me, “if you mean by that a popular one, and it’s cheap enough. They have all of a million subscribers.”
“And what’s the difference, beyond the paper and print?” I asked.
“The pictures are good.”
I looked it through again.
“Yes, very good, much improved. But I don’t see anything phenomenal—unless it is the absence of advertisements.”
Nellie took it out of my hand and ran it over.
“Just read some of that,” she said. “Read this story—and this article—and that.”
So I sat reading in the sunny silence, the gulls wheeling and dipping just as they used to, and the wide purple ocean just as changeable—and changeless—as ever.
One of the articles was on an extension of municipal service, and involved so much comment on preceding steps that I found it most enlightening. The other was a recent suggestion in educational psychology, and this too carried a retrospect of recent progress which gave me food for thought. The story was a clever one. I found it really amusing, and only on a second reading did I find what it was that gave the queer flavor to
