Chương Chương 16 · THE HOTEL

Arriving in town (where my bachelor-rooms, long before this time, had

received some other occupant), I established myself, for a day or two,

in a certain, respectable hotel. It was situated somewhat aloof from

my former track in life; my present mood inclining me to avoid most of

my old companions, from whom I was now sundered by other interests, and

who would have been likely enough to amuse themselves at the expense of

the amateur workingman. The hotel-keeper put me into a back room of

the third story of his spacious establishment. The day was lowering,

with occasional gusts of rain, and an ugly tempered east wind, which

seemed to come right off the chill and melancholy sea, hardly mitigated

by sweeping over the roofs, and amalgamating itself with the dusky

element of city smoke. All the effeminacy of past days had returned

upon me at once. Summer as it still was, I ordered a coal fire in the

rusty grate, and was glad to find myself growing a little too warm with

an artificial temperature.

My sensations were those of a traveller, long sojourning in remote

regions, and at length sitting down again amid customs once familiar.

There was a newness and an oldness oddly combining themselves into one

impression. It made me acutely sensible how strange a piece of

mosaic-work had lately been wrought into my life. True, if you look at

it in one way, it had been only a summer in the country. But,

considered in a profounder relation, it was part of another age, a

different state of society, a segment of an existence peculiar in its

aims and methods, a leaf of some mysterious volume interpolated into

the current history which time was writing off. At one moment, the

very circumstances now surrounding me--my coal fire and the dingy room

in the bustling hotel--appeared far off and intangible; the next

instant Blithedale looked vague, as if it were at a distance both in

time and space, and so shadowy that a question might be raised whether

the whole affair had been anything more than the thoughts of a

speculative man. I had never before experienced a mood that so robbed

the actual world of its solidity. It nevertheless involved a charm, on

which--a devoted epicure of my own emotions--I resolved to pause, and

enjoy the moral sillabub until quite dissolved away.

Whatever had been my taste for solitude and natural scenery, yet the

thick, foggy, stifled element of cities, the entangled life of many men

together, sordid as it was, and empty of the beautiful, took quite as

strenuous a hold upon my mind. I felt as if there could never be

enough of it. Each characteristic sound was too suggestive to be

passed over unnoticed. Beneath and around me, I heard the stir of the

hotel; the loud voices of guests, landlord, or bar-keeper; steps

echoing on the staircase; the ringing of a bell, announcing arrivals or

departures; the porter lumbering past my door with baggage, which he

thumped down upon the floors of neighboring chambers; the lighter feet

of chambermaids scudding along the passages;--it is ridiculous to think

what an interest they had for me! From the street came the tumult of

the pavements, pervading the whole house with a continual uproar, so

broad and deep that only an unaccustomed ear would dwell upon it. A

company of the city soldiery, with a full military band, marched in

front of the hotel, invisible to me, but stirringly audible both by its

foot-tramp and the clangor of its instruments. Once or twice all the

city bells jangled together, announcing a fire, which brought out the

engine-men and their machines, like an army with its artillery rushing

to battle. Hour by hour the clocks in many steeples responded one to

another.

In some public hall, not a great way off, there seemed to be an

exhibition of a mechanical diorama; for three times during the day

occurred a repetition of obstreperous music, winding up with the rattle

of imitative cannon and musketry, and a huge final explosion. Then

ensued the applause of the spectators, with clap of hands and thump of

sticks, and the energetic pounding of their heels. All this was just

as valuable, in its way, as the sighing of the breeze among the

birch-trees that overshadowed Eliot's pulpit.

Yet I felt a hesitation about plunging into this muddy tide of human

activity and pastime. It suited me better, for the present, to linger

on the brink, or hover in the air above it. So I spent the first day,

and the greater part of the second, in the laziest manner possible, in

a rocking-chair, inhaling the fragrance of a series of cigars, with my

legs and slippered feet horizontally disposed, and in my hand a novel

purchased of a railroad bibliopolist. The gradual waste of my cigar

accomplished itself with an easy and gentle expenditure of breath. My

book was of the dullest, yet had a sort of sluggish flow, like that of

a stream in which your boat is as often aground as afloat. Had there

been a more impetuous rush, a more absorbing passion of the narrative,

I should the sooner have struggled out of its uneasy current, and have

given myself up to the swell and subsidence of my thoughts. But, as it

was, the torpid life of the book served as an unobtrusive accompaniment

to the life within me and about me. At intervals, however, when its

effect grew a little too soporific,--not for my patience, but for the

possibility of keeping my eyes open, I bestirred myself, started from

the rocking-chair, and looked out of the window.

A gray sky; the weathercock of a steeple that rose beyond the opposite

range of buildings, pointing from the eastward; a sprinkle of small,

spiteful-looking raindrops on the window-pane. In that ebb-tide of my

energies, had I thought of venturing abroad, these tokens would have

checked the abortive purpose.

After several such visits to the window, I found myself getting pretty

well acquainted with that little portion of the backside of the

universe which it presented to my view. Over against the hotel and its

adjacent houses, at the distance of forty or fifty yards, was the rear

of a range of buildings which appeared to be spacious, modern, and

calculated for fashionable residences. The interval between was

apportioned into grass-plots, and here and there an apology for a

garden, pertaining severally to these dwellings. There were

apple-trees, and pear and peach trees, too, the fruit on which looked

singularly large, luxuriant, and abundant, as well it might, in a

situation so warm and sheltered, and where the soil had doubtless been

enriched to a more than natural fertility. In two or three places

grapevines clambered upon trellises, and bore clusters already purple,

and promising the richness of Malta or Madeira in their ripened juice.

The blighting winds of our rigid climate could not molest these trees

and vines; the sunshine, though descending late into this area, and too

early intercepted by the height of the surrounding houses, yet lay

tropically there, even when less than temperate in every other region.

Dreary as was the day, the scene was illuminated by not a few sparrows

and other birds, which spread their wings, and flitted and fluttered,

and alighted now here, now there, and busily scratched their food out

of the wormy earth. Most of these winged people seemed to have their

domicile in a robust and healthy buttonwood-tree. It aspired upward,

high above the roofs of the houses, and spread a dense head of foliage

half across the area.

There was a cat--as there invariably is in such places--who evidently

thought herself entitled to the privileges of forest life in this close

heart of city conventionalisms. I watched her creeping along the low,

flat roofs of the offices, descending a flight of wooden steps, gliding

among the grass, and besieging the buttonwood-tree, with murderous

purpose against its feathered citizens. But, after all, they were

birds of city breeding, and doubtless knew how to guard themselves

against the peculiar perils of their position.

Bewitching to my fancy are all those nooks and crannies where Nature,

like a stray partridge, hides her head among the long-established

haunts of men! It is likewise to be remarked, as a general rule, that

there is far more of the picturesque, more truth to native and

characteristic tendencies, and vastly greater suggestiveness in the

back view of a residence, whether in town or country, than in its

front. The latter is always artificial; it is meant for the world's

eye, and is therefore a veil and a concealment. Realities keep in the

rear, and put forward an advance guard of show and humbug. The

posterior aspect of any old farmhouse, behind which a railroad has

unexpectedly been opened, is so different from that looking upon the

immemorial highway, that the spectator gets new ideas of rural life and

individuality in the puff or two of steam-breath which shoots him past

the premises. In a city, the distinction between what is offered to

the public and what is kept for the family is certainly not less

striking.

But, to return to my window at the back of the hotel. Together with a

due contemplation of the fruit-trees, the grapevines, the

buttonwood-tree, the cat, the birds, and many other particulars, I

failed not to study the row of fashionable dwellings to which all these

appertained. Here, it must be confessed, there was a general sameness.

From the upper story to the first floor, they were so much alike, that

I could only conceive of the inhabitants as cut out on one identical

pattern, like little wooden toy-people of German manufacture. One

long, united roof, with its thousands of slates glittering in the rain,

extended over the whole. After the distinctness of separate characters

to which I had recently been accustomed, it perplexed and annoyed me

not to be able to resolve this combination of human interests into

well-defined elements. It seemed hardly worth while for more than one

of those families to be in existence, since they all had the same

glimpse of the sky, all looked into the same area, all received just

their equal share of sunshine through the front windows, and all

listened to precisely the same noises of the street on which they

boarded. Men are so much alike in their nature, that they grow

intolerable unless varied by their circumstances.

Just about this time a waiter entered my room. The truth was, I had

rung the bell and ordered a sherry-cobbler.

"Can you tell me," I inquired, "what families reside in any of those

houses opposite?"

"The one right opposite is a rather stylish boarding-house," said the

waiter. "Two of the gentlemen boarders keep horses at the stable of

our establishment. They do things in very good style, sir, the people

that live there."

I might have found out nearly as much for myself, on examining the

house a little more closely, in one of the upper chambers I saw a young

man in a dressing-gown, standing before the glass and brushing his hair

for a quarter of an hour together. He then spent an equal space of

time in the elaborate arrangement of his cravat, and finally made his

appearance in a dress-coat, which I suspected to be newly come from the

tailor's, and now first put on for a dinner-party. At a window of the

next story below, two children, prettily dressed, were looking out. By

and by a middle-aged gentleman came softly behind them, kissed the

little girl, and playfully pulled the little boy's ear. It was a papa,

no doubt, just come in from his counting-room or office; and anon

appeared mamma, stealing as softly behind papa as he had stolen behind

the children, and laying her hand on his shoulder to surprise him.

Then followed a kiss between papa and mamma; but a noiseless one, for

the children did not turn their heads.

"I bless God for these good folks!" thought I to myself. "I have not

seen a prettier bit of nature, in all my summer in the country, than

they have shown me here, in a rather stylish boarding-house. I will

pay them a little more attention by and by."

On the first floor, an iron balustrade ran along in front of the tall

and spacious windows, evidently belonging to a back drawing-room; and

far into the interior, through the arch of the sliding-doors, I could

discern a gleam from the windows of the front apartment. There were no

signs of present occupancy in this suite of rooms; the curtains being

enveloped in a protective covering, which allowed but a small portion

of their crimson material to be seen. But two housemaids were

industriously at work; so that there was good prospect that