The Fixed Period Part 17

"The fixed day, coming at a certain known hour; the feeling that it must come, though it came at the same time so slowly and yet so fast; every day growing shorter day by day, and every season month by month; the sight of these chimneys--"

"That was a mistake, Crasweller; that was a mistake. The cremation should have been elsewhere."

"A man should have been an angel to endure it,--or so much less than a man. I struggled,--for your sake. Who else would have struggled as I did to oblige a friend in such a matter?"

"I know it--I know it."

"But life under such a weight became impossible to me. You do not know what I endured even for the last year. Believe me that man is not so const.i.tuted as to be able to make such efforts."

"He would get used to it. Mankind would get used to it."

"The first man will never get used to it. That college will become a madhouse. You must think of some other mode of letting them pa.s.s their last year. Make them drunk, so that they shall not know what they are doing. Drug them and make them senseless; or, better still, come down upon them with absolute power, and carry them away to instant death. Let the veil of annihilation fall upon them before they know where they are. The Fixed Period, with all its d.a.m.nable certainty, is a mistake. I have tried it and I know it. When I look back at the last year, which was to be the last, not of my absolute life but of my true existence, I shudder as I think what I went through. I am astonished at the strength of my own mind in that I did not go mad. No one would have made such an effort for you as I made.

Those other men had determined to rebel since the feeling of the Fixed Period came near to them. It is impossible that human nature should endure such a struggle and not rebel. I have been saved now by these Englishmen, who have come here in their horror, and have used their strength to prevent the barbarity of your benevolence. But I can hardly keep myself quiet as I think of the sufferings which I have endured during the last month."

"But, Crasweller, you had a.s.sented."

"True; I did a.s.sent. But it was before the feeling of my fate had come near to me. You may be strong enough to bear it. There is nothing so hard but that enthusiasm will make it tolerable. But you will hardly find another who will not succ.u.mb. Who would do more for you than I have done? Who would make a greater struggle? What honester man is there whom you know in this community of ours? And yet even me you drove to be a liar. Think how strong must have been the facts against you when they have had this effect. To have died at your behest at the instant would have been as nothing. Any danger,--any immediate certainty,--would have been child's-play; but to have gone up into that frightful college, and there to have remained through that year, which would have wasted itself so slowly, and yet so fast,--that would have required a heroism which, as I think, no Greek, no Roman, no Englishman ever possessed."

Then he paused, and I was aware that I had overstayed my time. "Think of it," he continued; "think of it on board that vessel, and try to bring home to yourself what such a phase of living would mean."

Then he grasped me by the hand, and taking me out, put me upon my tricycle, and returned into the house.

As I went back to Gladstonopolis, I did think of it, and for a moment or two my mind wavered. He had convinced me that there was something wrong in the details of my system; but not,--when I came to argue the matter with myself,--that the system itself was at fault. But now at the present moment I had hardly time for meditation. I had been surprised at Crasweller's earnestness, and also at his eloquence, and I was in truth more full of his words than of his reasons. But the time would soon come when I should be able to devote tranquil hours to the consideration of the points which he had raised. The long hours of enforced idleness on board ship would suffice to enable me to sift his objections, which seemed at the spur of the moment to resolve themselves into the impatience necessary to a year's quiescence. Crasweller had declared that human nature could not endure it. Was it not the case that human nature had never endeavoured to train itself? As I got back to Gladstonopolis, I had already a glimmering of an idea that we must begin with human nature somewhat earlier, and teach men from their very infancy to prepare themselves for the undoubted blessings of the Fixed Period. But certain aids must be given, and the cremating furnace must be removed, so as to be seen by no eye and smelt by no nose.

As I rode up to my house there was that eternal guard of soldiers,--a dozen men, with abominable guns and ungainly military hats or helmets on their heads. I was so angered by their watchfulness, that I was half minded to turn my tricycle, and allow them to pursue me about the island. They could never have caught me had I chosen to avoid them; but such an escape would have been below my dignity. And moreover, I certainly did wish to go. I therefore took no notice of them when they shouldered their arms, but went into the house to give my wife her last kiss. "Now, Neverbend, remember you wear the flannel drawers I put up for you, as soon as ever you get out of the opposite tropics. Remember it becomes frightfully cold almost at once; and whatever you do, don't forget the little bag." These were Mrs Neverbend's last words to me. I there found Jack waiting for me, and we together walked down to the quay. "Mother would like to have gone too," said Jack.

"It would not have suited. There are so many things here that will want her eye."

"All the same, she would like to have gone." I had felt that it was so, but yet she had never pressed her request.

On board I found Sir Ferdinando, and all the ship's officers with him, in full dress. He had come, as I supposed, to see that I really went; but he a.s.sured me, taking off his hat as he addressed me, that his object had been to pay his last respects to the late President of the republic. Nothing could now be more courteous than his conduct, or less like the bully that he had appeared to be when he had first claimed to represent the British sovereign in Britannula. And I must confess that there was absent all that tone of domineering ascendancy which had marked his speech as to the Fixed Period. The Fixed Period was not again mentioned while he was on board; but he devoted himself to a.s.suring me that I should be received in England with every distinction, and that I should certainly be invited to Windsor Castle. I did not myself care very much about Windsor Castle; but to such civil speeches I could do no other than make civil replies; and there I stood for half an hour grimacing and paying compliments, anxious for the moment when Sir Ferdinando would get into the six-oared gig which was waiting for him, and return to the sh.o.r.e.

To me it was of all half-hours the weariest, but to him it seemed as though to grimace and to pay compliments were his second nature.

At last the moment came when one of the junior officers came up to Captain Battleax and told him that the vessel was ready to start.

"Now, Sir Ferdinando," said the captain, "I am afraid that the John Bright must leave you to the kindness of the Britannulists."

"I could not be left in more generous hands," said Sir Ferdinando, "nor in those of warmer friends. The Britannulists speak English as well as I do, and will, I am sure, admit that we boast of a common country."

"But not a common Government," said I, determined to fire a parting shot. "But Sir Ferdinando is quite right in expecting that he personally will receive every courtesy from the Britannulists. Nor will his rule be in any respect disobeyed until the island shall, with the agreement of England, again have resumed its own republican position." Here I bowed, and he bowed, and we all bowed. Then he departed, taking Jack with him, leaning on whose arm he stepped down into the boat; and as the men put their oars into the water, I jumped with a sudden start at the sudden explosion of a subsidiary cannon, which went on firing some dozens of times till the proper number had been completed supposed to be due to an officer of such magnitude.

CHAPTER XII.

OUR VOYAGE TO ENGLAND.

The boat had gone ash.o.r.e and returned before the John Bright had steamed out of the harbour. Then everything seemed to change, and Captain Battleax bade me make myself quite at home. "He trusted,"

he said, "that I should always dine with him during the voyage, but that I should be left undisturbed during all other periods of the day. He dined at seven o'clock, but I could give my own orders as to breakfast and tiffin. He was sure that Lieutenant Crosstrees would have pleasure in showing me my cabins, and that if there was anything on board which I did not feel to be comfortable, it should be at once altered. Lieutenant Crosstrees would tell my servant to wait upon me, and would show me all the comforts,--and discomforts,--of the vessel." With that I left him, and was taken below under the guidance of the lieutenant. As Mr Crosstrees became my personal friend during the voyage,--more peculiarly than any of the other officers, all of whom were my friends,--I will give some short description of him. He was a young man, perhaps eight-and-twenty years old, whose great gift in the eyes of all those on board was his personal courage. Stories were told to me by the junior officers of marvellous things which he had done, which, though never mentioned in his own presence, either by himself or by others, seemed to const.i.tute for him a special character,--so that had it been necessary that any one should jump overboard to attack a shark, all on board would have thought that the duty as a matter of course belonged to Lieutenant Crosstrees. Indeed, as I learnt afterwards, he had quite a peculiar name in the British navy. He was a small fair-haired man, with a pallid face and a bright eye, whose idiosyncrasy it was to conceive that life afloat was infinitely superior in all its attributes to life on sh.o.r.e. If there ever was a man entirely devoted to his profession, it was Lieutenant Crosstrees. For women he seemed to care nothing, nor for bishops, nor for judges, nor for members of Parliament. They were all as children skipping about the world in their foolish playful ignorance, whom it was the sailor's duty to protect. Next to the sailor came the soldier, as having some kindred employment; but at a very long interval. Among sailors the British sailor,--that is, the British fighting sailor,--was the only one really worthy of honour; and among British sailors the officers on board H.M. gunboat the John Bright were the happy few who had climbed to the top of the tree. Captain Battleax he regarded as the sultan of the world; but he was the sultan's vizier, and having the discipline of the ship altogether in his own hands, was, to my thinking, its very master. I should have said beforehand that a man of such sentiments and feelings was not at all to my taste. Everything that he loved I have always hated, and all that he despised I have revered. Nevertheless I became very fond of him, and found in him an opponent to the Fixed Period that has done more to shake my opinion than Crasweller with all his feelings, or Sir Ferdinando with all his arguments. And this he effected by a few curt words which I have found almost impossible to resist. "Come this way, Mr President," he said. "Here is where you are to sleep; and considering that it is only a ship, I think you'll find it fairly comfortable." Anything more luxurious than the place a.s.signed to me, I could not have imagined on board ship. I afterwards learned that the cabins had been designed for the use of a travelling admiral, and I gathered from the fact that they were allotted to me an idea that England intended to atone for the injury done to the country by personal respect shown to the late President of the republic.

"I, at any rate, shall be comfortable while I am here. That in itself is something. Nevertheless I have to feel that I am a prisoner."

"Not more so than anybody else on board," said the lieutenant.

"A guard of soldiers came up this morning to look after me. What would that guard of soldiers have done supposing that I had run away?"

"We should have had to wait till they had caught you. But n.o.body conceived that to be possible. The President of a republic never runs away in his own person. There will be a cup of tea in the officers'

mess-room at five o'clock. I will leave you till then, as you may wish to employ yourself." I went up immediately afterwards on deck, and looking back over the tafferel, could only just see the glittering spires of Gladstonopolis in the distance.

Now was the time for thought. I found an easy seat on the stern of the vessel, and sat myself down to consider all that Crasweller had said to me. He and I had parted,--perhaps for ever. I had not been in England since I was a little child, and I could not but feel now that I might be detained there by circ.u.mstances, or die there, or that Crasweller, who was ten years my senior, might be dead before I should have come back. And yet no ordinary farewell had been spoken between us. In those last words of his he had confined himself to the Fixed Period, so full had his heart been of the subject, and so intent had he felt himself to be on convincing me. And what was the upshot of what he had said? Not that the doctrine of the Fixed Period was in itself wrong, but that it was impracticable because of the horrors attending its last moments. These were the solitude in which should be pa.s.sed the one last year; the sight of things which would remind the old man of coming death; and the general feeling that the business and pleasures of life were over, and that the stillness of the grave had been commenced. To this was to be added a certainty that death would come on some prearranged day. These all referred manifestly to the condition of him who was to go, and in no degree affected the welfare of those who were to remain. He had not attempted to say that for the benefit of the world at large the system was a bad system. That these evils would have befallen Crasweller himself, there could be no doubt. Though a dozen companions might have visited him daily, he would have felt the college to be a solitude, because he would not have been allowed to choose his promiscuous comrades as in the outer world. But custom would no doubt produce a cure for that evil. When a man knew that it was to be so, the dozen visitors would suffice for him. The young man of thirty travels over all the world, but the old man of seventy is contented with the comparative confinement of his own town, or perhaps of his own house. As to the ghastliness of things to be seen, they could no doubt be removed out of sight; but even that would be cured by custom. The business and pleasures of life at the prescribed time were in general but a pretence at business and a reminiscence of pleasure. The man would know that the fated day was coming, and would prepare for it with infinitely less of the anxious pain of uncertainty than in the outer world. The fact that death must come at the settled day, would no doubt have its horror as long as the man were able habitually to contrast his position with that of the few favoured ones who had, within his own memory, lived happily to a more advanced age; but when the time should come that no such old man had so existed, I could not but think that a frame of mind would be created not indisposed to contentment. Sitting there, and turning it all over in my mind, while my eyes rested on the bright expanse of the gla.s.s-clear sea, I did perceive that the Fixed Period, with all its advantages, was of such a nature that it must necessarily be postponed to an age prepared for it. Crasweller's eloquence had had that effect upon me. I did see that it would be impossible to induce, in the present generation, a feeling of satisfaction in the system.

I should have declared that it would not commence but with those who were at present unborn; or, indeed, to allay the natural fears of mothers, not with those who should be born for the next dozen years. It might have been well to postpone it for another century. I admitted so much to myself, with the full understanding that a theory delayed so long must be endangered by its own postponement. How was I to answer for the zeal of those who were to come so long after me?

I sometimes thought of a more immediate date in which I myself might be the first to be deposited, and that I might thus be allowed to set an example of a happy final year pa.s.sed within the college. But then, how far would the Tallowaxes, and Barneses, and Exors of the day be led by my example?

I must on my arrival in England remodel altogether the Fixed Period, and name a day so far removed that even Jack's children would not be able to see it. It was with sad grief of heart that I so determined.

All my dreams of a personal ambition were at once shivered to the ground. Nothing would remain of me but the name of the man who had caused the republic of Britannula to be destroyed, and her government to be resumed by her old mistress. I must go to work, and with pen, ink, and paper, with long written arguments and studied logic, endeavour to prove to mankind that the world should not allow itself to endure the indignities, and weakness, and selfish misery of extreme old age. I confess that my belief in the efficacy of spoken words, of words running like an electric spark from the lips of the speaker right into the heart of him who heard them, was stronger far than my trust in written arguments. They must lack a warmth which the others possess; and they enter only on the minds of the studious, whereas the others touch the feelings of the world at large. I had already overcome in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of many listeners the difficulties which I now myself experienced. I would again attempt to do so with a British audience. I would again enlarge on the meanness of the man who could not make so small a sacrifice of his latter years for the benefit of the rising generation. But even spoken words would come cold to me, and would fall unnoticed on the hearts of others, when it was felt that the doctrine advocated could not possibly affect any living man. Thinking of all this, I was very melancholy when I was summoned down to tea by one of the stewards who attended the officers' mess.

"Mr President, will you take tea, coffee, cocoa, chocolate, or preserved dates? There are m.u.f.fins and crumpets, dry toast, b.u.t.tered toast, plum-cake, seed-cake, peach-fritters, apple-marmalade, and bread and b.u.t.ter. There are put-up fruits of all kinds, of which you really wouldn't know that they hadn't come this moment from graperies and orchard-houses; but we don't put them on the table, because we think that we can't eat quite so much dinner after them." This was the invitation which came from a young naval lad who seemed to be about fifteen years old.

"Hold your tongue, Percy," said an elder officer. "The fruits are not here because Lord Alfred gorged himself so tremendously that we were afraid his mother, the d.u.c.h.ess, would withdraw him from the service when she heard that he had made himself sick."

"There are curacoa, chartreuse, pepperwick, mangostino, and Russian brandy on the side-board," suggested a third.

"I shall have a gla.s.s of madeira--just a thimbleful," said another, who seemed to be a few years older than Lord Alfred Percy. Then one of the stewards brought the madeira, which the young man drank with great satisfaction. "This wine has been seven times round the world," he said, "and the only time for drinking it is five-o'clock tea,--that is, if you understand what good living means." I asked simply for a cup of tea, which I found to be peculiarly good, partly because of the cream which accompanied it. I then went up-stairs to take a const.i.tutional walk with Mr Crosstrees on the deck. "I saw you sitting there for a couple of hours very thoughtful," said he, "and I wouldn't disturb you. I hope it doesn't make you unhappy that you are carried away to England?"

"Had it done so, I don't know whether I should have gone--alive."

"They said that when it was suggested, you promised to be ready in two days."

"I did say so--because it suited me. But I can hardly imagine that they would have carried me on board with violence, or that they would have put all Gladstonopolis to the sword because I declined to go on board."

"Brown had told us that we were to bring you off dead or alive; and dead or alive, I think we should have had you. If the soldiers had not succeeded, the sailors would have taken you in hand." When I asked him why there was this great necessity for kidnapping me, he a.s.sured me that feeling in England had run very high on the matter, and that sundry bishops had declared that anything so barbarous could not be permitted in the twentieth century. "It would be as bad, they said, as the cannibals of New Zealand."

"That shows the absolute ignorance of the bishops on the subject."

"I daresay; but there is a prejudice about killing an old man, or a woman. Young men don't matter."

"Allow me to a.s.sure you, Mr Crosstrees," said I, "that your sentiment is carrying you far away from reason. To the State the life of a woman should be just the same as that of a man. The State cannot allow itself to indulge in romance."

"You get a sailor, and tell him to strike a woman, and see what he'll say."

"The sailor is irrational. Of course, we are supposing that it is for the public benefit that the woman should be struck. It is the same with an old man. The good of the commonwealth,--and his own,--requires that, beyond a certain age, he shall not be allowed to exist. He does not work, and he cannot enjoy living. He wastes more than his share of the necessaries of life, and becomes, on the aggregate, an intolerable burden. Read Shakespeare's description of man in his last stage--

'Second childishness, and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything;'

and the stage before is merely that of the 'lean and slippered pantaloon.' For his own sake, would you not save mankind from having to encounter such miseries as these?"

"You can't do it, Mr President."