E-text prepared by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D., and Delphine Lettau



THE FIXED PERIOD

by

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

First published anonymously in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1882.







CONTENTS

   VOLUME I.

         I. INTRODUCTION.

        II. GABRIEL CRASWELLER.

       III. THE FIRST BREAK-DOWN.

        IV. JACK NEVERBEND.

         V. THE CRICKET-MATCH.

        VI. THE COLLEGE.

   VOLUME II.

       VII. COLUMBUS AND GALILEO.

      VIII. THE "JOHN BRIGHT."

        IX. THE NEW GOVERNOR.

         X. THE TOWN-HALL.

        XI. FAREWELL!

       XII. OUR VOYAGE TO ENGLAND.




VOLUME I.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.


It may be doubted whether a brighter, more prosperous, and specially
a more orderly colony than Britannula was ever settled by British
colonists. But it had its period of separation from the mother
country, though never of rebellion,--like its elder sister New
Zealand. Indeed, in that respect it simply followed the lead given
her by the Australias, which, when they set up for themselves, did so
with the full co-operation of England. There was, no doubt, a special
cause with us which did not exist in Australia, and which was only,
in part, understood by the British Government when we Britannulists
were allowed to stand by ourselves. The great doctrine of a "Fixed
Period" was received by them at first with ridicule, and then
with dismay; but it was undoubtedly the strong faith which we of
Britannula had in that doctrine which induced our separation. Nothing
could have been more successful than our efforts to live alone during
the thirty years that we remained our own masters. We repudiated no
debt,--as have done some of our neighbours; and no attempts have
been made towards communism,--as has been the case with others.
We have been laborious, contented, and prosperous; and if we have
been reabsorbed by the mother country, in accordance with what I
cannot but call the pusillanimous conduct of certain of our elder
Britannulists, it has not been from any failure on the part of the
island, but from the opposition with which the Fixed Period has been
regarded.

I think I must begin my story by explaining in moderate language a
few of the manifest advantages which would attend the adoption of the
Fixed Period in all countries. As far as the law went it was adopted
in Britannula. Its adoption was the first thing discussed by our
young Assembly, when we found ourselves alone; and though there were
disputes on the subject, in none of them was opposition made to the
system. I myself, at the age of thirty, had been elected Speaker of
that Parliament. But I was, nevertheless, able to discuss the merits
of the bills in committee, and I did so with some enthusiasm. Thirty
years have passed since, and my "period" is drawing nigh. But I am
still as energetic as ever, and as assured that the doctrine will
ultimately prevail over the face of the civilised world, though I
will acknowledge that men are not as yet ripe for it.

The Fixed Period has been so far discussed as to make it almost
unnecessary for me to explain its tenets, though its advantages may
require a few words of argument in a world that is at present dead to
its charms. It consists altogether of the abolition of the miseries,
weakness, and _fainéant_ imbecility of old age, by the prearranged
ceasing to live of those who would otherwise become old. Need I
explain to the inhabitants of England, for whom I chiefly write, how
extreme are those sufferings, and how great the costliness of that
old age which is unable in any degree to supply its own wants? Such
old age should not, we Britannulists maintain, be allowed to be. This
should be prevented, in the interests both of the young and of those
who do become old when obliged to linger on after their "period" of
work is over. Two mistakes have been made by mankind in reference to
their own race,--first, in allowing the world to be burdened with the
continued maintenance of those whose cares should have been made to
cease, and whose troubles should be at an end. Does not the Psalmist
say the same?--"If by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet
is their strength labour and sorrow." And the second, in requiring
those who remain to live a useless and painful life. Both these
errors have come from an ill-judged and a thoughtless tenderness,--a
tenderness to the young in not calling upon them to provide for
the decent and comfortable departure of their progenitors; and a
tenderness to the old lest the man, when uninstructed and unconscious
of good and evil, should be unwilling to leave the world for which
he is not fitted. But such tenderness is no better than unpardonable
weakness. Statistics have told us that the sufficient sustenance of
an old man is more costly than the feeding of a young one,--as is
also the care, nourishment, and education of the as yet unprofitable
child. Statistics also have told us that the unprofitable young and
the no less unprofitable old form a third of the population. Let the
reader think of the burden with which the labour of the world is thus
saddled. To these are to be added all who, because of illness cannot
work, and because of idleness will not. How are a people to thrive
when so weighted? And for what good? As for the children, they are
clearly necessary. They have to be nourished in order that they may
do good work as their time shall come. But for whose good are the old
and effete to be maintained amid all these troubles and miseries? Had
there been any one in our Parliament capable of showing that they
could reasonably desire it, the bill would not have been passed.
Though to me the politico-economical view of the subject was always
very strong, the relief to be brought to the aged was the one
argument to which no reply could be given.

It was put forward by some who opposed the movement, that the old
themselves would not like it. I never felt sure of that, nor do I
now. When the colony had become used to the Fixed Period system,
the old would become accustomed as well as the young. It is to be
understood that a euthanasia was to be prepared for them;--and how
many, as men now are, does a euthanasia await? And they would depart
with the full respect of all their fellow-citizens. To how many does
that lot now fall? During the last years of their lives they were to
be saved from any of the horrors of poverty. How many now lack the
comforts they cannot earn for themselves? And to them there would be
no degraded feeling that they were the recipients of charity. They
would be prepared for their departure, for the benefit of their
country, surrounded by all the comforts to which, at their time of
life, they would be susceptible, in a college maintained at the
public expense; and each, as he drew nearer to the happy day, would
be treated with still increasing honour. I myself had gone most
closely into the question of expense, and had found that by the use
of machinery the college could almost be made self-supporting. But
we should save on an average £50 for each man and woman who had
departed. When our population should have become a million, presuming
that one only in fifty would have reached the desired age, the sum
actually saved to the colony would amount to £1,000,000 a-year. It
would keep us out of debt, make for us our railways, render all our
rivers navigable, construct our bridges, and leave us shortly the
richest people on God's earth! And this would be effected by a
measure doing more good to the aged than to any other class of the
community!

Many arguments were used against us, but were vain and futile in
their conception. In it religion was brought to bear; and in talking
of this the terrible word "murder" was brought into common use. I
remember startling the House by forbidding any member to use a phrase
so revolting to the majesty of the people. Murder! Did any one who
attempted to deter us by the use of foul language, bethink himself
that murder, to be murder, must be opposed to the law? This thing was
to be done by the law. There can be no other murder. If a murderer
be hanged,--in England, I mean, for in Britannula we have no capital
punishment,--is that murder? It is not so, only because the law
enacts it. I and a few others did succeed at last in stopping the use
of that word. Then they talked to us of Methuselah, and endeavoured
to draw an argument from the age of the patriarchs. I asked them in
committee whether they were prepared to prove that the 969 years, as
spoken of in Genesis, were the same measure of time as 969 years now,
and told them that if the sanitary arrangements of the world would
again permit men to live as long as the patriarchs, we would gladly
change the Fixed Period.

In fact, there was not a word to be said against us except that
which referred to the feelings of the young and old. Feelings are
changeable, I told them at that great and glorious meeting which
we had at Gladstonopolis, and though naturally governed only by
instinct, would be taught at last to comply with reason. I had lately
read how feelings had been allowed in England to stand in the way of
the great work of cremation. A son will not like, you say, to lead
his father into the college. But ought he not to like to do so? and
if so, will not reason teach him to like to do what he ought? I can
conceive with rapture the pride, the honour, the affection with
which, when the Fixed Period had come, I could have led my father
into the college, there to enjoy for twelve months that preparation
for euthanasia which no cares for this world would be allowed to
disturb. All the existing ideas of the grave would be absent. There
would be no further struggles to prolong the time of misery which
nature had herself produced. That temptation to the young to begrudge
to the old the costly comforts which they could not earn would be no
longer fostered. It would be a pride for the young man to feel that
his parent's name had been enrolled to all coming time in the bright
books of the college which was to be established for the Fixed
Period. I have a son of my own, and I have carefully educated him to
look forward to the day in which he shall deposit me there as the
proudest of his life. Circumstances, as I shall relate in this story,
have somewhat interfered with him; but he will, I trust, yet come
back to the right way of thinking. That I shall never spend that last
happy year within the walls of the college, is to me, from a selfish
point of view, the saddest part of England's reassuming our island as
a colony.

My readers will perceive that I am an enthusiast. But there are
reforms so great that a man cannot but be enthusiastic when he has
received into his very soul the truth of any human improvement. Alas
me! I shall never live to see carried out the glory of this measure
to which I have devoted the best years of my existence. The college,
which has been built under my auspices as a preparation for the happy
departure, is to be made a Chamber of Commerce. Those aged men who
were awaiting, as I verily believe, in impatience the coming day of
their perfected dignity, have been turned loose in the world, and
allowed to grovel again with mundane thoughts amidst the idleness of
years that are useless. Our bridges, our railways, our Government are
not provided for. Our young men are again becoming torpid beneath
the weight imposed upon them. I was, in truth, wrong to think that
so great a reform could be brought to perfection within the days of
the first reformers. A divine idea has to be made common to men's
minds by frequent ventilation before it will be seen to be fit
for humanity. Did not the first Christians all suffer affliction,
poverty, and martyrdom? How many centuries has it taken in the
history of the world to induce it to denounce the not yet abolished
theory of slavery? A throne, a lord, and a bishop still remain to
encumber the earth! What right had I, then, as the first of the
Fixed-Periodists, to hope that I might live to see my scheme carried
out, or that I might be allowed to depart as among the first glorious
recipients of its advantages?

It would appear absurd to say that had there been such a law in
force in England, England would not have prevented its adoption in
Britannula. That is a matter of course. But it has been because the
old men are still alive in England that the young in Britannula are
to be afflicted,--the young and the old as well. The Prime Minister
in Downing Street was seventy-two when we were debarred from carrying
out our project, and the Secretary for the Colonies was sixty-nine.
Had they been among us, and had we been allowed to use our wisdom
without interference from effete old age, where would they have been?
I wish to speak with all respect of Sir William Gladstone. When we
named our metropolis after him, we were aware of his good qualities.
He has not the eloquence of his great-grandfather, but he is, they
tell us, a safe man. As to the Minister for the Crown Colonies,--of
which, alas! Britannula has again become one,--I do not, I own, look
upon him as a great statesman. The present Duke of Hatfield has none
of the dash, if he has more than the prudence, of his grandfather.
He was elected to the present Upper Chamber as a strong anti-Church
Liberal, but he never has had the spirit to be a true reformer. It is
now due to the "feelings" which fill no doubt the bosoms of these two
anti-Fixed-Period seniors, that the doctrine of the Fixed Period has
for a time been quenched in Britannula. It is sad to think that the
strength and intellect and spirit of manhood should thus be conquered
by that very imbecility which it is their desire to banish from the
world.

Two years since I had become the President of that which we gloried
to call the rising Empire of the South Pacific. And in spite of all
internal opposition, the college of the Fixed Period was already
completed. I then received violent notice from the British Government
that Britannula had ceased to be independent, and had again been
absorbed by the mother country among the Crown Colonies. How that
information was received, and with what weakness on the part of the
Britannulists, I now proceed to tell.

I confess that I for one was not at first prepared to obey. We were
small, but we were independent, and owed no more of submission to
Great Britain than we do to the Salomon Islands or to Otaheite.
It was for us to make our own laws, and we had hitherto made them
in conformity with the institutions, and, I must say, with the
prejudices of so-called civilisation. We had now made a first attempt
at progress beyond these limits, and we were immediately stopped by
the fatuous darkness of the old men whom, had Great Britain known
her own interest, she would already have silenced by a Fixed Period
law on her own account. No greater instance of uncalled-for tyranny
is told of in the history of the world as already written. But my
brother Britannulists did not agree with me that, in the interest of
the coming races, it was our duty rather to die at our posts than
yield to the menaces of the Duke of Hatfield. One British gunboat,
they declared, in the harbour of Gladstonopolis, would reduce us--to
order. What order? A 250-ton steam-swiveller could no doubt crush
us, and bring our Fixed Period college in premature ruin about our
ears. But, as was said, the captain of the gunboat would never dare
to touch the wire that should commit so wide a destruction. An
Englishman would hesitate to fire a shot that would send perhaps five
thousand of his fellow-creatures to destruction before their Fixed
Period. But even in Britannula fear still remains. It was decided, I
will confess by the common voice of the island, that we should admit
this Governor, and swear fealty again to the British Crown. Sir
Ferdinando Brown was allowed to land, and by the rejoicing made at
the first Government House ball, as I have already learned since I
left the island, it appeared that the Britannulists rejoiced rather
than otherwise at their thraldom.

Two months have passed since that time, and I, being a worn-out old
man, and fitted only for the glory of the college, have nothing left
me but to write this story, so that coming ages may see how noble
were our efforts. But in truth, the difficulties which lay in our
way were very stern. The philosophical truth on which the system is
founded was too strong, too mighty, too divine, to be adopted by man
in the immediate age of its first appearance. But it has appeared;
and I perhaps should be contented and gratified, during the years
which I am doomed to linger through impotent imbecility, to think
that I have been the first reformer of my time, though I shall be
doomed to perish without having enjoyed its fruits.

I must now explain before I begin my story certain details of our
plan, which created much schism among ourselves. In the first place,
what should be the Fixed Period? When a party of us, three or four
hundred in number, first emigrated from New Zealand to Britannula,
we were, almost all of us, young people. We would not consent to
measures in regard to their public debt which the Houses in New
Zealand threatened to take; and as this island had been discovered,
and a part of it cultivated, thither we determined to go. Our
resolution was very popular, not only with certain parties in New
Zealand, but also in the mother country. Others followed us, and we
settled ourselves with great prosperity. But we were essentially
a young community. There were not above ten among us who had then
reached any Fixed Period; and not above twenty others who could be
said to be approaching it. There never could arrive a time or a
people when, or among whom, the system could be tried with so good a
hope of success. It was so long before we had been allowed to stand
on our bottom, that the Fixed Period became a matter of common
conversation in Britannula. There were many who looked forward to
it as the creator of a new idea of wealth and comfort; and it was
in those days that the calculation was made as to the rivers and
railways. I think that in England they thought that a few, and but
a few, among us were dreamers of a dream. Had they believed that
the Fixed Period would ever have become law, they would not have
permitted us to be law-makers. I acknowledge that. But when we were
once independent, then again to reduce us to submission by a 250-ton
steam-swiveller was an act of gross tyranny.

What should be the Fixed Period? That was the first question which
demanded an immediate answer. Years were named absurd in their
intended leniency;--eighty and even eighty-five! Let us say a
hundred, said I, aloud, turning upon them all the battery of my
ridicule. I suggested sixty; but the term was received with silence.
I pointed out that the few old men now on the island might be
exempted, and that even those above fifty-five might be allowed to
drag out their existences if they were weak enough to select for
themselves so degrading a position. This latter proposition was
accepted at once, and the exempt showed no repugnance even when it
was proved to them that they would be left alone in the community and
entitled to no honour, and never allowed even to enter the pleasant
gardens of the college. I think now that sixty was too early an age,
and that sixty-five, to which I gracefully yielded, is the proper
Fixed Period for the human race. Let any man look among his friends
and see whether men of sixty-five are not in the way of those who are
still aspiring to rise in the world. A judge shall be deaf on the
bench when younger men below him can hear with accuracy. His voice
shall have descended to a poor treble, or his eyesight shall be dim
and failing. At any rate, his limbs will have lost all that robust
agility which is needed for the adequate performance of the work of
the world. It is self-evident that at sixty-five a man has done all
that he is fit to do. He should be troubled no longer with labour,
and therefore should be troubled no longer with life. "It is all
vanity and vexation of spirit," such a one would say, if still brave,
and still desirous of honour. "Lead me into the college, and there
let me prepare myself for that brighter life which will require
no mortal strength." My words did avail with many, and then they
demanded that seventy should be the Fixed Period.

How long we fought over this point need not now be told. But we
decided at last to divide the interval. Sixty-seven and a half was
named by a majority of the Assembly as the Fixed Period. Surely the
colony was determined to grow in truth old before it could go into
the college. But then there came a further dispute. On which side
of the Fixed Period should the year of grace be taken? Our debates
even on this subject were long and animated. It was said that the
seclusion within the college would be tantamount to penal departure,
and that the old men should thus have the last lingering drops of
breath allowed them, without, in the world at large. It was at last
decided that men and women should be brought into the college at
sixty-seven, and that before their sixty-eighth birthday they should
have departed. Then the bells were rung, and the whole community
rejoiced, and banquets were eaten, and the young men and women called
each other brother and sister, and it was felt that a great reform
had been inaugurated among us for the benefit of mankind at large.

Little was thought about it at home in England when the bill was
passed. There was, I suppose, in the estimation of Englishmen, time
enough to think about it. The idea was so strange to them that it
was considered impossible that we should carry it out. They heard of
the bill, no doubt; but I maintain that, as we had been allowed to
separate ourselves and stand alone, it was no more their concern than
if it had been done in Arizona or Idaho, or any of those Western
States of America which have lately formed themselves into a new
union. It was from them, no doubt, that we chiefly expected that
sympathy which, however, we did not receive. The world was clearly
not yet alive to the grand things in store for it. We received,
indeed, a violent remonstrance from the old-fashioned Government at
Washington; but in answer to that we stated that we were prepared
to stand and fall by the new system--that we expected glory rather
than ignominy, and to be followed by mankind rather than repudiated.
We had a lengthened correspondence also with New Zealand and with
Australia; but England at first did not believe us; and when she was
given to understand that we were in earnest, she brought to bear upon
us the one argument that could have force, and sent to our harbour
her 250-ton steam-swiveller. The 250-ton swiveller, no doubt, was
unanswerable--unless we were prepared to die for our system. I was
prepared, but I could not carry the people of my country with me.

I have now given the necessary prelude to the story which I have to
tell. I cannot but think that, in spite of the isolated manners of
Great Britain, readers in that country generally must have become
acquainted with the views of the Fixed-Periodists. It cannot but
be that a scheme with such power to change,--and, I may say, to
improve,--the manners and habits of mankind, should be known in a
country in which a portion of the inhabitants do, at any rate, read
and write. They boast, indeed, that not a man or a woman in the
British Islands is now ignorant of his letters; but I am informed
that the knowledge seldom approaches to any literary taste. It may be
that a portion of the masses should have been ignorant of what was
being done within the empire of the South Pacific. I have therefore
written this preliminary chapter to explain to them what was the
condition of Britannula in regard to the Fixed Period just twelve
months before England had taken possession of us, and once more
made us her own. Sir Ferdinando Brown now rules us, I must say, not
with a rod of iron, but very much after his own good will. He makes
us flowery speeches, and thinks that they will stand in lieu of
independence. He collects his revenue, and informs us that to be
taxed is the highest privilege of an ornate civilisation. He pointed
to the gunboat in the bay when it came, and called it the divine
depository of beneficent power. For a time, no doubt, British
"tenderness" will prevail. But I shall have wasted my thoughts, and
in vain poured out my eloquence as to the Fixed Period, if, in the
course of years, it does not again spring to the front, and prove
itself to be necessary before man can accomplish all that he is
destined to achieve.




CHAPTER II.

GABRIEL CRASWELLER.


I will now begin my tale. It is above thirty years since I commenced
my agitation in Britannula. We were a small people, and had not
then been blessed by separation; but we were, I think, peculiarly
intelligent. We were the very cream, as it were, that had been
skimmed from the milk-pail of the people of a wider colony,
themselves gifted with more than ordinary intelligence. We were the
_élite_ of the selected population of New Zealand. I think I may say
that no race so well informed ever before set itself down to form a
new nation. I am now nearly sixty years old,--very nearly fit for the
college which, alas! will never be open for me,--and I was nearly
thirty when I began to be in earnest as to the Fixed Period. At
that time my dearest friend and most trusted coadjutor was Gabriel
Crasweller. He was ten years my senior then, and is now therefore
fit for deposition in the college were the college there to receive
him. He was one of those who brought with them merino sheep into the
colony. At great labour and expense he exported from New Zealand a
small flock of choice animals, with which he was successful from the
first. He took possession of the lands of Little Christchurch, five
or six miles from Gladstonopolis, and showed great judgment in the
selection. A prettier spot, as it turned out, for the fattening of
both beef and mutton and for the growth of wool, it would have been
impossible to have found. Everything that human nature wants was
there at Little Christchurch. The streams which watered the land were
bright and rapid, and always running. The grasses were peculiarly
rich, and the old English fruit-trees, which we had brought with
us from New Zealand, throve there with an exuberant fertility, of
which the mother country, I am told, knows nothing. He had imported
pheasants' eggs, and salmon-spawn, and young deer, and black-cock
and grouse, and those beautiful little Alderney cows no bigger than
good-sized dogs, which, when milked, give nothing but cream. All
these things throve with him uncommonly, so that it may be declared
of him that his lines had fallen in pleasant places. But he had
no son; and therefore in discussing with him, as I did daily, the
question of the Fixed Period, I promised him that it should be my lot
to deposit him in the sacred college when the day of his withdrawal
should have come. He had been married before we left New Zealand, and
was childless when he made for himself and his wife his homestead at
Little Christchurch. But there, after a few years, a daughter was
born to him, and I ought to have remembered, when I promised to him
that last act of friendship, that it might become the duty of that
child's husband to do for him with filial reverence the loving work
which I had undertaken to perform.

Many and most interesting were the conversations held between
Crasweller and myself on the great subject which filled our hearts.
He undoubtedly was sympathetic, and took delight in expatiating on
all those benefits that would come to the world from the race of
mankind which knew nothing of the debility of old age. He saw the
beauty of the theory as well as did I myself, and would speak often
of the weakness of that pretended tenderness which would fear to
commence a new operation in regard to the feelings of the men and
women of the old world. "Can any man love another better than I do
you?" I would say to him with energy; "and yet would I scruple for a
moment to deposit you in the college when the day had come? I should
lead you in with that perfect reverence which it is impossible
that the young should feel for the old when they become feeble and
incapable." I doubt now whether he relished these allusions to his
own seclusion. He would run away from his own individual case, and
generalise widely about some future time. And when the time for
voting came, he certainly did vote for seventy-five. But I took no
offence at his vote. Gabriel Crasweller was almost my dearest friend,
and as his girl grew up it was a matter of regret to me that my only
son was not quite old enough to be her husband.

Eva Crasweller was, I think, the most perfect piece I ever beheld of
youthful feminine beauty. I have not yet seen those English beauties
of which so much is said in their own romances, but whom the
young men from New York and San Francisco who make their way to
Gladstonopolis do not seem to admire very much. Eva was perfect in
symmetry, in features, in complexion, and in simplicity of manners.
All languages are the same to her; but that accomplishment has become
so common in Britannula that but little is thought of it. I do not
know whether she ravished our ears most with the old-fashioned piano
and the nearly obsolete violin, or with the modern mousometor, or the
more perfect melpomeneon. It was wonderful to hear the way with which
she expressed herself at the meeting held about the rising buildings
of the college when she was only sixteen. But I think she touched me
most with just a roly-poly pudding which she made with her own fair
hands for our dinner one Sunday at Little Christchurch. And once when
I saw her by chance take a kiss from her lover behind the door, I
felt that it was a pity indeed that a man should ever become old.
Perhaps, however, in the eyes of some her brightest charm lay in the
wealth which her father possessed. His sheep had greatly increased in
number; the valleys were filled with his cattle; and he could always
sell his salmon for half-a-crown a pound and his pheasants for
seven-and-sixpence a brace. Everything had thriven with Crasweller,
and everything must belong to Eva as soon as he should have been led
into the college. Eva's mother was now dead, and no other child had
been born. Crasweller had also embarked his money largely in the wool
trade, and had become a sleeping-partner in the house of Grundle &
Grabbe. He was an older man by ten years than either of his partners,
but yet Grundle's eldest son Abraham was older than Eva when
Crasweller lent his money to the firm. It was soon known who was to
be the happiest man in the empire. It was young Abraham, by whom Eva
was kissed behind the door that Sunday when we ate the roly-poly
pudding. Then she came into the room, and, with her eyes raised to
heaven, and with a halo of glory almost round her head as she poured
forth her voice, she touched the mousometor, and gave us the Old
Hundredth psalm.

She was a fine girl at all points, and had been quite alive to the
dawn of the Fixed Period system. But at this time, on the memorable
occasion of the eating of that dinner, it first began to strike me
that my friend Crasweller was getting very near his Fixed Period, and
it occurred to me to ask myself questions as to what might be the
daughter's wishes. It was the state of her feelings rather that would
push itself into my mind. Quite lately he had said nothing about
it,--nor had she. On that Sunday morning when he and his girl were
at church,--for Crasweller had stuck to the old habit of saying his
prayers in a special place on a special day,--I had discussed the
matter with young Grundle. Nobody had been into the college as yet.
Three or four had died naturally, but Crasweller was about to be
the first. We were arranging that he should be attended by pleasant
visitors till within the last week or two, and I was making special
allusion to the law which required that he should abandon all control
of his property immediately on his entering the college. "I suppose
he would do that," said Grundle, expressing considerable interest by
the tone of his voice.

"Oh, certainly," said I; "he must do that in accordance with the
law. But he can make his will up to the very moment in which he is
deposited." He had then about twelve months to run. I suppose there
was not a man or woman in the community who was not accurately aware
of the very day of Crasweller's birth. We had already introduced the
habit of tattooing on the backs of the babies the day on which they
were born; and we had succeeded in operating also on many of the
children who had come into the world before the great law. Some there
were who would not submit on behalf of themselves or their children;
and we did look forward to some little confusion in this matter. A
register had of course been commenced, and there were already those
who refused to state their exact ages; but I had been long on the
lookout for this, and had a little book of my own in which were
inscribed the "periods" of all those who had come to Britannula with
us; and since I had first thought of the Fixed Period I had been very
careful to note faithfully the births as they occurred. The reader
will see how important, as time went on, it would become to have an
accurate record, and I already then feared that there might be some
want of fidelity after I myself had been deposited. But my friend
Crasweller was the first on the list, and there was no doubt in the
empire as to the exact day on which he was born. All Britannula knew
that he would be the first, and that he was to be deposited on the
13th of June 1980. In conversation with my friend I had frequently
alluded to the very day,--to the happy day, as I used to call it
before I became acquainted with his actual feelings,--and he never
ventured to deny that on that day he would become sixty-seven.

I have attempted to describe his daughter Eva, and I must say a word
as to the personal qualities of her father. He too was a remarkably
handsome man, and though his hair was beautifully white, had fewer of
the symptoms of age than any old man I had before known. He was tall,
robust, and broad, and there was no beginning even of a stoop about
him. He spoke always clearly and audibly, and he was known for the
firm voice with which he would perform occasionally at some of our
decimal readings. We had fixed our price at a decimal in order that
the sum so raised might be used for the ornamentation of the college.
Our population at Gladstonopolis was so thriving that we found it
as easy to collect ten pennies as one. At these readings Gabriel
Crasweller was the favourite performer, and it had begun to be
whispered by some caitiffs who would willingly disarrange the whole
starry system for their own immediate gratification, that Crasweller
should not be deposited because of the beauty of his voice. And then
the difficulty was somewhat increased by the care and precision with
which he attended to his own business. He was as careful as ever
about his flocks, and at shearing-time would stand all day in the
wool-shed to see to the packing of his wool and the marking of his
bales.

"It would be a pity," said to me a Britannulist one day,--a man
younger than myself,--"to lock up old Crasweller, and let the
business go into the hands of young Grundle. Young Grundle will
never know half as much about sheep, in spite of his conceit; and
Crasweller is a deal fitter for his work than for living idle in the
college till you shall put an end to him."

There was much in these words which made me very angry. According to
this man's feelings, the whole system was to be made to suit itself
to the peculiarities of one individual constitution. A man who so
spoke could have known nothing of the general beauty of the Fixed
Period. And he had alluded to the manner of depositing in most
disrespectful terms. I had felt it to be essentially necessary so to
maintain the dignity of the ceremony as to make it appear as unlike
an execution as possible. And this depositing of Crasweller was to be
the first, and should--according to my own intentions--be attended
with a peculiar grace and reverence. "I don't know what you call
locking up," said I, angrily. "Had Mr Crasweller been about to be
dragged to a felon's prison, you could not have used more opprobrious
language; and as to putting an end to him, you must, I think, be
ignorant of the method proposed for adding honour and glory to the
last moments in this world of those dear friends whose happy lot it
will be to be withdrawn from the world's troubles amidst the love
and veneration of their fellow-subjects." As to the actual mode of
transition, there had been many discussions held by the executive in
President Square, and it had at last been decided that certain veins
should be opened while the departing one should, under the influence
of morphine, be gently entranced within a warm bath. I, as president
of the empire, had agreed to use the lancet in the first two or three
cases, thereby intending to increase the honours conferred. Under
these circumstances I did feel the sting bitterly when he spoke of my
putting "an end" to him. "But you have not," I said, "at all realised
the feeling of the ceremony. A few ill-spoken words, such as these
you have just uttered, will do us more harm in the minds of many than
all your voting will have done good." In answer to this he merely
repeated his observation that Crasweller was a very bad specimen to
begin with. "He has got ten years of work in him," said my friend,
"and yet you intend to make away with him without the slightest
compunction."

Make away with him! What an expression to use,--and this from the
mouth of one who had been a determined Fixed-Periodist! It angered
me to think that men should be so little reasonable as to draw
deductions as to an entire system from a single instance. Crasweller
might in truth be strong and hearty at the Fixed Period. But that
period had been chosen with reference to the community at large; and
what though he might have to depart a year or two before he was worn
out, still he would do so with everything around him to make him
happy, and would depart before he had ever known the agony of a
headache. Looking at the entire question with the eyes of reason,
I could not but tell myself that a better example of a triumphant
beginning to our system could not have been found. But yet there
was in it something unfortunate. Had our first hero been compelled
to abandon his business by old age--had he become doting over its
details--parsimonious, or extravagant, or even short-sighted in his
speculations--public feeling, than which nothing is more ignorant,
would have risen in favour of the Fixed Period. "How true is the
president's reasoning," the people would have said. "Look at
Crasweller; he would have ruined Little Christchurch had he stayed
there much longer." But everything he did seemed to prosper; and
it occurred to me at last that he forced himself into abnormal
sprightliness, with a view of bringing disgrace upon the law of
the Fixed Period. If there were any such feeling, I regard it as
certainly mean.

On the day after the dinner at which Eva's pudding was eaten, Abraham
Grundle came to me at the Executive Hall, and said that he had a few
things to discuss with me of importance. Abraham was a good-looking
young man, with black hair and bright eyes, and a remarkably handsome
moustache; and he was one well inclined to business, in whose hands
the firm of Grundle, Grabbe, & Crasweller was likely to thrive; but
I myself had never liked him much. I had thought him to be a little
wanting in that reverence which he owed to his elders, and to be,
moreover, somewhat over-fond of money. It had leaked out that though
he was no doubt attached to Eva Crasweller, he had thought quite as
much of Little Christchurch; and though he could kiss Eva behind
the door, after the ways of young men, still he was more intent
on the fleeces than on her lips. "I want to say a word to you, Mr
President," he began, "upon a subject that disturbs my conscience
very much."

"Your conscience?" said I.

"Yes, Mr President. I believe you're aware that I am engaged to marry
Miss Crasweller?"

It may be as well to explain here that my own eldest son, as fine a
boy as ever delighted a mother's eye, was only two years younger than
Eva, and that my wife, Mrs Neverbend, had of late got it into her
head that he was quite old enough to marry the girl. It was in vain
that I told her that all that had been settled while Jack was still
at the didascalion. He had been Colonel of the Curriculum, as they
now call the head boy; but Eva had not then cared for Colonels of
Curriculums, but had thought more of young Grundle's moustache. My
wife declared that all that was altered,--that Jack was, in fact,
a much more manly fellow than Abraham with his shiny bit of beard;
and that if one could get at a maiden's heart, we should find that
Eva thought so. In answer to this I bade her hold her tongue, and
remember that in Britannula a promise was always held to be as good
as a bond. "I suppose a young woman may change her mind in Britannula
as well as elsewhere," said my wife. I turned all this over in my
mind, because the slopes of Little Christchurch are very alluring,
and they would all belong to Eva so soon. And then it would be well,
as I was about to perform for Crasweller so important a portion of
his final ceremony, our close intimacy should be drawn still nearer
by a family connection. I did think of it; but then it occurred to
me that the girl's engagement to young Grundle was an established
fact, and it did not behove me to sanction the breach of a contract.
"Oh yes," said I to the young man, "I am aware that there is an
understanding to that effect between you and Eva's father."

"And between me and Eva, I can assure you."

Having observed the kiss behind the door on the previous day, I could
not deny the truth of this assertion.

"It is quite understood," continued Abraham, "and I had always
thought that it was to take place at once, so that Eva might get used
to her new life before her papa was deposited."

To this I merely bowed my head, as though to signify that it was a
matter with which I was not personally concerned. "I had taken it for
granted that my old friend would like to see his daughter settled,
and Little Christchurch put into his daughter's hands before he
should bid adieu to his own sublunary affairs," I remarked, when I
found that he paused.

"We all thought so up at the warehouse," said he,--"I and father,
and Grabbe, and Postlecott, our chief clerk. Postlecott is the next
but three on the books, and is getting very melancholy. But he is
especially anxious just at present to see how Crasweller bears it."

"What has all that to do with Eva's marriage?"

"I suppose I might marry her. But he hasn't made any will."

"What does that matter? There is nobody to interfere with Eva."

"But he might go off, Mr Neverbend," whispered Grundle; "and where
should I be then? If he was to get across to Auckland, or to Sydney,
and to leave some one to manage the property for him, what could
you do? That's what I want to know. The law says that he shall be
deposited on a certain day."

"He will become as nobody in the eye of the law," said I, with all
the authority of a President.

"But if he and his daughter have understood each other; and if some
deed be forthcoming by which Little Christchurch shall have been left
to trustees; and if he goes on living at Sydney, let us say, on the
fat of the land,--drawing all the income, and leaving the trustees as
legal owners,--where should I be then?"

"In that case," said I, having taken two or three minutes for
consideration,--"in that case, I presume the property would be
confiscated by law, and would go to his natural heir. Now if his
natural heir be then your wife, it will be just the same as though
the property were yours." Young Grundle shook his head. "I don't know
what more you would want. At any rate, there is no more for you to
get." I confess that at that moment the idea of my boy's chance of
succeeding with the heiress did present itself to my mind. According
to what my wife had said, Jack would have jumped at the girl with
just what she stood up in; and had sworn to his mother, when he had
been told that morning about the kiss behind the door, that he would
knock that brute's head off his shoulders before many days were gone
by. Looking at the matter merely on behalf of Jack, it appeared to
me that Little Christchurch would, in that case, be quite safe, let
Crasweller be deposited,--or run away to Sydney.

"You do not know for certain about the confiscation of the property,"
said Abraham.

"I've told you as much, Mr Grundle, as it is fit that you should
know," I replied, with severity. "For the absolute condition of the
law you must look in the statute-book, and not come to the President
of the empire."

Abraham Grundle then departed. I had assumed an angry air, as though
I were offended with him, for troubling me on a matter by referring
simply to an individual. But he had in truth given rise to very
serious and solemn thoughts. Could it be that Crasweller, my own
confidential friend--the man to whom I had trusted the very secrets
of my soul on this important matter,--could it be that he should be
unwilling to be deposited when the day had come? Could it be that
he should be anxious to fly from his country and her laws, just as
the time had arrived when those laws might operate upon him for the
benefit of that country? I could not think that he was so vain, so
greedy, so selfish, and so unpatriotic. But this was not all. Should
he attempt to fly, could we prevent his flying? And if he did fly,
what step should we take next? The Government of New South Wales was
hostile to us on the very matter of the Fixed Period, and certainly
would not surrender him in obedience to any law of extradition. And
he might leave his property to trustees who would manage it on his
behalf; although, as far as Britannula was concerned, he would be
beyond the reach of law, and regarded even as being without the pale
of life. And if he, the first of the Fixed-Periodists, were to run
away, the fashion of so running would become common. We should thus
be rid of our old men, and our object would be so far attained. But
looking forward, I could see at a glance that if one or two wealthy
members of our community were thus to escape, it would be almost
impossible to carry out the law with reference to those who should
have no such means. But that which vexed me most was that Gabriel
Crasweller should desire to escape,--that he should be anxious to
throw over the whole system to preserve the poor remnant of his life.
If he would do so, who could be expected to abstain? If he should
prove false when the moment came, who would prove true? And he, the
first, the very first on our list! Young Grundle had now left me,
and as I sat thinking of it I was for a moment tempted to abandon
the Fixed Period altogether. But as I remained there in silent
meditation, better thoughts came to me. Had I dared to regard myself
as the foremost spirit of my age, and should I thus be turned back
by the human weakness of one poor creature who had not sufficiently
collected the strength of his heart to be able to look death in the
face and to laugh him down. It was a difficulty--a difficulty the
more. It might be the crushing difficulty which would put an end to
the system as far as my existence was concerned. But I bethought
me how many early reformers had perished in their efforts, and how
seldom it had been given to the first man to scale the walls of
prejudice, and force himself into the citadel of reason. But they had
not yielded when things had gone against them; and though they had
not brought their visions down to the palpable touch of humanity,
still they had persevered, and their efforts had not been altogether
lost to the world.

"So it shall be with me," said I. "Though I may never live to deposit
a human being within that sanctuary, and though I may be doomed by
the foolish prejudice of men to drag out a miserable existence amidst
the sorrows and weakness of old age; though it may never be given to
me to feel the ineffable comforts of a triumphant deposition,--still
my name will be handed down to coming ages, and I shall be spoken of
as the first who endeavoured to save grey hairs from being brought
with sorrow to the grave."

I am now writing on board H.M. gunboat John Bright,--for the
tyrannical slaves of a modern monarch have taken me in the flesh
and are carrying me off to England, so that, as they say, all
that nonsense of a Fixed Period may die away in Britannula. They
think,--poor ignorant fighting men,--that such a theory can be made
to perish because one individual shall have been mastered. But no!
The idea will still live, and in ages to come men will prosper and be
strong, and thrive, unpolluted by the greed and cowardice of second
childhood, because John Neverbend was at one time President of
Britannula.

It occurred to me then, as I sat meditating over the tidings conveyed
to me by Abraham Grundle, that it would be well that I should see
Crasweller, and talk to him freely on the subject. It had sometimes
been that by my strength I had reinvigorated his halting courage.
This suggestion that he might run away as the day of his deposition
drew nigh,--or rather, that others might run away,--had been the
subject of some conversation between him and me. "How will it be," he
had said, "if they mizzle?" He had intended to allude to the possible
premature departure of those who were about to be deposited.

"Men will never be so weak," I said.

"I suppose you'd take all their property?"

"Every stick of it."

"But property is a thing which can be conveyed away."

"We should keep a sharp look-out upon themselves. There might be a
writ, you know, _ne exeant regno_. If we are driven to a pinch, that
will be the last thing to do. But I should be sorry to be driven to
express my fear of human weakness by any general measure of that
kind. It would be tantamount to an accusation of cowardice against
the whole empire."

Crasweller had only shaken his head. But I had understood him to
shake it on the part of the human race generally, and not on his own
behalf.




CHAPTER III.

THE FIRST BREAK-DOWN.


It was now mid-winter, and it wanted just twelve months to that 30th
of June on which, in accordance with all our plans, Crasweller was to
be deposited. A full year would, no doubt, suffice for him to arrange
his worldly affairs, and to see his daughter married; but it would
not more than suffice. He still went about his business with an
alacrity marvellous in one who was so soon about to withdraw himself
from the world. The fleeces for bearing which he was preparing his
flocks, though they might be shorn by him, would never return their
prices to his account. They would do so for his daughter and his
son-in-law; but in these circumstances, it would have been well for
him to have left the flocks to his son-in-law, and to have turned
his mind to the consideration of other matters. "There should be a
year devoted to that final year to be passed within the college, so
that, by degrees, the mind may be weaned from the ignoble art of
money-making." I had once so spoken to him; but there he was, as
intent as ever, with his mind fixed on the records of the price of
wool as they came back to him from the English and American markets.
"It is all for his daughter," I had said to myself. "Had he been
blessed with a son, it would have been otherwise with him." So I
got on to my steam-tricycle, and in a few minutes I was at Little
Christchurch. He was coming in after a hard day's work among the
flocks, and seemed to be triumphant and careful at the same time.

"I tell you what it is, Neverbend," said he; "we shall have the fluke
over here if we don't look after ourselves."

"Have you found symptoms of it?"

"Well; not exactly among my own sheep; but I know the signs of it so
well. My grasses are peculiarly dry, and my flocks are remarkably
well looked after; but I can see indications of it. Only fancy where
we should all be if fluke showed itself in Britannula! If it once got
ahead we should be no better off than the Australians."

This might be anxiety for his daughter; but it looked strangely like
that personal feeling which would have been expected in him twenty
years ago. "Crasweller," said I, "do you mind coming into the house,
and having a little chat?" and so I got off my tricycle.

"I was going to be very busy," he said, showing an unwillingness. "I
have fifty young foals in that meadow there; and I like to see that
they get their suppers served to them warm."

"Bother the young foals!" said I. "As if you had not men enough about
the place to see to feeding your stock without troubling yourself.
I have come out from Gladstonopolis, because I want to see you;
and now I am to be sent back in order that you might attend to the
administration of hot mashes! Come into the house." Then I entered
in under the verandah, and he followed. "You certainly have got the
best-furnished house in the empire," said I, as I threw myself on to
a double arm-chair, and lighted my cigar in the inner verandah.

"Yes, yes," said he; "it is pretty comfortable."

He was evidently melancholy, and knew the purpose for which I had
come. "I don't suppose any girl in the old country was ever better
provided for than will be Eva." This I said wishing to comfort him,
and at the same time to prepare for what was to be said.

"Eva is a good girl,--a dear girl. But I am not at all so sure about
that young fellow Abraham Grundle. It's a pity, President, your son
had not been born a few years sooner." At this moment my boy was half
a head taller than young Grundle, and a much better specimen of a
Britannulist. "But it is too late now, I suppose, to talk of that. It
seems to me that Jack never even thinks of looking at Eva."

This was a view of the case which certainly was strange to me, and
seemed to indicate that Crasweller was gradually becoming fit for
the college. If he could not see that Jack was madly in love with
Eva, he could see nothing at all. But I had not come out to Little
Christchurch at the present moment to talk to him about the love
matters of the two children. I was intent on something of infinitely
greater importance. "Crasweller," said I, "you and I have always
agreed to the letter on this great matter of the Fixed Period."
He looked into my face with supplicating, weak eyes, but he said
nothing. "Your period now will soon have been reached, and I think
it well that we, as dear loving friends, should learn to discuss the
matter closely as it draws nearer. I do not think that it becomes
either of us to be afraid of it."

"That's all very well for you," he replied. "I am your senior."

"Ten years, I believe."

"About nine, I think."

This might have come from a mistake of his as to my exact age; and
though I was surprised at the error, I did not notice it on this
occasion. "You have no objection to the law as it stands now?" I
said.

"It might have been seventy."

"That has all been discussed fully, and you have given your assent.
Look round on the men whom you can remember, and tell me, on how many
of them life has not sat as a burden at seventy years of age?"

"Men are so different," said he. "As far as one can judge of his own
capacities, I was never better able to manage my business than I am
at present. It is more than I can say for that young fellow Grundle,
who is so anxious to step into my shoes."

"My dear Crasweller," I rejoined, "it was out of the question so to
arrange the law as to vary the term to suit the peculiarities of one
man or another."

"But in a change of such terrible severity you should have suited the
eldest."

This was dreadful to me,--that he, the first to receive at the hands
of his country the great honour intended for him,--that he should
have already allowed his mind to have rebelled against it! If he, who
had once been so keen a supporter of the Fixed Period, now turned
round and opposed it, how could others who should follow be expected
to yield themselves up in a fitting frame of mind? And then I
spoke my thoughts freely to him. "Are you afraid of departure?" I
said,--"afraid of that which must come; afraid to meet as a friend
that which you must meet so soon as friend or enemy?" I paused; but
he sat looking at me without reply. "To fear departure;--must it not
be the greatest evil of all our life, if it be necessary? Can God
have brought us into the world, intending us so to leave it that the
very act of doing so shall be regarded by us as a curse so terrible
as to neutralise all the blessings of our existence? Can it be that
He who created us should have intended that we should so regard our
dismissal from the world? The teachers of religion have endeavoured
to reconcile us to it, and have, in their vain zeal, endeavoured to
effect it by picturing to our imaginations a hell-fire into which
ninety-nine must fall; while one shall be allowed to escape to a
heaven, which is hardly made more alluring to us! Is that the way to
make a man comfortable at the prospect of leaving this world? But it
is necessary to our dignity as men that we shall find the mode of
doing so. To lie quivering and quaking on my bed at the expectation
of the Black Angel of Death, does not suit my manhood,--which would
fear nothing;--which does not, and shall not, stand in awe of aught
but my own sins. How best shall we prepare ourselves for the day
which we know cannot be avoided? That is the question which I have
ever been asking myself,--which you and I have asked ourselves, and
which I thought we had answered. Let us turn the inevitable into
that which shall in itself be esteemed a glory to us. Let us teach
the world so to look forward with longing eyes, and not with a faint
heart. I had thought to have touched some few, not by the eloquence
of my words, but by the energy of my thoughts; and you, oh my friend,
have ever been he whom it has been my greatest joy to have had with
me as the sharer of my aspirations."

"But I am nine years older than you are."

I again passed by the one year added to my age. There was nothing
now in so trifling an error. "But you still agree with me as to the
fundamental truth of our doctrine."

"I suppose so," said Crasweller.

"I suppose so!" repeated I. "Is that all that can be said for the
philosophy to which we have devoted ourselves, and in which nothing
false can be found?"

"It won't teach any one to think it better to live than to die while
he is fit to perform all the functions of life. It might be very well
if you could arrange that a man should be deposited as soon as he
becomes absolutely infirm."

"Some men are infirm at forty."

"Then deposit them," said Crasweller.

"Yes; but they will not own that they are infirm. If a man be weak
at that age, he thinks that with advancing years he will resume the
strength of his youth. There must, in fact, be a Fixed Period. We
have discussed that fifty times, and have always arrived at the same
conclusion."

He sat still, silent, unhappy, and confused. I saw that there was
something on his mind to which he hardly dared to give words. Wishing
to encourage him, I went on. "After all, you have a full twelve
months yet before the day shall have come."

"Two years," he said, doggedly.

"Exactly; two years before your departure, but twelve months before
deposition."

"Two years before deposition," said Crasweller.

At this I own I was astonished. Nothing was better known in the
empire than the ages of the two or three first inhabitants to be
deposited. I would have undertaken to declare that not a man or a
woman in Britannula was in doubt as to Mr Crasweller's exact age. It
had been written in the records, and upon the stones belonging to the
college. There was no doubt that within twelve months of the present
date he was due to be detained there as the first inhabitant. And now
I was astounded to hear him claim another year, which could not be
allowed him.

"That impudent fellow Grundle has been with me," he continued, "and
wishes to make me believe that he can get rid of me in one year. I
have, at any rate, two years left of my out-of-door existence, and I
do not mean to give up a day of it for Grundle or any one else."

It was something to see that he still recognised the law, though he
was so meanly anxious to evade it. There had been some whisperings in
the empire among the elderly men and women of a desire to obtain the
assistance of Great Britain in setting it aside. Peter Grundle, for
instance, Crasweller's senior partner, had been heard to say that
England would not allow a deposited man to be slaughtered. There was
much in that which had angered me. The word slaughter was in itself
peculiarly objectionable to my ears,--to me who had undertaken to
perform the first ceremony as an act of grace. And what had England
to do with our laws? It was as though Russia were to turn upon the
United States and declare that their Congress should be put down.
What would avail the loudest voice of Great Britain against the
smallest spark of a law passed by our Assembly?--unless, indeed,
Great Britain should condescend to avail herself of her great power,
and thus to crush the free voice of those whom she had already
recognised as independent. As I now write, this is what she has
already done, and history will have to tell the story. But it was
especially sad to have to think that there should be a Britannulist
so base, such a coward, such a traitor, as himself to propose this
expedient for adding a few years to his own wretched life.

But Crasweller did not, as it seemed, intend to avail himself of
these whispers. His mind was intent on devising some falsehood by
which he should obtain for himself just one other year of life, and
his expectant son-in-law purposed to prevent him. I hardly knew as I
turned it all in my mind, which of the two was the more sordid; but I
think that my sympathies were rather in accord with the cowardice of
the old man than with the greed of the young. After all, I had known
from the beginning that the fear of death was a human weakness. To
obliterate that fear from the human heart, and to build up a perfect
manhood that should be liberated from so vile a thraldom, had been
one of the chief objects of my scheme. I had no right to be angry
with Crasweller, because Crasweller, when tried, proved himself to
be no stronger than the world at large. It was a matter to me of
infinite regret that it should be so. He was the very man, the very
friend, on whom I had relied with confidence! But his weakness was
only a proof that I myself had been mistaken. In all that Assembly
by which the law had been passed, consisting chiefly of young men,
was there one on whom I could rest with confidence to carry out the
purpose of the law when his own time should come? Ought I not so to
have arranged matters that I myself should have been the first,--to
have postponed the use of the college till such time as I might
myself have been deposited? This had occurred to me often throughout
the whole agitation; but then it had occurred also that none might
perhaps follow me, when under such circumstances I should have
departed!

But in my heart I could forgive Crasweller. For Grundle I felt
nothing but personal dislike. He was anxious to hurry on the
deposition of his father-in-law, in order that the entire possession
of Little Christchurch might come into his own hands just one year
the earlier! No doubt he knew the exact age of the man as well as
I did, but it was not for him to have hastened his deposition. And
then I could not but think, even in this moment of public misery, how
willing Jack would have been to have assisted old Crasweller in his
little fraud, so that Eva might have been the reward. My belief is
that he would have sworn against his own father, perjured himself
in the very teeth of truth, to have obtained from Eva that little
privilege which I had once seen Grundle enjoying.

I was sitting there silent in Crasweller's verandah as all this
passed through my mind. But before I spoke again I was enabled to see
clearly what duty required of me. Eva and Little Christchurch, with
Jack's feelings and interests, and all my wife's longings, must be
laid on one side, and my whole energy must be devoted to the literal
carrying out of the law. It was a great world's movement that had
been projected, and if it were to fail now, just at its commencement,
when everything had been arranged for the work, when again would
there be hope? It was a matter which required legislative sanction in
whatever country might adopt it. No despot could attempt it, let his
power be ever so confirmed. The whole country would rise against him
when informed, in its ignorance, of the contemplated intention. Nor
could it be effected by any congress of which the large majority were
not at any rate under forty years of age. I had seen enough of human
nature to understand its weakness in this respect. All circumstances
had combined to make it practicable in Britannula, but all these
circumstances might never be combined again. And it seemed to me to
depend now entirely on the power which I might exert in creating
courage in the heart of the poor timid creature who sat before me.
I did know that were Britannula to appeal aloud to England, England,
with that desire for interference which has always characterised her,
would interfere. But if the empire allowed the working of the law
to be commenced in silence, then the Fixed Period might perhaps be
regarded as a thing settled. How much, then, depended on the words
which I might use!

"Crasweller," I said, "my friend, my brother!"

"I don't know much about that. A man ought not to be so anxious to
kill his brother."

"If I could take your place, as God will be my judge, I would do so
with as ready a step as a young man to the arms of his beloved. And
if for myself, why not for my brother?"

"You do not know," he said. "You have not, in truth, been tried."

"Would that you could try me!"

"And we are not all made of such stuff as you. You have talked about
this till you have come to be in love with deposition and departure.
But such is not the natural condition of a man. Look back upon all
the centuries, and you will perceive that life has ever been dear
to the best of men. And you will perceive also that they who have
brought themselves to suicide have encountered the contempt of their
fellow-creatures."

I would not tell him of Cato and Brutus, feeling that I could not
stir him to grandeur of heart by Roman instances. He would have told
me that in those days, as far as the Romans knew,


      "the Everlasting had not fixed
   His canon 'gainst self-slaughter."


I must reach him by other methods than these, if at all. "Who can be
more alive than you," I said, "to the fact that man, by the fear of
death, is degraded below the level of the brutes?"

"If so, he is degraded," said Crasweller. "It is his condition."

"But need he remain so? Is it not for you and me to raise him to a
higher level?"

"Not for me--not for me, certainly. I own that I am no more than
man. Little Christchurch is so pleasant to me, and Eva's smiles and
happiness; and the lowing of my flocks and the bleating of my sheep
are so gracious in my ears, and it is so sweet to my eyes to see how
fairly I have turned this wilderness into a paradise, that I own that
I would fain stay here a little longer."

"But the law, my friend, the law,--the law which you yourself have
been so active in creating."

"The law allows me two years yet," said he; that look of stubbornness
which I had before observed again spreading itself over his face.

Now this was a lie; an absolute, undoubted, demonstrable lie. And
yet it was a lie which, by its mere telling, might be made available
for its intended purpose. If it were known through the capital that
Crasweller was anxious to obtain a year's grace by means of so foul a
lie, the year's grace would be accorded to him. And then the Fixed
Period would be at an end.

"I will tell you what it is," said he, anxious to represent his
wishes to me in another light. "Grundle wants to get rid of me."

"Grundle, I fear, has truth on his side," said I, determined to show
him that I, at any rate, would not consent to lend myself to the
furtherance of a falsehood.

"Grundle wants to get rid of me," he repeated in the same tone. "But
he shan't find that I am so easy to deal with. Eva already does
not above half like him. Eva thinks that this depositing plan is
abominable. She says that no good Christians ever thought of it."

"A child--a sweet child--but still only a child; and brought up by
her mother with all the old prejudices."

"I don't know much about that. I never knew a decent woman who wasn't
an Episcopalian. Eva is at any rate a good girl, to endeavour to save
her father; and I'll tell you what--it is not too late yet. As far as
my opinion goes, Jack Neverbend is ten to one a better sort of fellow
than Abraham Grundle. Of course a promise has been made; but promises
are like pie-crusts. Don't you think that Jack Neverbend is quite old
enough to marry a wife, and that he only needs be told to make up
his mind to do it? Little Christchurch would do just as well for him
as for Grundle. If he don't think much of the girl he must think
something of the sheep."

Not think much of the girl! Just at this time Jack was talking to
his mother, morning, noon, and night, about Eva, and threatening
young Grundle with all kinds of schoolboy punishments if he should
persevere in his suit. Only yesterday he had insulted Abraham
grossly, and, as I had reason to suspect, had been more than once
out to Christchurch on some clandestine object, as to which it was
necessary, he thought, to keep old Crasweller in the dark. And then
to be told in this manner that Jack didn't think much of Eva, and
should be encouraged in preference to look after the sheep! He would
have sacrificed every sheep on the place for the sake of half an hour
with Eva alone in the woods. But he was afraid of Crasweller, whom he
knew to have sanctioned an engagement with Abraham Grundle.

"I don't think that we need bring Jack and his love into this
dispute," said I.

"Only that it isn't too late, you know. Do you think that Jack could
be brought to lend an ear to it?"

Perish Jack! perish Eva! perish Jack's mother, before I would allow
myself to be bribed in this manner, to abandon the great object
of all my life! This was evidently Crasweller's purpose. He was
endeavouring to tempt me with his flocks and herds. The temptation,
had he known it, would have been with Eva,--with Eva and the genuine,
downright, honest love of my gallant boy. I knew, too, that at home
I should not dare to tell my wife that the offer had been made to
me and had been refused. My wife could not understand,--Crasweller
could not understand,--how strong may be the passion founded on the
conviction of a life. And honesty, simple honesty, would forbid
it. For me to strike a bargain with one already destined for
deposition,--that he should be withdrawn from his glorious, his
almost immortal state, on the payment of a bribe to me and my family!
I had called this man my friend and brother, but how little had the
man known me! Could I have saved all Gladstonopolis from imminent
flames by yielding an inch in my convictions, I would not have
done so in my then frame of mind; and yet this man,--my friend and
brother,--had supposed that I could be bought to change my purpose by
the pretty slopes and fat flocks of Little Christchurch!

"Crasweller," said I, "let us keep these two things separate; or
rather, in discussing the momentous question of the Fixed Period, let
us forget the loves of a boy and a girl."

"But the sheep, and the oxen, and the pastures! I can still make my
will."

"The sheep, and the oxen, and the pastures must also be forgotten.
They can have nothing to do with the settlement of this matter. My
boy is dear to me, and Eva is dear also, but not to save even their
young lives could I consent to a falsehood in this matter."

"Falsehood! There is no falsehood intended."

"Then there need be no bargain as to Eva, and no need for discussing
the flocks and herds on this occasion. Crasweller, you are sixty-six
now, and will be sixty-seven this time next year. Then the period of
your deposition will have arrived, and in the year following,--two
years hence, mind,--the Fixed Period of your departure will have
come."

"No."

"Is not such the truth?"

"No; you put it all on a year too far. I was never more than nine
years older than you. I remember it all as well as though it were
yesterday when we first agreed to come away from New Zealand. When
will you have to be deposited?"

"In 1989," I said carefully. "My Fixed Period is 1990."

"Exactly; and mine is nine years earlier. It always was nine years
earlier."

It was all manifestly untrue. He knew it to be untrue. For the sake
of one poor year he was imploring my assent to a base falsehood, and
was endeavouring to add strength to his prayer by a bribe. How could
I talk to a man who would so far descend from the dignity of manhood?
The law was there to support me, and the definition of the law was
in this instance supported by ample evidence. I need only go before
the executive of which I myself was the chief, desire that the
established documents should be searched, and demand the body of
Gabriel Crasweller to be deposited in accordance with the law
as enacted. But there was no one else to whom I could leave the
performance of this invidious task, as a matter of course. There
were aldermen in Gladstonopolis and magistrates in the country
whose duty it would no doubt be to see that the law was carried out.
Arrangements to this effect had been studiously made by myself. Such
arrangements would no doubt be carried out when the working of the
Fixed Period had become a thing established. But I had long foreseen
that the first deposition should be effected with some _éclat_ of
voluntary glory. It would be very detrimental to the cause to see my
special friend Crasweller hauled away to the college by constables
through the streets of Gladstonopolis, protesting that he was forced
to his doom twelve months before the appointed time. Crasweller was
a popular man in Britannula, and the people around would not be so
conversant with the fact as was I, nor would they have the same
reasons to be anxious that the law should be accurately followed.
And yet how much depended upon the accuracy of following the law! A
willing obedience was especially desired in the first instance, and a
willing obedience I had expected from my friend Crasweller.

"Crasweller," I said, addressing him with great solemnity; "it is not
so."

"It is--it is; I say it is."

"It is not so. The books that have been printed and sworn to, which
have had your own assent with that of others, are all against you."

"It was a mistake. I have got a letter from my old aunt in Hampshire,
written to my mother when I was born, which proves the mistake."

"I remember the letter well," I said,--for we had all gone through
such documents in performing the important task of settling the
Period. "You were born in New South Wales, and the old lady in
England did not write till the following year."

"Who says so? How can you prove it? She wasn't at all the woman to
let a year go by before she congratulated her sister."

"We have your own signature affirming the date."

"How was I to know when I was born? All that goes for nothing."

"And unfortunately," said I, as though clenching the matter, "the
Bible exists in which your father entered the date with his usual
exemplary accuracy." Then he was silent for a moment as though having
no further evidence to offer. "Crasweller," said I, "are you not man
enough to do this thing in a straightforward, manly manner?"

"One year!" he exclaimed. "I only ask for one year. I do think that,
as the first victim, I have a right to expect that one year should be
granted me. Then Jack Neverbend shall have Little Christchurch, and
the sheep, and the cattle, and Eva also, as his own for ever and
ever,--or at any rate till he too shall be led away to execution!"

A victim; and execution! What language in which to speak of the great
system! For myself I was determined that though I would be gentle
with him I would not yield an inch. The law at any rate was with me,
and I did not think as yet that Crasweller would lend himself to
those who spoke of inviting the interference of England. The law was
on my side, and so must still be all those who in the Assembly had
voted for the Fixed Period. There had been enthusiasm then, and the
different clauses had been carried by large majorities. A dozen
different clauses had been carried, each referring to various
branches of the question. Not only had the period been fixed, but
money had been voted for the college; and the mode of life at the
college had been settled; the very amusements of the old men had been
sanctioned; and last, but not least, the very manner of departure had
been fixed. There was the college now, a graceful building surrounded
by growing shrubs and broad pleasant walks for the old men, endowed
with a kitchen in which their taste should be consulted, and with a
chapel for such of those who would require to pray in public; and all
this would be made a laughing-stock to Britannula, if this old man
Crasweller declined to enter the gates. "It must be done," I said in
a tone of firm decision.

"No!" he exclaimed.

"Crasweller, it must be done. The law demands it."

"No, no; not by me. You and young Grundle together are in a
conspiracy to get rid of me. I am not going to be shut up a whole
year before my time."

With that he stalked into the inner house, leaving me alone on the
verandah. I had nothing for it but to turn on the electric lamp of my
tricycle and steam back to Government House at Gladstonopolis with a
sad heart.




CHAPTER IV.

JACK NEVERBEND.


Six months passed away, which, I must own to me was a period of great
doubt and unhappiness, though it was relieved by certain moments
of triumph. Of course, as the time drew nearer, the question of
Crasweller's deposition became generally discussed by the public of
Gladstonopolis. And so also did the loves of Abraham Grundle and Eva
Crasweller. There were "Evaites" and "Abrahamites" in the community;
for though the match had not yet been altogether broken, it was known
that the two young people differed altogether on the question of the
old man's deposition. It was said by the defendents of Grundle, who
were to be found for the most part among the young men and young
women, that Abraham was simply anxious to carry out the laws of his
country. It happened that, during this period, he was elected to a
vacant seat in the Assembly, so that, when the matter came on for
discussion there, he was able to explain publicly his motives; and
it must be owned that he did so with good words and with a certain
amount of youthful eloquence. As for Eva, she was simply intent on
preserving the lees of her father's life, and had been heard to
express an opinion that the college was "all humbug," and that people
ought to be allowed to live as long as it pleased God to let them.
Of course she had with her the elderly ladies of the community, and
among them my own wife as the foremost. Mrs Neverbend had never made
herself prominent before in any public question; but on this she
seemed to entertain a very warm opinion. Whether this arose entirely
from her desire to promote Jack's welfare, or from a reflection that
her own period of deposition was gradually becoming nearer, I never
could quite make up my mind. She had, at any rate, ten years to run,
and I never heard from her any expressed fear of,--departure. She
was,--and is,--a brave, good woman, attached to her household duties,
anxious for her husband's comfort, but beyond measure solicitous for
all good things to befall that scapegrace Jack Neverbend, for whom
she thinks that nothing is sufficiently rich or sufficiently grand.
Jack is a handsome boy, I grant, but that is about all that can be
said of him; and in this matter he has been diametrically opposed to
his father from first to last.

It will be seen that, in such circumstances, none of these moments
of triumph to which I have alluded can have come to me within my
own home. There Mrs Neverbend and Jack, and after a while Eva, sat
together in perpetual council against me. When these meetings first
began, Eva still acknowledged herself to be the promised bride of
Abraham Grundle. There were her own vows, and her parent's assent,
and something perhaps of remaining love. But presently she whispered
to my wife that she could not but feel horror for the man who was
anxious to "murder her father;" and by-and-by she began to own that
she thought Jack a fine fellow. We had a wonderful cricket club in
Gladstonopolis, and Britannula had challenged the English cricketers
to come and play on the Little Christchurch ground, which they
declared to be the only cricket ground as yet prepared on the face
of the earth which had all the accomplishments possible for the due
prosecution of the game. Now Jack, though very young, was captain
of the club, and devoted much more of his time to that occupation
than to his more legitimate business as a merchant. Eva, who had
not hitherto paid much attention to cricket, became on a sudden
passionately devoted to it; whereas Abraham Grundle, with a
steadiness beyond his years, gave himself up more than ever to the
business of the Assembly, and expressed some contempt for the game,
though he was no mean player.

It had become necessary during this period to bring forward in the
Assembly the whole question of the Fixed Period, as it was felt that,
in the present state of public opinion, it would not be expedient to
carry out the established law without the increased sanction which
would be given to it by a further vote in the House. Public opinion
would have forbidden us to deposit Crasweller without some such
further authority. Therefore it was deemed necessary that a question
should be asked, in which Crasweller's name was not mentioned, but
which might lead to some general debate. Young Grundle demanded one
morning whether it was the intention of the Government to see that
the different clauses as to the new law respecting depositions were
at once carried out. "The House is aware, I believe," he said, "that
the first operation will soon be needed." I may as well state here
that this was repeated to Eva, and that she pretended to take huff at
such a question from her lover. It was most indecent, she said; and
she, after such words, must drop him for ever. It was not for some
months after that, that she allowed Jack's name to be mentioned
with her own; but I was aware that it was partly settled between
her and Jack and Mrs Neverbend. Grundle declared his intention of
proceeding against old Crasweller in reference to the breach of
contract, according to the laws of Britannula; but that Jack's party
disregarded altogether. In telling this, however, I am advancing a
little beyond the point in my story to which I have as yet carried my
reader.

Then there arose a debate upon the whole principle of the measure,
which was carried on with great warmth. I, as President, of course
took no part in it; but, in accordance with our constitution, I heard
it all from the chair which I usually occupied at the Speaker's right
hand. The arguments on which the greatest stress was laid tended to
show that the Fixed Period had been carried chiefly with a view to
relieving the miseries of the old. And it was conclusively shown
that, in a very great majority of cases, life beyond sixty-eight was
all vanity and vexation of spirit. That other argument as to the
costliness of old men to the state was for the present dropped. Had
you listened to young Grundle, insisting with all the vehemence
of youth on the absolute wretchedness to which the aged had been
condemned by the absence of any such law,--had you heard the miseries
of rheumatism, gout, stone, and general debility pictured in the
eloquent words of five-and-twenty,--you would have felt that all
who could lend themselves to perpetuate such a state of things must
be guilty of fiendish cruelty. He really rose to a great height
of parliamentary excellence, and altogether carried with him the
younger, and luckily the greater, part of the House. There was really
nothing to be said on the other side, except a repetition of the
prejudices of the Old World. But, alas! so strong are the weaknesses
of the world, that prejudice can always vanquish truth by the mere
strength of its battalions. Not till it had been proved and re-proved
ten times over, was it understood that the sun could not have stood
still upon Gideon. Crasweller, who was a member, and who took
his seat during these debates without venturing to speak, merely
whispered to his neighbour that the heartless greedy fellow was
unwilling to wait for the wools of Little Christchurch.

Three divisions were made on the debate, and thrice did the
Fixed-Periodists beat the old party by a majority of fifteen in a
House consisting of eighty-five members. So strong was the feeling
in the empire, that only two members were absent, and the number
remained the same during the whole week of the debate. This, I did
think, was a triumph; and I felt that the old country, which had
really nothing on earth to do with the matter, could not interfere
with an opinion expressed so strongly. My heart throbbed with
pleasureable emotion as I heard that old age, which I was myself
approaching, depicted in terms which made its impotence truly
conspicuous,--till I felt that, had it been proposed to deposit all
of us who had reached the age of fifty-eight, I really think that
I should joyfully have given my assent to such a measure, and have
walked off at once and deposited myself in the college.

But it was only at such moments that I was allowed to experience this
feeling of triumph. I was encountered not only in my own house but in
society generally, and on the very streets of Gladstonopolis, by the
expression of an opinion that Crasweller would not be made to retire
to the college at his Fixed Period. "What on earth is there to hinder
it?" I said once to my old friend Ruggles. Ruggles was now somewhat
over sixty, and was an agent in the town for country wool-growers.
He took no part in politics; and though he had never agreed to
the principle of the Fixed Period, had not interested himself in
opposition to it. He was a man whom I regarded as indifferent to
length of life, but one who would, upon the whole, rather face such
lot as Nature might intend for him, than seek to improve it by any
new reform.

"Eva Crasweller will hinder it," said Ruggles.

"Eva is a mere child. Do you suppose that her opinion will be allowed
to interrupt the laws of the whole community, and oppose the progress
of civilisation?"

"Her feelings will," said Ruggles. "Who's to stand a daughter
interceding for the life of her father?"

"One man cannot, but eighty-five can do so."

"The eighty-five will be to the community just what the one would be
to the eighty-five. I am not saying anything about your law. I am
not expressing an opinion whether it would be good or bad. I should
like to live out my own time, though I acknowledge that you Assembly
men have on your shoulders the responsibility of deciding whether I
shall do so or not. You could lead me away and deposit me without any
trouble, because I am not popular. But the people are beginning to
talk about Eva Crasweller and Abraham Grundle, and I tell you that
all the volunteers you have in Britannula will not suffice to take
the old man to the college, and to keep him there till you have
polished him off. He would be deposited again at Little Christchurch
in triumph, and the college would be left a wreck behind him."

This view of the case was peculiarly distressing to me. As the
chief magistrate of the community, nothing is so abhorrent to me as
rebellion. Of a populace that are not law-abiding, nothing but evil
can be predicted; whereas a people who will obey the laws cannot but
be prosperous. It grieved me greatly to be told that the inhabitants
of Gladstonopolis would rise in tumult and destroy the college merely
to favour the views of a pretty girl. Was there any honour, or worse
again, could there be any utility, in being the President of a
republic in which such things could happen? I left my friend Ruggles
in the street, and passed on to the executive hall in a very painful
frame of mind.

When there, tidings reached me of a much sadder nature. At the very
moment at which I had been talking with Ruggles in the street on the
subject, a meeting had been held in the market-place with the express
purpose of putting down the Fixed Period; and who had been the chief
orator on the occasion but Jack Neverbend! My own son had taken upon
himself this new work of public speechifying in direct opposition to
his own father! And I had reason to believe that he was instigated
to do so by my own wife! "Your son, sir, has been addressing the
multitude about the Fixed Period, and they say that it has been quite
beautiful to hear him." It was thus that the matter was told me by
one of the clerks in my office, and I own that I did receive some
slight pleasure at finding that Jack could do something beyond
cricket. But it became immediately necessary to take steps to
stop the evil, and I was the more bound to do so because the only
delinquent named to me was my own son.

"If it be so," I said aloud in the office, "Jack Neverbend shall
sleep this night in prison." But it did not occur to me at the moment
that it would be necessary I should have formal evidence that Jack
was conspiring against the laws before I could send him to jail. I
had no more power over him in that respect than on any one else. Had
I declared that he should be sent to bed without his supper, I should
have expressed myself better both as a father and a magistrate.

I went home, and on entering the house the first person that I saw
was Eva. Now, as this matter went on, I became full of wrath with
my son, and with my wife, and with poor old Crasweller; but I never
could bring myself to be angry with Eva. There was a coaxing, sweet,
feminine way with her which overcame all opposition. And I had
already begun to regard her as my daughter-in-law, and to love
her dearly in that position, although there were moments in which
Jack's impudence and new spirit of opposition almost tempted me to
disinherit him.

"Eva," I said, "what is this that I hear of a public meeting in the
streets?"

"Oh, Mr Neverbend," she said, taking me by the arm, "there are only
a few boys who are talking about papa." Through all the noises and
tumults of these times there was an evident determination to speak
of Jack as a boy. Everything that he did and all that he said were
merely the efflux of his high spirits as a schoolboy. Eva always
spoke of him as a kind of younger brother. And yet I soon found that
the one opponent whom I had most to fear in Britannula was my own
son.

"But why," I asked, "should these foolish boys discuss the serious
question respecting your dear father in the public street?"

"They don't want to have him--deposited," she said, almost sobbing as
she spoke.

"But, my dear," I began, determined to teach her the whole theory of
the Fixed Period with all its advantages from first to last.

But she interrupted me at once. "Oh, Mr Neverbend, I know what a good
thing it is--to talk about. I have no doubt the world will be a great
deal the better for it. And if all the papas had been deposited for
the last five hundred years, I don't suppose that I should care so
much about it. But to be the first that ever it happened to in all
the world! Why should papa be the first? You ought to begin with some
weak, crotchety, poor old cripple, who would be a great deal better
out of the way. But papa is in excellent health, and has all his wits
about him a great deal better than Mr Grundle. He manages everything
at Little Christchurch, and manages it very well."

"But, my dear--" I was going to explain to her that in a question
of such enormous public interest as this of the Fixed Period it
was impossible to consider the merits of individual cases. But she
interrupted me again before I could get out a word.

"Oh, Mr Neverbend, they'll never be able to do it, and I'm afraid
that then you'll be vexed."

"My dear, if the law be--"

"Oh yes, the law is a very beautiful thing; but what's the good of
laws if they cannot be carried out? There's Jack there;--of course
he is only a boy, but he swears that all the executive, and all the
Assembly, and all the volunteers in Britannula, shan't lead my papa
into that beastly college."

"Beastly! My dear, you cannot have seen the college. It is perfectly
beautiful."

"That's only what Jack says. It's Jack that calls it beastly. Of
course he's not much of a man as yet, but he is your own son. And I
do think, that for an earnest spirit about a thing, Jack is a very
fine fellow."

"Abraham Grundle, you know, is just as warm on the other side."

"I hate Abraham Grundle. I don't want ever to hear his name again.
I understand very well what it is that Abraham Grundle is after. He
never cared a straw for me; nor I much for him, if you come to that."

"But you are contracted."

"If you think that I am going to marry a man because our names have
been written down in a book together, you are very much mistaken. He
is a nasty mean fellow, and I will never speak to him again as long
as I live. He would deposit papa this very moment if he had the
power. Whereas Jack is determined to stand up for him as long as he
has got a tongue to shout or hands to fight." These were terrible
words, but I had heard the same sentiment myself from Jack's own
lips. "Of course Jack is nothing to me," she continued, with that
half sob which had become habitual to her whenever she was forced to
speak of her father's deposition. "He is only a boy, but we all know
that he could thrash Abraham Grundle at once. And to my thinking he
is much more fit to be a member of the Assembly."

As she would not hear a word that I said to her, and was only intent
on expressing the warmth of her own feelings, I allowed her to go
her way, and retired to the privacy of my own library. There I
endeavoured to console myself as best I might by thinking of the
brilliant nature of Jack's prospects. He himself was over head and
ears in love with Eva, and it was clear to me that Eva was nearly
as fond of him. And then the sly rogue had found the certain way to
obtain old Crasweller's consent. Grundle had thought that if he could
once see his father-in-law deposited, he would have nothing to do but
to walk into Little Christchurch as master. That was the accusation
generally made against him in Gladstonopolis. But Jack, who did not,
as far as I could see, care a straw for humanity in the matter, had
vehemently taken the side of the Anti-Fixed-Periodists as the safest
way to get the father's consent. There was a contract of marriage,
no doubt, and Grundle would be entitled to take a quarter of the
father's possessions if he could prove that the contract had been
broken. Such was the law of Britannula on the subject. But not a
shilling had as yet been claimed by any man under that law. And
Crasweller no doubt concluded that Grundle would be unwilling to bear
the odium of being the first. And there were clauses in the law which
would make it very difficult for him to prove the validity of the
contract. It had been already asserted by many that a girl could
not be expected to marry the man who had endeavoured to destroy her
father; and although in my mind there could be no doubt that Abraham
Grundle had only done his duty as a senator, there was no knowing
what view of the case a jury might take in Gladstonopolis. And then,
if the worst came to the worst, Crasweller would resign a fourth of
his property almost without a pang, and Jack would content himself in
making the meanness of Grundle conspicuous to his fellow-citizens.

And now I must confess that, as I sat alone in my library, I did
hesitate for an hour as to my future conduct. Might it not be better
for me to abandon altogether the Fixed Period and all its glories?
Even in Britannula the world might be too strong for me. Should I
not take the good things that were offered, and allow Jack to marry
his wife and be happy in his own way? In my very heart I loved him
quite as well as did his mother, and thought that he was the finest
young fellow that Britannula had produced. And if this kind of thing
went on, it might be that I should be driven to quarrel with him
altogether, and to have him punished under the law, like some old
Roman of old. And I must confess that my relations with Mrs Neverbend
made me very unfit to ape the Roman _paterfamilias_. She never
interfered with public business, but she had a way of talking about
household matters in which she was always victorious. Looking back as
I did at this moment on the past, it seemed to me that she and Jack,
who were the two persons I loved best in the world, had been the
enemies who had always successfully conspired against me. "Do have
done with your Fixed Period and nonsense," she had said to me only
yesterday. "It's all very well for the Assembly; but when you come
to killing poor Mr Crasweller in real life, it is quite out of the
question." And then, when I began to explain to her at length the
immense importance of the subject, she only remarked that that would
do very well for the Assembly. Should I abandon it all, take the good
things with which God had provided me, and retire into private life?
I had two sides to my character, and could see myself sitting in
luxurious comfort amidst the furniture of Crasweller's verandah
while Eva and her children were around, and Jack was standing with
a cigar in his mouth outside laying down the law for the cricketers
at Gladstonopolis. "Were not better done as others use," I said to
myself over and over again as I sat there wearied with this contest,
and thinking of the much more frightful agony I should be called upon
to endure when the time had actually come for the departure of old
Crasweller.

And then again if I should fail! For half an hour or so I did fear
that I should fail. I had been always a most popular magistrate, but
now, it seemed, had come the time in which all my popularity must be
abandoned. Jack, who was quick enough at understanding the aspect of
things, had already begun to ask the people whether they would see
their old friend Crasweller murdered in cold blood. It was a dreadful
word, but I was assured that he had used it. How would it be when the
time even for depositing had come, and an attempt was made to lead
the old man up through the streets of Gladstonopolis? Should I have
strength of character to perform the task in opposition to the loudly
expressed wishes of the inhabitants, and to march him along protected
by a strong body of volunteers? And how would it be if the volunteers
themselves refused to act on the side of law and order? Should I not
absolutely fail; and would it not afterwards be told of me that, as
President, I had broken down in an attempt to carry out the project
with which my name had been so long associated?

As I sat there alone I had almost determined to yield. But suddenly
there came upon me a memory of Socrates, of Galileo, of Hampden, and
of Washington. What great things had these men done by constancy,
in opposition to the wills and prejudices of the outside world! How
triumphant they now appeared to have been in fighting against the
enormous odds which power had brought against them! And how pleasant
now were the very sounds of their names to all who loved their
fellow-creatures! In some moments of private thought, anxious as
were now my own, they too must have doubted. They must have asked
themselves the question, whether they were strong enough to carry
their great reforms against the world. But in these very moments the
necessary strength had been given to them. It must have been that,
when almost despairing, they had been comforted by an inner truth,
and had been all but inspired to trust with confidence in their
cause. They, too, had been weak, and had trembled, and had almost
feared. But they had found in their own hearts that on which they
could rely. Had they been less sorely pressed than was I now at this
present moment? Had not they believed and trusted and been confident?
As I thought of it, I became aware that it was not only necessary for
a man to imagine new truths, but to be able to endure, and to suffer,
and to bring them to maturity. And how often before a truth was
brought to maturity must it be necessary that he who had imagined
it, and seen it, and planned it, must give his very life for it,
and all in vain? But not perhaps all in vain as far as the world
was concerned; but only in vain in regard to the feelings and
knowledge of the man himself. In struggling for the welfare of his
fellow-creatures, a man must dare to endure to be obliterated,--must
be content to go down unheard of,--or, worse still, ridiculed, and
perhaps abused by all,--in order that something afterwards may remain
of those changes which he has been enabled to see, but not to carry
out. How many things are requisite to true greatness! But, first
of all, is required that self-negation which is able to plan new
blessings, although certain that those blessings will be accounted as
curses by the world at large.

Then I got up, and as I walked about the room I declared to myself
aloud my purpose. Though I might perish in the attempt, I would
certainly endeavour to carry out the doctrine of the Fixed Period.
Though the people might be against me, and regard me as their
enemy,--that people for whose welfare I had done it all,--still
I would persevere, even though I might be destined to fall in the
attempt. Though the wife of my bosom and the son of my loins should
turn against me, and embitter my last moments by their enmity, still
would I persevere. When they came to speak of the vices and the
virtues of President Neverbend,--to tell of his weakness and his
strength,--it should never be said of him that he had been deterred
by fear of the people from carrying out the great measure which he
had projected solely for their benefit.

Comforted by this resolve, I went into Mrs Neverbend's parlour,
where I found her son Jack sitting with her. They had evidently been
talking about Jack's speech in the market-place; and I could see that
the young orator's brow was still flushed with the triumph of the
moment. "Father," said he, immediately, "you will never be able to
deposit old Crasweller. People won't let you do it."

"The people of Britannula," I said, "will never interfere to prevent
their magistrate from acting in accordance with the law."

"Bother!" said Mrs Neverbend. When my wife said "bother," it was, I
was aware, of no use to argue with her. Indeed, Mrs Neverbend is a
lady upon whom argument is for the most part thrown away. She forms
her opinion from the things around her, and is, in regard to domestic
life, and to her neighbours, and to the conduct of people with whom
she lives, almost invariably right. She has a quick insight, and an
affectionate heart, which together keep her from going astray. She
knows how to do good, and when to do it. But to abstract argument,
and to political truth, she is wilfully blind. I felt it to be
necessary that I should select this opportunity for making Jack
understand that I would not fear his opposition; but I own that I
could have wished that Mrs Neverbend had not been present on the
occasion.

"Won't they?" said Jack. "That's just what I fancy they will do."

"Do you mean to say that it is what you wish them to do,--that you
think it right that they should do it?"

"I don't think Crasweller ought to be deposited, if you mean that,
father."

"Not though the law requires it?" This I said in a tone of authority.
"Have you formed any idea in your own mind of the subjection to the
law which is demanded from all good citizens? Have you ever bethought
yourself that the law should be in all things--"

"Oh, Mr President, pray do not make a speech here," said my wife. "I
shall never understand it, and I do not think that Jack is much wiser
than I am."

"I do not know what you mean by a speech, Sarah." My wife's name is
Sarah. "But it is necessary that Jack should be instructed that he,
at any rate, must obey the law. He is my son, and, as such, it is
essentially necessary that he should be amenable to it. The law
demands--"

"You can't do it, and there's an end of it," said Mrs Neverbend.
"You and all your laws will never be able to put an end to poor Mr
Crasweller,--and it would be a great shame if you did. You don't see
it; but the feeling here in the city is becoming very strong. The
people won't have it; and I must say that it is only rational that
Jack should be on the same side. He is a man now, and has a right to
his own opinion as well as another."

"Jack," said I, with much solemnity, "do you value your father's
blessing?"

"Well; sir, yes," said he. "A blessing, I suppose, means something of
an allowance paid quarterly."

I turned away my face that he might not see the smile which I felt
was involuntarily creeping across it. "Sir," said I, "a father's
blessing has much more than a pecuniary value. It includes that kind
of relation between a parent and his son without which life would be
a burden to me, and, I should think, very grievous to you also."

"Of course I hope that you and I may always be on good terms."

I was obliged to take this admission for what it was worth. "If you
wish to remain on good terms with me," said I, "you must not oppose
me in public when I am acting as a public magistrate."

"Is he to see Mr Crasweller murdered before his very eyes, and to say
nothing about it?" said Mrs Neverbend.

Of all terms in the language there was none so offensive to me as
that odious word when used in reference to the ceremony which I had
intended to be so gracious and alluring. "Sarah," said I, turning
upon her in my anger, "that is a very improper word, and one which
you should not tempt the boy to use, especially in my presence."

"English is English, Mr President," she said. She always called me
"Mr President" when she intended to oppose me.

"You might as well say that a man was murdered when he is--is--killed
in battle." I had been about to say "executed," but I stopped myself.
Men are not executed in Britannula.

"No. He is fighting his country's battle and dies gloriously."

"He has his leg shot off, or his arm, and is too frequently left to
perish miserably on the ground. Here every comfort will be provided
for him, so that he may depart from this world without a pang, when,
in the course of years, he shall have lived beyond the period at
which he can work and be useful."

"But look at Mr Crasweller, father. Who is more useful than he is?"

Nothing had been more unlucky to me as the promoter of the Fixed
Period than the peculiar healthiness and general sanity of him who
was by chance to be our first martyr. It might have been possible
to make Jack understand that a rule which had been found to be
applicable to the world at large was not fitted for some peculiar
individual, but it was quite impossible to bring this home to the
mind of Mrs Neverbend. I must, I felt, choose some other opportunity
for expounding that side of the argument. I would at the present
moment take a leaf out of my wife's book and go straight to my
purpose. "I tell you what it is, young man," said I; "I do not intend
to be thwarted by you in carrying on the great reform to which I
have devoted my life. If you cannot hold your tongue at the present
moment, and abstain from making public addresses in the market-place,
you shall go out of Britannula. It is well that you should travel and
see something of the world before you commence the trade of public
orator. Now I think of it, the Alpine Club from Sydney are to be in
New Zealand this summer, and it will suit you very well to go and
climb up Mount Earnshawe and see all the beauties of nature instead
of talking nonsense here in Gladstonopolis."

"Oh, father, I should like nothing better," cried Jack,
enthusiastically.

"Nonsense," said Mrs Neverbend; "are you going to send the poor boy
to break his neck among the glaciers? Don't you remember that Dick
Ardwinkle was lost there a year or two ago, and came to his death in
a most frightful manner?"

"That was before I was born," said Jack, "or at any rate very shortly
afterwards. And they hadn't then invented the new patent steel
climbing arms. Since they came up, no one has ever been lost among
the glaciers."

"You had better prepare then to go," said I, thinking that the idea
of getting rid of Jack in this manner was very happy.

"But, father," said he, "of course I can't stir a step till after the
great cricket-match."

"You must give up cricket for this time. So good an opportunity for
visiting the New Zealand mountains may never come again."

"Give up the match!" he exclaimed. "Why, the English sixteen are
coming here on purpose to play us, and swear that they'll beat us by
means of the new catapult. But I know that our steam-bowler will beat
their catapult hollow. At any rate I cannot stir from here till after
the match is over. I've got to arrange everything myself. Besides,
they do count something on my spring-batting. I should be regarded
as absolutely a traitor to my country if I were to leave Britannula
while this is going on. The young Marquis of Marylebone, their
leader, is to stay at our house; and the vessel bringing them will be
due here about eleven o'clock next Wednesday."

"Eleven o'clock next Wednesday," said I, in surprise. I had not
as yet heard of this match, nor of the coming of our aristocratic
visitor.

"They won't be above thirty minutes late at the outside. They left
the Land's End three weeks ago last Tuesday at two, and London at
half-past ten. We have had three or four water telegrams from them
since they started, and they hadn't then lost ten minutes on the
journey. Of course I must be at home to receive the Marquis of
Marylebone."

All this set me thinking about many things. It was true that at such
a moment I could not use my parental authority to send Jack out of
the island. To such an extent had the childish amusements of youth
been carried, as to give to them all the importance of politics and
social science. What I had heard about this cricket-match had gone
in at one ear and come out at the other; but now that it was brought
home to me, I was aware that all my authority would not serve to
banish Jack till it was over. Not only would he not obey me, but he
would be supported in his disobedience by even the elders of the
community. But perhaps the worst feature of it all was the arrival
just now at Gladstonopolis of a crowd of educated Englishmen. When
I say educated I mean prejudiced. They would be Englishmen with
no ideas beyond those current in the last century, and would be
altogether deaf to the wisdom of the Fixed Period. I saw at a glance
that I must wait till they should have taken their departure, and
postpone all further discussion on the subject as far as might be
possible till Gladstonopolis should have been left to her natural
quiescence after the disturbance of the cricket. "Very well," said
I, leaving the room. "Then it may come to pass that you will never be
able to visit the wonderful glories of Mount Earnshawe."

"Plenty of time for that," said Jack, as I shut the door.




CHAPTER V.

THE CRICKET-MATCH.


I had been of late so absorbed in the affairs of the Fixed Period,
that I had altogether forgotten the cricket-match and the noble
strangers who were about to come to our shores. Of course I had heard
of it before, and had been informed that Lord Marylebone was to be
our guest. I had probably also been told that Sir Lords Longstop and
Sir Kennington Oval were to be entertained at Little Christchurch.
But when I was reminded of this by Jack a few days later, it had
quite gone out of my head. But I now at once began to recognise the
importance of the occasion, and to see that for the next two months
Crasweller, the college, and the Fixed Period must be banished, if
not from my thoughts, at any rate from my tongue. Better could not be
done in the matter than to have them banished from the tongue of all
the world, as I certainly should not be anxious to have the subject
ventilated within hearing and speaking of the crowd of thoroughly
old-fashioned, prejudiced, aristocratic young Englishmen who were
coming to us. The cricket-match sprang to the front so suddenly, that
Jack seemed to have forgotten all his energy respecting the college,
and to have transferred his entire attention to the various weapons,
offensive and defensive, wherewith the London club was, if possible,
to be beaten. We are never short of money in Britannula; but it
seemed, as I watched the various preparations made for carrying
on two or three days' play at Little Christchurch, that England
must be sending out another army to take another Sebastopol. More
paraphernalia were required to enable these thirty-two lads to
play their game with propriety than would have been needed for the
depositing of half Gladstonopolis. Every man from England had his
attendant to look after his bats and balls, and shoes and greaves;
and it was necessary, of course, that our boys should be equally well
served. Each of them had two bicycles for his own use, and as they
were all constructed with the new double-acting levers, they passed
backwards and forwards along the bicycle track between the city and
Crasweller's house with astonishing rapidity. I used to hear that
the six miles had been done in fifteen minutes. Then there came
a struggle with the English and the Britannulists, as to which
would get the nearest to fourteen minutes; till it seemed that
bicycle-racing and not cricket had been the purpose for which the
English had sent out the 4000-ton steam-yacht at the expense of all
the cricketers of the nation. It was on this occasion that the track
was first divided for comers and goers, and that volunteers were set
to prevent stragglers from crossing except by the regular bridges. I
found that I, the President of the Republic, was actually forbidden
to go down in my tricycle to my old friend's house, unless I would
do so before noon. "You'd be run over and made mince-meat of," said
Jack, speaking of such a catastrophe with less horror than I thought
it ought to have engendered in his youthful mind. Poor Sir Lords was
run down by our Jack,--collided as Jack called it. "He hadn't quite
impetus enough on to make the turning sharp as he ought," said Jack,
without the slightest apparent regret at what had occurred. "Another
inch and a half would have saved him. If he can touch a ball from our
steam-bowler when I send it, I shall think more of his arms than I
do of his legs, and more of his eyes than I do of his lungs. What a
fellow to send out! Why, he's thirty, and has been eating soup, they
tell me, all through the journey." These young men had brought a
doctor with them, Dr MacNuffery, to prescribe to them what to eat and
drink at each meal; and the unfortunate baronet whom Jack had nearly
slaughtered, had encountered the ill-will of the entire club because
he had called for mutton-broth when he was sea-sick.

They were to be a month in Britannula before they would begin the
match, so necessary was it that each man should be in the best
possible physical condition. They had brought their Dr MacNuffery,
and our lads immediately found the need of having a doctor of their
own. There was, I think, a little pretence in this, as though Dr
Bobbs had been a long-established officer of the Southern Cross
cricket club, they had not in truth thought of it, and Bobbs was only
appointed the night after MacNuffery's position and duties had been
made known. Bobbs was a young man just getting into practice in
Gladstonopolis, and understood measles, I fancy, better than the
training of athletes. MacNuffery was the most disagreeable man of
the English party, and soon began to turn up his nose at Bobbs. But
Bobbs, I think, got the better of him. "Do you allow coffee to your
club;--coffee?" asked MacNuffery, in a voice mingling ridicule and
reproof with a touch of satire, as he had begun to guess that Bobbs
had not been long attending to his present work. "You'll find," said
Bobbs, "that young men in our air do not need the restraints which
are necessary to you English. Their fathers and mothers were not soft
and flabby before them, as was the case with yours, I think." Lord
Marylebone looked across the table, I am told, at Sir Kennington
Oval, and nothing afterwards was said about diet.

But a great trouble arose, which, however, rather assisted Jack in
his own prospects in the long-run,--though for a time it seemed to
have another effect. Sir Kennington Oval was much struck by Eva's
beauty, and, living as he did in Crasweller's house, soon had an
opportunity of so telling her. Abraham Grundle was one of the
cricketers, and, as such, was frequently on the ground at Little
Christchurch; but he did not at present go into Crasweller's house,
and the whole fashionable community of Gladstonopolis was beginning
to entertain the opinion that that match was off. Grundle had
been heard to declare most authoritatively that when the day came
Crasweller should be deposited, and had given it as his opinion that
the power did not exist which could withstand the law of Britannula.
Whether in this he preferred the law to Eva, or acted in anger
against Crasweller for interfering with his prospects, or had an idea
that it would not be worth his while to marry the girl while the
girl's father should be left alive, or had gradually fallen into this
bitterness of spirit from the opposition shown to him, I could not
quite tell. And he was quite as hostile to Jack as to Crasweller. But
he seemed to entertain no aversion at all to Sir Kennington Oval;
nor, I was informed, did Eva. I had known that for the last month
Jack's mother had been instant with him to induce him to speak out
to Eva; but he, who hardly allowed me, his father, to open my mouth
without contradicting me, and who in our house ordered everything
about just as though he were the master, was so bashful in the girl's
presence that he had never as yet asked her to be his wife. Now
Sir Kennington had come in his way, and he by no means carried
his modesty so far as to abstain from quarrelling with him. Sir
Kennington was a good-looking young aristocrat, with plenty of words,
but nothing special to say for himself. He was conspicuous for his
cricketing finery, and when got up to take his place at the wicket,
looked like a diver with his diving-armour all on; but Jack said that
he was very little good at the game. Indeed, for mere cricket Jack
swore that the English would be "nowhere" but for eight professional
players whom they had brought out with them. It must be explained
that our club had no professionals. We had not come to that
yet,--that a man should earn his bread by playing cricket. Lord
Marylebone and his friend had brought with them eight professional
"slaves," as our young men came to call them,--most ungraciously.
But each "slave" required as much looking after as did the masters,
and they thought a great deal more of themselves than did the
non-professionals.

Jack had in truth been attempting to pass Sir Kennington on the
bicycle track when he had upset poor Sir Lords Longstop; and,
according to his own showing, he had more than once allowed Sir
Kennington to start in advance, and had run into Little Christchurch
bicycle quay before him. This had not given rise to the best feeling,
and I feared lest there might be an absolute quarrel before the match
should have been played. "I'll punch that fellow's head some of
these days," Jack said one evening when he came back from Little
Christchurch.

"What's the matter now?" I asked.

"Impudent puppy! He thinks because he has got an unmeaning handle to
his name, that everybody is to come to his whistle. They tell me that
his father was made what they call a baronet because he set a broken
arm for one of those twenty royal dukes that England has to pay for."

"Who has had to come to his whistle now?" asked his mother.

"He went over with his steam curricle, and sent to ask Eva whether
she would not take a drive with him on the cliffs."

"She needn't have gone unless she wished it," I said.

"But she did go; and there she was with him for a couple of hours.
He's the most unmeaning upstart of a puppy I ever met. He has not
three ideas in the world. I shall tell Eva what I think about him."

The quarrel went on during the whole period of preparation, till it
seemed as though Gladstonopolis had nothing else to talk about. Eva's
name was in every one's mouth, till my wife was nearly beside herself
with anger. "A girl," said she, "shouldn't get herself talked about
in that way by every one all round. I don't suppose the man intends
to marry her."

"I can't see why he shouldn't," I replied.

"She's nothing more to him than a pretty provincial lass. What would
she be in London?"

"Why should not Mr Crasweller's daughter be as much admired in London
as here?" I answered. "Beauty is the same all the world over, and her
money will be thought of quite as much there as here."

"But she will have such a spot upon her."

"Spot! What spot?"

"As the daughter of the first deposited of the Fixed Period
people,--if ever that comes off. Or if it don't, she'll be talked
about as her who was to be. I don't suppose any Englishman will think
of marrying her."

This made me very angry. "What!" I said. "Do you, a Britannulist
and my wife, intend to turn the special glory of Britannula to the
disgrace of her people? That which we should be ready to claim as
the highest honour,--as being an advance in progress and general
civilisation never hitherto even thought of among other people,--to
have conceived that, and to have prepared it, in every detail for
perfect consummation,--that is to be accounted as an opprobrium to
our children, by you, the Lady President of the Republic! Have you
no love of country, no patriotism, no feeling at any rate of what
has been done for the world's welfare by your own family?" I own
I did feel vexed when she spoke of Eva as having been as it were
contaminated by being a Britannulist, because of the law enacting the
Fixed Period.

"She'd better face it out at home than go across the world to hear
what other people say of us. It may be all very well as far as state
wisdom goes; but the world isn't ripe for it, and we shall only be
laughed at."

There was truth in this, and a certain amount of concession had also
been made. I can fancy that an easy-going butterfly should laugh
at the painful industry of the ant; and I should think much of the
butterfly who should own that he was only a butterfly because it was
the age of butterflies. "The few wise," said I, "have ever been the
laughing-stock of silly crowds."

"But Eva isn't one of the wise," she replied, "and would be laughed
at without having any of your philosophy to support her. However, I
don't suppose the man is thinking of it."

But the young man was thinking of it; and had so far made up his mind
before he went as to ask Eva to marry him out of hand and return with
him to England. We heard of it when the time came, and heard also
that Eva had declared that she could not make up her mind so quickly.
That was what was said when the time drew near for the departure
of the yacht. But we did not hear it direct from Eva, nor yet from
Crasweller. All these tidings came to us from Jack, and Jack was in
this instance somewhat led astray.

Time passed on, and the practice on the Little Christchurch ground
was continued. Several accidents happened, but the cricketers took
very little account of these. Jack had his cheek cut open by a ball
running off his bat on to his face; and Eva, who saw the accident,
was carried fainting into the house. Sir Kennington behaved
admirably, and himself brought him home in his curricle. We were
told afterwards that this was done at Eva's directions, because old
Crasweller would have been uncomfortable with the boy in his house,
seeing that he could not in his present circumstances receive me or
my wife. Mrs Neverbend swore a solemn oath that Jack should be made
to abandon his cricket; but Jack was playing again the next day, with
his face strapped up athwart and across with republican black-silk
adhesive. When I saw Bobbs at work over him I thought that one side
of his face was gone, and that his eye would be dreadfully out of
place. "All his chance of marrying Eva is gone," said I to my wife.
"The nasty little selfish slut!" said Mrs Neverbend. But at two
the next day Jack had been patched up, and nothing could keep him
from Little Christchurch. Bobbs was with him the whole morning, and
assured his mother that if he could go out and take exercise his
eye would be all right. His mother offered to take a walk with him
in the city park; but Bobbs declared that violent exercise would
be necessary to keep the eye in its right place, and Jack was at
Little Christchurch manipulating his steam-bowler in the afternoon.
Afterwards Littlebat, one of the English professionals, had his leg
broken, and was necessarily laid on one side; and young Grundle was
hurt on the lower part of the back, and never showed himself again
on the scene of danger. "My life is too precious in the Assembly
just at present," he said to me, excusing himself. He alluded to
the Fixed Period debate, which he knew would be renewed as soon as
the cricketers were gone. I no doubt depended very much on Abraham
Grundle, and assented. The match was afterwards carried on with
fifteen on each side; for though each party had spare players, they
could not agree as to the use of them. Our next man was better than
theirs, they said, and they were anxious that we should take our
second best, to which our men would not agree. Therefore the game was
ultimately played with thirty combatants.

"So one of our lot is to come back for a wife, almost immediately,"
said Lord Marylebone at our table the day before the match was to be
played.

"Oh, indeed, my lord!" said Mrs Neverbend. "I am glad to find that a
Britannulan young lady has been so effective. Who is the gentleman?"
It was easy to see by my wife's face, and to know by her tone of
voice, that she was much disturbed by the news.

"Sir Kennington," said Lord Marylebone. "I supposed you had all heard
of it." Of course we had all heard of it; but Lord Marylebone did not
know what had been Mrs Neverbend's wishes for her own son.

"We did know that Sir Kennington had been very attentive, but there
is no knowing what that means from you foreign gentlemen. It's a pity
that poor Eva, who is a good girl in her way, should have her head
turned." This came from my wife.

"It's Oval's head that is turned," continued his lordship; "I never
saw a man so bowled over in my life. He's awfully in love with her."

"What will his friends say at home?" asked Mrs Neverbend.

"We understand that Miss Crasweller is to have a large fortune;
eight or ten thousand a-year at the least. I should imagine that
she will be received with open arms by all the Ovals; and as for a
foreigner,--we don't call you foreigners."

"Why not?" said I, rather anxious to prove that we were foreigners.
"What makes a foreigner but a different allegiance? Do we not call
the Americans foreigners?" Great Britain and France had been for
years engaged in the great maritime contest with the united fleets
of Russia and America, and had only just made that glorious peace by
which, as politicians said, all the world was to be governed for the
future; and after that, it need not be doubted but that the Americans
were foreign to the English;--and if the Americans, why not the
Britannulists? We had separated ourselves from Great Britain, without
coming to blows indeed; but still our own flag, the Southern Cross,
flew as proudly to our gentle breezes as ever had done the Union-jack
amidst the inclemency of a British winter. It was the flag of
Britannula, with which Great Britain had no concern. At the present
moment I was specially anxious to hear a distinguished Englishman
like Lord Marylebone acknowledge that we were foreigners. "If we be
not foreigners, what are we, my lord?"

"Englishmen, of course," said he. "What else? Don't you talk
English?"

"So do the Americans, my lord," said I, with a smile that was
intended to be gracious. "Our language is spreading itself over the
world, and is no sign of nationality."

"What laws do you obey?"

"English,--till we choose to repeal them. You are aware that we have
already freed ourselves from the stain of capital punishment."

"Those coins pass in your market-places?" Then he brought out a gold
piece from his waistcoat-pocket, and slapped it down on the table.
It was one of those pounds which the people will continue to call
sovereigns, although the name has been made actually illegal for the
rendering of all accounts. "Whose is this image and superscription?"
he asked. "And yet this was paid to me to-day at one of your banks,
and the lady cashier asked me whether I would take sovereigns. How
will you get over that, Mr President?"

A small people,--numerically small,--cannot of course do everything
at once. We have been a little slack perhaps in instituting a
national mint. In fact there was a difficulty about the utensil by
which we would have clapped a Southern Cross over the British arms,
and put the portrait of the Britannulan President of the day,--mine
for instance,--in the place where the face of the British monarch has
hitherto held its own. I have never pushed the question much, lest
I should seem, as have done some presidents, over anxious to exhibit
myself. I have ever thought more of the glory of our race than of
putting forward my own individual self,--as may be seen by the whole
history of the college. "I will not attempt to get over it," I said;
"but according to my ideas, a nation does not depend on the small
external accidents of its coin or its language."

"But on the flag which it flies. After all, a bit of bunting is
easy."

"Nor on its flag, Lord Marylebone, but on the hearts of its people.
We separated from the old mother country with no quarrel, with no
ill-will; but with the mutual friendly wishes of both. If there be
a trace of the feeling of antagonism in the word foreigners, I will
not use it; but British subjects we are not, and never can be again."
This I said because I felt that there was creeping up, as it were in
the very atmosphere, a feeling that England should be again asked
to annex us, so as to save our old people from the wise decision to
which our own Assembly had come. Oh for an adamantine law to protect
the human race from the imbecility, the weakness, the discontent,
and the extravagance of old age! Lord Marylebone, who saw that I
was in earnest, and who was the most courteous of gentlemen, changed
the conversation. I had already observed that he never spoke about
the Fixed Period in our house, though, in the condition in which the
community then was, he must have heard it discussed elsewhere.

The day for the match had come. Jack's face was so nearly healed that
Mrs Neverbend had been brought to believe entirely in the efficacy of
violent exercise for cuts and bruises. Grundle's back was still bad,
and the poor fellow with the broken leg could only be wheeled out in
front of the verandah to look at the proceedings through one of those
wonderful little glasses which enable the critic to see every motion
of the players at half-a-mile's distance. He assured me that the
precision with which Jack set his steam-bowler was equal to that of
one of those Shoeburyness gunners who can hit a sparrow as far as
they can see him, on condition only that they know the precise age of
the bird. I gave Jack great credit in my own mind, because I felt
that at the moment he was much down at heart. On the preceding day
Sir Kennington had been driving Eva about in his curricle, and Jack
had returned home tearing his hair. "They do it on purpose to put him
off his play," said his mother. But if so, they hadn't known Jack.
Nor indeed had I quite known him up to this time.

I was bound myself to see the game, because a special tent and a
special glass had been prepared for the President. Crasweller walked
by as I took my place, but he only shook his head sadly and was
silent. It now wanted but four months to his deposition. Though there
was a strong party in his favour, I do not know that he meddled much
with it. I did hear from different sources that he still continued to
assert that he was only nine years my senior, by which he intended to
gain the favour of a postponement of his term by twelve poor months;
but I do not think that he ever lent himself to the other party.
Under my auspices he had always voted for the Fixed Period, and he
could hardly oppose it now in theory. They tossed for the first
innings, and the English club won it. It was all England against
Britannula! Think of the population of the two countries. We had,
however, been taught to believe that no community ever played cricket
as did the Britannulans. The English went in first, with the two
baronets at the wickets. They looked like two stout Minervas with
huge wicker helmets. I know a picture of the goddess, all helmet,
spear, and petticoats, carrying her spear over her shoulder as she
flies through the air over the cities of the earth. Sir Kennington
did not fly, but in other respects he was very like the goddess,
so completely enveloped was he in his india-rubber guards, and so
wonderful was the machine upon his head, by which his brain and
features were to be protected.

As he took his place upon the ground there was great cheering. Then
the steam-bowler was ridden into its place by the attendant engineer,
and Jack began his work. I could see the colour come and go in his
face as he carefully placed the ball and peeped down to get its
bearing. It seemed to me as though he were taking infinite care to
level it straight and even at Sir Kennington's head. I was told
afterwards that he never looked at Sir Kennington, but that, having
calculated his distance by means of a quicksilver levelling-glass,
his object was to throw the ball on a certain inch of turf, from
which it might shoot into the wicket at such a degree as to make
it very difficult for Sir Kennington to know what to do with it.
It seemed to me to take a long time, during which the fourteen men
around all looked as though each man were intending to hop off to
some other spot than that on which he was standing. There used, I am
told, to be only eleven of these men; but now, in a great match, the
long-offs, and the long-ons, and the rest of them, are all doubled.
The double long-off was at such a distance that, he being a small
man, I could only just see him through the field-glass which I kept
in my waistcoat-pocket. When I had been looking hard at them for
what seemed to be a quarter of an hour, and the men were apparently
becoming tired of their continual hop, and when Jack had stooped
and kneeled and sprawled, with one eye shut, in every conceivable
attitude, on a sudden there came a sharp snap, a little smoke, and
lo, Sir Kennington Oval was--out!

There was no doubt about it. I myself saw the two bails fly away
into infinite space, and at once there was a sound of kettle-drums,
trumpets, fifes, and clarionets. It seemed as though all the loud
music of the town band had struck up at the moment with their
shrillest notes. And a huge gun was let off.


   "And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
    The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
    The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth.
    Now drinks the king to Hamlet."


I could not but fancy, at these great signs of success, that I was
Hamlet's father.

Sir Kennington Oval was out,--out at the very first ball. There
could be no doubt about it, and Jack's triumph was complete. It was
melancholy to see the English Minerva, as he again shouldered his
spear and walked back to his tent. In spite of Jack's good play, and
the success on the part of my own countrymen, I could not but be
sorry to think that the young baronet had come half round the world
to be put out at the first ball. There was a cruelty in it,--an
inhospitality,--which, in spite of the exigencies of the game, went
against the grain. Then, when the shouting, and the holloaing, and
the flinging up of the ball were still going on, I remembered that,
after it, he would have his consolation with Eva. And poor Jack,
when his short triumph was over, would have to reflect that, though
fortunate in his cricket, he was unhappy in his love. As this
occurred to me, I looked back towards the house, and there, from a
little lattice window at the end of the verandah, I saw a lady's
handkerchief waving. Could it be that Eva was waving it so as to
comfort her vanquished British lover? In the meantime Minerva went
to his tent, and hid himself among sympathetic friends; and I was
told afterwards that he was allowed half a pint of bitter beer by
Dr MacNuffery.

After twenty minutes spent in what seemed to me the very ostentation
of success, another man was got to the wickets. This was Stumps,
one of the professionals, who was not quite so much like a Minerva,
though he, too, was prodigiously greaved. Jack again set his ball,
snap went the machine, and Stumps wriggled his bat. He touched the
ball, and away it flew behind the wicket. Five republican Minervas
ran after it as fast as their legs could carry them; and I was told
by a gentleman who sat next to me scoring, that a dozen runs had been
made. He spent a great deal of time in explaining how, in the old
times, more than six at a time were never scored. Now all this was
altered. A slight tip counted ever so much more than a good forward
blow, because the ball went behind the wicket. Up flew on all sides
of the ground figures to show that Stumps had made a dozen, and two
British clarionets were blown with a great deal of vigour. Stumps was
a thick-set, solid, solemn-looking man, who had been ridiculed by our
side as being much too old for the game; but he seemed to think very
little of Jack's precise machine. He kept chopping at the ball, which
always went behind, till he had made a great score. It was two hours
before Jack had sorely lamed him in the hip, and the umpire had given
it leg-before-wicket. Indeed it was leg-before-wicket, as the poor
man felt when he was assisted back to his tent. However, he had
scored 150. Sir Lords Longstop, too, had run up a good score before
he was caught out by the middle long-off,--a marvellous catch they
all said it was,--and our trumpets were blown for fully five minutes.
But the big gun was only fired when a ball was hurled from the
machine directly into the wicket.

At the end of three days the Britishers were all out, and the runs
were numbered in four figures. I had my doubts, as I looked at the
contest, whether any of them would be left to play out the match. I
was informed that I was expected to take the President's seat every
day; but when I heard that there were to be two innings for each set,
I positively declined. But Crasweller took my place; and I was told
that a gleam of joy shot across his worn, sorrowful face when Sir
Kennington began the second innings with ten runs. Could he really
wish, in his condition, to send his daughter away to England simply
that she might be a baronet's wife?

When the Britannulists went in for the second time, they had 1500
runs to get; and it was said afterwards that Grundle had bet four to
one against his own side. This was thought to be very shabby on his
part, though if such was the betting, I don't see why he should lose
his money by backing his friends. Jack declared in my hearing that
he would not put a shilling on. He did not wish either to lose his
money or to bet against himself. But he was considerably disheartened
when he told me that he was not going in on the first day of their
second innings. He had not done much when the Britannulists were in
before,--had only made some thirty or forty runs; and, worse than
that, Sir Kennington Oval had scored up to 300. They told me that
his Pallas helmet was shaken with tremendous energy as he made his
running. And again, that man Stumps had seemed to be invincible,
though still lame, and had carried out his bat with a tremendous
score. He trudged away without any sign of triumph; but Jack said
that the professional was the best man they had.

On the second day of our party's second innings,--the last day but
one of the match,--Jack went in. They had only made 150 runs on the
previous day, and three wickets were down. Our kettle-drums had had
but little opportunity for making themselves heard. Jack was very
despondent, and had had some tiff with Eva. He had asked Eva whether
she were not going to England, and Eva had said that perhaps she
might do so if some Britannulists did not do their duty. Jack had
chosen to take this as a bit of genuine impertinence, and had been
very sore about it. Stumps was bowling from the British catapult,
and very nearly gave Jack his quietus during the first over. He hit
wildly, and four balls passed him without touching his wicket. Then
came his turn again, and he caught the first ball with his Neverbend
spring-bat,--for he had invented it himself,--such a swipe, as he
called it, that nobody has ever yet been able to find the ball. The
story goes that it went right up to the verandah, and that Eva picked
it up, and has treasured it ever since.

Be that as it may, during the whole of that day, and the next,
nobody was able to get him out. There was a continual banging of the
kettle-drum, which seemed to give him renewed spirits. Every ball as
it came to him was sent away into infinite space. All the Englishmen
were made to retire to further distances from the wickets, and to
stand about almost at the extremity of the ground. The management of
the catapults was intrusted to one man after another,--but in vain.
Then they sent the catapults away, and tried the old-fashioned slow
bowling. It was all the same to Jack. He would not be tempted out of
his ground, but stood there awaiting the ball, let it come ever so
slowly. Through the first of the two days he stood before his wicket,
hitting to the right and the left, till hope seemed to spring up
again in the bosom of the Britannulists. And I could see that the
Englishmen were becoming nervous and uneasy, although the odds were
still much in their favour.

At the end of the first day Jack had scored above 500;--but eleven
wickets had gone down, and only three of the most inferior players
were left to stand up with him. It was considered that Jack must
still make another 500 before the game would be won. This would allow
only twenty each to the other three players. "But," said Eva to me
that evening, "they'll never get the twenty each."

"And on which side are you, Eva?" I inquired with a smile. For in
truth I did believe at that moment that she was engaged to the
baronet.

"How dare you ask, Mr Neverbend?" she demanded, with indignation. "Am
not I a Britannulist as well as you?" And as she walked away I could
see that there was a tear in her eye.

On the last day feelings were carried to a pitch which was more
befitting the last battle of a great war,--some Waterloo of other
ages,--than the finishing of a prolonged game of cricket. Men looked,
and moved, and talked as though their all were at stake. I cannot
say that the Englishmen seemed to hate us, or we them; but that the
affair was too serious to admit of playful words between the parties.
And those unfortunates who had to stand up with Jack were so afraid
of themselves that they were like young country orators about to make
their first speeches. Jack was silent, determined, and yet inwardly
proud of himself, feeling that the whole future success of the
republic was on his shoulders. He ordered himself to be called at a
certain hour, and the assistants in our household listened to his
words as though feeling that everything depended on their obedience.
He would not go out on his bicycle, as fearing that some accident
might occur. "Although, ought I not to wish that I might be struck
dead?" he said; "as then all the world would know that though
beaten, it had been by the hand of God, and not by our default."
It astonished me to find that the boy was quite as eager about his
cricket as I was about my Fixed Period.

At eleven o'clock I was in my seat, and on looking round, I could
see that all the rank and fashion of Britannula were at the ground.
But all the rank and fashion were there for nothing, unless they had
come armed with glasses. The spaces required by the cricketers were
so enormous that otherwise they could not see anything of the play.
Under my canopy there was room for five, of which I was supposed
to be able to fill the middle thrones. On the two others sat those
who officially scored the game. One seat had been demanded for Mrs
Neverbend. "I will see his fate,--whether it be his glory or his
fall,"--said his mother, with true Roman feeling. For the other Eva
had asked, and of course it had been awarded to her. When the play
began, Sir Kennington was at the catapult and Jack at the opposite
wicket, and I could hardly say for which she felt the extreme
interest which she certainly did exhibit. I, as the day went on,
found myself worked up to such excitement that I could hardly keep my
hat on my head or behave myself with becoming presidential dignity.
At one period, as I shall have to tell, I altogether disgraced
myself.

There seemed to be an opinion that Jack would either show himself
at once unequal to the occasion, and immediately be put out,--which
opinion I think that all Gladstonopolis was inclined to hold,--or
else that he would get his "eye in" as he called it, and go on as
long as the three others could keep their bats. I know that his own
opinion was the same as that general in the city, and I feared that
his very caution at the outset would be detrimental to him. The great
object on our side was that Jack should, as nearly as possible, be
always opposite to the bowler. He was to take the four first balls,
making but one run off the last, and then beginning another over at
the opposite end do the same thing again. It was impossible to manage
this exactly; but something might be done towards effecting it.
There were the three men with whom to work during the day. The first
unfortunately was soon made to retire; but Jack, who had walked up to
my chair during the time allowed for fetching down the next man, told
me that he had "got his eye," and I could see a settled look of fixed
purpose in his face. He bowed most gracefully to Eva, who was so
stirred by emotion that she could not allow herself to speak a word.
"Oh Jack, I pray for you; I pray for you," said his mother. Jack, I
fancy, thought more of Eva's silence than of his mother's prayer.

Jack went back to his place, and hit the first ball with such energy
that he drove it into the other stumps and smashed them to pieces.
Everybody declared that such a thing had never been before achieved
at cricket,--and the ball passed on, and eight or ten runs were
scored. After that Jack seemed to be mad with cricketing power. He
took off his greaves, declaring that they impeded his running, and
threw away altogether his helmet. "Oh, Eva, is he not handsome?"
said his mother, in ecstasy, hanging across my chair. Eva sat quiet
without a sign. It did not become me to say a word, but I did think
that he was very handsome;--and I thought also how uncommonly hard
it would be to hold him if he should chance to win the game. Let
him make what orations he might against the Fixed Period, all
Gladstonopolis would follow him if he won this game of cricket for
them.

I cannot pretend to describe all the scenes of that day, nor the
growing anxiety of the Englishmen as Jack went on with one hundred
after another. He had already scored nearly 1000 when young Grabbe
was caught out. Young Grabbe was very popular, because he was so
altogether unlike his partner Grundle. He was a fine frank fellow,
and was Jack's great friend. "I don't mean to say that he can really
play cricket," Jack had said that morning, speaking with great
authority; "but he is the best fellow in the world, and will do
exactly what you ask him." But he was out now; and Jack, with over
200 still to make, declared that he gave up the battle almost as
lost.

"Don't say that, Mr Neverbend," whispered Eva.

"Ah yes; we're gone coons. Even your sympathy cannot bring us round
now. If anything could do it that would!"

"In my opinion," continued Eva, "Britannula will never be beaten as
long as Mr Neverbend is at the wicket."

"Sir Kennington has been too much for us, I fear," said Jack, with a
forced smile, as he retired.

There was now but the one hope left. Mr Brittlereed remained, but
he was all. Mr Brittlereed was a gentleman who had advanced nearer
to his Fixed Period than any other of the cricketers. He was nearly
thirty-five years of age, and was regarded by them all as quite an
old man. He was supposed to know all the rules of the game, and to
be rather quick in keeping the wicket. But Jack had declared that
morning that he could not hit a ball in a week of Sundays, "He
oughtn't to be here," Jack had whispered; "but you know how those
things are managed." I did not know how those things were managed,
but I was sorry that he should be there, as Jack did not seem to want
him.

Mr Brittlereed now went to his wicket, and was bound to receive the
first ball. This he did; made one run, whereas he might have made
two, and then had to begin the war over. It certainly seemed as
though he had done it on purpose. Jack in his passion broke the
handle of his spring-bat, and then had half-a-dozen brought to him in
order that he might choose another. "It was his favourite bat," said
his mother, and buried her face in her handkerchief.

I never understood how it was that Mr Brittlereed lived through that
over; but he did live, although he never once touched the ball. Then
it came to be Jack's turn, and he at once scored thirty-nine during
the over, leaving himself at the proper wicket for re-commencing
the operation. I think that this gave him new life. It added, at
any rate, new fire to every Britannulist on the ground, and I must
say that after that Mr Brittlereed managed the matter altogether to
Jack's satisfaction. Over after over Jack went on, and received every
ball that was bowled. They tried their catapult with single, double,
and even treble action. Sir Kennington did his best, flinging the
ball with his most tremendous impetus, and then just rolling it up
with what seemed to me the most provoking languor. It was all the
same to Jack. He had in truth got his "eye in," and as surely as the
ball came to him, it was sent away to some most distant part of the
ground. The Britishers were mad with dismay as Jack worked his way on
through the last hundred. It was piteous to see the exertions which
poor Mr Brittlereed made in running backwards and forwards across the
ground. They tried, I think, to bustle him by the rapid succession of
their bowling. But the only result was that the ball was sent still
further off when it reached Jack's wicket. At last, just as every
clock upon the ground struck six with that wonderful unanimity which
our clocks have attained since they were all regulated by wires
from Greenwich, Jack sent a ball flying up into the air, perfectly
regardless whether it might be caught or not, knowing well that the
one now needed would be scored before it could come down from the
heavens into the hands of any Englishman. It did come down, and was
caught by Stumps, but by that time Britannula had won her victory.
Jack's total score during that innings was 1275. I doubt whether in
the annals of cricket any record is made of a better innings than
that. Then it was that, with an absence of that presence of mind
which the President of a republic should always remember, I took off
my hat and flung it into the air.

Jack's triumph would have been complete, only that it was ludicrous
to those who could not but think, as I did, of the very little matter
as to which the contest had been raised;--just a game of cricket
which two sets of boys had been playing, and which should have been
regarded as no more than an amusement,--as a pastime, by which to
refresh themselves between their work. But they regarded it as though
a great national combat had been fought, and the Britannulists looked
upon themselves as though they had been victorious against England.
It was absurd to see Jack as he was carried back to Gladstonopolis as
the hero of the occasion, and to hear him, as he made his speeches
at the dinner which was given on the day, and at which he was called
upon to take the chair. I was glad to see, however, that he was not
quite so glib with his tongue as he had been when addressing the
people. He hesitated a good deal, nay, almost broke down, when he
gave the health of Sir Kennington Oval and the British sixteen; and I
was quite pleased to hear Lord Marylebone declare to his mother that
he was "a wonderfully nice boy." I think the English did try to turn
it off a little, as though they had only come out there just for the
amusement of the voyage. But Grundle, who had now become quite proud
of his country, and who lamented loudly that he should have received
so severe an injury in preparing for the game, would not let this
pass. "My lord," he said, "what is your population?" Lord Marylebone
named sixty million. "We are but two hundred and fifty thousand,"
said Grundle, "and see what we have done." "We are cocks fighting
on our own dunghill," said Jack, "and that does make a deal of
difference."

But I was told that Jack had spoken a word to Eva in quite a
different spirit before he had left Little Christchurch. "After all,
Eva, Sir Kennington has not quite trampled us under his feet," he
said.

"Who thought that he would?" said Eva. "My heart has never fainted,
whatever some others may have done."




CHAPTER VI.

THE COLLEGE.


I was surprised to see that Jack, who was so bold in playing his
match, and who had been so well able to hold his own against the
Englishmen,--who had been made a hero, and had carried off his
heroism so well,--should have been so shamefaced and bashful in
regard to Eva. He was like a silly boy, hardly daring to look her
in the face, instead of the gallant captain of the band who had
triumphed over all obstacles. But I perceived, though it seemed that
he did not, that she was quite prepared to give herself to him, and
that there was no real obstacle between him and all the flocks and
herds of Little Christchurch. Not much had been seen or heard of
Grundle during the match, and as far as Eva was concerned, he had
succumbed as soon as Sir Kennington Oval had appeared upon the scene.
He had thought so much of the English baronet as to have been cowed
and quenched by his grandeur. And Sir Kennington himself had, I
think, been in earnest before the days of the cricket-match. But
I could see now that Eva had merely played him off against Jack,
thinking thereby to induce the younger swain to speak his mind. This
had made Jack more than ever intent on beating Sir Kennington, but
had not as yet had the effect which Eva had intended. "It will all
come right," I said to myself, "as soon as these Englishmen have left
the island." But then my mind reverted to the Fixed Period, and to
the fast-approaching time for Crasweller's deposition. We were now
nearly through March, and the thirtieth of June was the day on which
he ought to be led to the college. It was my first anxiety to get rid
of these Englishmen before the subject should be again ventilated.
I own I was anxious that they should not return to their country
with their prejudices strengthened by what they might hear at
Gladstonopolis. If I could only get them to go before the matter was
again debated, it might be that no strong public feeling would be
excited in England till it was too late. That was my first desire;
but then I was also anxious to get rid of Jack for a short time. The
more I thought of Eva and the flocks, the more determined was I not
to allow the personal interests of my boy,--and therefore my own,--to
clash in any way with the performance of my public duties.

I heard that the Englishmen were not to go till another week had
elapsed. A week was necessary to recruit their strength and to enable
them to pack up their bats and bicycles. Neither, however, were
packed up till the day before they started; for the track down to
Little Christchurch was crowded with them, and they were still
practising as though another match were contemplated. I was very glad
to have Lord Marylebone as an inmate in our house, but I acknowledge
that I was anxious for him to say something as to his departure. "We
have been very proud to have you here, my lord," I remarked.

"I cannot say that we are very proud," he replied, "because we have
been so awfully licked. Barring that, I never spent a pleasanter two
months in my life, and should not be at all unwilling to stay for
another. Your mode of life here seems to me to be quite delightful,
and we have been thinking so much of our cricket, that I have hardly
as yet had a moment to look at your institutions. What is all this
about the Fixed Period?" Jack, who was present, put on a serious
face, and assumed that air of determination which I was beginning
to fear. Mrs Neverbend pursed up her lips, and said nothing; but
I knew what was passing through her mind. I managed to turn the
conversation, but I was aware that I did it very lamely.

"Jack," I said to my son, "I got a post-card from New Zealand
yesterday." The boats had just begun to run between the two islands
six days a-week, and as their regular contract pace was twenty-five
miles an hour, it was just an easy day's journey.

"What said the post-card?"

"There's plenty of time for Mount Earnshawe yet. They all say the
autumn is the best. The snow is now disappearing in great
quantities."

But an old bird is not to be caught with chaff. Jack was determined
not to go to the Eastern Alps this year; and indeed, as I found, not
to go till this question of the Fixed Period should be settled. I
told him that he was a fool. Although he would have been wrong to
assist in depositing his father-in-law for the sake of getting the
herd and flocks himself, as Grundle would have done, nevertheless he
was hardly bound by any feelings of honour or conscience to keep old
Crasweller at Little Christchurch in direct opposition to the laws of
the land. But all this I could not explain to him, and was obliged
simply to take it as a fact that he would not join an Alpine party
for Mount Earnshawe this year. As I thought of all this, I almost
feared Jack's presence in Gladstonopolis more than that of the young
Englishmen.

It was clear, however, that nothing could be done till the Englishmen
were gone, and as I had a day at my disposal I determined to walk up
to the college and meditate there on the conduct which it would be my
duty to follow during the next two months. The college was about five
miles from the town, at the side opposite to you as you enter the
town from Little Christchurch, and I had some time since made up my
mind how, in the bright genial days of our pleasant winter, I would
myself accompany Mr Crasweller through the city in an open barouche
as I took him to be deposited, through admiring crowds of his
fellow-citizens. I had not then thought that he would be a recreant,
or that he would be deterred by the fear of departure from enjoying
the honours which would be paid to him. But how different now was
his frame of mind from that glorious condition to which I had looked
forward in my sanguine hopes! Had it been I, I myself, how proud
should I have been of my country and its wisdom, had I been led along
as a first hero, to anticipate the euthanasia prepared for me! As
it was, I hired an inside cab, and hiding myself in the corner, was
carried away to the college unseen by any.

The place was called Necropolis. The name had always been distasteful
to me, as I had never wished to join with it the feeling of death.
Various names had been proposed for the site. Young Grundle had
suggested Cremation Hall, because such was the ultimate end to which
the mere husks and hulls of the citizens were destined. But there was
something undignified in the sound,--as though we were talking of a
dancing saloon or a music hall,--and I would have none of it. My idea
was to give to the mind some notion of an approach to good things to
come, and I proposed to call the place "Aditus." But men said that
it was unmeaning, and declared that Britannulists should never be
ashamed to own the truth. Necropolis sounded well, they said, and
argued that though no actual remains of the body might be left there,
still the tablets would remain. Therefore Necropolis it was called. I
had hoped that a smiling hamlet might grow up at the gate, inhabited
by those who would administer to the wants of the deposited; but I
had forgot that the deposited must come first. The hamlet had not
yet built itself, and round the handsome gates there was nothing at
present but a desert. While land in Britannula was plenty, no one had
cared to select ground so near to those awful furnaces by which the
mortal clay should be transported into the air. From the gates up to
the temple which stood in the middle of the grounds,--that temple
in which the last scene of life was to be encountered,--there ran a
broad gravel path, which was intended to become a beautiful avenue.
It was at present planted alternately with eucalypti and ilexes--the
gum-trees for the present generation, and the green-oaks for those
to come; but even the gum-trees had not as yet done much to give a
furnished appearance to the place. Some had demanded that cedars and
yew-trees should be placed there, and I had been at great pains to
explain to them that our object should be to make the spot cheerful,
rather than sad. Round the temple, at the back of it, were the sets
of chambers in which were to live the deposited during their year of
probation. Some of these were very handsome, and were made so, no
doubt, with a view of alluring the first comers. In preparing wisdom
for babes, it is necessary to wrap up its precepts in candied sweets.
But, though handsome, they were at present anything but pleasant
abodes. Not one of them had as yet been inhabited. As I looked at
them, knowing Crasweller as well as I did, I almost ceased to wonder
at his timidity. A hero was wanted; but Crasweller was no hero. Then
further off, but still in the circle round the temple, there were
smaller abodes, less luxurious, but still comfortable, all of which
would in a few short years be inhabited,--if the Fixed Period could
be carried out in accordance with my project. And foundations had
been made for others still smaller,--for a whole township of old men
and women, as in the course of the next thirty years they might come
hurrying on to find their last abode in the college. I had already
selected one, not by any means the finest or the largest, for myself
and my wife, in which we might prepare ourselves for the grand
departure. But as for Mrs Neverbend, nothing would bring her to
set foot within the precincts of the college ground. "Before those
next ten years are gone," she would say, "common-sense will have
interfered to let folks live out their lives properly." It had been
quite useless for me to attempt to make her understand how unfitting
was such a speech for the wife of the President of the Republic. My
wife's opposition had been an annoyance to me from the first, but I
had consoled myself by thinking how impossible it always is to imbue
a woman's mind with a logical idea. And though, in all respects of
domestic life, Mrs Neverbend is the best of women, even among women
she is the most illogical.

I now inspected the buildings in a sad frame of mind, asking myself
whether it would ever come to pass that they should be inhabited for
their intended purpose. When the Assembly, in compliance with my
advice, had first enacted the law of the Fixed Period, a large sum
had been voted for these buildings. As the enthusiasm had worn off,
men had asked themselves whether the money had not been wasted, and
had said that for so small a community the college had been planned
on an absurdly grand scale. Still I had gone on, and had watched
them as they grew from day to day, and had allowed no shilling to
be spared in perfecting them. In my earlier years I had been very
successful in the wool trade, and had amassed what men called a large
fortune. During the last two or three years I had devoted a great
portion of this to the external adornment of the college, not without
many words on the matter from Mrs Neverbend. "Jack is to be ruined,"
she had said, "in order that all the old men and women may be killed
artistically." This and other remarks of the kind I was doomed to
bear. It was a part of the difficulty which, as a great reformer, I
must endure. But now, as I walked mournfully among the disconsolate
and half-finished buildings, I could not but ask myself as to the
purpose to which my money had been devoted. And I could not but
tell myself that if in coming years these tenements should be left
tenantless, my country would look back upon me as one who had wasted
the produce of her young energies. But again I bethought me of
Columbus and Galileo, and swore that I would go on or perish in the
attempt.

As these painful thoughts were agitating my mind, a slow decrepit old
gentleman came up to me and greeted me as Mr President. He linked his
arm familiarly through mine, and remarked that the time seemed to be
very long before the college received any of its inhabitants. This
was Mr Graybody, the curator, who had been specially appointed to
occupy a certain residence, to look after the grounds, and to keep
the books of the establishment. Graybody and I had come as young men
to Britannula together, and whereas I had succeeded in all my own
individual attempts, he had unfortunately failed. He was exactly of
my age, as was also his wife. But under the stress of misfortune they
had both become unnaturally old, and had at last been left ruined
and hopeless, without a shilling on which to depend. I had always
been a sincere friend to Graybody, though he was, indeed, a man very
difficult to befriend. On most subjects he thought as I did, if he
can be said to have thought at all. At any rate he had agreed with me
as to the Fixed Period, saying how good it would be if he could be
deposited at fifty-eight, and had always declared how blessed must
be the time when it should have come for himself and his old wife.
I do not think that he ever looked much to the principle which I had
in view. He had no great ideas as to the imbecility and weakness of
human life when protracted beyond its fitting limits. He only felt
that it would be good to give up; and that if he did so, others might
be made to do so too. As soon as a residence at the college was
completed, I asked him to fill it; and now he had been living there,
he and his wife together, with an attendant, and drawing his salary
as curator for the last three years. I thought that it would be the
very place for him. He was usually melancholy, disheartened, and
impoverished; but he was always glad to see me, and I was accustomed
to go frequently to the college, in order to find a sympathetic soul
with whom to converse about the future of the establishment. "Well,
Graybody," I said, "I suppose we are nearly ready for the first
comer."

"Oh yes; we're always ready; but then the first comer is not." I
had not said much to him during the latter months as to Crasweller,
in particular. His name used formerly to be very ready in all my
conversations with Graybody, but of late I had talked to him in
a more general tone. "You can't tell me yet when it's to be, Mr
President? We do find it a little dull here."

Now he knew as well as I did the day and the year of Crasweller's
birth. I had intended to speak to him about Crasweller, but I wished
our friend's name to come first from him. "I suppose it will be some
time about mid-winter," I said.

"Oh, I didn't know whether it might not have been postponed."

"How can it be postponed? As years creep on, you cannot postpone
their step. If there might be postponement such as that, I doubt
whether we should ever find the time for our inhabitants to come. No,
Graybody; there can be no postponement for the Fixed Period."

"It might have been made sixty-nine or seventy," said he.

"Originally, no doubt. But the wisdom of the Assembly has settled all
that. The Assembly has declared that they in Britannula who are left
alive at sixty-seven shall on that day be brought into the college.
You yourself have, I think, ten years to run, and you will not be
much longer left to pass them in solitude."

"It is weary being here all alone, I must confess. Mrs G. says that
she could not bear it for another twelve months. The girl we have has
given us notice, and she is the ninth within a year. No followers
will come after them here, because they say they'll smell the dead
bodies."

"Rubbish!" I exclaimed, angrily; "positive rubbish! The actual clay
will evaporate into the air, without leaving a trace either for the
eye to see or the nose to smell."

"They all say that when you tried the furnaces there was a savour of
burnt pork." Now great trouble was taken in that matter of cremation;
and having obtained from Europe and the States all the best machinery
for the purpose, I had supplied four immense hogs, in order that
the system might be fairly tested, and I had fattened them for the
purpose, as old men are not unusually very stout. These we consumed
in the furnaces all at the same time, and the four bodies had been
dissolved into their original atoms without leaving a trace behind
them by which their former condition of life might be recognised.
But a trap-door in certain of the chimneys had been left open by
accident,--either that or by an enemy on purpose,--and undoubtedly
some slight flavour of the pig had been allowed to escape. I had been
there on the spot, knowing that I could trust only my own senses,
and was able to declare that the scent which had escaped was very
slight, and by no means disagreeable. And I was able to show that
the trap-door had been left open either by chance or by design,--the
very trap-door which was intended to prevent any such escape during
the moments of full cremation,--so that there need be no fear of a
repetition of the accident. I ought, indeed, to have supplied four
other hogs, and to have tried the experiment again. But the theme was
disagreeable, and I thought that the trial had been so far successful
as to make it unnecessary that the expense should be again incurred.
"They say that men and women would not have quite the same smell,"
said he.

"How do they know that?" I exclaimed, in my anger. "How do they know
what men and women will smell like? They haven't tried. There won't
be any smell at all--not the least; and the smoke will all consume
itself, so that even you, living just where you are, will not know
when cremation is going on. We might consume all Gladstonopolis, as
I hope we shall some day, and not a living soul would know anything
about it. But the prejudices of the citizens are ever the
stumbling-blocks of civilisation."

"At any rate, Mrs G. tells me that Jemima is going, because none of
the young men will come up and see her."

This was another difficulty, but a small one, and I made up my mind
that it should be overcome. "The shrubs seem to grow very well," I
said, resolved to appear as cheerful as possible.

"They're pretty nearly all alive," said Graybody; "and they do give
the place just an appearance like the cemetery at Old Christchurch."
He meant the capital in the province of Canterbury.

"In the course of a few years you will be quite--cheerful here."

"I don't know much about that, Mr President. I'm not sure that for
myself I want to be cheerful anywhere. If I've only got somebody just
to speak to sometimes, that will be quite enough for me. I suppose
old Crasweller will be the first?"

"I suppose so."

"It will be a gruesome time when I have to go to bed early, so as not
to see the smoke come out of his chimney."

"I tell you there will be nothing of the kind. I don't suppose you
will even know when they're going to cremate him."

"He will be the first, Mr President; and no doubt he will be looked
closely after. Old Barnes will be here by that time, won't he, sir?"

"Barnes is the second, and he will come just three months before
Crasweller's departure. But Tallowax, the grocer in High Street, will
be up here by that time. And then they will come so quickly, that
we must soon see to get other lodgings finished. Exors, the lawyer,
will be the fourth; but he will not come in till a day or two after
Crasweller's departure."

"They all will come; won't they, sir?" asked Graybody.

"Will come! Why, they must. It is the law."

"Tallowax swears he'll have himself strapped to his own kitchen
table, and defend himself to the last gasp with a carving-knife.
Exors says that the law is bad, and you can't touch him. As for
Barnes, he has gone out of what little wits he ever had with the
fright of it, and people seem to think that you couldn't touch a
lunatic."

"Barnes is no more a lunatic than I am."

"I only tell you what folk tell me. I suppose you'll try it on by
force, if necessary. You never expected that people would come and
deposit themselves of their own accord."

"The National Assembly expects that the citizens of Britannula will
obey the law."

"But there was one question I was going to ask, Mr President. Of
course I am altogether on your side, and do not wish to raise
difficulties. But what shall I do suppose they take to running away
after they have been deposited? If old Crasweller goes off in his
steam-carriage, how am I to go after him, and whom am I to ask to
help to bring him back again?"

I was puzzled, but I did not care to show it. No doubt a hundred
little arrangements would be necessary before the affairs of the
institution could be got into a groove so as to run steadily. But our
first object must be to deposit Crasweller and Barnes and Tallowax,
so that the citizens should be accustomed to the fashion of
depositing the aged. There were, as I knew, two or three old women
living in various parts of the island, who would, in due course, come
in towards the end of Crasweller's year. But it had been rumoured
that they had already begun to invent falsehoods as to their age,
and I was aware that we might be led astray by them. This I had been
prepared to accept as being unavoidable; but now, as the time grew
nearer, I could not but see how difficult it would be to enforce the
law against well-known men, and how easy to allow the women to escape
by the help of falsehood. Exors, the lawyer, would say at once that
we did not even attempt to carry out the law; and Barnes, lunatic as
he pretended to be, would be very hard to manage. My mind misgave me
as I thought of all these obstructions, and I felt that I could so
willingly deposit myself at once, and then depart without waiting
for my year of probation. But it was necessary that I should show a
determined front to old Graybody, and make him feel that I at any
rate was determined to remain firm to my purpose. "Mr Crasweller will
give you no such trouble as you suggest," said I.

"Perhaps he has come round."

"He is a gentleman whom we have both known intimately for many years,
and he has always been a friend to the Fixed Period. I believe that
he is so still, although there is some little hitch as to the exact
time at which he should be deposited."

"Just twelve months, he says."

"Of course," I replied, "the difference would be sure to be that of
one year. He seems to think that there are only nine years between
him and me."

"Ten, Mr President; ten. I know the time well."

"I had always thought so; but I should be willing to abandon a year
if I could make things run smooth by doing so. But all that is a
detail with which up here we need not, perhaps, concern ourselves."

"Only the time is getting very short, Mr President, and my old woman
will break down altogether if she's told that she's to live another
year all alone. Crasweller won't be a bit readier next year than he
is this; and of course if he is let off, you must let off Barnes and
Tallowax. And there are a lot of old women about who are beginning
to tell terrible lies about their ages. Do think of it all, Mr
President."

I never thought of anything else, so full was my mind of the subject.
When I woke in the morning, before I could face the light of day, it
was necessary that I should fortify myself with Columbus and Galileo.
I began to fancy, as the danger became nearer and still nearer, that
neither of those great men had been surrounded by obstructions such
as encompassed me. To plough on across the waves, and either to be
drowned or succeed; to tell a new truth about the heavens, and either
to perish or become great for ever!--either was within the compass
of a man who had only his own life to risk. My life,--how willingly
could I run any risk, did but the question arise of risking it! How
often I felt, in these days, that there is a fortitude needed by
man much greater than that of jeopardising his life! Life! what
is it? Here was that poor Crasweller, belying himself and all his
convictions just to gain one year more of it, and then when the year
was gone he would still have his deposition before him! Is it not so
with us all? For me I feel,--have felt for years,--tempted to rush
on, and pass through the gates of death. That man should shudder at
the thought of it does not appear amiss to me. The unknown future
is always awful; and the unknown future of another world, to be
approached by so great a change of circumstances,--by the loss of our
very flesh and blood and body itself,--has in it something so fearful
to the imagination that the man who thinks of it cannot but be struck
with horror as he acknowledges that by himself too it has to be
encountered. But it has to be encountered; and though the change be
awful, it should not therefore, by the sane judgment, be taken as a
change necessarily for the worst. Knowing the great goodness of the
Almighty, should we not be prepared to accept it as a change probably
for the better; as an alteration of our circumstances, by which our
condition may be immeasurably improved? Then one is driven back to
consider the circumstances by which such change may be effected.
To me it seems rational to suppose that as we leave this body so
shall we enter that new phase of life in which we are destined to
live;--but with all our higher resolves somewhat sharpened, and with
our lower passions, alas! made stronger also. That theory by which a
human being shall jump at once to a perfection of bliss, or fall to
an eternity of evil and misery, has never found credence with me. For
myself, I have to say that, while acknowledging my many drawbacks,
I have so lived as to endeavour to do good to others, rather than
evil, and that therefore I look to my departure from this world with
awe indeed, but still with satisfaction. But I cannot look with
satisfaction to a condition of life in which, from my own imbecility,
I must necessarily retrograde into selfishness. It may be that He who
judges of us with a wisdom which I cannot approach, shall take all
this into account, and that He shall so mould my future being as
to fit it to the best at which I had arrived in this world; still
I cannot but fear that a taint of that selfishness which I have
hitherto avoided, but which will come if I allow myself to become
old, may remain, and that it will be better for me that I should go
hence while as yet my own poor wants are not altogether uppermost in
my mind. But then, in arranging this matter, I am arranging it for
my fellow-citizens, and not for myself. I have to endeavour to think
how Crasweller's mind may be affected rather than my own. He dreads
his departure with a trembling, currish fear; and I should hardly be
doing good to him were I to force him to depart in a frame of mind
so poor and piteous. But then, again, neither is it altogether
of Crasweller that I must think,--not of Crasweller or of myself.
How will the coming ages of men be affected by such a change as I
propose, should such a change become the normal condition of Death?
Can it not be brought about that men should arrange for their own
departure, so as to fall into no senile weakness, no slippered
selfishness, no ugly whinings of undefined want, before they shall
go hence, and be no more thought of? These are the ideas that have
actuated me, and to them I have been brought by seeing the conduct
of those around me. Not for Crasweller, or Barnes, or Tallowax, will
this thing be good,--nor for those old women who are already lying
about their ages in their cottages,--nor for myself, who am, I know,
too apt to boast of myself, that even though old age should come upon
me, I may be able to avoid the worst of its effects; but for those
untold generations to come, whose lives may be modelled for them
under the knowledge that at a certain Fixed Period they shall depart
hence with all circumstances of honour and glory.

I was, however, quite aware that it would be useless to spend my
energy in dilating on this to Mr Graybody. He simply was willing to
shuffle off his mortal coil, because he found it uncomfortable in
the wearing. In all likelihood, had his time come as nigh as that of
Crasweller, he too, like Crasweller, would impotently implore the
grace of another year. He would ape madness like Barnes, or arm
himself with a carving-knife like Tallowax, or swear that there
was a flaw in the law, as Exors was disposed to do. He too would
clamorously swear that he was much younger, as did the old women.
Was not the world peopled by Craswellers, Tallowaxes, Exorses, and
old women? Had I a right to hope to alter the feelings which nature
herself had implanted in the minds of men? But still it might be done
by practice,--by practice; if only we could arrive at the time in
which practice should have become practice. Then, as I was about to
depart from the door of Graybody's house, I whispered to myself again
the names of Galileo and Columbus.

"You think that he will come on the thirtieth?" said Graybody, as he
took my hand at parting.

"I think," replied I, "that you and I, as loyal citizens of the
Republic, are bound to suppose that he will do his duty as a
citizen." Then I went, leaving him standing in doubt at his door.


END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.



      *      *      *      *      *



VOLUME II.

CHAPTER VII.

COLUMBUS AND GALILEO.


I had left Graybody with a lie on my tongue. I said that I was bound
to suppose that Crasweller would do his duty as a citizen,--by which
I had meant Graybody to understand that I expected my old friend to
submit to deposition. Now I expected nothing of the kind, and it
grieved me to think that I should be driven to such false excuses.
I began to doubt whether my mind would hold its proper bent under
the strain thus laid upon it, and to ask myself whether I was in all
respects sane in entertaining the ideas which filled my mind. Galileo
and Columbus,--Galileo and Columbus! I endeavoured to comfort myself
with these names,--but in a vain, delusive manner; and though I used
them constantly, I was beginning absolutely to hate them. Why could
I not return to my wool-shed, and be contented among my bales, and
my ships, and my credits, as I was of yore, before this theory took
total possession of me? I was doing good then. I robbed no one. I
assisted very many in their walks of life. I was happy in the praises
of all my fellow-citizens. My health was good, and I had ample scope
for my energies then, even as now. But there came on me a day of
success,--a day, shall I say, of glory or of wretchedness? or shall
I not most truly say of both?--and I persuaded my fellow-citizens to
undertake this sad work of the Fixed Period. From that moment all
quiet had left me, and all happiness. Still, it is not necessary that
a man should be happy. I doubt whether Cæsar was happy with all those
enemies around him,--Gauls, and Britons, and Romans. If a man be
doing his duty, let him not think too much of that condition of mind
which he calls happiness. Let him despise happiness and do his duty,
and he will in one sense be happy. But if there creep upon him a
doubt as to his duty, if he once begin to feel that he may perhaps
be wrong, then farewell all peace of mind,--then will come that
condition in which a man is tempted to ask himself whether he be in
truth of sane mind.

What should I do next? The cricketing Englishmen, I knew, were going.
Two or three days more would see their gallant ship steam out of the
harbour. As I returned in my cab to the city, I could see the English
colours fluttering from her topmast, and the flag of the English
cricket-club waving from her stern. But I knew well that they had
discussed the question of the Fixed Period among them, and that
there was still time for them to go home and send back some English
mandate which ought to be inoperative, but which we should be
unable to disobey. And letters might have been written before
this,--treacherous letters, calling for the assistance of another
country in opposition to the councils of their own.

But what should I do next? I could not enforce the law _vi et armis_
against Crasweller. I had sadly but surely acknowledged so much as
that to myself. But I thought that I had seen signs of relenting
about the man,--some symptoms of sadness which seemed to bespeak a
yielding spirit. He only asked for a year. He was still in theory
a supporter of the Fixed Period,--pleading his own little cause,
however, by a direct falsehood. Could I not talk him into a generous
assent? There would still be a year for him. And in old days there
had been a spice of manliness in his bosom, to which it might be
possible that I should bring him back. Though the hope was poor, it
seemed at present to be my only hope.

As I returned, I came round by the quays, dropping my cab at the
corner of the street. There was the crowd of Englishmen, all going
off to the vessel to see their bats and bicycles disposed of, and
among them was Jack the hero. They were standing at the water's-edge,
while three long-boats were being prepared to take them off. "Here's
the President," said Sir Kennington Oval; "he has not seen our yacht
yet: let him come on board with us." They were very gracious; so I
got into one boat, and Jack into another, and old Crasweller, who had
come with his guests from Little Christchurch, into the third; and we
were pulled off to the yacht. Jack, I perceived, was quite at home
there. He had dined there frequently, and had slept on board; but to
me and Crasweller it was altogether new. "Yes," said Lord Marylebone;
"if a fellow is to make his home for a month upon the seas, it is as
well to make it as comfortable as possible. Each of us has his own
crib, with a bath to himself, and all the et-ceteras. This is where
we feed. It is not altogether a bad shop for grubbing." As I looked
round I thought that I had never seen anything more palatial and
beautiful. "This is where we pretend to sit," continued the lord;
"where we are supposed to write our letters and read our books. And
this," he said, opening another door, "is where we really sit, and
smoke our pipes, and drink our brandy-and-water. We came out under
the rule of that tyrant King MacNuffery. We mean to go back as
a republic. And I, as being the only lord, mean to elect myself
president. You couldn't give me any wrinkles as to a pleasant mode of
governing? Everybody is to be allowed to do exactly what he pleases,
and nobody is to be interfered with unless he interferes with
somebody else. We mean to take a wrinkle from you fellows in
Britannula, where everybody seems, under your presidency, to be as
happy as the day is long."

"We have no Upper House with us, my lord," said I.

"You have got rid, at any rate, of one terrible bother. I daresay
we shall drop it before long in England. I don't see why we should
continue to sit merely to register the edicts of the House of
Commons, and be told that we're a pack of fools when we hesitate." I
told him that it was the unfortunate destiny of a House of Lords to
be made to see her own unfitness for legislative work.

"But if we were abolished," continued he, "then I might get into
the other place and do something. You have to be elected a Peer of
Parliament, or you can sit nowhere. A ship can only be a ship, after
all; but if we must live in a ship, we are not so bad here. Come and
take some tiffin." An Englishman, when he comes to our side of the
globe, always calls his lunch tiffin.

I went back to the other room with Lord Marylebone; and as I took my
place at the table, I heard that the assembled cricketers were all
discussing the Fixed Period.

"I'd be shot," said Mr Puddlebrane, "if they should deposit me, and
bleed me to death, and cremate me like a big pig." Then he perceived
that I had entered the saloon, and there came a sudden silence across
the table.

"What sort of wind will be blowing next Friday at two o'clock?" asked
Sir Lords Longstop.

It was evident that Sir Lords had only endeavoured to change the
conversation because of my presence; and it did not suit me to allow
them to think that I was afraid to talk of the Fixed Period. "Why
should you object to be cremated, Mr Puddlebrane," said I, "whether
like a big pig or otherwise? It has not been suggested that any one
shall cremate you while alive."

"Because my father and mother were buried. And all the Puddlebranes
were always buried. There are they, all to be seen in Puddlebrane
Church, and I should like to appear among them."

"I suppose it's only their names that appear, and not their bodies,
Mr Puddlebrane. And a cremated man may have as big a tombstone as
though he had been allowed to become rotten in the orthodox fashion."

"What Puddlebrane means is," said another, "that he'd like to have
the same chance of living as his ancestors."

"If he will look back to his family records he will find that they
very generally died before sixty-eight. But we have no idea of
invading your Parliament and forcing our laws upon you."

"Take a glass of wine, Mr President," said Lord Marylebone, "and
leave Puddlebrane to his ancestors. He's a very good Slip, though he
didn't catch Jack when he got a chance. Allow me to recommend you a
bit of ice-pudding. The mangoes came from Jamaica, and are as fresh
as the day they were picked." I ate my mango-pudding, but I did
not enjoy it, for I was sure that the whole crew were returning to
England laden with prejudices against the Fixed Period. As soon as I
could escape, I got back to the shore, leaving Jack among my enemies.
It was impossible not to feel that they were my enemies, as I was
sure that they were about to oppose the cherished conviction of my
very heart and soul. Crasweller had sat there perfectly silent while
Mr Puddlebrane had spoken of his own possible cremation. And yet
Crasweller was a declared Fixed-Periodist.

On the Friday, at two o'clock, the vessel sailed amidst all the
plaudits which could be given by mingled kettle-drums and trumpets,
and by a salvo of artillery. They were as good a set of fellows as
ever wore pink-flannel clothing, and as generous as any that there
are born to live upon _pâté_ and champagne. I doubt whether there was
one among them who could have earned his bread in a counting-house,
unless it was Stumps the professional. When we had paid all honour
to the departing vessel, I went at once to Little Christchurch, and
there I found my friend in the verandah with Eva. During the last
month or two he seemed to be much older than I had ever before known
him, and was now seated with his daughter's hand within his own. I
had not seen him since the day on board the yacht, and he now seemed
to be greyer and more haggard than he was then. "Crasweller," said
I, taking him by the hand, "it is a sad thing that you and I should
quarrel after so many years of perfect friendship."

"So it is; so it is. I don't want to quarrel, Mr President."

"There shall be no quarrel. Well, Eva, how do you bear the loss of
all your English friends?"

"The loss of my English friends won't hurt me if I can only keep
those which I used to have in Britannula." I doubted whether she
alluded to me or to Jack. It might be only to me, but I thought she
looked as if she were thinking of Jack.

"Eva, my dear," said Mr Crasweller, "you had better leave us. The
President, I think, wishes to speak to me on business." Then she
came up and looked me in the face, and pressed my hand, and I knew
that she was asking for mercy for her father. The feeling was not
pleasant, seeing that I was bound by the strongest oath which the
mind can conceive not to show him mercy.

I sat for a few minutes in silence, thinking that as Mr Crasweller
had banished Eva, he would begin. But he said nothing, and would have
remained silent had I allowed him to do so. "Crasweller," I said, "it
is certainly not well that you and I should quarrel on this matter.
In your company I first learned to entertain this project, and for
years we have agreed that in it is to be found the best means for
remedying the condition of mankind."

"I had not felt then what it is to be treated as one who was already
dead."

"Does Eva treat you so?"

"Yes; with all her tenderness and all her sweet love, Eva feels that
my days are numbered unless I will boldly declare myself opposed to
your theory. She already regards me as though I were a visitant from
the other world. Her very gentleness is intolerable."

"But, Crasweller, the convictions of your mind cannot be changed."

"I do not know. I will not say that any change has taken place. But
it is certain that convictions become vague when they operate against
one's self. The desire to live is human, and therefore God-like. When
the hand of God is felt to have struck one with coming death, the
sufferer, knowing the blow to be inevitable, can reconcile himself;
but it is very hard to walk away to one's long rest while health, and
work, and means of happiness yet remain."

There was something in this which seemed to me to imply that he had
abandoned the weak assertion as to his age, and no longer intended
to ask for a year of grace by the use of that falsehood. But it was
necessary that I should be sure of this. "As to your exact age, I've
been looking at the records," I began.

"The records are right enough," he said; "you need trouble yourself
no longer about the records. Eva and I have discussed all that." From
this I became aware that Eva had convinced him of the baseness of the
falsehood.

"Then there is the law," said I, with, as I felt, unflinching
hardness.

"Yes, there is the law,--if it be a law. Mr Exors is prepared to
dispute it, and says that he will ask permission to argue the case
out with the executive."

"He would argue about anything. You know what Exors is."

"And there is that poor man Barnes has gone altogether out of his
mind, and has become a drivelling idiot."

"They told me yesterday that he was a raging lunatic; but I learn
from really good authority that whether he takes one part or the
other, he is only acting."

"And Tallowax is prepared to run amuck against those who come to
fetch him. He swears that no one shall lead him up to the college."

"And you?" Then there was a pause, and Crasweller sat silent with
his face buried in his hands. He was, at any rate, in a far better
condition of mind for persuasion than that in which I had last found
him. He had given up the fictitious year, and had acknowledged that
he had assented to the doctrine with which he was now asked to
comply. But it was a hard task that of having to press him under such
circumstances. I thought of Eva and her despair, and of himself with
all that natural desire for life eager at his heart. I looked round
and saw the beauty of the scenery, and thought how much worse to
such a man would be the melancholy shades of the college than even
departure itself. And I am not by nature hard-hearted. I have none of
that steel and fibre which will enable a really strong man to stand
firm by convictions even when opposed by his affections. To have
liberated Crasweller at this moment, I would have walked off myself,
oh, so willingly, to the college! I was tearing my own heart to
pieces;--but I remembered Columbus and Galileo. Neither of them was
surely ever tried as I was at this moment. But it had to be done, or
I must yield, and for ever. If I could not be strong to prevail with
my own friend and fellow-labourer,--with Crasweller, who was the
first to come, and who should have entered the college with an heroic
grandeur,--how could I even desire any other to immure himself? how
persuade such men as Barnes, or Tallowax, or that pettifogger Exors,
to be led quietly up through the streets of the city? "And you?" I
asked again.

"It is for you to decide."

The agony of that moment! But I think that I did right. Though my
very heart was bleeding, I know that I did right. "For the sake
of the benefits which are to accrue to unknown thousands of your
fellow-creatures, it is your duty to obey the law." This I said in
a low voice, still holding him by the hand. I felt at the moment a
great love for him,--and in a certain sense admiration, because he
had so far conquered his fear of an unknown future as to promise to
do this thing simply because he had said that he would do it. There
was no high feeling as to future generations of his fellow-creatures,
no grand idea that he was about to perform a great duty for the
benefit of mankind in general, but simply the notion that as he had
always advocated my theory as my friend, he would not now depart from
it, let the cost to himself be what it might. He answered me only by
drawing away his hand. But I felt that in his heart he accused me
of cruelty, and of mad adherence to a theory. "Should it not be so,
Crasweller?"

"As you please, President."

"But should it not be so?" Then, at great length, I went over once
again all my favourite arguments, and endeavoured with the whole
strength of my eloquence to reach his mind. But I knew, as I was
doing so, that that was all in vain. I had succeeded,--or perhaps Eva
had done so,--in inducing him to repudiate the falsehood by which he
had endeavoured to escape. But I had not in the least succeeded in
making him see the good which would come from his deposition. He was
ready to become a martyr, because in years back he had said that he
would do so. He had now left it for me to decide whether he should
be called upon to perform his promise; and I, with an unfeeling
pertinacity, had given the case against him. That was the light in
which Mr Crasweller looked at it. "You do not think that I am cruel?"
I asked.

"I do," said Crasweller. "You ask the question, and I answer you. I
do think that you are cruel. It concerns life and death,--that is a
matter of course,--and it is the life and death of your most intimate
friend, of Eva's father, of him who years since came hither with
you from another country, and has lived with you through all the
struggles and all the successes of a long career. But you have my
word, and I will not depart from it, even to save my life. In a
moment of weakness I was tempted to a weak lie. I will not lie. I
will not demean myself to claim a poor year of life by such means,
though I do not lack evidence to support the statement. I am ready
to go with you;" and he rose up from his seat as though intending to
walk away and be deposited at once.

"Not now, Crasweller."

"I shall be ready when you may come for me. I shall not again leave
my home till I have to leave it for the last time. Days and weeks
mean nothing with me now. The bitterness of death has fallen upon
me."

"Crasweller, I will come and live with you, and be a brother to you,
during the entire twelve months."

"No; it will not be needed. Eva will be with me, and perhaps Jack may
come and see me,--though I must not allow Jack to express the warmth
of his indignation in Eva's hearing. Jack had perhaps better leave
Britannula for a time, and not come back till all shall be over. Then
he may enjoy the lawns of Little Christchurch in peace,--unless,
perchance, an idea should disturb him, that he has been put into
their immediate possession by his father's act." Then he got up from
his chair and went from the verandah back into the house.

As I rose and returned to the city, I almost repented myself of what
I had done. I had it in my heart to go back and yield, and to tell
him that I would assent to the abandonment of my whole project. It
was not for me to say that I would spare my own friend, and execute
the law against Barnes and Tallowax; nor was it for me to declare
that the victims of the first year should be forgiven. I could easily
let the law die away, but it was not in my power to decide that it
should fall into partial abeyance. This I almost did. But when I had
turned on my road to Little Christchurch, and was prepared to throw
myself into Crasweller's arms, the idea of Galileo and Columbus, and
their ultimate success, again filled my bosom. The moment had now
come in which I might succeed. The first man was ready to go to the
stake, and I had felt all along that the great difficulty would be
in obtaining the willing assent of the first martyr. It might well
be that these accusations of cruelty were a part of the suffering
without which my great reform could not be carried to success. Though
I should live to be accounted as cruel as Cæsar, what would that be
if I too could reduce my Gaul to civilisation? "Dear Crasweller,"
I murmured to myself as I turned again towards Gladstonopolis, and
hurrying back, buried myself in the obscurity of the executive
chambers.

The following day occurred a most disagreeable scene in my own house
at dinner. Jack came in and took his chair at the table in grim
silence. It might be that he was lamenting for his English friends
who were gone, and therefore would not speak. Mrs Neverbend, too,
ate her dinner without a word. I began to fear that presently there
would be something to be said,--some cause for a quarrel; and as
is customary on such occasions, I endeavoured to become specially
gracious and communicative. I talked about the ship that had started
on its homeward journey, and praised Lord Marylebone, and laughed at
Mr Puddlebrane; but it was to no effect. Neither would Jack nor Mrs
Neverbend say anything, and they ate their dinner gloomily till the
attendant left the room. Then Jack began. "I think it right to tell
you, sir, that there's going to be a public meeting on the Town Flags
the day after to-morrow." The Town Flags was an open unenclosed
place, over which, supported by arches, was erected the Town Hall.
It was here that the people were accustomed to hold those outside
assemblies which too often guided the responsible Assembly in the
Senate-house.

"And what are you all going to talk about there?"

"There is only one subject," said Jack, "which at present occupies
the mind of Gladstonopolis. The people don't intend to allow you to
deposit Mr Crasweller."

"Considering your age and experience, Jack, don't you think that
you're taking too much upon yourself to say whether people will allow
or will not allow the executive of the country to perform their
duty?"

"If Jack isn't old," said Mrs Neverbend, "I, at any rate, am older,
and I say the same thing."

"Of course I only said what I thought," continued Jack. "What I want
to explain is, that I shall be there myself, and shall do all that I
can to support the meeting."

"In opposition to your father?" said I.

"Well;--yes, I am afraid so. You see it's a public subject on a
public matter, and I don't see that father and son have anything to
do with it. If I were in the Assembly, I don't suppose I should be
bound to support my father."

"But you're not in the Assembly."

"I have my own convictions all the same, and I find myself called
upon to take a part."

"Good gracious--yes! and to save poor old Mr Crasweller's life from
this most inhuman law. He's just as fit to live as are you and I."

"The only question is, whether he be fit to die,--or rather to be
deposited, I mean. But I'm not going to argue the subject here. It
has been decided by the law; and that should be enough for you two,
as it is enough for me. As for Jack, I will not have him attend any
such meeting. Were he to do so, he would incur my grave
displeasure,--and consequent punishment."

"What do you mean to do to the boy?" asked Mrs Neverbend.

"If he ceases to behave to me like a son, I shall cease to treat him
like a father. If he attends this meeting he must leave my house, and
I shall see him no more."

"Leave the house!" shrieked Mrs Neverbend.

"Jack," said I, with the kindest voice which I was able to assume,
"you will pack up your portmanteau and go to New Zealand the day
after to-morrow. I have business for you to transact with Macmurdo
and Brown of some importance. I will give you the particulars when I
see you in the office."

"Of course he won't go, Mr Neverbend," cried my wife. But, though the
words were determined, there was a certain vacillation in the tone of
her voice which did not escape me.

"We shall see. If Jack intends to remain as my son, he must obey his
father. I have been kind, and perhaps too indulgent, to him. I now
require that he shall proceed to New Zealand the day after to-morrow.
The boat sails at eight. I shall be happy to go down with him and see
him on board."

Jack only shook his head,--by which I understood that he meant
rebellion. I had been a most generous father to him, and loved him as
the very apple of my eye; but I was determined that I would be stern.
"You have heard my order," I said, "and you can have to-morrow to
think about it. I advise you not to throw over, and for ever, the
affection, the fostering care, and all the comforts, pecuniary
as well as others, which you have hitherto had from an indulgent
father."

"You do not mean to say that you will disinherit the boy?" said Mrs
Neverbend.

I knew that it was utterly out of my power to do so. I could not
disinherit him. I could not even rob him of a single luxury without
an amount of suffering much greater than he would feel. Was I not
thinking of him day and night as I arranged my worldly affairs? That
moment when he knocked down Sir Kennington Oval's wicket, had I not
been as proud as he was? When the trumpet sounded, did not I feel
the honour more than he? When he made his last triumphant run, and
I threw my hat in the air, was it not to me sweeter than if I had
done it myself? Did I not even love him the better for swearing that
he would make this fight for Crasweller? But yet it was necessary
that I should command obedience, and, if possible, frighten him into
subservience. We talk of a father's power, and know that the old
Romans could punish filial disobedience by death; but a Britannulan
father has a heart in his bosom which is more powerful than law or
even custom, and I believe that the Roman was much the same. "My
dear, I will not discuss my future intentions before the boy. It
would be unseemly. I command him to start for New Zealand the day
after to-morrow, and I shall see whether he will obey me. I strongly
advise him to be governed in this matter by his father." Jack only
shook his head, and left the room. I became aware afterwards that he
slept that night at Little Christchurch.

That night I received such a lecture from Mrs Neverbend in our
bedroom as might have shamed that Mrs Caudle of whom we read in
English history. I hate these lectures, not as thinking them
unbecoming, but as being peculiarly disagreeable. I always find
myself absolutely impotent during their progress. I am aware that
it is quite useless to speak a word, and that I can only allow the
clock to run itself down. What Mrs Neverbend says at such moments has
always in it a great deal of good sense; but it is altogether wasted,
because I knew it all beforehand, and with pen and ink could have
written down the lecture which she delivered at that peculiar moment.
And I fear no evil results from her anger for the future, because her
conduct to me will, I know by experience, be as careful and as kind
as ever. Were another to use harsh language to me, she would rise in
wrath to defend me. And she does not, in truth, mean a tenth of what
she says. But I am for the time as though I were within the clapper
of a mill; and her passion goes on increasing because she can never
get a word from me. "Mr Neverbend, I tell you this,--you are going to
make a fool of yourself. I think it my duty to tell you so, as your
wife. Everybody else will think it. Who are you, to liken yourself
to Galileo?--an old fellow of that kind who lived a thousand years
ago, before Christianity had ever been invented. You have got nasty
murderous thoughts in your mind, and want to kill poor Mr Crasweller,
just out of pride, because you have said you would. Now, Jack is
determined that you shan't, and I say that he is right. There is no
reason why Jack shouldn't obey me as well as you. You will never
be able to deposit Mr Crasweller,--not if you try it for a hundred
years. The city won't let you do it; and if you have a grain of sense
left in your head, you won't attempt it. Jack is determined to meet
the men on the Town Flags the day after to-morrow, and I say that he
is right. As for your disinheriting him, and spending all your money
on machinery to roast pigs,--I say you can't do it. There will be a
commission to inquire into you if you do not mind yourself, and then
you will remember what I told you. Poor Mr Crasweller, whom you have
known for forty years! I wonder how you can bring yourself to think
of killing the poor man, whose bread you have so often eaten! And if
you think you are going to frighten Jack, you are very much mistaken.
Jack would do twice more for Eva Crasweller than for you or me, and
it's natural he should. You may be sure he will not give up; and
the end will be, that he will get Eva for his own. I do believe
he has gone to sleep." Then I gave myself infinite credit for the
pertinacity of my silence, and for the manner in which I had put
on an appearance of somnolency without overacting the part. Mrs
Neverbend did in truth go to sleep, but I lay awake during the whole
night thinking of the troubles before me.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE "JOHN BRIGHT."


Jack, of course, did not go to New Zealand, and I was bound to
quarrel with him,--temporarily. They held the meeting on the Town
Flags, and many eloquent words were, no doubt, spoken. I did not go,
of course, nor did I think it well to read the reports. Mrs Neverbend
took it into her head at this time to speak to me only respecting the
material wants of life. "Will you have another lump of sugar in your
tea, Mr President?" Or, "If you want a second blanket on your bed,
Mr Neverbend, and will say the word, it shall be supplied." I took
her in the same mood, and was dignified, cautious, and silent. With
Jack I was supposed to have quarrelled altogether, and very grievous
it was to me not to be able to speak to the lad of a morning or an
evening. But he did not seem to be much the worse for it. As for
turning him out of the house or stopping his pocket-money, that would
be carrying the joke further than I could do it. Indeed it seemed to
me that he was peculiarly happy at this time, for he did not go to
his office. He spent his mornings in making speeches, and then went
down in the afternoon on his bicycle to Little Christchurch.

So the time passed on, and the day absolutely came on which
Crasweller was to be deposited. I had seen him constantly during the
last few weeks, but he had not spoken to me on the subject. He had
said that he would not leave Little Christchurch, and he did not do
so. I do not think that he had been outside his own grounds once
during these six weeks. He was always courteous to me, and would
offer me tea and toast when I came, with a stately civility, as
though there had been no subject of burning discord between us. Eva I
rarely saw. That she was there I was aware,--but she never came into
my presence till the evening before the appointed day, as I shall
presently have to tell. Once or twice I did endeavour to lead him
on to the subject; but he showed a disinclination to discuss it so
invincible, that I was silenced. As I left him on the day before that
on which he was to be deposited, I assured him that I would call for
him on the morrow.

"Do not trouble yourself," he said, repeating the words twice over.
"It will be just the same whether you are here or not." Then I shook
my head by way of showing him that I would come, and I took my leave.

I must explain that during these last few weeks things had not gone
quietly in Gladstonopolis, but there had been nothing like a serious
riot. I was glad to find that, in spite of Jack's speechifying,
the younger part of the population was still true to me, and I did
not doubt that I should still have got the majority of votes in
the Assembly. A rumour was spread abroad that the twelve months of
Crasweller's period of probation were to be devoted to discussing the
question, and I was told that my theory as to the Fixed Period would
not in truth have been carried out merely because Mr Crasweller had
changed his residence from Little Christchurch to the college. I had
ordered an open barouche to be prepared for the occasion, and had got
a pair of splendid horses fit for a triumphal march. With these I
intended to call at Little Christchurch at noon, and to accompany Mr
Crasweller up to the college, sitting on his left hand. On all other
occasions, the President of the Republic sat in his carriage on the
right side, and I had ever stood up for the dignities of my position.
But this occasion was to be an exception to all rule.

On the evening before, as I was sitting in my library at home
mournfully thinking of the occasion, telling myself that after all
I could not devote my friend to what some might think a premature
death, the door was opened, and Eva Crasweller was announced. She
had on one of those round, close-fitting men's hats which ladies now
wear, but under it was a veil which quite hid her face. "I am taking
a liberty, Mr Neverbend," she said, "in troubling you at the present
moment."

"Eva, my dear, how can anything you do be called a liberty?"

"I do not know, Mr Neverbend. I have come to you because I am very
unhappy."

"I thought you had shunned me of late."

"So I have. How could I help it, when you have been so anxious to
deposit poor papa in that horrid place?"

"He was equally anxious a few years since."

"Never! He agreed to it because you told him, and because you were
a man able to persuade. It was not that he ever had his heart in it,
even when it was not near enough to alarm himself. And he is not a
man fearful of death in the ordinary way. Papa is a brave man."

"My darling child, it is beautiful to hear you say so of him."

"He is going with you to-morrow simply because he has made you a
promise, and does not choose to have it said of him that he broke his
word even to save his own life. Is not that courage? It is not with
him as it is with you, who have your heart in the matter, because you
think of some great thing that you will do, so that your name may be
remembered to future generations."

"It is not for that, Eva. I care not at all whether my name be
remembered. It is for the good of many that I act."

"He believes in no good, but is willing to go because of his promise.
Is it fair to keep him to such a promise under such circumstances?"

"But the law--"

"I will hear nothing of the law. The law means you and your
influences. Papa is to be sacrificed to the law to suit your
pleasure. Papa is to be destroyed, not because the law wishes it, but
to suit the taste of Mr Neverbend."

"Oh, Eva!"

"It is true."

"To suit my taste?"

"Well--what else? You have got the idea into your head, and you will
not drop it. And you have persuaded him because he is your friend.
Oh, a most fatal friendship! He is to be sacrificed because, when
thinking of other things, he did not care to differ with you." Then
she paused, as though to see whether I might not yield to her words.
And if the words of any one would have availed to make me yield, I
think it would have been hers as now spoken. "Do you know what people
will say of you, Mr Neverbend?" she continued.

"What will they say?"

"If I only knew how best I could tell you! Your son has asked me--to
be his wife."

"I have long known that he has loved you well."

"But it can never be," she said, "if my father is to be carried away
to this fearful place. People would say that you had hurried him off
in order that Jack--"

"Would you believe it, Eva?" said I, with indignation.

"It does not matter what I would believe. Mr Grundle is saying
it already, and is accusing me too. And Mr Exors, the lawyer,
is spreading it about. It has become quite the common report in
Gladstonopolis that Jack is to become at once the owner of Little
Christchurch."

"Perish Little Christchurch!" I exclaimed. "My son would marry no
man's daughter for his money."

"I do not believe it of Jack," she said, "for I know that he is
generous and good. There! I do love him better than any one in the
world. But as things are, I can never marry him if papa is to be shut
up in that wretched City of the Dead."

"Not City of the Dead, my dear."

"Oh, I cannot bear to think of it!--all alone with no one but me with
him to watch him as day after day passes away, as the ghastly hour
comes nearer and still nearer, when he is to be burned in those
fearful furnaces!"

"The cremation, my dear, has nothing in truth to do with the Fixed
Period."

"To wait till the fatal day shall have arrived, and then to know that
at a fixed hour he will be destroyed just because you have said so!
Can you imagine what my feelings will be when that moment shall have
come?"

I had not in truth thought of it. But now, when the idea was
represented to my mind's eye, I acknowledged to myself that it would
be impossible that she should be left there for the occasion. How or
when she should be taken away, or whither, I could not at the moment
think. These would form questions which it would be very hard to
answer. After some score of years, say, when the community would be
used to the Fixed Period, I could understand that a daughter or a
wife might leave the college, and go away into such solitudes as
the occasion required, a week perhaps before the hour arranged for
departure had come. Custom would make it comparatively easy; as
custom has arranged such a period of mourning for a widow, and such
another for a widower, a son, or a daughter. But here, with Eva,
there would be no custom. She would have nothing to guide her,
and might remain there till the last fatal moment. I had hoped
that she might have married Jack, or perhaps Grundle, during the
interval,--not having foreseen that the year, which was intended to
be one of honour and glory, should become a time of mourning and
tribulation. "Yes, my dear, it is very sad."

"Sad! Was there ever a position in life so melancholy, so mournful,
so unutterably miserable?" I remained there opposite, gazing into
vacancy, but I could say nothing. "What do you intend to do, Mr
Neverbend?" she asked. "It is altogether in your bosom. My father's
life or death is in your hands. What is your decision?" I could only
remain steadfast; but it seemed to be impossible to say so. "Well, Mr
Neverbend, will you speak?"

"It is not for me to decide. It is for the country."

"The country!" she exclaimed, rising up; "it is your own pride,--your
vanity and cruelty combined. You will not yield in this matter to me,
your friend's daughter, because your vanity tells you that when you
have once said a thing, that thing shall come to pass." Then she put
the veil down over her face, and went out of the room.

I sat for some time motionless, trying to turn over in my mind all
that she had said to me; but it seemed as though my faculties were
utterly obliterated in despair. Eva had been to me almost as a
daughter, and yet I was compelled to refuse her request for her
father's life. And when she had told me that it was my pride and
vanity which had made me do so, I could not explain to her that they
were not the cause. And, indeed, was I sure of myself that it was not
so? I had flattered myself that I did it for the public good; but
was I sure that obduracy did not come from my anxiety to be counted
with Columbus and Galileo? or if not that, was there not something
personal to myself in my desire that I should be known as one who had
benefited my species? In considering such matters, it is so hard to
separate the motives,--to say how much springs from some glorious
longing to assist others in their struggle upwards in humanity, and
how much again from mean personal ambition. I had thought that I had
done it all in order that the failing strength of old age might be
relieved, and that the race might from age to age be improved. But
I now doubted myself, and feared lest that vanity of which Eva had
spoken to me had overcome me. With my wife and son I could still be
brave,--even with Crasweller I could be constant and hard; but to be
obdurate with Eva was indeed a struggle. And when she told me that
I did so through pride, I found it very hard to bear. And yet it was
not that I was angry with the child. I became more and more attached
to her the more loudly she spoke on behalf of her father. Her very
indignation endeared me to her, and made me feel how excellent she
was, how noble a wife she would be for my son. But was I to give way
after all? Having brought the matter to such a pitch, was I to give
up everything to the prayers of a girl? I was well aware even then
that my theory was true. The old and effete should go, in order that
the strong and manlike might rise in their places and do the work of
the world with the wealth of the world at their command. Take the
average of mankind all round, and there would be but the lessening of
a year or two from the life of them all. Even taking those men who
had arrived at twenty-five, to how few are allotted more than forty
years of life! But yet how large a proportion of the wealth of the
world remains in the hands of those who have passed that age, and are
unable from senile imbecility to employ that wealth as it should be
used! As I thought of this, I said to myself that Eva's prayers might
not avail, and I did take some comfort to myself in thinking that all
was done for the sake of posterity. And then, again, when I thought
of her prayers, and of those stern words which had followed her
prayers,--of that charge of pride and vanity,--I did tell myself that
pride and vanity were not absent.

She was gone now, and I felt that she must say and think evil things
of me through all my future life. The time might perhaps come, when
I too should have been taken away, and when her father should long
since have been at rest, that softer thoughts would come across her
mind. If it were only possible that I might go, so that Jack might
be married to the girl he loved, that might be well. Then I wiped my
eyes, and went forth to make arrangements for the morrow.

The morning came,--the 30th of June,--a bright, clear, winter
morning, cold but still genial and pleasant as I got into the
barouche and had myself driven to Little Christchurch. To say that
my heart was sad within me would give no fair record of my condition.
I was so crushed by grief, so obliterated by the agony of the hour,
that I hardly saw what passed before my eyes. I only knew that the
day had come, the terrible day for which in my ignorance I had
yearned, and that I was totally unable to go through its ceremonies
with dignity, or even with composure. But I observed as I was driven
down the street, lying out at sea many miles to the left, a small
spot of smoke on the horizon, as though it might be of some passing
vessel. It did not in the least awaken my attention; but there it
was, and I remembered to have thought as I passed on how blessed were
they who steamed by unconscious of that terrible ordeal of the Fixed
Period which I was bound to encounter.

I went to Little Christchurch, and there I found Mr Crasweller
waiting for me in the hall. I came in and took his limp hand in
mine, and congratulated him. Oh how vain, how wretched, sounded that
congratulation in my own ears!

And it was spoken, I was aware, in a piteous tone of voice, and with
meagre, bated breath. He merely shook his head, and attempted to pass
on. "Will you not take your greatcoat?" said I, seeing that he was
going out into the open air without protection.

"No; why should I? It will not be wanted up there."

"You do not know the place," I replied. "There are twenty acres of
pleasure-ground for you to wander over." Then he turned upon me
a look,--oh, such a look!--and went on and took his place in the
carriage. But Eva followed him, and spread a rug across his knees,
and threw a cloak over his shoulders.

"Will not Eva come with us?" I said.

"No; my daughter will hide her face on such a day as this. It is for
you and me to be carried through the city,--you because you are proud
of the pageant, and me because I do not fear it." This, too, added
something to my sorrow. Then I looked and saw that Eva got into a
small closed carriage in the rear, and was driven off by a circuitous
route, to meet us, no doubt, at the college.

As we were driven away,--Crasweller and I,--I had not a word to say
to him. And he seemed to collect himself in his fierceness, and to
remain obdurately silent in his anger. In this way we drove on, till,
coming to a turn of the road, the expanse of the sea appeared before
us. Here again I observed a small cloud of smoke which had grown out
of the spot I had before seen, and I was aware that some large ship
was making its way into the harbour of Gladstonopolis. I turned my
face towards it and gazed, and then a sudden thought struck me. How
would it be with me if this were some great English vessel coming
into our harbour on the very day of Crasweller's deposition? A year
since I would have rejoiced on such an occasion, and would have
assured myself that I would show to the strangers the grandeur of
this ceremony, which must have been new to them. But now a creeping
terror took possession of me, and I felt my heart give way within me.
I wanted no Englishman, nor American, to come and see the first day
of our Fixed Period.

It was evident that Crasweller did not see the smoke; but to my eyes,
as we progressed, it became nearer, till at last the hull of the
vast vessel became manifest. Then as the carriage passed on into the
street of Gladstonopolis at the spot where one side of the street
forms the quay, the vessel with extreme rapidity steamed in, and I
could see across the harbour that she was a ship of war. A certain
sense of relief came upon my mind just then, because I felt sure that
she had come to interfere with the work which I had in hand; but how
base must be my condition when I could take delight in thinking that
it had been interrupted!

By this time we had been joined by some eight or ten carriages,
which formed, as it were, a funeral _cortège_ behind us. But I could
perceive that these carriages were filled for the most part by young
men, and that there was no contemporary of Crasweller to be seen at
all. As we went up the town hill, I could espy Barnes gibbering on
the doorstep of his house, and Tallowax brandishing a large knife in
his hand, and Exors waving a paper over his head, which I well knew
to be a copy of the Act of our Assembly; but I could only pretend not
to see them as our carriage passed on.

The chief street of Gladstonopolis, running through the centre of
the city, descends a hill to the level of the harbour. As the vessel
came in we began to ascend the hill, but the horses progressed very
slowly. Crasweller sat perfectly speechless by my side. I went on
with a forced smile upon my face, speaking occasionally to this or
the other neighbour as we met them. I was forced to be in a certain
degree cheerful, but grave and solemn in my cheerfulness. I was
taking this man home for that last glorious year which he was about
to pass in joyful anticipation of a happier life; and therefore I
must be cheerful. But this was only the thing to be acted, the play
to be played, by me the player. I must be solemn too,--silent as the
churchyard, mournful as the grave,--because of the truth. Why was I
thus driven to act a part that was false? On the brow of the hill we
met a concourse of people both young and old, and I was glad to see
that the latter had come out to greet us. But by degrees the crowd
became so numerous that the carriage was stopped in its progress; and
rising up, I motioned to those around us to let us pass. We became,
however, more firmly enveloped in the masses, and at last I had to
ask aloud that they would open and let us go on. "Mr President," said
one old gentleman to me, a tanner in the city, "there's an English
ship of war come into the harbour. I think they've got something to
say to you."

"Something to say to me! What can they have to say to me?" I replied,
with all the dignity I could command.

"We'll just stay and see;--we'll just wait a few minutes," said
another elder. He was a bar-keeper with a red nose, and as he spoke
he took up a place in front of the horses. It was in vain for me to
press the coachman. It would have been indecent to do so at such
a moment, and something at any rate was due to the position of
Crasweller. He remained speechless in the carriage; but I thought
that I could see, as I glanced at his face, that he took a strong
interest in the proceedings. "They're going to begin to come up the
hill, Mr Bunnit," said the bar-keeper to the tanner, "as soon as ever
they're out of their boats."

"God bless the old flag for ever and ever!" said Mr Bunnit. "I knew
they wouldn't let us deposit any one."

Thus their secret was declared. These old men,--the tanner and
whisky-dealer, and the like,--had sent home to England to get
assistance against their own Government! There had always been a
scum of the population,--the dirty, frothy, meaningless foam at
the top,--men like the drunken old bar-keeper, who had still clung
submissive to the old country,--men who knew nothing of progress
and civilisation,--who were content with what they ate and drank,
and chiefly with the latter. "Here they come. God bless their gold
bands!" said he of the red nose. Yes;--up the hill they came, three
gilded British naval officers surrounded by a crowd of Britannulans.

Crasweller heard it all, but did not move from his place. But he
leaned forward, and he bit his lip, and I saw that his right hand
shook as it grasped the arm of the carriage. There was nothing for me
but to throw myself back and remain tranquil. I was, however, well
aware that an hour of despair and opposition, and of defeat, was
coming upon me. Up they came, and were received with three deafening
cheers by the crowd immediately round the carriage. "I beg your
pardon, sir," said one of the three, whom I afterwards learned to be
the second lieutenant; "are you the President of this Republic?"

"I am," replied I; "and what may you be?"

"I am the second lieutenant on board H.M.'s gunboat, the John
Bright." I had heard of this vessel, which had been named from a
gallant officer, who, in the beginning of the century, had seated
himself on a barrel of gunpowder, and had, single-handed, quelled a
mutiny. He had been made Earl Bright for what he had done on that
occasion, but the vessel was still called J. B. throughout the
service.

"And what may be your business with me, Mr Second Lieutenant?"

"Our captain, Captain Battleax's compliments, and he hopes you won't
object to postpone this interesting ceremony for a day or two till he
may come and see. He is sure that Mr Crasweller won't mind." Then he
took off his hat to my old friend. "The captain would have come up
himself, but he can't leave the ship before he sees his big gun laid
on and made safe. He is very sorry to be so unceremonious, but the
250-ton steam-swiveller requires a great deal of care."

"Laid on?" I suggested.

"Well--yes. It is always necessary, when the ship lets go her anchor,
to point the gun in the most effective manner."

"She won't go off, will she?" asked Bunnit.

"Not without provocation, I think. The captain has the exploding wire
under double lock and key in his own state-room. If he only touched
the spring, we about the locality here would be knocked into little
bits in less time than it will take you to think about it. Indeed the
whole of this side of the hill would become an instantaneous ruin
without the sign of a human being anywhere."

There was a threat in this which I could not endure. And indeed, for
myself, I did not care how soon I might be annihilated. England,
with unsurpassed tyranny, had sent out one of her brutal modern
inventions, and threatened us all with blood and gore and murder
if we did not give up our beneficent modern theory. It was the
malevolent influence of the intellect applied to brute force,
dominating its benevolent influence as applied to philanthropy. What
was the John Bright to me that it should come there prepared to send
me into eternity by its bloodthirsty mechanism? It is an evil sign of
the times,--of the times that are in so many respects hopeful,--that
the greatest inventions of the day should always take the shape of
engines of destruction! But what could I do in the agony of the
moment? I could but show the coolness of my courage by desiring the
coachman to drive on.

"For God's sake, don't!" said Crasweller, jumping up.

"He shan't stir a step," said Bunnit to the bar-keeper.

"He can't move an inch," replied the other. "We know what our
precious lives are worth; don't we, Mr Bunnit?"

What could I do? "Mr Second Lieutenant, I must hold you responsible
for this interruption," said I.

"Exactly so. I am responsible,--as far as stopping this carriage
goes. Had all the town turned out in your favour, and had this
gentleman insisted on being carried away to be buried--"

"Nothing of that kind," said Crasweller.

"Then I think I may assume that Captain Battleax will not fire his
gun. But if you will allow me, I will ask him a question." Then he
put a minute whistle up to his mouth, and I could see, for the first
time, that there hung from this the thinnest possible metal wire,--a
thread of silk, I would have said, only that it was much less
palpable,--which had been dropped from the whistle as the lieutenant
had come along, and which now communicated with the vessel. I had,
of course, heard of this hair telephone, but I had never before
seen it used in such perfection. I was assured afterwards that one
of the ship's officers could go ten miles inland and still hold
communication with his captain. He put the instrument alternately to
his mouth and to his ear, and then informed me that Captain Battleax
was desirous that we should all go home to our own houses.

"I decline to go to my own house," I said. The lieutenant shrugged
his shoulders. "Coachman, as soon as the crowd has dispersed itself,
you will drive on." The coachman, who was an old assistant in my
establishment, turned round and looked at me aghast. But he was soon
put out of his trouble. Bunnit and the bar-keeper took out the horses
and proceeded to lead them down the hill. Crasweller, as soon as he
saw this, said that he presumed he might go back, as he could not
possibly go on. "It is but three miles for us to walk," I said.

"I am forbidden to permit this gentleman to proceed either on foot or
with the carriage," said the lieutenant. "I am to ask if he will do
Captain Battleax the honour to come on board and take tiffin with
him. If I could only prevail on you, Mr President." On this I shook
my head in eager denial. "Exactly so; but he will hope to see you on
another occasion soon." I little thought then, how many long days I
should have to pass with Captain Battleax and his officers, or how
pleasant companions I should find them when the remembrance of the
present indignity had been somewhat softened by time.

Crasweller turned upon his heel and walked down the hill with the
officers,--all the crowd accompanying them; while Bunnit and the
bar-keeper had gone off with the horses. I had not descended from
the carriage; but there I was, planted alone,--the President of the
Republic left on the top of the hill in his carriage without means of
locomotion! On looking round I saw Jack, and with Jack I saw also a
lady, shrouded from head to foot in black garments, with a veil over
her face, whom I knew, from the little round hat upon her head, to be
Eva. Jack came up to me, but where Eva went I could not see. "Shall
we walk down to the house?" he said. I felt that his coming to me at
such a moment was kind, because I had been, as it were, deserted by
all the world. Then he opened the door of the carriage, and I came
out. "It was very odd that those fellows should have turned up just
at this moment," said Jack.

"When things happen very oddly, as you call it, they seem to have
been premeditated."

"Not their coming to-day. That has not been premeditated; at least
not to my knowledge. Indeed I did not in the least know what the
English were likely to do."

"Do you think it right to send to the enemies of your country for aid
against your country?" This I asked with much indignation, and I had
refused as yet to take his arm.

"Oh but, sir, England isn't our enemy."

"Not when she comes and interrupts the quiet execution of our laws
by threats of blowing us and our city and our citizens to instant
destruction!"

"She would never have done it. I don't suppose that big gun is even
loaded."

"The more contemptible is her position. She threatens us with a lie
in her mouth."

"I know nothing about it, sir. The gun may be there all right, and
the gunpowder, and the twenty tons of iron shot. But I'm sure she'll
not fire it off in our harbour. They say that each shot costs two
thousand five hundred pounds, and that the wear and tear to the
vessel is two thousand more. There are things so terrible, that if
you will only create a belief in them, that will suffice without
anything else. I suppose we may walk down. Crasweller has gone, and
you can do nothing without him."

This was true, and I therefore prepared to descend the hill. My
position as President of the Republic did demand a certain amount
of personal dignity; and how was I to uphold that in my present
circumstances? "Jack," said I, "it is the sign of a noble mind to
bear contumely without petulance. Since our horses have gone before
us, and Crasweller and the crowd have gone, we will follow them."
Then I put my arm within his, and as I walked down the hill, I almost
took joy in thinking that Crasweller had been spared.

"Sir," said Jack, as we walked on, "I want to tell you something."

"What is it?"

"Something of most extreme importance to me! I never thought that I
should have been so fortunate as to announce to you what I've now got
to say. I hardly know whether I am standing on my head or my heels.
Eva Crasweller has promised to be my wife."

"Indeed!"

"If you will make us happy by giving us your permission."

"I should not have thought that she would have asked for that."

"She has to ask her father, and he's all right. He did say, when I
spoke to him this morning, that his permission would go for nothing,
as he was about to be led away and deposited. Of course I told him
that all that would amount to nothing."

"To nothing! What right had you to say so?"

"Well, sir,--you see that a party of us were quite determined. Eva
had said that she would never let me even speak to her as long as her
father's life was in danger. She altogether hated that wretch Grundle
for wanting to get rid of him. I swore to her that I would do the
best I could, and she said that if I could succeed, then--she thought
she could love me. What was a fellow to do?"

"What did you do?"

"I had it all out with Sir Kennington Oval, who is the prince of
good fellows; and he telegraphed to his uncle, who is Secretary for
Benevolence, or some such thing, at home."

"England is not your home," said I.

"It's the way we all speak of it."

"And what did he say?"

"Well, he went to work, and the John Bright was sent out here. But it
was only an accident that it should come on this very day."

And this was the way in which things are to be managed in Britannula!
Because a young boy had fallen in love with a pretty girl, the whole
wealth of England was to be used for a most nefarious purpose, and a
great nation was to exercise its tyranny over a small one, in which
her own language was spoken and her own customs followed! In every
way England had had reason to be proud of her youngest child. We
Britannulans had become noted for intellect, morals, health, and
prosperity. We had advanced a step upwards, and had adopted the Fixed
Period. Then, at the instance of this lad, a leviathan of war was
to be sent out to crush us unless we would consent to put down the
cherished conviction of our hearts! As I thought of all, walking
down the street hanging on Jack's arm, I had to ask myself whether
the Fixed Period was the cherished conviction of our hearts. It was
so of some, no doubt; and I had been able, by the intensity of my
will,--and something, too, by the covetousness and hurry of the
younger men,--to cause my wishes to prevail in the community. I did
not find that I had reconciled myself to the use of this covetousness
with the object of achieving a purpose which I believed to be
thoroughly good. But the heartfelt conviction had not been strong
with the people. I was forced to confess as much. Had it indeed been
really strong with any but myself? Was I not in the position of a
shepherd driving sheep into a pasture which was distasteful to them?
Eat, O sheep, and you will love the food in good time,--you or the
lambs that are coming after you! What sheep will go into unsavoury
pastures, with no hopes but such as these held out to them? And yet I
had been right. The pasture had been the best which the ingenuity of
man had found for the maintenance of sheep.

"Jack," said I, "what a poor, stupid, lovelorn boy you are!"

"I daresay I am," said Jack, meekly.

"You put the kisses of a pretty girl, who may perhaps make you a good
wife,--and, again, may make you a bad one,--against all the world in
arms."

"I am quite sure about that," said Jack.

"Sure about what?"

"That there is not a fellow in all Britannula will have such a wife
as Eva."

"That means that you are in love. And because you are in love, you
are to throw over--not merely your father, because in such an affair
that goes for nothing--"

"Oh, but it does; I have thought so much about it."

"I'm much obliged to you. But you are to put yourself in opposition
to the greatest movement made on behalf of the human race for
centuries; you are to set yourself up against--"

"Galileo and Columbus," he suggested, quoting my words with great
cruelty.

"The modern Galileo, sir; the Columbus of this age. And you are to
conquer them! I, the father, have to submit to you the son; I the
President of fifty-seven, to you the schoolboy of twenty-one; I the
thoughtful man, to you the thoughtless boy! I congratulate you; but I
do not congratulate the world on the extreme folly which still guides
its actions." Then I left him, and going into the executive chambers,
sat myself down and cried in the very agony of a broken heart.




CHAPTER IX.

THE NEW GOVERNOR.


"So," said I to myself, "because of Jack and his love, all the
aspirations of my life are to be crushed! The whole dream of my
existence, which has come so near to the fruition of a waking moment,
is to be violently dispelled because my own son and Sir Kennington
Oval have settled between them that a pretty girl is to have her own
way." As I thought of it, there seemed to be a monstrous cruelty
and potency in Fortune, which she never could have been allowed to
exercise in a world which was not altogether given over to injustice.
It was for that that I wept. I wept to think that a spirit of honesty
should as yet have prevailed so little in the world. Here, in our
waters, was lying a terrible engine of British power, sent out by a
British Cabinet Minister,--the so-called Minister of Benevolence, by
a bitter chance,--at the instance of that Minister's nephew, to put
down by brute force the most absolutely benevolent project for the
governance of the world which the mind of man had ever projected. It
was in that that lay the agony of the blow.

I remained there alone for many hours, but I must acknowledge
that before I left the chambers I had gradually brought myself to
look at the matter in another light. Had Eva Crasweller not been
good-looking, had Jack been still at college, had Sir Kennington Oval
remained in England, had Mr Bunnit and the bar-keeper not succeeded
in stopping my carriage on the hill,--should I have succeeded in
arranging for the final departure of my old friend? That was the
question which I ought to ask myself. And even had I succeeded in
carrying my success so far as that, should I not have appeared a
murderer to my fellow-citizens had not his departure been followed in
regular sequence by that of all others till it had come to my turn?
Had Crasweller departed, and had the system then been stopped, should
I not have appeared a murderer even to myself? And what hope had
there been, what reasonable expectation, that the system should have
been allowed fair-play?

It must be understood that I, I myself, have never for a moment
swerved. But though I have been strong enough to originate the idea,
I have not been strong enough to bear the terrible harshness of the
opinions of those around me when I should have exercised against
those dear to me the mandates of the new law. If I could, in the
spirit, have leaped over a space of thirty years and been myself
deposited in due order, I could see that my memory would have
been embalmed with those who had done great things for their
fellow-citizens. Columbus, and Galileo, and Newton, and Harvey, and
Wilberforce, and Cobden, and that great Banting who has preserved us
all so completely from the horrors of obesity, would not have been
named with honour more resplendent than that paid to the name of
Neverbend. Such had been my ambition, such had been my hope. But it
is necessary that a whole age should be carried up to some proximity
to the reformer before there is a space sufficiently large for his
operations. Had the telegraph been invented in the days of ancient
Rome, would the Romans have accepted it, or have stoned Wheatstone?
So thinking, I resolved that I was before my age, and that I must pay
the allotted penalty.

On arriving at home at my own residence, I found that our _salon_ was
filled with a brilliant company. We did not usually use the room;
but on entering the house I heard the clatter of conversation, and
went in. There was Captain Battleax seated there, beautiful with a
cocked-hat, and an epaulet, and gold braid. He rose to meet me, and
I saw that he was a handsome tall man about forty, with a determined
face and a winning smile. "Mr President," said he, "I am in command
of her Majesty's gunboat, the John Bright, and I have come to pay my
respects to the ladies."

"I am sure the ladies have great pleasure in seeing you." I looked
round the room, and there, with other of our fair citizens, I saw
Eva. As I spoke I made him a gracious bow, and I think I showed
him by my mode of address that I did not bear any grudge as to my
individual self.

"I have come to your shores, Mr President, with the purpose of seeing
how things are progressing in this distant quarter of the world."

"Things were progressing, Captain Battleax, pretty well before this
morning. We have our little struggles here as elsewhere, and all
things cannot be done by rose-water. But, on the whole, we are a
prosperous and well-satisfied people."

"We are quite satisfied now, Captain Battleax," said my wife.

"Quite satisfied," said Eva.

"I am sure we are all delighted to hear the ladies speak in so
pleasant a manner," said First-Lieutenant Crosstrees, an officer with
whom I have since become particularly intimate.

Then there was a little pause in the conversation, and I felt myself
bound to say something as to the violent interruption to which I had
this morning been subjected. And yet that something must be playful
in its nature. I must by no means show in such company as was now
present the strong feeling which pervaded my own mind. "You will
perceive, Captain Battleax, that there is a little difference of
opinion between us all here as to the ceremony which was to have
been accomplished this morning. The ladies, in compliance with that
softness of heart which is their characteristic, are on one side; and
the men, by whom the world has to be managed, are on the other. No
doubt, in process of time the ladies will follow--"

"Their masters," said Mrs Neverbend. "No doubt we shall do so when
it is only ourselves that we have to sacrifice, but never when the
question concerns our husbands, our fathers, and our sons."

This was a pretty little speech enough, and received the eager
compliments of the officers of the John Bright. "I did not mean,"
said Captain Battleax, "to touch upon public subjects at such a
moment as this. I am here only to pay my respects as a messenger from
Great Britain to Britannula, to congratulate you all on your late
victory at cricket, and to say how loud are the praises bestowed
on Mr John Neverbend, junior, for his skill and gallantry. The
power of his arm is already the subject discussed at all clubs and
drawing-rooms at home. We had received details of the whole affair
by water-telegram before the John Bright started. Mrs Neverbend, you
must indeed be proud of your son."

Jack had been standing in the far corner of the room talking to Eva,
and was now reduced to silence by his praises.

"Sir Kennington Oval is a very fine player," said my wife.

"And my Lord Marylebone behaves himself quite like a British peer,"
said the wife of the Mayor of Gladstonopolis,--a lady whom he had
married in England, and who had not moved there in quite the highest
circles.

Then we began to think of the hospitality of the island, and the
officers of the John Bright were asked to dine with us on the
following day. I and my wife and son, and the two Craswellers, and
three or four others, agreed to dine on board the ship on the next.
To me personally an extreme of courtesy was shown. It seemed as
though I were treated with almost royal honour. This, I felt, was
paid to me as being President of the republic, and I endeavoured to
behave myself with such mingled humility and dignity as might befit
the occasion; but I could not but feel that something was wanting
to the simplicity of my ordinary life. My wife, on the spur of the
moment, managed to give the gentlemen a very good dinner. Including
the chaplain and the surgeon, there were twelve of them, and she
asked twelve of the prettiest girls in Gladstonopolis to meet them.
This, she said, was true hospitality; and I am not sure that I did
not agree with her. Then there were three or four leading men of the
community, with their wives, who were for the most part the fathers
and mothers of the young ladies. We sat down thirty-six to dinner;
and I think that we showed a great divergence from those usual
colonial banquets, at which the elders are only invited to meet
distinguished guests. The officers were chiefly young men; and a
greater babel of voices was, I'll undertake to say, never heard from
a banqueting-hall than came from our dinner-table. Eva Crasweller was
the queen of the evening, and was as joyous, as beautiful, and as
high-spirited as a queen should ever be. I did once or twice during
the festivity glance round at old Crasweller. He was quiet, and I
might almost say silent, during the whole evening; but I could see
from the testimony of his altered countenance how strong is the
passion for life that dwells in the human breast.

"Your promised bride seems to have it all her own way," said Captain
Battleax to Jack, when at last the ladies had withdrawn.

"Oh yes," said Jack, "and I'm nowhere. But I mean to have my innings
before long."

Of what Mrs Neverbend had gone through in providing birds, beasts,
and fishes, not to talk of tarts and jellies, for the dinner of that
day, no one but myself can have any idea; but it must be admitted
that she accomplished her task with thorough success. I was told,
too, that after the invitations had been written, no milliner in
Britannula was allowed to sleep a single moment till half an hour
before the ladies were assembled in our drawing-room; but their
efforts, too, were conspicuously successful.

On the next day some of us went on board the John Bright for a return
dinner; and very pleasant the officers made it. The living on board
the John Bright is exceedingly good, as I have had occasion to learn
from many dinners eaten there since that day. I little thought when I
sat down at the right hand of Captain Battleax as being the President
of the republic, with my wife on his left, I should ever spend more
than a month on board the ship, or write on board it this account of
all my thoughts and all my troubles in regard to the Fixed Period.
After dinner Captain Battleax simply proposed my health, paying to
me many unmeaning compliments, in which, however, I observed that no
reference was made to the special doings of my presidency; and he
ended by saying, that though he had, as a matter of courtesy, and
with the greatest possible alacrity, proposed my health, he would
not call upon me for any reply. And immediately on his sitting down,
there got up a gentleman to whom I had not been introduced before
this day, and gave the health of Mrs Neverbend and the ladies of
Britannula. Now in spite of what the captain said, I undoubtedly had
intended to make a speech. When the President of the republic has
his health drunk, it is, I conceive, his duty to do so. But here the
gentleman rose with a rapidity which did at the moment seem to have
been premeditated. At any rate, my eloquence was altogether stopped.
The gentleman was named Sir Ferdinando Brown. He was dressed in
simple black, and was clearly not one of the ship's officers; but
I could not but suspect at the moment that he was in some special
measure concerned in the mission on which the gunboat had been sent.
He sat on Mrs Neverbend's left hand, and did seem in some respect
to be the chief man on that occasion. However, he proposed Mrs
Neverbend's health and the ladies, and the captain instantly called
upon the band to play some favourite tune. After that there was
no attempt at speaking. We sat with the officers some little time
after dinner, and then went ashore. "Sir Ferdinando and I," said the
captain, as we shook hands with him, "will do ourselves the honour of
calling on you at the executive chambers to-morrow morning."

I went home to bed with a presentiment of evil running across my
heart. A presentiment indeed! How much of evil,--of real accomplished
evil,--had there not occurred to me during the last few days! Every
hope for which I had lived, as I then told myself, had been brought
to sudden extinction by the coming of these men to whom I had been so
pleasant, and who, in their turn, had been so pleasant to me! What
could I do now but just lay myself down and die? And the death of
which I dreamt could not, alas! be that true benumbing death which
we think may put an end, or at any rate give a change, to all our
thoughts. To die would be as nothing; but to live as the late
President of the republic who had fixed his aspirations so high,
would indeed be very melancholy. As President I had still two
years to run, but it occurred to me now that I could not possibly
endure those two years of prolonged nominal power. I should be the
laughing-stock of the people; and as such, it would become me to hide
my head. When this captain should have taken himself and his vessel
back to England, I would retire to a small farm which I possessed at
the farthest side of the island, and there in seclusion would I end
my days. Mrs Neverbend should come with me, or stay, if it so pleased
her, in Gladstonopolis. Jack would become Eva's happy husband,
and would remain amidst the hurried duties of the eager world.
Crasweller, the triumphant, would live, and at last die, amidst the
flocks and herds of Little Christchurch. I, too, would have a small
herd, a little flock of my own, surrounded by no such glories as
those of Little Christchurch,--owing nothing to wealth, or scenery,
or neighbourhood,--and there, till God should take me, I would spend
the evening of my day. Thinking of all this, I went to sleep.

On the next morning Sir Ferdinando Brown and Captain Battleax were
announced at the executive chambers. I had already been there at my
work for a couple of hours; but Sir Ferdinando apologised for the
earliness of his visit. It seemed to me as he entered the room and
took the chair that was offered to him, that he was the greater man
of the two on the occasion,--or perhaps I should say of the three.
And yet he had not before come on shore to visit me, nor had he
made one at our little dinner-party. "Mr Neverbend," began the
captain,--and I observed that up to that moment he had generally
addressed me as President,--"it cannot be denied that we have come
here on an unpleasant mission. You have received us with all that
courtesy and hospitality for which your character in England stands
so high. But you must be aware that it has been our intention to
interfere with that which you must regard as the performance of a
duty."

"It is a duty," said I. "But your power is so superior to any that
I can advance, as to make us here feel that there is no disgrace in
yielding to it. Therefore we can be courteous while we submit. Not a
doubt but had your force been only double or treble our own, I should
have found it my duty to struggle with you. But how can a little
State, but a few years old, situated on a small island, far removed
from all the centres of civilisation, contend on any point with the
owner of the great 250-ton swiveller-gun?"

"That is all quite true, Mr Neverbend," said Sir Ferdinando Brown.

"I can afford to smile, because I am absolutely powerless before you;
but I do not the less feel that, in a matter in which the progress of
the world is concerned, I, or rather we, have been put down by brute
force. You have come to us threatening us with absolute destruction.
Whether your gun be loaded or not matters little."

"It is certainly loaded," said Captain Battleax.

"Then you have wasted your powder and shot. Like a highwayman, it
would have sufficed for you merely to tell the weak and cowardly that
your pistol would be made to go off when wanted. To speak the truth,
Captain Battleax, I do not think that you excel us more in courage
than you do in thought and practical wisdom. Therefore, I feel myself
quite able, as President of this republic, to receive you with a
courtesy due to the servants of a friendly ally."

"Very well put," said Sir Ferdinando. I simply bowed to him. "And
now," he continued, "will you answer me one question?"

"A dozen if it suits you to ask them."

"Captain Battleax cannot remain here long with that expensive toy
which he keeps locked up somewhere among his cocked-hats and white
gloves. I can assure you he has not even allowed me to see the
trigger since I have been on board. But 250-ton swivellers do cost
money, and the John Bright must steam away, and play its part in
other quarters of the globe. What do you intend to do when he shall
have taken his pocket-pistol away?"

I thought for a little what answer it would best become me to give
to this question, but I paused only for a moment or two. "I shall
proceed at once to carry out the Fixed Period." I felt that my honour
demanded that to such a question I should make no other reply.

"And that in opposition to the wishes, as I understand, of a large
proportion of your fellow-citizens?"

"The wishes of our fellow-citizens have been declared by repeated
majorities in the Assembly."

"You have only one House in your Constitution," said Sir Ferdinando.

"One House I hold to be quite sufficient."

I was proceeding to explain the theory on which the Britannulan
Constitution had been formed, when Sir Ferdinando interrupted me. "At
any rate, you will admit that a second Chamber is not there to guard
against the sudden action of the first. But we need not discuss all
this now. It is your purpose to carry out your Fixed Period as soon
as the John Bright shall have departed?"

"Certainly."

"And you are, I am aware, sufficiently popular with the people here
to enable you to do so?"

"I think I am," I said, with a modest acquiescence in an assertion
which I felt to be so much to my credit. But I blushed for its
untruth.

"Then," said Sir Ferdinando, "there is nothing for it but that he
must take you with him."

There came upon me a sudden shock when I heard these words, which
exceeded anything which I had yet felt. Me, the President of a
foreign nation, the first officer of a people with whom Great Britain
was at peace,--the captain of one of her gunboats must carry me off,
hurry me away a prisoner, whither I knew not, and leave the country
ungoverned, with no President as yet elected to supply my place! And
I, looking at the matter from my own point of view, was a husband,
the head of a family, a man largely concerned in business,--I was to
be carried away in bondage--I, who had done no wrong, had disobeyed
no law, who had indeed been conspicuous for my adherence to my
duties! No opposition ever shown to Columbus and Galileo had come
near to this in audacity and oppression. I, the President of a free
republic, the elected of all its people, the chosen depository of its
official life,--I was to be kidnapped and carried off in a ship of
war, because, forsooth, I was deemed too popular to rule the country!
And this was told to me in my own room in the executive chambers, in
the very sanctum of public life, by a stout florid gentleman in a
black coat, of whom I hitherto knew nothing except that his name was
Brown!

"Sir," I said, after a pause, and turning to Captain Battleax and
addressing him, "I cannot believe that you, as an officer in the
British navy, will commit any act of tyranny so oppressive, and of
injustice so gross, as that which this gentleman has named."

"You hear what Sir Ferdinando Brown has said," replied Captain
Battleax.

"I do not know the gentleman,--except as having been introduced to
him at your hospitable table. Sir Ferdinando Brown is to me--simply
Sir Ferdinando Brown."

"Sir Ferdinando has lately been our British Governor in Ashantee,
where he has, as I may truly say, 'bought golden opinions from all
sorts of people.' He has now been sent here on this delicate mission,
and to no one could it be intrusted by whom it would be performed
with more scrupulous honour." This was simply the opinion of Captain
Battleax, and expressed in the presence of the gentleman himself whom
he so lauded.

"But what is the delicate mission?" I asked.

Then Sir Ferdinando told his whole story, which I think should have
been declared before I had been asked to sit down to dinner with him
in company with the captain on board the ship. I was to be taken away
and carried to England or elsewhere,--or drowned upon the voyage,
it mattered not which. That was the first step to be taken towards
carrying out the tyrannical, illegal, and altogether injurious
intention of the British Government. Then the republic of Britannula
was to be declared as non-existent, and the British flag was to be
exalted, and a British Governor installed in the executive chambers!
That Governor was to be Sir Ferdinando Brown.

I was lost in a maze of wonderment as I attempted to look at the
proceeding all round. Now, at the close of the twentieth century,
could oppression be carried to such a height as this? "Gentlemen," I
said, "you are powerful. That little instrument which you have hidden
in your cabin makes you the master of us all. It has been prepared
by the ingenuity of men, able to dominate matter though altogether
powerless over mind. On myself, I need hardly say that it would be
inoperative. Though you should reduce me to atoms, from them would
spring those opinions which would serve altogether to silence your
artillery. But the dread of it is to the generality much more
powerful than the fact of its possession."

"You may be quite sure it's there," said Captain Battleax, "and that
I can so use it as to half obliterate your town within two minutes of
my return on board."

"You propose to kidnap me," I said. "What would become of your gun
were I to kidnap you?"

"Lieutenant Crosstrees has sealed orders, and is practically
acquainted with the mechanism of the gun. Lieutenant Crosstrees is
a very gallant officer. One of us always remains on board while the
other is on shore. He would think nothing of blowing me up, so long
as he obeyed orders."

"I was going on to observe," I continued, "that though this power
is in your hands, and in that of your country, the exercise of it
betrays not only tyranny of disposition, but poorness and meanness
of spirit." I here bowed first to the one gentleman, and then to the
other. "It is simply a contest between brute strength and mental
energy."

"If you will look at the contests throughout the world," said Sir
Ferdinando, "you will generally find that the highest respect is paid
to the greatest battalions."

"What world-wide iniquity such a speech as that discloses!" said I,
still turning myself to the captain; for though I would have crushed
them both by my words had it been possible, my dislike centred itself
on Sir Ferdinando. He was a man who looked as though everything were
to yield to his meagre philosophy; and it seemed to me as though he
enjoyed the exercise of the tyranny which chance had put into his
power.

"You will allow me to suggest," said he, "that that is a matter of
opinion. In the meantime, my friend Captain Battleax has below a
guard of fifty marines, who will pay you the respect of escorting you
on board with two of the ship's cutters. Everything that can be there
done for your accommodation and comfort,--every luxury which can be
provided to solace the President of this late republic,--shall be
afforded. But, Mr Neverbend, it is necessary that you should go to
England; and allow me to assure you, that your departure can neither
be prevented nor delayed by uncivil words spoken to the future
Governor of this prosperous colony."

"My words are, at any rate, less uncivil than Captain Battleax's
marines; and they have, I submit, been made necessary by the conduct
of your country in this matter. Were I to comply with your orders
without expressing my own opinion, I should seem to have done so
willingly hereafter. I say that the English Government is a tyrant,
and that you are the instruments of its tyranny. Now you can proceed
to do your work."

"That having all been pleasantly settled," said Sir Ferdinando, with
a smile, "I will ask you to read the document by which this duty has
been placed in my hands." He then took out of his pocket a letter
addressed to him by the Duke of Hatfield, as Minister for the Crown
Colonies, and gave it to me to read. The letter ran as follows:--


   COLONIAL OFFICE, CROWN COLONIES,
   15th May 1980.

   SIR,--I have it in command to inform your Excellency that
   you have been appointed Governor of the Crown colony which
   is called Britannula. The peculiar circumstances of the
   colony are within your Excellency's knowledge. Some years
   since, after the separation of New Zealand, the inhabitants
   of Britannula requested to be allowed to manage their own
   affairs, and H.M. Minister of the day thought it expedient
   to grant their request. The country has since undoubtedly
   prospered, and in a material point of view has given
   us no grounds for regret. But in their selection of a
   Constitution the Britannulists have unfortunately allowed
   themselves but one deliberative assembly, and hence have
   sprung their present difficulties. It must be, that in
   such circumstances crude councils should be passed as laws
   without the safeguard coming from further discussion and
   thought. At the present moment a law has been passed which,
   if carried into action, would become abhorrent to mankind
   at large. It is contemplated to destroy all those who shall
   have reached a certain fixed age. The arguments put forward
   to justify so strange a measure I need not here explain at
   length. It is founded on the acknowledged weakness of those
   who survive that period of life at which men cease to work.
   This terrible doctrine has been adopted at the advice of
   an eloquent citizen of the republic, who is at present
   its President, and whose general popularity seems to be
   so great, that, in compliance with his views, even this
   measure will be carried out unless Great Britain shall
   interfere.

   You are desired to proceed at once to Britannula, to
   reannex the island, and to assume the duties of the
   Governor of a Crown colony. It is understood that a year of
   probation is to be allowed to those victims who have agreed
   to their own immolation. You will therefore arrive there
   in ample time to prevent the first bloodshed. But it is
   surmised that you will find difficulties in the way of your
   entering at once upon your government. So great is the
   popularity of their President, Mr Neverbend, that, if he be
   left on the island, your Excellency will find a dangerous
   rival. It is therefore desired that you should endeavour
   to obtain information as to his intentions; and that, if
   the Fixed Period be not abandoned altogether, with a clear
   conviction as to its cruelty on the part of the inhabitants
   generally, you should cause him to be carried away and
   brought to England.

   To enable you to effect this, Captain Battleax, of H.M.
   gunboat the John Bright, has been instructed to carry
   you out. The John Bright is armed with a weapon of great
   power, against which it is impossible that the people of
   Britannula should prevail. You will carry out with you 100
   men of the North-north-west Birmingham regiment, which will
   probably suffice for your own security, as it is thought
   that if Mr Neverbend be withdrawn, the people will revert
   easily to their old habits of obedience.

   In regard to Mr Neverbend himself, it is the especial
   wish of H.M. Government that he shall be treated with all
   respect, and that those honours shall be paid to him which
   are due to the President of a friendly republic. It is to
   be expected that he should not allow himself to make an
   enforced visit to England without some opposition; but
   it is considered in the interests of humanity to be so
   essential that this scheme of the Fixed Period shall not be
   carried out, that H.M. Government consider that his absence
   from Britannula shall be for a time insured. You will
   therefore insure it; but will take care that, as far as
   lies in your Excellency's power, he be treated with all
   that respect and hospitality which would be due to him were
   he still the President of an allied republic.

   Captain Battleax, of the John Bright, will have received
   a letter to the same effect from the First Lord of the
   Admiralty, and you will find him ready to co-operate with
   your Excellency in every respect.--I have the honour to be,
   sir, your Excellency's most obedient servant,

   HATFIELD.


This I read with great attention, while they sat silent. "I
understand it; and that is all, I suppose, that I need say upon the
subject. When do you intend that the John Bright shall start?"

"We have already lighted our fires, and our sailors are weighing the
anchors. Will twelve o'clock suit you?"

"To-day!" I shouted.

"I rather think we must move to-day," said the captain.

"If so, you must be content to take my dead body. It is now nearly
eleven."

"Half-past ten," said the captain, looking at his watch.

"And I have no one ready to whom I can give up the archives of the
Government."

"I shall be happy to take charge of them," said Sir Ferdinando.

"No doubt,--knowing nothing of the forms of our government, or--"

"They, of course, must all be altered."

"Or of the habits of our people. It is quite impossible. I, too, have
the complicated affairs of my entire life to arrange, and my wife and
son to leave though I would not for a moment be supposed to put these
private matters forward when the public service is concerned. But the
time you name is so unreasonable as to create a feeling of horror at
your tyranny."

"A feeling of horror would be created on the other side of the
water," said Sir Ferdinando, "at the idea of what you may do if
you escape us. I should not consider my head to be safe on my own
shoulders were it to come to pass that while I am on the island an
old man were executed in compliance with your system."

Alas! I could not but feel how little he knew of the sentiment which
prevailed in Britannula; how false was his idea of my power; and how
potent was that love of life which had been evinced in the city when
the hour for deposition had become nigh. All this I could hardly
explain to him, as I should thus be giving to him the strongest
evidence against my own philosophy. And yet it was necessary that
I should say something to make him understand that this sudden
deportation was not necessary. And then during that moment there came
to me suddenly an idea that it might be well that I should take this
journey to England, and there begin again my career,--as Columbus,
after various obstructions, had recommenced his,--and that I should
endeavour to carry with me the people of Great Britain, as I
had already carried the more quickly intelligent inhabitants of
Britannula. And in order that I may do so, I have now prepared these
pages, writing them on board H.M. gunboat, the John Bright.

"Your power is sufficient," I said.

"We are not sure of that," said Sir Ferdinando. "It is always well to
be on the safe side."

"Are you so afraid of what a single old man can do,--you with
your 250-ton swivellers, and your guard of marines, and your
North-north-west Birmingham soldiery?"

"That depends on who and what the old man may be." This was the
first complimentary speech which Sir Ferdinando had made, and I
must confess that it was efficacious. I did not after that feel so
strong a dislike to the man as I had done before. "We do not wish
to make ourselves disagreeable to you, Mr Neverbend." I shrugged my
shoulders. "Unnecessarily disagreeable, I should have said. You are
a man of your word." Here I bowed to him. "If you will give us your
promise to meet Captain Battleax here at this time to-morrow, we
will stretch a point and delay the departure of the John Bright for
twenty-four hours." To this again I objected violently; and at last,
as an extreme favour, two entire days were allowed for my departure.

The craft of men versed in the affairs of the old Eastern world
is notorious. I afterwards learned that the stokers on board the
ship were only pretending to get up their fires, and the sailors
pretending to weigh their anchors, in order that their operations
might be visible, and that I might suppose that I had received a
great favour from my enemies' hands. And this plan was adopted, too,
in order to extract from me a promise that I would depart in peace.
At any rate, I did make the promise, and gave these two gentlemen my
word that I would be present there in my own room in the executive
chambers at the same hour on the day but one following.

"And now," said Sir Ferdinando, "that this matter is settled between
us, allow me most cordially to shake you by the hand, and to express
my great admiration for your character. I cannot say that I agree
with you in theory as to the Fixed Period,--my wife and children
could not, I am sure, endure to see me led away when a certain day
should come,--but I can understand that much may be said on the
point, and I admire greatly the eloquence and energy which you have
devoted to the matter. I shall be happy to meet you here at any hour
to-morrow, and to receive the Britannulan archives from your hands.
You, Mr Neverbend, will always be regarded as the father of your
country--


   'Roma patrem patriæ Ciceronem libera dixit.'"


With this the two gentlemen left the room.




CHAPTER X.

THE TOWN-HALL.


When I went home and told them what was to be done, they were of
course surprised, but apparently not very unhappy. Mrs Neverbend
suggested that she should accompany me, so as to look after my linen
and other personal comforts. But I told her, whether truly or not I
hardly then knew, that there would be no room for her on board a ship
of war such as the John Bright. Since I have lived on board her, I
have become aware that they would willingly have accommodated, at my
request, a very much larger family than my own. Mrs Neverbend at once
went to work to provide for my enforced absence, and in the course of
the day Eva Crasweller came in to help her. Eva's manner to myself
had become perfectly altered since the previous morning. Nothing
could be more affectionate, more gracious, or more winning, than she
was now; and I envied Jack the short moments of _tête-à-tête_ retreat
which seemed from time to time to be necessary for carrying out the
arrangements of the day.

I may as well state here, that from this time Abraham Grundle
showed himself to be a declared enemy, and that the partnership was
dissolved between Crasweller and himself. He at once brought an
action against my old friend for the recovery of that proportion of
his property to which he was held to be entitled under our marriage
laws. This Mr Crasweller immediately offered to pay him; but some
of our more respectable lawyers interfered, and persuaded him not
to make the sacrifice. There then came on a long action, with an
appeal,--all which was given against Grundle, and nearly ruined the
Grundles. It seemed to me, as far as I could go into the matter, that
Grundle had all the law on his side. But there arose certain quibbles
and questions, all of which Jack had at his fingers'-ends, by the
strength of which the unfortunate young man was trounced. As I
learned by the letters which Eva wrote to me, Crasweller was all
through most anxious to pay him; but the lawyers would not have it
so, and therefore so much of the property of Little Christchurch was
saved for the ultimate benefit of that happy fellow Jack Neverbend.

On the afternoon of the one day which, as a matter of grace, had
been allowed to me, Sir Ferdinando declared his intention of making
a speech to the people of Gladstonopolis. "He was desirous," he
said, "of explaining to the community at large the objects of H.M.
Government in sending him to Britannula, and in requesting the
inhabitants to revert to their old form of government." "Request
indeed," I said to Crasweller, throwing all possible scorn into the
tone of my voice,--"request! with the North-north-west Birmingham
regiment, and his 250-ton steam-swiveller in the harbour! That
Ferdinando Brown knows how to conceal his claws beneath a velvet
glove. We are to be slaves,--slaves because England so wills it. We
are robbed of our constitution, our freedom of action is taken from
us, and we are reduced to the lamentable condition of a British Crown
colony! And all this is to be done because we had striven to rise
above the prejudices of the day." Crasweller smiled, and said not a
word to oppose me, and accepted all my indignation with assent; but
he certainly did not show any enthusiasm. A happier old gentleman,
or one more active for his years, I had never known. It was but
yesterday that I had seen him so absolutely cowed as to be hardly
able to speak a word. And all this change had occurred simply because
he was to be allowed to die out in the open world, instead of
enjoying the honour of having been the first to depart in conformity
with the new theory. He and I, however, spent thus one day longer
in sweet friendship; and I do not doubt but that, when I return
to Britannula, I shall find him living in great comfort at Little
Christchurch.

At three o'clock we all went into our great town-hall to hear what
Sir Ferdinando had to say to us. The chamber is a very spacious one,
fitted up with a large organ, and all the arrangements necessary for
a music-hall; but I had never seen a greater crowd than was collected
there on this occasion. There was not a vacant corner to be found;
and I heard that very many of the inhabitants went away greatly
displeased in that they could not be accommodated. Sir Ferdinando had
been very particular in asking the attendance of Captain Battleax,
and as many of the ship's officers as could be spared. This, I was
told, he did in order that something of the _éclat_ of his oration
might be taken back to England. Sir Ferdinando was a man who thought
much of his own eloquence,--and much also of the advantage which he
might reap from it in the opinion of his fellow-countrymen generally.
I found that a place of honour had been reserved for me too at his
right hand, and also one for my wife at his left. I must confess that
in these last moments of my sojourn among the people over whom I had
ruled, I was treated with the most distinguished courtesy. But, as
I continued to say to myself, I was to be banished in a few hours
as one whose intended cruelties were too abominable to allow of my
remaining in my own country. On the first seat behind the chair sat
Captain Battleax, with four or five of his officers behind him. "So
you have left Lieutenant Crosstrees in charge of your little toy," I
whispered to Captain Battleax.

"With a glass," he replied, "by which he will be able to see whether
you leave the building. In that case, he will blow us all into
atoms."

Then Sir Ferdinando rose to his legs, and began his speech. I had
never before heard a specimen of that special oratory to which the
epithet flowery may be most appropriately applied. It has all the
finished polish of England, joined to the fervid imagination of
Ireland. It streams on without a pause, and without any necessary end
but that which the convenience of time may dictate. It comes without
the slightest effort, and it goes without producing any great effect.
It is sweet at the moment. It pleases many, and can offend none. But
it is hardly afterwards much remembered, and is efficacious only in
smoothing somewhat the rough ways of this harsh world. But I have
observed that in what I have read of British debates, those who have
been eloquent after this fashion are generally firm to some purpose
of self-interest. Sir Ferdinando had on this occasion dressed himself
with minute care; and though he had for the hour before been very
sedulous in manipulating certain notes, he now was careful to show
not a scrap of paper; and I must do him the justice to declare that
he spun out the words from the reel of his memory as though they all
came spontaneous and pat to his tongue.

"Mr Neverbend," he said, "ladies and gentlemen,--I have to-day for
the first time the great pleasure of addressing an intelligent
concourse of citizens in Britannula. I trust that before my
acquaintance with this prosperous community may be brought to an end,
I may have many another opportunity afforded me of addressing you. It
has been my lot in life to serve my Sovereign in various parts of the
world, and humbly to represent the throne of England in every quarter
of the globe. But by the admitted testimony of all people,--my
fellow-countrymen at home in England, and those who are equally my
fellow-countrymen in the colonies to which I have been sent,--it is
acknowledged that in prosperity, intelligence, and civilisation, you
are excelled by no English-speaking section of the world. And if by
none who speak English, who shall then aspire to excel you? Such,
as I have learned, has been the common verdict given; and as I look
round this vast room, on a spot which fifty years ago the marsupial
races had under their own dominion, and see the feminine beauty and
manly grace which greet me on every side, I can well believe that
some peculiarly kind freak of nature has been at work, and has tended
to produce a people as strong as it is beautiful, and as clever in
its wit as it is graceful in its actions." Here the speaker paused,
and the audience all clapped their hands and stamped their feet,
which seemed to me to be a very improper mode of testifying their
assent to their own praises. But Sir Ferdinando took it all in good
part, and went on with his speech.

"I have been sent here, ladies and gentlemen, on a peculiar
mission,--on a duty as to which, though I am desirous of explaining
it to all of you in every detail, I feel a difficulty of saying a
single word." "Fixed Period," was shouted from one of the balconies
in a voice which I recognised as that of Mr Tallowax. "My friend
in the gallery," continued Sir Ferdinando, "reminds me of the very
word for which I should in vain have cudgelled my brain. The Fixed
Period is the subject on which I am called upon to say to you a few
words;--the Fixed Period, and the man who has, I believe, been among
you the chief author of that system of living,--and if I may be
permitted to say so, of dying also." Here the orator allowed his
voice to fade away in a melancholy cadence, while he turned his face
towards me, and with a gentle motion laid his right hand upon my
shoulder. "Oh, my friends, it is, to say the least of it, a startling
project." "Uncommon, if it was your turn next," said Tallowax in the
gallery. "Yes, indeed," continued Sir Ferdinando, "if it were my
turn next! I must own, that though I should consider myself to be
affronted if I were told that I were faint-hearted,--though I should
know myself to be maligned if it were said of me that I have a
coward's fear of death,--still I should feel far from comfortable if
that age came upon me which this system has defined, and were I to
live in a country in which it has prevailed. Though I trust that I
may be able to meet death like a brave man when it may come, still I
should wish that it might come by God's hand, and not by the wisdom
of a man.

"I have nothing to say against the wisdom of that man," continued
he, turning to me again. "I know all the arguments with which he
has fortified himself. They have travelled even as far as my ears;
but I venture to use the experience which I have gathered in many
countries, and to tell him that in accordance with God's purposes the
world is not as yet ripe for his wisdom." I could not help thinking
as he spoke thus, that he was not perhaps acquainted with all the
arguments on which my system of the Fixed Period was founded; and
that if he would do me the honour to listen to a few words which I
proposed to speak to the people of Britannula before I left them,
he would have clearer ideas about it than had ever yet entered into
his mind. "Oh, my friends," said he, rising to the altitudes of his
eloquence, "it is fitting for us that we should leave these things in
the hands of the Almighty. It is fitting for us, at any rate, that we
should do so till we have been brought by Him to a state of god-like
knowledge infinitely superior to that which we at present possess."
Here I could perceive that Sir Ferdinando was revelling in the sounds
of his own words, and that he had prepared and learnt by heart the
tones of his voice, and even the motion of his hands. "We all know
that it is not allowed to us to rush into His presence by any deed of
our own. You all remember what the poet says,--


   'Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
    His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!'


Is not this self-slaughter, this theory in accordance with which a
man shall devote himself to death at a certain period? And if a man
may not slay himself, how shall he then, in the exercise of his poor
human wit, devote a fellow-creature to certain death?" "And he as
well as ever he was in his life," said Tallowax in the gallery.

"My friend does well to remind me. Though Mr Neverbend has named a
Fixed Period for human life, and has perhaps chosen that at which its
energies may usually be found to diminish, who can say that he has
even approached the certainty of that death which the Lord sends
upon us all at His own period? The poor fellow to whom nature has
been unkind, departs from us decrepit and worn out at forty; whereas
another at seventy is still hale and strong in performing the daily
work of his life."

"I am strong enough to do a'most anything for myself, and I was to
be the next to go,--the very next." This in a treble voice came from
that poor fellow Barnes, who had suffered nearly the pangs of death
itself from the Fixed Period.

"Yes, indeed; in answer to such an appeal as that, who shall venture
to say that the Fixed Period shall be carried out with all its
startling audacity? The tenacity of purpose which distinguishes our
friend here is known to us all. The fame of his character in that
respect had reached my ears even among the thick-lipped inhabitants
of Central Africa." I own I did wonder whether this could be true.
"'Justum et tenacem propositi virum!' Nothing can turn him from his
purpose, or induce him to change his inflexible will. You know him,
and I know him, and he is well known throughout England. Persuasion
can never touch him; fear has no power over him. He, as one unit, is
strong against a million. He is invincible, imperturbable, and ever
self-assured."

I, as I sat there listening to this character of myself, heroic
somewhat, but utterly unlike the person for whom it was intended,
felt that England knew very little about me, and cared less; and
I could not but be angry that my name should be used in this
way to adorn the sentences of Sir Ferdinando's speech. Here in
Gladstonopolis I was well known,--and well known to be neither
imperturbable nor self-assured. But all the people seemed to accept
what he said, and I could not very well interrupt him. He had his
opportunity now, and I perhaps might have mine by-and-by.

"My friends," continued Sir Ferdinando, "at home in England, where,
though we are powerful by reason of our wealth and numbers--" "Just
so," said I. "Where we are powerful, I repeat, by reason of our
wealth and numbers, though perhaps less advanced than you are in
the philosophical arrangements of life, it has seemed to us to be
impossible that the theory should be allowed to be carried to its
legitimate end. The whole country would be horrified were one life
sacrificed to this theory." "We knew that,--we knew that," said the
voice of Tallowax. "And yet your Assembly had gone so far as to give
to the system all the stability of law. Had not the John Bright
steamed into your harbour yesterday, one of your most valued citizens
would have been already--deposited." When he had so spoken, he turned
round to Mr Crasweller, who was sitting on my right hand, and bowed
to him. Crasweller looked straight before him, and took no notice of
Sir Ferdinando. He was at the present moment rather on my side of the
question, and having had his freedom secured to him, did not care for
Sir Ferdinando.

"But that has been prevented, thanks to the extraordinary rapidity
with which my excellent friend Captain Battleax has made his way
across the ocean. And I must say that every one of these excellent
fellows, his officers, has done his best to place H.M. ship the John
Bright in her commanding position with the least possible delay."
Here he turned round and bowed to the officers, and by keen eyes
might have been observed to bow through the windows also to the
vessel, which lay a mile off in the harbour. "There will not, at
any rate for the present, be any Fixed Period for human life in
Britannula. That dream has been dreamed,--at any rate for the
present. Whether in future ages such a philosophy may prevail, who
shall say? At present we must all await our death from the hands of
the Almighty. 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.'

"And now, gentlemen, I have to request your attention for a few
moments to another matter, and one which is very different from this
which we have discussed. I am to say a few words of the past and
the present,--of your past constitution, and of that which it is my
purpose to inaugurate." Here there arose a murmur through the room
very audible, and threatening by its sounds to disturb the orator. "I
will ask your favour for a few minutes; and when you shall have heard
me to-day, I will in my turn hear you to-morrow. Great Britain at
your request surrendered to you the power of self-government. To
so small an English-speaking community has this never before been
granted. And I am bound to say that you have in many respects shown
yourselves fit for the responsibility imposed upon you. You have been
intelligent, industrious, and prudent. Ignorance has been expelled
from your shores, and poverty has been forced to hide her diminished
head." Here the orator paused to receive that applause which he
conceived to be richly his due; but the occupants of the benches
before him sat sternly silent. There were many there who had been
glad to see a ship of war come in to stop the Fixed Period, but
hardly one who was pleased to lose his own independence. "But though
that is so," said Sir Ferdinando, a little nettled at the want of
admiration with which his words had been received, "H.M. Government
is under the necessity of putting an end to the constitution under
which the Fixed Period can be allowed to prevail. While you have made
laws for yourselves, any laws so made must have all the force of
law." "That's not so certain," said a voice from a distance, which I
shrewdly suspect to have been that of my hopeful son, Jack Neverbend.
"As Great Britain cannot and will not permit the Fixed Period to be
carried out among any English-speaking race of people--"

"How about the United States?" said a voice.

"The United States have made no such attempt; but I will proceed. It
has therefore sent me out to assume the reins, and to undertake the
power, and to bear the responsibility of being your governor during a
short term of years. Who shall say what the future may disclose? For
the present I shall rule here. But I shall rule by the aid of your
laws."

"Not the Fixed Period law," said Exors, who was seated on the floor
of the chamber immediately under the orator.

"No; that law will be specially wiped out from your statute-book. In
other respects, your laws and those of Great Britain are nearly the
same. There may be divergences, as in reference to the non-infliction
of capital punishment. In such matters I shall endeavour to follow
your wishes, and so to govern you that you may still feel that you
are living under the rule of a president of your own selection." Here
I cannot but think that Sir Ferdinando was a little rash. He did not
quite know the extent of my popularity, nor had he gauged the dislike
which he himself would certainly encounter. He had heard a few voices
in the hall, which, under fear of death, had expressed their dislike
to the Fixed Period; but he had no idea of the love which the people
felt for their own independence, or,--I believe I may say,--for their
own president. There arose in the hall a certain amount of clamour,
in the midst of which Sir Ferdinando sat down.

Then there was a shuffling of feet as of a crowd going away. Sir
Ferdinando having sat down, got up again and shook me warmly by the
hand. I returned his greeting with my pleasantest smile; and then,
while the people were moving, I spoke to them two or three words. I
told them that I should start to-morrow at noon for England, under
a promise made by me to their new governor, and that I purposed to
explain to them, before I went, under what circumstances I had given
that promise, and what it was that I intended to do when I should
reach England. Would they meet me there, in that hall, at eight
o'clock that evening, and hear the last words which I should have
to address to them? Then the hall was filled with a mighty shout,
and there arose a great fury of exclamation. There was a waving of
handkerchiefs, and a holding up of hats, and all those signs of
enthusiasm which are wont to greet the popular man of the hour. And
in the midst of them, Sir Ferdinando Brown stood up upon his legs,
and continued to bow without cessation.

At eight, the hall was again full to overflowing. I had been busy,
and came down a little late, and found a difficulty in making my way
to the chair which Sir Ferdinando had occupied in the morning. I
had had no time to prepare my words, though the thoughts had rushed
quickly,--too quickly,--into my mind. It was as though they would
tumble out from my own mouth in precipitate energy. On my right hand
sat the governor, as I must now call him; and in the chair on my left
was placed my wife. The officers of the gunboat were not present,
having occupied themselves, no doubt, in banking up their fires.

"My fellow-citizens," I said, "a sudden end has been brought to
that self-government of which we have been proud, and by which Sir
Ferdinando has told you that 'ignorance has been expelled from your
shores, and poverty has been forced to hide her diminished head.' I
trust that, under his experience, which he tells us as a governor has
been very extensive, those evils may not now fall upon you. We are,
however, painfully aware that they do prevail wherever the concrete
power of Great Britain is found to be in full force. A man ruling
us,--us and many other millions of subjects,--from the other side of
the globe, cannot see our wants and watch our progress as we can
do ourselves. And even Sir Ferdinando coming upon us with all his
experience, can hardly be able to ascertain how we may be made happy
and prosperous. He has with him, however, a company of a celebrated
English regiment, with its attendant officers, who, by their red
coats and long swords, will no doubt add to the cheerfulness of your
social gatherings. I hope that you may not find that they shall ever
interfere with you after a rougher fashion.

"But upon me, my fellow-citizens, has fallen the great disgrace of
having robbed you of your independence." Here a murmur ran through
the hall, declaring that this was not so. "So your new Governor
has told you, but he has not told you the exact truth. With whom
the doctrine of the Fixed Period first originated, I will not now
inquire. All the responsibility I will take upon myself, though the
honour and glory I must share with my fellow-countrymen.

"Your Governor has told you that he is aware of all the arguments by
which the Fixed Period is maintained; but I think that he must be
mistaken here, as he has not ventured to attack one of them. He has
told us that it is fitting that we should leave the question of life
and death in the hands of the Almighty. If so, why is all Europe
bristling at this moment with arms,--prepared, as we must suppose,
for shortening life,--and why is there a hangman attached to the
throne of Great Britain as one of its necessary executive officers?
Why in the Old Testament was Joshua commanded to slay mighty kings?
And why was Pharaoh and his hosts drowned in the Red Sea? Because the
Almighty so willed it, our Governor will say, taking it for granted
that He willed everything of which a record is given in the Old
Testament. In those battles which have ravished the North-west of
India during the last half-century, did the Almighty wish that men
should perish miserably by ten thousands and twenty thousands? Till
any of us can learn more than we know at present of the will of the
Almighty, I would, if he will allow me, advise our Governor to be
silent on that head.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it would be a long task, and one not to be
accomplished before your bedtime, were I to recount to you, for his
advantage, a few of the arguments which have been used in favour of
the Fixed Period,--and it would be useless, as you are all acquainted
with them. But Sir Ferdinando is evidently not aware that the
general prolongation of life on an average, is one of the effects
to be gained, and that, though he himself might not therefore live
the longer if doomed to remain here in Britannula, yet would his
descendants do so, and would live a life more healthy, more useful,
and more sufficient for human purposes.

"As far as I can read the will of the Almighty, or rather the
progress of the ways of human nature, it is for man to endeavour to
improve the conditions of mankind. It would be as well to say that we
would admit no fires into our establishments because a life had now
and again been lost by fire, as to use such an argument as that now
put forward against the Fixed Period. If you will think of the line
of reasoning used by Sir Ferdinando, you will remember that he has,
after all, only thrown you back upon the old prejudices of mankind.
If he will tell me that he is not as yet prepared to discard them,
and that I am in error in thinking that the world is so prepared,
I may perhaps agree with him. The John Bright in our harbour is
the strongest possible proof that such prejudices still exist. Sir
Ferdinando Brown is now your Governor, a fact which in itself is
strong evidence. In opposition to these witnesses I have nothing to
say. The ignorance which we are told that we had expelled from our
shores, has come back to us; and the poverty is about, I fear, to
show its head." Sir Ferdinando here arose and expostulated. But the
people hardly heard him, and at my request he again sat down.

"I do think that I have endeavoured in this matter to advance too
quickly, and that Sir Ferdinando has been sent here as the necessary
reprimand for that folly. He has required that I shall be banished
to England; and as his order is backed by a double file of
red-coats,--an instrument which in Britannula we do not possess,--I
purpose to obey him. I shall go to England, and I shall there use
what little strength remains to me in my endeavour to put forward
those arguments for conquering the prejudices of the people which
have prevailed here, but which I am very sure would have no effect
upon Sir Ferdinando Brown.

"I cannot but think that Sir Ferdinando gave himself unnecessary
trouble in endeavouring to prove to us that the Fixed Period is a
wicked arrangement. He was not likely to succeed in that attempt. But
he was sure to succeed in telling us that he would make it impossible
by means of the double file of armed men by whom he is accompanied,
and the 250-ton steam-swiveller with which, as he informed me, he is
able to blow us all into atoms, unless I would be ready to start with
Captain Battleax to-morrow. It is not his religion but his strength
that has prevailed. That Great Britain is much stronger than
Britannula none of us can doubt. Till yesterday I did doubt whether
she would use her strength to perpetuate her own prejudices and to
put down the progress made by another people.

"But, fellow-citizens, we must look the truth in the face. In this
generation probably, the Fixed Period must be allowed to be in
abeyance." When I had uttered these words there came much cheering
and a loud sound of triumph, which was indorsed probably by the
postponement of the system, which had its terrors; but I was enabled
to accept these friendly noises as having been awarded to the system
itself. "Well, as you all love the Fixed Period, it must be delayed
till Sir Ferdinando and the English have--been converted."

"Never, never!" shouted Sir Ferdinando; "so godless an idea shall
never find a harbour in this bosom," and he struck his chest
violently.

"Sir Ferdinando is probably not aware to what ideas that bosom may
some day give a shelter. If he will look back thirty years, he will
find that he had hardly contemplated even the weather-watch which he
now wears constantly in his waistcoat-pocket. At the command of his
Sovereign he may still live to carry out the Fixed Period somewhere
in the centre of Africa."

"Never!"

"In what college among the negroes he may be deposited, it may be
too curious to inquire. I, my friends, shall leave these shores
to-morrow; and you may be sure of this, that while the power of
labour remains to me, I shall never desist to work for the purpose
that I have at heart. I trust that I may yet live to return among
you, and to render you an account of what I have done for you and
for the cause in Europe." Here I sat down, and was greeted by the
deafening applause of the audience; and I did feel at the moment that
I had somewhat got the better of Sir Ferdinando.

I have been able to give the exact words of these two speeches, as
they were both taken down by the reporting telephone-apparatus, which
on the occasion was found to work with great accuracy. The words as
they fell from the mouth of the speakers were composed by machinery,
and my speech appeared in the London morning newspapers within an
hour of the time of its utterance.




CHAPTER XI.

FAREWELL!


I went home to my house in triumph; but I had much to do before noon
on the following day, but very little time in which to do it. I had
spent the morning of that day in preparing for my departure, and
in so arranging matters with my clerks that the entrance of Sir
Ferdinando on his new duties might be easy. I had said nothing, and
had endeavoured to think as little as possible, of the Fixed Period.
An old secretary of mine,--old in years of work, though not as yet in
age,--had endeavoured to comfort me by saying that the college up the
hill might still be used before long. But I had told him frankly that
we in Britannula had all been too much in a hurry, and had foolishly
endeavoured to carry out a system in opposition to the world's
prejudices, which system, when successful, must pervade the entire
world. "And is nothing to be done with those beautiful buildings?"
said the secretary, putting in the word beautiful by way of flattery
to myself. "The chimneys and the furnaces may perhaps be used,"
I replied. "Cremation is no part of the Fixed Period. But as for
the residences, the less we think about them the better." And so I
determined to trouble my thoughts no further with the college. And
I felt that there might be some consolation to me in going away to
England, so that I might escape from the great vexation and eyesore
which the empty college would have produced.

But I had to bid farewell to my wife and my son, and to Eva and
Crasweller. The first task would be the easier, because there would
be no necessity for any painful allusion to my own want of success.
In what little I might say to Mrs Neverbend on the subject, I could
continue that tone of sarcastic triumph in which I had replied to
Sir Ferdinando. What was pathetic in the matter I might altogether
ignore. And Jack was himself so happy in his nature, and so little
likely to look at anything on its sorrowful side, that all would
surely go well with him. But with Eva, and with Eva's father, things
would be different. Words must be spoken which would be painful in
the speaking, and regrets must be uttered by me which could not
certainly be shared by him. "I am broken down and trampled upon, and
all the glory is departed from my name, and I have become a byword
and a reproach rather than a term of honour in which future ages may
rejoice, because I have been unable to carry out my long-cherished
purpose by--depositing you, and insuring at least your departure!"
And then Crasweller would answer me with his general kindly feeling,
and I should feel at the moment of my leaving him the hollowness of
his words. I had loved him the better because I had endeavoured to
commence my experiment on his body. I had felt a vicarious regard
for the honour which would have been done him, almost regarding it
as though I myself were to go in his place. All this had received a
check when he in his weakness had pleaded for another year. But he
had yielded; and though he had yielded without fortitude, he had done
so to comply with my wishes, and I could not but feel for the man an
extraordinary affection. I was going to England, and might probably
never see him again; and I was going with aspirations in my heart so
very different from those which he entertained!

From the hours intended for slumber, a few minutes could be taken for
saying adieu to my wife. "My dear," said I, "this is all very sudden.
But a man engaged in public life has to fit himself to the public
demands. Had I not promised to go to-day, I might have been taken
away yesterday or the day before."

"Oh, John," said she, "I think that everything has been put up to
make you comfortable."

"Thanks; yes, I'm sure of it. When you hear my name mentioned after
I am gone, I hope that they'll say of me that I did my duty as
President of the republic."

"Of course they will. Every day you have been at these nasty
executive chambers from nine till five, unless when you've been
sitting in that wretched Assembly."

"I shall have a holiday now, at any rate," said I, laughing gently
under the bedclothes.

"Yes; and I am sure it will do you good, if you only take your meals
regular. I sometimes think that you have been encouraged to dwell
upon this horrid Fixed Period by the melancholy of an empty stomach."

It was sad to hear such words from her lips after the two speeches to
which she had listened, and to feel that no trace had been left on
her mind of the triumph which I had achieved over Sir Ferdinando; but
I put up with that, and determined to answer her after her own heart.
"You have always provided a sandwich for me to take to the chambers."

"Sandwiches are nothing. Do remember that. At your time of life you
should always have something warm,--a frizzle or a cutlet, and you
shouldn't eat it without thinking of it. What has made me hate the
Fixed Period worse than anything is, that you have never thought of
your victuals. You gave more attention to the burning of these pigs
than to the cooking of any food in your own kitchen."

"Well, my dear, I'm going to England now," said I, beginning to feel
weary of her reminiscences.

"Yes, my dear, I know you are; and do remember that as you get nearer
and nearer to that chilly country the weather will always be colder
and colder. I have put you up four pairs of flannel drawers, and a
little bag which you must wear upon your chest. I observed that Sir
Ferdinando, when he was preparing himself for his speech, showed that
he had just such a little bag on. And all the time I endeavoured to
spy how it was that he wore it. When I came home I immediately went
to work, and I shall insist on your putting it on the first thing
in the morning, in order that I may see that it sits flat. Sir
Ferdinando's did not sit flat, and it looked bulgy. I thought to
myself that Lady Brown did not do her duty properly by him. If you
would allow me to come with you, I could see that you always put it
on rightly. As it is, I know that people will say that it is all my
fault when it hangs out and shows itself." Then I went to sleep, and
the parting words between me and my wife had been spoken.

Early on the following morning I had Jack into my dressing-room, and
said good-bye to him. "Jack," said I, "in this little contest which
there has been between us, you have got the better in everything."

"Nobody thought so when they heard your answer to Sir Ferdinando last
night."

"Well, yes; I think I managed to answer him. But I haven't got the
better of you."

"I didn't mean anything," said Jack, in a melancholy tone of voice.
"It was all Eva's doing. I never cared twopence whether the old
fellows were deposited or not, but I do think that if your own time
had come near, I shouldn't have liked it much."

"Why not? why not? If you will only think of the matter all round,
you will find that it is all a false sentiment."

"I should not like it," said Jack, with determination.

"Yes, you would, after you had got used to it." Here he looked very
incredulous. "What I mean is, Jack, that when sons were accustomed
to see their fathers deposited at a certain age, and were aware that
they were treated with every respect, that kind of feeling which
you describe would wear off. You would have the idea that a kind of
honour was done to your parents."

"When I knew that somebody was going to kill him on the next day, how
would it be then?"

"You might retire for a few hours to your thoughts,--going into
mourning, as it were." Jack shook his head. "But, at any rate, in
this matter of Mr Crasweller you have got the better of me."

"That was for Eva's sake."

"I suppose so. But I wish to make you understand, now that I am going
to England, and may possibly never return to these shores again--"

"Don't say that, father."

"Well, yes; I shall have much to do there, and of course it may be
that I shall not come back, and I wish you to understand that I do
not part from you in the least in anger. What you have done shows a
high spirit, and great devotion to the girl."

"It was not quite altogether for Eva either."

"What then?" I demanded.

"Well, I don't know. The two things went together, as it were. If
there had been no question about the Fixed Period, I do think I could
have cut out Abraham Grundle. And as for Sir Kennington Oval, I am
beginning to believe that that was all Eva's pretence. I like Sir
Kennington, but Eva never cared a button for him. She had taken to
me because I had shown myself an anti-Fixed-Period man. I did it at
first simply because I hated Grundle. Grundle wanted to fix-period
old Crasweller for the sake of the property; and therefore I belonged
naturally to the other side. It wasn't that I liked opposing you. If
it had been Tallowax that you were to begin with, or Exors, you might
have burnt 'em up without a word from me."

"I am gratified at hearing that."

"Though the Fixed Period does seem to be horrible, I would have
swallowed all that at your bidding. But you can see how I tumbled
into it, and how Eva egged me on, and how the nearer the thing came
the more I was bound to fight. Will you believe it?--Eva swore a most
solemn oath, that if her father was put into that college she would
never marry a human being. And up to that moment when the lieutenant
met us at the top of the hill, she was always as cold as snow."

"And now the snow is melted?"

"Yes,--that is to say, it is beginning to thaw!" As he said this I
remembered the kiss behind the parlour-door which had been given to
her by another suitor before these troubles began, and my impression
that Jack had seen it also; but on that subject I said nothing. "Of
course it has all been very happy for me," Jack continued; "but I
wish to say to you before you go, how unhappy it makes me to think
that I have opposed you."

"All right, Jack; all right. I will not say that I should not have
done the same at your age, if Eva had asked me. I wish you always to
remember that we parted as friends. It will not be long before you
are married now."

"Three months," said Jack, in a melancholy tone.

"In an affair of importance of this kind, that is the same as
to-morrow. I shall not be here to wish you joy at your wedding."

"Why are you to go if you don't wish it?"

"I promised that I would go when Captain Battleax talked of carrying
me off the day before yesterday. With a hundred soldiers, no doubt he
could get me on board."

"There are a great many more than a hundred men in Britannula as good
as their soldiers. To take a man away by force, and he the President
of the republic! Such a thing was never heard of. I would not stir if
I were you. Say the word to me, and I will undertake that not one of
these men shall touch you."

I thought of his proposition; and the more I thought of it, the more
unreasonable it did appear that I, who had committed no offence
against any law, should be forced on board the John Bright. And I
had no doubt that Jack would be as good as his word. But there were
two causes which persuaded me that I had better go. I had pledged
my word. When it had been suggested that I should at the moment be
carried on board,--which might no doubt then have been done by the
soldiers,--I had said that if a certain time were allowed me I would
again be found in the same place. If I were simply there, and were
surrounded by a crowd of Britannulans ready to fight for me, I should
hardly have kept my promise. But a stronger reason than this perhaps
actuated me. It would be better for me for a while to be in England
than in Britannula. Here in Britannula I should be the ex-President
of an abolished republic, and as such subject to the notice of all
men; whereas in England I should be nobody, and should escape the
constant mortification of seeing Sir Ferdinando Brown. And then
in England I could do more for the Fixed Period than at home in
Britannula. Here the battle was over, and I had been beaten. I began
to perceive that the place was too small for making the primary
efforts in so great a cause. The very facility which had existed for
the passing of the law through the Assembly had made it impossible
for us to carry out the law; and therefore, with the sense of
failure strong upon me, I should be better elsewhere than at home.
And the desire of publishing a book in which I should declare
my theory,--this very book which I have so nearly brought to a
close,--made me desire to go. What could I do by publishing anything
in Britannula? And though the manuscript might have been sent home,
who would see it through the press with any chance of success? Now
I have my hopes, which I own seem high, and I shall be able to watch
from day to day the way in which my arguments in favour of the Fixed
Period are received by the British public. Therefore it was that I
rejected Jack's kind offer. "No, my boy," said I, after a pause, "I
do not know but that on the whole I shall prefer to go."

"Of course if you wish it."

"I shall be taken there at the expense of the British public, which
is in itself a triumph, and shall, I presume, be sent back in the
same way. If not, I shall have a grievance in their parsimony, which
in itself will be a comfort to me; and I am sure that I shall be
treated well on board. Sir Ferdinando with his eloquence will not be
there, and the officers are, all of them, good fellows. I have made
up my mind, and I will go. The next that you will hear of your father
will be the publication of a little book that I shall write on the
journey, advocating the Fixed Period. The matter has never been
explained to them in England, and perhaps my words may prevail."
Jack, by shaking his head mournfully, seemed to indicate his idea
that this would not be the case; but Jack is resolute, and will never
yield on any point. Had he been in my place, and had entertained my
convictions, I believe that he would have deposited Crasweller in
spite of Sir Ferdinando Brown and Captain Battleax. "You will come
and see me on board, Jack, when I start."

"They won't take me off, will they?"

"I should have thought you would have liked to have seen England."

"And leave Eva! They'd have to look very sharp before they could do
that. But of course I'll come." Then I gave him my blessing, told
him what arrangements I had made for his income, and went down to my
breakfast, which was to be my last meal in Britannula.

When that was over, I was told that Eva was in my study waiting to
see me. I had intended to have gone out to Little Christchurch, and
should still do so, to bid farewell to her father. But I was not
sorry to have Eva here in my own house, as she was about to become my
daughter-in-law. "Eva has come to bid you good-bye," said Jack, who
was already in the room, as I entered it.

"Eva, my dear," said I.

"I'll leave you," said Jack. "But I've told her that she must be very
fond of you. Bygones have to be bygones,--particularly as no harm has
been done." Then he left the room.

She still had on the little round hat, but as Jack went she laid it
aside. "Oh, Mr Neverbend," she said, "I hope you do not think that I
have been unkind."

"It is I, my dear, who should express that hope."

"I have always known how well you have loved my dear father. I have
been quite sure of it. And he has always said so. But--"

"Well, Eva, it is all over now."

"Oh yes, and I am so happy! I have got to tell you how happy I am."

"I hope you love Jack."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, and in a moment she was in my arms and I was
kissing her. "If you knew how I hate that Mr Grundle; and Jack is
all,--all that he ought to be. One of the things that makes me like
him best is his great affection for you. There is nothing that he
would not do for you."

"He is a very good young man," said I, thinking of the manner in
which he had spoken against me on the Town Flags.

"Nothing!" said Eva.

"And nothing that he would not do for you, my dear. But that is all
as it should be. He is a high-spirited, good boy; and if he will
think a little more of the business and a little less of cricket, he
will make an excellent husband."

"Of course he had to think a little of the match when the Englishmen
were here; and he did play well, did he not? He beat them all there."
I could perceive that Eva was quite as intent upon cricket as was her
lover, and probably thought just as little about the business. "But,
Mr Neverbend, must you really go?"

"I think so. It is not only that they are determined to take me, but
that I am myself anxious to be in England."

"You wish to--to preach the Fixed Period?"

"Well, my dear, I have got my own notions, which at my time of life I
cannot lay aside. I shall endeavour to ventilate them in England, and
see what the people there may say about them."

"You are not angry with me?"

"My child, how could I be angry with you? What you did, you did for
your father's sake."

"And papa? You will not be angry with papa because he didn't want to
give up Little Christchurch, and to leave the pretty place which he
has made himself, and to go into the college,--and be killed!"

I could not quite answer her at the moment, because in truth I was
somewhat angry with him. I thought that he should have understood
that there was something higher to be achieved than an extra year or
two among the prettinesses of Little Christchurch. I could not but
be grieved because he had proved himself to be less of a man than I
had expected. But as I remained silent for a few moments, Eva held
my hand in hers, and looked up into my face with beseeching eyes.
Then my anger went, and I remembered that I had no reason to expect
heroism from Crasweller, simply because he had been my friend. "No,
dear, no; all feeling of anger is at an end. It was natural that he
should wish to remain at Little Christchurch; and it was better than
natural, it was beautiful, that you should wish to save him by the
use of the only feminine weapon at your command."

"Oh, but I did love Jack," she said.

"I have still an hour or two before I depart, and I shall run down to
Little Christchurch to take your father by the hand once more. You
may be sure that what I shall say to him will not be ill-natured. And
now good-bye, my darling child. My time here in Britannula is but
short, and I cannot give up more of it even to my chosen daughter."
Then again she kissed me, and putting on her little hat, went away to
Mrs Neverbend,--or to Jack.

It was now nearly ten o'clock, and I had out my tricycle in order to
go down as quickly as possible to Little Christchurch. At the door of
my house I found a dozen of the English soldiers with a sergeant. He
touched his hat, and asked me very civilly where I was going. When I
told him that it was but five or six miles out of town, he requested
my permission to accompany me. I told him that he certainly might
if he had a vehicle ready, and was ready to use it. But as at that
moment my luggage was brought out of the house with the view of being
taken on board ship, the man thought that it would be as well and
much easier to follow the luggage; and the twelve soldiers marched
off to see my portmanteaus put safely on board the John Bright.

And I was again,--and I could not but say to myself, probably for the
last time,--once again on the road to Little Christchurch. During
the twenty minutes which were taken in going down there, I could
not but think of the walks I had had up and down with Crasweller in
old times, talking as we went of the glories of a Fixed Period, and
of the absolute need which the human race had for such a step in
civilisation. Probably on such occasions the majority of the words
spoken had come from my own mouth; but it had seemed to me then that
Crasweller had been as energetic as myself. The period which we
had then contemplated at a distance had come round, and Crasweller
had seceded wofully. I could not but feel that had he been stanch
to me, and allowed himself to be deposited not only willingly but
joyfully, he would have set an example which could not but have been
efficacious. Barnes and Tallowax would probably have followed as a
matter of course, and the thing would have been done. My name would
have gone down to posterity with those of Columbus and Galileo,
and Britannula would have been noted as the most prominent among
the nations of the earth, instead of having become a by-word among
countries as a deprived republic and reannexed Crown colony. But all
that on the present occasion had to be forgotten, and I was to greet
my old friend with true affection, as though I had received from his
hands no such ruthless ruin of all my hopes.

"Oh, Mr President," he said, as he met me coming up the drive towards
the house, "this is kind of you. And you who must be so busy just
before your departure!"

"I could not go without a word of farewell to you." I had not spoken
with him since we had parted on the top of the hill on our way out to
the college, when the horses had been taken from the carriage, and he
had walked back to life and Little Christchurch instead of making his
way to his last home, and to find deposition with all the glory of a
great name.

"It is very kind of you. Come in. Eva is not at home."

"I have just parted with her at my own house. So she and Jack are to
make a match of it. I need not tell you how more than contented I
shall be that my son should have such a wife. Eva to me has been
always dear, almost as a daughter. Now she is like my own child."

"I am sure that I can say the same of Jack."

"Yes; Jack is a good lad too. I hope he will stick to the business."

"He need not trouble himself about that. He will have Little
Christchurch and all that belongs to it as soon as I am gone. I had
made up my mind only to allow Eva an income out of it while she was
thinking of that fellow Grundle. That man is a knave."

I could not but remember that Grundle had been a Fixed-Periodist, and
that it would not become me to abuse him; and I was aware that though
Crasweller was my sincere friend, he had come to entertain of late an
absolute hatred of all those, beyond myself, who had advocated his
own deposition.

"Jack, at any rate, is happy," said I, "and Eva. You and I,
Crasweller have had our little troubles to imbitter the evenings of
our life."

"You are yet in the full daylight."

"My ambition has been disappointed. I cannot conceal the fact from
myself,--nor from you. It has come to pass that during the last year
or two we have lived with different hopes. And these hopes have been
founded altogether on the position which you might occupy."

"I should have gone mad up in that college, Neverbend."

"I would have been with you."

"I should have gone mad all the same. I should have committed
suicide."

"To save yourself from an honourable--deposition!"

"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 constituted 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 pass
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 damnable
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 assented."

"True; I did assent. 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 succumb. 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 assured 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 assuring 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 shore.
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 ashore 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 constitute 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 shore. 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 assigned 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 nobody
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 circumstances, 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 passed 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 glass-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 passed 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 breasts 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 muffins and crumpets, dry toast, buttered
toast, plum-cake, seed-cake, peach-fritters, apple-marmalade, and
bread and butter. 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 duchess, would withdraw him from the service
when she heard that he had made himself sick."

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

"I shall have a glass 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 constitutional 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
assured 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 assure 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."

"I very nearly did do it. The Britannulist Assembly, in the majesty
of its wisdom, passed a law to that effect." I was sorry afterwards
that I had spoken of the majesty of the Assembly's wisdom, because
it savoured of buncombe. Our Assembly's wisdom was not particularly
majestic; but I had intended to allude to the presumed majesty
attached to the highest council in the State.

"Your Assembly in the majesty of its wisdom could do nothing of the
kind. It might pass a law, but the law could be carried out only
by men. The Parliament in England, which is, I take it, quite as
majestic as the Assembly in Britannula--"

"I apologise for the word, Mr Crosstrees, which savours of the
ridiculous. I did not quite explain my idea at the moment."

"It is forgotten," he said; and I must acknowledge that he never used
the word against me again. "The Parliament in England might order a
three-months-old baby to be slain, but could not possibly get the
deed done."

"Not if it were for the welfare of Great Britain?"

"Not to save Great Britain from destruction. Strength is very strong,
but it is not half so powerful as weakness. I could, with the
greatest alacrity in the world, fire that big gun in among battalions
of armed men, so as to scatter them all to the winds, but I could not
point it in the direction of a single girl." We went on discussing
the matter at considerable length, and his convictions were quite as
strong as mine. He was sure that under no circumstances would an old
man ever be deprived of his life under the Fixed Period. I was as
confident as he on the other side,--or, at any rate, pretended to
be so,--and told him that he made no allowance for the progressive
wisdom of mankind. But we parted as friends, and soon after went to
dinner.

I was astonished to find how very little the captain had to do with
his officers. On board ship he lived nearly alone, having his first
lieutenant with him for a quarter of an hour every morning. On the
occasion of this my first day on board, he had a dinner-party in
honour of my coming among them; and two or three days before we
reached England, he had another. I dined with him regularly every day
except twice, when I was invited to the officers' mess. I breakfasted
alone in my own cabin, where everything was provided for me that I
could desire, and always lunched and took five-o'clock tea with the
officers. I remained alone till one o'clock, and spent four hours
every morning during our entire journey in composing this volume as
it is now printed. I have put it into the shape of a story, because
I think that I may so best depict the feelings of the people around
me as I made my great endeavour to carry out the Fixed Period in
Britannula, and because I may so describe the kind of opposition
which was shown by the expression of those sentiments on which
Lieutenant Crosstrees depended. I do not at this minute doubt but
that Crasweller would have been deposited had not the John Bright
appeared. Whether Barnes and Tallowax would have followed peaceably,
may be doubted. They, however, are not men of great weight in
Britannula, and the officers of the law might possibly have
constrained them to have followed the example which Crasweller had
set. But I do confess that I doubt whether I should have been able
to proceed to carry out the arrangements for the final departure of
Crasweller. Looking forward, I could see Eva kneeling at my feet,
and could acknowledge the invincible strength of that weakness to
which Crosstrees had alluded. A godlike heroism would have been
demanded,--a heroism which must have submitted to have been called
brutal,--and of such I knew myself not to be the owner. Had
the British Parliament ordered the three-months-old baby to be
slaughtered, I was not the man to slaughter it, even though I were
the sworn servant of the British Parliament. Upon the whole, I was
glad that the John Bright had come into our waters, and had taken
me away on its return to England. It was a way out of my immediate
trouble against which I was able to expostulate, and to show with
some truth on my side that I was an injured man. All this I am
willing to admit in the form of a tale, which I have adopted for my
present work, and for which I may hope to obtain some popularity
in England. Once on shore there, I shall go to work on a volume of
altogether a different nature, and endeavour to be argumentative and
statistical, as I have here been fanciful, though true to details.

During the whole course of my journey to England, Captain Battleax
never said a word to me about the Fixed Period. He was no doubt
a gallant officer, and possessed of all necessary gifts for the
management of a 250-ton steam swivel-gun; but he seemed to me to be
somewhat heavy. He never even in conversation alluded to Britannula,
and spoke always of the dockyard at Devonport as though I had been
familiar with its every corner. He was very particular about his
clothes, and I was told by Lieutenant Crosstrees on the first day
that he would resent it as a bitter offence had I come down to dinner
without a white cravat. "He's right, you know; those things do tell,"
Crosstrees had said to me when I had attempted to be jocose about
these punctilios. I took care, however, always to put on a white
cravat both with the captain and with the officers. After dinner with
the captain, a cup of coffee was always brought in on a silver tray,
in a silver coffee-pot. This was leisurely consumed; and then, as I
soon understood, the captain expected that I should depart. I learnt
afterwards that he immediately put his feet up on the sofa and slept
for the remainder of the evening. I retired to the lieutenant's
cabin, and there discussed the whole history of Britannula over many
a prolonged cigar.

"Did you really mean to kill the old men?" said Lord Alfred Percy to
me one day; "regularly to cut their throats, you know, and carry them
out and burn them."

"I did not mean it, but the law did."

"Every poor old fellow would have been put an end to without the
slightest mercy?"

"Not without mercy," I rejoined.

"Now, there's my governor's father," said Lord Alfred; "you know who
he is?"

"The Duke of Northumberland, I'm informed."

"He's a terrible swell. He owns three castles, and half a county, and
has half a million a-year. I can hardly tell you what sort of an old
fellow he is at home. There isn't any one who doesn't pay him the
most profound respect, and he's always doing good to everybody. Do
you mean to say that some constable or cremator,--some sort of first
hangman,--would have come to him and taken him by the nape of his
neck, and cut his throat, just because he was sixty-eight years old?
I can't believe that anybody would have done it."

"But the duke is a man."

"Yes, he's a man, no doubt."

"If he committed murder, he would be hanged in spite of his dukedom."

"I don't know how that would be," said Lord Alfred, hesitating. "I
cannot imagine that my grandfather should commit a murder."

"But he would be hanged; I can tell you that. Though it be very
improbable,--impossible, as you and I may think it,--the law is the
same for him as for others. Why should not all other laws be the same
also?"

"But it would be murder."

"What is your idea of murder?"

"Killing people."

"Then you are murderers who go about with this great gun of yours for
the sake of killing many people."

"We've never killed anybody with it yet."

"You are not the less murderers if you have the intent to murder. Are
soldiers murderers who kill other soldiers in battle? The murderer is
the man who illegally kills. Now, in accordance with us, everything
would have been done legally; and I'm afraid that if your grandfather
were living among us, he would have to be deposited like the rest."

"Not if Sir Ferdinando were there," said the boy. I could not go on
to explain to him that he thus ran away from his old argument about
the duke. But I did feel that a new difficulty would arise from the
extreme veneration paid to certain characters. In England how would
it be with the Royal Family? Would it be necessary to exempt them
down to the extremest cousins; and if so, how large a body of cousins
would be generated! I feared that the Fixed Period could only be good
for a republic in which there were no classes violently distinguished
from their inferior brethren. If so, it might be well that I should
go to the United States, and there begin to teach my doctrine.
No other republic would be strong enough to stand against those
hydra-headed prejudices with which the ignorance of the world at
large is fortified. "I don't believe," continued the boy, bringing
the conversation to an end, "that all the men in this ship could take
my grandfather and kill him in cold blood."

I was somewhat annoyed, on my way to England, by finding that the men
on board,--the sailors, the stokers, and stewards,--regarded me as
a most cruel person. The prejudices of people of this class are so
strong as to be absolutely invincible. It is necessary that a new
race should come up before the prejudices are eradicated. They were
civil enough in their demeanour to me personally, but they had all
been taught that I was devoted to the slaughter of old men; and
they regarded me with all that horror which the modern nations have
entertained for cannibalism. I heard a whisper one day between two of
the stewards. "He'd have killed that old fellow that came on board as
sure as eggs if we hadn't got there just in time to prevent him."

"Not with his own hands," said a listening junior.

"Yes; with his own hands. That was just the thing. He wouldn't allow
it to be done by anybody else." It was thus that they regarded the
sacrifice that I had thought to make of my own feelings in regard
to Crasweller. I had no doubt suggested that I myself would use the
lancet in order to save him from any less friendly touch. I believed
afterwards, that when the time had come I should have found myself
incapacitated for the operation. The natural weakness incidental to
my feelings would have prevailed. But now that promise,--once so
painfully made, and since that, as I had thought, forgotten by all
but myself,--was remembered against me as a proof of the diabolical
inhumanity of my disposition.

"I believe that they think that we mean to eat them," I said one day
to Crosstrees. He had gradually become my confidential friend, and to
him I made known all the sorrows which fell upon me during the voyage
from the ignorance of the men around me. I cannot boast that I had in
the least affected his opinion by my arguments; but he at any rate
had sense enough to perceive that I was not a bloody-minded cannibal,
but one actuated by a true feeling of philanthropy. He knew that my
object was to do good, though he did not believe in the good to be
done.

"You've got to endure that," said he.

"Do you mean to say, that when I get to England I shall be regarded
with personal feelings of the same kind?"

"Yes; so I imagine." There was an honesty about Crosstrees which
would never allow him to soften anything.

"That will be hard to bear."

"The first reformers had to bear such hardships. I don't exactly
remember what it was that Socrates wanted to do for his ungrateful
fellow-mortals; but they thought so badly of him, that they made him
swallow poison. Your Galileo had a hard time when he said that the
sun stood still. Why should we go further than Jesus Christ for an
example? If you are not able to bear the incidents, you should not
undertake the business."

But in England I should not have a single disciple! There would not
be one to solace or to encourage me! Would it not be well that I
should throw myself into the ocean, and have done with a world so
ungrateful? In Britannula they had known my true disposition. There
I had received the credit due to a tender heart and loving feelings.
No one thought there that I wanted to eat up my victims, or that I
would take a pleasure in spilling their blood with my own hands. And
tidings so misrepresenting me would have reached England before me,
and I should there have no friend. Even Lieutenant Crosstrees would
be seen no more after I had gone ashore. Then came upon me for the
first time an idea that I was not wanted in England at all,--that I
was simply to be brought away from my own home to avoid the supposed
mischief I might do there, and that for all British purposes it would
be well that I should be dropped into the sea, or left ashore on some
desert island. I had been taken from the place where, as governing
officer, I had undoubtedly been of use,--and now could be of use no
longer. Nobody in England would want me or would care for me, and
I should be utterly friendless there, and alone. For aught I knew,
they might put me in prison and keep me there, so as to be sure that
I should not return to my own people. If I asked for my liberty, I
might be told that because of my bloodthirstiness it would be for the
general welfare that I should be deprived of it. When Sir Ferdinando
Brown had told me that I should certainly be asked down to Windsor,
I had taken his flowery promises as being worth nothing. I had no
wish to go to Windsor. But what should I do with myself immediately
on my arrival? Would it not be best to return at once to my own
country,--if only I might be allowed to do so. All this made me very
melancholy, but especially the feeling that I should be regarded by
all around as a monster of cruelty. I could not but think of the
words which Lieutenant Crosstrees had spoken to me. The Saviour of
the world had His disciples who believed in Him, and the one dear
youth who loved Him so well. I almost doubted my own energy as a
teacher of progress to carry me through the misery which I saw in
store for me.

"I shall not have a very bright time when I arrive in England," I
said to my friend Crosstrees, two days before our expected arrival.

"It will be all new, and there will be plenty for you to see."

"You will go upon some other voyage?"

"Yes; we shall be wanted up in the Baltic at once. We are very good
friends with Russia; but no dog is really respected in this world
unless he shows that he can bite as well as bark."

"I shall not be respected, because I can neither bark nor bite. What
will they do with me?"

"We shall put you on shore at Plymouth, and send you up to
London--with a guard of honour."

"And what will the guard of honour do with me?"

"Ah! for that I cannot answer. He will treat you with all kind of
respect, no doubt."

"It has not occurred to you to think," said I, "where he will deposit
me? Why should it do so? But to me the question is one of some
moment. No one there will want me; nobody knows me. They to whom I
must be the cause of some little trouble will simply wish me out
of the way; and the world at large, if it hears of me at all, will
simply have been informed of my cruelty and malignity. I do not mean
to destroy myself."

"Don't do that," said the lieutenant, in a piteous tone.

"But it would be best, were it not that certain scruples prevent one.
What would you advise me to do with myself, to begin with?" He paused
before he replied, and looked painfully into my face. "You will
excuse my asking you, because, little as my acquaintance is with you,
it is with you alone of all Englishmen that I have any acquaintance."

"I thought that you were intent about your book."

"What shall I do with my book? Who will publish it? How shall I
create an interest for it? Is there one who will believe, at any
rate, that I believe in the Fixed Period?"

"I do," said the lieutenant.

"That is because you first knew me in Britannula, and have since
passed a month with me at sea. You are my one and only friend, and
you are about to leave me,--and you also disbelieve in me. You must
acknowledge to yourself that you have never known one whose position
in the world was more piteous, or whose difficulties were more
trying." Then I left him, and went down to complete my manuscript.