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.