THE ISLAND
OR
AN ADVENTURE OF A PERSON OF QUALITY
BY
RICHARD WHITEING
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
1888
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. OUT OF FOCUS 1
II. FURTHER AFIELD 9
III. FLIGHT 28
IV. ADVENTURE 32
V. RESCUE 41
VI. BEARINGS 53
VII. SETTLING DOWN 58
VIII. GOVERNMENT, ARTS, AND LAWS 67
IX. NURSE 74
X. SUNDAY 86
XI. A SAIL 98
XII. THREE DAYS 108
XIII. A MISSION 120
XIV. A PLOT 127
XV. REPENTANCE 143
XVI. A DECLARATION 154
XVII. A MEDITATION 161
XVIII. A LORD OF INDIA 173
XIX. PEDIGREE OF A POOR STUPID 188
XX. A VILLAGE FESTIVAL 213
XXI. A ROMAN HOLIDAY 228
XXII. MISUNDERSTANDING 237
XXIII. ANOTHER SAIL 244
XXIV. A PARAGRAPH 263
XXV. ANOTHER PARTING 269
XXVI. AN EXPLANATION 278
XXVII. THE PROMISE OF THE SKIES 289
THE ISLAND.
CHAPTER I.
OUT OF FOCUS.
Lat. 25° 4′ S.; long. 130° 8′ W.: August 18.
Rest, peace, the sounds of a summer noon, and the murmur of waves.
The calm of a peak in the Pacific thirteen thousand miles away from
the dome of St. Paul’s, and completely out of sight of it, if only by
reason of the curvature.
I hardly know how I came here. When last I took stock of myself, I
was standing on the steps of the Royal Exchange, on another summer
afternoon, and looking down. I was busy as usual. I am playing with my
little pocket agenda now (perhaps the last I shall ever buy) as I lie
here on the broad of my back, and I turn to the entry for that day:
‘8, Gallop, Row; 9.30, letters, coffee; 10.30, article for “Quarterly”;
12.30, City (I wanted Staples to put something on Turks, and thought
I had better be on the spot); 1.30, lunch; 2.30 to bedtime, horse
sale, chrysanthemums, calls, club, early dinner, address Working Men’s
Constitutional Association--“Social Harmonies,” dance at Mrs. G.’s,
club again, Daudet, bed.’
A mosaic like this is all very well, but a trifle throws it out. When I
had done with Staples, I had no further business at the Royal Exchange.
I had certainly nothing to do on the steps; yet I lingered there. It
was only for ten minutes, but it spoiled my day, and perhaps changed my
destiny.
It was such a sight--civilisation in a nutshell--that was what made
me pause. I was a part of it, and Apollo was taking a peep at his own
legs. Why not? we all seemed to be going on so beautifully; we were all
busy, all doing something for progress. What a scene! The Exchange I
had just left, with its groups of millionaires gossiping Bagdad and the
Irawaddy, Chicago and the Cape; dividend day over at the Bank yonder,
and the well known sight of the Blessed going to take their quarterly
reward; a sheriff’s coach turning the angle of the Mansion House
(breakfast to an African pro-consul, I believe), a vanishing splendour
of satin and plush and gold; dandy clerks making for Birch’s, with the
sure and certain hope of a partnership in their easy grace; shabby
clerks making for the bun shops; spry brokers going to take the odds
against Egyptians, and with an appropriate horsiness of air; a parson
(two hundred and fortieth annual thanksgiving sermon at St. Hilda’s to
commemorate Testator’s encounter with Barbary pirates, and providential
escape); itinerant salesmen of studs, pocket combs, and universal watch
keys; flower girls at the foot of the statue, a patch of colour; beggar
at the foot of the steps, another patch, the red shirt beautifully
toned down in wear--Perfect! We want more of this in London--giant
policeman moving him on; irruption of noisy crowd from the Cornhill
corner (East-End marching West to demonstrate for the right to a day’s
toil for a day’s crust); thieves, and bludgeon men, and stone men in
attendance on demonstration; detectives in attendance on thieves;
shutters up at the jewellers’ as they pass; probable average of 7_s._
6_d._ to the hundred pockets; with a wall only to divide them from all
the turtle of the Mansion House, or all the bullion of the Bank! And,
for background, the nondescript thousands in black and brown and russet
and every neutral hue, with the sun over all, and between the sun and
the thousands the London mist.
It was something as a picture, but so much more as a thought. What a
wonder of parts and whole! What a bit of machinery! The beggars, and
occasionally the stock jobbers and the nondescripts to go wrong; the
policeman to take them up; the parson to show the way of repentance;
and the sheriff to hang them, if need be, when all was done. With this,
the dandies to adorn the scene--myself not altogether unornamental--the
merchants, the clerks, and the dividend takers, all but cog and fly and
crank of the same general scheme. What a bit of machinery!
But suddenly the sunlight faded, and there was a change in me. It was
not a change of cause and effect, but only a coincidence. I fancied I
saw the man in red furtively writhing in his shirt with the beggar’s
itch, scratching himself, so to speak, against his own clothes. At
any rate, something threw the apparatus out of gear. They seemed all
scratching themselves on the sly. The whole thing looked as well as
ever; but how did it work? I saw the clerks home, the shabbies to
Stockton lodgings of unstained brick, where infants down with the
measles called for drink in the night, and querulous wives compounded
that claim for romance with which every woman born of woman comes into
the world for the not too solid certainty of bread and butter, at
thirty shillings a week all told. I saw the brokers making for their
haven of Bayswater stucco to receive the reports of Jane’s progress in
Elementary Physics, Master Harry’s broken window, the afternoon call
of the Bristow family to bring news that of late Mr. Bristow has not
been feeling quite so well--receiving these things, I say, and wanting
to stamp and shout, or do something to give a pulse to life. I saw the
sheriff’s coach, methought, with Care in it. There had been another
troublesome meeting in Hyde Park; London was going to be governed
for Londoners; and to-night’s snug Company Dinner, with its guzzling
treasurers, masters, wardens, upper wardens, renter-wardens, past
masters, chaplains, and the whole batch might be one of the last of the
disgusting series. The very policeman had his anxieties; would civic
reform bring him down to the wage level of the Metropolitan force? A
soldier who had strayed into the prospect seemed to think it was odd to
have to guard the Bank on sevenpence a day. They were all scratching
themselves; and when an entire civilisation begins to do that, it is a
serious thing.
It was a serious thing for me. For the life of me I could not get them
into focus again for my grand pictorial composition of a community
all playing the game of life for mutual diversion. Theirs was rather
that infernal game of bowls in the Fourth Circle, where the tormented
wretches will roll the balls in one another’s faces, when a more
sensible direction would give them delightful sport. I drove home,
telegraphed an excuse to the Constitutional Association, and, I am
ashamed to say, went to bed.
I was no better next morning. Human society was still out of focus. I
describe the complaint with some minuteness, because I believe it is
quite a new case for the books, and I may go down to posterity, with
my name tacked to this disease, like a second Bright. The anguish is
insufferable: it is a sort of intense vertigo, with a very disagreeable
accompaniment of sickness in the region of the heart, that robs life of
all joy. The men and women about you, instead of having any relation
to one another of love, friendship, trust, sympathy, and use, become a
mass of gyrating atoms, with nothing but repulsions for their principle
of movement. At times you do not know your own brother for such. They
form no whole; they will not compose; say, rather, they are out of
focus, I come back to that. How to get them in?
I consulted a friend of a most practical order of mind, and, while
frankly confessing his ignorance of the complaint, he thought, from
my persistent mention of the word focus, that distance might be the
remedy. ‘You were too near,’ he said, ‘get further off. Go down to
Richmond, and dine.’ I thought there might be something in that, and I
took his advice. Still it would not come right. So I started for Paris
by the night mail.