takes most of the inhabitants about ninety years to die--and even then
you can hardly call it dying. Life’s pendulum only slows down day by
day, and swings through an arc that imperceptibly diminishes as the
years go on, until at last, without surprise, without shock, almost
without regret, so gradual is the process, you perceive that it has
stopped. And then the whole village, all in Sunday clothes, marches out
to the little graveyard on the hill, and somebody’s great birchen
beer-mug is hung on the living-room wall in memory of one who ate and
drank and slept, and who is no more. There are rooms in those old houses
in Ausserland where the wooden mugs hang in a double row, and the oldest
of them was last touched by living lips in days when the dragon-ships of
the Vikings ploughed that Northern sea.
[Illustration]
Ausserland is a principality, and a part of a mighty empire; but except
that it has to pay its taxes, and in return is guaranteed immunity from
foreign invasion, it might just as well be an independent kingdom; or,
rather, an independent state, for it is governed by Burgesses, elected
by the people to administer laws made hundreds of years ago, and still
quite good and suitable. If a man steals his neighbor’s goods, he is put
in the pillory. But what should a man steal his neighbor’s goods for
when he has all the goods that he wants of his own? The last time the
pillory was used was for a shipwrecked Spanish sailor who refused to go
to church on the ground of a rooted prejudice against the Protestant
religion. And it must have been a singularly comfortable pillory, for
somehow or other he managed to carve his name on it during the hour in
which he stood there--his name and the date of the event, and there they
are to this day: “Miguel Diaz jul 6 1743.” My own opinion is that they
did not even let the top-piece down on him.
The men of Ausserland are not liable to conscription, and as no ships of
war ever come to their odd corner of the sea, they know no more of the
mighty struggles of their great empire than if they were half a world
away. This is a part of the beautiful understanding which the
Ausserlanders have established with their hereditary Prince and with the
imperial government. The Prince lives at the court of the Emperor, and
none of his line has seen Ausserland since his grandfather was there in
the last century for a day’s visit. Yet his relations with his subjects
are of a permanently pleasant nature. They pay him his taxes, of which
he hands over the lion’s share to the government, keeping enough for
himself to attire his plump person in beautiful uniforms and tight
cavalry boots, and to cultivate the most beautiful port-wine nose in the
whole court. The amount of the taxes has been settled long ago, and it
is always exactly the same. The Ausserland fishermen are like a sort of
deep-sea Dutchmen, independent, sturdy and shrewd. They know just how
much they ought to pay; and they pay it, and not one soumarkee more or
less. Ages ago the hereditary Princes discovered that if they put up the
tax-rate, the herring fisheries promptly failed just in the necessary
proportion to bring the assessment back to the old figure. When they
lowered the rate the accommodating herring came back. It was a curious
if not pleasing freak of nature to which they had to accustom
themselves, for it never would have done to leave the market open to any
other supply of herrings than the famous herrings of Ausserland. So that
question settled itself.
[Illustration]
Twice a year the finest of the broad-breasted fishing smacks sailed for
the distant mainland, bearing heavy cargoes of dried fish, and beautiful
seashells such as were to be found nowhere else. Twice a year they came
back, bringing cloths and calicos, always of the same quality, color and
pattern, for the fashions never change in Ausserland. They brought also
drugs and medicines, school-books and pipes, tools and household
utensils of the finer sort, more delicate than the Ausserland ironsmiths
could fashion; brandy and cordials and wine in casks great and small,
and the few other articles of commerce for which they were dependent
upon the outer world; for the Ausserlanders supplied their own needs for
the most part, spun their own linen, tanned their own leather, built
their own boats, and generally “did” for themselves, as they say in New
England. Then it was, and then only, that the newspapers came to
Ausserland--a six-months’ collection of newspapers at each trip. And the
Head Burgess read them for the whole town. The Head Burgess was always a
man who had reached that period of thrift and prosperity at which it
seemed futile to toil longer, and who was both willing and able to give
his whole leisure to affairs of state. He it was who collected and
forwarded the taxes, and who stood ready to punish offenders, should any
one feel tempted to offend. The Head Burgess always grumbled a good
deal, and talked much of the burdens of public life; but it was
observant among even the unobservant Ausserlanders that the Head Burgess
was usually the fattest man in town; and the post was much sought after
because few Head Burgesses had been known to die under ninety-two or
three years of age.
As a rule, the Head Burgess read slowly and with deliberation. Of a June
afternoon, when the fishermen came in from their day’s work, he would
stroll leisurely down to the wharves, with his long pipe with the
painted china bowl, and would give forth the news of the day to the
fishermen.
“Three families,” he would say, “were frozen to death in Hamburg.”
“Ah, indeed!” some courteous listener would respond; “and when was
that?”
“In February last,” the Head Burgess would reply; “it seems scandalous,
does it not, that people should never learn to go in-doors and keep the
fires lighted in Winter? Thank heaven, we have no such idiots here!”
For an Ausserlander can never understand what it means to be poor or
needy. How can anybody want, he argues, while there are millions of
herring in the sea, and they come along every year just at the same
time?
[Illustration]
In Spring, of course, the Head Burgess gave the Ausserlanders a budget
of news that began with the preceding Summer. They listened to it
politely, as they listened to the pastor’s sermons. Outside of the
market-reports they had little interest in the world which ate their
herrings. Still, they were a polite and intelligent people, and they
were willing for once in a way to lend a courteous and attentive ear to
the doings and sayings of people who were not happy enough to live in
Ausserland. Thus it happened that they knew, several months after it
occurred, of the death of the reigning Emperor and the accession to the
throne of his son. The news was received with just the least shade of
disapproval. The preceding Emperor had come to the throne a sick man,
and had reigned but a short time. _His_ father had reigned about as long
as an Emperor can possibly reign, and they felt that he had done what
was expected of him. They hoped that their Emperors were not going to
get into the habit of reigning for a few months and then dying. It was
annoying, they thought, to have to learn new names every few years.
So it is not remarkable that the new Emperor had been several months on
his throne before the good people of Ausserland learned that he was a
very peculiar young man, with a character of his own, and with a
passion, that almost amounted to a mania, for re-establishing an ancient
order of things that had well-nigh perished from the face of the earth.
Nor is it to be wondered at that, considering all news of the court as
frivolous and probably fictitious, they were utterly ignorant of a
controversy that had divided the whole social system of the empire into
two camps. Who could expect that in the cosy, well-furnished rooms of
the weather-beaten old houses of Ausserland it should be known that
there was a vast commotion in the Imperial court over the new cotillion
introduced by the Lord Chamberlain? It was a charming cotillion, all
agreed; the music was ravishing, and the figures were exquisitely
original; but the third figure--ah, there was the trouble!--the third
figure had not met with the approval of the matrons. The young girls and
the very young married women all liked it; and the men were as a unit in
its favor; but the more elderly ladies thought that it was indelicate,
and that it afforded opportunities for objectionable familiarities. A
hot war was raged between the two parties. The Emperor, of course, was
arbiter. He hesitated long. He was a very young man, and he took himself
very much in earnest. To him a matter of court punctilio had an
importance scarcely second to that of the fate of nations. As soon as an
objection was offered, he issued an edict proscribing the performance
of
[Illustration]
the dance of dubious propriety until such time as he should have made up
his imperial mind as to its character. For three months its fate
trembled in the balance. Then he decided that it should be and continue
to be; and he issued a formal proclamation to that effect--the first
formal proclamation of his reign. It was an opportunity for the
re-introduction of ancient and ancestral methods which the young Emperor
could not lose. The edict had gone forth in haste by word of mouth and
by notice in the daily papers; but he resolved that the proclamation
should go by special envoy to all the principalities that composed his
powerful empire. Accordingly, an officer of high rank, specially
despatched from the court, read his Imperial Majesty’s proclamation in
every principality of the nation; and thereafter it was legitimate and
proper to dance the third figure of the new Lord Chamberlain’s cotillion
on all occasions of lordly festivities, and all the elderly ladies
accepted the situation with a cheerful submissiveness, and set about
using it for scandal-mongering purposes with promptitude and alacrity.
* * * * *
Early one Midsummer morning a strange fishing-smack was sighted from the
Ausserland wharves far out at sea, beating up against an obstinate wind,
and coming from the direction of the mainland. This in itself was enough
to cause general comment and to stir the whole village with a thrill of
interest; for strange vessels rarely came that way, except under stress
of storm; and though the sea was running unusually high there had been
no storm in many days. Besides, why should a vessel obviously unfitted
for that sort of sailing, beat up against a wind that would take her to
the mainland in half the time? Yet there she was, making for the island
in long, laborious tacks. Everybody stopped work to look at her; but
work was suspended and utterly thrown aside when she hoisted a pennant
that, according to the nautical code, signified that she had on board an
Envoy from his Imperial Majesty.
The whole town was astir in a moment. The shops and schools closed. The
village band began to practice as it had never practiced before. The
burgesses and other officials donned their garments of state. A
committee was promptly appointed to prepare a public banquet worthy of
the Emperor’s messenger. The children were sent collecting flowers, and
were instructed how to strew them in his path. The bell-ringers gathered
and arranged an elaborate
[Illustration]
programme of chimes. The citizens got into their Sunday clothes, which
were most wonderful clothes in their way; and the town-crier, who played
the trumpet, got his instrument out and polished it up until it shone
like gold. But the man who felt most of the burden of responsibility
upon his shoulders was the Head Burgess. He got into his robes of office
as quickly as his wife and his three daughters could array him, and then
he hastened to the Rathhaus, or Town Hall, and there consulted the
archives to find out from the records of his predecessors what it became
him to do when his Majesty’s Envoy should announce his errand. He must
make a speech, that was clear, for the honor of the Island. But what
speech should he make? He could not compose one on the instant--in fact,
he could not compose one at all. What had his forerunners done on like
occasions? He looked over the record and found that three King’s Envoys
had landed on the Island: one in 1699, to announce that the Island had
been ceded by one kingdom to another; another in 1764, to inform the
people that the great-grandmother of the hereditary Prince was dead; and
another in 1848, to proclaim that the Islanders’ right of exemption from
conscription was suspended. In not one of these cases, it should be
remarked, did the message of King, Prince or Emperor, change the face of
affairs on the Island in the smallest degree. The herring market
remaining stable, the Ausserlanders cared no whit to whom they paid
taxes; as to the death of the Prince’s great-grandmother, they simply
remarked that it was a pity to die at the early age of eighty-seven; and
when they were told that they would have to get up a draft and be
conscripted into the army or navy, they just went fishing, and there the
matter dropped. One is not an Ausserlander for nothing.
But the Head Burgess found that the same speech had been used on all
three occasions. It was short, and he had little difficulty in
committing it to memory, for it took the ship of his Majesty’s Envoy six
good hours to get into port. This was the speech:
“Noble and Honorable, Well and High-Born Sir, the people of Ausserland
desire through their representative, the Head Burgess, to affirm their
unwavering loyalty to the most illustrious and high-born personage who
condescends to assume the government of a loyal and independent
populace, and to express the hope that Divine Providence may endow him
with such power and capacity as properly befit a so-situated ruler.”
So heartily did the whole population throw itself into the work of
preparing to receive the distinguished visitor, that everything had been
in readiness a full hour, when, in the early afternoon, the
fishing-smack finally made her landing. During this long hour, the whole
town watched the struggles of the little boat with the baffling wind and
waves. Everybody was in a state of delighted expectancy. An Emperor’s
Envoy does not call on one every day, and his coming offered an excuse
for merry-making such as the prosperous and easy-going people of
Ausserland were only too willing to seize.
So, when the boat made fast to the wharf, the signal guns boomed, and
the people cheered again and again, and threw their caps in the air when
the King’s Envoy appeared from the cabin and returned the salute of the
Head Burgess.
And, indeed, the King’s Envoy was a most satisfactory and gratifying
spectacle of grandeur. He was so grand and so gorgeous generally that he
might have been taken for the hereditary Prince, himself, had it not
been well known that the color of the hereditary Prince’s nose was
unchangeable--being what the ladies call a fast red--whereas, this
gentleman’s face was as white as the Head Burgess’s frilled shirtfront.
But his clothes! So splendid a uniform was never seen before. Some of it
was of cobalt blue and some of it of Prussian blue, and some of it of
white; and, all over, in every possible place, it was decorated with a
gold lace and gold buttons and silken frogs and tassels, and every other
device of beauty that ingenuity could suggest, with complete disregard
of cost.
[Illustration]
And then His Serene Highness, Herr Graf Maximilian von Bummelberg, of
Schloss Bummelfels in the Schwarzwald, stepped on the wharf and
graciously introduced himself to the representative of the people, who
grasped him warmly by the hand with a cordiality untempered by awe; and
the people shouted again as they saw the two great men together; and not
one suspected the anguish hidden by that martial outside. For, of
course, as such things will happen, the Envoy selected to carry the
Emperor’s proclamation to this marine principality was a man who had
never been to sea in his life, and who never would have made a sailor if
he had been kept at sea until he was pickled. And for eighteen hours the
unfortunate messenger of good tidings had been tossed about in the dark,
close, malodorous little cabin of a fishing-smack on the breast of a
chopping sea, beating up against a strong head wind. And, oh! had he not
been sick? Sick, sick, sick, and then again sick--so sick, indeed, that
he had had to hide his gorgeous clothes under a sailor’s dirty
tarpaulin. This made him feel sicker yet; but, though in the course of
the trip he lost his respect for mankind, including himself, for
royalty, for religion, for life and for death, he still retained a vital
spark of respect for his beautiful clothes. He stood motionless upon the
wharf and returned the compliments of the Head Burgess in a husky voice
that sounded in his own ears strange and far off. The Herr Graf
Maximilian von Bummelberg, of Schloss Bummelfels in the Schwarzwald,
Envoy of his Imperial Majesty, was waiting for the ground to steady
itself, for it was behaving as it had never behaved before, to his
knowledge. It rolled and it heaved, it flew up and it nearly hit him in
the face, then it slipped away from under him and rocked back again
sidewise. Never having been on an island before, the King’s Envoy might
have thought that the land was really afloat if he had not seen that
the wine in the silver cup which the Burgess was presenting to him was
swinging around like everything else without spilling a drop.
Things began to settle a little after the Envoy had drunk the wine, and
when he had found that there was actually a carriage to take him to the
Town Hall, he brightened up wonderfully. He was much pleased to see also
that the Town Hall was solidly built of brick, and that it was to a
stone balcony that he was led to read his proclamation to the people.
Grasping the balustrade firmly with one hand, he read to the surging
crowd before him--he had heard of surging crowds before, but now he saw
one that really did surge--the message of his Imperial Master. The
proclamation was exceedingly brief, except for the recital of the titles
of the Emperor. The body of the document ran as follows:
“I announce to my faithful, loyal and devoted subjects of the honorable
principality of Ausserland, that hereafter, by my favor and pleasure,
the use of the Third Figure in the Cotillion is graciously granted to
them without further restriction. Done, under my hand and seal, this
first day of July, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and
ninety-two.”
That was all. The people listened attentively and cheered
enthusiastically. Then the Envoy handed the proclamation and his
credentials to the Head Burgess, with a bow and a flourish, and
signified his intention of returning at once by the way he had come. Nor
could any entreaties prevail upon him even to stay to
[Illustration]
the banquet already spread. He told the Burgesses, with many compliments
and assurances of his lofty esteem, that he had another principality to
notify before six o’clock the next morning, and that the business of his
Imperial Master admitted of not so much as a moment’s delay. The truth
of the matter, however, he kept to himself. For one thing, he could not
have gazed upon food without disastrous results. For another, he was
experiencing an emotion which in any other than a military breast would
have been fear. He had but one wish in the world, and that was to get
back to the mainland, the breeze being in his favor going back and
promising a quicker passage. Indeed it was with difficulty that he
repressed a mad desire to ask the Head Burgess whether the island ever
fetched loose and floated further out, or sank to the bottom. However,
he maintained his dignity to the last; and, a half an hour later, as
the people watched the fishing-smack with the Imperial ensign sail forth
upon the dancing sea, bearing the Herr Graf Maximilian von Bummelberg,
of Schloss Bummelfels in the Schwarzwald, they all agreed that, for a
short visit, he made a very satisfactory King’s Envoy.
But they could banquet very well without assistance from Envoys or
anybody, and they sat them down in the great hall of the Rathhaus, and
they fell upon the smoked herring and the fresh herring, and the pickled
herring, and the smoked goose-breast and the potato salad, and all the
rest of the good things, and they drank great tankards of home-made
beer, and great flagons of imported Rhenish wine; and, after that, they
smoked long pipes and chatted contentedly, mainly about the
herring-market.
They had reached this stage in the proceedings before it occurred to any
one in the company to broach the comparatively uninteresting subject of
the Imperial proclamation, and then somebody said in a casual way that
he did not think he had quite caught the sense of it. Soon it appeared
that no one else had. The Head Burgess was puzzled. “I have just copied
it into the Town Archives,” he said; “but, upon my soul, I never thought
of considering the sense of it.” So the document was taken from the
ponderous safe of the Rathhaus and passed around among the goodly
company, each one of whom read it slowly through and smoked solemnly
over it. The Head Burgess was appealed to for the meaning of the word
“cotillion.” He had to confess that he did not exactly know. He
believed, however, that it was a custom-house word, and had reference
to the gauging of proof spirits. Then the Doctor was asked his opinion.
He said, somewhat uneasily, that he thought it was one of the new
chemicals recently derived from coal tar; but, with all due respect to
his Imperial Majesty, he took no stock in such new-fangled nonsense, and
castor-oil would be good enough for his patients while he lived. The
School-Master would know, some one suggested; but the School-Master had
gone home early, being in expectation of an addition to his family. The
Dominie took a hand in the discussion, and calling attention to the word
figure, opined that it belonged to some branch of astronomy hitherto
under the ban of the universities on account of its tendency to unsettle
the minds of young men and promote the growth of infidelity. He lamented
the atheistical tendency of modern times, and shook his head gravely as
he said he hoped that the young Emperor would not be led astray.
[Illustration]
Many suggestions were made; so many, indeed, that, it being plainly
impossible to arrive at a consensus of opinion, the subject was dropped;
and, wrapped in great clouds of tobacco smoke, the conversation made its
way back to the herring fisheries.
But, later in the night, as the Head Burgess and the Doctor strolled
slowly homeward, smoking their pipes in the calm moonlight, the question
came up again, and they were earnestly discussing it in deep, sonorous
tones when they came in front of the house of the School-Master, and saw
by a light in the window of his study that he was still waiting the
pleasure of Mrs. School-Master. They rapped with their pipes on the
door-post, giving the signal that had often called their old friend
forth to late card-parties at the tavern, and in a couple of
minutes--for no one hurries in Ausserland--he appeared at the door in
his old green dressing-gown and with his long-stemmed pipe in his mouth.
Now, the School-Master was not only a man of profound learning, but a
man of rapid mental processes. He had heard from his open window the
discussion as his two friends slowly came down the street; and, in point
of fact, his professional instinct had led him to note the mystic word
when it dropped from the Envoy’s lips. This it was, rather than domestic
expectations, that had kept him awake so late. And in the time that
elapsed between the arrival of his friends and his appearance at the
door, he had prepared himself to meet the situation.
He listened solemnly to the question with the tolerant interest of a man
of science, and he answered it without hesitation, in the imposing tone
of perfect knowledge.
[Illustration]