“Exile is when a man is for a crime condemned to depart out of the
dominion of the commonwealth, or out of a certain part thereof, and
during a prefixed time, or for ever, not to return to it; and seemeth
not in its own nature, without other circumstances, to be a
punishment; but rather an escape, or a public commandment to avoid
punishment by flight.”—HOBBES’ _Leviathan_.
The first to land in Meliora were a company of English Socialists, with
whom a few of the best who so called themselves were careful to cast in
their lot. These were men of forethought and resource, and the truth
that the circumstances of men are made by their inner natures was never
more clearly seen than in the difference which soon appeared in the
homes of the new settlers. The leader of this elect company was an old
Scholar who in his younger days had distinguished himself in many ways,
but, from a genuine belief that the medicine of a sick world lay in a
socialist creed, had laid aside all that had gained him fame and credit
for this one dream, and sealed his choice with the brand.
To him in his old age, after years of desolate wanderings, the thought
of a home in a new Atlantis was welcome indeed,—the soft sweet air of
the southern seas, the beautiful vegetation and strange fantastic story
of the Island awakened the old poetic feelings of his youth, and it
seemed as if his mission to the world would here meet fulfilment and
find its lost harmony with the earlier longings of his genius and fancy.
Through his help and counsel the first settlement of the land was
organized, houses suitable to the climate were built, Indian corn and
other crops for which they had brought a common stock of seed were sown
for the coming season, and to each was allotted an equal share of the
fruitful land on which there was only so much need to labour as Adam
found in Milton’s Paradise.
Some of course were more industrious, some more ingenious, than others.
Some had less bodily vigour; among these were those of whom I have
spoken as the elect few—the old Scholar and a little company of young
clerics, “Priests” of the Church of England.
This Church from the time of its disestablishment had begun a new
life—it had at once shown its vitality by casting off some of its old
disused organisms and by adapting itself in quick sympathy to the needs
of a changed order of things.
The young Priests of whom I have spoken believed that men had lost sight
of the great communistic idea of early Christianity, and they made
themselves poor and homeless for the sake of their creed. True brethren
of the Cross they were, not the less willing to cast in their lot with
the outlawed because most of these denied the Christian faith with their
lips. Some of them they knew acknowledged it in their lives, while in
the multitude who cast away all law and chose evil rather than good,
they recognized the lost sheep whom it was their mission if possible to
recall.
These men, who were less strong in body than many others, were yet much
more skilful in the use they made of the advantages which all shared
alike, and even the women, of whom a small company of enthusiasts had
arrived, were so wise and industrious in the building of their simple
homes and the tilling of their small plots, that the western point of
the Island, in which these elect ones took up their abode, became soon a
thriving and pleasant settlement, while the homes of the less
intelligent, even of those who were of great bodily strength, were of
poorer construction, their lands worse tilled, and an altogether
different manner of living and occupation prevailed among them.
And this notwithstanding that the little brotherhood of Priests made no
home for themselves beyond a rude shelter from the air before they had
built with the best skill they possessed, and with all the help they
could persuade others to give them, a church where daily worship of the
simplest kind was offered.
Things went for a time very happily; all that the elect company
possessed of skill or knowledge they were eager to share with others.
The old Scholar of whom I have spoken gave advice in regard to the
building of each new dwelling; those whose crops were the largest shared
with those who had least, and through the whole little colony in the
western part of the Island a common exile produced a common feeling of
loyalty to one another, and of desire for the good of the community, to
which for a time even those who professed to believe in no moral order
yielded. I cannot say that the white wooden church among the Bread-fruit
trees held many worshippers, but at least the Christian Brotherhood was
looked upon as a harmless and kindly element in the new society.
Some Russian noblemen and students were among the next arrivals. They
were full of enthusiasm for the future of the settlement, though enraged
at their banishment, and a little jealous of the established order they
found on the island and of the influence of the Scholar and the Priests.
The former, by the love and esteem in which he was held by many, and
even by the beauty of his venerable countenance, seemed to them
dangerously like a patriarch or chief, and the superiority of the
western dwellings was to them a sign of something reactionary. They
built their own homes rather carelessly, and gathered little companies
together by the side of the Lagoon to whom they talked in low and
earnest tones and in excellent English of the beauty of Anarchy and of
Nihilism, glorifying the _absence_ of certain things as a _presence_
more than any religion or philosophy had done before. The “Nothing” of
Molinos, the emptiness of Nirvana, would have been far too existent for
them.
Their ideas did not always meet with acceptance, for even the more
violent of the Socialists could hardly see that there was an object for
destructive denunciations in the simple order which seemed to them an
assurance of individual freedom.
But a change was coming.
I am not going here to write the history of the great Irish revolution
which followed the separation of that country from England. It is well
known how terrible that time was, and how, when all men were wearied out
and sick to death of the horrors of civil war, there followed a great
swing of the pendulum towards order and high-handed government; they
entreated for a king of the Royal Family of England, and a strongly
Conservative Cabinet in Dublin banished in large numbers all who
remained of the disaffected party.
These were the men who next landed in Meliora. They had been maddened
with rage against their own Church in consequence of the wise part taken
by the Pope and the Irish bishops against the revolutionary party. Hence
they were enemies of all creeds and forms of religion, and they were
also of course filled with the old bitterness against all of English
race.
At the same time a great number of German and Belgian Socialists of the
most violent kind were also landed on the Island, and they found no
difficulty in making friends at once with the Irish company, the German
system of education having made them as perfect in the use of foreign
tongues as it left them ignorant of the first principles of moral law
and of all sound theories of government and political economy.
These new-comers settled themselves in the southeast of the Island,
where there were large forests of Coco-palms, Bananas, and Bread-fruit
trees, which they began at once to fell in order to use the timber for
their houses, and this in so wasteful a way that they cut down those
trees which were valuable for fruit, but of slight use as timber, quite
as freely as the others. Indeed, for such houses as they wanted much
smaller wood was sufficient. The abundant Hybiscus would have supplied
all their material in that climate, where solid and substantial
dwellings are entirely needless.
Not content with a reckless destruction in their own district, they did
not scruple to begin cutting wood from the coco-bearing reef which
fringed the Lagoon far to the westward of their settlement.
A gentle remonstrance from those whom I will name the Western party
called forth feelings of anger and unreason in these men of violent
ideas, and there arose among them, it is scarcely known how, an idea of
building ships in which they might go out and subdue some neighbouring
islands. At the same time they had a scheme for constructing defences on
their own shore against the attacks they might in this manner provoke.
And, later, they showed signs of erecting a sort of stockade which, with
the abrupt line of the great mountain and its outlying ridges of broken
crater, would separate them from the Western settlement. At first, as
has been said, the scheme which led to their cutting down the forest was
chiefly one for shipbuilding. To this the Western party strongly opposed
themselves.
What indeed was the use of such a project? All the islands of the South
Pacific, in which signs of their great future were already
foreshadowing, were members of the British Federation. To land on any
one of them could only mean a defiance of the whole power of that
Federation, some fresh laws of repression, and possibly the presence of
troops in the island.
And this, a mean and futile struggle with the laws of a strong country
instead of the peaceful future for which the Island might have looked—a
future not of conflict, but of freedom and peace, so the Western
enthusiasts believed—a future in which every man should be a law to
himself, in which each should willingly work for all—a future from which
the old world, with its worn-out notions, should learn this lesson—that
to be without laws was not to be lawless, and that freedom from forms of
external government did not mean slavery to selfishness and passion.
Such counsels of perfection were hardly fitted for the wilder notions of
the Southern and Eastern settlers. The remonstrances of the West were
met with many an angry cry. From the Irish that they had not come round
the world to submit again to English rule; from the Russians that they
would not be governed by priests; from the Germans every possible
argument with no possible ground.
After a time a sort of parliament was convened in an amphitheatre formed
by one of the craters of the great mountain. No one could think of this
strange place of assembly as having been so lately given over to the two
fiercer elements of those primal four in which the old world believed,
the rush of angry Fire, or the wash of stormy Waves under which it had
lain a little while, but long enough for the busy coral creatures to
have claimed it for a foundation. Now it seemed as if Earth from the
beginning had held it in her green arms, and as if the gentle Air had
immemorially carried to and fro the sleepy odours of its wonderful
flowers.
Here they met, the Western party standing loyally round their leaders
and chief speakers—the old Scholar of whom I have spoken, the young
Priests, and a large company of English working men, who believed
heartily in the communistic idea. I will not say that as they discussed
the affairs of their Island nationality and opinion always kept
together. There were some Englishmen of a low type who applauded the
violent and warlike party; there was a company of the wiser and more
educated Russians who were convinced by the words of the West; there
were moderate men among the Germans and Belgians; but the Irish were
mostly for the axe and the sword. It was clearly shown at this time that
the Moderates were in the minority; there was no force to which they
could appeal, and, as the sun set behind the ridge on which they stood,
they turned and went rather sadly homeward.
Still there seemed one effort to be made. The Western party was now,
through the opposition of the South, bound by a real unity of thought.
They could, at any rate, set themselves to persuade by individual
converse some of the other side; indeed, as I have said, some of the
better class of Russian Nihilists had already been convinced—these might
influence their own people.
So for a while, though without much hope, milder counsels were urged
here and there by messengers from the West, who went singly across the
hills to speak to all who would listen. The young Priests even
endeavoured to recall some of the settlers of the South to thoughts of
duty and heavenly wisdom, and preached the gladness of a life in which
each lived for his fellows, in contrast with the misery of that state in
which each strove for his own gain, wrangling like brute beasts. But
though some few, touched by words that recalled an innocent past,
inclined at least to consider their meaning, there were but few who were
ready to receive them, and to most the Cross seemed but a worn-out
emblem of the creed of oppressors.
Finally, the sole result of all these efforts was to rouse the
opposition of the Southern leaders, who went to and fro denouncing those
of the West, inflaming the passions of their own followers by violent
appeals and angry denunciations, till that day came which all had
foreseen—how could it indeed not come? Yet it seemed, so said those who
remained to tell the story, as if so horrible a thing could not really
happen in that sweet, languid air, under that warm sun, tempered by soft
winds and sweet with a thousand flowers. Conflict and tumult and
cruelty—what had they to do with such a scene?
It was a Sunday morning. All the Western folk were gathered in and round
the church, whose open arcaded sides allowed those without to join
freely the worship of those within. The church indeed was too large for
those who mostly cared to enter it, but to-day the sense of coming
trouble brought the whole community together.
Suddenly upon the sound of prayer broke in the noisy shouts and hideous
laughter of their enemies; a wild multitude came rushing through the
trees, and then forming a ring round the church and the kneeling crowd,
they called for those they most hated in all that company—the Scholar
and the Priests.
The old Scholar, if the truth be told, was one who had no love for
creeds; he cared little for churches, though these Churchmen he had come
to honour as men—good men, wise, gentle and true of heart. He took
pleasure in believing that he was no Christian, not knowing himself. For
in truth he loved the Christ in His poor, and in these men His servants,
and he had long lived, though, as has been said, not thinking it, the
life of the Cross. Self had long been put away, so far as it can be by
any still dwelling in the flesh, only he had not ever looked up into the
face of Him who led him by the hand. He was therefore not within the
church, but a little away, under a Bread-fruit tree.
But when he heard them call his name, he came and stood upon the steps
at the door and spoke to the leaders of the crowd. He said that they
might do as they would with him, but he would entreat them once again to
consider what was good for the peace and safety of the whole Island. He
begged them to spare the Priests who had come there to serve them, to
teach their children, and to help all with wise counsels and the example
of virtuous lives. While he spoke, these men, having reverently finished
their prayers, came and stood beside him. Then the crowd broke out in
wild cries and thrust them back into the church, while some of their
number, with a sudden inspiration from the Evil Will, set fire to the
slight wooden roof of the porch.
It was but for a little while that the flames ran round the dry, thin
walls and mounted the wooden spire, and rose, a column of clear, pale
scarlet against the brilliant green of the tall Bread-fruit trees. Those
within the church saw that there was no escape, and the youngest of the
Priests, a boyish fellow who in England had thought much about stoles
and albs, quietly gave out the hymn they had meant to sing at the end of
the service. All joined with one voice, and only as the flames wrapped
round and choked them the sound of their singing died away—no groan, no
cry for help, no struggle to escape, but just one solemn, triumphant
martyr song, and all was still. The old Scholar died on the steps of the
altar, as they knew by his signet ring, an antique of great beauty, on
which was engraved the figure of a man bound by his outstretched hands
and feet, supposed to represent Prometheus chained upon the rock.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]