these be? Of course the obvious thing was for each to look after
"number one;" but he soon became painfully conscious that he could not
do this without the help of "number two," and that to obtain this help
he must be willing to do his own part. One gentleman, indeed,
apparently entirely unconscious of any other duty than that of taking
care of himself, set to work at once to make himself as comfortable as
circumstances would permit. Having selected the most roomy and
convenient tent he could find, he removed his most easily portable
possessions into it, and proceeded to regale himself on some cold
provisions which he had brought with him. After these were finished, he
rang violently several times a hand-bell which he had brought with him,
expecting that his valet would at once answer the summons; but he soon
found that he could not calculate on his servant's attendance in Comoro.
It was true that the man had come on the same steamer as his master,
having been one of the guests at the royal banquet; but he had no
thought now of looking after any one but himself, and was, when his
master rang for him, busily engaged in a drinking-bout with a few like-
minded companions.
And what could the females do? The spoilt children had, of course,
their mothers with them--for none but selfish mothers would spoil their
children--and these mothers with their little ones were preparing to
form themselves into a distinct community; but such a frightful
contention and uproar arose amongst the children themselves, that before
nightfall their parents had to abandon their original idea and seek
separate homes among their neighbours. As for the young ladies, they
soon managed to enlist the services of the female domestics who had come
to the island, and then placed themselves under the protection of two
elderly maiden sisters, on the express understanding that their
guardians were to be handsomely remunerated for looking after them.
The young gentlemen, having no intention to exert themselves
unnecessarily, lounged about with cigars in their mouths, and voted the
whole thing "a bore;" while several of the elders of both sexes,
suppressing for the time the exhibition of their specialities of
selfishness, indulged in a prolonged chorus of grumbling and mutual
condolence. But, in one way or other, all had been fed and housed
before midnight, and sleep buried for a while in forgetfulness the
troubles of the bewildered settlers on Comoro.
We pass over the first month, and how does the commissioner, on his
arrival at the island, find the exiles bearing their lot? Proclamation
was at once made that those who had anything to complain of should meet
him in a spacious marquee which he had caused to be set up on a large
open piece of ground near the shore, immediately on his arrival. He was
rather dismayed, however, when he found the place of hearing crowded
without a moment's delay by nine-tenths of the islanders, while many
were clamouring outside because unable to obtain admission. After a few
moments' consideration, he ordered his officers to clear the marquee,
and then to admit a hundred of the more elderly of each sex. This was
done with some considerable difficulty, and the commissioner then
addressed himself to a crabbed-looking old gentleman, who had elbowed
his way to the front with a vigour hardly to have been looked for in one
of his years and apparent infirmities.
"May I request, sir, to be informed what it is you have to complain of?"
asked the commissioner.
"I complain of everything and everybody," was the reply.
"Is that _all_ you have to complain of?" the commissioner then asked.
Before the old gentleman could frame an answer to this second question,
the judge, having paused to give a few moments for reply, exclaimed,
"Officer, dismiss this complainant;" and the old man was forthwith
removed from the tent in a state of boiling indignation.
"And now, madam," continued the commissioner, addressing a middle-aged
lady of dignified mien and commanding stature, "may I ask what is your
complaint?"
"I complain, sir," replied the lady sternly, "of general neglect and
ill-treatment."
"Excuse me, madam," was the judge's reply, "but I can see no evidence of
this in your personal appearance. So far from it, that, having met you
not unfrequently in the streets of our city, I am constrained to
congratulate you on the manifest improvement in health which you have
gained from a month's residence in this delightful climate.--Officer,
conduct this lady with all due ceremony to the outside of our court."
"And you, sir," speaking to a gentleman of very severe countenance, who
had been used at home to "show his slaves how choleric he was, and make
his bondmen tremble,"--"let me hear what charge you have to allege."
"Charge, Mr Commissioner! Charge enough, I'm sure! Why, I can't get
any one to mind a word that I say."
"Then, I am sure, sir, the fault must be wholly or for the most part
your own.--Officer, remove him."
"Has no one anything more definite to complain of?" he again asked,
looking round the assembly, which by this time had begun to thin, as it
became obvious to all present that no attention would be given to mere
vague grumblings.
"I'm sure it's very hard," sighed a knot of young ladies, who had
listened from the outside to what had been going on, and were afraid to
speak out more plainly. "We shall be moped to death if we're kept here
any longer," muttered one or two fast young men, shrugging their
shoulders. But to these remarks the commissioner turned a deaf ear; and
no one coming forward to lodge any distinct charge against another, the
court broke up, and the commissioner proceeded to make a tour of
inspection among the islanders.
He found, as he had indeed expected to find, that the necessity for
exertion, and the peculiarity of the circumstances in which they were
now placed, had already got rid of a good deal of the selfishness which
had only formed a sort of crust over the characters of many who, in the
main, were not without kind and generous feelings; so that the looking
after the due supply of provisions, and the cooking of them and serving
them to the different families, had been cheerfully undertaken by a duly
organised body of young and middle-aged workers of both sexes,--the
result of which was, not only an improvement in character in the workers
themselves, but also a drawing forth of expressions of gratitude from
some who formerly took all attentions as a right, but now had been made
to feel their dependence on their fellows. And it was pleasant to see
how cordially working men and women were united in striving for the good
of the community in conjunction with those who had hitherto occupied a
higher social position than themselves.
Some, indeed, of the lower orders, whose tastes had been of an utterly
low and degraded cast, had been summarily ejected from the island after
they had more than once endangered the lives and stores of the islanders
in their brutal drunken sprees. They had talked big, indeed, and made
at first a show of resistance; but the general body of the exiles had
authorised a powerful force of young and middle-aged men to take them
into custody, and convey them on a raft, constructed for the purpose, to
an island some ten miles distant. Here the rioters were left with a
sufficient supply of provisions; a warning being given them that, should
they attempt to return to Comoro, they would be put in irons, and kept
in custody till they could be brought up before the commissioner. The
island being thus happily rid of this disturbing element, there was, at
any rate, outward peace among the inhabitants of Comoro, though, of
course, there was yet abundance of discontent and bitterness beneath the
surface in the hearts of many.
As the commissioner was making his way to the shore preparatory to his
return to the mainland, he passed a tent from which there issued such
deep-fetched sighs that, having obtained permission to enter, he
inquired of the inmate the cause of so much trouble.
"Ah, sir!" replied the poor sufferer, who was a man some sixty years of
age, with grey hair, and a countenance whose expression was one of
mingled shrewdness, discontent, and ill-temper, "our sovereign little
knows the cruelty he has been guilty of in sending me all alone to a
place like this."
"How alone, my friend?" asked the other; "you have plenty of companions
within reach."
"Why, sir," was the poor man's reply, "I have been torn from the best
and most loving of wives--I who am so entirely dependent on her for my
happiness--I who love her so tenderly;--alas! Wretched man that I am,
what shall I do?"
"Do you know this gentleman?" said the commissioner, turning to his
secretary, who had accompanied him into the tent.
"I know him well, your excellency," was the reply; "and a more selfish
man does not exist. He tells the truth, however, when he says that he
is entirely dependent on his wife for his happiness; but it was
impossible for her to accompany him hither, as she is the most unselfish
of women. On her he has ever made it a practice to vent his chief
spleen and bitterness, exacting from her at the same time perpetual
service, and rarely repaying her with anything but sneers and insults,
holding her up even to the scorn and ridicule of his acquaintance."
As the secretary uttered these words, a burning blush covered the face
of the unhappy man, who ceased his sighs and bent his head upon his
hands.
"My friend," said the commissioner gently, "I am truly sorry for you;
but I am in hopes that your solitude will work for your good. Think
over the past with contrition, and be up and joining in some useful work
for the good of others; and when you return home, treat your injured,
long-suffering, and admirable wife as a human being, a lady, a
companion, a friend, an equal, and not, as you have hitherto done, like
a slave or a brute beast."
There was no reply, and the commissioner hastened to the shore. He was
about to step into the boat that was to convey him to the steamer, when
a young man of dandified appearance and affected manner requested to
know whether he could have one moment's private interview with the
commissioner before his departure.
"Well, sir," said the other, somewhat impatiently, "you must be brief,
for I am anxious to lose no time, as business matters at home are
pressing."
"Sir," said the young man, dropping, at the same time, his affected
drawl, "my case is a hard one, and I would ask if you could not grant me
a passage home in the vessel by which you are returning."
"On what grounds?" asked the commissioner.
"Why, sir, I have an old mother and a sister, both in infirm health, who
can hardly get on without me; and it is only just that I should be
allowed to return, as my mother, who is a widow, has no other son."
"Do you know this young man?" inquired the commissioner, turning to his
secretary.
"Far too well, your excellency; he is the clog of his home, the
laughing-stock of his companions behind his back, and is despised by all
wise and sensible people. He has had situation after situation offered
him, in which he could have earned an honest and respectable livelihood,
but he has declined one after another as not to his taste. He is far
too much of a gentleman, in his own estimation, to enter upon any work
that will involve any steady exertion; but he does not scruple to sponge
upon his poor mother, to whose support he contributes nothing, and who
has barely enough to meet her own needs, while he borrows--that is,
appropriates--the savings of his delicate sister, who, though in feeble
health, has undertaken tuition, because this brother of hers is too fine
a gentleman to live in anything but idleness, and spends those hard-
earned savings of hers as pocket-money on his own elegant pleasures and
follies."
"Contemptible wretch!" exclaimed the commissioner with flashing eyes;
"stay where you are, and learn, if it is possible, by the end of these
six months, to see that you have a duty to others as well as to your own
despicable self."
Amazed at this exposure and reply, the young man dropped his eye-glass
from his eye, and his cigar from his mouth, and stood staring in
bewilderment at the commissioner as he sprang into the boat and made for
the steamer which was to convey him home.
Only one other incident worth recording happened during the
commissioner's subsequent visits; for the discipline involved in their
banishment had produced the good result of making the various exiles
feel the necessity of bearing and forbearing, giving and taking, and of
each doing his and her part in contributing to the comfort and happiness
of the whole. The incident referred to happened during the
commissioner's third monthly visit.
Soon after his arrival he received a respectful note from the secretary
of a Ladies' Working Committee, requesting him to receive a deputation
from their society at the place of audience. This request having been
graciously acceded to, and the deputation received by his excellency in
due form, the spokeswoman of the party, a young lady in spectacles,
expressed the conviction, on behalf of herself and companions, that a
sad but no doubt unintentional mistake had been made by his majesty in
including themselves in the party sent to Comoro. They were associated,
and had been so for years past, as workers together for many benevolent
objects and therefore this sending of them to the "Selfish Island" was a
double wrong; for it not only threw a slur on their society, whose
members were banded together for the purpose of working for the good of
others, but it also deprived many suffering ones at home of the help and
comfort they had been used to derive from the united and self-denying
efforts of these their true and loving friends.
The commissioner having listened with due politeness and attention to
this address, assured the deputation that the king would be sorry to
have done them any wrong, should such prove to have been the case, and
that he would duly report the matter to his majesty. He could not,
however, release them on the present occasion; but he hoped, after
having made full inquiry into the case on his return, that he should be
able to bring them, on his next monthly visit, the welcome permission to
leave the island.
Having returned to Comoro in due time, his first care was to request the
Ladies' Working Committee to meet him again by deputation. This was
accordingly done, and the commissioner addressed them as follows:--
"I exceedingly regret, ladies, that I cannot promise you any shortening
of your time of banishment. His majesty has received your complaint,
and has caused due investigation to be made; and the result of that
investigation has not led him to make any relaxation in your case. For
it has been clearly ascertained that the good works and charitable deeds
of which you informed me on my last visit, consisted in your attending
to work to which you were not called, to the neglect of duties which
plainly belonged to you; and that for any seeming sacrifice you made in
the bestowal of your time and labour, you more than repaid yourselves in
the applause which you managed to obtain from a troop of ignorant or
interested admirers. It would, in fact, appear that your benevolence
and labour for others involved no real self-denial in it, but was only,
after all, another but less obvious form of selfishness. His majesty
admires and respects nothing more than genuine co-operation in working
for the benefit of the suffering and the needy; but in your case this
stamp of genuineness is found to be wanting. We trust, however, that
your present work may prove to be of a better character, and that at the
expiry of your exile you will return home prepared to do good from truly
pure and unselfish motives."
Murmurs followed, as they had accompanied, this speech, but the
commissioner was inexorable.
And now at last the six months had come to an end, and the exiles of
Comoro flocked to the steamers which were to convey them back to the
mainland. The discipline had been with most very salutary. Roughing it
for the first time in their lives had been the means with many of
smoothing out the wrinkles of grosser selfishness from their characters.
Others had learned to look at things through their neighbours' eyes,
and thus had come to think less about themselves and about consulting
their own pleasure merely. Some also who had moved up and down in a
groove all their previous lives, and had made all about them miserable
or uncomfortable by their unbending and ungracious habits, had learned
the wisdom, and happiness, too, of bending aside a little from the path
of their own prejudices to accommodate a neighbour. Many likewise,
having been forced to do things of which, on their first landing on
Comoro, they had loudly proclaimed themselves physically incapable, now
found, to no one's surprise so much as their own, that their former
impossibilities could henceforth be performed by themselves with ease.
While a few, who had been in the habit of glorying in unselfishness as
their strong point, had come to detect their own weakness when they got
little or no credit from their neighbours for their ambitious acts of
self-denial. And one thing was specially worthy of remark,--so far from
suffering in health, everyone returned home greatly improved in looks
and vigour by this compulsory stay in the clear and bracing atmosphere
of Comoro. As for the hypochondriacal gentleman, who had felt so keenly
the refusal to be allowed to take his packing-case of medicines with
him, he had returned in such a state of spirits that he at once sold his
extensive stock of drugs by auction, and gave the money to an hospital
for incurables. And, indeed, so great was the gain to the metropolis,
in the first place by the absence of the exiles, and afterwards by their
altered character, for the most part, on their return to their homes,
that the king, when talking over the matter with the commissioner,--whom
he had selected for the post as, by general acknowledgment, the most
upright, downright, straightforward, honest-minded man in his kingdom,--
declared that he should like to try the atmosphere of Comoro himself
some day, as it was proved to be so healthy and improving.
"I most heartily advise your majesty to do so," said the commissioner,
somewhat bluntly; "and if your majesty will only take the entire cabinet
with you, I have little doubt but that the benefit to yourself and your
ministers will be most heartily acknowledged and thoroughly appreciated
by your subjects on your majesty's auspicious return."
CHAPTER EIGHT.
A LITTLE MYSTERIOUS.
Mary Stansfield pursued her quiet work at Bridgepath amongst the poor,
being welcomed by all, but by none so cordially as by John Price and his
family, who seemed quite different people now from what they used to be.
And why? Just because they had exchanged resignation for God's peace.
Their characters and conduct were outwardly the same; but there was a
new light in them and reflected from them, even the light that shines in
hearts where Jesus dwells as a Saviour known and loved, a light which
brightens the heavy clouds of earthly sadness and spans them with a
rainbow of immortal hope. And not only so, but, in consequence of the
entrance of this purer light, a change for the better was taking place
in the bodily health of the poor bed-ridden man--for a wounded spirit
had had a good deal to do with his physical infirmities--so that there
seemed a likelihood that he would be able in time to leave his sick-bed
and go forth once more, not indeed to laborious work, but to fill some
light post which the colonel had in store for him.
It was on a lovely afternoon that he was sitting up in his arm-chair,
dressed in clothes which he had never thought to put on again. He was
listening to the gentle but earnest voice of Mary Stansfield, as she
read to him from the Word of God, and spoke a few loving and cheering
words of her own upon the passage she had selected. A shadow fell
across her book; she looked up. The colonel and his nephew stood in the
open doorway.
"Don't let us interrupt you, Miss Stansfield," said the former; "I was
only looking round with my nephew, who has not been here before, to see
how things are going on in Bridgepath. We will call again!"
They passed on, and Miss Stansfield resumed her reading. But somehow or
other John Price's attention seemed to wander--he looked disturbed, and
fidgeted in his chair; and so his visitor, thinking that he had been
read to as long as he could hear with comfort and profit in his weak
state, closed the book, and rose to leave.
"Oh, don't go, miss!" cried the old man in a distressed voice. "I'm so
sorry; but something as I can't exactly explain just took away my
thoughts and troubled me when the colonel came to the door. But go on,
go on, miss; I'm never tired of hearing the good news from your lips."
"No, John," replied Miss Stansfield; "I think we shall do for to-day.
You are not strong enough yet to bear much strain of mind or body; and
Colonel Dawson will be coming in directly, and will like to have a word
with you, and so, I am sure, will Mr Horace; so I will say good-bye."
The other looked scared and bewildered, and made no reply. "Poor John!"
said his kind visitor to herself, as she left the cottage and went on
her way; "I am afraid I have tired him. And yet I think there must be
something more than that which troubles him."
A few minutes later the colonel and his nephew entered John Price's
house. "Come in, Horace," said Colonel Dawson; "you have not yet been
introduced to one who will, I hope, be spared to be a great helper in
the good work in Bridgepath, though he does not look much like a worker
at present. But the Lord has been doing great things for him already,
and, I doubt not, means to do greater things for him yet."
The young man stepped forward up to the old man's chair, and held out
his hand to him. John Price grasped it eagerly with both his own thin,
wasted hands, and looking at him with a half-astonished, half-distressed
gaze, said abruptly, in a hoarse, choking voice, "What's your name?"
"My name?" said the young man, smiling at his earnestness. "My name,
old friend, is Horace Jackson."
"Horace--Horace!" muttered the other in a tone of great excitement; "it
must be--nay, it cannot be--and yet it must be. Are you sure, sir, your
name's Jackson?"
The young man, surprised at such a question, was about to reply, when
the colonel, coming forward, stooped over the old man and whispered a
few words in his ear. The poor invalid immediately sank back in his
chair, and covered his eyes with his hand for a moment; then he sat up
again, and took part in the conversation, but in a dreamy sort of way,
keeping his face steadily turned away from his younger visitor. But as
the colonel and his nephew were leaving the cottage, he fixed upon the
latter a look so full of anxiety and interest, that it was quite clear
that Horace Jackson had opened unwittingly a deep spring of feeling in
John Price's heart, which the old man found it almost impossible to
repress. As his visitors retired, Colonel Dawson, looking back, put his
finger on his lips, to which sign John Price slowly bent his head.
In a few minutes the colonel returned alone. "I have left my nephew at
the school," he said, "to give the children a questioning on what they
have been lately learning; and now, John, I shall be able to clear up
your doubts and fears, and to set your mind at rest on a subject which I
see affects you deeply." A long and interesting communication was then
made by the colonel to his humble friend, at the close of which the
invalid seemed as if he could have sprung out of his chair for very
gladness, while the tears poured from his eyes, and his lips murmured
words of thankfulness.
As Colonel Dawson was leaving, he turned and said with a smile,
"Remember, John, not a word to any one at present--not till I give you
leave."
"All right, sir; you may depend upon me. The Lord be praised!" was the
reply; and as the old man said the words, every wrinkle in his careworn
face seemed running over with light. But for the present Horace Jackson
did not call at his cottage again, though he now and then appeared in
the village, and was to be seen on more than one occasion accompanying
Miss Stansfield on her return from Bridgepath.