The Fixed Period

Comforted by this resolve, I went into Mrs Neverbend's parlour, where I found her son Jack sitting with her. They had evidently been talking about Jack's speech in the market-place; and I could see that the young orator's brow was still flushed with the triumph of the moment. "Father," said he, immediately, "you will never be able to deposit old Crasweller. People won't let you do it."

"The people of Britannula," I said, "will never interfere to prevent their magistrate from acting in accordance with the law."

"Bother!" said Mrs Neverbend. When my wife said "bother," it was, I was aware, of no use to argue with her. Indeed, Mrs Neverbend is a lady upon whom argument is for the most part thrown away. She forms her opinion from the things around her, and is, in regard to domestic life, and to her neighbours, and to the conduct of people with whom she lives, almost invariably right. She has a quick insight, and an affectionate heart, which together keep her from going astray. She knows how to do good, and when to do it. But to abstract argument, and to political truth, she is wilfully blind. I felt it to be necessary that I should select this opportunity for making Jack understand that I would not fear his opposition; but I own that I could have wished that Mrs Neverbend had not been present on the occasion.

"Won't they?" said Jack. "That's just what I fancy they will do."

"Do you mean to say that it is what you wish them to do, – that you think it right that they should do it?"

"I don't think Crasweller ought to be deposited, if you mean that, father."

"Not though the law requires it?" This I said in a tone of authority. "Have you formed any idea in your own mind of the subjection to the law which is demanded from all good citizens? Have you ever bethought yourself that the law should be in all things – "

"Oh, Mr President, pray do not make a speech here," said my wife. "I shall never understand it, and I do not think that Jack is much wiser than I am."

"I do not know what you mean by a speech, Sarah." My wife's name is Sarah. "But it is necessary that Jack should be instructed that he, at any rate, must obey the law. He is my son, and, as such, it is essentially necessary that he should be amenable to it. The law demands – "

"You can't do it, and there's an end of it," said Mrs Neverbend. "You and all your laws will never be able to put an end to poor Mr Crasweller, – and it would be a great shame if you did. You don't see it; but the feeling here in the city is becoming very strong. The people won't have it; and I must say that it is only rational that Jack should be on the same side. He is a man now, and has a right to his own opinion as well as another."

"Jack," said I, with much solemnity, "do you value your father's blessing?"

"Well; sir, yes," said he. "A blessing, I suppose, means something of an allowance paid quarterly."

I turned away my face that he might not see the smile which I felt was involuntarily creeping across it. "Sir," said I, "a father's blessing has much more than a pecuniary value. It includes that kind of relation between a parent and his son without which life would be a burden to me, and, I should think, very grievous to you also."

"Of course I hope that you and I may always be on good terms."

I was obliged to take this admission for what it was worth. "If you wish to remain on good terms with me," said I, "you must not oppose me in public when I am acting as a public magistrate."

"Is he to see Mr Crasweller murdered before his very eyes, and to say nothing about it?" said Mrs Neverbend.

Of all terms in the language there was none so offensive to me as that odious word when used in reference to the ceremony which I had intended to be so gracious and alluring. "Sarah," said I, turning upon her in my anger, "that is a very improper word, and one which you should not tempt the boy to use, especially in my presence."

"English is English, Mr President," she said. She always called me "Mr President" when she intended to oppose me.

"You might as well say that a man was murdered when he is – is – killed in battle." I had been about to say "executed," but I stopped myself. Men are not executed in Britannula.

"No. He is fighting his country's battle and dies gloriously."

"He has his leg shot off, or his arm, and is too frequently left to perish miserably on the ground. Here every comfort will be provided for him, so that he may depart from this world without a pang, when, in the course of years, he shall have lived beyond the period at which he can work and be useful."

"But look at Mr Crasweller, father. Who is more useful than he is?"

Nothing had been more unlucky to me as the promoter of the Fixed Period than the peculiar healthiness and general sanity of him who was by chance to be our first martyr. It might have been possible to make Jack understand that a rule which had been found to be applicable to the world at large was not fitted for some peculiar individual, but it was quite impossible to bring this home to the mind of Mrs Neverbend. I must, I felt, choose some other opportunity for expounding that side of the argument. I would at the present moment take a leaf out of my wife's book and go straight to my purpose. "I tell you what it is, young man," said I; "I do not intend to be thwarted by you in carrying on the great reform to which I have devoted my life. If you cannot hold your tongue at the present moment, and abstain from making public addresses in the market-place, you shall go out of Britannula. It is well that you should travel and see something of the world before you commence the trade of public orator. Now I think of it, the Alpine Club from Sydney are to be in New Zealand this summer, and it will suit you very well to go and climb up Mount Earnshawe and see all the beauties of nature instead of talking nonsense here in Gladstonopolis."

"Oh, father, I should like nothing better," cried Jack, enthusiastically.

"Nonsense," said Mrs Neverbend; "are you going to send the poor boy to break his neck among the glaciers? Don't you remember that Dick Ardwinkle was lost there a year or two ago, and came to his death in a most frightful manner?"

"That was before I was born," said Jack, "or at any rate very shortly afterwards. And they hadn't then invented the new patent steel climbing arms. Since they came up, no one has ever been lost among the glaciers."

"You had better prepare then to go," said I, thinking that the idea of getting rid of Jack in this manner was very happy.

"But, father," said he, "of course I can't stir a step till after the great cricket-match."

"You must give up cricket for this time. So good an opportunity for visiting the New Zealand mountains may never come again."

"Give up the match!" he exclaimed. "Why, the English sixteen are coming here on purpose to play us, and swear that they'll beat us by means of the new catapult. But I know that our steam-bowler will beat their catapult hollow. At any rate I cannot stir from here till after the match is over. I've got to arrange everything myself. Besides, they do count something on my spring-batting. I should be regarded as absolutely a traitor to my country if I were to leave Britannula while this is going on. The young Marquis of Marylebone, their leader, is to stay at our house; and the vessel bringing them will be due here about eleven o'clock next Wednesday."

"Eleven o'clock next Wednesday," said I, in surprise. I had not as yet heard of this match, nor of the coming of our aristocratic visitor.

"They won't be above thirty minutes late at the outside. They left the Land's End three weeks ago last Tuesday at two, and London at half-past ten. We have had three or four water telegrams from them since they started, and they hadn't then lost ten minutes on the journey. Of course I must be at home to receive the Marquis of Marylebone."

All this set me thinking about many things. It was true that at such a moment I could not use my parental authority to send Jack out of the island. To such an extent had the childish amusements of youth been carried, as to give to them all the importance of politics and social science. What I had heard about this cricket-match had gone in at one ear and come out at the other; but now that it was brought home to me, I was aware that all my authority would not serve to banish Jack till it was over. Not only would he not obey me, but he would be supported in his disobedience by even the elders of the community. But perhaps the worst feature of it all was the arrival just now at Gladstonopolis of a crowd of educated Englishmen. When I say educated I mean prejudiced. They would be Englishmen with no ideas beyond those current in the last century, and would be altogether deaf to the wisdom of the Fixed Period. I saw at a glance that I must wait till they should have taken their departure, and postpone all further discussion on the subject as far as might be possible till Gladstonopolis should have been left to her natural quiescence after the disturbance of the cricket. "Very well," said I, leaving the room. "Then it may come to pass that you will never be able to visit the wonderful glories of Mount Earnshawe."

"Plenty of time for that," said Jack, as I shut the door.

CHAPTER V

THE CRICKET-MATCH

I had been of late so absorbed in the affairs of the Fixed Period, that I had altogether forgotten the cricket-match and the noble strangers who were about to come to our shores. Of course I had heard of it before, and had been informed that Lord Marylebone was to be our guest. I had probably also been told that Sir Lords Longstop and Sir Kennington Oval were to be entertained at Little Christchurch. But when I was reminded of this by Jack a few days later, it had quite gone out of my head. But I now at once began to recognise the importance of the occasion, and to see that for the next two months Crasweller, the college, and the Fixed Period must be banished, if not from my thoughts, at any rate from my tongue. Better could not be done in the matter than to have them banished from the tongue of all the world, as I certainly should not be anxious to have the subject ventilated within hearing and speaking of the crowd of thoroughly old-fashioned, prejudiced, aristocratic young Englishmen who were coming to us. The cricket-match sprang to the front so suddenly, that Jack seemed to have forgotten all his energy respecting the college, and to have transferred his entire attention to the various weapons, offensive and defensive, wherewith the London club was, if possible, to be beaten. We are never short of money in Britannula; but it seemed, as I watched the various preparations made for carrying on two or three days' play at Little Christchurch, that England must be sending out another army to take another Sebastopol. More paraphernalia were required to enable these thirty-two lads to play their game with propriety than would have been needed for the depositing of half Gladstonopolis. Every man from England had his attendant to look after his bats and balls, and shoes and greaves; and it was necessary, of course, that our boys should be equally well served. Each of them had two bicycles for his own use, and as they were all constructed with the new double-acting levers, they passed backwards and forwards along the bicycle track between the city and Crasweller's house with astonishing rapidity. I used to hear that the six miles had been done in fifteen minutes. Then there came a struggle with the English and the Britannulists, as to which would get the nearest to fourteen minutes; till it seemed that bicycle-racing and not cricket had been the purpose for which the English had sent out the 4000-ton steam-yacht at the expense of all the cricketers of the nation. It was on this occasion that the track was first divided for comers and goers, and that volunteers were set to prevent stragglers from crossing except by the regular bridges. I found that I, the President of the Republic, was actually forbidden to go down in my tricycle to my old friend's house, unless I would do so before noon. "You'd be run over and made mince-meat of," said Jack, speaking of such a catastrophe with less horror than I thought it ought to have engendered in his youthful mind. Poor Sir Lords was run down by our Jack, – collided as Jack called it. "He hadn't quite impetus enough on to make the turning sharp as he ought," said Jack, without the slightest apparent regret at what had occurred. "Another inch and a half would have saved him. If he can touch a ball from our steam-bowler when I send it, I shall think more of his arms than I do of his legs, and more of his eyes than I do of his lungs. What a fellow to send out! Why, he's thirty, and has been eating soup, they tell me, all through the journey." These young men had brought a doctor with them, Dr MacNuffery, to prescribe to them what to eat and drink at each meal; and the unfortunate baronet whom Jack had nearly slaughtered, had encountered the ill-will of the entire club because he had called for mutton-broth when he was sea-sick.

They were to be a month in Britannula before they would begin the match, so necessary was it that each man should be in the best possible physical condition. They had brought their Dr MacNuffery, and our lads immediately found the need of having a doctor of their own. There was, I think, a little pretence in this, as though Dr Bobbs had been a long-established officer of the Southern Cross cricket club, they had not in truth thought of it, and Bobbs was only appointed the night after MacNuffery's position and duties had been made known. Bobbs was a young man just getting into practice in Gladstonopolis, and understood measles, I fancy, better than the training of athletes. MacNuffery was the most disagreeable man of the English party, and soon began to turn up his nose at Bobbs. But Bobbs, I think, got the better of him. "Do you allow coffee to your club; – coffee?" asked MacNuffery, in a voice mingling ridicule and reproof with a touch of satire, as he had begun to guess that Bobbs had not been long attending to his present work. "You'll find," said Bobbs, "that young men in our air do not need the restraints which are necessary to you English. Their fathers and mothers were not soft and flabby before them, as was the case with yours, I think." Lord Marylebone looked across the table, I am told, at Sir Kennington Oval, and nothing afterwards was said about diet.

But a great trouble arose, which, however, rather assisted Jack in his own prospects in the long-run, – though for a time it seemed to have another effect. Sir Kennington Oval was much struck by Eva's beauty, and, living as he did in Crasweller's house, soon had an opportunity of so telling her. Abraham Grundle was one of the cricketers, and, as such, was frequently on the ground at Little Christchurch; but he did not at present go into Crasweller's house, and the whole fashionable community of Gladstonopolis was beginning to entertain the opinion that that match was off. Grundle had been heard to declare most authoritatively that when the day came Crasweller should be deposited, and had given it as his opinion that the power did not exist which could withstand the law of Britannula. Whether in this he preferred the law to Eva, or acted in anger against Crasweller for interfering with his prospects, or had an idea that it would not be worth his while to marry the girl while the girl's father should be left alive, or had gradually fallen into this bitterness of spirit from the opposition shown to him, I could not quite tell. And he was quite as hostile to Jack as to Crasweller. But he seemed to entertain no aversion at all to Sir Kennington Oval; nor, I was informed, did Eva. I had known that for the last month Jack's mother had been instant with him to induce him to speak out to Eva; but he, who hardly allowed me, his father, to open my mouth without contradicting me, and who in our house ordered everything about just as though he were the master, was so bashful in the girl's presence that he had never as yet asked her to be his wife. Now Sir Kennington had come in his way, and he by no means carried his modesty so far as to abstain from quarrelling with him. Sir Kennington was a good-looking young aristocrat, with plenty of words, but nothing special to say for himself. He was conspicuous for his cricketing finery, and when got up to take his place at the wicket, looked like a diver with his diving-armour all on; but Jack said that he was very little good at the game. Indeed, for mere cricket Jack swore that the English would be "nowhere" but for eight professional players whom they had brought out with them. It must be explained that our club had no professionals. We had not come to that yet, – that a man should earn his bread by playing cricket. Lord Marylebone and his friend had brought with them eight professional "slaves," as our young men came to call them, – most ungraciously. But each "slave" required as much looking after as did the masters, and they thought a great deal more of themselves than did the non-professionals.

Jack had in truth been attempting to pass Sir Kennington on the bicycle track when he had upset poor Sir Lords Longstop; and, according to his own showing, he had more than once allowed Sir Kennington to start in advance, and had run into Little Christchurch bicycle quay before him. This had not given rise to the best feeling, and I feared lest there might be an absolute quarrel before the match should have been played. "I'll punch that fellow's head some of these days," Jack said one evening when he came back from Little Christchurch.

"What's the matter now?" I asked.

"Impudent puppy! He thinks because he has got an unmeaning handle to his name, that everybody is to come to his whistle. They tell me that his father was made what they call a baronet because he set a broken arm for one of those twenty royal dukes that England has to pay for."

"Who has had to come to his whistle now?" asked his mother.

"He went over with his steam curricle, and sent to ask Eva whether she would not take a drive with him on the cliffs."

"She needn't have gone unless she wished it," I said.

"But she did go; and there she was with him for a couple of hours. He's the most unmeaning upstart of a puppy I ever met. He has not three ideas in the world. I shall tell Eva what I think about him."

The quarrel went on during the whole period of preparation, till it seemed as though Gladstonopolis had nothing else to talk about. Eva's name was in every one's mouth, till my wife was nearly beside herself with anger. "A girl," said she, "shouldn't get herself talked about in that way by every one all round. I don't suppose the man intends to marry her."

"I can't see why he shouldn't," I replied.

"She's nothing more to him than a pretty provincial lass. What would she be in London?"

"Why should not Mr Crasweller's daughter be as much admired in London as here?" I answered. "Beauty is the same all the world over, and her money will be thought of quite as much there as here."

"But she will have such a spot upon her."

"Spot! What spot?"

"As the daughter of the first deposited of the Fixed Period people, – if ever that comes off. Or if it don't, she'll be talked about as her who was to be. I don't suppose any Englishman will think of marrying her."

This made me very angry. "What!" I said. "Do you, a Britannulist and my wife, intend to turn the special glory of Britannula to the disgrace of her people? That which we should be ready to claim as the highest honour, – as being an advance in progress and general civilisation never hitherto even thought of among other people, – to have conceived that, and to have prepared it, in every detail for perfect consummation, – that is to be accounted as an opprobrium to our children, by you, the Lady President of the Republic! Have you no love of country, no patriotism, no feeling at any rate of what has been done for the world's welfare by your own family?" I own I did feel vexed when she spoke of Eva as having been as it were contaminated by being a Britannulist, because of the law enacting the Fixed Period.

"She'd better face it out at home than go across the world to hear what other people say of us. It may be all very well as far as state wisdom goes; but the world isn't ripe for it, and we shall only be laughed at."

There was truth in this, and a certain amount of concession had also been made. I can fancy that an easy-going butterfly should laugh at the painful industry of the ant; and I should think much of the butterfly who should own that he was only a butterfly because it was the age of butterflies. "The few wise," said I, "have ever been the laughing-stock of silly crowds."

"But Eva isn't one of the wise," she replied, "and would be laughed at without having any of your philosophy to support her. However, I don't suppose the man is thinking of it."

But the young man was thinking of it; and had so far made up his mind before he went as to ask Eva to marry him out of hand and return with him to England. We heard of it when the time came, and heard also that Eva had declared that she could not make up her mind so quickly. That was what was said when the time drew near for the departure of the yacht. But we did not hear it direct from Eva, nor yet from Crasweller. All these tidings came to us from Jack, and Jack was in this instance somewhat led astray.

Time passed on, and the practice on the Little Christchurch ground was continued. Several accidents happened, but the cricketers took very little account of these. Jack had his cheek cut open by a ball running off his bat on to his face; and Eva, who saw the accident, was carried fainting into the house. Sir Kennington behaved admirably, and himself brought him home in his curricle. We were told afterwards that this was done at Eva's directions, because old Crasweller would have been uncomfortable with the boy in his house, seeing that he could not in his present circumstances receive me or my wife. Mrs Neverbend swore a solemn oath that Jack should be made to abandon his cricket; but Jack was playing again the next day, with his face strapped up athwart and across with republican black-silk adhesive. When I saw Bobbs at work over him I thought that one side of his face was gone, and that his eye would be dreadfully out of place. "All his chance of marrying Eva is gone," said I to my wife. "The nasty little selfish slut!" said Mrs Neverbend. But at two the next day Jack had been patched up, and nothing could keep him from Little Christchurch. Bobbs was with him the whole morning, and assured his mother that if he could go out and take exercise his eye would be all right. His mother offered to take a walk with him in the city park; but Bobbs declared that violent exercise would be necessary to keep the eye in its right place, and Jack was at Little Christchurch manipulating his steam-bowler in the afternoon. Afterwards Littlebat, one of the English professionals, had his leg broken, and was necessarily laid on one side; and young Grundle was hurt on the lower part of the back, and never showed himself again on the scene of danger. "My life is too precious in the Assembly just at present," he said to me, excusing himself. He alluded to the Fixed Period debate, which he knew would be renewed as soon as the cricketers were gone. I no doubt depended very much on Abraham Grundle, and assented. The match was afterwards carried on with fifteen on each side; for though each party had spare players, they could not agree as to the use of them. Our next man was better than theirs, they said, and they were anxious that we should take our second best, to which our men would not agree. Therefore the game was ultimately played with thirty combatants.

"So one of our lot is to come back for a wife, almost immediately," said Lord Marylebone at our table the day before the match was to be played.

"Oh, indeed, my lord!" said Mrs Neverbend. "I am glad to find that a Britannulan young lady has been so effective. Who is the gentleman?" It was easy to see by my wife's face, and to know by her tone of voice, that she was much disturbed by the news.

"Sir Kennington," said Lord Marylebone. "I supposed you had all heard of it." Of course we had all heard of it; but Lord Marylebone did not know what had been Mrs Neverbend's wishes for her own son.

"We did know that Sir Kennington had been very attentive, but there is no knowing what that means from you foreign gentlemen. It's a pity that poor Eva, who is a good girl in her way, should have her head turned." This came from my wife.