Chapter II.
Chapter II.
“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 themselveswere 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 forwhich 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 vitalityby 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 themultitude 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 andpleasant 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 whitewooden 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 theabsenceof certain things as apresencemore 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 swingof 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 bitternessagainst 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, andBread-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 whichfringed 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 lineof 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, andpossibly 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 havingbeen 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, theyoung 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, mildercounsels 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 andsweet 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 rushingthrough 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 thinkingit, 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 sparethe 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 againstthe 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 signetring, 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.