The Fixed Period

by Anthony Trollope

  CHAPTER XII.

  OUR VOYAGE TO ENGLAND.

  The boat had gone ashore and returned before the John Bright hadsteamed out of the harbour. Then everything seemed to change, andCaptain Battleax bade me make myself quite at home. "He trusted,"he said, "that I should always dine with him during the voyage, butthat I should be left undisturbed during all other periods of theday. He dined at seven o'clock, but I could give my own orders as tobreakfast and tiffin. He was sure that Lieutenant Crosstrees wouldhave pleasure in showing me my cabins, and that if there was anythingon board which I did not feel to be comfortable, it should be at oncealtered. Lieutenant Crosstrees would tell my servant to wait uponme, and would show me all the comforts,--and discomforts,--of thevessel." With that I left him, and was taken below under the guidanceof the lieutenant. As Mr Crosstrees became my personal friend duringthe voyage,--more peculiarly than any of the other officers, all ofwhom were my friends,--I will give some short description of him. Hewas a young man, perhaps eight-and-twenty years old, whose great giftin the eyes of all those on board was his personal courage. Storieswere told to me by the junior officers of marvellous things which hehad done, which, though never mentioned in his own presence, eitherby himself or by others, seemed to constitute for him a specialcharacter,--so that had it been necessary that any one should jumpoverboard to attack a shark, all on board would have thought that theduty as a matter of course belonged to Lieutenant Crosstrees. Indeed,as I learnt afterwards, he had quite a peculiar name in the Britishnavy. He was a small fair-haired man, with a pallid face and a brighteye, whose idiosyncrasy it was to conceive that life afloat wasinfinitely superior in all its attributes to life on shore. If thereever was a man entirely devoted to his profession, it was LieutenantCrosstrees. For women he seemed to care nothing, nor for bishops, norfor judges, nor for members of Parliament. They were all as childrenskipping about the world in their foolish playful ignorance, whomit was the sailor's duty to protect. Next to the sailor came thesoldier, as having some kindred employment; but at a very longinterval. Among sailors the British sailor,--that is, the Britishfighting sailor,--was the only one really worthy of honour; and amongBritish sailors the officers on board H.M. gunboat the John Brightwere the happy few who had climbed to the top of the tree. CaptainBattleax he regarded as the sultan of the world; but he was thesultan's vizier, and having the discipline of the ship altogether inhis own hands, was, to my thinking, its very master. I should havesaid beforehand that a man of such sentiments and feelings was not atall to my taste. Everything that he loved I have always hated, andall that he despised I have revered. Nevertheless I became very fondof him, and found in him an opponent to the Fixed Period that hasdone more to shake my opinion than Crasweller with all his feelings,or Sir Ferdinando with all his arguments. And this he effected by afew curt words which I have found almost impossible to resist. "Comethis way, Mr President," he said. "Here is where you are to sleep;and considering that it is only a ship, I think you'll find it fairlycomfortable." Anything more luxurious than the place assigned to me,I could not have imagined on board ship. I afterwards learned thatthe cabins had been designed for the use of a travelling admiral,and I gathered from the fact that they were allotted to me an ideathat England intended to atone for the injury done to the country bypersonal respect shown to the late President of the republic.

  "I, at any rate, shall be comfortable while I am here. That in itselfis something. Nevertheless I have to feel that I am a prisoner."

  "Not more so than anybody else on board," said the lieutenant.

  "A guard of soldiers came up this morning to look after me. Whatwould that guard of soldiers have done supposing that I had runaway?"

  "We should have had to wait till they had caught you. But nobodyconceived that to be possible. The President of a republic never runsaway in his own person. There will be a cup of tea in the officers'mess-room at five o'clock. I will leave you till then, as you maywish to employ yourself." I went up immediately afterwards ondeck, and looking back over the tafferel, could only just see theglittering spires of Gladstonopolis in the distance.

  Now was the time for thought. I found an easy seat on the stern ofthe vessel, and sat myself down to consider all that Crasweller hadsaid to me. He and I had parted,--perhaps for ever. I had not been inEngland since I was a little child, and I could not but feel now thatI might be detained there by circumstances, or die there, or thatCrasweller, who was ten years my senior, might be dead before Ishould have come back. And yet no ordinary farewell had been spokenbetween us. In those last words of his he had confined himself tothe Fixed Period, so full had his heart been of the subject, and sointent had he felt himself to be on convincing me. And what was theupshot of what he had said? Not that the doctrine of the Fixed Periodwas in itself wrong, but that it was impracticable because of thehorrors attending its last moments. These were the solitude in whichshould be passed the one last year; the sight of things which wouldremind the old man of coming death; and the general feeling that thebusiness and pleasures of life were over, and that the stillness ofthe grave had been commenced. To this was to be added a certaintythat death would come on some prearranged day. These all referredmanifestly to the condition of him who was to go, and in no degreeaffected the welfare of those who were to remain. He had notattempted to say that for the benefit of the world at large thesystem was a bad system. That these evils would have befallenCrasweller himself, there could be no doubt. Though a dozencompanions might have visited him daily, he would have felt thecollege to be a solitude, because he would not have been allowed tochoose his promiscuous comrades as in the outer world. But customwould no doubt produce a cure for that evil. When a man knew that itwas to be so, the dozen visitors would suffice for him. The youngman of thirty travels over all the world, but the old man of seventyis contented with the comparative confinement of his own town, orperhaps of his own house. As to the ghastliness of things to be seen,they could no doubt be removed out of sight; but even that would becured by custom. The business and pleasures of life at the prescribedtime were in general but a pretence at business and a reminiscenceof pleasure. The man would know that the fated day was coming, andwould prepare for it with infinitely less of the anxious pain ofuncertainty than in the outer world. The fact that death must come atthe settled day, would no doubt have its horror as long as the manwere able habitually to contrast his position with that of the fewfavoured ones who had, within his own memory, lived happily to a moreadvanced age; but when the time should come that no such old manhad so existed, I could not but think that a frame of mind would becreated not indisposed to contentment. Sitting there, and turning itall over in my mind, while my eyes rested on the bright expanse ofthe glass-clear sea, I did perceive that the Fixed Period, with allits advantages, was of such a nature that it must necessarily bepostponed to an age prepared for it. Crasweller's eloquence had hadthat effect upon me. I did see that it would be impossible to induce,in the present generation, a feeling of satisfaction in the system.I should have declared that it would not commence but with thosewho were at present unborn; or, indeed, to allay the natural fearsof mothers, not with those who should be born for the next dozenyears. It might have been well to postpone it for another century. Iadmitted so much to myself, with the full understanding that a theorydelayed so long must be endangered by its own postponement. How wasI to answer for the zeal of those who were to come so long after me?I sometimes thought of a more immediate date in which I myself mightbe the first to be deposited, and that I might thus be allowed to setan example of a happy final year passed within the college. But then,how far would the Tallowaxes, and Barneses, and Exors of the day beled by my example?

  I must on my arrival in England remodel altogether the Fixed Period,and name a day so far removed that even Jack's children would not beable to see it. It was with sad grief of heart that I so determined.All my dreams of a personal ambition were at once shivered to theground. Nothing would remain of me but the name of the man who hadcaused the republic
of Britannula to be destroyed, and her governmentto be resumed by her old mistress. I must go to work, and withpen, ink, and paper, with long written arguments and studied logic,endeavour to prove to mankind that the world should not allow itselfto endure the indignities, and weakness, and selfish misery ofextreme old age. I confess that my belief in the efficacy of spokenwords, of words running like an electric spark from the lips of thespeaker right into the heart of him who heard them, was stronger farthan my trust in written arguments. They must lack a warmth which theothers possess; and they enter only on the minds of the studious,whereas the others touch the feelings of the world at large. I hadalready overcome in the breasts of many listeners the difficultieswhich I now myself experienced. I would again attempt to do so witha British audience. I would again enlarge on the meanness of the manwho could not make so small a sacrifice of his latter years for thebenefit of the rising generation. But even spoken words would comecold to me, and would fall unnoticed on the hearts of others, when itwas felt that the doctrine advocated could not possibly affect anyliving man. Thinking of all this, I was very melancholy when I wassummoned down to tea by one of the stewards who attended theofficers' mess.

  "Mr President, will you take tea, coffee, cocoa, chocolate, orpreserved dates? There are muffins and crumpets, dry toast, butteredtoast, plum-cake, seed-cake, peach-fritters, apple-marmalade, andbread and butter. There are put-up fruits of all kinds, of which youreally wouldn't know that they hadn't come this moment from graperiesand orchard-houses; but we don't put them on the table, because wethink that we can't eat quite so much dinner after them." This wasthe invitation which came from a young naval lad who seemed to beabout fifteen years old.

  "Hold your tongue, Percy," said an elder officer. "The fruits are nothere because Lord Alfred gorged himself so tremendously that we wereafraid his mother, the duchess, would withdraw him from the servicewhen she heard that he had made himself sick."

  "There are curacoa, chartreuse, pepperwick, mangostino, and Russianbrandy on the side-board," suggested a third.

  "I shall have a glass of madeira--just a thimbleful," said another,who seemed to be a few years older than Lord Alfred Percy. Thenone of the stewards brought the madeira, which the young man drankwith great satisfaction. "This wine has been seven times round theworld," he said, "and the only time for drinking it is five-o'clocktea,--that is, if you understand what good living means." I askedsimply for a cup of tea, which I found to be peculiarly good, partlybecause of the cream which accompanied it. I then went up-stairs totake a constitutional walk with Mr Crosstrees on the deck. "I saw yousitting there for a couple of hours very thoughtful," said he, "and Iwouldn't disturb you. I hope it doesn't make you unhappy that you arecarried away to England?"

  "Had it done so, I don't know whether I should have gone--alive."

  "They said that when it was suggested, you promised to be ready intwo days."

  "I did say so--because it suited me. But I can hardly imagine thatthey would have carried me on board with violence, or that they wouldhave put all Gladstonopolis to the sword because I declined to go onboard."

  "Brown had told us that we were to bring you off dead or alive; anddead or alive, I think we should have had you. If the soldiers hadnot succeeded, the sailors would have taken you in hand." When Iasked him why there was this great necessity for kidnapping me, heassured me that feeling in England had run very high on the matter,and that sundry bishops had declared that anything so barbarous couldnot be permitted in the twentieth century. "It would be as bad, theysaid, as the cannibals of New Zealand."

  "That shows the absolute ignorance of the bishops on the subject."

  "I daresay; but there is a prejudice about killing an old man, or awoman. Young men don't matter."

  "Allow me to assure you, Mr Crosstrees," said I, "that your sentimentis carrying you far away from reason. To the State the life of awoman should be just the same as that of a man. The State cannotallow itself to indulge in romance."

  "You get a sailor, and tell him to strike a woman, and see what he'llsay."

  "The sailor is irrational. Of course, we are supposing that itis for the public benefit that the woman should be struck. It isthe same with an old man. The good of the commonwealth,--and hisown,--requires that, beyond a certain age, he shall not be allowedto exist. He does not work, and he cannot enjoy living. He wastesmore than his share of the necessaries of life, and becomes, on theaggregate, an intolerable burden. Read Shakespeare's description ofman in his last stage--

  'Second childishness, and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything;'

  and the stage before is merely that of the 'lean and slipperedpantaloon.' For his own sake, would you not save mankind from havingto encounter such miseries as these?"

  "You can't do it, Mr President."

  "I very nearly did do it. The Britannulist Assembly, in the majestyof its wisdom, passed a law to that effect." I was sorry afterwardsthat I had spoken of the majesty of the Assembly's wisdom, becauseit savoured of buncombe. Our Assembly's wisdom was not particularlymajestic; but I had intended to allude to the presumed majestyattached to the highest council in the State.

  "Your Assembly in the majesty of its wisdom could do nothing of thekind. It might pass a law, but the law could be carried out onlyby men. The Parliament in England, which is, I take it, quite asmajestic as the Assembly in Britannula--"

  "I apologise for the word, Mr Crosstrees, which savours of theridiculous. I did not quite explain my idea at the moment."

  "It is forgotten," he said; and I must acknowledge that he never usedthe word against me again. "The Parliament in England might order athree-months-old baby to be slain, but could not possibly get thedeed done."

  "Not if it were for the welfare of Great Britain?"

  "Not to save Great Britain from destruction. Strength is very strong,but it is not half so powerful as weakness. I could, with thegreatest alacrity in the world, fire that big gun in among battalionsof armed men, so as to scatter them all to the winds, but I could notpoint it in the direction of a single girl." We went on discussingthe matter at considerable length, and his convictions were quite asstrong as mine. He was sure that under no circumstances would an oldman ever be deprived of his life under the Fixed Period. I was asconfident as he on the other side,--or, at any rate, pretended tobe so,--and told him that he made no allowance for the progressivewisdom of mankind. But we parted as friends, and soon after went todinner.

  I was astonished to find how very little the captain had to do withhis officers. On board ship he lived nearly alone, having his firstlieutenant with him for a quarter of an hour every morning. On theoccasion of this my first day on board, he had a dinner-party inhonour of my coming among them; and two or three days before wereached England, he had another. I dined with him regularly every dayexcept twice, when I was invited to the officers' mess. I breakfastedalone in my own cabin, where everything was provided for me that Icould desire, and always lunched and took five-o'clock tea with theofficers. I remained alone till one o'clock, and spent four hoursevery morning during our entire journey in composing this volume asit is now printed. I have put it into the shape of a story, becauseI think that I may so best depict the feelings of the people aroundme as I made my great endeavour to carry out the Fixed Period inBritannula, and because I may so describe the kind of oppositionwhich was shown by the expression of those sentiments on whichLieutenant Crosstrees depended. I do not at this minute doubt butthat Crasweller would have been deposited had not the John Brightappeared. Whether Barnes and Tallowax would have followed peaceably,may be doubted. They, however, are not men of great weight inBritannula, and the officers of the law might possibly haveconstrained them to have followed the example which Crasweller hadset. But I do confess that I doubt whether I should have been ableto proceed to carry out the arrangements for the final departure ofCrasweller. Looking forward, I could see Eva kneeling at my feet,and could acknowledge the invincible strength of that weakness towhich
Crosstrees had alluded. A godlike heroism would have beendemanded,--a heroism which must have submitted to have been calledbrutal,--and of such I knew myself not to be the owner. Hadthe British Parliament ordered the three-months-old baby to beslaughtered, I was not the man to slaughter it, even though I werethe sworn servant of the British Parliament. Upon the whole, I wasglad that the John Bright had come into our waters, and had takenme away on its return to England. It was a way out of my immediatetrouble against which I was able to expostulate, and to show withsome truth on my side that I was an injured man. All this I amwilling to admit in the form of a tale, which I have adopted for mypresent work, and for which I may hope to obtain some popularityin England. Once on shore there, I shall go to work on a volume ofaltogether a different nature, and endeavour to be argumentative andstatistical, as I have here been fanciful, though true to details.

  During the whole course of my journey to England, Captain Battleaxnever said a word to me about the Fixed Period. He was no doubta gallant officer, and possessed of all necessary gifts for themanagement of a 250-ton steam swivel-gun; but he seemed to me to besomewhat heavy. He never even in conversation alluded to Britannula,and spoke always of the dockyard at Devonport as though I had beenfamiliar with its every corner. He was very particular about hisclothes, and I was told by Lieutenant Crosstrees on the first daythat he would resent it as a bitter offence had I come down to dinnerwithout a white cravat. "He's right, you know; those things do tell,"Crosstrees had said to me when I had attempted to be jocose aboutthese punctilios. I took care, however, always to put on a whitecravat both with the captain and with the officers. After dinner withthe captain, a cup of coffee was always brought in on a silver tray,in a silver coffee-pot. This was leisurely consumed; and then, as Isoon understood, the captain expected that I should depart. I learntafterwards that he immediately put his feet up on the sofa and sleptfor the remainder of the evening. I retired to the lieutenant'scabin, and there discussed the whole history of Britannula over manya prolonged cigar.

  "Did you really mean to kill the old men?" said Lord Alfred Percy tome one day; "regularly to cut their throats, you know, and carry themout and burn them."

  "I did not mean it, but the law did."

  "Every poor old fellow would have been put an end to without theslightest mercy?"

  "Not without mercy," I rejoined.

  "Now, there's my governor's father," said Lord Alfred; "you know whohe is?"

  "The Duke of Northumberland, I'm informed."

  "He's a terrible swell. He owns three castles, and half a county, andhas half a million a-year. I can hardly tell you what sort of an oldfellow he is at home. There isn't any one who doesn't pay him themost profound respect, and he's always doing good to everybody. Doyou mean to say that some constable or cremator,--some sort of firsthangman,--would have come to him and taken him by the nape of hisneck, and cut his throat, just because he was sixty-eight years old?I can't believe that anybody would have done it."

  "But the duke is a man."

  "Yes, he's a man, no doubt."

  "If he committed murder, he would be hanged in spite of his dukedom."

  "I don't know how that would be," said Lord Alfred, hesitating. "Icannot imagine that my grandfather should commit a murder."

  "But he would be hanged; I can tell you that. Though it be veryimprobable,--impossible, as you and I may think it,--the law is thesame for him as for others. Why should not all other laws be the samealso?"

  "But it would be murder."

  "What is your idea of murder?"

  "Killing people."

  "Then you are murderers who go about with this great gun of yours forthe sake of killing many people."

  "We've never killed anybody with it yet."

  "You are not the less murderers if you have the intent to murder. Aresoldiers murderers who kill other soldiers in battle? The murderer isthe man who illegally kills. Now, in accordance with us, everythingwould have been done legally; and I'm afraid that if your grandfatherwere living among us, he would have to be deposited like the rest."

  "Not if Sir Ferdinando were there," said the boy. I could not go onto explain to him that he thus ran away from his old argument aboutthe duke. But I did feel that a new difficulty would arise from theextreme veneration paid to certain characters. In England how wouldit be with the Royal Family? Would it be necessary to exempt themdown to the extremest cousins; and if so, how large a body of cousinswould be generated! I feared that the Fixed Period could only be goodfor a republic in which there were no classes violently distinguishedfrom their inferior brethren. If so, it might be well that I shouldgo to the United States, and there begin to teach my doctrine.No other republic would be strong enough to stand against thosehydra-headed prejudices with which the ignorance of the world atlarge is fortified. "I don't believe," continued the boy, bringingthe conversation to an end, "that all the men in this ship could takemy grandfather and kill him in cold blood."

  I was somewhat annoyed, on my way to England, by finding that the menon board,--the sailors, the stokers, and stewards,--regarded me asa most cruel person. The prejudices of people of this class are sostrong as to be absolutely invincible. It is necessary that a newrace should come up before the prejudices are eradicated. They werecivil enough in their demeanour to me personally, but they had allbeen taught that I was devoted to the slaughter of old men; andthey regarded me with all that horror which the modern nations haveentertained for cannibalism. I heard a whisper one day between two ofthe stewards. "He'd have killed that old fellow that came on board assure as eggs if we hadn't got there just in time to prevent him."

  "Not with his own hands," said a listening junior.

  "Yes; with his own hands. That was just the thing. He wouldn't allowit to be done by anybody else." It was thus that they regarded thesacrifice that I had thought to make of my own feelings in regardto Crasweller. I had no doubt suggested that I myself would use thelancet in order to save him from any less friendly touch. I believedafterwards, that when the time had come I should have found myselfincapacitated for the operation. The natural weakness incidental tomy feelings would have prevailed. But now that promise,--once sopainfully made, and since that, as I had thought, forgotten by allbut myself,--was remembered against me as a proof of the diabolicalinhumanity of my disposition.

  "I believe that they think that we mean to eat them," I said one dayto Crosstrees. He had gradually become my confidential friend, and tohim I made known all the sorrows which fell upon me during the voyagefrom the ignorance of the men around me. I cannot boast that I had inthe least affected his opinion by my arguments; but he at any ratehad sense enough to perceive that I was not a bloody-minded cannibal,but one actuated by a true feeling of philanthropy. He knew that myobject was to do good, though he did not believe in the good to bedone.

  "You've got to endure that," said he.

  "Do you mean to say, that when I get to England I shall be regardedwith personal feelings of the same kind?"

  "Yes; so I imagine." There was an honesty about Crosstrees whichwould never allow him to soften anything.

  "That will be hard to bear."

  "The first reformers had to bear such hardships. I don't exactlyremember what it was that Socrates wanted to do for his ungratefulfellow-mortals; but they thought so badly of him, that they made himswallow poison. Your Galileo had a hard time when he said that thesun stood still. Why should we go further than Jesus Christ for anexample? If you are not able to bear the incidents, you should notundertake the business."

  But in England I should not have a single disciple! There would notbe one to solace or to encourage me! Would it not be well that Ishould throw myself into the ocean, and have done with a world soungrateful? In Britannula they had known my true disposition. ThereI had received the credit due to a tender heart and loving feelings.No one thought there that I wanted to eat up my victims, or that Iwould take a pleasure in spilling their blood with my own hands. Andtidings so misrepresenting me would have reached
England before me,and I should there have no friend. Even Lieutenant Crosstrees wouldbe seen no more after I had gone ashore. Then came upon me for thefirst time an idea that I was not wanted in England at all,--that Iwas simply to be brought away from my own home to avoid the supposedmischief I might do there, and that for all British purposes it wouldbe well that I should be dropped into the sea, or left ashore on somedesert island. I had been taken from the place where, as governingofficer, I had undoubtedly been of use,--and now could be of use nolonger. Nobody in England would want me or would care for me, andI should be utterly friendless there, and alone. For aught I knew,they might put me in prison and keep me there, so as to be sure thatI should not return to my own people. If I asked for my liberty, Imight be told that because of my bloodthirstiness it would be for thegeneral welfare that I should be deprived of it. When Sir FerdinandoBrown had told me that I should certainly be asked down to Windsor,I had taken his flowery promises as being worth nothing. I had nowish to go to Windsor. But what should I do with myself immediatelyon my arrival? Would it not be best to return at once to my owncountry,--if only I might be allowed to do so. All this made me verymelancholy, but especially the feeling that I should be regarded byall around as a monster of cruelty. I could not but think of thewords which Lieutenant Crosstrees had spoken to me. The Saviour ofthe world had His disciples who believed in Him, and the one dearyouth who loved Him so well. I almost doubted my own energy as ateacher of progress to carry me through the misery which I saw instore for me.

  "I shall not have a very bright time when I arrive in England," Isaid to my friend Crosstrees, two days before our expected arrival.

  "It will be all new, and there will be plenty for you to see."

  "You will go upon some other voyage?"

  "Yes; we shall be wanted up in the Baltic at once. We are very goodfriends with Russia; but no dog is really respected in this worldunless he shows that he can bite as well as bark."

  "I shall not be respected, because I can neither bark nor bite. Whatwill they do with me?"

  "We shall put you on shore at Plymouth, and send you up toLondon--with a guard of honour."

  "And what will the guard of honour do with me?"

  "Ah! for that I cannot answer. He will treat you with all kind ofrespect, no doubt."

  "It has not occurred to you to think," said I, "where he will depositme? Why should it do so? But to me the question is one of somemoment. No one there will want me; nobody knows me. They to whom Imust be the cause of some little trouble will simply wish me outof the way; and the world at large, if it hears of me at all, willsimply have been informed of my cruelty and malignity. I do not meanto destroy myself."

  "Don't do that," said the lieutenant, in a piteous tone.

  "But it would be best, were it not that certain scruples prevent one.What would you advise me to do with myself, to begin with?" He pausedbefore he replied, and looked painfully into my face. "You willexcuse my asking you, because, little as my acquaintance is with you,it is with you alone of all Englishmen that I have any acquaintance."

  "I thought that you were intent about your book."

  "What shall I do with my book? Who will publish it? How shall Icreate an interest for it? Is there one who will believe, at anyrate, that I believe in the Fixed Period?"

  "I do," said the lieutenant.

  "That is because you first knew me in Britannula, and have sincepassed a month with me at sea. You are my one and only friend, andyou are about to leave me,--and you also disbelieve in me. You mustacknowledge to yourself that you have never known one whose positionin the world was more piteous, or whose difficulties were moretrying." Then I left him, and went down to complete my manuscript.