“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.”