A Week in the Future E-Book

Catherine Helen Spence

• Herausgeber: GAEditori
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

In late middle age, the narrator, Emily Bethel, learns that she is unlikely to live for more than another two years. Her family and her doctor advise her to adopt a life without worry or strong emotions, but that is anathema to her. She would rather have one week in the future, enabling her to see the outcome of the social and intellectual movements of her time, than two uneventful and boring years in the present. Her doctor, who is evidently something of a master of occult learning, grants her wish, and she finds herself in the London of 1988. A travel diary between confirmations and incredible discoveries.

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Catherine Helen Spence

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Indice dei contenuti

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

Catherine Helen Spence

A Week in the Future

CHAPTER I

Introductory

I have often observed that unmarried people, old maids and old bachelors,

take a keener interest in old family history, and in the ramifications of

the successive generations from the most remote ancestors they can claim,

than those who form the actual links in the chain of descent, and leave

children behind them to carry on the chronicle. Having lived all my life

with a mother who nearly attained the age of a century, and having a

strong interest in things past as well as in things present, I have been

steeped in memories of old times. I know how middle-class intelligent

people lived and worked, dressed and dined, worshipped God and amused

themselves, what they read for pleasure and for profit, not only so far

as her own recollections could carry the dear old lady, but two

generations farther back. In her youth she had lived much with an

intelligent grandmother, who could recollect the rebellion of 1745, and

the battle of Prestonpans, and had been of mature years during the American

War of Independence.

My own mother’s youth had been the period of the gigantic struggle of

Great Britain, sometimes single-handed, against the power of the first

Napoleon. The older lady had said to her then youthful descendant that no

one could expect to see as much as she had seen in her life, which

extended from 1734 to 1817, and included the American War, the French

Revolution, and the application of machinery to so many of the arts. The

grandchild, born at the beginning of 1791, had seen five French

Revolutions, and the map of Europe strangely altered; triumphs of art and

science, countless in number; steam, gas, electricity, the railway

system; mechanical inventions which had revolutionized industry; and the

rise of mighty colonies to compensate for the loss of the United States.

In the growth of one great colony she had taken a deep personal interest,

for she had watched it from the day of very small things in 1839. As we

sat and talked together, we would wonder what there could be for me to

see that would be equal to what had unfolded before her eyes. Was there

to be federation or disintegration? Was the homogeneous yet heterogeneous

British Empire to be firmly welded together, or were the component parts

to be allowed peacefully to separate and form new states? Was the

régime of unrestricted competition and free trade and individualism to

be kept up, or were these to be exchanged for protection and

collectivism? What was to be the outcome of the Irish Question, of German

Socialism, of Russian Nihilism? Was Britain to remain mistress of India,

and to keep that dependency? Was she to annex all territory which might

be supposed to preserve her open route towards it? What struggle was

there to be in central Asia between Britain and Russia? What power was

likely to demolish the terrible armed peace of Europe? Such questions as

these occupied my own mind primarily—my mother had taken the keenest

interest in them all, but latterly she cared less for the questions of

the day, and as her health gradually declined, she went further and

further back till she seemed to live more in the first ten years of the

century than in the more recent past.

When, after a long, wearing, and painful illness, I closed my mother’s

eyes—my companionship and occupation both gone at once—I had to

consider how I was to take up my life again. I was poorer after her

death, because her annuity, which must have made the insurance company

the losers, died with her, and I was left with that sort of provision

which the world considers quite sufficient for an elderly single woman.

My brother Robert came the day after the funeral to talk matters over

with me. “You have had a shock, Emily,” he said, “You would not save

yourself any way;—now, you must try to take life easier. What do you

yourself think of doing?”

“I mean to stay on here if I can manage it,” I said.

“Don’t attempt to keep house by yourself, it is too expensive, and too

much of a tie. Of course, so long as our mother lived, you had to keep a

home for her, and to stay in it, but now, if you will not come and live

with us, you had better go and board somewhere, or furnish a set of

apartments, and that would leave you at liberty. You have not work now

for two servants; if you have only one you cannot leave her by herself in

the house. Belle says she supposes I cannot persuade you to take up your

abode with us.”

My sister-in-law, though in her way an excellent woman, was one of the

most abject slaves of Mrs. Grundy, and her ways were not my ways. Their

house seemed as full as it could rightly be with their own large family,

and I could not in conscience think to occupy their only decent spare

room, at present tenanted by the married daughter and her first baby. I

was not disposed to go to a little den which did duty for a stray

bachelor guest. I clung to a home of my own.

“I dislike boarding-houses and furnished apartments,” I said. “After being

virtually the head of a house so long, I do not care to be a mere

pecuniary convenience to any one. I want a home to which I can invite my

friends, where I can have company or quiet as I please.”

“My dear Emily,” said Robert, “A single woman in your circumstances

should be quite satisfied if she has two or three comfortably furnished

apartments, and can invite a few friends to tea occasionally.”

“That means that I am to be shut out henceforward from the company of

men, for the tea guests are always women.”

“Of course, gentlemen all dine late, and do not appreciate even afternoon

tea much; but the social evenings of our youth are no more. You recollect

Emily? ‘Come to tea and spend the evening.’ Ah! those were pleasant

times. A little music and singing, a carpet dance, round games, and

flirtation. But you are past the age for that sort of thing. I did not

think you would care now for the disturbing male element in society.”

“I want to mix with people who are in the world, and engaged in its

business. I have for years devoted myself to my mother, now I should like

to live my own natural life for a few years.”

“You will get far more real information as to how the world goes on from

books than from any male guests you can induce to visit you at no end of

expense. I am sure the dinner guests whom we entertain, and whom Belle

and I meet elsewhere, do not give us any new ideas or much refreshment.

If I were you I should be glad of the peaceful life before you, after all

you have gone through lately; with books and needlework, and your piano,

and a little committee work such as your soul loveth, in conjunction with

a number of bright practical women. Or suppose you get one of your

friends to join you in housekeeping. That would be pleasant, and make

things easier for you. There’s Mary Bell, I dare say she would be glad to

do it.”

“I like Mary Bell very well, but I do not like her people, who would of

course be constantly coming and going.”

“Everywhere there is a lion in the path—I repeat it, Emily, I would

gladly change with you. What between the mill of business, which is

grinding exceedingly small in these days in the way of profit—protection

and the working man have it all their own way now—and the mill of social

requirements, and the mill of family anxieties, life is hardly worth

living. As for the young people, after we have got them brought up and

educated our troubles seem only to begin. There is Frank spending all his

salary, and all I allow him besides, and always in debt, because he will

bet on races and play for high stakes with insufficient skill; and

Gerald, dangling after a girl in a restaurant who I fear will hook

him,—the two boys are not much comfort; and Florrie, who is more than

half afraid to go back to the station, and I’m sure Belle will have a

sore heart to part from her. Who would think that Alf. Henderson was a

secret drunkard, and that the delicate health that won Florrie’s

compassion was the consequence of his own bad habits. And Jeannie has set

her heart on a man who has no merit whatever but that of being a good

tennis player and having a fine voice. There is no rise in him. The four

younger ones may do better, but you never can tell. I often feel as if a

large family was a mistake—at any rate now-a-days, when so much is

expected from parents.”

I was very sorry for my brother’s family troubles, but I felt as if he

and his wife had lived too much for society and position, and had not

taken the intelligent interest in their children, in studying their

tastes and guarding against their weaknesses, which might have saved some

disappointments. Belle, I knew, had been carried away by Mr. Henderson’s

large possessions, and had disregarded some ominous signs in her future

son-in-law.

I thought Robert rather cold-blooded in his advice that I should wrench

myself from the old home where I had taken root, but the more I thought

over ways and means, I became the more afraid that he had sound reason on

his side. I, however, delayed advertising my house. I put off the evil

day till I could accustom my mind to the change.

A singular feeling of malaise oppressed me, I missed the engrossing

occupation of the last two years, and I did not recover the spring and

elasticity of body and mind which I had expected. It was on one of those

suddenly hot days which we have in an Australian August that I had walked

rather far and rather fast, and when I got home, tired and breathless, I

found Florrie Henderson come to say good-bye before she went with her

little baby boy, Hugh, to the station. Florrie threw herself into my arms

in an hysterical passion of tears, and I, instead of being able to

comfort her or steady her nerves, fainted away for the first time in my

life. Florrie’s alarm about me made her throw off for the time her own

trouble; she sent for Dr. Brown, and meantime used all the simple and

ordinary remedies for restoration; but I had scarcely recovered full

possession of my faculties when he arrived. Dr. Brown had been the wise

and kind adviser of my mother, and he had often suggested that my

devotion to her should be less absorbing, and predicted that I should

suffer from the strain. He had even practised some auscultation from time

to time, which he now proceeded to repeat more minutely, and he

questioned me closely on my sensations and symptoms. I could read his

countenance like a book, and could understand his little impatient

gestures and half-uttered words. I felt that there was something

seriously wrong.

“Tell me the truth,” I said. “It is the heart?”

“Yes, just the weak part of you, which I have been anxious about all

through this long nursing of Mrs. Bethel.”

“And it is serious?”

“Serious? Why, that is according how you take it?”

“I take it literally. It is organic?”

“Yes, organic—but you know with ease and a quiet life, such as you may

lead now, there is no immediate danger.”

“I may live—how long? Don’t be afraid to tell me the truth.”

“You will live a year, perhaps two, with great care. You will need to be

very careful.”

“I know what that means,” said I, bitterly. “I must give up all the

things that make life worth living, all the outside interests that are

the very bread of life to a solitary spinster, all the larger objects

which the best and noblest of my brothers and sisters are striving to

accomplish and absorb myself in the one idea of self-preservation.”

“Oh, Auntie,” said Florrie, who with wet eyes and choking sobs had

listened to the death-warrant pronounced by our old, experienced, and

kindly family physician. “You must take care for all our sakes. Think how

valuable even two years of your life is to many who love and honor you.”

“Yes, valuable so long as it is life,” I said, “but of no value whatever

if I shut myself up in my shell, and merely absorb nutriment and warmth,

and exclude all disturbing influences—the wind of heaven and the cares

and labors of earth.”

“I did not pass so sweeping a sentence, Miss Bethel,” said Dr. Brown.

“You are only to avoid all over fatigue, all excitement, and especially

all worry.”

“What is life without these things?” I asked vehemently.

“It is what all old people have to do,” said Dr. Brown kindly.

“And was it not this that my poor mother felt so hard? Half her misery

was occasioned by ennui. The regret that she could do nothing for herself

or for anyone else embittered the last two years of her life. And if even

she, at the age of ninety-seven, chafed at the life of inaction and

helplessness, what must I do? I am not old; I have not been severed from

life and all its interests gradually by the chilling of my sensations and

the weakening of my faculties. I can see, hear, speak, learn, observe,

reflect, aspire, as well as I ever could do in my life, and to have to

die before I have seen the problems which have puzzled me all my life

solved, or nearly solved, is to me very hard.”

“Dear Auntie,” said Florrie with a broken, tremulous voice, yet musical,

as her voice always was when she quoted from her beloved Tennyson:—

“To thee, dear, doubtless will be given

A life that bears immortal fruit,

In such high offices as suit

The full-grown energies of Heaven.”

“Doubtless—is it doubtless? And even if these high offices were indeed

assured to me, it is here on earth that I am passionately interested. How

foreign to me with my present nature are the cares and employments of a

disembodied spirit, moving about among other equally unsubstantial

spirits, or at best reclothed in some strange new personality. It is this

world that I have loved and will continue to love,” I said passionately,

to the surprise of my two listeners.

“I should have thought that you of all women sat loose to the world,”

said Dr. Brown. “And so should I,” said my niece, “Mother always says

Aunt Emily is the most unworldly person she ever knew, though not in the

least sanctimonious either.”

“In a certain sense I do sit loose to the world, but I know and feel

convinced by many signs that we are on the eve of a great social and

industrial revolution. I had hoped to have seen some outcome from the

groaning and travailing of all creation, and from the efforts of so many

earnest and devoted men and women for the amelioration of the conditions

under which the toiling masses live and labor. What will come out of

Irish Agitation, German Socialism, Russian Nihilism? Will India be

prepared for self-government? Is the mighty Chinese Empire really

awaking? When and how is the barbarous practice of war to be abolished?

Is the scarcely less deadly war between labor and capital to end

peacefully, or is the cut-throat competition for cheapness all over the

world to be ended by a terrible and destructive catastrophe? Is religion

to become more Catholic or more sectarian? What is a year or a

problematical two years of life, wrapped up in cotton wadding, to my

eager questioning soul? I would give the year or two of life you promise

me for ONE WEEK IN THE FUTURE. A solid week I mean. Not a glance like a

momentary vision, but one week—seven days and nights to live with the

generations who are to come, to see all their doings, and to breathe in

their atmosphere, so as to imbibe their real spirit.”

“How far in the future should you like to spend your solid week—twenty

years, fifty years, a hundred years hence?” said Dr. Brown, with a

curious expression on his intelligent countenance.

“You know, Florrie, I have often said to you and to other people that I

would give anything to see the world fifty years after I left it, but as

I am not to live such a long life as my mother’s by thirty-five years,

and not even the Psalmist’s measure of three score and ten, and as the

changes that have to be wrought may take a long time, I think I should

prefer a hundred years to elapse before I see my WEEK IN THE FUTURE!”

“But everybody whom you knew and cared about would be dead,” said

Florrie. “I should not feel the least interest in the world after a

century. A hundred years—it is like an eternity.”

“Like an eternity to twenty-six, but it is only three years longer than

your grandmother’s single life.”

“That saw great changes certainly,” said Dr. Brown, “and the progress of

events, as you must have observed, becomes more rapid with each decade; I

should myself hesitate between fifty years and a hundred—fifty has the

advantage which Mrs. Henderson feels so strongly of greater familiarity

and possible personal survivals, but a hundred years must work radical

changes, more startling, and possibly—I only say possibly—more

interesting.”

More interesting to me, I feel sure. And Florrie, my affections strike

back to remote ancestors and would strike onward to remote collateral

descendants, which are all that an old maid can have. Why, Florrie, I

might see little Hugh’s children and grandchildren in the flesh.”

“Then,” said Dr. Brown, “you elect to overleap a complete century. And

how would you like to see the world of the latter end of the twentieth

century. Like Asmodeus, by unroofing the houses and spying on the doings

and misdoings of the post nati, or like a beneficent spirit, hovering

over the cities and fields, watching the human ants in the nest, or the

bees in the hive, or the butterflies among the flowers, and listening to

the words you hear them speak, yourself invisible and unheard.”

“No, not like a spirit at all, but just in this habit as I am, like a

middle-aged or rather an elderly single woman, who surely can never be

altogether out of date in any century”

“And where would you prefer to have your peep? In Melbourne, in London,

in your Scotch ancestral home, in New York, or in Pekin?”

“Every place has its charms, but as the older countries are those where

the greater need of change exists, let me be located in or close to

London.”

“Pekin represents an older civilization,” argued Dr. Brown.

“But too unfamiliar to be as interesting as the British metropolis. I

need all my past knowledge to throw light on the new revelations. The

language, the literature, the history, and the traditions of England are

among my most cherished possessions. A week of London for me.”

“And who will give you to drink of mandragora that you may sleep away

that gap of time, and traverse, not spiritually, but in the flesh, so

many thousand miles of land and ocean?” asked Dr. Brown.

“Who but you, with your strong leaning towards the occult and the

transcendental which are the favorite study of your leisure hours?”

“Are you really serious?” said Dr. Brown more gravely

“Perfectly serious.”

“It is because you believe it to be impossible that you would barter a

year, or it may be two, dating from August, 1888 for a single week in

1988. It would really be like all the bargains recorded by tradition or

supersitition between man and the arch enemy of souls, always greatly the

worse for the human party to the transaction. Why, at best, it would be

fifty-two to one.”

“Not so,” said I, “for I should barter a year or two of failing health

and disappointed hopes for a week of full life and intellectual

satisfaction. I should save my friends from all trouble and anxiety on my

behalf. I should at the same time save myself from the temptation to

peevish repining and exacting selfishness. I have not received your

death-warrant with the meekness and resignation which I know you expected

from me. I do not feel as if I could bear to watch the slow closing in of

life for myself, just after I have watched it for the being dearest to me

in the world, especially with the strong hold on life I have within me at

present. It puts me in mind of the terrible story I read when I was a

girl, in a Blackwood’s Magazine, of a political offender who was seized

by the relentless arm of despotic power, and shut up in a strong prison

with thirteen windows. During the first night, by some devilish

machinery, one window was closed, and next day there was but twelve, the

next day eleven, and so on till at last the coup de grâce was given,

and life was crushed out of him simultaneously with the closing of the

last window.”

“But Auntie,” said Florrie, softly, “you have always said life was good.

Father calls you an optimist. Mother says you always see the best side of

things and of people.”

“Yes, life has been good—very good. Like Harriett (sic) Martineau, I

feel I have had a good share of life hitherto, but that has been because

I have taken an active part in it, and it has been and continues to be so

exceedingly interesting, but I should not like to linger on the scene

when I can be no longer serviceable.”

“It shows how differently life is held by different people. If I had to

deal with your mother, Florrie, she would think a year or two with her

husband and children a vast deal better than a week, better than ten

years elsewhere,” said Dr. Brown.

“Belle knows they would be all only too happy to have the privilege of

nursing her, and that they would do anything to prolong her valuable

life,” said I.

“Oh Auntie, how glad I should be to take you with me to the station. It

is said to be so healthy, and is not exciting, and I’d be so glad of your

society, for mother won’t let Jeannie go, but—,” and Florrie sighed; she

had to reckon up a master of the house who was not reasonable, and was

not well disposed to his wife’s family. “But anyhow you must not stay

here alone, you must go to live with your own near and dear relatives. Do

not speak as if you had nobody to whom your life is precious.”

“I do not say that, Florrie, my dear, but though I have kind relatives

and dear friends, there is now no one to whom I am indispensable. Indeed,

I am doubtful if any of us is so indispensable as he or she fancies to

any one, but I always prayed that I might live while my mother needed me,

and that at least has been given.”

“I fear I should have to live longer than Dr. Brown’s utmost limit of two

years to see that consummation. Your parents’ consent must first be

given,” said I.

“I think they are a little moved now they see money is not everything.”

“But Claude has to make his way, and it will take a long while before he

can earn an income sufficient for an extravagant girl like Jeannie and

the lot of you. Perhaps my death might help Jeannie better than my life.”

“Don’t say so, Auntie, and please don’t call us extravagant. Father says

we are, but it isn’t really true.”

“I don’t know what you call extravagant, but you girls each spend as much

on your dress and personal expenses as my father gave to his three girls,

and he was called liberal. It is a pity, however, that the requirements

of modern society make marriage, instead of the hand-in-hand travel up the

hill which it ought to be, a goal to be attained when the hill is

climbed, unless a young man inherits unearned money.”

“And then it often is a curse,” said Florrie bitterly.

“In most cases it is the culmination of a young man’s ambition to be able

to afford to marry a young woman of education and refined tastes. How

much better for happiness and morality if it were to be the natural first

step in the life of an industrious, steady young man,” I said.

“That opens out large questions, Miss Bethel,” said Dr. Brown. “Will

people see things differently a hundred years hence?”

“Anyhow, Florrie, I cannot live to see Jeannie married, but she has my

best wishes. I like Claude Moore, and believe he has far more grit in him

than your father or mother can see just now. And Claude and Jeannie love

each other, which is the main point. He must work hard, and she must

reduce her ideas of an establishment to what is obtainable on moderate

means. But now, Florrie, I must really send you home. You must leave Dr.

Brown to prescribe something, for though I am set down as incurable, of

course it would be unprofessional not to give the chemist a turn, though

I dare say I would do as well with wholesome neglect and the expectancy

treatment. Come, dear, it must be good-bye.”

Her hot tears fell on my cheek as she kissed me. As she went out at the

door she met the postman, who brought no letters for me, but one of those

tradesmen’s circulars which are the daily annoyance of modern life, and a

book sent from England by my dear old friend Mrs. Durant. Florrie came

back with the packet in her hand which she proceeded to untie.

“I hope it is a good new novel to cheer you up. By the by, thanks for the

Children of Gibeon for my birthday, Auntie. This is not a novel,

however, but a book on Scientific Meliorism and the Evolution of

Happiness, by Jane Hume Clapperton. Let me have it when you have done

with it. The subject is one after your own heart. I must say good-bye

really now. However, you really look better than you did.”

Dr. Brown had taken the book out of my niece’s hand, and glanced rapidly

at the running titles on the top of the pages. “I think this will give

you some speculative ideas about your week in the future. I shall

prescribe, along with a necessary sedative, the careful reading of this

book.”

I was indeed deeply interested in the book, I half forgot my own

impending fate as I saw what this hopeful writer had gathered from other

authors and other observers, and had worked out for herself from the

signs of the times into a foreshadowing of the society of the future. Dr.

Brown gave me two days to read the book and then called to see how I was.

“You are better, decidedly better;’ he said.

“Not organically better, however?”

“No I cannot say that, but you have been agreeably interested and

diverted from the shock of two days ago.”

“It is because I have been living so much in the future.”

“Still harping on the future,” said the doctor. “Are you still serious

about your solid week.”

“Quite so, still more eager than ever since I have read this book.”

“Then will you put yourself in my hands, and I shall try what I can do to

further your wishes.”

“I am all obedience and submission,” I said.

“Give your maid a week’s holiday, and tell her you are going for a little

change of air and scene. Pack up a few necessaries in a hand-bag. I can

wait for you, you are no dawdler.”

I said what was needed to Janet, who was overjoyed at a week’s holiday,

and promised to take the key of the house with a message to my brother. I

could not have written a note to save my life. I changed my dress, and

packed my Gladstone bag with more rapidity than was quite prudent,

considering the state of my heart, and I stepped into the doctor’s

brougham with a curious feeling of expectancy. I was taken last in his

rounds that day, and driven not to his own home, but to a private

hospital for patients from the country in which he had a large interest,

and introduced to a quiet room at the back.

“Now,” said he, “the main thing is strength of volition on your own part,

aided by all the power of will I can lend you. This Week in the Future

is what you long for more than all things—all other objects are excluded

by this over-mastering desire. Lie down on this couch with your bag in

your hands. Your appearance, if we succeed in our great experiment, will