The Island Mystery by G.A. Birmingham

Author:G.A. Birmingham [Birmingham, G.A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Serapis Classics
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XV

There is no doubt that the Donovans owed their comfort on Salissa very largely to Smith, the ship’s steward, who had entered their service at the last moment, and, as it seemed, accidentally.

Donovan would never have achieved the rest and quiet he desired without Smith. Advocates of the simple life may say what they like; but a man like Donovan would have lived in a condition of perpetual worry and annoyance if he had been obliged to go foraging for such things as milk and eggs; if it had been his business to chop up wood and light the kitchen fire. He would not have liked cleaning his own boots or sweeping up the cigar ends and tobacco ash with which he strewed the floors of the palace. He would not have slept well at night in a bed that he made himself. He would have gone without shaving most days—thereby becoming uncomfortable and most unsightly—if he had been dependent on his own exertions for a supply of hot water and a properly stropped razor.

His daughter would have made a poor queen if it had fallen to her lot to cook meals for herself and her father, if she had spent a morning every week at a wash-tub and another morning with an iron in her hand. There were no labour-saving devices in the palace. King Otto had a remarkable taste for fantastic architecture; but it had not occurred to him to run hot and cold water through his house or to have a lift between the kitchen and the upper storeys. There was not even in the whole palace a single sink in which a plate could conveniently be washed. It is impossible to be a queen in any real and proper sense if you have to spend hours every day doing the work of a kitchen-maid. Queens, and indeed all members of aristocracies, ought to be occupied with thoughts of great and splendid things, wide schemes of philanthropy, sage counsels for the elevating of the masses. But the human mind will not work at social and political philosophy if it is continually worried with problems of scouring pans and emptying slops. That is why there must be a class of menials, perhaps slaves, in society, if any advance is to be made towards the finer civilization.

It was Smith who saved the Queen from becoming a drudge and Donovan from unfamiliar kinds of toil which would probably have still further injured his heart, would certainly have broken his temper.

Salissa was not by any means a desert island. It was inhabited by intelligent, kindly people, who kept milk-giving cows and hens which laid eggs. It was well cultivated. Grapes and wheat grew there. There were fish in the surrounding sea, and the islanders possessed boats and nets. Nor were the Donovans castaways of the ordinary kind. They had a large house, luxuriously furnished. They had ample stores of every kind. Nevertheless they

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