Orphan Island

by Rose Macaulay

  “Very Victorian,” murmured Charles, delighted.

  “You have quite a community here,” said Mr. Merton, complimenting them. “Quite a little nation. Houses, roads, and all that sort of thing. Very complete.”

  “Haven’t you houses and roads in your country?” asked the young woman who had spoken before, and Mr. Merton laughed loudly.

  “That’s good; that’s quite good, young lady.” He was delighted with her, because he saw that she was handsome as well as pert. “Quite good,” he said again.

  “What is your country?” inquired another Orphan. “You will have come a great way to visit us.”

  “From Great Britain,” Mr. Thinkwell said. “The island from which your community originally sailed. Yes, it is a considerable way.”

  “It is uncommonly civil and obliging of you to have come so far to see us,” said the chestnut-whiskered gentleman, who seemed important, like some kind of official, or cabinet minister. “We will do our best to make your visit agreeable. I hope you will stay for some time. You are just in time for the season.”

  “The season?”

  “Oh, we have, twice in the year, a month or so of unusual gaiety and dissipations. Parties, balls, routs, and such affairs. We have a famous time. The ladies are chiefly responsible, I needn’t say.” He looked roguish, as if he might add “Bless their hearts,” like a gentleman out of Thackeray. Rosamond observed that the young woman with the palm looked at him with a kind of cool, tolerant scorn, and inferred that she was his daughter.

  “She is beautiful,” thought Rosamond. “How beautiful she is. Her eyes shine, and her skin, and she has a red flower over each ear. And pearl ear rings. She is like a princess.”

  The young woman’s dark, bright glance met Rosamond’s, held it for a moment, with negligent, appraising interest, and passed on to Charles.

  “We are fortunate,” said Mr. Thinkwell. “It will be very agreeable to see something of your social life.”

  “I see,” said the other gentleman, “that you have a charming young lady in your party. Your daughter, perhaps?”

  Mr. Thinkwell agreed. “Indeed,” he added, “we ought to introduce ourselves. This is Captain Paul, of the schooner Typee; this is Mr. Merton. My own name is Thinkwell, and these are my sons and daughter, Charles, William, and Rosamond.”

  Several of the more important-looking Orphans bowed with some ceremony, and said, “We are delighted to make your acquaintance. We hope you all do very well.”

  The chestnut-whiskered gentleman then spoke again, saying that his name was Albert Edward Smith.

  “Indeed!” said Mr. Thinkwell. “Smith is perhaps a name frequently to be met with on your island, as on ours.”

  At this Mr. Smith straightened himself a little more, as, indeed, did several other of the prouder-looking Orphans.

  “Frequently, no, sir. Not at all frequently. We are not a large family, we Smiths, but I think we may say we are of some importance. We descend from Miss Charlotte Smith.” To the Thinkwells’ surprise, at this name all present bowed their heads.

  “Then,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “did she marry the doctor? I thought she would.”

  “You seem to know something of my mother’s and father’s affairs, sir,” said Mr. Smith, with a grave dignity that became him well.

  “A little only. The merest outline. The name, though? It goes down in the female line here?”

  “No, sir. Certainly not. That would be an odd notion indeed. But my mother, Miss Charlotte Smith” (again every one inclined) “naturally her name goes down.”

  “Rather than your father’s. … O’Malley, was it not?”

  “My mother preferred that it should be so.” Mr. Smith spoke now with some coldness, and the visitors inferred that the memory of Dr. O’Malley was not greatly esteemed on the island.

  Mr. Smith changed the subject.

  “We must not keep you standing on the beach in this inhospitable manner and in this sun,” he said. “You must come, all of you, and have some rest and refreshment. I hope, while you stay, that you will be the guests of myself and some of my friends. I am afraid that my house won’t accommodate the whole party. Perhaps you, sir, and your daughter will be my guests. Allow me to present to you Mrs. Albert Smith, my wife. My love!”

  Mrs. Albert Smith came forward. She was a large lady, very calm, very fat, and very brown, with a black moustache. She looked Spanish, for she was the daughter of a Spanish orphan, and she looked stupid, for so she was. She was sewing, with a sharp wooden needle, at some garment of fibrous cloth that she carried.

  “I was saying, my dear, that we shall be delighted if Mr. and Miss Thinkwell will stay with us during their visit here. Shall we not?”

  “Very pleased, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Smith, and the visitors learned subsequently that this was a favourite remark of hers. She was amiable, but lacked initiative.

  “Allow me also,” continued Mr. Smith, “to present our youngest daughter, Flora. Our home child, for all the others have left the nest.”

  Miss Flora Smith, the young lady with pearl ear-rings and a palm fan, inclined her head politely enough to the party. There seemed, however, to be something in her father’s speech which annoyed her, for she gave him a coldish glance, then turned away, linking her arm in that of another girl who stood near her.

  “Doesn’t like her papa,” thought Charles. “Expect he talks too much. Puffed up with being a Smith, that’s what ails him. And mamma’s an ass. I dare say home life in the nest is a bit of a bore. I’m not sure if I like Flora, though; she’s stuck up.”

  “It is most kind of you, sir,” Mr. Thinkwell said, “to offer us hospitality. We shall, of course, be delighted to accept.”

  “Speaking for myself, sir,” Captain Paul put in, “I fear I must get back to my ship for the night. I have rather a job crew; don’t like leaving them to their own devices too long. What about you, Merton?”

  “Oh, I think I shall stop ashore for to-night, anyhow,” said Mr. Merton.

  William, a downright and simple youth, who had been puzzled for some time, now blurted out to the Orphans in general, “But I say, don’t you want to be rescued? We came to rescue you, you know.”

  Every one looked at him. After a pause, a voice was heard in undertone: “I said from the first that they were missionaries,” and another, “Where is the Reverend? He must talk to them.”

  A tall, lanky young man stepped forward. Red-haired he was, with high cheekbones and a skin that was freckled instead of tanned. One expected from him the voice and speech of North Britain, but he spoke without much more of these than was discernible in the other Orphans.

  “You are very good, my dear sir”—he thus addressed William—“but we already have religion. We are all baptized members of the Christian church. It is my part to look to that. I am the clergyman here, you see.”

  William blinked at him stupidly. But Mr. Thinkwell, quicker to understand, put out his hand, explaining.

  “A very natural error. Most natural. But my son was not referring to spiritual rescue. He meant, do you not desire to be removed from this island and conveyed elsewhere?”

  The clergyman bowed.

  “Pardon me,” he said. “A natural error, as you say. You see, we once had a missionary here. He had escaped from a shipwreck in a small boat, with a black man and woman whom he had brought with him from Africa as Christian exhibits, where with to convert the South Sea Islanders. That was near the end of the nineteenth century, before I can remember. My grandfather was then the clergyman here. The missionary was a French Jesuit. He was very anxious to save us all; a most earnest man, one’s parents say. He denied the validity of our Orders, preached papal infallibility, and denounced scanty female attire and the “berso veed,” as he called it. That is French for not having a great number of children; he spoke French when he was excited. He started our religious dissensions, and made a good deal of trouble, which lasts even now. There is a sect here to-day which denies our Orders and prea
ches the pope of Rome.” He seemed to glance at Mrs. Albert Edward Smith, who was placidly sitting on the sand and sewing. Perhaps, though she looked no theologian, her Spanish descent told.…

  “Unfortunately,” continued the clergyman, “that poor missionary perished prematurely, in a no-popery riot, and was afterwards eaten by his black converts. That popery was an error this island was always taught, by Miss Smith.” (Again a general bow.)

  “What happened to the niggers?” William inquired.

  “They and their children are still with us,” said Mr. Albert Smith. “They work for members of the Smith family, and are, I am happy to say, now Protestants.”

  “And from where,” inquired Mr. Merton, who knew about things like that, from having been an Anglican missionary, “do your Orders derive, sir?”

  “Naturally, from Miss Smith,” said the young clergyman, with simplicity.

  “Miss Smith?” Mr. Merton smiled. “She ordained the first parson, did she?”

  “She ordains all the parsons, sir,” said her son, Mr. Albert Smith, with some dignity. “Who else should?”

  Mr. Thinkwell was startled.

  “You don’t mean to say——Do I infer, then, that Miss Smith is still living?”

  They all stared at him.

  “My dear sir”—Mr. Smith’s tone was mildly remonstrative—“ you surely did not imagine that she was dead?”

  Mr. Thinkwell was embarrassed.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Smith; I had, to tell you the truth, half supposed it to be probable. Your mother must be advanced in years, I think?”

  “Ninety-eight,” replied Mr. Smith. “We are keeping her birthday in a fortnight. She doesn’t, of course, get about very much in these days, but her mind is still active. She attends to all affairs of government herself—with constitutional advice, of course.”

  A curious murmur—was it of loyalty or otherwise?—rippled among a section of the crowd. Mr. Albert Smith, standing very upright, one hand grasping each chestnut whisker, fixed the populace with a firm and prominent gaze.

  William, a patient and persistent boy, interested neither in missionaries, Holy Orders, nor Miss Smith, at this point said, “What I mean is, don’t you, all of you, want to leave the island and come away? Because, you see, this is a desert island, and you were cast up on it.” He thought the Orphans did not quite realise their situation.

  They all looked at him.

  “Come away … leave the island …” they repeated, in some excitement.

  “Why, my boy?” said an elderly lady, interrupting the excitement in a dry voice. “All this gadding about for change of scene—no one thought of it when I was young. But I dare say the young people are all for travel, if they get a chance of it. Seeing life, pleasure-seeking, and all that. Miss

  Smith has always said——”

  The old lady was interrupted by a clear young voice.

  “To be sure we want to come away. I do, I know. Oh, Lord, I am sure I shall be prodigiously glad to see the world.”

  Mrs. Albert Edward Smith clicked with her tongue, disapprovingly, thinking really more about her sewing. Mr. Smith said, in his fine, mellow voice, “That will do, Flora. Your views, I think, were not asked.” He then addressed himself to William. “You seem to be proposing, my dear young gentleman, a complete emigration of our population to some other country. A little wholesale, surely. We have, you see, our roots, our family and national life, our means of livelihood, our history and traditions, here on this island, which I observe that you describe as ‘desert.’ Of course we know, for we have always been taught so here, that Great Britain, the country from which we originally emigrated, and which you now inhabit, is the world’s hub, peculiarly chosen by the Deity as the centre of His beneficent purposes towards His universe. We have, indeed, instructed by Miss Smith”—he raised his palm hat, and looked round to make sure that every one else did the same—“ taken Great Britain, her constitution, her customs, and the unrivalled purity of her domestic and social life, for our model in this island colony, as you will observe very soon if you spend any time among us. But we are an independent community, I may say a principality, and we have, I think, no desire permanently and as a nation to abandon our island home. Of course a little travel for some of us is another matter, and would be both instructive, beneficial, and entertaining. One ought to see the wider world. What say you, my love?” he inquired of his lady.

  “Oh, I,” she said placidly. “I am a home-lover, you know, my dear. Travel is all very well for gentlemen; makes a nice change, don’t it; but what do we women want with it? That’s what your mamma has always said, Bertie. Women’s business is in the home.”

  Mr. Smith indulgently displayed his wife’s womanly reply to the audience.

  “And yet,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “Miss Smith herself travelled rather far afield, if I may remind you of that.”

  “Ah.” Miss Smith’s son’s indulgent smile changed to a more reverent expression. “My mother, Mr. Thinkwell, is no ordinary woman. Almost a man’s grasp, a man’s intelligence and knowledge of affairs. And yet, sir, a womanly woman, if ever there was one.”

  Charles reflected that Miss Smith sounded much like the late Queen Victoria as viewed by herself and her subjects about the time of the Diamond Jubilee.

  “But,” resumed Mr. Smith, “we will discuss all these things together later on. We must not be so inhospitable as to keep you standing here. You must all come up to my little residence and partake of refreshment.”

  At the thought of that, the landing party brightened, particularly Mr. Merton, who, though he did not know much about Dr. O’Malley, knew enough of islands to be sure that, in all these years, the Orphans would have learnt what liquids best to ferment.

  Mr. Albert Smith motioned to his fellow islanders, indicating that they were to part and make a way through which the visitors might pass up from the beach.

  “My love,” he said to his wife, “we will conduct our guests to the Yams. You had better call the servants, and desire them to go on and prepare refreshments.”

  Mrs. Smith rose, with a sigh of stoutness, and called “Heavenly-Mind! True-Peace! Where in the world have those girls got to? The naughtiest maids any one ever had, upon my word. Oh, there you are, girls. Run up to the Yams and set the table in the veranda with fruit and drinks. Make haste now.”

  The two young women hurried off. Mr. Thinkwell mused on the question of class differences and domestic service as developed in small communities, but his comment was merely on the girl’s names.

  “Heavenly-Mind? True-Peace? Curious names, are they not?”

  Mrs. Smith looked as if she did not see anything curious about them or any other names, but Mr. Smith said, “They are taken from a book which was among the few possessions my mother managed to bring with her from the shipwreck. It is called The Holy War, by John Bunyan. A good many of our people have named their children out of that book. … I trust that no cocoa-nuts will fall on your heads.”

  They had now entered the woods, leaving the crowd behind them on the beach, and were following a path that led through thickets of luxuriant trees and shrubs. A thousand sweetnesses, like fleeting thoughts, assailed the hot, still, brooding air. In the dense green overhead monkeys chatted brightly, and radiant parrots uttered sharp, staccato cries, while paradise and humming birds flashed brilliant colours on the woody gloom. With soft, continuous thuds cocoa-nuts fell on emerald grass; with squashier sounds the ripe golden bread-fruit slipped softly from over-weighted boughs and tumbled through dark, glossy leaves to the ground. Rosamond picked one up and bit it. It was as good as she had always heard.

  “Books!” said Mr. Thinkwell. “I had not thought of that. Have you any other books on the island?”

  “My father,” said Mr. Smith, in the reserved voice he used for Dr. O’Malley, “had, I believe, when wrecked, one or two books in his pockets, of a humorous nature. Unfortunately they were also, my mother discovered, rather coarse, and she has never let the
m circulate among us. He also had one in Latin, which we cannot read, and a story called Wuthering Heights, which has always been of great interest to us here. It is the only book we have except for a little volume of my mother’s called Mixing in Society, or Correct Conduct, a manual of etiquette, which gives us a picture of domestic life in England to-day (and I cannot, by the way, think that it compares very favourably with our island life). The Holy War is more fanciful, more of the nature of what my mother calls an allegory. We have also a few books of devotion belonging to the French missionary, but, perhaps fortunately, they are in Latin, and therefore cannot be read.”

  “Miss Smith has no Bible, then,” said Mr. Merton.

  “No, sir. To her great distress, she did not remember to take that book with her from the ship. But she had such a close acquaintance with it that she was able to bring us all up on its stories, and to supply texts for every sermon that has been preached during our sixty-eight years here.”

  “You have many sermons?”

  “One every Sunday morning, naturally, as well as Christmas Day, Good Friday, the anniversary of our coming to the island, and my mother’s birthday. We used to keep also the birthday of Queen Victoria of England, but of late years that has been merged in that of my mother.”

  “How many parsons?” asked Mr. Merton, rather anxiously. But at the answer he brightened.

  “Only one at a time. No more are necessary. Our first clergyman was ordained in 1870; he was an orphan of Scottish origin, and our two subsequent clergy have been his son and grandson. My mother found that the lads of Scottish descent were, as a rule, more apt at theology than the others.”

  “Church of England?” asked Mr. Merton.

  “Ay, indeed. My mother was always very strict on that subject. Her father, you know, was a vicar. Our church here is the Protestant and Reformed Church of England. Certain popish errors have given us a good deal of trouble from the very first,” Mr Smith added coldly, “and they were augmented by the brief visit of the Catholic missionary last century. But we do our best to suppress them.” He glanced reprovingly at his wife waddling at his side, but she was not attending.