Orphan Island

by Rose Macaulay

  “Well,” said Rosamond, “I don’t know. I’ve never been abroad, you see, till now. Charles has. He was in France. But the war spoilt it; they were fighting.… He doesn’t much like the French, but not for those reasons, I don’t think; he says they’re too industrious, and stingy, and sentimental, and angry, and don’t understand poetry.… I forget what else. But, you see, it was war time; I expect no one was very nice then. The Germans were the worst, of course.”

  “War time? We had a war time, too. A war of revolution. What was your war against France about?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t against France; France and we were on the same side. It was against Germany. and I don’t exactly remember what it was about. Somehow they all quarrelled.… I don’t know; I was only ten when it began, you see. It was ages ago. Anyhow, every one fought. It was a frightfully serious war.”

  “So was ours. The rebels were defeated, of course; they were too few. Now they mostly live in Hibernia—the other part of the island, you know—and feel discontented.”

  “Which side were you on?”

  “I was too young to fight. But I think the rebels were right. They didn’t like being governed by Smiths, and kept under, and given no land or power. Why should they? I wouldn’t stand it, if I came of the landless classes. And the way members of parliament—and my grandmamma too—chatter about the sacred name of freedom, and the rights of man, and the Isle of Liberty, and recite poetry about it—that makes it a great deal worse. Tedious humbug! Does your parliament talk like that too?”

  “I’ve never been to Parliament. And I don’t read speeches, they look so dull. But my father and Charles say members of parliament are nearly always rather stupid people, and that’s why people elect them.”

  “I am sure ours are too.… This jelly is very agreeable, try it. Do you like jellies?”

  “Well, some jellies. It depends on the taste. I like, very much indeed, the kind of jelly you get with cream, in a wine glass. And calves’ foot. I don’t care awfully much for the kind you make from jelly squares.”

  “I know nothing about calves’ foot, or jelly squares. This has cream with it. It is made from the syrup of flowers, I think.”

  “It’s very nice.”

  “You don’t drink much. Have some more mango juice.”

  “Is that what it is? It’s rather like cider—lovely.”

  Rosamond took a deep draught. The sweet, fermented, fruity stuff ran suavely through her body and mind. The banquet spread beneath the moon was a merry and magical feast. Opposite, Flora’s golden face gleamed and swayed, like a tiger-lily on its stem, and her laughter broke like a brook on stones, like the run of the sea’s glimmering edge up the dark shore. Exquisite Flora; radiant and marvellous Flora. Heathcliff, bending towards Rosamond, plying her with delicate foods, asking questions about England, was radiant and marvellous too. As to the questions, Rosamond couldn’t answer most of them. “I don’t know,” she said happily, and smiled down the table, smiled across to Flora, smiled up at the beamy moon. “I don’t know.” This was when Heathcliff’s questions referred to society, politics, or recent history. She could answer well enough about food, or animals—only she could not make Heathcliff understand about horses, or cows, or dogs. She tried to describe her Peter at home. Heathcliff, knowing, of mammals, only monkeys, pigs, and turtles, could make but little of Peter, and scarcely believed how brave he was, and good, and full of love.

  “What is his noise? Has he a noise?”

  “Oh, yes, he barks, of course.”

  “Barks? What’s barks?”

  “Oh, well … like this …” Rosamond gave a creditable imitation.

  Every one near at hand looked at her and smiled, and she smiled too.

  Charles said to Flora, “Lord, Rosamond’s drunk.”

  “Yes,” said Flora indifferently. “Is she often?”

  “Never. Jamais de la vie, poor child. What chances has she?”

  “Hasn’t she chances? Why? Have you no drink in England?”

  “I should say we have; thank God. But Rosamond … oh, well, Rosamond doesn’t like the taste. She’s too young. She likes raspberry syrup and lemonade. This stuff of yours is sweet and nice, and I suppose she exceeded. In fact, it is apparent that she has exceeded.”

  “Heathcliff’s fault, no doubt. See, papa is looking at her.”

  Charles, looking up the table, saw Mr. Albert Edward Smith’s cold eye transfixing Rosamond and his son.

  “Heathcliff will get into trouble for this,” said Flora. “Poor Heathcliff, he is for ever in trouble with papa.”

  “Well,” said Charles, “it’s not your brother’s fault that Rosamond has a weak head and gets tipsy after a bowl of mango juice. No one else here seems tipsy, particularly.”

  “Not,” said Flora coolly, “at the moment. My grandmamma will, when she comes in.”

  “Yes. We noticed that in your grandmamma. Has she always—?”

  “The old people say that when first they all came here she had never drunk intoxicating drinks. She was a Total Abstainer (that’s what she always calls it), and taught all the orphans about the vices of drink. But then she married my grandpapa, and caught it from him.… For that matter, she is still a total abstainer, and still talks of the vices of drink. But drink, she says, doesn’t mean the stuff we ferment here; she calls that palm juice, or fruit juice. So does old Jean. So they both drink a prodigious amount of it, and yet are still total abstainers. … I don’t know how they will manage when they get to England and Aberdeen.… See, here comes grandmamma. Now we all stand and sing.”

  Out from the dark palm grove into the moonlit, flame-lit sward came four Zachary Macaulays, bearing a canopied hammock, and in the hammock reclined Miss Smith.

  Mr. Albert Smith sprang to his feet, lifting one arm high, as if to elevate the rest of the company, and at his gesture the banqueters all rose. Rosamond stumbled to her feet; she felt Heathcliff’s hand beneath her elbow, supporting her. Somewhere in the background a shrill piping began. The voices of the feasters rose in chorus:—

  “God save our gracious queen,

  God save our noble queen,

  God save our queen.

  Send her victorious,

  Happy and glorious,

  Long to reign over us,

  God save our queen!

  “O Lord our God, arise,

  Scatter her enemies,

  And make them fall.

  Confound their politics,

  Frustrate their knavish tricks;

  On her our hopes we fix,

  God save us all!

  “Thy choicest gifts in store

  On her be pleased to pour,

  Long may she reign.

  May she provide our laws,

  And ever give us cause

  To sing with heart and voice

  God save our queen!”

  During this anthem, Miss Smith, bowing very amiably, was assisted from her hammock and took her seat in the empty chair at Mr. Albert’s left side. At its conclusion, Mr. Albert lifted his drinking cup high, and said loudly, “Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Smith!”

  The toast was drunk. But Rosamond, lifting her goblet, found it empty, and Heathcliff did not replenish it, so she could not pledge Miss Smith. Instead, she smiled sweetly at Flora and the moony sea, and repeated “Miss Smith,” with great goodwill, adding, “But mine’s all gone.”

  After the toast they all sat down, and the gentlemen lit at the floating wicks or candle flames some very peculiar-looking cigars they had, made of rolled leaves. Charles produced his own cigarettes and offered one to Flora, which she declined.

  “You don’t smoke?” he said, noting that she neither took his cigarettes nor those smoked by the gentlemen islanders.

  Flora tilted her black eyebrows.

  “I? Lord, no. Not at a banquet. Ladies don’t smoke. Do yours?”

  “Why yes, as often as not. Why not?”

  “That’s very amazing. Heathcliff!” She called across the
table to him. “Charles says ladies smoke in England.” She turned to Charles. “Grandmamma brought us up to think that females never smoke. Heathcliff and I used to smoke on the sly when we were children, but I was always whipped if I was caught. No lady smokes. That’s what they tell us here.”

  “It was probably,” said Charles, “the case in 1855, when Miss Smith lost touch with European society. But for the last thirty years and more, I believe, English females have smoked when they liked to. You had better begin now, and introduce it.”

  “Not I. Not with papa commanding such an excellent view of me. I will try one of your cigarettes in the wood later on, and see if I like them better than ours.… Lord, what a shock grandmamma and papa and mamma and all the old ones are going to get in England. The prospect pleases me.… Oh, dear, now we are to have speeches. I warn you not to listen to papa; he talks at a great length, and is very tedious. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were all about you to-night. Look, your sister is wise; she is going to sleep.”

  But Rosamond was not asleep. From under dropped lashes she saw the long table, lit by the moon; by the swinging orange moon, by a million shivering stars, by the wavering flames of tall candles, and the flickering glow of wicks floating in cocoa-nut bowls, that threw their circles of radiance over each oyster-shell plate. She saw the gay and feathered feasters, the gentlemen with their long cheroots and whorls of pungent smoke, the ladies eating sweetmeats, their tanned arms and faces paler in the moonlight than by day, their hair parted smoothly and coiled over each ear, in the prevalent island style, though some of the older ladies retained the fashions of their youth, and wore braided coronets or short locks, according to their period. She saw Flora’s tiger-lily face, languid now and bored, and Charles, slim and oddly white among the red and brown people, in white drill, smoking a white cigarette, listening with a half smile to Mr. Albert Edward Smith. She saw Mrs. Albert Edward Smith, placid and fat, with her immense Spanish bosom, at the table’s lower end, and, beyond the lit table, the dim shore and the glimmering, curling line that marked the contact of the Pacific with Orphan Island. Out on the purple sea were lights—the Typee waiting for her captain.

  Suppose, thought Rosamond, suppose that the Typee should no longer wait for her captain, but should be off, away and away, back to Tahiti, back anywhere… reporting her captain, and Mr. Thinkwell, and Miss and the Masters Thinkwell, and Mr. Merton the trader, all drowned, lost, eaten up by sharks. No more, then, of the Cambridge Thinkwells; they would join the Orphan nation, chart, document, and all, leaving no trace behind whereby they might be sought. So are we all, thought Rosamond, who was by no means too tipsy to reflect, and who found no reflection strange, so are we all in the hands of destiny, one another, and the Lord, and of a handful of chocolate-coloured sailormen.

  From far away, above the distant crooning of the surf on the lagoon’s reef, above the soft murmur of the trade wind in the palms, came the mellow notes sounded by Mr. Smith, bearing at times, to Rosamond, some kind of coherent meaning, then drifting again away down some lunatic path of dream.

  “These welcome visitors who have landed on our shores.… Proud and happy to show them our island community, that they may compare it with their and our own mother country. I think we may say, with humble gratitude to Him from whom all gifts flow, that our island will not suffer greatly from the comparison… constitution … just and good laws … equity … sacred name of liberty … we may say, with a profound humility, that all these English flowers burgeon and flourish on our little island.… We have among us now a gentleman of learning, who studies and writes of human society … I may say that we shall welcome the frank expression of his opinion of our island ways, when he has had opportunity of observing them. … Kind and obliging suggestion that our visitors should transport such of us as care to go to the Wider World. This will have to be considered carefully before we arrive at a decision, and I may say that Miss Smith’s government will give it their early consideration. There must be no impatience on this point, no giving way to the mere craving for excitement and sensation which is so marked and so distressing a feature of our age, especially among the younger people.…” Here Rosamond lost touch, and did not find it again until Heathcliff nudged her and said, “Pay attention. We are going to drink your healths.” And, sure enough, every one but the visitors rose, bowls in hand, for Mr. Smith had just said, “Ladies and gentlemen, our visitors!”

  Rosamond beamed sleepily at Flora across the table. Did Flora smile back, and was there mockery in her smile, as she lifted her goblet and said, “Our visitors?” Rosamond only knew, and was happy to know, that Flora was pledging her.

  For the visitors Mr. Thinkwell returned thanks, in his precise, cultured, Cambridge voice and manner.

  “I like your papa,” Heathcliff said to Rosamond. “He says less than our papa, and better. I should say his mind is sharper—less round, you know. Our papa is very round in his thoughts and words—he rolls them out. Yours is different … less … less …”

  Less florid, he meant, but that was not an island word.

  “Yes,” agreed Rosamond, perceiving drowsily that this was so.

  “Now,” said Heathcliff, when Mr. Thinkwell had done, “we all stand up, while my grandmamma speaks to us. She’s quite tipsy to-night, so she won’t be long.”

  Rosamond struggled to her feet again. But, what with the liquor she had drunk, and that which Miss Smith had drunk, she made very little sense of what Miss Smith said, in her harsh old grating voice. It seemed partly about the visitors, partly about the Orphans, partly about Miss Smith, partly about the Lord.…

  “This island, so ’mazingly man’factured by tiny insects, that the Lord has given us to dwell in.…” Rosamond heard that. So did Heathcliff, who muttered “Damn the island” softly into his cigar.

  “Let our visitors,” Miss Smith exhorted, “gain good ’pressions of us … innocent revelry’s one thing, sensual dissipation quite ’nother. ’Member, dear children, it’s Sat’y night, to-morrow’s the Sabbath, no revelling after midnight. No common, Orphan manners. We d’shire that every one be on their best behaviour this evening, and while Think-well ’n his family and friends are ’mong us. Shocking rogue, Thinkwell was, but his son” (“Grandson,” Mr. Smith corrected in her ear.) “Hold your tongue, Bertie; I said grandson. Thinkwell’s grandson ain’t to blame for that. We d’shire Thinkwell’s ’scendants be treated with civility. We’d have Thinkwell whipped if he had the impudence to land here … but he’s dead … ain’t your rogue of a grandfather dead, young Think-well?”

  “Long since, madam,” Mr. Thinkwell replied.

  “Serve him right. Died young. We didn’t die, though he did his best to kill us. The Lord preserved us, and here we are yet.… eh, Thinkwell?”

  “By all means, madam.”

  Mr. Albert Smith, who perhaps thought his mother’s speech becoming too conversational, here whispered something to her, and himself concluded her address.

  “Miss Smith is a little tired to-night, and will say no more. I am very sure that we shall all put her precepts into practice. I will ask you all now to give a hearty cheer for Miss Smith, and the banquet will then be concluded.”

  After the hearty cheer, the banqueters left the table as they chose.

  Chapter XII

  THE BALL

  1

  HEATHCLIFF said to Rosamond, “Now there will be a ball. I hope you feel inclined to join, and will dance with me.”

  “I would rather watch,” said Rosamond. She felt unsteady on her legs; her head swam pleasantly, and the moon tumbled about.

  There began flutes, drums, the clashing together of shells. Mid-Victorian waltz-tunes made the night plaintive and sweet. Miss Smith, in her youth, cannot have been too evangelical to go to balls; or was it Dr. O’Malley who had thus handed down music and the dance?

  There was a rush of young people to an open space of smooth grass, between the woods and the sea. The elders, more sedately, sat and lay about the shor
e, or in the shadowed thickets, listening to the music, watching the dance.

  Rosamond found herself solitary, lying beneath great feathery trees, between the moonlight and the shade. A thousand perfumes drenched the warm air; sweeter than honey was the silver night on the tangled wood. Exquisite was the purple sea, foam-edged, and exquisite the wistful, swaying, voluptuous rhythms of the dance. Sensuous music, sensuous, swaying motions; to Rosamond, unconscious child of a sober, post-war generation, a generation which, growing up in the shadow of death, had not been able to cast it from them, but danced in shadow still, with stately, sober demure steps to halting, tuneless tunes, ascetic and grave and reserved—to Rosamond the sweet tunes and swinging, sensuous motion of an earlier and a more sentimental day were strange and new. She gazed at the circling pairs, clad in bright plumes and flowers, with smooth, bare limbs; lovely they were to her, dancing thus against the background of the murmuring sea, between the whispering sea and the dark wood. Lovely and strange and full of grace, and the music as tunes heard in dreams.

  Flora was dancing, all a moony fire, her partner a beautiful youth, fair-haired, slim-limbed, with long, sea-coloured, laughing eyes. An exquisite pair, as two young gods might be, dancing light-footed on earth.

  And then, passing close to Rosamond, these two, not waiting for the end of the waltz, broke asunder, turned, wordless, each from each; the young man slipped into the shadowed woods and the young woman danced up to Charles Thinkwell.

  “Now, if you still would like a dance.…”

  Rosamond saw her face, and it was like a fire gone out, a blown flame.

  Off they went, Flora and Charles, he a strange, prim, white figure among the feathers and bare limbs that were island evening wear; a stiff, prim figure, which made but a poor thing of the waltz, for Charles was used to a stiffer and a more stately step, and, too, he despised the sugared melody that the flutes were wailing. A slushy tune, he called it, and could scarcely bring himself to keep in step with it. A round tune, perhaps, as Heathcliff would say. Charles preferred music to be angular.