Orphan Island

by Rose Macaulay

  “You’ll find the little nation are contemplating it, papa,” said Flora. “No one is going to be left behind. I don’t think!” (This was a vulgar expression she had picked up from the Orphans.)

  “Your views, my child, were not, I believe, requested,” said Mr. Smith, who took it out of his children as his mamma took it out of him. “You had better go now and take Miss Rosamond for a short stroll before service. But you must walk very quietly; remember what day it is.”

  Flora rose impatiently, said, “Come on then, Rosamond,” and the two girls went out into the woods together.

  Mr. Smith said to Mr. Thinkwell, “A wild, pert girl indeed! I wish your little daughter may get no harm from her. I see it must be true what my mother has always said, that in Great Britain children are better behaved and more submissive to their elders than many of them, in this generation, are here.… But to return to our plans. I am not so shut off from the world as not to know that this is going to be an expensive business, the burden of which you cannot be expected to bear. In confidence, I wish you to know that we have a considerable store of pearls laid by (my mother saw to that, and gave me some idea of their value), more than enough, I should think, to cover any expense we are likely to be put to. It is understood, then, that you provide the necessary transport, while all costs are a Smith matter. Not a word, however, about the pearls to any one.

  Proceed as if you were doing everything. But I must really beg you to keep in mind that we—and particularly my mother—don’t desire any widespread emigration of the common people. My mother, I ought to add, in confidence, regards with some misgiving the thought of leaving the island herself. She is very old, and the island is her home and her property, which she believes it would be a betrayal of her responsibilities to desert. She is, as you no doubt observed, a trifle confused in her mind as to her identity.”

  “I perceived,” said Mr. Thinkwell, relief moving him to a jest, “that she seemed to regard herself as the late Queen Victoria. All the more reason why she should wish to return to Great Britain. Well, every one will have to decide for himself and herself whether they go or stay. I observed that the old Scottish lady was eager to come.”

  “Jean’s going,” said Mr. Smith gravely, “will, of course, depend on my mother’s. Jean knows her place and her duty too well to desert Miss Smith.… However, all this can be discussed later. I must tell you that at eleven o’clock we all assemble for divine service on the shore. To-morrow, when we are more at leisure, I should like to show you something of the island. You will, I think, be interested in some of our institutions and customs, particularly our parliament and laws. Sunday we keep very quietly, as you do in Great Britain, and I will, if you please, introduce you to our small library, where you may perhaps find something to interest you.… My dear boy, pray do not take your net out with you again to-day. We never fish on Sunday.”

  William looked disappointed. “Oh, is Sunday a close day for sea-fish here? I never heard of that before anywhere. What a pity. All right, I’ll go and look for that amblyrhynchus. Come on, Charles.”

  4

  Flora and Rosamond, the one in scarlet feathers for Sunday, the other in her white cotton frock, climbed a winding path up a thicketed slope. Humming birds darted about them, threading the green gloom with brightness. A mocking-bird called from a mahogany tree; a bird of paradise flaunted its tail from a silver-leaved candle-nut. There were scents of pears, of cloves, of spices, of almonds hot in the sun. Giant iguanas they met, and tiny geckos; hurrying tortoises and quiet, drowsy monkeys; silent cockatoos and crying lizards; kind little scorpions, parrots perched on the coils of snakes, great crabs climbing palm trees and plundering the cocoa-nuts, plants that spurted at them milky juice which stung.

  To Rosamond these sights, sounds, and scents were not surprising but natural, and it was Cambridge that was strange.

  Flora, humming a tune, switched with a willow wand she carried at the flowers, trees, and birds. Rosamond once cried, “Oh—you hit the hummingbird.”

  Flora turned on her her wide, amused stare.

  “It likes it,” she said, and resumed her little song.

  So Flora too, like William, thought animals easily pleased.

  They climbed up out of the thicket on to a small, rocky plateau, and here Flora stopped, and waved her switch nonchalantly at the sea below.

  “A view,” she said. “If you care for views.”

  And a view indeed it was. Huge, pale, landless, the Pacific stretched to a dazzling horizon, an ocean of shimmering silver haze. Nothing dotted it, to east or west, to south or north, only Orphan Island, and, anchored beyond the island’s guarding reef, a little schooner.

  What loneliness, in which time and space seemed drowned, God and man lost, sun, moon and earth a passing tumbler’s show.

  “A view,” said Flora, indifferent and far away; and, sitting on thymy rock, they looked at it. The hot sweetness from the tangled wood rose about them, and all its sharp and liquid cries. Rosamond bit into a golden bread-fruit she had plucked.

  “Have you loved?” asked Flora absently, chewing a root that tasted like liquorice, lounging sideways, her head upon her hand.

  Oh, yes, Rosamond had very often and very greatly loved.

  “Been in love, you understand?” Flora elucidated.

  “A great many times,” said Rosamond simply, mumblingly, her mouth full of bread-fruit.

  “You mean,” she added, after a swallow, “real people, not people in books?”

  “In books? How could one love any one in a book? Loved, I said.”

  Rosamond began ticking off her passions on her fingers. People at school… Sir Ernest Shackle-ton, that Mr. Mallory who climbed up Everest, Mr. de la Mare, the Rajah in the Green Goddess, Hamlet, Miss Edith Evans, Joan of Arc, Gerald du Maurier, several athletes and naval men, seen from far.… Captain Paul, a little.… And now Flora.… Oh, yes, Rosamond had indeed loved.

  “All those?” Flora questioned, watching the counting fingers. “Dear me, my dear, you have been a great lover already. I thought you half asleep—a child. And did they all love you?”

  “Oh, no.” Rosamond was shocked at the sacrilegious thought. “Oh, no. Scarcely any of them.”

  Flora looked at her. In her bright eyes was surprise, and a touch of amused disdain.

  “You can love like that? Again and again, with no requital? I am sure I could not. Where would be the fun? Does it give you pleasure to love those who spurn you?”

  “Well, they didn’t exactly spurn me, you know. Not mostly. They just—for the most part—took no notice. They didn’t really know I loved them, you see.… Yes, it does give me pleasure.”

  “You must have great self-control. I could not hide it, if I loved. You may have loved often, Rosamond, but I can’t believe you love so much as I do. You seem happy and calm. Love doesn’t hurt and tear you.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Rosamond, considering, and looking shyly at Flora’s smooth, averted cheek, “it does sometimes.”

  “Oh, well.…” Flora tossed her chewed liquorice root from her, and yawned. “We’re all different, I suppose. Other people are so odd compared with me, I never understand them. You are odd, Rosamond. But I think I rather like you.”

  (So much for saying one’s morning prayers.)

  “I think I will tell you about myself and Peter,” Flora continued. “We love, you know. We have loved for over a year, and we mayn’t marry, because of what I told you this morning on the beach. And I don’t want to live with him without marriage, if we can avoid it, because every one makes such a fuss about that. We should be shut out of society, and Peter would lose all his chances of getting on in the world. Grandmamma says that people in England who do that are entirely ruined—no one decent will know them any more. Is that true?”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” said Rosamond cautiously. “But I don’t know; I don’t believe people at Cambridge do it very much— I don’t remember. It seems to be quite easy to get married there,
there are so many clergymen, so I expect they do that instead. And Cambridge is the only place I know well. Charles would know about London, where I expect people do more of everything.”

  “Oh, well. When we get to England—it thrills me just to say the words—Peter and I can get married, I suppose, if there are so many clergymen. Grandmamma can’t get hold of them all.… They want me to marry my cousin George. Lord, what a plain, tedious fellow! Old, too. He’s twenty-eight or nine. Would you marry any one as old as that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rosamond, thinking of it for the first time, ”that I would marry any one at all. Unless perhaps an explorer, who let me come too. For one thing, there might be babies. They are a horrid result.”

  “Oh, well,” said Flora, “they’re a nuisance before they come, of course, but they are rather entertaining when they’ve arrived. I think I should rather like babies—in moderation.”

  “Would you? I don’t mind them, but I wouldn’t like to have one, it would be so awfully in the way. I can never see that they are any use. I’d have a puppy if I wanted anything of that sort.… But, as to being old, I don’t believe we count people old in England till they’re about thirty—not really old, you know. Charles says thirty is the great turning-point, and if you haven’t done anything by then, you never will.”

  “Done anything! I think one’s doing things all the time.”

  “So do I,” said Rosamond. “But Charles, I think, means written something, or painted something, or invented something, or passed some law, or found a lost book in a library, or a new star, or made a tune, or swum the Channel, or become well-known somehow—the way people do, you know. When I’m thirty I shan’t have done anything, of course, because I’m no good at anything. But I expect you will.”

  “Dear me, I’m sure I shan’t. I don’t want to spend my time looking for lost books or new stars, or passing laws either. When I’m thirty I shall be married, and going to parties and balls in London. I shan’t live in the country; country life and people must be most disagreeable. I can’t endure the people in Wuthering Heights. I suppose they are like that at Cambridge too?”

  “Not very, I don’t think.”

  “Well, it’s a vast pity you don’t know London, for I want to hear all about it.”

  “I’ve been to London.”

  “Well, what do you like best there?”

  “Theatres. And, next, the Zoo.”

  “Theatres! That’s where people act, isn’t it? Grandmamma has always taught us they are wicked. What’s the Zoo?”

  “Where the animals live.”

  “Oh, animals bore me. We have too many of them here. You and your brother William seem in love with animals.… I think you Thinkwells are a very droll family. There are the bells going; we must go down to service. I’m sure I don’t know why we’ve had all this solemn talk, so early in the day. The effect of Sunday, perhaps. Shall we race down?”

  They did so, leaping down the winding path, while the monkeys, all excitement, yelped, and the ignuanas scuttled for cover, and the hummingbirds flurried about in a green and crimson cloud. Rosamond was left behind, and Flora waited for her at the foot of the slope.

  “Now,” said Flora, “we walk very sedately to service.” She put on her Sunday hat of broad leaves trimmed with scarlet wings.

  “Where’s your hat, Rosamond?”

  “At the Yams, I think. Do I need it?”

  “Well, naturally, for church. Because, you know, of the angels—that’s in the Bible, grandmamma says. But see, I will plait one for you.” She pulled a number of dark, broad, shining leaves from a bread-fruit tree, and plaited them nimbly in and out, until they formed a shallow basket, which she inverted over Rosamond’s round yellow head.

  “There! That will do for the angels. Do you like my frock?”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “It took a long time to get all the feathers for it. See here, Rosamond, I have a fancy to change with you for to-day. I want to see what I feel like in English clothes. Will you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Here, then, behind this mangrove clump. No one will see us.”

  Each took off her frock. Flora looked with interest at Rosamond’s cami-knickers, Rosamond at Flora’s under-petticoat of scarlet-dyed cocoa-nut cloth. Flora slipped into the short-sleeved, low-necked white cotton frock, Rosamond into the tunic made of the scarlet feathers of many birds. Neither altogether fitted, for the wearers were of different builds; Rosamond was small, firmly built, stocky, like a sturdy little boy, without feminine elegances, or any of Flora’s wild-animal sinuousness.

  “It suits you, my dear,” said Flora. “How about me? Do I look well?”

  Rosamond considered.

  “Well, of course,” she said, “you always do. But I like you best in the feathers. It’s more like an island dress.”

  “That’s no merit, you absurd girl. Quite the contrary. Now I look like an English young lady of fashion, I hope. Come, we shall be late.”

  5

  They went down to the beach. Rosamond thought, “It is like in the Gospels,” for the shore was dense with people sitting in rows to be taught and to pray.

  Flora, very proud in her English dress, marched up to her family at the front. But Rosamond, in scarlet feathers and a leaf hat, felt shy, for all the Orphans stared at her, and, seeing Charles and William sitting on the sand at the end of a row near the back, she joined them. William stared at her, open-mouthed, and Charles smiled.

  “Swopped with Flora,” he murmured. “I shall swop with Heathcliff, and father with Mr. Smith. We will all be Orphans.”

  William nudged him, “Look! They’ll be the convicts.”

  Behind them a gang of men and women marched up, roped together with palm cords and guarded by several stalwart men who had the air of constables. The convicts showed themselves as such by having closely-shaven heads and a peculiar odour. Otherwise they had no appearance of villainy.

  On the raised grassy plateau at the edge of the wood stood the young clergyman, the Reverend Angus Maclean, his red head glowing in the shade of a palm tree, a cassock of black cloth roped about his waist. Round him were grouped what was, apparently, a choir, each with some instrument of music, such as bones, skin drums, flutes, and pipes. The noise of a voluntary was now proceeding from them.

  “I thought they said it began at eleven,” William grumbled impatiently. “It’s ten minutes past; why can’t they begin? Wasting a perfectly good Sunday morning like this.…”

  A lady in front of them turned round and said “Hush!” kindly. She thought the Thinkwells very barbarian. A moment later she turned again and added, “We are waiting for Miss Smith.”

  Even as she spoke, Miss Smith’s palanquin, borne by four Zachary Macaulays, appeared between the trees. The congregation rose to its feet, and “God save the Queen” was sung. Miss Smith was placed, still in her palanquin, by the side of the clergyman, and Mr. Maclean began, sonorously, with his faint North British accent, “When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed.…” He went on to “Dearly beloved brethren,” and the confession and absolution, and so through the whole office of matins as said or sung in Anglican churches, which Miss Smith, it seemed, had known and imparted to her flock quite thoroughly. The only part they omitted was the psalter for the day of the month. As to the lessons from the Bible, these were not, indeed, recited verbatim, but Mr. Albert Smith related, with approximate accuracy, the story of Moses in the bulrushes, and another gentleman, also of Smith appearance, that of the barren fig-tree. The congregation were, for the most part, stolid and Anglican, and did not appear to be listening much. But three separate tendencies among different sections were noted with interest by Mr. Thinkwell. Some looked deliberately and painstakingly sceptical; some showed furtive impulses towards ritualistic or Roman Catholic habits, and others towards dissenting ejaculations, such as “Hear hear,” or “Very true.” The Zachary Macaulays showed both these two last tendenc
ies, having, presumably, inherited Evangelical habits from their forefathers of the early nineteenth century, and acquired papistical ones from the Jesuit missionary.

  All these aberrations from strict Anglicanism were firmly suppressed by the sidesmen, who patrolled the congregation with sharp eyes and ears.

  “Human nature,” Mr. Thinkwell wrote in his notebook, “seems much the same here as elsewhere as regards religious self-expression. How much is due (a) to primitive nature; (b) to heredity; (c) to training?”

  Some of the ejaculatory tendency might certainly be laid to the door of training, for the leader of that school was old Jean, who sat in front, and ever and anon said loudly, “Aymen to that,” or “Verra true, verra true,” or, more occasionally, “Hoots!” or “Havers!” Miss Smith had, apparently, failed in seventy years to make a good Episcopalian of Calvanist Jean. The sidesmen passed her by, presumably as too old for reform, or too much respected for rebuke—after all, had she not spanked them all?

  The Orphans settled themselves for the sermon. The clergyman gave out the text he had received from Miss Smith. “And the Lord said unto Adam, Be thou content with the garden which I have given thee, and see thou run not after every new thing.”

  “Did the Lord say that unto Adam?” Charles whispered to Rosamond, who whispered back, “I don’t think so.” Charles mused on Miss Smith’s Bible, and its infinite opportunities. It must have proved all these years a rich treasure house of apposite counsels and strictures on Orphan national life.

  The sermon to-day was about content, and how we should be resigned to the stations in which it has pleased God to place us. The preacher deplored the restless, sensational spirit of the age, for ever seeking after some new excitement, longing to run over the world at large instead of patiently staying where put.… This sermon can well be imagined. Mr. Thinkwell wondered whether Miss Smith had supplied merely the main treatment, or the detail and phraseology also. Through the palm screens of her palanquin, the old lady could be seen sitting, podgy and inscrutable, her hands folded on her stomach, giving now and then an approving nod.