Orphan Island

by Rose Macaulay

  “And now,” said the preacher, not, however, turning eastward, for Miss Smith in her youth had not heard of such a piece of ritual, and would have scorned it if she had.

  A hymn was sung— “All things bright and beautiful.” During it, the sidesmen carried round turtle shells, into which the congregation dropped pieces of coral and various kinds of shells which they used as money. When it came to William, he saw among the rest a chiton, of the type he required, and, forgetting where he was, he remarked, “Oh, good!” and picked it out. The sidesman took it from him and replaced it, with a stern, cold stare, “If you have nothing to contribute, sir,” he whispered, “kindly pass the plate, which is for puttings in, not takings out.”

  William, confused, plunged his hand into his sandy trousers pocket and pulled out a small damp dead star-fish, smelling strongly of dead star-fish, which he dropped into the plate and passed it to Charles, who, trying to look as if William were not related to him, put in a sixpence. Rosamond found nothing in the pocket of Flora’s tunic but a small vermilion shell, with which she had seen Flora reddening her lips, and, not liking to offer up this, she passed the plate.

  Mr. Thinkwell, who was at the moment when the plate was offered him making a note on the sermon in his pocket-book, did not even see it; he was a man, like many Cambridge men, of one occupation at a time. So, except for Charles (and his contribution was not, at the moment, of much use), it cannot be said that the Thinkwell family came well out of this affair of the collection.

  There followed a blessing, another voluntary, and the congregation dispersed.

  Miss Smith, sitting in her palanquin beneath a palm-tree, then held a small court. Members of the extensive Smith family gathered about her, respectfully greeting her and passing the time of day with one another. Mr. Albert Smith brought Mr. Thinkwell and his family to join the gathering, as Miss Smith desired a little talk with them.

  “So, Thinkwell,” said the old lady, peering at him from behind her curtains, “though you are, as we learn from our daughter Adelaide, an atheist (as I dare say your grandfather was before you), you attended Divine Service. We trust you profited by it.”

  “Indeed, I trust so.”

  “An atheist,” Miss Smith repeated, nodding her head twice, with pursed lips. “The fool who said in his heart, there is no God.… But I suppose you don’t believe the Scriptures, Thinkwell. You are the Schismatick of the old poem—how does it go—we used to know it, and taught it to the Orphans, but our memory is poor these days.… Denis, say it.”

  She turned to a smallish, middle-aged man with ginger whiskers and merry eyes—obviously a Smith, but a Smith with a difference; a Smith (could it be?) of the O’Malley stamp.

  “The Schismatick, mamma? Oh, yes…

  “He talked among other pretty things

  That the Book of Kings

  Small Comfort brings

  To the Godly:

  Besides he had some Grudges

  Against the Book of Judges,

  And talked of Leviticus oddly.

  But Wisdom most of all

  He held Apocryphal.…”

  “That will do, Denis.” Miss Smith addressed the little gay, red-haired man testily, as if he were not sympathetic to her. But Mr. Thinkwell looked on him with more liking than he felt for his brother Albert Edward. If he were not mistaken, here was the reprobate Irish doctor over again. His watery green eye had a pleasant twinkle, and his mouth was quick to smile. His face was reddened with sun and (probably) fermented liquor… after all, that tendency was in both his parents.

  “How’s that,” said Miss Smith, “for a picture of the unscriptural man, for ever picking holes in religion? Don’t know who wrote it, but my papa used to say it to us.”

  “A pseudo John Cleveland,” Charles murmured, for he always knew things like that.

  Miss Smith yawned.

  “What did you think of the sermon, Thinkwell?”

  “A little commonplace, perhaps,” said Mr. Thinkwell, a man of truth.

  “Indeed!” Miss Smith looked displeased. “Perhaps you find the Holy Scriptures commonplace. Perhaps you desire wit and fancy to titillate your palate at Divine Service. Perhaps plain truth seems to you a milk and water beverage. Fie, sir, fie; you should be ashamed to own it. This morning’s sermon was one of our best, and singularly apt to the occasion. I hope all our people profited by it. Angus delivered it very well, too, so we thought. Didn’t he, Jean?”

  “Ay, ma’am, the laddie didna speak ill.” But old Jean was looking sour, and those who had sat near her during the sermon could have testified that several times she had ejaculated “Havers.”

  “Well,” said Miss Smith, yawning again, “dinner’s at three. Some one will give you some, no doubt. Till then you can do as you please. There’s our little library at your service, if you want some quiet Sunday reading. We must ask you to remember what day it is, if you please, and not to do anything unseemly on it.” She peered at William, who stood, wet and sandy and tousled, turning over the crabs in his pockets. Her scrutiny then fell on Rosamond.

  “Oh, indeed! Dressed up in feathers, are we? Why is that, if you please?”

  “Well, you see, Flora and I changed.”

  “Flora and you.… D’you mean to say that that young baggage is wearing your gown? Upon my soul! Where is she? Bertie, where’s that girl of yours?”

  “I don’t know, mamma. She went off after service somewhere.”

  “Went off somewhere! Yes, that’s the way. When I was a girl, I wasn’t allowed to go off after service somewhere, I can tell you. It was home to the parsonage I went, to read the life of a missionary and help get the cold dinner ready. I didn’t go gallivanting off dressed up in some one else’s clothes. It’s with that young scampNogood Conolly she’s gone, of course. Why didn’t you go with her, George?”

  George, a solid and not ill-looking young man in a large Smith style, said, “Don’t know, grandmamma. She was too quick.”

  “Well, go and find her. Don’t stand there like a stuck pig.… What that girl wants is a good whipping, and that’s just what she don’t get, I’ll be bound.” She glared at her son Bertie and her daughter-in-law Anna.

  “Dear, dear,” said Mrs. Albert Smith nervously, “girls are teasing, ain’t they! You never know what they’ll do next, do you, Mr. Thinkwell?”

  “It is difficult,” said Mr. Thinkwell, who always thought that people asked him very odd and foolish questions, “to be absolutely certain what any one will do next. Even oneself. But I should have thought that never was a strong expression in this matter. Suppose, for instance, that I were to raise my fist suddenly close to my daughter’s face, I think I might say that I should almost know she would make a movement of withdrawal. But even that would be subject to…”

  Mr. Thinkwell was unlike most persons in that, when asked a question, he endeavoured, if he answered it at all, to answer it accurately. This is, of course, among the tiresome habits, and they did not care for it on Orphan Island any more than elsewhere. The proper answer to Mrs. Smith’s inquiry was “No indeed,” or “That’s right,” or some other form signifying general agreement. Charles, perceiving that his father was being tiresome, interrupted with “There’s the boat coming in for us.”

  “Hey! The boat, did he say?” Miss Smith peered from her palanquin towards the glaring, shimmering sheet of haze, the Pacific at noon. “No boats on Sunday!”

  “It’s all right, mamma, it’s their own boat,” her son Denis told her, but she waved him aside.

  “No landings allowed here on Sunday, Thinkwell. It’s a law. Send ’em away.”

  “I am afraid I can hardly do that. You see, we have to go out to the schooner and fetch a few things we shall need for our stay here.”

  Miss Smith grunted. Mr. Albert Smith stepped to the fore, bland and firm, and took the situation in hand. One saw why he was, on the island, after his mamma, the Smith in chief.

  “Now, mamma, it is more than time you went in for your
rest. Everything will be quite all right, I assure you. We must not inconvenience our good friends here by depriving them of access to their schooner. I am very sure that they will not for a moment allow themselves to forget what day of the week it is. Now then, you Zacharies, up with the chair, and off with you back to Balmoral.”

  Miss Smith, who was really very sleepy, took this with no remonstrance beyond a grunt. But, as the Zacharies bore her away, her face appeared once more between the curtains.

  “Jean!” she called. “Don’t linger behind.”

  The old Scotswoman, muttering to herself, hobbled after her mistress.

  7

  The boat had brought Captain Paul and Mr. Merton, eager to see a little more of the island life, which they found very entertaining, before they left it. They proposed to stay on shore while the Thinkwells were rowed back to the schooner to collect such things as they wanted. At his own request Mr. Denis Smith accompanied the Thinkwells; he had, he said, a great curiosity to see the schooner. They found him a merry companion. The position of the Smith family in this world was not to him a heaven-ordained status, but a very fortunate piece of humbug.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “how we’ve managed to keep it up all this time; it’s been a near thing once or twice, and it couldn’t have gone on much longer, I think. Too much new thought about. The Orphans wouldn’t have gone on standing it more than a few years—and then where should we have been? Lucky business for us Smiths that you came when you did. But I don’t know how we’re going to like mixing in the world on equal terms with our neighbours, some of us. I shall enjoy seeing Bertie.… But as to poor old mamma!” He pursed up his lips in a soundless whistle. “If we ever get her there,” he added.

  “Thinks she’s Queen Victoria, y’know. That’s what poor mamma thinks. If she gets to England she’ll want to go straight to the Palace. And she’ll find Queen Victoria’s dead—you said so, didn’t you, and no wonder—and a king on the throne, and herself nothing but a humble old lady rather queer in the head and thirsty in the mouth. Then there’ll be a rumpus. Mamma settle down as a humble old lady? I don’t think! She’s been Miss Smith” (he bowed his head) “of Smith Island too long for that, and she don’t mean to climb down without making trouble.” He chuckled.

  “Perhaps,” suggested Mr. Thinkwell, “she can console herself by writing her memoirs, which every one will want to read.”

  “Oh, Lord, she’s written ’em. Kept a journal all these years, mamma has. Till a few years ago, anyhow. I can show it you if you’d care.”

  “Indeed I should, very much. But how has she managed for writing materials?”

  “Oh, we have something we use for writing—a dark liquid we get from the cuttlefish. And we write on bark, you know. But I believe mamma began her journal on the blank edges of some Latin book she had, or that my father had, and between the lines of print. I will ask her if I may show it you this afternoon, with the other books. By the way, you must all dine with me at three.”

  Mr. Thinkwell noted that the island still maintained early Victorian hours.

  They collected their things from the Typee and rowed back. Mr. Thinkwell then arranged his plans with Captain Paul. The Typee, after completing its trading cruise among the other islands, was to call again at Orphan Island for the Thinkwells (and possibly a few others, if any cared to be of the party) and take them away. At the first possible opportunity suitable transport would be sent to the island. Meanwhile, not a word must be said during the voyage of its existence. Captain Paul and Mr. Merton must take all precautions that the crew did not divulge the secret. Mr. Thinkwell was averse from notoriety if it could at all be avoided. As secrecy at this stage fell in with the trade plans of both Captain Paul and Mr. Merton, they readily made the necessary promises.

  They then somewhat reluctantly tore themselves away from the pleasures of the island— Captain Paul especially enjoying its female society and Mr. Merton its drinks—and departed from its shores, undertaking to be back within about ten days.

  The Thinkwells then accompanied Mr. Denis Smith to his estate some way back up the hill, and here they sat down to a large and delightful dinner, to which they did ample justice, for, owing to the unusual lateness of the hour, they were sharp-set, except Rosamond, who had, one way or another, managed to eat a good deal during the morning. She had gathered, during her walk before church, a great variety of luscious fruits, some of which she had eaten on the hill, some during the sermon, and the rest afterwards on the shore. She particularly liked the mango and the bread-fruit, both of which were, when ripe in the sun, round and golden and warm and very filling.

  Chapter XIV

  THE JOURNAL

  1

  DURING dinner, Mr. Denis Smith, who was a widower with married children, entertained the Thinkwells very well with his conversation and anecdotes of island life, and afterwards he offered to conduct Mr. Thinkwell to Balmoral, where he would have access to the island books. The young people said they would like to explore the island.

  “You must do it quietly, mind,” said their host.

  “We’re very particular about Sunday here, as perhaps you’ve noticed. No games allowed. I dare say you’ll pick up some one to show you round.”

  The Thinkwells said they would prefer not to trouble any one, but would like to explore for themselves. So they set off up the wooded hill, William with his butterfly-net and field glasses, Rosamond with her bathing dress, for this Sunday had not so far panned out so well as she had intended with regard to bathing and she felt that this must be remedied.

  Mr. Thinkwell and Mr. Denis Smith arrived at Balmoral, and the latter, going within for a short time, reappeared with four tattered volumes bound together with string, together with a bundle of sheets of thin bark.

  “Our library,” he said; “including mamma’s journal, which she has consented to your reading. Now, where will you read?”

  Mr. Thinkwell selected a shady corner of the woods, beneath a spreading banian tree, and settled himself for a comfortable Sunday afternoon. Mr. Smith left him, to pay a visit to a married daughter and her new baby.

  2

  An odd collection, indeed, thought Mr. Thinkwell, turning the pages of the dilapidated copy of Wuthering Heights. This strange, storm-ridden epic of Yorkshire, this wild vision of the lonely parson’s daughter, was all the presentment that the Orphans had of family life in England. On this domestic tale they were reared; its odd, savage, lonely beings seemed to them typical English men, women, and children. How surprised, how relieved, they would be on arriving in England! (If, indeed, they should ever, by mischance, arrive there.) Perhaps they were already surprised, at the comparatively composed, cheerful, and amiable manners of their visitors from Cambridge. Or possibly they thought that the one represented town life, the other country. Or, more likely still, these islanders had as much good sense as dwellers in other countries, and knew that people in books were a strange race apart.

  Then there was the Holy War. An odder society still! Mr. Thinkwell turned the pages at random, opening on the trial of the Diabolonians, with Mr. Know-All witnessing against Mr. Lustings, and Mr. Hate-Lies against Mr. Forget-Good.

  “My lord, I have heard this Forget-Good say that he could never abide to think of goodness, no, not for a quarter of an hour.

  Clerk: Where did you hear him say so?

  Hate-Lies: In All-base Lane, at a house next door to the sign of the Conscience-seared-with-a-hot-iron.

  Then said the Clerk, Come, Mr. Tell-True, give in your evidence concerning the Prisoner at the bar, about that for which he stands here, as you see, indicted by this honourable Court.

  Tell-True: My Lord, I have heard him often say, he had rather think of the vilest thing than of what is contained in the Holy Scriptures.

  Clerk: Where did you hear him say such grievous words?

  Tell-True: Where? In a great many places, particularly in Nauseous Street, in the house of one Shameless, and in Filth Lane, at the sign of the R
eprobate, next door to the Descent into the Pit.”

  And so on, and so on. This, no doubt, was the Orphans’ idea of an English law court. “Poor, crude stuff,” said Mr. Thinkwell, whose distaste for John Bunyan was only very slightly modified by his having lived two centuries ago. He took up next a small volume entitled Mixing in Society, or Everybody’s Book of Correct Conduct. Here, decided Mr. Thinkwell, was Miss Smith’s Bible of Manners, the code which summed her attitude toward life and conduct. Even in the raging storm she had clasped this volume to her bosom (and that in preference to the Bible of the Jews) before she consigned herself to the deep. Mr. Thinkwell opened it at random, and saw passages heavily scored. It was divided into different sections—the Duties of Life, the Pleasures of Life, Dress and the Toilet, the Studious Part of Life, the Formation of Habit, Conversation, Letters, the Heart and Conscience, and so on. Under each heading and sub-heading was set forth the correct path to pursue and the incorrect. Mr. Thinkwell learnt that it is the correct thing to marry for love; to appear fully dressed in the morning, but in a totally different style from that adopted in the evening; to choose at meals what is already on the table unless it is positively disagreeable to you; not to betray that you do not care about your dinner-partner; to eat and drink with moderation at dinner, but to remember that this is the repast par excéllence and to treat it as such; it is not correct, however, to let your host see that you have only come for the food. It is never correct for ladies to walk unaccompanied in London, except to church, nor for gentlemen to make use of classical quotations in the presence of ladies without apologising for or translating them (this was heavily scored). Gentlemen should remember that ladies are not interested in politics, and religion is a subject which should never be introduced in general society, as it is the topic upon which persons are least likely to preserve their temper. (“I notice no particular signs that Miss Smith has studied that rule,” said Mr. Thinkwell.) As to books, it is the correct thing to remember that there are books which blight and destroy the mind and soul (underlined, and commented or with a pencilled “Indeed yes!”) On the next page, Mr. Thinkwell read that the most refined pronunciation of English was taught at Eton and Oxford. As he himself had been taught English at Rugby and Cambridge, he perceived that this book was foolish, and put it away.