Orphan Island

by Rose Macaulay

  But still, there it was. Peter seldom got speech alone with Flora now. When he did, she would put him off, declaring that she would make no promises; yesterday was one thing, to-morrow quite another. “And to-day,” she added, “quite a third.”

  He had, of course, made her angry by refusing to say that he would give up painting when he got to London and go in for some more spectacular and fashionable line of life. They had quarrelled about this on Sunday evening, and since then she would have none of him.

  Peter did not dislike Charles on any other grounds. He, like the other islanders, thought the whole Thinkwell family very odd, but he did not dislike them.

  The islanders, as the days went by, became used to this strange family among them. They became familiar figures; Mr. Thinkwell, the dark, odd, learned, interested man, who looked closely at everything through glass eye-windows as he went about, making notes every now and then in the little book he carried, making inquiries about everything he saw, puzzling over simple remarks made to him, taking them literally when obviously they were meant loosely, enormously interested in small things and great. It became the fashion among some of the more inventive of the population to tell Mr. Thinkwell all kinds of things calculated to interest him, whether true or false.… He deserved this attention, it was felt. As old Jean had taught them in childhood, “Gin ye dinna speer nae questions, ye winna be tauld nae lees.”

  The younger Thinkwells too, were popular; Charles, the graceful, pleasant-mannered young man, to whom Flora Smith had taken a fancy and who had no eyes for any one else, though Hindley Smith-Rimski and all the literary set tried to get hold of him; William, the square-headed boy who was for ever hunting about for small animals with field glasses and a net, and who made friends with woodmen and fishermen; Rosamond, the funny, silent young girl, with her little round freckled face and grave, gray eyes and yellow hair cut round her neck in the pretty fashion of twenty years ago, and her habit of holding the tip of her pink tongue between her small white teeth when she was absorbed; Rosamond, who climbed the trees and crawled about the rocks, and, like William, watched the woodmen and fishermen at their work, and drank milk and ate fruit at all hours of the day; Rosamond, whose happy grin showed how much she enjoyed life on an island, though she had not many words to waste on it.

  “Yes, certainly, one liked these Thinkwells, queer though they were.

  2

  One morning Charles Thinkwell came to the dentist’s to have a tooth out. It had, he said, been aching for some time; he fancied it had an abcess.

  He found the dentist painting outside his tent.

  “That’s uncommonly good,” he said, surprised, looking over Peter’s shoulder.

  Peter put his picture away, and spoke of Charles’s tooth. He agreed that it seemed like an abcess, and should be extracted. He rubbed the gum with a narcotic juice, and also gave Charles to drink.

  “You don’t inject, then?” said Charles.

  “Inject?”

  “Yes. Prick the gum and put the stuff inside.”

  “No; that’s not the way we do it here.” He said it arrogantly, implying that Charles did not know what was done in the most advanced dental circles.

  Charles, Peter could see, was trying not to look as if he thought it a pity that was not the way they did it here. Peter was trying not to look as nervous and anxious as he felt. He had a great desire to make a good job of Charles’s tooth, to extract it whole with one tug, and without a great amount of pain, so that Charles should not have cause to complain of him.

  After a minute of waiting for the narcotics, external and internal, to work, Peter took a pair of wooden pincers and bade Charles open. Charles though a good deal frightened, opened, was gagged, and gripped tightly the arms of his chair.

  The anguish Charles then endured was unspeakable.

  “It’s coming,” said Peter, heaving. Something came, with a crack.

  “There. It’s broken,” said Peter, flushed and vexed. “Open once more, please; we must go on while it’s still numb.”

  Numb! What, Charles speculated deliriously in his agony, would an extraction of Peter’s be like were the tooth not numb? For his part, he could not feel that the narcotics had made the least difference.…

  “It’s coming,” said Peter, heaving again.

  This time it really came, root, abcess, and all.

  “My God,” said Charles.

  “Rinse, please,” said Peter.

  Charles rinsed.

  “There it is,” said Peter, showing him the tooth. “I am sorry it broke. Rotten teeth are brittle, of course.”

  Charles mumbled, “It wasn’t a rotten tooth. It was a perfectly good tooth, with an abcess. But that’s all right, it’s gone now.”

  “Have a drink,” said Peter. “This is reviving.” He gave him a drink that tasted of gruel and peppermint.

  “Now,” said Charles presently, feeling rather better, “may I see some of your pictures?”

  Peter hesitated. He half wanted to refuse. But the other half of him craved for the opinion of Charles, who knew, probably, more about painting than his father. To make Charles admire his pictures—he would like that.

  “Very well,” he said.

  He could not read Charles’s mind as he showed him the pictures. Charles, though in devilish pain, commented, praised, was interested, mumbled once or twice “Good Lord!” Then he fell silent, and Peter did not know what he thought of, or whether the pain in his jaw had overcome him. He did not know that Charles was thinking, “London will go mad about him. If Flora knew that.… But, of course, she doesn’t.…”

  “Extraordinarily interesting,” said Charles presently. “How do you get your colours?”

  Peter explained to him the derivation of each.

  They were interrupted by the arrival of another patient, and Charles, after paying his bill, went away. Actually to lie down and recover, but Peter supposed it was to meet Flora somewhere. “Open, please,” he said bitterly. And then, “Your teeth are in a shocking state Very few of them can be saved. You had better wait till you get to England, and have them all out there and get new ones. It’s very little use my doing anything to them.”

  He never wanted to do anything to any teeth again.

  3

  The days passed slowly by. Slowly to the Thinkwells because each was so new, so delightful, so many-coloured, and so strange. Like some lovely fruit that puts forth, ripens, and tumbles, over-mellow, to the ground, between dawn and nightfall, so each lovely day rose from the sea, small and gold and exquisite, ripened to a hot and fragrant noon, and slid rosily into the sea again, leaving the island afloat beneath the myriad eyes of a vast and purple night.

  It was the fine season. Had they been there a few months later, they were told, there would have been storms, seas, rains, thunders, monsoons. As it was, the only storm that shook the island was a small earthquake one afternoon, which threw Rosamond from a mango tree so that she badly bit her tongue. William was pleased, because all sorts of new fishes were thrown up on the beach by the earthquake wave.

  It was the gay season, in the world of fashion and society. There were dances, banquets, parties, swimming races, tortoise races, sports. The Thinkwells were asked out a great deal. Except Charles, who went where Flora went, and that was everywhere, they did not always accept. William disliked parties, and only attended the sporting events. Mr. Thinkwell did not go to dances, or stay long at parties. He preferred really a game of chess with Hindley Smith-Rimski, with whom he played about level, or a conversation with some one of intelligence, such as Denis Smith or one of the workmen. For the rest, he attended social functions in pursuit of his study of island life.

  As to Rosamond, she was rather shy, and, though she liked dancing and games and watching tortoises race, she did not, any more here than in Cambridge, care for that kind of party at which one stands about and talks, and consumes now and then some trifling article of food or drink. And banquets were only doubtfully agreeable, though
the food was exciting, for you had to make talk with your neighbours. However, Rosamond, in order not to seem rude and ungrateful, often had to attend these functions. The smaller islands, she was discovering, had their social obligations, their unwritten laws, no less than larger ones, and Polynesia and Cambridge were in many ways alike.

  It did not greatly matter. There was the island, with its palm trees, its monkeys, its humming-birds and bread-fruit, its honey-sweet woods, its blue lagoon, its coral reef and the illimitable Pacific beyond.

  Also there was Flora, who, Rosamond was beginning breathlessly to hope, might one day love and marry Charles. Poor Nogood Peter; one pitied him dreadfully, but still, Flora did seem to like Charles better now she knew him, and there it was. To have Flora for sister; to show her England, theatres, fields of cowslips, the Zoo … what felicity!

  Rosamond’s island days were as cups of sweet golden wine, running over at the brim. She counted them, giving to each as it died the tribute of a sigh. One more day gone; one fewer to come before the returning Typee bore them away.

  Rosamond formed within her mind a scheme, too splendid, probably, to occur. Why should not Flora sail away with them, before the others were fetched? Flora and Heathcliff, perhaps. Flora would then see England first. She could even, directly they got to Cambridge, marry Charles.…

  Rosamond was too shy to suggest this plan to Flora, but she mentioned it to Charles, who thought it sound, but did not imagine that the Albert Smiths would allow Flora to precede them.

  “Shall you ask her to marry you, Charles?” said Rosamond. “I hope you will. Do you think she would?”

  Charles bade her mind her own business.

  “Well,” said Rosamond, “she seems to like you a lot. Aren’t you awfully pleased?”

  Charles told her not to be a little donkey. Rosamond looked at him with new admiration, because Flora had honoured him with her regard.

  4

  The birthday of Miss Smith was approaching—the anniversary of the day on which she first saw the light, not that official birthday which she also observed in her capacity as Queen Victoria. It would fall on the day on which the Typee was due to return. Extensive preparations for its celebration were going forward.

  It was to be a public holiday; there was to be a free banquet for the Orphans, and a paid for banquet (better food and drink) for the Smiths. Even the convicts were, this year, to have a treat, for Miss Smith had arranged for them to be rowed out to the Typee when she was returned, and to be taken for a short sail.

  On the question of the transportation of the Orphans, Miss Smith seemed to have come round. She sent for Mr. Thinkwell to tell him so.

  “As it seems,” she said, “to be the Almighty’s will to take us all from the island, we will say no more. What the poor silly creatures will do in England, He who made ’em alone knows, but we must leave it to Him. I make no doubt they’ll repent, and be soon wanting to come back. As to ourself, where our people go, we must go. So that’s settled, Thinkwell, and off we all start for England when you send that liner.”

  Mr. Thinkwell was not at all glad that she had come to this frame of mind. He had trusted in her, that she would have remained obstinate to the last, and have defended the islanders against themselves. She appeared quite genial and cheerful, and insisted that he should quaff a beaker with her to the success of the plan.

  “Our plans,” she said, lifting her bowl, “ain’t apt to fail. But we’ll drink to this one, nevertheless.”

  She drank well, set down the beaker, and chuckled.

  “One more toast, Thinkwell. Drink to my birthday, and to the return of your ship. Deeply, man—no sipping!”

  Mr. Thinkwell raised his bowl and Miss Smith hers. Together they drank the toast.

  Miss Smith set down her empty goblet.

  “That’ll do, Thinkwell. You may go.”

  Mr. Albert Smith said to Mr. Thinkwell, “My mother stems to have changed her mind, and to be now contemplating the removal of the Orphans.” He did not look wholly pleased.

  “I think they would be wiser to stay where they are,” he added, “and I still hope to induce many of them to do so.… I am not even sure that Miss Smith has been wise in deciding to take this great step herself. I fear the voyage, and the new conditions, may prove very trying to her. At her advanced age, one is not adaptable.…”

  Mr. Thinkwell took what comfort he could from those reasonable views.

  Chapter XXI

  THE BIRTHDAY

  1

  ROSAMOND, sleeping under a banian tree, was woken on the Birthday morning by the sharp talk of monkeys overhead, and by the scurry of a centipede across her face. These creatures had called her just in time, that she might see the Birthday rise, regal and golden, out of the Pacific. She sat up and looked at it. It was being proclaimed by flutings and pipings and trillings, and incensed by pollen-sweet drifts of wind. It was indeed a Birthday. Also, it was a Last Day, and had a bitter-sweet sadness.

  Rosamond sipped some milk and bit the end off a banana. A little way off were the huddled forms of William and of Charles. Their light snores mingled agreeably with the other wood sounds, and with the light snoring of the ocean.

  Rosamond thought she would bathe while no one was about; she liked to have the Pacific to herself. She stole into Belle Vue, where Mr. Thinkwell slept beneath a roof and between walls, as middle-aged gentlemen like to do. She got into her bathing-dress and went down to the lagoon.

  But she was not as alone as she had supposed. On the grass plateau above the shore a bent old woman stood, and her dim, frowning stare searched the Pacific, as though she were dragging the Birthday above the horizon.

  Jean. Jean, impatient, presumably, for the Birthday. Jean, watching the sunrise—or watching, marooned old lady, for a sail.

  Rosamond bade her good-morning as she passed her. She started.

  “Guid-day tae ye, lassie, guid-day. This is a braw day we’ve got for it.”

  “For the Birthday? Yes, isn’t it?”

  “The Bairthday!” Jean emitted a sound as of contempt. “I was no thinking of the Bairthday. For your wee ship, I’m meanin’, that’s comin’ back the day.… Did your father tell ye, lassie, that he’s promised tae tak me on the wee ship with ye, so as I sall see Scotland afore the gran’ vessel can tak us?”

  “Good,” said Rosamond politely. “Is—are any of the others coming, do you know?”

  “I dinna ken. Mr. Thinkwell didna say. Forby, I’d as soon nane of the ithers did come. The young anes can bide a wee while longer, sin it’s no their hames they’re longin’ tae set eyes on, but new lands only; and the auld anes have no my sair longin’. They can all bide for the Lord’s guid time and the great ship.”

  “I thought perhaps Flora …”

  “Flora! The young limb. The less truck ye all have with Flora the better it sall be for ye. She’ll bring ye nae guid. Dinna ye go runnin’ after that wild lassie o’ Bairtie Smith’s; and dinna ye let that brither o’ yours fix his hairt on her, for she’s nae hairt hersel.’ No, no, Flora Smith winna come on the wee ship with me; she’ll bide with the ithers.… Rin on now, lassie, and tak your swim.”

  Rosamond left her standing there, peering at the morning horizon.

  The lagoon glimmered with the radiant rainbow sheen of spilt milk. Down through it Rosamond dived, till she was close to its floor, with its fantastic coral mosaics and beamy darts of light, that were sometimes shafts of the morning and sometimes fish. Rosamond clutched at them, grasped instead waving weeds, and shot up through swaying beams into clear air, air thin and sweet like some light golden wine.

  She floated on her chest, arms spread, face towards the island, gazing as one gazes into the face of a departing friend.

  To leave Orphan Island—Smith Island—whatever island it might be; to leave it on the morrow! To leave the lagoon, the reef, the shore, the woods, the valley with the green lake, the antics of monkeys, the humming-birds, scarlet and green and blue, the armadillos, the b
ig thief land-crabs that climbed the Smiths’ palm trees and stole their nuts, the little scarlet sea crabs that scuttled about the coral pools, the great sea turtles, the land turtles that crawled in the woods, the iguanas, geckos, tortoises, the mangos, bananas, bread-fruit, and figs, the paradise birds and the mocking birds, the little silver bird that was like the Holy Ghost, the cow-tree with its warm, gushing stream, the honey in the hollow trees, the trade winds sighing in the tree-tops and bearing bright pollen about the island, bearing scents of almond, of frangipani, of cloves, of wild roses, of vanilla, of frankincense and myrrh.…

  To leave the island—it was too much.

  Rosamond blinked away tears, with the salt Pacific, from her eyes.

  As to Flora—well, whatever old Jean might say, Rosamond did not believe that Charles, far gone in love as he now was, would leave the island without Flora. Either Flora must come, or Charles would stay—one or the other.

  And if Charles should stay … well, if Charles should stay, why should not Rosamond stay too, and await the coming of the liner? Why not indeed?

  But when Rosamond had hinted as much to Mr. Thinkwell, he had said no, he certainly was not going to leave her behind; she would travel on the Typee with him. He had behaved like a father; he was decided, firm, an arbiter of destinies; there was no more to be said.