Orphan Island

by Rose Macaulay

  “A most unfortunate incident,” Mr. Albert Smith commented.

  “So,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “you have trial by jury here—that odd old Saxon custom.”

  “To be sure we have, my dear sir. My mother instructed us from the first in British institutions. We have them all.”

  “Did his mother instruct them in journalese too?” Charles whispered. “The amazing scenes, the well-dressed women, and all the rest of it? Or did it just grow? After all, why not here as well as with us?”

  “It’s a natural enough style,” said Mr. Merton, for so, indeed, it seemed to him. “Nothing odd about that. How else should one report news?”

  William prodded Charles with his elbow. “Listen to this, Charles. Charles, we must listen to this.”

  The gentleman dictating the news, a small, plump, globular person with a brick-red face and a green cigar in his mouth, was in the middle of the Political Intelligence. This was too complicated for the strangers wholly to grasp. It seemed that there was trouble in Hibernia—(“Hibernia?” queried Mr. Thinkwell. Mr. Smith indicated the adjacent and smaller peninsula of the island. “My father named it that,” he said. “We have had a good deal of trouble with it from time to time. Malcontents have always made it their abode; particularly since the insurrection of 1910. The insurrectionists were put down, of course, but there is still a sad amount of disloyalty.”)—Trouble, then, in Hibernia; and trouble, too, in politics; a great fracas, in fact, in Parliament, between one party and another. It seemed that one party was in favour of the sending forth of boats on a voyage of exploration, and the other parties were not.

  “That has always been in dispute among us,” said Mr. Smith. “From time to time such an expedition has gone forth, but has never got far. We have no adequate equipment for such adventures. But there has always been a Forward Party, in favour of that and other wild schemes. Fortunately, they have never been in power.”

  Mr. Thinkwell signed to him, donnishly, with his hand, to stop talking, for he desired to listen to the news. It seemed that there had been more trouble still, made by a group of discontented people who appeared to be holding meetings with a view to subverting the constitution and redistributing the land.

  “Foolish fellows,” said Mr. Smith, and his stern, cold expression was repeated on the faces of a good many of those who stood by. “Always some mad scheme. They chatter like the monkeys, and are for ever quarrelling with the laws of God and man. The land, of course, all belongs to Us. We rent it out and keep it well cultivated, for the good of the community.”

  “I see you are good Tories here,” said Mr. Thinkwell.

  “Tories? That is the good political party in Great Britain, isn’t it? My mother has told us——”

  “As to good—well, that’s a matter of taste. I suppose they are no worse than any other party, and not even, I dare say, more stupid.”

  “Ah. Your political parties are all like that, then—on a low level.”

  “They are human, sir. Yours too, no doubt.”

  “With us,” said Mr. Albert Edward Smith, “there is, on every question, a right side and a wrong. Some of us are habitually on one side, some on the other. It is a question, largely, of birth and breeding. Partly, also, of course, of age, wisdom, and experience. We have our young hotheads, even among Ourselves.” His glance fell on a group of young people standing a little way off, among whom was his daughter Flora and a youth sufficiently like her in feature to be supposed by Mr. Thinkwell to be her brother.

  The news editor was still dictating. He had got now to social and personal news, and interesting items of information about this person and that were announced and written down. Two persons had been married; another pair had had twins; some one else had been devoured by a shark; Mr. and Mrs. Smith-Carter had given a reception at which many elegantly dressed persons had been present and the food had been delicious. Finally, “Mr. Heathcliff Smith, addressing an audience this morning on the land question, said …”

  Mr. Albert Edward Smith stepped forward, with raised hand. “That will do. Erase, if you please.”

  The reporter erased; the dictator cleared his throat and changed the subject. He said instead, “Girl’s amazing leap from tree saves young monkey’s life.”

  “Mussolini,” said Charles Thinkwell, addressing Mr. Smith.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Smith.

  “I was merely noting,” said Charles, “that your methods with the press resemble those of the present ruler of Italy.”

  Mr. Smith inclined his head, not displeased. But gloom still lay on his brow, following the reference to Mr. Heathcliff Smith.

  It seemed to Rosamond, who was looking often at the group of young people round Flora, that the youth who must be her brother was sneering a little, and looking defiantly towards his father. Perhaps that was Mr. Heathcliff Smith.

  Rosamond wished that she could go up to this group and ask them to show her round the island. She was tired of this stupid newspaper, which was hardly more amusing than all the stupid newspapers at home.

  “Very funny,” Captain Paul was saying. “Damn funny, isn’t it. Just like the silly things our papers say. Damn amusing.” He, like Mr. Merton, had drunk just enough fermented liquor.

  Rosamond, hearing him speak, remembered that only that morning she had felt towards him a thrilling kind of admiration and hero-worship, that had made her excited when he spoke to her or looked at her. Now the thrill was abated, swooned away, as it were, on the languishing island air. Was it merely that, on the island, he was no longer the captain, the chief? In that case, she thought, in that case she should have transferred her admiration to Mr. Albert Smith—or to the unseen Miss Smith lurking in the background. Or was it rather that, once you had seen Flora Smith, no one else counted very much? Such grace was hers, such mocking beauty and such pride … a mountain panther could not touch her for the kind of wild, disdainful elegance she had.

  Chapter VIII

  TO BALMORAL

  “ENOUGH news for this afternoon, I think,” said Mr. Smith. “The hour is approaching when Miss Smith, after her afternoon sleep, Receives. I will go up to Balmoral now and see if I can secure an audience for you. She will, I know, be profoundly interested in the news of your arrival. My mother, of course, unlike the rest of us, lived to maturity in Great Britain before she came here, and recollects it perfectly.”

  “Miss Smith ain’t the only one to do that.” The quavering voice of the little old Jewess spoke. “I recollect London perfectly. The Mile End Road, we called it, where we lived. Eight years old, I was, when they took me to the Orphanage, and I recollect it as if it was yesterday. Going shopping for my muvver—stalls with red meat all along the street on market nights, all lit up. … It might be yesterday. And I recollect the shipwreck, and poor Anne-Marie that was drowned, and the doctor that the shark ate up the day I was married to Jacob. How the doctor made us laugh and drink and dance, and taught us bits of Latin in his cups, and (when he’d had one more) about the pope … and how Miss Smith wouldn’t have it …”

  Mr. Smith lifted his hand for silence, not caring for these old-time recollections of his parents.

  “That is enough, Leah. Enough.” He turned to the visitors. “If you will accompany me to Miss Smith’s residence, I will inquire whether she can receive you forthwith.”

  They climbed up from the beach again, followed by inquisitive crowds, among whom were many well-dressed women. Two of these walked close at Rosamond’s side, inspecting her with interest, fingering her white cotton frock.

  “She wears a lot of clothes,” said one to the other. “She has something under this. She must be very hot. She wears clothes even on her legs and feet. Why do you wear clothes on your legs and feet, Rosamond?” (for so they had heard her called).

  “I don’t know,” said Rosamond. “People do, where I come from. It’s stupid.”

  “Is it very cold, where you come from?”

  “Very, very cold. Nearly always.”
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br />   “But it isn’t cold here. Here you needn’t wear so many clothes.”

  “I shan’t,” said Rosamond.

  “Why do you wear your hair short instead of parted and coiled over your ears? It’s not been the fashion here for—oh, ever so many years. Only elderly ladies do it.”

  “I always have. It’s common, in England.”

  “She is very white,” they said. “Not brown or red, like us. But her face is pink—she has freckles on her nose. Why are you so white, Rosamond?”

  “I suppose because the sun doesn’t shine much where I have lived.”

  “Why don’t the sun shine?”

  “I don’t know. You’d better ask William. He does science. … I mean, he knows about things like that.”

  “William? That’s the broad, young one, who stops and looks for things on the ground. He’s not so white as you; and he has more freckles. Charles is white—whiter than you. We think Charles is vastly handsome.”

  “Perhaps,” said Rosamond indifferently.

  “And Paul is handsome too. Merton not so much; we think he perhaps drinks a prodigious lot of fermented juice. Are they married, Merton and Paul and Charles and William? Are you married?”

  “Not Charles and William and me. I don’t know about Mr. Merton and Captain Paul. I dare say they are.”

  “Are you Smith?”

  “Smith?”

  “Yes. Have you a Smith descent? Are you upper class? We are Smith. In the female line. Our name is Macbean. Miss Smith is our great-grandmamma.”

  “Well, we are not descended from Miss Smith. Of course not.”

  “No, of course not. But you must be Smith—upper class—in your own country? We can see you’re not Orphan.”

  “I don’t think we are specially upper class. Just ordinary, I suppose.”

  “Aren’t you rich, then?”

  “Oh, yes, we are rich.”

  The Macbean young ladies did not know how unusual an answer, how unusual a belief, this was. Rosamond knew that University dons have more money than the majority of human beings.

  “What does your papa do?”

  “He gives lectures. He sets examination papers. He writes books. He reads, and finds things out.”

  “Oh, a teacher. They are not Smith, usually.” Their opinion of Rosamond’s social position seemed to fall a little. Its fall gave them a new frankness about their own. The younger dropped her voice, and blushed.

  “We are Smith, as we said. But our mamma did not get married to our papa, so Miss Smith cast her out, and we aren’t accepted in good society. We count as Orphan.”

  The elder Miss MacBean, scarlet cheeked, nudged the younger angrily. “Hush, Marah. Talking like that! Mamma will whip you if I tell her. What will Rosamond think of us? We’ve no business to know about things of that kind, you know we haven’t. I’m sure Rosamond don’t. Young ladies in England don’t ever. Do they, Rosamond?”

  “Things of that kind?”

  “Oh, acting as if you were married when you are not … all that.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Rosamond, surprised. “Of course we know about that. Why not?”

  “But you don’t speak of it in England, do you? Not young ladies?”

  “Why yes, I suppose so. We speak of anything we like … anything we do.”

  Two pairs of round, prominent blue eyes gazed at her, shocked. Decidedly, Rosamond could not be Smith in her own country. She had none of the Smith outlook, but a more than Orphan commonness.

  “Well,” said the elder Miss Macbean firmly, “we don’t.”

  Between them seventy years seemed to yawn, and neither understood.

  “I wonder what great-grandmamma will think of you,” said the younger girl. “She is very particular indeed. She won’t even see us, because of—you know. She made the Reverend christen us Shameless and Marah. Marah means not nice, you know. And it was all her fault, because she wouldn’t let the Reverend marry papa and mamma.

  “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “Well, you see, mamma was Smith, and papa was very low born. Papa’s work is to spear fish and sell them. That is not Smith. So mamma mightn’t marry him, and so she and papa did without.” The four round, shocked eyes were turned again on Rosamond’s face, to see if she was not shocked too.

  At this point Mr. Smith, who was walking ahead with the other gentlemen, turned about and looked at Rosamond and her companions. Wrath clouded his fine, high brow. He struck his hands twice together.

  “Clear off, you girls. Don’t let me find you annoying that young, lady again, or I will have you well beaten. Off, I say!”

  The Miss Macbeans scuttled away. Charles laughed.

  “Autocracy in working,” he observed.

  “I am sorry you have been troubled,” said Mr. Smith kindly, like a telephone operator, to Rosamond. “I am afraid we have a good number of undesirable characters here, who will pester you if they get the chance. Those girls are not quite the type with which your papa would desire you to associate.”

  Mr. Thinkwell gave his spasmodic grin.

  “Nothing to do with me,” he said. “Parental surveillance went out, you know, long before the twentieth century came in. Rosamond chooses her own friends, as I choose mine.”

  “Odd!” commented Mr. Smith, looking at him curiously. “Are you not afraid that she may get—er—undesirably entangled?”

  “Entangled, sir? I presume she is entangled. We all are. Life is entangled. Who is to help that?”

  “Well,” said Mr. Smith, unable, presumably, to reply to this inquiry, “here we are at Balmoral.” A prim, neat residence was before them, standing in a grove of palms. “If you will kindly wait here, I will go in and inquire if my mother will receive you. I must first relate to her, in a gradual manner, so as not to startle her, something of your story.”

  He entered through the gate of Balmoral.

  “Balmoral! Damned if the old lady doesn’t fancy herself old Victoria,” said Mr. Merton rudely.

  “Well,” said Charles, “she does sound awfully like her.”

  “I don’t know why we should all have to see her,” William grumbled. “I’d rather explore the island. Rosamond would too, wouldn’t you, Rosamond?”

  “Yes.”

  “Plenty of time for that,” said Mr. Thinkwell. “Personally, I have a good deal of curiosity to see Miss Smith. From all account she must be a very remarkable old lady.”

  Presently Mr. Smith reappeared, and said, “Miss Smith will now receive you. A word on the procedure. One by one you will advance and kiss her hand. You will then stand while she addresses you, unless she desires you to be seated, which, however, I must warn you, is by no means a probable occurrence. I must ask you to recollect, gentlemen, that Miss Smith is very old, and naturally becomes annoyed if not treated with the respect due to her position. She is, of course, the sovereign of our island, and has grown increasingly apt, as the years have passed, to, if I may say so, identify herself with the sovereign of yours, your noble Queen Victoria.”

  “A historic figure,” Mr. Thinkwell said, “but no longer a contemporary one. Miss Smith has outlived her.”

  “You must not tell her so,” Mr. Smith continued. “Indeed, she would not believe you if you did. In brief, gentlemen, my mamma is more than half persuaded that she is Queen Victoria. You see, during all her life in England she had the greatest admiration for that good queen.”

  “It was not unshared,” said Mr. Thinkwell. “Though I fear it is now a little waned. The kings and queens of English history have been apt to inspire a loyalty strictly contemporaneous.”

  “Be that as it may,” said Mr. Smith, waving the unfamiliar word away with his hand, as was his wont; “be that as it may, the loyalty inspired by, and, I may say, expected by, Miss Smith, is by no means of such a moderate or partial character. She commands the obedient respect of all right-thinking members of our community. I admit that there is a disloyal section, which has given trouble, but they are scarcely worthy to be co
nsidered. … Another point, Mr. Thinkwell. You must be prepared for a certain element of indignation in Miss Smith’s attitude. She deeply felt the ungrateful and callous behaviour of the cowardly men who left her and her helpless charges in the lurch and among whom was your grandfather, and she is inclined now to think that over much time has elapsed between then and the organisation of the rescue party. You must not be surprised, therefore, if she should express to you a little natural resentment.”

  “I am very seldom surprised,” said Mr. Think-well, “and Miss Smith could not, I imagine, surprise me more than she has already done. As to resentment, a certain amount of that is very natural. My grandfather and his fellow sailors behaved like the callous scoundrels they doubtless were. I may say, however, that I do not consider myself to blame, in any way.”

  “Certainly not, sir. But old ladies, as you no doubt know. … By the way, there is also, of course, in attendance on Miss Smith, old Jean, the nurse.”

  “What! She is alive, too! Your climate here must be healthy indeed. She must be over ninety also, no doubt?”

  “Jean has never mentioned her precise age. But she has always maintained that she is a few years younger than Miss Smith. She must certainly, however, be some years over ninety. She is greatly delighted at the news of your landing, and is all excitement, talking of seeing Aberdeen again. Jean has never, I may say, settled down here. She brought us all up on tales of Scotland, in spite of Miss Smith, who decreed that, since our Creator (who, she says, moves in a mysterious way) had, in His inscrutable wisdom, seen fit to place us here, here we were to be content.”

  “I should be content all right in Miss Smith’s position,” Charles murmured.