Orphan Island

by Rose Macaulay

  Chapter X

  MRS. SMITH-CARTER

  OUTSIDE Balmoral they were met by Mr. Smith’s sister Adelaide, reclining in her negro-borne hammock. A stout, genial, jolly lady of perhaps five and fifty, hung about with jingling chains, her red face dabbed with white shell-powder, her baby monkey on her shoulder.

  “Well,” she snapped. “Are you going to let ‘em go for a bit, my good Bertie? I fail, I must say, to see why you should monopolise our guests for the whole afternoon and evening. I want ’em to come and have supper with me.”

  “I have arranged,” said Mr. Smith, “for a public supper, at which our visitors shall meet a number of us, and be introduced to our society in a formal and agreeable manner.”

  “Oh, a state banquet. As you please. I dare say it may amuse them. Who are you letting come? All the family?”

  “There will scarcely be room for all. I am having the crier announce that any one desiring to be present must send in his or her name to my secretary, and I will consider the application.”

  “Free food?”

  “Certainly not. The price of admission will be twenty corals, exclusive of drinks.”

  “Mamma won’t appear, I suppose?”

  “She may come in before the end, for speeches.

  But it is uncertain. Saturday night, you know. … I left her thinking out to-morrow’s text,” he added, in a clear and audible tone, different from that in which he had said “Saturday night.”

  “She had a long talk with our friends here.”

  “How did she take to ’em?”

  “Kindly, on the whole. But she is most anxious that the Orphans should not get it into their heads that they are to be taken away.”

  “Quite right, quite right. Very bad for ’em. Besides, why in the world should they be taken away? This is the place for them. … Now, some of us would be glad of a change. I’ve a mind to see the world a little myself, now I’ve got the girls off. I’ll come away with you, gentlemen, if you’ll let me.” She tapped Captain Paul with her palm fan, for she thought him handsomer than Mr. Thinkwell, as indeed he was.

  “That brother of mine hasn’t introduced me. I’m Mrs. Smith-Carter. I’ll come away with you, with all the pleasure in life.”

  Captain Paul wondered if the Thinkwells realised what they were in for, if they knew the cost of getting all these queer birds to England, and what to do with them when there; but, as Thinkwell troubles touched him lightly, he bowed with gallantry.

  “By all means, madam. Delighted to take you. But, you know, there’ll be so many wanting to come that my little ship won’t hold you all. We shall have to charter a liner for you.”

  “A liner? That’s the kind of ship that split in two under mamma, ain’t it? You’ll have to bring a safe one, young man. We don’t want another wreck.… Well, how long will it take you to fetch your liner?”

  “A good many weeks, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, Lord! What a time! Well, but you could carry some of us off on that little ship of yours, eh?”

  “I fear the quarters are poor, ma’am. You would not be comfortable.”

  “Oh, well, I like to be comfortable, that’s very true.… Ain’t you comfortable on his ship, child?” the lady asked Rosamond.

  “Very. It’s a most nice ship.”

  “Still, you’re young. I dare say that I shouldn’t be comfortable. Perhaps I’ll wait for the liner. That’ll give me time to get some new clothes, after all. I’ve not a rag fit to face the world in. True-heart Jenkins makes my things, and she’s to be drowned Monday. I must find a new woman.… Are you interested in clothes, child?”

  “No,” said Rosamond, in her deep, abrupt little voice. “I mean, I don’t know much about them.”

  “She doesn’t know very much about anything,” Charles explained, “except islands. She’s a terribly ignorant girl.”

  Mrs. Smith-Carter’s eyes approved the slim, nonchalant, dark young man.

  “But you look as if you thought you knew plenty,” she told him. “What does this impudent brother of yours know, child?”

  “Charles? Oh, I don’t know. Lots of things.… About restaurants, and book, and writers, and foreign countries, and plays, and pictures, and Russians dancing, and … oh, lots of things.…”

  “What a catalogue,” said Charles, pleased.

  “Well,” the lady said, “none of it sounds a lot of use, to me, but I dare say it’s all right in your country.… You must make friends, both of you, with my niece, Flora. I shouldn’t be surprised if she could teach you both something. A clever girl, Flora. Handsome girl, too. Seen her?”

  “Yes,” said Rosamond, and coloured pink.

  “Well, you must get her to show you round. They try to keep her too much in leading-strings, and it makes her naughty, a fine, spirited girl like that. Wants to go her own way, Flora does. Scoldings won’t cure her, and I’ve told my brother so. How does your papa treat you, girl? Is he stern with you?”

  “Oh, no. Not stern.”

  “He looks a queer man. Is he clever? What does he know about?”

  “Yes, he is clever. He knows about nearly everything.” Rosamond was still so young as to have retained that filial illusion.

  Charles, who was not, looked sceptical as he strolled away to listen to what Mr. Smith was saying to his father.

  “Well, well,” Mrs. Smith-Carter said, “that’s not in my line. I’d rather a gentleman had agreeable manners and a handsome face and knew how to tell a good story after supper. And was Godfearing, of course,” she added, on a yawn. “Mamma brought us all up to think a lot of that. Is your papa a God-fearing man?”

  “I don’t think father believes in God,” said Rosamond.

  “Not! Why, then he’s an atheist. ’Pon my soul, mamma won’t like that. How very wrong and ignorant of your papa, child. Did he bring you all up in irreligion, then? Are you and your brothers atheists, too?”

  “Charles and William don’t believe in God, I suppose.… But father didn’t bring us up not to, he let us alone.” Rosamond stammered away from the religious beliefs of Charles, William, and herself, not able or willing to articulate her own. For Rosamond had religion. She believed, in a deep, childish, and romantic way, in God. She went further, and liked the expression of religion to be pictorial, lovely, sweet of sound and scent. Before the hard, patronising stare of this genial Smith lady, her religion fled, abashed, for cover.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Smith-Carter, yawning again, “to-morrow’s Sunday, you know, and we all go to church. You’ll have to come—papa, Charles, William, and all, and the other gentlemen too, even if they are atheists. Do ’em good, I dare say.… Can’t understand atheism, for my part, though of course we have it here too. What I say is, if there’s no God, who made us all, and the land and sea and sun and moon and stars, and the birds and fishes and beasts for us to eat, and all the rest of it? There’s a poser for your papa, my dear, since he’s so clever. Ask him that from me. It all made itself, no doubt he’ll say. Oh, I know ’em, your clever folk who set themselves up to do without the Lord who made ’em. They come to no good, in this world or the next. We’ve always had ’em with us. I recollect ’em when I was a girl, jabbering away about the truths of science and disproving the Creator from His handiwork in the shells and rocks. Doubt, we called it then. It ain’t doubt in these days, it’s sheer impudence. Horrid atheism, mamma always called it. She never allowed it, I can tell you.”

  “What did she do?” Rosamond asked, interested.

  “Tied ’em up, my dear, and fed ’em on nothing but shell-fish till they thought better of it. That was in the good old days. But people won’t stand that now—they’re grown so stuck up and independent, there’d be a riot. There has been, sometimes.… It’s a sad, insolent age.… That Jesuit missionary that landed when I was a girl, he said we ought to burn ’em to death. But mamma always said that would be popish. Mamma never would be popish; she don’t like the Pope. What do you think of the Pope, child?”

&n
bsp; Rosamond had never thought of the Pope, and did not even know who, at the moment, he might be. He was among the subjects concerning which she was, as Charles had said, terribly ignorant.

  “I don’t really know about him,” she said. “Except that he’s the head of the Roman Catholics, and lives in Rome.” She searched her memory for more of the Pope. “Oh, and people who live in Ulster don’t like him, I know that.” For William had had, at Trinity, an Ulster friend.

  “No respectable people like him, my dear. That poor Frenchman did; he called him God’s legate on earth; but then he was mad. Eaten up by his own Zacharies he was, one day when they forgot themselves. He’d taught ’em to be papists; so much for popery, we all said. The Scarlet Woman, mamma calls it—I forget why. And as to God’s legate, she says she can do all the legating that’s wanted here. But we’ve never quite stamped it out. Bowing and scraping and crossing and burning herbs to make a smell at worship—seems as if some weak-minded folk can’t help it. Especially in seaside places, mamma says. Just as some others must needs break out into private prayers of their own at public worship, getting all of an uproar. Mamma has always put her foot on that too. She says we have the Protestant Church of England, and no need of anything else.… You seem vastly interested in religion, child, you’re making me talk quite a lot about it. I must get on home now, and have a rest before this famous supper. I shall have a chat with the gentlemen later on. Home, Zachary!” She struck the nearest black man with her fan, and they lifted up her hammock and bore her away. Rosamond looked after the fashionable, voluble lady and her pet monkey, at the stalwart, docile Zachary Macaulays, descendants of those Roman Catholic Zacharies who had eaten up the poor Frenchman. To Rosamond none of it seemed remarkable or strange; she knew that life was like that.

  Chapter XI

  THE BANQUET

  THE long boards, standing on trestles, were set in the green glade at the wood’s edge, looking on the glimmering sea. The feast was lit by the climbing moon; but on the table were lights—tall candles, and cocoa-nut bowls wherein lighted wicks floated in oil, and round each candle and bowl a small, soft glow spread over the neighbouring food.

  “For what we are about to receive,” said Mr. Albert Smith loudly from the table’s head, “may the Lord make us truly thankful.” They all sat down. Rosamond did not know what were the foods she was about to receive, but they all looked very delightful. There was soup, and tortoise meat, and fishes, and oysters, and birds, and roasted yams, and bread-fruit, and eggs, and mangoes, and bananas, and a kind of pear, and pandanas, and jellies, and cream, and sweetmeats, and all the island delicacies one could expect, served on shell plates. And drinks.… “What will you drink?” asked the young man next Rosamond, and she said, “Anything, please,” and was given a goblet of liquor that tasted like sweet cider. She looked at her neighbour, and found him handsome and pale brown, with dark brows over southern eyes, and a proud, merry mouth, and she knew him for Flora’s brother, Heathcliff.

  “Is Flora here?” she asked, and he said, “Oh, yes. Opposite us there. Flora never misses a party, for all she says.

  “What does she say?”

  “Oh, all kinds of things. Proud things. About not obeying papa and mamma. So do I. Papa desired us to come to this banquet, so we all but didn’t, but, after all, it seemed too amusing to miss.”

  Rosamond looked shyly across the table at Flora nearly opposite, clad in white and golden feathers. The candle beneath her threw up a wavering circle of gold on to her face and bare, beautiful throat, slipping softly over the smooth skin, the proud, mocking mouth, the proud, rounded chin, the scarlet flowers that flamed in the dark coils over each ear. Above the circle of light, Flora’s brow shone argent to the silver moon; her dark, shadowed eyes and black brows slanted upwards a little to the outer corners, giving her a modified and attractive Mongolian touch. On her right hand sat Charles; fortunate Charles. Rosamond was glad of that; Charles was good at making friends when he chose; quicker than she was, and had more and better conversation. Flora and he were talking together, and both were laughing, their attractive faces turned towards each other. If Flora made friends with Charles, she must surely notice Rosamond later on, even though she was not clever and attractive like Charles.

  Rosamond’s eyes strayed up and down the length of the feast. At its head sat Mr. Albert Smith, presiding, keeping order, and so forth. Round him were Mrs. Smith-Carter (between Mr. Thinkwell and Captain Paul), and other important Smith-looking gentlemen and ladies of middle or elderly life. Somewhere among them was Mr. Merton. The table seemed to dwindle in importance down its length; still, doubtless, Smith, the guests seemed lesser Smiths, or younger Smiths, Smiths in some way of smaller account. These lesser Smiths had been thought, obviously, the proper environment for the three younger Thinkwells. Round them were a number of young people, for the most part very merry. At the table’s foot sat the placid Mrs. Albert Edward Smith.

  “You like banquets too?” said Heathcliff Smith to Rosamond, seeing her happy smile as she looked up and down the feast and drank turtle soup out of a bowl.

  “Yes,” said Rosamond. “I mean, this banquet. Banquets on islands, you know. It’s lovely. The things to eat look lovely, and having it out here in the moonlight, and the lights.… And the island, and the sea. Don’t you like it?”

  “Oh, well enough,” he said carelessly. “The food looks fairly eatable. And I dare say some of the speeches will be amusing.”

  “Of course,” she remembered, “you’re used to being on an island.”

  “I should say so.” He laughed. “Sick to death of it, too. I want to go away. I’ve always been of the Forward Party, which wanted to send boat expeditions to explore, but I was never let to go. Thank God you people have come at last. You’ll never guess, I dare say, how pleased we were, some of us, to see you land. Flora and I said—”

  “Was Flora pleased to see us?”

  “Was she not? I should say so. I am sure Flora and I are both sick of living all our lives on one miserable island. We want to see the world—get about, and do things. Now pray, Rosamond—that’s your name, isn’t it?—tell me what it’s all like, where you come from.”

  Rosamond reflected. She was no good at these large questions.

  “Not nearly so nice as this,” she said.

  “Oh,” he waved that aside, “that’s just because you’re used to it. I can tell you, this is deadly dull if you live here. Nothing but sea and land, sea and land, and the same old set of tiresome people. And old Grandmamma Smith in the background, laying down the law for us all and trying to stop everything amusing.… Lord, I’m sick of it. Pray tell me about England. From what grandmamma says of it, I’m inclined to think I shouldn’t care for it so much as for some of the other countries. She brought us all up on tales of England, how free and good and great it is, and what a good influence among the nations, till we hate the sound of it. Of course we know something about English people, and how they act in society and family life, from the books we have—Wuthering Heights, and the Book of Correct Conduct, and the Holy War. But old Jean says England is nothing to Scotland.… What’s England really like, in these days?”

  Rosamond thought. What was England really like? Green fields; cowslips; willows by slow streams; rain and chill winds. Colleges, learning, caps and gowns, gray skies, gray streets, motorcars and bicycles, games, Girl Guides.… That was Cambridge. Beyond Cambridge, England; rolling green country with hedges; cows; roads choked with dust and loud with cars; deep lanes; old market towns of red-brown brick, with wide inn yards; little lichened hamlets with weather-beaten gray churches; great nightmare towns, shrieking and black, in the nightmare midlands and north; people, people everywhere, drab pink, kindly, ugly, common, nice, silly people, all agog for life, wagging cheerful tongues, staring out of hard, curious eyes. Shops, newspapers, books, dogs, hot meals, and always, nearly always, that bite of bitter winds on body and soul.

  Rosamond, stumbling confused among scattered pi
ctures, selected.

  “Cold,” she said. “And they talk a lot.”

  “They couldn’t,” Heathcliff told her, “talk more than we do here. That I am sure they could not.… But is it happy? Is it free, as grandmamma says it is? Can people do as they please there?”

  “No.” Rosamond was sure of that. “We don’t do as we please, most people don’t. There are police, you see. And work. And we have to do things. Tiresome things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  Rosamond thought.

  “Wear shoes and stockings,” she said, “in the road. And other clothes we don’t want. Come in to meals at meal-times. Sleep indoors, mostly. Go out to tea sometimes. Talk to people who come in the house. Have classes, teaching girls and boys things—at least I do. Go to bazaars. Oh, dear, lots of things.”

  “Why do you? Is it the law, or does your papa make you?”

  “No, father doesn’t bother much. He has to do them too. And it’s not the law—not most of it.… I don’t know … you just have to.”

  “You have an old queen, haven’t you, like our grandmamma?”

  “No, a king. He doesn’t bother us, though.”

  “Oh, I thought a queen, called Victoria.”

  “No. There was once. She died ages ago, though; before I was born.”

  “Do your parents or grandparents or any one settle whom you are to marry, or mayn’t marry?”

  Rosamond laughed. “No! Of course not. People settle that for themselves.”

  “That’s a good plan. Flora would like that. She’s not allowed to. Oh, but that’s private, I forgot.… Do you like that bird? Too fishy, I think; they eat fish all day, you see. Have some more drink. This is prodigiously interesting, your coming from England. What are the other countries like? Are they better? There’s France, isn’t there, and Germany. My grandmamma says the French have always been our natural enemies, and eat frogs, and one Englishman can beat two Frenchmen, and they don’t understand liberty.”