Orphan Island

by Rose Macaulay

  Her head ached a little, but the air was like thin, sweet wine. The grass under her naked feet was silver with the dew; under the trees and shrubs about the path sleepers lay; the island was waking into life, but was not yet waked. But the birds had woken with the dawn, and were shrilling cascades of music everywhere, and courting tortoises were uttering hoarse cries of love, and milkmen entreating the pierced trunks of the tall cow-trees for their sunrise flow, as one coaxes the udders of cows.

  The shore was golden under the climbing sun, and the lagoon lay pale and smooth like milk, or like a great pearl.

  By the lagoon’s edge there was a great yellow she-turtle with mauve stripes, and it was chasing Charles, who, clad in an apron of fig-leaves, held out his hand to it as he fled, flattering it with ingratiating smiles, as one flatters a fierce dog, saying “Good turtle. Nice turtle. Down, sir” (for though I say it was a she-turtle, and it is the truth, this was not for Charles to know).

  A little way off, William, similarly costumed, crouched with a net and a tin basin in a deep coral pool, up to his chest in dull green sargassum, which he was exploring for live creatures with the care of a cat who hunts fleas in his long fur. Already he had caught and detached from their protective weed three green crabs, two violet and orange molluscs, several hydroids, and a small filefish, and he was now tugging at a large scarlet anemone who clung desperately to white coral rock.

  Rosamond watched him. How much did anemones feel?

  “Don’t be rough with it, William.”

  “All right, it likes it,” said William, as he used to tell her ten years ago about worms on hooks, and, indeed, fishes too. To Rosamond the world had seemed, in those days, a wonderful place, full of minor animals rejoicing in suffering like the Christian saints.

  “It’s ammonia sargassensis,” said William, winning the tug-of-war. “It had no business on the rock.”

  “Oh,” Rosamond breathed, bending over the pool, “there are tiny things like shrimps, transparent as glass, with green balls in them.”

  “Shrimps with eggs,” said William.

  “Don’t catch them, William.”

  “Yes. They’ll like it in the basin. They’ll lay their eggs there.”

  A brood of baby shrimps leaping from the egg, clear as glass, scuttling round and round the basin.… Perhaps they would like it.

  Rosamond hung face downwards from a rock, peering deep into the weedy pool. She saw the small sea world where scarlet and yellow and green crabs, some bearing their shells on their backs, some on their stomachs, scuttled about among tiny, bright-coloured fishes, and pink and yellow and blue trifles which were, William said, copepods. Tiny anemones opened and shut like flowers; little sea worms wriggled among waving hydroids; translucent shrimps, egg-laden, passed beamily about their business.

  “I wish,” remarked Charles, behind them, “that some one who can control this turtle would call it off. I can’t bathe with it swimming after me with its mouth open and hissing.”

  “You shouldn’t have aggravated it,” William grunted, thrusting his net beneath a patch of weed. “You’d better sit on its back. They like that.”

  Charles tried.

  “I daren’t sit with my whole weight, I’m afraid of cracking it. Steady, you brute.… You’re quite wrong, William; they don’t like it. Animals like far fewer things than you think. I’ve told you that before.”

  “What are you doing to Sarah?” called a voice, thin and husky from recent sleep, and there, stepping down from the wood together, beautiful and bronze-limbed, clad in scanty skin bathing suits, were Flora and her golden-haired young man.

  “It is more,” Charles explained, “what Sarah is doing to me.… I went in to swim, and Sarah pursued me like a devil and chased me up the beach. Look, she is after me now.”

  “You must have annoyed her, poor Sarah. Down, Sarah; down, miss. Back to the sea with you. Shoo!”

  Before the advance and hand-clapping of Flora and her friend, Sarah retreated, with sulky hissings and wagging head, and floundered into the lagoon.

  “I didn’t know,” said Charles to the young man, “that you kept turtles as pets here. I thought they were caught and eaten.”

  “Not the females; they are too valuable.… Flora, introduce us, if you please.”

  “Certainly. Mr. Charles Thinkwell—Mr. Conolly. A cousin of my own. As to his first name, he was christened Nogood, but his parents, not liking the name, privately called him Peter. Shall we swim?”

  Mr. Nogood Peter Conolly shook hands with Charles, with a very pleasing smile.

  “I have,” he said, “a thousand things to ask you about the world.”

  “And I you about the island,” Charles replied. “The island is the more interesting, I think.”

  “Oh, Lord, the island ain’t interesting at all. Is it, Flora?”

  “Not in the least. The most tedious place in the world, I dare say. Cramped, narrow, old-fashioned, ruled by old people who haven’t marched with the times… we’re sick to death of it. We want to be free, and to see the world. Oh, I can tell you, Mr. Charles Thinkwell, we were pleased enough to see you land here. Shall we swim?”

  Rosamond tumbled from her rock and splashed into the lagoon after them. Flora glanced at her over her shoulder.

  “A pretty morning,” she said. “I hope you slept well.”

  “Very, thank you. But to-night I shall sleep out of doors.”

  “That’s as may be.” Flora dived. Rosamond saw her, through swaying green prisms of light, crawling on the sandy floor, picking up bright shells. Mr. Conolly joined her, and in a moment they shot up, hand in hand.

  “You should dive,” called Flora to Rosamond. “It clears the head.”

  Rosamond plunged head downwards into green light. But she could not arrive at the sandy bottom; she sputtered and came up. Charles tried too, but the Cambridge Thinkwells were no divers.

  Heathcliff came running down the beach and leaped shouting into the lagoon. He took Charles and Rosamond each by a hand, and plunged with them to the bottom of the sea. A handful of shells and wet sand Rosamond scooped up; she grabbed at a scarlet fish; bursting with spent breath she shot up, spluttered too soon, came to the surface and choked.

  “All a matter of habit,” Heathcliff told her. “You’ll dive famously before long.”

  Flora and Mr. Conolly were swimming out, racing, splashing each other, to the reef that bounded the lagoon. The others followed. The morning lay like a smile on the Pacific. The dawn held the lagoon at its heart, as an oyster shell holds a pearl. Swimming shorewards, they saw the wooded island rising up from the white beach, breathed its scented airs, heard its light, sharp cries.

  William, at the sea’s edge, was wriggling along wet sand on his stomach, chasing a thorny lobster.

  They waded out, shaking the sea from their hair and eyes.

  “I hope, Thinkwells,” said Flora, “that you can keep a secret better than you can dive. For there is a detail in this morning’s events which you would oblige me by not mentioning. You bathed with Heathcliff and myself, if you like, but not with Mr Peter Nogood Conolly Neither have I introduced you to him. If he bathed at all, this morning, it was off the Hibernian shore, not here. One has one’s discretions, you will observe, in one’s narrations to one’s parents. You too, no doubt. Though, as to that, I would willingly exchange my papa for yours. Yours has the air of being scarcely a papa at all. You’ll discreet?”

  “Completely. As to Rosamond, she seldom troubles to tell any one anything, unless they ask. And William notices little among the human species.”

  “He is a sensible young man. Lobsters are more harmless than people, even when they pinch. Peter, you must leave us; people are coming down to the shore.”

  Mr. Conolly rapidly described a circuit that led him to the isthmus that joined Hibernia to the main island.

  Flora looked after him.

  “Nogood,” she explained, “because my grandmamma told his mother—she was a Smith—that
no good would come of her taking up with his father. And what came of it was Peter. So grandmamma had him christened Nogood. And I am not supposed to see him or speak to him, because of two things—he is a bastard, since his parents weren’t allowed to marry, and his papa is a rebel, who took a leading part in the Revolution, and is now a convict. But I do see him and speak to him, as you see.”

  “A convict! You have convicts here? How do you manage?”

  “Oh, yes, we have convicts. They work in a gang in Convicts’ Cove, at the other side of the island. They are roped together so that they can’t escape, and always guarded by police.”

  “Are they criminals?”

  “For the most part. Some are rebels. I dare say papa will take you to see them; he would enjoy it. In fact, you’ll see them if you look behind you at service this morning. They sit at the back.”

  “Service? Oh, I shan’t go to that. I never do. Can’t you show me the island during service?”

  “Lord, no. We all have to be at church. You have the drollest ideas, Charles Thinkwell. Don’t you have to go to church on Sunday where you come from?”

  “Not after we grow up. Our places of education make us go; they are still mediæval in method.”

  “I don’t know what that means: never mind, don’t tell me; I abhor being told the meaning of words. I shall like to live in England, shan’t you, Heathcliff? Here there’s a fine for not attending service.”

  “Miss Smith said the island was the home of liberty. I heard her.”

  “No doubt,” Heathcliff said. “You’ll hear her again, if you listen. Liberty is one of her favourite words. She learnt it when she was a child. And, if you’ve not heard it yet, you’ll soon hear that liberty doesn’t mean licence.”

  “One doesn’t have to come to the South Seas to hear that. They tell us that at home. Also that freedom means freedom to do right. Do you have that too?”

  “Oh, yes.… Our island and yours don’t seem so very different, after all.”

  “Well, you see, your nation and your Miss Smith are a British product. Coelum non animum mutant, I’m afraid.”

  “That sounds like Latin,” said Flora. “Latin isn’t allowed here.”

  “Why in the world not?”

  “I don’t know; it’s a rule. Something to do with my grandfather, I believe. He wasn’t very good, you know, and taught the Orphans Latin phrases that grandmamma thought were improper. But, as she didn’t know Latin, I don’t know how she knew they were improper. I suppose she knew my grandpapa, and that was enough. Poor grandpapa, a shark had him, and we never mention him. Papa remembers him, and looks shocked if any one says his name. I think he must have been a rather agreeable rattle. So does Aunt Adelaide.”

  “Well, look here,” said Charles, “will you show me the island after this service is over?”

  “Oh, la la! We have to keep very quiet to-day, you know. It’s Sunday.”

  “You have the drollest ideas, Flora Smith. One would think it was a Jewish island and that this was Saturday. Anyhow, I don’t see that you’ve kept so very quiet so far.”

  “Ah, this is early, and no one much is about. I now put on my Sunday dress and my Sunday behaviour.”

  “I shall keep on my bathing-suit,” said Rosamond. “So that I can easily go in and out of the sea.”

  “My dear, I’ve told you you’ll have to come to service. You can’t come to service in your bathing-suit.”

  “Can’t I? Why not?”

  “Well, do they do that on your island?”

  Rosamond felt abashed, “I suppose not. But ours isn’t a desert island. I should have thought that here we could have dressed as we liked.”

  “We’re not savages here, thank you,” Flora said sharply, and Rosamond saw that she was offended, and turned red and unhappy. Charles was displeased with her too, and said, “It’s Rosamond who’s the savage. Forgive her rustic manners; she means no harm.”

  But Rosamond felt that Flora did not forgive her just yet for her rudeness, and this depressed her so much that she left them, and joined William by the sea and picked up shells. Of course, she thought, she should have known that people on desert islands would be sensitive about it, and would try to be extra civilised and well-dressed and proper just because it was a desert island.

  “What shells have you found?” asked William, and Rosamond, who liked shells but was ignorant of conchology, showed him a handful of the pretty, coloured things.

  “I am looking,” he said, “for a chiton and a club-spined sea-urchin. You might tell me if you come across either.”

  “I shouldn’t know them.”

  “Well, show me anything you find that looks odd.… See that oyster-catcher?”

  The oyster-catcher had alighted on his toes quite close to them. Rosamond looked at him, and forgot Flora.

  But presently she remembered, and said, “It must be nearly breakfast time. We must go and dress.”

  “I’m not coming up,” said William, “until I have found a chiton.”

  3

  Rosamond went up from the beach. She met a great many people, all looking very well dressed in their Sunday costumes of dyed cloth or skin. Rosamond felt wet and bare and shy, and hurried by along small wood paths until she reached the Yams. Outside house stood Mr. Albert Smith, who informed her that breakfast would be ready in ten minutes, and that he trusted she had slept well and felt better than when she had gone to bed last night. Rosamond had forgotten about last night, and how she had behaved in a manner not at all Smith, and she blushed and said that she had slept very well. Mr. Smith then inquired if she had been bathing, which Rosamond could not help thinking rather stupid of him, as she was in her wet bathing suit.

  She went in to where she had slept, and put on clothes and her white frock. She could not brush her teeth, as she had not got her toothbrush on the island, but she rubbed them with soap, combed her wet hair with a wooden comb which Mrs. Smith had lent her, and said her prayers, thanking God very much for her happy bathe and her beautiful island life, and asking him to confer on her more virtue and good sense, and on Flora Smith every imaginable happiness, and, if it should prove possible and consonant with his plans, to be so very good as to cause Flora to conceive for her some regard, however mild.

  She then went out into the veranda, where breakfast was laid. When the Albert Smiths and Thinkwells (except William) were assembled round the table, Mr. Smith said grace, and they sat down. Mrs. Smith poured out a beverage of hot water which had stood on some kind of leaf till it was green and bitter, and which she erroneously called “tea.” They ate bread-fruit and roasted yams, honey, fish, and various kinds of fruits. The Thinkwells ate much more than usual, as one does on picnics.

  “You seem to be quite recovered this morning, dear,” said Mrs. Smith kindly to Rosamond, as Rosamond ate her third piece of bread-fruit and honey.

  In the middle of breakfast William arrived, clad in white drill again, but looking very wet and sandy and tousled, and carrying his basin full of small sea creatures. He sat down without either having brushed his hair or said grace, merely remarking that he had seen on the beach what looked remarkably like a marine amblyrhynchus, and if so, Darwin had been wrong in supposing this creature a native only of the Galapagos Archipelago.

  “Darwin!” Mrs. Smith echoed. “Isn’t he the man who was always wrong?”

  “Comparatively seldom, I think,” Mr. Thinkwell said. “Charles Darwin, the scientist, my son means.”

  “There is no reason whatever,” said Mr. Smith, firmly, to his wife, “to believe that this man was of a wrong way of thought.” He turned to Mr. Thinkwell. “Mrs. Smith means that the unhappy Catholic priest who sojourned with us for a short while some years since had much to say in condemnation of the teachings of Charles Darwin, who, he affirmed, was an atheist of the deepest dye. Unfavourable tradition about this scientist, therefore, has gone down among the Zachary Macaulays and others of low mental equipment who are infected by Catholic error. But Miss Smith m
aintained always that Darwin was an excellent person, who wrote admirable treatises on the lower forms of creation. No doubt he was a protestant, which was why our misguided and unfortunate friend the priest condemned him. But that is no reason why we should fall into the same error.”

  Mr. Thinkwell remembered that, in 1855, the Origin of Species had not yet been published. It was quite a question what Miss Smith would have made of that. Mrs. Smith, looking confused, as she always did after having made a Roman Catholic remark, prayed Mr. Thinkwell to take some more food.

  When they had all finished, they discussed how they would spend the day. Mr. Thinkwell said that, in the course of the day, a boat from the Typee would come to take him and his family back to the schooner, where they would collect such of their belongings as they would require for a short sojourn on the island, arrange their plans with Captain Paul, and return. The Typee was to go off to-day or to-morrow, finish her trading cruise among the islands, and return in ten days or a fortnight to pick up the Thinkwells and take them back to Tahiti, where they would make suitable arrangements for the transport of such of the inhabitants of Orphan Island as might desire removal. Mr. Thinkwell spoke with his usual precision, but for once his speech did not adequately reflect his thought. He felt that he was conceding too much to this notion of leaving the island, a romantic idea unworthy of a sociologist. What if a large number should desire removal? Where? To what? The cost, which he knew not who would defray, was the least of many difficulties. Delay, he trusted, would lead to a growth of common sense on this subject. Meanwhile, he trusted, in speech, that Mr. Smith would not allow him and his family to be a burden on their hospitality, but to shift for themselves as regarded food and lodging.

  “Indeed,” Mr. Smith said, “you would be no burden. But, if you would prefer it. I could arrange that an empty house, with service, could be put at your disposal. As to subsequent arrangements, I do not know that a vessel of any great size will be required. We are not contemplating the wholesale transportation of our little nation, you know!”