Orphan Island

by Rose Macaulay

  Generously, he used his influence to make Peter Conolly’s painting the fashion. Peter was enabled to give up dentistry and sell as many pictures as he could paint, and Flora became rich.

  The island underwent—is now undergoing—an intellectual as well as a political renaissance. It is producing, for good or ill, a considerable body of indifferent literature and art. It also has a flourishing drama and stage. Learning in all branches has been extended and reinforced by the stock of it introduced by the Cambridge Thinkwells. William has been made Instructor in Science, and twentieth century views of the cosmos have supervened on the dying and despised Paleyology imparted by Miss Smith.

  As to William, as to Rosamond, it is scarcely worth while referring to them; it will be obvious to any one who has followed this narrative that they are very happy on Orphan Island. and want no more of life. If William has occasional desires to increase his stock of knowledge at European sources, to keep up with whatever may be going on in the scientific world, these are counterbalanced by the greater freedom and peace of his present life.

  And Rosamond still lives as in a dream come true. To make up for her abandoned dog—her chief and only acute regret—she has adopted a small, affectionate monkey.

  So the Thinkwells slipped into island life, and Cambridge, speculating from time to time curiously on their disappearance, knows them no more.

  3

  It is, of course, only a year since these events occurred. It is early yet. Early to predict the future, to foresee the manner of the development of this little community, so curiously increased last year by six souls. What changes will the new element in the end make? What will be the ultimate destiny of the island republic? Will it become, in a few years, as tyrannous, as unfair, as oligarchic in constitution and economic condition, as it was in the palmy days of the Smiths? Likely enough, since this is a way states have, under whatever government they may flourish. And will the ship watched for by old Jean come? A ship—an aeroplane—rescue in some form—who knows whether even now Orphan Island is not being thus visited? Or will another seventy years elapse before it is again heard of? Or will the islanders presently succeed in building crafts substantial enough to weather the Pacific and make (those who so desire) their own escape?

  And, when the island shall be found again, how will it appear to its new finders? Will it seem, in its Thinkwellian, 1923 stage of knowledge, as strange, as backward, as outmoded in learning and outlook, as it did to those who broke into it after its first seventy years of segregated history?

  A further question. If rescue should at any time present itself, how many will avail themselves of it? Will the Orphans, leaving their newly constituted republic and their now more prosperous homes, lightly adventure in unknown lands? Will the Smiths wish to leave their island (even diminished among men as they now are) and go out into a world which knows them not for aristocrats fallen from power? Will the Thinkwells want to return to England, to Cambridge, to London? Will Captain Paul and Mr. Merton desert their easy-going life for labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar?

  It is certain that Flora and Heathcliff and Peter, and many others of the young and adventurous, will take any opportunity they may get to see the world, as they call Great Britain. But it is by no means so certain that, should they ever see it, they would remain in it long. Why should they? It is cold; it rains; it has large towns; its vegetation is poor, its sea poorer. It has, in short, few advantages over Orphan Island, beyond mere novelty and size.

  Unanswerable questions all of these, on which this tale must end. Across the future of Orphan Island, as across all futures, is hung a curtain of mist, on which is scrawled a question mark.

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

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  ISBN: 9781448204267

  eISBN: 9781448203673

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