Orphan Island (6 page)

“Well, it's your show. Later, perhaps?”

“Later, we shall see.”

As they steamed nearer, they could see, through their glasses, the forms and faces of the crowd
on the beach. Brown faces, freckled faces, red faces, sallow faces, white faces, rosy faces of children—unmistakable faces of white-skinned people who have been for long exposed to fierce suns. Bare brown legs and arms; but, except the small children, the Orphans were not naked; they wore garments of brown stuff which, said Mr. Merton, came from the palm tree, or of a lighter and finer material which might, the trader said, be made from bark. The ladies' costumes were skirt-shaped, and fell to the knee, where they were tied in, like the Princess dresses of the eighteen-seventies; the gentlemen wore trousers, also only to the knee. Many of the ladies seemed also adorned with coloured feathers. This much the arrivals could plainly see as their schooner neared the island shores.

They dropped anchor at a gap in the coral reef which was the entrance to the lagoon. Here they lowered a boat, in which the Thinkwells, Captain Paul, and Mr. Merton were rowed in.

Strange it was, thought Charles, very lovely and strange, the voyage through that blue and glassy sea, where swam fish more brightly-hued than rainbows, more oddly shaped than Gothic devils, each dip of the oars carrying the boat nearer that land unvisited for close on seventy years. Strange and lovely and exciting to Charles, and like a poet's dream; strange, exciting, and deeply interesting to Mr. Thinkwell, the sociologist; to William, the youth of science, natural enough, and a new field for exploration and investigation. And to Rosamond this and the whole voyage were like sailing out of an alien, irrelevant world of illusion into reality, to Rosamond it was like coming home. But, seeing so many persons gathered together, Rosamond felt them too many, preferring islands to be solitary.
Would the Orphans be bored that they had come, breaking thus into the happy peace of seventy years? Oh, they did not look bored; excited they looked, and pleased and amazed, as they ran out into the lapping waves and helped to pull the boat ashore.

When they were all got out, and stood in a group on the beach, surrounded by the population, there stepped forward a large, handsome, dignified man with sweeping chestnut whiskers (a fashion affected by most of the elder gentlemen, though the majority of the younger were completely shaved) and addressed them with great politeness.

“Good-day, my dear sirs. Good-day, madam. This is an unexpected and a quite unwonted pleasure. No one has called here for a prodigious great while. Very probably you are missionaries.”

“NOT at all,” said Mr. Thinkwell. “Not in the least. We are, in point of fact, a rescue party.” He paused on the phrase.
Were
they? Less and less, now he saw the size of this community, he thought so. Still, for the moment he let it pass at that. “We are,” he added, “a little delayed, I admit, but I can assure you that no time was lost after we were informed of your predicament.”

“Our predicament. …” The word was perhaps outside the Orphan vocabulary (which must, after all, have been limited) for they repeated it, puzzled.

“Your plight,” Mr. Thinkwell amended. “Your being, I mean, marooned upon this island, all those years ago.”

“He is referring,” said a bright-faced young woman, languidly fanning herself with a palm fan, “to the beginning of our history, when our grandparents came over.”

“Our parents,” corrected a man of about fifty.

“Ourselves,” quavered a little hook-nosed old lady. “Eight years old, I was, and I recollect it as if it was yesterday. I recollect the shipwreck, and poor Anne-Marie that was drowned. I recollect——”

“There's plenty of us who recollect as well as you, Leah,” another old female voice interrupted. “Let the gentlemen talk.”

“Very Victorian,” murmured Charles, delighted.

“You have quite a community here,” said Mr. Merton, complimenting them. “Quite a little nation. Houses, roads, and all that sort of thing. Very complete.”

“Haven't you houses and roads in your country?” asked the young woman who had spoken before, and Mr. Merton laughed loudly.

“That's good; that's quite good, young lady.” He was delighted with her, because he saw that she was handsome as well as pert. “Quite good,” he said again.

“What
is
your country?” inquired another Orphan. “You will have come a great way to visit us.”

“From Great Britain,” Mr. Thinkwell said. “The island from which your community originally sailed. Yes, it is a considerable way.”

“It is uncommonly civil and obliging of you to have come so far to see us,” said the chestnut-whiskered gentleman, who seemed important, like some kind of official, or cabinet minister. “We will do our best to make your visit agreeable. I hope you will stay for some time. You are just in time for the season.”

“The season?”

“Oh, we have, twice in the year, a month or so of unusual gaiety and dissipations. Parties, balls, routs, and such affairs. We have a famous time. The ladies are chiefly responsible, I needn't say.” He looked roguish, as if he might add “Bless their hearts,” like a gentleman out of Thackeray. Rosamond observed that the young woman with the palm looked at him with a kind of cool, tolerant scorn, and inferred that she was his daughter.

“She is beautiful,” thought Rosamond. “How
beautiful she is. Her eyes shine, and her skin, and she has a red flower over each ear. And pearl ear rings. She is like a princess.”

The young woman's dark, bright glance met Rosamond's, held it for a moment, with negligent, appraising interest, and passed on to Charles.

“We are fortunate,” said Mr. Thinkwell. “It will be very agreeable to see something of your social life.”

“I see,” said the other gentleman, “that you have a charming young lady in your party. Your daughter, perhaps?”

Mr. Thinkwell agreed. “Indeed,” he added, “we ought to introduce ourselves. This is Captain Paul, of the schooner
Typee
; this is Mr. Merton. My own name is Thinkwell, and these are my sons and daughter, Charles, William, and Rosamond.”

Several of the more important-looking Orphans bowed with some ceremony, and said, “We are delighted to make your acquaintance. We hope you all do very well.”

The chestnut-whiskered gentleman then spoke again, saying that his name was Albert Edward Smith.

“Indeed!” said Mr. Thinkwell. “Smith is perhaps a name frequently to be met with on your island, as on ours.”

At this Mr. Smith straightened himself a little more, as, indeed, did several other of the prouder-looking Orphans.

“Frequently, no, sir. Not at all frequently. We are not a large family, we Smiths, but I think we may say we are of some importance. We descend from Miss Charlotte Smith.” To the Thinkwells' surprise, at this name all present bowed their heads.

“Then,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “
did
she marry the doctor? I thought she would.”

“You seem to know something of my mother's and father's affairs, sir,” said Mr. Smith, with a grave dignity that became him well.

“A little only. The merest outline. The name, though? It goes down in the female line here?”

“No, sir. Certainly not. That would be an odd notion indeed. But my mother, Miss Charlotte Smith” (again every one inclined) “naturally
her
name goes down.”

“Rather than your father's. … O'Malley, was it not?”

“My mother preferred that it should be so.” Mr. Smith spoke now with some coldness, and the visitors inferred that the memory of Dr. O'Malley was not greatly esteemed on the island.

Mr. Smith changed the subject.

“We must not keep you standing on the beach in this inhospitable manner and in this sun,” he said. “You must come, all of you, and have some rest and refreshment. I hope, while you stay, that you will be the guests of myself and some of my friends. I am afraid that my house won't accommodate the whole party. Perhaps you, sir, and your daughter will be my guests. Allow me to present to you Mrs. Albert Smith, my wife. My love!”

Mrs. Albert Smith came forward. She was a large lady, very calm, very fat, and very brown, with a black moustache. She looked Spanish, for she was the daughter of a Spanish orphan, and she looked stupid, for so she was. She was sewing, with a sharp wooden needle, at some garment of fibrous cloth that she carried.

“I was saying, my dear, that we shall be delighted if Mr. and Miss Thinkwell will stay with us during their visit here. Shall we not?”

“Very pleased, I'm sure,” said Mrs. Smith, and the visitors learned subsequently that this was a favourite remark of hers. She was amiable, but lacked initiative.

“Allow me also,” continued Mr. Smith, “to present our youngest daughter, Flora. Our home child, for all the others have left the nest.”

Miss Flora Smith, the young lady with pearl ear-rings and a palm fan, inclined her head politely enough to the party. There seemed, however, to be something in her father's speech which annoyed her, for she gave him a coldish glance, then turned away, linking her arm in that of another girl who stood near her.

“Doesn't like her papa,” thought Charles. “Expect he talks too much. Puffed up with being a Smith, that's what ails him. And mamma's an ass. I dare say home life in the nest is a bit of a bore. I'm not sure if I like Flora, though; she's stuck up.”

“It is most kind of you, sir,” Mr. Thinkwell said, “to offer us hospitality. We shall, of course, be delighted to accept.”

“Speaking for myself, sir,” Captain Paul put in, “I fear I must get back to my ship for the night. I have rather a job crew; don't like leaving them to their own devices too long. What about you, Merton?”

“Oh, I think I shall stop ashore for to-night, anyhow,” said Mr. Merton.

William, a downright and simple youth, who had been puzzled for some time, now blurted out to the Orphans in general, “But I say, don't you
want to be
rescued
? We came to
rescue
you, you know.”

Every one looked at him. After a pause, a voice was heard in undertone: “I said from the first that they were missionaries,” and another, “Where is the Reverend? He must talk to them.”

A tall, lanky young man stepped forward. Red-haired he was, with high cheekbones and a skin that was freckled instead of tanned. One expected from him the voice and speech of North Britain, but he spoke without much more of these than was discernible in the other Orphans.

“You are very good, my dear sir”—he thus addressed William—“but we already have religion. We are all baptized members of the Christian church. It is my part to look to that. I am the clergyman here, you see.”

William blinked at him stupidly. But Mr. Thinkwell, quicker to understand, put out his hand, explaining.

“A very natural error. Most natural. But my son was not referring to
spiritual
rescue. He meant, do you not desire to be removed from this island and conveyed elsewhere?”

The clergyman bowed.

“Pardon me,” he said. “A natural error, as you say. You see, we once had a missionary here. He had escaped from a shipwreck in a small boat, with a black man and woman whom he had brought with him from Africa as Christian exhibits, where with to convert the South Sea Islanders. That was near the end of the nineteenth century, before I can remember. My grandfather was then the clergyman here. The missionary was a French Jesuit. He was very anxious to save us all; a most earnest man, one's parents say. He denied
the validity of our Orders, preached papal infallibility, and denounced scanty female attire and the “berso veed,” as he called it. That is French for not having a great number of children; he spoke French when he was excited. He started our religious dissensions, and made a good deal of trouble, which lasts even now. There is a sect here to-day which denies our Orders and preaches the pope of Rome.” He seemed to glance at Mrs. Albert Edward Smith, who was placidly sitting on the sand and sewing. Perhaps, though she looked no theologian, her Spanish descent told.…

“Unfortunately,” continued the clergyman, “that poor missionary perished prematurely, in a no-popery riot, and was afterwards eaten by his black converts. That popery was an error this island was always taught, by Miss Smith.” (Again a general bow.)

“What happened to the niggers?” William inquired.

“They and their children are still with us,” said Mr. Albert Smith. “They work for members of the Smith family, and are, I am happy to say, now Protestants.”

“And from where,” inquired Mr. Merton, who knew about things like that, from having been an Anglican missionary, “do your Orders derive, sir?”

“Naturally, from Miss Smith,” said the young clergyman, with simplicity.

“Miss Smith?” Mr. Merton smiled. “She ordained the first parson, did she?”

“She ordains all the parsons, sir,” said her son, Mr. Albert Smith, with some dignity. “Who else should?”

Mr. Thinkwell was startled.

“You don't mean to say——Do I infer, then, that
Miss Smith is still living?”

They all stared at him.

“My dear sir”—Mr. Smith's tone was mildly remonstrative—“ you surely did not imagine that she was dead?”

Mr. Thinkwell was embarrassed.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Smith; I had, to tell you the truth, half supposed it to be probable. Your mother must be advanced in years, I think?”

“Ninety-eight,” replied Mr. Smith. “We are keeping her birthday in a fortnight. She doesn't, of course, get about very much in these days, but her mind is still active. She attends to all affairs of government herself—with constitutional advice, of course.”

A curious murmur—was it of loyalty or otherwise?—rippled among a section of the crowd. Mr. Albert Smith, standing very upright, one hand grasping each chestnut whisker, fixed the populace with a firm and prominent gaze.