Orphan Island (7 page)

William, a patient and persistent boy, interested neither in missionaries, Holy Orders, nor Miss Smith, at this point said, “What I mean is, don't you, all of you, want to leave the island and come away? Because, you see, this is a
desert
island, and you were
cast up
on it.” He thought the Orphans did not quite realise their situation.

They all looked at him.

“Come away … leave the island …” they repeated, in some excitement.

“Why, my boy?” said an elderly lady, interrupting the excitement in a dry voice. “All this gadding about for change of scene—no one thought of it when
I
was young. But I dare say the young people are all for travel, if they get a chance of it.
Seeing life, pleasure-seeking, and all that. Miss

Smith has always said——”

The old lady was interrupted by a clear young voice.

“To be sure we want to come away. I do, I know. Oh, Lord, I am sure I shall be prodigiously glad to see the world.”

Mrs. Albert Edward Smith clicked with her tongue, disapprovingly, thinking really more about her sewing. Mr. Smith said, in his fine, mellow voice, “That will do, Flora. Your views, I think, were not asked.” He then addressed himself to William. “You seem to be proposing, my dear young gentleman, a complete emigration of our population to some other country. A little wholesale, surely. We have, you see, our roots, our family and national life, our means of livelihood, our history and traditions, here on this island, which I observe that you describe as ‘desert.' Of course we know, for we have always been taught so here, that Great Britain, the country from which we originally emigrated, and which you now inhabit, is the world's hub, peculiarly chosen by the Deity as the centre of His beneficent purposes towards His universe. We have, indeed, instructed by Miss Smith”—he raised his palm hat, and looked round to make sure that every one else did the same—“ taken Great Britain, her constitution, her customs, and the unrivalled purity of her domestic and social life, for our model in this island colony, as you will observe very soon if you spend any time among us. But we are an independent community, I may say a
principality
, and we have, I think, no desire permanently and as a nation to abandon our island home. Of course a little travel for some of us is another matter, and would be both instructive,
beneficial, and entertaining. One ought to see the wider world. What say you, my love?” he inquired of his lady.

“Oh, I,” she said placidly. “I am a home-lover, you know, my dear. Travel is all very well for gentlemen; makes a nice change, don't it; but what do we women want with it? That's what your mamma has always said, Bertie. Women's business is in the home.”

Mr. Smith indulgently displayed his wife's womanly reply to the audience.

“And yet,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “Miss Smith herself travelled rather far afield, if I may remind you of that.”

“Ah.” Miss Smith's son's indulgent smile changed to a more reverent expression. “My mother, Mr. Thinkwell, is no ordinary woman. Almost a man's grasp, a man's intelligence and knowledge of affairs. And yet, sir, a womanly woman, if ever there was one.”

Charles reflected that Miss Smith sounded much like the late Queen Victoria as viewed by herself and her subjects about the time of the Diamond Jubilee.

“But,” resumed Mr. Smith, “we will discuss all these things together later on. We must not be so inhospitable as to keep you standing here. You must all come up to my little residence and partake of refreshment.”

At the thought of that, the landing party brightened, particularly Mr. Merton, who, though he did not know much about Dr. O'Malley, knew enough of islands to be sure that, in all these years, the Orphans would have learnt what liquids best to ferment.

Mr. Albert Smith motioned to his fellow islanders,
indicating that they were to part and make a way through which the visitors might pass up from the beach.

“My love,” he said to his wife, “we will conduct our guests to the Yams. You had better call the servants, and desire them to go on and prepare refreshments.”

Mrs. Smith rose, with a sigh of stoutness, and called “Heavenly-Mind! True-Peace! Where in the world have those girls got to? The naughtiest maids any one ever had, upon my word. Oh, there you are, girls. Run up to the Yams and set the table in the veranda with fruit and drinks. Make haste now.”

The two young women hurried off. Mr. Thinkwell mused on the question of class differences and domestic service as developed in small communities, but his comment was merely on the girl's names.

“Heavenly-Mind? True-Peace? Curious names, are they not?”

Mrs. Smith looked as if she did not see anything curious about them or any other names, but Mr. Smith said, “They are taken from a book which was among the few possessions my mother managed to bring with her from the shipwreck. It is called
The Holy War
, by John Bunyan. A good many of our people have named their children out of that book. … I trust that no cocoa-nuts will fall on your heads.”

They had now entered the woods, leaving the crowd behind them on the beach, and were following a path that led through thickets of luxuriant trees and shrubs. A thousand sweetnesses, like fleeting thoughts, assailed the hot, still, brooding air. In the dense green overhead monkeys chatted brightly, and radiant parrots uttered sharp, staccato cries,
while paradise and humming birds flashed brilliant colours on the woody gloom. With soft, continuous thuds cocoa-nuts fell on emerald grass; with squashier sounds the ripe golden bread-fruit slipped softly from over-weighted boughs and tumbled through dark, glossy leaves to the ground. Rosamond picked one up and bit it. It was as good as she had always heard.

“Books!” said Mr. Thinkwell. “I had not thought of that. Have you any other books on the island?”

“My father,” said Mr. Smith, in the reserved voice he used for Dr. O'Malley, “had, I believe, when wrecked, one or two books in his pockets, of a humorous nature. Unfortunately they were also, my mother discovered, rather coarse, and she has never let them circulate among us. He also had one in Latin, which we cannot read, and a story called
Wuthering Heights
, which has always been of great interest to us here. It is the only book we have except for a little volume of my mother's called
Mixing in Society, or Correct Conduct
, a manual of etiquette, which gives us a picture of domestic life in England to-day (and I cannot, by the way, think that it compares very favourably with our island life).
The Holy War
is more fanciful, more of the nature of what my mother calls an
allegory
. We have also a few books of devotion belonging to the French missionary, but, perhaps fortunately, they are in Latin, and therefore cannot be read.”

“Miss Smith has no Bible, then,” said Mr. Merton.

“No, sir. To her great distress, she did not remember to take that book with her from the ship. But she had such a close acquaintance with it that she was able to bring us all up on its stories, and to
supply texts for every sermon that has been preached during our sixty-eight years here.”

“You have many sermons?”

“One every Sunday morning, naturally, as well as Christmas Day, Good Friday, the anniversary of our coming to the island, and my mother's birthday. We used to keep also the birthday of Queen Victoria of England, but of late years that has been merged in that of my mother.”

“How many parsons?” asked Mr. Merton, rather anxiously. But at the answer he brightened.

“Only one at a time. No more are necessary. Our first clergyman was ordained in 1870; he was an orphan of Scottish origin, and our two subsequent clergy have been his son and grandson. My mother found that the lads of Scottish descent were, as a rule, more apt at theology than the others.”

“Church of England?” asked Mr. Merton.

“Ay, indeed. My mother was always very strict on that subject. Her father, you know, was a vicar. Our church here is the Protestant and Reformed Church of England. Certain popish errors have given us a good deal of trouble from the very first,” Mr Smith added coldly, “and they were augmented by the brief visit of the Catholic missionary last century. But we do our best to suppress them.” He glanced reprovingly at his wife waddling at his side, but she was not attending.

“Also, we have other heresies. My mother has always said that heresies of all descriptions abound in Great Britain.
Dissenters
, she calls those who hold them. We too are not without our dissenters.”

“The history,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “of your religious life here would be of great interest to me to hear, sometime.” For, as a sociologist, he held
that in no matter is the trend and character of a society better shown than in its religions. “Have you,” he added, “atheists, sceptics, and agnostics?”

“Unfortunately,” replied Mr. Smith, “and extraordinary and terrible as it must seem, we have always had atheists among us. You would scarcely think it credible that here, in this remote island where we have been so mercifully preserved, there should be found any who doubt the existence of a beneficent and all-wise Deity, but so it is. … As to the other sects you inquire after, I don't know them.”

Mr. Thinkwell perceived that the words sceptic and agnostic had not formed part of the vocabulary imparted by Miss Smith to the orphans.

“Here,” said Mr. Smith, “we are.”

THEY came out into a clearing, in which stood a fine dwelling built of logs and plastered with mud. It was surrounded by a garden, enclosed from the wood by a palisade, and on the gate was cut “The Yams.” Charles noted, without surprise, that no yams appeared to grow on the premises, or even very near.

“My little place,” said Mr. Smith, ushering them through the gate. “No palace, as you see, but it suffices for our homely life. We Smiths, though between us we own all the island, are not flashy people.”

“How the devil,” muttered Charles to Captain Paul, “do they come to own all the island?”

“Doubtless,” Captain Paul sardonically murmured, “they obtained it from that source of all temporal and spiritual bounty, Miss Smith.”

Mr. Smith conducted them through his garden to his verandahed house. When all the party was within the palisade, he carefully shut and bolted the garden gate.

“Lest others intrude,” he said.

And, indeed, the house was now surrounded by a considerable crowd, who had come up from the beach by other paths, and were peering through the palings. As Mr. Smith closed the gate, a tart female voice ejaculated, “'Pon my soul, Bertie!”

“Aunt Adelaide is here,” said Flora, rather maliciously, to her papa. “Dying to come in.”

Mr. Smith gave no sign of attention. The tart female voice exclaimed loudly, through the palisade, “No such thing. Stuff and nonsense, child. I haven't the least desire to talk to our visitors in
this
house. Shouldn't get in a word edgeways. All the same, Bertie, it's pretty impudent the way you've carried 'em off.”

The visitors saw, between the rails of the fence, a fine figure of a woman clad in rich skins and feathers and hung with ropes of pearls. A monkey-skin bag jingled on her wrist, and a tiny black monkey peered under her arm. The face above this rich attire was large and red and proud. Obviously one of the caste of Smith, and a great lady on the island. She was seated in a kind of hammock, carried by two West African negroes.

Rosamond looked at her, embarrassed, feeling that their host was not being very courteous to this lady relative of his. The lady caught her eye and nodded to her.

“You seem a nice little thing. Ain't she, Sam?” (She addressed a gentleman at her side.) “My good brother Bertie, because he's the eldest son, pretends he's the only Smith on the island. Don't you believe him. You must all come and see
me
next. I can do you as well as he can, and a trifle better too.
My
palm wine is flavoured with turtle. … Flora, you must bring them round to me later. I want to hear a world of things from them.”

Flora nonchalantly nodded.

Mr. Smith meanwhile ushered the guests into his verandah and bade them be seated. The seats were wooden chairs, made comfortable with cushions of
brown cocoa-nut cloth stuffed with feathers. They were set round a table laid with fruits and drinks, the latter being served in cocoa-nut goblets. The two servant girls, Heavenly-Mind and True-Peace, were still setting out these refreshments, assisted by a small black child.

“That will do, Zachary,” said Mrs. Smith to this infant. “You can run away now and help cook.”

“A negroid child,” commented Mr. Thinkwell. “A descendant, I presume, of the black attendants of your missionary.”

“Their youngest child,” Mr. Smith replied. “They are prolific, the Zacharies.”

“That is their name?”

“Yes. They are called Zachary Macaulay. So are all their children. They were understood to say that, where they came from, most of the population bear that name, in memory of some one who was kind to them long ago. My mother says there was a slave-liberator of that name when she was young.”

“Interesting,” said Mr. Thinkwell.

“But his work was in vain,” interpolated Flora, languidly using her fan, “for now these poor Zacharies are slaves again.”

“You employ unpaid labour, then?”

“No one pays the Zacharies. They don't expect it,” and Mr. Merton said, “Hear, hear,” and drained his cocoa-nut.

“The lower orders among ourselves, however,” added Mr. Smith, “work for hire.”

“The lower orders! You have them, then, even here?”

“I should say so,” said Flora.

“Why?” asked Charles, preparing to get
sarcastic. “
How
are they lower? When did they become lower?”