Orphan Island (26 page)

“Oh, yes, worse. We have nettles and brambles and wasps and hornets and snakes and mosquitoes and harvest bugs and barbed wire. One comes home torn and swollen and bleeding. The country is very dangerous everywhere. And London still more so, because of motor traffic.”

“What's that?”

“Monstrous machines on wheels, that rush roaring along the streets and knock people down. But,” Charles added, “don't let me alarm or depress you about London. You'll like it very much. The great thing is to be
inside
one of the machines, then you're safe.… I shall simply love showing it all to you. I want you to meet all my friends; they mean well, though you'll think them queer, I dare say, at first. Anyhow, they'll adore you.”

“Will they? I shall like that, of course.”

Thus amicably conversing, they climbed to the top of the hill, and there rested in the shade of a thicket and ate their meal. The lagoon lay below them, a shimmering jewel under the hot noonday, and on the reef half a mile out crawled the little figures of Rosamond and of William. Other little figures fished from boats or rafts in the lagoon, and here and there a boat bobbed on the open sea beyond.

“Always the same old view,” said Flora. “But
in a short while we shall be sailing away out of sight of it, making for the World. Dear world.… I can scarcely believe it, Charles. I am afraid of waking. Such exciting things are dreams, not truth.”

“That,” said Charles, “is exactly what I am feeling about you, Flora. And I am afraid of waking, too.”

MR. THINKWELL, after an excellent dinner at the Yams, and an hour's rest after it in his own house (he really felt that he had spent a rather arduous morning), strolled out again with the intention of making the acquaintance of some of the Orphans in their dwellings or at their work. He had declined the company of Mr. Albert Smith on this expedition, for he felt that, unescorted by Smiths, he would be the better able to make friends with such of the lower classes as might come his way.

He walked first to a little colony of small, inferior houses, scarcely more than huts, that stood on the edge of the wood not far from Belle Vue. Outside some of these small dwellings women sat, with infants, sewing, or beating out bark, or stripping the fibrous covering from cocoa-nuts, or otherwise utilising one or another of the products of this useful nut. Most of the women seemed busy in some way. In an enclosed pool at the edge of the lagoon some of them washed clothes.

“Good-afternoon,” Mr. Thinkwell said, accosting thus a woman engaged with a cocoa-nut. She looked up respectfully, and returned his greeting.

Mr. Thinkwell then inquired what, at the moment,
she did, and she informed him that she was extracting oil for lamps.

“Do you,” he asked, “work all day at these nuts?”

She said no, sometimes she made or washed clothes, cleaned her house, and prepared meals for herself and her family.

“It does not sound,” said he, “as if you had much leisure in your day.”

At this she behaved like Lord Nelson, inquiring what leisure might be, for (said she, in effect), she never saw it.

“I mean,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “that you are always busy.”

The poor woman agreed that she was, for her part, always one to be that. Some people could be happy idle, others could not, that was how the world was made, and God made us all. Always busy; yes, that was her. And her bits of work helped out her husband's wages; he worked in the woods for Mr. Albert Smith.

“If it isn't impertinent,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “(and I merely ask because I am collecting facts of all kinds about the life here), how much does your husband earn?”

Her reply was in terms of shells and pieces of coral, and was therefore somewhat obscure to him.

“Is that a good living wage?” he asked her; and she answered that they could just do on it, no more, with what she herself earned.

“I see. A hard life.” Mr. Thinkwell pondered. “Are the workers contented,” he asked, “with their wages, the distribution of property, their conditions generally?”

The woman said that was what the men talked
about when they got together, and they weren't contented at all, but what was the good of fancying things different, when they were as they were, and always had been?

“I see you are a fatalist,” said Mr. Thinkwell, and changed the subject, asking her if she hoped to leave the island, to which she replied that this would make a nice change if it should come about, though it would be a bit of an upset too, with baby and all, but she was sure she didn't know if it would happen. Her husband thought that the poor people like themselves would be left out of the trip.

“Not at all,” Mr. Thinkwell assured her. “There will be no discriminations of the kind you suggest, whatever may be arranged. I gather, then, that you would like, yourself, to go?” He felt that he ought to be discouraging, but to use influence was all against his habit of scientific inquiry.

“Well,” she said,” one does get a bit tired of always doing the same work in the same place, year after year. Yes; I'd like a change very well. So would my husband. Would there be good living now, in England, for people like us?”

Mr. Thinkwell hesitated. Would there?

“Well,” he said, “England is perhaps a little overcrowded. Yes; decidedly overcrowded.… But all this can be settled late Shall I interrupt your work on the nuts if I sit down and talk to you for a while?”

For he had a desire to become acquainted with the minds and points of view of female Orphans. The female Orphan, polite though a little shy, cleared a place for him among the cocoa-nuts, and he sat down on the ground by her side and conversed.

But the conversation did not prove a great success. Mr. Thinkwell was not very much used to conversing, except with Cambridge people, who know about colleges and planets and intelligent things, and whose minds one can easily follow. He did not talk a great deal to women, and to poor women scarcely at all. His manner, though kind, was a little alarming to persons of a muddled and incoherent habit of mind and speech; he seemed to take them up rather too precisely and thoroughly, and continually to be assuming that their remarks meant more than was the case, which, though flattering, was confusing. For his part, he was interested by such persons, but at times a good deal puzzled, since their minds seemed to move in a mysterious way which he could not by any means always follow.

So, on the whole, the conversation between Mr. Thinkwell and the poor female Orphan was not very fruitful. He was interested, however, to discover in her a sentiment of great loyalty and respect towards Miss Smith.

“Ah, there ain't many like her,” she said, with conviction, and Mr. Thinkwell agreed that this was probably the case. But, when he pursued the question as to where, in detail, lay Miss Smith's claim to admiration and loyalty, he did not arrive at any more than one arrives at when discussing the Royal Family of Great Britain with one of its loyal subjects. Miss Smith was Miss Smith: she ruled Smith island, and was great and good, and if
she
had her way no one would ever want.

Loyalty to the reigning sovereign: a widespread, though by no means a universal trait, thought Mr. Thinkwell.

Presently, wishing his companion good-day with great friendliness, he left her, and made a tour of the shopping quarter, which interested him very much. He made several small purchases, having been provided by Mr. Denis Smith with some island money, and had a little conversation at each stall about the way in which the various commodities were produced. He then paid a visit to the workshops, for he was like the children and parents in Miss Edgeworth's books, not satisfied until he had watched the manufacture of the articles he saw through all its processes, from the very beginning. He found the workmen, like workmen everywhere, very interesting and intelligent company. They expressed, for the most part, some curiosity as to the world beyond the island, and considerable desire to see it.

“We don't want to be left behind if any one is going,” was the general sentiment. “Though they do tell us we shall probably starve if we leave the island.”

Mr. Thinkwell, though himself a little uneasy on this point, informed them, somewhat disingenuously, he felt, that, in Great Britain anyhow, one need not actually starve, as those who were unable to earn a livelihood received support from the state. The Orphans thought this an excellent idea, and became more than ever eager to depart to that better land.

Mr. Thinkwell was conversing thus with a maker of pig-skin shoes (who, he learnt, was, like other shoemakers, an atheist), and to the barber (who was, like other barbers, a chatterbox) when they
were interrupted by Mr. Albert Edward Smith, who had come for a shave and a hair-cut.

“How now?” he inquired blandly, looking a trifle vexed when he saw Mr. Thinkwell and the little group about him. “Work hours are not over, I think, Dobbs and Tomkins, though conversation time would seem to have taken its place. A time for everything, you know.” He indicated with his hand this remark carved on a neighbouring tree.

“Tomkins,” he told Mr. Thinkwell, “is our barber. And Dobbs, I believe, has a good deal of work in hand. Are those shoes of mine ready yet, Dobbs?”

“Not quite, sir.” The shoemaker fell more vigorously to work, and the barber hurried into his tent to prepare his implements.

“A shave and a hair-cut,” repeated Mr. Thinkwell. “I have, of course, perceived that both occur on the island, but I should be interested to see the process. Have you scissors?”

“Miss Smith,” said her son, “had a pair in her reticule, together with other convenient articles, when she was cast up. They have been in our family ever since.” He produced them from the pocket of his coat. “Other inferior pairs have, of course, been manufactured of sharply ground shell, which the Orphans use. These sharp shells also serve to shave us. If it would interest you to watch Tomkins at work, pray do so.”

Mr. Thinkwell accompanied him into the barber's tent, and watched with some interest while Tomkins covered his patron's chin with a luxuriant lather of cocoa-nut soap and hot sea-water, and proceeded to scrape it with the sharp edge of a very finely ground shell until it was smooth. The process seemed not uncomfortable, as Mr. Smith's expression
remained bland and calm. The barber then, taking the Smith family scissors, cut an inch off his client's hair and combed and trimmed his exquisite whiskers. He then dressed both hair and whiskers with a very sweetly smelling lotion, until Mr. Smith reeked delightfully to heaven.

“An excellent preparation, sir,” said Tomkins to Mr. Thinkwell. “If I may say so, it would do your own hair good. A little thin on the top, I see, sir; and some gray hairs on the temples Perhaps you would allow me to sell you a shellful.”

Mr. Thinkwell allowed him.

“If I may say so, sir,” said the barber, “Mr. Albert Smith has always used this preparation, and his hair and whiskers do credit to any gentleman. Scarcely any gray to be seen—and only the tiniest bare patch on the crown.”

“His bare patch,” said Mr. Thinkwell, not vain but accurate, “is, I think, larger than my own.”

Mr. Smith changed the subject.

“If you have any fancy to visit Hibernia, Mr. Thinkwell, I shall be very happy to escort you there.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Thinkwell, and wondered how he could avoid this and visit Hibernia by himself.

At this point in the conversation there appeared at the barber's entrance a very neat, elegant, slim, young-old gentleman, who seemed in the earlier forties. There was something in his aspect, and in the air with which he wore his close-fitting costume of smooth gray bark fabric, and neat lizard-skin shoes, which indicated the dandy. Behind one ear he had stuck a small scarlet hibiscus bud, and he swung a light cane. He was exquisitely shaved and perfumed, and had a cared-for looking
white skin. Mr. Thinkwell had often seen him about, but did not know his name.

He stopped at the entrance to the tent.

“I see you are engaged, Tomkins.… Perhaps, Uncle Bertie, you would introduce me to Mr. Thinkwell, whom I haven't yet had the pleasure of speaking to.”

Mr. Albert Smith looked at him a little coldly.

“This is my nephew,” he said to Mr. Thinkwell. “Mr. Hindley Smith-Rimski.”

“How do you do?” said Mr. Thinkwell.

“Very well, I thank you,” replied Mr. Hindley Smith-Rimski, bowing very affably. “I am charmed to have this opportunity of making your acquaintance, sir.”

Mr. Thinkwell remembered “Caroline's eldest boy,” who had been a leader in that mincing fashion, that affectation of personal elegance, which had arisen among young men at the close of the last century and had affected Miss Smith so disagreeably. He seemed, in spite of his grandmother, to have reverted to floral decoration behind the ear, which suited him remarkably well. He seemed an exquisite man, the flower of island civilisation. One could imagine that he might hold the office of Arbiter Elegantiæ among his peers.

“As Tomkins can't at present cut my hair,” he said, “I shall stroll over to Hibernia and see Peter Conolly. Do you care to come, Mr. Thinkwell?”

Mr. Thinkwell was glad to do so. He thought that Hindley Smith-Rimski would be a better escort than Albert Edward Smith, whom they left in the barber's chair having a shampoo.

“MY good uncle,” said Hindley, as they took the path round the shore towards Hibernia, “is rather a tedious old bore. I should think you would be glad to be rid of him sometimes.”

“Well,” Mr. Thinkwell admitted, “he is very kind, but I certainly find Mr. Denis Smith, for example, rather easier company.”

“Oh, Uncle Denis is good company enough. But not quite always available. This afternoon, for instance, he dined well, and … in short, he dined well. Dear Uncle Denis; he is very amusing, but it is rather vulgar and Orphan of him to get drunk so crudely. For my part, there is a berry I chew, which soothes and stimulates but doesn't intoxicate, so I am never unpresentable, like some of my family.… Well, so we are all to see the great world at last. It will be very diverting. Is it all as absurd as this island, I wonder, or can one take it seriously?”