Orphan Island Read online

  “What is interesting, Rosamond?” Mr. Thinkwell somewhat sharply asked her, for this inattentive habit in his child annoyed him, both because it is tiresome in a companion and because it vexed him to see in Rosamond a vague and wandering mind. Sometimes he was afraid that Rosamond had taken in some ways after her poor mother, an excellent creature, but with an inadequate power of response to himself. But he knew that these two were in reality very different, for the thoughts of the wife and mother had been engrossed mainly by practical matters, whereas those of the daughter appeared to stray in some less useful direction, except, indeed, when they were, as was frequently the case, upon things to eat.

  Rosamond, recalled to the moment by her father’s question, replied readily but inaptly, assuming that her father had been reading the morning newspaper, that she supposed it was the state of Europe which was, as usual, a little interesting. Possibly Central Europe. … This she hazarded with the air of a child making a good guess.

  “Not to you, my dear Rosamond,” Mr. Thinkwell replied, “as I believe you don’t yet know the difference between Yugo-Slavia and Czecho-Slovakia.”

  “She never will,” put in Charles, entering the room at this moment. “She doesn’t know the difference between any two things, unless they’re to eat. She can’t distinguish between women and men, nor between the Georgian poets. She mixes up the Sitwells and John Drinkwater and calls them both Drinkwell, to rhyme with us. The poor child’s mind is, so far, entirely undiscriminating. What’s that chart you have, father? It looks like islands.”

  “It is islands,” Mr. Thinkwell replied, and at the word islands Rosamond’s small round face turned pink, and her mouth, sticky with honey, fell open. It was untrue that her mind was entirely undiscriminating, for, in point of fact, she could distinguish between every Pacific island shown on maps, having, from an early age, made them her special study. It is probable that there was no island literature written, of any period, which she had not perused. Some young female minds are like this—inert, slovenly and dreamy, but with one great romance. As some young women perhaps meditate in idle hours, “When I shall be a great writer, actress, or doctor”; “when I shall play hockey for England”; or “when I shall love and be loved, marry a man, have a house, have children” … so others dream, “When I shall explore the world, find new islands, see coral reefs. …” It is a dream which does not well equip them for life, for it is sadly apt to go under without fulfilment, and leave them for ever in what the psycho-analysts call a state of frustration. Then they have to endeavour to sublimate their longing by literature, love, games, or some such inadequate substitute for adventure.

  Anyhow Rosamond, all agape, slice of bread and honey in hand, stared round-eyed at the dirty yellow paper by her father’s plate, seeing that it was indeed a chart of some part of the ocean, and as full of islands as a pudding of currants.

  “What scale?” she inquired, with her mouth full, her chief desire being to know how near the islands were together. For her part, she thought that the ideal islands lay in groups of three or four, within canoeing or even swimming distance of one another, so that now and then one could have a change. And on each island different trees and flowers, different creatures, different colours. … Oh, Rosamond could discriminate, when discrimination was worth while. Not between the sexes, the Drinkwells, or the Central European states, but between any things that mattered.

  Charles had reached out for the chart, and was studying it.

  “The scale appears to be five hundred miles to the inch. Some of these islands seem fairly close together, some a great many miles apart. The one to which our attention seems specially called is at least two hundred miles from the next. Who drew this map, father, and why is one island singled out for our notice with a cross and some letters. … What are they … O, R, F, E, N, S. …”

  “Orphans,” said Mr. Thinkwell. “That, apparently, was the way your great-grandfather used to spell it. Your great-grandfather wished to convey to posterity—strictly to posterity only—that on that island he and some fellow rascals deserted a lady, a doctor, a nurse, and a number of orphan children, in the year 1855. He wrote this document, which tells the tale, in 1867, when he seems to have thought it possible, though improbable, that some of the party might yet survive.”

  He passed to Charles his Aunt Sarah’s letter, together with his grandfather’s statement. Rosamond read them over Charles’s shoulder, and William, coming down very late to breakfast, a square-shouldered, rough-headed youth, with near, peering sight, and a sweet, wide grin, began on his porridge.

  “Exciting,” Charles commented, having perused the papers. “Heartless old ladies, our great-grandmamma and great aunts. They none of them seem to have worried themselves at all over these poor castaways. Now great-grandpapa had his excuses; he had obviously behaved in a shady way and wasn’t asking for trouble. He did his best for those he had marooned directly it seemed safe. But his female relatives were merely callous. Now, when great-grandpapa died, in 1875, there might have been quite a sporting chance of saving some of the castaways alive.”

  “But they’re probably still alive,” said Rosamond, solemn-eyed and glad. “The orphan children—they’d only be about seventy now. Great-grandfather says the island was comfortable and fertile, and some Pacific islands have lovely climates. They’d probably live till eighty or ninety.”

  “What in the world,” said William, over his porridge, “are you all talking about?”

  “Who were those so-called orphans?” Charles said. “Were they all brothers and sisters? Were they of two sexes? Because, if of two sexes and unrelated, they are probably by now great-grandparents. There is probably a thriving community on Orfens Island.”

  Mr. Thinkwell referred to his grandfather’s statement.

  “About forty orphan children. That sounds, I think, like more than one family. As to their sex, we know nothing. But in any case,” the sociologist meditated, “there was this Doctor O’Malley and Miss Smith, not to mention Jean the nurse. It may well be that some of those on the island became parents, and even grandparents, if spared long enough. An interesting thought. … More likely, the whole lot perished very soon after being left there.”

  “People don’t,” said Rosamond, “perish very much on desert islands. I’ve noticed that. They survive until rescued, as a rule. But still, father, I think no more time should be lost before we rescue them. When can we start?”

  “Not to-morrow,” Mr. Thinkwell said. “I have an examiners’ meeting.”

  William had now, since no one answered his questions, read the documents and grasped the business in hand.

  “I say,” he said, “let’s really go and find this island. You could take next term off, father, and, thank God, I’m a free man myself at last. Charles is becoming Cockneyfied and too damned literary and needs a change; a sea voyage might cure him of wielding the pen. And Rosamond may as well come too; she’s idle, wherever she is, and she’ll enjoy the new and strange foods. … That’s settled, then.”

  William had always been practical. He did not allow grass to grow under his feet, once he had made up his mind.

  “A steam yacht,” said Rosamond, “might be best.”

  “That would not,” said William, “be large enough to remove all the orphans on, should they wish to be rescued. I calculate that there might be about seven thousand of them by now. Allowing that the forty orphans made twenty pairs, and that each pair had, on an average, ten children, and that the next two generations did the same. …”

  “The orphans were not rabbits, William,” said Mr. Thinkwell.

  “They were Victorians, though,” said Charles. “I expect William’s quite right. They would need at least a liner, large size, to take them away. We must go on a liner. We must arrange with one of the companies. Wouldn’t the Royal Geographical Society finance the expedition? It ought to, as it’s to explore to an undiscovered island. Or the Royal Humane Society. …”

  “A party of pleasure
,” said Rosamond, biting an apple, and turning the words over softly to herself, her eyes watching her father’s dark, fantastic face for signs.

  Mr. Thinkwell wiped his curious mouth with his napkin and pushed back his chair. He strolled to the window and looked out on Grange Road. He lit his pipe.

  “Father,” said Rosamond, questioning.

  “My dear?” said Mr. Thinkwell absently, as he had been used to reply to Rosamond’s mamma.

  “Rosamond means, what have you decided to do in the matter of these unhappy orphans?” Charles interpreted. “I certainly think it is up to us, as Christian philanthropists, to do something. Especially since it was our great-grandfather. … The Government might organise an expedition, possibly. Or the Daily Whoop. Conducted, of course, by the Thinkwell family. …”

  “Government,” said Mr. Thinkwell placidly, “nothing. And the Royal Geographical Society nothing. And vulgar réclame, detestable always, is unnecessary at this stage. I shall by all means make an expedition to search for this alleged island. If white human life should yet survive on it in any form (which is improbable) it would be a remarkably interesting subject for investigation, and I should keep it for the present for my own researches. Since you all seem interested in my plans, I will tell you that I intend, early next month, to go via the Panama Canal to Tahiti or some other Polynesian island which lies on the steamer routes, and from there I shall hire a cargo steamer of some kind and set out in it to look for this island. It will be a purely private enterprise, with no publicity attached, and unreferred to by the press. If we should find the island, and if, by a curious chance, there should prove to be white persons on it, and should they, or some of them, want to be removed, that could be arranged later. Having waited some seventy years, they could wait, I imagine, a little longer. It might be a simple matter or a complicated economic problem in the solution of which I should be compelled to seek outside help.”

  “A very sound scheme,” said Charles. “And precisely the right way to do it. That’s all settled, then. William and Rosamond and I can be ready in a fortnight. It will take us about that to get our tropical outfit, I imagine”.

  “I see,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “that you all mean to insist on coming too. Very well, then, come. But there must be no babbling about it, either now or on the voyage out. It must not get about America, mind. Nor about Cambridge.”

  Mr. Thinkwell was a rather secretive man, and never cared that his affairs should get about anywhere, let alone America and Cambridge. Perhaps he inherited that from his grandfather, the sailor, who had kept his counsel so well for twenty years.

  His children promised that it should be as he desired, and then they looked up the Panama sailings in the press.

  2

  They were going a trip to the Polynesian Islands, and would be away at least six months. That was all they told Cambridge. Saying the lovely and liquid words, Polynesian Islands, Rosamond would colour and stammer, as if she were in love.

  She would have to give up her Girl Guides for a term; she was going to the Polynesian Islands. She divested herself of all that clinging web of obligation and performance that spins itself so readily and so closely about the young ladies resident in Cambridge whose papas are dons. Even about such as Rosamond, idle, inactive, ill-informed, jejune, and withdrawn, these webs are spun, and they command Girl Guides, act in Christmas plays, and take stalls at bazaars. It is difficult, in university towns, to be idle and alone. But in Polynesia, in Polynesia. … Oh, on Polynesian Islands, one could surely be both idle and alone. To lie under the mango tree and eat of the fruit thereof without any personal inconvenience whatever—that dear ideal, condemned by missionaries, of the savage and idle soul, could there, if anywhere, be achieved. In those unknown, dreaming, island-dotted seas—it was there that real life lay. Orphans nothing, as Mr. Thinkwell would have put it had he felt as Rosamond felt, instead of, in fact, precisely the reverse. Rosamond was not much interested in the orphans or the orphans’ children. She wanted to land on and explore an uninhabited island for herself. Perhaps her father would let her do that, while he and the others steamed off seeking orphans.

  Chapter III

  THE VOYAGE

  1

  THE Thinkwell family, having, by the Panama route, arrived at the famous and picturesque island of Tahiti, some time towards the end of July, chartered a small cargo steam schooner, with an English captain and a brown crew, which was trading about the islands for copra, palm oil, and pearls, to take them on their voyage of discovery. They imagined that Orphan Island must lie some two thousand miles south of the Tahiti group. When questioned as to his chances of finding it, the captain of the schooner, a gentleman named Paul, said that this was largely a matter of chance. There were any number of coral islands in those lonely parts of the Pacific which had never been visited by trading ships, or, probably, by natives. If the chart were at all accurate, it should, of course, be possible to discover and identify this island, particularly as it was of an unusual shape. The voyage thither, said Captain Paul, might take about three weeks or a month, calling at the various islands en route where he was accustomed to do business. It would be rather an expensive trip, he was afraid. Mr. Thinkwell was afraid so too, as he perceived that Captain Paul was rather a greedy man. However, as a sociologist, he was aware that most men are this, and he did not see that he was likely to drive a better bargain, so he closed with Captain Paul for part use of his Typee for six hundred dollars a month, and they set forth.

  “You read Hermann Melville, I infer,” Charles said to Captain Paul, as they watched the mountains of Tahiti recede. Charles admired this writer a good deal.

  “Used to as a boy,” said Captain Paul.

  “A writer,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “in my opinion overrated. A clumsy and undistinguished style. In my generation we had got through Melville by the time we left school. He seems now to be better thought of.”

  “He is uncommonly good,” said Charles, who knew what was what in literature.

  Rosamond, though she did not know what was what, thought so too, for Melville wrote of voyages and islands. But William found The Voyage of the Beagle better stuff, and Captain Paul was bored by talk about books, and said, to change the subject, “Come and see my turtles. I have a pair of very fine turtles on board, gathered on the Natupa beach.”

  Gathered, he said, as if the turtles had been fruit or flowers. A romantic word, Rosamond felt. Romantic turtles, and a most romantic man. She stared at him, with grave, wide eyes and open mouth. She adored him, as she had adored Sir Ernest Shackleton when she had heard him speak on his Arctic explorations, and Mr. Walter de la Mare when, because of his poetry, she had sat through his lectures while his half-caught meanings had drifted above her head like wreaths of mist. Captain Paul was different from either of these. He was, in point of fact, a compulsorily retired naval officer. The Thinkwells had been told this, not by Captain Paul, but they did not know what he had done to be retired. A broken navy man. Rosamond repeated the phrase to herself, liking it very much. It suited Captain Paul of the Typee, a tall, dark, pale man in the later thirties, with a slack, sad mouth and long blue eyes. What could he have done, that the navy should have broken him? Some frightful act, some deed of shame. Got drunk, perhaps, on his watch, and wrecked a ship. … Or falsified the log, or taken his superior officer’s wife. … Or committed bigamy, or trigamy, since sailors, one knew, had a wife in every port. Anyhow, whatever his crime, Captain Paul (captain, of course, only of the Typee) had been now for some time trading among the islands for copra and oil. A happy lot enough, but one supposed that he felt the ignominy, and that was why his eyes brooded and his mouth was sad.

  Mr. Thinkwell, Charles, and William did not care about Captain Paul so much as Rosamond did. That was only natural. Fallen men and women are usually preferred by the sex other than their own. Their own sex is apt to say, “A bit of a rotter,” or “Not the style I care about,” and leave it at that. Sisters often cannot understand why the
ir brothers like women who seem to them obviously second-rate, and brothers feel the same difficulty about some of their sisters’ male friends. Not that Charles and William disliked Captain Paul; he had, indeed, a charm which Charles felt, and William perceived that he knew a lot about the island fauna and flora, and the seas in general, and liked to talk with him. But it was not to be expected that they should see him as a high, broken, romantic being.

  There was also on board the Typee a Mr. Merton, a trader. He was carefully shaved but not well dressed; indeed, he needed new shoe laces, and his white ducks were more the colour of drakes. A faint alcoholic odour often floated about him. Charles liked him, saying that he had an adventurer’s mind. He had been a missionary (Anglican) before he took to trading, and was still rather religious by fits and starts. This aspect of him rather bored Charles, who had not religion, and did not consider Anglicanism well suited to Polynesian islanders.

  “As you know so much both about Anglicanism and Polynesian islanders,” said Mr. Merton sarcastically, “I won’t venture to contradict you.”

  “Frankly, though,” said Charles, “do you? For my part I feel that savages, if they become Christian at all, should become either Roman Catholics or—or dissenters of some kind, you know. Anglicanism must be so awfully different to what they are used to.”

  “No religion,” said Mr. Merton, “is very different from any other, when South Sea islanders practise it. All creeds, in their hands, acquire a curious sameness. It really matters very little which church they join, dear people. I, unlike you, fancy that they are very well suited by them all. That was why I gave up instructing them in any one faith, and took to trying to improve their conditions by trading with them.”

  Charles did not think that this was why, as he had heard otherwise from Captain Paul, but he did not say so. In his dealings with people, Charles was, on the whole, delicate-minded and indifferent, though it occurred from time to time that he fell into an odd, ill-bred impudence, which was partly due to the effects of the war on his nervous system, and partly to the demands of the literary profession, which, as is very well known, not infrequently leads young men into somewhat vulgar and acrimonious exchanges of personal comments.