Orphan Island (23 page)

Mr. Denis Smith had even engaged a young woman to serve them, prepare their meals, and so forth. She was a handsome girl called Hate-Lies Jones, the granddaughter of an Orphan whose father had been a Welsh milkman in east London and who had himself gone into the island milk trade and had passed it down to his son, the father of Hate-Lies. Hate-Lies, who always complained that, what with one thing and what with another, she was the most unlucky girl in the world, thus had the misfortune of taking in the morning milk, whether from cow-tree or cocoa-nut, from her own
father or brother, which every one must perceive is very dull. However, she endeavoured to make up for this with the bread-fruit man, the yam man, and the tortoise-meat man. But poor Hate-Lies was rather gloomy, for she had a great ambition to be married, and, though she was now turned twenty-eight, she was not yet engaged. She now declared herself sick of the Orphan young men, and hoped to meet some more likely husbands in Great Britain.

“I expect you heard the drowning this morning,” she remarked to Rosamond, as she cleared away the breakfast things.

“The drowning? No.”

“Well, that woman that poisoned her husband was drowned. Taken in a boat out to sea from Convict Cove and drowned. Six o'clock, it was fixed for. Half the island was down on the shore watching. Ought to be a lesson.”

Rosamond felt as she sometimes did in church before breakfast on a hot day—hot and cold and blind. Drowned on purpose! Choked to death in sea-water.… Yet was it worse than hangings in England … or prison everywhere … or animals in cages? …

She went out of the house and sat in the wood, staring into green trees, her back to the cruel sea, and thought of humming-birds, of Flora, of baby tortoises.

It was an exquisite morning of pearl and emerald, turquoise and gold. The Thinkwells lay and smoked outside Belle Vue, reposing after their pre-breakfast exertions and contemplating with pleasure the agreeable day before them. Rosamond forget the poor drowned murderess; she was drowned again, poor woman, in the enchanted oblivion of
the island, a land of sweet mandragora in which no grief could live.

Mr. Thinkwell said he would go and look at the schools this morning, and in the afternoon visit the House of Parliament. Charles said one could do that kind of thing in England, and he wasn't going to waste his time over it here. For his part, he would stroll about the island and enjoy himself ; he had a desire to visit the shops. William said he thought of calling on Mr. Lane this morning and seeing his animals. Rosamond had an ambition to cruise about the lagoon in a log canoe, landing on the reef. Also, she wanted to explore more of the island. She hoped that she might also enjoy for a time the company of Flora; and, for that matter, Charles too hoped for this.

So the Thinkwells went about their several businesses. Mr. Denis Smith strolled over to Belle Vue to fetch Mr. Thinkwell to see the schools.

“Which shall I show you first? The Smith school or the Orphan?”

“You have two, then?”

“Oh, dear, yes. 'Pon my soul, I should say so. High class and low class; gentry and riff-raff. Why, don't tell me you educate your different classes all mixed up at the same schools!”

“No. There is such a difference in cost between our various types of school that it means, practically, a class difference. We have our free schools, our cheap schools, and our expensive schools. It is merely a question of cost with us. Any one who
can afford it is free to send his children to the most expensive schools.”

“Well, we are very strict about ours. Only Smiths by birth—and not quite all of them—are admitted into our better schools. Never do to mix 'em up; it'd do away with class distinctions in no time.”

“Dear me! How you do value class here, to be sure!”

Mr. Denis Smith winked. “I should say so! Mamma's pet idea. She says the Creator appointed us gentry, trades people, and poor. The great thing is to keep the lower classes in their place. They get a bit uppish if one isn't careful; begin fancying themselves Smith, y' know, and all that. Wanting power, and land, and higher wages, and what not. Don't
your
upper classes feel like that about the poor?”

Mr. Thinkwell took off his glasses and rubbed them thoughtfully. “I suppose,” he said, “that a certain number do. Naturally, each class likes to keep such advantages as it has. But, as to power —political power, that is—it is always in the hands of a few, who are more often rich than poor, even when the poor have most of the votes. Money generally beats the vote in the race for power.”

“That's sound! Legislation ain't dangerous, then, even in the hands of the poor?”

“All legislation,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “is dangerous. Dangerous, I mean, to the public welfare. As to the vote, it is a form for putting one of our slightly ridiculous political parties rather than another in power (voters are perennially hopeful), but in point of fact no party in our country is very different from any other. None are intelligent, and all do considerably more harm than good. Most
politicians are rather stupid and selfish people, who care for little beyond their own advantage, and seem very soon dazzled with the pleasures of power.” Mr. Thinkwell, academic and cultured, despised politicians to perhaps an unjust extent.

“They sound amazingly like ourselves. Well now, here is our Orphan school.”

The Orphan school sat in groups or classes, with about twenty in each, on the sea shore, and before each class stood a male or female teacher, obviously also Orphan in class, imparting instruction. The school rose to its feet as Mr. Smith approached, but he motioned it to be seated.

They stopped near a group consisting of children of about ten years old, who were chanting in chorus. while their teacher beat time with a cane:—

“Julius invades at half B.C.,

Claudius conquers at half A.D.,

The Saxons come at half-past four,

At six converted they adore,

The Danish pirates land at eight,

At nine great Alfred yields to fate,

Half-past ten comes, yet Normans tarry,

Eleven brings the first king Harry.…”

“History,” Mr. Smith explained. “All in verse, y' see. Easier to learn, eh?”

“Fifteen four seven, five three and five eight,

Sixth Edward, Mary, Elizabeth date,”

the children chanted.

“I note,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “that your educational system suffers, as ours does, from a strange obsession as to the importance of the dates at which kings and queens reigned.”

“Oh, yes. Mamma always swore by the dates of the kings and queens. She taught us all that poem. Said it was composed by some clergyman her papa knew. We had to learn long lists of dates too, of course. Now here's a Scripture lesson.”

They moved on to another group, of whom a buxom young woman was inquiring, “What did God make on the first day?” She took them briskly through creation week, ending with, “And how did the Lord spend Saturday?”

“Resting,” said the class in chorus.

“And which day does He tell
us
to rest?”

“Sunday.”

“Why not Saturday?”

“To show we aren't Jews.”

After a few further inquiries derogatory to Jews, who were obviously not well thought of on the island, the teacher conducted her pupils to the Reformation, eliciting from them the unanimous view that this was a great and glorious event.

“Are there still Roman Catholics in the world?” she then inquired, and, on receiving an affirmative reply, “What do Roman Catholics worship instead of God?”

“The Virgin Mary and a piece of bread,” the Orphans told her, with some zest.

“How do they pray?”

“With vain repetitions in an unknown tongue and a string of beads.”

“And how does God punish Roman Catholics for their idolatry?”

“He has them killed, and eaten up by black men,
who are the blind and ignorant instruments of His will.”

“What do we learn from this?”

“Not to be Roman Catholics!” The Orphans were quite sure as to that.

The next class was learning arithmetic, the sand being used as blackboard, and to the one beyond was being imparted such geography as Miss Smith had acquired in her youth, developed and perverted through three generations of transmission. The world, as viewed from Orphan Island, wore a curious, Brito-Centric aspect. Furthermore, each country seemed to revolve round one large town, or capital, and to spend its entire time exporting and importing commodities to and fro between itself and Great Britain. One would have gathered that no other occupation was carried on. It was obvious that Miss Smith had been brought up on sound Free Trade principles, and had faithfully passed down the torch.

The French class then attracted Mr. Thinkwell's attention; having paused near it long enough to learn that, whatever the quality of Miss Smith's own French, it had become, as transmitted through seventy years, an almost unrecognisable jargon, he moved on to a group which seemed to be learning natural history by the catechising method quoted by Mr. Lane at supper last night, illustrated by drawings on the sand by Orphans of the animal under discussion. Mr. Thinkwell acquired as he listened some information as to the habits of various island creatures, and, more particularly, as to their various uses to the islanders, for natural history was taught here in the old-fashioned, homocentric manner. Kindness to animals was, however, urged, and unnecessary cruelty strongly condemned;
though, as the teacher pointed out, it was often necessary to deprive an animal of its life, in fact, it might often be the kindest treatment, since, as animals were not, like man, religious beings, their sufferings ended with their death. Furthermore, if we leave them to die of natural causes, we cannot eat them. The many lessons that should be learnt from animals were touched on, with particular reference to ants and bees, who were so very busy, intelligent and industrious as to put man to shame. The teacher, apropos of this, repeated to his class a poem about Matilda, who was set up in that she had made a purse of beads for her aunt, and was bidden to observe the bees, how they made hives full of honey and other ingenious contrivances far beyond her powers.

“All the same,” Mr. Thinkwell said, remembering vaguely a retort of Matilda's that he had seen somewhere appended to this tale, and absent-mindedly, as was a habit of his, quoting it aloud, “all the same,—

Whate'er their skill and busy deeds,

They cannot make a purse of beads.”

He spoke more loudly than he knew, and the teacher and class turned to look at him.

“
They cannot make a purse of beads,”
Mr. Think-well repeated, with some emphasis, and laughed, and the children laughed too, at being interrupted, and at the strange gentleman in his queer clothes.

Their teacher, an amiable young man, said “Ha, ha! Very true, sir. Very true indeed.”

“So, you see,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “Matilda had the laugh of the bees after all. Or did she? I'm not so sure! The bees might ask, why should
any one
wish
to make a purse of beads? Beads! What an idea! However, anyhow Matilda could do it if she wanted to, and the bees couldn't. On the other hand, they could make honey, and
she
couldn't. Well, perhaps after all the bees had the best of it.”

The Orphan children laughed more, with joy at the interruption and mirth at the droll gentleman dressed all in white with glass eyes who was come to take them all away on a ship.

“Dear me,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “I am afraid I am disturbing your class, sir. I should not have interrupted.”

“Indeed, sir, I pray you!”

Mr. Denis Smith, who had strolled away during the Scripture lesson, here came back and said that Mr. Thinkwell might perhaps be interested in the physiology lesson which was proceeding a little way off.

“They have lately introduced new methods of teaching this subject,” he said. “Some eager busy-bodies got up a fuss about children being kept in ignorance of physical matters—birth, don't you know, and what not. The modern view is that ignorance of such important things warps their little minds and lives. Of course mamma wouldn't agree.
She
always told us, when we asked questions, not to be inquisitive, and that we should know all that was necessary
when
it was necessary. And, sure enough, so we did. Most parents in our day brought up their children to believe that babies grew on cocoa-nut trees. You see, we're used to the idea that we get nearly everything we want from cocoa-nut trees—food, drink, cups, cord, cloth, oil, butter, soap, wax, resin, gum, thatch, baskets, screens, mats, and so forth—so why not babies?
Anyhow that's always been the legend here. Don't know if it warped our young minds. It didn't hurt mine, so far as I recollect, but then I didn't believe it. Never met a boy who did, what's more. Fact is, Mr. Thinkwell, children ain't such fools as people think. Now, if I may ask, pray what did you tell
your
children about such matters?”

“Nothing, that I remember. I have no recollection that the subject was ever broached. They may, of course, have raised it to their mother.…”

“Well, supposing they had asked you?”

“Naturally, I should have told them the facts. Why not? It would never have occurred to me to conceal them, any more than any other facts. They are of no great interest, and of no immediate importance to children, of course, but neither can there be any reason for concealing them. I am afraid I have never understood either the impulse to make a mystery of them or the enthusiasm for imparting them. Both seem to me to be unbalanced.”

“You, too, then, have both movements in your country?”

“I believe we have. But such matters do not come my way very much.”

“Well, here is the physiology class. Unknown, I needn't say, to my mother, the teachers of the new type have got their way, and a little careful information is now imparted, very delicately, to the higher classes.”