Orphan Island (12 page)

Rosamond had never thought of the Pope, and did not even know who, at the moment, he might be. He was among the subjects concerning which she was, as Charles had said, terribly ignorant.

“I don't really know about him,” she said. “Except that he's the head of the Roman Catholics, and lives in Rome.” She searched her memory for more of the Pope. “Oh, and people who live in Ulster don't like him, I know that.” For William had had, at Trinity, an Ulster friend.

“No respectable people like him, my dear. That poor Frenchman did;
he
called him God's legate on earth; but then he was mad. Eaten up by his own Zacharies he was, one day when they forgot themselves. He'd taught 'em to be papists; so much for popery, we all said. The Scarlet Woman, mamma calls it—I forget why. And as to God's legate, she says
she
can do all the legating that's wanted here. But we've never quite stamped it out. Bowing and scraping and crossing and burning herbs to make a smell at worship—seems as if some weak-minded folk can't help it. Especially in seaside places, mamma says. Just as some others must needs break out into private prayers of their own at public worship, getting all of an uproar. Mamma has always put her foot on that too. She says we have the Protestant Church of England, and no need of anything else.… You seem
vastly interested in religion, child, you're making me talk quite a lot about it. I must get on home now, and have a rest before this famous supper. I shall have a chat with the gentlemen later on. Home, Zachary!” She struck the nearest black man with her fan, and they lifted up her hammock and bore her away. Rosamond looked after the fashionable, voluble lady and her pet monkey, at the stalwart, docile Zachary Macaulays, descendants of those Roman Catholic Zacharies who had eaten up the poor Frenchman. To Rosamond none of it seemed remarkable or strange; she knew that life was like that.

THE long boards, standing on trestles, were set in the green glade at the wood's edge, looking on the glimmering sea. The feast was lit by the climbing moon; but on the table were lights—tall candles, and cocoa-nut bowls wherein lighted wicks floated in oil, and round each candle and bowl a small, soft glow spread over the neighbouring food.

“For what we are about to receive,” said Mr. Albert Smith loudly from the table's head, “may the Lord make us truly thankful.” They all sat down. Rosamond did not know what were the foods she was about to receive, but they all looked very delightful. There was soup, and tortoise meat, and fishes, and oysters, and birds, and roasted yams, and bread-fruit, and eggs, and mangoes, and bananas, and a kind of pear, and pandanas, and jellies, and cream, and sweetmeats, and all the island delicacies one could expect, served on shell plates. And drinks.… “What will you drink?” asked the young man next Rosamond, and she said, “Anything, please,” and was given a goblet of liquor that tasted like sweet cider. She looked at her neighbour, and found him handsome and pale brown, with dark brows over southern eyes, and a proud, merry mouth, and she knew him for Flora's brother, Heathcliff.

“Is Flora here?” she asked, and he said, “Oh,
yes. Opposite us there. Flora never misses a party, for all she says.

“What does she say?”

“Oh, all kinds of things. Proud things. About not obeying papa and mamma. So do I. Papa desired us to come to this banquet, so we all but didn't, but, after all, it seemed too amusing to miss.”

Rosamond looked shyly across the table at Flora nearly opposite, clad in white and golden feathers. The candle beneath her threw up a wavering circle of gold on to her face and bare, beautiful throat, slipping softly over the smooth skin, the proud, mocking mouth, the proud, rounded chin, the scarlet flowers that flamed in the dark coils over each ear. Above the circle of light, Flora's brow shone argent to the silver moon; her dark, shadowed eyes and black brows slanted upwards a little to the outer corners, giving her a modified and attractive Mongolian touch. On her right hand sat Charles; fortunate Charles. Rosamond was glad of that; Charles was good at making friends when he chose; quicker than she was, and had more and better conversation. Flora and he were talking together, and both were laughing, their attractive faces turned towards each other. If Flora made friends with Charles, she must surely notice Rosamond later on, even though she was not clever and attractive like Charles.

Rosamond's eyes strayed up and down the length of the feast. At its head sat Mr. Albert Smith, presiding, keeping order, and so forth. Round him were Mrs. Smith-Carter (between Mr. Thinkwell and Captain Paul), and other important Smith-looking gentlemen and ladies of middle or elderly life. Somewhere among them was Mr. Merton.
The table seemed to dwindle in importance down its length; still, doubtless, Smith, the guests seemed lesser Smiths, or younger Smiths, Smiths in some way of smaller account. These lesser Smiths had been thought, obviously, the proper environment for the three younger Thinkwells. Round them were a number of young people, for the most part very merry. At the table's foot sat the placid Mrs. Albert Edward Smith.

“You like banquets too?” said Heathcliff Smith to Rosamond, seeing her happy smile as she looked up and down the feast and drank turtle soup out of a bowl.

“Yes,” said Rosamond. “I mean, this banquet. Banquets on islands, you know. It's lovely. The things to eat look lovely, and having it out here in the moonlight, and the lights.… And the island, and the sea. Don't
you
like it?”

“Oh, well enough,” he said carelessly. “The food looks fairly eatable. And I dare say some of the speeches will be amusing.”

“Of course,” she remembered, “you're
used
to being on an island.”

“I should say so.” He laughed. “Sick to death of it, too. I want to go away. I've always been of the Forward Party, which wanted to send boat expeditions to explore, but I was never let to go. Thank God you people have come at last. You'll never guess, I dare say, how pleased we were, some of us, to see you land. Flora and I said—”

“Was Flora pleased to see us?”

“Was she not? I should say so. I am sure Flora and I are both sick of living all our lives on one miserable island. We want to see the world—get about, and do things. Now pray, Rosamond—
that's your name, isn't it?—tell me what it's all like, where you come from.”

Rosamond reflected. She was no good at these large questions.

“Not nearly so nice as this,” she said.

“Oh,” he waved that aside, “that's just because you're used to it. I can tell you, this is deadly dull if you live here. Nothing but sea and land, sea and land, and the same old set of tiresome people. And old Grandmamma Smith in the background, laying down the law for us all and trying to stop everything amusing.… Lord, I'm sick of it. Pray tell me about England. From what grandmamma says of it, I'm inclined to think I shouldn't care for it so much as for some of the other countries. She brought us all up on tales of England, how free and good and great it is, and what a good influence among the nations, till we hate the sound of it. Of course we know something about English people, and how they act in society and family life, from the books we have—
Wuthering Heights
, and the
Book of Correct Conduct
, and the
Holy War
. But old Jean says England is nothing to Scotland.… What's England
really
like, in these days?”

Rosamond thought. What was England really like? Green fields; cowslips; willows by slow streams; rain and chill winds. Colleges, learning, caps and gowns, gray skies, gray streets, motorcars and bicycles, games, Girl Guides.… That was Cambridge. Beyond Cambridge, England; rolling green country with hedges; cows; roads choked with dust and loud with cars; deep lanes; old market towns of red-brown brick, with wide inn yards; little lichened hamlets with weather-beaten gray churches; great nightmare towns,
shrieking and black, in the nightmare midlands and north; people, people everywhere, drab pink, kindly, ugly, common, nice, silly people, all agog for life, wagging cheerful tongues, staring out of hard, curious eyes. Shops, newspapers, books, dogs, hot meals, and always, nearly always, that bite of bitter winds on body and soul.

Rosamond, stumbling confused among scattered pictures, selected.

“Cold,” she said. “And they
talk
a lot.”

“They couldn't,” Heathcliff told her, “talk more than we do here. That I am sure they could not.… But is it happy? Is it free, as grandmamma says it is? Can people do as they please there?”

“No.” Rosamond was sure of that. “We don't do as we please, most people don't. There are police, you see. And work. And we
have
to do things. Tiresome things.”

“What kind of things?”

Rosamond thought.

“Wear shoes and stockings,” she said, “in the road. And other clothes we don't want. Come in to meals at meal-times. Sleep indoors, mostly. Go out to tea sometimes. Talk to people who come in the house. Have classes, teaching girls and boys things—at least I do. Go to bazaars. Oh, dear, lots of things.”

“Why do you? Is it the law, or does your papa make you?”

“No, father doesn't bother much. He has to do them too. And it's not the law—not most of it.… I don't know … you just
have
to.”

“You have an old queen, haven't you, like our grandmamma?”

“No, a king.
He
doesn't bother us, though.”

“Oh, I thought a queen, called Victoria.”

“No. There was once. She died ages ago, though; before I was born.”

“Do your parents or grandparents or any one settle whom you are to marry, or mayn't marry?”

Rosamond laughed. “No! Of course not. People settle that for themselves.”

“That's a good plan. Flora would like that.
She's
not allowed to. Oh, but that's private, I forgot.… Do you like that bird? Too fishy, I think; they eat fish all day, you see. Have some more drink. This is prodigiously interesting, your coming from England. What are the other countries like? Are they better? There's France, isn't there, and Germany. My grandmamma says the French have always been our natural enemies, and eat frogs, and one Englishman can beat two Frenchmen, and they don't understand liberty.”

“Well,” said Rosamond, “I don't know. I've never been abroad, you see, till now. Charles has. He was in France. But the war spoilt it; they were fighting.… He doesn't much like the French, but not for those reasons, I don't think; he says they're too industrious, and stingy, and sentimental, and angry, and don't understand poetry.… I forget what else. But, you see, it was war time; I expect no one was very nice then. The Germans were the worst, of course.”

“War time? We had a war time, too. A war of revolution. What was your war against France about?”

“Oh, it wasn't against France; France and we were on the same side. It was against Germany.
and I don't exactly remember what it was about. Somehow they all quarrelled.… I don't know; I was only ten when it began, you see. It was ages ago. Anyhow, every one fought. It was a frightfully serious war.”

“So was ours. The rebels were defeated, of course; they were too few. Now they mostly live in Hibernia—the other part of the island, you know—and feel discontented.”

“Which side were you on?”

“I was too young to fight. But I think the rebels were right. They didn't like being governed by Smiths, and kept under, and given no land or power. Why should they?
I
wouldn't stand it, if I came of the landless classes. And the way members of parliament—and my grandmamma too—chatter about the sacred name of freedom, and the rights of man, and the Isle of Liberty, and recite poetry about it—that makes it a great deal worse. Tedious humbug! Does your parliament talk like that too?”

“I've never been to Parliament. And I don't read speeches, they look so dull. But my father and Charles say members of parliament are nearly always rather stupid people, and that's why people elect them.”

“I am sure ours are too.… This jelly is very agreeable, try it. Do you like jellies?”

“Well, some jellies. It depends on the taste. I like, very much indeed, the kind of jelly you get with cream, in a wine glass. And calves' foot. I don't care awfully much for the kind you make from jelly squares.”

“I know nothing about calves' foot, or jelly squares. This has cream with it. It is made from the syrup of flowers, I think.”

“It's very nice.”

“You don't drink much. Have some more mango juice.”

“Is that what it is? It's rather like cider—lovely.”

Rosamond took a deep draught. The sweet, fermented, fruity stuff ran suavely through her body and mind. The banquet spread beneath the moon was a merry and magical feast. Opposite, Flora's golden face gleamed and swayed, like a tiger-lily on its stem, and her laughter broke like a brook on stones, like the run of the sea's glimmering edge up the dark shore. Exquisite Flora; radiant and marvellous Flora. Heathcliff, bending towards Rosamond, plying her with delicate foods, asking questions about England, was radiant and marvellous too. As to the questions, Rosamond couldn't answer most of them. “I don't know,” she said happily, and smiled down the table, smiled across to Flora, smiled up at the beamy moon. “I don't know.” This was when Heathcliff's questions referred to society, politics, or recent history. She could answer well enough about food, or animals—only she could not make Heathcliff understand about horses, or cows, or dogs. She tried to describe her Peter at home. Heathcliff, knowing, of mammals, only monkeys, pigs, and turtles, could make but little of Peter, and scarcely believed how brave he was, and good, and full of love.

“What is his noise? Has he a noise?”