Orphan Island (24 page)

They stopped by the physiology class and listened. A little careful—very careful—information was certainly being imparted; human physiology, via plants, birds, and animals. Mr. Thinkwell several times caught the words “Very holy. Very beautiful. A very wonderful arrangement of God's.”

“Dear me!” he said. “Dear me! What a curious notion! What is the idea in telling them that? Why not let them know at once, what they will have eventually to know, that it is one of the very worst, silliest, most inefficient, and most infernally inconvenient and dangerous arrangements in all nature?”

“My dear fellow,” said Mr. Smith, “that's not the way we talk here. It would be regarded as blasphemy to the divine Contriver who arranged all things.”

“Well, but one hears this ‘holy and beautiful' talk even among those who don't acknowledge a divine Contriver. I must say I can't understand it. They must all be celibates. They should ask a few mothers their frank opinion of feeling ill for months and then producing in great agony a creature not only grotesquely unattractive but so helpless and incompetent as to require attention from morning till night for years to keep it alive. It is a positive disgrace to science that no better system has yet been devised. I fear these teachers of yours, like many of ours, are sentimentalists. If it is that they are afraid of scaring the children off the whole business, they needn't be; nature will see to that.”

“I dare say you are very right,” said Mr. Smith. “Only once you begin telling children the worst about life, where are you to stop? I mean, you know, why darken their poor little lives at the dawn, so to speak? I mean, 'pon my soul, there's all kinds of trouble coming to them, poor little devils, pretty soon, and there's something to be said for giving 'em a rosy view of life to start with. But I dare say I am quite wrong.… Mind you, I don't uphold the cocoa-nut tree theory. But I can't
say I see much harm in letting 'em think the whole business is going to be rather jolly.”

“It is better,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “in matters of science, to tell people dry facts; plain facts, without either embellishment or depreciation, and then they can judge for themselves. All these
adjectives
people use are a mistake.”

“A dry fellow,” thought Mr. Denis Smith, as they walked away together. “A very queer, dry, fellow. Learned, of course, and it's made him a trifle inhuman. He should drink more. Likeable, though; no humbug about him.”

Aloud he said, “Well, that's the Orphan school. Now for the other. It's just round the next cove.”

The Smith school was smaller in numbers than the Orphan, and looked more select. The children were plumper and handsomer, and less coarsely clad. They sat on benches, instead of on the ground. Their teachers must also have had some Smith blood, for their accents were more high-class and their deportment had more gentility. The Smith children spoke with more agreeable voices and more refined pronunciation than the Orphans; some of them were a good deal older, for, whereas the eldest Orphan pupils seemed not above thirteen, the Smiths ranged up to sixteen or so. Mr. Thinkwell commented on this, and Mr. Smith replied, “The others have to go to work early and help their parents. These don't.”

Class in the making. Mr. Thinkwell was interested.

As to the substance of the teaching, it seemed much the same; except that the higher classes in the Smith school had got further in mathematics. Probably, Mr. Thinkwell reflected, that was about the only subject in which advance could be made
by individual intelligence, on the stock of knowledge originally brought to the island.

Presently play-time was announced, and the boys of the school repaired to a smooth piece of turf at the edge of the wood and began to play a kind of cricket, using polished cocoa-nuts for balls.

“Curious,” Mr. Thinkwell commented, and Mr. Albert Edward Smith, who had just joined them, said, “What is curious?”

“Why, that cricket should have found its way here. Miss Smith, I suppose—and your father, no doubt.…”

“Miss Smith,” said Albert Edward, with that touch of distance which the mention of his father always evoked, “taught us all cricket from the first. She told us it was the national English game, and that not to play it would be un-English. So we have always played it.”

“Quite so. But in point of fact, you know, it is a
tedious
game. A
slow
game. Don't you find it so?”

“I must confess,” said Albert Edward, with his faint laugh, “that I am English enough to enjoy it.… Do you remember, Denis, that time I hit you to leg in 1881 and made six? And that famous catch of poor William's?”

“No,” said Denis, rather rudely. “Can't say I do. Of course, if one plays cricket—and I agree with you, Mr. Thinkwell, that it's a tedious game —there must be hits and runs and catches. I don't keep 'em all in my mind for forty years.”

Mr. Thinkwell noted that the brothers did not always get on very harmoniously together.

“Football is a much better game,” he remarked. “Rugby. Do you play that here?”

“The boys kick balls about, of course. But with
no very definite rules. It was always cricket we were taught to play. What a training for an English gentleman! We have a phrase, ‘It's not cricket,' which we apply to anything underhand or unfair.”

“Have you indeed?” said Mr. Thinkwell disagreeably. He was reflecting that most of England's worst phrases seemed to have taken root in this island. Miss Smith had doubtless been a most pernicious carrier. Her papa would, almost certainly, have used that dreadful cricket phrase, and she would have admired it very much and have passed it on to her young charges.

“What about the girls?” he said. “Don't they play?”

“Hardly cricket.” Albert Edward gave a superior, Victorian smile at the thought. “That would scarcely be ladylike, would it? Not the older girls, anyhow. They have their games, of course.…”

“Oh! They play cricket at girls' schools with us. They are as keen as boys, I believe.”

“My mother,” said Albert Edward rather coldly, “would be amazed to hear it.… There is croquet, of course—hitting balls through hoops. Young ladies here play that.”

“Croquet! A more tedious game than cricket even. Nearly as bad as golf. In my opinion, the only good games with balls are of an active nature—football, hockey, or some form of tennis.”

“I am afraid,” said Albert Edward, “that you will think it dreadfully English of me, but I still must champion cricket as the king of games.”

He looked, indeed, such a king of men, as he stood benignly smiling, topping Mr. Thinkwell and his brother Denis by a head, his sweeping chestnut
whiskers shining like floss silk in the sun, that Mr. Thinkwell could not withhold his admiration. These Smiths! What a family, when all was said! Whether Mr. Smith thought of it first, or Mr. Thinkwell, it somehow came into the common consciousness that Mr. Thinkwell, whatever his present station and learning, was only two generations removed from that scoundrelly sailor, a rough fellow of no class at all, who had deserted and marooned Mr. Smith's mamma.
He
would not have cared for cricket, that scoundrel sailor; it had not been cricket, what he had done—marooning a lady and forty orphans. No, that had not been cricket; and it was not to be expected that his grandson, Mr. Thinkwell of Cambridge, should be a supporter of the king of games.

For a little longer the gentlemen stood and watched the school at play—the boys at cricket and the girls at their less organised and more childish scrambling about, chasing each other, playing at battles, climbing trees, and wading knee-deep in the sea after crabs. Then Mr. Albert Edward, glancing at the sundial near him, said, “Twelve o'clock. It is time that I went to the House. Do you care to accompany me, Mr. Thinkwell?”

Mr. Thinkwell said that he would like to very much.

“Having seen the flower of our nation in the bud,” Denis said to him, “you shall now see it full-blown, at work on its own constitution. I hope you'll be impressed. For my part, I think we all talk a prodigious deal of nonsense in that parliament of ours.”

“You mustn't mind my brother; he is something of a cynic,” Albert Edward said.

Mr. Thinkwell said that he was quite used to parliaments, having often been to Westminster, and knew pretty well what to expect.

Walking inland, they were soon arrived at a clearing of the woods where a long wooden shed stood, with “House of Parliament” carved over its door. Through this door the Mr. Smiths conducted Mr. Thinkwell, and handed him over to that Mr. Lane whom he had met last night at supper. Mr. Lane took him to a bench at one side of the shed, from whence he obtained an excellent view of the assembly who filled it. These were mostly gentlemen of a more or less Smith air, though in varying degrees. Particularly was this Smith appearance noticeable in those who, Mr. Thinkwell supposed, formed the cabinet—a group of five or six members sitting together in a prominent position near the Speaker's chair. The Speaker was a gentleman with a strong look of Albert Edward Smith, and Mr. Thinkwell concluded that he was another brother. It was certainly kept well in the family, this government business.

Miss Smith had obviously been not unfamiliar with the constitution of her country; she had taught the island parliament that it was proper to begin with a few questions.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Albert Edward Smith) was asked whether he was aware that a party of visitors had landed on Orphan Island the day before yesterday, and whether arrangements were being made for the transportation of any of the community to another country.

The Prime Minister replied that he was aware of the fact mentioned, and that Miss Smith's
Government had the whole matter under consideration. A statement would be issued later, when arrangements were completed.

The Minister of the Interior was asked if he was aware that there had been a great deal of trespassing of late on private lands, and a good deal of robbery of the fruit and nut trees, and whether measures were being contemplated to safeguard land and property.

At this question Mr. Lane, who sat with Mr. Thinkwell, nodded agreement.

“Getting perfectly monstrous,” he said. “Scandalous. They've no regard whatever for private property, these people. Trample over any one's land as soon as look at it.”

The Minister of the Interior said that measures were in hand for the more vigorous prosecution and punishment of trespassers. Mr. Lane said, “Hear, hear.”

Mr. Thinkwell asked him what claim the so-called owners of land had to it, over the other inhabitants of the island. Mr. Lane looked at him in surprise.

“Claim? How d'ye mean claim, sir? It's a question of ownership. The land
belongs
to certain people—always has.”

“You mean, for the last fifty years or so, I suppose. But I must say I don't quite see in what this alleged ownership consists. I should have thought that the land on which people live should be common property, or else more or less equally divided. Just as much as the air they breathe.”

“Gad, sir, you surprise me; indeed you do. Haven't you private ownership of land in England? We were always brought up to suppose so.”

“Oh, yes. Certainly. And the same remarks apply there. But I should have thought, I must
say, that on an island with so short a history as yours the land annexation system would scarcely have had time to become so developed. I am very much interested—and, if I may say so, rather shocked—to find that it is so. But let us listen. What is going on now?”

“The Bastardy laws are being tightened up and made more severe. People have been getting round 'em lately. We don't let bastards own or rent any land, you know, nor go in for trade. By this new Bill they will all have to earn their living as hired workers. So will their parents.”

“Really! Why so?”

“Oh, just to teach 'em not to be bastards. And not to have bastards, neither. Must have social laws kept, of course. Else, where
should
we all be? Not that I approve of all this interference with marriage by the Government. The Old Lady's much too apt to put her finger in the pie and forbid the parson to marry couples that want it. Of course one can't expect people to stand that, and I don't blame 'em. But apart from that there's a prodigious deal too much casualness about the business. I don't approve of it. I'm all for marriage or nothing. More respectable. Now, do you get much of that sort o' thing in England?”

“Oh, yes. In all countries, no doubt.”

“Well, how is it regarded? What are
your
Bastardy laws?”

“We have no penal laws against bastards, nor against their parents.”

“Well, but good Gad, how in the world d'you keep 'em under, then?”

“I don't know that we do. The male parent, if identified, has to maintain his offspring while young. And I suppose a certain social stigma attaches,
particularly, I believe, to the female parent.… But, if you don't mind, I should like to listen.”

The Bastardy Bill, which struck Mr. Thinkwell as an uncommonly savage piece of penal legislation, proceeded on its way, its clauses being discussed in the usual dilatory and tedious manner of parliaments.

It was followed by a discussion on the Fermented Liquors Bill, another piece of fierce legislation, directed against those who unlawfully manufactured or sold any kind of fermented drink.

“You make a monopoly of it, then,” said Mr. Thinkwell to Mr. Lane, who did not know that word, for he was not a very well informed man, and replied, “Oh, no, just wine to drink.”

An isolated voice was raised in favour of the total prohibition of the fermentation of liquor, but this found no support in the House.

“Poor fellow, he always suggests that,” said Mr. Lane, tapping a finger on his forehead. “We take no notice. Ever hear such a suggestion in your country?”