Orphan Island (32 page)

“Might meet with unpleasantness,” he said.

Meet with unpleasantness! Rosamond thought, that would be dreadful. It sounded so sinister, unpleasantness in the abstract, a creature stalking along the roads, that one might meet at any turning face to face. One would run for one's life, but Unpleasantness would run faster, hurrying in a horrid lumbering gallop.… No, one must not meet Unpleasantness. So Rosamond submitted to having her hand tucked into Captain Paul's arm, and to being escorted about her own island.

She could not help feeling a little happy to-day, deep in her soul, despite the disaster that had befallen them all, and that had so vexed some of the islanders, and, in particular, her dear Flora. Of course it
was
very vexing for them, to lose their Promised Land at a blow, like this. Vexing, too, for her father, who had his work in Cambridge, to which he was so oddly attached. One might not be able to understand how any one could prefer work in Cambridge to idleness on a coral island, but still, fathers are odd, and there it was. Rosamond was not so selfish as to desire her father to be permanently marooned and the islanders permanently disappointed, but, as this would appear to have occurred, for herself she could not but feel rather pleased, though the thought of her dog Peter somewhat distressed her.

“Some kind of sufficiently navigable craft
might
be built, possibly,” Captain Paul speculated aloud to himself. “Though the Lord alone knows how.…”

Rosamond reflected that the Lord's alone knowing would not help them very much. In her view, it
could not be done. No one on desert islands ever escaped from them in boats—not even in real boats saved from the ship. Even Masterman Ready (who was so clever that he could build houses, stockades, turtle traps, anything, for poor, stupid Mr. Seagrave, who could not help him at all), had known that he could not hope to do that. Even Jack, Ralph, and Peterkin, who had made a wonderful boat of chestnut planks, with nothing but an axe, had only used it to voyage round the island, and, on the one occasion when they went further, had been very nearly wrecked in a storm. Even Robinson Crusoe, so busy, persevering, and helped by Providence, had failed here. No; obviously it could not be done. Elsewhere one built ships, but not on desert islands. One waited for ships instead, and, if ships did not come, one went on waiting.

“I expect,” said Rosamond, “we shall have to wait to be rescued.”

CHARLES climbed above the crowds, up the steep wood path, beneath dense spreading boughs that hid him from the moon. He was shut in warm, scented darkness, with sleeping birds, huddled ball-shaped, heads under wings, who loaded the branches like coloured fruits, with monkeys who woke and chattered at his step, with armadillos who rattled like corn-crakes, fireflies who sparked like flames in a rick, tortoises who cried of love. Feathery boughs of pepper trees struck him softly across the face; pollen from brushed flowers dusted him and made him sneeze, and all the perfumes of the forest assailed him on small warm wandering winds, which bore no comfort on their wings.

He climbed above the woods, and on the hill's rocky brow met the moon. It stared low from a purple sky, with millions of enormous stars, drenching the island and the sea with pale gold.

Dreams, dreams, dreams! The perfumed island was a dream, afloat in a vast and shining ocean. Only the golden moon and the myriad stars burned on, imperishable lamps of truth. Beauty was a dream, that flashed across one's path, brilliant bird of paradise, and vanished in confusion and bitterness. Beauty fled; one woke on a cold
hillside, alone and palely loitering. Dreams, dreams, dreams!

From the shores below confused sounds came up, as of an island in uproar.

“Noise doesn't help,” said Charles, and turned his back on the climbing moon and plunged down the hill's other side, into the shallow, shadowed valley where the sedgy lake lay in gloom beneath hanging thickets.

By the lake's edge Charles lay. The golden stars were caught in green, weedy scum, floating there with sleeping water-birds and a thousand crawling insects.

“Very Baudelairien,” muttered Charles.

From the green stagnant water mist steamed, drifting about him in cold wreaths. He shivered, as if he had ague.

The sedge is withered from the lake
,

And no birds sing.…

Dreams, dreams, dreams!

He was drenched in sweat, from his climb through the hot, dark wood. The mist drifted about him chilling him. He plucked berries from a shrub at his side, and chewed them; they were bitter and numbing to the tongue. Perhaps they would also numb the soul.…

He was cold; he was hot; he was sick. The itch nettle spurted over him its milky juice. The moon reached him, looking over the hill, sending down long silver arms to embrace him where he lay in shadow, as if he had been Endymion. He
was
Endymion. As Endymion dreamed of the moon's kiss, so he. Both woke.

She had kissed him, his lovely moon. She had
let him kiss her on the mouth, on that proud, gay, cruel mouth.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild, and manna dew,

And sure in language strange she said,

I love thee true.

Dreams, dreams, dreams!

A mocking bird woke and uttered his odd, shrill cry. Centipedes crawled over the white sprawled figure by the water's brink. The climbing moon stood straight above the valley pool, staring whitely down on it, turning its green, mist-smudged surface to dull, iridescent silver.

“Very Mallarméan,” said Charles hoarsely.

The moon set. Only the blinking stars lit the world. In the dark, still hour before dawn, forest life stirred; a bird trilled, a monkey spoke, a parokeet uttered one shrill complaint, two pigs answered each other through the night. Then silence fell again.

A small wind was born; it ran shivering about like a naked, crying child. It touched the sprawling figure among the dark shrubs, running cold fingers through his hair.

Charles moved, shivered, got slowly up. Starry darkness held the island. The marshy smell of stagnant water was in his nostrils; his throat was swollen, his lips and gums bitter and stiff. He ached, from his forehead down to his ankles, and his skin, where he touched it, or where flowers and herbs brushed it, was tender, as if he had fever.

He climbed over the hill's top; he stood there and looked at the Pacific, vastily dim in the starlight. The island was a ship, that heaved and
rocked at anchor. He plunged dizzily down into black forest, and murmuring boughs blinded the stars. Big crabs dropped from trees about him, and a ripe nut thudded on his shoulder. It would be dawn in a few moments. Everywhere the birds and beasts announced it, in their different modes.

It was dawn when he came to the wood's edge. Morning glimmered on the Pacific, struggling with the dying stars.

A hundred birds unbailed themselves and sang; a hundred monkeys cried. Only man slept now; only Smiths and Orphans, wearied with the revellings of the birthday night of Miss Smith.

“Very Rimbaudien,” said Charles dizzily, and tumbled at the foot of a milk tree in a faint.

Every one was quieted down the day after the Birthday. They had got used to the disaster that had goaded them to revolt, to demonstration, to noise. After a day and a night spent in saying loudly what they thought of the affair, they woke with sore throats and practical purposes. Parliament was going to meet, and things were going to happen there. The Prime Minister had been told so last night, by the deputation which had waited on him at the Yams.

Mr. Thinkwell stood beside Charles, who lay sick of a fever at Belle Vue, with a cold bandage about his head. The doctor had come to see him.

“A fever,” the doctor said.

“Yes,” said Mr. Thinkwell, who had a clinical thermometer, “his temperature is a hundred and four.”

“If, as you say, he was out all night, it might
account for it. Very unwholesome, sleeping out in the woods. He seems to have contracted a kind of ague. Also, I see from the state of his lips and gums that he has either eaten or chewed noxious berries of some kind. Some of these berries are very unwholesome, even poisonous. I am afraid he is suffering from a very serious chill.”

“He is no better at diagnosis than doctors elsewhere,” Mr. Thinkwell thought, “I could have said all that. Ague, poisonous berries, a chill. Which?”

“Keep him very warm,” said the doctor; “except his head, which should be cool. I will send round a nurse presently, and some medicine. Meanwhile, I will let a little blood.”

“Rather an old-fashioned remedy,” said Mr. Thinkwell. “I should scarcely think it advisable.”

“As you like, my dear sir, as you like. It is the cure for fever, you know, but as you like. Well, I must be getting back to my other patient. She remains just the same, poor old lady. She'll never get over it, I fancy, however long she lingers. Well, it's a pretty state of affairs, isn't it? Our servants wanting to be our masters.”

Dr. Field, as the husband of a Smith-Carter daughter, felt one of the family. He viewed the Orphan unrest with disfavour.

“You must take care of this young gentleman,” he said, as he went away. “I don't like his state; not at all.”

“I know nothing about Charles's state that I did not know before he came,” said Mr. Thinkwell, when he was gone. “I see that doctors are the same everywhere. They know uncommonly little.”

“Yes,” Rosamond agreed. She sat by Charles's bedside, damping his bandage when it grew warm.

It was she who had found him, early in the morning, beneath the milk-tree.

Mr. Thinkwell stood looking down on his son.

“I have been asked to attend the meeting of parliament,” he said. “And it would interest me to do so. The nurse will be here directly. If he gets worse you must come for me or send a message, at once. You had better send William. Where is he? Down on the shore, I suppose. Well, never mind. I imagine, from what I know of malarial types of fever, that he will go on much the same through the day. I shall be back, in any case, in a couple of hours.”

He went out.

Rosamond sat by Charles. Every quarter of an hour she dipped the bandage round his head in cold water and replaced it. He tossed and turned, flushed and muttering, scarcely conscious. Through the long, wide, uncurtained window the sweet air of the island stole in, and the green forest light. Outside the window a large many-stemmed banian tree grew, giving shade with its thick foliage and edification with its stout trunks, each of which was inscribed with pious verse. One related the story of Ananias and Sapphira; from where she sat Rosamond could only see,—

“So did his wife Sapphira die,

When she came in and grew so bold

As to confirm that wicked lie

That just before her husband told.

Then let me always watch my lips,

Lest I be struck to death and Hell,

Since God a book of reckoning keeps

For every lie that children tell.”

On another stem the tale of Elisha and the mocking children must have been inscribed, for the stanza visible ran—

“God quickly stopped their wicked breath,

And sent two raging bears,

That tore them limb from limb to death,

With blood and groans and tears.”

Between these two a third trunk struck a more cheerful note, moved, doubtless, to a natural thankfulness by these sad tales of the fate of Israelites.

“Lord, I ascribe it to Thy grace,

And not to chance, as others do,

That I was born of Christian race,

And not a Heathen or a Jew.”

Charles picked at the cocoa-nut sheet with hot hands. He muttered with his lips. From time to time he ejaculated the name of Flora, or of a French poet.

Suddenly the quiet broke up, and there was a burst of noises. Noises seldom come singly. They arrive in battalions. The galloping of pigs in the wood, a sudden wind tearing at the trees, a breaking bough, the yelping of monkeys, the screaming of parokeets, the crying of a child. The world seemed all in a flurry. Then, as suddenly, it all died down; the world was drowsy again, and one heard only the small sounds, fruits that dropped with soft thumps, a gentle murmuring wind, bees humming over flowers, the sea that mourned against the reef and lapped with sleepy ripples on the shore.

With the quiet, came a small silver bird, like a pigeon. It flew in at the open window, and hovered over Charles's bed.

“It is the Holy Ghost,” thought Rosamond, without surprise, and dipped Charles's bandage again.

The bird flew out at the window. Charles sat up in bed.

“Very Baudelairien,” he exclaimed loudly, and fell back, muttering.

The nurse arrived. She was bright and strong and happy, and like a nurse.

“Now,” she said, “I'll make you nice and comfortable.”

Charles, who did not like nurses, and hated the word comfortable, scowled at her in his delirium. However, she moved cheerily about him, rearranged his head-bandage, dipping it into some fragrant lotion she had, felt his pulse, and told him how nice and comfortable he now was. She looked with interest at Mr. Thinkwell's clinical thermometer, which lay on a table by the bed.

“Doctor told me of it,” she said. “But we must be ever so careful, of course, never to let the patient get hold of it himself, even when he gets better.”

“Why not?” asked Rosamond. “It's rather amusing, taking one's temperature; it's something to do in bed.”

“My dear! That would never do. Doctor would be sadly shocked. We never let them know how they are.”

“Don't you? Why not?”

“Oh, it wouldn't do at all; it would throw them back. I never tell my patients what their pulse is, for example.”