CHAPTER X--SECOND DOCUMENT. DR. ULSWATER'S NARRATIVE CONTINUES: SUSANNAH

Malay Peninsula, _June._

|FOREVER shall my voice bear testimony to Mrs. Ulswater. She has gathered the races about her knee. The races didn't all stay there, but it's just as well they didn't. She has faced the hoary wisdom of the East, and subdued it. At the present writing Wisdom still acts as if he felt subdued.

Mrs. Ulswater was impatient to reach the far eastern mission field. She wished to see in action the process by which people, whose souls were naturally darkened by the opaqueness of their skins, become enlightened. This opinion as to the origin of idolatry I drew from Mrs. Ulswater with some difficulty. She held the theory, indeed, dimly, subconsciously. It was new to me. It is a theory worth examining for its latent mysticism. To what does it logically lead? If intelligence tends to increase with the transparency of the fleshly integument, wouldn't I be cleverer if not so fat? _C'est un grand peut-être_. But I'm getting thinner. Bismillah!

I have in my life pursued many ideals. I have hitched my wagon to certain stars. Some of the blanked things were comets, and some of them went out as unregretted as a bad cigar. Now I cling henceforward to this domestic light and floating fireside of the _Violetta_. No man has so entire a footing in the universe as he whose stockings are darned by a woman with a logical mind. I am not myself a vertebrate. Mrs. Ulswater is my complement. I am complete. I am satisfied. I am at rest.

My family has increased. It now consists of Mrs. Ulswater, an orphan girl, and an orphan pundit. But I go too fast.

On the 13th of last April, we put in at the island of Clementina, which lies to the north of Mozambique Channel.

“Now,” said I to Mrs. Ulswater, “I am complete. I am satisfied. I am at rest. But why Clementina?”

I was presented with and referred to a pamphlet or periodical, in fact, a quarterly. It appeared to be devoted to the reports of missionary labours. It is a branch of literature never by me thoroughly investigated. Mrs. Ulswater has a remarkable series of these pamphlets, covering more than ten years. A veritable find!

Now, in this number of the periodical in question, about two years old, was an illustrated article by one Mr. Tupper, a missionary, describing an orphan-asylum in the island of Clementina, and ah! so feelingly, with such pleasant details of the names and prospects of individual orphans, that I quickly shared the interest of Mrs. Ulswater. We wished to make the acquaintance of the following orphans, to wit, the orphan named “Susannah,” the orphan named “Thaddeus,” and the orphan named “James,” and the orphans “Caleb,” “Zillah,” “Stephen,” and “Naomi,” these apparently being the seven beneficiaries of the establishment.

“Susannah,” wrote Mr. Tupper, “is characterised by great vigour of mind, and by astuteness, if not perhaps by invariable serenity. She is the daughter of the late Rev. Mr. Romney of Georgia, U. S. A., my predecessor at this mission, who with his devoted wife died of an epidemic fever some eight years ago. Upon my arrival I found the orphans in a state most distressingly uncivilised. There are perils in this remote corner of the world, but hunger and cold are not among them. Little shelter is necessary, and food is to be had for the taking. Physically, a child can grow up and thrive almost unregarded.”

And so on, most interesting remarks by Mr. Tupper.

Clementina looked like a comfortable island. We recognised the port, and the high green hill, which the illustrations pictured as the site of the mission.

The _Violetta_ was anchored not far from the shore. Mrs. Ulswater and I were landed on the white beach under the hill. We climbed the hill. “On the very crest,” in the words of Mr. Tupper's description, stood “a cluster of bamboo cottages hidden in foliage.” The Asylum!

_Horribile dicta!_

“Well,” said Mrs. Ulswater, “I never!”

The cottages were empty! Nay, ruined, decadent, most of the roofs fallen! Eight decrepit bamboo structures in a row! The traces of a lawn, now faded into wilderness! Oh, neglect and desolation! What had we here? An orphaned orphanage! Most ridiculous of asylums!

A hen fled yelling across the open. In the wake of, in pursuit of, this hen, there rapidly wriggled out of the thicket seven scratched, and scarcely to be called clothed, individuals. My impression was immediate.

I said, “They are the orphans!”

They were. They sprang up in line. They bowed. They shouted with remarkable unison:

“Good morning, sir! Good morning, ma'am!”

We gasped. We were astounded. “Well,” said Mrs. Ulswater, “I never!”

They began to sing. They sang, in point of fact, as follows:

“ Pull for the shore, sailor!

Pull for the shore! ”

all except for one orphan, from whose rounded mouth detonated the statement, “I'm a pilgrim, I'm a stranger,” whose globular face was slapped with incredible rapidity by the girl who stood next him, at the head of the line, and who sang on imperiously, though the rest of the chorus broke down:

“ Heed not the rolling waves,

But bend to the oar.”

She had lank limbs, and the unmistakable features of an Aryan. I should have described her offhand as a “personage.”

“Susannah!” cried Mrs. Ulswater. “Don't tell me you're not!”

“Present!” said Susannah.

“Thaddeus?”

“Present!” from the globular pilgrim and stranger.

“James?”

“Present!”

James stood at the other end of the line. He was the smallest, Susannah the tallest, and Thaddeus the fattest of the orphans. “Caleb?”

“Present!”

“Naomi?”

“Present!”

“Zillah?”

“Present!”

“Stephen?”

“Present!”

Very good. There they were.

But alas! it was a run-down, abandoned asylum. Mr. Tupper, that talented descriptive author, had died some six months before, of the fever that seemed to be resident, or sporadic, in the island.

I discovered, at Port Clementina, a sort of governor or prefect, who seemed to be officially resident, and by nature sporadic, incidental. He was the calmest official in the Indian Ocean. There were vast vacant spaces in his mind. He did not know there were any orphans now at the asylum. He had understood there wasn't any asylum left. In any case, why not? In every conceivable case, why not? He had supposed they had all grown up, or disappeared, or fallen off something, or died of the fever, or snakes, or been adopted by natives, or something. Why not? In point of fact, now he came to think of it, he had not supposed anything about it whatever. Were they indeed still running around up there? Name of God! How amusing!

Mrs. Ulswater was indignant.

The population of Clementina is of extremely mixed blood. That Susannah was of Caucasian extraction--age fifteen or so; that Thaddeus also was of some northern ancestry, by his light hair, high cheek-bones, and slightly piggy eyes; that James was a diminutive Malayan--as I judged--age perhaps eight; and the rest miscellaneous African, Arab, French, and what not--all this argues a curious history for the island; which history I had no time to investigate, on account of Mrs. Ulswater's indignation.

Under the force of this indignation the orphans were swept swiftly aboard the _Violetta_. The hen, above mentioned, also came along with the current. The name of the hen is “Georgiana Tupper.” Mrs. Ulswater accomplished it in this way. She made an alliance with Susannah. The orphans were promptly aboard, Again, good! There they were.

The following morning they weren't. We found only Susannah still with us and Georgiana Tupper. The rest were gone, vanished forever. Captain Jansen approached us, and touched his cap.

“Yes'm. They yump; I hear 'em go yump, one, two, dree, four, six, un I get out dey boat, un dose gone swim ashore, un her don' yump. I don' know.”

Mrs. Ulswater turned on Susannah. “What made them jump?”

Said Susannah: “They ain't any good, those niggers. They're 'fraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Oh, they're just 'fraid to go. Their insides are all mush and dassent.”

“You're not afraid, Susannah?”

“Me!”

Singular, scornful maid!

We were unable to find the miscellaneous again. Apparently they hid, preferring the incidental or sporadic life of Clementina. With this diminished orphanage, we set over the Indian Ocean, seeking another asylum for Susannah.

I found at Clementina a curious variety of the Asteroidea or star fish.

You never saw the beat of Susannah.