A High Wind in Jamaica

Chp. 14

  Gone, alas, was any shred of confidence that she was God. That particular, supreme career was closed to her. But the conviction that she was the wickedest person who had ever been born, this would not die for much longer. Some appalling Power had determined it: it was no good struggling against it. Had she not already committed the most awful of crimes...the most awful of crimes, though, that was not murder, that was the mysterious crime against the Holy Ghost, which dwarfed even murder...had she, unwittingly, at some time committed this too? She so easily might have, since she did not know what it was. And if that were so, no wonder the pity of Heaven was sealed against her!

  So the poor little outcast lay shivering and sweating under her blanket, her gentle eyes fixed on the ear of the dwarf she had drawn.

  But presently she was singing again happily, and hanging right out of the bunk to outline in pencil the brown stain on the floor. A touch here, a touch there, and it was an old market-woman to the life, hobbling along with a bundle on her back! I admit that it staggered even Otto a bit when he came in later and saw what she had done.

  But when again she lay still on her back, and contemplated the practical difficulties of the life ahead of her (even leaving God and her Soul and all that on one side), she had not the support of Edward’s happy optimism: she was old enough to know how helpless she really was. How should she, dependent now for her very life on the kindness of those around her, how should she ever acquire the wit and strength to struggle against them and their kind?

She had developed by this time a rather curious feeling about Jonsen and Otto. In the first place, she had become very fond of them. Children, it is true, have a way of becoming more or less attached to any one they are in close contact with: but it was more than that, deeper. She was far fonder of them than she had ever been of her parents, for instance. They, for their part, showed every mild sign consonant with their natures of being fond of her: but how could she know ? It would be so easy for adult things like them to dissemble to her, she felt. Suppose they really intended to kill her: they could so easily hide it: they would behave with exactly this same kindness...I suppose this was the reflection of her own instinct for secretiveness?

  When she heard the captain’s step on the stairs, it might be that he was bringing her a plate of soup, or it might be that he had come to kill her—suddenly, with no warning change of expression on his amiable face even at the very end.

  If that was his intention, there was nothing whatever she could do to hinder him. To scream, struggle, attempt flight—they would be absolutely useless, and—well, a breach of decorum. If he chose to keep up appearances, it behoved her to do so too. If he showed no sign of his intention, she must show no sign of her inkling of it.

  That was why, when either of them came below, she would sing on, smile at him impishly and confidently, actually plague him for notice.

  She was a little fonder of Jonsen than of Otto. Ordinarily, any coarseness or malformity of adult flesh is in the highest degree repulsive to a child: but the cracks and scars on Jonsen’s enormous hands were as interesting to her as the valleys on the moon to a boy with a telescope. As he clumsily handled his parallel rulers and dividers, fitting them with infinite care to the marks on his chart, Emily would lie on her side and explore them, give them all names.

  Why must she grow up? Why couldn’t she leave her life always in other people’s keeping, to order as if it was no concern of hers?

  Most children have something of this feeling. With most children it is outweighed: still, they will generally hesitate before telling you they prefer to grow up. But then, most children live secure lives, and have an at least apparently secure future to grow up to. To have already murdered a full-sized man, and to have to keep it for ever secret, is not a normal background for a child of ten: to have a Margaret one could not altogether banish from one’s thoughts: to see every ordinary avenue of life locked against one, only a violent road, leading to Hell, open.