The comet was again visible on the ensuing night, but the horrors of sea-sickness were too acute, the misery of the passengers far too intense, for them to care greatly about the future of the world and of themselves. Word had been passed around the ship that the comet would not touch the earth for a few days yet, and that was a blessed respite. In the meantime there was no cessation of the strange agony caused by a rolling, pitching vessel which was traversing nearly six hundred miles of the roughest part of the Caribbean Sea. Some of the emigrants were secretly of the opinion that the comet could not be worse than the ship, and certainly was not just then interfering with their bodily comfort; they had also heard the sailors jesting at their fears, and that gave them a sort of courage, not unmixed with hope. Then the ex-street preacher, in the midst of one of his urgent appeals for the instant conversion of all sinners, had been suddenly taken with a desire to rush to the ship’s side. The people were too ill to laugh, but some of them smiled faintly at the unfortunate gentleman’s mishap. And smiles, coupled with sea-sickness, must inevitably reduce religious terrorism to the ridiculous.
So the second night wore on, and Jones in his cabin, and Susan in hers, slumbered fitfully, taking comfort as they remembered, when they started out of a doze, that the morning would bring an end to their present misery.
As it drew towards morning they found sleep impossible. It was as though they were in a steam bath, the awful, close, clammy heat was something they had never experienced before. They struggled out of their bunks, as did all the other second-class passengers, the perspiration streaming from their bodies. “This must be the beginning of hell,” Jones muttered impiously, though not without a certain sense of terror. He was still sea-sick, and this, and the terrific heat, inclined him to believe that he had now sounded the ultimate depths of human misery. “I wonder why I bother come to this infernal place?” he grumbled, as he struggled into his clothes with the intention of going on deck.
He peeped out of his porthole, trying to peer through the darkness. He heard outside the labourers jabbering as they moved about the ship; the swish of water as it poured from the upper deck into the sea warned him that they were swabbing down the decks, and he guessed that Colon could not now be far away. He hurried out of his stifling cabin and went to call up Susan; she was ready dressed, but pale and weak; she gladly came out, and together they went to the ship’s side, anxious for a first glimpse of the land.
The prospect was sufficiently depressing. The sky above was dark with heavy rain-clouds that hung low and the sea ran fiercely—one vast expanse of slate-coloured water. The rain was falling, not in a torrential shower, but steadily, pitilessly, unceasingly, and at quick intervals the pallid lightning flashed upon the scene, and the low rumble of thunder proclaimed the gathering storm.
“Colon!”
The cry came from one of the watchers on the emigrants’ deck, from one of the many men who had come to seek their fortune in this land of adventure of which the world had heard so much for some four hundred years. “Colon!” The word signified for them the land of promise, the land of their thoughts and dreams for many a long day. The cry was taken up and re-echoed from many lips. The sufferers forgot their sickness. The magic word had charmed it entirely away.
Jones and Susan bent forward quickly, electrified by the shout. In the distance they saw something like a huge bank of cloud on the horizon, and at once they thought it was their destination—Colon at last. By straining one’s eyes one could just perceive it; but it was not Colon, for that town lay fully fifteen miles away. Still, it was part of the Isthmus of Panama, and as the sunlight began to fight its way slowly and painfully through the clouds that hung over land and sea, you could perceive, stretching away for miles and miles, the low-lying inhospitable shores of the country which has one of the most romantic histories in the world.
There the mainland of Panama lay, dreary, ugly, uninviting. One could see the waves breaking listlessly against the shore, just as though the very energy of the water were affected by the terrible steaming heat. There was something unspeakably gloomy about the scene, something that subdued one to silence; and so it was in silence that almost every one on board watched the mangrove-covered banks slip by as the ship sped on her way.
The lightning flickered more frequently, the rumble of the thunder became louder, more insistent. The deckers, who had never undressed during the thirty-six hours of the passage, now began to make themselves presentable for going ashore, and Jones and Susan forced themselves to re-enter their cabins for the purpose of gathering together their possessions. It was daylight now, though the sun could not be seen. As they drew nearer to the town of Colon the rain slackened somewhat. The steamer slowed down, stopped, and lay idly rolling in the dark, oily water, waiting until the officials of the port should come on board.
Susan could now see before her the town of which she had heard so much. To her inquiring eyes it looked a small place: there was a cluster of ugly wooden piers jutting out into the sea and roofed with corrugated iron painted black; behind these was a street or road that ran along the seashore as far as she could follow it, and behind this street rose a line of frail-looking wooden buildings two or three storeys high. But farther away to the right, as one gazed landward from the deck of an incoming ship, could be seen bungalows of a description superior to the buildings near by; these bungalows stood amidst rows of cocoa-nut palms and light green shrubs evidently planted and tended by the hand of man. This touch of tropical scenery redeemed the town from the stigma of utter ugliness. Even so, and in spite of the well-known enchantment of distance, Colon stood confessed a mushroom town, a low, damp, rain-sodden bit of land which accident had made the terminus of a famous railway, and, after that, the site of the Atlantic entrance of the great Panama Canal.
Something like disappointment was expressed on Susan’s face and in her voice as she turned to Jones, saying:
“What you think of it, Sam?”
“Can’t say yet,” he replied dubiously; “howsoever, I am ready to go ashore.”
He started to stroll away, though he had no idea of where he was going to, when a swarthy little man unceremoniously sprang in front of him, caught him by the arm and waved him back. Jones had not observed the little man before. The latter had come on board at the same time as the doctor, and perhaps he thought that Jones wanted to disappear from view when it was necessary that he should be visible. Anyhow, he addressed Samuel in a perfectly unintelligible tongue, much to our young Jamaican’s astonishment, and wildly waved his arms. “What you mean?” indignantly demanded Jones, planting his feet firmly on the deck and refusing to move.
The little man appeared to be annoyed, and again poured forth a flood of Spanish. As Jones could not understand what he was saying, and could not possibly guess what he would be at, he concluded that the man was a fool, and said so loudly.
“You seem to be preposterously ignorant!” he exclaimed, addressing his excited aggressor. “You can’t even talk English! What you call you’self—Chinese or Cuban, or what?”
Now the man could not speak English, but he understood just enough of it to grasp the fact that Jones was insulting him. So he again addressed Mr. Jones in a violent manner, and gave him a backward push.
“Look here!” exclaimed Jones. “It’s about time you finish pushing me, you understand? I am not a Colon man, but an English gentleman, an’ if you touch me again I will box the head off you’ body!”
The little man was not daunted; indeed, he appeared to increase in pugnacity. But just then, fortunately, one of the petty officers of the ship, seeing that a serious quarrel was imminent, interfered.
“You’d better not argue with that man,” he said to Jones; “he’s the Captain of the Port.”
“But that is no reason why he should push me,” argued Jones, bent upon establishing at the outset his claim to deferential treatment at the hands of foreigners. “What he push me for?”
“Thought you were doing something you shouldn’t do, I suppose. They are rather funny, these people. There are all sorts of rules you have to obey down here.”
Jones fell back, not at all pleased with his first experience of Panamanian methods. But he waited quietly till the doctor, who was an American official, came up the second-class deck and assured himself that the passengers there had all been vaccinated at home and were suffering from no serious complaints. It took a longer time to examine the deckers: the doctor was very strict with these. But it was all over at last; the officials of the port boarded their respective launches and sped away (Jones following the launch of the Captain of the Port with eyes expressive of unmitigated contempt), and then the ship began to draw towards the dock. The gangways were shoved out, word was passed that the passengers were free to go ashore. Susan and Samuel prepared to land, the latter still fuming over his treatment by a little dark fiery man amongst whose serious offences was his utter inability to speak the English language.
On the pier they had to hunt for their luggage, which was mixed with that of other people whose frantic exertions to recover their belongings impeded themselves. But the baggage was assorted at last, and now came the inquisition of the Customs officers. These were quite young men, almost boys, and their slight, emaciated frames, sallow faces, and leisurely movements did not at all appeal to Jones’s sense of what was proper in Government officials. He watched them with amazement as they delved into his boxes and turned up everything, carelessly motioning him to re-arrange his things when they were through. “Sue,” he observed impressively, when the ordeal was over, “this is not a civilized country;” and, having thus announced his discovery, he accepted the offer of a truck-man, who wheeled their trunks to the gate of the wharf and then coolly demanded a dollar for the job.
As this bit of work would not have been worth more than a shilling in Jamaica, if as much, Jones and Susan were scandalized, and protested loudly against the imposition. But the man called a little policeman to arbitrate in the matter. This policeman spoke English of a kind, and the intention of his discourse was to assure Jones that, as he had made no previous bargain with the man, he must pay what the man asked. He said this with all gravity, but with a pronunciation so peculiar that Jones expressed his great anxiety to know at what school he had been educated. It was rather lucky for him that the “policia” did not grasp his meaning.
It was drizzling still, but very slightly. The clouds overhead, however, and the continuous flashes of lightning warned our friends that the downpour might come on at any moment. They hailed a cab (driven by a West Indian), and Jones told the man that he wanted to go to the Canal Commission’s Department of Labour and Quarters. He asked the cabman to drive slowly, so that they might see something of the town as they went on. With their luggage piled in front of and around them they began their ride through the principal street of Colon.
It was a busy thoroughfare. To their left, as they drove towards the Commission’s Department of Labour and Quarters, were the principal stores and shops and cafés of the town, wooden buildings all, painted pink, dull yellow, grey, or light blue, with pointed roofs, broad verandas running round the first and second floors, and a paved piazza running along the whole length of the ground floors. The projecting floors of the verandas above formed a shelter from sun and rain, and the piazzas were thronged with pedestrians. All sorts and conditions of human beings were represented in these crowds—West Indian labourers, East Indian pedlars, Chinese, Greeks; men from every country in Europe; natives of Panama and Colombia, ranging in colour from pure black to a sallow white; Americans—the men with their jackets thrown over their shoulders, energetic, masterful; the women, in cool white dresses and bareheaded, who walked along as unconcernedly as though they were taking a stroll in Broadway. Susan noticed that the Panamanian women were careful to have shawls thrown over their shoulders though their unstockinged feet were thrust into slippers down at heels. No one seemed to mind the rain. The shops were stocked with all sorts of showy goods; the cafés were crowded and business in them appeared to be brisk; the cabs were well patronized, and their drivers abused one another with a fluency of bad language that did not argue much for the vigilance or the good hearing of the Panama police. It was a busy town—that she could see at once. A peculiar town, too, from her point of view, for bordering the street were railway lines, and trains were passing or shunting up and down with a continuous tooting of shrill whistles; while immediately beyond the train lines was the ragged, sea-beaten shore of Colon, destitute of a seawall and ugly. She was not sure that she liked Colon at first sight, yet its bustle, its evident prosperity, appealed to her. Suddenly, and even while Susan was looking at the shops and houses, without turning out of the street the cab passed into that part of old Colon which is known as Christobal and which the Americans had taken over as part of their territory and converted into an American settlement.
Here she and Samuel found themselves in the midst of the bungalows and cocoa-nut trees they had sighted from the sea. There were no shops here, no noise, no bustle; there was absolute cleanliness and a sense of order that formed a sharp contrast to the careless life of the Panamanian town they had just left behind them. Gardens bloomed in front of many of the houses, the sanitation was perfect; the wire-screened doors and windows of the buildings gave them the quaint appearance of huge cages, and behind those wire-screens (a protection against the once-virulent mosquito of Colon) peered many a white face, the faces of American women and children who during the long warm days thought wistfully of their homes in the North. This, to Susan’s mind, looked an eminently respectable locality. “I would like to live here, Sam,” she remarked, “more than in the other part of the town.”
The cab stopped in front of a large building near the end of the street, and Jones jumped out, bidding Susan wait for him. He went into the office indicated by the cabman, where he found some other men waiting. He gave his name, and mentioned that he had been engaged in Jamaica by one of the Canal Commission’s agents, who had promised him quarters in the Canal Zone. “You must have been expecting me,” he observed, with an air of consequence.
“I kain’t say we have,” replied the tall American who attended to him, “but I guess it’s all right. I kain’t give you quarters to-day, anyhow; I’ve got to see what room we have for mechanics. You kin turn into work right here in Christobal to-morrow, an’ when you come I’ll see what we kin do about puttin’ you up.” With that he turned away abruptly to see what another man wanted, and Jones made his way back outside.
Where were they to go to now? It was the cabman who suggested a way out of the difficulty. He knew a place, he told them, where they could get a room for the night if they were willing to pay a dollar for the accommodation. Jones protested that the price was “ridiculous,” but agreed nevertheless to be taken to the place, Susan shrewdly suspecting that they were being victimized by the cabby, who knew that they were strangers. Back they drove into Colon, stopping for a minute at a shop to purchase some bread and cheese. Then the cabman took them to a house at the back of the town, charged them a dollar and a half for the work he had done, and drove away well satisfied with the innocence or ignorance of “dose Jamaica fools.” He was a Jamaican himself, but sophisticated.
The house, in which they secured a room for the night, was a long wooden barn divided into small apartments. Each room had a wooden shutter for a window, and the place had originally been built upon a swamp. The piles driven into the swamp still remained as the building’s foundation; the land behind the house had only lately been cleared by the American authorities and was not yet filled up. So the ground was covered with a sheet of fetid water, and a little behind this the mangrove bushes flourished, dark green and horrible, a sombre background suggesting fever and loathsome ailments even to the least observant mind.
A dank heavy smell of rotting vegetation permeated the air. The room was almost as stifling as the ship’s cabin had been that morning. No sooner had they taken their things inside when the thunder-storm, which had been threatening for hours, burst in full force upon Colon; the lightning writhed like maddened serpents through the blue-black sky, the crash of the thunder was deafening. Susan shuddered with fear. Even Jones looked lugubrious. This was a poor sort of welcome to the land of promise.
They set to and made the best of their circumstances. The room contained a cot, one wooden-seated chair, a table with a tin basin, a ewer of water and a glass, and another table, placed in the centre of the apartment and suggesting by its position that it was intended as a sort of ornament.
Jones, seated on the chair, placed the edibles he had procured on this centre table, and pulled a flask of rum out of his pocket. He offered some of the liquor to Susan, who refused it with a shake of her head. He helped himself liberally, then ate some of the bread and cheese, while she watched him sullenly. She felt downhearted, almost inclined to cry. But the rum had inspirited him, and already he was brighter. “What’s the matter? You sorry you come?” he asked her.
“Not exactly,” she replied; “but I don’t know a soul here; I feel lonely an’ miserable, and dis rain——” She could find no words to express her disappointment. “If I was to stay long in this room, I would dead,” she plaintively concluded.
“Don’t fret,” he cheerfully advised. “To-morrow we will get good quarters, an’ even here will soon be better. From all what I hear about the Americans, they are not the sort of people to procrastinate in improving conditions. As for you, you are all right now, Sue. I am goin’ to make a woman of you. I am more than a match for anything!” He suddenly remembered the comet. “That is, if we don’t dead,” he hastily added, “in which case we had better begin to prepare our soul.”
He relapsed into seriousness again, but not for long: the rum he had taken fought successfully against an access of melancholy brought on by the prospect of early death through the agency of ethereal bodies. He saw with genuine regret that Susan could eat nothing. The bread and cheese he did not like himself. But the rain soon began to fall less heavily, and the thunder became more and more distant. Susan not caring or not able to talk, he waited in silence until only a drizzle remained of the tremendous downpour. Then he and Susan put on their hats and went out into the streets of Colon once more.
“The first thing we got to do is to find a place where we can get some good food,” said Jones, whose mind was just then centred upon practical matters.
There was an abundance of such places in the narrow streets in which they soon found themselves, but they were crowded with men and Susan hesitated about entering them. It seemed to both herself and Samuel that a very large portion of the house-space of Colon was devoted to bars, the doors of which stood wide open, thus allowing the passers-by to stare at will at those who sat inside industriously playing dominoes or cards, or drinking beer. Now that she was away from the house near the swamp, and amidst pedestrians whom she could hear talking English, Susan felt a little easier in mind. But she was painfully aware of her bodily weakness, caused by sea-sickness and lack of food. She was decidedly hungry.
In about ten minutes, in a narrow back street of not very prepossessing appearance, they came upon a building over the doors of whose lower storey was displayed this legend: “The Jamaican’s Heaven of Rest; Welcome all to Dine.” Heavens in which hot dinners were provided were particularly welcome to Susan and Samuel just then, and it was evident that this place was owned or looked after by some one from “home.” They gladly entered. The room was dark and not over-clean. Two long tables covered with greasy cloths, and a number of chairs, constituted all its furniture. At one end of it, to the right as you entered, was a small bar well stocked with liquors, of which Colon consumed an extraordinary quantity; at the other end was a door leading into a kitchen which could be plainly seen and smelt, and which appeared to be overcrowded with cooks and waitresses, all slatternly attired, and as greasy as they well could be. Seated around the tables, some eating, some waiting to be served, were a number of men. Susan was the only woman guest, so, of course, all the men in the room paused to have a good look at her as she and Samuel took their seats.
Lunch was quickly served, and Jones ordered some whisky, which he promptly drank. After a few minutes of rapid mastication, he looked about the room with an inquiring air, with the view of engaging in conversation with some communicative person. One man noticed his look, and saw that Samuel was a stranger. “Come this morning?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Jones quickly, “by the ship. This is a rainy place, eh? When you think the rain will stop?”
“About November,” the man answered.
“November! You makin’ fun! Why, man, this is only May!”
“Wait an’ see,” was the significant rejoinder. “When rain commence to come in dis country, it don’t know when to stop. How is Jamaica when you leave it?”
“Oh, pretty well,” replied Jones. “Dull as usual, an’ little cash. All that the people talkin’ about over there is the comet.”
As he mentioned the comet he remembered that he had undertaken to marry Susan before the dreaded 18th, when the earth would pass through the comet’s tail. He suddenly grew grave.
“This is a very serious time,” he observed. “In a few hours we may be all before our Maker.”
This remark, apparently apropos of nothing, astonished those who heard it. In Panama they were not accustomed to discuss the hereafter at lunch. Some of the men laughed; the man who had addressed him asked:
“You are a evangelistic preacher?”
“No,” said Jones; “of course not. But don’t y’u know that the comet is going to destroy the world?”
The other man shook his head doubtingly. “Who say so?” he asked.
“The newspaper,” Samuel answered, mentioning the only source of information he knew of.
“It can’t be the latest paper, then,” observed the other; “for the Star and Herald to-day have a telegram that say there is no reason for anybody to frighten: the comet is not goin’ to come near us.”
“Is that so?” exclaimed Samuel in a voice of profound relief. “Then we are all right! Sue, you hear?”
“Yes,” replied Susan, “but which newspaper is right?”
“The latest, of course; every day a newspaper learn something new.”
“That may be so,” said the stranger; “but I don’t depend on newspaper to tell me about the end of de world. I are satisfied to think that this world was lasting from Adam was a boy; an’ if it don’t get destroy by a comet all this time, it not likely to destroy now.”
This way of looking at the matter, coupled with the latest statement in the Isthmian journal, convinced Jones that no danger to his existence was to be apprehended from the comet. He was so delighted to learn that the comet was innocuous that he did not pursue the conversation, but quickly finished his lunch, eager now to explore Colon and to begin that gay manner of living to which he had looked forward with such expectation for weeks. He paid the bill and he and Susan left the eating-house. They had not gone ten yards when Jones heard his name called by some one behind him.
He turned round, wondering to find himself known already in this strange town. He saw a black man, short, strongly built, with a genial face on which there was a smile of recognition. This man was over forty years of age, and his whole appearance indicated self-confidence and prosperity. Jones thought he remembered his face, but could not just then remember his name or where he had met him. Clearly, however, the stranger knew him, for he clapped him on the shoulder in a friendly way and asked him what he was doing in Colon.
“I come here to fill an occupation,” Jones replied; “but, to tell the truth, you have an advantage of me. What’s your name? I am Samuel Josiah Jones.”
“Oh, I know that well,” laughed the other; “you used to tell us so every day at de railway. You remember now? Mackenzie? Mac that was at the railway when you was learning trade?”
“Of course!” cried Samuel, now completely enlightened. “Sue, this is Mr. Mackenzie, who you always hear me talk about. Shake hands.”
Susan had never heard Mackenzie mentioned before, but did not say so. She shook hands as directed.
“When you come?” was Mackenzie’s next question.
“This morning, an’ it been raining ever since. Nasty place for rain. I was just goin’ home, Mac, when you accost me; but now we must go an’ take a drink together for luck. Where can we go?”
“But what about you’ sister?” asked Mackenzie, glancing at Susan and noticing that she did not seem to relish Jones’s proposal.
“She is my intended,” said Jones (Mackenzie had already guessed as much), “and she can go home in a ’bus. Sue, my dear,” he went on, turning to her, “Mr. Mac is a particular friend of mine, an’ I want to have a little confabulation with him. Take a ’bus an’ go home, like a good girl. I soon be there.”
If Mackenzie had not been a stranger, Susan would certainly have protested against being disposed of in so summary a fashion, especially as this was her first day in Colon. She was wild at being sent back to the miserable room while Jones was preparing to go about the town and enjoy himself. But she let him hail a passing cab, into which she got, and she left the two men standing on the side-walk without saying a single word to either of them.
It was seven o’clock before Jones went back to her. For hours she had remained in the wretched den, nursing her misery and her wrath. It had come on to rain again—a steady rain that held out no promise of stopping and which had not ceased when Samuel returned. He had been sufficiently thoughtful to bring with him some bread, a can of preserved meat, and a pint of whisky, for he judged that she had not been out to dinner. On these things he proposed that they should dine, and Susan watched him in silence while he placed them on the table and went outside to borrow some plates and a knife and fork. She made no effort to help him. He was not perfectly sober, yet he was sober enough to perceive that she was angry, and he had somewhere deep down in his heart an uneasy feeling that there was some justification for her anger. He became determinedly and manfully cheerful.
“To-morrow,” he remarked, as he began to eat, “we’ll be in better quarters and will settle down peaceful and regular; in the meantime we must eat an’ be happy.”
“Why you stay out so long?” Susan asked, speaking for the first time and showing no inclination either to eat or to be happy.
“Couldn’t help it,”, he replied. “Mac wanted to treat me good, an’ I wouldn’t have been a gentleman if I refused him.”
A sandwich in one hand, a glass of whisky in the other, he smiled jovially as if in approval of his own meritorious conduct. But he gave her no opportunity to comment on his ideas of gentlemanly behaviour.
“You know, Sue,” he observed, “I think you are a lucky girl? I am acquainted with about twenty other females, an’ them would kill themselves to be here to-night. But I am a man of emphatic decisiveness, an’ when I select a gurl I will stick to her—if she behave herself.” He paused, in order that she might mark the proviso well. Then he added, “But you will behave you’self.
“Tell you what!” he went on enthusiastically. “I am goin’ to raise cain as soon as I meet a few more Jamaica boys like Mac. No American man is goin’ to boss me. A Jamaican is more than a match for anybody; an’ if a man ever talk to me hard in this country, I kick him!”
“Y’u can’t kick anybody in this country,” said Susan quietly; “it’s not home.”
“Don’t matter. They got to think a lot of me in this low-down place. I won’t let a man interfere with you, either. I intend to stick to you.”
Susan, sitting on the cot, shifted her position a little. She had listened carefully to all that Samuel had said; she had noticed how persistently he dwelt upon his intention to stick to her—she had especially noticed that he expected her to behave herself. But to one matter, which had been in her mind ever since they landed, he had not once alluded. She intended that it should be discussed that night.
“See here, Sam,” she began, with simple directness, “you say on board the ship night before last that you was goin’ to marry me as soon as you get to Colon. But all day to-day y’u don’t say nothing about it. You goin’ to do it to-morrow?”
Samuel Josiah Jones paused in the act of conveying a glass of whisky to his lips and stared at Susan with a countenance expressive of profoundest astonishment. Susan’s question appeared to him a most unreasonable one. He was silent for some seconds, then in a tone of voice which was eloquent with reproach, and even with sorrow, he answered:
“You mean to say that y’u didn’t hear what that man tell us to-day in the cook-shop?”
“Yes,” said Susan, “I did hear what him say; but that don’t ’ave nothing to do with what you say on board the ship. Y’u promise to marry me because we wasn’t living quite correct, an’ if that was true yesterday morning, it must be true to-night.”
Susan’s rejoinder was so straightforward and clear that Jones could only reply indirectly.
“Well!” he exclaimed, apostrophizing the ceiling; “I never see people so unreasonable like Jamaica females. They have no logical perspecuity. They are so ambitious that I can’t understand them. Susan, you forget that when I talk to you about marriage an’ all that sort of foolishness we didn’t expect to live another week? You forget that? I don’t tell you that if the comet was really goin’ to kill us I wouldn’t get married. But now, seeing that we are safe, it would be the height of stupidness in me to pick up meself an’ enter in the bonds of matrimony, which, when you once get into it, y’u can’t get out of it at all. What you take me for? Specify!”
“Then you not goin’ to marry me again?” was Susan’s only reply to this long speech.
“Don’t I have signified to you?” he answered; and as she sat there looking at him darkly, he hastened to pacify her.
“But you are all right, Sue; you goin’ to live like a queen. After all, when we leave Jamaica we didn’t think about married. Besides, look what I do for you already!”
She did not see that he had done much for her at all, for she was not a woman easily satisfied. But Colon was not Kingston; she had no friends here; all the advantage would be on Jones’s side if she quarrelled with him now. She was well aware too that she could scarcely claim that he had brought her with him under false pretences. Nevertheless she felt bitterly disappointed, and Jones’s way of looking upon marriage with her as being only a sensible action when death appeared imminent, wounded her vanity. If he had not promised to marry her on the ship, she would not have mentioned the matter; but he had created hope in her, had awakened a dormant ambition, and she understood how advantageous it would be for her to have a legal right to his name in this new country. She now felt, therefore, that she had a grievance, and her resentment was increased by her sense of entire dependence upon Jones. It was true that she had boasted in Jamaica about going to Colon as an independent woman to earn her own living; but her few hours’ experience in that town had taught her that with girls like herself that was more easily said than done. Catherine had proved right after all. The young woman who did not know Panama well must have some one to assist her.
She did not propose to argue any more with Samuel. If her family were with her, she reflected, the situation might be very different, for together they would surely be able to earn a decent living, and then she would not feel so much obliged to tolerate anything like neglect from Samuel. Or again, if she had some money and knew Panama, she might be able to make her way about with ease. But she was not prepared to become a servant. She knew that women of a certain type flourished in Colon, but to their depths she would not and could never sink. Her mind ran upon Tom: she knew she had influence with him, and as a last resort she could always appeal to him for assistance; Truth to tell, however, she had felt Tom’s departure as a relief after he had left Jamaica: she had never cared for him. Samuel was wild, unstable, but was not intentionally unkind. . . . She liked him.
Sitting on the edge of the cot, one leg crooked over the other, her chin supported by her right hand, she thought the matter over. The sound of the rain and the thunder’s long roll came to her ears. In the next apartment a girl was singing—she knew the words, she had heard them in Jamaica:
“Ef I did hear what me mammee did say
?I wouldn’t be in dis wort’less Colon.”
But no one had warned her against Colon; she had wished to come to this place, she was here, she must make the best of it. She listened to the singing. It seemed to her that, despite the words, the singer’s voice was cheerful.
Samuel, on his part, was not worrying. He was not sober. He was quite satisfied that he was acting with the most becoming propriety and in strict accordance with the high gentlemanly standards of Samuel Josiah Jones. His mind was filled with pleasing anticipations of the part he would play in the society of the town. He had a dazzling vision of happiness, now that he had recovered from his first feeling of discontent, and was no longer haunted by fear of approaching dissolution. He was determined to make Susan comfortable; he would earn lots of money, dress well, sport, distinguish himself: there were no spots just then upon the bright sun of his reflections. So he went to bed in a merry frame of mind; but Susan sat up for some time longer, thinking. To one thing she had made up her mind when she finally determined to rest. She would save money, and so secure her personal independence.
The clanging of bells awakened Susan and Jones the next morning. The sharp peals came insistently from different directions; from Christobal, where the labourers were being warned that the day’s work would shortly begin once more; from the shunting trains and engines along the water-front of Colon; from the ships in the harbour. The noise pervaded the little town, and soon every one was stirring and preparing for the labours which, however diverse and apparently unconnected, had all a very definite connection with the one great undertaking of Panama, the building of the Canal.
Jones was soon ready to report himself for duty at Christobal. Whatever his failings, shirking his work was not one of them; he had been trained in the workshops of the Jamaica Government Railway, where discipline was well understood and where each man had been well drilled into his work. Jones had grumbled at his chiefs at the railway, but now he thought of them with pride and was determined to show the American bosses that a British subject who had served the Government was in no wise inferior to any man from the States.
He had an early breakfast at the cook-shop where he had lunched the day before, then hurried off to Christobal, where Mackenzie had promised to meet him at eight o’clock. Mackenzie appeared on time, and together they went into the office of Labour and Quarters. Here the arrangements between Jones and the Canal Commission were promptly concluded.
Jones was to work in the railway shop in Christobal as an under-mechanic. He was to receive fifteen, dollars a week, payable every fortnight, and could have free quarters in the Canal Zone, house accommodation being regarded as part of his salary. He gladly accepted this offer of houseroom, but was somewhat disconcerted when Mackenzie asked him if he proposed to leave Susan to live by herself in Colon.
“Can’t she come with me?” he asked, partly of Mackenzie, partly of the American clerk.
“Who is ‘she’?” inquired the latter.
“A female of mine,” he replied—“a young lady I am talking to.”
“Well, you don’t want to talk to a woman all the time, do you?” asked the American. “Is she your wife?”
“Not exactly,” said Jones; “she is a young female under my protection an’ care; I am responsible to her parents for her. We are practically husband an’ wife, though I don’t put a ring on her finger as yet.”
“Nothin’ doin’!” returned the clerk emphatically. “We kain’t allow them sort of things here. You’ve got to marry that female of yours if you want her to live in the Zone. Judge Riggs in the court building near here will fix you right now if you go to him, and then I’ll give you married people’s quarters. Now I guess there’s some other people waitin’ on me, so you’d better make up your mind quick, or get out.”
Jones stared at the clerk, wondering if he should not immediately resent his peremptory manner of disposing of Samuel Josiah Jones, but Mackenzie took him aside and explained to him that by an ordinance issued some time before, in obedience to the outraged moral sentiments of America, it was made compulsory that only married men and women should live together in the Zone. “It is a hard rule,” said Mackenzie, “an’ a lot of people only form that they married. The Americans don’t bother them, unless they can’t help it. But if them find it out, an’ have to take notice, there is a big fine. That’s why I warn you in time. P’rhaps you better married you’ sweetheart, an’ get a comfortable little house in the Zone, like a lot of other Jamaica people.”
“Me?” said Jones. “I let a man force me to marry if I don’t want to do it? No, me brother! It’s an infringement of the rights of the subject, that’s what I call it! I have a good mind to go back to that man an’ tell him I am a British subject an’ born under the English flag!”
“That’s what a lot of people from Jamaica is always sayin’ here,” replied Mackenzie dryly. “Only, some of them say they’re a British object.”
“An’ what the Americans do?” inquired Jones anxiously.
“Laugh at them, an’ say them don’t care what sort of object Jamaicans are. You don’t bluff out an American easy in this place, Jones. Them don’t talk a lot like we do in Jamaica; wid some of them it is a word an’ a blow, an’ a blow first if you cheek them too much.”
“You don’t mean to tell me that them ill-treat a man down here?” asked Jones, beginning to feel alarmed.
“No; not if you don’t interfere wid them. There is plenty of law in the Zone, like in Jamaica. If you mind you’ own business, do you’ work, an’ keep you’self to you’self, you will be perfectly all right. But of course if you abuse them, an’ go about an’ talk all the time about you are a British subject, some of them will hurt you. You meet some of the toughest men in the world down here. I don’t know where them come from!”
“This is a funny place, me friend!” cried Jones indignantly. “They don’t seem to care about a man’s feelings at all. If I was a married man now, what that American say or do would not affect my peace of mind; but I am not a married man. An’ yet I don’t like the prospective view of livin’ in Colon, an’ I can’t leave Sue to live by herself. You don’t think she could come with me as me cousin?”
Mackenzie explained that the Canal Zone authorities drew the line sternly at unmarried cousins.
“Well, in that case Sue an’ me will have to live in Colon, an’ the Americans can keep their house. What am I to do now?”
Mackenzie advised him to report himself at the railway machine shop without delay, and propose to turn in to work the next morning. They would allow him time to get quarters in Colon. He, Mackenzie, was on vacation this week, and would help Jones to find a suitable apartment in a decent part of the town.
Together they went to the machine shop, where Jones beheld in one great building more engines than he had ever seen in his life. They were of all sizes, from the diminutive engines used on soft ground or for conveying materials to the workmen, to the giant locomotives that could pull any number of laden freight cars at high speed. Hundreds of men were at work in this place repairing the engines, the air resounded with the clangour of hammers striking on hard metal, the workers swarmed under and around the iron monsters as though they were ants. Jones was impressed. Here was something he could understand: this mere collection of railway machinery told him, as nothing else could have done, that the building of the Panama Canal was a stupendous undertaking. He allowed Mackenzie to do most of the talking for him, and it was agreed that he should not report himself for service until eight o’clock on the following morning.
This matter settled, they went back to Susan, who had managed to procure some breakfast in the meantime; then the three of them set out on the hunt for a large apartment. The rain, having temporarily exhausted its energies during the night, was not falling now, indeed Mackenzie thought that there wouldn’t be much rain that day. It was gloomy enough overhead, but here and there the clouds had broken, allowing tiny patches of muddy blue to be seen. Colon was wet; but, compared with its condition on the day before, it might almost be said that Colon was bright. The people moving about were in cheerful spirits. Susan herself began to feel lively.
Through the assistance of Mackenzie they secured an apartment in Cash Street, at reasonable terms. Cash Street, probably originally so called on account of its poverty, ran in an east and west direction, was the third long thoroughfare behind Front Street, and therefore was near to the water-front and in the very heart of the populous town. There were numerous cross-streets in Colon, running in a north and south direction and indicated by numbers; the house in which Susan was to live was situated at the corner of one of these crossings: 6th Street it was called. It was a new building, three storeys high, all of wood, with very wide verandas, and painted a bright pink. The ground floor or first storey was devoted to commerce; there a haberdashery shop, a barber’s saloon, and a flourishing public-house found accommodation, and all these businesses did a thriving trade. Susan selected a corner room on the second storey, a room opening on a veranda six feet wide and commanding a view of Cash and 6th Streets. Her inspection of the premises showed her that privacy—even such limited privacy as the poorest might enjoy in Kingston—was not appreciated here. For the tenants kept their doors wide open and were singularly indifferent as to who should see them or what they might be seen doing, while it was as easy to gaze into the apartments of the houses opposite and watch the inmates going about their intimate household duties. She noticed too that the people living in the apartments near hers spoke English. As a matter of fact many of the tenants in this house were British West Indians.
The room engaged, they started out on another important errand, and again Mackenzie was of great assistance. He took them to a furniture shop, where Susan selected a “set” of furniture, which was to be sent to her new address at once. The salesman, being a Chinaman, did not imagine that “at once” signified some time in the indefinite future, hence the furniture arrived at its destination soon after its purchasers did. It did not take long to arrange it as Susan directed; this done, the men went for the trunks which Susan and Jones had taken with them to the lodging near the swamps the night before. These trunks contained not only clothing but some domestic linen, or, to be accurate, some domestic calico, and while the men were away Susan bought a couple of small iron stoves, a few plates, and some other things which a good housekeeper must have. She learnt that the cooking and the washing must be done on the veranda or in the open courtyard below, which was always wet and could be stared into by all the people passing by. She decided for the veranda. In the courtyard, in addition to washtubs and cooking-stoves, were quite a number of babies ranging from six months to five years of age, and all stark naked, in accordance with the prevailing fashion of tropical Spanish America. To naked babies she was not accustomed. So she resolutely set her face against the courtyard.
She would not have the men go out for lunch that day. She provided it at home, and as she had a turn for cooking, it was a very good meal that she placed before them in about an hour’s time. She provided coffee also, with a view to preventing Samuel from indulging in whisky or beer; and as the men gulped down the hot, fragrant liquid and puffed at their cigars, a feeling of contentment stole over them and they gave vocal expression to their appreciation of Susan as a housewife.
She was satisfied. Her discontent of the night before had vanished. Possessed of a new “set of furniture,” which was better than the things she had been obliged to sell in Jamaica, settled in a busy part of the town and fairly far from the noisome swamps, with Mackenzie also as a good friend ready to aid them with his advice and to put himself to some trouble on their account, she felt that her fate was by no means an unpleasant one. “We not going to batter about from pillar to post any more,” she observed to Jones when lunch was over. “We are comfortable here.” And, to crown her happiness, when Jones and Mackenzie were preparing to go out that evening, they invited her to go with them.
They did not return home until ten o’clock that night; in the interval Susan had seen as much of Colon as she cared to see, and that was nearly all of it. They dined out. They walked about the streets, Mackenzie conducting the party; they hired a cab and drove along Front Street and through Christobal, and the glitter of glass and lights in the open bars, the crowds that gambled at cards and dice and dominoes in these places, the shops, which kept their doors open to a late hour, appealed to Susan, and even more to Jones, with a peculiar fascination.
Here what was done in public by people unashamed, could only take place behind closed doors in Jamaica. Here the people had money to spend, and spent it freely. Here there were contradictions and anomalies which were nevertheless enjoyable. At the corner of a street, in a chapel built entirely of any old bits of board, a self-ordained preacher from Jamaica held forth to a small congregation on the error of their ways, though his ways did not differ from theirs in any essential particular. Opposite to this building was a merry-go-round in full swing and abundantly patronized. On the other side of the street, on the second storey of a high tenement structure, a dance was in progress, the guests footing it to the sound given forth by an execrable band; at a little distance away a moving-picture palace invited with flaring posters the lovers of silent drama to come within and be stewed in a steam bath provided by corrugated iron and the climate of Colon.
From this spot a walk of two minutes brought them to Christobal, and there they could see dimly the huge concrete piers jutting out into the sea—the piers which grew day by day and which were designed to accommodate easily the largest vessels in the world. It was quiet here: listening, they could hear the cocoa-nut palms moving their long fronds if ever so slight a breath of wind stirred, and the long waves of the Caribbean dash and break eternally on the coral shores of Colon.
Soon they turned their backs on Christobal, and a leisurely stroll of ten or twelve minutes brought them nearly to the opposite end of the little island, now artificially connected with the mainland, on which Colon and Christobal were built. At this part of Colon there was a park, quite new—a park with paths and seats, little fountains, evergreen shrubs, flowering hibiscus, and banana trees. They sat here for a little while, chatting about Jamaica and the life they had lived there, and after that Mackenzie bade his new friends good night and they went home.
Susan was happy. This day had been so different from the previous one.
Jones went to work the next day, and as he was a competent man he had no trouble with the workmen of superior grade or the bosses of the shop, who were all white men. He was pleasantly surprised to find that these bosses were quite easy in their manner, speaking in a friendly and encouraging fashion to the men who were under them. They were far more familiar during working hours than any Englishman in their position would have been in Jamaica. Later on he added to his experience. Whereas the Englishman would have recognized him outside of the shop, and would even have been affable, his American chief did not seem to be aware of his existence after work was over. Jones did not think that this was at all correct.
But the pay here was nearly double what it was in Jamaica, and the work was not so hard. Jones was too loyal to concede, even to himself, that any American could be a better worker or organizer than an Englishman. But he liked the eight-hour day of the Zone workshops and the liberal wages. He felt too that he deserved these things. He deserved them in his character of British subject and by virtue of being Samuel Josiah Jones.
In the meantime Susan was picking up some acquaintances. This was not difficult; she had money to spend; and as she lived in an apartment of a distinctly decent type, she was regarded as a desirable person to know by young women of more or less her own class. Some of these she had known in Jamaica, but had lost sight of for quite a long time. These young women were either married or “engaged,” and their menfolk were all in fairly good positions.
What with visiting one another, going to church on Sundays when so inclined, taking chances in the National Lottery, and gathering at the park on those nights when the National Band insisted upon playing, Susan and her friends passed their days pleasantly. Those who could obtain a girl from Jamaica had a very easy time of it; but in a country where the men outnumbered the women no girl remained a servant for long. Even so, Susan found that she could send some of her washing to the laundry, and could easily wash and iron the lighter things at home. Cooking she liked, and she could make her own clothes. Samuel was generous, and now that she knew Colon she found that the cost of living need not be very high if one did not wish to be extravagant. She saved money.
But she had one trouble that grew as the weeks went on. After his first few days in Colon, Samuel had begun to leave her every night, and sometimes he did not return until eleven or twelve o’clock. She was of a jealous disposition: one night she followed him. She tracked him to a café near by, where he played for money with some other men. He had fallen in with a few of the wilder spirits of the town, but as these men played fair and he was clever at cards, he won more often than he lost. This encouraged him to continue, and sometimes he would come home with as much as ten dollars more than he had taken out with him. He was always a little tipsy then, and disposed to contend loudly that Panama was the finest country in the world.
She rated him bitterly at times, and always took good care to subtract a portion of his winnings, which she put away in some place where he could not easily get at it. But he minded the loss far less than her nagging; he would have given her the money for the asking. When she upbraided him he would bark back at her and swear to leave her if she did not behave herself. But this threat disturbed her not at all; she knew he did not mean it. The next night, however, he would go to meet his comrades again.
Mackenzie was a frequent visitor, and Mackenzie made no secret of his liking for Susan. He even went so far, once or twice, as to remonstrate with Jones about his leaving her so much to herself at nights. But Jones was glad when Mackenzie came to see them, for that gave him the opportunity of pointing out to Susan that, with friends of both sexes coming to see her, she should not complain of neglect. Susan welcomed Mackenzie always: she could talk to him freely about the shortcomings of Sam, and he habitually sympathized with her. It was he, too, who had first begun to address her as Mrs. Jones in company, an example which was speedily followed by some of her less intimate acquaintances. His tact flattered Susan.
There were nights when Jones did not leave the house before eight o’clock; on those occasions, if Mackenzie happened to be there, Jones would pour into his ear a long recital of his grievances; and, as Mackenzie was not much of a talker, Samuel had an attentive if somewhat amused audience. Jones now pretended to a fine contempt for all things American, and as the colour line was somewhat strictly drawn in Christobal he was moved to frequent protests when supported by his friends. He objected to white men being better paid than coloured men, to there being separate white and coloured quarters in the Zone, and to the Americans not permitting coloured people to attend their sports. One evening he especially enlarged upon these grievances to Mackenzie. Mackenzie making no comment, Jones was nettled. He put a question pointedly. “What do you think of all these differences?” he asked.
“Well,” answered Mackenzie deliberately, “this place don’t belong to we. It belong to the Americans, an’ I am quite satisfied if I get a chance to earn a good bread from them.”
Jones snorted contemptuously, despising such prudence.
“I couldn’t earn as much in Jamaica as I earn here,” Mackenzie continued, “an’ the same is true of everybody who come to Panama. Then what is the use of complaining? I do me work, an’ go to me own sports, an’ I don’t care what de Americans do so long as them pay me an’ don’t interfere with me after workin’ time. That is the only way to get on when you not in you’ own country.”
Jones felt the rebuke conveyed in Mackenzie’s homely remarks. He was further disconcerted when Susan expressed her agreement with their friend.
“You right, Mr. Mac,” she said sharply. “If people did mind them own business, an’ didn’t go out gamblin’ every night, it would ’elp them better than interfering wid what don’t concern them. All that Jamaica people know to do is to say that the Americans don’t treat them good. Then what them come here for? If you know you goin’ to find fault, you better stay home. I don’t want to go where the American people don’t want me. If I was in me own country it would be different; but I am foreign, an’ I can’t expect everything me own way.”
Mackenzie looked pleased when he heard his opinions thus openly appreciated. Jones looked still more disdainful.
“There is no accounting for diverse tastes,” he remarked loftily. “I read one time in a book that if you bray a pig in a motor he will return to his wallow, and though present company is always exceptional I must beg to convey my entire dissension from the opinions that present company have expressed. These Americans are a rude set of men, an’ I don’t temporize with them. But, of course, if some people like to be treated like a dog, they can continue to put up with it.”
Mackenzie frowned and would have answered, but Susan was before him.
“You goin’ to be rude to Mr. Mac now, after all his kindness to us?” she asked tartly, and Jones, who guessed that Mackenzie, for all his placid exterior, was a man who could not be insulted with impunity, denied that he had any such intention. He informed Susan that he had known Mackenzie for years, whereas she had only known him for months, and that he would not allow any female to suggest that he could think of insulting so firm and tried a friend as Mac. Susan was satisfied with this speech, and Mackenzie was glad not to be compelled to take offence. He did not want his friendship with Susan and her lover to end abruptly. A few minutes afterwards the two men went out quite amicably together.
On another occasion—Jones had now been four months in Panama—he complained of the difficulty which every one experienced of saving money in that country.
“You can save if you really want to,” was Mackenzie’s reply. “I know plenty of men who send money home to Jamaica regular. Some things is dear, but if you are economical you don’t need to buy dear things all the time.”
“You are warm you’self, eh, Mr. Mac?” asked Susan, who had a great respect for the power of money, and no little curiosity concerning those who possessed it.
“So-so,” he replied, smiling. “I save a little when I was in Jamaica, an’ I been working steady in the Zone for about four years. Them pay me pretty well, an’ I don’t spend all I earn.”
“I don’t believe in living mean,” was Jones’s remark, which he strove to make appear as a statement applicable only to himself and his inclinations, but which Mackenzie knew was intended as a reflection on the disposition and habits of John Mackenzie. On this occasion, too, Susan took him up sharply.
“It’s not living mean to try an’ save money,” she snapped. “Fools make feast for wise man to come an’ eat. An’ when you spend out all you’ money an’ don’t ’ave one farthing to rub against another, you will begin to say, ‘I wish I did know.’ Better you save what you ’ave, than cry when you don’t ’ave it.”
Jones made no reply to this, but sulked a little. He was beginning to dislike Mackenzie and his prudence and his sensible way of looking upon life. Mackenzie was embodied criticism, eloquent even in his silence, and no man likes a critic on his hearth. And though Jones did not think that Susan had any particular liking for Mackenzie, yet her agreement with that person’s remarks, especially when those remarks were intended as a soft of rebuke to Samuel Josiah Jones, annoyed him more and more every day. He was no longer pleased when Mackenzie came to see them. He avoided Mackenzie now.
One afternoon Susan was sitting alone in her apartment when the door was abruptly pushed open and three young women, friends of hers, rushed in. They were so excited that they did not even trouble to apologize for their unceremonious entrance.
“This is a business visit!” exclaimed the first, who appeared to act as leader of the others. “We come wid a written invite to a subscription dance that some gentlemen givin’ next week Wednesday at Mrs. Driscole house.”
“You don’t tell me!” cried Susan, delighted with the prospect of something new.
“Yes, see the invite; read it for you’self,” said her friend, shoving into Susan’s hand an open envelope containing a gilt-edged card with letters of gold, which Susan hastily pulled out and perused.
The invitation was addressed to
Miss Susan Proudleigh
and
S. J. Jones, Esq.
and set forth that “A unique entertainment in the form of a refined dance will take place (D.V.) at Mrs. Driscole’s establishment. Your attendance is earnestly requested: subscription, two and a half dollars for males, ladies free if brought by gentlemen. Refreshments will be provided; subscriptions payable three days in advance. Only ladies and gentlemen will be admitted. R.S.V.P.”
The card was signed by four persons describing themselves as “The Dance Committee,” and Susan read it over three times with pleasure. It was the most stylish thing in the way of invitations that had yet come her way, and she argued from the elegant appearance of the invitation card, as well as from the amount of the subscription asked, that the dance would be a very high-class affair indeed.
“Lots of people goin’?” she asked, and the leader of the girls promptly answered:
“Any amount. Invitations post to all parts of the Zone, an’ some young men as far as Empire coming on Wednesday. I take six to deliver meself, an’ I bring yours. You will come?”
“I will try an’ get Sam to bring me,” said Susan; “I would really like to come.”
Then the young women departed to invite other ladies to the dance, and the next day, after talking over the matter with Jones, Susan sent ten shillings to the Dance Committee.
She was glad of the coming diversion. Mackenzie had been removed some three weeks before to Culebra, some forty miles away “up the line,” and Samuel still persisted in spending his evenings with his gaming companions. She could go out when she pleased, and this she often did, but she was now bitterly discontented with Jones. She could not accuse him of positive unkindness, and he was as generous as ever. But she felt that he neglected her, and this she resented. He readily consented to go with her to the dance, however, which pleased her greatly.
Wednesday evening came in due time, and she and Samuel started out early for the dance. It happened to be a fine evening, for Colon; it was warm, but had not rained for a couple of days. There was a moon visible, and a clear blue sky. In spite of these weather conditions Samuel insisted upon driving to Mrs. Driscole’s in a cab, explaining as his reason that it was absolutely necessary to “do the thing in style.”
Mrs. Driscole lived in Bolivar Street, where she made a mysterious living by providing for the amusement of her fellow-creatures. Her floor was at the disposal of anyone with money enough to pay for its use; to-night it was to be utilized by the Dance Committee and their guests, and she had pulled down a partition and thrown two rooms into one, which formed a dance-hall of fairly large size. In this and in two of the adjoining rooms the guests were rapidly assembling when Susan and Jones arrived. Dark ladies clothed in dresses of pink and white and blue, their well-combed hair plaited tightly and tied with white or pink ribbon, their necks and arms laden with silver and even golden ornaments; swarthy gentlemen, some in tweed suits, the more punctilious (and these were not a few) in regulation dress-suits—these formed quite a merry, laughing crowd. Many knew one another. Strangers were formally introduced, then immediately afterwards introduced themselves, and the ceremony proceeded in this fashion:
“Mr. Smith, Miss Brown; Miss Brown, Mr. Smith.”
“Glad to meet you, Miss Brown. My name is Ezekiel Smith.”
“The same I am glad to meet you, Mr. Smith; my name is Rosabella Brown.”
Then they would shake hands politely, and Mr. Smith, or whoever the gentleman might be, would invariably declare that this was the hottest night he had ever known, an opinion with which the lady would invariably agree.
Susan glanced round the ball-room as she entered, her eyes lighting up as she saw so many gaily-dressed people. The room was decorated; the musicians were tuning their instruments. Jones whispered to her that he would shortly return, and went to join some men whom he knew. Susan just then caught sight of the girl who had brought her the invitation, and started to go over to speak to her. Half-way across the room she halted suddenly as a young man turned and looked, surprised, into her face.
“Susan!”
“Tom!”
Thus they greeted one another. Then Susan put out her hand, which Tom shook lightly.
“I knew you was in Colon,” he said at once, but speaking quietly. “You’ sister, Catherine, write me last week to answer a letter I write you about a month ago, an’ which she open an’ read. She said you leave Kingston with a young man named Jones, an’ that you only write them once since you leave home. Susan, you think you treat me fair?”
“What you mean by if I treat you fair?” she asked, almost hissing the words. “From the time you leave home till the time I come to Colon, you ever send anything for me? You only write me one letter, an’ you surely couldn’t expect me to live on wind in Jamaica? If I didn’t come here wid Jones, I might have been dead of starvation by this time.”
Everybody was talking and laughing, and the musicians still were coercing their instruments into the proper pitch of musical perfection. But Susan was uneasy lest they should be overheard.
Her answer staggered Tom for a second or two, but he put the question that had been in his mind ever since he had heard from Catherine: “Well, what you goin’ to do now?”
“Do? What you expect me to do?” was her answer.
He hesitated as to his reply, and she saved him the trouble of replying.
“See here,” she said; “let us understand one another this same time. I don’t want you to make any trouble here between me and Jones, for I not leavin’ him to come to you. Y’u leave me alone in Jamaica, though I beg you hard to bring me wid you. I come here with another young man, who pay me passage an’ been supporting me all the time I am here, an’ so what was between you an’ me is dead an’ gone. I don’t want no sort of confusion here now. Y’u hear?”
Tom Wooley heard and his heart was as water. He subsided, not finding words with which to blame the fickle fair. He had been cruelly used; he felt sure of that. But he knew that he might be still more cruelly used, and by Jones, who, if he might lack Susan’s sharp tongue, might more than make up for that disadvantage by his hard fists. Thomas Wooley was a man of peace when sober, and by no means belligerent when drunk. So he merely answered, “Yes, Susan,” and asked her to point out Jones to him.
That gentleman had already noticed the whispered conference between the two, and was actually going up to them when Tom made his humble request. Susan decided that the best thing to do was to introduce them, and this she did, remarking at the same time that Tom was a friend of her family, and had been very kind to her parents.
As Samuel Josiah heard the name, he remembered what Mother Smith had told him about Tom and Susan on the night before he left Kingston for Colon. The story had long since passed out of his mind. Now also he recalled what his friend, Professor, had said about the case in which Susan had figured, and he observed that Susan was anxious to speak of Tom as a sort of casual friend. Tom Wooley was short, so Jones looked down upon him. And from the lofty standpoint of physical as well as intellectual and financial superiority he condescendingly addressed the young man who had once been Susan’s lover.
“How is it I never see you in Colon before?” was his question.
“I workin’ up the line,” said Tom—“at Pedro Miguel. But I used to be in Colon, an’ as I get an invitation to the dance, I come.”
“I see,” said Jones; “well, come an’ have a drink, Mr. Wooley, which is the best thing we can do when we boys meet together from Jamaica.”
Tom accepted the invitation. Susan heard and was delighted. She was certain that Tom would say nothing about their old relations in Jamaica, and she was equally certain that Jones could know nothing of those relations. Again, she felt, her luck was in the ascendant. Then, some one touched her on the arm, and, turning, she saw Mackenzie.
The two moved quickly to a corner of the room, for the dancers were now preparing to begin a waltz. Mackenzie explained that he had received an invitation to this party, and almost at the last moment had accepted, thinking that Susan would probably be there. He had come over to Colon by a late train. “Sam don’t seem to like me much now,” he remarked; “that’s why I don’t take a run over on a Sunday to see both of you, though I find it sort of lonely up at Culebra.”
Then he asked her to dance, and she consented, and they joined the slowly whirling groups.
The room was terribly warm. Although the windows were all wide open, no breath of wind was stirring that night, and the movements of the dancers in the crowded “ball-room” caused the perspiration to stream from their faces and drench their bodies. Only West Indians would have found pleasure in dancing under such circumstances, and even these felt the discomfort of the heat after a time.
“Lord! it hot!” panted a fat lady as she bounded across the room—they were now dancing a set of lancers. “I suffocate,” giggled a thin creature, as a burly fellow clasped her to his breast. But still the musicians played with undiminished energy, and still the dancers danced. And the stamping of feet upon the floor ceased only when one dance was at an end and a new set was being formed.
Tom had two drinks with Jones, and then returned to the dancing-hall, where he stationed himself against a wall, watching Susan and reflecting on his forlorn state. Those two drinks had reduced him to a maudlin condition, and just then his loss appeared to him as the one calamity of the world, though he had managed to bear it with equanimity since leaving Jamaica. Jones had also returned, had danced once with Susan and once with another lady, and then had adjourned to the refreshment-room, where, on a long table surrounded by chairs, stood a number of bottles containing various liquors, and some huge dishes filled with ham, beef, and chicken sandwiches. A few men were seated round this table, and these Jones joined. Conversation ensued, and this, probably because of the drink imbibed, soon turned to topics connected with their old life in Jamaica. Being Jamaicans, these men had grievances. Being British subjects, their grievances were against the Jamaica Government.
“De Jamaica Government don’t take enough care of we,” observed a heavy-looking man, who, when in Jamaica, had displayed extraordinary ingenuity in evading the payment of his taxes. “We ’ave no protection in dis place, an’ so these foreigners here can treat a Jamaican like a dawg.”
“Thet is a fact,” agreed a dapper little fellow who sported eyeglasses, and who was a clerk in one of the mercantile houses of Colon (he had been a lawyer’s clerk in Kingston). “There is no protection here whatever. A man’s rights are not regarded. The labourers are badly treated and have no redress. Representations should at once be made to the British Government about the Jamaica Government, who are neglectful. It is my intention to write to the Jamaica papers in re the matter.”
Jones at once recognized in this speaker a man of distinguished ability. He asked him to have a drink with him, and then made his contribution to the conversation.
“You are right,” he said. “There is no justice or jurisprudence in this place. I am a British subject, but it’s no use a man going to the British Consul here, for he don’t even want to listen to you.
“It’s more than hard,” he continued reflectively. “A man can’t get a good job in his own country, an’ when he come to a God-forsaken foreign land he has no protection at all. In Jamaica you have to die of starvation, an’ here you lucky if you don’t die of neglect.”
“In Jamaica it is only taxes you hear about all de time,” said the heavy-looking man. (All his remarks invariably gravitated towards the subject of taxation.) “The Gov’nment don’t care what become of you so long as them can get the taxes. It’s a shame!
“Look what them do wid a man down here. I live out at Gatun an’ them won’t even let me keep a female helpmeet in a respectable way. Them want me to married! Now don’t you see that if the Jamaica Government did look after us as it should, all that sort of advantage couldn’t be take of a man?”
“Yes,” assented Jones. “I have a female meself, an’ I have to live in Colon because they won’t let her come to Christobal. They put me to any amount of expense, all for the sake of form.”
“The thruth of the matter,” observed the erstwhile lawyer’s clerk, is this: “the American methods are conducive to immorality. If a man leaves his gurl in Colon, how is he to know that some other fellow is not going after her?” He put the question with an air of conviction. He himself had a great reputation for gallantry, and might be supposed to be speaking from experience.
“You know, you are right!” exclaimed Jones, staring at him with semi-drunken gravity. This aspect of the situation had apparently not occurred to him before. Now, however, it began to loom large in his muddled brain. He grew indignant. He voiced an imaginary wrong. “Fancy,” he cried, “just fancy a man working hard all day an’ supporting a female in comfort an’ proficiency, and another man goin’ to the house in the daytime an’ enjoying himself at my expense!” He foresaw himself being wronged, all through the neglect of the British Government and the faulty methods of the Canal Administration.
“Ah!” sighed the ex-lawyer’s clerk sympathetically, “a man has a lot to put up with in this country. He cannot be too careful. What I say, gentlemen, is: don’t trust any wemen, not even you’ own mother.”
This advice strongly appealed to Jones. It inspired him with a desire to be vigilant. That young man, Tom Wooley, who was even now in the dancing-hail where Susan was—what base designs might he not be harbouring against the domestic peace of Samuel Josiah Jones? He had been warned against Susan. Her friendliness towards Tom was apparent. Yes, he was not being treated fairly, he was sure of it; neither the Government of Jamaica nor Susan was treating him fairly. He became suddenly angry. “Gents,” he said, rising, “I have enjoyed you’ company, but a man must protect himself. An advantage is being taken of poor Samuel. I must go inside an’ look after me rights.”
The heavy man nodded a solemn acquiescence, and Jones, with lurching steps, proceeded to the dancing-hall, where the dancers were now clapping their hands and stamping their feet in a perfect ecstasy of enjoyment.
Jones entered the room with a stride that was intended to be impressive. Unhappily, the one or two persons who observed it merely laughed, and this did not tend to sweeten his temper. He glared round the room, and presently saw Susan dancing with some one he did not know; his eyes searched the company again. He was looking for Tom; the desire uppermost in his mind just then was once and for all to prevent that young man from ever thinking of Susan in the light of a lover, or even as a friend. “This thing got to stop at once,” he muttered. “I must demonstrate.”
What he intended to do, precisely what steps he proposed to take to banish all amorous thoughts or conjugal ambitions from the mind of the offending Tom Wooley, he did not know himself. He was perfectly satisfied that just then he was bent upon the accomplishment of an utterly heroic task; something had to be done and he was the man to do it. He smiled proudly as he thought of his entire devotion to duty. His eyes soon found the man he was looking for.
Tom was still leaning against the wall, and still engaged in following Susan’s movements with reproachful glances. The influence of those two drinks was upon him still, and he too imagined that he presented a romantic figure, that his appearance at that moment constituted an eloquent appeal even to hard-hearted Sue. She had seen him all the time without appearing to do so. Now and then her upper lip curled with conscious contempt. Susan had no respect for the lover sighing like a furnace; such a man was “too soft,” in her opinion.
It happened that Jones caught sight of Tom at a moment when the latter’s gaze was more than usually ardent. Susan was whirling by her ex-intended at the moment, and her eyes caught his; the next moment she was a couple of yards away. But Jones saw what he instantly believed to be an exchange of meaning glances. Straightway he became convinced that a most dishonest plot was being hatched against his domestic happiness.
Nothing could, in his opinion, surpass the dignity with which, to the intense amazement and confusion of the dancers, he strode across the room towards where Tom was standing. He shouldered the men aside, brushed the women away as if they did not count, disturbed and brought to an abrupt termination the dancing, and so, of course, aroused the ire of a score of persons at once. Notwithstanding his tremendous dignity, he found the maintenance of his equilibrium a task of exceeding difficulty; he could not for the life of him understand why the floor was so uneven and why the electric lights would persist in moving out of place. Nevertheless he succeeded in planting himself before Tom, and then, with portentous solemnity, and unheeding the indignant wonder of the guests, he addressed his rival.
“Mr. Wooley,” said he, “I don’t want no quarrel to mar the felicity of this festivity; but I shall have to interrogate you on one point: where did y’u know Susan from?”
Tom was startled, both by the question put to him and by the attitude of the questioner. At the moment his mind was unpleasantly dominated by a sense of Jones’s height and strength. He discreetly answered, “From home.”
“I know you must know her from home,” replied Jones severely, “for I am not a fool, though you seem to take me for one. But . . . but that is not the question. The position is this: what did you have to do wid her at home?”
Tom realized that it might not be safe to tell the truth. He hurriedly explained that he had known Susan casually, through her being a friend of his sister—a being of hitherto unknown existence.
“But how,” persisted Jones, with a cunning leer, “how if she was only an acquaintance through you’ sister, you could take such a interest in her parents? She didn’t tell me anything about you’ sister a little while ago. An’ a man like you isn’t going to be friendly with old people for nothing.”
Tom saw that his questioner was trying to trap him, that Jones entertained suspicions which evasive answers might only inflame. Tom noticed too that an astonished group had gathered round them, and that the men especially did not seem to be kindly disposed towards Jones. He became defiant.
“What right have you to ask me any question about meself?” he demanded, endeavouring at the same time to edge away from Jones.
“What right I have?” asked Jones, as if the question were an act of high treason. “What right I have? Well! What right have you to be here? That is what I got to know to-night. Y’u think I didn’t see you when you was whispering to Susan before she introduce your miserable carcase to me? What right I have to ask you any question? I will soon tell you! Come outside an’ let me beat the skin off you’ body! Come outside and let me gyrate upon your personality! I will show you the difference between me and a—a——” But here Samuel Josiah lost the thread of his speech, and could not remember the comparison he wished to institute. Nothing, however, would satisfy him but that Tom should immediately proceed outside to undergo corporal punishment, and as Mr. Wooley firmly declined that invitation, Jones abruptly grabbed him by his shirt collar, proposing to remove him by sheer force.
This of course was the signal for an uproar. A dozen men sprang forward to drag Jones away; the women shrieked in fright; Susan, terror-struck at the attitude of Jones, uttered the word which rose so easily to the lips of all frightened Jamaican women—“Murder!” A peremptory rap at the outer door, followed by the tramp of feet, was the immediate answer to the clamour and exclamation.
Jones, confused, and, if the truth must be told, not a little frightened himself, stared around him in bewilderment. Tom, seeing so many friends at his side, became heroically valiant and manfully glared at his foe from behind an impregnable barricade of two strong men. But his look of defiance gave place to one of fear when three diminutive-looking persons entered the room. They were dressed in the uniform of the Panamanian policia.
The insignificant size of these policemen gave no indication of their ferocity when roused to anger. They had been feeling of late that it was incumbent upon them to do something which should show how thoroughly they realized their obligation to maintain law and order. They had heard the cry of “murder,” they knew it came from Mrs. Driscole’s house. At once they determined to make an example of her and of some of her guests, being moved to that moral determination by the certainty of the prisoners being able to pay to the Republic a fine, and of Mrs. Driscole herself effecting a compromise with them in so far as her share in the disorder was concerned.
The moment the guests caught sight of the policemen, they rapidly made a lane through which the little men could advance towards the offenders. It is regrettable to relate that so anxious were one or two of the company to escape even the appearance of evil that they did not hesitate to point out Jones and Tom as the culprits to the preservers of the peace.
The two young men were sensible enough not to make any effort to move or to resist, being aware of the Panamanian policemen’s habit of arguing with their clubs instead of with words. As for Mrs. Driscole, she appeared on the scene, fat, trembling, obsequious, and protesting volubly in broken Spanish that she was innocent of any intention of breaking the laws of the Republic. As she implored the policemen to come back the next day, so as to give her the opportunity of proving her innocence, they left her alone. They knew she would be able to offer substantial proof (in specie) of her ignorance of any crime with which she might be charged. But they had already found Jones and Tom guilty, and so they motioned these towards the door with some not very gentle prods from their clubs.
This indignity brought tears to the eyes of Jones. Only in the last resort would a Jamaica policeman have ventured to enter a private house when a dance was going on. And the most he would have done, in the absence of visible wounds, would have been to take the names of the proprietor and the parties accused of disturbing the peace. Yet here was he, Samuel Josiah Jones, being dragged off to gaol by men he would have laughed at in Jamaica!
In his excitement he completely forgot Susan, who was at that moment almost frantic with terror. She knew nothing about Panamanian law, and, of course, feared the worst. Sam might be sent to prison without the option of a fine; she herself might be arrested as the first cause of the quarrel. It was Mackenzie who came to her rescue. He had not interfered with the young men; he had been keeping his eye on Susan all the time. When Tom and Jones had been taken away he went up to her. “You better come home,” he said.
When they got outside, she broke down completely.
“You think him will go to prison, Mr. Mac?” she asked, between her sobs.
“Prison? what for?” said Mackenzie. “Them can only fine him to-morrow; that’s all.”
“But what about his job?” said Susan, who never quite lost sight of the financial aspect of any question.
“His job is all right,” Mackenzie replied. “What happen in Colon don’t concern the people in de Zone.”
“Then I don’t too sorry him gone to the calaboose,” said Susan spitefully. “Him is always boasting an’ thinking him can do what him like! To-night will teach him a good lesson.”
“Jones have no lesson to learn, Miss Sue,” said Mackenzie sententiously. “He is a young man that will always get himself in trouble. Him talk too much. What did he want to fight the other young man for to-night?”
“Because I did know Tom from home,” replied Susan.
“You was friendly wid him?” asked Mackenzie bluntly.
“Yes.”
“Did Jones know?”
“No; I will tell you why I didn’t tell him.”
She told Mackenzie quite truthfully all about Tom. “There was no occasion for Sam to go on like that to-night,” she added in conclusion; “I wasn’t goin’ to ’ave anything to do with Tom. I am not that sort of gurl, Mr. Mac; if I have one intended I stick to him. But Sam not behaving himself now, an’ I going back home to Jamaica.”
They had arrived at her home. Afraid to be left alone, yet also fearing that if Mackenzie went in with her there might be some talk about it amongst the neighbours of a suspicious turn of mind, she stopped and hesitated.
“It is late,” said Mackenzie, “but I want to have a talk with you, so I will come in for a little.” After this, of course, she could say nothing.
“You mean to tell me,” he said, as he sat down, “that Jones not goin’ on no better than before?”
“No, Mr. Mac; him gamble too much, an’ stay out late every night. He won’t hear what I say to him at all.”
“What you goin’ to do?”
“I make up me mind. I am goin’ back to Jamaica.”
He was silent for the space of a minute. Then:
“Instead of goin’ back, why don’t you get married?” he asked.
The proposal was made so simply—for Susan understood it as such quite well—that it took her breath away. She knew that Mackenzie liked her, but it had never occurred to her that he would ever want to marry her. He had been a good friend, but had never shown any sentiment; he had even tried to induce Jones to keep in her good graces. Now that she had said that she was returning to Jamaica (though, in spite of her emphatic words, she was not at all sure that she meant it)—only now did Mackenzie reveal his innermost feelings.
She was surprised. Confused too, for she did not quite know what answer to give. She began picking at an end of her handkerchief with her teeth, while she revolved in her mind this strange, unexpected turn of events. Marriage meant a great deal to her. It would give her position, security . . . and she had more than sufficient excuse for leaving Jones.
Nevertheless she hesitated to agree. Mackenzie was fully twice her age. She liked him as a friend, not as she had liked Samuel; and marriage—that was very different from an engagement.
“If you go back to Jamaica, what y’u going to do?” Mackenzie asked, seeing that she could not make up her mind.
“I don’t know,” she answered frankly.
Mackenzie was well aware of the importance of the proposal he had made. It was much to offer marriage to Susan, for though she was good-looking and a capable housewife, and would easily find some one to take care of her if she deserted Jones and remained in Panama, there were not many men in his position who might be willing to marry her. And if she returned to Jamaica her chances of a comfortable living would not be many. But he also knew that Jones was a much younger man than he, a more dashing kind of man; and perhaps Susan would prefer another of the same type, even though he might not offer her marriage. He, Mackenzie, however, would not break his heart if Susan refused him. There was not much passion in his composition.
Susan remembered how Jones had promised to marry her, and then had broken his promise. She had never quite forgiven him that. Then the habit of drinking might grow upon him. She was well aware that he drank, not so much through inclination, as from a desire to vie with others who did so. His ambition was to be considered “a sport,” but he might become a drunkard. And she had no claim upon him.
Mackenzie was a steady man. If she married him, she could become a member of a church. That would mean a definite rise in the social scale; her respectability would then be beyond challenge, beyond question. The ring on her finger would be the outward and visible sign of her right to respectful treatment on earth below, and also the promise of an uninterrupted passage to heaven in the unfortunate event of death. When she had thought of all these things she came to a provisional decision.
“I can’t answer you right away, Mr. Mac,” she said, “for it is like dis. When a gurl goin’ to take a step like marriage it is right she should think well what she doin’. Don’t I right?”
Mackenzie nodded his agreement.
“Well, then, I will write y’u on Friday an’ tell you me answer. I know you will treat me kind, Mr. Mac.”
“Tell you what we better do, then,” said Mackenzie, who believed in businesslike arrangements. “If you write me on Friday morning, I will get the letter during the day. If it is all right, I will get a licence from de judge at Culebra, an’ he will perform the ceremony when you come. When you think you will come?”
“Saturday. But I would prefer a parson to marry me.”
“That not easy, for we don’t have time. The judge married almost everybody in de Zone. You going to tell Jones?”
“No! Why you ask dat?”
“I don’t see why you shouldn’t tell him. Him would only talk an’ bluster, but him is not the sort of man to do anything. Howsoever, follow you’ own mind.”
He said good night without any attempt at endearment. Susan saw him downstairs; it was very late. Being much too tired to do any thinking, she went to bed and fell asleep, spitefully hoping that Jones would reflect upon his conduct all night in the calaboose of Colon.
On the following morning Jones was fined ten dollars for a breach of the peace—a light sentence, since the police had at first been inclined to charge him with attempted murder. Tom escaped with a fine of five dollars, presumably because he had not been murdered; and both men were severely warned that the next time they appeared before the court it would go hard with them, and that in the meantime the police would be instructed to keep an eye upon them.
In addition to this Samuel lost half a day’s pay, to say nothing of some hours in a cell shared by insects which vigorously disputed its possession with him.
It was an embittered Jones that went home that afternoon. His friends, instead of going to bail him, had avoided the vicinity of the calaboose; Susan herself had not come near him. He had been deserted by those who should have rallied to his cause, though he himself would have stood by them to the end. He solemnly swore that he never again would put his faith in Jamaicans.
Susan waited until he had voiced his complaints, and had eaten his dinner. Then she opened her attack.
“Sam, you not ashamed of you’self?”
He was, but was not prepared to admit it. That would be a lowering of his dignity. “What for?” he asked her sullenly.
“That you goin’ on in this way to make me fret. You quarrel, an’ fight, an’ drink, an’ gamble, an’ won’t hear what I say. You think you goin’ on right?”
“But what is all this for now?” he demanded angrily. “Instead of feeling vex that them wanted to hang me without a trial in Colon, you begin to ask me all sort of foolish question. You want to provoke me?”
“I don’t want to provoke y’u, but I am going to ask you one plain question. Don’t you think you should try to behave you’self now, an’ marry me, after you bring me to Colon an’ make me mind disturbed night an’ day? Suppose the policeman did kill you last night: what position I would be into to-day?”
“You mean to say you going back to all that foolishness again, Susan?” he cried, scandalized by her persistence in stupidity. “I am not going to talk about marriage, an’ as I can’t have peace in this place, I am going out.” Then, before Susan could make any further remark, he seized his hat and left the room in a temper.
Then Susan locked the door, took pen, ink, and paper out of one of her cupboards, and sat down to write. She had given Samuel a last chance. He had answered her as he had done before. In a sentence or two she informed Mackenzie that she would leave Colon for Culebra by the second train on Saturday morning.
Then she indicted a letter to her father. This was an important epistle, for she calculated upon its being shown to a large number of persons in Kingston. She informed her father that “When these few lines come to hand, hoping it will reach you in the same good health it leave me, your affectionate daughter will be Mrs. John Mackenzie, for I am going to married to a nice gentleman working with the American people up at Culebra. Jones is too bad. He meet Tom the other night at a dance, and make a row and I have to fret too much. But I wouldn’t leave him all the same if I wasn’t a girl that like religion as you brought me up, and beside it is an honourable life to get married. Tell Kate and Eliza them must follow my example, for God bless me and smile on me, and I have everything I want and Mackenzie care for me, otherwise him wouldn’t want to put a ring on me finger. If it wasn’t that I always fear the Lord this good luck wouldn’t happen to me, and I going to pray for all of you. Tell Kate and Eliza them mustn’t keep any bad company in Kingston, and make Maria and her old obeah mother know that I married, for it will hurt them. Tell mammee and Aunt Deborah that I will rite them.—Yours truly loving daughter,
“Susan.”
Then an idea occurred to her, and she added a postscript.
“I send some money for all of you out of what I save. It is a wedding present.”
This wedding present consisted of five pounds. Only once before had she written to her people, and then she had enclosed three pounds. She thought, and rightly, that she was acting generously by them.
She regarded this composition with no little pride, then, though fatigued by such unwonted mental exertion, she proceeded to compose another letter. It was brief and to the point.
“Dear Sam,—When I ask you Thursday evening after you leave the jail if you was going to keep your promise on board ship and marry me you say no. Alright then. I am obliged to leave you for I am going to marry another gentleman who you know. Mr. Mac has been good to me, and when you get this letter I will be Mrs. Mackenzie, but if you did behave yourself I wouldn’t go away from you but it is all your own fault.—Yours affectionate,
“Susan Proudleigh.”
She folded these letters, enclosed them in envelopes, and carefully addressed them. She would post Mackenzie’s that evening. To-morrow she would buy postal orders for five pounds and then register the letter to Jamaica; in the meantime the letters that were to be posted the next day were carefully locked away by her in a little box which she kept at the bottom of her trunk. Susan had carefully observed how absconding wives acted in moving-picture dramas. These wrote their last farewells in the space of five seconds, read them over with frowning brows, sealed them, and placed them in a most conspicuous position in order that they should not by any possibility be overlooked. A wife of this type would scarcely have left the house before the husband would return, and there, on the table, would be the letter waiting for him, as large as life. But he never saw it at once. Some occult influence, apparently, kept his eyes away from it. He would look round the room, search the ceiling for the missing one, scrutinize the floor, survey the atmosphere, and would be on the point of leaving the room when his eye would fall upon the table and the letter would be seen. This procedure would probably give him just sufficient time to rush into the street, summon the motor-car that always attends upon the movements of repentant husbands, and dash off to the railway station or the ship’s dock, or the house to which his wife had fled. A second more and he would have been too late. In the moving-picture world, however, time itself is subordinate to the imperious demands of domestic felicity, and the reconciliation takes place dramatically with a public embrace.
That Jones might rush to the railway station, she knew. But instead of a reconciliation there might be a quarrel. There might be an arrest. She concluded that she would post Sam’s letter at one of the stations at which the train would stop while on the way to Culebra; by the time he received it she would have been already married. She went out and posted Mackenzie’s letter, called on a friend to discuss the scene of the preceding night, and returned home to find Samuel waiting for her.
He was much earlier than usual. The truth is, he was still very much frightened and wished to run no further risks with vigilant policemen. He had opinions to express, and he sought the security of his own dwelling to give utterance to them; Susan gathered from his remarks that he would very much like to hoist the standard of revolution in the Republic of Panama, summoning thereto all the West Indians who suffered under the tyranny of the laws. A Jamaican named Preston had many years before been prominently identified with a revolutionary movement in this same country. All Jamaica had rung with his name. Jones’s idea was annexation; Panama should be taken by West Indians for the British Crown, the Protestant religion should be firmly established, the natives, and especially that portion of them attached to the Police Force, should be put in their proper places. Sir Henry Morgan had once burnt the old city of Panama. And Sir Henry had done it with men from Jamaica. “If that could be done in the old days,” said Jones, “we could do more now that we are stronger. A couple of English man-o’-war would soon show them a thing or two!”
But presently he was assailed by doubts as to the part the British Government would consent to play in such a laudable enterprise. He was not sure that England was alive to her opportunities in this part of the world. He confided his misgivings to Susan, who saw in his ambitions clear evidence of a desire for further trouble. But she quietly agreed with everything he said, which pleased him immensely. He noticed too that she did not even remotely approach again the perilous question of marriage. She seemed to accept the existing situation as permanent. In an outburst of confidence he passed from Imperialistic aspirations to her own affairs, and told her how he had been accosted by an old woman on the night before leaving Kingston, who had warned him about her and Tom Wooley.
“That was Mother Smith,” said Susan. “She wanted to injure me.”
“But she has not accomplished her purpose,” he graciously replied; “an’ between you and I an’ the door, I sorry I make a fool of myself last night over a little fellow like Tom Wooley. The fact is, I was drunk. I know you wouldn’t leave Samuel Josiah for anybody here: love me too much! An’ nothing anybody say will make me leave you.”
That closed the conversation. He did not notice that Susan said nothing in answer to these remarks.
Friday night came, the last she was to pass under that roof. Something unusual happened. After dinner, Jones announced that he was not going out, and for an instant she wondered, startled, if he had any inkling of her plans. But her mind was soon at ease. Samuel had not recovered from the effects of those few hours in gaol. He had received a lesson; he did not wish for a repetition. He drank nothing: drinking was largely a matter of show and bravado with him. He had purchased some Jamaica newspapers that day, and diligently read the news while she sat idle, thinking of the plan she would carry out in the morning. Even his views on the annexation of Panama were not mentioned.
Saturday morning came. Had Jones been an observant man he might have noticed that Susan was unusually nervous, and that she bade him “good-bye” when he was going out to work. She watched him go, then hastily made her final preparations. She packed all the things she needed into a trunk and a straw “grip,” ran downstairs, summoned a cab, had her trunk brought down, and gave the key of her apartment to a neighbour, whom she asked to hand it to Samuel when he should come home that afternoon. Then she drove to the railway station at Christobal, half-fearing, half-wishing that Jones might see her. In a few minutes she had passed through the iron gates of the station and had taken her seat in a second-class carriage of the train.
She was conscious now of a strange sensation somewhere about her heart. There was a tightening there; there was a lump in her throat; the inclination was strong upon her to quit the train, to turn back, to leave marriage and Mackenzie alone. She was nervous, excited, but she did not feel happy. In a vague kind of way she realized that she was cutting herself off from the past, entering a new life. . . .
The train moved out of the station. It gathered speed and flew towards Culebra. She looked out of the window, seeing the long low range of buildings in which lived the coloured employees of the railway; she saw the verandas on which the clothes were hung out to dry, where the food was cooked, where fruit of all kinds was exposed for sale and healthy-looking children played to their hearts’ content. Soon the train was running through the swamp outside of Colon and on the mainland of Panama. Long grass grew in the black water, a thick jungle where fever lurked, and deadly tarantulas and all sorts of evil things; but the swamp was passed and now green pastures appeared, and in the distance she could catch a glimpse of green low-lying hills.
The train stopped every now and then at the Labour Towns along the route. Masses of wooden buildings clung to hill-sides, the forest grew beyond them, defiant, the riotous vegetation of this strip of tropical America striving ceaselessly with man for the mastery. These towns seemed alive with workers, there was activity everywhere, an eternal movement. And every now and then an almost interminable train of cars; laden with rocks and earth dug out of the great Cut at Culebra, would rush at full speed by her train with a thunderous deafening roar.
On and on, through the forest. Monteliro was reached, and here she asked a fellow-passenger who had arrived at his destination to post Sam’s letter for her. Frijoles, and now she saw the turbulent Chagres, the problem of the Canal Administration’s engineers, rolling peacefully, a broad and shining river, between its verdant banks. It stretched away into the distance, travelling through a luxuriant country to the sea, its surface lighted up by the sun and breaking into iridescent flashes of silver light.
She saw it all, but half unconsciously. The nature of the ground began to change. The soil was red; low, rounded hills went rising one after another to the far-off horizon; the towns were becoming more numerous too, each one of them a cluster of slate-roofed buildings with well-constructed streets and paths winding in and out amongst them.
San Pablo, Gorgona, Matachin; the land was rising now. Black earth and huge black rocks proclaimed the volcanic nature of the soil. The country became more open, the forests had disappeared. She was nearing Empire. The next station after that would be Culebra. There Mackenzie would be waiting for her; there, in at the latest a couple of hours hence, she would become Mrs. Mackenzie. That thought had never left her mind; it now obsessed her to the exclusion of every other thought. So she was actually going to be married! It was not the sort of wedding she would have preferred, not the sort of ceremony she would have had in Jamaica. In that country the bridegroom would have hired three carriages at least; and six bridesmaids, all dressed in white, would have waited upon her in the church. And all the guests would have been gaily attired; the women unaffectedly excited, the men striving to show how imperturbably serene they could be even in the face of such a crisis. She pictured the scene; her triumphal parade in a carriage to the church, with the black-coated man beside her who was to give her away—her father, of course, though she did not think he became the position well. She was beautifully dressed; a long veil flowed over her head and shoulders; in her right hand she carried a huge bunch of lilies and white roses. The ceremony over, she returned with her husband to the house where the wedding feast was prepared. As she appeared at the door a choir of female voices, led by her friend, Cordelia Sampson, burst into song—“Let us open the Door to the Children, the Door of the Kingdom of Heaven.” Then would come the congratulations, and inquiries would be made of the spinsters as to when they would follow her good example and make a few men supremely happy; something which, as Susan knew, they were quite ready to do at any moment, the only obstacle being the reluctance of the men to be made happy.
And then the wedding feast. She saw the long decorated table covered with cakes and sweets and glasses, and at the head of it all, towering above everything else, the bridal cake. Behind this cake stood herself and her husband, but he did not resemble Mackenzie. His face, his form, his voice, his language, his gestures, were those of Jones; it was Jones who had met her at the church door, Jones who had said, “I will,” Jones who was with her now, ready to respond to the toast to the bride and bridegroom. The speeches were stereotyped: she already knew them by heart. She and her husband were likened first to a pair of turtle-doves, then afterwards to a pair of white pigeons, the winged creation figuring prominently as types of matrimonial constancy and bliss. Then Isaac and Rebecca would be mentioned, and some ambitious speaker, anxious to excel in oratory, but rather weak in scriptural knowledge, might compare them to Ananias and Sapphira. Eventually she and her husband would leave while the dancing was going on, first taking care to make such desperate efforts to escape unobserved that the departure would become as public as a well-advertised show. There would be a shower of rose petals, a chorus of cries——
“Culebra!”
The train stopped. Looking down upon the station and the railway line was a large building the veranda of which was adorned with a flowering vine. And other buildings beside and behind this one, and steps cut, into the high sloping bank which led up to them. Scores of people were hastily descending from the train at this station, she amongst them. She looked round. “The train arrive in time to-day,” said Mackenzie pleasantly.
That afternoon she became Mrs. Mackenzie.
“This hill really hard to climb, an’ de cramps is troubling me feet so much that it make me feel funny,” said Mr. Proudleigh dolorously.
“The longest journey must hend at last,” his sister consolingly observed, as Mr. Proudleigh halted in the middle of the steep path and gazed upwards at the height which yet remained to be climbed.
“If you did know you couldn’t walk it, pupa, you shouldn’t come,” said Catherine irreverently. “Old people shouldn’t try and do what them know them can’t do.”
“Y’u don’t have no feelings for you’ poor ole father, Kate,” replied Mr. Proudleigh sternly. “If I was a young gal, I would treat the old folkses respectably. There is a commandment in de Bible which say that forty she bear destroy the children that mock at Elijah, and——”
“You are misquoting de Scripture, Jim,” cried his sister; “an’ though Kate should treat you respectfully, which is your own daughter, yet I really thinks you should make an endeavour to reach Susan house before night come down.”
Mr. Proudleigh groaned, but struggled manfully forward. After the party had toiled slowly upwards for another couple of minutes they saw coming towards them two young Americans busily engaged in conversation. When these drew near enough Mr. Proudleigh accosted them, giving them his favourite military salute.
“Gentlemen,” he panted, “can you direct de old man to where Mrs. Susan Mackenzie live? De Lord will bless y’u ef you can render——” But the young men had passed on without even looking at him.
“Well, what manners!” exclaimed Mr. Proudleigh. “Nobody ever treat me like dat before!” With this remark he made a movement as if he would sit down by the roadside, perhaps for the purpose of reflecting on the discourteous treatment just received.
But Catherine was obdurate. “You can’t sit down, pupa,” she insisted, with something of Susan’s severity. “You got to try an’ walk it, even if you tired. An’ don’t ask any more American the way to Susan’s house, for them not going to answer you, an’ it is not to be supposed that them can know where everybody live. If we see a man from Jamaica we can ask him; but we not goin’ to meet anybody if we loiter here.”
Again Mr. Proudleigh groaned, and again he feebly tottered forward, too exhausted now to indulge in any further observation.
Presently they came to more level ground; as they reached this they saw yawning, to their left, a tremendous chasm, into the depths of which they plunged their eyes affrighted, for they had had no idea of what they would come upon. The three of them halted simultaneously, Mr. Proudleigh delighted with any excuse to pause for a moment. They were accustomed to the steep precipices of Jamaica, declivities of a thousand feet and more, with almost sheer perpendicular walls, vast openings in the earth, to peer down into which might make one sick and dizzy. But this was different.
On either side of the great Cut had been carved gigantic terraces, a sort of giant’s stairway, and along the whole length of these terraces, as far as their eyes could reach, were railway lines, and along these lines long trains were passing continuously, and men were everywhere below, moving up and down, and looking like pygmies in the distance.
It was but a small section of the Culebra Cut, and not the busiest, that Mr. Proudleigh and his womenfolk saw that afternoon. Little given as they were to speculation or to thinking, about things that did not directly concern them, they perceived that a great mountain had been cleft in twain by the hand of man, and the wonderful signs of intense energy that the busy scene below presented could not fail to impress them. But not for long. Mr. Proudleigh was weary, and so was more intent just then upon finding out where Susan lived than upon admiring the work that was being carried on before his eyes. Miss Proudleigh, on the other hand, perceived a comparison between the dividing of Culebra Hill and the parting of the waters of the Red Sea for the safe passage of the escaping Israelites. The latter she naturally approved of. But this work on the hill afflicted her mind with misgivings.
“If the Lord did intend the hill to cut in two,” she said, as they resumed their walk, “He would have cut it Himself. But now man think he can improve God’s handiwork, an’ p’rhaps he is only provoking the Lord to wrath.”
“That is so,” her brother agreed; “dis Canal may bring a judgment. If them offer me a job on it, I won’t teck it! What them want to dig out all dis dirt for? I remember that when the Car Company was layin’ de electric car line in Kingston, I dream one night——”
“You will have to both sleep an’ dream out here to-night, sah, if you go on talkin’ foolishness an’ don’t hurry up!” exclaimed Catherine, now thoroughly impatient. “If them didn’t commence diggin’ the Canal, Susan wouldn’t married, an’ you would now be in Jamaica instead of here.”
Viewed as a contributory cause of Susan’s good fortune, Mr. Proudleigh instantly agreed that there was a great deal to be said for the Canal. He would have explained its good points at length, but Catherine absolutely refused to listen. In silence, therefore, they continued upon their way.
They could already see before them a number of wooden buildings, one, two, and three storeys high; it was obvious to them that they were now approaching a town of no inconsiderable size.
They saw people too, and they gladly observed that some of these were coloured men. Catherine undertook to question one of them. Did he know Mrs. Mackenzie? He did not, but thought that Catherine would easily find the person she was seeking if she inquired at the quarters where the coloured people lived. These were a little farther away, and there was nothing for it but that they should proceed thither, without delay.
Mr. Proudleigh would have protested, but even he realized that protests would be of no avail. Happily, they had not a long distance to go. And when the old man caught sight of the neat verandaed wire-screened cottages provided for the skilled coloured employees of the Canal Commission, his spirits revived wonderfully. Catherine soon found some one who knew where Susan lived. This man was kind enough to guide them to the place.
It was a four-roomed single-storey house, built upon high foundations and provided with a comfortable little veranda. Though Susan’s relatives had been expecting to find her comfortably situated, this house was distinctly superior to anything they had imagined she would have. Mr. Proudleigh immediately calculated that in Jamaica its rental value would be at least two pounds a month, and the class of persons who could afford to live in such residences were, from his point of view, very well off indeed. As the front door and windows were closed, Catherine timidly knocked at the door. “Come in,” said a voice, which, they at once recognized.
They opened the door and entered.
Susan was sitting in a rocking-chair, sewing something that looked like a waist. As she caught sight of her visitors she started up with an exclamation.
“Kate! Papee! What’s the matter? Why you come?”
The persons thus addressed faced her a little confusedly. Miss Proudleigh remained in the rear, thus discreetly leaving it to the others to bear the brunt of Susan’s questioning.
“Me dearest daughter!” exclaimed Mr. Proudleigh, evading any direct reply just then by a magnificent display of paternal solicitude, “I can’t tell you how you’ poor ole father is glad to see you! From you leave me in Jamaica I been fretting after you, an’ now to think dat I see you wid me own eye in your own mansion!”
He seated himself as he spoke, somewhat disconcerted to observe that Susan showed no inclination to kiss him, but still continued looking at him and at the others with a puzzled stare.
“What’s the matter?” she asked again. “Where is mammee an’ Eliza? Why y’u come here?”
“Mammee an’ Eliza quite well, Sue,” said Catherine. “Them both remain behind in Jamaica.” She paused, leaving it to the others to explain why they had come to Panama. She had followed her father’s example and sat down. So had Miss Proudleigh.
“The sea voyage was very rough, Susan,” remarked the latter lady, as though a recital of her sufferings would sufficiently explain her reason for coming to Panama, as well as relieve the obvious embarrassment of the situation. “I never was so sea-sick before. I couldn’t move for a whole day.”
“Nor me,” asseverated Mr. Proudleigh promptly. “I never sick like dat before. I thought I would vomit me heart out, an’ de more I sick, the more de vessel roll. But I comfort meself wid the reflections that I would soon see me own daurter again, who was married to a noble gentleman; an’ when I dwelted upon that, it sort of seem to me that I didn’t sick so much.”
He glanced at Susan’s face to see how this authentic account of the effect of fatherly affection on sea-sickness had appealed to her. Not very much encouraged by her look, he hurried on.
“I nearly died; nevertheless, thanks be to God, I survive me agonies, an’ now that I see you once more, I can die in peace. You remember dat old man in the Scriptures, Sue, who say, ‘Lord, now let Thy servant depart in peace’?——”
“You mean to tell me, pupa, that you only come here to see me, and then die afterwards?” demanded Susan.
“Well, not exactly, Sue, for I are not prepared fo’ death.”
“Then what y’u come for?”
Driven to his last ditch, Mr. Proudleigh determined to offer no defence, but to cast himself upon the enemy’s clemency.
“Sue,” said he pathetically, “you don’t appears to be glad to see me. But if it was you who did come to Jamaica, I would have killed the fatted calf for you.” This reference to the fatted calf was not only intended to convince Susan that she would have been welcomed by him, but also to indicate that bodily refreshment would be most acceptable at that moment.
Susan would not immediately take the hint. But she had by now recovered from her first feeling of astonishment and was beginning to be glad to see some of her people once more. She knew her father and her aunt, however; she was well aware that they would have written to tell her of their coming had they thought she would have approved of the reason for it. She was still suspicious; they had as yet explained nothing. She turned to Catherine with a view of getting at the bottom of the mystery at once, when her father, as if suddenly inspired, started out without further circumlocution on the perilous path of truth.
“The fact of de matter, Sue,” he said, “is that I did always want to come to Colon. An’ when I got you’ letter that say you was going to married, an’ receive the five pounds, for which God is goin’ to bless you, if Him don’t bless you already, I say to you’ mother: ‘I am goin’ to follow me daurter to Colon an’ keep her company, for she must be lonely.’ An’ I tell them to sell the things in the little shops, which was not doin’ too well since you lefted us, an’ I advise them all to come wid me. But you’ mother misjudge you, an’ say you wouldn’t like it; but I know you wouldn’t mind, for it is me that bring you up since you was born, an’ look after you, an’ train you in the way you should go, an’ I persuaded meself that you was not goin’ to be ungrateful. But you’ mother wouldn’t come, an’ Eliza had to stay wid her; but your aunt and Kate come with me, an’ they are sensible, for you always hear me say I would like to come to Colon, an’ if you didn’t want me to come you wouldn’t send five pounds for me in you’ letter.”
“Then you mean to tell me, pupa,” cried Susan, “that—that y’u come here to live in this house, an’ didn’t even write to tell me?”
“We wanted to give you a pleasant surprise, Sue,” said Miss Proudleigh, to whom prevarication did not appear as a heinous offence.
“You mean you know that I wouldn’t want you to come, so you keep it secret!” exclaimed Susan. “I never hear of such a madness before. What y’u going to do now? You can’t stay here: Mackenzie wouldn’t like it.”
Catherine had been fearing some such announcement. Now, in self-defence, she said, “I didn’t want to come, Sue.”
“But you are more all right than pupa an’ Aunt Deborah,” said Susan. “You are young an’ can work; an’ I don’t think Mackenzie would mind if you stay with me. But Aunt Deborah an’ papee shouldn’t come here at all, for them don’t have much use for old people in this country.”
“Hexcuse me, Susan,” said Miss Proudleigh with impressive dignity, “but I objects to being called old. I am only forty.”
“I thought you was fifty,” said Susan rudely.
“You right, Sue!” exclaimed Mr. Proudleigh. “I am sixty year of age, an’ I remember the very day you’ aunt was born. I don’t see why she want to hide ’er age; age is no disgrace, an’ if a ooman keeps herself respectfully she should have no concealment from her fambily. Now, when you’ aunt was born——”
Shocked by the desertion of Mr. Proudleigh at a moment when it was vital that the invading forces should present a solid front to the enemy, Miss Proudleigh deemed it advisable to leave the age question severely alone and adopt a pacific attitude before her brother should adduce the damaging testimony of days and dates against her. She cut him short with a diplomatic remark.
“I am not young an’ strong like you, Sue,” she said, with a propitiatory smile, “an’ the Lord have not blessed me like you, though I am not ungrateful for His manifold kindness. But I didn’t come here to live on you. Things is very hard in Jamaica, an’ as I know that you married an’ have influence over here, I thought as you might help me to get a little dressmakin’ or washing so as to keep me independent. I don’t want anything but work.”
“Nor me,” said Catherine sturdily. “Nobody can tell me that I can’t make a good living in Panama, though I couldn’t be a servant.”
Mr. Proudleigh said nothing. Now that the talk was of work, and he was actually in Panama, he did not care to remind anyone that while in Jamaica he had never lost an opportunity of proclaiming his readiness to earn his own living whenever the chance of so doing should present itself to him.
But Susan wasn’t thinking of his capabilities just then. In her aunt’s suggestion she saw a way out of the difficulty. “You can get plenty of washin’ if you want it,” she said quickly, “either up here or in Colon. You an’ pupa will ’ave to live together by you’self, but Kate can stop with me.”
“I prefer to go back to Colon,” said Kate. “I like what I see of it, an’ this place look dull.”
“It dull for true!” agreed Susan, “an’ though I would like you to stay with me, I know Colon livelier than up here.”
Mr. Proudleigh, who had been secretly hoping to spend at least some months in the comparative calm of Culebra, did not approve of the suggestion that he should live with his sister or that he should return to Colon. Nor did he like Susan’s reference to the dullness of the labour town in which she lived. It did not argue a contented mind. The house she was mistress of, the furniture she possessed, the leisure she evidently enjoyed seemed to him enough to make any woman happy for the rest of her life, especially if to all these things could be added the blessing of a father’s presence and words of cheer.
“You should be very comfortable, Sue,” he suggested. “A young married ooman like you shouldn’t have a thing to fret her.”
“Don’t you are now a member of society, Sue?” asked her aunt.
“Yes; I belong to de Baptist church up here, an’ I going to join the choir.”
“And don’t you’ husband treat you good?” inquired her father.
“Of course! I didn’t say him didn’t!”
This sharp answer, given in the form of a threatening question, checked at once the impending flow of Mr. Proudleigh’s interrogatory. But further to prevent any more personal inquiries, and remembering that her relatives must be hungry, Susan invited them into the dining-room, where they found a table covered with a clean cloth, a meat-safe, and a few chairs. She took some cold food out of the meat-safe and placed it before them, offering the older folk, in addition, a little Jamaica rum, which Mackenzie always kept in the house. This they drank at once, Mr. Proudleigh secretly hoping for a further supply of the same liquor. He expressed his astonishment at the thirst created by the Panamanian climate, then prepared himself to dine.
Susan was no longer annoyed with her people for their unexpected appearance. Now that it had been decided that they were to live by themselves and do something to earn their living, she felt glad that they had come to Panama. They would not be very far from her; she could go to see them fairly often; the old associations, severed when she left Jamaica, were renewed once more. With her elbows on the table and her entwined fingers supporting her chin, she watched them eat with a pleasant glow of hospitality. “Tell me all about home,” she said. “You ever see Maria?”
“No,” said Catherine; “but I meet Hezekiah one day, an’ him tell me that Maria hear that you married: somebody write from Colon to tell her. She will never get a man to put a ring on her finger. You ever see Tom an’ Jones since you married, Sue?”
“No; I don’t think them ever come up this way; an’ since I married, going eight weeks now, I never leave Culebra once.”
“Jones never write you?” asked her aunt.
“No! Him couldn’t do that. I have nothing more to do wid him.”
“I never did like dat young man,” said Mr. Proudleigh with grave deliberation. “He talk too much, an’ him always using big words dat I couldn’t understand. I never thoughted that you would be happy with him, Sue.”
“Did Jones ever do you anything, pupa?” asked Susan sharply.
“Me? No. Him couldn’t do me anyt’ing. I wouldn’t make him take a liberty wid me!”
“An’ when you used to borrow a shillin’ from him every now an’ then, behind my back, though you know you couldn’t pay him back, he ever refused you?”
This little matter of the loans Mr. Proudleigh had hitherto regarded as an entirely private business arrangement between Samuel Josiah and himself; indeed, he had always prefaced his request for a loan with a speech on the wisdom of not letting one’s left hand know what one’s right hand did. He had never failed to intimate clearly that Susan was one of those symbolical left hands that had always better be kept in ignorance of all important financial transactions between man and man. But now that, to his intense surprise, Susan mentioned his past obligations to Jones, he asserted with assurance, “I goin’ to pay him back every farden. I will write an’ send de money.” An excellent resolution, though he did not trouble to mention when he would write or where the money was to come from.
“Well, seeing that Jones was kind to you in Jamaica, I don’t see why y’u should say you don’t like him,” Susan continued. “We didn’t get on too well sometimes in Colon, for him was a little wild an’ he got into bad company. That is why I leave him an’ married Mackenzie. But I don’t ’ave anything to say against him, for him didn’t stint me in anything, an’ him never ill-treat me.”
“I always liked Mr. Jones, though I never borrow any money from him,” said Miss Proudleigh untruthfully, pleased at being able to get even with her brother for his recent attempt to establish her age at fifty. “He was always polite an’ gentlemanly.”
Mr. Proudleigh had in the meantime filled his mouth to its utmost capacity, with a view of showing that he could not without grave inconvenience take any further part in a conversation which was becoming unpleasantly personal. Catherine had finished eating. Seeing this, Susan invited her into the kitchen, on the excuse that she wished to prepare something for Mackenzie.
“You have it dull, Sue?” asked Catherine, as soon as the two found themselves alone.
“Lord, yes! Every day it is one thing over an’ over. I know some of de people here, but you can’t make a dance when you like, or ’ave much merriment.”
“But you have you’ husband.”
Susan twisted her mouth slightly, a facial contortion which Catherine interpreted as meaning that Mackenzie’s existence did not contribute materially to making life bright at Culebra.
“Mac is all right enough,” Susan explained, “but him is very quiet an’ serious.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she added:
“Jones was livelier.”
“Then why you leave Jones?”
Susan let the question pass.
“Marriage is dull,” she said: “you are not you’ own mistress. It is true you ’ave a honourable position, but what is the good of that if it don’t make you any happier?”
With unconscious inconsistency she continued. “Sam promised to marry me when we was at sea, but he wouldn’t do it afterwards. It would have been better for him if he did keep his word.”
Catherine was looking at her narrowly as she spoke. She saw quite clearly that Susan was not satisfied with her present situation. And yet she was in a position that hundreds would have envied.
“Perhaps if you did wait, Jones would have married you,” Catherine suggested.
“I don’t think so. Him was wild an’ foolish, an’ thought that I care for him so much that I wouldn’t leave him. If he was different I would be with him now, even if him didn’t married me.”
Catherine looked wise. “I always say it is better not to married too quick,” she observed; “for you may find you make a mistake, an’ then you can’t do nothing.”
But here Susan thought that perhaps she had said too much, even to her sister. So she remarked, with emphasis, that, after all, she was very comfortable, and that Mackenzie was kind to her and never quarrelled with her. “I don’t ’ave a word to say against him,” she asserted truthfully.
Then she and Catherine rejoined the others, for she was now expecting her husband at any moment.
He came in presently, glanced inquiringly at Susan, who was about to say who the strangers were, when Mr. Proudleigh, who for a week had been rehearsing a little speech he had prepared to greet Mackenzie with, stood up in haste and unceremoniously interrupted his daughter. The old man had been an Odd Fellow in his younger days, and had frequently figured as “chaplain” in the lodge. He now chose to regard Mackenzie as an embodied Odd Fellows Society, and forthwith addressed him as such:
“My noble king! When first I hear that you married Miss Susan, who is the best daurter I have, an’ when I hear about you from all de people who come back to Jamaica from here—for I can tell you you are well beknown—I say to meself: I will arise an’ never be happy till I see me son-in-law. An’ here I come, though sea-sickness nearly kill me, to welcome you into de fambily; an’ I can tell you at once that I are going to do everything to make you comfortable. We don’t acquainted well yet, but when we are acquaint——”
What would happen when the further acquaintanceship hinted at by Mr. Proudleigh should have developed, will never be known. For just then Mackenzie quietly put a stop to his oratory by remarking:
“So you are Sue’s father? I am glad to see you, sir,” and then shook hands with him.
He greeted Miss Proudleigh and Catherine with similar cordiality, assuring them that he was happy to see them. Then they all sat down.
“Come on a trip, or to do business?” he inquired of Miss Proudleigh, who somehow he took to be the leader of the party.
“Things being bad in Jamaica,” that lady replied, “I took a thought an’ came with me brother an’ niece to see if I could get a little work in Colon. I am a hard-working woman, an’ so long as I can make an honest living, I are satisfied.”
“Quite right,” said Mackenzie; “nothing like independence, ma’am. You goin’ to stop too, sir?” he asked Mr. Proudleigh.
“Well, yes,” said his father-in-law; “I thinks I will. I like up here well; it’s a nice climate.”
“Well, you can stop here a few days; glad if y’u would,” said Mackenzie hospitably, but this limited invitation finally put an end to Mr. Proudleigh’s lingering hope of being invited to stay for good. “I hope Sue been treating you good?” Mackenzie went on, “and that we have something nice fo’ supper. Sue, we must get some beer an’ spend a nice evening. It’s not all times we have friends from home.”
He asked to be excused while he went out to get the beer. Both Catherine and Miss Proudleigh concluded that he was a kind man, easily satisfied, and generous in a thoughtful, cautious sort of way. But Mr. Proudleigh felt that Mackenzie’s invitation to him implied a narrow and unappreciative spirit. Mr. Proudleigh already voted Mackenzie a failure as a son-in-law.
That night they sat up until late discussing the condition of Jamaica. From Mr. Proudleigh’s remarks, a stranger would have gathered that a perfectly peaceful island was just then on the eve of revolution. He did most of the talking, Mackenzie agreeing with what he said with all the politeness of a host.
For four days did the visitors remain at Culebra. Susan tried to prevail upon Catherine to stay with her for good, but that her sister would not do; she was bored at Culebra. She noticed that Susan and Mackenzie seemed to get on very well with one another, and that Mackenzie was apparently quite satisfied with his marriage. But she was convinced that Susan was not. “She don’t love him,” thought Catherine; “she don’t happy. Better she didn’t married.”
But though she felt sorry for Susan, she would not share her loneliness. She went with her father and her aunt to Colon.
It had been arranged that Susan should go to see her people as soon as they had settled down in Colon: two weeks later she set out on the journey to the little town she knew so well and missed so much. She started in the forenoon, her plan being to spend the night in Colon and return to Culebra the next day. In less than two hours she arrived, and, taking a cab, drove to the house where her relatives now lived, they having written to give her the address.
She was effusively welcomed by them. They had two small apartments in one of the numerous tenement buildings of Colon. Miss Proudleigh, although preferring dressmaking as a more genteel occupation, had become a private laundress, as more money could be made that way. She had hired a girl to help her; particularly, to go for and to take home the clothes, for that neither she nor Catherine would consent to do. Catherine assisted with the ironing. They were pleased to find that they earned four or five times as much at this work as they would have done in Jamaica. This almost compensated for the menial character of the work. Mr. Proudleigh discovered elements of dignity in it. His only contribution was gratuitous advice.
Catherine had news for Susan.
“Guess who I meet in Colon, Sue?” was her first remark, after Susan had taken off her hat.
“Jones!” said Susan instantly.
“He an’ Tom. Them tell me all about the row, an’ Jones come here sometimes during the day an’ in the evening. Him may come here to-day,” she concluded, with a glance at her sister to see how she took the news.
Susan felt her heart leap as Catherine mentioned the possibility of Jones’s calling at the house while she was there. But she affected indifference.
“I don’t want to see him,” she said; “but it won’t matter.”
“Of course not,” observed her aunt, “for you are a lawfully married woman now.”
“An’ nobody can take dat from you,” Mr. Proudleigh insisted, as though some attempt to rob Susan of her married state was not at all unlikely.
“Nobody need try,” laughed Susan, pluming herself upon being Mrs. Mackenzie; “I have me marriage certificate.”
“That is a very good thing to have,” Mr. Proudleigh agreed. “But y’u needn’t fret that Jones won’t treat you respectful in dis house: he have to! But I must tell you, Sue, that him is a very decent young man. He confine to me all his troubles; an’ I must really tell you that I thinks y’u treat him hard, for he is a noble young man.”
From these remarks Susan gathered that Jones was once more advancing to her father small loans, to be repaid at a hypothetical future date. The old financial relations had been re-established between the two men. But she was not displeased to hear her father speak highly of Samuel. She did not even resent the old man’s mild reproach.
When twelve o’clock came, she found herself anxiously wondering whether Jones would call that day. From twelve to two o’clock he would not be working; he would have ample time for a visit. Her aunt and Catherine were ironing on that part of the veranda upon which their rooms opened. She sat on the veranda talking to them, and every now and then she would glance down into the street to see if anyone she knew was passing. She saw some acquaintances, but always with a feeling of disappointment; as two o’clock drew near she grew silent, a change which Catherine was not slow to notice. When the hour struck and she had to recognize that there was no possibility of Samuel’s coming that afternoon, she made no effort to conceal from herself that she was bitterly disappointed: in her inmost heart, also, she confessed to herself that during all the journey from Culebra to Colon her great hope had been that she should see him, meet him. For what? She had her reason ready. She told herself that she wanted to know how he had taken her sudden departure, how he had fared in the intervening ten weeks, how he would greet her, and whether he had been captured by some other woman. When she reflected on the possibility of his having been captured—just as though his personal responsibility in that matter must be almost nil—she became fiercely antagonistic towards the unknown woman. She resented her existence, hated her bitterly.
During the rest of the afternoon she was rather moody; but when six o’clock came she grew cheerful and talkative once more. An hour passed, and then Catherine suggested that they should go for a walk about the town. She agreed.
As they went along, Susan peeped into all the cafés that they passed. She well knew the old favourite haunt of Samuel, and she led her sister past it; but, though the doors were wide open as usual, she saw no sign of Samuel. They called on one or two of Susan’s friends, and to these the story of her marriage was related; her hearers had no doubt whatever that she had acted wisely in leaving Jones; there was but one opinion on her excellent good fortune. The congratulations she received heartened her greatly; it was much to be a married woman; now she knew she had done a sensible and proper thing. It was half-past nine when she and Catherine went back to the house.
“A stranger is upstairs,” said Catherine, as they ascended the steps; “that is not papee’s voice.”
Susan paused for a moment, her heart beating violently. “It is Jones,” she whispered.
Catherine listened. “Yes,” she said; “him must have been here a long time, for it is late already. Y’u not coming up?” she asked, for Susan was standing still.
Slowly Susan followed her sister. The latter entered the room first. Susan stepped in after her with a well-assumed air of indifference.
Some one rose. She heard his voice addressing her.
“Good evening, Mrs. Mackenzie. I hope I see you well? Your husband’s health is propitious, I presume?”
She was equal to the occasion. “Good evening, Mr. Jones. Yes, thank y’u, Mr. Mackenzie is quite well. He would ’ave sent you his compliments if he did know I would meet you.”
She sat down. Their eyes met.
“That don’t matter,” said Jones, most loftily. “Compliments are only words, an’ nobody don’t mean them. I am not sending anybody any compliments. I have no friends, Mrs. Mackenzie, an’ I compliment nobody. A man don’t know who to trust in this world.”
“Quite true, Mr. Jones, quite true,” observed Miss Proudleigh, who had never forgotten Susan’s reception of her at Culebra. “There is but one Friend who we can trust, an’ to Him we can take all our troubles. When man desert us an’ play us false, we can take them to the Lord in pr’yer.” In this way the good lady endeavoured to convey to Jones her opinion of Susan’s general behaviour.
Jones enjoyed Miss Proudleigh’s sympathy. He felt that he was amongst friends. He had helped them with his advice since they had been in Colon, and Mr. Proudleigh had confessed to him that in Mr. Proudleigh’s opinion Mackenzie was not fit to unloose the latchet of Samuel Josiah’s shoe. At that moment Susan was at a disadvantage.
He was looking at her narrowly. Her sojourn at Culebra had improved her: he did not think he had ever seen her look so well before. She was singularly attractive. Dressed in cool white, she faced him self-possessed, while on the third finger of her left hand gleamed a broad band of gold, the symbol of her new condition. Ever and again his eyes lingered on that ring. He hated it. But he determined to show he was indifferent, as indifferent as she appeared to be; in his most bombastic manner he resumed the conversation.
“I am thinkin’ of returning to me native land. The temperature of Panama is deleterious to my constitution, an’ they have no decent administration in the country. Some people, of course, are contented with it. If you kick some people it will please them. But Samuel Josiah Jones is of a different characteristic; besides, I am one of those men who can make a living in me own country, an’ I didn’t come here to pass all me life digging dirt for American people.”
“I don’t suppose anybody else come here fo’ good, either, Mr. Jones,” replied Susan sharply, feeling it incumbent upon her to defend her absent husband against all covert attacks. “I expect meself to go home before long.”
“Is Mac gwine to Jamaica, Sue?” asked her father quickly. “For, ef so, I wouldn’t mind takin’ a trip meself, an’ I could come back wid you.”
“I don’t know what Mackenzie is goin’ to do, papee,” answered Susan severely. “But perhaps, as you an’ Mr. Jones is so friendly, you can go wid him.”
“Oh, that’s all right!” exclaimed Jones. “I can take the old man. I have the cash, an’ no one ever say yet that Samuel Josiah was mean. When I am goin’, old massa, you can come along.”
“Thank y’u, me son!” Mr. Proudleigh burst out.
“You is the sort of young man I did want for me son-in-law.”
He had no sooner spoken the words than he regretted them. They expressed his true sentiments, but how would Susan take them? Catherine laughed.
“Wishes don’t alter facts,” said Miss Proudleigh sourly, “though some people, in spite of all they may pretends, would be glad if facts could be altered.”
Susan understood this remark and hated her aunt very thoroughly at that moment. “I suppose you been wishin’ for a lot of things you never get—eh, Aunt Deborah?” she said. “You must ’ave wished to get married for a long time before you got old, but I hear you never even had an intended.”
“What!” cried Mr. Proudleigh, before his sister could hurl the full force of her scorn at the offending Susan, “my dear daurter, you don’t know you’ aunt. You grow up an’ find ’er in religion, but she was a little devil when she was young. I remember one night me father half-murder her because she used to stay out late, an’ a young man beat her one day because she was carryin’ on wid another young man, while she was engage to de first one. But when she come near forty, of cou’se, an’ she see she was getting old, she teck to religion an’ becomes an example to you young people.”
“You are an infernal liar!” cried Miss Proudleigh fiercely, roused now to bitterest anger by this gratuitous detailing of her early history, and entirely forgetful of the virtue of Christian forbearance and godly conversation in her desire to maintain her claim to having always led a pure and spotless life. “Since you come to Colon I don’t know what come over you! All you seem to want to do is to make fun of me, an’ abuse me character; but as you remember so many things that never happen, you might as well remember dat it is me who is helping you to live in Colon, an’ not Susan.”
“This don’t need any quarrel,” observed Jones hastily. “If I did want to quarrel I could find plenty of reason, but I bear all the ill-treatment I receive in silence, being disposed thereto by an equanimitous attitude of mind.”
“That is the same like my attitude of mind,” peacefully remarked Mr. Proudleigh, “for if there is a man that don’t like confusion it is me. I didn’t mean to vex Deborah at all, an’ I beg to ask her pardon as she get offended by what I say. In fact, I don’t see how she should think I could want to insult me own sister before a perfec’ stranger like Mister Jones, an’ she is very wrong to think so. But it is because I am old an’ poor. Ef I was a young man, an’ earning me two pounds a week, all de sort of words dat everybody give me now I wouldn’t hear at all. But when a man is poor, dog can bark at him an’ him can’t say a word; so everybody take an advantage of me an’ tell me what them do for me, though them never remember what I do for them. However, I apologize to Deborah, an’ I excuse her, for she was always very ignorant.”
“When you thinkin’ of goin’ home, Mr. Jones?” asked Susan with a view to putting an end to the dispute between her aunt and father. She knew how spiteful Miss Proudleigh could be, and was well aware that if her usually mild parent was once thoroughly annoyed, the recital of his grievances and wrongs would form the main topic of all conversations for the next three or four days.
“I haven’t determined on a date hitherto, Mrs. Mackenzie,” Jones replied, “but I contemplate a speedy departure from these regions. If I wasn’t a man of strong mentality, all the sufferings I have had to put up with in Colon would drive me mad. But I have a solid brain, an’ what would kill some people passes by me like ‘the idle wind which I regard not.’ That is Shakespeare,” he explained.
“Well, it’s a good thing to be able to go home when y’u like, Mr. Jones, an’ you are an independent man with no responsibility. My ’usband have to work hard to keep his wife in comforts, so he can’t travel about like you, an’ go out to see his friends an’ enjoy himself every night. Some people like to ’ave everything, you know, without any responsibility, but Mackenzie is different.”
“I don’t know anything about your husband, Mrs. Mackenzie,” Jones answered superciliously. “He and I was never friends in Jamaica: we didn’t walk in the same street at all. Of course, when a man come to a place like Colon, he get to know a lot of people he would never know at home. I moved in good society in Jamaica. The very night before I leave for Colon I was entertained by a few high-toned educated friends of mine, an’ if I had paid attention to what one of them say to me, I wouldn’t have been made a fool of here. But I was always of a confiding an’ trustful disposition, an’ put a lot of faith in females.”
A sarcastic laugh from Miss Proudleigh, directed at Susan, welcomed this remark. But Susan took no notice of it.
It was now past ten o’clock, and Catherine was repeatedly yawning. Jones rose to leave.
“This has been an unexpected pleasure, Mrs. Mackenzie,” he said, as he bade Susan good night. “If we do not meet again, you may say to Mr. Mackenzie that y’u saw me here in excellent spirits.” He flourished his hat and bowed as he spoke, then marched with stately step out of the room.
“Dat is a perfec’ gen’leman,” said Mr. Proudleigh.
Susan thought so too.
After that visit to Colon, Culebra became more distasteful than ever to Susan. In spite of her possession of “comforts,” her life seemed to her to be singularly uninteresting; she felt that she had nothing new to expect, she experienced no pleasant thrill of anticipated adventures; she loved excitement, and at Culebra, except for the accidents, there was nothing like excitement to look forward to. She might have children. But though she possessed the instinct of motherhood as fully as any other normally developed woman, the coming of children seemed to her to be a mere matter of course, something too that would bind her down more tightly to her humdrum existence as Mackenzie’s wife. She began to regret even the days in Jamaica when she had the shop—days that now seemed so very far away, though only a few months had passed since she had come to Panama.
She had no doubt now, she no longer strove to conceal from herself, that she had made a mistake in marrying Mackenzie. He was a good husband, a steady man; but he was over forty and very uninteresting. She could not even quarrel with him: he did nothing to provoke a quarrel. If she was petulant, he was patient; if she became a little unreasonable, he yielded with a good humour which she instinctively felt was not the result of weakness. She stood in some awe of him; as a friend he had been altogether desirable, but now as her husband she discovered that his disposition was alien to hers; she respected but could not care for him.
She could not even complain that he restricted her liberty, for he did not. She was free in reason to go where she liked; if she had not left Culebra but once since her marriage, that was not because she could not have done so had she wished. The situation, clearly, was hopelessly annoying. As some one had to be blamed for it, she blamed Jones.
It was all his fault. He should have acted differently. It was not because he had refused to marry her that she had left him. It was because he had taken to drinking, gambling, and bad habits generally; because he had made himself objectionable and might at any moment have found himself within the four walls of a prison. She had chosen the best way of escape open to her, and everybody agreed that she had acted wisely. She was in no way at fault.
But this self-vindication did not tend to console her, for, by an apparently perverse arrangement of things, she was the sufferer while Jones was as free as air. Susan was too intelligent not to feel that, however tragically Jones might conduct himself just now, he was likely to find consolation as time went on. She believed profoundly in her lasting influence over every man who had fallen in love with her; there was Tom’s case as an illustration. But she doubted whether that influence would keep anyone like Jones, from falling into the clutches of other women, especially as she was married and separated from him for ever. “The same way he could do without me before I know him, he will do without me now,” she thought ruefully; and this was the more certain if he should return to Jamaica. And if he did return, what chance would there be of his coming back, in a hurry at any rate?
Besides, even if he did come back, how would that help her? They now met as acquaintances merely. She addressed him as Mr. Jones. He spoke to her as Mrs. Mackenzie. Everything was as it should be from the point of view of propriety: he treated her as a married woman ought to be treated. Yet she would have much preferred a bitter quarrel with him, an open flinging of reproaches from one to the other, passionate upbraiding. Why, she did not exactly know, save that the sarcastic politeness of both, and the thinly veiled innuendoes they had indulged in at her relatives’ house on the night of their meeting, seemed to her a mere sham: they had not spoken to one another as they would have liked to speak. They had merely acted a part.
She wondered if all married women felt, as she did, that marriage was an awful bore. And she wondered if her endurance could stand the strain of that boredom for years.