“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.”
“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.
BOOK III
“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 onherfinger. 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.
“Mackenzie,” said Susan one evening, some four days after she had been to Colon, “you ever see Jones?”
“No,” he replied, “I don’t think him ever come this way. An’ I never hear anything of him; perhaps he gone back home.”
“I don’t think so,” Susan said, “for Kate tell me when I was in Colon this week that Jones go to see them sometimes. I was thinking that maybe him will get married himself.”
“Cho!” laughed Mackenzie, “Jones is never goin’ to do anything. Some girl may marry him if she really want to get married, and can take him to a church, but it will be she who will do it. You take my word for it, some day Jones is going to go back to Jamaica widout a cent in his pocket. He will have nothing to show for all the time him spend here.”
“I think so meself,” agreed Susan; “he don’t steady at all like you, Mac.”
This direct compliment, at the expense of Jones too, pleased Mackenzie not the less because he felt it was deserved. He smiled complacently.
“I always thought from the first time I see you in Colon, Sue,” he said, “that you was too good for a fellow like Jones. He has his good points, for he can work hard an’ he know his work. But him like to show off too much, an’ he never know his own mind.”
“You think I should speak to him if I ever meet him? You see, he may go to see me family when I am there, an’ I wouldn’t like to speak to him if you didn’t like it.”
“Why, of course you can speak to him; I don’t see why you shouldn’t. He don’t do you nothing, an’ I don’t see why he should vex because you leave him to get married. If I see him meself I will speak to him: an’ if him don’t choose to answer it will be all the same to me.”
“You right, Mac. If you hold out the hand of friendship an’ Jones don’t choose to take it, that’s ‘up to him’ as the American people here say. An’ I will follow your advice and speak to him if I ever see him, for I don’t bear anybody malice.”
“Malice is foolishness,” said Mackenzie emphatically. “If I was to meet Jones up here I would invite him to come an’ spend a evening in me house. I don’t know if him would come, but that would show him that I have no bad feelings towards him.”
She said nothing to her husband of her having already met Samuel Josiah. But now she felt that she could with a clear conscience be polite to Jones when next she should see him; and perhaps, after that meeting, she might tell Mackenzie of it . . . that would be wise. She was going to see her people again, but she must not seem in any hurry to do so; she must force herself to wait. She allowed two weeks to elapse before she went, taking care to let Catherine know by letter beforehand the day on which to expect her.
She arrived in Colon in the afternoon, and that evening Jones came round to the house. He expected to meet her.
For a little while they discussed indifferent topics; then suddenly Susan gave a sharp turn to the conversation and surprised everybody by saying:
“I hear that I have to congratulate you, Mr. Jones.”
“Me? What for?” he asked.
“I hear you goin’ to get married.”
“You don’t say!” exclaimed Mr. Proudleigh, immediately becoming interested. Jones had been coming so often to see them, and had been so obliging in the matter of the loans, that the old gentleman had begun to think that a match might be arranged between the young man and Catherine.
“I never hear of it before,” said Jones, “but people always know a man’s business better than he know it himself.” (Mr. Proudleigh’s face lighted up with pleasure.) “I have nothing more to do with any woman, Mrs. Mackenzie, an’ don’t intend to.” (Here Mr. Proudleigh’s hopes fell to zero—a common enough occurrence.) “Women do me enough already in this world. I have been fooled once, but that was not my fault. If I allow anybody to fool me again, however, I would be more than stupid.”
Susan’s question had been deliberately put for the purpose of finding out if Samuel’s affections were still unengaged. She was therefore delighted with his reply. But she answered to the point. “I didn’t know you ever was married before, Mr. Jones, so you couldn’t have been fooled.”
“P’rhaps it is a very good thing him was never married,” observed Miss Proudleigh caustically, leaving her meaning to be understood by Susan.
“Perhaps so,” replied Susan promptly, “for if Mr. Jones was married him might have all his wife’s old relations wanting to live on him.”
“It’s not a matter of relations,” said Jones, “for when I put me hand into me pocket, I can always find money there to help anybody. But females are not to be trusted; and as I don’t take away anybody’s wife, I wouldn’t like anybody to take away mine.”
“I agree wid you, Mister Jones,” said Mr. Proudleigh; “but you don’t have no occasion to worry you’self, for as you not married, nobody can teck away you’ wife.” He laughed as he ceased, being proud of his logic.
“Well, marriage is not everything,” said Susan; “but as I hear that Mr. Jones was goin’ to get married—I forget who tell me—I thought I would mention it so as to congratulate him. But since it isn’t true, I congratulate him all de same.”
“I thank you kindly,” said Jones with a sweeping bow, “and without indulging in any process of vituperation, I venture to submit that some people would have a better life with Samuel Josiah Jones than with other men I could mention. Some married people have it dull, you know. Now I am a sport, an’ anybody who is along with me must enjoy themself.”
Susan immediately credited her aunt with having been talking about her to Jones. Her suspicions were just. Yet Jones had said enough to indicate that he was still regretting her desertion of him, and this established a sympathetic understanding between them: they were both partners in misfortune.
“What that word, ‘vituperation,’ mean, Mister Jones?” inquired Mr. Proudleigh, who was interested in polysyllables but sometimes found that Jones’s terms left him bewildered in a maze of hopeless conjecture.
“It means,” said Jones, beginning an explanation which might have left the old man no wiser than before, when a shout in the street attracted their attention, and they heard a babble of voices and the sound of hurrying feet.
“Fire!” cried Mr. Proudleigh, moving quickly towards the veranda. “What a place Colon is for fire! Almost every week dere is one.”
“They say the American doctors burn down the houses when they can’t cure the fever any other way,” said Jones, hurriedly following Mr. Proudleigh to the veranda.
“The people burn it down themself when them want to rob,” was Miss Proudleigh’s hypothesis, which probably did account for many of the fires which afflicted Colon.
From the veranda they could see a red glare against the north-western sky, and a great volume of smoke surging upwards. The glare grew brighter every moment; denser became the smoke.
“It’s a big fire!” cried Susan excitedly, “an’ nearly all the house in Colon is of wood. It may burn down de whole town!”
“I gwine to see it!” Mr. Proudleigh exclaimed. “I never miss a fire yet.” He hurried into the room for his hat, spurred to unusual activity by the prospect of enjoying one of his favourite amusements.
“But suppose it come this way, pupa?” cried Catherine in a frightened tone of voice. “What about we clothes and other things?”
But Mr. Proudleigh was already half-way down the stairs, and calling out loudly to ask if they were not going with him. Miss Proudleigh refused to move, not being willing to leave her room to the mercy of wandering thieves. Catherine, after a moment’s hesitation, ran after her father. Jones and Susan went out together.
The street below was crowded. Half the people in Colon were running towards the scene of the conflagration, shouting “Fire!” with all the power of their lungs. Cabs tore through the narrow thoroughfare, mounted men appeared from nowhere and began to urge their horses through the hurrying throng with a fine disregard of other people’s safety. The excitement was contagious; it infected Susan and Jones, who, hand in hand, began to run also, immediately losing sight of Catherine and Mr. Proudleigh and thinking only of themselves. Soon they came to the spot where a huge crowd was collected near a block of wooden buildings, some of which were now blazing furiously. Fortunately there was no wind, so the sparks were not carried to any considerable distance. But they rose to a tremendous height in the heated air, and at that moment thousands of anxious people were wondering whether a single house would be left standing in Colon when morning dawned.
The fire brigades were on the spot, the town brigade as well as that from Christobal. The men worked like demons. Long silver streams poured upon the blazing buildings; uniformed men in shining helmets swarmed up the sides of the doomed structures, splintering and smashing the woodwork with their axes, giving fierce battle to the yellow monster which leaped from roof to roof, roaring dully as if glorying in destruction. The Panamanian police were everywhere, the little fellows running about and clubbing out of the way whoever ventured too near the burning houses. Soon it was seen that the flames were threatening to leap across a narrow street, the houses in which were already warping and blistering under the terrible heat. If those houses should once ignite, it would be with the greatest difficulty that they could be saved.
A sudden scattering of the crowd indicated that the police were impressing men to help them fight the fire. They seized every able-bodied man they could lay their hands upon, tolerating no show of resistance; people on the outskirts of the crowd, knowing that an unpleasant time would be in store for them if once they were impressed, were hastily making off, and Jones, who was among them, thought it eminently wise to follow their example as quickly as possible. Pulling Susan by the hand, he hurried away. When he thought that he had put sufficient ground between himself and the police he halted. From where they now stood they could still see the flames fighting their way upwards, and the huge masses of heavy black smoke spreading like a pall over the town.