She too wanted to go away. She had heard of the riches of Panama and Costa Rica, and had often talked about those places with her friends. Life there, they believed, was free as air; money almost to be had for the asking. True, returning emigrants told of fearful fevers, and unsympathetic policemen, and months of continuous rain, and the dark impenetrable jungle; but the bright fantastic picture painted by imagination cast no shadow in spite of all these dreadful tales. The emigrants who returned to Jamaica almost invariably went back. The fascination of the semi-civilized Central American countries, once felt, was too often irresistible. Hundreds of forgotten graves in Central America contained the bones of men and women who had gone thither with high hopes of enriching themselves; but still the exodus continued. The restless longing for change, for new scenes, for a new life, acted as a spur to discontent.
Susan had become silent and depressed. Jones noticed this and asked her:
“You tired?”
“No,” she said, “I was thinkin’!”
“What was you thinkin’ about?”
She hesitated, then said quite frankly:
“I would like to go to Colon.”
Jones pushed back his jippi jappa hat and stared at her. So she was dissatisfied with Jamaica also! Half-jestingly he asked her:
“You want to go with me?”
She, on her part, surprised by the question, looked at him with eager eyes. Her heart beat quickly, her face lit up with excitement.
“But y’u don’t mean it?” she asked.
Now he really did not know whether he meant it or not. He was a very impulsive man, who did most things on the spur of the moment. He was also a very gallant man, and wasted much of his substance on “females.” He had no permanent connexion with any one of them just then, however; and on Susan asking him whether he really wanted to take her with him or not, it occurred to him that it might be a very fine thing indeed to land in Colon with so attractive a companion.
The idea was worth playing with. “A man,” he answered Susan, “say a lot of things he don’t mean. But y’u don’t answer me question yet. You would like to come with me?”
She made up her mind to a straightforward reply. “I wouldn’t mind, if——”
“If what?”
“If y’u would treat me good.”
“Oh,” he remonstrated. “Do you think a gentlemanly man like me would treat y’u bad? I never do such a thing in me life!”
“I don’t think y’u would,” Susan graciously replied. “You don’t look like those sort of young men at all.”
This compliment pleased Jones immensely. “You are intrinsically correct,” he assured her. “Not a female have a word to say against Samuel Josiah Jones. An’ you will find when you get to Colon what sort of man I am.”
“Then you goin’ to take me?” Susan asked quickly.
“Of course! Don’t y’u want to go?”
Her heart gave one great bound. Here was the opportunity come to her at last!
“All right,” she exclaimed. “I will come. When you goin’?”
“Three weeks’ time. I give notice at the Railway already, but I have to fix up me business. Where y’u live in Kingston?”
“Luke Lane. Y’u must come wid me to-night, let me introduce you to me parents. The place don’t too nice, but you mustn’t mind dat.”
“Certainly not. You are nice, an’ that is enough.”
He felt that something more was required of him—something that a lover in one of the novels he had read would have thought appropriate to the occasion. At the moment only one thing in the way of what he called poetry came to his memory; but still it was poetry, and therefore suitable. He repeated it, standing still and looking fondly in Susan’s face:
“Fleecy looks and black complexionDo not alter Nature’s claim,Skin may differ, but affectionDwells in white and black the same.”
“Fleecy looks and black complexionDo not alter Nature’s claim,Skin may differ, but affectionDwells in white and black the same.”
“Fleecy looks and black complexionDo not alter Nature’s claim,Skin may differ, but affectionDwells in white and black the same.”
“Fleecy looks and black complexion
Do not alter Nature’s claim,
Skin may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same.”
He expected applause. As Susan did not know what the verse was intended for, she simply answered, “Yes.”
“Let us go and tell Letitia,” she added, catching hold of his arm and dragging him with her in her excitement. Nothing loth, he followed, and soon they found Letitia, to whom the good tidings were told. Hezekiah heard it too. He was standing near by when Susan was speaking to her friend, and Susan spoke loudly on purpose that he might hear.
“I goin’ in three weeks’ time. I not comin’ back to Jamaica at all! Sam going to get three pounds a week! What a good luck, eh, Letitia? What a luck!”
Hezekiah heard it all, and saw Jones in the flesh, smiling with the consciousness of irresistible masculine attractions and great potential wealth. Hezekiah could not doubt, and so that night he did exactly what Susan had calculated on his doing. Not only Maria and her mother, but everybody else that he met in Blake Lane was told that Susan had got another intended with plenty of money, and was going to Colon.
“Dis world don’t level,”[1]was Maria’s bitter comment on Susan’s undeserved good fortune.
[1]Fortune is not fair.
[1]
Fortune is not fair.
“We must take a ’bus,” said Jones, when he and Susan alighted from the train at Kingston. “Don’t bother with the car. It’s late already.”
He hailed a cab, and both of them, after bidding Letitia good-bye, got into the cab and drove off, but not before the cabman had exchanged some sharp words with the policeman who was regulating the traffic. Jones wanted to take sides with the cabman, partly through a natural inclination for argument, partly from a desire to impress Susan with his utter contempt for the guardian of the law. But she urged the cabman to drive on, fearing any serious quarrel at the very beginning of her new career; and the cabman obeyed after some grumbling, though he was clearly in the wrong.
She was glad to be back in Kingston, glad to be riding once more through the ill-lighted streets, to be amongst the slow-moving, chattering people, to feel the dust of the city in her face. She thrilled with excitement at the thought of her parents’ surprise; the whole yard would wonder who it was that had brought her home so splendidly from the picnic. Then she remembered the room and felt ashamed.
“The place shabby,” she again warned Jones. “Me an’ me family are poor; but we are decent. Me father ’ave cramps in his feet; that is why we ’ave to live in a little room.”
She said nothing about Tom and the house in Blake Lane; Jones again declared that the place she lived in did not matter to him.
“I can’t stay long,” he said, when the cab stopped at Susan’s gate. “I will have to go home for me dinner.”
He entered the yard jauntily, and Susan took him up to the room, sitting near the door and at the threshold of which were her father and mother and sisters, and her aunt who had dropped in to see them, as she so frequently did.
They were expecting Susan, but when they heard the cab stop at the gate they had not imagined it was she who had come home in it. Seeing her now with a tall young man whose face they could not distinctly make out in the darkness, they all rose, each one looking at him intently.
“This is Mr. Jones,” said Susan; “I met him at the picnic.”
“My best respects, sir,” said Mr. Proudleigh, taking off the remains of the hat he wore—“my distant respects.”
“Same to you, sir,” said Jones, feeling a trifle awkward.
“Won’t you step inside?” asked Miss Proudleigh. “The place is small, but de heart is warm. Susan, show the gentleman inside.”
She stepped inside herself as she spoke, being curious to know who the gentleman was and what he had come for. That he had some sort of design upon Susan she had no doubt whatever; for no man could take a young woman home without a very definite interpretation being given to this ostensibly innocent act. Susan led Jones into the room. Mr. Proudleigh transferred into the apartment two chairs from his part of the room, and on these he and his sister sat; Jones took the one remaining chair, and Susan sat on the bed. Catherine and Eliza stood by the doorway, curious, while their mother disappeared, as usual, being a woman who rarely indulged in conversation or obtruded her presence upon anyone.
“Very noice picnic, Mr. Jones?” inquired Mr. Proudleigh. “Plenty of music and enjiements? Hope you enjie you’self?”
“Magnanimously,” said Jones; “I met you’ daughter an’ we had a nice conversation. You have a beautiful daughter, Mr. Proudleigh.”
“Cho!” said Susan deprecatingly, but nevertheless pleased.
“Oh yes, sir,” agreed Mr. Proudleigh; “she take after me. She have my features and my disposition. I always say she is me own daurter.”
“Hi! papee,” cried Eliza, a trifle indignant; “don’t we are you’ own daughter too?”
“Of course,” assented her father; “but Sue is de most oldest; an’ she take the world upon her shoulder.”
The world was really himself and the rest of the family, and a good deal of the deference he showed to Susan was inspired by the fear that she might some day throw the burden off.
“Yes,” said Jones, wishing to come to the point at once; “I seldom see a female like Miss Susan. She is perfectly emphatic.”
“Quite true, sir,” said Miss Proudleigh; “but we must remember that beauty is only skin deep, and except a young lady have the fear of de Lord in her heart, she can’t prosper. What society you belongs to, Mr. Jones?”
“Society? Me?” said Jones; “I never belong to any society since I use to go to Sunday school when I was a boy.
“Church is a very good thing,” he continued, “but a young man is wild.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Proudleigh, “I didn’t jine society meself till I was long time over forty. Then I felts that I was a ripe man, an’ could do me duty. I don’t like to see a young man goin’ too much to church. That is like de Scribes an’ Pharisee; it is hypocritical.”
“Well,” his sister was beginning, but here Susan’s impatience got the better of her manners.
“Why don’t you tell them what you ’ave to tell them?” she asked Jones.
Every one’s ears were pricked up. What was it that he could have to say? Miss Proudleigh forgot entirely the remark she had been about to make. Catherine glanced quickly from Jones to Susan, and back again.
“I am goin’ to take away your daughter altogether from you,” said Jones to the old man, and struck an attitude.
So that was it! Everybody had heard the “altogether,” and Mr. Proudleigh and his sister immediately came to the conclusion that Jones wished to marry Susan. It was a most unexpected announcement, but Mr. Proudleigh loved dramatic climaxes, and, fearing lest his sister should forestall him, he quickly rose from his chair and grabbed Jones by the hand.
“I esteem y’u, sir!” he exclaimed. “It is true I never meet you before; but Miss Susan is a big ooman an’ must judge for herself. Besides, I can look ’pon you an’ tell dat you are a honourable gen’leman. Miss Susan will makes a good wife, better dan all——”
He stopped, seeing that Jones was shaking his head decisively.
“I didn’t say I was going to married—yet,” Jones explained; then he looked at Susan as if expecting her to complete the explanation.
“It’s all right,” she said; “papee understand.”
Mr. Proudleigh sat down again. He was sorry he had not grasped the purport of Jones’s words from the start, for it was rather embarrassing to have mentioned marriage when marriage was not immediately intended.
But Miss Proudleigh rose to the occasion. “Ef Susan are satisfied,” she said, “there is nobody to interfere. A respectable young man may not feel like marrying now, an’ yet that does not signify that he is to remain widout a partner in life. After all, who make the marriage service? Don’t it is man? Read the Bible, an’ y’u won’t find a word of it there. Isaac an’ Rebecca didn’t married in a church; an’ yet look how lovin’ them live together. I am a Christian woman, an’ I know what is right from wrong. But I don’t agree wid all those stiff-neck people who say that everybody ought to married right off. That is not a practical view.”
Mr. Proudleigh saw the golden bridge which his sister had built for him, and he went flying over it.
“That is my own opinions,” he remarked with emphasis. “When Mister Jones mention dis matter, I did thought it was funny that . . . I mean that I thought dat a young man would want to know the sort o’ female him goin’ to get married to. Before I married, I was along wid Susan’s mother for ten years. I had the twins that dead, an’ me son who is now oversea—a good buoy that. Then I married, an’ Susan was born. An’ p’rhaps I wouldn’t married at all ef the parson of de church I use to attend sometimes didn’t talk to me an’ tell me I ought to jine society an’ don’t live no more in sin. I don’t regret I are married, but I wouldn’t tell any young man to married right off if him don’t wants to.”
“That is what I say meself,” put in Catherine from the door. “If a gurl get a young man, she would be foolish to drive him away because him don’t want to married at once. After all, if him is free, she is free too.”
Now Catherine had no young man in view, so far as Miss Proudleigh was aware. And though many excellent arguments might be found to show that Susan and Jones were doing almost the right and proper thing in the circumstances existing, Miss Proudleigh felt that a stricter code of morality ought to be enforced in so far as Catherine and Eliza were concerned, at any rate until the time should come when moral theory might wisely be dispensed with on the tacit understanding of a marriage in perspective.
She pursed up her mouth. “I doesn’t thinks,” she observed, “that a young gurl should talk in that way. Susan is different. But you an’ Eliza don’t know de world yet, an’ you should be modest. When I was young, me parents wouldn’t allow me to make such a remarks.”
Catherine bridled up, Eliza tittered, Susan laughed outright.
Catherine made a peculiar noise with her mouth which is locally known as “sucking your teeth,” and which expresses both contempt and defiance. Miss Proudleigh would have volubly resented this, had not her brother interrupted her by going to the door and calling his wife.
“Mattie,” he explained, when she answered the summons, “Mister Jones is takin’ Susan as an intended. Him is a decent young gen’leman, an’ I tell him we is pleased to welcome him.”
“Yes,” said his wife; “we very pleased, sah.” She looked at Jones as she spoke, not liking him as well as she had liked Tom, but yet feeling that Susan was woman enough to make her own choice.
“I am goin’ to make you’ daughter very comfortable, old lady,” said Jones, involuntarily glancing round the little room. “When we go to Colon we going to have fine times.”
He spoke loudly and gaily, for the effect of the liquor he had been drinking had by no means worn off, and he held himself to be something of a hero who had arrived just in time to rescue a good-looking girl from poverty and distress.
The old woman smiled, then asked: “You an’ Miss Susan goin’ to Colon, sah?”
“Yes; three weeks’ time. They offered me an occupation down there, an’ I am taking Susan with me.”
“Well! there is coincidence!” exclaimed Miss Proudleigh. “P’rhaps, Sue, you will meet T——”
“What you goin’ to say now, ma’am?” asked Susan, in a threatening tone.
Miss Proudleigh heard and understood in time. “I was sayin’ that p’rhaps you might meet you’ brother; but I just remember he gone to Nicaragua an’ not Panama,” she replied, with admirable presence of mind.
“Sue did want to go to Colon all this time,” said her mother; “an’ now she can go.” She glanced again at Jones, and left the room; then that gentleman rose to bid them good night, saying as he did so that they would see him on the following night.
Susan accompanied him to the gate, where they remained talking for a little while. When she returned she was clinking a few silver coins in her hand, and smiling gaily.
“Well!” she said, “you see me luck don’t desert me! I did think I would ’ave to work an’ save before I could go away; an’ before I save a shillin’ I get a friend to take me.”
“An’ you remember, Sue,” said her father, “that it was me who strongly advise y’u to go to de picnic. I had a sort of feeling that you should go. Something say to me, ‘Make her go.’ I am a man who follow me feeling all de time; an’ p’rhaps if I didn’t do it, you wouldn’t have gotted such a chance to go foreign.
“Well, nobody can say I don’t do me best fo’ me children,” he proceeded, in a self-satisfied tone. “An’ if them should forget me, the curse of God must fall on them. All night long I lay down and thinks about them. When you believe I are sleeping I am thinking about you.”
If snoring be a proof of wakefulness, then it must be admitted that Mr. Proudleigh spent all the long hours of the night in anxiously reflecting on his children’s future welfare. In fact, on the strength of such evidence, it might reasonably be contended that he never knew what it was to sleep. On the other hand, it was difficult to reconcile his claims to habitual insomnia with his habit of frequent dreaming; for every morning he had at least one dream to relate, and nearly every dream of his was fraught with prophetic meaning.
That he should now be anxious to bind his children, and especially Susan, to him by the bonds of gratitude was natural. And the reason was obvious. If Susan went to Panama and did not take the others with her, or agree to send something regularly for them, the prospects of himself and the old woman might again become serious, however it should fare with the two girls. In mentioning the vengeance of God upon ungrateful children, therefore, he felt he had struck a note that would vibrate to good effect, and inwardly congratulated himself on his diplomacy. Susan, however, did not need to be reminded of the necessity of doing something for her people before she left; she had already made up her mind as to that while driving home from the railway station. So by way of answer to her father’s remarks, she began to tell them of her plans.
“I can’t take Kate wid me again, as I was goin’ to do if I did go by meself,” she explained. “An’ I can’t promise to send for any of you, for Sam not going to like it. If Kate can manage to come to Colon by herself, after I get down there, dat will be all right, for I would like some of me own family near me. But I not sending for her. And I don’t see what you would do in Colon, sah,” she went on, turning to her father, “for you’re old, an’ you can’t work.”
“Me!” exclaimed Mr. Proudleigh indignantly; but Susan calmly continued with her statement, without taking any notice of his protest, or giving him the opportunity of showing how extremely useful just such a man as he would be in a country devoted to the strenuous task of building a great canal.
“I am going to leave the shop, an’ all of you can look after it, same as if I was in Jamaica. It getting on well, an’ if you don’t act foolish you will make a profit every week. An’ I will send something for y’u whenever I can. And see here! Remember that I don’t want nobody to talk about Tom when Sam come to see me. Aunt Deborah nearly do it a little while ago when Sam was here, an’ it is all that sort of stupidness I don’t like.”
“You needn’t express you’self in that way, Susan,” protested Miss Proudleigh severely. “I didn’t mean anyt’ing. It only occur to me that Jones might meet Tom, an’ Tom might make confusion.”
“Him make confusion!” retorted Susan scornfully. “What about? What him send for me since him gone away? I only hear from him once, an’ him say that if he don’t get sick him will send for me; an’ he didn’t even put a dollar in de letter. It’s two months now since him gone. If I didn’t look for meself I might have been dead by this time. Besides, after all, I am me own woman, an’ if I choose to get another intended, that’s my business!”
“But suppose Jones meet Tom in Colon?” said Catherine.
“Well, what about dat? Jones couldn’t think that he is me first lover. I am not his first sweetheart. I don’t want him to hear anyt’ing about Tom, for I don’t want any chat in Kingston before I leave; but if him meet Tom an’ I see any confusion goin’ to come, I will simply look for something to do, like I been doing here since Tom leave. Once I am in Colon I will be all right.”
But Miss Proudleigh, not pleased with Susan’s confidence and self-assertion, and perhaps resenting her niece’s continued good fortune, assumed a dismally prophetic air and uttered this doleful prediction:
“I don’t quite like this, Susan. This young man’s name is Jones, an’ the lawyer who lose you’ case against Maria is Jones. Now if you put two an’ two together, an’ reflect in a general way on the coincidence, y’u will see that there is trouble before you. Howsoever——”
“Howsoever,” flamed out Susan, “it would be a good thing if everybody mind them own business. It wasn’t me who select Lawyer Jones; an’ a lot of people in Kingston have the same name. Those who envy me can think an’ believe what them like.”
Then she asked for her dinner, which she had been too excited all this time to think of; and about an hour after eating it she went to bed.
But her excitement prevented her from sleeping; and with the excitement was mingled some anxiety lest Jones should change his mind in the morning and not come back to see her after all. That was not improbable, for a man sober might think much differently from the same man who, according to his own admission, had taken “a few good drinks” during the day. Yet she was inclined to believe that he had been in earnest. He had given her five shillings when bidding her good-bye at the gate, and no one who was not very much in earnest would have done so. On the whole, after thinking the matter over, she felt she was certain of him.
She began to think about her approaching migration. To her, Colon and Panama meant one and the same place, the lesser thus being made to include the greater. She could form no idea of what the town might be like, but of one thing she was certain: she would enjoy herself there immensely and all the time. She would have plenty of money to spend. She would have many fine dresses to wear. If Jones did not treat her nicely? Well, she was not the sort of young woman to submit to bad treatment. She would not stay with him. But she liked Samuel Josiah; he was attentive and generous. She speedily decided that they would get on excellently together. . . .
As for all those who disliked her, how she had triumphed over them! They would hear of her good luck, and gnash their teeth with envy. Maria? Mother Smith? They were entirely beneath her notice now.
She dwelt upon this thought with delight for some time, then gradually fell asleep.
Unlike Susan, Jones slept very soundly that night. It was not until the next morning that he thought over the proposal he had made to Susan, and he did not regret it. He was attracted by her, more so than he had been by any other woman he could remember. He did not know the reason, and would have been the last person in the world to have thought about reasons in such a connexion. He simply believed he was in love with her, and not in quite the same way that he had been in love some twenty times before.
He felt happier now about going to Colon. The truth is that Jones, in spite of all his talk, had been rather uneasy about leaving Jamaica and going to a land where he might meet with no one whom he knew intimately. Susan’s will was stronger than his. Hers was a more determined character. That was one cause of the attraction she had for him; impulsive, uncertain, volatile, and talkative as he was, it was not surprising that a girl who usually knew her own mind in matters that directly concerned her, and who could stick to her own point with remarkable tenacity, should exercise considerable influence over him almost from the moment of their first meeting. Then she was good-looking, lively, and of excellent figure. She was not common either, he was sure, for she had not welcomed his advances at the start as so many other girls would have done. Consequently he was satisfied with the arrangements of the previous day; and he lost no time that evening in going to see her. When he appeared, Susan’s last doubt vanished. She was now quite certain of him.
Soon Mr. Proudleigh began to speak of him as his son-in-law, and Susan’s sisters regarded him as their brother-in-law. Calling Jones brother-in-law appealed to the girls’ sense of propriety, while it suited their aunt’s religious views to consider Jones as almost married to Susan. The family’s standards of respectability demanded that some deference, if only in words, should be paid to the conventions of recognized propriety.
Jones went to see Susan every night, sometimes taking her out for long car rides. Usually they were left alone when at home, for, as Mr. Proudleigh put it, “A courting couple don’t like disturbation.” On these occasions the rest of the family distributed themselves amongst the other people who lived in the yard, or sat together in the yard on boxes talking about Susan’s good luck. Both Catherine and Eliza would then dearly express the hope that a similar stroke of good fortune might befall them, for they were heartily tired of their present way of life. But whenever they voiced their discontent Mr. Proudleigh would ask them to have patience, assuring them at the same time that he was praying for them as he had prayed for Susan, and was expecting a similar answer at any moment.
One night it rained, and then all of them were obliged to assemble indoors. It was then that Mr. Proudleigh took the opportunity of mentioning certain fears that he professed to feel in regard to Samuel’s and Susan’s future; though, if the truth must be told, he had begun to think that as Jones already had a good situation in Jamaica, he might as well remain in the island with Susan and endeavour to be happy, instead of going to a place where he (Mr. Proudleigh) might not be able to follow them. Not without some hope of dissuading Jones from leaving Jamaica, he remarked:
“You know, Mister Jones, I been hearing dat Panama is a dangerous place for a young man. A person tell me this morning dat the Americans don’t like Jamaica people at all; an’ that the first word you say to them, them shoot y’u.”
“That don’t frighten me,” said Jones. “No American man is going to shoot Samuel Josiah. I can do my work, an’ when the work is done, I go about me own business, an’ leave the Americans to themselves. Besides, I hear that all y’u have to do is to tell an American you are a British subject, an’ he wouldn’t put a finger on you.”
“So I hear meself,” said Susan. “If you belongs to another race, them will take an advantage of you. But so long as them know y’u are an English subject, them will respect y’u.”
“Is dat so?” asked the old man, rather disappointed at hearing that British citizenship was such a sure protection against the dangers of which he was warning Samuel; “but how is it that I hear them sometimes illstreat folkses that go away from here?”
“It can’t be Americans do it,” said Jones, quite positively.
Now Mr. Proudleigh, although not gifted with particular quickness of wit, could perceive that there was something lacking in Jones’s reply. “Not reburting you, Mister Jones,” he said, “but even ef it wasn’t de Americans who half-murder the Jamaica mens, it was somebody. An’ those people didn’t seem to mind dat Jamaica people was British subjects.”
This way of looking at the matter was certainly of some importance; Jones, however, was not one to allow himself to be easily beaten in an argument.
“The Jamaica people couldn’t have been Jamaica people at all,” he answered. “For a British subject can’t be touched.”
“I don’t see how dat can be,” said Mr. Proudleigh doubtfully, “for those Jamaica people did really born in Jamaica.”
“Then they were a set of fools,” replied Jones shortly. “Most Jamaica people is foolish; they have no cranium whatsoever. I bet you those men never told they were British subjects. Now, if it was me, I would have made everybody to understand that I was an Anglo-Saxon, an’ that if they touch a hair of me head, war would be declared. That’s the way to talk in a foreign country. I wouldn’t make a man bluff me out. No, sir!”
“Dat is all right, Mister Sam,” said the old man. “But p’rhaps them wouldn’t care what y’u call you’self till after them finish beat y’u. An’ then I don’t see how it would help y’u, even if them publicly expologize to you as you are a British subjec’.”
“But why y’u want to frighten Samuel, papee?” asked Susan, who now began to suspect that her father had some motive in arguing like this. “Don’t y’u think Sam can look after himself? An’ don’t a lot of other people gone to Colon an’ nothing ’appen to them? Why you talking like that?”
Mr. Proudleigh may never have heard of the proverb which asserts that discretion is the better part of valour, but he certainly lived up to both the spirit and the letter of it.
“Y’u misunderstand you’ poor ole father, Sue,” he answered, with the suggestion of a reproach in his voice. “I only wanted to hinform Mister Sam as to what I hear. I know him can look after himself. Him is as brave as a . . . a . . .” He cast about in his mind for a term of comparison that would transcend all such other commonplace terms as “lion” and “tiger,” and finally came out with—“as a hedgehog.” He had not the faintest conception what sort of animal a hedgehog might be; but that in itself induced him to think of it as possessing remarkable qualities of courage. His children, who had read at the elementary school of the hedgehog and its ways, laughed outright; but Jones was not at all offended.
“You are right, old massa,” he observed, “if y’u put your hand on a hedgehog, he stick you with his porcupines, an’ that’s like me. I am a word and a blow all the time. If any man interfere with me, he get the worst of it.”
“But nobody going to interfere wid you,” Sue insisted. “Y’u will mind your own business, an’ leave everybody else alone.”
Given Jones’s temperament, this was highly improbable. But he agreed with her.
“Besides,” he added, “it is quite true that they can’t do what they like with a British subject. That’s undiscussable.”
“I wonder why dat is so?” asked Mr. Proudleigh. “I always hear so, but I don’t understand de reason.”
“It is the King,” explained Catherine. “Them ’fraid of the King. If y’u do one British subject anything, an’ the King hear about it, him send ships to fight for you. Him ’ave sojers an’ ships, an’ nobody can beat them. And as Jamaica belongs to him, him protect us.”
Catherine’s display of political knowledge deeply impressed her father. “I see!” he remarked. “It’s like what Queen Victoria used to do. I hear dat when she come to the throne she get up one day an’ say, ‘I don’t want any more slave in Jamaica,’ an’ the moment she say so, them send an’ free every slave! That was a good ooman. An’ that is why she live so long that I was beginning to think she would never dead. An’ her children take after her, or them wouldn’t protect us when we go foreign.”
“It’s not only the King,” said Jones, anxious to show that he knew much about such matters. “It’s the Parliament as well. The Parliament look after British subjects wherever them go to.”
“Yes, eh?” said Mr. Proudleigh, still more deeply impressed; “what is de Parliament?”
Jones thought for an instant, then answered, “It’s something like our Legislative Council. A lot of dukes; an’ they all discuss an’ argue. I hear, too, men are elected to it; big men, like lords, and that sometimes them fight, but them don’t fight often. They are all white, for in England y’u never see a black man. But if a black man go there an’ just say he is a British subject, they do anything for him. They love him, y’u know, because he is born under the British flag.”
“That’s a place I would like to go to,” said Mr. Proudleigh. “I would like to see de King. Howsoever, ef he protect Jamaica people in Colon, you an’ Miss Susan will be all right there.”
Then the talk drifted to other subjects, and Mr. Proudleigh made no further attempts to persuade Jones to remain.
The days flew by quickly. During the last week that she was to remain in Kingston Susan busied herself in going round to her debtors and letting them know that Catherine would collect the moneys due to her, in going to see her friends to bid them good-bye, and in going for long car rides in the evenings with Jones. It was when she was returning from one of these rides one night that she stopped suddenly and looked back at a woman who was walking slowly at some distance behind her.
“What’s the matter?” asked Jones.
“Nothing,” she replied. “I thought I did know that person back of us; but I can’t see her face. I must be mistaken.” But that night after Jones had left she said to Catherine:
“Kate, y’u know who I could swear I thought I saw in the lane to-night?”
“Who?” asked Kate.
“Mother Smith. As I was coming down, I pass a person that look familiar. An’ something say to me, ‘Turn back.’ An’ when I look back, the person seem to be Mother Smith, but I wasn’t sure; an’ as Sam was wid me I couldn’t go up to her.”
“But what is Mother Smith doin’ here?” asked Catherine. “Maria was with ’er?”
“No. P’rhaps it wasn’t her, after all. If it was ’er, she must ’ave been walkin’ this way to see what sort o’ young man Sam is, for Hezekiah must ’ave told her an’ her big-mouth daughter that I going to Colon. I hope she see what she come to see! Thank God! She can’t interfere wid me any more—the old wretch!” Then she dismissed Mother Smith from her mind.
She was to sail on Saturday, so on Friday night quite a number of her friends came to see her. She had specially invited them; for though, the exigencies of space forbidding, she could not give a dance, she had heard that rich people had “at homes,” and she saw no good reason why she should not have one herself. She did not call it an “at home”; she merely told her friends it was to be “a joke”; but she meant it to be a very serious and fashionable joke, which was what she conceived an “at home” to be.
Letitia was there, and Cordelia Sampson, a reddish-brown young lady, very much freckled, and with a voice of astonishing shrillness. Cordelia sang in the choir of an Episcopalian mission church in one of the suburbs of the city, always spoke of herself as “a choir,” and was always alluded to as “a choir” by those who knew her. She was the terror of the mild-mannered clergyman who, for some utterly inexplicable reason, believed that she was endowed with a splendid voice, and that her resignation, so frequently threatened, would mean a great loss to the church. You sometimes had to persuade her to sing when she came to see you; but, once she began, the problem was how to persuade her to stop. She was clothed in pink this evening, and was aggressively prepared to be musical; in fact, she had brought a music folio with her, and she sat with it in her lap, so as to be ready for all emergencies. There were four other girls, two of them black, and the other two of the dark brown shade known as sambo. All of these were dressed in light white frocks which fitted them to perfection. No men had been invited, except Letitia’s brother; for Susan did not think highly of the few young men she knew.
The cloth partition in the room had been taken down, and the beds removed. Some chairs had been borrowed from the people in the yard, who, since they had heard of Susan’s good fortune, treated her with marked respect and never neglected to address her as Miss Susan. There was therefore room for the guests, who, if they did sit rather close to one another, and perspired profusely, did not seem to mind that much. As for refreshments, Susan had laid out eight shillings in cakes, aerated waters and syrups, being determined that no one should call her mean. She was expecting Samuel; but he, she told her friends, might not come until nine o’clock.
There was but one thing to talk about, of course.
“I may ’ave to sing at you’ wedding, Sue,” said Miss Sampson. “For if a young man can fall in love with a young lady at first sight, an’ take ’er away with ’im, it is likely he may marry ’er.”
“I believe so!” said Letitia. “The moment I saw Sue an’ Jones together, I know ’im love ’er. Y’u should see the way him look on ’er. Sort of funny, y’u know . . . in fact, you could see love all over his face.”
“Well,” said Susan complacently, “if it’s my luck to married, I will married. But I not putting me head on that. After all, a lot of people married an’ don’t better off than me to-day; so ef I don’t married I won’t fret.”
“Y’u right, me child,” said Letitia. “What’s de good of getting married if you ’ave to work ’ard? I know some married woman that toils like a slave from morning to night, an’ I don’t see what them get for it. That wouldn’t suit me!”
“Nor me,” observed one of the other girls. “What any woman going to kill herself for?”
“But I say, Sue,” she went on, inadvertently turning the conversation; “y’u ever hear anything about that gurl y’u brought up in de court-house? I never see y’u since dat time, an’ I wanted to ask you about ’er.”
“I never see her. I don’t ’ave no bad feelings for ’er now, for if she didn’t interfere wid me, I wouldn’t be goin’ away to-morrow. But I glad she didn’t get Tom, for that teach people like she not to interfere wid other gurls’ intendeds,” Susan replied.
“She an’ her mother must be cursing y’u,” said Cordelia with a shrill laugh. “You are all right, an’ they are all wrong! Y’u ought to sing ‘Sound the loud Timbrel o’er Egypt’s Dark Sea,’ Sue, because y’u really beat them out,” and she fingered her song folio suggestively.
“Ladies,” said Susan, taking the hint, “don’t you think Miss Sampson should favour us with a song?”
Her careful pronunciation and formal speech was, as it were, a call to order; it meant that the serious business of the evening was about to begin.
Miss Sampson simpered, opened her book, said, “You must ’elp me with the chorus,” and then uttered a terrifying scream.
In the choir she must have been a disturbing element. As a soloist she was indisputably remarkable. Yet that did not prevent the company from assisting her with the chorus to the best of the ability of their lungs; and when the song was ended they expressed themselves as enraptured.
It was after that that Susan’s sisters handed round glasses of kola and bits of cake in saucers, and while the guests were enjoying these refreshments Jones came in.
He was duly introduced, but would not sit down.
“Some friends of mine,” he explained, “want to give me a send-off; so while you girls enjoyin’ you’selves here, I will go an’ enjoy meself with a few males.”
This was disappointing to the girls, who had already begun to find the society of their own sex a little dull.
“We would like to enjoy you’ conversation, Mr. Jones,” Cordelia suggested. “I’ve just rendered a song, an’ now we would like you to say something.”
But Jones would not be prevailed upon to say something. He shook hands with them, told Susan at what hour he was coming for her the next day, and went out. Susan followed him to the gate, as usual, and her friends, finding the ceremonial of an “at home” much too stiff for enjoyment, began to discuss him and Susan and their own affairs in an intimate manner, and without paying any special and irksome attention to the pronunciation of their words or the grammatical sequence of their sentences. This sort of talk was congenial to Susan herself, and she heartily joined in it when she returned to the room. And when her friends were leaving her at a little past eleven o’clock, she agreed that she had had a very fine evening, and that the “joke,” although not by any means as lively as a joke with music and dancing, had nevertheless been a very good joke of its kind.
Yet, when all the guests had gone, her sisters noticed a puzzled look on Susan’s face.
“What is it?” asked Catherine.
Susan wrinkled her brows. “I am sure Mother Smith was outside this yard to-night,” she answered. “I saw her when I went to de gate wid Sam. What is dat woman coming about me for? What can she mean?”
In the meantime Jones had gone to meet his friends. On leaving Susan, he turned southwards, and as he emerged from the lane on to a crossing an old woman approached him, as if with the intention of speaking to him. Thinking she was a beggar, he took no notice of her, but hurriedly continued on his way. In about ten minutes he came to a saloon, over the principal entrance of which was a huge signboard with the encouraging invitation, “Welcome to All.”
He went up a short flight of steps, pushed the slat door, which swung back on its hinges behind him, and found himself in a large well-lighted room. He knew the place well. Facing the entrance was a long bar of dark polished wood, and behind it, against the wall, were a number of shelves arranged in the form of a pyramid. These shelves were stocked with bottles of all sorts and shapes, all of them containing liquors. In the centre of the pyramid was a huge mirror, the only one in the room. At one end of the bar was a great pitcher of iced water, and scattered about it were glasses and ice-bowls and long silver-plated ice-spoons.
Behind the bar stood two bright-looking dark girls, gaily dressed and busily attending to the orders of the customers. One or two of the latter were lounging against the bar, but the most of them were seated at little marble-topped tables scattered here and there about the room. The people who frequented this place were nearly all clerks, shopmen, and superior artisans. It was towards one of the tables, round which four or five men were seated, that Jones walked immediately on entering the saloon.
One of the men held a newspaper in his hand, and was talking loudly. “Hullo, Sam!” he shouted, when he caught sight of our friend, “I thought you weren’t comin’ again. Make room, boys, make room!”
They made room for Jones, who sat down.
“What’ll you have?” said the same speaker, who was known to his friend’s as the Professor. “Order something good, old boy: won’t see you after to-morrow, y’u know. What is your drink?”
Jones decided on gin and ginger beer; ordered a pack of cigarettes, then settled down to enjoy his beverage, his smoke, and a last friendly chat.
“So you going to leave us, eh?” said a dark, serious-looking man, who sat stirring a bit of ice in a glass with his finger. “Going away! I travel once meself to Colon when the French was diggin’ the Canal. I nearly die, an’ when I came back to Jamaica I swear I never would go away again. A man don’t have long to live, an’ it’s just as well to remain here till his time come.”
“Why you talking like that?” asked Jones. “You not sick? When I come back y’u will be alive and kicking, Septimus, an’ yet you talking to-night like a dying duck in a thunder-storm. You are too pessimistical, man.”
“You don’t know what y’u saying,” replied the serious Septimus seriously. “I know you are a man don’t read the newspaper, but you should hear what Professor been reading to-night!”
Curious, Jones turned to the Professor, who impressively read from a local journal the views of a European astronomer on Halley’s Comet, then visible in the morning sky. Jones had heard of the comet, like most other people in the island, and, like them, had not given it much thought. Now, however, he listened to what the newspaper had to say about it with a great deal of interest. It appeared that somebody in Europe believed that he had discovered certain green bands in the tail of the comet, which indicated a poisonous gas, and now that astronomer was warning the inhabitants of the earth of their possible extermination at an early date. The whole article was read out aloud by the Professor (for the third time), and nearly everybody in the room listened intently. When the reader stopped, the serious man again took up the burden of his lamentations.
“There you are!” he exclaimed dismally. “I have been expecting that thing for I don’t know how long. It is written in the Book of Revelations that before the last day there shall be signs and wonders. The Kingston earthquake was a sign. An’ this comet is a perfect wonder; for when I saw it the first time a few days ago it only had a head, an’ yesterday morning I only saw its tail! Oh! you can laugh as y’u like” (Jones had laughed) “but I tell you the situation is serious.”
The seriousness of the situation so overcame him that he called for another drink.
“Well,” said Jones, “I wouldn’t trouble about that. I don’t see the comet yet; an’ you say you only see the tail. But if you see the tail, you see the comet. An’ if you see the comet, the head must be somewhere.”
This reasoning appealed to the Professor, a light-complexioned man of about thirty, who had once been an elementary schoolmaster.
“I agree with you, Jones,” he said. “Besides, the Book of Revelations is unscientific. There is something about a three-footed horse in it, isn’t there?”
“A pale horse,” said Septimus reprovingly. “A three-footed horse is a Jamaica duppy[1]story.”
“Even so,” said the Professor, “a horse cannot be pale.”
“What’s to hinder it?” asked the serious man. “If a man can be pale, a horse can be pale too. The pale horse in Revelations was a sign; an’ I tell you that everything y’u read in that book is coming true. I wouldn’t leave Jamaica now, me brother! All we can do in these last days is to watch and pray. I think I’ll take a little rum.”
He took it, then—“It’s rather hard,” he said, “that after a man spend his whole life looking after his family, a comet should come like this to destroy him. What have I done?”
Jones found the conversation distinctly depressing, though there was no denying that many persons in the room were listening to it with very serious faces. He was going away next day, and he began to fear that, at sea, he might be more directly exposed to danger from the comet than those on land.
“I like to talk about big scientific things, meself,” he said, “but I don’t see the good of talkin’ about the end of the world.”
“Well, perhaps you are right,” said the serious man. “It’s not everybody who can face these questions like me. You know, I was brought up very religious. Me gran’mother was a very strict woman; she used to make me say me prayers every morning, an’ she flog me whenever I didn’t want to go to Sunday school. That’s why I turn out so well.”
This claim to superiority nettled Jones. “I have been brought up religious meself,” he said, a little indignantly. “Suppose we have a game of billiards?”
“No, Sam,” Septimus replied gravely. “This is not a time for billiards. I think I shall go to church on Sunday. It is time to turn our thoughts to higher things. I nearly got killed two years ago, an’ since then I not taking any risk with my soul. Y’u going to join Church when you go to Panama?”
“No,” said Jones, “I don’t have nothing to do with churches; the fact is, I don’t understand them at all.”
A chorus of approval greeted these words. “Something should be done to reform the churches,” said the Professor. Then he added impressively, “Something is going wrong somewhere.”
“If the churches were better,” said Jones, “there would be less sin in the world. That’s what I always say.”
“That is so,” said Septimus; “the churches are to blame.” Then calling to the younger barmaid, he said, “Missis, you hear about this comet?”
“I am prepare,” the girl answered, “whenever the call shall come.”
“That’s a fine girl,” said Jones approvingly. “If I wasn’t taking one with me to Panama, I would take her.”
He spoke loudly enough for the barmaid to hear him, and she (though prepared for instant death) imagining that he was making fun at her, promptly faced him with an indignant rejoinder.
“See here, Mister Jones! you really wouldn’t be rude to me to-night. It’s not because y’u see me servin’ behind a bar that you must think y’u can laugh at me! I am a lady, though I am poor; an’ if me dead father should know I was workin’ here, him would dead again from grief!”
“I wasn’t making any fun!” protested Jones. “I was only admiring you. An’ I meant what I said!”
“Stop!” said his serious friend. “You really takin’ a female with you?”
“Yes,” said Jones gaily. “You didn’t hear?”
“No! y’u don’t mean to tell me you married an’ didn’t let me know? You will regret it, me friend! You don’t know what marriage mean yet! A man who have a wife an’ children have a feeling of responsibility he can’t get over, no matter how hard he try, an’ I tell you I have tried very hard. However, we all have to shoulder our burden, an’ do our duty, an’ so let our light shine.”
Here the elder barmaid happening to pass near by him, he (for he seemed to be on terms of surprising familiarity with her) tried to put his arm round her waist. She drew away giggling, and he nearly lost his balance. But his good humour was imperturbable in spite of his fears of the comet, and of the heavy responsibility of wife and children, which, as he alleged, weighed him utterly down.
Jones speedily reassured him and his other anxious friends.
“It’s only a female I taking with me,” he said. “She and I became acquainted recently.”
“What’s her name?” asked one of the men who had hitherto taken no part in the conversation.
“Miss Susan Proudleigh. Fine girl, man! Fall in love with me the same day she see me. I am going to cut a dash with her in Colon.”
“Proudleigh?” asked the Professor, lifting his eyebrows as if trying to remember something. “I think I know that name. . . . Yes, she had a case in court some time ago.”
“What’s that?” Jones asked sharply. “You make a mistake, me friend. She is not the sort of girl anybody can take to court-house. She is a perfect incomparable, man!”
“I didn’t say anybody take her to court-house, Sam; but she did have a case. I don’t remember it exactly, but I think she brought up a girl.”
“It can’t be so,” said Jones, “for I never hear anything about it. It must be somebody else.”
“Perhaps so,” said the Professor, who had no special object to gain by contending he was right, and who knew also that there might be other Susan Proudleighs in Kingston besides the one he remembered having read about.
“Yes, y’u can make a mistake about a name,” said Septimus, “but you can’t make any mistake about this comet. The newspaper say it have sanatogen in its tail, an’ sanatogen is not a thing to fool with.”
“Cyanogen,” corrected the Professor; “sanatogen is a tonic—something you drink.”
“Well, whatever y’u call it, it’s a dangerous thing. However, let us hope for the best. Jones, old man, if we even don’t meet again, let’s have a drink before we part.”
He led the way to the bar, and each of them ordered the liquor he most preferred. It was a farewell glass, and the sincerity with which Jones’s health was drunk showed that his friends really liked him. Under their hilarity there was emotion concealed. Which of them could know for certain that he would ever see Samuel Josiah again?
This last glass was the signal for the breaking up of the party.
Jones lived to the west of the city, and the Professor said he was going that way. So they bade the other fellows good-bye at the tavern door, and started homewards.
They had hardly gone fifteen yards when an elderly, respectable-looking woman boldly accosted them; she spoke to Jones, calling him by name: could she speak to him for a moment?
She was close enough for him to perceive that she could not be a beggar. He wondered what she could have to say to him. He stopped, and asked his invariable question:
“What’s the matter?”
“Y’u mustn’t vex because I stop you out here, my gentleman,” said the old woman: “but I came up to speak to you in Luke Lane to-night, an’ you walk on before I could stop y’u. I only want to tell y’u one thing. I hear y’u going away some time dis month wid Susan Proudleigh. That isyourbusiness. But let me tell you—for I don’t believe she tell you herself—dat she has a young man in Colon already, an’ is only making you a fool. You can ask her to-night about Tom Wooley! I don’t like to see a nice-lookin’ young gentleman like you deceive; so I tell you about the sarpent you is nourishin’ in you’ bosom.”
She ceased and said good night, having done the work she had been striving for several nights to accomplish. The oath that she had taken on the night when Susan had fought with Maria had been by no means forgotten, for Mother Smith was a revengeful woman, and, bitterly disliking Susan, would have gone far to injure her. To think that Susan had been more fortunate than Maria was gall and wormwood to her already bitter spirit. Only one chance of striking at Susan was open to her and she had seized it. She wanted Jones to know the truth about Susan; how he would act she could not guess, but she hoped for the worst.
“Tom Wooley,” said Samuel’s companion as the woman walked away—“why, that’s the name of the man mentioned in the case I was telling you about.”
Jones, who had been astonished at the old woman’s reason for stopping him, continued his walk.
“I don’t see through this whole business,” he said to his friend. “What she mean?”
Professor, who had read the case in the newspapers, had easily grasped the situation. He explained:
“The old woman’s daughter was the girl your intended brought up; so the old lady want to put a spoke in her wheel.”
“Yes, of course!” said Jones; “what a woman, eh? She nearly frightened me! Now what she think I can do, me dear sir?”
A question which showed that he intended to do nothing; which indeed was the decision he had arrived at. As he had never had any reason to suppose that he was Susan’s first lover, he could not profess to feel shocked at learning that a former flame of hers was now in Colon. Nor did he really feel aggrieved, for even though she had not told him of the case, there was clearly nothing to her discredit about it, since she had been the prosecutor. He would have liked to ask her about it, and said to himself that he would do so some day; but the truth is that he already knew Susan well enough to understand that she might lose her temper if questioned about anything she did not want to discuss. On the whole, he did not see that Susan’s past mattered to him, any more than his could matter to her. This conclusion was characteristic of Jones. Before he had reached his house he had begun to talk of another subject having no relation whatever to Mother Smith and her story.