“I hope them won’t hold pupa,” panted Susan, staring with wide-open eyes at the curling smoke and lurid sky.
“They wouldn’t bother with him,” Jones assured her; “he is too feeble; in fact, he shouldn’t be in that crowd at all. It is the strong men they looking for to-night. They will try to hold people like me an’ Mackenzie.”
Mackenzie’s name slipped out almost without Jones knowing that he had pronounced it. It showed that Mackenzie occupied a large portion of his thoughts in these days. The mention of the name also led to a question which seemed strangely out of place at a time when Colon appeared to be threatened with wholesale destruction.
“You an’ you’ husband ever talk about me?” he asked Susan.
She was surprised at this question, so out of keeping it was with her thoughts just then. Still staring towards the fire, she said, “Why you ask that now?”
“Because I would like to know what you say about me, an’ this is the only time I can ask you. I suppose Mackenzie laugh at me an’ think I am a fool to let him take you away from me so easy?”
“Why you always like to talk disagreeable things, Sam?” she answered, unconsciously dropping back into her old familiar way of addressing him. There was no pretence now; there was a touch of regret in her voice as she went on:
“Mackenzie is quite up at Culebra, an’ you is down here. I going back to-morrow. What’s de good of talkin’ about him?”
“But can you tell me now that you don’t sorry you leave me, Sue; that you are as happy as you used to be? I don’t make any pretence like you. I miss you, an’ I tell you so plain.”
“It was your fault, Sam. Before I went away I ask you if you was going to keep you’ promise to marry me, an’ you say I was talking foolishness. I knew Mackenzie was going to act differently, and, after all, him do for me what you would never do.”
“That is the way you put it. But you didn’t tell me Mackenzie offered to marry you. You stole away from me like a thief in the night. If you had told me you were going, and why you were going, I wouldn’t have made you go, an’ we would have been married to-day. But you didn’t give me a chance to know. Why? I could have done you nothing if you had told me.”
There was so much in what he said, that for the space of a few seconds Susan remained silent. Then she answered.
“You talk like that now, Sam, but you would have talked different if I had told you. I was afraid.”
“Afraid,” he repeated bitterly, “though I never lift me hand to you in me life! An’ suppose it had come to a big quarrel or a fight. You was living in the same house with a lot of people: what could I do you? An’ if I did make a fight, the wrong would have been on my side, an’ you could have left me with a clear conscience. How is it now? You mean to tell me that every day of you’ natural life you going to be content with the same sort of life you living now? I know all about it. You can’t prevent you’ people from talking. Besides, I know something about Culebra; and I know Mackenzie. An’ if it is bad now, what is it goin’ to be later on? You are going to be miserable, you going to fret, you going to wish you were dead; an’ so, for all your name is Mrs. Mackenzie, an’ you have a ring on you’ finger, and all the comforts you want, I don’t see that you are as well off as before you got married. So what is the good of it?”
Out there, in the streets of Colon, in the town where, as she now so keenly remembered, she had had so many hours of happiness, Susan felt the full force of Samuel’s words. Both of them had forgotten the fire. Their own affairs were of supremest importance in all the world.
“It is no use talkin’ now,” she said dismally. “What is done can’t be undone.”
“That is true. You make your own bed an’ must lie on it.”
“We live an’ learn,” said Susan. “You can’t know if you don’t try.”
“What’s the sense of tryin’ once if you can never try again?”
She said nothing, and he continued, as if talking to himself:
“You can’t marry again, once you’re married; that’s the hard part of it. You leave me, but you can’t leave Mackenzie. . . . You can’t. . . . But, Sue, you can! Let us go away from here to Jamaica!”
No such proposition had definitely formed itself in his mind when he first began to speak. The suddenness of it was a revelation to himself. Yet the idea must have been lurking somewhere at the back of his mind, for he had never entirely given up Susan. Now too he went on as though the whole course of their future conduct had been carefully thought out by him.
“We can go to Jamaica, Sue, an’ we’ll be all right there. I will arrange all about the passage; you can come down here from Culebra the night before the ship sail, and we can leave in the morning. You needn’t say a word to anybody, not even your own people; you can write them when you are in Jamaica. When we get there, Mackenzie can only divorce you, for he can’t do you anything in Jamaica. But even if he divorce you, it won’t matter, for I will marry you then. Mackenzie take you away from me, so it is only fair if I take you away from him. What you say?”
“No, Sam! This is different. When I leave you I wasn’t married; I was me own woman; now I am not. It would be a disgrace for me to go away wid you an’ leave me lawful husband. Besides, it would be a sin. Don’t you know that if a married woman ’ave anything to do with another man it is seven years’ trouble for both of them?”
It came into Jones’s mind at that moment that, if such were the case, there must be large numbers of persons in Central America and the West Indies enduring long seven-year periods of tribulation just then; but he only said, “That’s all foolishness, Sue.”
“It is not. Marriage is a different thing from every other thing; that is what I learn, and that is what nobody can take out of me head. An’ suppose Mackenzie was to divorce me. You think I would like to have me name disgrace like that?”
“Then what we going to do?”
For answer, Susan began to walk slowly in the direction of her people’s house. There were many persons in the streets now. The fire was burning still, but had been mastered; the fear that it might consume the whole town had passed away. People were beginning to return to their homes, all talking about the danger which they had escaped. The street in which they were was filled with the murmur of excited voices.
They walked on, Jones at her side. “Pupa must be gone home,” she remarked. “We better go back too.”
As she spoke she saw a man who was passing in the opposite direction turn and look at her and her companion. She glanced over her shoulder to look at him, Jones also turning to stare. The man had stopped and was staring.
They both recognized who it was, and Susan nodded her head. The man returned the bow, but Jones looked at him as if he were a post. “That is the jackass,” he said, “who cause all this trouble;” and he spoke loudly enough for Tom Wooley to hear.
They continued on their way, arriving at the house in a few minutes. There they found Mr. Proudleigh relating his wonderful experiences at the scene of the fire. He and Catherine had been separated in the crowd, and he related how the police had tried to induce him to assist in extinguishing the fire, and with what arguments he had effectually prevented them from laying sacrilegious hands upon his venerable person. A story which showed that the old man had in him the makings of an ingenious newspaper reporter, and which was listened to by his sister with every manifestation of profound disbelief.
Mr. Thomas Wooley had never been credited with strong moral convictions by anyone who knew him. Among his mild boasts, uttered in the company of congenial companions, certain alleged breaches by him of the seventh commandment had frequently flourished: to gain a reputation for gallantry he had not scrupled to libel himself. But on that night when he saw Susan and Jones together in the streets of Colon the sacredness of the marriage tie appealed to him strongly; he felt that a great wrong was being done to marriage as a civil and religious institution, and he remembered that he himself had been badly treated by Susan and by Jones. That, he decided in his mind, had been freely forgiven. He was magnanimous. But Susan was now a wife, and it was clearly wrong that she should have anything whatever to do with Jones, who was, in Tom’s opinion, a desperate and malignant character who pretended to be friendly with you at first for the purpose of ill-treating you afterwards.
Tom argued that, shocked though he was, he had no right to interfere personally with Jones. He would not remonstrate with him on the evil tenor of his way. But he reflected with intense satisfaction that Mackenzie was, if anything, Jones’s physical superior, as well as the rightful lord and master of Susan. Mackenzie, then, could read to Jones a much-needed moral lesson, could deal with Susan as an outraged husband should, and, generally, could do all those things which Tom wanted to see done, but could not do himself.
The problem was, how to acquaint Mackenzie with the atrocious actions of Susan and her lover? Tom felt that he had been a martyr. He had suffered much because of Susan. But martyrdom, he was convinced, should not be allowed to go beyond reasonable limits, and should, as a general rule, be carefully avoided whenever possible. He had lost his situation in Kingston, he had been roughly handled and fined in Colon. These things he had endured without murmuring. He was now prepared to become an active agent in the work of Susan’s moral redemption, and, incidentally, in the deserved punishment of Jones; he had no doubt whatever that in endeavouring to call Mackenzie’s attention to the wrongs of which that injured man was still ignorant, he would be performing a highly meritorious act. But caution must be displayed. Jones was very likely to take a singularly narrow-minded view of his action, if he should ever think that he, Tom, had meddled with his affairs. There was only one way in which to approach Mackenzie, and that was through the medium of an anonymous letter—a letter so worded that suspicion could not possibly fall on Tom Wooley. Tom had been removed to Christobal. Early the next morning, with a fine feeling of noble endeavour, somewhat mingled with apprehension lest, in spite of all his efforts, his identity should be disclosed, he sat down and wrote to Mackenzie.
The morning after this, on calling at the Post Office on his way to work, Mackenzie was handed a letter which he opened and read as he slowly walked away.
“Dear Sir,” it ran, “this is to inform you that things are not quite straight. Everybody has a respect for you, and it would be a shame if a friend of yours do not let you know that your wife is not behaving towards you as she should.” Here Mackenzie stopped reading and glanced at the end of the letter to see from whom it came. It was signed, “A True Friend,” a signature that left him none the wiser. He continued reading.
“Your wife is always in Colon with Jones, the young man she was with when you married her. I see them together over and over, and this is not right, for she is your wife and should think of your feelings. I therefore take this opportunity of making you acquainted with the facts.”
Mackenzie read the letter twice, then studied the handwriting: it told him nothing. He folded the letter, carefully placed it in its envelope, put it away in his pocket, and went thoughtfully to his work.
Susan had returned the day before. She had told him all about the fire, of which he had already read a sensational account in that morning’s papers. She had told him that she and her relatives had run out to see the fire (which is what he knew they would have done), that they had met Jones in the crowd, and that she had spoken to Jones. There was nothing improbable whatever in her story. He remembered that he himself had advised her to speak to Jones if she should ever meet him. This anonymous letter said that she was often in Colon with Jones. But he, Mackenzie, knew that Susan had only been twice to Colon since she had been his wife. So that assertion was a lie. The person who had written the letter, whoever it was, must have seen Susan speaking to Jones on the night of the fire, but Susan had not kept that a secret. This man too, who signed himself “A True Friend,” must surely bear Susan a grudge, and perhaps was also an enemy of himself. For the fellow evidently wanted to make mischief, and that no true friend would do. Mackenzie did not like the letter; it worried him a little. He did not care to have Susan’s name coupled with that of Jones: the association was not pleasant. But he did not, for he could not, believe the story. He decided he would show the letter to Susan later on.
He handed it to her when he went home for lunch.
“You have some enemy in Colon, Sue,” he said; “or it is my enemy. I get this letter to-day, an’ it is no good person write it. I wonder if it is a woman?”
Susan took the letter and glanced at the handwriting. She knew it at once. Although Tom had tried to disguise his handwriting, and believed he had succeeded, his endeavour had been at best a clumsy one; she gave no sign, however, that she knew the author of the anonymous communication; she did not wish Mackenzie to seek out Tom and demand an explanation, which might be very inconvenient to her. She read the letter slowly. She realized that the attempt to make it appear that she was continually meeting Samuel had defeated its own end. She felt that only a fool like Tom could have blundered so badly. He hadn’t even mentioned the fire, so eager was he to conceal his identity. Her heart was beating quickly, though she tried to appear unconcerned. She strove to control her voice when she spoke.
“It’s a wonder the person who writes this letter didn’t say I was two weeks wid Jones,” she said, as she handed the letter back to her husband. “That’s the way that worthless people tell lies on other people! They want to rob me of me character because them is envious of me!”
“Well, it is what you have to expect,” said Mackenzie philosophically. “I know you only go twice to Colon to see you’ family, an’ Jones have his work to do during the day, so he couldn’t be with you.”
He said this more for the purpose of setting her mind at ease than because he was any longer interested in the subject of the letter; but Susan was inwardly too anxious to let the matter rest there. None of her relatives, not even her aunt, would betray her; but suppose some other person should follow Tom’s example? A bold idea suggested itself to her. “I wonder if it is Jones himself write it?” she remarked. Mackenzie was surprised at the suggestion.
“Why y’u think so?” he asked. “Jones wouldn’t tell a lie on himself?”
“I don’t know about that. P’rhaps him think you couldn’t say anything to him, but might want to quarrel wid me. Men are bad, an’ Jones might want to get me into trouble because I wouldn’t take much notice of him the other night when I saw him at the fire, as I told you.”
Mackenzie looked at the letter he still held in his hand. He shook his head; the handwriting was not like Jones’s.
“He may have begged one of his friend to write it,” urged Susan.
“Maybe,” admitted Mackenzie; “it may be Jones. But I wouldn’t like to accuse him till I was sure: that would be foolishness.”
“Well, don’t notice it, then,” said Susan, pleased with Mackenzie’s prudence. “I don’t care what anybody say about me, so long as me conscience don’t trouble me an’ it don’t put you out. But I wouldn’t like anybody else do me a thing like this again, for my character is all dat I have, and what one person do another may do.”
But as Mackenzie preferred always to deal with facts and not with possibilities, he let the subject drop, and by the time he returned to his work that afternoon he had ceased to think about the letter.
Not for an instant, however, did Susan cease to think of it. She was desperately frightened. As she had said to Mackenzie, what one person had done another might do, and then Mackenzie would begin to grow suspicious. She feared to meet Samuel again, yet she wanted to see him at least once more: she wanted to warn him. How could she see him? . . . If she risked a meeting some enemy of hers might learn about it, and this time she might not be able to find a ready excuse. It is true that Mackenzie had told her she should be polite to Jones if she should see him, but at that time no anonymous letter had coupled her name with that of her former lover. And to meet Jones the very next time she went to Colon would of a surety have a suspicious look.
Should she write to him? Letters went astray sometimes, and Samuel was careless.
Then what was she to do?
She worried herself all that afternoon, trying to think a way out of the difficulty. Suppose Mackenzie should meet Jones and mention the letter to him? Jones might say something about his meeting her at her people’s house . . . and then!
She felt sick of the difficult position in which she found herself, wearied to death; she had a sensation of being tied hand and foot, of being a prisoner; she longed for release, and she knew that only one avenue of escape was open to her. She could leave Culebra, leave Panama, and go back to Jamaica with Jones. She would be happier there, free, more like what she used to be before her marriage. What did the hardships and discontents of that time now seem to her? They were as nothing; she remembered only that she had been happier, and what was the good of marriage if it brought but boredom and disgust? But there was the divorce court to think of also, and her terrible fall from respectability. Even if Mackenzie did not take the trouble to divorce her, she would be a byword amongst those persons who should know her as a woman who had left her husband for another man. She could not face that shame.
She decided that she must wait. Nothing might happen in the next couple of weeks. At the end of that time it would not seem at all strange if she went to Colon to see her people; then, if she met Samuel, she would tell him of the letter and put him on his guard.
She felt grateful to Mackenzie for his confidence in her. Such confidence displayed by a man like Tom would merely have awakened her contempt; but she saw that her husband was perfectly sincere, and determined to take her part against her traducers. Had he doubted her he would have shown it at once, he would have made inquiries, and the sequel would have been terrible. That, she argued, would have been unjust to her. She had done nothing deserving of blame. She had met Jones twice; she had not told her husband the truth about those meetings; but on the other hand she had refused to fly with Samuel, and on that demonstration of virtuous feeling she greatly preened herself. She had behaved splendidly; after such conduct it would have been most unjust if Mackenzie had acted any differently from how he had acted. And to think that it was Tom who had tried to injure her; to think too that nothing painful could be done to him! She thirsted for revenge, yet she knew that Tom must escape scot-free. The slightest attempt at reprisals might but lead to exposure. The thought that she could not pay back Tom with heavy interest was like wormwood to her soul.
When Mackenzie came home that evening she again brought up the subject of the letter. She thought that if she dwelt upon it, showed no anxiety that it should be forgotten, her husband’s mind would be cleared of any shadow of suspicion that, unknown to himself, might be lingering in some dark corner there. Mackenzie laughed as he listened to her extravagantly expressed wonder that anyone should be base enough to lie against another person anonymously.
“I remember,” he said, “about eight years ago, when I was workin’ at the Jamaica railway, somebody write a letter about me to de manager. He didn’t sign his name, but I knew all the time who it was, an’ the manager knew it too. The man wanted me job, an’ he accuse me of robbin’ the railway’s goods an’ sellin’ them outside. But I was more than a match for him. I could account for every screw that pass through me hand. All that man ever get for his lie was to lose his job, an’ that teach him not to write letters against other people in future.”
Mackenzie had never forgotten that incident. It had much to do with his disbelief in anonymous letters.
“So it is not me alone that them try to injure,” said Susan, glad that her husband had also been attacked by an anonymous scribe. “However, I not going back to Colon.”
“That’s stupidness,” said Mackenzie. “You goin’ to make a lie trouble y’u? You must go an’ see you’ people sometimes.”
This remark was just what she wanted to hear; her husband himself had now advised her to go to Colon when she wanted! But she would not avail herself of this advice to rush off to Colon. Although her inclination was to do so, she fought against it, forcing herself to wait. Her patience and prudence were rewarded when, five days after, her sister Catherine appeared at Culebra.
Catherine had come by one of the afternoon trains; as she had calculated, she found Susan alone.
“I bet you you don’t tell me why I come here to-day?” she said to her sister, dropping her voice as though she had an important secret to impart.
Susan expressed her inability to guess, but, with the anonymous letter always in her mind, became feverishly curious to know what had brought Catherine up to Culebra. Was some scandal about her being circulated in Colon?
Catherine produced a sealed, unaddressed envelope and placed it in her sister’s hand; Susan broke the seal; the letter was from Jones.
Catherine observed Susan’s start of surprise and alarm. She hastened to explain that Jones had not posted the letter because he would not take the risk of its falling into any other hands except those of Susan. He had not even addressed the envelope, lest, inadvertently, the handwriting should be seen and recognized.
“Samuel pay my trainage from Colon to up here, an’ back again,” said Catherine. “I didn’t want to come, but he beg me hard, an’ I thought it was better I bring the letter than that him should ask anybody else.”
She looked inquiringly at Susan, anxious to learn what Jones had written about.
Susan said nothing. She was reading and re-reading the letter. It was written in Samuel’s most grandiloquent style, and opened with a declaration of his intention to poison himself, throw himself on a railway track to be run over by a train, drown himself, or commit suicide in some other unpleasant manner if he were compelled to endure much longer his present agony of mind. He wanted to see Susan to tell her “something very important.” He had to see her, and he begged her to go to Colon as early as she could. He ended by saying that he was leaving for Jamaica in a week’s time, wishing as he did to die in his own country, and that she would never cease to regret it if she let him leave Panama without seeing her. She must tell Catherine if she would go to Colon, and when.
There was a postscript: “And when I am departed hence, forlorn and forsaken, you will eventually come to find that your desertation of me was a catastrophe worse than ever you have known; but alas! it will be too late.”
“You know what Sam write to me about?” said Susan, searching Catherine’s face with her eyes.
Catherine shook her head negatively. “Him want you to leave Mackenzie?”
“Not exactly. Him want to see me, but I can’t go to Colon just now at all.”
“Why? No harm can be done. Nobody will know why y’u go.”
“Wait till I tell you something,” said Susan, and she told Catherine of her conversation with Jones on the night of the fire, of their accidental meeting with Tom, and of how Tom had acted. She had intended to keep all this secret, but now was glad to have some one to whom she could confide her cares.
Catherine listened, breathless, but not surprised at what she heard about Jones. She had never been deceived by the formal conversations he had carried on with Susan on the two occasions they had met at the house in Colon. But with Tom’s treachery she was disgusted. She had once entertained a kindly feeling for him; now she felt contempt. All her sympathies were with her sister, and she agreed that it might indeed be a risk for Susan to go just then to Colon; she had better wait for some time longer.
She proposed to return to Colon the next morning, and she promised to explain to Samuel why Susan could not see him just then; she also promised to warn him against Tom, at the same time impressing upon him that any rash action on his part could do no good but might merely create an unpleasant scandal. All this agreed upon, Susan professed herself satisfied, then immediately added, “But suppose Sam go away without I see him?”
That was possible. She did not take seriously his threats of suicide; they were merely intended to frighten her. But that he was thinking of returning to Jamaica she could well believe. His restlessness and impatience might easily cause him to do that, and quickly, and . . . and she wanted to see him again.
“Tell him,” she said to Catherine after a pause, “that he must ’ave patience.”
“But patience for what?” asked Catherine, and Susan could give no answer.
The following morning Catherine returned to Colon. That evening, when Jones came round to the house as agreed, she quietly took him out on the veranda and told him the result of her mission.
When they went back into Mr. Proudleigh’s room, Jones solemnly walked up to Mr. Proudleigh and shook hands with him.
“Old massa, you have nothing to do with it,” he said—“nothing at all.”
Mr. Proudleigh immediately agreed that he hadn’t, and then anxiously inquired what it was with which he was so entirely unconnected.
“You know that I loved your daughter, didn’t you?” asked Jones.
“In course!” agreed Mr. Proudleigh briskly. “Dat is what I always say. I ’ave seen many a young man all in love all times, but I never see one like you. Your love is true love, Mister Jones, like mine when I was young an’ good-lookin’. I remember I was in love wid three different young lady at one time, an’ I couldn’t say which one I love de most. One day——”
“Very well,” said Jones, who was more anxious to air his grievances than to listen to the youthful idylls of Mr. Proudleigh. “Y’u know that I take her away from Kingston, Jamaica, an’ bring her here?”
“Sartinly. I was down at de wharf de day you leave. Sun was hot that day, me friend!”
“Very well. And y’u know that I bring her here an’ look after her kindly, an’ nearly went to prison for her?”
“Yes, y’u tell me all about it. But she say it was your fault; but, as I tell her, a young man——”
“Very well. Now tell me fair an’ square: do you think Susan acted right to leave me in ruinate in the manner visible?”
“Well, to tell y’u de truth, Mister Jones, you is looking very well just now. Ef I was you, I wouldn’t bodder me head about a young lady that act so foolish as to leave me an’ go an’ married. De same thing happen to me once, but it didn’t make a tooth in me head ache. An’ if you want another han’some intended, there is Miss Catherine——”
“Please to leave me out of you’ conversation, pupa!” came peremptorily from Catherine, and Mr. Proudleigh halted promptly in the midst of his matchmaking endeavour.
“It don’t matter how I look,” said Jones angrily: “it’s how I feel. If it wasn’t for one thing, I would throw meself in the sea this very night.”
“That would not be Christianlike, Mister Jones,” said Miss Proudleigh, who had been listening attentively to the conversation. “We must patiently bear our crosses. Besides, I don’t see what you worrying you’self about, for there is some things that is a good riddance. Y’u don’t see it now, but you will see it later on.”
“That may be true, but I am speaking of now an’ not of later on,” said Jones. “I want you all to understand that I have been driven like a lamb to the slaughter by Susan Mackenzie. She get married without my knowledge; she took away all the money I give her, an’ what she used to take from me when she thought I didn’t know; an’ now she is living like a king at Culebra. If it wasn’t for me she might have been in Jamaica to-day keeping a little shop, without an extra five shillin’s. Yet when I send her sister to ask her——”
“What y’u going to say now?” cried Catherine, seeing he was on the verge of blurting out what he had agreed should be kept a secret.
“What I am going to say I am going to say,” replied Jones impetuously. “I am goin’ away to Jamaica, an’ I send an’ ask Susan to come an’ tell me good-bye and have a talk before I go. What she do? She say she can’t come! Is that a decent way to treat a man, especially a man like me? When she left me I bear it in silence, though I might have been very disagreeable. Yet now she treat me like if I was a dog!”
This angry outburst was received in silence by those who heard it. They had never seen Jones in a temper before.
“You know what I am going to do now?” he asked after a moment’s pause. “I am going straight up to Culebra to tell Susan what I think of her!”
“Y’u can’t do that at all, Mr. Jones,” said Catherine firmly. “I told you already why Sue can’t come now, an’ you must remember she is married an’ dat her husband wouldn’t like y’u to bring no confusion into his house.”
“Her husband can go to the devil!” exclaimed Jones. “Who is her husband?”
“But suppose him meet you an’ have a fight?” said Mr. Proudleigh, thinking that such a prospect might have a deterrent effect upon Jones.
“If Mackenzie can fight, I can fight too,” replied the young man. “If he don’t interfere with me, I won’t interfere with him. But I am going to Culebra.”
“Well, Mister Jones,” said Mr. Proudleigh, “if you determine to go, I can’t stop y’u. But do, I beg you, don’t say dat we know anyt’ing at all about it. You see, I don’t ’fraid of any man in de world, but quarrel is a thing I keep out of. Mackenzie is me son-in-law, so I can’t say nothing against him, but y’u know what I think; an’ if you take my foolish advice you wouldn’t go to Culebra.”
“Don’t call my name, whatever you do,” said Catherine. “I sorry I have anything to do wid your business, for I can see you going to act like a fool. And after all, what can y’u expect Susan to do? If you go an’ make any trouble now, her husband will believe what that liar, Tom, write an’ tell him.”
“What is dat?” asked Mr. Proudleigh quickly, but Catherine refused to reply. Her reticence, coming after her allusion to Tom and Mackenzie, caused the old man to feel that the situation was more perilous than he had thought it was.
As for Miss Proudleigh, she loudly lifted up her voice in denunciation of sin and its consequences, this time with a good deal of sincerity born of fear.
“Susan have much to answer for,” she cried; “she bring all this trouble on herself an’ her husband an’ Mr. Jones. Your sin will find you out, an’ who shall flee from the wrath to come! I have nothing to do with it. She is me niece, but she never treat me respectfully. She deserve all she going to suffer, and she going to suffer for true! But I sympathize wid her, for we are told not to bear any malice.”
As the old lady seemed to be trying to qualify for the position of a modern Jeremiah, Catherine brusquely demanded if she wanted all the people in the house to hear what she was saying.
“They will all hear soon enough,” replied Miss Proudleigh grimly. “There is going to be war an’ rumours of war.”
“An’ I am going to make the war,” said Jones fiercely. “I make up my mind to die.”
“Don’t do that, me son,” implored Mr. Proudleigh. “Death is not a thing to meck fun with. Wait an’ have patience.”
“Patience for what?”
As Mr. Proudleigh could not say, he merely suggested that Jones had better not act rashly, but Samuel would not allow his mind to be affected by such advice.
He took his hat.
“When you goin’ to Culebra?” asked Catherine, wondering if she would have time to warn Susan.
“Why you want to know?”
“Never mind, if y’u don’t want to tell me!” she snapped, “but take care what you doin’.”
“I know what I am doing,” answered Jones, and left the room.
“You think him will really go?” Mr. Proudleigh inquired anxiously of Catherine, after the door had closed behind Jones.
Catherine pondered a moment.
“If him could go to-night, him would go,” she said; “but he can’t go to-night. To-morrow him may change his mind. Jones is a man that will do a thing in a temper, but not otherwise.”
Catherine’s estimate of Samuel’s character was shrewd. But it is not always possible to foresee the actions of any human being.
It was raining at Culebra—had been raining for days. For miles and miles the sky was overcast, hour after hour the rain came down, now swiftly and in showers, now in a light drizzle which gave to the surrounding country an aspect of greyness, a cheerless, depressing hue.
It was between eight and nine o’clock in the forenoon; her husband had gone to his work and Susan was busying herself with her household duties. She was pensive, moving about as one who had no energy; her mind was not set about what she was doing, her thoughts were far away.
She knew that Catherine must have told Jones on the previous night her answer to his letter: she was wondering what he had said, whether he had determined to go back to Jamaica without seeing her, whether all was over between them now. . . .
There was a knock at the front door: she went to answer it. She opened the door: on the veranda stood Samuel, the last person in the world she expected to see at Mackenzie’s house that day.
“You!” she exclaimed. “What y’u doing up here?”
She stood guarding the doorway, as if to prevent him from entering; she was trembling all over with fear, not of Jones, but lest her husband should unexpectedly return and find Samuel there.
“You not going to let me in?” asked Jones, with a note of pleading in his voice; “I have only come to have a talk with you.”
“You shouldn’t come,” she answered. “What a trial is this! I told Kate to tell you I couldn’t come to Colon now, an’ here you come to Culebra to make trouble. What’s the good of all this, Sam?”
She did not wait for him to answer.
“You must go right back,” she insisted, “for the neighbours goin’ to tell Mackenzie dat a strange man come here to-day, an’ if you stay an’ him find out it is you, he will believe what Tom write an’ tell him. You can’t remain here, Sam.”
Her words, her earnest manner, her evident determination not to let him enter, left Jones at a loss what to do. He had taken the early morning train to Culebra; he had left Colon for the purpose of speaking his mind to her: he wanted to relieve his feelings. While in the train he had kept his courage up to the sticking point; again and again he had rehearsed to himself his grievances; even when he left the train and was climbing the hill he felt that he would be able to go through with the scene which he had pictured. But when he neared the house which was pointed out to him as Susan’s, he had been conscious of some hesitation in his mind, of an inclination to pause and consider whether he was acting wisely. He had fought down that inclination; he was now standing face to face with Susan. But she, though frightened, was resolute, and he stood before her perplexed, uncertain what to do.
“You going to stay at the door all day?” he asked her.
“No, for I don’t expect you goin’ to remain here.”
“You not even going to ask me to take a seat?”
“What for?”
“I am tired. I didn’t sleep all last night; I walk from the train station to this house, and all you do is to insult me like a dog. I only came here to tell you good-bye. I am taking the steamer to Jamaica to-morrow.”
“To-morrow?”
“Yes. I don’t want to stop here any longer.”
Her eyelids fluttered; she gazed at him in blank silence; she felt that he had spoken the truth, had made up his mind to leave Panama. In a little while he would return to the station, in a few hours he would be on his way . . . home.
The patter of the rain on the roofs and ground played a heavy accompaniment to the beating of her heart. Through the thick atmosphere came steadily the booming sound of dynamite explosions in the Cut. Boom, boom, boom: the heavy noise assaulted the ear, but she herself was conscious only of a deadly stillness within her. Suddenly Jones put out his hand. “Good-bye,” he said.
For answer, she stepped backwards. “Come in and sit down a little, if you tired,” she said.
He entered, glanced carelessly around him, and sat down. She left the door open, threw open all the windows also, as if there were a dead body in the house. Anyone passing could see them, no one could imagine or say that she was entertaining Jones clandestinely. “Mackenzie shouldn’t come back before half-past twelve,” she remarked; “but if he come you must tell him that you come up here to tell him an’ me good-bye.”
She sat at some distance from him, and by one of the open windows.
“What you going to do in Jamaica?” she asked.
“I don’t know, an’ I don’t care. I should never have come to this place. In fact,” he added, breaking out a little, “I am goin’ to kill meself!”
“Stop talking stupidness, Sam,” she said quietly: “you know y’u not goin’ to do nothing of the sort. I suppose at first you thought you would make a quarrel wid me up here?”
He feebly protested that such a thought had never entered his mind, but knew that he did not convince her. He was aware now that a quarrel at Culebra would have been a hopelessly foolish thing.
Both of them fell into silence after this. There seemed nothing more to say. Both of them appeared to be listening to the rain, to that persistent booming of the explosions; both of them were wondering if this were really their last leave-taking.
One question formed itself again and again in Susan’s mind: “Would it not be better to sacrifice respectability, religion, and go with him?” Sitting face to face with him, knowing that to-morrow he would be on his way to Jamaica, the answer “Yes” was whispered to her from her heart. As if he knew what was passing in her mind, he asked her suddenly:
“And you won’t make up you’ mind to come with me, Sue?”
If “Yes” rose to her lips, she resolutely shut them. A few seconds passed before she replied.
“Something tell me, ‘Better not,’ Sam. But I am sorry.”
She covered her face with her hands.
“Kiss me an’ tell me good-bye, Sue.”
He had risen and was standing over her. She got up, glanced quickly outside: no one was passing. She kissed him.
He left the house, walking hurriedly away. She fell back into her chair, crying as she had never cried before.
Jones walked rapidly in the direction of the Culebra station. He knew that Susan cared for him still; he believed that if he waited and persisted he would be able to break down her resolution. But he might have long to wait, and he did not feel equal to that. His work at Christobal had become a dreary drudgery. It would be better to go back to Jamaica, and that he would do the next day.
He did not blame Susan now; he felt for her nothing but kindness and affection. It was Mackenzie he blamed; Mackenzie it was who had inveigled her away from him: Mackenzie was the cause of her unhappiness and his. But even while he thought this, he felt in his heart of hearts that he himself had been the first cause of Susan’s desertion of him. He had promised to marry her and had broken his word. He had made a fool of himself in Colon. He sought for excuses for his conduct; he found many; yet his self-accusation persisted: conscience was by no means dead in Samuel Josiah.
He reached the station; there he learnt that there would be no train leaving for the next couple of hours. This delay he had not foreseen: he wondered what he should do with himself in the meantime. He could not return to Susan’s house.
He lounged about the station for a few minutes, but his thoughts troubled him and inaction was irksome. He must do something, he would walk about a little: he turned his back to the station and took the road leading down into the Culebra Cut. He had never been inside the Cut before. Troubled in mind as he was, the scene there made demands on his attention. Soon he was looking about him with wondering eyes.
On either hand of him rose lofty walls of rock and earth, carved into wide terraces which formed the buttresses of the mighty Cut. He was walking along one of these terraces; on it and on all the others train lines were laid. The trains were passing up and down, powerful engines dragging twenty, thirty, forty dump-cars laden with the stones and dirt that had been dug out of this part of the Canal; and at the bottom of the ditch and along the sides of it steam shovels were at work.
He watched these shovels curiously. He saw long cranes attached to engines, and at the end of each crane an iron box with a movable lid and bottom. The crane swung round, was lowered, the iron box or mouth bit into a pile of earth and rock shattered by dynamite, gorged itself, swung round again until it hovered over a dump-car. Then the bottom of the box opened slowly and a mass of earth and stones was poured into the car. Again the shovel swung back, and again and again was this process repeated. He remembered that Mackenzie was engaged on one of those steam shovels, and thought that perhaps he was, without knowing it, watching Mackenzie’s shovel at work. Then he resumed his walk, thankful that he had worn his waterproof that day, for now black and heavy rain-clouds were brooding over the Cut.
He walked along rapidly, knowing that he had not much more time to spare. The farther on he went, the more intense became the activity of the works, the more impressive the scene around him. Thousands of men were earnestly at work; groups of West Indians were manipulating the air-drills which bored the holes for the dynamite charges, scores of steam shovels were toiling to remove the heaped-up debris, dozens of steam-engines were hurrying to and fro and sending forth shrill screams. From the escapes of the steam shovels came puffs of greyish smoke, from the funnels of the engines a thick black smoke was belched, from the air-drills little spurts of steam darted, and from all around came the heavy detonation of dynamite discharges, shaking the earth.
Penned in by the high walls on either side, the smoke drifted hither and thither, forming a gloomy pall. The cliffs of Culebra flung back the deep boom of the explosions, the hurrying trains seemed to threaten at every moment to come into violent collision. Jones saw West Indian labourers carelessly carrying boxes of dynamite on their heads and shoulders, and remembered that many a man had, through his carelessness, been shattered to pieces in an instant. He saw more than one of them trip and the boxes they carried almost hurled to the ground. The men laughed. Familiarity with danger had rendered them contemptuous of it; but Jones shuddered; he could not appreciate the indifference and recklessness of these workers.
Boom, boom, boom: that sound dominated every other. It was answered soon by a thunder-crash from above, and then the driving rainstorm burst over Culebra. The rain came roaring down, an opaque volume of rushing water; objects a yard or two away were completely blotted out of sight; the blackness of night was above. But still he heard the whistling scream of the trains, still the heavy detonations warned him that the dynamite was blasting the solid rock. Nothing could be allowed to stay this work; the men, clad in their waterproofs, toiled on; the deafening noise ceased never for a moment.
He was drenched in spite of his cloak. Yet, because of the awful heat, he was in a profuse perspiration. He began to think he had lost his train after all; he would have to wait until another one came in from the city of Panama. Happily the downpour was ceasing; it was too violent to last. He waited until it became a drizzle, cast a regretful glance before him, for he wished he had been able to go farther on, and was about to retrace his steps when a shout from some men in front of him caused him to look hurriedly opposite, towards where these men were pointing with wild gestures.
Then he saw a sight that almost paralysed his heart. The mountain-side immediately opposite to him was slipping, coming down with a rush, as though it had been struck by an invisible hand and was being hurled to the bottom of the chasm. Hundreds of tons of loosened rock and earth were crashing down-wards, and the horror-stricken men who saw what was happening were shouting, screaming, gesticulating, for well they knew the fate of any who should be struck unawares by the swift-descending mass. Jones started to run, then stopped, apprehensive of what might happen next; he could not be certain that the wall which towered above him, or even the terrace on which he stood, might not also suddenly slip away. His mind was dazed; he felt that he had been very near to death, and, for all he knew, might be near to it still.
He looked about him; hundreds of men were running towards the huge pile of debris below. He noticed that the train lines down there had been torn away and twisted as if they were merely wire; some machinery had been dashed to pieces. Was anyone killed? he wondered.
People were clambering down the sides of the terraces; he ran towards them, joined them, and found that he could descend without great difficulty. All the men seemed to know in what direction they should go; he heard them saying to one another that the rock-fall had not been unexpected, that the engineers had noticed cracks some days before, which had led them to believe that once again Culebra would put their patience to the test. He gathered that on this particular section much work was not being done; perhaps, then, no one had lost his life. But the men were not certain; the slide was a bigger one than ordinary. Thus talking in snatches and exclamations, slipping, climbing, running, they reached the bottom of the Cut.
Here a crowd was already collected, a crowd working with might and main, digging away at something as if their lives depended upon it. Jones pushed his way to the front; he saw that the diggers were at work upon the earth and shattered rock that covered a steam shovel partly. This shovel had been in operation when the slide occurred; had it been a few yards farther back it must have entirely escaped. As it was, the men who manned it had had no warning, had not been able to leap clear of the machine and get away in time. It was doubtful if they were yet alive; but nothing was being left undone to save them, if they could be saved.
“Who are they?” Jones heard one American in the crowd ask another. “Any white men?”
“Two, and a coloured man,” was the answer: “poor fellows.”
The news spread; dark faces turned ashen with horror. A thousand people waited to hear if there was any hope—or none.
“What’s their name?” Jones kept on asking of persons who paid no attention to him. At last one of them who worked in this part of the Cut, hearing the question, replied, “The white men name Jackson an’ Campbell; the black man is Mackenzie.”
Jones went suddenly cold. “Mackenzie?” he repeated. “Mackenzie being suffocated to death?” He fought his way to where the men were digging. The thought uppermost in his mind was that his old friend was dying, dying horribly. “Good God!” he exclaimed, and the next instant, seizing a shovel from the heaps which had been hurriedly brought up, he was digging amongst the labourers like a man gone wild.
Not as his rival, not as the husband of Susan, did he think of Mackenzie now. For those few moments of his life Jones was utterly unselfish.
Somebody caught him by the shoulder and pushed him back; his assistance was not needed.
“Careful now,” said a commanding voice; “bring ’em out carefully.”
“Here’s one,” cried a man, an American like the first.
“Back there, back!” came a peremptory order. Four doctors were already on the spot; the crowd was being forced back; the same remarkable organization that made the building of the great Canal a matter of routine and order was in evidence at this tragedy too. It took less than a minute for the doctors to pronounce their verdict. The men had been killed instantly, could not have realized what was happening.
The bodies were placed upon stretchers, and the stretchers were hoisted into a railway car. The people began to return to their temporarily interrupted work. Tragedies were not rare at Culebra. One cannot build a great canal without loss of life.
Wet, muddied, horror-stricken still, Jones slowly followed the returning labourers, intending to get out of the Cut as quickly as possible. He realized that the man who had stood between him and Susan had been removed; but the manner of Mackenzie’s removal terrified him. Had Mackenzie sickened and died, it is possible that Jones would have seen the hand of Providence in the circumstance. But this sudden death—a death, too, which might so easily have overtaken himself had he been on the opposite side of the chasm—seemed to him to be somewhat devilish; he was afraid. He vehemently told himself that he had never wished Mackenzie dead, though he knew he had often done so; then he said to himself that he had never meant his wish. Whether he had meant it or not, it was realized. He was startled by the fact. This was no good thing: why should Mackenzie have died like that, just then? He forgot the two white men entirely.
He got out of the Cut at last, wondering if he should go and tell Susan the terrible news. He decided that he would not: she would probably have heard it already, and he was not exactly the one to inform her how Mackenzie had come to his end. But there was something he could do. He hurried to the telegraph station and dispatched a message to Susan’s people in Colon, telling them what had happened and advising them to come over to Culebra without delay. After that he went to the coloured section of the town; he saw many people in and about Mackenzie’s house. So Susan knew. He went back to the railway station to await the arrival of Susan’s relatives.
He sat down on the edge of the platform, thinking of all that had happened that day. If Susan had left the house with him and they had afterwards heard of this death! What a narrow escape it had been! And then with his mind’s eye he saw Mackenzie as Mackenzie had greeted him on the day of his arrival in Colon, a cordial, helpful friend. He saw him as a visitor, always contented and happy in the house. He saw him as a corpse on the stretcher, suddenly struck dead. “Poor Mac,” he muttered again and again, “poor Mac; poor fellow.” And he cried like a child in contrition and sorrow.
When the train from Colon came in, Miss Proudleigh was one of the first to step on to the platform, closely followed by her niece and brother. The old man was dressed in a suit once black, but now of a greenish tint and shiny as though it had been polished; he also wore a bowler hat of a pattern that had probably been fashionable thirty years before, but of which few specimens could at this time have been extant.
Catherine and her aunt were attired in white ironed dresses and new straw hats trimmed with black ribbon. Samuel saw that they had come ready-dressed for the funeral, which must take place on the following morning. The severity of Miss Proudleigh’s demeanour indicated that she was about to officiate at a very important function, and the large straw fan which she carried in her right hand would have informed anyone who knew the lady that she had not brought forth her favourite symbol of authority without a determination to establish her claim to precedence and power at any cost.
Jones approached the little group. “I was waiting for you,” he said.
“Then you mean to tell me y’u not arrested?” was the startling question of Miss Proudleigh. “There seems to be no law at all in Panama!”
She edged away from Jones as she spoke, looking as she did so towards an American policeman who was strolling about the platform.
“What am I to be arrested for?” asked the young man, surprised. “What’s the matter with you’ aunt?” he said to Catherine. “She takin’ leave of her senses?”
“Didn’t you’ telegram say that Mackenzie dead?” asked Catherine.
“Yes; but what is that to do with me?”
“I know it wasn’t you dat kill him, me son,” Mr. Proudleigh now observed. “When I get you’ telegram, I said to meself: ‘Mister Jones is a man like me. Him talk a lot, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly: him is too afraid of de court-house.’ But Deborah would insist it was you dat kill Mackenzie, for you leave the house last night in a blind temper, an’ you come up here to-day, an’ Mackenzie dead very sudden.”
“It is very suspicious,” said Miss Proudleigh. “I don’t understand it at all.”
“Well, it is not everything y’u can understand,” said Catherine practically; “and it couldn’t be Mr. Jones that kill Mackenzie, otherwise him would be in jail.”
“Dat is so,” agreed her father; “only, I hear dat in Panama y’u can pay ten dollars an’ kill anybody you like.”
“That is all stupidness,” said Jones impatiently; “it is the Canal that kill Mackenzie, not me. What was I goin’ to kill him for?”
A snort from Miss Proudleigh was her only comment on this speech. She was not willing to be persuaded that Mackenzie had not been a victim of the machinations of Samuel and her niece.
As they went on, Jones explained how Mackenzie had come by his death, and how he himself had been a witness of the tragedy. All of them had heard before of the lives which the Culebra Cut had claimed, and now as Jones spoke doubts rose once more in the minds of Mr. Proudleigh and his sister as to the wisdom and propriety of human beings attempting to unite two oceans.
“I always thought that some great disaster would occur because of the iniquity of man in trying to join what God separate,” said Miss Proudleigh; “but I never dream that de disaster was to come on me own family; for, after all, Mackenzie was my nephew-in-law.”
But she did not seem unduly oppressed by the calamity. She found abundant comfort in the prospect of a funeral, and in the opportunity now given her of bewailing in public her irreparable loss. She could now proclaim her past forebodings and hint at other tragedies that would shortly follow upon this one. Properly managed, this funeral could not fail to afford some edifying exhibitions of religious fortitude, Christian resignation, and personal piety, mingled discreetly with an insulting attitude towards those whom she might happen to dislike.
As for Mr. Proudleigh, at that moment he was chiefly afflicted with fears for his personal safety. If a landslide or something like it could kill Mackenzie, there was nothing to prevent a landslide from killing him. This was a dangerous country.
“We will have to leave this place as soon as poor Mackenzie is in de grave,” he remarked, as he laboured on. “What y’u goin’ to do wid you’self, Mister Jones?”
“When?”
“To-morrow. After we bury me son-in-law.”
“I don’t know,” said Jones.
“You staying up here wid Miss Susan?”
“That would not be proper,” observed Miss Proudleigh sternly. “It is none of my business, an’ I don’t want to interfere. But if the day after Mackenzie bury, a young man should stay in the same place with the widder, them will put her out of any church she belong to.”
“I don’t think Susan can stay here much longer, now that Mackenzie is dead,” said Jones. “She will have to leave soon, for the American people will want the premises.”
“Well, she better come back to Colon wid me,” said Mr. Proudleigh; “an’ now that Mac is dead, Mister Jones——”
But Samuel, guessing the nature of the old man’s forthcoming proposition, hastily interrupted him with another recital of that day’s tragedy. He was still speaking when they arrived at Susan’s house.
All the doors and windows were open, and three or four persons were moving about within. These were friendly neighbours who had come over to help Susan with her dead.
She was expecting her family. As a matter of fact she had telegraphed to them. But having received Jones’s message earlier, they had left for Culebra before Susan’s telegram was delivered at their house.
She was very quiet and composed. When the news of Mackenzie’s death had been broken to her she had shrieked in terror. Her first thought was that there had been a fight between Samuel and her husband, and that the latter had been murdered. A few words of explanation relieved her mind of this horrible fear, then she wept bitterly as if stricken to the heart. She had never cared greatly for her husband; but his sudden death, the overwhelming memory of how, that very day, she had had to fight against the temptation to abandon him, the recollection of all his kindnesses, touched her to genuine sorrow and regret. She recovered her self-possession a little later on and straightway set about making preparations for the funeral. She was still engaged on these when Samuel and her family arrived.
She hardly appeared to notice Jones, who kept himself in the background. She suffered herself to be embraced by her father, who thought it proper to assure her that he had hastened to comfort her, though he himself was grief-stricken and could not say when he should be able to take an interest in life any more. Mr. Proudleigh then deposited his hat on a table and elaborately wiped his eyes. This ceremony being gone through, he sat down.
But Miss Proudleigh would not sit down. She took Susan by the hand. “It is the will of God,” she loudly proclaimed, “an’ men can only say, ‘Thy will be done.’ We must be prepared to meet our God. We must take up our cross an’ follow Him. Husband-o, son-o, mother-o, wife-o, when the call come we must give them all up to Him who gave them life. We cannot rebel, for the Lord gave an’ the Lord taketh away—blessed be the name of the Lord. We cannot prevent the tears from flowing, for that is nature; but the heart must be submissive.”
She paused to note the effect of her words, which she considered sufficiently stirring to move Susan to tears and the other people in the house to sympathy. But most of the people there did not know Miss Proudleigh and were paying no attention to her; Susan remained dry-eyed; Catherine appeared unsympathetic. Only her brother seemed attentive, and as she did not regard him as an audience worth having, she concluded that spiritual consolations had better be reserved for a later occasion.
“You can go into the dining-room an’ wash you’ hands an’ face if you like, Aunt Deborah,” said Susan quietly. “It is fixed up.”
“What about the body?” demanded Miss Proudleigh.
“The body fixed up already. Everything is arranged. Some of Mackenzie’s friends looking after the funeral.”
It was bitterly disappointing to Miss Proudleigh to find that she had been forestalled; still, opportunities for usefulness might present themselves later on. She went into the dining-room as invited, feeling that Susan’s calmness was most unbecoming at such a moment. A widow, with a proper sense of what was expected of her, should have given way to a wild outburst of grief at the sight of her sympathizing family.
Presently Susan asked her aunt to go into the room where Mackenzie’s body was laid out. Mackenzie had been struck mainly by descending masses of earth; thus he had escaped disfigurement. Miss Proudleigh glanced at the set face, saying with real feeling, “Poor fellow; just as if he was sleeping.” Then she mastered this inclination to weakness, and, laying her hand upon the cold, sheeted figure, she shook her head determinedly. “Not enough ice,” she said.
“Quite enough,” replied one of Susan’s helpers, a young woman who had developed a marked fondness for assisting at funerals.
“You will excuse me,” said Miss Proudleigh with great firmness. “I bury a lot of my relatives an’ friends, an’ therefore it stands to reason that I must know about de treatment of corpses.
“Mr. Mackenzie was my nephew-in-law, an’ I know he would like to bury decently an’ in a good condition; in consequence of which I would advise his wife to take my foolish advice an’ get some more ice. Susan, ’ave you a little gurl?”
“One is outside,” Susan answered.
“Send ’er for more ice!”
“All right, Aunt Deborah,” said Susan resignedly; “you can send ’er.”
This was a victory of considerable importance; it placed Miss Proudleigh in charge of all arrangements affecting the corpse. She adapted her voice to suit her new dignity and now spoke in impressive stage whispers.
But where was Samuel? Susan had lost sight of him; he had quietly slipped out of the house after observing how she was conducting herself; he was glad to see her calm and collected, but a certain delicacy of feeling warned him that he should not remain in the house just now. He was damp and dirty; but there were shops in the town where he could buy some ready-made clothing. He bought a suit and was allowed to put it on in a room behind the shop; if it did not fit him well, at least it was clean and dry.
The day’s work was over in the Cut; everybody he met was talking about the accident. He noticed that they all spoke well of Mackenzie; he wondered whether, if he had died like Mackenzie, his acquaintances would have spoken like that of him.
The rain had ceased entirely, but the sky was sombre still. He remembered that he had eaten nothing from morning, but he had no appetite, did not feel like eating. He lingered about the houses and the shops till long after darkness had fallen. At about eight o’clock, he went back to Susan’s house.
He entered and silently took one of the many chairs that had been borrowed from friendly neighbours for the accommodation of the people who had come and were coming to sit up for a few hours with Susan. Every one was quiet and reverential, and those who talked did so in low and mournful tone.
A solitary light was burning in the room where the body of the dead man lay. Those who wished to do so, stole into the room and peeped at it, then stole back gloomily to their seats. The subdued conversation was about Mackenzie in particular and death in general, and when an elderly woman remarked that Mackenzie was a man who could always be depended upon, and groaned by way of emphasizing her remark, Miss Proudleigh groaned also, as though parting with Mackenzie had been one of the most awful experiences of her life.
Then the young woman who had contradicted Miss Proudleigh in the matter of the ice felt it incumbent upon her to say something.
“I remember poor Mr. Mackenzie when he first come up to Culebra,” she said. “Such a quiet, mannerly gentleman. And to think he die so sudden!”
“In the midst of life we are in death!” retorted Miss Proudleigh aggressively.
“I not stayin’ here one day longer than I can help it,” said Mr. Proudleigh earnestly. “I never did want much to come to Colon at any time; but me children wishin’ to see if them could make a good living over here, I say to meself, ‘I mustn’t desert them. Don’t care what happen to me, it is me juty to go wid dem.’ So I come here, but I not goin’ to stop any longer, because it must be a very funny country where a hill-side broke down without nothing do it, and kill me son-in-law. Ef I are to die, I want to die in me bed in Jamaica.”
“Parents must devote themselves to their children,” said one of Susan’s neighbours.
“That is what I ’ave always done,” said Mr. Proudleigh with dignity. “But if Susan take my advice, she will go back wid me to Jamaica as soon as she bury her husban’. I can’t teck any more risk in Panama.”
“The Lord is strong to save, wherever His people are,” remarked Miss Proudleigh rebukingly. Her laundry was proving very profitable, and she needed no further evidence to assure her of the omnipresent care of Providence.
Just then the young woman who had already angered Miss Proudleigh, feeling that she was being eclipsed, went up to Susan, and, throwing her arms about the widow’s neck, exclaimed, “My heart bleed for you,” and audibly wept. But Miss Proudleigh was mistress of ceremonies, and Susan herself was now subject to her aunt’s authority. That a stranger, an insolent stranger, should have dared to set the example of tears in the midst of a conversation, was more than Miss Proudleigh could stand. Extraneous sympathy must not be allowed to pass the bounds set by decorum and established practice. Happily Miss Proudleigh knew that she was equal to any emergency. Whipping out of her pocket a hymn-book which she had thoughtfully brought with her from Colon, in a shrill and belligerent treble she began to sing “Peace, Perfect Peace.” The hymn sounded like a declaration of war without quarter, and the sobbing young lady recognized it as such and struggled by means of louder sobs to maintain the position she had won. But Miss Proudleigh had great allies. For most of the guests, tired of talking or sitting still, joined in the hymn, singing with genuine feeling.