SAMUEL JOSIAH JONES
That afternoon Susan made special preparations for the great event of
the morrow. Hairdressing being a very important part of her toilet, she
literally sat at Catherine’s feet, who, armed with a strong comb and a
pot of scented castor oil, bent over her sister’s head and spent fully
three-quarters of an hour in combing out the hair, oiling it, plaiting
it, and twisting the plaits into the shape dictated by the latest
fashion. That done, Susan tied up her hair very carefully in a towel, so
that it should not become disarranged. Then she took out her blue dress
and hung it up over the head of her bed. She polished her shoes,
carefully looked over her hat, and fished out a fan from the bottom of
her trunk. When all this work was over, she untied her head, dressed
hurriedly and went to church, her sister going with her. Both her
parents strongly approved of church-going; and though the old man
himself never went out on Sunday, he would not allow the day to pass
without reading aloud the first Psalm, laying special stress on the
opening words which proclaim a blessing on those who walk not in the way
of the ungodly.
Susan and her sisters enjoyed the service. They usually did. The large
church, nearly filled with people dressed in their multi-coloured best,
the deep-toned organ, the hearty singing in which they joined, the
bright light from the electric lamps—all this was a weekly source of
pleasure to girls who had nice dresses to wear on the Sabbath day. The
sermon might consist of denunciations of the popular way of living. They
listened to it with interest and agreed that the parson was, from his
point of view, perfectly right. But he, so to speak, was looking at life
theoretically, while they were compelled to regard it from the practical
standpoint of daily bread. If he expounded doctrine, they appeared
engrossed in his words, and followed his meaning with a fair degree of
understanding. What they liked best were the hymns; and when the service
was over, and they mingled with the contented home-going crowds, they
felt that they were, after all, not very far from the Kingdom.
Susan went to bed immediately after going home, not omitting to bind up
her head once more. She wished to be up early in the morning. Her father
talked to her for a while from his part of the room, a cloth partition
placing no obstacles in the way of conversation; but though he was very
anxious to hear about the sermon, so that he might give his opinion on
the parson’s theology, she soon shut him up by saying she wished to go
to sleep. Then silence reigned unbroken, but for the barking of the dogs
in the lane; for by nine o’clock practically all the inmates of the yard
had retired, after a day spent for the most part in lolling about and
avoiding any unnecessary work.
At half-past four in the morning Susan was awake. She hurried out of the
hot, stifling room to wash her face under the water-pipe, then went in
again to dress. She was ready by five o’clock. Her dress fitted her
nicely; and though blue was perhaps not the colour that best suited her
complexion, it was more striking than white would have been, and she
wanted to attract attention. She wore a pink sash, and her hat was
trimmed with pink roses and ribbons. Her high-heeled shoes were gorgeous
with buckles. When fully arrayed, and after she had gulped down her cup
of coffee, she turned herself round and round to be admired. Catherine
and Eliza surveyed her critically.
“You is all right, Sue,” said the first, and her younger sister agreed.
Her mother smiled, then went about her business. Her father was vocal in
his praise.
“Ef I was a young man,” he said approvingly, “I would fall in love wid
you. Dat frock suit you’ figure. Everybody gwine to dance wid you, an’
you mustn’t fo’got to bring somet’ing nice fo’ me.”
Susan, satisfied with this appreciation, promised to bring home for him
a part of whatever she might get; and Letitia coming in just then, both
girls went out to catch the electric car that should take them to the
railway station.
It was not yet six o’clock, so the air was still comparatively cool. It
was a public holiday, consequently they met numbers of other
pleasure-seekers like themselves, all gaily dressed. They caught the
car, and it took them by a circuitous route to the station, going first
towards the north of the city for nearly a mile, then south again, then
east to where the railway station stands. On the way they passed
handsome villas; those were the houses, they thought, where the rich
people lived, people so much above their own station in life that they
never dreamt of envying them. The white and the higher classes of fair
coloured people belonged to one world. They belonged to another. But
envy and hatred did not embitter the relations of one class with
another, though their interests in life were superficially as different
as was the yard-room or little front house from the spacious-looking
residence with its garden of tropical shrubs and flowers blooming in
front of it.
They alighted at the railway station, and found it crowded. Every colour
of the rainbow was represented in the dresses of the women and the
neckties of the men; and a stranger not accustomed to a West Indian
crowd might well have thought that there could have been no greater
confusion at the Tower of Babel. Everybody talked and nobody listened.
Everybody gesticulated. Laughing, pushing, screaming, scrambling through
the iron gates, the good-humoured picnickers made towards the platform,
and then began to fight their way into the train. In vain the guards
shouted. In vain they tried to direct the passengers. Discipline and
order were thrown to the winds on this holiday morning, when the chief
thought of every one was to obtain all the fun and excitement that the
day could afford.
In the struggle for a good seat Susan was nearly separated from her
friend. But by a vigorous use of their elbows they managed to keep
together; and when at last, breathless but triumphant, they were seated,
they began to look about them to see if any of their friends were near.
Susan saw many persons whom she knew. Amongst these was Hezekiah, and
him she stared out of countenance. She nodded to the others, and
commenced with lively anticipation to discuss the prospects of the
picnic with Letitia, when the train, with a sudden jerk, pulled out of
the station.
Slowly at first, then quickly, and crowded to its utmost capacity, it
ran out of the city and into the open, sunlit country. The transition
was abrupt. Within a minute Kingston had been left behind, and broad
fields and forests soon appeared on either side, all steeped in the
early morning light and still green and fresh with the dews of the
night. The hot and dusty city lay baking in the sun behind the
pleasure-seekers; the country, with its wonderful beauty of deep blue
skies, giant trees, and variegated green; with its dark-gleaming
rivulets, placid streams and leaping waterfalls, unrolled itself before
them. Peeping out of the windows, they could see the cattle and horses
browsing in the pastures, the distant skyline broken by a long chain of
dream-like verdure-clothed mountains, the long, delicate tendrils of
parasitic plants waving gently in the breeze, and clumps of
water-hyacinths glowing in the ponds or in some quiet backwater of a
stream. All, all was beautiful. A majestic peace pervaded the spacious
countryside, and the great yellow sun of the tropics lighted it up with
splendour. There was something alluring, enticing about it all;
something enervating too in its luscious appealing beauty. But Susan and
Letitia gave no thought to it all, nor did many of the people in the
train. Their minds were centred upon one subject—this picnic to which
they were speeding and which was to afford them a whole day’s intensest
pleasure.
“Cumberland Pen!” The guard shouted the name of the station, the train
slowed down and stopped, the doors of the carriages were thrown open,
and then the scramble and hubbub began once more. Parcels were grabbed
at and secured, and then—a phenomenon which one observes in every
country and on every occasion among passengers on a train—every one
pushed forward to alight as quickly as possible, and as though a second
longer spent upon the train would lead to the most unpleasant results.
The siding was soon crowded, and already a straggling stream of human
beings was pouring towards the Cumberland Pen gate, where stood two men
who collected the tickets and indulged in arguments with those who
pretended to be scandalized at the amount they were called upon to pay
as entrance fee. It was quick work at this gate in spite of the chaffing
and arguing; then other trains came in from Kingston, and soon more than
a thousand persons were assembled on a grassy sward, spacious and fairly
smooth, and shaded here and there by leafy trees that grew singly or in
cool inviting clumps. But shade trees were not in demand just now,
except as convenient places for the storing of parcels and baskets
filled with refreshments, which some of the more prudent or more
fastidious picnickers had brought with them. These impedimenta put away
for the present, the pleasure-lovers broke into groups, and a loud cry
for music arose.
Then rose the piercing squeal of the clarionettes, the squeak of
fiddles, the blare of cornets and the bang of a big drum. There was
noise enough, and the dancers called it music. The young men took off
their jackets and waved them wildly in the air to show their
appreciation of the band. Girls with arms akimbo swayed their bodies to
and fro, keeping time with the tune. Thus encouraged, the musicians
redoubled their efforts and the discord was infernal; but partners were
rapidly selected, places taken, and in a few minutes there were nearly
five hundred couples dancing on the sward and under the now burning,
blistering rays of the forenoon sun.
Susan was in her element. Quadrilles followed lancers, polkas followed
quadrilles, and mentoes, a sublimated West African, phallic dance,
followed the polkas and were the most popular with a certain section of
the people. The girls danced these, swaying on their hips. Some of the
women, however, and amongst these was Susan, did not care to dance these
mentoes, on the ground that they were not quite proper. So while mentoes
were being danced, Susan sat at the foot of a tree fanning herself, and
trying to mop up with her wet handkerchief the flood of perspiration
that streamed from her face.
Gazing intently at the dancers during one of these intervals, she did
not notice that a man had approached her, till she heard herself
addressed.
“Young lady,” said the stranger, “you not dancing?”
“No,” she answered shortly, without looking round to see who the speaker
might be.
“Why?”
“I don’t dance mento.”
“But why you don’t?”
The persistency of her questioner annoyed her; it was common enough for
girls to be accosted by strangers at a picnic; but she did not want to
make any more acquaintances that day, for the simple reason that she was
tired. The stranger, however, was not to be denied. He deliberately sat
down near her, and resumed the conversation.
“Well,” said he, “allow me to introduce meself. My name is Samuel Josiah
Jones from Spanish Town. I been watchin’ you all the time you been
sitting here; an’ when I see a beautiful young female not enjoying
herself, I think I ought to do the consequential.”
Susan had not the faintest idea of what the consequential might be, but
the word pleased her. Besides, Samuel Josiah Jones had called her
beautiful, and such a compliment predisposed her to be kind. As she did
not exactly know what to reply, she looked at him with an inquiring air;
but that did not in the least disconcert Mr. Jones, who blandly went on.
“My name,” he repeated, “is Samuel Josiah Jones.” (He plainly expected
the repetition of his name to have a talismanic effect.) “Spanish Town
is my paternity. Where you come from?”
“Kingston,” said Susan briefly; then she added, “What is that to you?”
“Oh, don’t be vex,” said Jones appealingly. “Don’t expostulate with me.
I don’t ask you for nothing. But you didn’t introduce you’self properly,
so I interrogated you. You angry?”
Susan saying nothing in reply, Jones’s voice became more confidential.
“I wouldn’t tell you a lie. I have had a few good drinks to-day. But me
head is strong, an’ when I see a young lady like you, I would rather die
than disgrace meself.
“If a young man can’t behave himself in the company of ladies,” he
continued, still speaking confidentially, “he ought not to frequent
their company. Don’t you think I am right?”
Susan was obliged to nod her agreement.
Pleased with this, his voice took on a triumphant ring.
“Quite so,” he resumed. “As I tell these boys here, sobriety is the
great thing; sobriety an’ temperance. Take a drink when y’u want one;
but don’t disgrace you’self—like me.”
“But you not disgracin’ you’self,” said Susan, flattered by the respect
he professed for her, but a little puzzled by his last sentence.
“No,” said Jones, “that is what I say. I don’t disgrace meself. I set a
good example. I don’t want no man to say that Samuel Josiah Jones
disgrace himself in public.”
Mr. Jones leaned back against the tree, obviously proud of the example
he was setting, and quite as obviously pleased with the world and
himself. Susan looked at him curiously. He was a young man of her own
complexion; that is to say, dark brown. His features were good, his face
frank and lively, and when he spoke two big gold teeth gleamed brightly,
showing that Mr. Jones did not belong to the common classes. He was
tall, and flashily dressed, his necktie reminding one of a Scotch plaid
of the most pronounced pattern. A gorgeous fob hung out of the trousers
pocket in which he kept his watch. It was plain to Susan that he was a
young man of some importance, and by the words he used she judged him to
be a man of considerable education. She was pleased too he had
recognized that she was a young lady, for some “fast and forward young
men” of her acquaintance had not always been ready to do that. She was
rather glad now that he had persisted in talking to her. His preference
for her company was a distinct compliment.
She saw that his sobriety had been tempered with a fair quantity of
strong drink. He had himself said so. But temperance folk were held in
strong contempt by her, and she had always heard her aunt quote with
great approval Paul’s advice to Timothy, that he should take a little
wine for his stomach’s sake. Miss Proudleigh faithfully followed this
advice herself: every night before going to bed she drank, not a little
wine, but a little rum and water; and Susan’s parents would have done
the same had they been able to afford it. So she thought more highly of
Mr. Jones for being able to enjoy himself in the free and independent
manner which his appearance denoted. She was about to continue the
conversation when Letitia came up.
The latter stared at Jones, not exactly surprised, for on such a day a
girl might pick up half a dozen new acquaintances. Susan introduced her,
and Jones, rising with great dignity, assured her that his name was
Samuel Josiah Jones, and asked her to take a seat.
“I not sitting down,” said Letitia, shaking her head. “I came to
henquire if Sue are going to ’ave her lunch.” (Letitia was very careful
of her diction in company.)
“Lunch?” said Jones; “lunch? Of course! The inner man must be
replenished. We will have lunch immediate. Miss Susan, arise!”
Miss Susan arose, as bidden, and seeing that Letitia showed no objection
to accepting Mr. Jones’s hospitality, she followed the young man to the
spot where refreshments were being sold.
Under a tree, and protected by a barricade of dealboard tables and low
wooden benches, were a number of women and a man, retailers of
refreshments, and all busy attending to the crowd of customers that
surrounded them. Quick-tempered and aggressive, the women bustled about
with their sleeves drawn up above their elbows, and the upper part of
their skirts tucked up into bundles around their waists. Within the
enclosure, huge pots steamed and bubbled on improvised fireplaces; and
barrels and boxes containing aerated waters, and beer and whisky and
Jamaica rum, stood invitingly open.
The smell of stewed beef mingled with that of stewed salt-fish, and the
heavy odour of cocoa-nut oil rose from two five-gallon cans in which
rice and red peas were boiling. The women ladled the food into coarse
earthenware and enamelled plates as it was ordered, and the man served
the liquors.
Jones and the girls sat down to a lunch of stewed fish and
rice-and-peas. He ordered whisky for himself, and asked his companions
what they would have. After some hesitation, they decided on beer, this
being a luxury they did not often enjoy. He called for two glasses of
“the best beer,” and the girls gulped the stuff down, declaring with
grimaces that it tasted bitter.
Letitia noticed that Jones paid a good deal of attention to Susan. “I
wonder if him speaking ’er up?” was her thought, but presently she
ceased to think, the beer having set her head a-swimming. Susan felt
dizzy too, and had to cling to Jones for support when they rose from the
table.
He offered an arm to each of the girls, and gallantly escorted them back
to the tree. They sat there for a little while, Jones talking, Susan and
Letitia hearing nothing.
The pipes still screamed, and the fiddles squeaked, and the dancers
continued dancing. A good many persons had strolled down to the river
that ran through the pen, to bathe. Here and there some sat on stones or
logs of wood, resting; contented-looking cows cropped the grass within a
stone’s throw of the picnickers, no longer frightened by the unusual
noise; children climbed the trees to hunt for mangoes; big green lizards
pursued their prey among the stones and leaves; and down on men and
beasts and trees came the fiery rays of the now vertical sun, scorching,
blistering, burning, but powerless to exhaust the energy of the
musicians or to put an end to the dance.
“This sun,” remarked Jones, “is the hottest sun I feel for a long time.
It make me sweat like a bull. But I come to dance, an’ I must dance.
What you say?”
His words were addressed to Susan, who faintly murmured in reply, “Too
hot.”
Two or three minutes passed in silence, and then the beer, acting in
conjunction with the heat and the exertion of the morning, completed its
work. Reclining against the tree, Susan slept. Letitia, who was not so
easily affected by strong drinks as her friend, laughed at first; then,
finding it dull sitting there, asked Jones what he intended to do.
“Remain here,” he said. “A gentleman must behave gentlemanly. Can’t
leave this female alone when she is not in her senses.”
“All right,” said Letitia; “I goin’ to dance. I will come back later.
Tell Susan so when she ’wake.”.
Jones nodded, then stretched his legs out more comfortably, covered his
face with his handkerchief, and disposed himself to reflect on his own
superior manners, while Letitia walked away.
He dozed, and for an hour both of them lay there, recumbent in the sun.
Jones woke first. Although desiring to be gentlemanly, his first impulse
was to go and join the dancers; for a chance meeting at a picnic did
not, he felt, compel him to remain constantly in attendance upon one
young woman. Instead of doing so, however, he bent over and shook Susan
slightly. She opened her eyes, yawned loudly, stretched her arms above
her head, yawned again, then remarked, “I seems to ’ave been sleepin’,
Mr. Jones.”
“Yes,” he said. “You been sleepin’ all the time. An’ I been watching
you, in case any of these common young men wanted to take any liberty
with you. I wouldn’t move a foot while you reposed.”
“Thank you,” said Susan; “but I mustn’t keep y’u back from dancin’.”
“Don’t mention,” said Jones; “it would be preposterous to leave you in a
somnolescent state. Will you take some more beer?”
She shook her head firmly. “It make me giddy,” she confessed.
“All right, then, you stay here till I come. I am goin’ for a rum; I
soon be back.”
He went off to the refreshment stand, and Susan followed him with her
eyes. He was showing her a lot of attention: did he mean anything? She
quickly persuaded herself that he did; otherwise why should he have
remained with her all the time? It might be her good fortune to get
another intended in place of Tom. She thought of the yard-room and the
shop with disgust. This fellow was evidently well off, decent looking,
generous. . . . She smiled when he returned, and readily rose when he
suggested that they should take a little walk and then have a dance.
“Y’u like Spanish Town, Mr. Jones?” she asked him as they moved away.
“So, so,” he replied; “but I been living in Kingston these last ten
years—up in Allman Town.”
“Funny I never see y’u,” said Susan, though there seemed nothing really
funny in her not having before met one particular person in a city of
over sixty thousand souls.
“That is so,” Jones agreed; “it is a peculiar incident. And here we have
become acquainted just when I am goin’ away.”
“Goin’ away?” Susan asked, surprised. “Where?”
“Panama. They wants mechanics down there. An’ Mr. Hewet, an American man
that was down here three months ago hiring labourers, send for me. They
wants a man like me to help them dig the canal,” he proceeded
grandiloquently. “Fifteen dollars a week, an’ quarters. Here I can’t
earn much more than thirty shillin’s, an’ I have so many people to boss
me that sometimes I don’t know what to do.
“This is a worthless country,” he continued. “No prospects at all. It is
much better foreign. I don’t think I will bother come back to Jamaica.”
So he wasn’t “speaking her up” after all! The disappointment she felt
was keener than she would have thought possible. Her hastily constructed
castle in the air came toppling down, and only the shop and the
yard-room remained in their sordid reality.
Tom had gone to Panama. Jones was going. She knew that every week scores
and hundreds of other people went, and that the dream of almost
everybody she had met was to go to Colon or Port Limon, or “anywhere,”
as one man told the steamship clerk to whom he applied for a decker’s
ticket. “Anywhere.” Anywhere outside of Jamaica. That was the wish of
thousands of persons in all classes and ranks of society, and she had
caught the general infection.
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 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.
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[1] Fortune is not fair.