"Captain Hollowell! O Captain Hollowell!"
I left my little bag behind me. Fear lent wings to my feet, and I kept
crying out to Captain Hollowell as I ran up that gang-plank, mercifully
still down. At the end of it was my dear blond purser, and right into
his arms unhesitatingly I ran. He kept saying: "Well! well! well!" and
he took me to Captain Hollowell, who swore dreadfully when he learned
that Mr. Campbell had not met me. Then my purser went to the dock wharf
to get my bag, and to "skin the hide off that damned black baboon" who
had frightened me.
I ate dinner with Captain Hollowell and the officers of the _Atlas_
that night, the last remaining passenger on the boat. After dinner,
accompanied by the captain and the purser, I was taken by carriage to
the office of _The Lantern_.
I don't know what Captain Hollowell said to Mr. Campbell before I was
finally called in, for I had been left in the outer office. Their
voices were loud and angry, and I thought they were quarreling. I
devoutly hoped it was not over me. I was tired and sleepy. In fact,
when Captain Hollowell motioned to me to come in, I remember rubbing my
eyes, and he put his arm about me and told me not to cry.
In a dingy office, with papers and books scattered about in the most
bewildering disorder, at a long desk-table, likewise piled with books
and journals and papers, sat an old man who looked exactly like the
pictures of Ibsen. He was sitting all crumpled up, as it were, in a big
arm-chair; but as I came forward he sat up straight. He stared at me so
long, and with such an expression of amazement, that I became uneasy
and embarrassed. I remember holding on tight to Captain Hollowell's
sleeve on one side and Mr. Marsden's on the other. And then at last a
single sentence came from the lips of my employer. It came explosively,
despairingly:
"My God!" said the owner of _The Lantern_.
It seems that our Quebec friend had been assigned to obtain for _The
Lantern_ a mature and experienced journalist. Mr. Campbell had expected
a woman of the then approved, if feared, type of bluestocking, and
behold a baby had been dropped into his lap!
The captain and Marsden had departed. I sat alone with that old man
who looked like Ibsen, and who stared at me as if I were some freak of
nature. He had his elbows upon his desk, and his chin propped up in the
cup of his hands. He began to ask me questions, after he had literally
stared me down and out of countenance, and I sat there before him,
twisting my handkerchief in my hand.
"How old are you?"
"Seventeen. I mean--I'm going on eighteen." Eighteen was, in fact,
eleven months off.
"Have you ever worked before?"
"I've written things."
After a silent moment, during which he glared at me more angrily than
ever, he demanded:
"What have you written?"
"Poetry," I said, and stopped because he said again in that lost voice,
"My God!"
"What else?"
"I had a story published in _The Star_," I said. "I've got it here, if
you'd like to see it."
He made a motion of emphatic dissent.
"What else have you done?"
"I taught myself shorthand," I said, "and I can take dictation as fast
as you can talk."
He looked frankly skeptical and in no wise impressed.
"How can you do that if you've had no experience as a stenographer?"
"I got a shorthand book," I said eagerly. "It's not at all hard to
teach yourself after you learn the rudiments. My sister showed me
that. She's secretary to the Premier of Canada. As soon as I had
learned shorthand, I acquired practice and speed by going to church and
prayer-meetings and taking down sermons."
After a moment he said grudgingly:
"Not a bad idea." And then added, "What do you think you are going to
do here?"
"Write for your paper," I said as conciliatingly as I could.
"What?" he inquired curiously.
"Why--anything--poetry--"
He waved his hand in such a dismissing manner that I got up, though it
was my poetry, not I, he wished to be rid of just then. I went nearer
to him.
"I know you don't want me," I said, "and I don't want to stay. I'm
sorry I came. I wouldn't if I had known that this was a hot, beastly
old country where nearly everybody is black. If you'll just get me back
to the boat, I know Captain Hollowell will let me go back with him,
even if I haven't the money for my fare."
"What about the money I paid for you to come here?" he snarled. "Think
I'm going to lose that?"
I did not answer him. I felt enervated, homesick, miserable, and
tired. He got up presently, limped over to another table,--he was
lame,--poured a glass of water, brought it to me with a big fan, and
said gruffly, "Sit!"
The act, I don't know why, touched me. In a dim way I began to
appreciate his position. He was a lame old man running a fiery,
two-sheet little newspaper in this tropical land far from his native
Canada. There was no staff, and, indeed, none of the ordinary
appurtenances of a newspaper office. He employed only one able
assistant, and as he could not get such a person in Jamaica and could
not afford to pay a man's salary, being very loyal to Canada, he
had been accustomed to send there for bright and expert young women
reporters to do virtually all the work of running his newspaper.
Newspaper women are not plentiful in Canada. The fare to Jamaica is,
or was then, about $55. Mr. Campbell must have turned all these things
over in his mind as he looked at this latest product of his native
land, a green, green girl of seventeen, whose promise that she would
"look older next day," when her "hair was done up," carried little
reassurance as to her intelligence or ability.
He did a lot of "cussing" of our common friend in Canada. Finally
he said that he would take me over to the Myrtle Bank Hotel, where
accommodations had been arranged for me, and we could talk the matter
over in the morning.
While he was getting his stick and hat, the latter a green-lined
helmet, I couldn't resist looking at some of his books. He caught me
doing this, and asked me gruffly if I had ever read anything. I said:
"Yes, Dickens, George Eliot, and Sir Walter Scott; and I've read
Huxley and Darwin, and lots of books on astronomy to my father, who is
very fond of that subject." As he made no comment, nor seemed at all
impressed by my erudition, I added proudly: "My father's an Oxford man,
and a descendant of the family of Sir Isaac Newton."
There was some legend to this effect in our family. In fact, the
greatness of my father's people had been a sort of fairy-story with us
all, and we knew that it was his marriage with mama that had cut him
off from his kindred. My Jamaica employer, however, showed no interest
in my distinguished ancestry. He took me roughly by the arm, and half
leaning upon, half leading me, hobbled with me out into the dark street.
It was about nine o'clock. As we approached the hotel, which was only
a short distance from the office of _The Lantern_, it pleased me as a
happy omen that somewhere within those fragrant, moonlit gardens a
band began to play most beautifully.
Mr. Campbell took me to the room of the girl whose place I was to take,
and who was also from Quebec. She had already gone to bed, but she rose
to let me in. Mr. Campbell merely knocked hard on the door and said:
"Here's Miss Ascough. You should have met her," and angrily shoved me
in, so it seemed to me.
Miss Foster, her hair screwed up in curl-papers, after looking at me
only a moment, said in a tired, complaining voice, like that of a sick
person, that I had better get to bed right away; and then she got into
bed, and turned her face to the wall. I tried to draw her out a bit
while undressing, but to all my questions she returned monosyllabic
answers. I put out the light, and crept into bed beside her. The last
thing she said to me, and very irritably, was:
"Keep to your own side of the bed."
I slept fairly well, considering the oppressiveness of the heat, but I
awoke once when something buzzed against my face.
"What's that?" I cried, sitting up in bed.
She murmured crossly:
"Oh, for heaven's sake lie down! I haven't slept a wink for a century.
You'll have to get used to Jamaica bugs and scorpions. They ought to
have screens in the windows!"
After that I slept with the sheet over my head.