Susan Proudleigh

by Herbert George De Lisser

BOOK III

CHAPTER I
THE FAMILY ARRIVES

“This hill really hard to climb, an’ de cramps is troubling me feet so much that it make me feel funny,” said Mr. Proudleigh dolorously.

“The longest journey must hend at last,” his sister consolingly observed, as Mr. Proudleigh halted in the middle of the steep path and gazed upwards at the height which yet remained to be climbed.

“If you did know you couldn’t walk it, pupa, you shouldn’t come,” said Catherine irreverently. “Old people shouldn’t try and do what them know them can’t do.”

“Y’u don’t have no feelings for you’ poor ole father, Kate,” replied Mr. Proudleigh sternly. “If I was a young gal, I would treat the old folkses respectably. There is a commandment in de Bible which say that forty she bear destroy the children that mock at Elijah, and——”

“You are misquoting de Scripture, Jim,” cried his sister; “an’ though Kate should treat you respectfully, which is your own daughter, yet I really thinks you should make an endeavour to reach Susan house before night come down.”

Mr. Proudleigh groaned, but struggled manfully forward. After the party had toiled slowly upwards for another couple of minutes they saw coming towards them two young Americans busily engaged in conversation. When these drew near enough Mr. Proudleigh accosted them, giving them his favourite military salute.

“Gentlemen,” he panted, “can you direct de old man to where Mrs. Susan Mackenzie live? De Lord will bless y’u ef you can render——” But the young men had passed on without even looking at him.

“Well, what manners!” exclaimed Mr. Proudleigh. “Nobody ever treat me like dat before!” With this remark he made a movement as if he would sit down by the roadside, perhaps for the purpose of reflecting on the discourteous treatment just received.

But Catherine was obdurate. “You can’t sit down, pupa,” she insisted, with something of Susan’s severity. “You got to try an’ walk it, even if you tired. An’ don’t ask any more American the way to Susan’s house, for them not going to answer you, an’ it is not to be supposed that them can know where everybody live. If we see a man from Jamaica we can ask him; but we not goin’ to meet anybody if we loiter here.”

Again Mr. Proudleigh groaned, and again he feebly tottered forward, too exhausted now to indulge in any further observation.

Presently they came to more level ground; as they reached this they saw yawning, to their left, a tremendous chasm, into the depths of which they plunged their eyes affrighted, for they had had no idea of what they would come upon. The three of them halted simultaneously, Mr. Proudleigh delighted with any excuse to pause for a moment. They were accustomed to the steep precipices of Jamaica, declivities of a thousand feet and more, with almost sheer perpendicular walls, vast openings in the earth, to peer down into which might make one sick and dizzy. But this was different.

On either side of the great Cut had been carved gigantic terraces, a sort of giant’s stairway, and along the whole length of these terraces, as far as their eyes could reach, were railway lines, and along these lines long trains were passing continuously, and men were everywhere below, moving up and down, and looking like pygmies in the distance.

It was but a small section of the Culebra Cut, and not the busiest, that Mr. Proudleigh and his womenfolk saw that afternoon. Little given as they were to speculation or to thinking, about things that did not directly concern them, they perceived that a great mountain had been cleft in twain by the hand of man, and the wonderful signs of intense energy that the busy scene below presented could not fail to impress them. But not for long. Mr. Proudleigh was weary, and so was more intent just then upon finding out where Susan lived than upon admiring the work that was being carried on before his eyes. Miss Proudleigh, on the other hand, perceived a comparison between the dividing of Culebra Hill and the parting of the waters of the Red Sea for the safe passage of the escaping Israelites. The latter she naturally approved of. But this work on the hill afflicted her mind with misgivings.

“If the Lord did intend the hill to cut in two,” she said, as they resumed their walk, “He would have cut it Himself. But now man think he can improve God’s handiwork, an’ p’rhaps he is only provoking the Lord to wrath.”

“That is so,” her brother agreed; “dis Canal may bring a judgment. If them offer me a job on it, I won’t teck it! What them want to dig out all dis dirt for? I remember that when the Car Company was layin’ de electric car line in Kingston, I dream one night——”

“You will have to both sleep an’ dream out here to-night, sah, if you go on talkin’ foolishness an’ don’t hurry up!” exclaimed Catherine, now thoroughly impatient. “If them didn’t commence diggin’ the Canal, Susan wouldn’t married, an’ you would now be in Jamaica instead of here.”

Viewed as a contributory cause of Susan’s good fortune, Mr. Proudleigh instantly agreed that there was a great deal to be said for the Canal. He would have explained its good points at length, but Catherine absolutely refused to listen. In silence, therefore, they continued upon their way.

They could already see before them a number of wooden buildings, one, two, and three storeys high; it was obvious to them that they were now approaching a town of no inconsiderable size.

They saw people too, and they gladly observed that some of these were coloured men. Catherine undertook to question one of them. Did he know Mrs. Mackenzie? He did not, but thought that Catherine would easily find the person she was seeking if she inquired at the quarters where the coloured people lived. These were a little farther away, and there was nothing for it but that they should proceed thither, without delay.

Mr. Proudleigh would have protested, but even he realized that protests would be of no avail. Happily, they had not a long distance to go. And when the old man caught sight of the neat verandaed wire-screened cottages provided for the skilled coloured employees of the Canal Commission, his spirits revived wonderfully. Catherine soon found some one who knew where Susan lived. This man was kind enough to guide them to the place.

It was a four-roomed single-storey house, built upon high foundations and provided with a comfortable little veranda. Though Susan’s relatives had been expecting to find her comfortably situated, this house was distinctly superior to anything they had imagined she would have. Mr. Proudleigh immediately calculated that in Jamaica its rental value would be at least two pounds a month, and the class of persons who could afford to live in such residences were, from his point of view, very well off indeed. As the front door and windows were closed, Catherine timidly knocked at the door. “Come in,” said a voice, which, they at once recognized.

They opened the door and entered.

Susan was sitting in a rocking-chair, sewing something that looked like a waist. As she caught sight of her visitors she started up with an exclamation.

“Kate! Papee! What’s the matter? Why you come?”

The persons thus addressed faced her a little confusedly. Miss Proudleigh remained in the rear, thus discreetly leaving it to the others to bear the brunt of Susan’s questioning.

“Me dearest daughter!” exclaimed Mr. Proudleigh, evading any direct reply just then by a magnificent display of paternal solicitude, “I can’t tell you how you’ poor ole father is glad to see you! From you leave me in Jamaica I been fretting after you, an’ now to think dat I see you wid me own eye in your own mansion!”

He seated himself as he spoke, somewhat disconcerted to observe that Susan showed no inclination to kiss him, but still continued looking at him and at the others with a puzzled stare.

“What’s the matter?” she asked again. “Where is mammee an’ Eliza? Why y’u come here?”

“Mammee an’ Eliza quite well, Sue,” said Catherine. “Them both remain behind in Jamaica.” She paused, leaving it to the others to explain why they had come to Panama. She had followed her father’s example and sat down. So had Miss Proudleigh.

“The sea voyage was very rough, Susan,” remarked the latter lady, as though a recital of her sufferings would sufficiently explain her reason for coming to Panama, as well as relieve the obvious embarrassment of the situation. “I never was so sea-sick before. I couldn’t move for a whole day.”

“Nor me,” asseverated Mr. Proudleigh promptly. “I never sick like dat before. I thought I would vomit me heart out, an’ de more I sick, the more de vessel roll. But I comfort meself wid the reflections that I would soon see me own daurter again, who was married to a noble gentleman; an’ when I dwelted upon that, it sort of seem to me that I didn’t sick so much.”

He glanced at Susan’s face to see how this authentic account of the effect of fatherly affection on sea-sickness had appealed to her. Not very much encouraged by her look, he hurried on.

“I nearly died; nevertheless, thanks be to God, I survive me agonies, an’ now that I see you once more, I can die in peace. You remember dat old man in the Scriptures, Sue, who say, ‘Lord, now let Thy servant depart in peace’?——”

“You mean to tell me, pupa, that you only come here to see me, and then die afterwards?” demanded Susan.

“Well, not exactly, Sue, for I are not prepared fo’ death.”

“Then what y’u come for?”

Driven to his last ditch, Mr. Proudleigh determined to offer no defence, but to cast himself upon the enemy’s clemency.

“Sue,” said he pathetically, “you don’t appears to be glad to see me. But if it was you who did come to Jamaica, I would have killed the fatted calf for you.” This reference to the fatted calf was not only intended to convince Susan that she would have been welcomed by him, but also to indicate that bodily refreshment would be most acceptable at that moment.

Susan would not immediately take the hint. But she had by now recovered from her first feeling of astonishment and was beginning to be glad to see some of her people once more. She knew her father and her aunt, however; she was well aware that they would have written to tell her of their coming had they thought she would have approved of the reason for it. She was still suspicious; they had as yet explained nothing. She turned to Catherine with a view of getting at the bottom of the mystery at once, when her father, as if suddenly inspired, started out without further circumlocution on the perilous path of truth.

“The fact of de matter, Sue,” he said, “is that I did always want to come to Colon. An’ when I got you’ letter that say you was going to married, an’ receive the five pounds, for which God is goin’ to bless you, if Him don’t bless you already, I say to you’ mother: ‘I am goin’ to follow me daurter to Colon an’ keep her company, for she must be lonely.’ An’ I tell them to sell the things in the little shops, which was not doin’ too well since you lefted us, an’ I advise them all to come wid me. But you’ mother misjudge you, an’ say you wouldn’t like it; but I know you wouldn’t mind, for it is me that bring you up since you was born, an’ look after you, an’ train you in the way you should go, an’ I persuaded meself that you was not goin’ to be ungrateful. But you’ mother wouldn’t come, an’ Eliza had to stay wid her; but your aunt and Kate come with me, an’ they are sensible, for you always hear me say I would like to come to Colon, an’ if you didn’t want me to come you wouldn’t send five pounds for me in you’ letter.”

“Then you mean to tell me, pupa,” cried Susan, “that—that y’u come here to live in this house, an’ didn’t even write to tell me?”

“We wanted to give you a pleasant surprise, Sue,” said Miss Proudleigh, to whom prevarication did not appear as a heinous offence.

“You mean you know that I wouldn’t want you to come, so you keep it secret!” exclaimed Susan. “I never hear of such a madness before. What y’u going to do now? You can’t stay here: Mackenzie wouldn’t like it.”

Catherine had been fearing some such announcement. Now, in self-defence, she said, “I didn’t want to come, Sue.”

“But you are more all right than pupa an’ Aunt Deborah,” said Susan. “You are young an’ can work; an’ I don’t think Mackenzie would mind if you stay with me. But Aunt Deborah an’ papee shouldn’t come here at all, for them don’t have much use for old people in this country.”

“Hexcuse me, Susan,” said Miss Proudleigh with impressive dignity, “but I objects to being called old. I am only forty.”

“I thought you was fifty,” said Susan rudely.

“You right, Sue!” exclaimed Mr. Proudleigh. “I am sixty year of age, an’ I remember the very day you’ aunt was born. I don’t see why she want to hide ’er age; age is no disgrace, an’ if a ooman keeps herself respectfully she should have no concealment from her fambily. Now, when you’ aunt was born——”

Shocked by the desertion of Mr. Proudleigh at a moment when it was vital that the invading forces should present a solid front to the enemy, Miss Proudleigh deemed it advisable to leave the age question severely alone and adopt a pacific attitude before her brother should adduce the damaging testimony of days and dates against her. She cut him short with a diplomatic remark.

“I am not young an’ strong like you, Sue,” she said, with a propitiatory smile, “an’ the Lord have not blessed me like you, though I am not ungrateful for His manifold kindness. But I didn’t come here to live on you. Things is very hard in Jamaica, an’ as I know that you married an’ have influence over here, I thought as you might help me to get a little dressmakin’ or washing so as to keep me independent. I don’t want anything but work.”

“Nor me,” said Catherine sturdily. “Nobody can tell me that I can’t make a good living in Panama, though I couldn’t be a servant.”

Mr. Proudleigh said nothing. Now that the talk was of work, and he was actually in Panama, he did not care to remind anyone that while in Jamaica he had never lost an opportunity of proclaiming his readiness to earn his own living whenever the chance of so doing should present itself to him.

But Susan wasn’t thinking of his capabilities just then. In her aunt’s suggestion she saw a way out of the difficulty. “You can get plenty of washin’ if you want it,” she said quickly, “either up here or in Colon. You an’ pupa will ’ave to live together by you’self, but Kate can stop with me.”

“I prefer to go back to Colon,” said Kate. “I like what I see of it, an’ this place look dull.”

“It dull for true!” agreed Susan, “an’ though I would like you to stay with me, I know Colon livelier than up here.”

Mr. Proudleigh, who had been secretly hoping to spend at least some months in the comparative calm of Culebra, did not approve of the suggestion that he should live with his sister or that he should return to Colon. Nor did he like Susan’s reference to the dullness of the labour town in which she lived. It did not argue a contented mind. The house she was mistress of, the furniture she possessed, the leisure she evidently enjoyed seemed to him enough to make any woman happy for the rest of her life, especially if to all these things could be added the blessing of a father’s presence and words of cheer.

“You should be very comfortable, Sue,” he suggested. “A young married ooman like you shouldn’t have a thing to fret her.”

“Don’t you are now a member of society, Sue?” asked her aunt.

“Yes; I belong to de Baptist church up here, an’ I going to join the choir.”

“And don’t you’ husband treat you good?” inquired her father.

“Of course! I didn’t say him didn’t!”

This sharp answer, given in the form of a threatening question, checked at once the impending flow of Mr. Proudleigh’s interrogatory. But further to prevent any more personal inquiries, and remembering that her relatives must be hungry, Susan invited them into the dining-room, where they found a table covered with a clean cloth, a meat-safe, and a few chairs. She took some cold food out of the meat-safe and placed it before them, offering the older folk, in addition, a little Jamaica rum, which Mackenzie always kept in the house. This they drank at once, Mr. Proudleigh secretly hoping for a further supply of the same liquor. He expressed his astonishment at the thirst created by the Panamanian climate, then prepared himself to dine.

CHAPTER II
CATHERINE LEARNS SOMETHING

Susan was no longer annoyed with her people for their unexpected appearance. Now that it had been decided that they were to live by themselves and do something to earn their living, she felt glad that they had come to Panama. They would not be very far from her; she could go to see them fairly often; the old associations, severed when she left Jamaica, were renewed once more. With her elbows on the table and her entwined fingers supporting her chin, she watched them eat with a pleasant glow of hospitality. “Tell me all about home,” she said. “You ever see Maria?”

“No,” said Catherine; “but I meet Hezekiah one day, an’ him tell me that Maria hear that you married: somebody write from Colon to tell her. She will never get a man to put a ring on her finger. You ever see Tom an’ Jones since you married, Sue?”

“No; I don’t think them ever come up this way; an’ since I married, going eight weeks now, I never leave Culebra once.”

“Jones never write you?” asked her aunt.

“No! Him couldn’t do that. I have nothing more to do wid him.”

“I never did like dat young man,” said Mr. Proudleigh with grave deliberation. “He talk too much, an’ him always using big words dat I couldn’t understand. I never thoughted that you would be happy with him, Sue.”

“Did Jones ever do you anything, pupa?” asked Susan sharply.

“Me? No. Him couldn’t do me anyt’ing. I wouldn’t make him take a liberty wid me!”

“An’ when you used to borrow a shillin’ from him every now an’ then, behind my back, though you know you couldn’t pay him back, he ever refused you?”

This little matter of the loans Mr. Proudleigh had hitherto regarded as an entirely private business arrangement between Samuel Josiah and himself; indeed, he had always prefaced his request for a loan with a speech on the wisdom of not letting one’s left hand know what one’s right hand did. He had never failed to intimate clearly that Susan was one of those symbolical left hands that had always better be kept in ignorance of all important financial transactions between man and man. But now that, to his intense surprise, Susan mentioned his past obligations to Jones, he asserted with assurance, “I goin’ to pay him back every farden. I will write an’ send de money.” An excellent resolution, though he did not trouble to mention when he would write or where the money was to come from.

“Well, seeing that Jones was kind to you in Jamaica, I don’t see why y’u should say you don’t like him,” Susan continued. “We didn’t get on too well sometimes in Colon, for him was a little wild an’ he got into bad company. That is why I leave him an’ married Mackenzie. But I don’t ’ave anything to say against him, for him didn’t stint me in anything, an’ him never ill-treat me.”

“I always liked Mr. Jones, though I never borrow any money from him,” said Miss Proudleigh untruthfully, pleased at being able to get even with her brother for his recent attempt to establish her age at fifty. “He was always polite an’ gentlemanly.”

Mr. Proudleigh had in the meantime filled his mouth to its utmost capacity, with a view of showing that he could not without grave inconvenience take any further part in a conversation which was becoming unpleasantly personal. Catherine had finished eating. Seeing this, Susan invited her into the kitchen, on the excuse that she wished to prepare something for Mackenzie.

“You have it dull, Sue?” asked Catherine, as soon as the two found themselves alone.

“Lord, yes! Every day it is one thing over an’ over. I know some of de people here, but you can’t make a dance when you like, or ’ave much merriment.”

“But you have you’ husband.”

Susan twisted her mouth slightly, a facial contortion which Catherine interpreted as meaning that Mackenzie’s existence did not contribute materially to making life bright at Culebra.

“Mac is all right enough,” Susan explained, “but him is very quiet an’ serious.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she added:

“Jones was livelier.”

“Then why you leave Jones?”

Susan let the question pass.

“Marriage is dull,” she said: “you are not you’ own mistress. It is true you ’ave a honourable position, but what is the good of that if it don’t make you any happier?”

With unconscious inconsistency she continued. “Sam promised to marry me when we was at sea, but he wouldn’t do it afterwards. It would have been better for him if he did keep his word.”

Catherine was looking at her narrowly as she spoke. She saw quite clearly that Susan was not satisfied with her present situation. And yet she was in a position that hundreds would have envied.

“Perhaps if you did wait, Jones would have married you,” Catherine suggested.

“I don’t think so. Him was wild an’ foolish, an’ thought that I care for him so much that I wouldn’t leave him. If he was different I would be with him now, even if him didn’t married me.”

Catherine looked wise. “I always say it is better not to married too quick,” she observed; “for you may find you make a mistake, an’ then you can’t do nothing.”

But here Susan thought that perhaps she had said too much, even to her sister. So she remarked, with emphasis, that, after all, she was very comfortable, and that Mackenzie was kind to her and never quarrelled with her. “I don’t ’ave a word to say against him,” she asserted truthfully.

Then she and Catherine rejoined the others, for she was now expecting her husband at any moment.

He came in presently, glanced inquiringly at Susan, who was about to say who the strangers were, when Mr. Proudleigh, who for a week had been rehearsing a little speech he had prepared to greet Mackenzie with, stood up in haste and unceremoniously interrupted his daughter. The old man had been an Odd Fellow in his younger days, and had frequently figured as “chaplain” in the lodge. He now chose to regard Mackenzie as an embodied Odd Fellows Society, and forthwith addressed him as such:

“My noble king! When first I hear that you married Miss Susan, who is the best daurter I have, an’ when I hear about you from all de people who come back to Jamaica from here—for I can tell you you are well beknown—I say to meself: I will arise an’ never be happy till I see me son-in-law. An’ here I come, though sea-sickness nearly kill me, to welcome you into de fambily; an’ I can tell you at once that I are going to do everything to make you comfortable. We don’t acquainted well yet, but when we are acquaint——”

What would happen when the further acquaintanceship hinted at by Mr. Proudleigh should have developed, will never be known. For just then Mackenzie quietly put a stop to his oratory by remarking:

“So you are Sue’s father? I am glad to see you, sir,” and then shook hands with him.

He greeted Miss Proudleigh and Catherine with similar cordiality, assuring them that he was happy to see them. Then they all sat down.

“Come on a trip, or to do business?” he inquired of Miss Proudleigh, who somehow he took to be the leader of the party.

“Things being bad in Jamaica,” that lady replied, “I took a thought an’ came with me brother an’ niece to see if I could get a little work in Colon. I am a hard-working woman, an’ so long as I can make an honest living, I are satisfied.”

“Quite right,” said Mackenzie; “nothing like independence, ma’am. You goin’ to stop too, sir?” he asked Mr. Proudleigh.

“Well, yes,” said his father-in-law; “I thinks I will. I like up here well; it’s a nice climate.”

“Well, you can stop here a few days; glad if y’u would,” said Mackenzie hospitably, but this limited invitation finally put an end to Mr. Proudleigh’s lingering hope of being invited to stay for good. “I hope Sue been treating you good?” Mackenzie went on, “and that we have something nice fo’ supper. Sue, we must get some beer an’ spend a nice evening. It’s not all times we have friends from home.”

He asked to be excused while he went out to get the beer. Both Catherine and Miss Proudleigh concluded that he was a kind man, easily satisfied, and generous in a thoughtful, cautious sort of way. But Mr. Proudleigh felt that Mackenzie’s invitation to him implied a narrow and unappreciative spirit. Mr. Proudleigh already voted Mackenzie a failure as a son-in-law.

That night they sat up until late discussing the condition of Jamaica. From Mr. Proudleigh’s remarks, a stranger would have gathered that a perfectly peaceful island was just then on the eve of revolution. He did most of the talking, Mackenzie agreeing with what he said with all the politeness of a host.

For four days did the visitors remain at Culebra. Susan tried to prevail upon Catherine to stay with her for good, but that her sister would not do; she was bored at Culebra. She noticed that Susan and Mackenzie seemed to get on very well with one another, and that Mackenzie was apparently quite satisfied with his marriage. But she was convinced that Susan was not. “She don’t love him,” thought Catherine; “she don’t happy. Better she didn’t married.”

But though she felt sorry for Susan, she would not share her loneliness. She went with her father and her aunt to Colon.

CHAPTER III
THE MEETING

It had been arranged that Susan should go to see her people as soon as they had settled down in Colon: two weeks later she set out on the journey to the little town she knew so well and missed so much. She started in the forenoon, her plan being to spend the night in Colon and return to Culebra the next day. In less than two hours she arrived, and, taking a cab, drove to the house where her relatives now lived, they having written to give her the address.

She was effusively welcomed by them. They had two small apartments in one of the numerous tenement buildings of Colon. Miss Proudleigh, although preferring dressmaking as a more genteel occupation, had become a private laundress, as more money could be made that way. She had hired a girl to help her; particularly, to go for and to take home the clothes, for that neither she nor Catherine would consent to do. Catherine assisted with the ironing. They were pleased to find that they earned four or five times as much at this work as they would have done in Jamaica. This almost compensated for the menial character of the work. Mr. Proudleigh discovered elements of dignity in it. His only contribution was gratuitous advice.

Catherine had news for Susan.

“Guess who I meet in Colon, Sue?” was her first remark, after Susan had taken off her hat.

“Jones!” said Susan instantly.

“He an’ Tom. Them tell me all about the row, an’ Jones come here sometimes during the day an’ in the evening. Him may come here to-day,” she concluded, with a glance at her sister to see how she took the news.

Susan felt her heart leap as Catherine mentioned the possibility of Jones’s calling at the house while she was there. But she affected indifference.

“I don’t want to see him,” she said; “but it won’t matter.”

“Of course not,” observed her aunt, “for you are a lawfully married woman now.”

“An’ nobody can take dat from you,” Mr. Proudleigh insisted, as though some attempt to rob Susan of her married state was not at all unlikely.

“Nobody need try,” laughed Susan, pluming herself upon being Mrs. Mackenzie; “I have me marriage certificate.”

“That is a very good thing to have,” Mr. Proudleigh agreed. “But y’u needn’t fret that Jones won’t treat you respectful in dis house: he have to! But I must tell you, Sue, that him is a very decent young man. He confine to me all his troubles; an’ I must really tell you that I thinks y’u treat him hard, for he is a noble young man.”

From these remarks Susan gathered that Jones was once more advancing to her father small loans, to be repaid at a hypothetical future date. The old financial relations had been re-established between the two men. But she was not displeased to hear her father speak highly of Samuel. She did not even resent the old man’s mild reproach.

When twelve o’clock came, she found herself anxiously wondering whether Jones would call that day. From twelve to two o’clock he would not be working; he would have ample time for a visit. Her aunt and Catherine were ironing on that part of the veranda upon which their rooms opened. She sat on the veranda talking to them, and every now and then she would glance down into the street to see if anyone she knew was passing. She saw some acquaintances, but always with a feeling of disappointment; as two o’clock drew near she grew silent, a change which Catherine was not slow to notice. When the hour struck and she had to recognize that there was no possibility of Samuel’s coming that afternoon, she made no effort to conceal from herself that she was bitterly disappointed: in her inmost heart, also, she confessed to herself that during all the journey from Culebra to Colon her great hope had been that she should see him, meet him. For what? She had her reason ready. She told herself that she wanted to know how he had taken her sudden departure, how he had fared in the intervening ten weeks, how he would greet her, and whether he had been captured by some other woman. When she reflected on the possibility of his having been captured—just as though his personal responsibility in that matter must be almost nil—she became fiercely antagonistic towards the unknown woman. She resented her existence, hated her bitterly.

During the rest of the afternoon she was rather moody; but when six o’clock came she grew cheerful and talkative once more. An hour passed, and then Catherine suggested that they should go for a walk about the town. She agreed.

As they went along, Susan peeped into all the cafés that they passed. She well knew the old favourite haunt of Samuel, and she led her sister past it; but, though the doors were wide open as usual, she saw no sign of Samuel. They called on one or two of Susan’s friends, and to these the story of her marriage was related; her hearers had no doubt whatever that she had acted wisely in leaving Jones; there was but one opinion on her excellent good fortune. The congratulations she received heartened her greatly; it was much to be a married woman; now she knew she had done a sensible and proper thing. It was half-past nine when she and Catherine went back to the house.

“A stranger is upstairs,” said Catherine, as they ascended the steps; “that is not papee’s voice.”

Susan paused for a moment, her heart beating violently. “It is Jones,” she whispered.

Catherine listened. “Yes,” she said; “him must have been here a long time, for it is late already. Y’u not coming up?” she asked, for Susan was standing still.

Slowly Susan followed her sister. The latter entered the room first. Susan stepped in after her with a well-assumed air of indifference.

Some one rose. She heard his voice addressing her.

“Good evening, Mrs. Mackenzie. I hope I see you well? Your husband’s health is propitious, I presume?”

She was equal to the occasion. “Good evening, Mr. Jones. Yes, thank y’u, Mr. Mackenzie is quite well. He would ’ave sent you his compliments if he did know I would meet you.”

She sat down. Their eyes met.

“That don’t matter,” said Jones, most loftily. “Compliments are only words, an’ nobody don’t mean them. I am not sending anybody any compliments. I have no friends, Mrs. Mackenzie, an’ I compliment nobody. A man don’t know who to trust in this world.”

“Quite true, Mr. Jones, quite true,” observed Miss Proudleigh, who had never forgotten Susan’s reception of her at Culebra. “There is but one Friend who we can trust, an’ to Him we can take all our troubles. When man desert us an’ play us false, we can take them to the Lord in pr’yer.” In this way the good lady endeavoured to convey to Jones her opinion of Susan’s general behaviour.

Jones enjoyed Miss Proudleigh’s sympathy. He felt that he was amongst friends. He had helped them with his advice since they had been in Colon, and Mr. Proudleigh had confessed to him that in Mr. Proudleigh’s opinion Mackenzie was not fit to unloose the latchet of Samuel Josiah’s shoe. At that moment Susan was at a disadvantage.

He was looking at her narrowly. Her sojourn at Culebra had improved her: he did not think he had ever seen her look so well before. She was singularly attractive. Dressed in cool white, she faced him self-possessed, while on the third finger of her left hand gleamed a broad band of gold, the symbol of her new condition. Ever and again his eyes lingered on that ring. He hated it. But he determined to show he was indifferent, as indifferent as she appeared to be; in his most bombastic manner he resumed the conversation.

“I am thinkin’ of returning to me native land. The temperature of Panama is deleterious to my constitution, an’ they have no decent administration in the country. Some people, of course, are contented with it. If you kick some people it will please them. But Samuel Josiah Jones is of a different characteristic; besides, I am one of those men who can make a living in me own country, an’ I didn’t come here to pass all me life digging dirt for American people.”

“I don’t suppose anybody else come here fo’ good, either, Mr. Jones,” replied Susan sharply, feeling it incumbent upon her to defend her absent husband against all covert attacks. “I expect meself to go home before long.”

“Is Mac gwine to Jamaica, Sue?” asked her father quickly. “For, ef so, I wouldn’t mind takin’ a trip meself, an’ I could come back wid you.”

“I don’t know what Mackenzie is goin’ to do, papee,” answered Susan severely. “But perhaps, as you an’ Mr. Jones is so friendly, you can go wid him.”

“Oh, that’s all right!” exclaimed Jones. “I can take the old man. I have the cash, an’ no one ever say yet that Samuel Josiah was mean. When I am goin’, old massa, you can come along.”

“Thank y’u, me son!” Mr. Proudleigh burst out.

“You is the sort of young man I did want for me son-in-law.”

He had no sooner spoken the words than he regretted them. They expressed his true sentiments, but how would Susan take them? Catherine laughed.

“Wishes don’t alter facts,” said Miss Proudleigh sourly, “though some people, in spite of all they may pretends, would be glad if facts could be altered.”

Susan understood this remark and hated her aunt very thoroughly at that moment. “I suppose you been wishin’ for a lot of things you never get—eh, Aunt Deborah?” she said. “You must ’ave wished to get married for a long time before you got old, but I hear you never even had an intended.”

“What!” cried Mr. Proudleigh, before his sister could hurl the full force of her scorn at the offending Susan, “my dear daurter, you don’t know you’ aunt. You grow up an’ find ’er in religion, but she was a little devil when she was young. I remember one night me father half-murder her because she used to stay out late, an’ a young man beat her one day because she was carryin’ on wid another young man, while she was engage to de first one. But when she come near forty, of cou’se, an’ she see she was getting old, she teck to religion an’ becomes an example to you young people.”

“You are an infernal liar!” cried Miss Proudleigh fiercely, roused now to bitterest anger by this gratuitous detailing of her early history, and entirely forgetful of the virtue of Christian forbearance and godly conversation in her desire to maintain her claim to having always led a pure and spotless life. “Since you come to Colon I don’t know what come over you! All you seem to want to do is to make fun of me, an’ abuse me character; but as you remember so many things that never happen, you might as well remember dat it is me who is helping you to live in Colon, an’ not Susan.”

“This don’t need any quarrel,” observed Jones hastily. “If I did want to quarrel I could find plenty of reason, but I bear all the ill-treatment I receive in silence, being disposed thereto by an equanimitous attitude of mind.”

“That is the same like my attitude of mind,” peacefully remarked Mr. Proudleigh, “for if there is a man that don’t like confusion it is me. I didn’t mean to vex Deborah at all, an’ I beg to ask her pardon as she get offended by what I say. In fact, I don’t see how she should think I could want to insult me own sister before a perfec’ stranger like Mister Jones, an’ she is very wrong to think so. But it is because I am old an’ poor. Ef I was a young man, an’ earning me two pounds a week, all de sort of words dat everybody give me now I wouldn’t hear at all. But when a man is poor, dog can bark at him an’ him can’t say a word; so everybody take an advantage of me an’ tell me what them do for me, though them never remember what I do for them. However, I apologize to Deborah, an’ I excuse her, for she was always very ignorant.”

“When you thinkin’ of goin’ home, Mr. Jones?” asked Susan with a view to putting an end to the dispute between her aunt and father. She knew how spiteful Miss Proudleigh could be, and was well aware that if her usually mild parent was once thoroughly annoyed, the recital of his grievances and wrongs would form the main topic of all conversations for the next three or four days.

“I haven’t determined on a date hitherto, Mrs. Mackenzie,” Jones replied, “but I contemplate a speedy departure from these regions. If I wasn’t a man of strong mentality, all the sufferings I have had to put up with in Colon would drive me mad. But I have a solid brain, an’ what would kill some people passes by me like ‘the idle wind which I regard not.’ That is Shakespeare,” he explained.

“Well, it’s a good thing to be able to go home when y’u like, Mr. Jones, an’ you are an independent man with no responsibility. My ’usband have to work hard to keep his wife in comforts, so he can’t travel about like you, an’ go out to see his friends an’ enjoy himself every night. Some people like to ’ave everything, you know, without any responsibility, but Mackenzie is different.”

“I don’t know anything about your husband, Mrs. Mackenzie,” Jones answered superciliously. “He and I was never friends in Jamaica: we didn’t walk in the same street at all. Of course, when a man come to a place like Colon, he get to know a lot of people he would never know at home. I moved in good society in Jamaica. The very night before I leave for Colon I was entertained by a few high-toned educated friends of mine, an’ if I had paid attention to what one of them say to me, I wouldn’t have been made a fool of here. But I was always of a confiding an’ trustful disposition, an’ put a lot of faith in females.”

A sarcastic laugh from Miss Proudleigh, directed at Susan, welcomed this remark. But Susan took no notice of it.

It was now past ten o’clock, and Catherine was repeatedly yawning. Jones rose to leave.

“This has been an unexpected pleasure, Mrs. Mackenzie,” he said, as he bade Susan good night. “If we do not meet again, you may say to Mr. Mackenzie that y’u saw me here in excellent spirits.” He flourished his hat and bowed as he spoke, then marched with stately step out of the room.

“Dat is a perfec’ gen’leman,” said Mr. Proudleigh.

Susan thought so too.

---

After that visit to Colon, Culebra became more distasteful than ever to Susan. In spite of her possession of “comforts,” her life seemed to her to be singularly uninteresting; she felt that she had nothing new to expect, she experienced no pleasant thrill of anticipated adventures; she loved excitement, and at Culebra, except for the accidents, there was nothing like excitement to look forward to. She might have children. But though she possessed the instinct of motherhood as fully as any other normally developed woman, the coming of children seemed to her to be a mere matter of course, something too that would bind her down more tightly to her humdrum existence as Mackenzie’s wife. She began to regret even the days in Jamaica when she had the shop—days that now seemed so very far away, though only a few months had passed since she had come to Panama.

She had no doubt now, she no longer strove to conceal from herself, that she had made a mistake in marrying Mackenzie. He was a good husband, a steady man; but he was over forty and very uninteresting. She could not even quarrel with him: he did nothing to provoke a quarrel. If she was petulant, he was patient; if she became a little unreasonable, he yielded with a good humour which she instinctively felt was not the result of weakness. She stood in some awe of him; as a friend he had been altogether desirable, but now as her husband she discovered that his disposition was alien to hers; she respected but could not care for him.

She could not even complain that he restricted her liberty, for he did not. She was free in reason to go where she liked; if she had not left Culebra but once since her marriage, that was not because she could not have done so had she wished. The situation, clearly, was hopelessly annoying. As some one had to be blamed for it, she blamed Jones.

It was all his fault. He should have acted differently. It was not because he had refused to marry her that she had left him. It was because he had taken to drinking, gambling, and bad habits generally; because he had made himself objectionable and might at any moment have found himself within the four walls of a prison. She had chosen the best way of escape open to her, and everybody agreed that she had acted wisely. She was in no way at fault.

But this self-vindication did not tend to console her, for, by an apparently perverse arrangement of things, she was the sufferer while Jones was as free as air. Susan was too intelligent not to feel that, however tragically Jones might conduct himself just now, he was likely to find consolation as time went on. She believed profoundly in her lasting influence over every man who had fallen in love with her; there was Tom’s case as an illustration. But she doubted whether that influence would keep anyone like Jones, from falling into the clutches of other women, especially as she was married and separated from him for ever. “The same way he could do without me before I know him, he will do without me now,” she thought ruefully; and this was the more certain if he should return to Jamaica. And if he did return, what chance would there be of his coming back, in a hurry at any rate?

Besides, even if he did come back, how would that help her? They now met as acquaintances merely. She addressed him as Mr. Jones. He spoke to her as Mrs. Mackenzie. Everything was as it should be from the point of view of propriety: he treated her as a married woman ought to be treated. Yet she would have much preferred a bitter quarrel with him, an open flinging of reproaches from one to the other, passionate upbraiding. Why, she did not exactly know, save that the sarcastic politeness of both, and the thinly veiled innuendoes they had indulged in at her relatives’ house on the night of their meeting, seemed to her a mere sham: they had not spoken to one another as they would have liked to speak. They had merely acted a part.

She wondered if all married women felt, as she did, that marriage was an awful bore. And she wondered if her endurance could stand the strain of that boredom for years.

CHAPTER IV
THE NIGHT OF THE FIRE

“Mackenzie,” said Susan one evening, some four days after she had been to Colon, “you ever see Jones?”

“No,” he replied, “I don’t think him ever come this way. An’ I never hear anything of him; perhaps he gone back home.”

“I don’t think so,” Susan said, “for Kate tell me when I was in Colon this week that Jones go to see them sometimes. I was thinking that maybe him will get married himself.”

“Cho!” laughed Mackenzie, “Jones is never goin’ to do anything. Some girl may marry him if she really want to get married, and can take him to a church, but it will be she who will do it. You take my word for it, some day Jones is going to go back to Jamaica widout a cent in his pocket. He will have nothing to show for all the time him spend here.”

“I think so meself,” agreed Susan; “he don’t steady at all like you, Mac.”

This direct compliment, at the expense of Jones too, pleased Mackenzie not the less because he felt it was deserved. He smiled complacently.

“I always thought from the first time I see you in Colon, Sue,” he said, “that you was too good for a fellow like Jones. He has his good points, for he can work hard an’ he know his work. But him like to show off too much, an’ he never know his own mind.”

“You think I should speak to him if I ever meet him? You see, he may go to see me family when I am there, an’ I wouldn’t like to speak to him if you didn’t like it.”

“Why, of course you can speak to him; I don’t see why you shouldn’t. He don’t do you nothing, an’ I don’t see why he should vex because you leave him to get married. If I see him meself I will speak to him: an’ if him don’t choose to answer it will be all the same to me.”

“You right, Mac. If you hold out the hand of friendship an’ Jones don’t choose to take it, that’s ‘up to him’ as the American people here say. An’ I will follow your advice and speak to him if I ever see him, for I don’t bear anybody malice.”

“Malice is foolishness,” said Mackenzie emphatically. “If I was to meet Jones up here I would invite him to come an’ spend a evening in me house. I don’t know if him would come, but that would show him that I have no bad feelings towards him.”

She said nothing to her husband of her having already met Samuel Josiah. But now she felt that she could with a clear conscience be polite to Jones when next she should see him; and perhaps, after that meeting, she might tell Mackenzie of it . . . that would be wise. She was going to see her people again, but she must not seem in any hurry to do so; she must force herself to wait. She allowed two weeks to elapse before she went, taking care to let Catherine know by letter beforehand the day on which to expect her.

She arrived in Colon in the afternoon, and that evening Jones came round to the house. He expected to meet her.

For a little while they discussed indifferent topics; then suddenly Susan gave a sharp turn to the conversation and surprised everybody by saying:

“I hear that I have to congratulate you, Mr. Jones.”

“Me? What for?” he asked.

“I hear you goin’ to get married.”

“You don’t say!” exclaimed Mr. Proudleigh, immediately becoming interested. Jones had been coming so often to see them, and had been so obliging in the matter of the loans, that the old gentleman had begun to think that a match might be arranged between the young man and Catherine.

“I never hear of it before,” said Jones, “but people always know a man’s business better than he know it himself.” (Mr. Proudleigh’s face lighted up with pleasure.) “I have nothing more to do with any woman, Mrs. Mackenzie, an’ don’t intend to.” (Here Mr. Proudleigh’s hopes fell to zero—a common enough occurrence.) “Women do me enough already in this world. I have been fooled once, but that was not my fault. If I allow anybody to fool me again, however, I would be more than stupid.”

Susan’s question had been deliberately put for the purpose of finding out if Samuel’s affections were still unengaged. She was therefore delighted with his reply. But she answered to the point. “I didn’t know you ever was married before, Mr. Jones, so you couldn’t have been fooled.”

“P’rhaps it is a very good thing him was never married,” observed Miss Proudleigh caustically, leaving her meaning to be understood by Susan.

“Perhaps so,” replied Susan promptly, “for if Mr. Jones was married him might have all his wife’s old relations wanting to live on him.”

“It’s not a matter of relations,” said Jones, “for when I put me hand into me pocket, I can always find money there to help anybody. But females are not to be trusted; and as I don’t take away anybody’s wife, I wouldn’t like anybody to take away mine.”

“I agree wid you, Mister Jones,” said Mr. Proudleigh; “but you don’t have no occasion to worry you’self, for as you not married, nobody can teck away you’ wife.” He laughed as he ceased, being proud of his logic.

“Well, marriage is not everything,” said Susan; “but as I hear that Mr. Jones was goin’ to get married—I forget who tell me—I thought I would mention it so as to congratulate him. But since it isn’t true, I congratulate him all de same.”

“I thank you kindly,” said Jones with a sweeping bow, “and without indulging in any process of vituperation, I venture to submit that some people would have a better life with Samuel Josiah Jones than with other men I could mention. Some married people have it dull, you know. Now I am a sport, an’ anybody who is along with me must enjoy themself.”

Susan immediately credited her aunt with having been talking about her to Jones. Her suspicions were just. Yet Jones had said enough to indicate that he was still regretting her desertion of him, and this established a sympathetic understanding between them: they were both partners in misfortune.

“What that word, ‘vituperation,’ mean, Mister Jones?” inquired Mr. Proudleigh, who was interested in polysyllables but sometimes found that Jones’s terms left him bewildered in a maze of hopeless conjecture.

“It means,” said Jones, beginning an explanation which might have left the old man no wiser than before, when a shout in the street attracted their attention, and they heard a babble of voices and the sound of hurrying feet.

“Fire!” cried Mr. Proudleigh, moving quickly towards the veranda. “What a place Colon is for fire! Almost every week dere is one.”

“They say the American doctors burn down the houses when they can’t cure the fever any other way,” said Jones, hurriedly following Mr. Proudleigh to the veranda.

“The people burn it down themself when them want to rob,” was Miss Proudleigh’s hypothesis, which probably did account for many of the fires which afflicted Colon.

From the veranda they could see a red glare against the north-western sky, and a great volume of smoke surging upwards. The glare grew brighter every moment; denser became the smoke.

“It’s a big fire!” cried Susan excitedly, “an’ nearly all the house in Colon is of wood. It may burn down de whole town!”

“I gwine to see it!” Mr. Proudleigh exclaimed. “I never miss a fire yet.” He hurried into the room for his hat, spurred to unusual activity by the prospect of enjoying one of his favourite amusements.

“But suppose it come this way, pupa?” cried Catherine in a frightened tone of voice. “What about we clothes and other things?”

But Mr. Proudleigh was already half-way down the stairs, and calling out loudly to ask if they were not going with him. Miss Proudleigh refused to move, not being willing to leave her room to the mercy of wandering thieves. Catherine, after a moment’s hesitation, ran after her father. Jones and Susan went out together.

The street below was crowded. Half the people in Colon were running towards the scene of the conflagration, shouting “Fire!” with all the power of their lungs. Cabs tore through the narrow thoroughfare, mounted men appeared from nowhere and began to urge their horses through the hurrying throng with a fine disregard of other people’s safety. The excitement was contagious; it infected Susan and Jones, who, hand in hand, began to run also, immediately losing sight of Catherine and Mr. Proudleigh and thinking only of themselves. Soon they came to the spot where a huge crowd was collected near a block of wooden buildings, some of which were now blazing furiously. Fortunately there was no wind, so the sparks were not carried to any considerable distance. But they rose to a tremendous height in the heated air, and at that moment thousands of anxious people were wondering whether a single house would be left standing in Colon when morning dawned.

The fire brigades were on the spot, the town brigade as well as that from Christobal. The men worked like demons. Long silver streams poured upon the blazing buildings; uniformed men in shining helmets swarmed up the sides of the doomed structures, splintering and smashing the woodwork with their axes, giving fierce battle to the yellow monster which leaped from roof to roof, roaring dully as if glorying in destruction. The Panamanian police were everywhere, the little fellows running about and clubbing out of the way whoever ventured too near the burning houses. Soon it was seen that the flames were threatening to leap across a narrow street, the houses in which were already warping and blistering under the terrible heat. If those houses should once ignite, it would be with the greatest difficulty that they could be saved.

A sudden scattering of the crowd indicated that the police were impressing men to help them fight the fire. They seized every able-bodied man they could lay their hands upon, tolerating no show of resistance; people on the outskirts of the crowd, knowing that an unpleasant time would be in store for them if once they were impressed, were hastily making off, and Jones, who was among them, thought it eminently wise to follow their example as quickly as possible. Pulling Susan by the hand, he hurried away. When he thought that he had put sufficient ground between himself and the police he halted. From where they now stood they could still see the flames fighting their way upwards, and the huge masses of heavy black smoke spreading like a pall over the town.

“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.

CHAPTER V
THE ANONYMOUS LETTER

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.

CHAPTER VI
SAMUEL’S DETERMINATION

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.

CHAPTER VII
WHAT HAPPENED AT CULEBRA

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.

CHAPTER VIII
SUSAN’S LUCK

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.

Rising and falling in measured cadence, the sound floated far away, and men and women in other houses listened, thinking perhaps of the days when they too had watched beside the corpse of some one dear to them. Perhaps their memory was touched, and they thought of a grave somewhere on a mountain-side, under the shade of rustling trees, in some far-off West Indian island which they called home.

The singing ceased; then another hymn, even more pathetic than the first, was started: All took it up, singing softly:

“Days and moments quickly flying

Blend the living with the dead,

Soon shall you and I be lying

Each within his narrow bed.”

A picture of Mackenzie lying alone in the room, cold, motionless, swathed in dripping cerements; a picture of him as he went forth that morning, cheerful, confident, strong, with never a thought of death in his mind, rose before Susan’s mental vision.

She broke down and cried.

Jones wiped his eyes repeatedly.

Others were crying quietly. For the first time that night they felt themselves to be strangers in a strange land, men and women who had come to seek a livelihood in a foreign country from which, for all they knew, they might never return.

When Susan lifted her head a little while after, her eyes caught those of Jones. Each knew what the other was thinking of. In the forenoon of that same day they had wronged Mackenzie in thought, almost in act, and he had died without knowing it. But did he not know? Did he not know now? Neither one could boast of being free from superstition: what if Mackenzie’s spirit were near, reading all that was passing in their minds and hearts? Susan shuddered. Samuel’s heart failed him in spite of his desperate inward struggle with his fears. They lowered their eyes again.

Twelve o’clock came, and most of the people rose to leave. Only a few would remain until the morning. Some, however, would return in time for the funeral. They all endeavoured to persuade Susan to go and lie down, and try to sleep, but she was afraid. She might dream. In her sleep Mackenzie’s spirit might accuse her!

So all night she and Samuel sat in the same room, wakeful, alert, thinking over and over again of what had taken place between them a few hours before, and of the tragedy in Culebra Cut.

At six o’clock in the morning Miss Proudleigh began to set things in order, and, shortly after, the men who were looking after Mackenzie’s funeral arrived. They worked quickly: by seven the body was in the coffin, which was lifted into the sitting-room uncovered, in order that all who knew Mackenzie might take last leave of him. Flowers were scarce at Culebra, but the mourners had gathered a few. These they strewed over the corpse, and the evergreens they had brought were arranged here and there about the room, giving to it a fresh and verdant appearance.

One by one the men and women who had come to attend the funeral stepped up to the coffin, gazed a little while at the dead man’s face, and turned away. Then the minister, a young Englishman connected with Jamaica, who had followed the people to Panama that they might still be kept in touch with the religion of their own country, arrived. The people made way for him respectfully, glancing at him with pride and admiration; he went up to Susan and shook hands with her sympathetically, speaking a few words which he meant to be consoling, but feeling, not for by any means the first time in his life, how poorly words express real sympathy. Then he was taken possession of by Miss Proudleigh, who led him to a chair which she had covered, for no very obvious reason, with a white lace curtain.

“Ready?” he asked her quietly, book in hand.

“Yes, minister; but” (she hesitated a little) “don’t it is right to read the will first?”

“That depends,” said the parson. “Does Mrs. Mackenzie want it read? Is there a will?”

Miss Proudleigh looked at Susan inquiringly. It was not usual to read the will before a funeral; but Miss Proudleigh feared that if she did not make use of the present opportunity she might never know what Mackenzie had left, and whether he had bequeathed his property to Susan alone or not. As for Susan, she was not anxious that her private affairs should be exposed, but her aunt was now the predominant person in the house, and she did not want to appear secretive. “My husband used to keep his papers in his own trunk,” she said; “I will look.”

In a minute or two she returned with a document which she thought must be the will; which it was. Miss Proudleigh took it from her and handed it to the minister, asking him to read it.

So the will was read. A small house in Kingston, ten acres of land in St. Andrew (not far from Kingston), a life insurance policy worth a hundred pounds, and all the money lodged in Mackenzie’s name in a bank in Panama—everything was left to Susan. His will had been made three weeks after Mackenzie’s marriage, and Susan knew that he had at least eighty pounds in the bank. She was well-off! That was her thought as the parson ceased reading. “It is my old luck!”—the words formed themselves in her mind: her good fortune, her luck, never seemed to desert her for long. She was a woman with property, money. She saw in the faces of the people in the room that they were surprised that Mackenzie had left so much.

Miss Proudleigh was conscious of a feeling of resentment, born of envy. But with it struggled a feeling of pride: she was glad that she had asked that the will should be read. For was she not related to all these riches; was it not she who had directed the funeral arrangements in the house of a man who had left his widow in so comfortable a position? There was dignity in her look and voice as she said to the minister:

“Minister, will we proceed?”

The offices of the dead took up but little time. Six strong men lifted the coffin, and, headed by the minister, the funeral cortège moved slowly out of the house.

Susan and her father walked immediately behind the coffin, the rest of the mourners following without regard to precedence. Mr. Proudleigh’s thoughts were not of an unpleasant nature. Never had he heard of any young widow like Susan possessing so much riches. He concluded that she must be worth hundreds of pounds, and to a mind which, for some years, had been content to think financially in terms of sixpence, shilling and eighteenpence, a hundred pounds meant nearly as much as a million. Never had he thought so highly of Mackenzie, never had he felt so pleased with Susan’s marriage. Jones? What was Jones compared with Mackenzie? When would a man like Jones ever be able to accumulate a fortune? He was more likely to waste one; and here Mr. Proudleigh began seriously to think that Susan ought to be warned against having anything to do with Samuel Josiah in the future. Mr. Proudleigh saw his duty as a father plain before him, but gravely doubted whether he should ever muster enough courage to perform it. However, he, as Susan’s father, a parent too who had always been tender and considerate, should now be comfortable for life. He marched bravely on, forgetting to be fatigued. Panama was not such a bad place after all, if you knew just when to leave it.

Catherine wondered at her sister’s luck. She was not of an envious disposition; she felt quite able to make her own way in the world. But Susan seemed to be extraordinarily lucky; even incidents that at first appeared unfortunate were afterwards seen to have contributed to Susan’s good fortune. Catherine wondered why this was so. She had been told at school that there was no such thing as luck, that one only got what one worked for or deserved. She was by no means assured that that was true.

And Jones? He too since the reading of the will had realized that a great change had taken place in Susan’s financial situation. She was actually better off than he was—very much better off. She might care for him. But he could not forget that she had left him to marry Mackenzie, and only yesterday had refused to desert Mackenzie for him. Now therefore that she knew herself to be independent, how would she act? Many men would be glad enough to marry her now: she could afford to wait, and to pick and choose. She was vain; she would try to make the most of her improved position. She was very lucky. But there seemed no end to his ill fortune.

Susan alone, during that procession to the cemetery, did not dwell on her good fortune. After her first thrill of pleasure on hearing the terms of the will, she had become depressed and sad: she was again realizing that Mackenzie’s kindness and thoughtfulness were of sterling worth. And he was dead, dead and gone for ever, this man who had done so much for her, and it was of him she thought. Soon they came to the cemetery. The funeral service was read, the grave filled, and Susan turned away, the one real mourner there that morning. But not the most demonstrative, for Miss Proudleigh, feeling that full justice had not been done to Mackenzie’s memory, burst into loud sobs when the last spadeful of earth was thrown upon the grave, and had to be led away by two unnecessarily sympathetic men.

CHAPTER IX
JONES SPEAKS IN THE PREDICATE

“What a lot of things happen to me since I come to Panama,” said Susan, as with her hands she smoothed out the black skirt, heavily trimmed with crape, which she wore.

“This is a world where y’u don’t know to-day what goin’ to happen to-morrow,” remarked her father, his tone suggesting that in better-regulated worlds one would know beforehand everything that was likely to occur.

“A few months ago I was only Susan Proudleigh,” the widow continued, “an’ I had to work for me living; now I am a widow and everybody respect me an’ sympathize with me.”

“You are more than a widder,” said Mr. Proudleigh; “you are a young ooman of property, an’ there is very few that can say de same thing.”

“For which we must be thankful,” Miss Proudleigh interposed. “Providence is always looking after the widow an’ the orphant; but sometimes they don’t deserve it, and that is why, peradventure, that some widows with their money go like butter against the sun. But Sue is not goin’ to be one of those.”

Since the reading of Mackenzie’s will Miss Proudleigh had come to see qualities in Susan which she had not been able to perceive during all the previous months she had lived in Panama. Cordial relations had therefore been re-established between the two, and Miss Proudleigh had now reverted to her long-ignored habit of seeing most things that concerned Susan from Susan’s point of view.

“I am glad y’u make up you’ mind to go back home, Sue, now that you not married any more, for the house which you’ husband, who is now in heaven, leave to you in Kingston, needs somebody to look after it, an’ you ’ave other property in Jamaica to see about. An’ you can’t trust no strange person to do it, for them will rob your eye out of you’ head; and if you take them to law the judge may tell you to make up the case peacefully, like that time when you bring up Maria. Therefore,” Miss Proudleigh concluded, “go and look after your business you’self.”

“I ’ave nothing more to do with court-house,” said Susan, “nor wid Maria and her mother either. They can’t trouble me again.”

“They have not troubled you at all,” said her aunt. “All their wickedness have been turned aside, an’ you have not dashed your foot against a stone. That is what I say from the first. You see what it is to ’ave faith?”

In her cheap black muslin dress (provided by Susan) Miss Proudleigh looked as though, by faith, she would be able to move mountains, if only she should determine to exert herself to that extent.

“Even Tom try to make mischief against me,” continued Susan, still bent upon recounting her experiences; “but he didn’t succeed any more than Maria an’ her mother.”

“Well, me dear daurter,” said Mr. Proudleigh, “dat was because I was always having y’u in me thoughts. I don’t know what you could do without me. Tom was a bad young man; but when I kneel down every night an’ thoughted about him, an’ pray dat some harm would befall him because he was tryin’ to disturb y’u, I felt that my pr’yer would be answered.”

“Anything happen to him?” asked Susan.

“Not exactly—yet,” replied her father; “but I hear this morning that him gone away to de capital with a female who used to beat her other intended; an’ don’t you see dat if she could beat one, she will do de same with Tom?”

Susan, knowing Tom as she did, thought it highly probable.

“Let him go about his business,” she said, thus dismissing Tom and his affairs from her mind. “I am sorry, Aunt Deborah, that you an’ Kate won’t come home with me; but of course you can do better here.”

Miss Proudleigh nodded affirmatively. “But next year, please God,” she said, “I will take a trip home to see how everybody is getting on.”

It was the ninth day after Mackenzie’s death. Susan had been allowed to remain for a few days in the house at Culebra, during which she had made arrangements for her departure from Panama. She had determined to go to Jamaica without delay, to see after her property there, and she was leaving to-morrow. But before going there was one function to be attended to; this was Mackenzie’s Ninth Night, the final taking leave of Mackenzie’s spirit, the last ceremony to be held in his honour. For this purpose she had come to Colon.

This Ninth Night is a survival of an African purification ceremony, the origin and meaning of which neither Susan nor her relatives knew. All that they did know was that the Ninth Night was a custom which it was not considered altogether proper to neglect, and yet which it was not considered altogether proper to observe after the manner of the lower classes. With these it tended sometimes to degenerate into an orgy; in Miss Proudleigh’s view it should only be a quiet prayer-meeting, a sort of love-feast, eminently respectable and edifying. The theory was that Mackenzie’s spirit, though ultimately destined for heaven, was for some nine days fated to hover near those who had been connected with him, and might continue so to do for years unless the Ninth Night ceremony was performed. This theory not being countenanced by the churches, Miss Proudleigh defended it by pointing out that the soul was not the spirit; and that though the soul went straight to heaven or to hell, after the decease of the body, the spirit, assuming the form of a ghost, might be unpleasantly present on earth. When this explanation was held to be unsatisfactory by some sceptic, Miss Proudleigh took refuge in asserting that it was all very well to scoff, but that plenty of people had seen ghosts and every one was afraid of them. Then she would instance the raising of Samuel’s spirit by the Witch of Endor, a fact which could only be got rid of by being dismissed as untrue.

On Ninth Nights both Susan and Catherine looked with some disrespect; they were of the younger generation. But Mr. Proudleigh stood up for them, not only on religious grounds, but because he knew from experience that much good cheer was provided at them, and many opportunities afforded for oratory. Therefore a Ninth Night was highly desirable. So Susan had decided to wait for the Ninth Night; and Jones, knowing that, had waited also, and had booked his passage by the same steamer in which she was going to Jamaica.

Susan and her people were now waiting for the guests. The room in which they sat was provided with a number of extra chairs; in the centre was a table covered with a white cloth; on the table were a few hymn-books and a Bible. The lamps were lighted, for it was already dark.

“Everything is prepared,” said Miss Proudleigh, after she had announced her intention of going to Jamaica on a visit in the following year. “The chocolate is good chocolate, an’ I parch ah’ grind the coffee meself.”

“You ’ave any rum?” inquired Mr. Proudleigh anxiously.

“Plenty. You think we could ask people to come an’ have a little quiet pr’yer and talk with us, and don’t treat them decently?”

“No,” agreed her brother heartily, and would have launched out into a lengthy account of those Ninth Nights at which he had not been treated decently, but that his sister refused him the chance of doing so.

“We have bread, an’ bun, an’ cake, an’ fish, cheese, bananas, an’ rum, an’ a bottle of whisky, an’ lemonade, besides coffee an’ chocolate,” recited Miss Proudleigh with pride. “Mackenzie can’t feel ashamed to-night!”

Mr. Proudleigh inwardly determined that, when the time came, he would make all these good things “look foolish.” He complacently disposed himself to wait for that happy hour.

Presently Catherine came in, accompanied by a tall young man of her own complexion, who appeared to be very attentive to her. These were followed by other persons, and then the ceremony of the evening began.

Miss Proudleigh suggested a hymn, which was sung; then she volunteered to lead in prayer. This she did, taking the opportunity of reminding her audience, under guise of a general supplication, that she was not as other women were, but might more properly be likened to the ancient Deborah or to some other equally superior character, having been strenuous in following the light, and having, beyond the shadow of a doubt, set a noble example to all with whom she had come in contact.

She prayed for Susan, Catherine, and for all her other relatives, and she informed the angelic host that she knew that Mackenzie was in heaven, enjoying all the felicities prepared for the righteous before the foundations of the world were laid. Then she proceeded to review the events of the times as she had heard of them, and asked earnestly that peace should be established on earth. She did not forget the King and all the Royal Family. Jamaica was included as a place which sadly needed regeneration. It seemed as if she would never cease, and her brother, who himself had prepared a nice little prayer for the occasion, began to feel jealous; Deborah had touched upon every subject he had intended to deal with, and more besides. Susan felt decidedly bored. The guests began to shuffle uneasily on their knees. Warned by certain slight though ominous sounds, Miss Proudleigh at last brought her eloquence to a close. As she rose from her knees she began chanting the Hundredth Psalm. Everybody joined her. At that moment Samuel Josiah Jones entered the room.

Jones had left Culebra immediately after the burial of Mackenzie, and, yielding to the urgent advice of Miss Proudleigh, had not returned thither to see Susan. He had written to her, and had received in reply a brief letter telling him that she was going to Colon, to her relatives, as soon as her affairs at Culebra were settled. It was from Mr. Proudleigh that he had learnt when Susan was leaving for Jamaica. Susan’s aloofness, he thought, might be due to grief, or to the circumstance that her husband was only a few days dead, or to her improved financial position, and a determination, the result of that improved position to have nothing more to do with Samuel Josiah. Well, he would find out what it was. No woman should say that her money frightened him. He could always earn a good living, either in Jamaica or in Panama; in a few years he could save as much as Mackenzie had saved, though he did not see any good reason why he should.

All eyes were turned on him as he entered the room and deliberately asked a youth to let him have his chair. The youth had been sitting next to Susan. Jones installed himself in his place.

“Sorry I am late,” he whispered, wishing at the same time that the people would sing more loudly. Miss Proudleigh seemed to divine his wish. Her voice shrilled out astonishingly.

“You are quite in time,” said Susan quietly.

“No; I miss you every minute I am not with y’u.”

“Sh-h. People will hear y’u.”

“It is all in camera.”

“You mustn’t talk, Mr. Jones.”

The “Mr. Jones” was disconcerting. But he would not be repulsed.

“I want to talk to you,” he said.

“Later on,” she answered, and would not pursue the conversation.

Hymn followed hymn, and the good things so freely provided by Miss Proudleigh (who had received an advance for that purpose from Susan) were duly handed round. The guests enjoyed them, eating and drinking to their hearts’ content; and Mr. Proudleigh, reflecting that it might be long before he should assist at another Ninth Night, worthily led them on in this satisfactory effort. Then, when it was nearly twelve o’clock, he thought he saw his opportunity, and, forestalling his sister, he rose and intimated that it was his intention to make a few remarks.

“It is shortly toward midnight, dear friends,” he began, “an’ before we finish an’ terminate this firs’ part of our gathering, we must call to mind certain things. Every meeting have an end, an’ every end has a termini.” (He paused to allow this term to have its full effect upon the audience. It was one he had learnt from Jones.) “But before we proceed to bid Mackenzie good-bye,” he went on, “an’ the younger folkses begin to enjie themself, which is natural, for I remember that in de old days, which I always tell my fambily, for none of them know what I know, an’ so to speak a man like me is expected to ’ave experience, an’ as I was saying——” But the difficulty was that he could not for the life of him remember what he had been saying. His sister had given him no opportunity of speaking earlier that night, and in the meantime sundry glasses of rum and water had inflamed his ambition without strengthening his mind. There was now, therefore, a struggle between the orator and the liquor, and his refusal to own himself vanquished as he strove to recall what he had intended to say would have been magnificent had it not appeared to the audience supremely ludicrous. Mr. Proudleigh wanted to pronounce a eulogy upon Mackenzie. He had an idea that Mackenzie’s spirit was hovering near, and he would have liked it to hear his speech. He felt that Mackenzie deserved special posthumous praise for having left Susan so comfortably off. He bravely began once more.

“Mackenzie was me son-in-law. He was a very kind young man. An’ when he write me for Miss Susan” (here Susan stared) “I wouldn’t refuse him. I say to him . . . I say . . .” Once again Mr. Proudleigh halted, and in the midst of the momentary silence the little clock on the shelf just above his head struck the midnight hour. A hush fell on the company as Miss Proudleigh sank upon her knees. That lady afterwards declared that as the last stroke of the clock died away she had felt something like a cold wind rushing by her, as though an invisible presence were leaving this mundane sphere for ever; and after hearing of her experience Mr. Proudleigh also asserted that he too had been touched by Mackenzie’s departing spirit that night. His sister, recollecting his condition, secretly doubted his story; but as moral support is always of value when proof is not forthcoming, she never contradicted him.

“Let us pray,” said Miss Proudleigh when the clock had ceased to strike.

This time she prayed that all wandering spirits might find eternal rest, and that the dead might never be allowed to intervene in the affairs of the living. She made it known to all and sundry whose place was another world that, however much their company may have been pleasant and interesting when they were alive, the proper sphere for their activities now was heaven, where, she indirectly assured them, they would be far more happy than if they returned to earth. This prayer closed with a loud Amen from the assembled guests, who entirely shared the sentiments expressed by Miss Proudleigh. “Well, we are done wid poor Mackenzie now,” she said, satisfied, as she rose from her knees.

Mr. Proudleigh, with his undelivered speech still in mind, understood from these words that the end of that speech would never be heard by that audience. He felt that an advantage had been taken of him, and his bitterness was intense.

---

It was a relief to the younger guests and members of the family when Miss Proudleigh signified that the religious portion of the Ninth Night ceremony was over, and Mackenzie finally dismissed to his last home. In a moment their emotions changed from grave to gay, and they all settled themselves down to gossip, joke, laugh, and otherwise enjoy themselves, while more refreshments were handed round. Every one present addressed Susan punctiliously as Mrs. Mackenzie. Jones still sat by her side, and his gestures and movements were marked by the company, whose chief diversion was to discuss the private affairs of their neighbours and friends.

“We can’t always mourn,” sententiously observed one young lady, who saw in Samuel a suitor for Susan’s hand, and who wished to gain merit by indirectly suggesting that she personally knew of no reason for unlimited grief. “Life is short, an’ when we ’ave done our best, we must do what we can.”

An enigmatical speech, but well understood by those who heard it, and who saw the significant glance which the speaker directed towards Susan and Jones.

“Sorrow endureth for a night, but joy cometh in the morning,” commented Miss Proudleigh. “Sue, will you take a little ginger-wine? Or do you prefer chocolate?”

“She prefer love,” said Jones shamelessly. “Love is better than wine.”

“Behave you’self!” cried Susan. “Y’u forget where you are?”

“After a storm there comes a calm, after a funeral, why not a wedding?” said the lady who had previously suggested the futility of endless weeping.

“That’s not the sort of conversation for a Nine-Night,” primly suggested Susan. “I will never marry again, an’ so what y’u say don’t concern me; but still, this is not the time to talk about weddings.”

“I don’t know dat I agrees wid Sue,” said her father. “Mister Mac is dead, an’ if Mister Jones write me for y’u, I——”

But the old man, doomed it would appear to perpetual interruptions, was not allowed to complete his remark. Miss Proudleigh felt that the limits of decorum were in danger of being overstepped. She immediately and loudly began to tell of an arrest she had witnessed a day or two before in Colon, an arrest which had almost caused the death of the prisoner, he having been unmercifully clubbed by the policemen. This was an interesting topic of conversation, and while the company were discussing the demerits of the Republic’s peace officers, Jones quietly suggested to Susan that they might go and sit together for a little while on the veranda.

She agreed, and they went out, remarked by all. But such pairings-off were customary; it was felt, moreover, that the widow had the right to do as she pleased, on account of her youth and her superior financial position.

She and Samuel sat on the chairs they took out with them, and, leaning over the veranda, looked down into the silent street. They had placed themselves where they could not easily be seen by the people in the room, though the door stood open. After a few seconds Jones stretched out his hand and placed it on Susan’s shoulder. “Sue,” he whispered, “when you going to Jamaica?”

“To-morrow. Don’t you know it already?”

“I am going with you.”

“I can’t stop y’u, Sam. The ship is for you as well as for me.”

“Stop that foolishness, Sue. It is all very well when you makin’ fun to talk like that. But now I am talking in the Predicate and in the verb To Be; I am serious. I am going to marry you.”

“But suppose I don’t want to get married again? I know what marriage mean, an’ you don’t. Besides that, I am all right now, an’ I can live comfortable without anybody. When you could marry me y’u didn’t, and I don’t forget how y’u used to leave me in the night when we was together. It’s better we remain apart, for what ’appen once will ’appen again.”

“You know you don’t mean what y’u say,” replied Jones with conviction. “Jamaica is not Colon, and it will be all right when we get there. I will be steadier. I was steady there.”

“Cho!” exclaimed Susan, but there was something in her voice which denoted satisfaction. “Y’u going to go on the same way in Jamaica as you went on here,” she added.

“Well, we will have to make the best of it,” said Jones philosophically, “though you know quite well I am not a drunkard. We will get married in Parish Church.”

Fully a minute passed before she replied—

“As poor Mackenzie is just dead, don’t tell anybody here about it.”

---

When, two days after the Ninth Night ceremony, Susan and Jones, with Mr. Proudleigh standing between them, saw the grey-green mountains of Jamaica rising into view as the ship drew nearer the shore, they felt for the first time in their lives what a homecoming meant. Susan eagerly pointed out object after object as her eyes roved over the scene stretched out in front of her; Jones was enthusiastic; Mr. Proudleigh, contrary to his habit, was silent. But when the ship entered the harbour, and Kingston appeared, and he saw again the houses and the piers with which he had been familiar all his life, he broke his silence and spoke the thoughts that were in his mind.

“Fancy a old man like me go quite to Colon an’ come back,” he said reflectively. “Who is to tell what is gwine to happen in dis world! An’ I leave me second daurter and me sister behind me! Well, God will take care of them, same as Him take care of me. I am glad to come back. I really glad.”

“No place like home,” said Jones heartily.

“That’s a fact,” was Susan’s sincere comment.

---

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---

METHUEN’S

COLONIAL LIBRARY

A SERIES OF COPYRIGHT BOOKS BY EMINENT AND POPULAR

AUTHORS, PUBLISHED AS FAR AS POSSIBLE SIMULTANEOUSLY

WITH THEIR APPEARANCE IN ENGLAND

FICTION

ALBANESI, E. MARIA

SUSANNAH AND ONE OTHER

I KNOW A MAIDEN

THE INVINCIBLE AMELIA

THE BLUNDER OF AN INNOCENT

PETER, A PARASITE

THE GLAD HEART

OLIVIA MARY

THE BELOVED ENEMY

ALLERTON, MARK

THE GIRL ON THE GREEN

ANNESLEY, MAUDE

THIS DAY’S MADNESS

WIND ALONG THE WASTE

SHADOW-SHAPES

‘ANONYMOUS’

HUNGERHEART

FROM BEYOND THE PALE

ANSTEY, F.

PERCY AND OTHERS

ARNOLD, Mrs. J. O.

HONOURS EASY

REQUITAL

BAGOT, RICHARD

A ROMAN MYSTERY

ANTHONY CUTHBERT

LOVE’S PROXY

THE HOUSE OF SERRAVALLE

DARNELEY PLACE

BAILEY, H. C.

STORM AND TREASURE

THE LONELY QUEEN

THE SUBURBAN

THE SEA CAPTAIN

A GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER

BARING-GOULD, S.

KITTY ALONE

NOÉMI Illus.

THE BROOM-SQUIRE Illus.

PABO THE PRIEST Illus.

WINEFRED Illus.

BARB, ROBERT

IN THE MIDST OF ALARMS

THE MUTABLE MANY

THE COUNTESS TEKLA

BARRETT, WILSON

THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

THE NEVER-NEVER LAND

BEACON, EVELYN

ONCE OF THE ANGELS

BELLOC, H.

A CHANGE IN THE CABINET

BENNETT, ARNOLD

CLAYHANGER

HILDA LESSWAYS

THE CARD

A MAN FROM THE NORTH

THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS

BURIED ALIVE

THE REGENT

WHOM GOD HATH JOINED

THE PRICE OF LOVE

BENSON, E. F.

DODO

BIRMINGHAM, G. A.

SPANISH GOLD

THE BAD TIMES

THE SEARCH PARTY

LALAGE’S LOVERS

THE ADVENTURES OF DR. WHITTY

BOWEN, MARJORIE

I WILL MAINTAIN

DEFENDER OF THE FAITH

GOD AND THE KING

THE QUEST OF GLORY

A KNIGHT OF SPAIN

THE GOVERNOR OF ENGLAND

MR. WASHINGTON

THE PRINCE OF ORANGE

PRINCE AND HERETIC

THE CARNIVAL OF FLORENCE

BRAMAH, ERNEST

MAX CARRADOS

BURNETT, YELVA

WINGS OF WAX

CAPES, BERNARD

WHY DID HE DO IT?

JEMMY ABERCRAW

CASTLE, AGNES and EGERTON

FLOWER O’ THE ORANGE Illus.

THE GOLDEN BARRIER

FORLORN ADVENTURES

CHESTERTON, G. K.

THE FLYING INN

CONRAD, JOSEPH

THE SECRET AGENT

A SET OF SIX

UNDER WESTERN EYES

CHANCE

VICTORY

CONYERS, DOROTHEA

SALLY

SANDY MARRIED

OLD ANDY

A MIXED PACK

COOK, W. VICTOR

ANTON OF THE ALPS

A WILDERNESS WOOING

CORELLI, MARIE

A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS

VENDETTA

THELMA

ARDATH

THE SOUL OF LILITH

WORMWOOD

BARABBAS

THE SORROWS OF SATAN

THE MASTER-CHRISTIAN

TEMPORAL POWER

GOD’S GOOD MAN

HOLY ORDERS

THE LIFE EVERLASTING

BOY

THE MIGHTY ATOM

CAMEOS

CROCKETT, S. R.

LOCHINVAR Illus.

THE STANDARD BEARER

CROKER, B. M.

ANGEL

JOHANNA

A NINE DAYS’ WONDER

KATHERINE THE ARROGANT

BABES IN THE WOOD

CURTOIS, M. A.

THE STORY OF A CIRCLE

DANBY, FRANK

JOSEPH IN JEOPARDY

DE LISSER, HERBERT G.

JANE’S CAREER

DOYLE, Sir A. CONAN

ROUND THE RED LAMP

DUNCAN, SARA JEANNETTE

THE BURNT OFFERING

FINDLATER, JANE H.

THE GREEN GRAVES OF BALGOWRIE

FINDLATER, MARY

THE ROSE OF JOY

A BLIND BIRD’S NEST Illus.

THE NARROW WAY

FRANCIS, M. E.

HARDY-ON-THE-HILL

FRY, B. and C. B.

A MOTHER’S SON

GIBBON, PERCEVAL

MARGARET HARDING

THE SECOND-CLASS PASSENGER

GIBSON, L. S.

THE OAKUM PICKERS

GISSING, GEORGE

THE CROWN OF LIFE

GLANVILLE, ERNEST

THE KLOOF BRIDE Illus.

GLEIG, CHARLES

A WOMAN IN THE LIMELIGHT

GREY, LINCOLN

SARAH MIDGET

HALIFAX, ROBERT

THE WHITE THREAD

RED HAIR

HARRADEN, BEATRICE

IN VARYING MOODS

THE SCHOLAR’S DAUGHTER

HILDA STRAFFORD Illus.

INTERPLAY

HAUPTMANN, G.

A FOOL IN CHRIST

HEATH, E. CROSBY

ENTER AN AMERICAN

HICHENS, ROBERT S.

TONGUES OF CONSCIENCE

THE PROPHET OF BERKELEY SQUARE

FELIX

THE WOMAN WITH THE FAN

THE GARDEN OF ALLAH

THE BLACK SPANIEL Illus.

THE CALL OF THE BLOOD

BARBARY SHEEP

THE DWELLER ON THE THRESHOLD

THE WAY OF AMBITION

HILLIERS, ASHTON

REMITTANCE BILLY

HOLDSWORTH ANNIE E.

THE LITTLE COMPANY OF RUTH

DAME VERONA OF THE ANGELS

HOPE, ANTHONY

A MAN OF MARK

A CHANGE OF AIR

THE GOD IN THE CAR

THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO

PHROSO Illus.

SIMON DALE Illus.

THE KING’S MIRROR

QUISANTÉ

A SERVANT OF THE PUBLIC Illus.

TALES OF TWO PEOPLE Illus.

THE GREAT MISS DRIVER Illus.

MRS. MAXON PROTESTS

HOPE, MARGARET

CHRISTINA HOLBROOK

MESSENGERS

LITTLE MRS. LEE

HORNIMAN, ROY

CAPTIVITY

HYNE, C. J. CUTCLIFFE

MR. HORROCKS, PURSER Illus.

FIREMEN HOT

INGE, CHARLES

SQUARE PEGS

JACOBS, W. W.

MANY CARGOES

SEA URCHINS

A MASTER OF CRAFT Illus.

LIGHT FREIGHTS Illus.

THE SKIPPER’S WOOING Illus.

ODD CRAFT Illus.

AT SUNWICH PORT Illus.

DIALSTONE LANE Illus.

THE LADY OF THE BARGE Illus.

SALTHAVEN Illus.

SAILORS’ KNOTS Illus.

SHORT CRUISES Illus.

JACOMB, AGNES

THE FRUITS OF THE MORROW

KEATING, JOSEPH

TIPPERARY TOMMY

KING, BASIL

THE WILD OLIVE

THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT

THE WAY HOME

THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT

LEBLANC, GEORGETTE

THE CHOICE OF LIFE

LE QUEUX, WILLIAM

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW Illus.

BEHIND THE THRONE

THE CROOKED WAY

LISLE, DAVID

A PAINTER OF SOULS

A KINGDOM DIVIDED

WHAT IS LOVE?

LONDON, JACK

WHITE FANG Illus.

LOWNDES, Mrs. BELLOC

THE CHINK IN THE ARMOUR

MARY PECHELL

STUDIES IN LOVE AND IN TERROR

THE LODGER

THE END OF HER HONEYMOON

LUCAS, E. V.

MR. INGLESIDE

LONDON LAVENDER

LANDMARKS

LUNN, ARNOLD

THE HARROVIANS

LYALL, EDNA

DERRICK VAUGHAN, NOVELIST

LYNEGROYE, R. C.

LOTTERIES OF CIRCUMSTANCE

MAARTENS, MAARTEN

THE NEW RELIGION

BROTHERS ALL

THE PRICE OF LIS DORIS

HARMEN POLS

McCARTHY, JUSTIN HUNTLY

THE DUKE’S MOTTO

MACNAUGHTAN, S.

CHRISTINA M’NAB

PETER AND JANE

MAKGILL, Sir GEORGE

BLACKLAW

MALET, LUCAS

THE WAGES OF SIN

THE CARISSIMA

THE GATELESS BARRIER

A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION

COLONEL ENDERBY’S WIFE Illus.

SIR RICHARD CALMADY

MANN, MARY E.

MRS. PETER HOWARD

THE PARISH NURSE

ASTRAY IN ARCADY

THERE WAS A WIDOW

MARSH, RICHARD

A ROYAL INDISCRETION

LIVE MEN’S SHOES

JUDITH LEE

IF IT PLEASE YOU!

MARSHALL, ARCHIBALD

MANY JUNES Illus.

THE SQUIRE’S DAUGHTER

THE ELDEST SON

THE TERRORS, AND OTHER STORIES

MAUD, CONSTANCE

A DAUGHTER OF FRANCE Illus.

MAXWELL, W. B.

VIVIEN

THE RAGGED MESSENGER

THE GUARDED FLAME

ODD LENGTHS

THE COUNTESS OF MAYBURY

HILL RISE

THE REST CURE

MILNE, A. A.

THE HOLIDAY ROUND

THE DAY’S PLAY

ONCE A WEEK

MITFORD, BERTRAM

THE SIGN OF THE SPIDER Illus.

MOBERLEY, L. G.

THE HIGHWAY

MONTAGUE, C. E.

A HIND LET LOOSE

THE MORNING’S WAR

MORDAUNT, ELEANOR

SIMPSON

BELLAMY

THE FAMILY

MORRISON, ARTHUR

TALES OF MEAN STREETS

A CHILD OF THE JAGO

THE HOLE IN THE WALL

DIVERS VANITIES

TO LONDON TOWN

NESBIT, E.

THE RED HOUSE

DORMANT

NEWTON, DOUGLAS

WAR

THE NORTH AFIRE

NORMAN, Mrs. GEORGE

LADY FANNY

DELPHINE CARFREY

THE SILVER DRESS

THE SUMMER LADY

OLLIVANT, ALFRED

OWD BOB Illus.

THE TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT

THE ROYAL ROAD

ONIONS, OLIVER

THE EXCEPTION

GOOD BOY SELDOM

THE TWO KISSES

A CROOKED MILE

OPPENHEIM, E. PHILLIPS

MASTER OF MEN

THE MISSING DELORA Illus.

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF MR. ALFRED BURTON

A PEOPLE’S MAN

THE WAY OF THESE WOMEN

THE VANISHED MESSENGER

ORCZY, BARONESS

FIRE IN STUBBLE

OSBOURNE, LLOYD

THE KINGDOMS OF THE WORLD

OXENHAM, JOHN

A WEAVER OF WEBS Illus.

PROFIT AND LOSS Illus.

THE LONG ROAD Illus.

THE SONG OF HYACINTH

MY LADY OF SHADOWS

LAURISTONS

THE COIL OF CARNE

THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN ROSE

MARY ALL-ALONE

BROKEN SHACKLES

PAIN, BARRY

THE GIFTED FAMILY

THE EXILES OF FALOO

PARKER, GILBERT

THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD Illus.

WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC

AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH

PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE

MRS. FALCHION

THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY Illus.

THE POMP OF THE LAVILETTES

THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG Illus.

THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE

NORTHERN LIGHTS

THE JUDGMENT HOUSE

PEMBERTON, MAX

THE FOOTSTEPS OF A THRONE

LOVE THE HARVESTER Illus.

TWO WOMEN

PENROSE, Mrs. H. H.

CHARLES THE GREAT

PERRIN, ALICE

THE CHARM

THE ANGLO-INDIANS

A HAPPY HUNTING GROUND

PHILLPOTTS, EDEN

SONS OF THE MORNING Illus.

CHILDREN OF THE MIST Illus.

LYING PROPHETS

THE RIVER Illus.

THE HUMAN BOY Illus.

THE AMERICAN PRISONER

THE PORTREEVE Illus.

THE STRIKING HOURS

DEMETER’S DAUGHTER

PICKTHALL, MARMADUKE

SAĪD THE FISHERMAN

BRENDLE

‘Q’

THE MAYOR OF TROY

MAJOR VIGOUREUX

RAWSON, MAUD STEPNEY

HAPPINESS

SPLENDID ZIPPORAH

RIDGE, W. PETT

A SON OF THE STATE

NAME OF GARLAND

SPLENDID BROTHER

MRS. GALER’S BUSINESS Illus.

NINE TO SIX-THIRTY

THANKS TO SANDERSON

DEVOTED SPARKES

THE REMINGTON SENTENCE

THE HAPPY RECRUIT

BOOK HERE

RITCHIE, Mrs. DAVID G.

THE HUMAN CRY

RITTENBERG, MAX

SWIRLING WATERS

EVERY MAN HIS PRICE

ROHMER, SAX

THE MYSTERY OF DR. FU-MANCHU

SCHOFIELD, Mrs. S. R.

CASSANDRA BY MISTAKE

SHELLEY, BERTHA

THE EVOLUTION OF EVE

SIDGWICK, Mrs. A.

THE KINSMAN

THE LANTERN BEARERS

ANTHEA’S GUEST

LAMORNA

BELOW STAIRS

IN OTHER DAYS

SNAITH, J. C.

THE PRINCIPAL GIRL

AN AFFAIR OF STATE

SOMERVILLE, E. Œ., and ROSS, M.

DAN RUSSEL THE FOX

STRAUS, RALPH

THE ORLEY TRADITION

SWINNERTON, FRANK

THE HAPPY FAMILY

ON THE STAIRCASE

SYRETT, NETTA

THE JAM QUEEN

THYNNE, MOLLY

THE UNCERTAIN GLORY

TOWNSHEND, R. B.

A GIRL FROM MEXICO

VAN VORST, MARIE

THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMY BULSTRODE

IN AMBUSH

WAINEMAN, PAUL

A ROMAN PICTURE

WALFORD, L. B.

DAVID AND JONATHAN IN THE RIVIERA

WATSON, FREDERICK

SHALLOWS

THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE

WATSON, H. B. MARRIOTT

THE BIG FISH

THE FLOWER OF THE HEART

WEALE, PUTNAM

THE REVOLT

THE ROMANCE OF A FEW DAYS

THE ETERNAL PRIESTESS

WEBLING, PEGGY

VIRGINIA PERFECT

A SPIRIT OF MIRTH

FELIX CHRISTIE

THE PEARL-STRINGER

EDGAR CHIRRUP

WELLS, H. G.

THE SEA LADY

BEALBY

WESTRUP, MARGARET

TIDE MARKS

ROGER INGRAM

WEYMAN, STANLEY J.

UNDER THE RED ROBE Illus.

WHITBY, BEATRICE

THE RESULT OF AN ACCIDENT

ROSAMUND

WHITE, EDMUND

THE PATH

WHITE, PERCY

LOVE AND THE WISE MEN

THE LOST HALO

WILLIAMSON, C. N. and A. M.

THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR Illus.

THE PRINCESS PASSES Illus.

MY FRIEND THE CHAUFFEUR Illus.

LADY BETTY ACROSS THE WATER Illus.

THE CAR OF DESTINY Illus.

THE BOTOR CHAPERON Illus.

SCARLET RUNNER Illus.

SET IN SILVER Illus.

LORD LOVELAND DISCOVERS AMERICA

THE GOLDEN SILENCE

THE GUESTS OF HERCULES

THE HEATHER MOON

THE LOVE PIRATE

IT HAPPENED IN EGYPT

A SOLDIER OF THE LEGION

THE PRINCESS VIRGINIA

THE WEDDING DAY

WITHAM, JOHN

STARVEACRE

WODEHOUSE, P. G.

THE LITTLE NUGGET

THE MAN UPSTAIRS

WRENCH, Mrs. STANLEY

POTTER AND CLAY

LILY LOUISA

WYLLARDE, DOLF

THE PATHWAY OF THE PIONEER

THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON

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GENERAL LITERATURE

A List of Books in General Literature may be obtained from any bookseller, or post free on application to the Publishers.

The List contains books by:—

F. W. BAIN

GRAHAM BALFOUR

S. BARING-GOULD

HILAIRE BELLOC

ARNOLD BENNETT

LORD CHARLES BERESFORD

H. MASSAE BUIST

EDWARD CARPENTER

G. K. CHESTERTON

EDWARD HUTTON

SIR HARRY JOHNSTON

RUDYARD KIPLING

EDWARD KNOBLAUCH

SIR E. RAY LANKESTER

SIR OLIVER LODGE

E. V. LUCAS

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

SIR HIRAM MAXIM

LADY DOROTHY NEVILL

R. L. STEVENSON

OSCAR WILDE

H. NOEL WILLIAMS

METHUEN & CO. LTD., 36 ESSEX STREET, LONDON, W.C.

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METHUEN’S

COLONIAL LIBRARY

A SERIES OF COPYRIGHT BOOKS BY EMINENT AND POPULAR AUTHORS PUBLISHED AS FAR AS POSSIBLE SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH THEIR APPEARANCE IN ENGLAND. THEY ARE OF VERY HANDSOME APPEARANCE, BOUND TASTEFULLY IN PAPER OR IN CLOTH. THEY FALL INTO TWO DIVISIONS—(1) FICTION; (2) GENERAL LITERATURE.

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AMONG THE AUTHORS CONTRIBUTING ARE—

E. M. ALBANESI

R. BAGOT

H. C. BAILEY

ARNOLD BENNETT

E. F. BENSON

G. A. BIRMINGHAM

MARJORIE BOWEN

AGNES & EGERTON CASTLE

G. K. CHESTERTON

JOSEPH CONRAD

DOROTHEA CONYERS

MARIE CORELLI

S. R. CROCKETT

B. M. CROKER

FRANK DANBY

A. CONAN DOYLE

BEATRICE HARRADEN

ROBERT HICHENS

ANTHONY HOPE

W. W. JACOBS

BASIL KING

RUDYARD KIPLING

WM. LE QUEUX

JACK LONDON

MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES

E. V. LUCAS

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

S. MacNAUGHTAN

LUCAS MALET

M. E. MANN

A. E. W. MASON

W. B. MAXWELL

A. A. MILNE

ELINOR MORDAUNT

BARONESS ORCZY

JOHN OXENHAM

SIR GILBERT PARKER

MAX PEMBERTON

ALICE PERRIN

W. PETT RIDGE

EDEN PHILLPOTTS

MRS. ALFRED SIDGWICK

J. C. SNAITH

FREDERICK WATSON

PEGGY WEBLING

H. G. WELLS

STANLEY WEYMAN

OSCAR WILDE

C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON