At half-past four in the morning Susan was awake. She hurried out of the hot, stifling room to wash her face under the water-pipe, then went in again to dress. She was ready by five o’clock. Her dress fitted her nicely; and though blue was perhaps not the colour that best suited her complexion, it was more striking than white would have been, and she wanted to attract attention. She wore a pink sash, and her hat was trimmed with pink roses and ribbons. Her high-heeled shoes were gorgeous with buckles. When fully arrayed, and after she had gulped down her cup of coffee, she turned herself round and round to be admired. Catherine and Eliza surveyed her critically.
“You is all right, Sue,” said the first, and her younger sister agreed. Her mother smiled, then went about her business. Her father was vocal in his praise.
“Ef I was a young man,” he said approvingly, “I would fall in love wid you. Dat frock suit you’ figure. Everybody gwine to dance wid you, an’ you mustn’t fo’got to bring somet’ing nice fo’ me.”
Susan, satisfied with this appreciation, promised to bring home for him a part of whatever she might get; and Letitia coming in just then, both girls went out to catch the electric car that should take them to the railway station.
It was not yet six o’clock, so the air was still comparatively cool. It was a public holiday, consequently they met numbers of other pleasure-seekers like themselves, all gaily dressed. They caught the car, and it took them by a circuitous route to the station, going first towards the north of the city for nearly a mile, then south again, then east to where the railway station stands. On the way they passed handsome villas; those were the houses, they thought, where the rich people lived, people so much above their own station in life that they never dreamt of envying them. The white and the higher classes of fair coloured people belonged to one world. They belonged to another. But envy and hatred did not embitter the relations of one class with another, though their interests in life were superficially as different as was the yard-room or little front house from the spacious-looking residence with its garden of tropical shrubs and flowers blooming in front of it.
They alighted at the railway station, and found it crowded. Every colour of the rainbow was represented in the dresses of the women and the neckties of the men; and a stranger not accustomed to a West Indian crowd might well have thought that there could have been no greater confusion at the Tower of Babel. Everybody talked and nobody listened. Everybody gesticulated. Laughing, pushing, screaming, scrambling through the iron gates, the good-humoured picnickers made towards the platform, and then began to fight their way into the train. In vain the guards shouted. In vain they tried to direct the passengers. Discipline and order were thrown to the winds on this holiday morning, when the chief thought of every one was to obtain all the fun and excitement that the day could afford.
In the struggle for a good seat Susan was nearly separated from her friend. But by a vigorous use of their elbows they managed to keep together; and when at last, breathless but triumphant, they were seated, they began to look about them to see if any of their friends were near. Susan saw many persons whom she knew. Amongst these was Hezekiah, and him she stared out of countenance. She nodded to the others, and commenced with lively anticipation to discuss the prospects of the picnic with Letitia, when the train, with a sudden jerk, pulled out of the station.
Slowly at first, then quickly, and crowded to its utmost capacity, it ran out of the city and into the open, sunlit country. The transition was abrupt. Within a minute Kingston had been left behind, and broad fields and forests soon appeared on either side, all steeped in the early morning light and still green and fresh with the dews of the night. The hot and dusty city lay baking in the sun behind the pleasure-seekers; the country, with its wonderful beauty of deep blue skies, giant trees, and variegated green; with its dark-gleaming rivulets, placid streams and leaping waterfalls, unrolled itself before them. Peeping out of the windows, they could see the cattle and horses browsing in the pastures, the distant skyline broken by a long chain of dream-like verdure-clothed mountains, the long, delicate tendrils of parasitic plants waving gently in the breeze, and clumps of water-hyacinths glowing in the ponds or in some quiet backwater of a stream. All, all was beautiful. A majestic peace pervaded the spacious countryside, and the great yellow sun of the tropics lighted it up with splendour. There was something alluring, enticing about it all; something enervating too in its luscious appealing beauty. But Susan and Letitia gave no thought to it all, nor did many of the people in the train. Their minds were centred upon one subject—this picnic to which they were speeding and which was to afford them a whole day’s intensest pleasure.
“Cumberland Pen!” The guard shouted the name of the station, the train slowed down and stopped, the doors of the carriages were thrown open, and then the scramble and hubbub began once more. Parcels were grabbed at and secured, and then—a phenomenon which one observes in every country and on every occasion among passengers on a train—every one pushed forward to alight as quickly as possible, and as though a second longer spent upon the train would lead to the most unpleasant results.
The siding was soon crowded, and already a straggling stream of human beings was pouring towards the Cumberland Pen gate, where stood two men who collected the tickets and indulged in arguments with those who pretended to be scandalized at the amount they were called upon to pay as entrance fee. It was quick work at this gate in spite of the chaffing and arguing; then other trains came in from Kingston, and soon more than a thousand persons were assembled on a grassy sward, spacious and fairly smooth, and shaded here and there by leafy trees that grew singly or in cool inviting clumps. But shade trees were not in demand just now, except as convenient places for the storing of parcels and baskets filled with refreshments, which some of the more prudent or more fastidious picnickers had brought with them. These impedimenta put away for the present, the pleasure-lovers broke into groups, and a loud cry for music arose.