She would not have the men go out for lunch that day. She provided it at home, and as she had a turn for cooking, it was a very good meal that she placed before them in about an hour’s time. She provided coffee also, with a view to preventing Samuel from indulging in whisky or beer; and as the men gulped down the hot, fragrant liquid and puffed at their cigars, a feeling of contentment stole over them and they gave vocal expression to their appreciation of Susan as a housewife.
She was satisfied. Her discontent of the night before had vanished. Possessed of a new “set of furniture,” which was better than the things she had been obliged to sell in Jamaica, settled in a busy part of the town and fairly far from the noisome swamps, with Mackenzie also as a good friend ready to aid them with his advice and to put himself to some trouble on their account, she felt that her fate was by no means an unpleasant one. “We not going to batter about from pillar to post any more,” she observed to Jones when lunch was over. “We are comfortable here.” And, to crown her happiness, when Jones and Mackenzie were preparing to go out that evening, they invited her to go with them.
They did not return home until ten o’clock that night; in the interval Susan had seen as much of Colon as she cared to see, and that was nearly all of it. They dined out. They walked about the streets, Mackenzie conducting the party; they hired a cab and drove along Front Street and through Christobal, and the glitter of glass and lights in the open bars, the crowds that gambled at cards and dice and dominoes in these places, the shops, which kept their doors open to a late hour, appealed to Susan, and even more to Jones, with a peculiar fascination.
Here what was done in public by people unashamed, could only take place behind closed doors in Jamaica. Here the people had money to spend, and spent it freely. Here there were contradictions and anomalies which were nevertheless enjoyable. At the corner of a street, in a chapel built entirely of any old bits of board, a self-ordained preacher from Jamaica held forth to a small congregation on the error of their ways, though his ways did not differ from theirs in any essential particular. Opposite to this building was a merry-go-round in full swing and abundantly patronized. On the other side of the street, on the second storey of a high tenement structure, a dance was in progress, the guests footing it to the sound given forth by an execrable band; at a little distance away a moving-picture palace invited with flaring posters the lovers of silent drama to come within and be stewed in a steam bath provided by corrugated iron and the climate of Colon.
From this spot a walk of two minutes brought them to Christobal, and there they could see dimly the huge concrete piers jutting out into the sea—the piers which grew day by day and which were designed to accommodate easily the largest vessels in the world. It was quiet here: listening, they could hear the cocoa-nut palms moving their long fronds if ever so slight a breath of wind stirred, and the long waves of the Caribbean dash and break eternally on the coral shores of Colon.
Soon they turned their backs on Christobal, and a leisurely stroll of ten or twelve minutes brought them nearly to the opposite end of the little island, now artificially connected with the mainland, on which Colon and Christobal were built. At this part of Colon there was a park, quite new—a park with paths and seats, little fountains, evergreen shrubs, flowering hibiscus, and banana trees. They sat here for a little while, chatting about Jamaica and the life they had lived there, and after that Mackenzie bade his new friends good night and they went home.
Susan was happy. This day had been so different from the previous one.
CHAPTER IV
THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT
Jones went to work the next day, and as he was a competent man he had no trouble with the workmen of superior grade or the bosses of the shop, who were all white men. He was pleasantly surprised to find that these bosses were quite easy in their manner, speaking in a friendly and encouraging fashion to the men who were under them. They were far more familiar during working hours than any Englishman in their position would have been in Jamaica. Later on he added to his experience. Whereas the Englishman would have recognized him outside of the shop, and would even have been affable, his American chief did not seem to be aware of his existence after work was over. Jones did not think that this was at all correct.
But the pay here was nearly double what it was in Jamaica, and the work was not so hard. Jones was too loyal to concede, even to himself, that any American could be a better worker or organizer than an Englishman. But he liked the eight-hour day of the Zone workshops and the liberal wages. He felt too that he deserved these things. He deserved them in his character of British subject and by virtue of being Samuel Josiah Jones.