Everybody was talking and laughing, and the musicians still were coercing their instruments into the proper pitch of musical perfection. But Susan was uneasy lest they should be overheard.
Her answer staggered Tom for a second or two, but he put the question that had been in his mind ever since he had heard from Catherine: “Well, what you goin’ to do now?”
“Do? What you expect me to do?” was her answer.
He hesitated as to his reply, and she saved him the trouble of replying.
“See here,” she said; “let us understand one another this same time. I don’t want you to make any trouble here between me and Jones, for I not leavin’ him to come to you. Y’u leave me alone in Jamaica, though I beg you hard to bring me wid you. I come here with another young man, who pay me passage an’ been supporting me all the time I am here, an’ so what was between you an’ me is dead an’ gone. I don’t want no sort of confusion here now. Y’u hear?”
Tom Wooley heard and his heart was as water. He subsided, not finding words with which to blame the fickle fair. He had been cruelly used; he felt sure of that. But he knew that he might be still more cruelly used, and by Jones, who, if he might lack Susan’s sharp tongue, might more than make up for that disadvantage by his hard fists. Thomas Wooley was a man of peace when sober, and by no means belligerent when drunk. So he merely answered, “Yes, Susan,” and asked her to point out Jones to him.
That gentleman had already noticed the whispered conference between the two, and was actually going up to them when Tom made his humble request. Susan decided that the best thing to do was to introduce them, and this she did, remarking at the same time that Tom was a friend of her family, and had been very kind to her parents.
As Samuel Josiah heard the name, he remembered what Mother Smith had told him about Tom and Susan on the night before he left Kingston for Colon. The story had long since passed out of his mind. Now also he recalled what his friend, Professor, had said about the case in which Susan had figured, and he observed that Susan was anxious to speak of Tom as a sort of casual friend. Tom Wooley was short, so Jones looked down upon him. And from the lofty standpoint of physical as well as intellectual and financial superiority he condescendingly addressed the young man who had once been Susan’s lover.
“How is it I never see you in Colon before?” was his question.
“I workin’ up the line,” said Tom—“at Pedro Miguel. But I used to be in Colon, an’ as I get an invitation to the dance, I come.”