When he had gone, Mother Jenks went behind the bar and fortified herself with her morning's morning—which rite having been performed, her sleep-benumbed brain livened up immediately.
“Gord's truth!” the lady murmured. “An' me about to turn him adrift for the lawst fortnight! Well for 'im 'e allers hadmired the picture o' my sainted 'Enery, as was the spittin' image of his own fawther. 'Evings! 'Ell's bells! But that was a bit of a tight squeak! Just as I'm fully conwinced 'e's beat it an' I'm left 'oldin' the sack, all along o' my kindness of 'eart, 'e gets the cablegram 'e's been lookin' for this two months past; an' 'e allers claimed as 'ow any time'e got a cablegram it'd be an answer to 'is letter, with money to foller! My word, but that was touch an' go! An' yet Willie's got such a tykin' w'y about him, I might 'ave knowed 'e was a gentleman!”
Still congratulating herself upon her good fortune in intercepting Don Juan Cafetéro, Mother Jenks proceeded upstairs to her chamber, clothed herself, and adjourned to the kitchen, where Carmelita was already engaged in the preparation of the morning meal. After giving orders for an extra special breakfast for two, Mother Jenks returned to her cantina, and formally opened the same for the business of that day and night; while a lank Jamaica negro swept out the room and cleaned the cuspidors, she washed and polished her glassware and set her back bar in order. To her here came presently, via the tiled hallway, the object of her solicitude, a young man on the sunny side of thirty. At the first glance one suspected this individual to be a member of the Caucasian race; at the second glance one verified this suspicion. He was thin for one of his height and breadth of chest; in colour his countenance resembled that of a sick Chinaman. His hair was thick and wavy but lustreless; his dark blue eyes carried a hint of jaundice; and a generous mouth, beneath an equally generous upper lip, gave ample ground for the suspicion that while Mr. William Geary's speech denoted him an American citizen, at least one of his maternal ancestors had been wooed and won by an Irishman. An old panama hat, sad relic of a prosperous past, a pair of soiled buckskin pumps, a suit of unbleached linen equally befouled, and last but not least, the remnants of a smile that much hard luck could never quite obliterate, completed his attire—and to one a stranger in the tropics would appear to constitute a complete inventory of Mr. Geary's possessions. An experienced person, however, would have observed immediately that Mother Jenks's seedy guest had been bitten deeply and often by mosquitoes and was, in consequence, the proprietor of a low malarial fever, with its concomitant chills.
“Dulce corazon mio, I extend a greeting,” he called at the entrance. “I trust you rested well last night, Mother Jenks, and that no evil dreams were born of your midnight repast of frijoles refritos, marmalade, and arf-an'-arf!”
“Chop yer spoofin', Willie,” Mother Jenks simpered. “My heye! So I'm yer sweet'eart, eh? Yer wheedlin' blighter, makin' love to a girl as is old enough to be yer mother!”
“A woman,” Mr. Geary retorted sagely and not a whit abashed, “is at the apex of her feminine charms at thirty-seven.”
He knew his landlady to be not a day under fifty, but such is the ease with which the Irish scatter their blarney, and such the vanity of the gentler sex (for despite Mother Jenks's assault upon Carmelita, we include the lady in that pleasing category), that neither Billy Geary nor Mother Jenks regarded this pretty speech in the light of an observation immaterial, inconsequential and not germane to the matter at issue. For Mother Jenks was the eternal feminine, and it warmed the cockles of her heart to be told she was only thirty-seven, even though reason warned her that the compliment was not garnished with the sauce of sincerity. As for Billy, the sight of Mother Jenks swallowing this specious bait, together with hook, line, and sinker, always amused him and for the nonce took his mind off his own troubles. Nevertheless, there was a deeper reason for his blarney. This morning, watching the tell tale tinge of pleasure underlying the alcohol-begotten hue of the good creature's face, he felt almost ashamed of his own heartlessness—almost, but not quite.
Let us take Billy's view of his own case and view his mendacity with a kindly and tolerant eye. For two months he had existed entirely because of the leniency of Mother Jenks in the matter of credit.
He could not pay her cash, devoutly as he hoped to do some day, and he considered it of the most vital importance that in the interim he should somehow survive. Therefore, in lieu of cash he paid her compliments, which she snapped up greedily.
In the cold gray dawn of the morning after Mother Jenks always detected the bug in Billy's amber and vowed to rout him bag and baggage that very day; but when one is fond of blarney, it is hard indeed to destroy the source of it; and while Mother Jenks's courage had mounted to the point of action many a time, in the language of the sporting extra, Billy had always “beaten her to the punch”; for when instinct warned him that Mother Jenks was about to talk business, he could always rout her by declaring she was pencilling her eyebrows or rouging her cheeks.