Jane’s Career: A Story of Jamaica
Chapter 1
Daddy Buckram was chief elder in the little village church on the hill, and whenever anything of importance happened or threatened to happen in the village he was always consulted in regard to it, and never failed to make some remarks which he considered appropriate to the occasion. To-day he sat in the canvas easy-chair in Mr Burrell’s hut and lectured a girl of about fifteen years of age who stood humbly before him holding her hands behind her back as she had been instructed by her mother to do, and listening to his words of advice without quite understanding what half of them meant. There were several other persons in the room. There were the girl’s parents, sturdy peasants who owned three acres of land and the tiny house they lived in, and who looked upon their property as a bank upon which they could always draw. There was their eldest son, a lad turned nineteen, who was still undecided whether he should remain at home and help his fat her, or emigrate to Costa Rica or Panama, there to carve out an independent career for himself. There were the three younger children, a girl of thirteen and two boys; there were also three or four neighbours who had come in to her Daddy Buckram make one of the speeches for which he was famous. The room was crowded, and some of the people present were obliged to stand, there being in the hut but three wooden-seated chairs, the easy-chair which the Elder occupied, and a small wooden couch but this crowding did not inconvenience Daddy Buckram, whose long and important connection with a church had developed in him an insatiable craving for large and attentive audiences.
“Jane,” he continued impressively after a pause, “Kingston is a very big an’ wicked city, an’ a young girl like you, who de Lord has blessed wid a good figure an’ a face, must be careful not to keep bad company. Satan goeth about like a roaring lion in Kingston, seeking who he may devour. He will devour you if you do not take him to the Lord in prayer. Do you’ work well. Write to you’ moder often, for a chile who don’t remember her parent cannot prosper. Don’t stay out in the street in de night, go to church whenever you’ employer allow you. If sinners entice thee, consent thou not. Now, tell me what I say to you.”
Jane hesitated a while, then answered: “You say I mus’ behave meself, sah, an’ go to church, an’ don’t keep bad company, an’ dat de devil is a roarin’ lion. An’ … an’ dat I must write mumma.”
The Elder smiled his approval. “I see,” he observed benignantly, “that you have been giving my words attention. If you always remember them like that, you will conquer in de battle.”
“Dat is so, Daddy Buckram,” remarked Jane’s mother, pleased that her daughter had won such high commendation. “I tell Jane just what you done tell her, an’ now if she go an’ do anyting foolish it will be all her own fault. We bring her up decent an’ respectable; she know dat her fader an’ me married long before she born; so d