Some five or six weeks after the events narrated in the preceding
chapters, Judge Barton's Australian chestnuts were rattling their
silver-plated harness on the Luneta driveway at sunset, while their
owner was threading the mazes of a Sunday-night carriage jam. He had
that day returned from a short vacation in Japan, where he had gone
to recuperate after his attack of fever.
The hot season was coming on apace, and but little breeze disturbed
the waters of the bay, which were sombred by the reflections of
slate-colored clouds streaked across the zenith. The brilliancy of the
sunset seemed to have driven apart the clouds in the west, however,
where the sky was enamelled in hues of jade and amber and turquoise,
seamed here and there with gold, and occasionally with a fading line
of dark vapor. With the purple shapes of the mountains extending to
right and left, with the foreshortened sweep of the waters, and with
the motionless lines of the anchored vessels, the distant picture
flamed out like a theatre curtain, while the motley assemblage
which filled the oval around the bandstand was not unsuggestive of
a waiting audience.
As he was in the act of leaning forward to note the outline of a
great five-masted freighter, anchored abreast the bandstand, Judge
Barton caught sight of a profile which was vaguely familiar to him,
but which, for a moment, he quite failed to associate with a name. A
second later, he remembered that he had always seen Miss Ponsonby
in her nurse's cap, and he could not determine whether it was the
harmonious effect of imported millinery or some radical change in
herself which lent a charm to her face never found there before.
As for the man at her side, it was something of a triumph to perceive
the hat at just the angle at which the Judge's imagination had pictured
it, the angle affected by a very smart enlisted man.
It was not wholly in response to the political instinct which, in a
democracy, bestows handshakes in place of largesse, that Judge Barton
made his way to the carriage in which Miss Ponsonby sat. Since the
miserable Christmas Eve when he had succeeded in pricking her into a
fencing match, he had not seen her. On the following day, she was put
on day duty in another ward, in accordance with some mysterious system
of change pursued in the hospital. Within three or four days more,
the Judge was pronounced able to begin the journey up the China coast,
from which he had only that day returned. When he left the hospital,
Collingwood was convalescent, but was suffering from a moroseness
which his observant neighbor attributed to thwarted affection.
Miss Ponsonby greeted her quondam patient not with coldness, which
may imply an intentionally concealed interest, but lifelessly, with an
indifference almost impertinent. Judge Barton felt the indifference,
was chilled by it, and revenged himself by a guarded significance
of manner which did not amount to ill breeding, but which hinted
at an expectation gratified, and made her, as he was delighted to
perceive, self-conscious and ill at ease. The feeling with which
he had approached her was genial and kindly. To find himself
suddenly enveloped in the atmosphere of challenge, of reserve,
of dumb interrogation of the providential workings of this world,
stirred up in him the old desire to push her just a little bit closer
to the wall against which her back was so resolutely set. It was not
a chivalrous feeling, but it was a very human and natural one, which
might have been shared by millions of the Judge's fellow-citizens,
far more pretentious than he was in the matter of Christian charity
and brotherhood.
Miss Ponsonby was looking even paler and thinner than she had looked
at Christmas. There was a purpling thickness in her eyelids, there was
a depth of shadow beneath, which, to an attentive observer, hinted at
tears and vigils in the night. In her listlessness, and in a sweet
effort in her smile, the Judge found, in the further course of the
talk, the signs of conquest. It was as if, driven to bay, she sought
help even from her enemies to ease the agony of surrender. The Judge
was not hard-hearted. So long as she fought, he was willing to stab
and prick. At the first sign of feminine weakness, at the sight of her
beaten and shrinking, he was ready to forget that only a few weeks
before he had been rather eager to see her reduced to humility. His
concern for her finally found utterance in the hope that she was
going to indulge in a much needed rest. "You know I always said,
when I was in the hospital, that you needed nursing just as much as
Collingwood and I did, if not more," he added.
She thanked him rather formally, and he detected in her stiffness an
access of shyness. A faint color dyed her cheek.
Collingwood, whose resemblance to a pagan deity--or to a young
ruffian--was stronger than ever, broke in joyously:
"Oh, she's going to take a vacation, all right--a long one, in fact,
for the rest of her life--with me. You are quite right, Judge. She
does need care, and I'll see that she gets it."
Miss Ponsonby's face rivalled the afterglow into which the gorgeous
spectacle before them was beginning to melt like metals fused in a
crucible; but, after an instant, she lifted her eyes and gazed with
a remarkable intensity at Judge Barton. If her self-consciousness had
originated in a prescience of his astonishment, it was not more painful
than his own chagrin at having betrayed himself. He had certainly not
expected her to marry Martin Collingwood. He had taken a mild pleasure
in letting her perceive that he divined her struggles in a compromise
with her pride for the sake of a few passing attentions and pleasures;
but never had it occurred to him that she could possibly bridge the
distance between herself and Collingwood in marriage. To have exhibited
his utter amazement enraged him with himself. He recovered himself
promptly, however, and, in turn, tendered a firm white hand to each.
"Bless you, my children," he said blandly, "I showed some surprise,
but really I don't know why. The thing is obviously appropriate."
There was a dryness in Collingwood's reply which made him, for a
moment, almost as impressive as the Judge himself.
"I am glad you think so. That was my opinion from the first, but I
had considerable difficulty in getting Miss Ponsonby to take my view
of it, and even yet she has her moments of doubt."
Miss Ponsonby gave him a shy little smile, but at the end of the
fleeting movement, her eyes again sought the Judge's with the same
questioning intensity, so that he was amazed to find himself answering
aloud.
"Obviously appropriate," he repeated, "and for a hundred reasons:
first, my dear young lady, so charming a person as yourself has
no business rusting out in the fatigues of your profession; second,
because this young free-lance needs somebody to look after him; third,
because marriage is to be encouraged on general principles." At
this point he seemed to recognize the necessity of steering the
conversational bark into safer waters, and endeavored to divert it
by pleasantry at his own expense. "Although I have not been able to
induce any young woman to share my joys and sorrows, believe me,
it is not because I am opposed to the institution. If I am an old
bachelor, it is not for lack of trying to marry."
It was Collingwood who made the humanely frank rejoinder, "I guess
you haven't tried very hard since you have been on the bench, have
you, Judge?"
It is strange how a man may both resent a fact and take pride in
it. Six weeks before, when the Judge had wished to put a squabbling
young woman in her place, he had rather gloried in the material
advantages connected with his position. A hint that his position
might win him a wife when his personality unaided could not do so,
rasped his nerves. Charlotte saw him wince and returned good for evil.
"Ah! you are not sincere. You are too modern to believe in marriage."
"Is it in an ironical spirit, then, do you think, that I beg an
invitation to yours?"
"But it will be so very quiet--not even cards or cake; and only one
or two of Mr. Collingwood's friends, and one or two of mine, to give
us countenance."
"To keep us from feeling that we are eloping," said Collingwood
blithely.
"Am I not the very man to do that? If there is no other way, I must
be railroaded in in an official capacity. Does not Collingwood need a
best man? Does not the marriage ceremony call for a parent to give the
bride away--'Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?'--and
all that?"
This was pure advertising propaganda, a way to one of those newspaper
squibs which delight both the snobbishness and the sentimentality of
Americans. In the slight pause which ensued, the Judge had a momentary
sensation of being weighed in a very delicately balanced mind, and
of being found wanting. But Charlotte only said, "You may come if
you wish. But it is sooner than you anticipate--very soon."
"To-morrow morning at seven-thirty," interjected Collingwood. "We
are going out on the Coastguard boat at ten."
Here was a burning of bridges, a lover who wooed and a maid who did
not dally! The Judge asked where the ceremony would take place, and
was told to come to a certain church not far from the hospital. Once
more his over-restraint betrayed him, and Miss Ponsonby guessed
his surprise.
"We were both brought up Catholics," she said, "and though we have
neither of us clung very closely to the Mother Church, that is
where we naturally turn on such an occasion. We have not needed a
dispensation. The path has been easy." She smiled enigmatically.
"No, we haven't needed a dispensation from the Pope," said Collingwood,
"but apparently we cannot manage our own affairs without the help
of the Civil Government. I am not sure that we shall get through
to-morrow without the appearance of some of the gang declaring that
there are reasons why this woman should not be married to this man."
"The Civil Government?" repeated Judge Barton, mystified. Then a light
broke upon him. "Of course--you are under contract." He addressed
Miss Ponsonby.
"My service under contract was fulfilled five months ago," she
replied. "I am at liberty to leave Government employ any moment
I wish."
"But they are long on eminent medicos and short on nurses," went on
Collingwood, whose spirits were evidently riotous, "and when Miss
Ponsonby sent in her resignation, they informed her of the fact,
and, by the Lord! they had the effrontery to expect us to arrange our
affairs to suit their convenience. The letter has gone back and forth
till it has eighteen endorsements. It hove in sight a few days ago
in an extra large envelope. I told Charlotte to put on a nineteenth,
and to end the whole matter by telling the Civil Commission and the
Bureau of Health and the Marine Hospital Service all three to go to
the devil."
"Which it was manifestly impossible for me to do," added Miss Ponsonby,
blushing.
"Manifestly," assented the Judge, with a short laugh. To him whose
whole policy was diplomacy here was temerity in a twentieth century
citizen of the American Republic to mock the Civil Commission. As
well a Venetian in the twelfth had jeered at the Council of Ten.
"Manifestly is a good word," Collingwood went on. "It was, as you
say, manifestly impossible that Miss Ponsonby should tell the Bureau
of Health to go to the devil, but it was manifestly ordained that
I should write them a letter, telling them what I thought of them,
and telling them to go to the devil's place of residence; which I
did. Forthwith, Miss Ponsonby was fired, bag and baggage, from Civil
employ. They had not seen their way to releasing her for six months,
but when she crossed Their High-Mightinesses--or when I did it for
her--they could let her go in twenty-four hours. Well, what's one
man's meat is another man's poison. I don't know about their poison,
but I knew my meat when they put it in my hand, and I'm not the man
to let it go."
"I see." There was a falling off in Judge Barton's interest in the
romance, but he struggled to conceal his feelings. He fancied also
that Miss Ponsonby was embarrassed, almost annoyed, at her lover's
frankness. "To-morrow morning, you say, at seven-thirty? I'll be
there."
He turned away after his most impressive handshake, and still pondering
this inexplicable step on the lady's part, sought his own carriage. Was
she led by romance simply, by the belated desire for love-making and
mating which might easily seize upon a woman pushing rapidly away from
the age when romance is a right? Or had she, with a shrewdness which
belied her late folly, decided to accommodate herself to the rather
material atmosphere which prevails in Manila? Had she perceived that
Collingwood was of the stuff to win out in whatever he undertook? And
had she voluntarily embraced a temporary effacement with him in order
to return to the world better equipped for the struggle to impress
it with her personality? Whatever was her motive, she was not wholly
a happy bride, and yet,--there was something in that fleeting smile
which she had given Collingwood, something very tender, exquisitely
feminine, which touched the Judge and roused in him a grudging
spirit toward the man who had reached out his hand to take what he,
Alexander Barton, had never dreamed of taking. The Judge was baffled,
and was about to give up the problem, when the well-known figure of
his friend Mrs. Badgerly recalled her cleverness in analysis and her
unbounded effrontery in stating her conclusions. He went immediately
to submit his difficulty to her.
Collingwood and his betrothed continued listening to the evening
concert in a silence which may have expressed their entire proprietary
assumption of each other, but which, on the gentleman's part, was
permeated with the watchfulness of one handling an overfilled glass. He
was anxious not to joggle his companion's reserve, as if he feared
that the spilling of a drop or two of what was passing in her mind
might leave a few acid scars upon his complacency. There had been, as
you felt, no easy courtship. If, in the presence of others, he chose
to carry it off with a high hand, when he was left alone with her,
he betrayed that, until the final blessing should have been said over
them the next day, he was more or less in doubt of his captive. His
blurting out the news of their approaching marriage to Judge Barton had
been a stroke of policy as well as an overflow of pride. His lover's
watchfulness, combating with his lover's tenderness, told him that
every pressure must be brought to bear to keep her from halting even
at the last moment. He had realized from his earliest acquaintance
with her that she was overworked and at the point of a nervous and
physical breakdown. He knew from her own admissions that she had no
relatives to whom she was willing to apply for assistance. He had
had her shy confession of affection for him and no few glimpses at a
depth of feeling which she would not wholly reveal. His own rashness
in meddling in her dispute with the Government officials had cost
her her means of livelihood, in the islands, at least, and his own
business was pressing him. These reasons, even unsupported by the
ardor of his love for her, seemed to justify him in applying all the
pressure he could to hurry Charlotte into marriage; but he could not
be blind to her reluctance, to a timidity and foreboding which she
would not explain but which caused her no little unhappiness.
Miss Ponsonby sat on in a reverie not altogether pleasant, as one
or two changes in her sensitive countenance testified. She was so
preoccupied that she remained unconscious of the playing of the
national anthem, of the dispersal of the crowd, and of the threats
of a few spattering raindrops which were not followed by a shower,
but which sent the coachman to put up the hood of their victoria. The
darkness had quite closed down upon them, the lights on the shipping
were huddled like little suburban villages on the plain of waters,
and the flash-light on Corregidor was winking an occasional red eye
low down against the sea, when Collingwood laid an almost timorous
hand upon his betrothed's arm.
"Don't worry. Leave that to me. It is my side of the contract. Why
do you take this ridiculous quarrel so seriously? Besides, it was my
fault. I jumped in--oh! just because I felt so good that I wanted to
tackle the world."
"It is an omen. It is the recurrence of conditions that have always
weighed me down. Whatever I do, there is someone to be annoyed and
offended at the act. I am in disgrace. I have been unutterably lonely
in Manila, and I felt that in our marriage, at least, there would be
the compensation of having no one to object; and now these offended
dignitaries project themselves into the affair, trailing their forked
lightnings of displeasure. Why must combat hover over my head? Why
must I fight for what drops into the laps of other women?"
"You couldn't fight," said Collingwood. "You haven't fought. You have
only been wearied and discouraged and unhappy. When I came in and did
a little fighting for you, it paralyzed you. What is a row more or
less--and least of all, under the circumstances? It would take more
than exchanging compliments with the Bureau of Health to unsettle my
spirits to-night."
"It crushes me," replied Charlotte. "Besides, you have not had
my life."
Collingwood studied her through the gloom. Her last words were a
lifting of the veil which, she had assured him, hid much pain. He
had been able to account for her reluctance in being hurried into an
early marriage through reasons which reflected credit upon her and were
not uncomplimentary to himself. To marry a man who had come into her
life less than three months before and who was planning to carry her
off to a practically uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean might
well have daunted the enthusiasm of a much more daring spirit than
hers. Collingwood's social traditions were rudimentary beside hers;
but even he, pagan that he was, could make allowances for nervousness
on that score. What he could not account for was her evident misgiving
of the ultimate outcome of their romance. She was vexed by doubts
which she was unwilling to share with him, and yet a few frank words in
the early days of their engagement had sufficed to remove all thought
that she was concealing from him anything that he ought to know.
She had told him that she had been practically an orphan since
infancy; that till she was fourteen years of age, she had been
brought up in a convent; that at fourteen she went to live in the
family of her mother's cousin; that she had been educated at Smith
College, taking her bachelor's degree there; that she had found the
bread of dependence exceedingly hard to eat, and, in defiance of her
relatives' wishes, had taken her training as a nurse; and finally,
that she had come to the Philippines to put as great a distance as
possible between herself and them, to whom her career was a source of
humiliation. "There has never been, in my past life, one act of which
you or I should be ashamed. There have been no events, no episodes,
nothing but a series of petty humiliations, of wasted efforts, and of
thwarted ambitions which I cannot talk about even to you. I want to
forget them. They have almost overwhelmed me. I have been--I am--on
the verge of becoming morbidly introspective and retrospective. Help
me to put the past away, but not because there is one thing in it
that you ought to know."
To such an appeal a lover can make but one reply. After that, whenever
Collingwood saw her struggling with one of her moods of gloom, he
bent his energies to its conquest, none the less willingly that he
had discovered a ready charm for its exorcising in the caresses for
which his own affection was glad to find an excuse.
He had early learned the futility of argument against her despondent
moods, not only because her intelligence was better trained than his
own, but because, as he admitted to himself, she had all the argument
on her side. But he possessed, in the final appeal to tenderness,
a power before which she was invariably vanquished. There was, in her
shy acceptance of his caresses, an element of childishness, of a child
yielding to some forbidden pleasure, self-rebuking, fearing a price
to be paid, yet infinitely content in the moment. She was wonderfully
self-reliant in her thinking processes, and adorably dependent in
her emotions. She could think, and she was begging of the unseen
Fates to be spared thinking. She could decide, but she was grateful
to him for taking decision out of her hands. She loved him, but she
found unutterable difficulty in voicing her feelings. He had found,
in truth, what the coquette must skilfully feign--the woman's dread
of her own emotions, the alternate advance and retreat, the struggle
with her own nature, before she could submit to a master. She was
veritably a wild creature, striving to conceal the fact, a woman of
nearly thirty as timid as a girl in her teens. He was secretly amused
at the evident difficulty she experienced in recognizing her own
capacity for romance and affection; but her careful repression of her
emotions lent savor to a wooing which had in it some of the elements
of mediaevalism. For the time when she would see fit to cease her own
struggle against the mysterious influences which he felt battling
against him, he could afford to wait. That such a time would come,
his natural optimism and his previous experiences with women made
him certain. In the meanwhile, he did not intend to risk a chance
word as he felt his hand so near closing on hers forever.
Protected by the darkness within the carriage hood, he threw an arm
about her and held her pressed to his side while he put his lips
against hers and finally pressed his face against her cheek in a
wordless caress.
"There is nothing to be said that we have not said," he murmured
at length. "But I entreat you, in God's name, put your fears aside
to-night. Are we the first man and woman who have dared risk and
calamity for the sake of loving? Oh! the word sticks in your throat,
I dare say. It is wonderful how you have coquetted with every reason
which may excuse our marriage except the only one that justifies it."
"Ah, if I only knew that we could be sure of ourselves," she
murmured. "But suppose it is a mistake; suppose you find me something
different from what you fancy me--I tell you every day that you
idealize me--that I cannot live up to your conception of me! Suppose
you come to hate me, as some men do hate women that are tied for life
to them, millstones around their necks!" She shuddered.
It was a line of thought so unnatural for a girl to indulge in on the
eve of her marriage, that Collingwood found time for a moment's wonder
what could have been the formative influences of her life to make her
look so despondently on her own powers of holding affection. But the
moment was not for indecision. Collingwood drew his face away from
hers although he still continued to encircle her with his arm.
"You may not be sure of yourself," he said. "The processes of your
education seem to have left you muddled on matters that you ought to
have been clear on before now. But I'm sure of myself. I'm marrying you
for love--for a consuming passion, if you like the term. I got it out
of a novel. I don't pretend to combat your reasons. All that you have
said may be in the light of prophecy. You may be right, but no power
on earth could make me give you up without the utmost struggle that I
am capable of. I believe that we have a happy life before us. But if
I believed that it was going to end in the blackest tribulation that
man ever entered into this side of the eternal torments, I would go
on and mortgage my life for the few weeks of joy I've had and the few
that may be ahead of us before the thing goes to smash. As for you, you
have resisted at every step, and I've felt every minute that you were
fighting yourself more than me." He crushed her against him suddenly,
and as suddenly dropped his arm from her waist. "There, now, you are
free. Do you mean to tell me that you like this better--that you are
not happy in my arms? Then something in you that isn't your tongue
lies. Why, I've felt it at every caress I've ever given you--the
struggle and the yielding and the gladness. Come! Stop coquetting
with yourself! Isn't it so?"
In the minute or two which intervened before her reply, he held
his breath for fear he had gone too far. Then the soundness of his
instinctive judgment was demonstrated to his entire satisfaction. For
a second or two Miss Ponsonby strained her clasped hands to her eyes,
then she deliberately nestled back to his side, and slipped an arm
around his neck. She began to cry, the first tears her lover had seen
her shed, though he suspected that she shed many, and he hushed her to
his breast as if she were a grieving child. She cried very quietly,
and he knew that she was ashamed of her weakness. She soon regained
control of herself, and she answered his question with an instinctive
sense of fairness which he had often noticed in her. Most women would
have taken advantage of the tears to evade an acknowledgment of defeat.
"You are right, Martin," she admitted. "I have coquetted with myself,
I have been pretending to myself that I meant ultimately to back out,
and in my heart of hearts I knew I would not, I knew I could not. I
have been selfish. I have spoiled your happiness, and refused to
accept my own for fear of the future. Yours is the only sensible
view. There are chances--but we cannot reason, we cannot think. We
must just take what life gives us; and if by and by comes sorrow, why,
we've had a little taste of joy. I am through coquetting, dear. I
am happy--now--here. I do not care what comes. I've been a wretched
prophet of evil, because secretly I meant to ride rough-shod over
whatever I summoned to oppose. I surrender. I throw myself on your
mercy. I don't deserve quarter, but I know you will give it."
There was a very long silence in the victoria. At the end of it,
Miss Ponsonby said with a little choking laugh, "But, Martin, I--I
distrust I'm marrying my master."
"Not the least doubt about it," said Collingwood. "But when masters
are the right sort--fellows like me, for instance--they are not a
bad thing for some women to have--women like you, for instance."