This is an unexpected pleasure, murmured Mrs. Collingwood, giving to
Judge Barton a warm pressure of the hand. For though she was proud
and sensitive, she was not vindictive, and the Judge's conduct on
her wedding day had gone far to blot out the recollection of their
of their unamicable past. Also his presence was a compliment, an
assurance that his professions of interest were not wholly perfunctory.
"It should not be so," he replied. "What did I tell you on your wedding
day? You've forgotten. I haven't, you see, and here I am! Moreover,
I have brought you a commissioner and a gentleman interested in pearl
shells." By the time he had finished this long speech, the Judge had
shaken hands with both husband and wife, and stood ready to introduce
the men who followed him. They were respectively a member of the
Philippine Commission and an American agent for a button factory
in the United States, who was desirous of making arrangements for a
permanent supply of shells.
"The Commissioner is headed for Cuyo, and will go on there to-morrow,"
said Judge Barton. "Mr. Jones would like to stay and see the field
and talk business with Mr. Collingwood until the steamer returns, in
about a week; and I have wondered if you could put up with me that long
also. But nobody is to be inconvenienced. Knowing the limited resources
of islands in the Visaya Sea, each of us has come provided with an army
cot and bedding, and we have also a first-class shelter tent. Likewise,
remembering Mr. Collingwood's reminiscences in hospital, and being
minded of the scarcity of fresh beef, I ventured to bring along the
quarter of a cow--I believe a part of the hind quarter."
He got no further. Martin had again taken his hand between two bronzed
paws and was shaking it fervently.
"I understand, Judge," he declared, "just why you hold your eminent
position. A man can't be great these days without a head for detail,
and you have one. There are plenty of men who would have forgotten
all I said about this place, but you haven't. You remembered it
at the right time. Now, frankly, Judge, where is that beef at the
present moment?"
The Judge hooked a thumb in the direction of the steamer's boat. "That
beef is in that dinghey," he replied, "and, without desiring to advise
Mrs. Collingwood in her domestic arrangements, I should suggest
that the sooner it is eaten the better. The steamer's ice-carrying
facilities are limited, and it is by the grace of God that it has
'kept' till now."
"He means by the grace of Government coal, Mrs. Collingwood,"
interrupted the steamer's captain, who was standing by talking to
Kingsnorth, whom he knew. "I had nearly to ruin my engines getting that
beef down here, the Judge was so concerned about it." It came ashore
at that minute, a suggestively dead piece of beef in cheese-cloth
wrappings, but the fishers received it almost with rites of welcome.
Kingsnorth and the Maclaughlins having been presented, the group
wandered leisurely toward the Collingwood cottage. The newcomers
protested that there was no need of Mrs. Collingwood's giving herself
trouble about dinner; they could go back to the steamer for dinner;
it would be waiting for them. It was the stereotyped convention
throughout a land where hospitality is as catholic as is the necessity
for it. Martin and Charlotte, naturally, would hear nothing of the
visitors' returning to the steamer before bedtime.
"If you don't mind dinner's being a little late," Charlotte added,
while Mrs. Maclaughlin threw in, in response to a last weak protest,
"Trouble! Why we would cook for twenty people to get to talk to one."
So the boat went back for the tent, the cots, and the luggage of the
prospective guests, while the visitors sat on Charlotte's veranda,
enjoying the evening breeze and the sunset, as they drank tea and
consumed delicious little triangles of buttered toast, and slices of
sweet cake. The Commissioner wanted to know all about the island:
who owned it? what crops did it produce? was there an intelligent
teniente? "He obeys the orders that we give him," replied Martin
dryly, and the Commissioner smiled: Was there easy communication
with the mainland? What did Mr. Collingwood think of coprax in the
Visayas? Then, in an aside, to Charlotte, What a pity that he had
not brought Mrs. Commissioner! she would have enjoyed this. Such
a charming situation and such a delightful home! Mrs. Commissioner
would never cease to regret having missed it. "We hope that you will
have occasion to pass again, and will bring her with you," Charlotte
murmured politely, and the great man assured her that he should make
a point of it. "She loves atmosphere," he said. "We have more of that
than anything else," Kingsnorth interjected, and to the Commissioner's
hearty laugh, Martin added, "Specially when it is moving N.N.E. eighty
miles an hour."
Meanwhile Judge Barton was trying out his Grand Army manner with
Mrs. Maclaughlin, and privately taking stock of place and people.
"Chickens!" he said regretfully in response to her remark that
she guessed those chickens would live a day longer in view of that
quarter of beef. "Have I contributed, by my own unselfishness, to my
own undoing? The chickens of Manila are not chickens, they are merely
delusions in the form of blood, bones, and feathers, bought, killed,
and served, by a succession of inhuman Chinese cooks, for the sole
purpose of tantalizing the American stomach. Do I understand that
you feed your chickens, and that they are actually fat?"
"Fat as butter," said Mrs. Maclaughlin proudly.
The Judge sighed with anticipation. "I'm glad I'm going to stay a
week," he declared. "I'm fond of chicken--when it is chicken. But
tell me, are you never lonely here, Mrs. Maclaughlin?"
"I am. Charlotte ain't."
The Judge took note of the familiarity, but the laughing eye he turned
upon Mrs. Collingwood did not betray that fact. "Yes, we are talking
about you," he said in response to the glance she gave, hearing her
name used. "Mrs. Maclaughlin says that you are never lonely."
"Of course I am not. I have too many occupations. I am busy from
morning till night. There is no excuse for ennui."
"I thirst to know what you do. I know a score of ladies who are
suffering from nostalgia with far less excuse for loneliness than
you have."
"Well, there is the housekeeping, though our servants are quite
satisfactory, and it isn't onerous; and there is my mending and
Martin's, and my sewing, and I have an hour's school each day for the
children, and an hour's medical inspection, which usually runs into
two or three; and if you will look on our table, you will not find
it wholly empty of books and magazines. Then when Martin comes home,
there is tea and talk, and then dinner. Sometimes after dinner,
I read aloud, or Martin and I play a game of chess. We go to bed
early and get up early for we are working people."
"Heavens!" said the Judge. "I stand confounded. It is virtue past
all the known limits of exemplariness. I wish a few women of my
acquaintance could hear you."
Charlotte lifted her brows and smiled with kindly malice. "Your friend
Mrs. Badgerly is well?" she inquired sweetly.
"You are no less a mind reader than you formerly were, I perceive. My
friend Mrs. Badgerly is quite well. She was in my thoughts when I gave
utterance to my wish. My friend Mrs. Badgerly is one of your admirers,
Mrs. Collingwood."
"Since when?"
"Since that memorable day on which you so effectually snubbed her."
"I am glad I did it," Charlotte said emphatically, and they both
laughed.
"It has been done more brutally, I believe," said the Judge, "but
never more thoroughly. She appreciates your powers. She really does."
To this bit of by-talk the Commissioner and Martin had been paying a
desultory attention as they sipped their tea. At that point, Charlotte
brought the conversation back to something which would include the
other guests, and the Judge got no further opportunity to engross
her attention, till, the dark falling, a servant lit a lamp in the
sala, and Charlotte excused herself on the plea of a housekeeper's
duties. She left the group on the veranda enjoying the warm starlit
darkness, across which the steamer's lights gleamed cosily. Judge
Barton, glancing behind him, saw her superintending the laying of
the table in the living-room of the cottage, and he abruptly rose
and joined her.
"Can't I help?" he said by way of excuse for presenting himself. "I
have brought all this nuisance down upon you. I might be allowed to
make myself useful if I can." Then in reply to her assurance that there
was nothing that he could do, and that she regarded the occasion as a
treat and not as a nuisance, he went on, "Then can't I stay and talk
to you?" He took the permission for granted and without waiting for a
reply, glanced around the room, which, with its quaintly adorned walls,
its tasteful photographs and water-colors, its gleaming brass, and the
glancing lights on carved teak and inlaid blackwood, was full of charm.
"What an absolutely delightful room! and this old table! Where does
Collingwood pick up these things?"
Charlotte smilingly laid a finger upon her lips, glancing in the
direction of the Commissioner. "I think it's loot," she said.
"And I know this is," the Judge remarked, standing in front of the
desk. "I remember hearing Collingwood say he was in the Chinese affair
in 1900. Why wasn't it my fate to be there too? It's all very well to
talk about our superior civilization, but there is something in the
mere thought of looting treasures like these to make the mouth water."
"Martin did not loot these. Mr. Kingsnorth did. He gave them to me
for a wedding present."
"Lucky dog! either to loot or to give."
"I am ashamed to confess," Charlotte admitted, twitching a tablecloth
into better place as a servant laid it, "that I am getting dreadfully
mixed upon matters of right and wrong. When I came out here, my
principles were simple as day. There wasn't any doubt how I regarded
looters and people who would accept looted goods. I should as soon
have accepted a stolen ham. And here am I, the possessor of various
pieces of looted furniture, brazenly rejoicing in them, and all the
more because they were looted. I am degenerating hour by hour." She
shook her head plaintively as she put a massive brass candlestick of
old Chinese design into its place.
Judge Barton, leaning against the open casement, his two hands braced
behind on the sill, stood a picture of smiling content as he studied
her. His natural magnetism fairly radiated from him in his benignant
mood. His wealth of grizzling hair, his large-featured, intellectual
face, and one or two lines that bespoke the brute strength and will
of the man, made him look like some roughly but powerfully sketched
figure. His clothes were always fashionably cut and he wore them
well, but the sense of the well formed muscular-body beneath them
always dominated their lines. As he stood beaming upon her, it would
have taken a stronger-minded woman than Mrs. Collingwood to weigh
impartially the balanced charms of the powerful intellect and of the
powerful animal in the man. She relaxed her old suspicious guard,
which had revived for an instant when he followed her into the house,
so clearly bent upon a tete-a-tete. Without the faintest suggestion of
sentimental intimacy, they were encased in an atmosphere of congenial
interest. An onlooker would have pronounced them a pair of reunited
chums.
"I am dying to say something," said the Judge in response to her
lament over her decaying morals, "but I don't dare."
"Why?"
"You know why very well. 'I'm skeered o' you.'" He threw a fine negro
accent into the negro phrase.
"Is it something so impertinent?"
"If I may so express it, it is humanely impertinent. I know no other
woman to whom I should hesitate to propound it at once, for it is a
question. But I have been scathed by you before this, and I am not
absolutely foolhardy."
"Oh, go ahead," said Charlotte. "Impertinence acknowledged is
impertinence disarmed. Besides, I may owe you some amends. I could
never see how I did it, but my husband says I used to snap your head
off every time you spoke."
"You did, you did, indeed." This was said with fervor.
"Well, I promise not to snap this time."
"Don't you find it more comfortable, then--being degenerate, I mean?"
For an instant Mrs. Collingwood stared at him, and he broke into a
peal of laughter in which she presently joined.
"Indeed, I must be a formidable person if you were afraid to ask that,"
she said. "Well, then, I do. Does my answer content you?"
"Unspeakably. You know we all enjoy being degenerate, but I never
hoped to hear you admit it."
At this instant, Mrs. Collingwood's attention was diverted by the
servant, who came back with a tray of cutlery. She indicated several
places at which plates and silver were to be laid, but found time
for an abstracted smile at her guest, who stood waiting her pleasure
while she gave her directions.
"I daresay--" she returned briskly to the subject after this lapse of
time--"I was very priggish. Martin has humanized me--there is no doubt
of it--and I am grateful to him. He is so humorously practical. How
do you think he is looking?"
"Oh--fine!" Judge Barton was conscious of a restiveness suppressed. He
said to himself that he had not come two hundred and fifty miles to
talk about Martin Collingwood's looks.
"I am so glad you think so, because I think so myself. I fancy
Mrs. Maclaughlin did not feed him properly in the old days, and men
get so careless by themselves. He says I 'hold him up to the collar
beautifully' and I really try to, and regular food and physical
comfort will tell."
"Collingwood is the picture of health and of masculine good looks,"
said Judge Barton; "and as for you, it is a joy to see anyone looking
so healthy, so vital. You have changed immensely. I wonder, dear lady,
if you yourself realized how tired and nearly broken-down you were
in those old days."
"I was miserable, physically and nervously worn out, and I suppose
I looked it. But I have had a glorious rest and nothing in the world
to fret or worry about, and--" she raised her eyes to his, blushing
as she approached the topic which had been the source of so much
constraint between them--"and Martin and I have been ridiculously
happy in each other. I may as well be frank and admit that half that
was depressing me was sheer loneliness and wounded pride. Probably
the loneliness was much my own fault, for I hardly met people half
way; and the wounded pride was wholly my own fault, for I started
out to earn my own living in defiance of all my relatives' wishes. I
suppose I had not the philosophy to meet the situation, in spite of
that hateful little slap you gave me about 'the unloveliest thing in
women.'" The Judge started forward.
"Thank you for giving me my opportunity," he said in a low voice. "I
could not have referred to it otherwise. I have writhed with shame
every time I have thought of those words, Mrs. Collingwood. Will you
permit me to apologize for them and for numerous other unmanly stabs
that I have given you? I do not know why I did it; all the time I
was longing to be friends with you."
"I suppose I irritated you," Charlotte replied slowly, a little
surprised by his vehemence. "It is inexplicable to me also when I look
back upon it. I had really forgiven you long ago. You were very nice
to us on our wedding day, I remember, and I felt forlorn and deserted
enough on that occasion to be grateful to anyone who showed any signs
of human interest in us. But I am glad that you have apologized,
and am glad to express my forgiveness, and to regret that I was
so snappish. All of which may be expressed in that homely phrase,
'Let us bury the hatchet.'"
"We were always meant to be friends, I think." Some vibration in the
voice made Charlotte sheer off from an approach to intensity. "Martin
always liked you," she said; and thus, ten seconds after their
reconciliation, the Judge had cause to reflect with some irritation
that there is no woman in the world so unsatisfying at times as
one born without natural coquetry. He had a few minutes in which to
develop this idea, while Charlotte made a voyage of investigation
to the kitchen. She came back well satisfied. "I think we can count
on dinner in half an hour," she said, and carried him back with her
to the veranda, where she did her duty by the Commissioner and the
Honorable Mr. Jones, who was not expansive on any subject other than
oyster shells.
Kingsnorth, who had gone over to his own cottage and had donned the
English mess jacket, which is the standard evening attire in the
Orient, came back, an undeniable English gentleman in spite of his
degenerate countenance, and devoted himself to the judicial luminary,
who took stock of him as they chatted. Indeed, the Judge was profoundly
interested in Charlotte's island companions. The Maclaughlins were the
sort of people he would expect to find in company with Collingwood,
but the Englishman was a surprise. He said to himself that it must have
strained all Mrs. Collingwood's pride to accommodate herself to that
household, and he marvelled at her tremendous growth in self-control
and in social vagabondage. Six months before she would not have met
so unconcernedly such a situation as that in which she found herself.
At dinner the Commissioner, sitting on one side of Mrs. Collingwood
with the Judge on the other, was secretly amazed at the house, the
household, and the very agreeable woman who was his hostess. With
one laughing remark--"My dear, I am the housekeeper, and I won't be
apologized for"--she had silenced Martin, who was inclined to drift
into that apologetic and explanatory vein which demands continual
reassurance from the guests of their appreciation of their food;
and, picking up the conversational ball, she had sent it spinning
lightly here and there through all the courses of as perfectly
served a dinner as the Commissioner had ever sat through. She was
ably assisted by the two officials and Kingsnorth and even by Martin,
whose delight in his wife's grasp of the situation set his dry, keen
wits at bubbling effervescence. Maclaughlin, though not partial to
what he called "gentlefolk," was a hard-headed Scot, not likely to
rush in where angels tread lightly, and Mrs. Maclaughlin, who found
the general trend of conversation too agile for her, may be said to
have concentrated herself on the oyster-shell seeker and the Captain,
who suffered also from a slowness of abstract speech.
It was also, considering the fact that it was limited by the resources
of a comparatively unproductive island, a good dinner, even in
the opinion of two habitual diners-out. It began with a cocktail
of Martin's own mixing and was continued in a clear soup and in a
baked fish which must have weighed ten pounds and was of incomparable
flavor. "Never have I eaten such fish," declared Judge Barton, helping
himself the second time to the fish and its garnish of thin, sliced
cucumbers. Then there was a roast of beef highly relished by the fisher
folk, camote, or sweet potato, croquettes, a dish of bamboo sprouts
cooked after a savory native recipe, and green peppers stuffed with
force-meat. There was a crab salad, deliciously cold, and papaya ice.
"But how do you obtain ice?" said the Commissioner.
"We have a small machine which freezes one hundred pounds daily,"
replied Charlotte, "just enough for each cottage and the mess kitchen."
"I remember when Collingwood proposed having that machine made by
special order, how I pooh-poohed the idea," remarked Kingsnorth. "I
was not sufficiently Americanized to feel the need of it. But I am
as bad as the rest of them now. Frozen desserts are the only ones
fit for the tropics; and I've even learned to drink iced-tea."
A general chorus of assent went up. "You certainly make yourselves
comfortable," the Commissioner declared, "and, really, failing a fresh
beef supply, you seem to have all that we get in Manila, in addition
to a more charming situation. I suppose your only real difficulty is
the matter of medical aid."
"That is our only real fear," Collingwood replied. "We keep a supply of
coal on hand for emergencies, and we never let it get below a certain
point. We keep a reserve sufficient to take the launch over to Cuyo
or to Romblon. But if there came a sudden need in bad weather, we
should be in the deuce of a fix. It is the only thought that ever
keeps me awake at night."
The Commissioner nodded and murmured something appreciative of a
possible crisis. Certainly this very entertaining lady who sat beside
him--a lady who had seen something of the world if he was any judge
of personality--must feel herself strangely situated in that out of
the way spot, chancing the dangers of tidal waves, of storms, and
of illness without medical assistance. He fancied the situation was
explicable. The compromises which women make for matrimony had offered
him food for reflection long before he ever saw Mrs. Collingwood;
but what he could not understand was why she should have been among
those who have to make compromises. A woman of her grace and finish
ought to have a pretty wide field of selection, he thought; but then
one can never tell how circumstances force persons into unfortunate
positions. The Englishman was a dose; not that he had altogether lost
his breeding, but that the atmosphere of degeneration hung so palpably
about him. "How he must hate himself," thought the Commissioner,
"to make us all so conscious of his fall!" He removed his eyes from
Kingsnorth's face after arriving at this conclusion, just in time to
meet the clear gaze of his hostess, and to know, by her sudden blush
and momentary shrinking, that she had read him like an open book,
and to realize that she was self-conscious of her own situation.
She was enough mistress of herself, however, to hold the conversation
at its level. She asked with intelligent interest about those political
events in the islands, concerning which it is tactful to question
Commissioners. She drew the statesman out on the subject of his own
hopes and plans for the islands. He in turn asked information from the
fishers, and they, warming to the theme as men will when they talk
of things in which they are experienced, gave him their practical,
hard-headed views of men and conditions, spoke of native labor and
its capacities and incapacities, of resources and possibilities, and
of the disadvantages of political unrest to a people more primitive
than any that ever before held the reins of government.
Even an illiterate man is interesting when he talks of his craft,
and Martin Collingwood, however little natural development he had in
social subtilties, was anything but illiterate or even ill informed. To
his wife he seemed to gather new dignity as he took a leader's natural
position. It was plain that his business associates deferred to him;
and in ten minutes it was plain that the Commissioner knew he was
dealing with a man who would, in the financial world at least, make
himself felt. Commissioners never ignore financiers. There came into
the Commissioner's manner as the dinner progressed, something more
deferential than the mere civility of a guest to a host, something
which implied his acceptance of Mr. Collingwood as a man to be
considered.
It was, on the whole, a most successful dinner. The newcomers
had brought with them a current of the outer atmosphere, breathing
interest and exhilaration into the little colony of self-exiles; and
the exiles shared themselves so wholly with the outsiders that the
outsiders grew to feel much at home. When, at eleven o'clock, they
all walked down to the beach with the Commissioner and the Captain,
regrets and good-byes were as hearty as they would have been if the
acquaintance had been of long duration.
As he was pulled out to the steamer, the Commissioner remembered that,
on the way down, Barton had given him a hint of an odd situation,
to which he had paid but a cursory attention. Well it was for the old
gossip that he was safe ashore under the tent. "But I'll have it out
of him going back," reflected the Commissioner. "Fine woman! Fine
manly fellow, her husband; sort of man we need out here! He isn't
her equal socially, but I suppose women forget social differences
just as we do when they come under the attraction of good looks and
manly traits. Besides, if he makes money, she can float him with no
difficulty. A remarkably fine woman."