It was all finally settled, and preparations such as could be made
were begun. Charlotte found that, with a prospect of returning to the
world, a variety of interests which she had thought quite extinct
revived and grew clamorous. Memory was busy, too, with the days of
her courtship. That strange mingling of ecstasy and misery through
which she had passed seemed quite remote and, in retrospect, quite
unnecessary. A hundred times she asked herself why she had been such
a goose, why she had hesitated, why she had permitted the possible
opinion of the world at large to influence her. She went about almost
uplifted with the sense of new moral independence.
Collingwood was childishly eager for the change. His head, too,
was full of memories and of places--how they would revisit the place
where such and such a conversation had taken place,--did she remember
that wrestle of their two individualities,--or drive over the ground
where he had pleaded so fiercely for the right to take care of her,
to stand between her and the bread-and-butter struggle. Particularly
he looked forward to the Luneta evenings, for, of all moments in his
life, he held that moment on the Luneta when she had dropped her flag
the sweetest. He said as much to her, and she blushed like a girl. He
also said something to the same effect to Mrs. Mac when that lady
was sharpening her imagination one evening at dinner.
"We are going to run off and leave you just once, Mrs. Mac," he
said. "I've got one drive with my wife all planned out; it will be
a Sunday evening. I am going to take her to the Luneta that evening;
just she and I."
"Oh, I can understand," replied Mrs. Mac. "For that matter, Mac and
I were young once ourselves."
Kingsnorth, who had preserved a kind of displeased reticence ever
since it had been settled that Mrs. Mac was to go to Manila with the
Collingwoods, started to say something, bestowed upon the lady an
unfriendly glance, and somewhat pointedly asked Mrs. Collingwood if
she was going to join the bridge game after dinner.
Charlotte smiled across the table at her husband. "Not unless I'm
actually needed," she replied.
"You hate it so badly, you'll have to be excused," Collingwood
said. "Better let Kingsnorth take you for a stroll. You need exercise
and his temper needs sweetening. He has been in a devilish mood
all day."
"You make me feel like a prescription," said Charlotte,
laughingly. "Mr. Kingsnorth, if your temper does not improve after
a dose of my society, my husband's faith in me as a panacea for all
troubles of the mind will have gone forever."
"I note that fact," said Kingsnorth, gravely. "I commit myself now
to come back grinning like a Cheshire cat." But he knew, in spite of
her light manner, that Charlotte was displeased. It was seldom that
she permitted herself the least badinage with him; and he recognized
it nearly always as a cloak to cover some hasty and more aggressive
instinct.
Nevertheless, when they started away after dinner, she fell into a
more intimate tone with him than she generally used. The sunset was
just dying out, and its flaming radiance seemed to exaggerate the
wide sweep of the waters, the white stretch of sand, and the lithe,
swaying boles of the cocoanut groves. Charlotte paused to look about
her in a sudden rush of tenderness for the solitude.
"It is wonderful how contented one can be in such a situation as
this," she said. "I am amazed at myself. I am never sad, seldom even
lonely. I have a feeling, at times, that this could go on and on and
on in endless aeons, and I could ask no more than one day's sunshine
and that same day's sunset. It is inexplicable and yet it is all in
myself; anything to upset that harmony between my soul and this could
make it a nightmare, an endless nightmare."
"As it is to me," Kingsnorth rejoined. "I don't know why I stand it
from day to day. I don't see how mere dollars and cents can compensate
for stagnating here. Yet I am such a slave to the dollar that I do
stay; the good Lord only knows when I shall go away."
"Yet you gave up your trip, you pretended to feel about this as you
don't feel. Why did you do it, Mr. Kingsnorth?"
"I wanted you and Martin to go. You can say what you please about
being satisfied and contented; some of your radiance and vitality
have disappeared in the last two or three weeks."
Charlotte flushed uncomfortably. She did not enjoy the thought that she
was so closely watched and studied. Kingsnorth, divining her thoughts,
went on hastily.
"Besides, I am as miserable there as here. I want the impossible. I'm
crying for the moon. I've cried for it--My God!--these twenty years. I
wonder, Mrs. Collingwood, if you can understand a mood of savage
self-dissatisfaction--a mood in which it seems indecent that you should
be alive yourself, and unjust that so many million fellow-beings
should find this world an agreeable place. There are times when
I should like to be an Atlas poised on the gulf of space! How I'd
send the old ball and all that dwell in it humming into the void,
to go on and on into darkness! You know that poem of Byron's--"
"Yes, I know the poem and the mood." She regretted the
statement as soon as she had made it, and bit her lips in silent
confusion. Kingsnorth stopped and faced her. They stood close to a
great clump of pandan bushes where a path, making a short cut from
the cottages to the point, led away through the bunched sand grass.
"Are you going to draw that line on me forever, Mrs. Collingwood?" he
demanded.
"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Kingsnorth."
"Oh, yes, you do. I am Martin's friend, Mrs. Collingwood. Am I never
going to be yours?"
"Just as far as it is a friendship including Martin, yes. But why
fence over the matter? The friendship which you would form with me
excludes him. I should have poor powers of analysis, Mr. Kingsnorth, if
I could not perceive that you have not been bidding for the friendship
of a friend's wife, as she is joined to his life and yours in the
present. What you want is a friendship based on the past. You want
to build something out of what we have both experienced and what he
has not experienced, and I will have nothing of it."
"I meant no disloyalty to him," Kingsnorth muttered.
"Disloyalty; no! But would he feel his position a dignified one? Would
he have no cause for complaint with both you and me?"
"You coddle him," said Kingsnorth, with a short bitter laugh.
"I am jealous for all that touches his dignity as well as mine."
Kingsnorth lost his head. "Why did you marry him?" he said.
"I married him because I was in love with him, Mr. Kingsnorth. I
haven't regretted it. I love him better to-day, if it were possible,
than I did then. I have answered your question because I was able to
answer it frankly; but, none the less, I resent its impertinence."
"I apologize. But you will admit, lady of the stony heart, that there
are situations that provoke human curiosity past the limits of all
good manners."
Charlotte stood tapping one foot on the ground a long while before
she spoke. She was thinking deeply, and the result of her meditations
was a sudden appeal.
"Mr. Kingsnorth," she said gently, "I should like to put this
matter honestly before you. You and I find ourselves in a peculiar
situation. When I first came here I was utterly taken aback by your
presence. You saw my confusion. You probably read it aright, and I
saw in your eyes, that first morning, the question which you have
just asked me. The answer is easy, and yet not easy to make. For
the sake of human affection in my life, to escape a loneliness and a
sense of isolation that were almost intolerable to me, I compromised
with my ambitions. I know how you and all the rest of the world--or,
at least, that part of it in which you and I were brought up--regard
my marriage. All the same, I do not regret it, and my life with Martin
has been full of happiness. I don't intend to jeopardize one drop of
that happiness. I have steadily refused to drift into any relations
with you that could startle Martin's mind into recognition of facts
which he is blind to, and which I choose to ignore. Are you so
selfish that, for the sake of a few idle hours, a few reminiscences,
perhaps, you would ask me to risk the dearest possession I have in
the world--my husband's unalloyed pleasure in our own relations, his
perfect confidence in himself?" She drew a long breath. "It would be
a sacrilege. I'll guard his happy self-confidence as I would guard
my own self-respect."
"That self-confidence of his is deuced irritating to the
onlooker." Then with a burst of anger, "You can't forgive me for being
myself, but you will forgive him for bringing you here and expecting
you to associate with me."
"The association has done me no harm, Mr. Kingsnorth."
"No, you're right. You've treated me like a leper."
"I have treated you with the courtesy and consideration which any
woman owes to her husband's friends."
"And you've measured it out drop by drop, as you would medicine in
a glass; just as you'll measure out courtesy to Mrs. Maclaughlin on
this trip. Good Lord! Mrs. Collingwood, you can't have that woman at
your heels in Manila. What is Martin thinking of? Let me give him a
hint for you."
"Don't you dare," she cried, her face crimsoning, her eyes beginning
to flash. Then with a sudden repression of her feelings, "What
evil genius inspires this desire to interfere? Why can you not
leave me to manage my own affairs? Martin is pleased at the idea of
Mrs. Maclaughlin's going, and that is enough for me." Then she began to
laugh softly. "Please, Mr. Kingsnorth, let this be the last time that
you and I discuss my personal affairs or Martin's. Martin and I have
a little Garden of Eden of our own, but I am no primitive Eve. With
my consent, he shall not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge."
Kingsnorth turned around with a shrug. "How long do you think you
can keep it up?"
"As long as we live in Maylubi, at the least. I hope forever."
"Not another day," said Collingwood's voice, as he stepped into
the path clear in view from behind the pandan bushes. "I've been
listening to this jargon for ten minutes. Now I should like to know
what it means?"
Kingsnorth did not start or utter a word; he only stared defiantly
at Collingwood. He was conscious of a low repressed sound from
Mrs. Collingwood, who stood as if turned to stone, her gaze fixed not
on her husband, but on Kingsnorth. She was nibbling a ratched edge of
pandan fibre which she had stripped as they talked; but her expression
was one of bitter accusation. Plainly she held him responsible for the
conversation he had forced upon her, and the betrayal which had ensued.
Collingwood was white and his brown eyes glittered with an uncanny
lustre. He was holding himself in with a strong hand.
It was Charlotte who spoke first. "At what point did you enter the
conversation, Martin?" she inquired suavely.
"I didn't enter. But I judge I heard from the beginning. Mrs. Mac found
she had something else to do, and Mac wanted to read; so I came across,
short cut, to join you. I waited a minute, intending to scare you,
and then what I heard made me want to hear more."
Charlotte gave a little reckless shrug, and turned her face
seaward. Her expression cut Kingsnorth to the heart.
"If you heard from the beginning, you must see that I forced a
conversation on Mrs. Collingwood that she disliked," he said slowly.
"Oh, yes, I got that all right. I'm not playing the jealous
husband. Charlotte's all right; so are you, for that matter. What
I'd like to have explained is this compromise talk."
Charlotte raised her eyes to his. A leaden pain seemed to make them
heavy and spiritless.
"You don't need explanations, Martin," she said. "Would to Heaven
you did; though I'd tear my tongue out by the roots before I would
give them, if you really did."
"I guess I gathered the point," Martin replied bitterly. "There isn't
much to be said. It makes a thousand things that have mystified me
plain as day. You've deceived me. You've played a nasty part. It does
you small credit."
Kingsnorth started to move away. "You needn't go," Martin said,
"I don't see any reason to be sensitive about discussing this thing
before you. You seemed to be admitted to things before I was."
"I learned what my eyes and wits told me. I give you my word of
honor that until to-night Mrs. Collingwood and I have never spoken
of you or of your and her private affairs. What she said to me was
in self-defence and only to parry an insistence that I sincerely
regret." He turned toward Charlotte appealingly, but she made a fierce
little movement as if to wave away anything apologetic he might say.
"It must have been a damned interesting comedy," Martin went on,
the words stinging like sleet.
"Stop!" cried Charlotte. She put up a hand. "I have never deceived you,
Martin. If you recall the day on which you left the hospital, and on
which you came to me and asked me to marry you, you will remember that
I spelt out with almost painful distinctness the things which have
been alluded to to-night. You simply refused to listen to them. You
would not understand. Every word fell on deaf ears."
"Well, they're sensitive enough now, I understand the situation. You've
simply reversed the squawman act. You wanted a home and somebody to
love you, and you took what you could get, not what you wanted. And
you said to yourself that it did not matter, for you never expected
to go home, and you wouldn't have to show me to your friends. That's
all very fine, from the squawman's view-point. It's practical. But by
the living God I'm no squaw, to be content with my position! You're
not proud of me, I see. Damnation! do you think I'll live with you,
or any woman that walks the earth, on those terms?"
There was an instant's silence. Collingwood somewhat relieved by his
own violence, glared at the woman, who, up to that hour, had never
known less than tenderness from him. Kingsnorth stood bowed with
shame and repentance. For an instant Charlotte's frozen glance met
her husband's. Then with an unconscious gesture she laid one hand
on her constricted throat, and, turning, took the path across the
grove. Her white figure moved so lightly that they could not realize
the difficulty with which she walked. But as the shadows of the tall
cocoanut trees closed around her, she grasped a slender bole with both
arms and leaned against it, panting. Nausea swept over her. Despair,
humiliation, hopelessness weighed her down. Her knees trembled beneath
her, and with a little moan, too soft to reach the ears of the two men,
who remained motionless, she sank at the foot of the tree.
She lay there a long time, unable to rise, though she was not
fainting. Weakness had fastened upon her. But under her breath she
kept on repeating one sobbing phrase:
"It isn't fair! It isn't fair--three men against one woman. They are
so hard. They aren't generous. It isn't fair."
At length Collingwood turned abruptly and walked down the
beach. Kingsnorth came out of his stupor and pursued him.
"Collingwood," he said earnestly, "if I were not such a blackguard
myself, I'd call you one, for your treatment of your wife. She's had
no chance between us."
"She can take care of herself, I think. My advice to you is to keep
out of the matter."
"How can I? I've been the cause of it."
"You the cause!" Martin stared an instant and broke into a short, ugly
laugh. "Do you suppose I care for that talk out there to-night? You
did me a favor. What I care about is the part I've played for the
last ten months. A devilish pretty dupe I've been."
Kingsnorth recognized the futility of argument with a man whose
self-love has been so sorely wounded. "You'll see this thing
differently when you cool down," he remarked. "Don't say anything more
to your wife. She's a noble woman, Martin, a damned sight too good for
you, if you want the truth; and you've half killed her to-night. Hold
in till you've had time to get your second thoughts. If you want to
beat my face in, I'll stand it. God! I'm certain it would be a relief."
Martin's reply was an inarticulate grunt, as he flung up the path to
his own cottage. He charged up the steps through the lighted sala,
and into the bedroom, expecting to find Charlotte there. The desire
to quarrel was strong in him.
The empty room surprised him, and for an instant jolted his thoughts
into a less combative vein. He went out and sat down on the veranda
steps, chewing the end of an unlighted cigar, and expecting each
minute to see her white-clad figure emerge from the dark line of the
cocoanut grove. Gloomy thoughts seized upon his mind.
The chiming of the sala clock brought him to a sudden realization that
it was eleven o'clock and Charlotte had not returned. Alarm overcame
his rage, and he started hastily up the path through the grove. He
almost stumbled over her before he saw her.
"What in the name of Heaven are you doing here?" he demanded. "Get
up and come home at once."
She tried to obey him, but it was with the third unassisted effort
only that she dropped her head with a moan that went to his heart. "I
can't get up. I would if I could." And Martin stooped and lifted her
to her feet.
"Can you walk?" he asked. His voice trembled.
She nodded and dragged herself along with his aid. Collingwood was
thoroughly frightened. He helped her to her room, where she fell on her
bed nerveless. No fury could have blinded him to her utter exhaustion,
to the set despair of her face. He went into the dining-room and
brought her a glass of whiskey. When she had drunk it, a bit of color
came back into her face and she looked at him appealingly.
"Don't say any more to-night, please, Martin. If you'll go out on the
veranda, I'll get myself to bed without assistance. I can't talk." Her
teeth chattered.
Collingwood, half sulky still, half compassionate, betook himself to
the veranda and a succession of cigars. Away from the sight of her
suffering, anger and humiliation sat again upon his shoulders. When
in the wee small hours, he sought his room, he asked her grouchily if
she had slept, or if he could do anything for her. To both questions
she uttered a denial. It was evident that she had not been crying
though she looked very pale and worn; and the next morning she was
unable to rise.