The Locusts' Years Part 15

Mrs. Collingwood very quietly pulled her hand out of his grasp.

"So," she said. She had the air of one who finds herself incarcerated with a madman. Judge Barton leaned far across the table, his eyes gleaming, his rather large, powerful face flushed, all the brute strength of the man dominating the urbane jurist who said clever things in a rich, well-modulated voice.

"You had no business to marry him in the first place," he said. "But that's done. Still you can change it."

"Yes," replied Mrs. Collingwood, a very level intonation of contempt in her tone. It irritated the Judge, and his vehemence rose higher.

"Anything can be changed in these days," he went on. "I want you to divorce Collingwood and to marry me."

"Well, I shan't," said Mrs. Collingwood. She did not offer to rise, however. Her heart was swelling with anger, humiliation, and a dull disappointment in the man in front of her. But some unaccountable instinct held her listening to the end. She did want to hear what he would say, she knew it would wound her, but she had a very strong curiosity as to how far he would go; and a retrospect of all her past a.s.sociation with him flashed through her mind. A faint smile curved her lips as she remembered the weeks when he had been free, had he so chosen, to make love to her. But he had not wanted to make love to her, till, in the making, he violated all the laws of right and loyalty. She sat very white and rigid, and the Judge felt in her once again the woman who had challenged his old self-complacency.

"I suppose it was natural," he went on. "You were alone. You had to have your romance. But what will it be to ours?--to ours? I'll be a lover to rival the lovers of history--a husband--and we'll do some of the things we want to do in this world. We have ambitions, both of us. Dear--" his voice dropped like a violin note on the octave--"take the same courage you had in hand to make this mistake, and remedy it. You defied public opinion in marrying Collingwood. Defy it once again to get rid of him. The world will understand you better. Yes, by Jove! it will sympathize more."

"I shall not test it," said Mrs. Collingwood. This time she rose definitely. "I thank G.o.d you are going away to-morrow. The very air will be freer and cleaner after you have gone."

He stood looking after her, red-eyed, enraged, yet longing with all the fierce strength of his nature to seize her in his arms and conquer her as Martin Collingwood had once conquered her. When he heard the snap of her closing door, he fell into a sort of stupor, still sitting at the table, his head resting on his clasped hands.

The vehement forceful fury of his mood fell away from him, and he sat staring haggardly at the white cloth. The act was final, and having committed it, he had full opportunity to question its discretion. Strange tragedy of temperament, forcing eye and voice to utterance which no human power can revoke, though life itself would be reckoned a fair price for revocation! Sitting there alone with his thoughts, Alexander Barton was conscious of a shame that would stay with him for life, of a futile hopeless anger and despair with himself, of an ache that would take the taste out of life for many a month and year to come.

Meanwhile, Charlotte had pa.s.sed into her room, where she stood very quietly looking out of the window. Her heart lay heavy within her, and a dull, gripping pain tugged at her throat. She had a sense of having been morally bruised and beaten. For she saw with painful distinctness, that it was not only brute feeling which had carried away Judge Barton's self-control; but that deeper, subtler was his measurement of the compromise she had made with life. It was not Charlotte Collingwood's personality, it was what she had done that opened the way to his advances.

After a time she lay down, and she remained so for the rest of the afternoon, with her face buried in her pillow. How was she to face Martin with the wretched story? How was she to dissemble her own misery? She was a fair actress to the world, taking refuge in a kind of stoic dignity. But how was she to hide her embarra.s.sment and misery from the man who could measure her moods as a barometer measures pressure?

CHAPTER XII

The evening meal pa.s.sed off more easily than had seemed possible to Mrs. Collingwood's disturbed imagination. Judge Barton managed to appear perfectly at ease, and she played her own part better than she had fancied that she could. Only one dread preyed upon her. There was a readiness in Kingsnorth to devote himself to the entertainment of the guests, and a tact on his part in holding the household together which made her suspect that keen observer of a desire to aid her; and such a desire could only lead to the inference that he had, to some extent, grasped the situation. The thought was galling; but its bitterness was, for the time, mitigated by her sense of need.

She slept little that night, but toward morning she fell into a doze from which she was aroused by the sounds of breakfast preparations in the next room. She jumped up hurriedly, only to behold the bathers sporting in the sea, and the coastguard cutter lying a mile or so off sh.o.r.e. Dressing as quickly as she could she hastened down to the beach in time to meet the Commissioner as he came ash.o.r.e.

The Commissioner's first rush of enthusiasm had had time to cool, and he had thought much during his week's absence. Without in the least abating his very high opinion of Mrs. Collingwood's personality and attainments, he had had time to consider the possible att.i.tude of Mrs. Commissioner, and the difficulties attendant upon too close a connection with the queer island menage. The result of his reflections was a self-conscious restraint, and a very bungling masculine attempt to recede from a position without betraying himself in the act.

Charlotte read his self-consciousness aright, ignored the existence of a Mrs. Commissioner, saved his feelings for him, and bore him no grudge. She had accepted her husband's a.s.sociates kindly for his sake; but she had never ceased to look upon them with the clear vision of her upbringing. Socially Kingsnorth and the Maclaughlins were "impossible." It mattered little to her, because she had turned her back forever upon society and all its works. She even took satisfaction in playing her part gracefully. She enjoyed the Commissioner's mystification, and the little access of deference in his manner when he spoke to her.

She was saved the necessity of any direct speech with the Judge, till, at the very last moment, he s.n.a.t.c.hed a second while the others were grouped around the Commissioner.

"I don't dare put out a hand," he said, "and I suppose you won't believe me when I say that I am sorry, and that I didn't sleep last night for execrating myself. I am sorry in the dullest, heart-sickest way a man can be. I knew as well before I said those things as I know now that it would not do me any good, and yet they had to come out. Well, I've lost a friend. But do you suppose you can ever think kindly of me again?"

She raised her eyes to him for one of those slow painful glances that she sometimes gave, and she answered measuredly:

"I don't think unkindly of you on my own account. Somehow the thing has no bearing on me. I have seen you in the proper light, and I do not think you are worth thinking unkindly about. But for my husband's sake I shall always feel a resentment. He gave you shelter under his roof, and a seat at his table; and in turn you would have betrayed him. On his account, I shall always feel anger, but for me you are just--erased."

"You can say, at least, as bitter things as other women," the Judge retorted with pale lips. She shrugged her shoulders lightly and extended a very high hand.

"It has been such a pleasure to have you with us," she said quite distinctly. Her eyes met his unflinchingly, but his own were bright with moisture. He wrung her hand in spite of its high bent wrist.

"No, don't do that," he said. "Give me a good honest handshake. I'm sorry. I shall be sorry for some time to come. Besides--" his expressive pause said as plainly as words, "You have conducted yourself admirably. The thing has done you no harm."

Collingwood saw the shrug, the look exchanged, and the handshake. He perceived war in his wife's manner, and he wondered what it was all about. But as the Commissioner was already seating himself in the human chair to be carried out to the boat there was no time to ask questions then. He was still more surprised when his wife came up to him, and slipping a hand in his, stood watching the departing dignitary. Charlotte had a horror of public demonstrations, and the act was unlike her. He slipped an arm around her, glancing, as he did so, somewhat sheepishly at his other guests; but the Judge was apparently absorbed in the process of turning up the bottoms of an exceedingly well made pair of trousers before embarking in turn; and, as he was carried out, his anxiety to protect a pair of spotless shoes seemed superior to every other consideration.

When the guests were once aboard their boat, the fishers made haste to embark in their own; and Mrs. Collingwood, with a hasty wave of her hand, turned immediately and went indoors.

She drew a long breath of relief as she entered her little sitting-room. There was a sort of clearing in the atmosphere, a sense of wholesomeness and content in having their lives to themselves. She pa.s.sed lovingly from one piece of furniture to another, giving a touch here, making some slight change there. Her housekeeping cares became a renewed pleasure. All day she busied herself about house and mending, laying aside wholly the books and magazines which, for several hours each day, had been her wonted entertainment. When Martin came home at five o'clock, she met him, a radiant creature, eyes smiling, face beaming content, her laugh spontaneous as a child's. He was inclined to be lonely, and said as much at dinner. Mrs. Maclaughlin agreed with him, but Maclaughlin and Kingsnorth went over to Charlotte's side, and insisted that things were cosier with their own little family.

After dinner, husband and wife sat on their veranda steps while Martin smoked a pipe or two. He was very thoughtful, she silently content. Suddenly he broke out:

"Charlotte, did you and the Judge quarrel?"

Charlotte started perceptibly and answered after a decided pause:

"What makes you think we did?"

"I saw your handshake."

He felt rather than saw another little shrug. It was a reckless gesture. Charlotte wanted very much to quarrel with her little G.o.ds just then. She kept silence, however, and he was forced to go on insistently.

"Did he try to make love to you?"

There was a miserable humor in her reply. "Not in your acceptance of the term, Martin."

"Well, what is my acceptance of the term? I should like to know what you mean by that."

"He did not put his arm around my waist or try to kiss me."

"Then what were you sc.r.a.pping with him for?" said Martin with such instant relief that Charlotte laughed helplessly, though the tears were rolling down her cheeks. Martin studied her intently through the gloom.

"There's something behind all this," he remarked sententiously. "I never before knew you to dodge a question, or to be in such a mood. Now, see here, I've got some rights in this matter and I want to know about it."

His tone brought her up sharp in her half-hysterical mirth. She replied quickly.

"You will not like it, Martin."

"I'll have to decide that."

"Well, if nothing but the truth will do, he proposed to me that I should get rid of you and marry him."

Collingwood threw down his cigar with an oath, and jumped, in the sudden rush of his anger, quite clear of the steps. He made several short, quick turns back and forth before he finally sat down again at his wife's side.

"I suppose he had some reason for thinking you might entertain such a proposition," he said bitterly.

Charlotte's pride sprang to arms. "He may have had one," she replied laconically. "It was not in any glance or words I had given him. I haven't been flirting with him. My conscience is clear."

"But men don't make propositions of that sort without a reason, Charlotte."