The Locusts' Years Part 18

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 n.o.ble woman, Martin, a d.a.m.ned 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. G.o.d! 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 una.s.sisted 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sistance. I can't talk." Her teeth chattered.

Collingwood, half sulky still, half compa.s.sionate, 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.

CHAPTER XIV

It seemed to Mrs. Collingwood that the next three days embodied the quintessence of all that had ever fallen to her lot of discomfort and misery. To lie physically helpless, a burden and a care to the one person who, at that time, was most out of love with her, was humiliation of the most cankering variety. Added to it was the sense of loss, the consciousness of ruin and disaster, and a feeling of shame that bowed her to the earth. Her husband's bitter words had sunk deep into her soul. She saw herself as a creature degraded and partaking of the instincts of the most depraved cla.s.s. Her marriage began to a.s.sume the complexion of an adventure. Was there an element of the adventuress in her? she asked herself tremulously. In reply came a wild rush of denial, an agony of revolt. As she envisaged herself she could not but justify her own actions. The feminine weakness, and dread of life's bread-and-b.u.t.ter struggle, alone justified them. And she had loved Martin tenderly; she had been a good wife, loyal to his interests, guarding his dignity as her own, literally pouring her affection and her grat.i.tude for all his tenderness toward her into his carelessly outstretched palm. No mother ever more sedulously stood between her child and the evil of the world than she had sought to save Martin Collingwood the pain of knowing what he had come to know. His ingrat.i.tude, though she would not use that word even to herself, cut her to the depths of her heart.

But it was plain that their romance was ended; "the thing had gone to smash," in Collingwood's forceful language. Time and time again she went over that night on the Luneta before their marriage, and Martin's words, and her own miserable doubts and fears. The worst had happened, as she had feared it might, but Collingwood was not living up to his philosophy. He was angry at her, held himself a man cheated, put all the blame on her, wanted in a dumb, fruitless way to quarrel with her.

On the evening of her second day in bed, they attempted to thresh out their difficulties, but it was soon evident that they had reached a hopeless impa.s.se. Charlotte ended what was a miserable controversy.

"What is your quarrel with me about, Martin?" she said. "Simply that I am I, that I have lived through certain experiences, that I have certain criterions of taste and judgment that you have not. I have not obtruded them on you. I haven't made myself obnoxious by them. I deny that I have ever deceived you, and I have tried honestly to think and feel as you do. I haven't been playing a part. I have been thoroughly happy. But you can't any more make me put your values on life and people, than you can, because somebody wishes you to, convince yourself that there is no America; that all your past life has been a dream; that all you have known and felt and seen has been mere imagination, a fancy on your part. I'll have no quarrel with you, no reproaches. I married you of my own free will, and married you for love. As for my philosophy of life or my views on worldly matters, what actual part need they play in our life? If I am content to put them out of sight, why cannot you do so?"

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'll live with any woman on earth on your terms,"

Collingwood reiterated.

She looked him steadily in the eyes. "Then the thing is finally settled, and we can spare ourselves the pain of useless discussion. For in the thing we are quarrelling with--not my actions, but my philosophy of life--I shall not change. Nor can I fancy any woman with a spark of modesty or decency in her, entreating a man to live with her. If you will allow me to remain here during your stay in Manila, I'll go before you get back."

"How do you think you are going to live?"

She gave a little reckless shrug. "I supported myself before we were married. I suppose I can do so again. I'll make no demands on your pocket book. I didn't marry you to be supported. I married you to be loved by you, to feel that I gave in your life and home an order and an a.s.sistance--yes, and a joy--to equalize what I cost you in money. When there is no longer exchange, I refuse to accept."

"Big talk," said Martin. She did not reply, but turned away wearily. The servant knocked at the door a minute after to say that dinner was ready, and he went to his meal. After that, it seemed that they had subsided into a tacit acceptance of their future as she had outlined it.

Collingwood was quite as unhappy as his wife was. All his masculine pride was chafing, but his masculine heart was aching. He wanted to be set gloriously in the right, to ascend the pedestal from which he had been ignominiously tumbled by a few incautious words overheard. He wanted, though he hardly phrased it to himself, apologies for his wife's daring to understand a thing that he had not understood. He had literally eaten of the tree of knowledge and was enraged with what lay patent to his seared vision.

The consciousness of what had been going on in Kingsnorth's mind, in Judge Barton's, in the Commissioner's, burnt like acid on a wound. He saw, with astonis.h.i.+ng clearness, Judge Barton's viewpoint, and he marvelled no more at that gentleman's temerity. His beggar maid a princess! his throne a mesalliance!--the thought burned. His tortured self-love yawned like an abyss which no heaping of prostrate offenders could ever fill; and against his wife's quiet dignity his thwarted will raged sullenly.

Yet it is doubtful if he ever really regarded their separation as probable. Tacitly he accepted her statement that she was going away. In reality he hardly thought of such a possibility. Alone with his thoughts, all his will and his imagination bent itself to her conquest. It was that hour of her final humiliation and confession to which he looked forward. How long was she going to keep it up?

During her few days' illness, however, he showed her some courtesies for which she returned a dignified, but not an affectionate, grat.i.tude. Indeed, she had been up and about the house two or three days before her husband perceived that the door of her heart and mind, which she had so shyly opened to him, had closed, and that he stood outside of it, a part of that concourse which Charlotte Ponsonby had always feared and distrusted. She had trusted him most of all the world, and he had turned upon her and hurt her more cruelly than anyone else had ever done. Without reproach or lamentation or any sign of self-pity, she retired behind those invincible ramparts to which Martin had been blind in hospital days, but to which he was now so much alive.

It would have been exceedingly difficult for him to tell in what the change consisted. Her courtesy was finely measured, it is true, but it was not an armed truce between belligerents. It was the refuge of dignity, of one who feels his position false, but would save appearances by outward grace, at least. She who had been his wife, his dearest possession, became only a graceful hostess in his home--a lady who stood ready to lend a deferential ear to his suggestions, or carry out, to the best of her ability, his every wish, expressed or unexpressed. She ignored his gloom, saw to all his needs, spoke to him always kindly, though without humility or contrition; but for herself she asked not one fraction of his time or his attention. The occasions for little courtesies which he had been accustomed to offer her were skilfully avoided; but were never rudely made conspicuous by their avoidance. Her quiet pride was infinitely more than a match for his aggressive self-love; her supreme naturalness, the most impregnable armor she could have worn.

Kingsnorth beheld the transformation in her, was first astonished, then interested, then moved to profound pity and contrition. With tact equal to her own, he set himself to meet the situation, seconded all her efforts to make their awkward meals natural and easy, silenced Mrs. Mac's gaping curiosity, and managed, in doing it all, to keep himself well in the background. With Collingwood he had one conversation on the launch, but the sum and substance was that gentleman's reiteration of the terms on which he would live.

"d.a.m.nation!" was Kingsnorth's irritable response, "you are simply making an a.s.s of yourself, Collingwood. I can't call you a brute, because I've been too much of one myself. I live in gla.s.s houses--I can't throw stones. You've married a jewel among women, and you're going to make your ruffled dignity make smash of two lives that ought to be happy. Moreover, you are not in earnest. This is all bluffing and bad temper to bring Mrs. Collingwood to her knees, and to make her put herself in the wrong when you know there isn't any wrong or right about things. Now I'll give you a piece of advice, old man. You are trying that game on the wrong woman: see that you don't carry it too far, and turn her affection into dislike. I've learned one thing, learned it tragically well in this life; and that is that one has just one chance really in this world with one person. Now don't lose your chance with your wife."

To this Martin vouchsafed a grunt. Hardly conscious of it, he had set his will to bring Charlotte to his terms. He could not listen to anything that crossed that strong desire.

The days went by slowly where they had once gone so fast, and neither husband nor wife referred again to that tacit agreement of separation. Yet Martin knew from the bundle of letters which he was to carry up to Manila that Charlotte was making plans for business life again; and once, when he came into the sitting-room unexpectedly, he found her frowning over her bank book. He knew the balance it contained, for, on their wedding journey, they had laughed at her little savings; and he knew she could not long maintain herself upon it. He smiled grimly at her flushed discomfiture when he found her pondering ways and means, and somewhat brutally said to himself that she would find that she had little rope to run upon.

Yet at the last moment it was he who wavered, he who rang down the curtain on their make-believe. She had looked after his garments and had packed his trunk with wifely solicitude; had prepared for his launch trip, foods for which she knew his predilection, and had, at the moment of farewell, saved the situation by putting out a friendly hand.

"I do hope you will have a pleasant trip," she said,--and what it cost her to speak so easily and naturally, only she could have told,--"and thank you for giving me the weeks here to get ready. I'll go over to Cuyo when the launch goes up for you on your return trip, and will leave a letter for you there. There are some things I can't say to you, but I should like to write them. They will, perhaps, leave a better feeling between us."

To these words Martin found, at the time, no answer. He wrung her hand, muttered something, and hastened away. Yet when his belongings had all been deposited in the boat, and the men were waiting to "chair"

him out, he turned on his heel, and strode back to the cottage.

He took her by surprise, for she had not stayed to watch him. Her impulse had been to scream, to weep, to give some vent to the pain that wrenched soul and body; and in the determination to keep hold upon herself she had gone straight to the back of the house, and was wrestling there with a refractory lock on a cupboard. She turned at his step a face drawn, white, and frozen into lines of pain, and looked at him with eyes that asked and yet were proudly defiant.

He went straight up to her and took her in his arms; and though she relaxed and her head lay pa.s.sive on his shoulder, there thrilled through them both the sense of conflict, of individuality set against individuality. Their embrace did not lessen the strain, and after an instant, something of his own fierce grasp relaxed, and they stood, the dumb victims of emotions that were stronger than their wills, stronger than their aching desires to be at peace with each other.

She turned at length and looked at him with eyes of misery. "Oh, go!" she said. "It's a hundred times worse than I ever thought anything could be. Think kindly of me as I do of you. We can't help ourselves. I knew this hour. I felt it when we were happiest. It had to be."

"What I want you to do," Martin said honestly, "is to take into consideration my care for you and my protection. I can take care of you--can do it well. That ought to count for something."

"O my poor boy, has it not always counted? I've leaned on you and your love, Martin. I've told you so a thousand times."

"Yes, but you set against them a lot of trifles."

"But I don't set the trifles against them. I have never weighed one against the other--never for an instant."

"But you know that you could." Poor Martin here uttered helplessly what was, after all, at the bottom of his spleen.

"Ah," she sighed. "Don't judge me by what I know; judge me by what I've done and thought."

"You've got to change," he muttered. "I can't. I'm right. You're wrong."

"The things you have in mind can't be changed by will power, dear. They are the results of education, a.s.sociation, environment. New environment may change them gradually. What you ask I cannot give. 'I've done all I can do, come as far to meet you as I can.' I'm not stubborn, Martin. I would do anything in my power to meet your wishes. You are quarrelling not with what I do, but with what I am."

The answer was a grunt of impatience as Martin flung away again. He raged helplessly against the truth of her words.

When, at last, the launch was hull down on the sky line, Charlotte went to bed, and shutting out Mrs. Maclaughlin's insistent curiosity, permitted herself the luxury of nearly a week's retirement. Though at times she wept, for the most part she tried to shut out the past, and to concentrate her thoughts on the future. Collingwood's idea that her dread of business life would outweigh her sense of humiliation and her wounded self-love was entirely wrong. She shrank, it is true, from the world; but the thought that there was an alternative never suggested itself to her. Collingwood had said that he would not live with her, or what had seemed to her the equivalent of that. She took him at his word. The fact that legally he was her husband counted no more in her summing up of the situation than if he had been a chance stranger encountered in the street. Live for an hour more than was absolutely necessary under the same roof with a man who entertained such feelings for her? She turned sick at the thought.

When at last she emerged from her retirement she was the woman of hospital days, the super-sensitive orphan, feeling herself unwelcome to all the world, everybody's hand against her, her hand against everybody; but she took them, as Kingsnorth phrased it to himself, in the hollow of her own hand. In the presence of her reserve, even Mrs. Maclaughlin's frank speech grew guarded. Kingsnorth merely looked at her in a kind of mute apology. Again and again she caught his glance with its furtive appeal; but each time her own eyes met it, not with studied blankness, but with a naturalness that was almost histrionic.