The Locusts' Years Part 19

Maclaughlin had returned with the launch before her seclusion was at an end, and after a family discussion of what was patent to their eyes, he went vigorously on her side. She was "gentle folks," he maintained, a deal sight too good for Martin Collingwood; and Collingwood was behaving like a fool. Mrs. Maclaughlin's democratic partiality, naturally roused in Martin's favor, was somewhat rudely snubbed.

CHAPTER XV

It was at the end of a month, when Charlotte looked forward with increasing dread to her husband's return and to her own departure, that the lorcha Dos Hermanos, their tried friend, left cargo and letters at the island. Collingwood wrote that he should delay his return another month. He sent down their commissaries, and Maclaughlin was to come up to Romblon harbor to meet the first June run of the Puerta Princesa steamer. Most of these details were contained in a letter to Maclaughlin. His letter to his wife, a very bulky epistle, dwelt upon their own difficulties. It was the first letter he had written to her, and Charlotte's face, as she read it, was a study.

"My dearest Girl:

"You are that, after all. I've been thinking over our affairs, and I am willing to admit that I was hasty. But I don't think that you treated me altogether fair. What I do see is that we haven't got any time to jaw over what is done and gone. You have been talking about leaving me and all that, but that is just talk. I don't suppose you ever really meant it, and I never took it seriously. We'll kiss and be friends when I get back, and you'll see that everything will come out all right.

"I've been having a pretty fine time up here. About the first person I met was Barton. I had intended to kick him on sight, but I was still feeling pretty sore toward you, so I didn't. He took me up to his clubs and entered my name, and the next night took me to call on that Mrs. Badgerly. Lord! Lord! that woman is inquisitive! She dug at me like a lawyer at a witness. I never gave anything away: swore you wouldn't come along because you hated the sea trip so, and vowed I had come up on a sugar lorcha. Then this Mrs. Badgerly (she's a corker; I like her style), told me she wanted to take me to see old General ----'s wife, because the old lady knew you at home. She was a mighty nice old lady--real motherly,--and she told me a lot of things that you never told me, and made a good many things clear that I've never understood. Then I was invited out to the General's to a big dinner, where there were two or three other people who used to know you; and if I hadn't been so fond of you, it would have made me all-fired mad the way they rammed it into me that I had married into a fine family, and a fine woman, and all that sort of thing. I didn't need their verdict on you.

"There was another old lady there who used to know you [here Martin named the mother of a very important civil officer], and both the old ladies took me to their hearts and purred over me. I bluffed the thing right through, invited everybody to Maylubi, and promised to bring you up some time this year. Barton was at the dinner too, and he piled it on thick about our island, made it quite romantic.

"Well, the long and the short of the matter is that you call me. I'll admit that the crowd here is a little swifter than any I have ever known, and maybe you have some right to your private opinions that I didn't see before. And, as you said, you keep them to yourself, so I don't see why I should let them bother me. I'll stay another month or so, and by that time we will both have a chance to get over our grudges. You needn't think I'll let you go back to nursing; and as for me, I am willing to live with you on the old terms, and mighty anxious to get back to them.

"I have put six dots here to represent six kisses (......). I'll give you sixty when I get home.

"Your affectionate husband,

"Martin Collingwood."

"P. S. I am going to take both old ladies for a drive to-night. How am I getting on for a beau?"

When she had twice read this epistle, Mrs. Martin Collingwood was startled by the realization of a great mental change in herself. For six weeks she had schooled herself to feel that she must leave her husband purely out of decent pride and self-respect. She had believed that she was actuated by the desire to remove an obnoxious presence from one who had ceased to take pleasure in it; and she had said to herself a hundred times that her affection for her husband had never wavered, but that to thrust it upon him was indecent.

But as she laid down the letter after a second perusal, she was aghast to realize that she did not want to live again with Martin Collingwood: that she recoiled pa.s.sionately from his easy sense of possession; that his taking her so completely for granted was an affront that she could not pardon. She became conscious of a slow process that had been going on in her mind during the dreary weeks, the death of the feeling that had cast a glamour over Martin Collingwood and his inability to understand her standards and traditions. He had lived with her for a year, and had been unable to comprehend that she was of different substance from Mrs. Maclaughlin or Mrs. Badgerly. He had been grossly offensive at the bare suggestion that she might be superior to one of them, but when she was ticketed with the other's approval,--she drew an indignant breath,--he stood ready to exhibit her to the world, and to call its attention to the superfine partner whom he had drawn in the matrimonial lottery.

Well, he would be disappointed. He had yet to learn that she was no readier to accept his terms than he had been to accept hers. She had had her romance, and she would pay the price!

Her social knowledge told her, also, that the Spencer family had taken steps to make its power felt across the Pacific, and that in spite of her marriage and her bitter letter, they were behind her, holding fast to the old tenet that blood is thicker than water. She knew that from both the ladies who had impressed Martin as motherly old dears she would have received at any time both courtesy and kindness; but they would not have taken especial notice of Martin Collingwood or have troubled themselves to introduce him without some sort of urgent appeal from the Boston family.

The thought warmed her sad heart a little, for we are all grateful for good-will, and the world looked a lonely place to Charlotte at that time. She was very thoughtful, however, and she was inclined to regret that old family friends had arrived so inopportunely in Manila. It would make her lot harder, entail humiliating explanations exceedingly difficult to make and--crowning agony--it would mean that the disastrous outcome of her marriage would be immediately known and discussed by the very persons whose knowledge of her affairs she most desired to restrict.

She was sitting on her veranda, the letter upon her lap, her brows frowning, her lips pain-drawn, when Kingsnorth approached from his own cottage. He too had had a letter from Collingwood, and after a bath and a change of garments, had come over to discuss it with Mrs. Collingwood.

He advanced with the hesitating and apologetic air which he had worn with her ever since that unfortunate evening on the beach. She roused herself to a cold courtesy, gave him a cup of tea, and then sat listlessly awaiting what she knew he had come to say.

"I have a letter from Martin," Kingsnorth began awkwardly, at length, "which I thought you might want to see. He says in it that he did not mention some of the business details to you and that I am to show it to you."

She took it, glanced through it, flushed slightly, but handed it back without comment. It was a characteristically brief but condensed epistle, dealing wholly with business save in the last paragraph.

"Better show this to my wife. I wrote her, but had something more interesting to talk about than these matters. You were quite right. I have been a d.a.m.n fool, but I am all right now, and she and I are going to be happy ever after."

As Charlotte returned the epistle, Kingsnorth fixed her with a curious eye, half interested, half apologetic. Then, as she said nothing, he stammered.

"I hope it will be as Martin says, Mrs. Collingwood, and that no lasting ill will come out of my stupidity and insistence."

A slight flush tinged Mrs. Collingwood's cheek. "Martin wrote what he meant to be a kindly letter, and I am grateful for it. But it really doesn't affect the matter in the least. I am going away. You will have to know it sooner or later."

"You can't forgive him?"

"I can't forgive myself. I have no hard feeling against him. But he showed me myself." Her face burned.

"Dear Mrs. Collingwood, don't feel that way. Martin did not mean what he said."

She lifted her heavy eyes. "Wasn't it true?"

"No, it wasn't; or, at least, the coloring he gave it wasn't true. It wouldn't be true unless--" he paused and broke off confused.

"Unless what?"

"You know." He looked at her steadily.

"I don't know."

"Unless you leave him. That's what they do; that's what I did when I got tired. But if you stay by what you promised, no human being can think of you with less than respect. It isn't the game, it's the way you play the game that counts." His voice trembled with emotion.

Charlotte sat very still, her cheeks burning. It seemed incomprehensible that she should be sitting there, listening to John Kingsnorth's views on ethics. Where had she failed? What gradual disintegration had taken place in her, that she should be willing, nay, eager, to listen to moral advice from a man whose very presence had once seemed polluting?

At the same time, she realized that his words had value. Is it, she asked herself, the cut and dried opinion of those who walk safely along a beaten path in company with myriads of their fellow beings, which really counts in this world? or is it the knowledge that comes of bitterness and experience? It is so easy to formulate high-sounding phrases; but what do these phrases amount to when one is confronted with life? In the past three years, what downward steps had she taken upon that pathway--she whose whole ideal had been to keep herself untainted from the common world and to walk serenely and gracefully along those heights where all the training of childhood and the instincts of heredity had made her believe that her path lay? When had she missed it? And then, like a flash, she saw in retrospect her conduct for years past; saw herself stopping here, twisting there, trying, at every instant, to evade the fate and the suffering allotted to her in life. Suddenly she realized how much she and John Kingsnorth had in common, for each was a coward. Neither had strength to take sorrow to his heart, and to bear it uncomplainingly. She was doing what he had done, failing as he had failed.

The letter dropped from her shaking fingers, and she raised her eyes to his with a look so hopeless, shamed, and grief-stricken, that he shrank back and winced as if he had seen a gaping wound.

"I can't," she said. "Something has snapped. I have changed. I can't be Martin Collingwood's wife again. If the weight of my own self-contempt could crush me, I should be dead. Oh, why did they destroy my faith? There would have been the religious life at least."

"You must not talk that way," Kingsnorth said. "Your path is as plain as a pikestaff. You married Martin Collingwood,--why, only you and your Maker know,--but you did marry him, and you have got to stay with him. He needs you."

"Oh, you men!" she cried scornfully. "And if he did not need me--if only I needed him--it would be equally my duty to leave him. However you arrange the scale of duties, they are always to suit your own interests."

"I am thinking of this from yours," Kingsnorth said firmly. "I tell you, and I know, that the one thing the human soul can't stand is to live on compromising with its own self-contempt. A woman of your brains can't take the liberties with her conscience that her frivolous sisters do. You can't stand the self-contempt. You'll disintegrate under it. Convince yourself that you are a martyr if you can, and hug your martyrdom. They got something out of it when it was boiling oil, and melted lead, and crucifixion, and all the rest of those horrors. Be a martyr if you must, but do not try living under the weight of your own self-contempt. Of all failures that is the weakest, saddest, most loathsome. Dear lady, I've carried mine with me like an atmosphere. People have felt it; you did. I've seen you shrink from me as if I were a leper. And you were right. I am loathsome to myself."

He stopped, wiped his brow, and settled back into his chair with a heavy sigh. Charlotte sat on, her trembling fingers tightly clasped, her eyes fixed on the sea. She turned at last and shook her head.

"I can't. I can't take up that thread of life. I don't know how I got myself here--it is all a nightmare--but I must go away and work--by myself again."

Kingsnorth leaned forward, his hands loosely clasped between his knees.