The Locusts' Years Part 17

"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 G.o.d!--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 s.p.a.ce! 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 gra.s.s.

"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 a.n.a.lysis, 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 a.s.sociate with me."

"The a.s.sociation 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 gla.s.s; 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 l.u.s.tre. 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 d.a.m.ned 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 G.o.d I'm no squaw, to be content with my position! You're not proud of me, I see. d.a.m.nation! 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."