The Locusts' Years Part 2

"Is Mrs. Badgerly womanly?"

"Not in the completest sense, but womanly enough to be spoiled--to base all her demands upon her charms, and not upon her rights."

"I will think that over. It presents a field for interesting thought. But do drink your medicine."

"Not until you have told me what you really think."

"I think you leave no place for the women with no charms. Has she no rights either?"

"The proper sort of woman does not want any rights. She values her charms infinitely higher than all the rights that can be given her."

"That must be exceedingly pleasant for the women who are born charming. But I insist that a sensible woman should value the attainable more than the unattainable. Charm is unattainable by any conscious process. The woman born without it had better make few claims if, to use a commercial metaphor, she wants her drafts honored. There is nothing for her to do but philosophically to make the best of the situation, and to accept those things which are the commonly admitted rights of her s.e.x."

"Ah! you reason so clearly and practically. But don't be a philosopher. Don't let philosophy creep upon you. Resist it. You know the quotation, I am sure, 'That unloveliest of things in women, a philosopher.'"

He set the gla.s.s to his lips, so that he did not see how she paled under the thrust, nor how one hand went to her throat quickly as if a sudden pain had gripped her. When he had finished drinking and had set the empty gla.s.s upon her tray, she switched off the light without her usual "good-night," and left him.

"Nurse--Miss Ponsonby," said a small voice in the gloom, a most abject voice to issue from six feet of rec.u.mbent manhood, "won't you come here a minute?"

Miss Ponsonby paused, but did not look back. "Are you awake?" she inquired evenly. "I thought you were asleep hours ago. You must be dreadfully tired. The attendant is here now, the one who handles you so nicely. I will send him to you immediately."

A man cannot lie in the dark and cry for a nurse who will not come. Collingwood submitted, though fear had taken possession of him. His late audacity seemed madness.

The night wore on. Clouds obscured the sky, and a hot, choking darkness blocked the windows, with solid blackness. The sounds of traffic grew intermittent. Occasionally a carriage went past, full of drunken soldiers or marines, shouting and singing. Once the ambulance went out and came back with an emergency case.

Collingwood's bed commanded the door which opened into the main ward, so that he had a perfect view of Miss Ponsonby, sitting at her desk and working at her report. A thick green shade cut the light from the room, but centred it like a halo around her shapely head.

By and by, though her features were composed, the watcher saw a glisten of light which flashed at recurrent intervals as a tear dropped downward. The sight filled him with repentance and perplexity. He a.s.sociated the tears, though he could not tell why, with his stolen kiss. He had kissed more young women in his life than he had energy at that moment to remember; and no one before had felt his caresses a reasonable pretext for weeping. Here again was that mysterious goodness mixing up a situation which ought to have been simple as day, and yet he was glad that it was there to mix.

A faint sound from Judge Barton's couch told him that the Judge, too, was wakeful and had seen the sparkling drops; but he could not hear what that gentleman was saying to himself.

"Not a philosopher," he murmured, "not a philosopher, but uncompromising. Why isn't she attractive! She ought to be attractive." Then, quite gently, "Poor creature! Why doesn't she surrender? Why doesn't she accept the situation and compromise with life?"

There was no one to answer. Presently Miss Ponsonby, as if realising that there might be wakeful eyes among the patients, got up and went out into the corridor. A few minutes afterwards, the bells, the whistles, and the revolvers of enthusiastic exiles flung out a Christmas greeting, and her relief came.

Each man took unto himself a partial responsibility for her tears. Judge Barton planned to wipe out the memory of his unchivalrous conduct by his most deferential manner and his very best conversation. Collingwood dreamed of abasing himself, and of settling without delay all doubts as to his att.i.tude. If he saw a rosy vision of Miss Ponsonby reconciled to him and forgiving, he was not altogether conceited. He had been a man decidedly popular with women. But when the sixteen weary hours had pa.s.sed away, and the afternoon shift of nurses brought not Miss Ponsonby but the red-haired lady of cheerful temperament, Judge Barton's instinctive sigh was speedily followed by a rapt interest in Collingwood. That young man had allowed his disappointment to express itself by an involuntary twist in bed, so that he yelled in agony.

CHAPTER III

Some five or six weeks after the events narrated in the preceding chapters, Judge Barton's Australian chestnuts were rattling their silver-plated harness on the Luneta driveway at sunset, while their owner was threading the mazes of a Sunday-night carriage jam. He had that day returned from a short vacation in j.a.pan, where he had gone to recuperate after his attack of fever.

The hot season was coming on apace, and but little breeze disturbed the waters of the bay, which were sombred by the reflections of slate-colored clouds streaked across the zenith. The brilliancy of the sunset seemed to have driven apart the clouds in the west, however, where the sky was enamelled in hues of jade and amber and turquoise, seamed here and there with gold, and occasionally with a fading line of dark vapor. With the purple shapes of the mountains extending to right and left, with the foreshortened sweep of the waters, and with the motionless lines of the anch.o.r.ed vessels, the distant picture flamed out like a theatre curtain, while the motley a.s.semblage which filled the oval around the bandstand was not unsuggestive of a waiting audience.

As he was in the act of leaning forward to note the outline of a great five-masted freighter, anch.o.r.ed abreast the bandstand, Judge Barton caught sight of a profile which was vaguely familiar to him, but which, for a moment, he quite failed to a.s.sociate with a name. A second later, he remembered that he had always seen Miss Ponsonby in her nurse's cap, and he could not determine whether it was the harmonious effect of imported millinery or some radical change in herself which lent a charm to her face never found there before.

As for the man at her side, it was something of a triumph to perceive the hat at just the angle at which the Judge's imagination had pictured it, the angle affected by a very smart enlisted man.

It was not wholly in response to the political instinct which, in a democracy, bestows handshakes in place of largesse, that Judge Barton made his way to the carriage in which Miss Ponsonby sat. Since the miserable Christmas Eve when he had succeeded in p.r.i.c.king her into a fencing match, he had not seen her. On the following day, she was put on day duty in another ward, in accordance with some mysterious system of change pursued in the hospital. Within three or four days more, the Judge was p.r.o.nounced able to begin the journey up the China coast, from which he had only that day returned. When he left the hospital, Collingwood was convalescent, but was suffering from a moroseness which his observant neighbor attributed to thwarted affection.

Miss Ponsonby greeted her quondam patient not with coldness, which may imply an intentionally concealed interest, but lifelessly, with an indifference almost impertinent. Judge Barton felt the indifference, was chilled by it, and revenged himself by a guarded significance of manner which did not amount to ill breeding, but which hinted at an expectation gratified, and made her, as he was delighted to perceive, self-conscious and ill at ease. The feeling with which he had approached her was genial and kindly. To find himself suddenly enveloped in the atmosphere of challenge, of reserve, of dumb interrogation of the providential workings of this world, stirred up in him the old desire to push her just a little bit closer to the wall against which her back was so resolutely set. It was not a chivalrous feeling, but it was a very human and natural one, which might have been shared by millions of the Judge's fellow-citizens, far more pretentious than he was in the matter of Christian charity and brotherhood.

Miss Ponsonby was looking even paler and thinner than she had looked at Christmas. There was a purpling thickness in her eyelids, there was a depth of shadow beneath, which, to an attentive observer, hinted at tears and vigils in the night. In her listlessness, and in a sweet effort in her smile, the Judge found, in the further course of the talk, the signs of conquest. It was as if, driven to bay, she sought help even from her enemies to ease the agony of surrender. The Judge was not hard-hearted. So long as she fought, he was willing to stab and p.r.i.c.k. At the first sign of feminine weakness, at the sight of her beaten and shrinking, he was ready to forget that only a few weeks before he had been rather eager to see her reduced to humility. His concern for her finally found utterance in the hope that she was going to indulge in a much needed rest. "You know I always said, when I was in the hospital, that you needed nursing just as much as Collingwood and I did, if not more," he added.

She thanked him rather formally, and he detected in her stiffness an access of shyness. A faint color dyed her cheek.

Collingwood, whose resemblance to a pagan deity--or to a young ruffian--was stronger than ever, broke in joyously:

"Oh, she's going to take a vacation, all right--a long one, in fact, for the rest of her life--with me. You are quite right, Judge. She does need care, and I'll see that she gets it."

Miss Ponsonby's face rivalled the afterglow into which the gorgeous spectacle before them was beginning to melt like metals fused in a crucible; but, after an instant, she lifted her eyes and gazed with a remarkable intensity at Judge Barton. If her self-consciousness had originated in a prescience of his astonishment, it was not more painful than his own chagrin at having betrayed himself. He had certainly not expected her to marry Martin Collingwood. He had taken a mild pleasure in letting her perceive that he divined her struggles in a compromise with her pride for the sake of a few pa.s.sing attentions and pleasures; but never had it occurred to him that she could possibly bridge the distance between herself and Collingwood in marriage. To have exhibited his utter amazement enraged him with himself. He recovered himself promptly, however, and, in turn, tendered a firm white hand to each.

"Bless you, my children," he said blandly, "I showed some surprise, but really I don't know why. The thing is obviously appropriate."

There was a dryness in Collingwood's reply which made him, for a moment, almost as impressive as the Judge himself.

"I am glad you think so. That was my opinion from the first, but I had considerable difficulty in getting Miss Ponsonby to take my view of it, and even yet she has her moments of doubt."

Miss Ponsonby gave him a shy little smile, but at the end of the fleeting movement, her eyes again sought the Judge's with the same questioning intensity, so that he was amazed to find himself answering aloud.

"Obviously appropriate," he repeated, "and for a hundred reasons: first, my dear young lady, so charming a person as yourself has no business rusting out in the fatigues of your profession; second, because this young free-lance needs somebody to look after him; third, because marriage is to be encouraged on general principles." At this point he seemed to recognize the necessity of steering the conversational bark into safer waters, and endeavored to divert it by pleasantry at his own expense. "Although I have not been able to induce any young woman to share my joys and sorrows, believe me, it is not because I am opposed to the inst.i.tution. If I am an old bachelor, it is not for lack of trying to marry."

It was Collingwood who made the humanely frank rejoinder, "I guess you haven't tried very hard since you have been on the bench, have you, Judge?"

It is strange how a man may both resent a fact and take pride in it. Six weeks before, when the Judge had wished to put a squabbling young woman in her place, he had rather gloried in the material advantages connected with his position. A hint that his position might win him a wife when his personality unaided could not do so, rasped his nerves. Charlotte saw him wince and returned good for evil.

"Ah! you are not sincere. You are too modern to believe in marriage."

"Is it in an ironical spirit, then, do you think, that I beg an invitation to yours?"

"But it will be so very quiet--not even cards or cake; and only one or two of Mr. Collingwood's friends, and one or two of mine, to give us countenance."

"To keep us from feeling that we are eloping," said Collingwood blithely.

"Am I not the very man to do that? If there is no other way, I must be railroaded in in an official capacity. Does not Collingwood need a best man? Does not the marriage ceremony call for a parent to give the bride away--'Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?'--and all that?"

This was pure advertising propaganda, a way to one of those newspaper squibs which delight both the sn.o.bbishness and the sentimentality of Americans. In the slight pause which ensued, the Judge had a momentary sensation of being weighed in a very delicately balanced mind, and of being found wanting. But Charlotte only said, "You may come if you wish. But it is sooner than you antic.i.p.ate--very soon."

"To-morrow morning at seven-thirty," interjected Collingwood. "We are going out on the Coastguard boat at ten."

Here was a burning of bridges, a lover who wooed and a maid who did not dally! The Judge asked where the ceremony would take place, and was told to come to a certain church not far from the hospital. Once more his over-restraint betrayed him, and Miss Ponsonby guessed his surprise.

"We were both brought up Catholics," she said, "and though we have neither of us clung very closely to the Mother Church, that is where we naturally turn on such an occasion. We have not needed a dispensation. The path has been easy." She smiled enigmatically.