“Can’t be helped,” replied Kingsnorth, curtly. “I hope that you will not feel it presumptuous in me to suggest that Mrs. Maclaughlin stay with you to-night, Mrs. Collingwood. I’ll come over also if there is anything very bad.”
Both women were grateful for the suggestion. Each had been secretly longing to broach the matter, and had felt ashamed to do so.
“I’ll go over with you while you lock up your place,” said Kingsnorth to Mrs. Maclaughlin. They disappeared almost instantly in the profound blackness of the night. Charlotte marvelled at it. The gloom was like a solid substance save where the phosphorescence showed a glimpse of foaming suds, and a few lights gleaming from the distant village seemed golden by contrast with the green and blue fires.
The servants all begged leave to absent themselves for the night. Each had discovered an ailing relative in the village to whom his presence was an absolute necessity.
“Let ‘em go,” said Kingsnorth. “They are in a dead fright. They know we’ll probably have Tophet before the night is over, and they want to get into their flock.” Even as he spoke, a little moan of wind came off the sea, and a pattering shower drenched the earth.
“Curtain rung up,” said Kingsnorth. He had been standing tentatively, hat in hand, after escorting back Mrs. Maclaughlin and some, as it seemed to Charlotte, preposterously large bundles. Charlotte motioned him to a chair. “We may as well watch the first act,” she smiled, humoring his metaphor.
“Just as well,” he answered, “because I fancy we’ll be on the second.”
“Do you mean that there may be any actual danger?” Charlotte asked, startled.
“Danger? no! At the worst we might have to spend a night under the pandan bushes. But one of these big storms is a trying thing while it lasts.”
“Trying isn’t the word,” Mrs. Maclaughlin precipitated this dictum into the conversation with her usual vigor. “It’s just nerve-wracking. Lord! Lord! what fools we women are! Here are two of us out here likely to be swallowed up by a tidal wave or Heaven only knows what, just because we were so tarnation ready to take up with a man. I’ve traipsed around this world at Andrew Maclaughlin’s heels twenty-two years, and the good Lord only knows what he hasn’t asked me to go through with; and now he’s left me unprotected in the face of the biggest storm we’re likely to have.” She fairly choked with fear and anger.