A sudden impulse stirred Charlotte. “No, no,” she said. “You must not think that. I believe that, if you had married the right woman (that’s the stock phrase, isn’t it?) you would have been a tender husband, and if you had had children, a kind father. I don’t know what perversity of fate kept those influences out of your life, but all that is wayward in you and bitter seems to have been caused by their lack.”
She uttered the words with real warmth, and for an instant wondered that he made no reply. Then, as the pause grew more marked, she heard him breathing heavily, and it flashed into her mind that the man was on the point of an utter breakdown. Her few sincere words had gone straight through the armor that Mrs. Maclaughlin’s blows had apparently failed to affect. An absolute horror of such a possibility seized upon her. They had had, she felt, an indecent exhibition of naked human emotions. If more were to follow, what intimate revelations might not take place? Yet the impossibility of uttering some banality was clear to her mind. Anything short of the sincerity and earnestness demanded by the situation would be insulting. So she remained as if transfixed, in a kind of shivering expectation of what might be coming.
Kingsnorth, however, pulled himself together after a convulsive movement or two of his chest. He stood for an instant without a word, and then walked away to his own quarters, whence Charlotte soon heard his voice shouting angrily for his servant.
Mrs. Maclaughlin, somewhat appeased by finding the Bible which she had brought along for her usual nightly chapter, came out on the piazza as the strident tones of Kingsnorth penetrated the sitting-room.
“Taking it out on his boy,” she remarked. “Well, I’ve been aching to tell the truth to John Kingsnorth for two years, and now I’ve done it.”
“Do you feel any better for it?”
“Yes—no. I’m always sorry when I blurt out. He’s right: Mac holds me in.” Her voice broke. “Oh, my Lord! My Lord! I wish I knew where he was this minute. You’re a strange woman, Charlotte Collingwood. You sit here and watch them waves roll in and hear the wind blowing, and you don’t seem to give one thought to the man that you’ve lived here with side by side for a year. Ain’t you got no love for him?”
Charlotte put up a hand. “I can’t discuss that with you, Mrs. Maclaughlin. Surely I have made it plain before this.”
“You’ve made a lot plain,” replied Mrs. Maclaughlin. There was endless reservation in her tone. It heaped such mountains of unuttered reproach that Charlotte quite bowed under it.
“The rain is coming in strong,” said Mrs. Maclaughlin, when she had extracted sufficient healing from her companion’s discomfort. “You’ll get drenched out here. I’m going to read my Bible. You had better come in.”