Mrs. Maclaughlin was tall and bony with iron-gray hair and a large featured, strong face, characteristic of the pioneer. She was not shy, and she seized Mrs. Collingwood by both hands and kissed her, then held her off for inspection.
“Well, Martin Collingwood’s a fool for luck,” she remarked. “I never thought he’d get a nice, peart, stylish girl like you to follow him off to a place like this. You’re either mad—and you don’t look it—or you’re worse in love than any woman ever was before you.”
The informality of the greeting took Charlotte’s breath. As she stood blushing, a large, brown, and well-made hand was extended to her.
“How do you do, Mrs. Collingwood?” said a voice in the refined accents of the upper class Englishman. “I don’t need to introduce myself, do I? Martin has told you all about us, and there are not enough of us to confuse. Don’t let Mrs. Mac’s plainness of speech annoy you. When you are well acquainted, you’ll rather like it. It breaks the monotony of things.”
She tried to make some trivial, laughing rejoinder; but the words faltered on her lips, for, as she glanced up into his eyes, she saw there the instant recognition of all that she was, the interrogation flashing into quickly throttled life, as to why she was Martin Collingwood’s wife, and what she could possibly have to do with a colony of fisher folk composed of one insouciant blade of fortune, two typical bits of western flotsam, and a renegade from decent society.
Chapter VII
On a certain cloudless September morning eight months later, five persons were merrily disporting themselves in the warm billows that rolled upon the island beach. It was one of those radiantly clear mornings which so often occur in the tropical rainy seasons when every particle of dust has been washed out of the air, and the morning breeze is of a spring-like freshness. The sun had not yet peeped over the Antique coast range, but the mountain flanks were outlined in soft mauve and gray against the glowing sky. A fishing fleet off the coast showed tints of pearl, and thin threads of masts above the quiet sea. Westward there was a sapphire expanse, and a whole string of lorchas, every inch of canvas set to take advantage of the fresh wind, standing across on a tack for San José or Cuyo.
Charlotte Collingwood, slipping out of the water, paused an instant to breathe deeply and to feast her eyes upon the solitary beauty of the scene, before she betook herself to housekeeping cares. Then hastening across the short extent of ground between the beach and her cottage, she sought her bathroom and the brisk dousing with fresh water that would remove the sticky effects of the sea bath.
Half an hour later she emerged from her bedroom as hearty looking a young woman as you could desire to see. Her shapely figure, clad in a simple white piqué dress, was considerably fuller than it had been in her hospital days, though it had not degenerated into stoutness. Her skin was still colorless, for color once faded in the tropics is gone forever; but her face was fuller, her eye brighter, her expression one of happiness and content.