Charlotte’s first exclamation of surprise and pity was followed by an indignant flush. The child, which was evidently dying of anæmia, was a mestizo. Its blue eye, its almost fair hair above a pasty skin and something indefinably British in the stamp of its expression betrayed its paternity at once.
The man spoke neither Spanish nor English, and the girl had only a few phrases of each; but with Charlotte’s command of the vernacular she managed to get a few facts in some sort of sequence. For brevity and to spare the reader an elliptical conversation in three languages they can be set down as Charlotte summed them up afterwards.
The man was the child’s grandfather; the girl, its aunt. Its mother had died a week or so before at a village on the Antique coast. The woman and her people had lived with Kingsnorth openly in his house up to the morning of the señora Americana’s arrival. At that time Kingsnorth had come in in great excitement, had bundled them all off in short order, and had established them in the coast village. As he was their only source of income, they accepted his mandate without question.
But the mother had died, of what they could not make quite clear, though the girl pressed her hands upon her heart and repeated “muy, muy triste” more than once. After the mother’s death, the baby lacked nourishment, though its father gave money to buy milk. They had come over on a fish parao to show it to its father, and had received orders to keep out of Mrs. Collingwood’s way; but hearing from the villagers of that lady’s skill in curing the sick and of her willingness to use it, they could not forbear bringing the child to her. But with tears, they besought her to keep the secret. The old man made a very fair representation of bestowing a hearty kick, and the girl, weeping, ejaculated “Pega, pega mucho,” many times.
Charlotte had been interested during her hospital experience in a series of experiments made by one of the surgeons in infant-feeding. The mortality among Filipino children is enormous, and much attention is given to infant care. It happened that she had been trying the food process on one or two babies in the village, and it was doubtless the news of that fact which had induced the people to risk Kingsnorth’s anger and appeal to her.
She led them homeward, gave the child some nourishment, and set to work to show the girl how to prepare the canned milk for future use. It was not till they had departed that she realized that they had not said whether or not the mother had been legally married. Later she decided that the fact was immaterial, but she was inclined to believe the child illegitimate.
For the next ten days the girl presented herself with the child for treatment. She watched carefully to see that the fishers had gone each day, and that Mrs. Maclaughlin was not around. The child thrived, and with returning health showed a somewhat engaging appearance.
Charlotte could never be quite certain of her reasons for keeping silence to her husband on the subject. At first undoubtedly she desired to avoid making trouble for the old man and the girl; but later, when Mrs. Maclaughlin had met the girl face to face on Charlotte’s veranda steps, and she knew the fact had been retailed to Maclaughlin and to the other men, she was still wordless. For a few days the sullen demeanor of Kingsnorth showed that he dumbly resented her knowledge; but in the end his protégés established themselves in the village, and when Charlotte walked that way she often saw his taffy-colored son, in a single garment, staring with incongruous blue eyes from the floor of a nipa shack.
What was stranger, even, than anything else, Mrs. Maclaughlin showed an eager desire to avoid the subject. Charlotte had anticipated, with some dread, that the lady would break forth garrulously once the cat was out of the bag; but she was most pleasantly disappointed. Between herself and Martin the matter was never mentioned. There were times when she would have liked to ask him what he had really expected her to do before Kingsnorth saved the situation by packing off his impedimenta; but she was afraid that, if the subject were ever opened up between them, she would express herself too frankly, and she was too thoroughly happy with her husband to care to risk disturbing their satisfaction in each other. As time went on, she ceased to give the matter any thought at all. After all, she reflected, had she not known it all potentially the first time she ever saw Kingsnorth? What did the addition of a few specific data matter? At that time all her will was bent to the determination to make the best of her romance, to be happy at any cost, and to postpone indefinitely, if not ultimately, any hour of settlement.