Chapter VIII
“Want a paseo, Charlotte?” Martin called from his deck chair on the vine-shaded veranda one Sunday afternoon. “It’s not so very hot. I feel like walking myself.”
Mrs. Collingwood, who was dabbing a powder puff across her face as a finish to her afternoon toilet, responded at once, from the adjoining bedroom, that she was longing for a walk. In a few minutes, she appeared, tying the strings of a great sun hat, and handed her umbrella to Martin.
“Have I got to lug this thing?” he groaned; but even as he spoke, he opened it and held it tenderly over her.
Kingsnorth, smoking on his own veranda, nodded and asked them where they were going.
“Most anywhere. Up the hill, probably. Charlotte likes to go there. Will you come along?”
Mrs. Collingwood did not second the invitation, though she had time to do so before Kingsnorth replied. “I’m too lazy. I’ll leave hill-climbing to you adventurous young persons.” To himself he added, “You don’t want me. You want to go up there and spoon. Oh, Lord! to be young again!” He did not add, “and to love and be loved”; but the words were bitter in his thoughts as he watched the young couple go along the clean beach.
When they came to a path leading across the cocoanut grove to a spur of hill on the eastern side of the island, they took it, followed it through the shadowed green arcades, climbed a rather stiff hill, and, at length, found themselves in the shade of a bamboo clump at the head of a cleft filled with undergrowth. An outcropping of rock made a sort of natural seat for Charlotte, and Collingwood stretched himself at her feet. On the ridge above them a line of cocoanut trees drooped their great leaves, while over their heads the long bamboo stems swayed to every breath of air. Although the elevation was low—not more than fifty or sixty feet above the water—it gave the loungers an extended view. The sea rolled in long swells of deepest sapphire. Far away to the north, the great plateau mountain of Tablas was a violet shadow in the sky; but on the east the insistent sun searched out every ravine and spur of the Antique coast range. From that grim mountain king which lords it over them on the north to the far distance of the south their weathered sides lay outlined in long lines of pink and mauve, and in great patches of smoky-blue, where cloud shadows lay soft upon them. Here and there a distant sail gleamed, a mere speck of pearl against the lustre of sea and sky, and, in the north, a steamer’s smudge was plainly visible, though the vessel was hull down.
“May be a tramp freighter going north, which slipped through the channel without our noticing her,” said Martin. “This is not the time for the Puerta Princesa steamer.” Boats were always a source of conversation at the island. They were charged with almost a romantic significance, coming and going, ever the mute reminders that, beyond the shining horizon line, people still lived and toiled, still built and populated the great cities of which Martin loved to speak.
“I can’t see a line of smoke without a pang of homesickness,” he said. “Let’s see. We are thirteen hours ahead of Chicago time. It is now about four o’clock; it’s quiet enough in those empty streets now. But about the time we were eating lunch, the theatres were just emptying. I can see the carriages drive up, and the women with their beautiful dresses showing under their opera cloaks; and the other kind, the kind that don’t go in carriages, hurrying off to catch a car, buttoning up their jackets as they come out into the cool—it’s just frosty weather there now—and the lights in the big restaurants, and the lamps flashing on carriages and automobiles. Meanwhile, we are here frizzling, and here we bid fair to stay till we make money enough to go home in style. I shall take you to the theatre some time that way, Charlotte. You’ll be in a low-necked dress with diamonds—do you think you’ll like diamonds?—and you shall have one of those long coats with the hoods, and I’ll be in my swallow-tail. We’ll spin up in an electric brougham, and rustle into our box. Then, after the performance, we’ll have a supper, and then I’ll say ‘Home’ kind of careless to the chauffeur. How does that strike your imagination?”