He lay at her feet, smiling, and Charlotte hardly knew what to reply. How could she say to him that the experience on which his whole imagination had fastened was a matter of fact detail of her past? She had rarely entered a theatre except under the circumstances which had made it a picture of delight to him. She did not deny that it would be pleasant to go again, and she did not, for an instant, underrate the pleasure which comes of knowing oneself among the envied few. But how could she take from him the pleasure of anticipating for her as well as for himself? Indeed, would not it make a perceptible rift in his present joy if he knew that his innocent outburst could find no echo in her breast? Would he not feel a little ridiculous? And how uncomfortable it was that that coil of misunderstanding always was most perceptible at Martin’s most exalted moments! Why had he chosen to assume that she was a stranger to luxury, and why had her good taste so resolutely declined to give him even a hint, until suddenly she found herself in a position where a hint would seem like an insult? She would have liked to tell him, then and there, a string of reminiscences, and to share half a hundred memories with him, but it was too late. To say anything then would be to pour cold water by the bucket over his enthusiasms. What she did say was:
“I shall enjoy that immensely if it ever comes; but until it does come, I want you to understand that I am not discontented with our life here; and that if it never comes, I shall not let myself repine over it.”
“Thank God for that,” he replied earnestly. And as she smiled at him faintly, puzzled by his emphasis, he added, “I took my chances when I brought you here, and there is no doubt that you are an unusual woman to have stood it as you have done. The queer part of it is that I knew what risks I was taking, but until it was too late to back out, I couldn’t own them to myself. One of the reasons that I wanted you so badly was that I hated it so here, and it was so all-fired lonely. But I kept on saying to myself that it wouldn’t be lonely for you because I would be here.”
“Well,” she conceded, willing to gloss over the selfishness of which he stood ready to accuse himself, “so long as you are willing to believe that you would not be lonely because I would be here, that seems a fair exchange.”
“No, it wasn’t fair at any point, because I knew exactly what the place was like and you were going into it blindfold. But a man can’t stop to look at things that way. If we did, nobody would ever get anything in the world that he wanted. My mother used to say to me that God helps those who help themselves. I’ve come to the conclusion that He doesn’t do anything of the kind, but that He sits back and doesn’t interfere with those who take.”
After this burst of unusual eloquence, Mr. Collingwood closed his eyes and puffed luxuriously at his cigar. But for the rhythm of the surf, nature seemed steeped in afternoon slumber. In the accentuated silence the voices of children digging clams far up the beach came to them like drowsy music.
Collingwood smoked on, content with his own analysis of his conduct and delighting in his wife’s soft hand on his brow. Charlotte thought he was going to sleep, and smiled tenderly at his closed eyes. Martin not infrequently displayed his enjoyment of her society by a willingness to nap in it; but she was not petty enough to grudge him the indulgence. Besides, many of her tenderest thoughts, her best inspirations had come to her as she mused, on lazy afternoons, with his handsome profile in her lap. There seemed, at such times, to be a reversal of their ordinary relations. She leaned tremendously on Martin, not by making him a sharer in her domestic difficulties or by wearying him, already weary with toil, by that demand for petty services by which some women delight to vaunt their possession of a slave. As far as she could be a buffer between him and all the little cares and burdens of their daily life, Charlotte had kept her promise to herself to make Martin Collingwood a good wife. And though she measured his hourly joy in the pride of having her undivided affection, she felt herself meanly stinting him of that secret hoard of gratitude which lay so warm in her heart. Was he fairly treated, she asked herself, in being denied the knowledge that he alone of all the world had made her feel herself welcome in it? He thought her strong, when, in reality, all her strength came from him. Deprived of that crown and sceptre with which he had endowed her, would she be more than a poor shrinking outcast again, a creature at bay, ready to snap without discrimination at passing curiosity or at passing kindness. But pride was still strong in her heart—love had not subdued that; and there were some explanations that she could not force herself to make. When he lay supine, as on that afternoon, his pagan beauty even more markedly defined by a slumber that was like a child’s, she had an intuition of his unexpressed dependence on her. Was it possible that Martin had reservations also? The thought bred another. Is it possible for any soul to unbosom itself completely to another? Does not the very wealth of confidence entrain some final reservations, the inner sanctuary of that self-dignity with which the-gentlest spirit is reluctant to part? She decided that, freely as he revealed himself to her, Martin must carry deep in his heart, some feelings jealously guarded from her—thoughts and feelings perhaps that he had recklessly revealed to the young girls who at times had fired his imagination. It is the instinct of the human soul to guard those weaknesses of which it is self-conscious from those natures which cannot understand them, and, not understanding, cannot sympathize. Of what weakness did she make Martin self-conscious? She knew only too well the weaknesses of which he made her self-conscious; knew, too, her desperate fear that full cognizance of them might shake the foundations of his pride in her. They had been married eight months, and in that time they had hardly touched a jar in their lives. He had told her a thousand times that she was all the world to him, and she had replied a thousand times that she asked nothing more, and that, so long as she could be that, she was willing to bear solitude, and endure even privation. Was all her happiness hinged upon the chance dropping of a curtain in his speech or hers? upon the revelation of another self hidden away behind his merriment, behind her silence? She sighed and moved impatiently, trying to shake off her thoughts. Then she remembered that he was sleeping and glanced down to find him gazing at her quizzically.
“I’ve been awake all the while,” he said, “watching your face. You have been doing a sight of thinking all to yourself. You thought I had dropped off, didn’t you?”
“I’ve had reason to believe you capable of it, Martin.”
“What I have done and what I am going to do this afternoon are two distinct things, Mrs. C.”