Live under the bane of his anger she could not. The tentative overtures, the timid looks or glances, the humility with which less spirited women propitiate an injured deity were foreign to her nature; but equally she was not calloused, as many women are, to conjugal frowns.
All the self-confidence which she had gained in months of happiness was jolted out of her at Martin’s first angry word. Another woman might have turned his wrath away with a laugh, might have nestled her hand into his with a whisper and a kind look; but it was not in Charlotte Collingwood to offer a caress to an angry husband. It would have been to her an act beyond the pale of decency. Her heart harbored no revenge. Every moment as she sat listening for his step, she justified his resentment, she told herself over and over that she had no tact and no consideration, and that Martin was an abused husband; but to have risen and sought him when he was plainly averse to her society would have seemed to her the acme of unwomanliness.
Meanwhile Mr. Collingwood was pacing the sands. His temper was seething. He did not understand the situation, and the more he realized his inability to understand it, the higher rose his desire to hold somebody accountable. There was no doubting the sincerity of Charlotte’s words, “I have not been flirting with him,” but Martin Collingwood thought there had to be a reason for such a radical step on the part of so conservative a man as the Judge. Then there was the fact that the Judge had departed without that closer acquaintance with Martin Collingwood’s footwear. To a man of Collingwood’s temperament, being balked of the physical pleasures of revenge was worse even than the sting of the affront. Why had not Charlotte told him? She had clearly not meant to tell him. She had meant to let him go on shaking that viper by the hand when they met. But why? Ah, that why!
It was long after midnight when he entered his home. His wife was asleep or pretended to be so; and when he awoke late, after a troubled sleep, he found her dressed and gone. From the adjoining room, the clinking of cups and saucers told him that breakfast was going on.
Collingwood dressed quickly and went in to breakfast wearing an unpleasant face. After one quick glance, Charlotte gave him a smiling good morning, to which he vouchsafed a surly reply.
Kingsnorth remarked: “I thought I should have to go to work without you, old man. Mrs. Collingwood would not have you waked. She made us talk in whispers and eat in parenthesis, as it were.”
“All tom-foolishness,” said Martin. “I am no six-weeks-old baby. You let me oversleep like this again,” he added, addressing the muchacho, “and I’ll beat you with a dog whip.”
Then electrically everybody knew that something was wrong in the Collingwood household. Mrs. Maclaughlin stole a frightened look at Charlotte whose face flamed, Maclaughlin stared first at Collingwood and then at his wife, and finally turned his wondering eyes on Kingsnorth, who met his gaze with an eye about as intelligent as that of an oculist’s advertisement. A moment later Charlotte addressed some trifling remark to Kingsnorth who answered with a suspicious readiness, and they fell into conversation unshared by the rest of the table.
Collingwood continued to gloom after the Maclaughlins and Kingsnorth, who had nearly finished when he appeared, had excused themselves. Charlotte sat on profoundly uncomfortable. She had no words in which to address his frowning majesty, but she was heartsick. She rose at last, saying, “If you will excuse me, Martin, I will leave you to finish alone, I forgot about those launch supplies;” and she made her errand in the kitchen detain her until she saw the launch puffing lazily across the blue, sparkling water.
She went back to her room and lay down half nauseated with the misery surging within her. Nothing in her experience had prepared her to meet the emergency she was confronting. She came of a family to whom the scene which had taken place in her breakfast-room could be possible only as a definite, final act of estrangement. She was as utterly ignorant of those persons who alternately frown and smile and betray joy or sorrow unthinkingly to the world as Martin was ignorant of the jealous guarding of appearances which pertained to her world. It never once occurred to her that Martin could publicly affront her at breakfast and forget all about it before dinner.