“Fiddlesticks,” Martin said. “You can get along by yourself a while. It’s just the thing. Charlotte will have somebody for company while I am at business.”
By this time, Charlotte was ready with a smile and an echo of his remark. Kingsnorth grew morose while Mrs. Maclaughlin began to enumerate the things which actually demanded her presence in Manila. Maclaughlin gave her one or two frowns; but she had taken the bit in her teeth; and it was soon decided that she was to have her way.
Charlotte’s heart sank and her anticipation of pleasure subsided into dread. Mrs. Maclaughlin was, at all times, a trial to her. She had little sympathy with the self-complacent temperament which is not subject to atmospheric influences; and Mrs. Maclaughlin’s society seemed to her several degrees less desirable in Manila than it did in Maylubi. She made no objection, however, and even succeeded in forcing herself to a half-hearted share in Martin’s enthusiasm.
Chapter XIII
It was all finally settled, and preparations such as could be made were begun. Charlotte found that, with a prospect of returning to the world, a variety of interests which she had thought quite extinct revived and grew clamorous. Memory was busy, too, with the days of her courtship. That strange mingling of ecstasy and misery through which she had passed seemed quite remote and, in retrospect, quite unnecessary. A hundred times she asked herself why she had been such a goose, why she had hesitated, why she had permitted the possible opinion of the world at large to influence her. She went about almost uplifted with the sense of new moral independence.
Collingwood was childishly eager for the change. His head, too, was full of memories and of places—how they would revisit the place where such and such a conversation had taken place,—did she remember that wrestle of their two individualities,—or drive over the ground where he had pleaded so fiercely for the right to take care of her, to stand between her and the bread-and-butter struggle. Particularly he looked forward to the Luneta evenings, for, of all moments in his life, he held that moment on the Luneta when she had dropped her flag the sweetest. He said as much to her, and she blushed like a girl. He also said something to the same effect to Mrs. Mac when that lady was sharpening her imagination one evening at dinner.
“We are going to run off and leave you just once, Mrs. Mac,” he said. “I’ve got one drive with my wife all planned out; it will be a Sunday evening. I am going to take her to the Luneta that evening; just she and I.”
“Oh, I can understand,” replied Mrs. Mac. “For that matter, Mac and I were young once ourselves.”
Kingsnorth, who had preserved a kind of displeased reticence ever since it had been settled that Mrs. Mac was to go to Manila with the Collingwoods, started to say something, bestowed upon the lady an unfriendly glance, and somewhat pointedly asked Mrs. Collingwood if she was going to join the bridge game after dinner.