The chiming of the sala clock brought him to a sudden realization that it was eleven o’clock and Charlotte had not returned. Alarm overcame his rage, and he started hastily up the path through the grove. He almost stumbled over her before he saw her.
“What in the name of Heaven are you doing here?” he demanded. “Get up and come home at once.”
She tried to obey him, but it was with the third unassisted effort only that she dropped her head with a moan that went to his heart. “I can’t get up. I would if I could.” And Martin stooped and lifted her to her feet.
“Can you walk?” he asked. His voice trembled.
She nodded and dragged herself along with his aid. Collingwood was thoroughly frightened. He helped her to her room, where she fell on her bed nerveless. No fury could have blinded him to her utter exhaustion, to the set despair of her face. He went into the dining-room and brought her a glass of whiskey. When she had drunk it, a bit of color came back into her face and she looked at him appealingly.
“Don’t say any more to-night, please, Martin. If you’ll go out on the veranda, I’ll get myself to bed without assistance. I can’t talk.” Her teeth chattered.
Collingwood, half sulky still, half compassionate, betook himself to the veranda and a succession of cigars. Away from the sight of her suffering, anger and humiliation sat again upon his shoulders. When in the wee small hours, he sought his room, he asked her grouchily if she had slept, or if he could do anything for her. To both questions she uttered a denial. It was evident that she had not been crying though she looked very pale and worn; and the next morning she was unable to rise.
Chapter XIV
It seemed to Mrs. Collingwood that the next three days embodied the quintessence of all that had ever fallen to her lot of discomfort and misery. To lie physically helpless, a burden and a care to the one person who, at that time, was most out of love with her, was humiliation of the most cankering variety. Added to it was the sense of loss, the consciousness of ruin and disaster, and a feeling of shame that bowed her to the earth. Her husband’s bitter words had sunk deep into her soul. She saw herself as a creature degraded and partaking of the instincts of the most depraved class. Her marriage began to assume the complexion of an adventure. Was there an element of the adventuress in her? she asked herself tremulously. In reply came a wild rush of denial, an agony of revolt. As she envisaged herself she could not but justify her own actions. The feminine weakness, and dread of life’s bread-and-butter struggle, alone justified them. And she had loved Martin tenderly; she had been a good wife, loyal to his interests, guarding his dignity as her own, literally pouring her affection and her gratitude for all his tenderness toward her into his carelessly outstretched palm. No mother ever more sedulously stood between her child and the evil of the world than she had sought to save Martin Collingwood the pain of knowing what he had come to know. His ingratitude, though she would not use that word even to herself, cut her to the depths of her heart.