But it was plain that their romance was ended; “the thing had gone to smash,” in Collingwood’s forceful language. Time and time again she went over that night on the Luneta before their marriage, and Martin’s words, and her own miserable doubts and fears. The worst had happened, as she had feared it might, but Collingwood was not living up to his philosophy. He was angry at her, held himself a man cheated, put all the blame on her, wanted in a dumb, fruitless way to quarrel with her.
On the evening of her second day in bed, they attempted to thresh out their difficulties, but it was soon evident that they had reached a hopeless impasse. Charlotte ended what was a miserable controversy.
“What is your quarrel with me about, Martin?” she said. “Simply that I am I, that I have lived through certain experiences, that I have certain criterions of taste and judgment that you have not. I have not obtruded them on you. I haven’t made myself obnoxious by them. I deny that I have ever deceived you, and I have tried honestly to think and feel as you do. I haven’t been playing a part. I have been thoroughly happy. But you can’t any more make me put your values on life and people, than you can, because somebody wishes you to, convince yourself that there is no America; that all your past life has been a dream; that all you have known and felt and seen has been mere imagination, a fancy on your part. I’ll have no quarrel with you, no reproaches. I married you of my own free will, and married you for love. As for my philosophy of life or my views on worldly matters, what actual part need they play in our life? If I am content to put them out of sight, why cannot you do so?”
“I’ll be damned if I’ll live with any woman on earth on your terms,” Collingwood reiterated.
She looked him steadily in the eyes. “Then the thing is finally settled, and we can spare ourselves the pain of useless discussion. For in the thing we are quarrelling with—not my actions, but my philosophy of life—I shall not change. Nor can I fancy any woman with a spark of modesty or decency in her, entreating a man to live with her. If you will allow me to remain here during your stay in Manila, I’ll go before you get back.”
“How do you think you are going to live?”
She gave a little reckless shrug. “I supported myself before we were married. I suppose I can do so again. I’ll make no demands on your pocket book. I didn’t marry you to be supported. I married you to be loved by you, to feel that I gave in your life and home an order and an assistance—yes, and a joy—to equalize what I cost you in money. When there is no longer exchange, I refuse to accept.”
“Big talk,” said Martin. She did not reply, but turned away wearily. The servant knocked at the door a minute after to say that dinner was ready, and he went to his meal. After that, it seemed that they had subsided into a tacit acceptance of their future as she had outlined it.
Collingwood was quite as unhappy as his wife was. All his masculine pride was chafing, but his masculine heart was aching. He wanted to be set gloriously in the right, to ascend the pedestal from which he had been ignominiously tumbled by a few incautious words overheard. He wanted, though he hardly phrased it to himself, apologies for his wife’s daring to understand a thing that he had not understood. He had literally eaten of the tree of knowledge and was enraged with what lay patent to his seared vision.
The consciousness of what had been going on in Kingsnorth’s mind, in Judge Barton’s, in the Commissioner’s, burnt like acid on a wound. He saw, with astonishing clearness, Judge Barton’s viewpoint, and he marvelled no more at that gentleman’s temerity. His beggar maid a princess! his throne a mésalliance!—the thought burned. His tortured self-love yawned like an abyss which no heaping of prostrate offenders could ever fill; and against his wife’s quiet dignity his thwarted will raged sullenly.