Yet it is doubtful if he ever really regarded their separation as probable. Tacitly he accepted her statement that she was going away. In reality he hardly thought of such a possibility. Alone with his thoughts, all his will and his imagination bent itself to her conquest. It was that hour of her final humiliation and confession to which he looked forward. How long was she going to keep it up?
During her few days’ illness, however, he showed her some courtesies for which she returned a dignified, but not an affectionate, gratitude. Indeed, she had been up and about the house two or three days before her husband perceived that the door of her heart and mind, which she had so shyly opened to him, had closed, and that he stood outside of it, a part of that concourse which Charlotte Ponsonby had always feared and distrusted. She had trusted him most of all the world, and he had turned upon her and hurt her more cruelly than anyone else had ever done. Without reproach or lamentation or any sign of self-pity, she retired behind those invincible ramparts to which Martin had been blind in hospital days, but to which he was now so much alive.
It would have been exceedingly difficult for him to tell in what the change consisted. Her courtesy was finely measured, it is true, but it was not an armed truce between belligerents. It was the refuge of dignity, of one who feels his position false, but would save appearances by outward grace, at least. She who had been his wife, his dearest possession, became only a graceful hostess in his home—a lady who stood ready to lend a deferential ear to his suggestions, or carry out, to the best of her ability, his every wish, expressed or unexpressed. She ignored his gloom, saw to all his needs, spoke to him always kindly, though without humility or contrition; but for herself she asked not one fraction of his time or his attention. The occasions for little courtesies which he had been accustomed to offer her were skilfully avoided; but were never rudely made conspicuous by their avoidance. Her quiet pride was infinitely more than a match for his aggressive self-love; her supreme naturalness, the most impregnable armor she could have worn.
Kingsnorth beheld the transformation in her, was first astonished, then interested, then moved to profound pity and contrition. With tact equal to her own, he set himself to meet the situation, seconded all her efforts to make their awkward meals natural and easy, silenced Mrs. Mac’s gaping curiosity, and managed, in doing it all, to keep himself well in the background. With Collingwood he had one conversation on the launch, but the sum and substance was that gentleman’s reiteration of the terms on which he would live.
“Damnation!” was Kingsnorth’s irritable response, “you are simply making an ass of yourself, Collingwood. I can’t call you a brute, because I’ve been too much of one myself. I live in glass houses—I can’t throw stones. You’ve married a jewel among women, and you’re going to make your ruffled dignity make smash of two lives that ought to be happy. Moreover, you are not in earnest. This is all bluffing and bad temper to bring Mrs. Collingwood to her knees, and to make her put herself in the wrong when you know there isn’t any wrong or right about things. Now I’ll give you a piece of advice, old man. You are trying that game on the wrong woman: see that you don’t carry it too far, and turn her affection into dislike. I’ve learned one thing, learned it tragically well in this life; and that is that one has just one chance really in this world with one person. Now don’t lose your chance with your wife.”
To this Martin vouchsafed a grunt. Hardly conscious of it, he had set his will to bring Charlotte to his terms. He could not listen to anything that crossed that strong desire.
The days went by slowly where they had once gone so fast, and neither husband nor wife referred again to that tacit agreement of separation. Yet Martin knew from the bundle of letters which he was to carry up to Manila that Charlotte was making plans for business life again; and once, when he came into the sitting-room unexpectedly, he found her frowning over her bank book. He knew the balance it contained, for, on their wedding journey, they had laughed at her little savings; and he knew she could not long maintain herself upon it. He smiled grimly at her flushed discomfiture when he found her pondering ways and means, and somewhat brutally said to himself that she would find that she had little rope to run upon.
Yet at the last moment it was he who wavered, he who rang down the curtain on their make-believe. She had looked after his garments and had packed his trunk with wifely solicitude; had prepared for his launch trip, foods for which she knew his predilection, and had, at the moment of farewell, saved the situation by putting out a friendly hand.
“I do hope you will have a pleasant trip,” she said,—and what it cost her to speak so easily and naturally, only she could have told,—“and thank you for giving me the weeks here to get ready. I’ll go over to Cuyo when the launch goes up for you on your return trip, and will leave a letter for you there. There are some things I can’t say to you, but I should like to write them. They will, perhaps, leave a better feeling between us.”
To these words Martin found, at the time, no answer. He wrung her hand, muttered something, and hastened away. Yet when his belongings had all been deposited in the boat, and the men were waiting to “chair” him out, he turned on his heel, and strode back to the cottage.