“England has always a frontier war or two on her hands, and I got into one. A private, a ‘gentleman ranker’ has a magnificent opportunity to sink in the English army. Afterwards I drifted over here, and got into pearl-fishing. I liked the life and its adventures (we had to fight a bit in the early days), and then when the Americans came, I fell in with Collingwood. We fancied each other on sight. Then we picked up Mac, and I lighted accidentally on this oyster bed, and we settled here.
“Throughout all these years I have kept up a desultory correspondence with my married sisters; but I have drifted out of their lives, and I realize that I represent to them only a possible legacy. It is my business to make some money, and one day to die and leave it to them; and meanwhile a few gifts from the Orient are not unacceptable.
“Well, to shorten this tale, I settled here and married my wife. You need not look so startled. She was my wife legally; bell, book, and candle were all there. I lived openly with her in my house till the morning when you landed on Maylubi. Then, after I had seen and talked with you, I went home and ordered her out. She loved me, and she obeyed me. Five months later she died.” He stopped and wiped a cold perspiration from his brow.
“But how could you have kept it from me?” cried Charlotte. “Why did not Martin or Mrs. Maclaughlin tell me?”
“Mrs. Mac had her orders from Mac. She never disobeys him. Martin was simply a good friend.”
“But he brought me here.” She stopped, crimsoning with indignation.
“Precisely. He brought you here to associate with me, a respectable married man, as he considered me. He has never understood my conduct. He doesn’t understand why I preferred you to believe me a profligate instead of a decent married man. He has never understood why I should be willing to have my child pass for illegitimate. But you understand, Mrs. Collingwood.”
“Yes, I understand.” Then with sudden passion she cried, “But it was not my fault. I was trained to it.”
“As I was. But, if I had had one spark of manhood in me, I should have stood by the woman I had married, and should have taken my child to my heart in the face of the world. But I did not have the courage. I writhed and twisted to get out of facing the consequences of my own actions; and since then the weight of my own self-contempt has grown steadily heavier. Don’t talk to me of reform,” he added savagely as she started to speak. “There isn’t any reform for such as I. I tell you the consciousness of my own moral cowardice is with me day and night. It never leaves me. And it’s the ungodly unfairness of it all that kills me by inches. I see other men about me, living lives not so very different from mine: Collingwood himself has been no saint. But because I’ve wanted better things, because I drank my cup, knowing that it was poor drink, it has not slaked my thirst, and it has parched the last drop of sweetness out of my life.
“Don’t you go another foot along this trail; you began it when you married Collingwood. If you double and twist on your tracks again, you are lost. Hug pain, hug misery, martyr yourself, if you will, but don’t try to indulge your own selfish will, and to square things by saying that you despise yourself. God in Heaven! Do you know what it is to despise yourself? You don’t now; but you will some day.” He wiped the perspiration that stood in great drops on his brow.