Chapter VI

Chapter VIIt was well on in the afternoon of the next day when they anchored off Cuyo, which, with its squat lighthouse and low shore, impressed Charlotte as a dreary, lonesome spot. A launch, which was lying abreast the lighthouse, saluted them with vociferous toots, and Collingwood waved his hat in joyous response.“That’s Mac, all right,” he said. “He’ll be aboard directly. It’s a wonder he didn’t hire the town band to welcome us.”Charlotte winced and secretly rejoiced that for once Mr. Maclaughlin’s initiative had failed to come up to its reputation. Yet when a boat came alongside, and a grizzled Scotch-American stepped up the short ladder, her greeting was warm enough to fully satisfy her husband.“My soul!” said Mr. Maclaughlin, giving her a lengthy handshake and a look of unqualified admiration, “but you could ha’ knocked us down with a feather the day the letter came saying that Martinwould bring back a wife. Kingsnorth nigh took to his bed on it.”Consternation was plainly written on Mrs. Collingwood’s face. Her sensitiveness was a-flutter, fearing a cold welcome from her husband’s friends.“I’m sorry,” she began, and then came to an awkward stop.“No offence, I hope,” said Maclaughlin, reading the signs, “He’s well over it by now. Kingsnorth is just one of those poor bodies we call a woman-hater; and you’ll notice, Mrs. Collingwood, that they always begin life just the opposite. He thought he’d found a bunkie for life in Martin, an’ the lad fooled him! I don’t say but we were all surprised, but you’ll find a hearty welcome at the island.”“Can we get out to-night?” asked Collingwood.“Get out in an hour if we can get our freight transhipped, unless Mrs. Collingwood is in a mind to stay and see the city by gaslight.” He jerked a derisive thumb in the direction of the iron and nipa roofs ashore.“All the light stuff is on deck now,” said Martin whose instincts to accomplish whatever was to be done mastered any tendency toward conversation.He pointed, as he spoke, to a tarpaulin-covered heap forward. “The heavy cases are stored where they can be hauled up in a minute. I’ll see the captain at once. He won’t try to delay us, not he. Get alongside right away, with the launch, can’t you?”“I doubt you’ve gone broke,” remarked Maclaughlin, contemplating the heap and smiling at Charlotte, who laughed.“Not so had as that, I hope,” she responded, “but some of the credit is due me that he hasn’t.”“That’s a fact,” her husband supplemented. “I wanted to buy out Manila and wire additional supplies from Hong Kong. However, we can talk about that later. Thank the Lord, there isn’t any sea on. We would have the devil’s own time transhipping, if there were.”He dashed off, and Maclaughlin jumped into his boat with an order to the native rowers to hurry. For an instant, Charlotte was annoyed by their unceremonious departure, but her good sense soon rose superior to her training. Martin alert, talking business, with his hat on the back of his head, a long pencil emphasizing his gestures, was a very different figure from the insouciant young pagan,alternately jocose and pleading, that had wooed her. How quickly, too, the easy speech of the husband had possessed him. “Devil’s own time” came ripping out with unconscious force. At first, Charlotte’s fastidiousness revolted from it. Then she decided that it was virile and that she liked it. Still, she mused, if he felt the need of emphatic embellishment to point the assertion of so simple a fact as that, what might he not do when an occasion out of the ordinary arose?Her question was answered before their goods and commissaries were aboard the launch, and, for a time, she could not tell whether she wanted to laugh or to cry. While she was still in doubt, her husband came back, red and perspiring, with his coat off. He held out a collar and necktie.“Just look out for these things for me, won’t you?” he said. “My! I’m pretty well cussed out. Hope I didn’t shock you, pet.”“You did, but it didn’t matter; or rather, it passed the point of shocking. You have the towering imagination in profanity, Martin, of an architect of sky-scraping buildings.”Collingwood was able to extract a compliment from this, and looked grateful, though he was evidentlyimpressed by the form of its expression. “I may have said a little too much,” he apologized, “but a man would have to be a saint not to lose his temper—Here!” he roared, as three of the crew, having mounted to the upper deck and having armed themselves with a flower pot apiece, started brazenly off with their burdens, “take two of those at a time. How many trips do you plan to make with this flower garden, anyway? You see that everything is right in the stateroom, won’t you?” he threw over his shoulder as he darted off.“Certainly,” she replied, adding to herself, “for I shouldn’t like you to ‘cuss’ me.”She felt quite safe from any such dire possibility, or she could not have joked about it even with herself. Nevertheless, she was very thoughtful as she gathered up their belongings and put them in the valises, leaving, however, the strapping and the pulling to be done by Martin.When she had done all that there was to be done, and had put on her hat, she sank down on a locker, still holding her husband’s discarded collar, and let her thoughts dwell rosily on the part she could play in the island life. A guilty conscience urged her to acts of reparation. All that she could do tobring order and system and beauty into her husband’s home she was resolved to do. He had told her enough to let her know that he had lived in an unlovely fashion, and that he had aspirations for something better, though he could not define what he objected to in the past, or just what he wanted in the future. He was bent on making money, chiefly because he seemed to feel that there was no way of obtaining his ideal without large expenditures; and yet he was not ostentatious. He had been very liberal—extravagant, she had laughingly told him—in the purchase of household belongings; and she had told the truth when she said that she deserved the credit of restraining him. He was going to become the typical American husband, who labors unceasingly that his womankind may be decked in finery and may represent him in the whirl of society; but his wife could see that, until such a time as their prosperity should be at flood tide, he would expect her to administer wisely and economically. He gave much—as far as he was conscious of her needs—and he would ask proportionally in return. Charlotte’s head reared proudly to meet the thought. She would not fail him. And then she vowed for the hundredth time,that his unstinted devotion should meet with its just due, and that never, never should Martin suspect how she had had to battle with herself before she could conquer the feeling that her love was a shame to her.Martin, coming to seek her in order to introduce her to the wife of a local military officer, found her sunk in reverie with his crumpled neck-wear pressed against her cheek. He put on a clean tie and collar and they went on deck together.The military officer’s wife was a young woman, plainly of village origin, who was carrying the wide-spreading sail which many Americans in the Philippines elect to display in the exuberance of having journeyed to foreign lands. Her appearance jarred on Mrs. Collingwood, and her conversation, which was frivolous and full of assumption, reinforced the unfavorable impression.The lady had met Collingwood three or four times before, and had treated him with scant courtesy, because he had been an enlisted man. But when she heard that he was married, and that his wife was aboard ship, her curiosity got the better of her exclusiveness—that and her eagerness to hear the sound of her own voice, for there werefew Americans in Cuyo, and she was already on bad terms with several families. She threw a gushing condescension into her manner of greeting Charlotte, which put that young woman’s nerves on edge at once. But Mrs. Snodgrass (“What a name!” thought Charlotte, “I never expected to meet it out of books!”) was determined to make the best of the conversational opportunity. After a somewhat ingenuous scrutiny, she invited the Collingwoods to dinner. Charlotte was about to decline, when Martin interrupted and said that their being delayed an hour or so was of no importance; that it was evidently going to be a clear night, and they had time enough to make the run over before dawn. Charlotte supposed that some affection for Lieutenant Snodgrass—who had been a captain of volunteers in the war, and Martin’s officer—was the cause of her husband’s eagerness, and she accepted the invitation at once. She went ashore with the Lieutenant’s wife, while Martin remained to see to a few last details, and to make some arrangements with Maclaughlin.Lieutenant and Mrs. Snodgrass (he had not been able to secure entrance to the regular army with his volunteer rank) were comfortably domiciled,and the meal was a good one, though Charlotte was made uncomfortable by the hostess’s repeated apologies both for her food and her service. “The servants are such impossible creatures here, don’t you think?” fluttered the little woman who, before her marriage, had been a stenographer working for twelve dollars a week, and who had never enjoyed the luxury of a servant in her life till she came to the Philippines.Charlotte glanced at her in surprise. “I had not thought so,” she replied. “They need a great deal of training, of course, but I fancied them ideal servants, so truly of the servant class, believing that God ordained us to be masters, and them to serve. At home, I feel that servants do not acquiesce in the situation, and the more intelligent they are, the more sensitive I am to the undercurrent.”It was evident that Mrs. Snodgrass regarded this remark as verbiage. “How funny!” she said. “I never felt that way.”“In other words,” remarked Lieutenant Snodgrass, who was a self-made man, but who was taking on his army training with great quickness, “Mrs. Collingwood prefers an aristocratic social system to a democratic one.”“I suppose so,” Charlotte assented, “though theoretically I stand for democracy like all good Americans. You inferred a condition of my mind of which I was hardly conscious myself. But I suppose you are right.”“Do you hear that, Collingwood? You are the most rabid democrat I know. Are you going to bring your wife over to your way of thinking?”Martin was staring at Charlotte, who began to color with embarrassment. Her view-point had seemed to her so natural and so simple that she was quite unprepared for the comment it evoked.“I’ll have to coach you up before I turn you loose on people,” he said. “Why, I never thought it of you.”Lieutenant Snodgrass assumed the air of a man, the length of whose matrimonial experience justifies him in extensive allusions to feminine peculiarities.“Oh, if she doesn’t startle you any worse than that,” he hinted darkly.After dinner, Charlotte was left to a long hour of Mrs. Snodgrass’s company while their husbands reviewed war experiences and discussed that never-ending theme of exiles, the Government’s Philippine policy. It was ten o’clock when the Collingwoodsbade good-bye to their hosts, with the usual promise of an exchange of visits. They found Maclaughlin waiting for them at the landing with the boat. He asked Mrs. Collingwood if she could steer and, being told that she could, vacated his place in the stern for her.The night was dark but not cloudy, like the previous one. The moon would not rise till later, but the night azure of the sky was unclouded, and all the constellations of the tropic belt were glittering in its peaceful depths. The Southern Cross was there, and the so-called False Cross, while, in the north, the “Big Dipper” hung low and out of place. The water was phosphorescent, the oars turning in green fire, which sent a million prickles flashing away in the waves. When, now and then, abancacrept past them, its shape was outlined in the same lurid radiance, and the noiseless paddles dripped smears of unearthly flame. Charlotte pulled her tiller ropes in silence, keeping a wary eye out for unlighted craft, and watching the huddle of lights that was their launch. The coastguard cutter had left half an hour before. She was a faint glimmer of dots on the vague horizon; her smoke still lay a wavering, dark line across the night sky.Suddenly a tremor of deadly fear shook Charlotte. There went the chain by which she had felt herself linked to the world and civilization. She had put herself at the mercy of a man of whom she knew, after all, next to nothing. Once aboard the launch, once out of Cuyo harbor, she was as utterly in his power as any prisoner in a dungeon is in the power of his captors. A wife may have rights and privileges in the eye of the law, but they avail her little on an island where no one of her own race save her husband’s friends steps foot.Her crowding thoughts sickened her, though she had enough will and strength to guide the boat alongside the launch. Collingwood threw away his cigar and held out his hands. “Up with you,” he cried gayly.The answer was a half movement and a groan as she dropped back with her face in her hands.“Charlotte, are you sick? My God! What’s the matter?”His vehemence and the fear in his voice reassured her. With indomitable pride she raised herself. “My ankle turned; it was sickening pain for an instant. It is all right, I think. The pain is growing less.”She hated herself for the lie. She despised herself for the little pretence she still made at lameness as her husband would have picked her up bodily. “I can walk,” she said, and stepped over the thwarts.Maclaughlin had clambered aboard ready to receive her as Martin lifted her. They put her in the steamer chair which was to serve her as a stateroom, and Martin hovered over, chafing her hands, offering her brandy from his pocket flask. Mr. Maclaughlin, after making certain that she was not seriously hurt, tactfully removed himself. Martin called to him to wait a minute before pulling out; that it might be necessary to get a doctor. Charlotte’s face burned. She was grateful for the darkness that hid it.“It is not even sprained,” she said truthfully. “There—see how I can move it. It didn’t amount to anything, only I am such a coward.”“You are sure now?” said Martin. She was only too glad to say that she was.An hour later, a waveless sea was gurgling musically as the launch cut through it, and a tropical moon was scattering a pathway of brilliants into which the little craft seemed desirous of plungingherself, but which she could never quite attain. The Filipino steersman shifted from foot to foot, a dim moving shape at his shadowed post. Mysterious clanks and groans issued at intervals from the engine-room below. There was no longer a wavering dark line across the night sky, though the light on Cuyo was still visible. And in the exquisite peace a woman, reared to luxury and social exclusiveness, lay in her deck chair and listened to the talk of men who had known most of the shadows of life and some of its pits of evil, took their homage, too, and found it tasty.Each had drawn up one of the three-legged, rattan stools which are so common in the Philippines and they were seated one on each side of her. Their talk wandered over many themes, but was always terse and vivid. They agreed in damning the Government. All civilian non-employees do that continually. They spoke of affairs on the island, and discussed the administration of local justice with the simplicity of men who do not quibble over political documents, but who have a strong conviction that the powerful must rule the weak. One of the Japanese divers was making trouble with the launch crew, preaching the inferiority of thewhite race and the drubbing one part of it was destined to receive. “I guess he’s right on the Russians,” said Collingwood. “I believe the Japs will thrash them into the middle of kingdom come; but if he goes to putting on any airs around me, I’ll kick him into the China Sea.”“No need,” said Maclaughlin cheerily, “I did it for him last week. It did him a world of good.”“How are findings?”“None too good. We’ll not make our fortunes this year, but we’ll make our keep, and a little to spare.” The smile on the keen face told Charlotte that the speaker was not dissatisfied.“How’s Kingsnorth?”“Just himself.”“Poor devil,” said Martin feelingly. Maclaughlin broke into a hearty laugh. “Hear the married man,” he cried, “an’ if you could ha’ heard him six months gone, Mrs. Collingwood!”“I probably shouldn’t have liked it,” said Charlotte dryly.“Kingsnorth will snort when he hears that Mrs. Snodgrass asked us to dinner,” said Martin. “They don’t like each other,” he explained to his wife. “I can’t say I ever thought she liked memuch till this trip. She thinks I’m likelier to be a respectable member of society, now I’m married. She thinks that because I was a soldier I went about sowing wild oats by the cavan.”It happened that at the moment he finished the remark, Charlotte’s glance rested on Maclaughlin, whose face was fair in the moonlight. In a flash—in just the instant’s time that it took him to change his expression—she read the man’s judgment that Collingwood owed thanks to his wife for any civility received from Mrs. Snodgrass. A man brought up in the British empire has some sources of knowledge denied the citizens of our great republic. Thirty years of kicking over American frontiers had robbed the Scotchman of many a national trait. They had not obscured his firm fixed impressions of gentility. He knew Martin’s wife for a gentlewoman.“How did you like Mrs. Snodgrass?” Martin asked his wife.Charlotte cast about for something truthful and non-committal. “I thought she was very prettily dressed,” she replied, “and that she showed very good taste in her home. It was cosy, and the dinner was excellent.”“Good heavens, Charlotte! I didn’t ask you that. I asked you how you liked her.”“She told you,” said Maclaughlin with a short laugh.“Of course I did,” echoed Charlotte. “I put it in the most forcible way I could. Don’t pretend you did not understand.”“I understood well enough. I just wanted you to come out and out with what you mean. Why don’t you like her?”“She is too commonplace and too assuming.”“What do you mean by commonplace?”“I mean—I mean—” exasperation brought her to the point of unguarded speech—“a woman who says ‘Don’t you know?’ with every other breath, or tacks on a sweet ‘Isn’t it so?’ or ‘Don’t you think?’ to qualify every word she utters. I mean a woman of exactly Mrs. Snodgrass’s type.”“Commonplace always means a woman then?”But by that time Charlotte was laughing, partly at her flash of temper, partly at the odd confusion of her definition, which Martin had so quickly pointed out with his uncompromising finger.“It doesn’t mean a man like you,” she said. “You are not commonplace, but unique.”“The only one of my kind,” said Martin yawning. She could see, under his jocularity, his pride and pleasure in her (as he considered) audacity. Her criticisms of the lady meant little to him, except as they were the gauntlet thrown down, the laudable declaration that Martin Collingwood’s wife was not going to stand any patronizing from the regular army. But she realized also that he was flattered by the invitation they had received. To him Lieutenant and Mrs. Snodgrass were people that counted. A pang of contrition shot through her that what had been a sort of social triumph to him had been an unmitigated bore to her. Then a sense of humor came uppermost. The boredom she might conceal. But as well attempt to make water run up hill as to make Charlotte Collingwood regard an acquaintance with Lieutenant and Mrs. Snodgrass as a social triumph. Maclaughlin, who was to take the first watch, went forward, and Collingwood curled himself up, native fashion, on a mat at his wife’s feet. Long after his deep respirations told her that he was fast asleep, she lay with wide open eyes, staring into the silvered pathway ahead of them, her thoughts a blending of regret and of exquisite joy. When,at three o’clock, Maclaughlin came to wake up Martin, she pretended to be asleep, and shortly after she did fall into a slumber, from which she was awakened by her husband’s voice and the word “home.”She sprang to her feet with an instinctive movement of bewilderment, and then caught her breath for sheer delight in what she saw.The launch was riding a mile or more off the shore of a wedge-shaped island perhaps three miles in length. Its backbone was a line of hills which rose precipitously from the sea on the eastern side (as she later discovered) but which, on the west sloped gently down to a level coast plain, a quarter of a mile or more broad. The plain and the hills were one huge cocoanut grove. In the foreground, the columned boles and the graceful plumes made a great haunt of emerald shade, a dream place of cool recesses and long cathedral aisles. Its rich, unvarying greenness seemed the more vivid by contrast with the changing hues of the shallow water, with the gleaming whiteness of the beach, and the occasional overtopping of a wave like the dip of a sea-gull’s wings.At the northern apex of the island, situatedwhere they not only commanded the western sea, but looked eastward over a channel to the coast line of Panay and a scarped mountain rearing its cloud-hung flanks against a lustering sky, three steep nipa-roofed cottages nestled among the palms. Southward, the beach line ran straight till it curved out into a sharp point in front of one of the hills. There stood a small nipa village.Dawn flushes played across the sky behind the distant mountain, and pearled the shining sea. A great fishingbancamanned by at least twelve oarsmen swept boldly past them. The naked backs were made of rippling bronze. A lorcha, almost on the western horizon line, showed in faint lines and in gleaming spots of mother of pearl. The morning breeze was almost chill.It came, a crowding of perceptions and sensations, but Charlotte’s pleasure was almost ecstatic.“Beautiful, beautiful!” she murmured. “It is a veritable paradise.”“Isit?” said Maclaughlin’s knowing voice behind her. “I’m glad you think so, Mrs. Collingwood. My wife has been doubting you’d find it dull. Martin and I will take ours with a bandstandand a few trolley-cars and a chop-house thrown in, eh, Collingwood?”“Oh, shut up, Mac, don’t pour cold water on my wife’s enthusiasms. Besides, she’s got a poetic soul, and you and I haven’t.”Charlotte stared. “What will you endow me with next?” she asked. “A poetic soul! Martin, who has been talking about poetry for the last two months?”“I don’t mind admitting,” said Mr. Collingwood shamelessly, “that I have, or, at least, I’ve been dwelling on the poetry of love and I found you responsive. Therefore I deduced a poetic soul—sort of Sherlock Holmes. Sabe?”She made no reply beyond one of those reproachful head shakes which indicate the compromise between duty and inclination. Martin grinned. He knew when she tried to be severe, but was yet secretly pleased with him.Charlotte did what she could to repair the dishevelled appearance caused by sleeping dressed in the steamer chair. A few minutes later, they were all in the boat, speeding straight for the nipa cottages. Martin explained that the launch could goin no further on account of the coral reef; but, he said, a mile or more to the southward, where the hill jutted out, there was a channel cut through the reef, and the launch could come close in and find anchorage in a pool which lay under the cliff. A rude pier had been constructed there, and there their freight would be landed and then dragged up to them along the beach in a carabao cart; for they had one draft animal. He further informed her that the launch lay down at the anchorage every night, and came up abreast the cottages every morning to pick up the fishers, for it was easier to be rowed out than to trudge down the mile of sand.As they drew near the shore, Charlotte perceived that, in spite of the steep roofs, the cottages had something of an American air, having broad verandas in front; while one, which she imagined must be the Maclaughlin home, was covered with morning glory vines. The houses sat back about fifty yards from the beach, just where the cocoanut grove came to an end, and it was evident that the sea breeze made them deliciously cool.A man was pacing up and down the beach, and, as the boat grounded, a woman emerged from the vine-wreathed cottage, and came swiftly on, flappinga kitchen apron which she was wearing, and making other gestures of welcome. Charlotte had little time to observe either closely, for her attention was quite taken up with the novel preparations for landing her and her companions. Full thirty feet of water intervened between them and the dry sand, not deep enough to drown in, but quite enough to spoil dress and shoes. The Filipino oarsmen met the difficulty, however, by rolling up their trousers and going overboard. They made a chair of their clasped hands, and Charlotte, seating herself therein, was carried ashore and set down in front of Mrs. Maclaughlin.Mrs. Maclaughlin was tall and bony with iron-gray hair and a large featured, strong face, characteristic of the pioneer. She was not shy, and she seized Mrs. Collingwood by both hands and kissed her, then held her off for inspection.“Well, Martin Collingwood’s a fool for luck,” she remarked. “I never thought he’d get a nice, peart, stylish girl like you to follow him off to a place like this. You’re either mad—and you don’t look it—or you’re worse in love than any woman ever was before you.”The informality of the greeting took Charlotte’sbreath. As she stood blushing, a large, brown, and well-made hand was extended to her.“How do you do, Mrs. Collingwood?” said a voice in the refined accents of the upper class Englishman. “I don’t need to introduce myself, do I? Martin has told you all about us, and there are not enough of us to confuse. Don’t let Mrs. Mac’s plainness of speech annoy you. When you are well acquainted, you’ll rather like it. It breaks the monotony of things.”She tried to make some trivial, laughing rejoinder; but the words faltered on her lips, for, as she glanced up into his eyes, she saw there the instant recognition of all that she was, the interrogation flashing into quickly throttled life, as to why she was Martin Collingwood’s wife, and what she could possibly have to do with a colony of fisher folk composed of one insouciant blade of fortune, two typical bits of western flotsam, and a renegade from decent society.Chapter VIIOn a certain cloudless September morning eight months later, five persons were merrily disporting themselves in the warm billows that rolled upon the island beach. It was one of those radiantly clear mornings which so often occur in the tropical rainy seasons when every particle of dust has been washed out of the air, and the morning breeze is of a spring-like freshness. The sun had not yet peeped over the Antique coast range, but the mountain flanks were outlined in soft mauve and gray against the glowing sky. A fishing fleet off the coast showed tints of pearl, and thin threads of masts above the quiet sea. Westward there was a sapphire expanse, and a whole string of lorchas, every inch of canvas set to take advantage of the fresh wind, standing across on a tack for San José or Cuyo.Charlotte Collingwood, slipping out of the water, paused an instant to breathe deeply and to feast her eyes upon the solitary beauty of the scene, beforeshe betook herself to housekeeping cares. Then hastening across the short extent of ground between the beach and her cottage, she sought her bathroom and the brisk dousing with fresh water that would remove the sticky effects of the sea bath.Half an hour later she emerged from her bedroom as hearty looking a young woman as you could desire to see. Her shapely figure, clad in a simple white piqué dress, was considerably fuller than it had been in her hospital days, though it had not degenerated into stoutness. Her skin was still colorless, for color once faded in the tropics is gone forever; but her face was fuller, her eye brighter, her expression one of happiness and content.The room which she contemplated with a possessive and complacent eye was one so typical of American housekeeping in the Philippines that it merits description. It was a perfectly square apartment, generous in its proportion. Two sides were almost entirely taken up by windows opening on a deep-eaved veranda. The series of shell lattices were pushed back to their fullest extent, and on the broad window-seats were rows of potted ferns, rose geraniums, and foliage plants, some in gleaming brass jardinières, some in old blue andwhite Chinese jars. The walls were of the plaited bamboo in its natural color calledsuali; but the woodwork of soft American pine had been carefully burnt by Charlotte herself, and gave some richness of coloring. The floor of close tied bamboo slats was covered with blue and white Japanese mats. One inside wall was almost entirely hidden by a great Romblon mat, upon which Collingwood’s collection of spears, bolos, and head axes was artfully displayed. Beneath this, an army cot, a mattress, and some blue and white Japanese crêpe had been combined into a tempting couch heaped with pillows. The other inside wall held a very fair collection of hats, ranging from the cheap sun-defence of the field laborer to the old-time aristocrat’s head-piece of tortoise-shell ornamented with silver. Below these were some home-made shelves with Charlotte’s books upon them. One corner was occupied by a desk of carved teak inlaid with mother of pearl, a veritable treasure which Kingsnorth had given to Charlotte as a wedding present. Another corner held a tall, brass-bound Korean chest of drawers, which Charlotte had picked up at an auction in Manila. A suit of Moro armor in carabao horn and link copper hung besidethis, and everywhere there was brass—brass samovars from Manchuria, incense burners from Japan, Moro gongs and betel-nut boxes, an Indian tea table with its shining tray. Wherever there was room for them, framed photographs decorated the walls. Rattan easy-chairs and rockers and a steamer chair with gay cushions lent a homely comfort to the apartment.As the room was living-room and dining-room combined, its centre was occupied by a round narra-table—a beautiful piece of old Spanish workmanship, the glories of which were hidden at that moment by the whitest of cloths—and a service of Japanese blue and white china. There, too, gleamed the remains of the Maryland silver which had once been the pride of a county—the great breakfast tray with its urn and attendant dishes, the heavy knives and forks and spoons. It had lain for twenty years in chests, and Charlotte had brought it with her to the Philippines, not so much anticipating a use for it, as making it the evidence of final separation from all that her life had known.Mrs. Collingwood never ceased to contemplate her living-room, and especially her table, with satisfaction. The snowy linen, the gleaming silver andglass, stood for her tastes. She could remember vividly the depression she had experienced at meal times during her first two weeks at the island, when the mess made its headquarters with the Maclaughlins. Mrs. Maclaughlin’s dream of table luxury was a red and white checked cloth, much colored glass in the form of tumblers, sugar bowl, cream pitcher, and vinegar cruets, a set of brown and white “semi-porcelain” dishes, and knives and forks of German silver. Charlotte had endured the meals for which Martin had half-way prepared her, by the exercise of fortitude only; but she had waited patiently for Mrs. Maclaughlin’s own suggestion of a division of labor.It happened that Mrs. Maclaughlin greatly desired to devote herself to poultry and gardening. The islanders had to depend wholly upon poultry, fish, pigs, and goats for meat, and upon tinned vegetables. Everybody yearned for green foods and better meats, so that Mrs. Maclaughlin’s ambitions received a hearty support. A kitchen was added to the Collingwood quarters, the stove and kitchen utensils were transferred, and Charlotte found plenty of occupation in her new duties.The work was naturally to her taste. She possessedan ample home-making instinct, and she had had, in addition to the usual “Domestic Science” course of a modern college, her nurse’s training in dietetics. Collingwood’s exuberant delight in the changes she made in their manner of living was just second to Kingsnorth’s. For decency’s sake, that gentleman had refrained from comment in Mrs. Maclaughlin’s presence; but after their first meal he had taken Mrs. Collingwood aside, and had assured her with unmistakable sincerity that she was no less than a fairy godmother in their midst. He execrated Mrs. Maclaughlin’s cooking, her taste in foods, and her ideas of table service; and his gratitude to Charlotte was profound.Mrs. Collingwood was contemplating her breakfast table and smiling softly at the memory, when her husband came out of their bedroom in his working clothes—flannel shirt, khaki trousers, and sea boots. He gave her a hearty kiss.“You vain creature,” he said, “looking at your housekeeping and thinking how you can lay it over Mrs. Mac.”“That wouldn’t be much to do. Do you remember that red and white tablecloth?”“Don’t I? And how Kingsnorth used to curseit!” He eyed her reflectively. “Kingsnorth is mighty grateful to you, Charlotte, and mighty fond of you.”To this, at first, no answer was returned. Mrs. Collingwood fingered a bowl which stood in the window, flushed slightly, and looked embarrassed. At last, as if his continued silence demanded response, she said perfunctorily:“Well, of course, if I have made things pleasanter for him, incidentally, in doing it for you, I’m glad.”“That’s the only thing you’ve disappointed me in. I wanted you and him to be good friends. I think he has tried, but you have been stubborn; there’s no denying that, pet.”“I’ve tried my very hardest. I’m sorry, Martin. You’ll have to give me time.”“Give you all the time you want,” he cried gayly. “But you’ll have to come round in the end.” She shrugged her shoulders half seriously, half teasingly, but a reply was obviated by the entrance of the Maclaughlins and of the person under discussion.The Englishman, beak nosed, high nostrilled, fair, and tall, was typical of his race. But drinkhad dulled his eye, his skin was flabby, and an unspeakable air of degeneration hung about him. Even the exaggerated deference of his manner to Mrs. Collingwood seemed a travesty upon the once easy courtesy of the well-born Briton. As for Charlotte, she stiffened perceptibly. Try as she would, she could not overcome her proud resentment at being expected to associate with John Kingsnorth.“Any special plans for to-day, Mrs. Collingwood?” Kingsnorth demanded as they sat down to breakfast.“There never are any, I believe. I am going to make a lemon pie under the direct supervision of Mrs. Maclaughlin. My husband has impressed it upon me that I can never fulfil his ideal of a cook till I can make such lemon pies as Mrs. Maclaughlin does.”In a second Kingsnorth’s manner changed, just a fine hostile change which implied that no pie made by Mrs. Maclaughlin’s recipes could interest him. “Withlimoncitos” he said slightingly, “or with those big knotty yellow things that the women use in laundering theircamisas?”“Why, you are quite up in native customs,” Charlotteexclaimed. “I didn’t know that. Are you sure?”A faintly cynical smile played for an instant over Kingsnorth’s features. “Oh, yes, I’m sure,” he replied.Charlotte became suddenly aware of a changed atmosphere. Martin and Maclaughlin were looking discreetly into their plates, Mrs. Maclaughlin was gazing with a hostile eye at Kingsnorth.“You certainly do know a great deal about Filipino customs,” she said meaningly.“You keep still, Jenny,” Maclaughlin threw in hastily. His wife tossed her head scornfully, but subsided. Kingsnorth went on eating. His expression was not agreeable. Charlotte threw herself into the silence that followed.“Martin, who is that bucolic looking Japanese that I saw strolling up the beach this morning?”“Bucolic! What do you mean by that long word? You are always springing the dictionary upon me.”This charge was an indication that Collingwood was highly pleased. It was the nearest open tribute he ever paid to his wife’s education. She made no reply but smiled at him, indulgent of his wit.“Well, explain,” Martin went on teasingly. “What does it mean?” But Charlotte only went on smiling.“Greek for hayseed,” Kingsnorth put in lightly. “You knowthatword, Collingwood?”“Right you are. He is a hayseed. That is our new diver. He came down on the lorcha last week, and we picked him up with the launch. Been promenading around here, did you say?”“In kimono and parasol,” said Charlotte.“Well, he goes to work to-morrow. He won’t get much more time to parade.”“Have you three divers, then?”“No. The fellow that Mac kicked hasn’t been able to get over it. He resigned immediately, but I succeeded in convincing him that he couldn’t quit the job till I got a new man in his place. I believe he wants to go to law about it.”“Can he make any trouble? Isn’t that taking the law into your own hands?”Martin shrugged his shoulders. Kingsnorth laughed. “It would be dangerous on British soil,” he said, “but not under the great republic. Who is going to tack back and forth across this channel in a lorcha or a parao, because a Jap got kicked?His nearest magistrate is a Filipinojuez de pazon the Antique coast. I wish him joy of all the law he can get there. When it comes to the island of Maylubi, Martin, Mac, and I are the law. ‘L’état, c’est nous.’”Mrs. Collingwood smiled discreetly at the French, and pushed her chair back. Kingsnorth often threw a phrase of French into his speech, and she felt that it was aimed directly at her, and implied an exclusion of the others from their superior plane of conversation. It was not an act characteristic of an Englishman of his class, and she realized that only the intensity of his desire to establish himself on a footing of intimacy could induce him to use such methods.They all walked down to the beach together, and after Charlotte had watched their row-boat pull alongside the launch, she sat down on a bit of sand grass beneath a cocoanut tree and revelled in the morning breeze. It was a “four man breeze” as they say when four men are needed on the outriggers of theparaos; and more than one deep-sea fishing craft swept by with its four naked squatting outriders sitting at ease on their well sprayed stations with the great sail bellying above them. Asthe tide went out, troops of children wandered up the beach, digging skilfully with their toes for clams, or pouncing with shrieks of delight on some stranded jelly fish. From the field beyond the house, their gardener could be heard hissing at their one draft animal, and once in awhile Mrs. Maclaughlin’s voice arose in a rain of pigeon Spanish as she bent over her garden beds, or ranged through her poultry yards.It was very lonely, but Charlotte did not mind it. Barring the discomforts of their experiences in the early days with Mrs. Maclaughlin’s food, and the difficulty of holding John Kingsnorth in his place without betraying her feelings about him to Martin, she might have said that her island life hardly boasted of the crumpled rose leaf. Even Kingsnorth’s evident determination to be accepted as an intimate, did not imply a desire to establish any sentimental relation to herself, nor could she explain to her whole satisfaction just why she so vigorously thwarted him. She was only conscious of feeling that to accept his tacit offer of good fellowship was a clearly defined step downward, an open throwing over of standards which, if she had endangered them by her marriage, she had still high hopes ofmaintaining, and to which she hoped ultimately to win her husband.On the whole, her thoughts were very sweet and wholesome as she sat there in the growing warmth. More than once a sense of housekeeping responsibility urged her to rise and betake herself indoors, but she could not bring herself to disturb her reverie till a respectful cough attracted her attention.An old man and a young girl, carrying a child in her arms, stood a few feet away. The man was dressed in spotless white trousers with a Chinese shirt of white muslin. One sleeve was decorously adorned with a black mourning band, and his white bamboo plaited hat was also wreathed in sable. The girl was dressed in the deepest of Filipino mourning—black calico skirt, black alpacatapis, or apron, and acamisaof thin barred black net, shiny and stiff with starch. Through its gauzy texture her white chemise, trimmed with scarlet embroidery, showed garishly, while the immense sleeves made no pretence of hiding her plump, gold-colored arms. Her face, of a veryMalaysiantype, was decidedly pretty, and the haughty column of her neck and a wealth of jetty hair lent still further charm. As she caught Charlotte’s eye, shestepped forward, throwing back, as she did so, the black veil which had hidden the child’s face.Charlotte’s first exclamation of surprise and pity was followed by an indignant flush. The child, which was evidently dying of anæmia, was amestizo. Its blue eye, its almost fair hair above a pasty skin and something indefinably British in the stamp of its expression betrayed its paternity at once.The man spoke neither Spanish nor English, and the girl had only a few phrases of each; but with Charlotte’s command of the vernacular she managed to get a few facts in some sort of sequence. For brevity and to spare the reader an elliptical conversation in three languages they can be set down as Charlotte summed them up afterwards.The man was the child’s grandfather; the girl, its aunt. Its mother had died a week or so before at a village on the Antique coast. The woman and her people had lived with Kingsnorth openly in his house up to the morning of theseñora Americana’sarrival. At that time Kingsnorth had come in in great excitement, had bundled them all off in short order, and had established them in the coast village.As he was their only source of income, they accepted his mandate without question.But the mother had died, of what they could not make quite clear, though the girl pressed her hands upon her heart and repeated “muy, muy triste” more than once. After the mother’s death, the baby lacked nourishment, though its father gave money to buy milk. They had come over on a fishparaoto show it to its father, and had received orders to keep out of Mrs. Collingwood’s way; but hearing from the villagers of that lady’s skill in curing the sick and of her willingness to use it, they could not forbear bringing the child to her. But with tears, they besought her to keep the secret. The old man made a very fair representation of bestowing a hearty kick, and the girl, weeping, ejaculated “Pega, pega mucho,” many times.Charlotte had been interested during her hospital experience in a series of experiments made by one of the surgeons in infant-feeding. The mortality among Filipino children is enormous, and much attention is given to infant care. It happened that she had been trying the food process on one or two babies in the village, and it was doubtless thenews of that fact which had induced the people to risk Kingsnorth’s anger and appeal to her.She led them homeward, gave the child some nourishment, and set to work to show the girl how to prepare the canned milk for future use. It was not till they had departed that she realized that they had not said whether ornotthe mother had been legally married. Later she decided that the fact was immaterial, but she was inclined to believe the child illegitimate.For the next ten days the girl presented herself with the child for treatment. She watched carefully to see that the fishers had gone each day, and that Mrs. Maclaughlin was not around. The child thrived, and with returning health showed a somewhat engaging appearance.Charlotte could never be quite certain of her reasons for keeping silence to her husband on the subject. At first undoubtedly she desired to avoid making trouble for the old man and the girl; but later, when Mrs. Maclaughlin had met the girl face to face on Charlotte’s veranda steps, and she knew the fact had been retailed to Maclaughlin and to the other men, she was still wordless. For a few days the sullen demeanor of Kingsnorth showedthat he dumbly resented her knowledge; but in the end hisprotégésestablished themselves in the village, and when Charlotte walked that way she often saw his taffy-colored son, in a single garment, staring with incongruous blue eyes from the floor of a nipa shack.What was stranger, even, than anything else, Mrs. Maclaughlin showed an eager desire to avoid the subject. Charlotte had anticipated, with some dread, that the lady would break forth garrulously once the cat was out of the bag; but she was most pleasantly disappointed. Between herself and Martin the matter was never mentioned. There were times when she would have liked to ask him what he had really expected her to do before Kingsnorth saved the situation by packing off hisimpedimenta; but she was afraid that, if the subject were ever opened up between them, she would express herself too frankly, and she was too thoroughly happy with her husband to care to risk disturbing their satisfaction in each other. As time went on, she ceased to give the matter any thought at all. After all, she reflected, had she not known it all potentially the first time she ever saw Kingsnorth? What did the addition of a few specificdata matter? At that time all her will was bent to the determination to make the best of her romance, to be happy at any cost, and to postpone indefinitely, if not ultimately, any hour of settlement.

Chapter VIIt was well on in the afternoon of the next day when they anchored off Cuyo, which, with its squat lighthouse and low shore, impressed Charlotte as a dreary, lonesome spot. A launch, which was lying abreast the lighthouse, saluted them with vociferous toots, and Collingwood waved his hat in joyous response.“That’s Mac, all right,” he said. “He’ll be aboard directly. It’s a wonder he didn’t hire the town band to welcome us.”Charlotte winced and secretly rejoiced that for once Mr. Maclaughlin’s initiative had failed to come up to its reputation. Yet when a boat came alongside, and a grizzled Scotch-American stepped up the short ladder, her greeting was warm enough to fully satisfy her husband.“My soul!” said Mr. Maclaughlin, giving her a lengthy handshake and a look of unqualified admiration, “but you could ha’ knocked us down with a feather the day the letter came saying that Martinwould bring back a wife. Kingsnorth nigh took to his bed on it.”Consternation was plainly written on Mrs. Collingwood’s face. Her sensitiveness was a-flutter, fearing a cold welcome from her husband’s friends.“I’m sorry,” she began, and then came to an awkward stop.“No offence, I hope,” said Maclaughlin, reading the signs, “He’s well over it by now. Kingsnorth is just one of those poor bodies we call a woman-hater; and you’ll notice, Mrs. Collingwood, that they always begin life just the opposite. He thought he’d found a bunkie for life in Martin, an’ the lad fooled him! I don’t say but we were all surprised, but you’ll find a hearty welcome at the island.”“Can we get out to-night?” asked Collingwood.“Get out in an hour if we can get our freight transhipped, unless Mrs. Collingwood is in a mind to stay and see the city by gaslight.” He jerked a derisive thumb in the direction of the iron and nipa roofs ashore.“All the light stuff is on deck now,” said Martin whose instincts to accomplish whatever was to be done mastered any tendency toward conversation.He pointed, as he spoke, to a tarpaulin-covered heap forward. “The heavy cases are stored where they can be hauled up in a minute. I’ll see the captain at once. He won’t try to delay us, not he. Get alongside right away, with the launch, can’t you?”“I doubt you’ve gone broke,” remarked Maclaughlin, contemplating the heap and smiling at Charlotte, who laughed.“Not so had as that, I hope,” she responded, “but some of the credit is due me that he hasn’t.”“That’s a fact,” her husband supplemented. “I wanted to buy out Manila and wire additional supplies from Hong Kong. However, we can talk about that later. Thank the Lord, there isn’t any sea on. We would have the devil’s own time transhipping, if there were.”He dashed off, and Maclaughlin jumped into his boat with an order to the native rowers to hurry. For an instant, Charlotte was annoyed by their unceremonious departure, but her good sense soon rose superior to her training. Martin alert, talking business, with his hat on the back of his head, a long pencil emphasizing his gestures, was a very different figure from the insouciant young pagan,alternately jocose and pleading, that had wooed her. How quickly, too, the easy speech of the husband had possessed him. “Devil’s own time” came ripping out with unconscious force. At first, Charlotte’s fastidiousness revolted from it. Then she decided that it was virile and that she liked it. Still, she mused, if he felt the need of emphatic embellishment to point the assertion of so simple a fact as that, what might he not do when an occasion out of the ordinary arose?Her question was answered before their goods and commissaries were aboard the launch, and, for a time, she could not tell whether she wanted to laugh or to cry. While she was still in doubt, her husband came back, red and perspiring, with his coat off. He held out a collar and necktie.“Just look out for these things for me, won’t you?” he said. “My! I’m pretty well cussed out. Hope I didn’t shock you, pet.”“You did, but it didn’t matter; or rather, it passed the point of shocking. You have the towering imagination in profanity, Martin, of an architect of sky-scraping buildings.”Collingwood was able to extract a compliment from this, and looked grateful, though he was evidentlyimpressed by the form of its expression. “I may have said a little too much,” he apologized, “but a man would have to be a saint not to lose his temper—Here!” he roared, as three of the crew, having mounted to the upper deck and having armed themselves with a flower pot apiece, started brazenly off with their burdens, “take two of those at a time. How many trips do you plan to make with this flower garden, anyway? You see that everything is right in the stateroom, won’t you?” he threw over his shoulder as he darted off.“Certainly,” she replied, adding to herself, “for I shouldn’t like you to ‘cuss’ me.”She felt quite safe from any such dire possibility, or she could not have joked about it even with herself. Nevertheless, she was very thoughtful as she gathered up their belongings and put them in the valises, leaving, however, the strapping and the pulling to be done by Martin.When she had done all that there was to be done, and had put on her hat, she sank down on a locker, still holding her husband’s discarded collar, and let her thoughts dwell rosily on the part she could play in the island life. A guilty conscience urged her to acts of reparation. All that she could do tobring order and system and beauty into her husband’s home she was resolved to do. He had told her enough to let her know that he had lived in an unlovely fashion, and that he had aspirations for something better, though he could not define what he objected to in the past, or just what he wanted in the future. He was bent on making money, chiefly because he seemed to feel that there was no way of obtaining his ideal without large expenditures; and yet he was not ostentatious. He had been very liberal—extravagant, she had laughingly told him—in the purchase of household belongings; and she had told the truth when she said that she deserved the credit of restraining him. He was going to become the typical American husband, who labors unceasingly that his womankind may be decked in finery and may represent him in the whirl of society; but his wife could see that, until such a time as their prosperity should be at flood tide, he would expect her to administer wisely and economically. He gave much—as far as he was conscious of her needs—and he would ask proportionally in return. Charlotte’s head reared proudly to meet the thought. She would not fail him. And then she vowed for the hundredth time,that his unstinted devotion should meet with its just due, and that never, never should Martin suspect how she had had to battle with herself before she could conquer the feeling that her love was a shame to her.Martin, coming to seek her in order to introduce her to the wife of a local military officer, found her sunk in reverie with his crumpled neck-wear pressed against her cheek. He put on a clean tie and collar and they went on deck together.The military officer’s wife was a young woman, plainly of village origin, who was carrying the wide-spreading sail which many Americans in the Philippines elect to display in the exuberance of having journeyed to foreign lands. Her appearance jarred on Mrs. Collingwood, and her conversation, which was frivolous and full of assumption, reinforced the unfavorable impression.The lady had met Collingwood three or four times before, and had treated him with scant courtesy, because he had been an enlisted man. But when she heard that he was married, and that his wife was aboard ship, her curiosity got the better of her exclusiveness—that and her eagerness to hear the sound of her own voice, for there werefew Americans in Cuyo, and she was already on bad terms with several families. She threw a gushing condescension into her manner of greeting Charlotte, which put that young woman’s nerves on edge at once. But Mrs. Snodgrass (“What a name!” thought Charlotte, “I never expected to meet it out of books!”) was determined to make the best of the conversational opportunity. After a somewhat ingenuous scrutiny, she invited the Collingwoods to dinner. Charlotte was about to decline, when Martin interrupted and said that their being delayed an hour or so was of no importance; that it was evidently going to be a clear night, and they had time enough to make the run over before dawn. Charlotte supposed that some affection for Lieutenant Snodgrass—who had been a captain of volunteers in the war, and Martin’s officer—was the cause of her husband’s eagerness, and she accepted the invitation at once. She went ashore with the Lieutenant’s wife, while Martin remained to see to a few last details, and to make some arrangements with Maclaughlin.Lieutenant and Mrs. Snodgrass (he had not been able to secure entrance to the regular army with his volunteer rank) were comfortably domiciled,and the meal was a good one, though Charlotte was made uncomfortable by the hostess’s repeated apologies both for her food and her service. “The servants are such impossible creatures here, don’t you think?” fluttered the little woman who, before her marriage, had been a stenographer working for twelve dollars a week, and who had never enjoyed the luxury of a servant in her life till she came to the Philippines.Charlotte glanced at her in surprise. “I had not thought so,” she replied. “They need a great deal of training, of course, but I fancied them ideal servants, so truly of the servant class, believing that God ordained us to be masters, and them to serve. At home, I feel that servants do not acquiesce in the situation, and the more intelligent they are, the more sensitive I am to the undercurrent.”It was evident that Mrs. Snodgrass regarded this remark as verbiage. “How funny!” she said. “I never felt that way.”“In other words,” remarked Lieutenant Snodgrass, who was a self-made man, but who was taking on his army training with great quickness, “Mrs. Collingwood prefers an aristocratic social system to a democratic one.”“I suppose so,” Charlotte assented, “though theoretically I stand for democracy like all good Americans. You inferred a condition of my mind of which I was hardly conscious myself. But I suppose you are right.”“Do you hear that, Collingwood? You are the most rabid democrat I know. Are you going to bring your wife over to your way of thinking?”Martin was staring at Charlotte, who began to color with embarrassment. Her view-point had seemed to her so natural and so simple that she was quite unprepared for the comment it evoked.“I’ll have to coach you up before I turn you loose on people,” he said. “Why, I never thought it of you.”Lieutenant Snodgrass assumed the air of a man, the length of whose matrimonial experience justifies him in extensive allusions to feminine peculiarities.“Oh, if she doesn’t startle you any worse than that,” he hinted darkly.After dinner, Charlotte was left to a long hour of Mrs. Snodgrass’s company while their husbands reviewed war experiences and discussed that never-ending theme of exiles, the Government’s Philippine policy. It was ten o’clock when the Collingwoodsbade good-bye to their hosts, with the usual promise of an exchange of visits. They found Maclaughlin waiting for them at the landing with the boat. He asked Mrs. Collingwood if she could steer and, being told that she could, vacated his place in the stern for her.The night was dark but not cloudy, like the previous one. The moon would not rise till later, but the night azure of the sky was unclouded, and all the constellations of the tropic belt were glittering in its peaceful depths. The Southern Cross was there, and the so-called False Cross, while, in the north, the “Big Dipper” hung low and out of place. The water was phosphorescent, the oars turning in green fire, which sent a million prickles flashing away in the waves. When, now and then, abancacrept past them, its shape was outlined in the same lurid radiance, and the noiseless paddles dripped smears of unearthly flame. Charlotte pulled her tiller ropes in silence, keeping a wary eye out for unlighted craft, and watching the huddle of lights that was their launch. The coastguard cutter had left half an hour before. She was a faint glimmer of dots on the vague horizon; her smoke still lay a wavering, dark line across the night sky.Suddenly a tremor of deadly fear shook Charlotte. There went the chain by which she had felt herself linked to the world and civilization. She had put herself at the mercy of a man of whom she knew, after all, next to nothing. Once aboard the launch, once out of Cuyo harbor, she was as utterly in his power as any prisoner in a dungeon is in the power of his captors. A wife may have rights and privileges in the eye of the law, but they avail her little on an island where no one of her own race save her husband’s friends steps foot.Her crowding thoughts sickened her, though she had enough will and strength to guide the boat alongside the launch. Collingwood threw away his cigar and held out his hands. “Up with you,” he cried gayly.The answer was a half movement and a groan as she dropped back with her face in her hands.“Charlotte, are you sick? My God! What’s the matter?”His vehemence and the fear in his voice reassured her. With indomitable pride she raised herself. “My ankle turned; it was sickening pain for an instant. It is all right, I think. The pain is growing less.”She hated herself for the lie. She despised herself for the little pretence she still made at lameness as her husband would have picked her up bodily. “I can walk,” she said, and stepped over the thwarts.Maclaughlin had clambered aboard ready to receive her as Martin lifted her. They put her in the steamer chair which was to serve her as a stateroom, and Martin hovered over, chafing her hands, offering her brandy from his pocket flask. Mr. Maclaughlin, after making certain that she was not seriously hurt, tactfully removed himself. Martin called to him to wait a minute before pulling out; that it might be necessary to get a doctor. Charlotte’s face burned. She was grateful for the darkness that hid it.“It is not even sprained,” she said truthfully. “There—see how I can move it. It didn’t amount to anything, only I am such a coward.”“You are sure now?” said Martin. She was only too glad to say that she was.An hour later, a waveless sea was gurgling musically as the launch cut through it, and a tropical moon was scattering a pathway of brilliants into which the little craft seemed desirous of plungingherself, but which she could never quite attain. The Filipino steersman shifted from foot to foot, a dim moving shape at his shadowed post. Mysterious clanks and groans issued at intervals from the engine-room below. There was no longer a wavering dark line across the night sky, though the light on Cuyo was still visible. And in the exquisite peace a woman, reared to luxury and social exclusiveness, lay in her deck chair and listened to the talk of men who had known most of the shadows of life and some of its pits of evil, took their homage, too, and found it tasty.Each had drawn up one of the three-legged, rattan stools which are so common in the Philippines and they were seated one on each side of her. Their talk wandered over many themes, but was always terse and vivid. They agreed in damning the Government. All civilian non-employees do that continually. They spoke of affairs on the island, and discussed the administration of local justice with the simplicity of men who do not quibble over political documents, but who have a strong conviction that the powerful must rule the weak. One of the Japanese divers was making trouble with the launch crew, preaching the inferiority of thewhite race and the drubbing one part of it was destined to receive. “I guess he’s right on the Russians,” said Collingwood. “I believe the Japs will thrash them into the middle of kingdom come; but if he goes to putting on any airs around me, I’ll kick him into the China Sea.”“No need,” said Maclaughlin cheerily, “I did it for him last week. It did him a world of good.”“How are findings?”“None too good. We’ll not make our fortunes this year, but we’ll make our keep, and a little to spare.” The smile on the keen face told Charlotte that the speaker was not dissatisfied.“How’s Kingsnorth?”“Just himself.”“Poor devil,” said Martin feelingly. Maclaughlin broke into a hearty laugh. “Hear the married man,” he cried, “an’ if you could ha’ heard him six months gone, Mrs. Collingwood!”“I probably shouldn’t have liked it,” said Charlotte dryly.“Kingsnorth will snort when he hears that Mrs. Snodgrass asked us to dinner,” said Martin. “They don’t like each other,” he explained to his wife. “I can’t say I ever thought she liked memuch till this trip. She thinks I’m likelier to be a respectable member of society, now I’m married. She thinks that because I was a soldier I went about sowing wild oats by the cavan.”It happened that at the moment he finished the remark, Charlotte’s glance rested on Maclaughlin, whose face was fair in the moonlight. In a flash—in just the instant’s time that it took him to change his expression—she read the man’s judgment that Collingwood owed thanks to his wife for any civility received from Mrs. Snodgrass. A man brought up in the British empire has some sources of knowledge denied the citizens of our great republic. Thirty years of kicking over American frontiers had robbed the Scotchman of many a national trait. They had not obscured his firm fixed impressions of gentility. He knew Martin’s wife for a gentlewoman.“How did you like Mrs. Snodgrass?” Martin asked his wife.Charlotte cast about for something truthful and non-committal. “I thought she was very prettily dressed,” she replied, “and that she showed very good taste in her home. It was cosy, and the dinner was excellent.”“Good heavens, Charlotte! I didn’t ask you that. I asked you how you liked her.”“She told you,” said Maclaughlin with a short laugh.“Of course I did,” echoed Charlotte. “I put it in the most forcible way I could. Don’t pretend you did not understand.”“I understood well enough. I just wanted you to come out and out with what you mean. Why don’t you like her?”“She is too commonplace and too assuming.”“What do you mean by commonplace?”“I mean—I mean—” exasperation brought her to the point of unguarded speech—“a woman who says ‘Don’t you know?’ with every other breath, or tacks on a sweet ‘Isn’t it so?’ or ‘Don’t you think?’ to qualify every word she utters. I mean a woman of exactly Mrs. Snodgrass’s type.”“Commonplace always means a woman then?”But by that time Charlotte was laughing, partly at her flash of temper, partly at the odd confusion of her definition, which Martin had so quickly pointed out with his uncompromising finger.“It doesn’t mean a man like you,” she said. “You are not commonplace, but unique.”“The only one of my kind,” said Martin yawning. She could see, under his jocularity, his pride and pleasure in her (as he considered) audacity. Her criticisms of the lady meant little to him, except as they were the gauntlet thrown down, the laudable declaration that Martin Collingwood’s wife was not going to stand any patronizing from the regular army. But she realized also that he was flattered by the invitation they had received. To him Lieutenant and Mrs. Snodgrass were people that counted. A pang of contrition shot through her that what had been a sort of social triumph to him had been an unmitigated bore to her. Then a sense of humor came uppermost. The boredom she might conceal. But as well attempt to make water run up hill as to make Charlotte Collingwood regard an acquaintance with Lieutenant and Mrs. Snodgrass as a social triumph. Maclaughlin, who was to take the first watch, went forward, and Collingwood curled himself up, native fashion, on a mat at his wife’s feet. Long after his deep respirations told her that he was fast asleep, she lay with wide open eyes, staring into the silvered pathway ahead of them, her thoughts a blending of regret and of exquisite joy. When,at three o’clock, Maclaughlin came to wake up Martin, she pretended to be asleep, and shortly after she did fall into a slumber, from which she was awakened by her husband’s voice and the word “home.”She sprang to her feet with an instinctive movement of bewilderment, and then caught her breath for sheer delight in what she saw.The launch was riding a mile or more off the shore of a wedge-shaped island perhaps three miles in length. Its backbone was a line of hills which rose precipitously from the sea on the eastern side (as she later discovered) but which, on the west sloped gently down to a level coast plain, a quarter of a mile or more broad. The plain and the hills were one huge cocoanut grove. In the foreground, the columned boles and the graceful plumes made a great haunt of emerald shade, a dream place of cool recesses and long cathedral aisles. Its rich, unvarying greenness seemed the more vivid by contrast with the changing hues of the shallow water, with the gleaming whiteness of the beach, and the occasional overtopping of a wave like the dip of a sea-gull’s wings.At the northern apex of the island, situatedwhere they not only commanded the western sea, but looked eastward over a channel to the coast line of Panay and a scarped mountain rearing its cloud-hung flanks against a lustering sky, three steep nipa-roofed cottages nestled among the palms. Southward, the beach line ran straight till it curved out into a sharp point in front of one of the hills. There stood a small nipa village.Dawn flushes played across the sky behind the distant mountain, and pearled the shining sea. A great fishingbancamanned by at least twelve oarsmen swept boldly past them. The naked backs were made of rippling bronze. A lorcha, almost on the western horizon line, showed in faint lines and in gleaming spots of mother of pearl. The morning breeze was almost chill.It came, a crowding of perceptions and sensations, but Charlotte’s pleasure was almost ecstatic.“Beautiful, beautiful!” she murmured. “It is a veritable paradise.”“Isit?” said Maclaughlin’s knowing voice behind her. “I’m glad you think so, Mrs. Collingwood. My wife has been doubting you’d find it dull. Martin and I will take ours with a bandstandand a few trolley-cars and a chop-house thrown in, eh, Collingwood?”“Oh, shut up, Mac, don’t pour cold water on my wife’s enthusiasms. Besides, she’s got a poetic soul, and you and I haven’t.”Charlotte stared. “What will you endow me with next?” she asked. “A poetic soul! Martin, who has been talking about poetry for the last two months?”“I don’t mind admitting,” said Mr. Collingwood shamelessly, “that I have, or, at least, I’ve been dwelling on the poetry of love and I found you responsive. Therefore I deduced a poetic soul—sort of Sherlock Holmes. Sabe?”She made no reply beyond one of those reproachful head shakes which indicate the compromise between duty and inclination. Martin grinned. He knew when she tried to be severe, but was yet secretly pleased with him.Charlotte did what she could to repair the dishevelled appearance caused by sleeping dressed in the steamer chair. A few minutes later, they were all in the boat, speeding straight for the nipa cottages. Martin explained that the launch could goin no further on account of the coral reef; but, he said, a mile or more to the southward, where the hill jutted out, there was a channel cut through the reef, and the launch could come close in and find anchorage in a pool which lay under the cliff. A rude pier had been constructed there, and there their freight would be landed and then dragged up to them along the beach in a carabao cart; for they had one draft animal. He further informed her that the launch lay down at the anchorage every night, and came up abreast the cottages every morning to pick up the fishers, for it was easier to be rowed out than to trudge down the mile of sand.As they drew near the shore, Charlotte perceived that, in spite of the steep roofs, the cottages had something of an American air, having broad verandas in front; while one, which she imagined must be the Maclaughlin home, was covered with morning glory vines. The houses sat back about fifty yards from the beach, just where the cocoanut grove came to an end, and it was evident that the sea breeze made them deliciously cool.A man was pacing up and down the beach, and, as the boat grounded, a woman emerged from the vine-wreathed cottage, and came swiftly on, flappinga kitchen apron which she was wearing, and making other gestures of welcome. Charlotte had little time to observe either closely, for her attention was quite taken up with the novel preparations for landing her and her companions. Full thirty feet of water intervened between them and the dry sand, not deep enough to drown in, but quite enough to spoil dress and shoes. The Filipino oarsmen met the difficulty, however, by rolling up their trousers and going overboard. They made a chair of their clasped hands, and Charlotte, seating herself therein, was carried ashore and set down in front of Mrs. Maclaughlin.Mrs. Maclaughlin was tall and bony with iron-gray hair and a large featured, strong face, characteristic of the pioneer. She was not shy, and she seized Mrs. Collingwood by both hands and kissed her, then held her off for inspection.“Well, Martin Collingwood’s a fool for luck,” she remarked. “I never thought he’d get a nice, peart, stylish girl like you to follow him off to a place like this. You’re either mad—and you don’t look it—or you’re worse in love than any woman ever was before you.”The informality of the greeting took Charlotte’sbreath. As she stood blushing, a large, brown, and well-made hand was extended to her.“How do you do, Mrs. Collingwood?” said a voice in the refined accents of the upper class Englishman. “I don’t need to introduce myself, do I? Martin has told you all about us, and there are not enough of us to confuse. Don’t let Mrs. Mac’s plainness of speech annoy you. When you are well acquainted, you’ll rather like it. It breaks the monotony of things.”She tried to make some trivial, laughing rejoinder; but the words faltered on her lips, for, as she glanced up into his eyes, she saw there the instant recognition of all that she was, the interrogation flashing into quickly throttled life, as to why she was Martin Collingwood’s wife, and what she could possibly have to do with a colony of fisher folk composed of one insouciant blade of fortune, two typical bits of western flotsam, and a renegade from decent society.

Chapter VI

It was well on in the afternoon of the next day when they anchored off Cuyo, which, with its squat lighthouse and low shore, impressed Charlotte as a dreary, lonesome spot. A launch, which was lying abreast the lighthouse, saluted them with vociferous toots, and Collingwood waved his hat in joyous response.“That’s Mac, all right,” he said. “He’ll be aboard directly. It’s a wonder he didn’t hire the town band to welcome us.”Charlotte winced and secretly rejoiced that for once Mr. Maclaughlin’s initiative had failed to come up to its reputation. Yet when a boat came alongside, and a grizzled Scotch-American stepped up the short ladder, her greeting was warm enough to fully satisfy her husband.“My soul!” said Mr. Maclaughlin, giving her a lengthy handshake and a look of unqualified admiration, “but you could ha’ knocked us down with a feather the day the letter came saying that Martinwould bring back a wife. Kingsnorth nigh took to his bed on it.”Consternation was plainly written on Mrs. Collingwood’s face. Her sensitiveness was a-flutter, fearing a cold welcome from her husband’s friends.“I’m sorry,” she began, and then came to an awkward stop.“No offence, I hope,” said Maclaughlin, reading the signs, “He’s well over it by now. Kingsnorth is just one of those poor bodies we call a woman-hater; and you’ll notice, Mrs. Collingwood, that they always begin life just the opposite. He thought he’d found a bunkie for life in Martin, an’ the lad fooled him! I don’t say but we were all surprised, but you’ll find a hearty welcome at the island.”“Can we get out to-night?” asked Collingwood.“Get out in an hour if we can get our freight transhipped, unless Mrs. Collingwood is in a mind to stay and see the city by gaslight.” He jerked a derisive thumb in the direction of the iron and nipa roofs ashore.“All the light stuff is on deck now,” said Martin whose instincts to accomplish whatever was to be done mastered any tendency toward conversation.He pointed, as he spoke, to a tarpaulin-covered heap forward. “The heavy cases are stored where they can be hauled up in a minute. I’ll see the captain at once. He won’t try to delay us, not he. Get alongside right away, with the launch, can’t you?”“I doubt you’ve gone broke,” remarked Maclaughlin, contemplating the heap and smiling at Charlotte, who laughed.“Not so had as that, I hope,” she responded, “but some of the credit is due me that he hasn’t.”“That’s a fact,” her husband supplemented. “I wanted to buy out Manila and wire additional supplies from Hong Kong. However, we can talk about that later. Thank the Lord, there isn’t any sea on. We would have the devil’s own time transhipping, if there were.”He dashed off, and Maclaughlin jumped into his boat with an order to the native rowers to hurry. For an instant, Charlotte was annoyed by their unceremonious departure, but her good sense soon rose superior to her training. Martin alert, talking business, with his hat on the back of his head, a long pencil emphasizing his gestures, was a very different figure from the insouciant young pagan,alternately jocose and pleading, that had wooed her. How quickly, too, the easy speech of the husband had possessed him. “Devil’s own time” came ripping out with unconscious force. At first, Charlotte’s fastidiousness revolted from it. Then she decided that it was virile and that she liked it. Still, she mused, if he felt the need of emphatic embellishment to point the assertion of so simple a fact as that, what might he not do when an occasion out of the ordinary arose?Her question was answered before their goods and commissaries were aboard the launch, and, for a time, she could not tell whether she wanted to laugh or to cry. While she was still in doubt, her husband came back, red and perspiring, with his coat off. He held out a collar and necktie.“Just look out for these things for me, won’t you?” he said. “My! I’m pretty well cussed out. Hope I didn’t shock you, pet.”“You did, but it didn’t matter; or rather, it passed the point of shocking. You have the towering imagination in profanity, Martin, of an architect of sky-scraping buildings.”Collingwood was able to extract a compliment from this, and looked grateful, though he was evidentlyimpressed by the form of its expression. “I may have said a little too much,” he apologized, “but a man would have to be a saint not to lose his temper—Here!” he roared, as three of the crew, having mounted to the upper deck and having armed themselves with a flower pot apiece, started brazenly off with their burdens, “take two of those at a time. How many trips do you plan to make with this flower garden, anyway? You see that everything is right in the stateroom, won’t you?” he threw over his shoulder as he darted off.“Certainly,” she replied, adding to herself, “for I shouldn’t like you to ‘cuss’ me.”She felt quite safe from any such dire possibility, or she could not have joked about it even with herself. Nevertheless, she was very thoughtful as she gathered up their belongings and put them in the valises, leaving, however, the strapping and the pulling to be done by Martin.When she had done all that there was to be done, and had put on her hat, she sank down on a locker, still holding her husband’s discarded collar, and let her thoughts dwell rosily on the part she could play in the island life. A guilty conscience urged her to acts of reparation. All that she could do tobring order and system and beauty into her husband’s home she was resolved to do. He had told her enough to let her know that he had lived in an unlovely fashion, and that he had aspirations for something better, though he could not define what he objected to in the past, or just what he wanted in the future. He was bent on making money, chiefly because he seemed to feel that there was no way of obtaining his ideal without large expenditures; and yet he was not ostentatious. He had been very liberal—extravagant, she had laughingly told him—in the purchase of household belongings; and she had told the truth when she said that she deserved the credit of restraining him. He was going to become the typical American husband, who labors unceasingly that his womankind may be decked in finery and may represent him in the whirl of society; but his wife could see that, until such a time as their prosperity should be at flood tide, he would expect her to administer wisely and economically. He gave much—as far as he was conscious of her needs—and he would ask proportionally in return. Charlotte’s head reared proudly to meet the thought. She would not fail him. And then she vowed for the hundredth time,that his unstinted devotion should meet with its just due, and that never, never should Martin suspect how she had had to battle with herself before she could conquer the feeling that her love was a shame to her.Martin, coming to seek her in order to introduce her to the wife of a local military officer, found her sunk in reverie with his crumpled neck-wear pressed against her cheek. He put on a clean tie and collar and they went on deck together.The military officer’s wife was a young woman, plainly of village origin, who was carrying the wide-spreading sail which many Americans in the Philippines elect to display in the exuberance of having journeyed to foreign lands. Her appearance jarred on Mrs. Collingwood, and her conversation, which was frivolous and full of assumption, reinforced the unfavorable impression.The lady had met Collingwood three or four times before, and had treated him with scant courtesy, because he had been an enlisted man. But when she heard that he was married, and that his wife was aboard ship, her curiosity got the better of her exclusiveness—that and her eagerness to hear the sound of her own voice, for there werefew Americans in Cuyo, and she was already on bad terms with several families. She threw a gushing condescension into her manner of greeting Charlotte, which put that young woman’s nerves on edge at once. But Mrs. Snodgrass (“What a name!” thought Charlotte, “I never expected to meet it out of books!”) was determined to make the best of the conversational opportunity. After a somewhat ingenuous scrutiny, she invited the Collingwoods to dinner. Charlotte was about to decline, when Martin interrupted and said that their being delayed an hour or so was of no importance; that it was evidently going to be a clear night, and they had time enough to make the run over before dawn. Charlotte supposed that some affection for Lieutenant Snodgrass—who had been a captain of volunteers in the war, and Martin’s officer—was the cause of her husband’s eagerness, and she accepted the invitation at once. She went ashore with the Lieutenant’s wife, while Martin remained to see to a few last details, and to make some arrangements with Maclaughlin.Lieutenant and Mrs. Snodgrass (he had not been able to secure entrance to the regular army with his volunteer rank) were comfortably domiciled,and the meal was a good one, though Charlotte was made uncomfortable by the hostess’s repeated apologies both for her food and her service. “The servants are such impossible creatures here, don’t you think?” fluttered the little woman who, before her marriage, had been a stenographer working for twelve dollars a week, and who had never enjoyed the luxury of a servant in her life till she came to the Philippines.Charlotte glanced at her in surprise. “I had not thought so,” she replied. “They need a great deal of training, of course, but I fancied them ideal servants, so truly of the servant class, believing that God ordained us to be masters, and them to serve. At home, I feel that servants do not acquiesce in the situation, and the more intelligent they are, the more sensitive I am to the undercurrent.”It was evident that Mrs. Snodgrass regarded this remark as verbiage. “How funny!” she said. “I never felt that way.”“In other words,” remarked Lieutenant Snodgrass, who was a self-made man, but who was taking on his army training with great quickness, “Mrs. Collingwood prefers an aristocratic social system to a democratic one.”“I suppose so,” Charlotte assented, “though theoretically I stand for democracy like all good Americans. You inferred a condition of my mind of which I was hardly conscious myself. But I suppose you are right.”“Do you hear that, Collingwood? You are the most rabid democrat I know. Are you going to bring your wife over to your way of thinking?”Martin was staring at Charlotte, who began to color with embarrassment. Her view-point had seemed to her so natural and so simple that she was quite unprepared for the comment it evoked.“I’ll have to coach you up before I turn you loose on people,” he said. “Why, I never thought it of you.”Lieutenant Snodgrass assumed the air of a man, the length of whose matrimonial experience justifies him in extensive allusions to feminine peculiarities.“Oh, if she doesn’t startle you any worse than that,” he hinted darkly.After dinner, Charlotte was left to a long hour of Mrs. Snodgrass’s company while their husbands reviewed war experiences and discussed that never-ending theme of exiles, the Government’s Philippine policy. It was ten o’clock when the Collingwoodsbade good-bye to their hosts, with the usual promise of an exchange of visits. They found Maclaughlin waiting for them at the landing with the boat. He asked Mrs. Collingwood if she could steer and, being told that she could, vacated his place in the stern for her.The night was dark but not cloudy, like the previous one. The moon would not rise till later, but the night azure of the sky was unclouded, and all the constellations of the tropic belt were glittering in its peaceful depths. The Southern Cross was there, and the so-called False Cross, while, in the north, the “Big Dipper” hung low and out of place. The water was phosphorescent, the oars turning in green fire, which sent a million prickles flashing away in the waves. When, now and then, abancacrept past them, its shape was outlined in the same lurid radiance, and the noiseless paddles dripped smears of unearthly flame. Charlotte pulled her tiller ropes in silence, keeping a wary eye out for unlighted craft, and watching the huddle of lights that was their launch. The coastguard cutter had left half an hour before. She was a faint glimmer of dots on the vague horizon; her smoke still lay a wavering, dark line across the night sky.Suddenly a tremor of deadly fear shook Charlotte. There went the chain by which she had felt herself linked to the world and civilization. She had put herself at the mercy of a man of whom she knew, after all, next to nothing. Once aboard the launch, once out of Cuyo harbor, she was as utterly in his power as any prisoner in a dungeon is in the power of his captors. A wife may have rights and privileges in the eye of the law, but they avail her little on an island where no one of her own race save her husband’s friends steps foot.Her crowding thoughts sickened her, though she had enough will and strength to guide the boat alongside the launch. Collingwood threw away his cigar and held out his hands. “Up with you,” he cried gayly.The answer was a half movement and a groan as she dropped back with her face in her hands.“Charlotte, are you sick? My God! What’s the matter?”His vehemence and the fear in his voice reassured her. With indomitable pride she raised herself. “My ankle turned; it was sickening pain for an instant. It is all right, I think. The pain is growing less.”She hated herself for the lie. She despised herself for the little pretence she still made at lameness as her husband would have picked her up bodily. “I can walk,” she said, and stepped over the thwarts.Maclaughlin had clambered aboard ready to receive her as Martin lifted her. They put her in the steamer chair which was to serve her as a stateroom, and Martin hovered over, chafing her hands, offering her brandy from his pocket flask. Mr. Maclaughlin, after making certain that she was not seriously hurt, tactfully removed himself. Martin called to him to wait a minute before pulling out; that it might be necessary to get a doctor. Charlotte’s face burned. She was grateful for the darkness that hid it.“It is not even sprained,” she said truthfully. “There—see how I can move it. It didn’t amount to anything, only I am such a coward.”“You are sure now?” said Martin. She was only too glad to say that she was.An hour later, a waveless sea was gurgling musically as the launch cut through it, and a tropical moon was scattering a pathway of brilliants into which the little craft seemed desirous of plungingherself, but which she could never quite attain. The Filipino steersman shifted from foot to foot, a dim moving shape at his shadowed post. Mysterious clanks and groans issued at intervals from the engine-room below. There was no longer a wavering dark line across the night sky, though the light on Cuyo was still visible. And in the exquisite peace a woman, reared to luxury and social exclusiveness, lay in her deck chair and listened to the talk of men who had known most of the shadows of life and some of its pits of evil, took their homage, too, and found it tasty.Each had drawn up one of the three-legged, rattan stools which are so common in the Philippines and they were seated one on each side of her. Their talk wandered over many themes, but was always terse and vivid. They agreed in damning the Government. All civilian non-employees do that continually. They spoke of affairs on the island, and discussed the administration of local justice with the simplicity of men who do not quibble over political documents, but who have a strong conviction that the powerful must rule the weak. One of the Japanese divers was making trouble with the launch crew, preaching the inferiority of thewhite race and the drubbing one part of it was destined to receive. “I guess he’s right on the Russians,” said Collingwood. “I believe the Japs will thrash them into the middle of kingdom come; but if he goes to putting on any airs around me, I’ll kick him into the China Sea.”“No need,” said Maclaughlin cheerily, “I did it for him last week. It did him a world of good.”“How are findings?”“None too good. We’ll not make our fortunes this year, but we’ll make our keep, and a little to spare.” The smile on the keen face told Charlotte that the speaker was not dissatisfied.“How’s Kingsnorth?”“Just himself.”“Poor devil,” said Martin feelingly. Maclaughlin broke into a hearty laugh. “Hear the married man,” he cried, “an’ if you could ha’ heard him six months gone, Mrs. Collingwood!”“I probably shouldn’t have liked it,” said Charlotte dryly.“Kingsnorth will snort when he hears that Mrs. Snodgrass asked us to dinner,” said Martin. “They don’t like each other,” he explained to his wife. “I can’t say I ever thought she liked memuch till this trip. She thinks I’m likelier to be a respectable member of society, now I’m married. She thinks that because I was a soldier I went about sowing wild oats by the cavan.”It happened that at the moment he finished the remark, Charlotte’s glance rested on Maclaughlin, whose face was fair in the moonlight. In a flash—in just the instant’s time that it took him to change his expression—she read the man’s judgment that Collingwood owed thanks to his wife for any civility received from Mrs. Snodgrass. A man brought up in the British empire has some sources of knowledge denied the citizens of our great republic. Thirty years of kicking over American frontiers had robbed the Scotchman of many a national trait. They had not obscured his firm fixed impressions of gentility. He knew Martin’s wife for a gentlewoman.“How did you like Mrs. Snodgrass?” Martin asked his wife.Charlotte cast about for something truthful and non-committal. “I thought she was very prettily dressed,” she replied, “and that she showed very good taste in her home. It was cosy, and the dinner was excellent.”“Good heavens, Charlotte! I didn’t ask you that. I asked you how you liked her.”“She told you,” said Maclaughlin with a short laugh.“Of course I did,” echoed Charlotte. “I put it in the most forcible way I could. Don’t pretend you did not understand.”“I understood well enough. I just wanted you to come out and out with what you mean. Why don’t you like her?”“She is too commonplace and too assuming.”“What do you mean by commonplace?”“I mean—I mean—” exasperation brought her to the point of unguarded speech—“a woman who says ‘Don’t you know?’ with every other breath, or tacks on a sweet ‘Isn’t it so?’ or ‘Don’t you think?’ to qualify every word she utters. I mean a woman of exactly Mrs. Snodgrass’s type.”“Commonplace always means a woman then?”But by that time Charlotte was laughing, partly at her flash of temper, partly at the odd confusion of her definition, which Martin had so quickly pointed out with his uncompromising finger.“It doesn’t mean a man like you,” she said. “You are not commonplace, but unique.”“The only one of my kind,” said Martin yawning. She could see, under his jocularity, his pride and pleasure in her (as he considered) audacity. Her criticisms of the lady meant little to him, except as they were the gauntlet thrown down, the laudable declaration that Martin Collingwood’s wife was not going to stand any patronizing from the regular army. But she realized also that he was flattered by the invitation they had received. To him Lieutenant and Mrs. Snodgrass were people that counted. A pang of contrition shot through her that what had been a sort of social triumph to him had been an unmitigated bore to her. Then a sense of humor came uppermost. The boredom she might conceal. But as well attempt to make water run up hill as to make Charlotte Collingwood regard an acquaintance with Lieutenant and Mrs. Snodgrass as a social triumph. Maclaughlin, who was to take the first watch, went forward, and Collingwood curled himself up, native fashion, on a mat at his wife’s feet. Long after his deep respirations told her that he was fast asleep, she lay with wide open eyes, staring into the silvered pathway ahead of them, her thoughts a blending of regret and of exquisite joy. When,at three o’clock, Maclaughlin came to wake up Martin, she pretended to be asleep, and shortly after she did fall into a slumber, from which she was awakened by her husband’s voice and the word “home.”She sprang to her feet with an instinctive movement of bewilderment, and then caught her breath for sheer delight in what she saw.The launch was riding a mile or more off the shore of a wedge-shaped island perhaps three miles in length. Its backbone was a line of hills which rose precipitously from the sea on the eastern side (as she later discovered) but which, on the west sloped gently down to a level coast plain, a quarter of a mile or more broad. The plain and the hills were one huge cocoanut grove. In the foreground, the columned boles and the graceful plumes made a great haunt of emerald shade, a dream place of cool recesses and long cathedral aisles. Its rich, unvarying greenness seemed the more vivid by contrast with the changing hues of the shallow water, with the gleaming whiteness of the beach, and the occasional overtopping of a wave like the dip of a sea-gull’s wings.At the northern apex of the island, situatedwhere they not only commanded the western sea, but looked eastward over a channel to the coast line of Panay and a scarped mountain rearing its cloud-hung flanks against a lustering sky, three steep nipa-roofed cottages nestled among the palms. Southward, the beach line ran straight till it curved out into a sharp point in front of one of the hills. There stood a small nipa village.Dawn flushes played across the sky behind the distant mountain, and pearled the shining sea. A great fishingbancamanned by at least twelve oarsmen swept boldly past them. The naked backs were made of rippling bronze. A lorcha, almost on the western horizon line, showed in faint lines and in gleaming spots of mother of pearl. The morning breeze was almost chill.It came, a crowding of perceptions and sensations, but Charlotte’s pleasure was almost ecstatic.“Beautiful, beautiful!” she murmured. “It is a veritable paradise.”“Isit?” said Maclaughlin’s knowing voice behind her. “I’m glad you think so, Mrs. Collingwood. My wife has been doubting you’d find it dull. Martin and I will take ours with a bandstandand a few trolley-cars and a chop-house thrown in, eh, Collingwood?”“Oh, shut up, Mac, don’t pour cold water on my wife’s enthusiasms. Besides, she’s got a poetic soul, and you and I haven’t.”Charlotte stared. “What will you endow me with next?” she asked. “A poetic soul! Martin, who has been talking about poetry for the last two months?”“I don’t mind admitting,” said Mr. Collingwood shamelessly, “that I have, or, at least, I’ve been dwelling on the poetry of love and I found you responsive. Therefore I deduced a poetic soul—sort of Sherlock Holmes. Sabe?”She made no reply beyond one of those reproachful head shakes which indicate the compromise between duty and inclination. Martin grinned. He knew when she tried to be severe, but was yet secretly pleased with him.Charlotte did what she could to repair the dishevelled appearance caused by sleeping dressed in the steamer chair. A few minutes later, they were all in the boat, speeding straight for the nipa cottages. Martin explained that the launch could goin no further on account of the coral reef; but, he said, a mile or more to the southward, where the hill jutted out, there was a channel cut through the reef, and the launch could come close in and find anchorage in a pool which lay under the cliff. A rude pier had been constructed there, and there their freight would be landed and then dragged up to them along the beach in a carabao cart; for they had one draft animal. He further informed her that the launch lay down at the anchorage every night, and came up abreast the cottages every morning to pick up the fishers, for it was easier to be rowed out than to trudge down the mile of sand.As they drew near the shore, Charlotte perceived that, in spite of the steep roofs, the cottages had something of an American air, having broad verandas in front; while one, which she imagined must be the Maclaughlin home, was covered with morning glory vines. The houses sat back about fifty yards from the beach, just where the cocoanut grove came to an end, and it was evident that the sea breeze made them deliciously cool.A man was pacing up and down the beach, and, as the boat grounded, a woman emerged from the vine-wreathed cottage, and came swiftly on, flappinga kitchen apron which she was wearing, and making other gestures of welcome. Charlotte had little time to observe either closely, for her attention was quite taken up with the novel preparations for landing her and her companions. Full thirty feet of water intervened between them and the dry sand, not deep enough to drown in, but quite enough to spoil dress and shoes. The Filipino oarsmen met the difficulty, however, by rolling up their trousers and going overboard. They made a chair of their clasped hands, and Charlotte, seating herself therein, was carried ashore and set down in front of Mrs. Maclaughlin.Mrs. Maclaughlin was tall and bony with iron-gray hair and a large featured, strong face, characteristic of the pioneer. She was not shy, and she seized Mrs. Collingwood by both hands and kissed her, then held her off for inspection.“Well, Martin Collingwood’s a fool for luck,” she remarked. “I never thought he’d get a nice, peart, stylish girl like you to follow him off to a place like this. You’re either mad—and you don’t look it—or you’re worse in love than any woman ever was before you.”The informality of the greeting took Charlotte’sbreath. As she stood blushing, a large, brown, and well-made hand was extended to her.“How do you do, Mrs. Collingwood?” said a voice in the refined accents of the upper class Englishman. “I don’t need to introduce myself, do I? Martin has told you all about us, and there are not enough of us to confuse. Don’t let Mrs. Mac’s plainness of speech annoy you. When you are well acquainted, you’ll rather like it. It breaks the monotony of things.”She tried to make some trivial, laughing rejoinder; but the words faltered on her lips, for, as she glanced up into his eyes, she saw there the instant recognition of all that she was, the interrogation flashing into quickly throttled life, as to why she was Martin Collingwood’s wife, and what she could possibly have to do with a colony of fisher folk composed of one insouciant blade of fortune, two typical bits of western flotsam, and a renegade from decent society.

It was well on in the afternoon of the next day when they anchored off Cuyo, which, with its squat lighthouse and low shore, impressed Charlotte as a dreary, lonesome spot. A launch, which was lying abreast the lighthouse, saluted them with vociferous toots, and Collingwood waved his hat in joyous response.

“That’s Mac, all right,” he said. “He’ll be aboard directly. It’s a wonder he didn’t hire the town band to welcome us.”

Charlotte winced and secretly rejoiced that for once Mr. Maclaughlin’s initiative had failed to come up to its reputation. Yet when a boat came alongside, and a grizzled Scotch-American stepped up the short ladder, her greeting was warm enough to fully satisfy her husband.

“My soul!” said Mr. Maclaughlin, giving her a lengthy handshake and a look of unqualified admiration, “but you could ha’ knocked us down with a feather the day the letter came saying that Martinwould bring back a wife. Kingsnorth nigh took to his bed on it.”

Consternation was plainly written on Mrs. Collingwood’s face. Her sensitiveness was a-flutter, fearing a cold welcome from her husband’s friends.

“I’m sorry,” she began, and then came to an awkward stop.

“No offence, I hope,” said Maclaughlin, reading the signs, “He’s well over it by now. Kingsnorth is just one of those poor bodies we call a woman-hater; and you’ll notice, Mrs. Collingwood, that they always begin life just the opposite. He thought he’d found a bunkie for life in Martin, an’ the lad fooled him! I don’t say but we were all surprised, but you’ll find a hearty welcome at the island.”

“Can we get out to-night?” asked Collingwood.

“Get out in an hour if we can get our freight transhipped, unless Mrs. Collingwood is in a mind to stay and see the city by gaslight.” He jerked a derisive thumb in the direction of the iron and nipa roofs ashore.

“All the light stuff is on deck now,” said Martin whose instincts to accomplish whatever was to be done mastered any tendency toward conversation.He pointed, as he spoke, to a tarpaulin-covered heap forward. “The heavy cases are stored where they can be hauled up in a minute. I’ll see the captain at once. He won’t try to delay us, not he. Get alongside right away, with the launch, can’t you?”

“I doubt you’ve gone broke,” remarked Maclaughlin, contemplating the heap and smiling at Charlotte, who laughed.

“Not so had as that, I hope,” she responded, “but some of the credit is due me that he hasn’t.”

“That’s a fact,” her husband supplemented. “I wanted to buy out Manila and wire additional supplies from Hong Kong. However, we can talk about that later. Thank the Lord, there isn’t any sea on. We would have the devil’s own time transhipping, if there were.”

He dashed off, and Maclaughlin jumped into his boat with an order to the native rowers to hurry. For an instant, Charlotte was annoyed by their unceremonious departure, but her good sense soon rose superior to her training. Martin alert, talking business, with his hat on the back of his head, a long pencil emphasizing his gestures, was a very different figure from the insouciant young pagan,alternately jocose and pleading, that had wooed her. How quickly, too, the easy speech of the husband had possessed him. “Devil’s own time” came ripping out with unconscious force. At first, Charlotte’s fastidiousness revolted from it. Then she decided that it was virile and that she liked it. Still, she mused, if he felt the need of emphatic embellishment to point the assertion of so simple a fact as that, what might he not do when an occasion out of the ordinary arose?

Her question was answered before their goods and commissaries were aboard the launch, and, for a time, she could not tell whether she wanted to laugh or to cry. While she was still in doubt, her husband came back, red and perspiring, with his coat off. He held out a collar and necktie.

“Just look out for these things for me, won’t you?” he said. “My! I’m pretty well cussed out. Hope I didn’t shock you, pet.”

“You did, but it didn’t matter; or rather, it passed the point of shocking. You have the towering imagination in profanity, Martin, of an architect of sky-scraping buildings.”

Collingwood was able to extract a compliment from this, and looked grateful, though he was evidentlyimpressed by the form of its expression. “I may have said a little too much,” he apologized, “but a man would have to be a saint not to lose his temper—Here!” he roared, as three of the crew, having mounted to the upper deck and having armed themselves with a flower pot apiece, started brazenly off with their burdens, “take two of those at a time. How many trips do you plan to make with this flower garden, anyway? You see that everything is right in the stateroom, won’t you?” he threw over his shoulder as he darted off.

“Certainly,” she replied, adding to herself, “for I shouldn’t like you to ‘cuss’ me.”

She felt quite safe from any such dire possibility, or she could not have joked about it even with herself. Nevertheless, she was very thoughtful as she gathered up their belongings and put them in the valises, leaving, however, the strapping and the pulling to be done by Martin.

When she had done all that there was to be done, and had put on her hat, she sank down on a locker, still holding her husband’s discarded collar, and let her thoughts dwell rosily on the part she could play in the island life. A guilty conscience urged her to acts of reparation. All that she could do tobring order and system and beauty into her husband’s home she was resolved to do. He had told her enough to let her know that he had lived in an unlovely fashion, and that he had aspirations for something better, though he could not define what he objected to in the past, or just what he wanted in the future. He was bent on making money, chiefly because he seemed to feel that there was no way of obtaining his ideal without large expenditures; and yet he was not ostentatious. He had been very liberal—extravagant, she had laughingly told him—in the purchase of household belongings; and she had told the truth when she said that she deserved the credit of restraining him. He was going to become the typical American husband, who labors unceasingly that his womankind may be decked in finery and may represent him in the whirl of society; but his wife could see that, until such a time as their prosperity should be at flood tide, he would expect her to administer wisely and economically. He gave much—as far as he was conscious of her needs—and he would ask proportionally in return. Charlotte’s head reared proudly to meet the thought. She would not fail him. And then she vowed for the hundredth time,that his unstinted devotion should meet with its just due, and that never, never should Martin suspect how she had had to battle with herself before she could conquer the feeling that her love was a shame to her.

Martin, coming to seek her in order to introduce her to the wife of a local military officer, found her sunk in reverie with his crumpled neck-wear pressed against her cheek. He put on a clean tie and collar and they went on deck together.

The military officer’s wife was a young woman, plainly of village origin, who was carrying the wide-spreading sail which many Americans in the Philippines elect to display in the exuberance of having journeyed to foreign lands. Her appearance jarred on Mrs. Collingwood, and her conversation, which was frivolous and full of assumption, reinforced the unfavorable impression.

The lady had met Collingwood three or four times before, and had treated him with scant courtesy, because he had been an enlisted man. But when she heard that he was married, and that his wife was aboard ship, her curiosity got the better of her exclusiveness—that and her eagerness to hear the sound of her own voice, for there werefew Americans in Cuyo, and she was already on bad terms with several families. She threw a gushing condescension into her manner of greeting Charlotte, which put that young woman’s nerves on edge at once. But Mrs. Snodgrass (“What a name!” thought Charlotte, “I never expected to meet it out of books!”) was determined to make the best of the conversational opportunity. After a somewhat ingenuous scrutiny, she invited the Collingwoods to dinner. Charlotte was about to decline, when Martin interrupted and said that their being delayed an hour or so was of no importance; that it was evidently going to be a clear night, and they had time enough to make the run over before dawn. Charlotte supposed that some affection for Lieutenant Snodgrass—who had been a captain of volunteers in the war, and Martin’s officer—was the cause of her husband’s eagerness, and she accepted the invitation at once. She went ashore with the Lieutenant’s wife, while Martin remained to see to a few last details, and to make some arrangements with Maclaughlin.

Lieutenant and Mrs. Snodgrass (he had not been able to secure entrance to the regular army with his volunteer rank) were comfortably domiciled,and the meal was a good one, though Charlotte was made uncomfortable by the hostess’s repeated apologies both for her food and her service. “The servants are such impossible creatures here, don’t you think?” fluttered the little woman who, before her marriage, had been a stenographer working for twelve dollars a week, and who had never enjoyed the luxury of a servant in her life till she came to the Philippines.

Charlotte glanced at her in surprise. “I had not thought so,” she replied. “They need a great deal of training, of course, but I fancied them ideal servants, so truly of the servant class, believing that God ordained us to be masters, and them to serve. At home, I feel that servants do not acquiesce in the situation, and the more intelligent they are, the more sensitive I am to the undercurrent.”

It was evident that Mrs. Snodgrass regarded this remark as verbiage. “How funny!” she said. “I never felt that way.”

“In other words,” remarked Lieutenant Snodgrass, who was a self-made man, but who was taking on his army training with great quickness, “Mrs. Collingwood prefers an aristocratic social system to a democratic one.”

“I suppose so,” Charlotte assented, “though theoretically I stand for democracy like all good Americans. You inferred a condition of my mind of which I was hardly conscious myself. But I suppose you are right.”

“Do you hear that, Collingwood? You are the most rabid democrat I know. Are you going to bring your wife over to your way of thinking?”

Martin was staring at Charlotte, who began to color with embarrassment. Her view-point had seemed to her so natural and so simple that she was quite unprepared for the comment it evoked.

“I’ll have to coach you up before I turn you loose on people,” he said. “Why, I never thought it of you.”

Lieutenant Snodgrass assumed the air of a man, the length of whose matrimonial experience justifies him in extensive allusions to feminine peculiarities.

“Oh, if she doesn’t startle you any worse than that,” he hinted darkly.

After dinner, Charlotte was left to a long hour of Mrs. Snodgrass’s company while their husbands reviewed war experiences and discussed that never-ending theme of exiles, the Government’s Philippine policy. It was ten o’clock when the Collingwoodsbade good-bye to their hosts, with the usual promise of an exchange of visits. They found Maclaughlin waiting for them at the landing with the boat. He asked Mrs. Collingwood if she could steer and, being told that she could, vacated his place in the stern for her.

The night was dark but not cloudy, like the previous one. The moon would not rise till later, but the night azure of the sky was unclouded, and all the constellations of the tropic belt were glittering in its peaceful depths. The Southern Cross was there, and the so-called False Cross, while, in the north, the “Big Dipper” hung low and out of place. The water was phosphorescent, the oars turning in green fire, which sent a million prickles flashing away in the waves. When, now and then, abancacrept past them, its shape was outlined in the same lurid radiance, and the noiseless paddles dripped smears of unearthly flame. Charlotte pulled her tiller ropes in silence, keeping a wary eye out for unlighted craft, and watching the huddle of lights that was their launch. The coastguard cutter had left half an hour before. She was a faint glimmer of dots on the vague horizon; her smoke still lay a wavering, dark line across the night sky.

Suddenly a tremor of deadly fear shook Charlotte. There went the chain by which she had felt herself linked to the world and civilization. She had put herself at the mercy of a man of whom she knew, after all, next to nothing. Once aboard the launch, once out of Cuyo harbor, she was as utterly in his power as any prisoner in a dungeon is in the power of his captors. A wife may have rights and privileges in the eye of the law, but they avail her little on an island where no one of her own race save her husband’s friends steps foot.

Her crowding thoughts sickened her, though she had enough will and strength to guide the boat alongside the launch. Collingwood threw away his cigar and held out his hands. “Up with you,” he cried gayly.

The answer was a half movement and a groan as she dropped back with her face in her hands.

“Charlotte, are you sick? My God! What’s the matter?”

His vehemence and the fear in his voice reassured her. With indomitable pride she raised herself. “My ankle turned; it was sickening pain for an instant. It is all right, I think. The pain is growing less.”

She hated herself for the lie. She despised herself for the little pretence she still made at lameness as her husband would have picked her up bodily. “I can walk,” she said, and stepped over the thwarts.

Maclaughlin had clambered aboard ready to receive her as Martin lifted her. They put her in the steamer chair which was to serve her as a stateroom, and Martin hovered over, chafing her hands, offering her brandy from his pocket flask. Mr. Maclaughlin, after making certain that she was not seriously hurt, tactfully removed himself. Martin called to him to wait a minute before pulling out; that it might be necessary to get a doctor. Charlotte’s face burned. She was grateful for the darkness that hid it.

“It is not even sprained,” she said truthfully. “There—see how I can move it. It didn’t amount to anything, only I am such a coward.”

“You are sure now?” said Martin. She was only too glad to say that she was.

An hour later, a waveless sea was gurgling musically as the launch cut through it, and a tropical moon was scattering a pathway of brilliants into which the little craft seemed desirous of plungingherself, but which she could never quite attain. The Filipino steersman shifted from foot to foot, a dim moving shape at his shadowed post. Mysterious clanks and groans issued at intervals from the engine-room below. There was no longer a wavering dark line across the night sky, though the light on Cuyo was still visible. And in the exquisite peace a woman, reared to luxury and social exclusiveness, lay in her deck chair and listened to the talk of men who had known most of the shadows of life and some of its pits of evil, took their homage, too, and found it tasty.

Each had drawn up one of the three-legged, rattan stools which are so common in the Philippines and they were seated one on each side of her. Their talk wandered over many themes, but was always terse and vivid. They agreed in damning the Government. All civilian non-employees do that continually. They spoke of affairs on the island, and discussed the administration of local justice with the simplicity of men who do not quibble over political documents, but who have a strong conviction that the powerful must rule the weak. One of the Japanese divers was making trouble with the launch crew, preaching the inferiority of thewhite race and the drubbing one part of it was destined to receive. “I guess he’s right on the Russians,” said Collingwood. “I believe the Japs will thrash them into the middle of kingdom come; but if he goes to putting on any airs around me, I’ll kick him into the China Sea.”

“No need,” said Maclaughlin cheerily, “I did it for him last week. It did him a world of good.”

“How are findings?”

“None too good. We’ll not make our fortunes this year, but we’ll make our keep, and a little to spare.” The smile on the keen face told Charlotte that the speaker was not dissatisfied.

“How’s Kingsnorth?”

“Just himself.”

“Poor devil,” said Martin feelingly. Maclaughlin broke into a hearty laugh. “Hear the married man,” he cried, “an’ if you could ha’ heard him six months gone, Mrs. Collingwood!”

“I probably shouldn’t have liked it,” said Charlotte dryly.

“Kingsnorth will snort when he hears that Mrs. Snodgrass asked us to dinner,” said Martin. “They don’t like each other,” he explained to his wife. “I can’t say I ever thought she liked memuch till this trip. She thinks I’m likelier to be a respectable member of society, now I’m married. She thinks that because I was a soldier I went about sowing wild oats by the cavan.”

It happened that at the moment he finished the remark, Charlotte’s glance rested on Maclaughlin, whose face was fair in the moonlight. In a flash—in just the instant’s time that it took him to change his expression—she read the man’s judgment that Collingwood owed thanks to his wife for any civility received from Mrs. Snodgrass. A man brought up in the British empire has some sources of knowledge denied the citizens of our great republic. Thirty years of kicking over American frontiers had robbed the Scotchman of many a national trait. They had not obscured his firm fixed impressions of gentility. He knew Martin’s wife for a gentlewoman.

“How did you like Mrs. Snodgrass?” Martin asked his wife.

Charlotte cast about for something truthful and non-committal. “I thought she was very prettily dressed,” she replied, “and that she showed very good taste in her home. It was cosy, and the dinner was excellent.”

“Good heavens, Charlotte! I didn’t ask you that. I asked you how you liked her.”

“She told you,” said Maclaughlin with a short laugh.

“Of course I did,” echoed Charlotte. “I put it in the most forcible way I could. Don’t pretend you did not understand.”

“I understood well enough. I just wanted you to come out and out with what you mean. Why don’t you like her?”

“She is too commonplace and too assuming.”

“What do you mean by commonplace?”

“I mean—I mean—” exasperation brought her to the point of unguarded speech—“a woman who says ‘Don’t you know?’ with every other breath, or tacks on a sweet ‘Isn’t it so?’ or ‘Don’t you think?’ to qualify every word she utters. I mean a woman of exactly Mrs. Snodgrass’s type.”

“Commonplace always means a woman then?”

But by that time Charlotte was laughing, partly at her flash of temper, partly at the odd confusion of her definition, which Martin had so quickly pointed out with his uncompromising finger.

“It doesn’t mean a man like you,” she said. “You are not commonplace, but unique.”

“The only one of my kind,” said Martin yawning. She could see, under his jocularity, his pride and pleasure in her (as he considered) audacity. Her criticisms of the lady meant little to him, except as they were the gauntlet thrown down, the laudable declaration that Martin Collingwood’s wife was not going to stand any patronizing from the regular army. But she realized also that he was flattered by the invitation they had received. To him Lieutenant and Mrs. Snodgrass were people that counted. A pang of contrition shot through her that what had been a sort of social triumph to him had been an unmitigated bore to her. Then a sense of humor came uppermost. The boredom she might conceal. But as well attempt to make water run up hill as to make Charlotte Collingwood regard an acquaintance with Lieutenant and Mrs. Snodgrass as a social triumph. Maclaughlin, who was to take the first watch, went forward, and Collingwood curled himself up, native fashion, on a mat at his wife’s feet. Long after his deep respirations told her that he was fast asleep, she lay with wide open eyes, staring into the silvered pathway ahead of them, her thoughts a blending of regret and of exquisite joy. When,at three o’clock, Maclaughlin came to wake up Martin, she pretended to be asleep, and shortly after she did fall into a slumber, from which she was awakened by her husband’s voice and the word “home.”

She sprang to her feet with an instinctive movement of bewilderment, and then caught her breath for sheer delight in what she saw.

The launch was riding a mile or more off the shore of a wedge-shaped island perhaps three miles in length. Its backbone was a line of hills which rose precipitously from the sea on the eastern side (as she later discovered) but which, on the west sloped gently down to a level coast plain, a quarter of a mile or more broad. The plain and the hills were one huge cocoanut grove. In the foreground, the columned boles and the graceful plumes made a great haunt of emerald shade, a dream place of cool recesses and long cathedral aisles. Its rich, unvarying greenness seemed the more vivid by contrast with the changing hues of the shallow water, with the gleaming whiteness of the beach, and the occasional overtopping of a wave like the dip of a sea-gull’s wings.

At the northern apex of the island, situatedwhere they not only commanded the western sea, but looked eastward over a channel to the coast line of Panay and a scarped mountain rearing its cloud-hung flanks against a lustering sky, three steep nipa-roofed cottages nestled among the palms. Southward, the beach line ran straight till it curved out into a sharp point in front of one of the hills. There stood a small nipa village.

Dawn flushes played across the sky behind the distant mountain, and pearled the shining sea. A great fishingbancamanned by at least twelve oarsmen swept boldly past them. The naked backs were made of rippling bronze. A lorcha, almost on the western horizon line, showed in faint lines and in gleaming spots of mother of pearl. The morning breeze was almost chill.

It came, a crowding of perceptions and sensations, but Charlotte’s pleasure was almost ecstatic.

“Beautiful, beautiful!” she murmured. “It is a veritable paradise.”

“Isit?” said Maclaughlin’s knowing voice behind her. “I’m glad you think so, Mrs. Collingwood. My wife has been doubting you’d find it dull. Martin and I will take ours with a bandstandand a few trolley-cars and a chop-house thrown in, eh, Collingwood?”

“Oh, shut up, Mac, don’t pour cold water on my wife’s enthusiasms. Besides, she’s got a poetic soul, and you and I haven’t.”

Charlotte stared. “What will you endow me with next?” she asked. “A poetic soul! Martin, who has been talking about poetry for the last two months?”

“I don’t mind admitting,” said Mr. Collingwood shamelessly, “that I have, or, at least, I’ve been dwelling on the poetry of love and I found you responsive. Therefore I deduced a poetic soul—sort of Sherlock Holmes. Sabe?”

She made no reply beyond one of those reproachful head shakes which indicate the compromise between duty and inclination. Martin grinned. He knew when she tried to be severe, but was yet secretly pleased with him.

Charlotte did what she could to repair the dishevelled appearance caused by sleeping dressed in the steamer chair. A few minutes later, they were all in the boat, speeding straight for the nipa cottages. Martin explained that the launch could goin no further on account of the coral reef; but, he said, a mile or more to the southward, where the hill jutted out, there was a channel cut through the reef, and the launch could come close in and find anchorage in a pool which lay under the cliff. A rude pier had been constructed there, and there their freight would be landed and then dragged up to them along the beach in a carabao cart; for they had one draft animal. He further informed her that the launch lay down at the anchorage every night, and came up abreast the cottages every morning to pick up the fishers, for it was easier to be rowed out than to trudge down the mile of sand.

As they drew near the shore, Charlotte perceived that, in spite of the steep roofs, the cottages had something of an American air, having broad verandas in front; while one, which she imagined must be the Maclaughlin home, was covered with morning glory vines. The houses sat back about fifty yards from the beach, just where the cocoanut grove came to an end, and it was evident that the sea breeze made them deliciously cool.

A man was pacing up and down the beach, and, as the boat grounded, a woman emerged from the vine-wreathed cottage, and came swiftly on, flappinga kitchen apron which she was wearing, and making other gestures of welcome. Charlotte had little time to observe either closely, for her attention was quite taken up with the novel preparations for landing her and her companions. Full thirty feet of water intervened between them and the dry sand, not deep enough to drown in, but quite enough to spoil dress and shoes. The Filipino oarsmen met the difficulty, however, by rolling up their trousers and going overboard. They made a chair of their clasped hands, and Charlotte, seating herself therein, was carried ashore and set down in front of Mrs. Maclaughlin.

Mrs. Maclaughlin was tall and bony with iron-gray hair and a large featured, strong face, characteristic of the pioneer. She was not shy, and she seized Mrs. Collingwood by both hands and kissed her, then held her off for inspection.

“Well, Martin Collingwood’s a fool for luck,” she remarked. “I never thought he’d get a nice, peart, stylish girl like you to follow him off to a place like this. You’re either mad—and you don’t look it—or you’re worse in love than any woman ever was before you.”

The informality of the greeting took Charlotte’sbreath. As she stood blushing, a large, brown, and well-made hand was extended to her.

“How do you do, Mrs. Collingwood?” said a voice in the refined accents of the upper class Englishman. “I don’t need to introduce myself, do I? Martin has told you all about us, and there are not enough of us to confuse. Don’t let Mrs. Mac’s plainness of speech annoy you. When you are well acquainted, you’ll rather like it. It breaks the monotony of things.”

She tried to make some trivial, laughing rejoinder; but the words faltered on her lips, for, as she glanced up into his eyes, she saw there the instant recognition of all that she was, the interrogation flashing into quickly throttled life, as to why she was Martin Collingwood’s wife, and what she could possibly have to do with a colony of fisher folk composed of one insouciant blade of fortune, two typical bits of western flotsam, and a renegade from decent society.

Chapter VIIOn a certain cloudless September morning eight months later, five persons were merrily disporting themselves in the warm billows that rolled upon the island beach. It was one of those radiantly clear mornings which so often occur in the tropical rainy seasons when every particle of dust has been washed out of the air, and the morning breeze is of a spring-like freshness. The sun had not yet peeped over the Antique coast range, but the mountain flanks were outlined in soft mauve and gray against the glowing sky. A fishing fleet off the coast showed tints of pearl, and thin threads of masts above the quiet sea. Westward there was a sapphire expanse, and a whole string of lorchas, every inch of canvas set to take advantage of the fresh wind, standing across on a tack for San José or Cuyo.Charlotte Collingwood, slipping out of the water, paused an instant to breathe deeply and to feast her eyes upon the solitary beauty of the scene, beforeshe betook herself to housekeeping cares. Then hastening across the short extent of ground between the beach and her cottage, she sought her bathroom and the brisk dousing with fresh water that would remove the sticky effects of the sea bath.Half an hour later she emerged from her bedroom as hearty looking a young woman as you could desire to see. Her shapely figure, clad in a simple white piqué dress, was considerably fuller than it had been in her hospital days, though it had not degenerated into stoutness. Her skin was still colorless, for color once faded in the tropics is gone forever; but her face was fuller, her eye brighter, her expression one of happiness and content.The room which she contemplated with a possessive and complacent eye was one so typical of American housekeeping in the Philippines that it merits description. It was a perfectly square apartment, generous in its proportion. Two sides were almost entirely taken up by windows opening on a deep-eaved veranda. The series of shell lattices were pushed back to their fullest extent, and on the broad window-seats were rows of potted ferns, rose geraniums, and foliage plants, some in gleaming brass jardinières, some in old blue andwhite Chinese jars. The walls were of the plaited bamboo in its natural color calledsuali; but the woodwork of soft American pine had been carefully burnt by Charlotte herself, and gave some richness of coloring. The floor of close tied bamboo slats was covered with blue and white Japanese mats. One inside wall was almost entirely hidden by a great Romblon mat, upon which Collingwood’s collection of spears, bolos, and head axes was artfully displayed. Beneath this, an army cot, a mattress, and some blue and white Japanese crêpe had been combined into a tempting couch heaped with pillows. The other inside wall held a very fair collection of hats, ranging from the cheap sun-defence of the field laborer to the old-time aristocrat’s head-piece of tortoise-shell ornamented with silver. Below these were some home-made shelves with Charlotte’s books upon them. One corner was occupied by a desk of carved teak inlaid with mother of pearl, a veritable treasure which Kingsnorth had given to Charlotte as a wedding present. Another corner held a tall, brass-bound Korean chest of drawers, which Charlotte had picked up at an auction in Manila. A suit of Moro armor in carabao horn and link copper hung besidethis, and everywhere there was brass—brass samovars from Manchuria, incense burners from Japan, Moro gongs and betel-nut boxes, an Indian tea table with its shining tray. Wherever there was room for them, framed photographs decorated the walls. Rattan easy-chairs and rockers and a steamer chair with gay cushions lent a homely comfort to the apartment.As the room was living-room and dining-room combined, its centre was occupied by a round narra-table—a beautiful piece of old Spanish workmanship, the glories of which were hidden at that moment by the whitest of cloths—and a service of Japanese blue and white china. There, too, gleamed the remains of the Maryland silver which had once been the pride of a county—the great breakfast tray with its urn and attendant dishes, the heavy knives and forks and spoons. It had lain for twenty years in chests, and Charlotte had brought it with her to the Philippines, not so much anticipating a use for it, as making it the evidence of final separation from all that her life had known.Mrs. Collingwood never ceased to contemplate her living-room, and especially her table, with satisfaction. The snowy linen, the gleaming silver andglass, stood for her tastes. She could remember vividly the depression she had experienced at meal times during her first two weeks at the island, when the mess made its headquarters with the Maclaughlins. Mrs. Maclaughlin’s dream of table luxury was a red and white checked cloth, much colored glass in the form of tumblers, sugar bowl, cream pitcher, and vinegar cruets, a set of brown and white “semi-porcelain” dishes, and knives and forks of German silver. Charlotte had endured the meals for which Martin had half-way prepared her, by the exercise of fortitude only; but she had waited patiently for Mrs. Maclaughlin’s own suggestion of a division of labor.It happened that Mrs. Maclaughlin greatly desired to devote herself to poultry and gardening. The islanders had to depend wholly upon poultry, fish, pigs, and goats for meat, and upon tinned vegetables. Everybody yearned for green foods and better meats, so that Mrs. Maclaughlin’s ambitions received a hearty support. A kitchen was added to the Collingwood quarters, the stove and kitchen utensils were transferred, and Charlotte found plenty of occupation in her new duties.The work was naturally to her taste. She possessedan ample home-making instinct, and she had had, in addition to the usual “Domestic Science” course of a modern college, her nurse’s training in dietetics. Collingwood’s exuberant delight in the changes she made in their manner of living was just second to Kingsnorth’s. For decency’s sake, that gentleman had refrained from comment in Mrs. Maclaughlin’s presence; but after their first meal he had taken Mrs. Collingwood aside, and had assured her with unmistakable sincerity that she was no less than a fairy godmother in their midst. He execrated Mrs. Maclaughlin’s cooking, her taste in foods, and her ideas of table service; and his gratitude to Charlotte was profound.Mrs. Collingwood was contemplating her breakfast table and smiling softly at the memory, when her husband came out of their bedroom in his working clothes—flannel shirt, khaki trousers, and sea boots. He gave her a hearty kiss.“You vain creature,” he said, “looking at your housekeeping and thinking how you can lay it over Mrs. Mac.”“That wouldn’t be much to do. Do you remember that red and white tablecloth?”“Don’t I? And how Kingsnorth used to curseit!” He eyed her reflectively. “Kingsnorth is mighty grateful to you, Charlotte, and mighty fond of you.”To this, at first, no answer was returned. Mrs. Collingwood fingered a bowl which stood in the window, flushed slightly, and looked embarrassed. At last, as if his continued silence demanded response, she said perfunctorily:“Well, of course, if I have made things pleasanter for him, incidentally, in doing it for you, I’m glad.”“That’s the only thing you’ve disappointed me in. I wanted you and him to be good friends. I think he has tried, but you have been stubborn; there’s no denying that, pet.”“I’ve tried my very hardest. I’m sorry, Martin. You’ll have to give me time.”“Give you all the time you want,” he cried gayly. “But you’ll have to come round in the end.” She shrugged her shoulders half seriously, half teasingly, but a reply was obviated by the entrance of the Maclaughlins and of the person under discussion.The Englishman, beak nosed, high nostrilled, fair, and tall, was typical of his race. But drinkhad dulled his eye, his skin was flabby, and an unspeakable air of degeneration hung about him. Even the exaggerated deference of his manner to Mrs. Collingwood seemed a travesty upon the once easy courtesy of the well-born Briton. As for Charlotte, she stiffened perceptibly. Try as she would, she could not overcome her proud resentment at being expected to associate with John Kingsnorth.“Any special plans for to-day, Mrs. Collingwood?” Kingsnorth demanded as they sat down to breakfast.“There never are any, I believe. I am going to make a lemon pie under the direct supervision of Mrs. Maclaughlin. My husband has impressed it upon me that I can never fulfil his ideal of a cook till I can make such lemon pies as Mrs. Maclaughlin does.”In a second Kingsnorth’s manner changed, just a fine hostile change which implied that no pie made by Mrs. Maclaughlin’s recipes could interest him. “Withlimoncitos” he said slightingly, “or with those big knotty yellow things that the women use in laundering theircamisas?”“Why, you are quite up in native customs,” Charlotteexclaimed. “I didn’t know that. Are you sure?”A faintly cynical smile played for an instant over Kingsnorth’s features. “Oh, yes, I’m sure,” he replied.Charlotte became suddenly aware of a changed atmosphere. Martin and Maclaughlin were looking discreetly into their plates, Mrs. Maclaughlin was gazing with a hostile eye at Kingsnorth.“You certainly do know a great deal about Filipino customs,” she said meaningly.“You keep still, Jenny,” Maclaughlin threw in hastily. His wife tossed her head scornfully, but subsided. Kingsnorth went on eating. His expression was not agreeable. Charlotte threw herself into the silence that followed.“Martin, who is that bucolic looking Japanese that I saw strolling up the beach this morning?”“Bucolic! What do you mean by that long word? You are always springing the dictionary upon me.”This charge was an indication that Collingwood was highly pleased. It was the nearest open tribute he ever paid to his wife’s education. She made no reply but smiled at him, indulgent of his wit.“Well, explain,” Martin went on teasingly. “What does it mean?” But Charlotte only went on smiling.“Greek for hayseed,” Kingsnorth put in lightly. “You knowthatword, Collingwood?”“Right you are. He is a hayseed. That is our new diver. He came down on the lorcha last week, and we picked him up with the launch. Been promenading around here, did you say?”“In kimono and parasol,” said Charlotte.“Well, he goes to work to-morrow. He won’t get much more time to parade.”“Have you three divers, then?”“No. The fellow that Mac kicked hasn’t been able to get over it. He resigned immediately, but I succeeded in convincing him that he couldn’t quit the job till I got a new man in his place. I believe he wants to go to law about it.”“Can he make any trouble? Isn’t that taking the law into your own hands?”Martin shrugged his shoulders. Kingsnorth laughed. “It would be dangerous on British soil,” he said, “but not under the great republic. Who is going to tack back and forth across this channel in a lorcha or a parao, because a Jap got kicked?His nearest magistrate is a Filipinojuez de pazon the Antique coast. I wish him joy of all the law he can get there. When it comes to the island of Maylubi, Martin, Mac, and I are the law. ‘L’état, c’est nous.’”Mrs. Collingwood smiled discreetly at the French, and pushed her chair back. Kingsnorth often threw a phrase of French into his speech, and she felt that it was aimed directly at her, and implied an exclusion of the others from their superior plane of conversation. It was not an act characteristic of an Englishman of his class, and she realized that only the intensity of his desire to establish himself on a footing of intimacy could induce him to use such methods.They all walked down to the beach together, and after Charlotte had watched their row-boat pull alongside the launch, she sat down on a bit of sand grass beneath a cocoanut tree and revelled in the morning breeze. It was a “four man breeze” as they say when four men are needed on the outriggers of theparaos; and more than one deep-sea fishing craft swept by with its four naked squatting outriders sitting at ease on their well sprayed stations with the great sail bellying above them. Asthe tide went out, troops of children wandered up the beach, digging skilfully with their toes for clams, or pouncing with shrieks of delight on some stranded jelly fish. From the field beyond the house, their gardener could be heard hissing at their one draft animal, and once in awhile Mrs. Maclaughlin’s voice arose in a rain of pigeon Spanish as she bent over her garden beds, or ranged through her poultry yards.It was very lonely, but Charlotte did not mind it. Barring the discomforts of their experiences in the early days with Mrs. Maclaughlin’s food, and the difficulty of holding John Kingsnorth in his place without betraying her feelings about him to Martin, she might have said that her island life hardly boasted of the crumpled rose leaf. Even Kingsnorth’s evident determination to be accepted as an intimate, did not imply a desire to establish any sentimental relation to herself, nor could she explain to her whole satisfaction just why she so vigorously thwarted him. She was only conscious of feeling that to accept his tacit offer of good fellowship was a clearly defined step downward, an open throwing over of standards which, if she had endangered them by her marriage, she had still high hopes ofmaintaining, and to which she hoped ultimately to win her husband.On the whole, her thoughts were very sweet and wholesome as she sat there in the growing warmth. More than once a sense of housekeeping responsibility urged her to rise and betake herself indoors, but she could not bring herself to disturb her reverie till a respectful cough attracted her attention.An old man and a young girl, carrying a child in her arms, stood a few feet away. The man was dressed in spotless white trousers with a Chinese shirt of white muslin. One sleeve was decorously adorned with a black mourning band, and his white bamboo plaited hat was also wreathed in sable. The girl was dressed in the deepest of Filipino mourning—black calico skirt, black alpacatapis, or apron, and acamisaof thin barred black net, shiny and stiff with starch. Through its gauzy texture her white chemise, trimmed with scarlet embroidery, showed garishly, while the immense sleeves made no pretence of hiding her plump, gold-colored arms. Her face, of a veryMalaysiantype, was decidedly pretty, and the haughty column of her neck and a wealth of jetty hair lent still further charm. As she caught Charlotte’s eye, shestepped forward, throwing back, as she did so, the black veil which had hidden the child’s face.Charlotte’s first exclamation of surprise and pity was followed by an indignant flush. The child, which was evidently dying of anæmia, was amestizo. Its blue eye, its almost fair hair above a pasty skin and something indefinably British in the stamp of its expression betrayed its paternity at once.The man spoke neither Spanish nor English, and the girl had only a few phrases of each; but with Charlotte’s command of the vernacular she managed to get a few facts in some sort of sequence. For brevity and to spare the reader an elliptical conversation in three languages they can be set down as Charlotte summed them up afterwards.The man was the child’s grandfather; the girl, its aunt. Its mother had died a week or so before at a village on the Antique coast. The woman and her people had lived with Kingsnorth openly in his house up to the morning of theseñora Americana’sarrival. At that time Kingsnorth had come in in great excitement, had bundled them all off in short order, and had established them in the coast village.As he was their only source of income, they accepted his mandate without question.But the mother had died, of what they could not make quite clear, though the girl pressed her hands upon her heart and repeated “muy, muy triste” more than once. After the mother’s death, the baby lacked nourishment, though its father gave money to buy milk. They had come over on a fishparaoto show it to its father, and had received orders to keep out of Mrs. Collingwood’s way; but hearing from the villagers of that lady’s skill in curing the sick and of her willingness to use it, they could not forbear bringing the child to her. But with tears, they besought her to keep the secret. The old man made a very fair representation of bestowing a hearty kick, and the girl, weeping, ejaculated “Pega, pega mucho,” many times.Charlotte had been interested during her hospital experience in a series of experiments made by one of the surgeons in infant-feeding. The mortality among Filipino children is enormous, and much attention is given to infant care. It happened that she had been trying the food process on one or two babies in the village, and it was doubtless thenews of that fact which had induced the people to risk Kingsnorth’s anger and appeal to her.She led them homeward, gave the child some nourishment, and set to work to show the girl how to prepare the canned milk for future use. It was not till they had departed that she realized that they had not said whether ornotthe mother had been legally married. Later she decided that the fact was immaterial, but she was inclined to believe the child illegitimate.For the next ten days the girl presented herself with the child for treatment. She watched carefully to see that the fishers had gone each day, and that Mrs. Maclaughlin was not around. The child thrived, and with returning health showed a somewhat engaging appearance.Charlotte could never be quite certain of her reasons for keeping silence to her husband on the subject. At first undoubtedly she desired to avoid making trouble for the old man and the girl; but later, when Mrs. Maclaughlin had met the girl face to face on Charlotte’s veranda steps, and she knew the fact had been retailed to Maclaughlin and to the other men, she was still wordless. For a few days the sullen demeanor of Kingsnorth showedthat he dumbly resented her knowledge; but in the end hisprotégésestablished themselves in the village, and when Charlotte walked that way she often saw his taffy-colored son, in a single garment, staring with incongruous blue eyes from the floor of a nipa shack.What was stranger, even, than anything else, Mrs. Maclaughlin showed an eager desire to avoid the subject. Charlotte had anticipated, with some dread, that the lady would break forth garrulously once the cat was out of the bag; but she was most pleasantly disappointed. Between herself and Martin the matter was never mentioned. There were times when she would have liked to ask him what he had really expected her to do before Kingsnorth saved the situation by packing off hisimpedimenta; but she was afraid that, if the subject were ever opened up between them, she would express herself too frankly, and she was too thoroughly happy with her husband to care to risk disturbing their satisfaction in each other. As time went on, she ceased to give the matter any thought at all. After all, she reflected, had she not known it all potentially the first time she ever saw Kingsnorth? What did the addition of a few specificdata matter? At that time all her will was bent to the determination to make the best of her romance, to be happy at any cost, and to postpone indefinitely, if not ultimately, any hour of settlement.

Chapter VII

On a certain cloudless September morning eight months later, five persons were merrily disporting themselves in the warm billows that rolled upon the island beach. It was one of those radiantly clear mornings which so often occur in the tropical rainy seasons when every particle of dust has been washed out of the air, and the morning breeze is of a spring-like freshness. The sun had not yet peeped over the Antique coast range, but the mountain flanks were outlined in soft mauve and gray against the glowing sky. A fishing fleet off the coast showed tints of pearl, and thin threads of masts above the quiet sea. Westward there was a sapphire expanse, and a whole string of lorchas, every inch of canvas set to take advantage of the fresh wind, standing across on a tack for San José or Cuyo.Charlotte Collingwood, slipping out of the water, paused an instant to breathe deeply and to feast her eyes upon the solitary beauty of the scene, beforeshe betook herself to housekeeping cares. Then hastening across the short extent of ground between the beach and her cottage, she sought her bathroom and the brisk dousing with fresh water that would remove the sticky effects of the sea bath.Half an hour later she emerged from her bedroom as hearty looking a young woman as you could desire to see. Her shapely figure, clad in a simple white piqué dress, was considerably fuller than it had been in her hospital days, though it had not degenerated into stoutness. Her skin was still colorless, for color once faded in the tropics is gone forever; but her face was fuller, her eye brighter, her expression one of happiness and content.The room which she contemplated with a possessive and complacent eye was one so typical of American housekeeping in the Philippines that it merits description. It was a perfectly square apartment, generous in its proportion. Two sides were almost entirely taken up by windows opening on a deep-eaved veranda. The series of shell lattices were pushed back to their fullest extent, and on the broad window-seats were rows of potted ferns, rose geraniums, and foliage plants, some in gleaming brass jardinières, some in old blue andwhite Chinese jars. The walls were of the plaited bamboo in its natural color calledsuali; but the woodwork of soft American pine had been carefully burnt by Charlotte herself, and gave some richness of coloring. The floor of close tied bamboo slats was covered with blue and white Japanese mats. One inside wall was almost entirely hidden by a great Romblon mat, upon which Collingwood’s collection of spears, bolos, and head axes was artfully displayed. Beneath this, an army cot, a mattress, and some blue and white Japanese crêpe had been combined into a tempting couch heaped with pillows. The other inside wall held a very fair collection of hats, ranging from the cheap sun-defence of the field laborer to the old-time aristocrat’s head-piece of tortoise-shell ornamented with silver. Below these were some home-made shelves with Charlotte’s books upon them. One corner was occupied by a desk of carved teak inlaid with mother of pearl, a veritable treasure which Kingsnorth had given to Charlotte as a wedding present. Another corner held a tall, brass-bound Korean chest of drawers, which Charlotte had picked up at an auction in Manila. A suit of Moro armor in carabao horn and link copper hung besidethis, and everywhere there was brass—brass samovars from Manchuria, incense burners from Japan, Moro gongs and betel-nut boxes, an Indian tea table with its shining tray. Wherever there was room for them, framed photographs decorated the walls. Rattan easy-chairs and rockers and a steamer chair with gay cushions lent a homely comfort to the apartment.As the room was living-room and dining-room combined, its centre was occupied by a round narra-table—a beautiful piece of old Spanish workmanship, the glories of which were hidden at that moment by the whitest of cloths—and a service of Japanese blue and white china. There, too, gleamed the remains of the Maryland silver which had once been the pride of a county—the great breakfast tray with its urn and attendant dishes, the heavy knives and forks and spoons. It had lain for twenty years in chests, and Charlotte had brought it with her to the Philippines, not so much anticipating a use for it, as making it the evidence of final separation from all that her life had known.Mrs. Collingwood never ceased to contemplate her living-room, and especially her table, with satisfaction. The snowy linen, the gleaming silver andglass, stood for her tastes. She could remember vividly the depression she had experienced at meal times during her first two weeks at the island, when the mess made its headquarters with the Maclaughlins. Mrs. Maclaughlin’s dream of table luxury was a red and white checked cloth, much colored glass in the form of tumblers, sugar bowl, cream pitcher, and vinegar cruets, a set of brown and white “semi-porcelain” dishes, and knives and forks of German silver. Charlotte had endured the meals for which Martin had half-way prepared her, by the exercise of fortitude only; but she had waited patiently for Mrs. Maclaughlin’s own suggestion of a division of labor.It happened that Mrs. Maclaughlin greatly desired to devote herself to poultry and gardening. The islanders had to depend wholly upon poultry, fish, pigs, and goats for meat, and upon tinned vegetables. Everybody yearned for green foods and better meats, so that Mrs. Maclaughlin’s ambitions received a hearty support. A kitchen was added to the Collingwood quarters, the stove and kitchen utensils were transferred, and Charlotte found plenty of occupation in her new duties.The work was naturally to her taste. She possessedan ample home-making instinct, and she had had, in addition to the usual “Domestic Science” course of a modern college, her nurse’s training in dietetics. Collingwood’s exuberant delight in the changes she made in their manner of living was just second to Kingsnorth’s. For decency’s sake, that gentleman had refrained from comment in Mrs. Maclaughlin’s presence; but after their first meal he had taken Mrs. Collingwood aside, and had assured her with unmistakable sincerity that she was no less than a fairy godmother in their midst. He execrated Mrs. Maclaughlin’s cooking, her taste in foods, and her ideas of table service; and his gratitude to Charlotte was profound.Mrs. Collingwood was contemplating her breakfast table and smiling softly at the memory, when her husband came out of their bedroom in his working clothes—flannel shirt, khaki trousers, and sea boots. He gave her a hearty kiss.“You vain creature,” he said, “looking at your housekeeping and thinking how you can lay it over Mrs. Mac.”“That wouldn’t be much to do. Do you remember that red and white tablecloth?”“Don’t I? And how Kingsnorth used to curseit!” He eyed her reflectively. “Kingsnorth is mighty grateful to you, Charlotte, and mighty fond of you.”To this, at first, no answer was returned. Mrs. Collingwood fingered a bowl which stood in the window, flushed slightly, and looked embarrassed. At last, as if his continued silence demanded response, she said perfunctorily:“Well, of course, if I have made things pleasanter for him, incidentally, in doing it for you, I’m glad.”“That’s the only thing you’ve disappointed me in. I wanted you and him to be good friends. I think he has tried, but you have been stubborn; there’s no denying that, pet.”“I’ve tried my very hardest. I’m sorry, Martin. You’ll have to give me time.”“Give you all the time you want,” he cried gayly. “But you’ll have to come round in the end.” She shrugged her shoulders half seriously, half teasingly, but a reply was obviated by the entrance of the Maclaughlins and of the person under discussion.The Englishman, beak nosed, high nostrilled, fair, and tall, was typical of his race. But drinkhad dulled his eye, his skin was flabby, and an unspeakable air of degeneration hung about him. Even the exaggerated deference of his manner to Mrs. Collingwood seemed a travesty upon the once easy courtesy of the well-born Briton. As for Charlotte, she stiffened perceptibly. Try as she would, she could not overcome her proud resentment at being expected to associate with John Kingsnorth.“Any special plans for to-day, Mrs. Collingwood?” Kingsnorth demanded as they sat down to breakfast.“There never are any, I believe. I am going to make a lemon pie under the direct supervision of Mrs. Maclaughlin. My husband has impressed it upon me that I can never fulfil his ideal of a cook till I can make such lemon pies as Mrs. Maclaughlin does.”In a second Kingsnorth’s manner changed, just a fine hostile change which implied that no pie made by Mrs. Maclaughlin’s recipes could interest him. “Withlimoncitos” he said slightingly, “or with those big knotty yellow things that the women use in laundering theircamisas?”“Why, you are quite up in native customs,” Charlotteexclaimed. “I didn’t know that. Are you sure?”A faintly cynical smile played for an instant over Kingsnorth’s features. “Oh, yes, I’m sure,” he replied.Charlotte became suddenly aware of a changed atmosphere. Martin and Maclaughlin were looking discreetly into their plates, Mrs. Maclaughlin was gazing with a hostile eye at Kingsnorth.“You certainly do know a great deal about Filipino customs,” she said meaningly.“You keep still, Jenny,” Maclaughlin threw in hastily. His wife tossed her head scornfully, but subsided. Kingsnorth went on eating. His expression was not agreeable. Charlotte threw herself into the silence that followed.“Martin, who is that bucolic looking Japanese that I saw strolling up the beach this morning?”“Bucolic! What do you mean by that long word? You are always springing the dictionary upon me.”This charge was an indication that Collingwood was highly pleased. It was the nearest open tribute he ever paid to his wife’s education. She made no reply but smiled at him, indulgent of his wit.“Well, explain,” Martin went on teasingly. “What does it mean?” But Charlotte only went on smiling.“Greek for hayseed,” Kingsnorth put in lightly. “You knowthatword, Collingwood?”“Right you are. He is a hayseed. That is our new diver. He came down on the lorcha last week, and we picked him up with the launch. Been promenading around here, did you say?”“In kimono and parasol,” said Charlotte.“Well, he goes to work to-morrow. He won’t get much more time to parade.”“Have you three divers, then?”“No. The fellow that Mac kicked hasn’t been able to get over it. He resigned immediately, but I succeeded in convincing him that he couldn’t quit the job till I got a new man in his place. I believe he wants to go to law about it.”“Can he make any trouble? Isn’t that taking the law into your own hands?”Martin shrugged his shoulders. Kingsnorth laughed. “It would be dangerous on British soil,” he said, “but not under the great republic. Who is going to tack back and forth across this channel in a lorcha or a parao, because a Jap got kicked?His nearest magistrate is a Filipinojuez de pazon the Antique coast. I wish him joy of all the law he can get there. When it comes to the island of Maylubi, Martin, Mac, and I are the law. ‘L’état, c’est nous.’”Mrs. Collingwood smiled discreetly at the French, and pushed her chair back. Kingsnorth often threw a phrase of French into his speech, and she felt that it was aimed directly at her, and implied an exclusion of the others from their superior plane of conversation. It was not an act characteristic of an Englishman of his class, and she realized that only the intensity of his desire to establish himself on a footing of intimacy could induce him to use such methods.They all walked down to the beach together, and after Charlotte had watched their row-boat pull alongside the launch, she sat down on a bit of sand grass beneath a cocoanut tree and revelled in the morning breeze. It was a “four man breeze” as they say when four men are needed on the outriggers of theparaos; and more than one deep-sea fishing craft swept by with its four naked squatting outriders sitting at ease on their well sprayed stations with the great sail bellying above them. Asthe tide went out, troops of children wandered up the beach, digging skilfully with their toes for clams, or pouncing with shrieks of delight on some stranded jelly fish. From the field beyond the house, their gardener could be heard hissing at their one draft animal, and once in awhile Mrs. Maclaughlin’s voice arose in a rain of pigeon Spanish as she bent over her garden beds, or ranged through her poultry yards.It was very lonely, but Charlotte did not mind it. Barring the discomforts of their experiences in the early days with Mrs. Maclaughlin’s food, and the difficulty of holding John Kingsnorth in his place without betraying her feelings about him to Martin, she might have said that her island life hardly boasted of the crumpled rose leaf. Even Kingsnorth’s evident determination to be accepted as an intimate, did not imply a desire to establish any sentimental relation to herself, nor could she explain to her whole satisfaction just why she so vigorously thwarted him. She was only conscious of feeling that to accept his tacit offer of good fellowship was a clearly defined step downward, an open throwing over of standards which, if she had endangered them by her marriage, she had still high hopes ofmaintaining, and to which she hoped ultimately to win her husband.On the whole, her thoughts were very sweet and wholesome as she sat there in the growing warmth. More than once a sense of housekeeping responsibility urged her to rise and betake herself indoors, but she could not bring herself to disturb her reverie till a respectful cough attracted her attention.An old man and a young girl, carrying a child in her arms, stood a few feet away. The man was dressed in spotless white trousers with a Chinese shirt of white muslin. One sleeve was decorously adorned with a black mourning band, and his white bamboo plaited hat was also wreathed in sable. The girl was dressed in the deepest of Filipino mourning—black calico skirt, black alpacatapis, or apron, and acamisaof thin barred black net, shiny and stiff with starch. Through its gauzy texture her white chemise, trimmed with scarlet embroidery, showed garishly, while the immense sleeves made no pretence of hiding her plump, gold-colored arms. Her face, of a veryMalaysiantype, was decidedly pretty, and the haughty column of her neck and a wealth of jetty hair lent still further charm. As she caught Charlotte’s eye, shestepped forward, throwing back, as she did so, the black veil which had hidden the child’s face.Charlotte’s first exclamation of surprise and pity was followed by an indignant flush. The child, which was evidently dying of anæmia, was amestizo. Its blue eye, its almost fair hair above a pasty skin and something indefinably British in the stamp of its expression betrayed its paternity at once.The man spoke neither Spanish nor English, and the girl had only a few phrases of each; but with Charlotte’s command of the vernacular she managed to get a few facts in some sort of sequence. For brevity and to spare the reader an elliptical conversation in three languages they can be set down as Charlotte summed them up afterwards.The man was the child’s grandfather; the girl, its aunt. Its mother had died a week or so before at a village on the Antique coast. The woman and her people had lived with Kingsnorth openly in his house up to the morning of theseñora Americana’sarrival. At that time Kingsnorth had come in in great excitement, had bundled them all off in short order, and had established them in the coast village.As he was their only source of income, they accepted his mandate without question.But the mother had died, of what they could not make quite clear, though the girl pressed her hands upon her heart and repeated “muy, muy triste” more than once. After the mother’s death, the baby lacked nourishment, though its father gave money to buy milk. They had come over on a fishparaoto show it to its father, and had received orders to keep out of Mrs. Collingwood’s way; but hearing from the villagers of that lady’s skill in curing the sick and of her willingness to use it, they could not forbear bringing the child to her. But with tears, they besought her to keep the secret. The old man made a very fair representation of bestowing a hearty kick, and the girl, weeping, ejaculated “Pega, pega mucho,” many times.Charlotte had been interested during her hospital experience in a series of experiments made by one of the surgeons in infant-feeding. The mortality among Filipino children is enormous, and much attention is given to infant care. It happened that she had been trying the food process on one or two babies in the village, and it was doubtless thenews of that fact which had induced the people to risk Kingsnorth’s anger and appeal to her.She led them homeward, gave the child some nourishment, and set to work to show the girl how to prepare the canned milk for future use. It was not till they had departed that she realized that they had not said whether ornotthe mother had been legally married. Later she decided that the fact was immaterial, but she was inclined to believe the child illegitimate.For the next ten days the girl presented herself with the child for treatment. She watched carefully to see that the fishers had gone each day, and that Mrs. Maclaughlin was not around. The child thrived, and with returning health showed a somewhat engaging appearance.Charlotte could never be quite certain of her reasons for keeping silence to her husband on the subject. At first undoubtedly she desired to avoid making trouble for the old man and the girl; but later, when Mrs. Maclaughlin had met the girl face to face on Charlotte’s veranda steps, and she knew the fact had been retailed to Maclaughlin and to the other men, she was still wordless. For a few days the sullen demeanor of Kingsnorth showedthat he dumbly resented her knowledge; but in the end hisprotégésestablished themselves in the village, and when Charlotte walked that way she often saw his taffy-colored son, in a single garment, staring with incongruous blue eyes from the floor of a nipa shack.What was stranger, even, than anything else, Mrs. Maclaughlin showed an eager desire to avoid the subject. Charlotte had anticipated, with some dread, that the lady would break forth garrulously once the cat was out of the bag; but she was most pleasantly disappointed. Between herself and Martin the matter was never mentioned. There were times when she would have liked to ask him what he had really expected her to do before Kingsnorth saved the situation by packing off hisimpedimenta; but she was afraid that, if the subject were ever opened up between them, she would express herself too frankly, and she was too thoroughly happy with her husband to care to risk disturbing their satisfaction in each other. As time went on, she ceased to give the matter any thought at all. After all, she reflected, had she not known it all potentially the first time she ever saw Kingsnorth? What did the addition of a few specificdata matter? At that time all her will was bent to the determination to make the best of her romance, to be happy at any cost, and to postpone indefinitely, if not ultimately, any hour of settlement.

On a certain cloudless September morning eight months later, five persons were merrily disporting themselves in the warm billows that rolled upon the island beach. It was one of those radiantly clear mornings which so often occur in the tropical rainy seasons when every particle of dust has been washed out of the air, and the morning breeze is of a spring-like freshness. The sun had not yet peeped over the Antique coast range, but the mountain flanks were outlined in soft mauve and gray against the glowing sky. A fishing fleet off the coast showed tints of pearl, and thin threads of masts above the quiet sea. Westward there was a sapphire expanse, and a whole string of lorchas, every inch of canvas set to take advantage of the fresh wind, standing across on a tack for San José or Cuyo.

Charlotte Collingwood, slipping out of the water, paused an instant to breathe deeply and to feast her eyes upon the solitary beauty of the scene, beforeshe betook herself to housekeeping cares. Then hastening across the short extent of ground between the beach and her cottage, she sought her bathroom and the brisk dousing with fresh water that would remove the sticky effects of the sea bath.

Half an hour later she emerged from her bedroom as hearty looking a young woman as you could desire to see. Her shapely figure, clad in a simple white piqué dress, was considerably fuller than it had been in her hospital days, though it had not degenerated into stoutness. Her skin was still colorless, for color once faded in the tropics is gone forever; but her face was fuller, her eye brighter, her expression one of happiness and content.

The room which she contemplated with a possessive and complacent eye was one so typical of American housekeeping in the Philippines that it merits description. It was a perfectly square apartment, generous in its proportion. Two sides were almost entirely taken up by windows opening on a deep-eaved veranda. The series of shell lattices were pushed back to their fullest extent, and on the broad window-seats were rows of potted ferns, rose geraniums, and foliage plants, some in gleaming brass jardinières, some in old blue andwhite Chinese jars. The walls were of the plaited bamboo in its natural color calledsuali; but the woodwork of soft American pine had been carefully burnt by Charlotte herself, and gave some richness of coloring. The floor of close tied bamboo slats was covered with blue and white Japanese mats. One inside wall was almost entirely hidden by a great Romblon mat, upon which Collingwood’s collection of spears, bolos, and head axes was artfully displayed. Beneath this, an army cot, a mattress, and some blue and white Japanese crêpe had been combined into a tempting couch heaped with pillows. The other inside wall held a very fair collection of hats, ranging from the cheap sun-defence of the field laborer to the old-time aristocrat’s head-piece of tortoise-shell ornamented with silver. Below these were some home-made shelves with Charlotte’s books upon them. One corner was occupied by a desk of carved teak inlaid with mother of pearl, a veritable treasure which Kingsnorth had given to Charlotte as a wedding present. Another corner held a tall, brass-bound Korean chest of drawers, which Charlotte had picked up at an auction in Manila. A suit of Moro armor in carabao horn and link copper hung besidethis, and everywhere there was brass—brass samovars from Manchuria, incense burners from Japan, Moro gongs and betel-nut boxes, an Indian tea table with its shining tray. Wherever there was room for them, framed photographs decorated the walls. Rattan easy-chairs and rockers and a steamer chair with gay cushions lent a homely comfort to the apartment.

As the room was living-room and dining-room combined, its centre was occupied by a round narra-table—a beautiful piece of old Spanish workmanship, the glories of which were hidden at that moment by the whitest of cloths—and a service of Japanese blue and white china. There, too, gleamed the remains of the Maryland silver which had once been the pride of a county—the great breakfast tray with its urn and attendant dishes, the heavy knives and forks and spoons. It had lain for twenty years in chests, and Charlotte had brought it with her to the Philippines, not so much anticipating a use for it, as making it the evidence of final separation from all that her life had known.

Mrs. Collingwood never ceased to contemplate her living-room, and especially her table, with satisfaction. The snowy linen, the gleaming silver andglass, stood for her tastes. She could remember vividly the depression she had experienced at meal times during her first two weeks at the island, when the mess made its headquarters with the Maclaughlins. Mrs. Maclaughlin’s dream of table luxury was a red and white checked cloth, much colored glass in the form of tumblers, sugar bowl, cream pitcher, and vinegar cruets, a set of brown and white “semi-porcelain” dishes, and knives and forks of German silver. Charlotte had endured the meals for which Martin had half-way prepared her, by the exercise of fortitude only; but she had waited patiently for Mrs. Maclaughlin’s own suggestion of a division of labor.

It happened that Mrs. Maclaughlin greatly desired to devote herself to poultry and gardening. The islanders had to depend wholly upon poultry, fish, pigs, and goats for meat, and upon tinned vegetables. Everybody yearned for green foods and better meats, so that Mrs. Maclaughlin’s ambitions received a hearty support. A kitchen was added to the Collingwood quarters, the stove and kitchen utensils were transferred, and Charlotte found plenty of occupation in her new duties.

The work was naturally to her taste. She possessedan ample home-making instinct, and she had had, in addition to the usual “Domestic Science” course of a modern college, her nurse’s training in dietetics. Collingwood’s exuberant delight in the changes she made in their manner of living was just second to Kingsnorth’s. For decency’s sake, that gentleman had refrained from comment in Mrs. Maclaughlin’s presence; but after their first meal he had taken Mrs. Collingwood aside, and had assured her with unmistakable sincerity that she was no less than a fairy godmother in their midst. He execrated Mrs. Maclaughlin’s cooking, her taste in foods, and her ideas of table service; and his gratitude to Charlotte was profound.

Mrs. Collingwood was contemplating her breakfast table and smiling softly at the memory, when her husband came out of their bedroom in his working clothes—flannel shirt, khaki trousers, and sea boots. He gave her a hearty kiss.

“You vain creature,” he said, “looking at your housekeeping and thinking how you can lay it over Mrs. Mac.”

“That wouldn’t be much to do. Do you remember that red and white tablecloth?”

“Don’t I? And how Kingsnorth used to curseit!” He eyed her reflectively. “Kingsnorth is mighty grateful to you, Charlotte, and mighty fond of you.”

To this, at first, no answer was returned. Mrs. Collingwood fingered a bowl which stood in the window, flushed slightly, and looked embarrassed. At last, as if his continued silence demanded response, she said perfunctorily:

“Well, of course, if I have made things pleasanter for him, incidentally, in doing it for you, I’m glad.”

“That’s the only thing you’ve disappointed me in. I wanted you and him to be good friends. I think he has tried, but you have been stubborn; there’s no denying that, pet.”

“I’ve tried my very hardest. I’m sorry, Martin. You’ll have to give me time.”

“Give you all the time you want,” he cried gayly. “But you’ll have to come round in the end.” She shrugged her shoulders half seriously, half teasingly, but a reply was obviated by the entrance of the Maclaughlins and of the person under discussion.

The Englishman, beak nosed, high nostrilled, fair, and tall, was typical of his race. But drinkhad dulled his eye, his skin was flabby, and an unspeakable air of degeneration hung about him. Even the exaggerated deference of his manner to Mrs. Collingwood seemed a travesty upon the once easy courtesy of the well-born Briton. As for Charlotte, she stiffened perceptibly. Try as she would, she could not overcome her proud resentment at being expected to associate with John Kingsnorth.

“Any special plans for to-day, Mrs. Collingwood?” Kingsnorth demanded as they sat down to breakfast.

“There never are any, I believe. I am going to make a lemon pie under the direct supervision of Mrs. Maclaughlin. My husband has impressed it upon me that I can never fulfil his ideal of a cook till I can make such lemon pies as Mrs. Maclaughlin does.”

In a second Kingsnorth’s manner changed, just a fine hostile change which implied that no pie made by Mrs. Maclaughlin’s recipes could interest him. “Withlimoncitos” he said slightingly, “or with those big knotty yellow things that the women use in laundering theircamisas?”

“Why, you are quite up in native customs,” Charlotteexclaimed. “I didn’t know that. Are you sure?”

A faintly cynical smile played for an instant over Kingsnorth’s features. “Oh, yes, I’m sure,” he replied.

Charlotte became suddenly aware of a changed atmosphere. Martin and Maclaughlin were looking discreetly into their plates, Mrs. Maclaughlin was gazing with a hostile eye at Kingsnorth.

“You certainly do know a great deal about Filipino customs,” she said meaningly.

“You keep still, Jenny,” Maclaughlin threw in hastily. His wife tossed her head scornfully, but subsided. Kingsnorth went on eating. His expression was not agreeable. Charlotte threw herself into the silence that followed.

“Martin, who is that bucolic looking Japanese that I saw strolling up the beach this morning?”

“Bucolic! What do you mean by that long word? You are always springing the dictionary upon me.”

This charge was an indication that Collingwood was highly pleased. It was the nearest open tribute he ever paid to his wife’s education. She made no reply but smiled at him, indulgent of his wit.

“Well, explain,” Martin went on teasingly. “What does it mean?” But Charlotte only went on smiling.

“Greek for hayseed,” Kingsnorth put in lightly. “You knowthatword, Collingwood?”

“Right you are. He is a hayseed. That is our new diver. He came down on the lorcha last week, and we picked him up with the launch. Been promenading around here, did you say?”

“In kimono and parasol,” said Charlotte.

“Well, he goes to work to-morrow. He won’t get much more time to parade.”

“Have you three divers, then?”

“No. The fellow that Mac kicked hasn’t been able to get over it. He resigned immediately, but I succeeded in convincing him that he couldn’t quit the job till I got a new man in his place. I believe he wants to go to law about it.”

“Can he make any trouble? Isn’t that taking the law into your own hands?”

Martin shrugged his shoulders. Kingsnorth laughed. “It would be dangerous on British soil,” he said, “but not under the great republic. Who is going to tack back and forth across this channel in a lorcha or a parao, because a Jap got kicked?His nearest magistrate is a Filipinojuez de pazon the Antique coast. I wish him joy of all the law he can get there. When it comes to the island of Maylubi, Martin, Mac, and I are the law. ‘L’état, c’est nous.’”

Mrs. Collingwood smiled discreetly at the French, and pushed her chair back. Kingsnorth often threw a phrase of French into his speech, and she felt that it was aimed directly at her, and implied an exclusion of the others from their superior plane of conversation. It was not an act characteristic of an Englishman of his class, and she realized that only the intensity of his desire to establish himself on a footing of intimacy could induce him to use such methods.

They all walked down to the beach together, and after Charlotte had watched their row-boat pull alongside the launch, she sat down on a bit of sand grass beneath a cocoanut tree and revelled in the morning breeze. It was a “four man breeze” as they say when four men are needed on the outriggers of theparaos; and more than one deep-sea fishing craft swept by with its four naked squatting outriders sitting at ease on their well sprayed stations with the great sail bellying above them. Asthe tide went out, troops of children wandered up the beach, digging skilfully with their toes for clams, or pouncing with shrieks of delight on some stranded jelly fish. From the field beyond the house, their gardener could be heard hissing at their one draft animal, and once in awhile Mrs. Maclaughlin’s voice arose in a rain of pigeon Spanish as she bent over her garden beds, or ranged through her poultry yards.

It was very lonely, but Charlotte did not mind it. Barring the discomforts of their experiences in the early days with Mrs. Maclaughlin’s food, and the difficulty of holding John Kingsnorth in his place without betraying her feelings about him to Martin, she might have said that her island life hardly boasted of the crumpled rose leaf. Even Kingsnorth’s evident determination to be accepted as an intimate, did not imply a desire to establish any sentimental relation to herself, nor could she explain to her whole satisfaction just why she so vigorously thwarted him. She was only conscious of feeling that to accept his tacit offer of good fellowship was a clearly defined step downward, an open throwing over of standards which, if she had endangered them by her marriage, she had still high hopes ofmaintaining, and to which she hoped ultimately to win her husband.

On the whole, her thoughts were very sweet and wholesome as she sat there in the growing warmth. More than once a sense of housekeeping responsibility urged her to rise and betake herself indoors, but she could not bring herself to disturb her reverie till a respectful cough attracted her attention.

An old man and a young girl, carrying a child in her arms, stood a few feet away. The man was dressed in spotless white trousers with a Chinese shirt of white muslin. One sleeve was decorously adorned with a black mourning band, and his white bamboo plaited hat was also wreathed in sable. The girl was dressed in the deepest of Filipino mourning—black calico skirt, black alpacatapis, or apron, and acamisaof thin barred black net, shiny and stiff with starch. Through its gauzy texture her white chemise, trimmed with scarlet embroidery, showed garishly, while the immense sleeves made no pretence of hiding her plump, gold-colored arms. Her face, of a veryMalaysiantype, was decidedly pretty, and the haughty column of her neck and a wealth of jetty hair lent still further charm. As she caught Charlotte’s eye, shestepped forward, throwing back, as she did so, the black veil which had hidden the child’s face.

Charlotte’s first exclamation of surprise and pity was followed by an indignant flush. The child, which was evidently dying of anæmia, was amestizo. Its blue eye, its almost fair hair above a pasty skin and something indefinably British in the stamp of its expression betrayed its paternity at once.

The man spoke neither Spanish nor English, and the girl had only a few phrases of each; but with Charlotte’s command of the vernacular she managed to get a few facts in some sort of sequence. For brevity and to spare the reader an elliptical conversation in three languages they can be set down as Charlotte summed them up afterwards.

The man was the child’s grandfather; the girl, its aunt. Its mother had died a week or so before at a village on the Antique coast. The woman and her people had lived with Kingsnorth openly in his house up to the morning of theseñora Americana’sarrival. At that time Kingsnorth had come in in great excitement, had bundled them all off in short order, and had established them in the coast village.As he was their only source of income, they accepted his mandate without question.

But the mother had died, of what they could not make quite clear, though the girl pressed her hands upon her heart and repeated “muy, muy triste” more than once. After the mother’s death, the baby lacked nourishment, though its father gave money to buy milk. They had come over on a fishparaoto show it to its father, and had received orders to keep out of Mrs. Collingwood’s way; but hearing from the villagers of that lady’s skill in curing the sick and of her willingness to use it, they could not forbear bringing the child to her. But with tears, they besought her to keep the secret. The old man made a very fair representation of bestowing a hearty kick, and the girl, weeping, ejaculated “Pega, pega mucho,” many times.

Charlotte had been interested during her hospital experience in a series of experiments made by one of the surgeons in infant-feeding. The mortality among Filipino children is enormous, and much attention is given to infant care. It happened that she had been trying the food process on one or two babies in the village, and it was doubtless thenews of that fact which had induced the people to risk Kingsnorth’s anger and appeal to her.

She led them homeward, gave the child some nourishment, and set to work to show the girl how to prepare the canned milk for future use. It was not till they had departed that she realized that they had not said whether ornotthe mother had been legally married. Later she decided that the fact was immaterial, but she was inclined to believe the child illegitimate.

For the next ten days the girl presented herself with the child for treatment. She watched carefully to see that the fishers had gone each day, and that Mrs. Maclaughlin was not around. The child thrived, and with returning health showed a somewhat engaging appearance.

Charlotte could never be quite certain of her reasons for keeping silence to her husband on the subject. At first undoubtedly she desired to avoid making trouble for the old man and the girl; but later, when Mrs. Maclaughlin had met the girl face to face on Charlotte’s veranda steps, and she knew the fact had been retailed to Maclaughlin and to the other men, she was still wordless. For a few days the sullen demeanor of Kingsnorth showedthat he dumbly resented her knowledge; but in the end hisprotégésestablished themselves in the village, and when Charlotte walked that way she often saw his taffy-colored son, in a single garment, staring with incongruous blue eyes from the floor of a nipa shack.

What was stranger, even, than anything else, Mrs. Maclaughlin showed an eager desire to avoid the subject. Charlotte had anticipated, with some dread, that the lady would break forth garrulously once the cat was out of the bag; but she was most pleasantly disappointed. Between herself and Martin the matter was never mentioned. There were times when she would have liked to ask him what he had really expected her to do before Kingsnorth saved the situation by packing off hisimpedimenta; but she was afraid that, if the subject were ever opened up between them, she would express herself too frankly, and she was too thoroughly happy with her husband to care to risk disturbing their satisfaction in each other. As time went on, she ceased to give the matter any thought at all. After all, she reflected, had she not known it all potentially the first time she ever saw Kingsnorth? What did the addition of a few specificdata matter? At that time all her will was bent to the determination to make the best of her romance, to be happy at any cost, and to postpone indefinitely, if not ultimately, any hour of settlement.

Back to IndexNext