The Ragged Edge, Harold MacGrath [great books of all time txt] 📗

was always in a state of semi-intoxication, but he was always gentle with me. Probably he taught me what a joke was merely to irritate my father; for suddenly Father stopped my going to the store for things and sent our old Kanaka cook instead. She had been to San Francisco, and what I learned about the world was from her. Thank you for the books."

"You were born on the island?"

"I believe so."

"You don't remember your mother?"

"Oh, no; she died when I was very little."

She showed him the locket; and he studied the face. It was equally as beautiful but not quite so fine as the daughter's. He returned the locket without comment.

"Perhaps things would have been different if she had lived."

"No doubt," he replied. "Mine died while I was over here. Perhaps that is why I lost my ambition."

"I am sorry."

"It is life."

There was a pause. "He never let me keep a dog or a cat about the house. But after a time I learned the ways of the parrakeets, and they would come down to me like doves in the stories. I never made any effort to touch them; so by and by they learned to light fearlessly on my arms and shoulders. And what a noise they made! This is how I used to call them."

She pursed her lips and uttered a whistle, piercingly shrill and high; and instantly she became the object of intense astonishment on the part of the other diners. She was quite oblivious to the sensation she had created.

The picture of her flashed across the doctor's vision magically. The emerald wings, slashed with scarlet and yellow, wheeling and swooping about her head, there among the wild plantain.

"I never told anybody," she went on. "An audience might have frightened the birds. Only in the sunshine; they would not answer my whistle on cloudy days."

"Didn't the natives have a name for you?"

She blushed. "It was silly."

"Go on, tell me," he urged, enchanted. Never was there another girl like this one. He blushed, too, spiritually, as it were. He had invited himself to dine with her merely to watch her table manners. They were exquisite. Knowing the South Seas from hearsay and by travel, he knew something of that inertia which blunted the fineness, innate and acquired, of white men and women, the eternal warfare against indifference and slovenliness. Only the strong survived. This queer father of hers had given her everything but his arms. "Tell me, what did they call you?"

"Well, the old Kanaka cook used to call me the Golden One, but the natives called me the Dawn Pearl."

"The Dawn Pearl! Odd, but we white folks aren't half so poetical as the yellow or the black. What did you do when your father went on trips to other islands?"

"Took off my shoes and stockings and played in the lagoon."

"He made you wear shoes and stockings?"

"Always."

"What else did you do when alone?"

"I read the encyclopaedia. That is how I learned that there were such things as novels. Books! Aren't they wonderful?"

The blind alley of life stretching out before her, with its secret doorways and hidden menaces; and she was unconcerned. Books; an inexplicable hunger to be satisfied. Somewhere in the world there was a book clerk with a discerning mind; for he had given her the best he had. He envied her a little. To fall upon those tales for the first time, when the mind was fresh and the heart was young!

He became aware of an odd phase to this conversation. The continuity was frequently broken in upon by diversory suppositions. Take the one that struck him at this moment. Supposing that was it; at least, a solution to part of this amazing riddle? Supposing her father had made her assist him in the care of the derelicts solely to fill her with loathing and abhorrence for mankind?

"Didn't you despise the men your father brought home-the beachcombers?"

"No. In the beginning was afraid; but after the first several cases, I had only pity. I somehow understood."

"Didn't some of them ... try to touch you?"

"Not the true unfortunates. How men suffer for the foolish things they do!"

"Ay to that. There's our young friend upstairs."

"There's a funny idea in my head. I've been thinking about it ever since morning. There was a loose button on that coat, and I want to sew it on. It keeps dangling in front of my eyes."

"Ah, yes; that coat. Probably a sick man's whim. Certainly, there wasn't a thing in the pockets. But be very careful not to let him know. If he awoke and caught you at it, there might be a set-back. By the way, what did he say when he was out of his head?"

"The word 'Fool.' He muttered it continually. There was another phrase which sounded something like 'Gin in a blue-serge coat'. I wonder what he meant by that?"

"The Lord knows!"

The patient was restless during the first watch of the night. He stirred continually, thrusting his legs about and flinging his arms above his head. Gently each time Ruth drew down the arms. There was a recurrence of fever, but nothing alarming. Once she heard him mutter, and she leaned down.

"Ali Baba, in a blue-serge coat!... God-forsaken fool!"


CHAPTER XIII


One day Ruth caught the patient's eyes following her about; but there was no question in the gaze, no interest; so she pretended not to notice.

"Where am I?" asked Spurlock.

"In Canton."

"How long have I been in bed?"

"A week."

"My coat, please."

"It is folded under your pillow."

"Did I ask for it?"

"Yes. But perhaps you don't know; there was nothing in the pockets. You were probably robbed in Hong-Kong."

"Nothing in the pockets."

"You see, we didn't know but you might die; and so we had to search your belongings for the address of your people."

"I have no people-anybody who would care."

She kindled with sympathy. He was all alone, too. Nobody who cared.

Ruth was inflammable; she would always be flaring up swiftly, in pity, in tenderness, in anger; she would always be answering impulses, without seeking to weigh or to analyse them. She was emerging from the primordial as Spurlock was declining toward it. She was on the rim of civilization, entering, as Spurlock was on the rim, preparing to make his exit. Two souls in travail; one inspired by fresh hopes, the other, by fresh despairs. Both of them would be committing novel and unforgettable acts.

"How long shall I be here?" he asked.

"That depends upon you. Not very long, if you want to get well."

"Are you a nurse?"

"Yes. Don't ask any more questions. Wait a little; rest."

There was a pause. Ruth flashed in and out of the sunshine; and he took note of the radiant nimbus above her head each time the sunshine touched her hair.

"Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

"The first day you came. Don't you remember? There were four of us, and we went touring in the city."

"As in a dream." There was another pause. "Was I out of my head?"

"Yes."

"What did I say?"

"Only one word," she said, offering her first white lie.

"What was it?" He was insistent.

"You repeated the word ' Fool ' over and over."

"Nothing else?"

"No. Now, no more questions, or I shall be forced to leave the room."

"I promise to ask no more."

"Would you like to have me read to you?"

He did not answer. So she took up Stevenson and began to read aloud. She read beautifully because the fixed form of the poem signified nothing. She went from period to period exactly as she would have read prose; so that sense and music were equally balanced. She read for half an hour, then closed the book because Spurlock appeared to have fallen asleep. But he was wide awake.

"What poet was that?"

"Stevenson." Ruth had read from page to page in "The Child's Garden of Verse," generally unfamiliar to the admirers of Stevenson. Of course Ruth was not aware that in this same volume there were lyrics known the world over.

Immediately Spurlock began to chant one of these.

"'Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.'"

"'This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea.
And the hunter home from the hill.'"

"What is that?" she asked. Something in his tone pinched her heart. "Did you write it?"

"No. You will find it somewhere in that book. Ah, if I had written that!"

"Don't you want to live?"

"I don't know; I really don't know."

"But you are young!" It was a protest, almost vehement. She remembered the doctor's warning that the real battle would begin when the patient recovered consciousness. "You have all the world before you."

"Rather behind me;" and he spoke no more that morning.

Throughout the afternoon, while the doctor was giving her the first lesson out of his profound knowledge of life, her interest would break away continually, despite her honest efforts to pin it down to the facts so patiently elucidated for her. Recurrently she heard: "I don't know; I really don't know." It was curiously like the intermittent murmur of the surf, those weird Sundays, when her father paused for breath to launch additional damnation for those who disobeyed the Word. "I don't know; I really don't know."

Her ear caught much of the lesson, and many things she stored away; but often what she heard was sound without sense. Still, her face never betrayed this distraction. And what was singular she did not recount to the doctor that morning's adventure. Why? If she had put the query to herself, she could not have answered it. It was in no sense confessional; it was a state of mind in the patient the doctor had already anticipated. Yet she held her tongue.

As for the doctor, he found a pleasure in this service that would have puzzled him had he paused to analyse it. There was scant social life on the Sha-mien aside from masculine foregatherings, little that interested him. He took his social pleasures once a year in Hong-Kong, after Easter. He saw, without any particular regret, that this year he would have to forego the junket; but there would be ample compensation in the study of these queer youngsters. Besides, by the time they were off his hands, old McClintock would be dropping in to have his liver renovated.

All at once he recollected the fact that McClintock's copra plantation was down that way, somewhere in the South Seas; had an island of his own. Perhaps he had heard of this Enschede. Mac-the old gossip-knew about everything going on in that part of the world; and if Enschede was anything up to the picture the girl had drawn, McClintock would have heard of him, naturally. He might solve the riddle. All of which proves that the doctor