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

also had his moments of distraction, with this difference: he was not distracted from his subject matter.

"So endeth the first lesson," he said. "Suppose we go and have tea? I'd like to take you to a teahouse I know, but we'll go to the Victoria instead. I must practise what I preach."

"I should be unafraid to go anywhere with you."

"Lord, that's just the lesson I've been expounding! It isn't a question of fear; it's one of propriety."

"I'll never understand."

"You don't have to. I'll tell you what. I'll write out certain rules of conduct, and then you'll never be in doubt."

She laughed; and it was pleasant laughter in his ears. If only this child were his: what good times they would have together! The thought passed on, but it left a little ache in his heart.

"Why do you laugh?" he asked.

"All that you have been telling me, our old Kanaka cook summed up in a phrase."

"What was it?"

"Never glance sideways at a man.".

"The whole thing in a nutshell!"

"Are there no men a woman may trust absolutely?"

"Hang it, that isn't it. Of course there are, millions of them. It's public opinion. We all have to kow-tow to that."

"Who made such a law?"

"This world is governed by minorities-in politics, in religion, in society. Majorities, right or wrong, dare not revolt. Footprints, and we have to toddle along in them, willy-nilly; and those who have the courage to step outside the appointed path are called pariahs!"

"I'm afraid I shall not like this world very much. It is putting all my dreams out of joint."

"Never let the unknown edge in upon your courage. The world is like a peppery horse. If he senses fear in the touch of your hand, he'll give you trouble."

"It's all so big and aloof. It isn't friendly as I thought it would be. I don't know; I really don't know," she found herself repeating.

He drew her away from this thought. "I read those stories."

"Are they good?"

"He can write; but he hasn't found anything real to write about. He hasn't found himself, as they say. He's rewriting Poe and De Maupassant; and that stuff was good only when Poe and De Maupassant wrote it."

"How do you spell the last name?"

He spelt it. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw a faint shudder stir her shoulders. "Not the sort of stories young ladies should read. Poe is all right, if you don't mind nightmares. But De Maupassant-sheer off! Stick to Dickens and Thackeray and Hugo. Before you go I'll give you a list of books to read."

"There are bad stories, then, just as there are bad people?"

"Yes. Sewn on that button yet?"

"I've been afraid to take the coat from under the pillow."

"Funny, about that coat. You told him there wasn't anything in the pockets?"

"Yes."

"How did he take it?"

"He did not seem to care."

"There you are, just as I said. We've got to get him to care. We've got to make him take up the harp of life and go twanging it again. That's the job. He's young and sound. Of course, there'll be a few kinks to straighten out. He's passed through some rough mental torture. But one of these days everything will click back into place. Great sport, eh? To haul them back from the ragged edge. Wouldn't it be fun to see his name on a book-cover some day? He'll go strutting up and down without ever dreaming he owed the whole shot to us. That would be fun, eh?"

"I wonder if you know how kind you are? You are like somebody out of a book."

"There, now! You mustn't get mixed. You mustn't go by what you read so much as by what you see and hear. You must remember, you've just begun to read; you haven't any comparisons. You mustn't go dressing up Tom, Dick, and Harry in Henry Esmond's ruffles. What you want to do is to imagine every woman a Becky Sharp and every man a Rawdon Crawley."

"I know what is good," she replied.

"Yes; but what is good isn't always proper. And so, here we are, right back from where we started. But no more of that. Let's talk of this chap. There's good stuff in him, if one could find the way to dig it out. But pathologically, he is still on the edge. Unless we can get some optimism into him, he'll probably start this all over again when he gets on his feet. That's the way it goes. But between us, we'll have him writing books some day. That's one of the troubles with young folks: they take themselves so seriously. He probably imagines himself to be a thousand times worse off than he actually is. Youth finds it pleasant sometimes to be melancholy. Disappointed puppy-love, and all that."

"Puppy-love."

"A young fellow who thinks he's in love, when he has only been reading too much."

"Do girls have puppy-love?"

"Land sakes, yes! On the average they are worse than the boys. A boy can forget his amatory troubles playing baseball; but a girl can't find any particular distraction in doing fancy work. Do you know, I envy you. All the world before you, all the ologies. What an adventure! Of course, you'll bark your shins here and there and hit your funnybone; but the newness of everything will be something of a compensation. All right. Let's get one idea into our heads. We are going to have this chap writing books one of these days."

Ideas are never born; they are suggested; they are planted seeds. Ruth did not reply, but stared past the doctor, her eyes misty. The doctor had sown a seed, carelessly. All that he had sown that afternoon with such infinite care was as nothing compared to this seed, cast without forethought. Ruth's mind was fertile soil; for a long time to come it would be something of a hothouse: green things would spring up and blossom overnight. Already the seed of a tender dream was stirring. The hour for which, presumably, she had been created was drawing nigh. For in life there is but one hour: an epic or an idyll: all other hours lead up to and down from it.

"By the way," said the doctor, as he sat down in the dining room of the Victoria and ordered tea, "I've been thinking it over."

"What?"

"We'll put those stories back into the trunk and never speak of them to him."

"But why not?"

The doctor dallied with his teaspoon. Something about the girl had suggested an idea. It would have been the right idea, had Ruth been other than what she was. First-off, he had decided not to tell her what he had found at the bottom of that manila envelope. Now it occurred to him that to show her the sealed letter would be a better way. Impressionable, lonely, a deal beyond his analytical reach, the girl might let her sympathies go beyond those of the nurse. She would be enduing this chap with attributes he did not possess, clothing him in fictional ruffles. To disillusion her, forthwith.

"I'll tell you why," he said. "At the bottom of that big envelope I found this one."

He passed it over; and Ruth read:

To be opened in case of my death and the letter inside
forwarded to the address thereon. All my personal effects
to be left in charge of the nearest American Consulate.


CHAPTER XIV


Ruth lost the point entirely. The doctor expected her to seize upon the subtle inference that there was something furtive, even criminal, in the manner the patient set this obligation upon humanity at large, to look after him in the event of his death. The idea of anything criminal never entered her thoughts. Any man might have endeavoured to protect himself in this fashion, a man with no one to care, with an unnameable terror at the thought (as if it mattered!) of being buried in alien earth, far from the familiar places he loved.

Close upon this came another thought. She had no place she loved. In all this world there was no sacred ground that said to her: Return! She was of all human beings the most lonely. Even now, during the recurring doubts of the future, the thought of the island was repellent. She hated it, she hated the mission-house; she hated the sleek lagoon, the palms, the burning sky. But some day she would find a place to love: there would be rosy apples on the boughs, and there would be flurries of snow blowing into her face. It was astonishing how often this picture returned: cold rosy apples and flurries of snow.

"The poor young man!" she said.

The doctor sensed that his bolt had gone wrong, but he could not tell how or why. He dared not go on. He was not sure that the boy had put himself beyond the pale; merely, the boy's actions pointed that way. If he laid his own suspicions boldly before the girl, and in the end the boy came clean, he would always be haunted by the witless cruelty of the act.

That night in his den he smoked many pipes. Twice he cleaned the old briar; still there was no improvement. He poured a pinch of tobacco into his palm and sniffed. The weed was all right. Probably something he had eaten. He was always forgetting that his tummy was fifty-four years old.

He would certainly welcome McClintock's advent. Mac would have some new yarns to spin and a fresh turn-over to his celebrated liver. He was a comforting, humorous old ruffian; but there were few men in the Orient more deeply read in psychology and physiognomy. It was, in a way, something of a joke to the doctor: psychology and physiognomy on an island which white folks did not visit more than three or four times a year, only then when they had to. Why did the beggar hang on down there, when he could have enjoyed all that civilization had to offer? Yes, he would be mighty glad to see McClintock; and the sooner he came the better.

Sometimes at sea a skipper will order his men to trim, batten down the hatches, and clear the deck of all litter. The barometer says nothing, neither the sky nor the water; the skipper has the "feel" that out yonder there's a big blow moving. Now the doctor had the "feel" that somewhere ahead lay danger. It was below consciousness, elusive; so he sent out a call to his friend, defensively.

* * * * *

At the end of each day Ah Cum would inquire as to the progress of the patient, and invariably the answer was: "About the same." This went on for ten days. Then Ah Cum was notified that the patient had sat up in bed for quarter of an hour. Promptly Ah Cum wired the information to O'Higgins in Hong-Kong. The detective reckoned that his quarry would be up in ten days more.

To Ruth the thought of Hartford no longer projected upon her vision a city of spires and houses