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

job. I don't care how lonesome it is."

Out of the beaten track! thought Spurlock. A forgotten island beyond the ship lanes, where that grim Hand would falter and move blindly in its search for him! From what he had read, there wouldn't be much to do; and in the idle hours he could write.

"Thanks," he said, holding out a thin white hand. "I'll be very glad to take that kind of a job, if you can find it."

"Well, that's fine. Got you interested in something, then? Would you like a peg?"

"No. I hated the stuff. There was a pleasant numbness in the bottle; that's why I went to it."

"Thought so. But I had to know for sure. Down there, whisky raises the very devil with white men. Don't build your hopes too high; but I will do what I can. While there's life there's hope. Buck up."

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Understand what?"

"You or this girl. There are, then, in this sorry world, people who can be disinterestedly kind!"

The doctor laughed, gave Spurlock's shoulder a pat, and left the room. Outside the door he turned and stared at the panels. Why hadn't he gone on with the girl's story? What instinct had stuffed it back into his throat? Why the inexplicable impulse to hurry this rather pathetic derelict on his way?


CHAPTER XV


Previous to his illness, Spurlock's mind had been tortured by an appalling worry, so that now, in the process of convalescence, it might be compared to a pool which had been violently stirred: there were indications of subsidence, but there were still strange forms swirling on the surface-whims and fancies which in normal times would never have risen above sub-consciousness.

Little by little the pool cleared, the whims vanished: so that both Ruth and the doctor, by the middle of the third week, began to accept Spurlock's actions as normal, whereas there was still a mote or two which declined to settle, still a kink in the gray matter that refused to straighten out.

Spurlock began to watch for Ruth's coming in the morning; first, with negligent interest, then with positive eagerness. His literary instincts were reviving. Ruth was something to study for future copy; she was almost unbelievable. She was not a reversion to type, which intimates the primordial; she suggested rather the incarnation of some goddess of the South Seas. He was not able to recognize, as the doctor did, that she was only a natural woman.

His attitude toward her was purely intellectual, free of any sentimentality, utterly selfish. Ruth was not a woman; she was a phenomenon. So, adroitly and patiently, he pulled Ruth apart; that is, he plucked forth a little secret here, another there, until he had quite a substantial array. What he did not know was this: Ruth surrendered these little secrets because the doctor had warned her that the patient must be amused and interested.

From time to time, however, he was baffled. The real tragedy-which he sensed and toward which he was always reaching-eluded all his verbal skill. It was not a cambric curtain Ruth had drawn across that part of her life: it was of iron. Ruth could tell the doctor; she could bare many of her innermost thoughts to that kindly man; but there was an inexplicable reserve before this young man whom she still endued with the melancholy charm of Sydney Carton. It was not due to shyness: it was the inherent instinct of the Woman, a protective fear that she must retain some elements of mystery in order to hold the interest of the male.

When she told him that the natives called her The Dawn Pearl, his delight was unbounded. He addressed her by that title, and something in the tone disturbed her. A sophisticated woman would have translated the tone as a caress. And yet to Spurlock it was only the title of a story he would some day write. He was caressing an idea.

The point is, Spurlock was coming along: queerly, by his own imagination. The true creative mind is always returning to battle; defeats are only temporary set-backs. Spurlock knew that somewhere along the way he would write a story worth while. Already he was dramatizing Ruth, involving her, now in some pearl thieving adventure, now in some impossible tale of a white goddess. But somehow he could not bring any of these affairs to an orderly end. Presently he became filled with astonishment over the singular fact that Ruth was eluding him in fancy as well as in reality.

One morning he caught her hand suddenly and kissed it. Men had tried that before, but never until now had they been quick enough. The touch of his lips neither thrilled nor alarmed her, because the eyes that looked into hers were clean. Spurlock knew exactly what he was doing, however: speculative mischief, to see how she would act.

"I haven't offended you?"-not contritely but curiously.

"No"-as if her thoughts were elsewhere.

Something in her lack of embarrassment irritated him. "Has no man ever kissed you?"

"No." Which was literally the truth.

He accepted this confession conditionally: that no young man had kissed her. There was nothing of the phenomenon in this. But his astonishment would have been great indeed had he known that not even her father had ever caressed her, either with lips or with hands.

Ruth had lived in a world without caresses. The significance of the kiss was still obscure to her, though she had frequently encountered the word and act in the Old and New Testaments and latterly in novels. Men had tried to kiss her-unshaven derelicts, some of them terrible-but she had always managed to escape. What had urged her to wrench loose and fly was the guarding instinct of the good woman. Something namelessly abhorrent in the eyes of those men...!

She knew what arms were for-to fold and embrace and to hold one tightly; but why men wished to kiss women was still a profound mystery. No matter how often she came across this phase in love stories, there was never anything explanatory: as if all human beings perfectly understood. It would not have been for her an anomaly to read a love story in which there were no kisses.

This salute of his-actually the first she could remember-while it did not disturb her, began to lead her thoughts into new channels of speculation. The more her thoughts dwelt upon the subject, the more convinced she was that she could not go to any one for help; she would have to solve the riddle by her own efforts, by some future experience.

"The Dawn Pearl," he said.

"The natives have foolish ways of saying things."

"On the contrary, if that is a specimen, they must be poets. Tell me about your island. I have never seen a lagoon."

"But you can imagine it. Tell me what you think the island is like."

He did not pause to consider how she had learned that he had imagination; he comprehended only the direct challenge. To be free of outward distraction, he shut his eyes and concentrated upon the scraps she had given him; and shortly, with his eyes still closed, he began to describe Ruth's island: the mountain at one end, with the ever-recurring scarves of mist drifting across the lava-scarred face; the jungle at the foot of it; the dazzling border of white sand; the sprawling store of the trader and the rotting wharf, sundrily patched with drift-wood; the native huts on the sandy floor of the palm groves; the scattered sandalwood and ebony; the screaming parakeets in the plantains; the fishing proas; the mission with its white washed walls and barren frontage; the lagoon, fringed with coco palms, now ruffled emerald, now placid sapphire.

"I think the natives saw you coming out of the lagoon, one dawn. For you say that you swim. Wonderful! The water, dripping from you, must have looked like pearls. Do you know what? You're some sea goddess and you're only fooling us."

He opened his eyes, to behold hers large with wonder.

"And you saw all that in your mind?"

"It wasn't difficult. You yourself supplied the details. All I had to do was to piece them together."

"But I never told you how the natives fished."

"Perhaps I read of it somewhere."

"Still, you forgot something."

"What did I forget?"

"The breathless days and the faded, pitiless sky. Nothing to do; nothing for the hands, the mind, the heart. To wait for hours and hours for the night! The sea empty for days! You forgot the monotony, the endless monotony, that bends you and breaks you and crushes you-you forgot that!"

Her voice had steadily risen until it was charged with passionate anger. It was his turn to express astonishment. Fire; she was full of it. Pearls in the dawn light, flashing and burning!

"You don't like your island?"

"I hate it!... But, there!"-weariness edging in. "I am sorry. I shouldn't talk like that. I'm a poor nurse."

"You are the most wonderful human being I ever saw!" And he meant it.

She trembled; but she did not know why. "You mustn't talk any more; the excitement isn't good for you."

Drama. To get behind that impenetrable curtain, to learn why she hated her island. Never had he been so intrigued. Why, there was drama in the very dress she wore! There was drama in the unusual beauty of her, hidden away all these years on a forgotten isle!

"You've been lonely, too."

"You mustn't talk."

He ignored the command. "To be lonely! What is physical torture, if someone who loves you is nigh? But to be alone ... as I am!... yes, and as you are! Oh, you haven't told me, but I can see with half an eye. With nobody who cares ... the both of us!"

He was real in this moment. She was given a glimpse of his soul. She wanted to take him in her arms and hush him, but she sat perfectly still. Then came the shock of the knowledge that soon he would be going upon his way, that there would be no one to depend upon her; and all the old loneliness came smothering down upon her again. She could not analyse what was stirring in her: the thought of losing the doll, the dog, and the cat. There was the world besides, looming darker and larger.

"What would you like most in this world?" he asked. Once more he was the searcher.

"Red apples and snow!" she sent back at him, her face suddenly transfixed by some inner glory.

"Red apples and snow!" he repeated. He returned figuratively to his bed-the bed he had made for himself and in which he must for ever lie. Red apples and snow! How often had these two things entered his thoughts since his wanderings began? Red apples and snow!-and never again to behold them!

"I am going out for a little while," she said. She wanted to be alone. "Otherwise you will not get your morning's sleep."

He did not reply. His curiosity, his literary instincts, had been submerged by the recurring thought of the fool he had made of himself. He heard the door close; and in a little while he fell into a doze; and there came a dream filled with broken pictures, each one of which the girl dominated. He saw her, dripping with rosy pearls, rise out of the lagoon in the dawn light: he saw her flashing to and