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

meat he ate; it permeated everything, taste and smell. For a long time even the strong pipe tobacco (with which McClintock supplied him) possessed a coconut flavour. Then, mysteriously, he no longer smelled or tasted it.

On the day he carried the manuscript to Copeley's he brought back a packet of letters, magazines, and newspapers. McClintock never threw away any advertising matter; in fact, he openly courted pamphlets; and they came from automobile dealers and great mail-order houses, from haberdashers and tailors and manufacturers of hair-tonics, razors, gloves, shoes, open plumbing. In this way (he informed Spurlock) he kept posted on what was going on in the strictly commercial world. "Besides, lad, even an advertisement of a cough-drop is something to read." So there was always plenty of mail.

Among the commercial enticements McClintock found a real letter. In privacy he read and reread it a dozen times, and eventually destroyed it by fire. It was, in his opinion, the most astonishing letter he had ever read. He hated to destroy it; but that was the obligation imposed; and he was an honourable man.

Not since she had discovered it had Ruth touched or opened the mission Bible; but to-night (the same upon which the wonderful manuscripts started on their long and circuitous voyage to America) she was inexplicably drawn to it. In all these weeks she had not once knelt to pray. Why should she? she asked rebelliously. God had never answered any of her prayers. But this time she wanted nothing for herself: she wanted something for Hoddy-success. So, not exactly hopefully but earnestly, she returned to the feet of God. She did not open the Bible but laid it on the edge of the bed, knelt and rested her forehead upon the worn leather cover.

It was not a long prayer. She said it audibly, having learned long since that an audible prayer was a concentrated one. And yet, at the end of this prayer a subconscious thought broke through to consciousness. "And someday let him care for me!"

She sprang up, alarmed. This unexpected interpolation might spoil the efficacy of all that had gone before. She hadn't meant to ask anything for herself. Her stifled misery had betrayed her. She had been fighting down this thought for days: that Hoddy did not care, that he did not love her, that he had mistaken a vagary of the mind for a substance, and now regretted what he had done-married a girl who was not his equal in anything. The agony on the sands now ceased to puzzle her.

All her tender lures, inherent and acquired, had shattered themselves futilely against the reserve he had set between them. Why had he offered her that kiss on board The Tigress ? Perhaps that had been his hour of disenchantment. She hadn't measured up; she had been stupid; she hadn't known how to make love.

Loneliness. Here was an appalling fact: all her previous loneliness had been trifling beside that which now encompassed her and would for years to come.

If only sometimes he would grow angry at her, impatient! But his tender courtesy was unfailing; and under this would be the abiding bitterness of having mistaken gratitude for love. Very well. She would meet him upon this ground: he should never be given the slightest hint that she was unhappy.

She still had her letter of credit. She could run away from him, if she wished, as she had run away from her father; she could carry out the original adventure. But the cases were not identical. Her father-man of rock-had never needed her, whereas Hoddy, even if he did not love her, would always be needing her.

Love stories!... A sob rushed into her throat, and to smother it she buried her face in a pillow.

Spurlock, filled with self-mockery, sat in a chair on the west veranda. The chair had extension arms over which a man might comfortably dangle his legs. For awhile he watched the revolving light on Copeley's. Occasionally he relit his pipe. Once he chuckled aloud. Certain phases of irony always caused him to chuckle audibly. Every one of those four stories would be accepted. He knew it absolutely, as if he had the check in his hand. Why? Because Howard Spurlock the author dared not risk the liberty of Howard Spurlock the malefactor; because there were still some dregs in this cup of irony. For what could be more ironical than for Howard Spurlock to see himself grow famous under the name of Taber? The ambrosia of which he had so happily dreamt!-and this gall and wormwood! He stood up and rapped his pipe on the rail.

"All right," he said. "Whatever you say-you, behind those stars there, if you are a God. We Spurlocks take our medicine, standing. Pile it on! But if you can hear the voice of the mote, the speck, don't let her suffer for anything I've done. Be a sport, and pile it all on me!"

He went to bed.

There is something in prayer; not that there may be any noticeable result, any definite answer; but no human being can offer an honest prayer to God without gaining immeasurably in courage, in fortitude, in resignation, and that alone is worth the effort.

On the morrow Spurlock (who was unaware that he had offered a prayer) let down the bars to his reserve. He became really companionable, discussed the new story he had in mind, and asked some questions about colour. Ruth, having decided a course for herself-that of renunciation-and having the strength to keep it, met these advances in precisely the mood they were offered. So these two young philosophers got along very well that day; and the succeeding days.

She taught him all the lore she had; about bird-life and tree-life and the changing mysteries of the sea. She taught him how to sail a proa, how to hack open a milk-coconut, how to relish bamboo sprouts. Eventually this comradeship (slightly resented by Rollo) reached a point where he could call out from the study: "Hey, Ruth!-come and tell me what you think of this."

Her attitude now entirely sisterly, he ceased to be afraid of her; there was never anything in her eyes (so far as he could see) but friendly interest in all he said or did. And yet, often when alone, he wondered: had McClintock been wrong, or had she ceased to care in that way? The possibility that she no longer cared should have filled him with unalloyed happiness, whereas it depressed him, cut the natural vanity of youth into shreds and tatters. Yesterday this glorious creature had loved him; to-day she was only friendly. No more did she offer her forehead for the good-night kiss. And instead of accepting the situation gratefully, he felt vaguely hurt!

One evening in September a proa rasped in upon the beach. It brought no coconut. There stepped forth a tall brown man. He remained standing by the stem of the proa, his glance roving investigatingly. He wore a battered sun-helmet, a loin-cloth and a pair of dilapidated canvas shoes. At length he proceeded toward McClintock's bungalow, drawn by the lights and the sound of music.

Sure of foot, noiseless, he made the veranda and paused at the side of one of the screened windows. By and by he ventured to peer into this window. He saw three people: a young man at the piano, an elderly man smoking in a corner, and a young woman reclining in a chair, her eyes closed. The watcher's intake of breath was sibilant.

It was she! The Dawn Pearl!

He vaulted the veranda rail, careless now whether or not he was heard, and ran down to the beach. He gave an order, the proa was floated and the sail run up. In a moment the brisk evening breeze caught the lank canvas and bellied it taut. The proa bore away to the northwest out of which it had come.

James Boyle O'Higgins knew little or nothing of the South Seas, but he knew human beings, all colours. His deduction was correct that the beauty of Ruth Enschede could not remain hidden long even on a forgotten isle.


CHAPTER XXIV


Spurlock's novel was a tale of regeneration. For a long time to come that would naturally be the theme of any story he undertook to write. After he was gone in the morning, Ruth would steal into the study and hurriedly read what he had written the previous night. She never questioned the motives of the characters; she had neither the ability nor the conceit for that; but she could and often did correct his lapses in colour. She never touched the manuscript with pencil, but jotted down her notes on slips of paper and left them where he might easily find them.

She marvelled at his apparent imperviousness to the heat. He worked afternoons, when everybody else went to sleep; he worked at night under a heat-giving light, with insects buzzing and dropping about, with a blue haze of tobacco smoke that tried to get out and could not. With his arms bare, the neckband of his shirt tucked in, he laboured. Frequently he would take up a box of talc and send a shower down his back, or fill his palms with the powder and rub his face and arms and hands. He kept at it even on those nights when the monsoon began to break with heavy storms and he had to weight down with stones everything on his table. Soot was everywhere, for the lamp would not stay trimmed in the gale. But he wrote on.

As the novel grew Ruth was astonished to see herself enter and dominate it: sometimes as she actually was, with all her dreams reviewed-as if he had caught her talking in her sleep. It frightened her to behold her heart and mind thus laid bare; but the chapter following would reassure her. Here would be a woman perfectly unrecognizable, strong, ruthless but just.

This heroine ruled an island which (in the '80s) was rich with shell-pearl-shell; and she fought pearl thievers and marauding beachcombers, fought them with weapons and with woman's guile. No man knew whence she had come nor why. That there would eventually be a lover Ruth knew; and she waited his appearance upon the scene, waited with an impatience which was both personal and literary. If the creator drew a hero anything like himself, she would accept it as a sign that he did care a little.

Ruth did not resent the use of her mind and body in this tale of adventure. She gloried in it: he needed her. When the hero finally did appear, Ruth became filled with gentle self-mockery. He was no Hoddy, but a tremendous man, with hairy arms and bearded face and drink-shattered intellect. Day by day she followed the spiritual and physical contest between this man and woman. One day a pall of blackness encompassed the sick mind of the giant; and when he came to his senses, they properly functioned: and he saw his wife by his bedside!

An astonishing idea entered Ruth's head one day-when the novel was complete in the rough-an astonishing idea because it had not developed long ago. A thing which had mystified her since childhood, a smouldering wonder why it should be, and until now she had never felt the urge to investigate. She tucked the mission Bible under her arm, and crooking a finger at Rollo, went forth to the west beach where the sou'-west surge piled up muddily, burdened with broken spars, crates, boxes, and weeds. During the wet monsoon the west beach was always littered. Where the stuff came from