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

elements.

"I don't know," she answered vaguely.

"But there's nothing more to see in Canton."

"Perhaps I'm too tired to plan for to-morrow. Those awful chairs!"

After dinner the spinsters proceeded to inscribe their accustomed quota of postcards, and Ruth was left to herself. She walked through the office to the door, aimlessly.

Beyond the steps was a pole-chair in readiness. One of the coolies held the paper lantern. Near by stood Ah Cum and the young unknown, the former protesting gently, the latter insistent upon his demands.

"I repeat," said Ah Cum, "that the venture is not propitious. Canton is all China at night. If we were set upon I could not defend you. But I can easily bring in a sing-song girl to play for you."

"No. I want to make my own selection."

"Very well, sir. But if you have considerable money, you had better leave it in the office safe. You can pay me when we return. The sing-song girls in Hong-Kong are far handsomer. That is a part of the show in Hong-Kong. But here it is China."

"If you will not take me, I'll find some guide who will."

"I will take you. I simply warn you."

Spurlock entered the office, passed Ruth without observing her (or if he did observe her, failed to recognize her), and deposited his funds with the manager.

"I advise you against this trip, Mr. Taber," said the manager. "Affairs are not normal in Canton at present. Only a few weeks ago there was a bloody battle on the bridge there between the soldiery and the local police. Look at these walls."

The walls were covered with racks of loaded rifles. In those revolutionary times one had to be prepared. Some Chinaman might take it into his head to shout: "Death to the foreign devils!" And out of that wall yonder would boil battle and murder and sudden death. A white man, wandering about the streets of Canton at night, was a challenge to such a catastrophe.

Taber. Ruth stared thoughtfully at the waiting coolies. That did not sound like the name the young man had offered in the tower of the water-clock. She remained by the door until the walls of the city swallowed the bobbing lantern. Then she went into the office.

"What is a sing-song girl?" she asked.

The manager twisted his moustache. "The same as a Japanese geisha girl."

"And what is a geisha girl?"

Not to have heard of the geisha! It was as if she had asked: "What is Paris?" What manner of tourist was this who had heard neither of the geisha of Japan nor of the sing-song girl of China? Before he could marshal the necessary phrases to explain, Ruth herself indicated her thought.

"A bad girl?" She put the question as she would have put any question-level-eyed and level-toned.

After a series of mental gymnastics-occupying the space of a few seconds-it came to him with a shock that here was a new specimen of the species. At the same time he comprehended that she was as pure and lovely as the white orchid of Borneo and that she did not carry that ridiculous shield called false modesty. He could talk to her as frankly as he could to a man, that she would not take offence at anything so long as it was in the form of explanation. On the other hand, there was a subconscious impression that she would be able to read instantly anything unclean in a man's eye. All her questions would have as a background the idea of future defence.

"The geisha and the sing-song girl are professional entertainers. They are not bad girls, but the average tourist has that misconception of them. If some of them are bad in the sense you mean, it is because there are bad folks in all walks of life. They sell only their talents, not their bodies; they are not girls of the street."

The phrase was new, but Ruth nodded understandingly.

"Still," went on the manager, "they are slaves in a sense; they are bought and sold until their original indebtedness is paid. A father is in debt, we'll say. He sells his daughter to a geisha or a sing-song master, and the girl is rented out until the debt is paid. Then the work is optional; they go on their own. There are sing-song girls in Hong-Kong and Shanghai who are famous and wealthy. Sometimes they marry well. If they become bad it is through inclination, not necessity."

Again Ruth nodded.

"To go a little further. Morality is a point of view. It is an Occidental point of view. The Oriental has no equivalent. What you would look upon as immorality is here merely an established custom, three thousand years older than Christianity, accepted with no more ado than that which would accompany you should you become a clerk in a shop."

"That is what I wanted to know," said Ruth gravely. "The poor things!"

The manager laughed. "Your sympathy is being wasted. They are the only happy women in the Orient."

"Do you suppose he knew?"

"He? Oh, you mean Mr. Taber?" He wondered if this crystal being was interested in that blundering fool who had gone recklessly into the city. "I don't know what his idea was."

"Will there be any danger?"

"To Mr. Taber? There is a possibility. Canton at night is as much China as the border town of Lan-Chow-fu. A white man takes his life in his hands. But Ah Cum is widely known for his luck. Besides," he added cynically, "it is said that God watches over fools and drunken men."

This expression was old in Ruth's ears. She had heard the trader utter it many times.

"Thank you," she said, and left the office.

The manager stared at the empty doorway for a space, shrugged, and returned to his ledgers. The uncanny directness of those gray eyes, the absence of diffidence, the beauty of the face in profile (full, it seemed a little too broad to make for perfect beauty), the mellow voice that came full and free, without hesitance, all combined to mark her as the most unusual young woman he had ever met. He was certain that those lips of hers had never known the natural and pardonable simper of youth.

Was she interested in that young ass who was risking his bones over there in the city? They had come up on the same boat. Still, one never could tell. The young fellow was almost as odd in his way as the girl was in hers. He seldom spoke, and drank with a persistence that was sinister. He was never drunk in the accepted meaning of the word; rather he walked in a kind of stupefaction. Supposing Ah Cum's luck failed for once?

The manager made a gesture of dismissal, and added up the bill for the Misses Jedson, who were returning to Hong-Kong in the morning.


CHAPTER VI


Sidney Carton, thought Ruth, in pursuit of a sing-song girl! The idea was so incongruous that a cold little smile parted her lips. It seemed as if each time her imagination reached out investingly, an invisible lash beat it back. Still, she knew instinctively that all of Sidney Carton's life had not been put upon the printed page. But to go courting a slave-girl, at the risk of physical hurt! A shudder of distaste wrinkled her shoulders.

She opened the window, for the night was mild, and sat on the floor with her chin resting upon the window-sill. Even the stars were strangers. Where was this kindly world she had drawn so rosily in fancy? Disillusion everywhere. The spinsters were not kind; they were only curious because she was odd and wore a dress thirty years out of date. Later, when they returned home, she would serve as the topic of many conversations. Everybody looked askance at everybody else. To escape one phase of loneliness she had plunged into another, so vast that her courage sometimes faltered.

She recalled how she had stretched out her arms toward the magic blue horizon. Just beyond there would be her heart's desire. And in these crowded four weeks, what had she learned? That all horizons were lies: that smiles and handshakes and goodbyes and welcomes were lies: that there were really no to-morrows, only a treadmill of to-days: and that out of these lies and mirages she had plucked a bitter truth-she was alone.

She turned her cheek to the cold sill; and by and by the sill grew warm and wet with tears. She wanted to stay where she was; but tears were dangerous; the more she wept, the weaker she would become defensively. She rose briskly, turned on the light, and opened Les Misérables to the episode of the dark forest: where Jean Valjean reaches out and takes Cosette's frightful pail from her chapped little hands.

There must be persons tender and loving in this world. There must be real Valjeans, else how could authors write about them? Supposing some day she met one of these astonishing creators, who could make one cry and laugh and forget, who could thrill one with love and anger and tenderness?

Most of us have witnessed carnivals. Here are all our harlequins and columbines of the spoken and written drama. They flash to and fro, they thrill us with expectancy. Then, presto! What a dreary lot they are when the revellers lay aside the motley!

Ruth had come from a far South Sea isle. The world had not passed by but had gone around it in a tremendous half-circle. Many things were only words, sounds; she could not construct these words and sounds into objects; or, if she did, invariably missed the mark. Her education was remarkable in that it was overdeveloped here and underdeveloped there: the woman of thirty and the child of ten were always getting in each other's way. Until she had left her island, what she heard and what she saw were truths. And now she was discovering that even Nature was something of a liar, with her mirages and her horizons.

At the present moment she was living in a world of her own creation, a carnival of brave men and fair women, characters out of the tales she had so newly read for the first time. She could not resist enduing persons she met with the noble attributes of the fictional characters. We all did that in our youth, when first we came upon a fine story; else we were worthless metal indeed. So, step by step, and hurt by hurt, Ruth was learning that John Smith was John Smith and nobody else.

Presently she was again in that dreadful tavern of the Thénardiers. That was the wonder of these stories; one lived in them. Cosette sat under the table, still as a mouse, fondling her pitiful doll. Dolls. Ruth's gaze wandered from the printed page. She had never had a real doll. Instinct had forced her to create something out of rags to satisfy a mysterious craving. But a doll that rolled its eyes and had flaxen hair! Except for the manual labour-there had been natives to fetch and carry-she and Cosette were sisters in loneliness.

Perhaps an hour passed before she laid aside the book. A bobbing lantern, crossing the bridge-for she had not drawn the curtain-attracted her attention. She turned off the light and approached the window. She saw a pole-chair; that would be this Mr. Taber returning. Evidently Ah Cum's luck had held good.

As she stared her eyes grew accustomed to the