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

doctor and the hotel bill-and in the event of his death, enough to ship the body home? So all things pointed to the happy circumstance of setting this young fool upon his feet again, of seeing him hence upon his journey. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

An hour later the doctor arrived; and after a thorough examination, he looked doubtful.

"He is dying?" whispered Ruth.

"Well, without immediate care he would have passed out. He's on the ragged edge. It depends upon what he was before he began this racket. Drink, and no sustaining food. But while there's life there's hope. There isn't a nurse this side of Hong-Kong to be had. I've only a Chinaman who is studying under me; but he's a good sport and will help us out during the crisis. This chap's recovery all depends upon the care he receives."

Out of nowhere Ruth heard her voice saying: "I will see to that."

"Your husband?"

"No. I do not even know his name."

The doctor sent her a sharp, quizzical glance. He could not quite make her out; a new type.

"Taber," said the manager; "Taber is the name."

For some reason she did not then understand, Ruth did not offer the information that Taber had another name.

"This is very fine of you, Miss...."

"Enschede."

"Ah. Well, come back in half an hour. I'll send for Wu Fang. He speaks English. Not a job he may care about; but he's a good sport. The hard work will be his, until we yank this young fellow back from the brink. Run along now; but return in half an hour."

The doctor was in the middle fifties, gray and careworn, but with alert blue eyes and a gentle mouth. He smiled at Ruth as she turned away from the bed, smiled with both his mouth and eyes; and she knew that here would be a man of heart as well as of science. She went out into the hall, where she met the Jedsons in their kimonos.

"What has happened?" asked Sister Prudence. "We've heard coming and going."

"Mr. Taber is very ill."

"Oh." Prudence shrugged. "Well, what can you expect, guzzling poison like that? Are you returning with us to Hong-Kong in the morning?"

"No. I am going to help take care of him," said Ruth, quite ordinarily, as though taking care of unknown derelicts was an ordinary event in her life.

"What?-help take care of him? Why, you can't do that, Miss Enschede!" was the protest.

"Why can't I?"

"You will be compromised. It isn't as if he were stricken with typhoid or pneumonia or something like that. You will certainly be compromised."

"Compromised." Ruth repeated the word, not in the effect of a query, but ruminantly. "Mutual concessions," she added. "I don't quite understand the application."

Sister Prudence looked at Sister Angelina, who understood what was expected of her. Sister Angelina shook her head as if to say that such ignorance was beyond her.

"Why, it means that people will think evilly of you."

"For a bit of kindness?" Ruth was plainly bewildered.

"You poor child!" Prudence took Ruth's hands in her own. "I never saw the like of you! One has to guard one's actions constantly in this wicked world, if one is a woman, young and pretty. A woman such as I am might help take care of Mr. Taber and no one comment upon it. But you couldn't. Never in this world! Let the hotel people take care of him; it's their affair. They sold him the whisky. Come along with us in the morning. Your father...."

Prudence felt the hands stiffen oddly; and again the thought came to her that perhaps this poor child's father had once been, perhaps still was, in the same category as this Taber.

"It's a fine idea, my child, but you mustn't do it. Even if he were an old friend, you couldn't afford to do it. But a total stranger, a man you never saw twenty-four hours ago! It can't be thought of. It isn't your duty."

"I feel bewildered," said Ruth. "Is it wrong, then, to surrender to good impulses?"

"In the present instance, yes. Can't I make you understand? Perhaps it sounds cruel to you; but we women often have to be cruel defensively. You don't want people to snub you later. This isn't your island, child; it's the great world."

"So I perceive," said Ruth, withdrawing her hands. "He is all alone. Without care he will die."

"But, goodness me, the hotel will take care of him! Why not? They sold him the poison. Besides, I have my doubts that he is so very sick. Probably he will come around to-morrow and begin all over again. You're alone, too, child. I'm trying to make you see the worldly point of view, which always inclines toward the evil side of things."

"I have promised. After all, why should I care what strangers think?" Ruth asked with sudden heat. "Is there no charity? Isn't it understood?"

"Of course it is! In the present instance I can offer it and you can't, or shouldn't. There are unwritten laws governing human conduct. Who invented them? Nobody knows. But woe to those who disregard them! Of course, basically it is all wrong; and sometimes God must laugh at our ideas of rectitude. But to live at peace with your neighbour...."

Ruth brushed her eyes with one hand and with the other signed for the spinster to stop. "No more, please! I am bewildered enough. I understand nothing of what you say. I only know that it is right to do what I do."

"Well," said Sister Prudence, "remember, I tried to save you some future heartaches. God bless you, anyhow!" she added, with a spontaneity which surprised Sister Angelina into uttering an individual gasp. "Good-bye!"

For a moment Ruth was tempted to fling herself against the withered bosom; but long since she had learned repression. She remained stonily in the middle of the hallway until the spinsters' door shut them from view ... for ever.

[Illustration: Distinctive Pictures Corporation. The Ragged Edge. A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.]


CHAPTER VIII


Slowly Ruth entered her own room. She opened her suitcase-new and smelling strongly of leather-and took out of it a book, dogeared and precariously held together, bound in faded blue cloth and bearing the inscription: The Universal Handbook. Herein was the sum of human knowledge in essence.

In the beginning it was a dictionary. Words were given with their original meaning, without their ramifications. If you were a poet in need of rhymes, you had only to turn to a certain page. Or, if you were about to embark upon a nautical career, here was all the information required. It also told you how to write on all occasions, how to take out a patent, how to doctor a horse, and who Achates was. You could, if you were ambitious to round out your education, memorize certain popular foreign phrases.

But beyond "amicable agreement in which mutual concessions are made," the word "compromise" was as blank as the Canton wall at night. There were words, then, that ran on indefinitely, with reversals? Here they meant one thing; there, the exact opposite. To be sure, Ruth had dimly been aware of this; but now for the first time she was made painfully conscious of it. Mutual concessions!-and then to turn it around so that it suggested that an act of kindness might be interpreted as moral obloquy!

Walls; queer, invisible walls that receded whenever she reached out, but that still remained between her and what she sought. The wall of the sky, the wall of the horizon, the wall behind which each human being hid-the wall behind which she herself was hiding! If only her mother had lived, her darling mother!

Presently the unhappy puzzlement left her face; and an inward glow began to lighten it. The curtain before one mystery was torn aside, and she saw in reality what lay behind the impulse that had led her into the young man's room. Somebody to whom she would be necessary, who for days would have to depend upon her for the needs of life. An inarticulate instinct which now found expression. Upon what this instinct was based she could not say; she was conscious only of its insistence. Briefly explained, she was as the child who discards the rag baby for the living one. Spurlock was no longer a man before this instinct; he was a child in trouble.

Her cogitations were dissipated by a knock on the door. The visitor was the hotel manager, who respectfully announced that the doctor was ready for her. So Ruth took another step toward her destination, which we in our vanity call destiny.

"Will he live?" asked Ruth.

"Thanks to you," said the doctor. "Without proper medical care, he would have been dead by morning." He smiled at her as he smiled at death, cheerfully.

The doctor's smile is singular; there is no other smile that reaches the same level. It is the immediate inspiration of confidence; it alleviates pain, because we know by that smile that pain is soon to leave us; it becomes the bulwark against our depressive thoughts of death; and it is the promise that we still have a long way to go before we reach the Great Terminal.

In passing, why do we fear death? For our sins? Rather, isn't it the tremendous inherent human curiosity to know what is going to happen to-morrow that causes us to wince at the thought of annihilation? A subconscious resentment against the idea of entering darkness while our neighbour will proceed with his petty affairs as usual?

"It's nip and tuck," said the doctor; "but we'll pull him through. Probably his first serious bout with John Barleycorn. If he had eaten food, this wouldn't have happened. It is not a dissipated face."

"No; it is only-what shall I say?-troubled. The ragged edge."

"Yes. This is also the ragged edge of the world, too. It is the bottom of the cup, where all the dregs appear to settle. But this chap is good wine yet. We'll have him on his way before many days. But ... he must want to live in order that the inclination to repeat this incident may not recur. The manager tells me that you are an American. So am I. For ten years I've been trying to go home, but my conscience will not permit me, I hate the Orient. It drives one mad at times. Superstition-you knock into it whichever way you turn. The Oriental accepts my medicines kowtowing, and when my back is turned, chucks the stuff out of the window and burns joss-sticks. I hate this part of the world."

"So do I," replied Ruth.

"You have lived over here?"-astonished.

"I was born in the South Seas and I am on my way to America, to an aunt."

"Well, it's mighty fine of you to break your journey in this fashion-for someone you don't know, a passer-by."

He held out his dry hard hand into which she placed hers. The manager had sketched the girl's character, or rather had interpreted it, from the incidents which had happened since dinner. "You will find her new." New? That did not describe her. Here, indeed, was a type with which he had never until now come into contact-a natural woman. She would be extraordinarily interesting as a metaphysical study. She would be surrendering to all her impulses-particularly the good impulses-many of which society had condemned long