The Ragged Edge Part 18

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 Maupa.s.sant--sheer off! Stick to d.i.c.kens 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 b.u.t.ton 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 tw.a.n.ging it again.

That's the job. He's young and sound. Of course, there'll be a few kinks to straighten out. He's pa.s.sed 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, d.i.c.k, 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 a.n.a.lytical 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 pa.s.sed 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 c.u.m 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 c.u.m was notified that the patient had sat up in bed for quarter of an hour. Promptly Ah c.u.m 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 and tree-lined streets. Her fanciful imagination no longer drew pictures of the aunt in the doorway of a wooden house, her arms extended in welcome. The doctor's lessons, perhaps delivered with too much serious emphasis, had destroyed that buoyant confidence in her ability to take care of herself.

Between Canton and Hartford two giants had risen, invisible but menacing--Fear and Doubt. The unknown, previously so attractive, now presented another face--blank. The doctor had not heard from his people. She was reasonably certain why. They did not want her.

Thus, all her interest in life began to centre upon the patient, who was apparently quite as anchorless as she was. Sometimes a whole morning would pa.s.s without Spurlock uttering a word beyond the request for a drink of water. Again, he would ask a few questions, and Ruth would answer them. He would repeat them innumerable times, and patiently Ruth would repeat her answers.

"What is your name?"

"Ruth."

"Ruth what?"

"Enschede; Ruth Enschede."

"En-shad-ay. You are French?"

"No. Dutch; Pennsylvania Dutch."