The Ragged Edge Part 23

Something happened down there, and probably I'll never know what.

Every time you mention the father, she turns into marble. No; she'd never go back. Mac, she's the honestest human being I ever saw or heard of; and at the same time she is velvet over steel. And yet, she would be easy prey in her present state of mind to any plausible, attractive scoundrel. That's why I'm so anxious to get her to a haven."

"Come along, then. You've got me interested and curious. If you were ten years younger, you'd have me wondering."

The doctor did not reply to this rather ambiguous statement, but pushed back his chair and signed to McClintock to follow. They found Ruth reading to Spurlock, whose shoulders and head were propped by pillows.

McClintock did not exaggerate his ability to read faces. It was his particular hobby, and the leisure he had to apply to it had given him a remarkable appraising eye. Within ten minutes he had read much more than had greeted his eye. A wave of pity went over him--pity for the patient, the girl, and his friend. The poor old imbecile! Why, this child was a firebrand, a wrecker, if ever he had seen one; and the worst kind because she was unconscious of her gifts.

As for the patient, his decision was immediate. Here was no crooked soul; a little weak perhaps, impulsive beyond common, but fundamentally honest. Given time and the right environment, and he would outgrow these defects. Confidence in himself would strengthen him. If the boy had done anything wrong back there in the States, his would be the brand of conscience to pay him out in full. With a little more meat on him, he would be handsome.

"My friend here," said McClintock, "tells me you are looking for a job."

"Yes."

"Well, I've a job open; but I don't want you to get the wrong idea of it. In the first place, it will be d.a.m.nably dull. You won't often see white folks. There will be long stretches of idleness, heat, and enervation; and always the odour of drying coconut. A good deal of the food will be in tins. You'll live to hate chicken; and the man in you will rise up and demand strong drink. But n.o.body drinks on my island unless I offer it, which is seldom. If there is any drinking, I'll do it."

Spurlock smiled at the doctor.

"He'll not trouble you on the liquor side, Mac."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Distinctive Pictures Corporation. The Ragged Edge._ A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.]

"So much the better. You will have a bungalow to yourself,"

continued McClintock, "and your morning meal will be your own affair. But luncheon and dinners you will sit at my table. I'm a stickler about clothes and clean chins. How you dress when you're loafing will be no concern of mine; but fresh twill or Shantung, when you dine with me, collar and tie. If you like books and music, we'll get along."

"Then you are taking me on?" Spurlock's eyes grew soft like those of a dog that, expecting the whip, saw only the kindly hand.

"I am going to give you a try."

"When will you want me?"--with pitiful eagerness. "How shall I get to you?"

"My yacht is in the river. The doctor here says he can get you aboard to-morrow night. But understand me thoroughly: I am offering you this job because my friend wants to help you. I don't know anything about you. I am gambling on his intuition." McClintock preferred to put it thus.

"To-morrow night!" said Spurlock, in a wondering whisper. Out of the beaten track, far from the trails of men! He relaxed.

The doctor reached over and laid his hand upon Spurlock's heart.

"Thumping; but that's only excitement. You'll do."

Then he looked at Ruth. Her face expressed nothing. That was one of the mysterious qualities of this child of the lagoon: she had always at instant service that Oriental mask of impenetrable calm that no Occidental trick could dislodge. He could not tell by the look of her whether she was glad or sorry that presently she would be free.

"I have good news for you. If you do not find your aunt, my people will take you under wing until you can stand on your own."

"That is very kind of you," she acknowledged. The lips of the mask twisted upward into a smile.

The doctor missed the expression of terror and dismay that flitted across Spurlock's face.

Once they were below, McClintock turned upon the doctor. "I can readily see," he said, "why you'll always be as poor as a church mouse."

"What?" said the doctor, whose thoughts were in something of a turmoil. "What's that?"

"The old human cry of something for nothing; but with you it is in reverse. You are always doing something for nothing, and that is why I love you. If I offered you half of my possessions, you'd doubtless wallop me on the jaw. To be with you is the best moral tonic I know. You tonic my liver and you tonic my soul. It is good sometimes to walk with a man who can look G.o.d squarely in the face, as you can."

"But wasn't I right? That pair?"

"I'll take the boy; he'll be a novelty. Amiable and good-looking.

That's the kind, my friend, that always fall soft. No matter what they do, always someone to bolster them up, to lend them money, and to coddle them."

"But, man, this chap hasn't fallen soft."

"Ay, but he will. And here's the proof. You and the girl have made it soft for him, and I'm going to make it soft for him. But what I do is based upon the fact that he is one of those individuals who are conscience-driven. Conscience drove him to this side of the world, to this bed. It drives him to my island, where I can study him to my heart's content. He believes that he is leaving this conscience behind; and I want to watch his disillusion on this particular point. Oh, don't worry. I shall always be kind to him; I sha'n't bait him. Only, he'll be an interesting specimen for me to observe. But ship that girl east as soon as you can."

"Why?"

McClintock put a hand on the doctor's shoulder. "Because she's a fire-opal, and to the world at large they bring bad luck."

"Rot! Mac, what do you suppose the natives used to call her? The Dawn Pearl!"

McClintock wagged his Scotch head negatively. He knew what he knew.

Spurlock possessed that extraordinary condition of the mind which is called New England conscience. Buried under various ancestral sixteenths, smothered under modern thought, liberty of action and bewildering variety of flesh-pots, it was still alive to the extent that it needed only his present state to resuscitate it in all its peculiar force. The Protestant Flagellant, who whipped his soul rather than his body, who made self-denial the rack and the boot, who believed that on Sunday it was sacrilegious to smile, blasphemous to laugh! Spurlock had gone back spiritually three hundred years. In the matter of his conscience he was primitive; and for an educated man to become primitive is to become something of a child.

From midnight until morning he was now left alone. He had sufficient strength to wait upon himself. During the previous night he had been restless; and in the lonely dragging hours his thoughts had raced in an endless circle--action without progress. He was reaching wearily for some kind of buffer to his harrying conscience. He thought rationally; that is to say, he thought clearly, as a child thinks clearly. The primitive superst.i.tion of his Puritan forbears was his; and before this the buckler of his education disintegrated. The idea of Ruth as a talisman against misfortune--which he now recognized as a sick man's idea--faded as his appreciation of the absurd rea.s.serted itself. But in its stead--toward morning--there appeared another idea which appealed to him as sublime, appealed to the primitive conscience, to his artistic sense of the drama, to the poet and the novelist in him. He was and always would be dramatizing his emotions; perpetually he would be confounding his actual with his imaginary self.

To surrender himself to the law, to face trial and imprisonment, was out of the question. Let the law put its hand on his shoulder--if it could! But at present he was at liberty, and he purposed to remain in that state. His conscience never told him to go back and take his punishment; it tortured him only in regard to the deed itself. He had tossed an honoured name into the mire; he required no prison bars to accentuate this misery.

Something, then, to appease the wrath of G.o.d; something to blunt this persistent agony. It was not necessary to appease the wrath of human society; it was necessary only to appease that of G.o.d for the broken Commandment. To divide the agony into two spheres so that one would mitigate the other. In fine, to marry Ruth (if she would consent) as a punishment for what he had done! To whip his soul so long as he lived, but to let his body go free! To provide for her, to work and dream for her, to be tender and thoughtful and loyal, to shelter and guard her, to become accountable to G.o.d for her future.

It was the sing-song girl idea, magnified many diameters. In this hour its colossal selfishness never occurred to him.

So, then, when McClintock offered the coveted haven, Spurlock became afire to dramatize the idea.

"Ruth!"

She had gone to the door, aimlessly, without purpose. All the sombre visions she had been pressing back, fighting out of her thoughts, swarmed over the barrier and crushed her. She did not want to go to the doctor's people; however kindly that might be, they would be only curious strangers. She would never return to her father; that resolution was final. What she actually wanted was the present state of affairs to continue indefinitely.

That is what terrified her: the consciousness that nothing in her life would be continuous, that she would no sooner form friendships (like the present) than relentless fate would thrust her into a new circle. All the initial confidence in herself was gone; her courage was merely a sh.e.l.l to hide the lack. To have the present lengthen into years! But in a few hours she would be upon her way, far lonelier than she had ever been. As Spurlock called her name, she paused and turned.

"Dawn Pearl!... come here!"

She moved to the side of the bed. "What is it?"

"Can't you see? Together, down there; you and I!... As my wife!

Both of us, never to be lonely again!... Will you marry me, Ruth?"

As many a wiser woman had done, Ruth mistook thrilling eagerness for love. Love and companionship. A fire enveloped her, a fire which was strangely healing, filling her heart with warmth, blotting out the menace of the world. She forgot her vital hatred of the South Seas; she forgot that McClintock's would not differ a jot from the old island she had for ever left behind her; she forgot all the doctor's lessons and warnings.

She would marry him. Because of the thought of love and companionship? No. Because here was the haven for which she had been blindly groping: the positive abolition of all her father's rights in her--the right to drag her back. The annihilation of the Terror which fascinated her and troubled her dreams o' nights.