The Ragged Edge Part 39

He inspected his watch. Half after six. He was astonished. For four hours he had shifted his own troubles to the shoulders of these imaginative characters.

"He called me a wanton, Hoddy. That is what I don't understand."

"There isn't an angel in heaven, Ruth, purer or sweeter than you are. No doubt--because he did not understand you--he thought you had run away with someone. The trader you spoke about: he disliked your father, didn't he? Well, he probably played your father a horrible practical joke."

"Perhaps that was it. I always wondered why he bought my mother's pearls so readily. I am dreadfully sad."

"I'll tell you what. I'll speak to McClintock to-night and see if he won't take us for a junket on _The Tigress_. Eh? Banging against the old rollers--that'll put some life into us both. Run along while I rig up and get the part in my hair straight."

"If he had only been my father!--McClintock!"

"G.o.d didn't standardize human beings, Ruth; no grain of wheat is like another. See the new litter of Mrs. Pig? By George, every one of them looks like the other; and yet each one attacks the source of supply with a squeal and an oof that's entirely different from his brothers' and sisters'. Put on that new dress--the one that's all white. We'll celebrate that check, and let the rest of the world go hang."

"You are very good to me, Hoddy."

Something reached down into his heart and twisted it. But he held the smile until she turned away from the curtain. He dressed mechanically; so many moves this way, so many moves that. The evening breeze came; the bamboo shades on the veranda clicked and rasped; the loose edges of the ma.n.u.script curled. To prevent the leaves from blowing about, should a blow develop, he distributed paper weights. Still unconscious of anything he did physically.

He tried not to think--of Ruth with her mother's locket, of her misguided father, taking his lonely way to sea. He drew compellingly upon his new characters to keep him out of this melancholy channel; but they ebbed and ebbed; he could not hold them. Enschede: no human emotion should ever again shuttle between him and G.o.d. As if G.o.d would not continue to mock him so long as his brain held a human thought! G.o.d had given him a pearl without price, and he had misunderstood until this day.

McClintock was in a gay mood at dinner that night; but he did not see fit to give these children the true reason. For a long time there had been a standing offer from the company at Copeley's to take over the McClintock plantation; and to-day he had decided to sell. Why? Because he knew that when these two young people left, the island would become intolerable. For nearly thirty years he had lived here in contented loneliness; then youth had to come and fill him with discontent.

He would give _The Tigress_ a triple coat of paint, and take these two on a long cruise, wherever they wanted to go--Roundhead and Seraph, the blunderbus and the flaming angel. And there was another matter. To have sprung this upon them to-night would have been worth a thousand pounds. But his lips were honour-locked.

There was a pint of champagne and a quart of mineral water (both taboo) at his elbow. In a tall gla.s.s the rind of a Syrian orange was arranged in spiral form. The wine bubbled and seethed; and the exquisite bouquet of oranges permeated the room.

"I sha'n't offer any of these to you two," he said; "but I know you won't mind me having an imitation king's peg. The occasion is worth a dash of the grape, lad. You're on the way to big things. A thousand dollars is a lot of money for an author to earn."

Spurlock laughed. "Drink your peg; don't bother about me. I wouldn't touch the stuff for all the pearls in India. A cup of lies. I know all about it."

Ruth's eyes began to glow. She had often wondered if Hoddy would ever go back to it. She knew now that he never would.

"Sometimes a cup of lies is a cheering thing," replied the trader.

"In wine there is truth. What about that?"

"It means that drink cheats a man into telling things he ought not to. And there's your liver."

"Ay, and there's my liver. It'll be turning over to-morrow. But never mind that," said McClintock grinning as he drew the dish of bread-fruit toward him. "To-morrow I shall have a visitor. I do not say guest because that suggests friendship; and I am no friend of this Wastrel. I've told you about him; and you wrote a shrewd yarn on the subject."

"The pianist?"

"Yes. He'll be here two or three days. So Mrs. Spurlock had better stick to the bungalow."

"Ah," said Spurlock; "that kind of a man."

"Many kinds; a thorough outlaw. We've never caught him cheating at cards; too clever; but we know he cheats. But he's witty and amusing, and when reasonably drunk he can play the piano like a Paderewski. He's an interpretative genius, if there ever was one.

n.o.body knows what his real name is, but he's a Hollander. Kicked out of there for something shady. A remittance man. A check arrives in Batavia every three months. He has a grand time. Then he goes stony, and beats his way around the islands for another three months. Retribution has a queer way of acting sometimes. The Wastrel--as we call him--cannot play when he's sober; hands too shaky. He can't play cards, either, when he's sober. Alcohol--would you believe it?--steadies his nerves and keens his brain: which is against the laws of gravitation, you might say. He has often told me that if he could play sober, he would go to America and reap a fortune."

"You never told me what he is like," said Spurlock.

"I thought it best that you should imagine him. You were wide the mark, physically; otherwise you had him pat. He is big and powerful; one of those drinkers who show it but little outwardly.

Whisky kills him suddenly; it does not sap him gradually. In his youth he must have been a remarkably handsome man, for he is still handsome. I don't believe he is much past forty. A bad one in a rough-and-tumble; all the water-front tricks. His hair is oddly streaked with gray--I might say a dishonourable gray. Perhaps in the beginning the women made fools of themselves over him."

"That's reasonable. I don't know how to explain it," said Spurlock, "but music hits women queerly. I've often seen them storming the Carnegie Hall stage."

"Aye, music hits them. I'm thinking that the Wastrel was one day a celebrated professional; and the women were partly the cause of his fall. Women! He is always chanting the praise of some discovery; sometimes it will be a native, often a white woman out of the stews. So it will be wise for Mrs. Spurlock to keep to the bungalow until the rogue goes back to Copeley's. Queer world. For every Eden, there will be a serpent; for every sheepfold, there will be a wolf."

"What's the matter, Ruth?" asked Spurlock, anxiously.

"It has been ... rather a hard day, Hoddy," Ruth answered. She was wan and white.

So, after the dinner was over, Spurlock took her home; and worked far into the night.

The general office was an extension of the west wing of the McClintock bungalow. From one window the beach was always visible; from another, the stores. Spurlock was invariably at the high desk in the early morning, poring over ledgers, and giving the beach and the stores an occasional glance. Whenever McClintock had guests, he loafed with them on the west veranda in the morning.

This morning he heard voices--McClintock's and the Wastrel's.

"Sorry," said McClintock, "but I must ask you to check out this afternoon before five. I'm having some unexpected guests."

"Ah! Sometimes I wonder I don't run amok and kill someone," said the Wastrel, in broken English. "I give you all of my genius, and you say--'Get out!' I am some kind of a dog."

"That is your fault, none of mine. Without whisky," went on McClintock, "your irritability is beyond tolerance. You have said a thousand times that there was no shame in you. n.o.body can trust you. n.o.body can antic.i.p.ate your next move. We tolerate you for your genius, that's a fact. But underneath this tolerance there is always the vague hope that your manhood will someday rea.s.sert itself."

The Wastrel laughed. "Did you ever hear me whine?"

"No," admitted McClintock

"You've no objection to my dropping in again later, after your guests go?"

"No. When I'm alone I don't mind."

"Very well. You won't mind if I empty this gin?"

"No. Befuddle yourself, if you want to."

Silence.

Spurlock mused over the previous night. After he had eaten dinner with Ruth, he had gone to McClintock's; and he had heard music such as he had heard only in the great concert halls. The picturesque scoundrel had the true gift; and Spurlock was filled with pity at the thought of such genius gone to pot. To use it as a pa.s.sport to card-tables and gin-bottles! McClintock wasn't having any guests; at any rate, he had not mentioned the fact.

Spurlock had sensed what had gone completely over McClintock's head--that this was the playing of a soul in d.a.m.nation. His own peculiar genius--a miracle key to the hidden things in men's souls--had given him this immediate and astonishing illumination. As the Wastrel played, Spurlock knew that the man saw the inevitable end--death by drink; saw the glory of the things he had thrown away, the past, once so full of promise. And, decently as he could, McClintock was giving the man the boot.

There was, it might be said, a double illumination. But for Ruth, he, Howard Spurlock, might have ended upon the beach, inescapably d.a.m.ned. The Dawn Pearl. After all, the Wastrel was in luck: he was alone.

These thoughts, however, came to a broken end. From the window he saw _The Tigress_ faring toward Copeley's! Then somebody was coming? Some political high muckamuck, probably. Still, he was puzzled because McClintock had not spoken.

Presently McClintock came in. "General inspection after lunch; drying bins, stores and the young palms south-east. It will be hot work, but it must be done at once."

"All right, Mr. McClintock." Spurlock lowered his voice. "You are giving that chap the boot rather suddenly?"