The Ragged Edge Part 17

"Yes."

"What did I say?"

"Only one word," she said, offering her first white lie.

"What was it?" He was insistent.

"You repeated the word '_Fool_' over and over."

"Nothing else?"

"No. Now, no more questions, or I shall be forced to leave the room."

"I promise to ask no more."

"Would you like to have me read to you?"

He did not answer. So she took up Stevenson and began to read aloud. She read beautifully because the fixed form of the poem signified nothing. She went from period to period exactly as she would have read prose; so that sense and music were equally balanced. She read for half an hour, then closed the book because Spurlock appeared to have fallen asleep. But he was wide awake.

"What poet was that?"

"Stevenson." Ruth had read from page to page in "The Child's Garden of Verse," generally unfamiliar to the admirers of Stevenson. Of course Ruth was not aware that in this same volume there were lyrics known the world over.

Immediately Spurlock began to chant one of these.

"'Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.'"

"'This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea.

And the hunter home from the hill.'"

"What is that?" she asked. Something in his tone pinched her heart.

"Did you write it?"

"No. You will find it somewhere in that book. Ah, if I had written that!"

"Don't you want to live?"

"I don't know; I really don't know."

"But you are young!" It was a protest, almost vehement. She remembered the doctor's warning that the real battle would begin when the patient recovered consciousness. "You have all the world before you."

"Rather behind me;" and he spoke no more that morning.

Throughout the afternoon, while the doctor was giving her the first lesson out of his profound knowledge of life, her interest would break away continually, despite her honest efforts to pin it down to the facts so patiently elucidated for her. Recurrently she heard: "I don't know; I really don't know." It was curiously like the intermittent murmur of the surf, those weird Sundays, when her father paused for breath to launch additional d.a.m.nation for those who disobeyed the Word. "I don't know; I really don't know."

Her ear caught much of the lesson, and many things she stored away; but often what she heard was sound without sense. Still, her face never betrayed this distraction. And what was singular she did not recount to the doctor that morning's adventure. Why? If she had put the query to herself, she could not have answered it. It was in no sense confessional; it was a state of mind in the patient the doctor had already antic.i.p.ated. Yet she held her tongue.

As for the doctor, he found a pleasure in this service that would have puzzled him had he paused to a.n.a.lyse it. There was scant social life on the Sha-mien aside from masculine foregatherings, little that interested him. He took his social pleasures once a year in Hong-Kong, after Easter. He saw, without any particular regret, that this year he would have to forego the junket; but there would be ample compensation in the study of these queer youngsters. Besides, by the time they were off his hands, old McClintock would be dropping in to have his liver renovated.

All at once he recollected the fact that McClintock's copra plantation was down that way, somewhere in the South Seas; had an island of his own. Perhaps he had heard of this Enschede. Mac--the old gossip--knew about everything going on in that part of the world; and if Enschede was anything up to the picture the girl had drawn, McClintock would have heard of him, naturally. He might solve the riddle. All of which proves that the doctor also had his moments of distraction, with this difference: he was not distracted from his subject matter.

"So endeth the first lesson," he said. "Suppose we go and have tea?

I'd like to take you to a teahouse I know, but we'll go to the Victoria instead. I must practise what I preach."

"I should be unafraid to go anywhere with you."

"Lord, that's just the lesson I've been expounding! It isn't a question of fear; it's one of propriety."

"I'll never understand."

"You don't have to. I'll tell you what. I'll write out certain rules of conduct, and then you'll never be in doubt."

She laughed; and it was pleasant laughter in his ears. If only this child were his: what good times they would have together! The thought pa.s.sed on, but it left a little ache in his heart.

"Why do you laugh?" he asked.

"All that you have been telling me, our old Kanaka cook summed up in a phrase."

"What was it?"

"Never glance sideways at a man.".

"The whole thing in a nutsh.e.l.l!"

"Are there no men a woman may trust absolutely?"

"Hang it, that isn't it. Of course there are, millions of them.

It's public opinion. We all have to kow-tow to that."

"Who made such a law?"

"This world is governed by minorities--in politics, in religion, in society. Majorities, right or wrong, dare not revolt. Footprints, and we have to toddle along in them, w.i.l.l.y-nilly; and those who have the courage to step outside the appointed path are called pariahs!"

"I'm afraid I shall not like this world very much. It is putting all my dreams out of joint."

"Never let the unknown edge in upon your courage. The world is like a peppery horse. If he senses fear in the touch of your hand, he'll give you trouble."

"It's all so big and aloof. It isn't friendly as I thought it would be. I don't know; I really don't know," she found herself repeating.

He drew her away from this thought. "I read those stories."

"Are they good?"

"He can write; but he hasn't found anything real to write about. He hasn't found himself, as they say. He's rewriting Poe and De Maupa.s.sant; and that stuff was good only when Poe and De Maupa.s.sant wrote it."

"How do you spell the last name?"