The Ragged Edge Part 21

"But you can imagine it. Tell me what you think the island is like."

He did not pause to consider how she had learned that he had imagination; he comprehended only the direct challenge. To be free of outward distraction, he shut his eyes and concentrated upon the sc.r.a.ps she had given him; and shortly, with his eyes still closed, he began to describe Ruth's island: the mountain at one end, with the ever-recurring scarves of mist drifting across the lava-scarred face; the jungle at the foot of it; the dazzling border of white sand; the sprawling store of the trader and the rotting wharf, sundrily patched with drift-wood; the native huts on the sandy floor of the palm groves; the scattered sandalwood and ebony; the screaming parakeets in the plantains; the fis.h.i.+ng proas; the mission with its white washed walls and barren frontage; the lagoon, fringed with coco palms, now ruffled emerald, now placid sapphire.

"I think the natives saw you coming out of the lagoon, one dawn.

For you say that you swim. Wonderful! The water, dripping from you, must have looked like pearls. Do you know what? You're some sea G.o.ddess and you're only fooling us."

He opened his eyes, to behold hers large with wonder.

"And you saw all that in your mind?"

"It wasn't difficult. You yourself supplied the details. All I had to do was to piece them together."

"But I never told you how the natives fished."

"Perhaps I read of it somewhere."

"Still, you forgot something."

"What did I forget?"

"The breathless days and the faded, pitiless sky. Nothing to do; nothing for the hands, the mind, the heart. To wait for hours and hours for the night! The sea empty for days! You forgot the monotony, the endless monotony, that bends you and breaks you and crushes you--you forgot that!"

Her voice had steadily risen until it was charged with pa.s.sionate anger. It was his turn to express astonishment. Fire; she was full of it. Pearls in the dawn light, flas.h.i.+ng and burning!

"You don't like your island?"

"I hate it!... But, there!"--weariness edging in. "I am sorry. I shouldn't talk like that. I'm a poor nurse."

"You are the most wonderful human being I ever saw!" And he meant it.

She trembled; but she did not know why. "You mustn't talk any more; the excitement isn't good for you."

Drama. To get behind that impenetrable curtain, to learn why she hated her island. Never had he been so intrigued. Why, there was drama in the very dress she wore! There was drama in the unusual beauty of her, hidden away all these years on a forgotten isle!

"You've been lonely, too."

"You mustn't talk."

He ignored the command. "To be lonely! What is physical torture, if someone who loves you is nigh? But to be alone ... as I am!... yes, and as you are! Oh, you haven't told me, but I can see with half an eye. With n.o.body who cares ... the both of us!"

He was real in this moment. She was given a glimpse of his soul.

She wanted to take him in her arms and hush him, but she sat perfectly still. Then came the shock of the knowledge that soon he would be going upon his way, that there would be no one to depend upon her; and all the old loneliness came smothering down upon her again. She could not a.n.a.lyse what was stirring in her: the thought of losing the doll, the dog, and the cat. There was the world besides, looming darker and larger.

"What would you like most in this world?" he asked. Once more he was the searcher.

"Red apples and snow!" she sent back at him, her face suddenly transfixed by some inner glory.

"Red apples and snow!" he repeated. He returned figuratively to his bed--the bed he had made for himself and in which he must for ever lie. Red apples and snow! How often had these two things entered his thoughts since his wanderings began? Red apples and snow!--and never again to behold them!

"I am going out for a little while," she said. She wanted to be alone. "Otherwise you will not get your morning's sleep."

He did not reply. His curiosity, his literary instincts, had been submerged by the recurring thought of the fool he had made of himself. He heard the door close; and in a little while he fell into a doze; and there came a dream filled with broken pictures, each one of which the girl dominated. He saw her, dripping with rosy pearls, rise out of the lagoon in the dawn light: he saw her flas.h.i.+ng to and fro among the coco palms in the moons.h.i.+ne: he saw her breasting the hurricane, her body as full of grace and beauty as the Winged Victory of the Louvre. The queer phase of the dream was this, she was at no time a woman; she was symbolical of something, and he followed to learn what this something was. There was a lapse of time, an interval of blackness; then he found his hand in hers and she was leading him at a run up the side of the mountain.

His heart beat wildly and he was afraid lest the strain be too much; but the girl shook her head and smiled and pointed to the top of the mountain. All at once they came to the top, the faded blue sky overhead, and whichever way he looked, the horizon, the great rocking circle which hemmed them in. She pointed hither and yon, smiled and shook her head. Then he understood. Nowhere could he see that reaching, menacing Hand. So long as she stood beside him, he was safe. That was what she was trying to make him understand.

He awoke, strangely content. As it happens sometimes, the idea stepped down from the dream into the reality; and he saw it more clearly now than he had seen it in the dream. It filled his thoughts for the rest of the day, and became an obsession. How to hold her, how to keep her at his side; this was the problem with which he struggled.

When she came in after dinner that night, Ruth was no longer an interesting phenomenon, something figuratively to tear apart and investigate: she was talismanic. So long as she stood beside him, the Hand would not prevail.

CHAPTER XVI

Ah c.u.m began to worry. Each morning his inquiry was properly answered: the patient was steadily improving, but none could say when he would be strong enough to proceed upon his journey. The tourist season would soon be at ebb, and it would be late in September before the tide returned. So, then, fifty gold was considerable; it would carry Ah c.u.m across four comparatively idle months. And because of this hanging gold Ah c.u.m left many doors open to doubt.

Perhaps the doctor, the manager and the girl were in collusion: perhaps they had heard indirectly of the visit paid by Mr.

O'Higgins, the American detective, and were waiting against the hour when they could a.s.sist the young man in a sudden dash for liberty. Why not? Were not his own sentiments inclined in favour of the patient? But fifty gold was fifty gold.

One morning, as he took his stand on the Hong-Kong packet dock to ambush the possible tourist, he witnessed the arrival of a tubby schooner, dirty gray and blotched as though she had run through fire. Her two sticks were bare and brown, her snugged canvas drab, her bra.s.ses dull, her anchor mottled with rust. There was only one clean spot in the picture--the s.h.i.+p's wash (all white) that fluttered on a line stretched between the two masts. The half-nude brown bodies of the crew informed Ah c.u.m that the schooner had come up from the South Seas. The boiling under her stern, however, told him nothing. He was not a sailor. It would not have interested him in the least to learn that the tub ran on two powers--wind and oil.

Sampans with fish and fruit and vegetables swarmed about, while overhead gulls wheeled and swooped and circled. One of the sampans was hailed, and a rope-ladder was lowered. Shortly a man descended laboriously. He was dressed immaculately in a suit of heavy Shantung silk. His face was half hidden under a freshly pipeclayed _sola topee_--sun-helmet. He turned and shouted some orders to the Kanaka crew, then nodded to the sampan's coolies, who bore upon the sweeps and headed for the Sha-mien.

Ah c.u.m turned to his own affairs, blissfully ignorant that this tub was, within forty-eight hours, to cost him fifty gold. What had s.h.i.+fted his casual interest was the visible prospect of a party of three who were coming down the packet gang-plank. The trio exhibited that indecisive air with which Ah c.u.m was tolerably familiar. They were looking for a guide. Forthwith he presented his card.

The Reverend Henry Dolby had come to see China; for that purpose he had, with his wife and daughter, traversed land and sea to the extent of ten thousand miles. Actually, he had come all this distance simply to fulfil a certain clause in his contract with Fate, to be in Canton on this particular day.

Meantime, as the doctor was splitting his breakfast orange, he heard a commotion in his office, two rooms removed: volleys of pidgin English, one voice in protest, the other dominant. This was followed by heavy footsteps, and in another moment the dining-room door was flung open.

The doctor jumped to his feet. "Mac, you old son-of-a-gun!"

"Got a man's breakfast?" McClintock demanded to know.

"Tom! Hey, Tom!" The Chinese cook thrust his head into the dining room. "Those chops, fried potatoes, and b.u.t.tered toast."

"Aw light!"

The two old friends held each other off at arms' length for inspection; this proving satisfactory, they began to prod and pummel one another affectionately. No hair to fall awry, no powder to displace, no ruffles to crush; men are lucky. Women never throw themselves into each other's arms; they calculate the distance and the damage perfectly.

They sat down, McClintock reaching for a lump of sugar which he began munching.

"Come up by the packet?"

"No; came up with _The Tigress_."

"_The Tigress!_" The doctor laughed. "You'd have hit it off better if you'd called her _The Sow_. I'll bet you haven't given her a bucket of paint in three years. Oh, I know. You give her a daub here and there where the rust shows. A man as rich as you are ought to have a thousand-ton yacht."

"Good enough for me. She's plenty clean below."