The Ragged Edge by Harold MacGrath (best beach reads .TXT) 📖

over what he knew, the deeper grew his chagrin. The real Ruth was as completely hidden as though she stood behind the walls of Agra Fort. But after all, what did it matter whether she had secrets or not? To him she was not a woman but a symbol; and one did not investigate the antecedents of symbols.

"She tells me there was a Kanaka cook; been in the family as long as she can remember."

"I see. I deal with the Malay mostly; but twice a year I visit islands occupied by the true blacks, recently cured of their ancient taste for long-pig."

"What's that?"

"Think it over," said McClintock, grimly.

"Good Lord!-cannibals?"

"Aye. Someday I'll take you down there and have them rig up the coconut dance for you. The Malays have one, too, but it's a rank imitation, tom-toms and all. But what I want to get at is this. If your wife can coach you a bit in native lingo, it will help all round. I have two Malay clerks in the store; but I'm obliged to have a white man to watch over them, or they'd clean me out. Single pearls-Lord knows where they come from!-are always turning up, some of them of fine lustre; but I never set eyes on them. My boys buy them with beads or bolts of calico of mine. They steal over to Copeley's at night and dispose of the pearl for cash. That's how I finally got wind of it. Primarily your job will be to balance the stores against the influx of coconut and keep an eye on these boys. There'll be busy days and idle. Everything goes-the copra for oil, the fibre of the husk for rope, and the shell for carbon. If you fall upon a good pearl, buy it in barter and pay me out of your salary."

"Pearls!"

"Sounds romantic, eh? Well, forty years ago the pearl game hereabouts was romantic; but there's only one real pearl region left-the Persian Gulf. In these waters the shell has about given out. Still, they bob up occasionally. I need a white man, if only to talk to; and it will be a god send to talk to someone of your intelligence. The doctor said you wrote."

"Trying to."

"Well, you'll have lots of time down there."

Here Ruth returned with the broth; and McClintock strode aft, convinced that he was going to have something far more interesting than books to read.

Spurlock stared at Ruth across the rim of his bowl. He was vaguely uneasy; he knew not what about. Here was the same Ruth who had left him a few minutes since: the same outwardly; and yet...!

On the ninth day Spurlock was up and about; that is, he was strong enough to walk alone, from the companion to his chair, to lean upon the rail when the chair grew irksome, to join Ruth and his employer at lunch and dinner: strong enough to argue about books, music, paintings. He was, in fact, quite eager to go on living.

Ruth drank in these intellectual controversies, storing away facts. What she admired in her man was his resolute defense of his opinions. McClintock could not browbeat him, storm as he might. But whenever the storm grew dangerous, either McClintock or Spurlock broke into saving laughter.

McClintock would bang his fist upon the table. "I wouldn't give a betel-nut for a man who wouldn't stick to his guns, if he believed himself in the right. We'll have some fun down there at my place, Spurlock; but we'll probably bore your wife to death."

"Oh, no!" Ruth protested. "I have so much to learn."

"Aye," said McClintock, in a tone so peculiar that it sent Spurlock's glance to his plate.

"All my life I've dreamed of something like this," he said, divertingly, with a gesture which included the yacht. "These islands that come out of nowhere, like transparent amethyst, that deepen to sapphire, and then become thickly green! And always the white coral sand rimming them-emeralds set in pearls!"

"'A thing of beauty is a joy forever!'" quoted McClintock. "But I like Bobby Burns best. He's neighbourly; he has a jingle for every ache and joy I've had."

So Ruth heard about the poets; she became tolerably familiar with the exploits of that engaging ruffian Cellini; she heard of the pathetic deafness of Beethoven; she was thrilled, saddened, exhilarated; and on the evening of the twelfth day she made bold to enter the talk.

"There is something in The Tale of Two Cities that is wonderful," she said.

"That's a fine tale," said Spurlock. "The end is the most beautiful in English literature. 'It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.' That has always haunted me."

"I liked that, too," she replied; "but it wasn't that I had in mind. Here it is." She opened the book which she had brought to the table. "'A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city at night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!' ... It kind of terrifies me," said Ruth, looking up, first at the face of her husband, then at McClintock's. "No matter how much I tell of myself, I shall always keep something back. No matter how much you tell me, you will always keep something back."

Neither man spoke. McClintock stared into the bowl of his pipe and Spurlock into his coffee cup. But McClintock's mind was perceptive, whereas Spurlock's was only dully confused. The Scot understood that, gently and indirectly, Ruth was asking her husband a question, opening a door if he cared to enter.

So the young fool had not told her! McClintock had suspected as much. Everything in this world changed-except human folly. This girl was strong and vital: how would she take it when she learned that she had cast her lot with a fugitive from justice? For McClintock was certain that Spurlock was a hunted man. Well, well; all he himself could do would be to watch this singular drama unroll.

The night before they made McClintock's Ruth and Spurlock leaned over the rail, their shoulders touching. It might have been the moon, or the phosphorescence of the broken water, or it might have been his abysmal loneliness; but suddenly he caught her face in his hands and kissed her on the mouth.

"Oh!" she gasped. "I did not know ... that it was ... like that!" She stepped back; but as his hands fell she caught and held them tightly. "Please, Hoddy, always tell me when do I things wrong. I never want you to be ashamed of me. I will do anything and everything I can to become your equal."

"You will never become that, Ruth. But if God is kind to me, someday I may climb up to where you are. I'd like to be alone now. Would you mind?"

She wanted another kiss, but she did not know how to go about it; so she satisfied the hunger by pressing his hands to her thundering heart. She let them fall and sped to the companion, where she stood for a moment, the moonlight giving her a celestial touch. Then she went below.

Spurlock bent his head to the rail. The twists in his brain had suddenly straightened out; he was normal, wholly himself; and he knew now exactly what he had done.


CHAPTER XXI


McClintock's island was twelve miles long and eight miles wide, with the shape of an oyster. The coconut plantation covered the west side. From the white beach the palms ran in serried rows quarter of a mile inland, then began a jungle of bamboo, gum-tree, sandalwood, plantain, huge fern, and choking grasses. The south-east end of the island was hillocky, with volcanic subsoil. There was plenty of sweet water.

The settlement was on the middle west coast. The stores, the drying bins, McClintock's bungalows and the native huts sprawled around an exquisite landlocked lagoon. One could enter and leave by proa, but nothing with a keel could cross the coral gate. The island had evidently grown round this lagoon, approached it gradually from the volcanic upheaval-an island of coral and lava.

There were groves of cultivated guava, orange, lemon, and pomegranate. The oranges were of the Syrian variety, small but filled with scarlet honey. This fruit was McClintock's particular pride. He had brought the shrubs down from Syria, and, strangely enough, they had prospered.

"Unless you have eaten a Syrian orange," he was always saying, "you have only a rudimentary idea of what an orange is."

The lemons had enormously thick skins and were only mildly acidulous-sweet lemons, they were called; and one found them delicious by dipping the slices in sugar.

But there was an abiding serpent in this Eden. McClintock had brought from Penang three mangosteen evergreens; and, wonders of wonders, they had thrived-as trees. But not once in these ten years had they borne blossom or fruit. The soil was identical, the climate; still, they would not bear the Olympian fruit, with its purple-lined jacket and its snow-white pulp. One might have said that these trees grieved for their native soil; and, grieving, refused to bear.

Of animal life, there was nothing left but monkeys and wild pig, the latter having been domesticated. Of course there were goats. There's an animal! He thrives in all zones, upon all manner of food. He may not be able to eat tin-cans, but he tries to. The island was snake-free.

There were all varieties of bird-life known in these latitudes, from the bird of paradise down to the tiny scarlet-beaked love-birds. There were always parrots and parrakeets screaming in the fruit groves.

The bungalows and stores were built of heavy bamboo and gum-wood; sprawly, one-storied affairs; for the typhoon was no stranger in these waters. Deep verandas ran around the bungalows, with bamboo drops which were always down in the daytime, fending off the treacherous sunshine. White men never went abroad without helmets. The air might be cool, but half an hour without head-gear was an invitation to sunstroke.

Into this new world, vivid with colour, came Spurlock, receptively. For a few days he was able to relegate his conscience to the background. There was so much to see, so much to do, that he became what he had once been normally, a lovable boy.

McClintock was amused. He began really to like Spurlock, despite the shadow of the boy's past, despite his inexplicable attitude toward this glorious girl. To be sure, he was attentive, respectful; but in his conduct there was none of that shameless
camaraderie of a man who loved his woman and didn't care a hang if all the world knew it. If the boy did not love the girl, why the devil had he dragged her into this marriage?

Spurlock was a bit shaky bodily, but his brain was functioning clearly; and, it might be added, swiftly-as the brain always acts when confronted by a perplexing riddle. No matter how swiftly he pursued this riddle, he could not bring it to a halt. Why had Ruth married him ? A penniless outcast, for