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

McClintock. "Well, well; I have given out of my wisdom. I'd like to shake you until your bones rattled; but the bones of a Roundhead wouldn't rattle to any purpose. Lad, I admire you even in your folly. Mountains out of molehills and armies out of windmills; and you'll tire yourself in one direction and shatter yourself in the other. There is strength in you-misguided. You will torture yourself and torture her all through life; but in the end she will pour the wine of her faith into a sound chalice. I would that you were my own."

"I, a thief?"

"Aye; thief, Roundhead and all. If a certain kink in your sense of honour will not permit you to go to her as a lover, go to her as a comrade. Talk to her of the new story; divert her; for this day her heart has been twisted sorely."

McClintock without further speech strode toward his bungalow; and half an hour later Spurlock, passing, heard the piano-tuning key at work.

Spurlock plodded through the heavy sand, leaden in the heart and mind as well as in the feet. But recently he had asked God to pile it all on him; and God had added this, with a fresh portion for Ruth. One thing-he could be thankful for that-the peak of his misfortunes had been reached; the world might come to an end now and not matter in the least.

Love ... to take her in his arms and to comfort her: and then to add to her cup of bitterness the knowledge that her husband was a thief! For himself he did not care; God could continue to grind and pulverize him; but to add another grain to the evil he had already wrought upon Ruth was unthinkable. The future? He dared not speculate upon that.

He paused at the bamboo curtain of her room, which was in semi-darkness. He heard Rollo's stump beat a gentle tattoo on the floor.

"Ruth?"

Silence for a moment. "Yes. What is it?"

"Is there anything I can do?" The idiocy of the question filled him with the craving of laughter. Was there anything he could do!

"No, Hoddy; nothing."

"Would you like to have me come in and talk?" How tender that sounded!-talk!

"If you want to."

Bamboo and bead tinkled and slithered behind him. The dusky obscurity of the room was twice welcome. He did not want Ruth to see his own stricken countenance; nor did he care to see hers, ravaged by tears. He knew she had been weeping. He drew a chair to the side of the bed and sat down, terrified by the utter fallowness of his mind. Filled as he was with conflicting emotions, any stretch of silence would be dangerous. The fascination of the idea of throwing himself upon his knees and crying out all that was in his heart! As his eyes began to focus objects, he saw one of her arms extended upon the counterpane, in his direction, the hand clenched tightly.

"I am very wicked," she said. "After all, he is my father, Hoddy; and I cursed him. But all those empty years!... My heart was hot. I'm sorry. I do forgive him; but he will never know now."

"Write him," urged Spurlock, finding speech.

"He would return my letters unopened or destroy them."

That was true, thought Spurlock. No matter what happened, whether the road smoothed out or became still rougher, he would always be carrying this secret with him; and each time he recalled it, the rack.

"Would you rather be alone?"

"No. It's kind of comforting to have you there. You understand. I sha'n't cry any more. Tell me a story-with apple-blossoms in it-about people who are happy."

Miserably his thoughts shuttled to and fro in search of what he knew she wanted-a love story. Presently he began to weave a tale, sorry enough, with all the ancient claptraps and rusted platitudes. How long he sat there, reeling off this drivel, he never knew. When he reached the happy ending, he waited. But there was no sign from her. By and by he gathered enough courage to lean toward her. She had fallen asleep. The hand that had been clenched lay open, relaxed; and upon the palm he saw her mother's locket.


CHAPTER XXVI


Spurlock went out on his toes, careful lest the bamboo curtain rattle behind him. He went into the study and sat down at his table, but not to write. He drew out the check and the editorial letter. He had sold half a dozen short tales to third-rate magazines; but this letter had been issued from a distinguished editorial room, of international reputation. If he could keep it up-style and calibre of imagination-within a year the name of Taber would become widely known. Everything in the world to live for!-fame that he could not reap, love that he must not take! What was all this pother about hell as a future state?

By and by things began to stir on the table: little invisible things. The life with which he had endued these sheets of paper began to beckon imperiously. So he sharpened a score of pencils, and after fiddling about and rewriting the last page he had written the previous night, he plunged into work. It was hot and dry. There were mysterious rustlings that made him glance hopefully toward the sea. He was always deceived by these rustlings which promised wind and seldom fulfilled that promise.

"Time to dress for dinner," said Ruth from behind the curtain. "I don't see how you do it, Hoddy. It's so stuffy-and all that tobacco smoke!"

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!"

"God 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 manuscript 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 God. As if God would not continue to mock him so long as his brain held a human thought! God 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 glass 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. Nobody 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