The Ragged Edge

  CHAPTER XI

  The second call energized her into action. She dropped themanuscripts and swiftly brought the coat to him, noting that abutton hung loose. Later, she would sew it on.

  "What is it you want?" she asked, as she held out the coat.

  "Fold it ... under the pillow."

  This she did carefully, but inwardly commenting that he was stillin the realm of strange fancies. Wanting his coat, when he musthave known that the pockets were empty! But the effort to talk hadcost him something. The performance over, he relaxed and closed hiseyes. Even as she watched, the sweat of weakness began to form onhis forehead and under the nether lip. She wet some absorbentcotton with alcohol and refreshed his face and neck. This done, shewaited at the side of the bed; but he gave no sign that he wasconscious of her nearness.

  The poor boy, wanting his empty coat! The incident, however, causedher to review the recent events. It was now evident that he had notbeen normal that first day. Perhaps he had had money in the coat,back in Hong-Kong, and had been robbed without knowing it. Perhapsthese few words were the first real conscious words he had utteredin days. His letter of credit; probably that was it; and, observingthe strangeness of the room he was in, his first concern onreturning to consciousness would naturally relate to his letter ofcredit. How would he act when he learned that it had vanished?

  She gathered up the manuscripts and restored them to the envelope.This she put into the trunk. She noticed that this trunk was notlittered with hotel labels. These little squares of coloured paperinterested her mightily--hotel labels. She was for ever scanningluggage and finding her way about the world, via these miniaturepictures. London, Paris, Rome! There were no hotel labels on thepatient's trunk, but there were ship labels; and by these she wasable to reconstruct the journey: from New York to Naples, thence toAlexandria; from Port Said to Colombo; from Colombo to Bombay; fromCalcutta to Rangoon, thence down to Singapore; from Singapore toHong-Kong. The great world outside!

  She stood motionless beside the trunk, deep in speculation; andthus the doctor found her.

  "Well?" he whispered.

  "I believe he is conscious," she answered. "He just asked for hiscoat, which he wanted under his pillow."

  "Conscious; well, that's good news. He'll be able to help us alittle now. I hope that some day he'll understand how much he owesyou."

  "Oh, that!" she said, with a deprecating gesture.

  "Miss Enschede, you're seven kinds of a brick!"

  "A brick?"

  He chuckled. "I forgot. That's slang, meaning you're splendid."

  "I begin to see that I shall have to learn English all over again."

  "You have always spoken it?"

  "Yes; except for some native. I wasn't taught that; I simply fellinto it from contact."

  "I see. So he's come around, then? That's fine."

  He approached the bed and laid his palm on the patient's forehead,and nodded. Then he took the pulse.

  "He will pull through?"

  "Positively. But the big job for you is yet to come. When he beginsto notice things, I want you to trap his interest, to amuse him,keep his thoughts from reverting to his misfortunes."

  "Then he has been unfortunate?"

  "That's patent enough. He's had a hard knock somewhere; and untilhe is strong enough to walk, we must keep his interest away fromthat thought. After that, we'll go our several ways."

  "What makes you think he has had a hard knock?"

  "I'm a doctor, young lady."

  "You're fine, too. I doubt if you will receive anything for yourtrouble."

  "Oh, yes I will. The satisfaction of cheating Death again. You'vebeen a great help these five days; for he had to have attendanceconstantly, and neither Wu nor I could have given that. And yet,when you offered to help, it was what is to come that I had inmind."

  "To make him forget the knock?"

  "Precisely. I'm going to be frank; we must have a clearunderstanding. Can you afford to give this time? There are your ownaffairs to think of."

  "There's no hurry."

  "And money?"

  "I'll have plenty, if I'm careful."

  "It has done me a whole lot of good to meet you. Over here a manquickly loses faith, and I find myself back on solid ground oncemore. Is there anything you'd like?"

  "Books."

  "What kind?"

  "Dickens, Hugo."

  "I'll bring you an armful this afternoon. I've a lot of oldmagazines, too. There are a thousand questions I'd like to ask you,but I sha'n't ask them."

  "Ask them, all of them, and I will gladly answer. I mystify you; Ican see that. Well, whenever you say, I promise to do away with themystery."

  "All right. I'll call for you this afternoon when Wu is on. I'llshow you the Sha-mien; and we can talk all we want."

  "I was never going to tell anybody," she added. "But you are a goodman, and you'll understand. I believed I was strong enough to go onin silence; but I'm human like everybody else. To tell someone whois kind and who will understand!"

  "There, there!" he said. There was a hint of tears in her voice."That's all right. We'll get together this afternoon; and you canpretend that I am your father."

  "No! I have run away from my father. I shall never go back to him;never, never!"

  Distressed, embarrassed beyond measure by this unexpected tragicrevelation, the doctor puttered about among the bottles on thestand.

  "We're forgetting," he said. "We mustn't disturb the patient. I'llcall for you after lunch."

  "I'm sorry."

  She began to prepare the room for Wu's coming, while the doctorwent downstairs. As he was leaving the hotel, Ah Cum stepped up tohis side.

  "How is Mr. Taber?"

  "Regained consciousness this morning."

  Ah Cum nodded. "That is good."

  "You are interested?"

  "In a way, naturally. We are both graduates of Yale."

  "Ah! Did he tell you anything about himself?"

  "Aside from that, no. When will he be up?"

  "That depends. Perhaps in two or three weeks. Did he talk a littlewhen you took him into the city?"

  "No. He appeared to be strangely uncommunicative, though I tried todraw him out. He spoke only when he saw the sing-song girl hewanted to buy."

  "Why didn't you head him off, explain that it couldn't be done by awhite man?"

  Ah Cum shrugged. "You are a physician; you know the vagaries of menin liquor. He was a stranger. I did not know how he would act if Iobstructed him."

  "We found all his pockets empty."

  "Then they were empty when he left," replied Ah Cum, with dignity.

  "I was only commenting. Did he act to you that day as if he knewwhat he was doing?"

  "Not all of the time."

  "A queer case;" and the doctor passed on.

  Ah Cum made a movement as though to follow, but reconsidered. Theword of a Chinaman; he had given it, so he must abide. There wasnow no honest way of warning Taber that the net had been drawn. Ofcourse, it was ridiculous, this inclination to assist the fugitive,based as it was upon an intangible university idea. And yet,mulling it over, he began to understand why the white man was sopowerful in the world: he was taught loyalty and fair play in hisschools, and he carried this spirit the world which his forebearshad conquered.

  Suddenly Ah Cum laughed aloud. He, a Chinaman, troubling himselfover Occidental ideas! With his hands in his sleeves, he proceededon his way.

  * * * * *

  Ruth and the doctor returned to the hotel at four. Both carriedpackages of books and magazines. There was an air of repressedgaiety in her actions: the sense of freedom had returned; her heartwas empty again. The burden of decision had been transferred.

  And because he knew it was a burden, there was no gaiety upon thedoctor's face; neither was there speech on his tongue. He knew nothow to act, urged as he was in two directions. It would be uselessto tell her to go back, even heartless; and yet he could not advise
her to go on, blindly, not knowing whether her aunt was dead oralive. He was also aware that all his arguments would shatterthemselves against her resolutions. There was a strange quality ofsteel in this pretty creature. He understood now that it was a partof her inheritance. The father would be all steel. One point in hernarrative stood out beyond all others. To an unthinking mind theepisode would be ordinary, trivial; but to the doctor, who had hadplenty of time to think during his sojourn in China, it was basicof the child's unhappiness. A dozen words, and he saw Enschede asclearly as though he stood hard by in the flesh.

  To preach a fine sermon every Sunday so that he would lose neitherthe art nor the impulse; and this child, in secret rebellion,taking it down in long hand during odd hours in the week! Preachinggrandiloquently before a few score natives who understood littlebeyond the gestures, for the single purpose of warding offdisintegration! It reminded the doctor of a stubborn retreat; frombarricade to barricade, grimly fighting to keep the enemy at bay,that insidious enemy of the white man in the South Seas--inertia.

  The drunken beachcombers; the one-sided education; the utterloneliness of a white child without playfellows, human or animal,without fairy stories, who for days was left alone while the fathervisited neighbouring islands, these pictures sank far below theiractual importance. He would always see the picture of the huge,raw-boned Dutchman, haranguing and thundering the word of God intothe dull ears of South Sea Islanders, who, an hour later, would becarrying fruit penitently to their wooden images.

  He now understood her interest in Taber, as he called himself:habit, a twice-told tale. A beachcomber in embryo, and she had lenta hand through habit as much as through pity. The grim mockery ofit!--those South Sea loafers, taking advantage of Enschede'sChristianity and imposing upon him, accepting his money andmedicines and laughing behind his back! No doubt they made the namea byword and a subject for ribald jest in the waterfront bars. Andthis clear-visioned child had comprehended that only half therogues were really ill. But Enschede took them as they came,without question. Charity for the ragtag and the bobtail of theSeven Seas, and none for his own flesh and blood.

  This started a thought moving. There must be something behind themissioner's actions, something of which the girl knew nothing norsuspected. It would not be possible otherwise to live in dailycontact with this level-eyed, lovely girl without loving her.Something with iron resolve the father had kept hidden all theseyears in the lonely citadel of his heart. Teaching the word of Godto the recent cannibal, caring for the sick, storming thestrongholds of the plague, adding his own private income to thepittance allowed him by the Society, and never seeing the angelthat walked at his side! Something the girl knew nothing about;else Enschede was unbelievable.

  It now came to him with an added thrill how well she had told herstory; simply and directly, no skipping, no wandering hither andyon: from the first hour she could remember, to the night she hadfled in the proa, a clear sustained narrative. And through it all,like a golden thread on a piece of tapestry, weaving in and out ofthe patterns, the unspoken longing for love.

  "Well," she said, as they reached the hotel portal, "what is youradvice?"

  "Would you follow it?"

  "Probably not. Still, I am curious."

  "I do not say that what you have done is wrong in any sense. I donot blame you for the act. There are human limitations, and nodoubt you reached yours. For all that, it is folly. If you knewyour aunt were alive, if she expected you, that would be different.But to plunge blindly into the unknown!"

  "I had to! I had to!"

  She had told him only the first part of her story. She wondered ifthe second part would overcome his objections? Several times thewords had rushed to her tongue, to find her tongue paralysed. To awoman she might have confided; but to this man, kindly as he was,it was unthinkable. How could she tell him of the evil that drewher and drew her, as a needle to the magnet?--the fascinating evilthat even now, escaped as it was, went on distilling its poison inher mind?

  "Yes, yes!" said the doctor. "But if you do not find this aunt,what will you do? What can you do to protect yourself againsthunger?"

  "I'll find something."

  "But warn the aunt, prepare her, if she lives."

  "And have her warn my father! No. If I surprised her, if I saw heralone, I might make her understand."

  He shook his head. "There's only one way out of the muddle, that Ican see."

  "And what is that?"

  "I have relatives not far from Hartford. I may prevail upon them totake you in until you are full-fledged, providing you do not findthis aunt. You say you have twenty-four hundred in your letter ofcredit. It will not cost you more than six hundred to reach yourdestination. The pearls were really yours?"

  "They were left to me by my mother. I sometimes laid away myfather's clothes in his trunk. I saw the metal box a hundred times,but I never thought of opening it until the day I fled. I nevereven burrowed down into the trunk. I had no curiosity of that kind.I wanted something _alive_." She paused.

  "Go on."

  "Well, suddenly I knew that I must see the inside of that box,which had a padlock. I wrenched this off, and in an envelopeaddressed to me in faded ink, I found the locket and the pearls. Itis queer how ideas pop into one's head. Instantly I knew that I wasgoing to run away that night before he returned from theneighbouring island. At the bottom of the trunk I found two of mymother's dresses. I packed them with the other few things I owned.Morgan the trader did not haggle over the pearls, but gave me atonce what he judged a fair price. You will wonder why he did nothold the pearls until Father returned. I didn't understand then,but I do now. It was partly to pay a grudge he had against father."

  "And partly what else?"

  "I shall never tell anybody that."

  "I don't know," said the doctor, dubiously. "You're only twenty--notlegally of age."

  "I am here in Canton," she replied, simply.

  "Very well. I'll cable to-night, and in a few days we'll have somenews. I'm a graybeard, an old bachelor; so I am accorded certainprivileges. Sometimes I am frightfully busy; and then there will beperiods of dullness. I have a few regular patients, and I take careof them in the morning. Every afternoon, from now on, I will teachyou a little about life--I mean the worldly points of view you'relikely to meet. You are queerly educated; and it strikes me thatyour father had some definite purpose in thus educating you. I'lltry to fill in the gaps."

  The girl's eyes filled. "I wonder if you will understand what thiskindness means to me? I am so terribly wise--and so wofullyignorant!"