CHAPTER XXVII
His idea, cleverly planned, was to shatter her resistance, toconfound her suddenly by striking her mind with words which wouldrob her coherent thought. Everything in his favour--the luck of thegods! The only white men were miles down the coast. She mightscream until her voice failed; the natives would not come to heraid; they never meddled with the affairs of the whites.
"It is droll," he said. "Your father--poor imbecile!--believes weran away together. I arranged that he should. So that way isclosed. You never can go back."
There was a roaring in her ears like that of angry waters.Wanton!... This, then, was what her father had meant. And he hadgone away without knowing the truth!
"My proa boys are ready; the wind is brisk; and in an hour we shallbe beyond all pursuit. Will you come sensibly, or shall I carryyou? You are _mine_!"
Ruth's peculiar education had not vitiated the primitive senses;they were always on guard; and in a moment such as this they rushedinstantly to the surface. Danger, the most terrible she had everfaced, was substantially in this room. She must kill this man, orkill herself. She knew it. No tricks would serve. There would be nomercy in this man. Any natural fineness would be numbed by drink.To-morrow he might be sorry; but to-day, this hour!
She rose, not quickly, but with a dignity which only accentuatedher beauty.
"And you ran away with a weakling! You denied me for a puppet!"
"My lawful husband."
"Ah, yes, yes; lawful husbands in these parts are those who cantake and hold.... As I shall take and hold." The Wastrel advanced.
"If you touch me I will kill you," said Ruth, grasping the scissorswhich lay beside the pencils--Hoddy's!
The Wastrel laughed, still advancing. "Fire! That was what drew meto you in the beginning. Well, kill me. Either we go forthtogether, or they shall bury me."
"Beast!"
For a little while they manoeuvred around the table. Suddenly theWastrel took hold of the edge and flung the table aside. Even inthis dread moment Ruth was conscious of a pathetic interest in thescattering pencils.
He reached for her, and she struck savagely. But with the skill ofa fencer he met the blow and broke it, seizing the wrist.
"It looks as though, we should go together," he said, pulling hertoward him.
Ruth was strong in body and soul. She fought him with tooth andnail. Three times she escaped. Chairs were overturned. Once shereached the bamboo curtain, clutched at it and tore it down as hisarms went around her waist. The third time she escaped she reachedthe inconsequent barricade of the overturned table.
"If there is any honour in you, stop and think. I love my husband.I love him!" She was weak and dizzy: from horror as much as fromphysical exertion. She knew that the next time he caught her shewould not be able to free herself. "What good would it do you todestroy me? For I have courage to kill myself."
The Wastrel laughed. He had heard this talk before.
The race began once more; but this time Ruth knew that there wouldbe no escape. If only she had thought to plunge the scissors intoher own heart! Hoddy ... to return and find her either gone ordead! But even as the Wastrel's arms gathered her, there came thesound of hurrying steps on the veranda.
"Ruth?"
"Hoddy!" she cried.
Spurlock stepped into the room. One of those hanging momentsensued--hypnotic.
Spurlock had seen Rollo heading for the jungle, and for some reasonhe could not explain the incident had bothered him. Fretting andfidgeting, he had, after an hour or so, turned to McClintock.
"I'm going back for Ruth."
"Nonsense!"
"Something's wrong."
"Wrong? What the devil could be wrong?" McClintock had demanded,irascibly. He had particular reasons for wanting to keep Spurlockaway from the jetty.
"I haven't any answer for that; but I'm going back after her. Shewanted to come, and I wouldn't let her."
"Run along, then."
* * * * *
"To me, you dirty blackguard!" cried Spurlock, flinging aside hishelmet. That he was hot and breathless was of no matter; in thatmoment he would have faced a dozen Samsons.
"She was mine before you ever saw her." The Wastrel tried to reachRuth's lips.
"You lie!"
Head down, fists doubled, Spurlock rushed: only to be met with akick which was intended for the groin but which struck the thighinstead. Even then it sent Spurlock spinning backward, to crashagainst the wall. He felt no pain from this cowardly kick. Thatwould come later. Again he rushed. He dodged the boot this time,and smashed his left upon the Wastrel's lips, leaving them bloodypulp.
The Wastrel did not relish this. He flung Ruth aside, carelesswhether she fell or not. There was only one idea in his head now--tobatter and bruise and crush this weakling, then cast him at the feetof his love-lorn wife. He brought into service all his Orientalbar-room tricks. Time after time he sent Spurlock into this corneror that; but always the boy regained his feet before the murderousboot could reach the mark. From all angles he was at a disadvantage--inweight, skill, endurance. But Ruth was his woman, and he had sworn toGod to defend her.
"One of us has got to die," he panted. "You've got to kill me toget out of here alive."
The Wastrel rushed. Spurlock dove headlong at the other's legs,toppling the man. In this moment he could have stamped upon theWastrel's face, and ended the affair; but all that was clean inhim, chivalrous, revolted at the thought. Not even for Ruth couldhe do such a beastly thing. So, bloody but unbeaten, weak and spentbut undaunted, he waited for the Wastrel to spring up.
The unequal battle went on. It came to Spurlock suddenly that ifsomething did not react in his favour inside of five minutes, hewas done. In a side-glance--for the floor was variously encumberedwith overturned objects--he saw one of his paper weights, acoloured glass ball such as McClintock used in trade. As theWastrel rushed, Spurlock sidestepped, swept the ball into his hand,set himself and threw it. If the Wastrel had not turned the instanthe did, the ball would have missed him; as it was he turneddirectly into its path. It struck his forehead, splitting it, andbrought him to his knees.
Luck. Spurlock understood that his vantage would be temporary; theWastrel had been knocked down, not out. Still, the respite wassufficient for Spurlock to look about for some weapon. Hanging onthe wall was a temple censer, bronze, moulded in the shape of alotus blossom with stem and leaves--deadly as a club. He tore itdown just as the Wastrel rose, wavering slightly. Spurlockadvanced, the censer swung high.
The Wastrel wiped the blood from his forehead. The blow had broughthim back to the realm of sober thought. He glanced at Ruth (who hadstood with her back to the wall, pinned there throughout thecontest by terror and the knowledge of her own helplessness), thenat the bronze menace, and calculated correctly that this particularadventure was finished.
His hesitation was visible, and Spurlock took advantage of this torun to Ruth. He put his free arm around her and held the censerready; and as Ruth snuggled her cheek against his sleeve, theywere, so far as intent, in each other's arms. Without a word or agesture, the Wastrel turned and staggered forth, out of the orbitof these two, having been thrust into it for a single purposealready described.
For a while they stood there, silent, motionless, staring at thedoorway where still a few strings of the bamboo curtain swayed andtwisted, agitated by the Wastrel's passage.
"I was going to die, Hoddy!" she whispered. "You do love me?"
"God knows how much!" Suddenly he laid his head on her shoulder."But I'm a blackguard, too, Ruth. I had no right to marry you. Ihave no right to love you."
"Why not?"
"I am a thief, a hunted man."
"So that is what separated us! Oh, Hoddy, you have wasted so manywonderful days! Why didn't you tell me?"
"I couldn't!" He made as though to draw away, but her arms becamehoops of steel.
"Because you did not wish to hurt me?"
"Yes. If I let you bel
ieve I did not love you, and they found me,your shame would be negligible."
"And loving me, you fought me, avoided all my traps! I'm glad I'vebeen so unhappy. Remember, in your story--look at it, scatteredeverywhere!--that line? _We arrive at true happiness only throughlabyrinths of misery._"
"I am a thief, nevertheless."
"Oh, that!"
He raised his head, staring at her in blank astonishment. "Youmean, it doesn't matter?"
"Poor Hoddy! When you were ill in Canton, out of your head, youbabbled words. Only a few, but enough for me to understand thatsome act had driven you to this part of the world, where the huntedhide."
"And you married me, knowing?"
"I married the man who bought a sing-song girl to give her herfreedom."
"But I was intoxicated!"
"So was the man you just fought in this room. There is no hiddenbeast in you, Hoddy. I could not love you else."
"They may find me."
"Well, if they send you to prison, I'll be outside when they letyou go."
He took her face between his hands and kissed her on the lips. "I'mnot worth it. You are all that I am or hope to be--the celestialatom God put into me at the beginning. Now He has taken that outand given it form and beauty--you!"
"Wonderful hand!" Ruth seized his right hand and kissed it. "Allthe wonderful things it is going to do! If I could only know forcertain that my mother knew how happy I'm going to be!"
"You love the memory of your mother?"
"It is a part of my blood ... my beautiful mother!"
He saw Enschede, putting out to sea, alone, memories and regretscrowding upon his wake. Her father was right: Ruth must never know.The mother was far more real to her than the father; the ghostlyfar more substantial than the living form. So long as he lived,Spurlock knew that in fancy he would be reconstructing that scenebetween himself and Ruth's father.
Their heads touched again, their arms tightened. Gazing into eachother's eyes with new-found rapture, neither observed the suddenappearance in the doorway of an elderly woman in travel-stainedlinen.
There was granite in her face and agate in her eyes. The lips werestraight and pale, the chin aggressive, the nose indomitable. Shewas, by certain signs, charged with anger, but she saw upon thefaces of these two young fools the look of angels and an ineffablekindness breathed upon her withered heart.
"So, you young fool, I have found you!" she said, harshly.
Ruth and Spurlock separated, the one embarrassed, the other utterlydumfounded.
"Auntie?" he cried.
"Yes, Auntie! And to date you have cost me precisely sixteenthousand dollars--hard earned, every one of them."
Spurlock wondered if something hadn't suddenly gone awry in hishead. He had just passed through a terrific physical test. Surelyhe was imagining this picture. His aunt, here at McClintock's? Itwas unbelievable. He righted a chair and sat in it, his face in hishands. But when he looked again, there she was!
"I don't understand," he said, finally.
"You will before I'm done with you. I have come to take you home;and hereafter my word will be the law. You will obey me out ofcommon decency. You can scribble if you want to, but after you'vegiven your eight hours daily to the mills. Sixteen thousand! Markme, young man, you'll pay it back through the nose, every dollar ofit!"
"I owe you nothing." Pain was stabbing him, now here, now there;pain was real enough; but he could not establish as a fact in histhrobbing brain the presence of his aunt in the doorway. "I owe younothing," he repeated, dully.
"Hoity-toity! You owe me sixteen thousand dollars. They were verynice about it, in memory of your father. They telephoned that youhad absconded with ten thousand, and that if I would make good theloss within twenty-four hours, they would not prosecute. I sent mycheck for ten thousand; and it has cost me six thousand to findyou. I should say that you owed me considerable."
Still his brain refused to assimilate the news or to deduce thetremendous importance of it.
"You are Ruth?"
"Yes," said Ruth, stirred by anger and bitterness and astonishment.This, then, was the woman from whom Hoddy would not have accepted acup of water.
"Come here," said the petticoated tyrant. Ruth obeyed, notwillingly, but because there was something hypnotic in theauthoritative tone. "Put your arms about me." Ruth did so, butwithout any particular fervour. "Kiss me." Ruth slightly brushedthe withered cheek. The aunt laughed. "Love me, love my dog!Because I've scolded him and told him a few truths, you are ice tome. Not afraid of me, either."
"No," said Ruth, pulling back.
But the aunt seized her in her arms and rocked with her. "A miserlyold woman. Well, I've had to be. All my life I've had to fighthuman wolves to hold what I have. So I've grown hard--outside.What's all this about, anyhow? You. Far away there was the onewoman for this boy of mine--some human being who would understandthe dear fool better than all the rest of the world. But God didnot put you next door. He decided that Hoddy should pay a colossalprice for the Dawn Pearl--shame, loneliness, torment, for onlythrough these agencies would he learn your worth. The fibre of hissoul had to be tested, queerly, to make him worthy of you. Throughfire and water, through penury and pestilence, your hand willalways be on his shoulder. McClintock wrote me about you; but all Ineeded was the sight of your face as it was a moment gone."
Gently she thrust Ruth aside. Ruth's eyes were wet, but she sawlight everywhere: the room was filled with celestial aura.
The aunt rushed over to her nephew, knelt and wrapped him in herarms. "My little Hoddy! You used to love me; and I have alwaysloved you. The thought of you, wandering from pillar to post,believing yourself hunted--it tore my old heart to pieces! For Iknew you. You would suffer the torments of the damned for what youhad done. So I set out to find you, even if it cost ten timessixteen thousand. My poor Hoddy! I had to talk harshly, or breakdown and have hysterics. I've come to take you back home. Don't youunderstand? Back among your own again, and only a few of us thewiser. Have you suffered?"
"Dear God!... every hour since!"
"The Spurlock conscience. That is why Wall Street broke yourfather; he was honest."
"Ah, my father! The way you treated him...!"
"Good money after bad. You haven't heard my side if it, Hoddy. Toshore up a business that never had any foundation, he wanted me tolend him a hundred thousand; and for his sake as well as for mine Ihad to refuse. He wasn't satisfied with an assured income from thepaper-mills your grandfather left us. He wanted to become amillionaire. So I had to buy out his interest, and it pinched medreadfully to do it. In the end he broke his own heart along withyour mother's. I even offered him back the half interest he hadsold to me. You sent back my Christmas checks."
"I had to. I couldn't accept anything from you."
"You might have added 'then'," said Miss Spurlock, drily.
"I'm an ungrateful dog!"
"You will be if you don't instantly kiss me the way you used to.But your face! What happened here just before I came?"
"Perhaps God wasn't quite sure that I could hold what I had, andwanted to try me out."
"And you whipped the beast? I passed him."
"At any rate, I won, for he went away. But, Auntie, however in thisworld did you find this island?"
She told him. "The chief of the detective agency informed me thatit would be best not to let Mr. O'Higgins know the truth; hewouldn't be reckless with the funds, then. For a time I didn't knowwe'd ever find you. Then came the cable that you were in Canton,ill, but not dangerously so. Mr. O'Higgins was to keep track of youuntil I believed you had had enough punishment. Then he was toarrest you and bring you home to me. When I learned you weremarried, I changed my plans. I did not know what God had in mindthen. Mr. O'Higgins and I landed at Copeley's yesterday; and Mr.McClintock sent his yacht over for us this morning. Hoddy, whatmade you do it? Whatever made you do it?"
"God knows! Something said to me: _Take it! Take it!_ And ... Itook it. After I took the bills it
was too late to turn back. Idrew out what I had saved and boarded the first ship out. Wait!"
He released himself from his aunt's embrace, ran to the trunk andfetched the old coat. With the aid of a penknife he ripped theshoulder seams and drew out the ten one-thousand dollar bills.Gravely he placed them in his aunt's hand.
"You didn't spend it?"
"I never intended to spend it--any more than I really intended tosteal it. That's the sort of fool your nephew is!"
"Not even a good time!" said the aunt, whimsically, as she stuffedthe bills into her reticule. "Not a single whooper-upter! Nothingbut torment and remorse ... and Ruth! Children, put your armsaround me. In a little while--to-morrow--all these tender,beautiful emotions will pass away, and I'll become what I wasyesterday, a cynical, miserly old spinster. I'll be wanting mysixteen thousand."
"Six," he corrected.
"Why, so it is," she said, in mock astonishment. "Think of meforgetting ten thousand so quickly!"
"Go to, you old fraud! You'll never fool me again. God bless you,Auntie! I'll go into the mills and make pulp with my bare hands, ifyou want me to. Home!--which I never hoped to see again. To dreamand to labour: to you, my labour; to Ruth, my dreams. And ifsometimes I grow heady--and it's in the blood--remind me of thisday when you took me out of hell--a thief."
"Hoddy!" said Ruth. "You mustn't!"
"Nothing can change that, Dawn Pearl. Auntie has taken the nailsout of my palms, but the scars will always be there."
There fell upon the three the silence of perfect understanding; andin this silence each saw a vision. To Ruth came that of the greatworld, her lawful lover at her side; and there would be gloriousbooks into each of which he would unconsciously put a little of hersoul along with his own, needing her always. The spinster sawherself growing warm again in the morning sunshine of youth--aflaring ember before the hearth grew cold. Spurlock's vision wasoddly of the past. He saw Enschede, making the empty sea, alone,alone, forever alone.
"Children," said the aunt, first to awake, "be young fools as longas God will permit you. And don't worry about the six thousand,Hoddy. I'll call it my wedding gift. There's nothing so sad in thisworld as an old fool," she added.
The three of them laughed joyously.
And Rollo, who had been waiting for some encouraging sound,presented himself at the doorway. He was caked with dried muck. Hewas a bad dog; he knew it perfectly; but where there was laughter,there was hope. With his tongue lolling and his flea-bitten stumpwagging apologetically, he glanced from face to face to see ifthere was any forgiveness visible. There was.
~THE END~
_Distinctive Pictures Photoplay The Ragged Edge_MIMI PALMERI AS RUTH ENSCHEDE ALFRED LUNT AS HOWARD SPURLOCK]
_Distinctive Pictures Photoplay The Ragged Edge_A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY]
_Distinctive Pictures Photoplay The Ragged Edge_A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY]
_Distinctive Pictures Photoplay The Ragged Edge_A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY]
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