The Ragged Edge Part 6

CHAPTER VI

Sidney Carton, thought Ruth, in pursuit of a sing-song girl! The idea was so incongruous that a cold little smile parted her lips.

It seemed as if each time her imagination reached out investingly, an invisible lash beat it back. Still, she knew instinctively that all of Sidney Carton's life had not been put upon the printed page.

But to go courting a slave-girl, at the risk of physical hurt! A shudder of distaste wrinkled her shoulders.

She opened the window, for the night was mild, and sat on the floor with her chin resting upon the window-sill. Even the stars were strangers. Where was this kindly world she had drawn so rosily in fancy? Disillusion everywhere. The spinsters were not kind; they were only curious because she was odd and wore a dress thirty years out of date. Later, when they returned home, she would serve as the topic of many conversations. Everybody looked askance at everybody else. To escape one phase of loneliness she had plunged into another, so vast that her courage sometimes faltered.

She recalled how she had stretched out her arms toward the magic blue horizon. Just beyond there would be her heart's desire. And in these crowded four weeks, what had she learned? That all horizons were lies: that smiles and handshakes and goodbyes and welcomes were lies: that there were really no to-morrows, only a treadmill of to-days: and that out of these lies and mirages she had plucked a bitter truth--she was alone.

She turned her cheek to the cold sill; and by and by the sill grew warm and wet with tears. She wanted to stay where she was; but tears were dangerous; the more she wept, the weaker she would become defensively. She rose briskly, turned on the light, and opened Les Miserables to the episode of the dark forest: where Jean Valjean reaches out and takes Cosette's frightful pail from her chapped little hands.

There must be persons tender and loving in this world. There must be real Valjeans, else how could authors write about them?

Supposing some day she met one of these astonis.h.i.+ng creators, who could make one cry and laugh and forget, who could thrill one with love and anger and tenderness?

Most of us have witnessed carnivals. Here are all our harlequins and columbines of the spoken and written drama. They flash to and fro, they thrill us with expectancy. Then, presto! What a dreary lot they are when the revellers lay aside the motley!

Ruth had come from a far South Sea isle. The world had not pa.s.sed by but had gone around it in a tremendous half-circle. Many things were only words, sounds; she could not construct these words and sounds into objects; or, if she did, invariably missed the mark.

Her education was remarkable in that it was overdeveloped here and underdeveloped there: the woman of thirty and the child of ten were always getting in each other's way. Until she had left her island, what she heard and what she saw were truths. And now she was discovering that even Nature was something of a liar, with her mirages and her horizons.

At the present moment she was living in a world of her own creation, a carnival of brave men and fair women, characters out of the tales she had so newly read for the first time. She could not resist enduing persons she met with the n.o.ble attributes of the fictional characters. We all did that in our youth, when first we came upon a fine story; else we were worthless metal indeed. So, step by step, and hurt by hurt, Ruth was learning that John Smith was John Smith and n.o.body else.

Presently she was again in that dreadful tavern of the Thenardiers.

That was the wonder of these stories; one lived in them. Cosette sat under the table, still as a mouse, fondling her pitiful doll.

Dolls. Ruth's gaze wandered from the printed page. She had never had a real doll. Instinct had forced her to create something out of rags to satisfy a mysterious craving. But a doll that rolled its eyes and had flaxen hair! Except for the manual labour--there had been natives to fetch and carry--she and Cosette were sisters in loneliness.

Perhaps an hour pa.s.sed before she laid aside the book. A bobbing lantern, crossing the bridge--for she had not drawn the curtain--attracted her attention. She turned off the light and approached the window. She saw a pole-chair; that would be this Mr.

Taber returning. Evidently Ah c.u.m's luck had held good.

As she stared her eyes grew accustomed to the night; and she discovered five persons instead of four. She remembered Taber's hat. (What was the name he had given her that day?) He was walking beside the chair upon which appeared to be a bundle of colours. She could not see clearly. All at once her heart began to patter queerly. He was bringing the sing-song girl to the hotel!

The strange cortege presently vanished below the window-sill.

Curiosity to see what a sing-song girl was like took possession of Ruth's thoughts. She fought the inclination for a while, then surrendered. She was still fully dressed; so all she had to do was to pause before the mirror and give her hair a few pats.

Mirrors. Prior to the great adventure, her mirrors had been the still pools in the rocks after the ebb. She had never been able to discover where her father had hidden his shaving mirror.

When she entered the office a strange scene was presented to her startled gaze. The sing-song girl, her fiddle broken, was beating her forehead upon the floor and wailing: _Ai, ai! Ai, ai!_ Spurlock--or Taber, as he called himself--sat slumped in a chair, staring with glazed eyes at nothing, absolutely uninterested in the confusion for which he was primarily accountable. The hotel manager was expostulating and Ah c.u.m was replying by a series of expressive shrugs.

"What has happened?" Ruth asked.

"A drunken idea," said Ah c.u.m, taking his hands out of his sleeves.

"I could not make him understand."

"She cannot stay here," the manager declared.

"Why does she weep?" Ruth wanted to know.

Ah c.u.m explained. "She considers her future blasted beyond hope.

Mr. Taber did not leave all his money in the office. He insisted on buying this girl for two hundred mex. He now tells her that she is free, no longer a slave. She doesn't understand; she believes he has taken a sudden dislike to her. Free, there is nothing left to her but the ca.n.a.l. Until two hours ago she was as contented and as happy as a linnet. If she returns to the house from which we took her, her companions will laugh at her and smother her with ridicule. On this side of the ca.n.a.l she has no place to go. Her people live in Heng-Chow, in the Hu-nan province. It is all very complex. It is the old story of a Westerner meddling with an Eastern custom."

"But why didn't you oppose him?"

"I had to let him have his way, else he might not have returned safely. One cannot successfully argue with a drunken man."

The object of this discussion sat motionless. The voices went into his ears but left no impression of their import. There was, in fact, only one clear thought in his fevered brain: he had reached the hotel without falling down.

The sing-song girl, seeing Ruth, extended her hands and began to chatter rapidly. Ruth made a little gesture, of infinite pity; and this was quickly seized upon by the slant-eyed Chinese girl. She crawled over and caught at the skirts of this white woman who understood.

"What is she saying to me?"

Ah c.u.m shrugged.

Ruth stared into the painted face, now sundrily cracked by the coursing tears. "But she is saying something to me! What is it?"

The hotel manager, who spoke Cantonese with facility, interpreted.

He knew that he could translate literally. "She is saying that you, a woman, will readily understand the position in which she finds herself. She addresses you as the Flower of the Lotus, as the Resplendent Moonbeam."

"Just to give her her freedom?" said Ruth, turning to Ah c.u.m.

"Precisely. The chair is in the veranda. I will take her back. But of course the money will not be refunded.

"Then take her back," said the manager. "You knew better than to bring her here under the circ.u.mstances."

"Well," said Ah c.u.m, amiably, "when I argued against the venture, he threatened to go wandering about alone, I was most concerned in bringing him back unhurt."

He then spoke authoritatively to the girl. He appeared to thunder dire happenings if she did not obey him without further ado. He picked up the broken fiddle and beckoned. The sing-song girl rose and meekly pattered out of the office into the night.

Ruth crossed over to the dramatist of this tragicomedy and put a hand on his shoulder.

"I understand," she said. Her faith in human beings revived. "You tried to do something that was fine, and ... and civilization would not let you."

Spurlock turned his dull eyes and tried to focus hers. Suddenly he burst into wild laughter; but equally as suddenly something strangled the sound in his throat. He reached out a hand gropingly, sagged, and toppled out of the chair to the floor, where he lay very still.

CHAPTER VII

The astonis.h.i.+ng collapse of Spurlock created a tableau of short duration. Then the hotel manager struck his palms together sharply, and two Chinese "boys" came pattering in from the dining room. With a gesture which was without any kind of emotional expression, the manager indicated the silent crumpled figure on the floor and gave the room number. The Chinamen raised the limp body and carried it to the hall staircase, up which they mounted laboriously.

"A doctor at once!" cried Ruth excitedly.

"A doctor? What he needs is a good jolt of aromatic spirits of ammonia. I can get that at the bar," the manager said, curtly. He was not particularly grateful for the present situation.

"I warn you, if you do not send for a doctor immediately, you will have cause to regret it," Ruth declared vigorously. "Something more than whisky did that. Why did you let him have it?"