Perhaps he should not apply the term "fool"; "unfortunate" might be the more accurate application. Besides, he was a Yale man. He might be unfortunate, but he would scarcely be a fool. The Yale spirit! Ah Cum smiled whimsically. After fifteen years, to find that peculiarly Occidental attribute—college loyalty—still alive in his heart! A Western idea that had survived; an idea that was merely the flower of youthful enthusiasm!

With his hands still in his sleeves, his chin down in speculation over this phenomenon, he continued his patrol.

"Hey, you!"

Ah Cum stopped and turned. Framed in one of the square ports of the packet was a face which reminded Ah Cum of a Japanese theatrical mask. One side of the face was white with foamy lather and the other ruddy-cheeked and blue-jawed.

"Speak English?" boomed the voice.

"Yes; I speak English."

"Fine! I'll be wanting a guide. Where can I get one?" asked O'Higgins.

"I am one."

"All right. I'll be with you in a jiffy." Quarter of an hour later O'Higgins stepped off the gangplank. He carried a small bag. "This your regular business?"

"For the present. Will you be wanting me alone?" asked Ah Cum. "I generally take a party."

"What'll it cost to have you all to myself for the day?"

Ah Cum named the sum. He smiled inwardly. Here was one of those Americans who would make him breathless before sundown. The booming voice and the energetic movements spoke plainly of hurry.

"You're on," said O'Higgins. "Now, lead me to a hotel where I can get breakfast. Wait a moment. I've got an address here."

O'Higgins emptied an inside pocket—and purposely let the battered photograph fall to the ground. He pretended to be unaware of the mishap. Politely Ah Cum stooped and recovered the photograph. He rose slowly and extended it. An ancient smile lay on his lips.

"You dropped this, sir."

"Oh. Thanks." O'Higgins, bitten with disappointment, returned the photograph to his pocket. "Victoria; that's the hotel."

"That's but a short distance from here, sir."

"O'Higgins is the name."

"Mr. O'Higgins. Let me take the satchel, sir."

"It's light. I'll tote it myself. Say, ever see any one resembling that photograph I dropped?"

"So many come and go," said Ah Cum, shrugging. "Few stay more than a day. And there are other guides."

"Uh-huh. Well, let's beat it to the hotel. I'm hungry."

"This way, sir."

"What's your name?"

Ah Cum got out his black-bordered card and offered it.

"Aw Come. That sounds kind of funny," said O'Higgins. Smiling, the Chinaman gave the correct pronunciation. "I see. Ah Coom. What's the idea of the black border?"

"My father recently died, sir."

"But that style isn't Oriental."

"I was educated in America."

"Where?"

"At Yale."

"Well, well! This part of the world is jammed full of surprises. I met a Hindu a few weeks ago who was a Harvard man."

"Will you be taking a pole-chair?"

"If that's the racket. I naturally want to do it up in proper style."

"Very well, sir. I'll be outside the hotel at nine-thirty."

Ten minutes' walk brought them to the hotel. As O'Higgins signed the hotel register, his keen glance took in the latest signatures.

"Anywhere," he said in answer to the manager's query. "I'm not particular about rooms. Where's the dining room? And, say, can I have some eggs? This jam-tea breakfast gets my goat."

"Come this way, Mr. O'Higgins," said the manager, amusedly.

O'Higgins followed him into the dining room. That register would be easy to get at; comforting thought. It did not matter in the least what name the young fellow was travelling under; all James Boyle O'Higgins wanted was the letter H. There was something fatalistic about the letter H. The individual twist was always there, even in the cleverest forgeries.

The eggs were all right, but nobody in this part of the world had the least conception of what the coffee bean was for. Always as black and bitter as gall. Coffee a la Turque wasn't so bad; but a guy couldn't soak his breakfast toast in it.

Two women entered and sat down at the adjoining table. After a while one began to talk.

"The manager says there is still some doubt. The change will come to-day. Ah Cum had no business taking him into the city last night. The young man did not know what he was doing or where he was."

O'Higgins extracted a cigar from a pocket and inspected it. Henry Clay, thirteen cents in Hong-Kong and two-bits in that dear old New York. He would never be able to figure out that: all these miles from Cuba, and you could get a perfecto for thirteen cents. He heard the woman talking again.

"I feel guilty, going away and leaving that ignorant child; but our days have been so planned that we dare not change the schedule. Didn't understand me when I said she would be compromised! He won't be able to leave his bed under four weeks; and she said she hadn't much money. If she had once known him, if he were some former neighbour, it would be comprehensible. But an individual she never laid eyes on day before yesterday! And the minute he gets up, he'll head for the public bar. There's something queer about that young man; but we'll never be able to find out what it is. I don't believe his name is Taber."

O'Higgins tore free the scarlet band of his perfecto, the end of which he bit off with strong white teeth, and smiled. You certainly had to hand it to these Chinks. Picked up the photograph, looked at it, handed it back, and never batted an eye! The act was as clear as daylight, but the motive was as profoundly mysterious as the race itself. He hadn't patrolled old Pell Street as a plain clothes man without getting a glimmer of the ancient truth that East is East and West is West. He would have some sport with Mr. Ah Cum before the day was over, slyly baiting him. But what had young Spurlock done for Ah Cum in the space of twenty-four hours that had engaged Ah Cum's loyalty, not only engaged it but put it on guard? For O'Higgins, receiving light from the next table, had no doubt regarding the identity of the subject of this old maid's observations.

A queer game this: he could not move directly as in an ordinary case of man-hunt. He had certain orders from which on no account was he to deviate. But this made the chase all the more exciting. What was the matter with Spurlock that was to keep him in bed three or four weeks? He would dig that out of the hotel manager. Anyhow, there was some pleasurable satisfaction in knowing where the quarry would be for the next three weeks.

There was now a girl in the picture, so it seemed. Well, this was the side of the world where things like that happened. The boy would naturally attract the women, if the women were at all romantic. Good looks, with a melancholy cast, always drew sentimental females. Probably some woman on the loose; they were as thick as flies over here—dizzy blondes. That is, if Spurlock had been throwing money about, which was more than likely.

"As long as I live, I'll never forget that dress of hers," Prudence declared.

"Out of a family album, you said," Angelina reminded her sister.

O'Higgins struck a match and lit his Henry Clay, thereby drawing upon himself the mutual disapproval of the spinsters.

"Beg pardon," he said, "but isn't smoking allowed in the dining room?"

"It probably is," answered Prudence, "but that in no wise mitigates the odiousness of the procedure."

"Plumb in the eye!" said O'Higgins, rising. "I'll tote the odiousness outside."

He was delighted to find the office deserted. He inspected the formidable array of rifles and at length walked over to the register. Howard Taber. From his wallet he brought forth a yellow letter. Quickly he compared the Hs. They were so nearly alike that the difference would be due to a shaky hand. But for perfect satisfaction, he must take a peek into the bedroom. Humph. A crisis of some kind was toward. It might be that the boy had taken one drink too many, or someone had given him knock-out drops. The Oriental waterfronts were rank with the stuff.

But that Chink, Ah Cum! O'Higgins chuckled as he passed into the hall and rested his hand on the newel-post of the staircase. He'd have some fun with that Chinaman before the morning was out.

O'Higgins mounted the stairs, his step extraordinarily light for one so heavy. In the upper hall he paused to listen. There was absolute quiet. Boldly he turned the knob of a certain door and entered. The mock astonishment of his face immediately became genuine.

The brilliant sunshine poured through the window, effecting an oblong block of mote-swimming light. In the midst of this light stood a young woman. To O'Higgins—for all his sordid business he was not insensible to beauty—to O'Higgins she appeared to have entered the room with the light. Above her head was an aura of white fire. The sunshine broke across each shoulder, one lance striking the yellow face of a Chinaman, queueless and dressed in European clothes, the other lance falling squarely upon the face of the man he had journeyed thirteen thousand miles to find. He recognized the face instantly.

There came to O'Higgins the discouraging knowledge that upon the heels of a wonderful chase—blindman's buff in the dark—would come a stretch of dull inaction. He would have to sit down here in Canton and wait, perhaps for weeks. Certainly he could not move now other than to announce the fact that he had found his man.

"I beg pardon," he said. "Got the rooms mixed."

The young woman laid a finger on her lips, cautioning O'Higgins to silence. The detective backed out slowly and closed the door without sound.

Outside in the hall he paused and thoughtfully stroked his smooth blue chin. As he understood it, folks saw in two or three days all there was to see of Canton. After the sights he would have to twiddle his thumbs until the joints cracked. All at once he saw a way out of the threatening doldrums. Some trustworthy Chinaman to watch, for a small bribe, while he, James Boyle O'Higgins, enjoyed himself in Hong-Kong, seeing the spring races, the boxing matches, and hobnobbing with Yankee sailors. Canton was something like a blind alley; unless you were native, you couldn't get anywhere except by returning to Hong-Kong and starting afresh.

Satisfied that he had solved his difficulty, he proceeded to his room. At nine-thirty he climbed into the chair and signified to Ah Cum that he was ready.

"You speak English better than I do," said O'Higgins, as the coolies jogged across the bridge toward the gate. "Where did you pick it up?"

"I believe I told you; at Yale."

O'Higgins laughed. "I'd forgotten. But that explains everything."

"Everything." It was not uttered interrogatively; rather as though Ah Cum did not like the significance of the word and was turning it over and about in speculation.

"Ye-ah," said O'Higgins, jovially. "Why you pretended not to recognize the photograph of the young fellow you toted around these diggings all day yesterday."

Many wrinkles appeared at the corners of Ah Cum's slant eyes—as if the sun hurt—but the rest of his face remained as passive as a graven Buddha's.



CHAPTER X

Ah Cum was himself puzzled. Why hadn't he admitted that he recognized the photograph? What instinct had impelled him swiftly to assume his Oriental mask?

"Why?" asked O'Higgins. "What's the particular dope?"

"If I told you, you would laugh," answered Ah Cum, gravely.

"No; I don't think I'd laugh. You never saw him before yesterday. Why should you want to shield him?"

"I really don't know."

"Because he said he was a Yale man?"

"That might be it."

"Treated you like a white man there, did they?"

"Like a gentleman."

"All right. I had that coming. I didn't think. But, holy smoke!—the Yale spirit in...."

"A Chinaman. I wonder. I spent many happy days there. Perhaps it was the recollection of those happy days. You are a detective?"

"Yes. I have come thirteen thousand miles for this young fellow; I'm ready to go galloping thirteen thousand more."

"You have extradition papers?"

"What sort of a detective do you think I am?" countered O'Higgins.

"Then his case is hopeless."

"Absolutely."

"I'm sorry. He does not look the criminal."

"That's the way it goes. You never can tell." There was a pause. "They tell me over here that the average Chinaman is honest."

Ah Cum shrugged. "Yes?"

"And that when they give their word, they never break it." O'Higgins had an idea in regard to Ah Cum.

"Your tone suggests something marvellous in the fact," replied Ah Cum, ironically. "Why shouldn't a Chinaman be honest? Ah, yes; I know. Most of you Americans pattern all Chinese upon those who fill a little corner in New York. In fiction you make the Chinese secretive, criminal, and terrible—or comic. I am an educated Chinese, and I resent the imputations against my race. You Americans laugh at our custom of honouring our ancestors, our many-times great grandfathers. On the other hand, you seldom revere your immediate grandfather, unless he has promised to leave you some money."

"Bull's eye!" piped O'Higgins.

"Of course, there is a criminal element, but the percentage is no larger than that in America or Europe. Why don't you try to find out how the every-day Chinese lives, how he treats his family, what his normal habits are, his hopes, his ambitions? Why don't you come to China as I went to America—with an open mind?"

"You're on," said O'Higgins, briskly. "I'll engage you for four days. To-day is for the sights; the other three days—lessons. How's that strike you?"

"Very well, sir. At least I can give you a glimmer." A smile broke the set of Ah Cum's lips. "I'll take you into a Chinese home. We are very poor, but manage to squeeze a little happiness out of each day."

"And I promise that all you tell me and show me will sink in," replied O'Higgins, frankly interested. "I'm a detective; my ears and eyes have been trained to absorb all I see and all I hear. When I absorb a fact, my brain weighs the fact carefully and stores it away. You fooled me this morning; but I overheard two old maids talking about you and the young man."

"What has he done?"

"What did he have to drink over here last night?"

"Not even water. No doubt he has been drinking for days without eating substantially, and his heart gave out."

"What happened?"

Ah Cum recounted the story of the sing-song girl. "I had to give in to him. You know how stubborn they get."

"Surest thing you know. Bought the freedom of a sing-song girl; and all the while you knew you'd have to tote the girl back. But the Yale spirit!"

Ah Cum laughed.

"I've got a proposition to make," said O'Higgins.

"So long as it is open and above board."

"It's that, but it interferes with the college spirit stuff. Would a hundred dollars interest you?"

"Very much, if I can earn it without offending my conscience."

"It won't. Here goes. I've come all these miles for this young fellow; but I don't cotton to the idea of lallygagging four weeks in this burg. I've an idea it'll be that long before the chap gets up. My proposition is for you to keep an eye on him, and the moment he puts on his clothes to send me a telegram, care of the Hong-Kong Hotel. Understand me. Double-crossing wouldn't do any good. For all you might know, I might have someone watching you. This time he couldn't get far. He will have to return to Hong-Kong."

"Not necessarily. There is a railroad."

"He won't be taking that. The only safe place for him is at sea; and if he had kept to the sea, I shouldn't have found him so easily. Well, what about it?"

"I accept."

"As an honest Chinaman?"—taking out the offensiveness of the query by smiling.

"As an honest Chinaman."

O'Higgins produced his wallet. "Fifty now and fifty when I return."

"Agreed. Here are the jade carvers. Would you like to see them at work?"

"Lead on, Macduff!"

Ah Cum raised the skirt of his fluttering blue silk robe and stored the bill away in a trouser wallet. It was the beginning and the end of the transaction. When he finally telegraphed his startling information to Hong-Kong, it was too late for O'Higgins to act. The quarry had passed out into the open sea.

* * * * *

From the comatose state, Spurlock passed into that of the babbling fever; but that guarding instinct which is called subconsciousness held a stout leash on his secret. He uttered one word over and over, monotonously:

"Fool! ... Fool!"

But invariably the touch of Ruth's hand quieted him, and his head would cease to roll from side to side. He hung precariously on the ragged edge, but he hung there. Three times he uttered a phrase:

"A djinn in a blue-serge coat!"

And each time he would follow it with a chuckle—the chuckle of a soul in damnation.

Neither the American Express nor Cook's had received mail for Howard Taber; he was not on either list. This was irregular. A man might be without relatives, but certainly he would not be without friends, that is to say, without letters. The affair was thick with sinister suggestions. And yet, the doctor recalled an expression of the girl's: that it was not a dissipated face, only troubled.

The whole affair interested him deeply. That was one of the compensations for having consigned himself to this part of the world. Over here, there was generally some unusual twist to a case. He would pull this young fellow back; but later he knew that he would have to fight the boy's lack of will to live. When he recovered his mental faculties, he would lie there, neutral; they could save him or let him die, as they pleased; and the doctor knew that he would wear himself out forcing his own will to live into this neutrality. And probably the girl would wear herself out, too.

To fight inertia on the one hand and to study this queer girl on the other. Any financial return was inconsiderable against the promise of this psychological treat. The girl was like some north-country woodland pool, penetrated by a single shaft of sunlight—beautifully clear in one spot and mysteriously obscured elsewhere. She would be elemental; there would be in her somewhere the sleeping tigress. The elemental woman was always close to the cat: as the elemental man was always but a point removed from the wolf.

It was so arranged that Ruth went on duty after breakfast and remained until noon. The afternoon was her own; but from eight until midnight she sat beside the patient. At no time did she feel bodily or mental fatigue. Frequently she would doze in her chair; but the slightest movement on the bed aroused her.

At luncheon, on the third day, a thick-set man with a blue jaw smiled across his table at her. She recognized him as the man who had blundered into the wrong room.

"How is the patient?" he asked.

"He will live," answered Ruth.

"That's fine," said O'Higgins. "I suppose he'll be on his feet any day now."

"No. It will take at least three weeks."

"Well, so long as he gets on his feet in the end. You're a friend of the young man?"

"If you mean did I know him before he became ill, no."

"Ah." O'Higgins revolved this information about, but no angle emitted light. Basically a kindly man but made cynical and derisive by sordid contacts, O'Higgins had almost forgotten that there was such a thing as unselfishness. The man or woman who did something for nothing always excited his suspicions; they were playing some kind of a game. "You mean you were just sorry for him?"

"As I would be for any human being in pain."

"Uh-huh." For the life of him, O'Higgins could not think of anything else to say. Just because she was sorry for that young fool! "Uh-huh," he repeated, rising and bowing as he passed Ruth's table. He wished he had the time to solve this riddle, for it was a riddle, and four-square besides. Back in the States young women did not offer to play the Good Samaritan to strange young fools whom Jawn D. Barleycorn had sent to the mat for the count of nine: unless the young fool's daddy had a bundle of coin. Maybe the girl was telling the truth, and then again, maybe she wasn't.

The situation bothered him considerably. Things happened frequently over here that wouldn't happen in the States once in a hundred years. Who could say that the two weren't in collusion? When a chap like Spurlock jumped the traces, cherchez la femme, every time. He hadn't gambled or played the horses or hit the booze back there in little old New York....

"Aw, piffle!" he said, half aloud and rather disgustedly, as he stepped out into the sunshine. "My old coco is disintegrating. I've bumped into so much of the underside that I can't see clean any more. No girl with a face like that.... And yet, dang it! I've seen 'em just as innocent looking that were prime vipers. Let's get to Hong-Kong, James, and hit the high spots while there is time."

He signalled to Ah Cum; and the two of them crossed on foot into the city.

It was not until the morning of the fifth day that the constant vigil was broken. The patient fell into a natural and refreshing sleep. So Ruth found that for a while her eyes were free. She tiptoed to the stand and gathered up the manuscripts which she carried to a chair by the window. Since the discovery of them, she had been madly eager to read these typewritten tales. Treasure caves to explore!

All through these trying days she had recurrently wondered what this strange young man would have to say that Dickens and Hugo had not already said. That was the true marvel of it. No matter how many books one read, each was different, as each human being was different. Some had the dignity and the aloofness of a rock in the sea; and others were as the polished pebbles on the sands—one saw the difference of pebble from pebble only by close scrutiny. Ruth, without suspecting it, had fallen upon a fundamental truth: that each and every book fitted into the scheme of human moods and intelligence.

Ruth was at that stage where the absorption of facts is great, but where the mental digestion is not quite equal to the task. She was acquiring truths, but in a series of shocks rather than by the process of analysis.

There were seven tales in all—short stories—a method of expression quite strange to her, after the immense canvases of Dickens and Hugo. When she had finished the first tale, there was a sense of disappointment. She had expected a love story; and love was totally absent. It was a tale of battle, murder, and sudden death on the New York waterfront. Sordid; but that was not Ruth's term for it; she had no precise commentary to offer.

From time to time she would come upon a line of singular beauty or a paragraph full of haunting music; and these would send her rushing on for something that never happened. Each manuscript was like the other: the same lovely treatment of an unlovely subject. Abruptly would come the end. It was as if she had come upon the beautiful marble facade of a fairy palace, was invited to enter, and behind the door—nothing.

She did not realize that she was offering criticisms. The word "criticism" had no concrete meaning to her then; no more than "compromise." Some innate sense of balance told her that something was wrong with these tales. She could not explain in words why they disappointed her or that she was disappointed.

Two hours had come and gone during this tantalizing occupation. At the least, the tales had the ability to make her forget where she was; which was something in their favour.

"My coat!"

Ruth did not move but stared astonishedly at the patient.

"My coat!" he repeated, his glance burning into hers.



CHAPTER XI

The second call energized her into action. She dropped the manuscripts and swiftly brought the coat to him, noting that a button 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 still in the realm of strange fancies. Wanting his coat, when he must have known that the pockets were empty! But the effort to talk had cost him something. The performance over, he relaxed and closed his eyes. Even as she watched, the sweat of weakness began to form on his forehead and under the nether lip. She wet some absorbent cotton with alcohol and refreshed his face and neck. This done, she waited at the side of the bed; but he gave no sign that he was conscious of her nearness.

The poor boy, wanting his empty coat! The incident, however, caused her to review the recent events. It was now evident that he had not been normal that first day. Perhaps he had had money in the coat, back in Hong-Kong, and had been robbed without knowing it. Perhaps these few words were the first real conscious words he had uttered in days. His letter of credit; probably that was it; and, observing the strangeness of the room he was in, his first concern on returning to consciousness would naturally relate to his letter of credit. 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 not littered with hotel labels. These little squares of coloured paper interested her mightily—hotel labels. She was for ever scanning luggage and finding her way about the world, via these miniature pictures. London, Paris, Rome! There were no hotel labels on the patient's trunk, but there were ship labels; and by these she was able to reconstruct the journey: from New York to Naples, thence to Alexandria; from Port Said to Colombo; from Colombo to Bombay; from Calcutta to Rangoon, thence down to Singapore; from Singapore to Hong-Kong. The great world outside!

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

"Well?" he whispered.

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

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

"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 fell into 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 begins to 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 until he is strong enough to walk, we must keep his interest away from that 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 your trouble."

"Oh, yes I will. The satisfaction of cheating Death again. You've been a great help these five days; for he had to have attendance constantly, 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 in mind."

"To make him forget the knock?"

"Precisely. I'm going to be frank; we must have a clear understanding. Can you afford to give this time? There are your own affairs 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 man quickly loses faith, and I find myself back on solid ground once more. Is there anything you'd like?"

"Books."

"What kind?"

"Dickens, Hugo."

"I'll bring you an armful this afternoon. I've a lot of old magazines, 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; I can see that. Well, whenever you say, I promise to do away with the mystery."

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

"I was never going to tell anybody," she added. "But you are a good man, and you'll understand. I believed I was strong enough to go on in silence; but I'm human like everybody else. To tell someone who is 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 can pretend 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 tragic revelation, the doctor puttered about among the bottles on the stand.

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

"I'm sorry."

She began to prepare the room for Wu's coming, while the doctor went downstairs. As he was leaving the hotel, Ah Cum stepped up to his 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 little when you took him into the city?"

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

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

Ah Cum shrugged. "You are a physician; you know the vagaries of men in liquor. He was a stranger. I did not know how he would act if I obstructed 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 knew what 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. The word of a Chinaman; he had given it, so he must abide. There was now no honest way of warning Taber that the net had been drawn. Of course, 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 so powerful in the world: he was taught loyalty and fair play in his schools, and he carried this spirit the world which his forebears had conquered.

Suddenly Ah Cum laughed aloud. He, a Chinaman, troubling himself over Occidental ideas! With his hands in his sleeves, he proceeded on his way.

* * * * *

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

And because he knew it was a burden, there was no gaiety upon the doctor's face; neither was there speech on his tongue. He knew not how to act, urged as he was in two directions. It would be useless to 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 or alive. He was also aware that all his arguments would shatter themselves against her resolutions. There was a strange quality of steel in this pretty creature. He understood now that it was a part of her inheritance. The father would be all steel. One point in her narrative stood out beyond all others. To an unthinking mind the episode would be ordinary, trivial; but to the doctor, who had had plenty of time to think during his sojourn in China, it was basic of the child's unhappiness. A dozen words, and he saw Enschede as clearly as though he stood hard by in the flesh.

To preach a fine sermon every Sunday so that he would lose neither the art nor the impulse; and this child, in secret rebellion, taking it down in long hand during odd hours in the week! Preaching grandiloquently before a few score natives who understood little beyond the gestures, for the single purpose of warding off disintegration! It reminded the doctor of a stubborn retreat; from barricade 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 utter loneliness of a white child without playfellows, human or animal, without fairy stories, who for days was left alone while the father visited neighbouring islands, these pictures sank far below their actual importance. He would always see the picture of the huge, raw-boned Dutchman, haranguing and thundering the word of God into the dull ears of South Sea Islanders, who, an hour later, would be carrying 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 lent a hand through habit as much as through pity. The grim mockery of it!—those South Sea loafers, taking advantage of Enschede's Christianity and imposing upon him, accepting his money and medicines and laughing behind his back! No doubt they made the name a byword and a subject for ribald jest in the waterfront bars. And this clear-visioned child had comprehended that only half the rogues were really ill. But Enschede took them as they came, without question. Charity for the ragtag and the bobtail of the Seven Seas, and none for his own flesh and blood.

This started a thought moving. There must be something behind the missioner's actions, something of which the girl knew nothing nor suspected. It would not be possible otherwise to live in daily contact with this level-eyed, lovely girl without loving her. Something with iron resolve the father had kept hidden all these years in the lonely citadel of his heart. Teaching the word of God to the recent cannibal, caring for the sick, storming the strongholds of the plague, adding his own private income to the pittance allowed him by the Society, and never seeing the angel that 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 her story; simply and directly, no skipping, no wandering hither and yon: from the first hour she could remember, to the night she had fled in the proa, a clear sustained narrative. And through it all, like a golden thread on a piece of tapestry, weaving in and out of the patterns, the unspoken longing for love.

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

"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 do not blame you for the act. There are human limitations, and no doubt you reached yours. For all that, it is folly. If you knew your 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 if the second part would overcome his objections? Several times the words had rushed to her tongue, to find her tongue paralysed. To a woman she might have confided; but to this man, kindly as he was, it was unthinkable. How could she tell him of the evil that drew her and drew her, as a needle to the magnet?—the fascinating evil that even now, escaped as it was, went on distilling its poison in her 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 against hunger?"

"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 her alone, I might make her understand."

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

"And what is that?"

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

"They were left to me by my mother. I sometimes laid away my father'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 never even 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 envelope addressed to me in faded ink, I found the locket and the pearls. It is queer how ideas pop into one's head. Instantly I knew that I was going to run away that night before he returned from the neighbouring island. At the bottom of the trunk I found two of my mother's dresses. I packed them with the other few things I owned. Morgan the trader did not haggle over the pearls, but gave me at once what he judged a fair price. You will wonder why he did not hold 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—not legally 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 some news. I'm a graybeard, an old bachelor; so I am accorded certain privileges. Sometimes I am frightfully busy; and then there will be periods of dullness. I have a few regular patients, and I take care of them in the morning. Every afternoon, from now on, I will teach you a little about life—I mean the worldly points of view you're likely to meet. You are queerly educated; and it strikes me that your father had some definite purpose in thus educating you. I'll try to fill in the gaps."

The girl's eyes filled. "I wonder if you will understand what this kindness means to me? I am so terribly wise—and so wofully ignorant!"



CHAPTER XII

The doctor shifted his books and magazines to the crook of his elbow. He had done this a dozen times on the way from his office. Books were always sliding and slipping, clumsy objects to hold. Looking at this girl, a sense of failure swept over him. He had not been successful as the world counted success; the fat bank-account, the filled waiting room of which he had once dreamed, had never materialized except in the smoke of his evening pipe.

And yet he knew that his skill was equal to that of any fashionable practitioner in Hong-Kong. He wasn't quite hard enough to win worldly success; that was his fault. Anybody in pain had only to call to him. So, here he was, on the last lap of middle age, in China, having missed all the thrills in life except one—the war against Death. It rather astonished him. He hadn't followed this angle of thought in ten years: what he might have been, with a little shrewd selfishness. This extraordinary child had opened up an old channel through which it was no longer safe to cruise. She was like an angel with one wing. The simile started a laugh in his throat.

"Why do you laugh?" she asked gravely.

"At a thought. Of you—an angel with one wing."

"Meaning that I don't belong anywhere, in heaven or on earth?"

"Meaning that you must cut off the wing or grow another to mate it. Let's go up and see how the patient is doing. Wu may have news for us. We'll get those books into your room first. And I'll have supper with you."

"If only...." But she did not complete the thought aloud. If only this man had been her father! The world would have meant nothing; the island would have been wide enough.

"You were saying—?"

"I started to say something; that is all."

"By the way, did you read those stories?"

"Yes."

"Worth anything?"

"I don't know."

"Silly love stories?"

"No; love wasn't the theme. Supposing you take them and read them? You might be able to tell me why I felt disappointed."

"All right. I'll take them back with me. Probably he has something to say and can't say it, or he writes well about nothing."

"Do you believe his failure caused...."

"What?" he barked. But he did not follow on with the thought. There was no need of sowing suspicion when he wasn't really certain there were grounds for it. "Well, you never can tell," he continued, lamely. "These writer chaps are queer birds."

"Queer birds."

He laughed and followed her into the hotel. "More slang," he said. "I'll have to set you right on that, too."

"I have heard sailors use words like that, but I never knew what they meant."

Sailors, he thought; and most of them the dregs of the South Seas, casting their evil glances at this exquisite creature and trying to smirch with innuendo the crystal clearness of her mind. Perhaps there were experiences she would never confide to any man. Sudden indignation boiled up in him. The father was a madman. It did not matter that he wore the cloth; something was wrong with him. He hadn't played fair.

"Remember; we must keep the young fellow's thoughts away from himself. Tell him about the island, the coconut dance, the wooden tom-toms; read to him."

"What made him buy that sing-song girl?" Regarding this, Ruth had ideas of her own, but she wanted the doctor's point of view.

"Maybe he realized that he was slipping fast and thought a fine action might give him a hand-hold on life again. You tell me he didn't like the stuff."

"He shuddered when he drank."

"Well, that's a hopeful sign. I'll test him out later; see if there is any craving. Give me the books. I'll put them in your room; then we'll have a look-see."

The patient was asleep. According to Wu, the young man had not opened his eyes once during the afternoon.

So Ruth returned to her room and sorted the books and magazines the doctor had loaned her, inspected the titles and searched for pictures. And thus it was that she came upon a book of Stevenson's verse—her first adventure into poetry. The hymnal lyrics had never stirred her; she had memorized and sung them parrot-wise. But here was new music, tender and kindly and whimsical, that first roved to and fro in the mind and then cuddled up in the heart. Anything that had love in it!

The doctor comprehended that he also had his work cut out. While the girl kept the patient from dwelling upon his misfortunes, whatever these were, he himself would have to keep the girl from brooding over hers. So he made merry at the dinner table, told comic stories, and was astonished at the readiness with which she grasped the comic side of life. His curiosity put itself into a question.

"Old Morgan the trader," she explained, "used to save me Tit-Bits. He would read the jokes and illustrate them; and after a time I could see the point of a joke without having it explained to me. I believe it amused him. I was a novelty. He was always in a state of semi-intoxication, but he was always gentle with me. Probably he taught me what a joke was merely to irritate my father; for suddenly Father stopped my going to the store for things and sent our old Kanaka cook instead. She had been to San Francisco, and what I learned about the world was from her. Thank you for the books."

"You were born on the island?"

"I believe so."

"You don't remember your mother?"

"Oh, no; she died when I was very little."

She showed him the locket; and he studied the face. It was equally as beautiful but not quite so fine as the daughter's. He returned the locket without comment.

"Perhaps things would have been different if she had lived."

"No doubt," he replied. "Mine died while I was over here. Perhaps that is why I lost my ambition."

"I am sorry."

"It is life."

There was a pause. "He never let me keep a dog or a cat about the house. But after a time I learned the ways of the parrakeets, and they would come down to me like doves in the stories. I never made any effort to touch them; so by and by they learned to light fearlessly on my arms and shoulders. And what a noise they made! This is how I used to call them."

She pursed her lips and uttered a whistle, piercingly shrill and high; and instantly she became the object of intense astonishment on the part of the other diners. She was quite oblivious to the sensation she had created.

The picture of her flashed across the doctor's vision magically. The emerald wings, slashed with scarlet and yellow, wheeling and swooping about her head, there among the wild plantain.

"I never told anybody," she went on. "An audience might have frightened the birds. Only in the sunshine; they would not answer my whistle on cloudy days."

"Didn't the natives have a name for you?"

She blushed. "It was silly."

"Go on, tell me," he urged, enchanted. Never was there another girl like this one. He blushed, too, spiritually, as it were. He had invited himself to dine with her merely to watch her table manners. They were exquisite. Knowing the South Seas from hearsay and by travel, he knew something of that inertia which blunted the fineness, innate and acquired, of white men and women, the eternal warfare against indifference and slovenliness. Only the strong survived. This queer father of hers had given her everything but his arms. "Tell me, what did they call you?"

"Well, the old Kanaka cook used to call me the Golden One, but the natives called me the Dawn Pearl."

"The Dawn Pearl! Odd, but we white folks aren't half so poetical as the yellow or the black. What did you do when your father went on trips to other islands?"

"Took off my shoes and stockings and played in the lagoon."

"He made you wear shoes and stockings?"

"Always."

"What else did you do when alone?"

"I read the encyclopaedia. That is how I learned that there were such things as novels. Books! Aren't they wonderful?"

The blind alley of life stretching out before her, with its secret doorways and hidden menaces; and she was unconcerned. Books; an inexplicable hunger to be satisfied. Somewhere in the world there was a book clerk with a discerning mind; for he had given her the best he had. He envied her a little. To fall upon those tales for the first time, when the mind was fresh and the heart was young!

He became aware of an odd phase to this conversation. The continuity was frequently broken in upon by diversory suppositions. Take the one that struck him at this moment. Supposing that was it; at least, a solution to part of this amazing riddle? Supposing her father had made her assist him in the care of the derelicts solely to fill her with loathing and abhorrence for mankind?

"Didn't you despise the men your father brought home—the beachcombers?"

"No. In the beginning was afraid; but after the first several cases, I had only pity. I somehow understood."

"Didn't some of them ... try to touch you?"

"Not the true unfortunates. How men suffer for the foolish things they do!"

"Ay to that. There's our young friend upstairs."

"There's a funny idea in my head. I've been thinking about it ever since morning. There was a loose button on that coat, and I want to sew it on. It keeps dangling in front of my eyes."

"Ah, yes; that coat. Probably a sick man's whim. Certainly, there wasn't a thing in the pockets. But be very careful not to let him know. If he awoke and caught you at it, there might be a set-back. By the way, what did he say when he was out of his head?"

"The word 'Fool.' He muttered it continually. There was another phrase which sounded something like 'Gin in a blue-serge coat'. I wonder what he meant by that?"

"The Lord knows!"

The patient was restless during the first watch of the night. He stirred continually, thrusting his legs about and flinging his arms above his head. Gently each time Ruth drew down the arms. There was a recurrence of fever, but nothing alarming. Once she heard him mutter, and she leaned down.

"Ali Baba, in a blue-serge coat!... God-forsaken fool!"



CHAPTER XIII

One day Ruth caught the patient's eyes following her about; but there was no question in the gaze, no interest; so she pretended not to notice.

"Where am I?" asked Spurlock.

"In Canton."

"How long have I been in bed?"

"A week."

"My coat, please."

"It is folded under your pillow."

"Did I ask for it?"

"Yes. But perhaps you don't know; there was nothing in the pockets. You were probably robbed in Hong-Kong."

"Nothing in the pockets."

"You see, we didn't know but you might die; and so we had to search your belongings for the address of your people."

"I have no people—anybody who would care."

She kindled with sympathy. He was all alone, too. Nobody who cared.

Ruth was inflammable; she would always be flaring up swiftly, in pity, in tenderness, in anger; she would always be answering impulses, without seeking to weigh or to analyse them. She was emerging from the primordial as Spurlock was declining toward it. She was on the rim of civilization, entering, as Spurlock was on the rim, preparing to make his exit. Two souls in travail; one inspired by fresh hopes, the other, by fresh despairs. Both of them would be committing novel and unforgettable acts.

"How long shall I be here?" he asked.

"That depends upon you. Not very long, if you want to get well."

"Are you a nurse?"

"Yes. Don't ask any more questions. Wait a little; rest."

There was a pause. Ruth flashed in and out of the sunshine; and he took note of the radiant nimbus above her head each time the sunshine touched her hair.

"Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

"The first day you came. Don't you remember? There were four of us, and we went touring in the city."

"As in a dream." There was another pause. "Was I out of my head?"

"Yes."

"What did I say?"

"Only one word," she said, offering her first white lie.

"What was it?" He was insistent.

"You repeated the word 'Fool' over and over."

"Nothing else?"

"No. Now, no more questions, or I shall be forced to leave the room."

"I promise to ask no more."

"Would you like to have me read to you?"

He did not answer. So she took up Stevenson and began to read aloud. She read beautifully because the fixed form of the poem signified nothing. She went from period to period exactly as she would have read prose; so that sense and music were equally balanced. She read for half an hour, then closed the book because Spurlock appeared to have fallen asleep. But he was wide awake.

"What poet was that?"

"Stevenson." Ruth had read from page to page in "The Child's Garden of Verse," generally unfamiliar to the admirers of Stevenson. Of course Ruth was not aware that in this same volume there were lyrics known the world over.

Immediately Spurlock began to chant one of these.

"'Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.'"

"'This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea. And the hunter home from the hill.'"

"What is that?" she asked. Something in his tone pinched her heart. "Did you write it?"

"No. You will find it somewhere in that book. Ah, if I had written that!"

"Don't you want to live?"

"I don't know; I really don't know."

"But you are young!" It was a protest, almost vehement. She remembered the doctor's warning that the real battle would begin when the patient recovered consciousness. "You have all the world before you."

"Rather behind me;" and he spoke no more that morning.

Throughout the afternoon, while the doctor was giving her the first lesson out of his profound knowledge of life, her interest would break away continually, despite her honest efforts to pin it down to the facts so patiently elucidated for her. Recurrently she heard: "I don't know; I really don't know." It was curiously like the intermittent murmur of the surf, those weird Sundays, when her father paused for breath to launch additional damnation for those who disobeyed the Word. "I don't know; I really don't know."

Her ear caught much of the lesson, and many things she stored away; but often what she heard was sound without sense. Still, her face never betrayed this distraction. And what was singular she did not recount to the doctor that morning's adventure. Why? If she had put the query to herself, she could not have answered it. It was in no sense confessional; it was a state of mind in the patient the doctor had already anticipated. Yet she held her tongue.

As for the doctor, he found a pleasure in this service that would have puzzled him had he paused to analyse it. There was scant social life on the Sha-mien aside from masculine foregatherings, little that interested him. He took his social pleasures once a year in Hong-Kong, after Easter. He saw, without any particular regret, that this year he would have to forego the junket; but there would be ample compensation in the study of these queer youngsters. Besides, by the time they were off his hands, old McClintock would be dropping in to have his liver renovated.

All at once he recollected the fact that McClintock's copra plantation was down that way, somewhere in the South Seas; had an island of his own. Perhaps he had heard of this Enschede. Mac—the old gossip—knew about everything going on in that part of the world; and if Enschede was anything up to the picture the girl had drawn, McClintock would have heard of him, naturally. He might solve the riddle. All of which proves that the doctor also had his moments of distraction, with this difference: he was not distracted from his subject matter.

"So endeth the first lesson," he said. "Suppose we go and have tea? I'd like to take you to a teahouse I know, but we'll go to the Victoria instead. I must practise what I preach."

"I should be unafraid to go anywhere with you."

"Lord, that's just the lesson I've been expounding! It isn't a question of fear; it's one of propriety."

"I'll never understand."

"You don't have to. I'll tell you what. I'll write out certain rules of conduct, and then you'll never be in doubt."

She laughed; and it was pleasant laughter in his ears. If only this child were his: what good times they would have together! The thought passed on, but it left a little ache in his heart.

"Why do you laugh?" he asked.

"All that you have been telling me, our old Kanaka cook summed up in a phrase."

"What was it?"

"Never glance sideways at a man.".

"The whole thing in a nutshell!"

"Are there no men a woman may trust absolutely?"

"Hang it, that isn't it. Of course there are, millions of them. It's public opinion. We all have to kow-tow to that."

"Who made such a law?"

"This world is governed by minorities—in politics, in religion, in society. Majorities, right or wrong, dare not revolt. Footprints, and we have to toddle along in them, willy-nilly; and those who have the courage to step outside the appointed path are called pariahs!"

"I'm afraid I shall not like this world very much. It is putting all my dreams out of joint."

"Never let the unknown edge in upon your courage. The world is like a peppery horse. If he senses fear in the touch of your hand, he'll give you trouble."

"It's all so big and aloof. It isn't friendly as I thought it would be. I don't know; I really don't know," she found herself repeating.

He drew her away from this thought. "I read those stories."

"Are they good?"

"He can write; but he hasn't found anything real to write about. He hasn't found himself, as they say. He's rewriting Poe and De Maupassant; and that stuff was good only when Poe and De Maupassant wrote it."

"How do you spell the last name?"

He spelt it. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw a faint shudder stir her shoulders. "Not the sort of stories young ladies should read. Poe is all right, if you don't mind nightmares. But De Maupassant—sheer off! Stick to Dickens and Thackeray and Hugo. Before you go I'll give you a list of books to read."

"There are bad stories, then, just as there are bad people?"

"Yes. Sewn on that button yet?"

"I've been afraid to take the coat from under the pillow."

"Funny, about that coat. You told him there wasn't anything in the pockets?"

"Yes."

"How did he take it?"

"He did not seem to care."

"There you are, just as I said. We've got to get him to care. We've got to make him take up the harp of life and go twanging it again. That's the job. He's young and sound. Of course, there'll be a few kinks to straighten out. He's passed through some rough mental torture. But one of these days everything will click back into place. Great sport, eh? To haul them back from the ragged edge. Wouldn't it be fun to see his name on a book-cover some day? He'll go strutting up and down without ever dreaming he owed the whole shot to us. That would be fun, eh?"

"I wonder if you know how kind you are? You are like somebody out of a book."

"There, now! You mustn't get mixed. You mustn't go by what you read so much as by what you see and hear. You must remember, you've just begun to read; you haven't any comparisons. You mustn't go dressing up Tom, Dick, and Harry in Henry Esmond's ruffles. What you want to do is to imagine every woman a Becky Sharp and every man a Rawdon Crawley."

"I know what is good," she replied.

"Yes; but what is good isn't always proper. And so, here we are, right back from where we started. But no more of that. Let's talk of this chap. There's good stuff in him, if one could find the way to dig it out. But pathologically, he is still on the edge. Unless we can get some optimism into him, he'll probably start this all over again when he gets on his feet. That's the way it goes. But between us, we'll have him writing books some day. That's one of the troubles with young folks: they take themselves so seriously. He probably imagines himself to be a thousand times worse off than he actually is. Youth finds it pleasant sometimes to be melancholy. Disappointed puppy-love, and all that."

"Puppy-love."

"A young fellow who thinks he's in love, when he has only been reading too much."

"Do girls have puppy-love?"

"Land sakes, yes! On the average they are worse than the boys. A boy can forget his amatory troubles playing baseball; but a girl can't find any particular distraction in doing fancy work. Do you know, I envy you. All the world before you, all the ologies. What an adventure! Of course, you'll bark your shins here and there and hit your funnybone; but the newness of everything will be something of a compensation. All right. Let's get one idea into our heads. We are going to have this chap writing books one of these days."

Ideas are never born; they are suggested; they are planted seeds. Ruth did not reply, but stared past the doctor, her eyes misty. The doctor had sown a seed, carelessly. All that he had sown that afternoon with such infinite care was as nothing compared to this seed, cast without forethought. Ruth's mind was fertile soil; for a long time to come it would be something of a hothouse: green things would spring up and blossom overnight. Already the seed of a tender dream was stirring. The hour for which, presumably, she had been created was drawing nigh. For in life there is but one hour: an epic or an idyll: all other hours lead up to and down from it.

"By the way," said the doctor, as he sat down in the dining room of the Victoria and ordered tea, "I've been thinking it over."

"What?"

"We'll put those stories back into the trunk and never speak of them to him."

"But why not?"

The doctor dallied with his teaspoon. Something about the girl had suggested an idea. It would have been the right idea, had Ruth been other than what she was. First-off, he had decided not to tell her what he had found at the bottom of that manila envelope. Now it occurred to him that to show her the sealed letter would be a better way. Impressionable, lonely, a deal beyond his analytical reach, the girl might let her sympathies go beyond those of the nurse. She would be enduing this chap with attributes he did not possess, clothing him in fictional ruffles. To disillusion her, forthwith.

"I'll tell you why," he said. "At the bottom of that big envelope I found this one."

He passed it over; and Ruth read:

To be opened in case of my death and the letter inside forwarded to the address thereon. All my personal effects to be left in charge of the nearest American Consulate.



CHAPTER XIV

Ruth lost the point entirely. The doctor expected her to seize upon the subtle inference that there was something furtive, even criminal, in the manner the patient set this obligation upon humanity at large, to look after him in the event of his death. The idea of anything criminal never entered her thoughts. Any man might have endeavoured to protect himself in this fashion, a man with no one to care, with an unnameable terror at the thought (as if it mattered!) of being buried in alien earth, far from the familiar places he loved.

Close upon this came another thought. She had no place she loved. In all this world there was no sacred ground that said to her: Return! She was of all human beings the most lonely. Even now, during the recurring doubts of the future, the thought of the island was repellent. She hated it, she hated the mission-house; she hated the sleek lagoon, the palms, the burning sky. But some day she would find a place to love: there would be rosy apples on the boughs, and there would be flurries of snow blowing into her face. It was astonishing how often this picture returned: cold rosy apples and flurries of snow.

"The poor young man!" she said.

The doctor sensed that his bolt had gone wrong, but he could not tell how or why. He dared not go on. He was not sure that the boy had put himself beyond the pale; merely, the boy's actions pointed that way. If he laid his own suspicions boldly before the girl, and in the end the boy came clean, he would always be haunted by the witless cruelty of the act.

That night in his den he smoked many pipes. Twice he cleaned the old briar; still there was no improvement. He poured a pinch of tobacco into his palm and sniffed. The weed was all right. Probably something he had eaten. He was always forgetting that his tummy was fifty-four years old.

He would certainly welcome McClintock's advent. Mac would have some new yarns to spin and a fresh turn-over to his celebrated liver. He was a comforting, humorous old ruffian; but there were few men in the Orient more deeply read in psychology and physiognomy. It was, in a way, something of a joke to the doctor: psychology and physiognomy on an island which white folks did not visit more than three or four times a year, only then when they had to. Why did the beggar hang on down there, when he could have enjoyed all that civilization had to offer? Yes, he would be mighty glad to see McClintock; and the sooner he came the better.

Sometimes at sea a skipper will order his men to trim, batten down the hatches, and clear the deck of all litter. The barometer says nothing, neither the sky nor the water; the skipper has the "feel" that out yonder there's a big blow moving. Now the doctor had the "feel" that somewhere ahead lay danger. It was below consciousness, elusive; so he sent out a call to his friend, defensively.

* * * * *

At the end of each day Ah Cum would inquire as to the progress of the patient, and invariably the answer was: "About the same." This went on for ten days. Then Ah Cum was notified that the patient had sat up in bed for quarter of an hour. Promptly Ah Cum wired the information to O'Higgins in Hong-Kong. The detective reckoned that his quarry would be up in ten days more.

To Ruth the thought of Hartford no longer projected upon her vision a city of spires and houses and tree-lined streets. Her fanciful imagination no longer drew pictures of the aunt in the doorway of a wooden house, her arms extended in welcome. The doctor's lessons, perhaps delivered with too much serious emphasis, had destroyed that buoyant confidence in her ability to take care of herself.

Between Canton and Hartford two giants had risen, invisible but menacing—Fear and Doubt. The unknown, previously so attractive, now presented another face—blank. The doctor had not heard from his people. She was reasonably certain why. They did not want her.

Thus, all her interest in life began to centre upon the patient, who was apparently quite as anchorless as she was. Sometimes a whole morning would pass without Spurlock uttering a word beyond the request for a drink of water. Again, he would ask a few questions, and Ruth would answer them. He would repeat them innumerable times, and patiently Ruth would repeat her answers.

"What is your name?"

"Ruth."

"Ruth what?"

"Enschede; Ruth Enschede."

"En-shad-ay. You are French?"

"No. Dutch; Pennsylvania Dutch."

And then his interest would cease. Perhaps an hour later he would begin again.

At other times he seemed to have regained the normal completely. He would discuss something she had been reading, and he would give her some unexpected angle, setting a fictional character before her with astonishing clearness. Then suddenly the curtain would fall.

"What is your name?" To-day, however, he broke the monotony. "An American. Enschede—that's a queer name."

"I'm a queer girl," she replied with a smile.

Perhaps this was the real turning point: the hour in which the disordered mind began permanently to readjust itself.

"I've been wondering, until this morning, if you were real."

"I've been wondering, too."

"Are you a real nurse?"

"Yes."

"Professional?"

"Why do you wish to know?"

"Professional nurses wear a sort of uniform."

"While I look as if I had stepped out of the family album?"

He frowned perplexedly. "Where did I hear that before?"

"Perhaps that first day, in the water-clock tower."

"I imagine I've been in a kind of trance."

"And now you are back in the world again, with things to do and places to go. There is a button loose on that coat under your pillow. Shall I sew it on for you?"

"If you wish."

This readiness to surrender the coat to her surprised Ruth. She had prepared herself to meet violent protest, a recurrence of that burning glance. But in a moment she believed she understood. He was normal now, and the coat was only a coat. It had been his fevered imagination that had endued the garment with some extraordinary value. Gently she raised his head and withdrew the coat from under the pillow.

"Why did I want it under my pillow?" he asked.

"You were a little out of your head."

Gravely he watched the needle flash to and fro. He noted the strong white teeth as they snipped the thread. At length the task was done, and she jabbed the needle into a cushion, folded the coat, and rose.

"Do you want it back under the pillow?"

"Hang it over a chair. Or, better still, put all my clothes in the trunk. They litter up the room. The key is in my trousers."

This business over, she returned to the bedside with the key. She felt a little ashamed of herself, a bit of a hypocrite. Every article in the trunk was fully known to her, through a recounting of the list by the doctor. To hand the key back in silence was like offering a lie.

"Put it under my pillow," he said.

Immediately she had spoken of the loose button he knew that henceforth he must show no concern over the disposition of that coat. He must not in any way call their attention to it. He must preserve it, however, as they preserved the Ark of the Covenant. It was his redemption, his ticket out of hell—that blue-serge coat. To witness this girl sewing on a loose button, flopping the coat about on her knees, tickled his ironic sense of humour; and laughter bubbled into his throat. He smothered it down with such a good will that the reaction set his heart to pounding. The walls rocked, the footrail of the bed wavered, and the girl's head had the nebulosity of a composite photograph. So he shut his eyes. Presently he heard her voice.

"I must tell you," she was saying. "We went through your belongings. We did not know where to send ... in case you died. There was nothing in the pockets of the coat."

"Don't worry about that." He opened his eyes again.

"I wanted you to know. There is nobody, then?"

"Oh, there is an aunt. But if I were dying of thirst, in a desert, I would not accept a cup of water at her hands. Will you read to me? I am tired; and the sound of your voice makes me drowsy."

Half an hour later she laid aside the book. He was asleep. She leaned forward, her chin in her palms, her elbows on her knees, and she set her gaze upon his face and kept it there in dreamy contemplation. Supposing he too wanted love and his arms were as empty as hers?

Some living thing that depended upon her. The doll she had never owned, the cat and the dog that had never been hers: here they were, strangely incorporated in this sleeping man. He depended upon her, for his medicine, for his drink, for the little amusement it was now permissible to give him. The knowledge breathed into her heart a satisfying warmth.

At noon the doctor himself arrived. "Go to lunch," he ordered Ruth. He wanted to talk with the patient, test him variously; and he wanted to be alone with him while he put these tests. His idea was to get behind this sustained listlessness. "How goes it?" he began, heartily. "A bit up in the world again; eh?"

"Why did you bother with me?"

"Because no human being has the right to die. Death belongs to God, young man."

"Ah." The tone was neutral.

"And had you been the worst scoundrel unhung, I'd have seen to it that you had the same care, the same chance. But don't thank me; thank Miss Enschede. She caught the fact that it was something more than strong drink that laid you out. If they hadn't sent for me, you'd have pegged out before morning."

"Then I owe my life to her?"

"Positively."

"What do you want me to do?"

The doctor thought this query gave hopeful promise. "Always remember the fact. She is something different. When I told her that there were no available nurses this side of Hong-Kong, she offered her services at once, and broke her journey. And I need not tell you that her hotel bill is running on the same as yours."

"Do you want me to tell her that I am grateful?"

"Well, aren't you?"

"I don't know; I really don't know."

"Look here, my boy, that attitude is all damned nonsense. Here you are, young, sound, with a heart that will recover in no time, provided you keep liquor out of it. And you talk like that! What the devil have you been up to, to land in this bog?" It was a cast at random.

His guardian angel warned Spurlock to speak carefully. "I have been very unhappy."

"So have we all. But we get over it. And you will."

After a moment Spurlock said: "Perhaps I am an ungrateful dog."

"That's better. Remember, if there's anything you'd like to get off your chest, doctors and priests are in the same boat."

With no little effort—for the right words had a way of tumbling back out of reach—he marshalled his phrases, and as he uttered them, closed his eyes to lessen the possibility of a break. "I'm only a benighted fool; and having said that, I have said everything. I'm one of those unfortunate duffers who have too much imagination—the kind who build their own chimeras and then run away from them. How long shall I be kept in this bed?"

"That's particularly up to you. Ten days should see you on your feet. But if you don't want to get up, maybe three times ten days."

There had never been, from that fatal hour eight months gone down to this, the inclination to confess. He had often read about it, and once he had incorporated it in a story, that invisible force which sent men to prison and to the gallows, when a tongue controlled would have meant liberty indefinite. As for himself, there had never been a touch of it. It was less will than education. Even in his fevered hours, so the girl had said, his tongue had not betrayed him. Perhaps that sealed letter was a form of confession, and thus relieved him on that score. And yet that could not be: it was a confession only in the event of his death. Living, he knew that he would never send that letter.

His conscience, however, was entirely another affair. He could neither stifle nor deaden that. It was always jabbing him with white-hot barbs, waking or sleeping. But it never said: "Tell someone! Tell someone!" Was he something of a moral pervert, then? Was it what he had lost—the familiar world—rather than what he had done?

He stared dully at the footrail. For the present the desire to fly was gone. No doubt that was due to his helplessness. When he was up and about, the idea of flight would return. But how far could he fly on a few hundred? True, he might find a job somewhere; but every footstep from behind...!

"Who is she? Where does she come from?"

"You mean Miss Enschede?"

"Yes. That dress she has on—my mother might have worn it."

He was beginning to notice things, then? The doctor was pleased. The boy was coming around.

"Miss Enschede was born on an island in the South Seas. She is setting out for Hartford, Connecticut. The dress was her mother's, and she was wearing it to save a little extra money."

The doctor had entered the room fully determined to tell the patient the major part of Ruth's story, to inspire him with proper respect and gratitude. Instead, he could not get beyond these minor details—why she wore the dress, whence she had come, and whither she was bound. The idea of this sudden reluctance was elusive; the fact was evident but not the reason for it.

"How would you like a job on a copra plantation?" he asked, irrelevantly to the thoughts crowding one another in his mind. "Out of the beaten track, with a real man for an employer? How would that strike you?"

Interest shot into Spurlock's eyes; it spread to his wan face. Out of the beaten track! He must not appear too eager. "I'll need a job when I quit this bed. I'm not particular what or where."

"That kind of talk makes you sound like a white man. Of course, I can't promise you the job definitely. But I've an old friend on the way here, and he knows the game down there. If he hasn't a job for you, he'll know someone who has. Managers and accountants are always shifting about, so he tells me. It's mighty lonesome down there for a man bred to cities."

"Find me the job. I don't care how lonesome it is."

Out of the beaten track! thought Spurlock. A forgotten island beyond the ship lanes, where that grim Hand would falter and move blindly in its search for him! From what he had read, there wouldn't be much to do; and in the idle hours he could write.

"Thanks," he said, holding out a thin white hand. "I'll be very glad to take that kind of a job, if you can find it."

"Well, that's fine. Got you interested in something, then? Would you like a peg?"

"No. I hated the stuff. There was a pleasant numbness in the bottle; that's why I went to it."

"Thought so. But I had to know for sure. Down there, whisky raises the very devil with white men. Don't build your hopes too high; but I will do what I can. While there's life there's hope. Buck up."

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Understand what?"

"You or this girl. There are, then, in this sorry world, people who can be disinterestedly kind!"

The doctor laughed, gave Spurlock's shoulder a pat, and left the room. Outside the door he turned and stared at the panels. Why hadn't he gone on with the girl's story? What instinct had stuffed it back into his throat? Why the inexplicable impulse to hurry this rather pathetic derelict on his way?



CHAPTER XV

Previous to his illness, Spurlock's mind had been tortured by an appalling worry, so that now, in the process of convalescence, it might be compared to a pool which had been violently stirred: there were indications of subsidence, but there were still strange forms swirling on the surface—whims and fancies which in normal times would never have risen above sub-consciousness.

Little by little the pool cleared, the whims vanished: so that both Ruth and the doctor, by the middle of the third week, began to accept Spurlock's actions as normal, whereas there was still a mote or two which declined to settle, still a kink in the gray matter that refused to straighten out.

Spurlock began to watch for Ruth's coming in the morning; first, with negligent interest, then with positive eagerness. His literary instincts were reviving. Ruth was something to study for future copy; she was almost unbelievable. She was not a reversion to type, which intimates the primordial; she suggested rather the incarnation of some goddess of the South Seas. He was not able to recognize, as the doctor did, that she was only a natural woman.

His attitude toward her was purely intellectual, free of any sentimentality, utterly selfish. Ruth was not a woman; she was a phenomenon. So, adroitly and patiently, he pulled Ruth apart; that is, he plucked forth a little secret here, another there, until he had quite a substantial array. What he did not know was this: Ruth surrendered these little secrets because the doctor had warned her that the patient must be amused and interested.

From time to time, however, he was baffled. The real tragedy—which he sensed and toward which he was always reaching—eluded all his verbal skill. It was not a cambric curtain Ruth had drawn across that part of her life: it was of iron. Ruth could tell the doctor; she could bare many of her innermost thoughts to that kindly man; but there was an inexplicable reserve before this young man whom she still endued with the melancholy charm of Sydney Carton. It was not due to shyness: it was the inherent instinct of the Woman, a protective fear that she must retain some elements of mystery in order to hold the interest of the male.

When she told him that the natives called her The Dawn Pearl, his delight was unbounded. He addressed her by that title, and something in the tone disturbed her. A sophisticated woman would have translated the tone as a caress. And yet to Spurlock it was only the title of a story he would some day write. He was caressing an idea.

The point is, Spurlock was coming along: queerly, by his own imagination. The true creative mind is always returning to battle; defeats are only temporary set-backs. Spurlock knew that somewhere along the way he would write a story worth while. Already he was dramatizing Ruth, involving her, now in some pearl thieving adventure, now in some impossible tale of a white goddess. But somehow he could not bring any of these affairs to an orderly end. Presently he became filled with astonishment over the singular fact that Ruth was eluding him in fancy as well as in reality.

One morning he caught her hand suddenly and kissed it. Men had tried that before, but never until now had they been quick enough. The touch of his lips neither thrilled nor alarmed her, because the eyes that looked into hers were clean. Spurlock knew exactly what he was doing, however: speculative mischief, to see how she would act.

"I haven't offended you?"—not contritely but curiously.

"No"—as if her thoughts were elsewhere.

Something in her lack of embarrassment irritated him. "Has no man ever kissed you?"

"No." Which was literally the truth.

He accepted this confession conditionally: that no young man had kissed her. There was nothing of the phenomenon in this. But his astonishment would have been great indeed had he known that not even her father had ever caressed her, either with lips or with hands.

Ruth had lived in a world without caresses. The significance of the kiss was still obscure to her, though she had frequently encountered the word and act in the Old and New Testaments and latterly in novels. Men had tried to kiss her—unshaven derelicts, some of them terrible—but she had always managed to escape. What had urged her to wrench loose and fly was the guarding instinct of the good woman. Something namelessly abhorrent in the eyes of those men...!

She knew what arms were for—to fold and embrace and to hold one tightly; but why men wished to kiss women was still a profound mystery. No matter how often she came across this phase in love stories, there was never anything explanatory: as if all human beings perfectly understood. It would not have been for her an anomaly to read a love story in which there were no kisses.

This salute of his—actually the first she could remember—while it did not disturb her, began to lead her thoughts into new channels of speculation. The more her thoughts dwelt upon the subject, the more convinced she was that she could not go to any one for help; she would have to solve the riddle by her own efforts, by some future experience.

"The Dawn Pearl," he said.

"The natives have foolish ways of saying things."

"On the contrary, if that is a specimen, they must be poets. Tell me about your island. I have never seen a lagoon."

"But you can imagine it. Tell me what you think the island is like."

He did not pause to consider how she had learned that he had imagination; he comprehended only the direct challenge. To be free of outward distraction, he shut his eyes and concentrated upon the scraps she had given him; and shortly, with his eyes still closed, he began to describe Ruth's island: the mountain at one end, with the ever-recurring scarves of mist drifting across the lava-scarred face; the jungle at the foot of it; the dazzling border of white sand; the sprawling store of the trader and the rotting wharf, sundrily patched with drift-wood; the native huts on the sandy floor of the palm groves; the scattered sandalwood and ebony; the screaming parakeets in the plantains; the fishing proas; the mission with its white washed walls and barren frontage; the lagoon, fringed with coco palms, now ruffled emerald, now placid sapphire.

"I think the natives saw you coming out of the lagoon, one dawn. For you say that you swim. Wonderful! The water, dripping from you, must have looked like pearls. Do you know what? You're some sea goddess and you're only fooling us."

He opened his eyes, to behold hers large with wonder.

"And you saw all that in your mind?"

"It wasn't difficult. You yourself supplied the details. All I had to do was to piece them together."

"But I never told you how the natives fished."

"Perhaps I read of it somewhere."

"Still, you forgot something."

"What did I forget?"

"The breathless days and the faded, pitiless sky. Nothing to do; nothing for the hands, the mind, the heart. To wait for hours and hours for the night! The sea empty for days! You forgot the monotony, the endless monotony, that bends you and breaks you and crushes you—you forgot that!"

Her voice had steadily risen until it was charged with passionate anger. It was his turn to express astonishment. Fire; she was full of it. Pearls in the dawn light, flashing and burning!

"You don't like your island?"

"I hate it!... But, there!"—weariness edging in. "I am sorry. I shouldn't talk like that. I'm a poor nurse."

"You are the most wonderful human being I ever saw!" And he meant it.

She trembled; but she did not know why. "You mustn't talk any more; the excitement isn't good for you."

Drama. To get behind that impenetrable curtain, to learn why she hated her island. Never had he been so intrigued. Why, there was drama in the very dress she wore! There was drama in the unusual beauty of her, hidden away all these years on a forgotten isle!

"You've been lonely, too."

"You mustn't talk."

He ignored the command. "To be lonely! What is physical torture, if someone who loves you is nigh? But to be alone ... as I am!... yes, and as you are! Oh, you haven't told me, but I can see with half an eye. With nobody who cares ... the both of us!"

He was real in this moment. She was given a glimpse of his soul. She wanted to take him in her arms and hush him, but she sat perfectly still. Then came the shock of the knowledge that soon he would be going upon his way, that there would be no one to depend upon her; and all the old loneliness came smothering down upon her again. She could not analyse what was stirring in her: the thought of losing the doll, the dog, and the cat. There was the world besides, looming darker and larger.

"What would you like most in this world?" he asked. Once more he was the searcher.

"Red apples and snow!" she sent back at him, her face suddenly transfixed by some inner glory.

"Red apples and snow!" he repeated. He returned figuratively to his bed—the bed he had made for himself and in which he must for ever lie. Red apples and snow! How often had these two things entered his thoughts since his wanderings began? Red apples and snow!—and never again to behold them!

"I am going out for a little while," she said. She wanted to be alone. "Otherwise you will not get your morning's sleep."

He did not reply. His curiosity, his literary instincts, had been submerged by the recurring thought of the fool he had made of himself. He heard the door close; and in a little while he fell into a doze; and there came a dream filled with broken pictures, each one of which the girl dominated. He saw her, dripping with rosy pearls, rise out of the lagoon in the dawn light: he saw her flashing to and fro among the coco palms in the moonshine: he saw her breasting the hurricane, her body as full of grace and beauty as the Winged Victory of the Louvre. The queer phase of the dream was this, she was at no time a woman; she was symbolical of something, and he followed to learn what this something was. There was a lapse of time, an interval of blackness; then he found his hand in hers and she was leading him at a run up the side of the mountain.

His heart beat wildly and he was afraid lest the strain be too much; but the girl shook her head and smiled and pointed to the top of the mountain. All at once they came to the top, the faded blue sky overhead, and whichever way he looked, the horizon, the great rocking circle which hemmed them in. She pointed hither and yon, smiled and shook her head. Then he understood. Nowhere could he see that reaching, menacing Hand. So long as she stood beside him, he was safe. That was what she was trying to make him understand.

He awoke, strangely content. As it happens sometimes, the idea stepped down from the dream into the reality; and he saw it more clearly now than he had seen it in the dream. It filled his thoughts for the rest of the day, and became an obsession. How to hold her, how to keep her at his side; this was the problem with which he struggled.

When she came in after dinner that night, Ruth was no longer an interesting phenomenon, something figuratively to tear apart and investigate: she was talismanic. So long as she stood beside him, the Hand would not prevail.



CHAPTER XVI

Ah cum began to worry. Each morning his inquiry was properly answered: the patient was steadily improving, but none could say when he would be strong enough to proceed upon his journey. The tourist season would soon be at ebb, and it would be late in September before the tide returned. So, then, fifty gold was considerable; it would carry Ah Cum across four comparatively idle months. And because of this hanging gold Ah Cum left many doors open to doubt.

Perhaps the doctor, the manager and the girl were in collusion: perhaps they had heard indirectly of the visit paid by Mr. O'Higgins, the American detective, and were waiting against the hour when they could assist the young man in a sudden dash for liberty. Why not? Were not his own sentiments inclined in favour of the patient? But fifty gold was fifty gold.

One morning, as he took his stand on the Hong-Kong packet dock to ambush the possible tourist, he witnessed the arrival of a tubby schooner, dirty gray and blotched as though she had run through fire. Her two sticks were bare and brown, her snugged canvas drab, her brasses dull, her anchor mottled with rust. There was only one clean spot in the picture—the ship's wash (all white) that fluttered on a line stretched between the two masts. The half-nude brown bodies of the crew informed Ah Cum that the schooner had come up from the South Seas. The boiling under her stern, however, told him nothing. He was not a sailor. It would not have interested him in the least to learn that the tub ran on two powers—wind and oil.

Sampans with fish and fruit and vegetables swarmed about, while overhead gulls wheeled and swooped and circled. One of the sampans was hailed, and a rope-ladder was lowered. Shortly a man descended laboriously. He was dressed immaculately in a suit of heavy Shantung silk. His face was half hidden under a freshly pipeclayed sola topee—sun-helmet. He turned and shouted some orders to the Kanaka crew, then nodded to the sampan's coolies, who bore upon the sweeps and headed for the Sha-mien.

Ah Cum turned to his own affairs, blissfully ignorant that this tub was, within forty-eight hours, to cost him fifty gold. What had shifted his casual interest was the visible prospect of a party of three who were coming down the packet gang-plank. The trio exhibited that indecisive air with which Ah Cum was tolerably familiar. They were looking for a guide. Forthwith he presented his card.

The Reverend Henry Dolby had come to see China; for that purpose he had, with his wife and daughter, traversed land and sea to the extent of ten thousand miles. Actually, he had come all this distance simply to fulfil a certain clause in his contract with Fate, to be in Canton on this particular day.