The Ragged Edge - Harold MacGrath (best books under 200 pages TXT) 📗

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