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

forgive you; but not now. No, no! Not now!"

Ruth turned abruptly and walked toward the bungalow, mounted the veranda steps, and vanished within. Without a word, without a sign, Enschede started toward the beach, where his proa waited.

For a time Spurlock did not move. This incredible scene robbed him of the sense of locomotion. But his glance roved, to the door through which Ruth had gone, to Enschede's drooping back. Unexpectedly he found himself speeding toward the father.

"Enschede!" he called.

Enschede halted. "Well?" he said, as Spurlock reached his side.

"Are you a human being, to leave her thus?"

"It is better so. You heard her. What she said is true."

"But why? In the name of God, why? Your flesh and blood! Have you never loved anything?"

"Are you indeed my daughter's lawful husband?" Enschede countered.

"I am. You will find the proof in McClintock's safe. You called her a wanton!"

"Because I had every reason to believe she was one. There was every indication that she fled the island in company with a dissolute rogue." Still the voice was without emotion; calm, colourless.

Fired with wrath, Spurlock recounted the Canton episode. "She travelled alone; and she is the purest woman God ever permitted to inhabit the earth. What!-you know so little of that child? She ran away from you . Somebody tricked you back yonder-baited you for spite. She ran away from you; and now I can easily understand why. What sort of a human being are you, anyhow?"

Enschede gazed seaward. When he faced Spurlock, the granite was cracked and rived; never had Spurlock seen such dumb agony in human eyes. "What shall I say? Shall I tell you, or shall I leave you in the dark-as I must always leave her? What shall I say except that I am accursed of men? Yes; I have loved something-her mother. Not wisely but too well. I loved her beyond anything in heaven or on earth-to idolatry. God is a jealous God, and He turned upon me relentlessly. I had consecrated my life to His Work; and I took the primrose path."

"But a man may love his wife!" cried Spurlock, utterly bewildered.

"Not as I loved mine. So, one day, because God was wroth, her mother ran away with a blackguard, and died in the gutter, miserably. Perhaps I've been mad all these years; I don't know. Perhaps I am still mad. But I vowed that Ruth should never suffer the way I did-and do. For I still love her mother. So I undertook to protect her by keeping love out of her life, by crushing it whenever it appeared, obliterating it. I made it a point to bring beachcombers to the house to fill her with horror of mankind. I never let her read stories, or have pets, dolls. Anything that might stir the sense of love And God has mocked me through it all."

"Man, in God's name, come with me and tell her this!" urged Spurlock.

"It is too late. Besides, I would tear out my tongue rather than let it speak her mother's infamy. To tell Ruth anything, it would be necessary to tell her everything; and I cannot and you must not. She was always asking questions about her mother and supplying the answers. So she built a shrine. Always her prayers ended-'And may my beautiful mother guide me!' No. It is better as it is. She is no longer mine; she is yours."

"What a mistake!"

"Yes. But you-you have a good face. Be kind to her. Whenever you grow impatient with her, remember the folly of her father. I can now give myself to God utterly; no human emotion will ever be shuttling in between."

"And all the time you loved her?"-appalled.

"Perhaps."

Enschede stepped into the proa, and the natives shoved off. Spurlock remained where he was until the sail became an infinitesimal speck in the distance. His throat filled; he wanted to weep. For yonder went the loneliest man in all God's unhappy world.


CHAPTER XXV


Spurlock pushed back his helmet and sat down in the white sand, buckling his knees and folding his arms around them-pondering. Was he really awake? The arrival and departure of this strange father lacked the essential human touch to make it real. Without a struggle he could give up his flesh and blood like that! "I can now give myself to God utterly; no human emotion will ever be shuttling in between." The mortal agony behind those eyes! And all the while he had probably loved his child. To take Spring and Love out of her life, as if there were no human instincts to tell Ruth what was being denied her! And what must have been the man's thought as he came upon Ruth wearing a gown of her mother's?-a fair picture of the mother in the primrose days? Not a flicker of an eyelash; steel and granite outwardly.

The conceit of Howard Spurlock in imagining he knew what mental suffering was! But Enschede was right: Ruth must never know. To find the true father at the expense of the beautiful fairy tale Ruth had woven around the woman in the locket was an intolerable thought. But the father, to go his way forever alone! The iron in the man!-the iron in this child of his!

Wanting a little love, a caress now and then. Spurlock bent his head to his knees. He took into his soul some of the father's misery, some of the daughter's, to mingle with his own. Enschede, to have starved his heart as well as Ruth's because, having laid a curse, he knew not how to turn aside from it! How easily he might have forgotten the unworthy mother in the love of the child! And this day to hear her voice lifted in a quality of anathema. Poor Ruth: for a father, a madman; for a husband-a thief!

Spurlock rocked his body slightly. He knew that at this moment Ruth lay upon her bed in torment, for she was by nature tender; and the reaction of her scathing words, no matter how justifiable, would be putting scars on her soul. And he, her lawful husband, dared not go to her and console her! Accursed-all of them-Enschede, Ruth, and himself.

"What's the matter, lad, after all the wonderful fireworks at lunch?"

Spurlock beheld McClintock standing beside him. He waved a hand toward the sea.

"A sail?" said McClintock. "What about it?"

"Enschede."

"Enschede?-her father? What's happened?" McClintock sat down. "Do you mean to tell me he's come and gone in an hour? What the devil kind of a father is he?"

Spurlock shook his head.

"What's become of Ruth?"

"Gone to her room."

"Come, lad; let's have it," said McClintock. "Anything that concerns Ruth is of interest to me. What happened between Ruth and her father that made him hurry off without passing ordinary courtesies with me?"

"I suppose I ought to tell you," said Spurlock; "but it is understood that Ruth shall never know the truth."

"Not if it will hurt her."

"Hurt her? It would tear her to pieces; God knows she has had enough. Her mother.... Do you recall the night she showed you the face in the locket? Do you remember how she said-'If only my mother had lived'? Did you ever see anything more tender or beautiful?"

"I remember. Go on and tell me."

When Spurlock had finished the tale, touched here and there by his own imagination, McClintock made a negative sign.

"So that was it? And what the devil are you doing here, moping alone on the beach? Why aren't you with her in this hour of bitterness?"

"What can I do?"

"You can go to her and take her in your arms."

"I might have been able to do that if you hadn't told me ... she cared."

"Man, she's your wife!"

"And I am a thief."

"You're a damn fool, too!" exploded the trader.

"I am as God made me."

"No. God gives us an equal chance; but we make ourselves. You are captain of your soul; don't forget your Henley. But I see now. That poor child, trying to escape, and not knowing how. Her father for fifteen years, and you now for the rest of her life! Tell her you're a thief. Get it off your soul."

"Add that to what she is now suffering? It's too late. She would not forgive me."

"And why should you care whether she forgave you or not?"

Spurlock jumped to his feet, the look of the damned upon his face. "Why? Because I love her! Because I loved her at the start, but was too big a fool to know it!"

His own astonishment was quite equal to McClintock's. The latter began to heave himself up from the sand.

"Did I hear you ..." began McClintock.

"Yes!" interrupted Spurlock, savagely. "You heard me say it! It was inevitable. I might have known it. Another labyrinth in hell!"

A smile broke over the trader's face. It began in the eyes and spread to the lips: warm, embracing, even fatherly.

"Man, man! You're coming to life. There's something human about you now. Go to her and tell her. Put your arms around her and tell her you love her. Dear God, what a beautiful moment!"

The fire went out of Spurlock's eyes and the shadow of hopeless weariness fell upon him. "I can't make you understand; I can't make you see things as I see them. As matters now stand, I'm only a thief, not a blackguard. What!-add another drop to her cup? Who knows? Any day they may find me. So long as matters remain as they are, and they found me, there would be no shame for Ruth. Can't I make you see?"

"But I'm telling you Ruth loves you. And her kind of love forgives everything and anything but infidelity."

"You did not hear her when she spoke to her father; I did."

"But she would understand you; whereas she will never understand her father. Spurlock: 'tis Roundhead, sure enough. Go to her, I say, and take her in your arms, you poor benighted Ironsides! I can't make you see. Man, if you tell her you love her, and later they took you away to prison, who would sit at the prison gate until your term was up? Ruth. Why am I here-thirty years of loneliness? Because I know women, the good and the bad; and because I could not have the good, I would not take the bad. The woman I wanted was another man's wife. So here I am, king of all I survey, with a predilection for poker, a scorched liver, and a piano-player. But you! Ruth is your lawful wife. Not to go to her is wickeder than if I had run away with my friend's wife. You're a queer lad. With your pencil you see into the hearts of all; and without your pencil you are dumb and blind. Ruth is not another man's wife; she is all your own, for better or for worse. Have you thought of the monstrous lie you are adding to your theft?"

"Lie?" said Spurlock, astounded.

"Aye-to pretend to her that you don't care. That's a most damnable lie; and when she finds out, 'tis then she will not forgive. She'll have this hour always with her; and you failed her. Go to her."

"I can't."

"Afraid?"

"Yes."

This simple admission disarmed