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

swiftly moving drama, now enraptured by the tender passages of love. Love.... He could imagine it even if he could not feel it. That was the true miracle of the gift; without actual experience, to imagine love and hate and greed and how they would react upon each other; and then, when these passions had served their temporary purpose, to cast them aside for new imaginings.

She heard the bamboo curtain rattle slightly. She looked up quickly. The Wastrel, his eyes full of humorous evil, stood inside the room.


CHAPTER XXVII


His idea, cleverly planned, was to shatter her resistance, to confound her suddenly by striking her mind with words which would rob her coherent thought. Everything in his favour-the luck of the gods! The only white men were miles down the coast. She might scream until her voice failed; the natives would not come to her aid; they never meddled with the affairs of the whites.

"It is droll," he said. "Your father-poor imbecile!-believes we ran away together. I arranged that he should. So that way is closed. You never can go back."

There was a roaring in her ears like that of angry waters. Wanton!... This, then, was what her father had meant. And he had gone away without knowing the truth!

"My proa boys are ready; the wind is brisk; and in an hour we shall be beyond all pursuit. Will you come sensibly, or shall I carry you? You are mine !"

Ruth's peculiar education had not vitiated the primitive senses; they were always on guard; and in a moment such as this they rushed instantly to the surface. Danger, the most terrible she had ever faced, was substantially in this room. She must kill this man, or kill herself. She knew it. No tricks would serve. There would be no mercy in this man. Any natural fineness would be numbed by drink. To-morrow he might be sorry; but to-day, this hour!

She rose, not quickly, but with a dignity which only accentuated her beauty.

"And you ran away with a weakling! You denied me for a puppet!"

"My lawful husband."

"Ah, yes, yes; lawful husbands in these parts are those who can take and hold.... As I shall take and hold." The Wastrel advanced.

"If you touch me I will kill you," said Ruth, grasping the scissors which lay beside the pencils-Hoddy's!

The Wastrel laughed, still advancing. "Fire! That was what drew me to you in the beginning. Well, kill me. Either we go forth together, or they shall bury me."

"Beast!"

For a little while they manoeuvred around the table. Suddenly the Wastrel took hold of the edge and flung the table aside. Even in this dread moment Ruth was conscious of a pathetic interest in the scattering pencils.

He reached for her, and she struck savagely. But with the skill of a fencer he met the blow and broke it, seizing the wrist.

"It looks as though, we should go together," he said, pulling her toward him.

Ruth was strong in body and soul. She fought him with tooth and nail. Three times she escaped. Chairs were overturned. Once she reached the bamboo curtain, clutched at it and tore it down as his arms went around her waist. The third time she escaped she reached the inconsequent barricade of the overturned table.

"If there is any honour in you, stop and think. I love my husband. I love him!" She was weak and dizzy: from horror as much as from physical exertion. She knew that the next time he caught her she would not be able to free herself. "What good would it do you to destroy me? For I have courage to kill myself."

The Wastrel laughed. He had heard this talk before.

The race began once more; but this time Ruth knew that there would be no escape. If only she had thought to plunge the scissors into her own heart! Hoddy ... to return and find her either gone or dead! But even as the Wastrel's arms gathered her, there came the sound of hurrying steps on the veranda.

"Ruth?"

"Hoddy!" she cried.

Spurlock stepped into the room. One of those hanging moments ensued-hypnotic.

Spurlock had seen Rollo heading for the jungle, and for some reason he could not explain the incident had bothered him. Fretting and fidgeting, he had, after an hour or so, turned to McClintock.

"I'm going back for Ruth."

"Nonsense!"

"Something's wrong."

"Wrong? What the devil could be wrong?" McClintock had demanded, irascibly. He had particular reasons for wanting to keep Spurlock away from the jetty.

"I haven't any answer for that; but I'm going back after her. She wanted to come, and I wouldn't let her."

"Run along, then."

* * * * *

"To me, you dirty blackguard!" cried Spurlock, flinging aside his helmet. That he was hot and breathless was of no matter; in that moment he would have faced a dozen Samsons.

"She was mine before you ever saw her." The Wastrel tried to reach Ruth's lips.

"You lie!"

Head down, fists doubled, Spurlock rushed: only to be met with a kick which was intended for the groin but which struck the thigh instead. Even then it sent Spurlock spinning backward, to crash against the wall. He felt no pain from this cowardly kick. That would come later. Again he rushed. He dodged the boot this time, and smashed his left upon the Wastrel's lips, leaving them bloody pulp.

The Wastrel did not relish this. He flung Ruth aside, careless whether she fell or not. There was only one idea in his head now-to batter and bruise and crush this weakling, then cast him at the feet of his love-lorn wife. He brought into service all his Oriental bar-room tricks. Time after time he sent Spurlock into this corner or that; but always the boy regained his feet before the murderous boot could reach the mark. From all angles he was at a disadvantage-in weight, skill, endurance. But Ruth was his woman, and he had sworn to God to defend her.

"One of us has got to die," he panted. "You've got to kill me to get out of here alive."

The Wastrel rushed. Spurlock dove headlong at the other's legs, toppling the man. In this moment he could have stamped upon the Wastrel's face, and ended the affair; but all that was clean in him, chivalrous, revolted at the thought. Not even for Ruth could he do such a beastly thing. So, bloody but unbeaten, weak and spent but undaunted, he waited for the Wastrel to spring up.

The unequal battle went on. It came to Spurlock suddenly that if something did not react in his favour inside of five minutes, he was done. In a side-glance-for the floor was variously encumbered with overturned objects-he saw one of his paper weights, a coloured glass ball such as McClintock used in trade. As the Wastrel rushed, Spurlock sidestepped, swept the ball into his hand, set himself and threw it. If the Wastrel had not turned the instant he did, the ball would have missed him; as it was he turned directly into its path. It struck his forehead, splitting it, and brought him to his knees.

Luck. Spurlock understood that his vantage would be temporary; the Wastrel had been knocked down, not out. Still, the respite was sufficient for Spurlock to look about for some weapon. Hanging on the wall was a temple censer, bronze, moulded in the shape of a lotus blossom with stem and leaves-deadly as a club. He tore it down just as the Wastrel rose, wavering slightly. Spurlock advanced, the censer swung high.

The Wastrel wiped the blood from his forehead. The blow had brought him back to the realm of sober thought. He glanced at Ruth (who had stood with her back to the wall, pinned there throughout the contest by terror and the knowledge of her own helplessness), then at the bronze menace, and calculated correctly that this particular adventure was finished.

His hesitation was visible, and Spurlock took advantage of this to run to Ruth. He put his free arm around her and held the censer ready; and as Ruth snuggled her cheek against his sleeve, they were, so far as intent, in each other's arms. Without a word or a gesture, the Wastrel turned and staggered forth, out of the orbit of these two, having been thrust into it for a single purpose already described.

For a while they stood there, silent, motionless, staring at the doorway where still a few strings of the bamboo curtain swayed and twisted, agitated by the Wastrel's passage.

"I was going to die, Hoddy!" she whispered. "You do love me?"

"God knows how much!" Suddenly he laid his head on her shoulder. "But I'm a blackguard, too, Ruth. I had no right to marry you. I have no right to love you."

"Why not?"

"I am a thief, a hunted man."

"So that is what separated us! Oh, Hoddy, you have wasted so many wonderful days! Why didn't you tell me?"

"I couldn't!" He made as though to draw away, but her arms became hoops of steel.

"Because you did not wish to hurt me?"

"Yes. If I let you believe I did not love you, and they found me, your shame would be negligible."

"And loving me, you fought me, avoided all my traps! I'm glad I've been so unhappy. Remember, in your story-look at it, scattered everywhere!-that line? We arrive at true happiness only through labyrinths of misery. "

"I am a thief, nevertheless."

"Oh, that!"

He raised his head, staring at her in blank astonishment. "You mean, it doesn't matter?"

"Poor Hoddy! When you were ill in Canton, out of your head, you babbled words. Only a few, but enough for me to understand that some act had driven you to this part of the world, where the hunted hide."

"And you married me, knowing?"

"I married the man who bought a sing-song girl to give her her freedom."

"But I was intoxicated!"

"So was the man you just fought in this room. There is no hidden beast in you, Hoddy. I could not love you else."

"They may find me."

"Well, if they send you to prison, I'll be outside when they let you go."

He took her face between his hands and kissed her on the lips. "I'm not worth it. You are all that I am or hope to be-the celestial atom God put into me at the beginning. Now He has taken that out and given it form and beauty-you!"

"Wonderful hand!" Ruth seized his right hand and kissed it. "All the wonderful things it is going to do! If I could only know for certain that my mother knew how happy I'm going to be!"

"You love the memory of your mother?"

"It is a part of my blood ... my beautiful mother!"

He saw Enschede, putting out to sea, alone, memories and regrets crowding upon his wake. Her father was right: Ruth must never know. The mother was far more real to her than the father; the ghostly far more substantial than the living form. So long as he lived, Spurlock knew that in fancy he would be reconstructing that scene between himself and Ruth's father.