The Ragged Edge Read online

  CHAPTER IV

  The tourists returned to the Sha-mien at four o'clock. They weresilent and no longer observant, being more or less exhausted by thetedious action of the chairs. Even Ah Cum had resumed his Orientalshell of reserve. To reach the Sha-mien--and particularly the HotelVictoria--one crossed a narrow canal, always choked with rockingsampans over and about which swarmed yellow men and women andchildren in varied shades of faded blue cotton. At sunset theswarming abruptly ceased; even the sampans appeared to draw closertogether, with the quiet of water-fowl. There is everywhere atnight in China the original fear of darkness.

  From the portals of the hotel--scarcely fifty yards from thecanal--one saw the blank face of the ancient city of Canton. Blankit was, except for a gate near the bridgehead. Into this hole in thewall and out of it the native stream flowed from sunrise to sunset,when the stream mysteriously ceased. The silence of Canton at nightwas sinister, for none could prophesy what form of mob mightsuddenly boil out.

  No Cantonese was in those days permitted to cross to the Sha-mienafter sunset without a license. To simplify matters, he carried acoloured paper lantern upon which his license number was painted inArabic numerals. It added to the picturesqueness of the Sha-miennight to observe these gaily coloured lanterns dancing hither andyon like June fireflies in a meadow.

  Meantime the spinsters sought the dining room where tea was beingserved. They had much to talk about, or rather Miss Prudence had.

  "But she is a dear," said Angelina, timidly.

  "I'll admit that. But I don't understand her; she's over my head.She leaves me almost without comparisons. She is like somecharacter out of Phra the Phoenician: she's been buried for thirtyyears and just been excavated. That's the way she strikes me. Andit's uncanny."

  "But I never saw anybody more alive."

  "Who wouldn't be lively after thirty years' sleep? Did you hear herexplain about beachcombers? And yet she looks at one with thestraightest glance I ever saw. Still, I'm glad she didn't accept myinvitation to join us. I shouldn't care to have attentionconstantly drawn to us. This world over here! Everything'supside-down or back-end-to. Humph!"

  "What's the matter?"

  "Sh!"

  Spurlock passed by on the way to the bar. Apparently he did not seehis recent companions. There was a strained, eager expression onhis face.

  "Going to befuddle himself between now and dinner," was the commentof Prudence.

  "The poor young man!" sighed Angelina.

  "Pah! He's a fool. I never saw a man who wasn't."

  "There was Father," suggested Angelina gently.

  "Ninny! What did we know about Father, except when he was aroundthe house? But where is the girl? She said something about havingtea with us. I want to know more about her. I wonder if she has anyidea how oddly beautiful she is?"

  Ruth at that precise moment was engaged by a relative wonder. Shewas posing before the mirror, critically, miserably, defensively,and perhaps bewilderedly. What was the matter with the dress? Shecould not see. For the past four weeks mirrors had been herdelight, a new toy. Here was one that subtly mocked her.

  Life is a patchwork of impressions, of vanishing personalities.Each human contact leaves some indelible mark. The spinsters--whoon the morrow would vanish out of the girl's life for ever--hadalready left their imprint upon her imagination. Clothes.Henceforth Ruth would closely observe her fellow women and note thehang of their skirts.

  Around her neck was a little gold chain. She gathered up the chain,revealing a locket which had lain hidden in her bosom. The locketcontained the face of her mother--all the family album she had. Shestudied the face and tried to visualize the body, clothed in thedress which had created the spinsters' astonishment. Very well.To-morrow, when she returned to Hong-Kong, she would purchase asimple but modern dress. Anything that drew attention to her must beavoided.

  She dropped the locket into its sweet hiding place. It was preciousfor two reasons: it was the photograph of her beautiful mother whomshe could not remember, and it would identify her to the aunt inHartford.

  She uttered a little ejaculative note of joy and rushed to the bed.A dozen books lay upon the counterpane. Oh, the beautiful books!Romance, adventure, love stories! She gathered up the books in herarms and cuddled them, as a mother might have cuddled a child. Lovestories! It was of negligible importance that these books werebound in paper; Romance lay unalterably within. All these wonderfulcomrades, henceforth and for ever hers. She would never again belonely. Les Miserables, A Tale of Two Cities, Henry Esmond, TheLast Days of Pompeii, The Marble Faun ... Love stories!

  Until her arrival in Singapore, she had never read a novel.Pilgrim's Progress, The Life of Martin Luther and Alice inWonderland (the only fairy-story she had been permitted to read)were the sum total of her library. But in the appendix of thedictionary she had discovered magic names--Hugo, Dumas, Thackeray,Hawthorne, Lytton. She had also discovered the names of Grimm andAndersen; but at that time she had not been able to visualize "thepale slender things with gossamer wings"--fairies. The world intowhich she was so boldly venturing was going to be wonderful, butnever so wonderful as the world within these paper covers. AlreadyCosette was her chosen friend. Daily contact with actual humanbeings all the more inclined her toward the imaginative.

  Joyous, she felt the need of physical expression; and her bodybegan to sway sinuously, to glide and turn and twist about theroom. As she danced there was in her ears the faded echo of woodentom-toms.

  Eventually her movements carried her to the little stand at theside of the bed. There lay upon this stand a book bound in limpblack leather--the Holy Bible.

  Her glance, absorbing the gilt letters and their significance,communicated to her poised body a species of paralysis. She stoodwithout motion and without strength. The books slid from her armsand fluttered to the floor. Presently repellance grew under thefrozen mask of astonishment and dissipated it.

  "No!" she cried. "No, no!"

  With a gesture, fierce and intolerant, she seized the Bible andthrust it out of sight, into the drawer. Then, her body still tensewith the atoms of anger, she sat down upon the edge of the bed androcked from side to side. But shortly this movement ceased. Therecollection of the forlorn and loveless years--stirred intoconsciousness by the unexpected confrontation--bent her as the highwind bends the water-reed.

  "My father!" she whispered. "My own father!"

  Queerly the room and its objects receded and vanished; and thereintervened a series of mental pictures that so long as she livedwould ever be recurring. She saw the moonlit waters, the blackshadow of the proa, the moon-fire that ran down the far edge of thebellying sail, the silent natives: no sound except the slapping ofthe outrigger and the low sibilant murmur of water falling awayfrom the sides--and the beating of her heart. The flight.

  How she had fought her eagerness in the beginning, lest it revealher ignorance of the marvels of mankind! The terror and ecstasy ofthat night in Singapore--the first city she had ever seen! Therewas still the impression that something akin to a miracle hadpiloted her successfully from one ordeal to another.

  The clerk at the Raffles Hotel had accorded her but scant interest.She had, it was true, accepted doubtfully the pen he had offered.She had not been sufficiently prompted in relation to the ways ofcaravansaries; but her mind had been alert and receptive. Almost atonce she had comprehended that she was expected to write down hername and address, which she did, in slanting cobwebby lettering,perhaps a trifle laboriously. Ruth Enschede, Hartford, Conn. Theaddress was of course her destination, thousands of miles away, aninfinitesimal spot in a terrifying space.

  She could visualize the picture she had presented, particularly thebattered papier-mache kitbag at her feet. In Europe or in Americapeople would have smiled; but in Singapore--the half-way port ofthe world--where a human kaleidoscope tumbles continuously east andwest, no one had remarked her.

  She would never forget the agony of that first meal in the greatdining room. She could have dined
alone in her room; but couragehad demanded that she face the ordeal and have done with it. Everyeye seemed focussed upon her; and yet she had known the sensationto be the conceit of her imagination.

  The beautiful gowns and the flashing bare shoulders and arms of thewomen had disturbed and distressed her. Women, she had been taught,who exposed the flesh of their bodies under the eyes of man were ina special catagory of the damned. Almost instantly she hadrecognized the fallacy of such a statement. These women could notbe bad, else the hotel would not have permitted them to enter!Still, the scene presented a riddle: to give immunity to the blackwomen who went about all but naked and to damn the white forexposing their shoulders!

  She had eaten but little; all her hunger had been in her eyes--andin her heart. Loneliness--something that was almost physical: as ifthe vitality had been taken out of the air she breathed. Thelonging to talk to someone! But in the end she had gone to her roomwithout giving in to the craving.

  Once in the room, the door locked, the sense of loneliness haddropped away from her as the mists used to drop away from themountain in the morning. Even then she had understood vaguely thatshe had touched upon some philosophy of life: that one was neverlonely when alone, only in the midst of crowds.

  Another picture slid across her vision. She saw herself begin aslow, sinuous dance: and stop suddenly in the middle of a figure,conscious that the dance was not impromptu, her own, but native--thesame dance she had quitted but a few minutes gone. She had falleninto it naturally, the only expression of the dance she had everseen or known, and that a stolen sweet. That was odd: when youngpeople were joyous, they had to express it physically. But native!She must watch out.

  She remembered that she had not gone to bed until two o'clock inthe morning. She had carried a chair into the room veranda and hadwatched and listened until the night silences had lengthened andonly occasionally she heard a voice or the rattle of rickshawwheels in the courtyard.

  The great ordeal--that which she had most dreaded--had proved to beno ordeal at all. The kindly American consul-general had himselftaken her to the bank, where her banknotes had been exchanged for aletter of credit, and had thoroughly advised her. Everything had sofar come to pass as the withered old Kanaka woman had foretold.

  "The Golden One knows that I have seen the world; therefore followmy instructions. Never glance sideways at man. Nothing elsematters."

  The prison bars of circumstance, they no longer encompassed her.Her wings were oddly weak, but for all that she could fly. That wasthe glorious if bewildering truth. She had left for ever the cage,the galling leash: she was free. The misty caravans of which shehad dreamed were become actualities. She had but to choose. Allabout her, hither and yon, lay the enticing Unknown. Romance! Theromance of passing faces, of wires that carried voices and words tothe far ends of the world, of tremendous mechanisms that propelledships and trains! And, oh the beautiful books!

  She swiftly knelt upon the floor and once more gathered the booksto her heart.