Ah Cum lived at No. 6 Chiu Ping le, Chiu Yam Street. He was a
Canton guide, highly educated, having been graduated from Yale
University. If he took a fancy to you, he invited you to the house
for tea, bitter and yellow and served in little cups without
handles. If you knew anything about Canton ware, you were, as like
as not, sorely tempted to stuff a teacup into your pocket.
He was tall, slender, and suave. He spoke English with astonishing
facility and with a purity which often embarrassed his tourists. He
made his headquarters at the Victoria on the Sha-mien, and
generally met the Hong-Kong packet in the morning. You left
Hong-Kong at night, by way of the Pearl River, and arrived in Canton
the next morning. Ah Cum presented his black-bordered card to such
individuals as seemed likely to require his services.
This morning his entourage (as he jestingly called it) consisted of
the girl, two spinsters (Prudence and Angelina Jedson), prim and
doubtful of the world, and the young man who appeared to be
considerably the worse for the alcohol he had consumed.
In the beginning Ah Cum would run his glance speculatively over the
assortment and select that individual who promised to be the most
companionable. He was a philosopher. Usually his charges bored him
with their interrogative chatter, for he knew that his information
more often than not went into one ear and out of the other. To-day
he selected the girl, and gave her the lead-chair. He motioned the
young man to the rear chair, because at that hour the youth
appeared to be a quantity close to zero. Being a Chinaman in blood
and instinct, he despised all spinsters; they were parasites. A
woman was born to have children, particularly male children.
Half a day had turned the corner of the hours; and Ah Cum admitted
that this girl puzzled him. He dug about in his mind for a term to
fit her, and he came upon the word _new_. She was new, unlike any
other woman he had met in all his wide travel. He could not tell
whether she was English or American. From long experience with both
races he had acquired definitions, but none snugly applied to this
girl. Her roving eagerness was at all times shaded with shyness,
reserve, repression. Her voice was soft and singularly musical; but
from time to time she uttered old-fashioned words which forced him
to grope mentally. She had neither the semi-boisterousness of the
average American girl nor the chilling insolence of the English.
Ah, these English! They travelled all over, up and down the world,
not to acquire information but rather to leave the impress of their
superiority as a race. It was most amusing. They would suffer
amazing hardships to hunt the snow-leopard; but in the Temple of
Five Hundred Gods they would not take the trouble to ask the name
of one!
But this girl, she was alone. That added to his puzzle. At this
moment she was staring ahead; and again came the opportunity to
study her. Fine but strong lines marked the profile: that would
speak for courage and resolution. She was as fair as the lily of
the lotus. That suggested delicacy; and yet her young body was
strong and vital. Whence had she come: whither was she bound?
A temporary congestion in the street held up the caravan for a
spell; and Ah Cum looked backward to note if any of the party had
become separated. It was then that the young man entered his
thought with some permanency: because there was no apparent reason
for his joining the tour, since from the beginning he had shown no
interest in anything. He never asked questions; he never addressed
his companions; and frequently he took off his cap and wiped his
forehead. For the first time it occurred to Ah Cum that the young
man might not be quite conscious of his surroundings, that he might
be moving in that comatose state which is the aftermath of a long
debauch. For all that, Ah Cum was forced to admit that his charge
did not look dissipated.
Ah Cum was more or less familiar with alcoholic types. In the
genuinely dissipated face there was always a suggestion of slyness
in ambush, peeping out of the wrinkles around the eyes and the
lips. Upon this young fellow's face there were no wrinkles, only
shadows, in the hollows of the cheeks and under the eyes. He was
more like a man who had left his bed in the middle of
convalescence.
Ah Cum's glance returned to the girl. Of course, it really
signified nothing in this careless part of the world that she was
travelling alone. What gave the puzzling twist to an ordinary
situation was her manner: she was guileless. She reminded him of
his linnet, when he gave the bird the freedom of the house: it
became filled with a wild gaiety which bordered on madness. All
that was needed to complete the simile was that the girl should
burst into song.
But, alas! Ah Cum shrugged philosophically. His commissions this
day would not fill his metal pipe with one wad of tobacco. The
spinsters had purchased one grass-linen tablecloth; the girl and
the young man had purchased nothing. That she had not bought one
piece of linen subtly established in Ah Cum's mind the fact that
she had no home, that the instinct was not there, or she would have
made some purchase against the future.
Between his lectures--and primarily he was an itinerant lecturer--he
manoeuvred in vain to acquire some facts regarding the girl, who she
was, whence she had come; but always she countered with: "What is
that?" Guileless she might be; simple, never.
It was noon when the caravan reached the tower of the water-clock.
Here they would be having lunch. Ah Cum said that it was customary
to give the chair boys small money for rice. The four tourists
contributed varied sums: the spinsters ten cents each, the girl a
shilling, the young man a Mexican dollar. The lunches were
individual affairs: sandwiches, bottled olives and jam commandeered
from the Victoria.
"You are alone?" said one of the spinsters--Prudence Jedson.
"Yes," answered the girl.
"Aren't you afraid?"
"Of what?"--serenely.
"The men."
"They know."
"They know what?"
"When and when not to speak. You have only to look resolute and
proceed upon your way."
Ah Cum lent an ear covertly.
"How old are you?" demanded Miss Prudence.
The spinsters offered a good example of how singular each human
being is, despite the fact that in sisters the basic corpuscle is
the same. Prudence was the substance and Angelina the shadow; for
Angelina never offered opinions, she only agreed with those
advanced by Prudence.
"I am twenty," said the girl.
Prudence shook her head. "You must have travelled a good deal to
know so much about men."
The girl smiled and began to munch a sandwich. Secretly she was
gratified to be assigned to the rôle of an old traveller. Still, it
was true about men. Seldom they molested a woman who appeared to
know where she was going and who kept her glance resolutely to the
fore.
Said Prudence, with commendable human kindness: "My sister and I
are going on to Shanghai and Peking. If you are going that way, why
not join us."
The girl's blood ran warmly for a minute. "That is very kind of
you, but I am on my way to America. Up to dinner yesterday I did
not expect to come to Canton. I was the last on board. Wasn't the
river beautiful under the moonlight?"
"We did not leave our cabins. Did you bring any luggage?"
"All I own. In this part of the world it is wise never to be
separated from your luggage."
The girl fished into the bottle for an olive. How clever she was,
to fool everybody so easily! Not yet had any one suspected the
truth: that she was, in a certain worldly sense, only four weeks
old, that her every act had been written down on paper beforehand,
and that her success lay in rigidly observing the rules which she
herself had drafted to govern her conduct.
She finished the olive and looked up. Directly in range stood the
strange young man, although he was at the far side of the loft. He
was leaning against a window frame, his hat in his hand. She noted
the dank hair on his forehead, the sweat of revolting nature. What
a pity! But why?
There was no way over this puzzle, nor under it, nor around it:
that men should drink, knowing the inevitable payment. This young
man did not drink because he sought the false happiness that lured
men to the bottle. To her mind, recalling the picture of him the
night before, there had been something tragic in the grim silent
manner of his tippling. Peg after peg had gone down his blistered
throat, but never had a smile touched his lips, never had his gaze
roved inquisitively. Apparently he had projected beyond his table
some hypnotic thought, for it had held him all through the dining
hour.
Evidently he was gazing at the dull red roofs of the city: but was
he registering what he saw? Never glance sideways at man, the old
Kanaka woman had said. Yes, yes; that was all very well in ordinary
cases; but yonder was a soul in travail, if ever she had seen one.
Here was not the individual against whom she had been warned. He
had not addressed to her even the most ordinary courtesy of fellow
travellers; she doubted that he was even aware of her existence.
She went further: she doubted that he was fully conscious of where
he was.
Suddenly she became aware of the fact that he had brought no lunch.
A little kindness would not bring the world tumbling about her
ears. So she approached him with sandwiches.
"You forgot your lunch," she said. "Won't you take these?"
For a space he merely stared at her, perhaps wondering if she were
real. Then a bit of colour flowed into his sunken white cheeks.
"Thank you; but I've a pocket full of water-chestnuts. I'm not
hungry."
"Better eat these, even if you don't want them," she urged. "My
name is Ruth Enschede."
"Mine is Howard Spurlock."
Immediately he stepped back. Instinctively she imitated this
action, chilled and a little frightened at the expression of terror
that confronted her. Why should he stare at her in this
fashion?--for all the world as if she had pointed a pistol at his
head?