At dinner the spinsters invited Ruth to sit at their table, an
invitation she accepted gratefully. She was not afraid exactly, but
there was that about her loneliness to-night she distrusted.
Detached, it was not impossible that she would be forced to leave
the dining room because of invading tears. To be near someone, even
someone who made a pretense of friendliness, to hear voices, her
own intermingling, would serve as a rehabilitating tonic. The world
had grown dark and wide, and she was very small. Doubts began to
rise up all about her, plucking at her confidence. Could she go
through with it? She must. She would never, never go back.
As usual the substantive sister--Prudence--did all the talking for
the pair; Angelina, the shadow, offered only her submitting nods.
Sometimes she missed her cue and nodded affirmatively when the
gesture should have been the reverse; and Prudence would send her a
sharp glance of disapproval. Angelina's distress over these
mischances was pathetic.
None of this by-play escaped Ruth, whose sense of humour needed no
developing. That she possessed any sense of humour was in itself
one of those human miracles which metaphysicians are always
pothering over without arriving anywhere; for her previous
environment had been particularly humourless. But if she smiled at
all it was with her eyes. To-night she could have hugged both the
old maids.
"Somebody ought to get hold of that young man," said Prudence,
grimly, as she nodded in Spurlock's direction. "Look at him!"
Ruth looked. He was draining a glass, and as he set it down he
shuddered. A siphon and a whisky bottle stood before him. He
measured out the portion of another peg, the bottle wavering in his
hand. His food lay untouched about his plate. There was no disgust
in Ruth's heart, only an infinite pity; for only the pitiful
understand.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"I have no sympathy," replied Prudence, "with a man who
deliberately fuddles himself with strong drink."
"You would, if you had seen what I have. Men in this part of the
world drink to forget the things they have lost."
"And what should a young man like this one have to forget?"
Prudence demanded to know.
"I wonder," said Ruth. "Couldn't you speak to him?"
"What?--and be insulted for my trouble? No, thank you!"
"That is it. You complain of a condition, but you leave the
correction to someone else."
The spinster had no retort to offer such directness. This child was
frequently disconcerting. Prudence attacked her chicken wing.
"If I spoke to him, my interest might be misinterpreted."
"Where did you go to school?" Prudence asked, seeking a new
channel, for the old one appeared to be full of hidden reefs.
"I never went to school."
"But you are educated!"--astonished.
"That depends upon what you call educated. Still, my tutor was a
highly educated scholar--my father." Neither spinster noticed the
reluctance in the tones.
"Ah! I see. He suddenly realized that he could not keep you for
ever in this part of the world; so he sends you to your aunt. That
dress! Only a man--and an unworldly one--would have permitted you
to proceed on your adventure dressed in a gown thirty years out of
date. What is your father's business?"
The question was an impertinence, but Ruth was not aware of that.
"Souls," she answered, drily.
"A missioner! That illuminates everything." The spinster's face
actually became warm. "You will finish your education in the East
and return. I see."
"No. I shall never come back."
Something in the child's voice, something in her manner, warned the
spinster that her well-meaning inquisitiveness had received a
set-back and that it would be dangerous to press it forward again.
What she had termed illuminative now appeared to be only another
phase of the mystery which enveloped the child. A sinister thought
edged in. Who could say that the girl's father had not once been a
fashionable clergyman in the States and that drink had got him and
forced him down, step by step, until--to use the child's odd
expression--he had come upon the beach? She was cynical, this
spinster. There was no such a thing as perfection in a mixed world.
Clergymen were human. Still, it was rather terrible to suspect that
one had fallen from grace, but nevertheless the thing was possible.
With the last glimmer of decency he had sent the daughter to his
sister. The poor child! What frightful things she must have seen on
that island of hers!
The noise of crashing glass caused a diversion; and Ruth turned
gratefully toward the sound.
The young man had knocked over the siphon. He rose, steadied
himself, then walked out of the dining room. Except for the dull
eyes and the extreme pallor of his face, there was nothing else to
indicate that he was deep in liquor. He did not stagger in the
least. And in this fact lay his danger. The man who staggers, whose
face is flushed, whose attitude is either noisily friendly or
truculent, has some chance; liquor bends him eventually. But men of
the Spurlock type, who walk straight, who are unobtrusive and
intensely pale, they break swiftly and inexplicably. They seldom
arrive on the beach. There are way-stations--even terminals.
There was still the pity of understanding in Ruth's eyes. Perhaps
it was loneliness. Perhaps he had lost his loved ones and was
wandering over the world seeking forgetfulness. But he would die if
he continued in this course. They were alike in one phase--loveless
and lonely. If he died, here in this hotel, who would care? Or if
she died, who would care?
A queer desire blossomed in her heart: to go to him, urge him to
see the folly of trying to forget. Of what use was the temporary
set-back to memory, when it always returned with redoubled
poignancy?
Then came another thought, astonishing. This was the first young
man who had drawn from her something more than speculative
interest. True, on board the ships she had watched young men from
afar, but only with that normal curiosity which is aroused in the
presence of any new species. But after Singapore she found herself
enduing them with the characteristics of the heroes in the novels
she had just read for the first time. This one was Henry Esmond,
that one the melancholy Marius, and so forth and so on; never any
villains. It wasn't worth while to invest imaginatively a man with
evil projects simply because he was physically ugly.
Some day she wanted to be loved as Marius loved Cosette; but there
was another character which bit far more deeply into her mind. Why?
Because she knew him in life, because, so long as she could
remember, he had crossed and recrossed her vision--Sidney Carton.
The wastrel, the ne'er-do-well, who went mostly nobly to a fine
end.
Here, then, but for the time and place, might be another Sidney
Carton. Given the proper incentive, who could say that he might not
likewise go nobly to some fine end? She thrilled. To find the
incentive! But how? Thither and yon the idea roved, seeking the
way. But always this new phase in life which civilization called
convention threw up barrier after barrier.
She could not go to him with a preachment against strong drink; she
knew from experience that such a plan would be wasted effort. Had
she not seen them go forth with tracts in their pockets and grins
in their beards? To set fire to his imagination, to sting his sense
of chivalry into being, to awaken his manhood, she must present
some irresistible project. She recalled that day of the typhoon and
the sloop crashing on the outer reefs. The heroism of two beach
combers had saved all on board and their own manhood as well.
"Are you returning to Hong-Kong to-morrow by the day boat?"
For a moment Ruth was astonished at the sound of the spinster's
voice. She had, by the magic of recollection, set the picture of
the typhoon between herself and her table companions: the terrible
rollers thundering on the white shore, the deafening bellow of the
wind, the bending and snapping palms, the thatches of the native
huts scattering inland, the blur of sand dust, and those two
outcasts defying the elements.
"I don't know," she answered vaguely.
"But there's nothing more to see in Canton."
"Perhaps I'm too tired to plan for to-morrow. Those awful chairs!"
After dinner the spinsters proceeded to inscribe their accustomed
quota of postcards, and Ruth was left to herself. She walked
through the office to the door, aimlessly.
Beyond the steps was a pole-chair in readiness. One of the coolies
held the paper lantern. Near by stood Ah Cum and the young unknown,
the former protesting gently, the latter insistent upon his
demands.
"I repeat," said Ah Cum, "that the venture is not propitious.
Canton is all China at night. If we were set upon I could not
defend you. But I can easily bring in a sing-song girl to play for
you."
"No. I want to make my own selection."
"Very well, sir. But if you have considerable money, you had better
leave it in the office safe. You can pay me when we return. The
sing-song girls in Hong-Kong are far handsomer. That is a part of
the show in Hong-Kong. But here it is China."
"If you will not take me, I'll find some guide who will."
"I will take you. I simply warn you."
Spurlock entered the office, passed Ruth without observing her (or
if he did observe her, failed to recognize her), and deposited his
funds with the manager.
"I advise you against this trip, Mr. Taber," said the manager.
"Affairs are not normal in Canton at present. Only a few weeks ago
there was a bloody battle on the bridge there between the soldiery
and the local police. Look at these walls."
The walls were covered with racks of loaded rifles. In those
revolutionary times one had to be prepared. Some Chinaman might
take it into his head to shout: "Death to the foreign devils!" And
out of that wall yonder would boil battle and murder and sudden
death. A white man, wandering about the streets of Canton at night,
was a challenge to such a catastrophe.
Taber. Ruth stared thoughtfully at the waiting coolies. That did
not sound like the name the young man had offered in the tower of
the water-clock. She remained by the door until the walls of the
city swallowed the bobbing lantern. Then she went into the office.
"What is a sing-song girl?" she asked.
The manager twisted his moustache. "The same as a Japanese geisha
girl."
"And what is a geisha girl?"
Not to have heard of the geisha! It was as if she had asked: "What
is Paris?" What manner of tourist was this who had heard neither of
the geisha of Japan nor of the sing-song girl of China? Before he
could marshal the necessary phrases to explain, Ruth herself
indicated her thought.
"A bad girl?" She put the question as she would have put any
question--level-eyed and level-toned.
After a series of mental gymnastics--occupying the space of a few
seconds--it came to him with a shock that here was a new specimen
of the species. At the same time he comprehended that she was as
pure and lovely as the white orchid of Borneo and that she did not
carry that ridiculous shield called false modesty. He could talk to
her as frankly as he could to a man, that she would not take
offence at anything so long as it was in the form of explanation.
On the other hand, there was a subconscious impression that she
would be able to read instantly anything unclean in a man's eye.
All her questions would have as a background the idea of future
defence.
"The geisha and the sing-song girl are professional entertainers.
They are not bad girls, but the average tourist has that
misconception of them. If some of them are bad in the sense you
mean, it is because there are bad folks in all walks of life. They
sell only their talents, not their bodies; they are not girls of
the street."
The phrase was new, but Ruth nodded understandingly.
"Still," went on the manager, "they are slaves in a sense; they are
bought and sold until their original indebtedness is paid. A father
is in debt, we'll say. He sells his daughter to a geisha or a
sing-song master, and the girl is rented out until the debt is paid.
Then the work is optional; they go on their own. There are sing-song
girls in Hong-Kong and Shanghai who are famous and wealthy.
Sometimes they marry well. If they become bad it is through
inclination, not necessity."
Again Ruth nodded.
"To go a little further. Morality is a point of view. It is an
Occidental point of view. The Oriental has no equivalent. What you
would look upon as immorality is here merely an established custom,
three thousand years older than Christianity, accepted with no more
ado than that which would accompany you should you become a clerk
in a shop."
"That is what I wanted to know," said Ruth gravely. "The poor
things!"
The manager laughed. "Your sympathy is being wasted. They are the
only happy women in the Orient."
"Do you suppose he knew?"
"He? Oh, you mean Mr. Taber?" He wondered if this crystal being was
interested in that blundering fool who had gone recklessly into the
city. "I don't know what his idea was."
"Will there be any danger?"
"To Mr. Taber? There is a possibility. Canton at night is as much
China as the border town of Lan-Chow-fu. A white man takes his life
in his hands. But Ah Cum is widely known for his luck. Besides," he
added cynically, "it is said that God watches over fools and
drunken men."
This expression was old in Ruth's ears. She had heard the trader
utter it many times.
"Thank you," she said, and left the office.
The manager stared at the empty doorway for a space, shrugged, and
returned to his ledgers. The uncanny directness of those gray eyes,
the absence of diffidence, the beauty of the face in profile (full,
it seemed a little too broad to make for perfect beauty), the
mellow voice that came full and free, without hesitance, all
combined to mark her as the most unusual young woman he had ever
met. He was certain that those lips of hers had never known the
natural and pardonable simper of youth.
Was she interested in that young ass who was risking his bones over
there in the city? They had come up on the same boat. Still, one
never could tell. The young fellow was almost as odd in his way as
the girl was in hers. He seldom spoke, and drank with a persistence
that was sinister. He was never drunk in the accepted meaning of
the word; rather he walked in a kind of stupefaction. Supposing Ah
Cum's luck failed for once?
The manager made a gesture of dismissal, and added up the bill for
the Misses Jedson, who were returning to Hong-Kong in the morning.