One day Ruth caught the patient's eyes following her about; but
there was no question in the gaze, no interest; so she pretended
not to notice.
"Where am I?" asked Spurlock.
"In Canton."
"How long have I been in bed?"
"A week."
"My coat, please."
"It is folded under your pillow."
"Did I ask for it?"
"Yes. But perhaps you don't know; there was nothing in the pockets.
You were probably robbed in Hong-Kong."
"Nothing in the pockets."
"You see, we didn't know but you might die; and so we had to search
your belongings for the address of your people."
"I have no people--anybody who would care."
She kindled with sympathy. He was all alone, too. Nobody who cared.
Ruth was inflammable; she would always be flaring up swiftly, in
pity, in tenderness, in anger; she would always be answering
impulses, without seeking to weigh or to analyse them. She was
emerging from the primordial as Spurlock was declining toward it.
She was on the rim of civilization, entering, as Spurlock was on
the rim, preparing to make his exit. Two souls in travail; one
inspired by fresh hopes, the other, by fresh despairs. Both of them
would be committing novel and unforgettable acts.
"How long shall I be here?" he asked.
"That depends upon you. Not very long, if you want to get well."
"Are you a nurse?"
"Yes. Don't ask any more questions. Wait a little; rest."
There was a pause. Ruth flashed in and out of the sunshine; and he
took note of the radiant nimbus above her head each time the
sunshine touched her hair.
"Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"
"The first day you came. Don't you remember? There were four of us,
and we went touring in the city."
"As in a dream." There was another pause. "Was I out of my head?"
"Yes."
"What did I say?"
"Only one word," she said, offering her first white lie.
"What was it?" He was insistent.
"You repeated the word '_Fool_' over and over."
"Nothing else?"
"No. Now, no more questions, or I shall be forced to leave the
room."
"I promise to ask no more."
"Would you like to have me read to you?"
He did not answer. So she took up Stevenson and began to read
aloud. She read beautifully because the fixed form of the poem
signified nothing. She went from period to period exactly as she
would have read prose; so that sense and music were equally
balanced. She read for half an hour, then closed the book because
Spurlock appeared to have fallen asleep. But he was wide awake.
"What poet was that?"
"Stevenson." Ruth had read from page to page in "The Child's Garden
of Verse," generally unfamiliar to the admirers of Stevenson. Of
course Ruth was not aware that in this same volume there were
lyrics known the world over.
Immediately Spurlock began to chant one of these.
"'Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.'"
"'This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea.
And the hunter home from the hill.'"
"What is that?" she asked. Something in his tone pinched her heart.
"Did you write it?"
"No. You will find it somewhere in that book. Ah, if I had written
that!"
"Don't you want to live?"
"I don't know; I really don't know."
"But you are young!" It was a protest, almost vehement. She
remembered the doctor's warning that the real battle would begin
when the patient recovered consciousness. "You have all the world
before you."
"Rather behind me;" and he spoke no more that morning.
Throughout the afternoon, while the doctor was giving her the first
lesson out of his profound knowledge of life, her interest would
break away continually, despite her honest efforts to pin it down
to the facts so patiently elucidated for her. Recurrently she
heard: "I don't know; I really don't know." It was curiously like
the intermittent murmur of the surf, those weird Sundays, when her
father paused for breath to launch additional damnation for those
who disobeyed the Word. "I don't know; I really don't know."
Her ear caught much of the lesson, and many things she stored away;
but often what she heard was sound without sense. Still, her face
never betrayed this distraction. And what was singular she did not
recount to the doctor that morning's adventure. Why? If she had put
the query to herself, she could not have answered it. It was in no
sense confessional; it was a state of mind in the patient the
doctor had already anticipated. Yet she held her tongue.
As for the doctor, he found a pleasure in this service that would
have puzzled him had he paused to analyse it. There was scant
social life on the Sha-mien aside from masculine foregatherings,
little that interested him. He took his social pleasures once a
year in Hong-Kong, after Easter. He saw, without any particular
regret, that this year he would have to forego the junket; but
there would be ample compensation in the study of these queer
youngsters. Besides, by the time they were off his hands, old
McClintock would be dropping in to have his liver renovated.
All at once he recollected the fact that McClintock's copra
plantation was down that way, somewhere in the South Seas; had an
island of his own. Perhaps he had heard of this Enschede. Mac--the
old gossip--knew about everything going on in that part of the
world; and if Enschede was anything up to the picture the girl had
drawn, McClintock would have heard of him, naturally. He might
solve the riddle. All of which proves that the doctor also had his
moments of distraction, with this difference: he was not distracted
from his subject matter.
"So endeth the first lesson," he said. "Suppose we go and have tea?
I'd like to take you to a teahouse I know, but we'll go to the
Victoria instead. I must practise what I preach."
"I should be unafraid to go anywhere with you."
"Lord, that's just the lesson I've been expounding! It isn't a
question of fear; it's one of propriety."
"I'll never understand."
"You don't have to. I'll tell you what. I'll write out certain
rules of conduct, and then you'll never be in doubt."
She laughed; and it was pleasant laughter in his ears. If only this
child were his: what good times they would have together! The
thought passed on, but it left a little ache in his heart.
"Why do you laugh?" he asked.
"All that you have been telling me, our old Kanaka cook summed up
in a phrase."
"What was it?"
"Never glance sideways at a man.".
"The whole thing in a nutshell!"
"Are there no men a woman may trust absolutely?"
"Hang it, that isn't it. Of course there are, millions of them.
It's public opinion. We all have to kow-tow to that."
"Who made such a law?"
"This world is governed by minorities--in politics, in religion, in
society. Majorities, right or wrong, dare not revolt. Footprints,
and we have to toddle along in them, willy-nilly; and those who
have the courage to step outside the appointed path are called
pariahs!"
"I'm afraid I shall not like this world very much. It is putting
all my dreams out of joint."
"Never let the unknown edge in upon your courage. The world is like
a peppery horse. If he senses fear in the touch of your hand, he'll
give you trouble."
"It's all so big and aloof. It isn't friendly as I thought it would
be. I don't know; I really don't know," she found herself
repeating.
He drew her away from this thought. "I read those stories."
"Are they good?"
"He can write; but he hasn't found anything real to write about. He
hasn't found himself, as they say. He's rewriting Poe and De
Maupassant; and that stuff was good only when Poe and De Maupassant
wrote it."
"How do you spell the last name?"
He spelt it. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw a faint shudder
stir her shoulders. "Not the sort of stories young ladies should
read. Poe is all right, if you don't mind nightmares. But De
Maupassant--sheer off! Stick to Dickens and Thackeray and Hugo.
Before you go I'll give you a list of books to read."
"There are bad stories, then, just as there are bad people?"
"Yes. Sewn on that button yet?"
"I've been afraid to take the coat from under the pillow."
"Funny, about that coat. You told him there wasn't anything in the
pockets?"
"Yes."
"How did he take it?"
"He did not seem to care."
"There you are, just as I said. We've got to get him to care. We've
got to make him take up the harp of life and go twanging it again.
That's the job. He's young and sound. Of course, there'll be a few
kinks to straighten out. He's passed through some rough mental
torture. But one of these days everything will click back into
place. Great sport, eh? To haul them back from the ragged edge.
Wouldn't it be fun to see his name on a book-cover some day? He'll
go strutting up and down without ever dreaming he owed the whole
shot to us. That would be fun, eh?"
"I wonder if you know how kind you are? You are like somebody out
of a book."
"There, now! You mustn't get mixed. You mustn't go by what you read
so much as by what you see and hear. You must remember, you've just
begun to read; you haven't any comparisons. You mustn't go dressing
up Tom, Dick, and Harry in Henry Esmond's ruffles. What you want to
do is to imagine every woman a Becky Sharp and every man a Rawdon
Crawley."
"I know what is good," she replied.
"Yes; but what is good isn't always proper. And so, here we are,
right back from where we started. But no more of that. Let's talk
of this chap. There's good stuff in him, if one could find the way
to dig it out. But pathologically, he is still on the edge. Unless
we can get some optimism into him, he'll probably start this all
over again when he gets on his feet. That's the way it goes. But
between us, we'll have him writing books some day. That's one of
the troubles with young folks: they take themselves so seriously.
He probably imagines himself to be a thousand times worse off than
he actually is. Youth finds it pleasant sometimes to be melancholy.
Disappointed puppy-love, and all that."
"Puppy-love."
"A young fellow who thinks he's in love, when he has only been
reading too much."
"Do girls have puppy-love?"
"Land sakes, yes! On the average they are worse than the boys. A
boy can forget his amatory troubles playing baseball; but a girl
can't find any particular distraction in doing fancy work. Do you
know, I envy you. All the world before you, all the ologies. What
an adventure! Of course, you'll bark your shins here and there and
hit your funnybone; but the newness of everything will be something
of a compensation. All right. Let's get one idea into our heads. We
are going to have this chap writing books one of these days."
Ideas are never born; they are suggested; they are planted seeds.
Ruth did not reply, but stared past the doctor, her eyes misty. The
doctor had sown a seed, carelessly. All that he had sown that
afternoon with such infinite care was as nothing compared to this
seed, cast without forethought. Ruth's mind was fertile soil; for a
long time to come it would be something of a hothouse: green things
would spring up and blossom overnight. Already the seed of a tender
dream was stirring. The hour for which, presumably, she had been
created was drawing nigh. For in life there is but one hour: an
epic or an idyll: all other hours lead up to and down from it.
"By the way," said the doctor, as he sat down in the dining room of
the Victoria and ordered tea, "I've been thinking it over."
"What?"
"We'll put those stories back into the trunk and never speak of
them to him."
"But why not?"
The doctor dallied with his teaspoon. Something about the girl had
suggested an idea. It would have been the right idea, had Ruth been
other than what she was. First-off, he had decided not to tell her
what he had found at the bottom of that manila envelope. Now it
occurred to him that to show her the sealed letter would be a
better way. Impressionable, lonely, a deal beyond his analytical
reach, the girl might let her sympathies go beyond those of the
nurse. She would be enduing this chap with attributes he did not
possess, clothing him in fictional ruffles. To disillusion her,
forthwith.
"I'll tell you why," he said. "At the bottom of that big envelope I
found this one."
He passed it over; and Ruth read:
To be opened in case of my death and the letter inside
forwarded to the address thereon. All my personal effects
to be left in charge of the nearest American Consulate.