Previous to his illness, Spurlock's mind had been tortured by an
appalling worry, so that now, in the process of convalescence, it
might be compared to a pool which had been violently stirred: there
were indications of subsidence, but there were still strange forms
swirling on the surface--whims and fancies which in normal times
would never have risen above sub-consciousness.
Little by little the pool cleared, the whims vanished: so that both
Ruth and the doctor, by the middle of the third week, began to
accept Spurlock's actions as normal, whereas there was still a mote
or two which declined to settle, still a kink in the gray matter
that refused to straighten out.
Spurlock began to watch for Ruth's coming in the morning; first,
with negligent interest, then with positive eagerness. His literary
instincts were reviving. Ruth was something to study for future
copy; she was almost unbelievable. She was not a reversion to type,
which intimates the primordial; she suggested rather the
incarnation of some goddess of the South Seas. He was not able to
recognize, as the doctor did, that she was only a natural woman.
His attitude toward her was purely intellectual, free of any
sentimentality, utterly selfish. Ruth was not a woman; she was a
phenomenon. So, adroitly and patiently, he pulled Ruth apart; that
is, he plucked forth a little secret here, another there, until he
had quite a substantial array. What he did not know was this: Ruth
surrendered these little secrets because the doctor had warned her
that the patient must be amused and interested.
From time to time, however, he was baffled. The real tragedy--which
he sensed and toward which he was always reaching--eluded all his
verbal skill. It was not a cambric curtain Ruth had drawn across
that part of her life: it was of iron. Ruth could tell the doctor;
she could bare many of her innermost thoughts to that kindly man;
but there was an inexplicable reserve before this young man whom
she still endued with the melancholy charm of Sydney Carton. It was
not due to shyness: it was the inherent instinct of the Woman, a
protective fear that she must retain some elements of mystery in
order to hold the interest of the male.
When she told him that the natives called her The Dawn Pearl, his
delight was unbounded. He addressed her by that title, and
something in the tone disturbed her. A sophisticated woman would
have translated the tone as a caress. And yet to Spurlock it was
only the title of a story he would some day write. He was caressing
an idea.
The point is, Spurlock was coming along: queerly, by his own
imagination. The true creative mind is always returning to battle;
defeats are only temporary set-backs. Spurlock knew that somewhere
along the way he would write a story worth while. Already he was
dramatizing Ruth, involving her, now in some pearl thieving
adventure, now in some impossible tale of a white goddess. But
somehow he could not bring any of these affairs to an orderly end.
Presently he became filled with astonishment over the singular fact
that Ruth was eluding him in fancy as well as in reality.
One morning he caught her hand suddenly and kissed it. Men had
tried that before, but never until now had they been quick enough.
The touch of his lips neither thrilled nor alarmed her, because the
eyes that looked into hers were clean. Spurlock knew exactly what
he was doing, however: speculative mischief, to see how she would
act.
"I haven't offended you?"--not contritely but curiously.
"No"--as if her thoughts were elsewhere.
Something in her lack of embarrassment irritated him. "Has no man
ever kissed you?"
"No." Which was literally the truth.
He accepted this confession conditionally: that no young man had
kissed her. There was nothing of the phenomenon in this. But his
astonishment would have been great indeed had he known that not
even her father had ever caressed her, either with lips or with
hands.
Ruth had lived in a world without caresses. The significance of the
kiss was still obscure to her, though she had frequently
encountered the word and act in the Old and New Testaments and
latterly in novels. Men had tried to kiss her--unshaven derelicts,
some of them terrible--but she had always managed to escape. What
had urged her to wrench loose and fly was the guarding instinct of
the good woman. Something namelessly abhorrent in the eyes of those
men...!
She knew what arms were for--to fold and embrace and to hold one
tightly; but why men wished to kiss women was still a profound
mystery. No matter how often she came across this phase in love
stories, there was never anything explanatory: as if all human
beings perfectly understood. It would not have been for her an
anomaly to read a love story in which there were no kisses.
This salute of his--actually the first she could remember--while it
did not disturb her, began to lead her thoughts into new channels
of speculation. The more her thoughts dwelt upon the subject, the
more convinced she was that she could not go to any one for help;
she would have to solve the riddle by her own efforts, by some
future experience.
"The Dawn Pearl," he said.
"The natives have foolish ways of saying things."
"On the contrary, if that is a specimen, they must be poets. Tell
me about your island. I have never seen a lagoon."
"But you can imagine it. Tell me what you think the island is
like."
He did not pause to consider how she had learned that he had
imagination; he comprehended only the direct challenge. To be free
of outward distraction, he shut his eyes and concentrated upon the
scraps she had given him; and shortly, with his eyes still closed,
he began to describe Ruth's island: the mountain at one end, with
the ever-recurring scarves of mist drifting across the lava-scarred
face; the jungle at the foot of it; the dazzling border of white
sand; the sprawling store of the trader and the rotting wharf,
sundrily patched with drift-wood; the native huts on the sandy
floor of the palm groves; the scattered sandalwood and ebony; the
screaming parakeets in the plantains; the fishing proas; the
mission with its white washed walls and barren frontage; the
lagoon, fringed with coco palms, now ruffled emerald, now placid
sapphire.
"I think the natives saw you coming out of the lagoon, one dawn.
For you say that you swim. Wonderful! The water, dripping from you,
must have looked like pearls. Do you know what? You're some sea
goddess and you're only fooling us."
He opened his eyes, to behold hers large with wonder.
"And you saw all that in your mind?"
"It wasn't difficult. You yourself supplied the details. All I had
to do was to piece them together."
"But I never told you how the natives fished."
"Perhaps I read of it somewhere."
"Still, you forgot something."
"What did I forget?"
"The breathless days and the faded, pitiless sky. Nothing to do;
nothing for the hands, the mind, the heart. To wait for hours and
hours for the night! The sea empty for days! You forgot the
monotony, the endless monotony, that bends you and breaks you and
crushes you--you forgot that!"
Her voice had steadily risen until it was charged with passionate
anger. It was his turn to express astonishment. Fire; she was full
of it. Pearls in the dawn light, flashing and burning!
"You don't like your island?"
"I hate it!... But, there!"--weariness edging in. "I am sorry. I
shouldn't talk like that. I'm a poor nurse."
"You are the most wonderful human being I ever saw!" And he meant
it.
She trembled; but she did not know why. "You mustn't talk any more;
the excitement isn't good for you."
Drama. To get behind that impenetrable curtain, to learn why she
hated her island. Never had he been so intrigued. Why, there was
drama in the very dress she wore! There was drama in the unusual
beauty of her, hidden away all these years on a forgotten isle!
"You've been lonely, too."
"You mustn't talk."
He ignored the command. "To be lonely! What is physical torture, if
someone who loves you is nigh? But to be alone ... as I am!... yes,
and as you are! Oh, you haven't told me, but I can see with half an
eye. With nobody who cares ... the both of us!"
He was real in this moment. She was given a glimpse of his soul.
She wanted to take him in her arms and hush him, but she sat
perfectly still. Then came the shock of the knowledge that soon he
would be going upon his way, that there would be no one to depend
upon her; and all the old loneliness came smothering down upon her
again. She could not analyse what was stirring in her: the thought
of losing the doll, the dog, and the cat. There was the world
besides, looming darker and larger.
"What would you like most in this world?" he asked. Once more he
was the searcher.
"Red apples and snow!" she sent back at him, her face suddenly
transfixed by some inner glory.
"Red apples and snow!" he repeated. He returned figuratively to his
bed--the bed he had made for himself and in which he must for ever
lie. Red apples and snow! How often had these two things entered
his thoughts since his wanderings began? Red apples and snow!--and
never again to behold them!
"I am going out for a little while," she said. She wanted to be
alone. "Otherwise you will not get your morning's sleep."
He did not reply. His curiosity, his literary instincts, had been
submerged by the recurring thought of the fool he had made of
himself. He heard the door close; and in a little while he fell
into a doze; and there came a dream filled with broken pictures,
each one of which the girl dominated. He saw her, dripping with
rosy pearls, rise out of the lagoon in the dawn light: he saw her
flashing to and fro among the coco palms in the moonshine: he saw
her breasting the hurricane, her body as full of grace and beauty
as the Winged Victory of the Louvre. The queer phase of the dream
was this, she was at no time a woman; she was symbolical of
something, and he followed to learn what this something was. There
was a lapse of time, an interval of blackness; then he found his
hand in hers and she was leading him at a run up the side of the
mountain.
His heart beat wildly and he was afraid lest the strain be too
much; but the girl shook her head and smiled and pointed to the top
of the mountain. All at once they came to the top, the faded blue
sky overhead, and whichever way he looked, the horizon, the great
rocking circle which hemmed them in. She pointed hither and yon,
smiled and shook her head. Then he understood. Nowhere could he see
that reaching, menacing Hand. So long as she stood beside him, he
was safe. That was what she was trying to make him understand.
He awoke, strangely content. As it happens sometimes, the idea
stepped down from the dream into the reality; and he saw it more
clearly now than he had seen it in the dream. It filled his
thoughts for the rest of the day, and became an obsession. How to
hold her, how to keep her at his side; this was the problem with
which he struggled.
When she came in after dinner that night, Ruth was no longer an
interesting phenomenon, something figuratively to tear apart and
investigate: she was talismanic. So long as she stood beside him,
the Hand would not prevail.