Spurlock's novel was a tale of regeneration. For a long time to
come that would naturally be the theme of any story he undertook to
write. After he was gone in the morning, Ruth would steal into the
study and hurriedly read what he had written the previous night.
She never questioned the motives of the characters; she had neither
the ability nor the conceit for that; but she could and often did
correct his lapses in colour. She never touched the manuscript with
pencil, but jotted down her notes on slips of paper and left them
where he might easily find them.
She marvelled at his apparent imperviousness to the heat. He worked
afternoons, when everybody else went to sleep; he worked at night
under a heat-giving light, with insects buzzing and dropping about,
with a blue haze of tobacco smoke that tried to get out and could
not. With his arms bare, the neckband of his shirt tucked in, he
laboured. Frequently he would take up a box of talc and send a
shower down his back, or fill his palms with the powder and rub his
face and arms and hands. He kept at it even on those nights when
the monsoon began to break with heavy storms and he had to weight
down with stones everything on his table. Soot was everywhere, for
the lamp would not stay trimmed in the gale. But he wrote on.
As the novel grew Ruth was astonished to see herself enter and
dominate it: sometimes as she actually was, with all her dreams
reviewed--as if he had caught her talking in her sleep. It
frightened her to behold her heart and mind thus laid bare; but
the chapter following would reassure her. Here would be a woman
perfectly unrecognizable, strong, ruthless but just.
This heroine ruled an island which (in the '80s) was rich with
shell--pearl-shell; and she fought pearl thievers and marauding
beachcombers, fought them with weapons and with woman's guile. No
man knew whence she had come nor why. That there would eventually
be a lover Ruth knew; and she waited his appearance upon the scene,
waited with an impatience which was both personal and literary. If
the creator drew a hero anything like himself, she would accept it
as a sign that he did care a little.
Ruth did not resent the use of her mind and body in this tale of
adventure. She gloried in it: he needed her. When the hero finally
did appear, Ruth became filled with gentle self-mockery. He was no
Hoddy, but a tremendous man, with hairy arms and bearded face and
drink-shattered intellect. Day by day she followed the spiritual
and physical contest between this man and woman. One day a pall of
blackness encompassed the sick mind of the giant; and when he came
to his senses, they properly functioned: and he saw his wife by his
bedside!
An astonishing idea entered Ruth's head one day--when the novel was
complete in the rough--an astonishing idea because it had not
developed long ago. A thing which had mystified her since
childhood, a smouldering wonder why it should be, and until now she
had never felt the urge to investigate. She tucked the mission
Bible under her arm, and crooking a finger at Rollo, went forth to
the west beach where the sou'-west surge piled up muddily, burdened
with broken spars, crates, boxes, and weeds. During the wet monsoon
the west beach was always littered. Where the stuff came from was
always a mystery.
The Enschede Bible--the one out of which she read--had been
strangely mutilated. Sections and pages had been pasted together,
and all through both Testaments a word had been blotted out. The
open books she knew by heart; aye, they had been ground into her,
morning and night. One of her duties, after she had been taught to
read, had been to read aloud after breakfast and before going to
bed. The same old lines and verses, over and over, until there had
come times when shrieking would have relieved her. How she had
hated it!... All these mumblings which were never explained, which
carried no more sense to her brain than they would have carried to
Old Morgan's swearing parrot. Like the parrot, she could memorize
the lines, but she could not understand them. Never had her father
explained. "Read the first chapter of Job"; beyond that, nothing.
Whenever she came upon the obliterated word and paused, her father
would say: "Faith. Go on." So, after a time, encountering the blot,
she herself would supply the word Faith. But was it Faith? That is
what she was this day going to find out.
She closed her eyes more vividly to recall some line which had
carried the blot. And so she came upon the word _Love_. Blotted
out--Love! With infinite care, through nearly a thousand pages,
her father had obliterated the word _Love_. Why? Love was a word of
God's, and yet her father had denied it--denied it to the Book,
denied it to his own flesh and blood. Why? He could preach the Word
and deny Love!--tame the savage heart, succour broken white
men!--pray with his face strained with religious fervour! The idea
made her dizzy because it was so inexplicable. She could accord her
father with one grace: he was not in any manner a hypocrite. Tender
with the sick, firm with the strong, fearless, with a body that had
the resistance of iron, there was nothing of the hypocrite in him.
She recalled him. A gaunt, powerful man: no feature of his face
decided, and yet for all that it had the significance of a
countenance hewn out of rock. Never had he corrected her with hand
or whip, the ring in his voice had always been sufficient to cower
her. But never had the hand touched her with a father's caress;
never had he taken her into his arms; never had he kissed her. She
had never been "My child" or "My dear"; always her name--Ruth.
Love, obliterated, annihilated; out of his heart and out of his
Bible. Why? Here was a curtain indeed. No matter. It was ended. She
herself had cut the slender tie that had bound them. Ah, but she
could remember; and many things there were that she would never
forgive. Sometimes--a lonely forlorn child--she had gone to him and
put her arms around his neck. Stonily he had disengaged himself. "I
forbid you to do that." She had brought home a puppy one day. He
had taken it back. He destroyed her clumsily made dolls whenever he
found them.
Once she had asked him: "Are you my father?"
He had answered: "I am."
She had no reason to doubt him. Her father, her own father! She
remembered now a verse from the Psalms her father had always been
quoting; but now she recited it with perfect understanding.
_How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? How long wilt thou
hide thy face from me?_
She came upon the Song of Songs--which had been pasted down in the
Enschede Bible--the burning litany of love; and from time to time
she intoned some verse of tender lyric beauty. There was one verse
that haunted and mocked her.
_Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of
love._
Here was Ruth Enschede--sick of love! Love--something the world
would always keep hidden from her, at least human love. All she had
found was the love of this dog. She threw her arms around Rollo's
neck and laid her cheek upon the flea-bitten head.
"Oh, Rollo, there are so many things I don't know! But you love me,
don't you?"
Rollo wagged his stump violently and tried to lick her face. He
understood. When she released him he ran down the beach for a stick
which he fetched and laid at her feet. But she was staring seaward
and did not notice the offering.
* * * * *
October. The skies became brilliant; the dry monsoon was setting
in. Then came the great day. It was at lunch when McClintock
announced that in the mail-pouch he had found a letter addressed to
Howard Taber, care of Donald McClintock and so-forth.
Spurlock grew cold. All that confidence, born of irony,
disappeared; and fear laid hold of him. The envelope might contain
only a request as to what he wanted done with the manuscripts. In
mailing the tales he had not enclosed return postage or the
equivalent in money.
"So you're writing under a nom de plume, eh?" said McClintock,
holding out the letter.
"You open it, Ruth. I'm in a funk," Spurlock confessed.
McClintock laughed as he gave the letter to Ruth. She, having all
the confidence in the world, ripped off an end and drew out the
contents--a letter and a check. What the editor had to say none of
the three cared just then. Spurlock snatched the check out of
Ruth's hands and ran to the window.
"A thousand dollars in British pounds!... A thousand dollars for
four short stories!" The tan on Spurlock's face lightened. He was
profoundly stirred. He turned to Ruth and McClintock. "You two ...
both of you! But for you I couldn't have done it. If only you knew
what this means to me!"
"We do, lad," replied McClintock, gravely. The youth of them! And
what was he going to do when they left his island? What would
Donald McClintock be doing with himself, when youth left the
island, never more to return?
Ruth was thrilling with joy. Every drop of blood in her body glowed
and expanded. To go to Hoddy, to smother him with kisses and
embraces in this hour of triumph! To save herself from committing
the act--the thought of which was positive hypnotism--she began the
native dance. Spurlock (himself verging upon the hysterical)
welcomed the diversion. He seized a tray, squatted on the floor,
and imitated the tom-tom. It was a mad half-hour.
"Well, lad, supposing you read what the editor has to say?" was
McClintock's suggestion, when the frolic was over.
"You read it, Ruth. You're luck."
"Aye!" was McClintock's inaudible affirmative. Luck. The boy would
never know just how lucky he was. Ruth read:
DEAR SIR:
"We are delighted to accept these four stories,
particularly 'The Man Who Could Not Go Home.' We shall be
pleased to see more of your work.
"'The Man Who Could Not Go Home.' Why," said Ruth, "you did not
read that to us."
"Wanted to see if I could turn out one all on my own," replied
Spurlock, looking at McClintock, who nodded slightly. "It was the
story of a man, so to speak, who had left his vitals in his native
land and wandered strange paths emptily. But never mind that. Come
along home, Ruth. I'm burning to get to work."
After all those former bitter failures, this cup was sweet, even if
there was the flavour of irony. At least, he would always be able
to take care of Ruth. The Dawn Pearl; how well they had named her!
The pearl without price--his and not his!
He took her arm and drew it under his; and together they went down
the veranda steps. Ruth's arm trembled and her step faltered, but
he was too far away in thought to be observant. He saw rifts in
clouds--sunshine. The future was not so black. All the money he
earned--serving McClintock and the muse--could be laid away. Then,
in a few years, he and Ruth might fare forth in comfort and
security. After five or six years it would not be difficult to hide
in Italy or in France. No; the future was not so dark; there was a
bit of dawn visible. If this success continued, it would be easy to
assume the name of Taber. Ruth could not very well object, since an
air of distinction would go with Taber.
Suddenly he felt Ruth swing violently away from him, and he wheeled
to learn the cause.
He beheld a tall gaunt man, his brown face corrugated like a
winter's road, grim, stony. His gangling body was clothed in rusty
twill trousers and a long black seersucker coat, buttoned to the
throat, around which ran a collar which would have marked him the
world over as a man of the Word. His hand rested heavily and
cruelly upon Ruth's shoulder.
"So, wanton, I have found you!"
"Wanton! Why, you infernal liar!" cried Spurlock, striking at the
arm. But the free arm of the stranger hit him a flail-like blow on
the chest and sent him sprawling into the yielding sand. Berserker,
Spurlock rose, head down, and charged.
"Hoddy, Hoddy!... No, no! This is my father!" warned Ruth.
Spurlock halted in his tracks. "But what does he mean by calling
you a wanton?--you, my wife?"
Enschede's hand slipped from his daughter's shoulder. The iron
slipped from his face, leaving it blank with astonishment. "Your
wife?"
"His lawful wife," said Ruth, with fine dignity.
For a moment none of them stirred; then slowly Enschede turned
away. To Spurlock's observing eye, Enschede's wrinkles multiplied
and the folds in his clothes. The young man's imagination suddenly
pictured the man as a rock, loosed from its ancient bed, crumbling
as it fell. But why did he turn away?
"Wait!" Ruth called to her father.
The recollection of all her unhappiness, the loveless years, the
unending loneliness, the injustice of it, rolled up to her lips in
verbal lava. It is not well that a daughter should talk to her
father as Ruth talked to hers that day.
The father, granite; the daughter, fire: Spurlock saw the one and
heard the other, his amazement indescribable. Never before had he
seen a man like Enschede nor heard a voice like Ruth's. But as the
mystery which surrounded Ruth fell away that which enveloped her
father thickened.
"I used to cry myself to sleep, Hoddy, I was so forlorn and lonely.
He heard me; but he never came in to ask what was the matter. For
fifteen years!--so long as I can remember! All I wanted was a
little love, a caress now and then. But I waited in vain. So I ran
away, blindly, knowing nothing of the world outside. Youth! You
denied me even that," said Ruth, her glance now flashing to her
father. "Spring!--I never knew any. I dared not sing, I dared not
laugh, except when you went away. What little happiness I had I was
forced to steal. I am glad you found me. I am out of your life
forever, never having been in it. Did you break my mother's heart
as you tried to break mine? I am no longer accountable to you for
anything. Wanton! Had I been one, even God would have forgiven me,
understanding. Some day I may forgive you; but not now. No, no! Not
now!"
Ruth turned abruptly and walked toward the bungalow, mounted the
veranda steps, and vanished within. Without a word, without a sign,
Enschede started toward the beach, where his proa waited.
For a time Spurlock did not move. This incredible scene robbed him
of the sense of locomotion. But his glance roved, to the door
through which Ruth had gone, to Enschede's drooping back.
Unexpectedly he found himself speeding toward the father.
"Enschede!" he called.
Enschede halted. "Well?" he said, as Spurlock reached his side.
"Are you a human being, to leave her thus?"
"It is better so. You heard her. What she said is true."
"But why? In the name of God, why? Your flesh and blood! Have you
never loved anything?"
"Are you indeed my daughter's lawful husband?" Enschede countered.
"I am. You will find the proof in McClintock's safe. You called her
a wanton!"
"Because I had every reason to believe she was one. There was every
indication that she fled the island in company with a dissolute
rogue." Still the voice was without emotion; calm, colourless.
Fired with wrath, Spurlock recounted the Canton episode. "She
travelled alone; and she is the purest woman God ever permitted to
inhabit the earth. What!--you know so little of that child? She ran
away from _you_. Somebody tricked you back yonder--baited you for
spite. She ran away from you; and now I can easily understand why.
What sort of a human being are you, anyhow?"
Enschede gazed seaward. When he faced Spurlock, the granite was
cracked and rived; never had Spurlock seen such dumb agony in human
eyes. "What shall I say? Shall I tell you, or shall I leave you in
the dark--as I must always leave her? What shall I say except that
I am accursed of men? Yes; I have loved something--her mother. Not
wisely but too well. I loved her beyond anything in heaven or on
earth--to idolatry. God is a jealous God, and He turned upon me
relentlessly. I had consecrated my life to His Work; and I took the
primrose path."
"But a man may love his wife!" cried Spurlock, utterly bewildered.
"Not as I loved mine. So, one day, because God was wroth, her
mother ran away with a blackguard, and died in the gutter,
miserably. Perhaps I've been mad all these years; I don't know.
Perhaps I am still mad. But I vowed that Ruth should never suffer
the way I did--and do. For I still love her mother. So I undertook
to protect her by keeping love out of her life, by crushing it
whenever it appeared, obliterating it. I made it a point to bring
beachcombers to the house to fill her with horror of mankind. I
never let her read stories, or have pets, dolls. Anything that
might stir the sense of love And God has mocked me through it all."
"Man, in God's name, come with me and tell her this!" urged
Spurlock.
"It is too late. Besides, I would tear out my tongue rather than
let it speak her mother's infamy. To tell Ruth anything, it would
be necessary to tell her everything; and I cannot and you must not.
She was always asking questions about her mother and supplying the
answers. So she built a shrine. Always her prayers ended--'And may
my beautiful mother guide me!' No. It is better as it is. She is no
longer mine; she is yours."
"What a mistake!"
"Yes. But you--you have a good face. Be kind to her. Whenever you
grow impatient with her, remember the folly of her father. I can
now give myself to God utterly; no human emotion will ever be
shuttling in between."
"And all the time you loved her?"--appalled.
"Perhaps."
Enschede stepped into the proa, and the natives shoved off.
Spurlock remained where he was until the sail became an
infinitesimal speck in the distance. His throat filled; he wanted
to weep. For yonder went the loneliest man in all God's unhappy
world.