His idea, cleverly planned, was to shatter her resistance, to
confound her suddenly by striking her mind with words which would
rob her coherent thought. Everything in his favour--the luck of the
gods! The only white men were miles down the coast. She might
scream until her voice failed; the natives would not come to her
aid; they never meddled with the affairs of the whites.
"It is droll," he said. "Your father--poor imbecile!--believes we
ran away together. I arranged that he should. So that way is
closed. You never can go back."
There was a roaring in her ears like that of angry waters.
Wanton!... This, then, was what her father had meant. And he had
gone away without knowing the truth!
"My proa boys are ready; the wind is brisk; and in an hour we shall
be beyond all pursuit. Will you come sensibly, or shall I carry
you? You are _mine_!"
Ruth's peculiar education had not vitiated the primitive senses;
they were always on guard; and in a moment such as this they rushed
instantly to the surface. Danger, the most terrible she had ever
faced, was substantially in this room. She must kill this man, or
kill herself. She knew it. No tricks would serve. There would be no
mercy in this man. Any natural fineness would be numbed by drink.
To-morrow he might be sorry; but to-day, this hour!
She rose, not quickly, but with a dignity which only accentuated
her beauty.
"And you ran away with a weakling! You denied me for a puppet!"
"My lawful husband."
"Ah, yes, yes; lawful husbands in these parts are those who can
take and hold.... As I shall take and hold." The Wastrel advanced.
"If you touch me I will kill you," said Ruth, grasping the scissors
which lay beside the pencils--Hoddy's!
The Wastrel laughed, still advancing. "Fire! That was what drew me
to you in the beginning. Well, kill me. Either we go forth
together, or they shall bury me."
"Beast!"
For a little while they manoeuvred around the table. Suddenly the
Wastrel took hold of the edge and flung the table aside. Even in
this dread moment Ruth was conscious of a pathetic interest in the
scattering pencils.
He reached for her, and she struck savagely. But with the skill of
a fencer he met the blow and broke it, seizing the wrist.
"It looks as though, we should go together," he said, pulling her
toward him.
Ruth was strong in body and soul. She fought him with tooth and
nail. Three times she escaped. Chairs were overturned. Once she
reached the bamboo curtain, clutched at it and tore it down as his
arms went around her waist. The third time she escaped she reached
the inconsequent barricade of the overturned table.
"If there is any honour in you, stop and think. I love my husband.
I love him!" She was weak and dizzy: from horror as much as from
physical exertion. She knew that the next time he caught her she
would not be able to free herself. "What good would it do you to
destroy me? For I have courage to kill myself."
The Wastrel laughed. He had heard this talk before.
The race began once more; but this time Ruth knew that there would
be no escape. If only she had thought to plunge the scissors into
her own heart! Hoddy ... to return and find her either gone or
dead! But even as the Wastrel's arms gathered her, there came the
sound of hurrying steps on the veranda.
"Ruth?"
"Hoddy!" she cried.
Spurlock stepped into the room. One of those hanging moments
ensued--hypnotic.
Spurlock had seen Rollo heading for the jungle, and for some reason
he could not explain the incident had bothered him. Fretting and
fidgeting, he had, after an hour or so, turned to McClintock.
"I'm going back for Ruth."
"Nonsense!"
"Something's wrong."
"Wrong? What the devil could be wrong?" McClintock had demanded,
irascibly. He had particular reasons for wanting to keep Spurlock
away from the jetty.
"I haven't any answer for that; but I'm going back after her. She
wanted to come, and I wouldn't let her."
"Run along, then."
* * * * *
"To me, you dirty blackguard!" cried Spurlock, flinging aside his
helmet. That he was hot and breathless was of no matter; in that
moment he would have faced a dozen Samsons.
"She was mine before you ever saw her." The Wastrel tried to reach
Ruth's lips.
"You lie!"
Head down, fists doubled, Spurlock rushed: only to be met with a
kick which was intended for the groin but which struck the thigh
instead. Even then it sent Spurlock spinning backward, to crash
against the wall. He felt no pain from this cowardly kick. That
would come later. Again he rushed. He dodged the boot this time,
and smashed his left upon the Wastrel's lips, leaving them bloody
pulp.
The Wastrel did not relish this. He flung Ruth aside, careless
whether she fell or not. There was only one idea in his head now--to
batter and bruise and crush this weakling, then cast him at the feet
of his love-lorn wife. He brought into service all his Oriental
bar-room tricks. Time after time he sent Spurlock into this corner
or that; but always the boy regained his feet before the murderous
boot could reach the mark. From all angles he was at a disadvantage--in
weight, skill, endurance. But Ruth was his woman, and he had sworn to
God to defend her.
"One of us has got to die," he panted. "You've got to kill me to
get out of here alive."
The Wastrel rushed. Spurlock dove headlong at the other's legs,
toppling the man. In this moment he could have stamped upon the
Wastrel's face, and ended the affair; but all that was clean in
him, chivalrous, revolted at the thought. Not even for Ruth could
he do such a beastly thing. So, bloody but unbeaten, weak and spent
but undaunted, he waited for the Wastrel to spring up.
The unequal battle went on. It came to Spurlock suddenly that if
something did not react in his favour inside of five minutes, he
was done. In a side-glance--for the floor was variously encumbered
with overturned objects--he saw one of his paper weights, a
coloured glass ball such as McClintock used in trade. As the
Wastrel rushed, Spurlock sidestepped, swept the ball into his hand,
set himself and threw it. If the Wastrel had not turned the instant
he did, the ball would have missed him; as it was he turned
directly into its path. It struck his forehead, splitting it, and
brought him to his knees.
Luck. Spurlock understood that his vantage would be temporary; the
Wastrel had been knocked down, not out. Still, the respite was
sufficient for Spurlock to look about for some weapon. Hanging on
the wall was a temple censer, bronze, moulded in the shape of a
lotus blossom with stem and leaves--deadly as a club. He tore it
down just as the Wastrel rose, wavering slightly. Spurlock
advanced, the censer swung high.
The Wastrel wiped the blood from his forehead. The blow had brought
him back to the realm of sober thought. He glanced at Ruth (who had
stood with her back to the wall, pinned there throughout the
contest by terror and the knowledge of her own helplessness), then
at the bronze menace, and calculated correctly that this particular
adventure was finished.
His hesitation was visible, and Spurlock took advantage of this to
run to Ruth. He put his free arm around her and held the censer
ready; and as Ruth snuggled her cheek against his sleeve, they
were, so far as intent, in each other's arms. Without a word or a
gesture, the Wastrel turned and staggered forth, out of the orbit
of these two, having been thrust into it for a single purpose
already described.
For a while they stood there, silent, motionless, staring at the
doorway where still a few strings of the bamboo curtain swayed and
twisted, agitated by the Wastrel's passage.
"I was going to die, Hoddy!" she whispered. "You do love me?"
"God knows how much!" Suddenly he laid his head on her shoulder.
"But I'm a blackguard, too, Ruth. I had no right to marry you. I
have no right to love you."
"Why not?"
"I am a thief, a hunted man."
"So that is what separated us! Oh, Hoddy, you have wasted so many
wonderful days! Why didn't you tell me?"
"I couldn't!" He made as though to draw away, but her arms became
hoops of steel.
"Because you did not wish to hurt me?"
"Yes. If I let you believe I did not love you, and they found me,
your shame would be negligible."
"And loving me, you fought me, avoided all my traps! I'm glad I've
been so unhappy. Remember, in your story--look at it, scattered
everywhere!--that line? _We arrive at true happiness only through
labyrinths of misery._"
"I am a thief, nevertheless."
"Oh, that!"
He raised his head, staring at her in blank astonishment. "You
mean, it doesn't matter?"
"Poor Hoddy! When you were ill in Canton, out of your head, you
babbled words. Only a few, but enough for me to understand that
some act had driven you to this part of the world, where the hunted
hide."
"And you married me, knowing?"
"I married the man who bought a sing-song girl to give her her
freedom."
"But I was intoxicated!"
"So was the man you just fought in this room. There is no hidden
beast in you, Hoddy. I could not love you else."
"They may find me."
"Well, if they send you to prison, I'll be outside when they let
you go."
He took her face between his hands and kissed her on the lips. "I'm
not worth it. You are all that I am or hope to be--the celestial
atom God put into me at the beginning. Now He has taken that out
and given it form and beauty--you!"
"Wonderful hand!" Ruth seized his right hand and kissed it. "All
the wonderful things it is going to do! If I could only know for
certain that my mother knew how happy I'm going to be!"
"You love the memory of your mother?"
"It is a part of my blood ... my beautiful mother!"
He saw Enschede, putting out to sea, alone, memories and regrets
crowding upon his wake. Her father was right: Ruth must never know.
The mother was far more real to her than the father; the ghostly
far more substantial than the living form. So long as he lived,
Spurlock knew that in fancy he would be reconstructing that scene
between himself and Ruth's father.
Their heads touched again, their arms tightened. Gazing into each
other's eyes with new-found rapture, neither observed the sudden
appearance in the doorway of an elderly woman in travel-stained
linen.
There was granite in her face and agate in her eyes. The lips were
straight and pale, the chin aggressive, the nose indomitable. She
was, by certain signs, charged with anger, but she saw upon the
faces of these two young fools the look of angels and an ineffable
kindness breathed upon her withered heart.
"So, you young fool, I have found you!" she said, harshly.
Ruth and Spurlock separated, the one embarrassed, the other utterly
dumfounded.
"Auntie?" he cried.
"Yes, Auntie! And to date you have cost me precisely sixteen
thousand dollars--hard earned, every one of them."
Spurlock wondered if something hadn't suddenly gone awry in his
head. He had just passed through a terrific physical test. Surely
he was imagining this picture. His aunt, here at McClintock's? It
was unbelievable. He righted a chair and sat in it, his face in his
hands. But when he looked again, there she was!
"I don't understand," he said, finally.
"You will before I'm done with you. I have come to take you home;
and hereafter my word will be the law. You will obey me out of
common decency. You can scribble if you want to, but after you've
given your eight hours daily to the mills. Sixteen thousand! Mark
me, young man, you'll pay it back through the nose, every dollar of
it!"
"I owe you nothing." Pain was stabbing him, now here, now there;
pain was real enough; but he could not establish as a fact in his
throbbing brain the presence of his aunt in the doorway. "I owe you
nothing," he repeated, dully.
"Hoity-toity! You owe me sixteen thousand dollars. They were very
nice about it, in memory of your father. They telephoned that you
had absconded with ten thousand, and that if I would make good the
loss within twenty-four hours, they would not prosecute. I sent my
check for ten thousand; and it has cost me six thousand to find
you. I should say that you owed me considerable."
Still his brain refused to assimilate the news or to deduce the
tremendous importance of it.
"You are Ruth?"
"Yes," said Ruth, stirred by anger and bitterness and astonishment.
This, then, was the woman from whom Hoddy would not have accepted a
cup of water.
"Come here," said the petticoated tyrant. Ruth obeyed, not
willingly, but because there was something hypnotic in the
authoritative tone. "Put your arms about me." Ruth did so, but
without any particular fervour. "Kiss me." Ruth slightly brushed
the withered cheek. The aunt laughed. "Love me, love my dog!
Because I've scolded him and told him a few truths, you are ice to
me. Not afraid of me, either."
"No," said Ruth, pulling back.
But the aunt seized her in her arms and rocked with her. "A miserly
old woman. Well, I've had to be. All my life I've had to fight
human wolves to hold what I have. So I've grown hard--outside.
What's all this about, anyhow? You. Far away there was the one
woman for this boy of mine--some human being who would understand
the dear fool better than all the rest of the world. But God did
not put you next door. He decided that Hoddy should pay a colossal
price for the Dawn Pearl--shame, loneliness, torment, for only
through these agencies would he learn your worth. The fibre of his
soul had to be tested, queerly, to make him worthy of you. Through
fire and water, through penury and pestilence, your hand will
always be on his shoulder. McClintock wrote me about you; but all I
needed was the sight of your face as it was a moment gone."
Gently she thrust Ruth aside. Ruth's eyes were wet, but she saw
light everywhere: the room was filled with celestial aura.
The aunt rushed over to her nephew, knelt and wrapped him in her
arms. "My little Hoddy! You used to love me; and I have always
loved you. The thought of you, wandering from pillar to post,
believing yourself hunted--it tore my old heart to pieces! For I
knew you. You would suffer the torments of the damned for what you
had done. So I set out to find you, even if it cost ten times
sixteen thousand. My poor Hoddy! I had to talk harshly, or break
down and have hysterics. I've come to take you back home. Don't you
understand? Back among your own again, and only a few of us the
wiser. Have you suffered?"
"Dear God!... every hour since!"
"The Spurlock conscience. That is why Wall Street broke your
father; he was honest."
"Ah, my father! The way you treated him...!"
"Good money after bad. You haven't heard my side if it, Hoddy. To
shore up a business that never had any foundation, he wanted me to
lend him a hundred thousand; and for his sake as well as for mine I
had to refuse. He wasn't satisfied with an assured income from the
paper-mills your grandfather left us. He wanted to become a
millionaire. So I had to buy out his interest, and it pinched me
dreadfully to do it. In the end he broke his own heart along with
your mother's. I even offered him back the half interest he had
sold to me. You sent back my Christmas checks."
"I had to. I couldn't accept anything from you."
"You might have added 'then'," said Miss Spurlock, drily.
"I'm an ungrateful dog!"
"You will be if you don't instantly kiss me the way you used to.
But your face! What happened here just before I came?"
"Perhaps God wasn't quite sure that I could hold what I had, and
wanted to try me out."
"And you whipped the beast? I passed him."
"At any rate, I won, for he went away. But, Auntie, however in this
world did you find this island?"
She told him. "The chief of the detective agency informed me that
it would be best not to let Mr. O'Higgins know the truth; he
wouldn't be reckless with the funds, then. For a time I didn't know
we'd ever find you. Then came the cable that you were in Canton,
ill, but not dangerously so. Mr. O'Higgins was to keep track of you
until I believed you had had enough punishment. Then he was to
arrest you and bring you home to me. When I learned you were
married, I changed my plans. I did not know what God had in mind
then. Mr. O'Higgins and I landed at Copeley's yesterday; and Mr.
McClintock sent his yacht over for us this morning. Hoddy, what
made you do it? Whatever made you do it?"
"God knows! Something said to me: _Take it! Take it!_ And ... I
took it. After I took the bills it was too late to turn back. I
drew out what I had saved and boarded the first ship out. Wait!"
He released himself from his aunt's embrace, ran to the trunk and
fetched the old coat. With the aid of a penknife he ripped the
shoulder seams and drew out the ten one-thousand dollar bills.
Gravely he placed them in his aunt's hand.
"You didn't spend it?"
"I never intended to spend it--any more than I really intended to
steal it. That's the sort of fool your nephew is!"
"Not even a good time!" said the aunt, whimsically, as she stuffed
the bills into her reticule. "Not a single whooper-upter! Nothing
but torment and remorse ... and Ruth! Children, put your arms
around me. In a little while--to-morrow--all these tender,
beautiful emotions will pass away, and I'll become what I was
yesterday, a cynical, miserly old spinster. I'll be wanting my
sixteen thousand."
"Six," he corrected.
"Why, so it is," she said, in mock astonishment. "Think of me
forgetting ten thousand so quickly!"
"Go to, you old fraud! You'll never fool me again. God bless you,
Auntie! I'll go into the mills and make pulp with my bare hands, if
you want me to. Home!--which I never hoped to see again. To dream
and to labour: to you, my labour; to Ruth, my dreams. And if
sometimes I grow heady--and it's in the blood--remind me of this
day when you took me out of hell--a thief."
"Hoddy!" said Ruth. "You mustn't!"
"Nothing can change that, Dawn Pearl. Auntie has taken the nails
out of my palms, but the scars will always be there."
There fell upon the three the silence of perfect understanding; and
in this silence each saw a vision. To Ruth came that of the great
world, her lawful lover at her side; and there would be glorious
books into each of which he would unconsciously put a little of her
soul along with his own, needing her always. The spinster saw
herself growing warm again in the morning sunshine of youth--a
flaring ember before the hearth grew cold. Spurlock's vision was
oddly of the past. He saw Enschede, making the empty sea, alone,
alone, forever alone.
"Children," said the aunt, first to awake, "be young fools as long
as God will permit you. And don't worry about the six thousand,
Hoddy. I'll call it my wedding gift. There's nothing so sad in this
world as an old fool," she added.
The three of them laughed joyously.
And Rollo, who had been waiting for some encouraging sound,
presented himself at the doorway. He was caked with dried muck. He
was a bad dog; he knew it perfectly; but where there was laughter,
there was hope. With his tongue lolling and his flea-bitten stump
wagging apologetically, he glanced from face to face to see if
there was any forgiveness visible. There was.
~THE END~
[Illustration: _Distinctive Pictures Photoplay The Ragged Edge_
MIMI PALMERI AS RUTH ENSCHEDE ALFRED LUNT AS HOWARD SPURLOCK]
[Illustration: _Distinctive Pictures Photoplay The Ragged Edge_
A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY]
[Illustration: _Distinctive Pictures Photoplay The Ragged Edge_
A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY]
[Illustration: _Distinctive Pictures Photoplay The Ragged Edge_
A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY]