CHAPTER XV
Previous to his illness, Spurlock's mind had been tortured by anappalling worry, so that now, in the process of convalescence, itmight be compared to a pool which had been violently stirred: therewere indications of subsidence, but there were still strange formsswirling on the surface--whims and fancies which in normal timeswould never have risen above sub-consciousness.
Little by little the pool cleared, the whims vanished: so that bothRuth and the doctor, by the middle of the third week, began toaccept Spurlock's actions as normal, whereas there was still a moteor two which declined to settle, still a kink in the gray matterthat refused to straighten out.
Spurlock began to watch for Ruth's coming in the morning; first,with negligent interest, then with positive eagerness. His literaryinstincts were reviving. Ruth was something to study for futurecopy; she was almost unbelievable. She was not a reversion to type,which intimates the primordial; she suggested rather theincarnation of some goddess of the South Seas. He was not able torecognize, as the doctor did, that she was only a natural woman.
His attitude toward her was purely intellectual, free of anysentimentality, utterly selfish. Ruth was not a woman; she was aphenomenon. So, adroitly and patiently, he pulled Ruth apart; thatis, he plucked forth a little secret here, another there, until hehad quite a substantial array. What he did not know was this: Ruthsurrendered these little secrets because the doctor had warned herthat the patient must be amused and interested.
From time to time, however, he was baffled. The real tragedy--whichhe sensed and toward which he was always reaching--eluded all hisverbal skill. It was not a cambric curtain Ruth had drawn acrossthat 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 whomshe still endued with the melancholy charm of Sydney Carton. It wasnot due to shyness: it was the inherent instinct of the Woman, aprotective fear that she must retain some elements of mystery inorder to hold the interest of the male.
When she told him that the natives called her The Dawn Pearl, hisdelight was unbounded. He addressed her by that title, andsomething in the tone disturbed her. A sophisticated woman wouldhave translated the tone as a caress. And yet to Spurlock it wasonly the title of a story he would some day write. He was caressingan idea.
The point is, Spurlock was coming along: queerly, by his ownimagination. The true creative mind is always returning to battle;defeats are only temporary set-backs. Spurlock knew that somewherealong the way he would write a story worth while. Already he wasdramatizing Ruth, involving her, now in some pearl thievingadventure, now in some impossible tale of a white goddess. Butsomehow he could not bring any of these affairs to an orderly end.Presently he became filled with astonishment over the singular factthat Ruth was eluding him in fancy as well as in reality.
One morning he caught her hand suddenly and kissed it. Men hadtried that before, but never until now had they been quick enough.The touch of his lips neither thrilled nor alarmed her, because theeyes that looked into hers were clean. Spurlock knew exactly whathe was doing, however: speculative mischief, to see how she wouldact.
"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 manever kissed you?"
"No." Which was literally the truth.
He accepted this confession conditionally: that no young man hadkissed her. There was nothing of the phenomenon in this. But hisastonishment would have been great indeed had he known that noteven her father had ever caressed her, either with lips or withhands.
Ruth had lived in a world without caresses. The significance of thekiss was still obscure to her, though she had frequentlyencountered the word and act in the Old and New Testaments andlatterly in novels. Men had tried to kiss her--unshaven derelicts,some of them terrible--but she had always managed to escape. Whathad urged her to wrench loose and fly was the guarding instinct ofthe good woman. Something namelessly abhorrent in the eyes of thosemen...!
She knew what arms were for--to fold and embrace and to hold onetightly; but why men wished to kiss women was still a profoundmystery. No matter how often she came across this phase in lovestories, there was never anything explanatory: as if all humanbeings perfectly understood. It would not have been for her ananomaly to read a love story in which there were no kisses.
This salute of his--actually the first she could remember--while itdid not disturb her, began to lead her thoughts into new channelsof speculation. The more her thoughts dwelt upon the subject, themore 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 somefuture 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. Tellme about your island. I have never seen a lagoon."
"But you can imagine it. Tell me what you think the island islike."
He did not pause to consider how she had learned that he hadimagination; he comprehended only the direct challenge. To be freeof outward distraction, he shut his eyes and concentrated upon thescraps she had given him; and shortly, with his eyes still closed,he began to describe Ruth's island: the mountain at one end, withthe ever-recurring scarves of mist drifting across the lava-scarredface; the jungle at the foot of it; the dazzling border of whitesand; the sprawling store of the trader and the rotting wharf,sundrily patched with drift-wood; the native huts on the sandyfloor of the palm groves; the scattered sandalwood and ebony; thescreaming parakeets in the plantains; the fishing proas; themission with its white washed walls and barren frontage; thelagoon, fringed with coco palms, now ruffled emerald, now placidsapphire.
"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 seagoddess 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 hadto 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 andhours for the night! The sea empty for days! You forgot themonotony, the endless monotony, that bends you and breaks you andcrushes you--you forgot that!"
Her voice had steadily risen until it was charged with passionateanger. It was his turn to express astonishment. Fire; she was fullof 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. Ishouldn't talk like that. I'm a poor nurse."
"You are the most wonderful human being I ever saw!" And he meantit.
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 shehated her island. Never had he been so intrigued. Why, there wasdrama in the very dress she wore! There was drama in the unusualbeauty 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, ifsomeone 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 aneye. 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 satperfectly still. Then came the shock of the kn
owledge that soon hewould be going upon his way, that there would be no one to dependupon her; and all the old loneliness came smothering down upon heragain. She could not analyse what was stirring in her: the thoughtof losing the doll, the dog, and the cat. There was the worldbesides, looming darker and larger.
"What would you like most in this world?" he asked. Once more hewas the searcher.
"Red apples and snow!" she sent back at him, her face suddenlytransfixed by some inner glory.
"Red apples and snow!" he repeated. He returned figuratively to hisbed--the bed he had made for himself and in which he must for everlie. Red apples and snow! How often had these two things enteredhis thoughts since his wanderings began? Red apples and snow!--andnever again to behold them!
"I am going out for a little while," she said. She wanted to bealone. "Otherwise you will not get your morning's sleep."
He did not reply. His curiosity, his literary instincts, had beensubmerged by the recurring thought of the fool he had made ofhimself. He heard the door close; and in a little while he fellinto a doze; and there came a dream filled with broken pictures,each one of which the girl dominated. He saw her, dripping withrosy pearls, rise out of the lagoon in the dawn light: he saw herflashing to and fro among the coco palms in the moonshine: he sawher breasting the hurricane, her body as full of grace and beautyas the Winged Victory of the Louvre. The queer phase of the dreamwas this, she was at no time a woman; she was symbolical ofsomething, and he followed to learn what this something was. Therewas a lapse of time, an interval of blackness; then he found hishand in hers and she was leading him at a run up the side of themountain.
His heart beat wildly and he was afraid lest the strain be toomuch; but the girl shook her head and smiled and pointed to the topof the mountain. All at once they came to the top, the faded bluesky overhead, and whichever way he looked, the horizon, the greatrocking circle which hemmed them in. She pointed hither and yon,smiled and shook her head. Then he understood. Nowhere could he seethat reaching, menacing Hand. So long as she stood beside him, hewas safe. That was what she was trying to make him understand.
He awoke, strangely content. As it happens sometimes, the ideastepped down from the dream into the reality; and he saw it moreclearly now than he had seen it in the dream. It filled histhoughts for the rest of the day, and became an obsession. How tohold her, how to keep her at his side; this was the problem withwhich he struggled.
When she came in after dinner that night, Ruth was no longer aninteresting phenomenon, something figuratively to tear apart andinvestigate: she was talismanic. So long as she stood beside him,the Hand would not prevail.