The Ragged Edge | Page 7

moment he found her beautiful. Her face
reminded him of a delicate unglazed porcelain cup, filled with blond
wine. But there was something else; and in his befogged mental state
the comparison eluded him.
Ruth broke the exquisite pose by summoning Ah Cum, who was lured
into a lecture upon the water-clock. This left Spurlock alone.
He began munching his water-chestnuts--a small brown radish-shaped
vegetable, with the flavour of coconut--that grow along the river brims.
Below the window he saw two coolies carrying a coffin, which
presently they callously dumped into a yawning pit. This made the
eleventh. There were no mourners. But what did the occupant of the
box care? The laugh was always with the dead: they were out of the
muddle.
From the unlovely hillside his glance strayed to the several five-story
towers of the pawnshops. Celestial Uncles! Spurlock chuckled, and a

bit of chestnut, going down the wrong way, set him to coughing
violently. When the paroxysm passed, he was forced to lean against the
window-jamb for support.
"That young man had better watch his cough," said Spinster Prudence.
"He acts queerly, too."
"They always act like that after drink," said Ruth, casually.
She intercepted the glance the spinsters exchanged, and immediately
sensed that she had said too much. There was no way of recalling the
words; so she waited.
"Miss Enschede--such an odd name!--are you French?"
"Oh, no. Pennsylvania Dutch. But I have never seen America. I was
born on an island in the South Seas. I am on my way to an aunt who
lives in Hartford, Connecticut."
The spinsters nodded approvingly. Hartford had a very respectable
sound.
Ruth did not consider it necessary, however, to add that she had not
notified this aunt of her coming, that she did not know whether the aunt
still resided in Hartford or was underground. These two elderly ladies
would call her stark mad. Perhaps she was.
"And you have seen ... drunken men?" Prudence's tones were full of
suppressed horror.
"Often. A very small settlement, mostly natives. There was a trader--a
man who bought copra and pearls. Not a bad man as men go, but he
would sell whisky and gin. Over here men drink because they are
lonely; and when they drink too hard and too long, they wind up on the
beach."
The spinsters stared at her blankly.
Ruth went on to explain. "When a man reaches the lowest scale through

drink, we call him a beachcomber. I suppose the phrase--the
word--originally meant a man who searched for food on the beach. The
poor things! Oh, it was quite dreadful. It is queer, but men of education
and good birth fall swiftest and lowest."
She sent a covert glance toward the young man. She alone of them all
knew that he was on the first leg of the terrible journey to the beach.
Somebody ought to talk to him, warn him. He was all alone, like
herself.
"What are those odd-looking things on the roofs?" she asked of Ah
Cum.
"Pigs and fish, to fend off the visitations of the devil." Ah Cum smiled.
"After all, I believe we Chinese have the right idea. The devil is on top,
not below. We aren't between him and heaven; he is between us and
heaven."
The spinsters had no counter-philosophy to offer; so they turned to
Ruth, who had singularly and unconsciously invested herself with
glamour, the glamour of adventure, which the old maids did not
recognize as such because they were only tourists. This child at once
alarmed and thrilled them. She had come across the wicked South Seas
which were still infested with cannibals; she had seen drunkenness and
called men beachcombers; who was this moment as innocent as a babe,
and in the next uttered some bitter wisdom it had taken a thousand
years of philosophy to evolve. And there was that dress of hers! She
must be warned that she had been imposed upon.
"You'll pardon an old woman, Miss Enschede," said Sister Prudence;
"but where in this world did you get that dress?"
Ruth picked up both sides of the skirt and spread it, looking down. "Is
there anything wrong with it?"
"Wrong? Why, you have been imposed upon somewhere. That dress is
thirty years old, if a day."

"Oh!" Ruth laughed softly. "That is easily explained. I haven't much
money; I don't know how much it is going to cost me to reach Hartford;
so I fixed over a couple of my mother's dresses. It doesn't look bad,
does it?"
"Mercy, no! That wasn't the thought. It was that somebody had cheated
you."
The spinster did not ask if the mother lived; the question was
inconsequent. No mother would have sent her daughter into the world
with such a wardrobe. Straitened circumstances would