The Ragged Edge | Page 8

not have
mattered; a mother would have managed somehow. In the '80s such a
dress would have indicated considerable financial means; under the
sun-helmet it was an anachronism; and yet it served only to add a
quainter charm to the girl's beauty.
"Do you know what you make me think of?"
"What?"
"As if you had stepped out of some old family album."
The feminine vanities in Ruth were quiescent; nothing had ever
occurred in her life to tingle them into action. She was dressed as a
white woman should be; and that for the present satisfied her instincts.
But she threw a verbal bombshell into the spinsters' camp.
"What is a family album?"
"You poor child, do you mean to tell me you've never seen a family
album? Why, it's a book filled with the photographs of your
grandmothers and grandfathers, your aunts and uncles and cousins,
your mother and father when they were little."
Ruth stood with drawn brows; she was trying to recall. "No; we never
had one; at least, I never saw it."
The lack of a family album for some reason put a little ache in her heart.

Grandmothers and grandfathers and uncles and aunts ... to love and to
coddle lonely little girls.
"You poor child!" said Prudence.
"Then I am old-fashioned. Is that it? I thought this very pretty."
"So it is, child. But one changes the style of one's clothes yearly. Of
course, this does not apply to uninteresting old maids," Prudence
modified with a dry little smile.
"But this is good enough to travel in, isn't it?"
"To be sure it is. When you reach San Francisco, you can buy
something more appropriate." It occurred to the spinster to ask: "Have
you ever seen a fashion magazine?"
"No. Sometimes we had the Illustrated London News and Tit-Bits.
Sailors would leave them at the trader's."
"Alice in Wonderland!" cried Prudence, perhaps a little enviously.
"Oh, I've read that!"
Spurlock had heard distinctly enough all of this odd conversation; but
until the spinster's reference to the family album, no phrase had been
sufficient in strength of attraction to break the trend of his own
unhappy thoughts. Out of an old family album: here was the very
comparison that had eluded him. His literary instincts began to stir. A
South Sea island girl, and this was her first adventure into civilization.
Here was the corner-stone of a capital story; but he knew that Howard
Spurlock would never write it.
Other phrases returned now, like echoes. The beachcomber, the lowest
in the human scale; and some day he would enter into this estate.
Between him and the beach stood the sum of six hundred dollars.
But one thing troubled him, and because of it he might never arrive on
the beach. A new inexplicable madness that urged him to shrill

ironically the story of his coat--to take it off and fling it at the feet of
any stranger who chanced to be nigh.
"Look at it!" he felt like screaming. "Clean and spotless, but beginning
to show the wear and tear of constant use. I have worn it for weeks and
weeks. I have slept with it under my pillow. Observe it--a blue-serge
coat. Ever hear of the djinn in the bottle? Like enough. But did you
ever hear of a djinn in a blue-serge coat? Stitched in!"
Something like this was always rushing into his throat; and he had to
sink his nails into his palms to stop his mouth. Very fascinating, though,
trying to analyse the impulse. It was not an affair of the conscience; it
was vaguely based upon insolence and defiance. He wondered if these
abnormal mental activities presaged illness. To be ill and helpless.
He went on munching his water-chestnuts, and stared at the skyline. He
hated horizons. He was always visualizing the Hand whenever he let
his gaze rest upon the horizon. An enormous Hand that rose up swiftly,
blotting out the sky. A Hand that strove to reach his shoulder, relentless,
soulless but lawful. The scrutiny of any strange man provoked a sweaty
terror. What a God-forsaken fool he was! And dimly, out there
somewhere in the South Seas--the beach!
Already he sensed the fascination of the inevitable; and with this
fascination came the idea of haste, to get there quickly and have done.
Odd, but he had never thought of the beach until this girl (who looked
as if she had stepped out of the family album) referred to it with a
familiarity which was as astonishing as it was profoundly sad.
The beach: to get there as quickly as he could, to reach the white man's
nadir of abasement and gather the promise of that soothing indifference
which comes with the final disintegration of the fibres of conscience.