CHAPTER XVII
After the Ten Commandments have been spoken, conscience becomes less something inherent than something acquired. It is now a point of view, differing widely, as the ignorant man differs from the educated. You and I will agree upon the Ten Commandments; but perhaps we will refuse to accept the other's interpretation of the ramifications. I step on my neighbour's feet, return and apologize because my acquired conscience orders me to do so; whereas you might pass on without caring if your neighbour hopped about on one foot. The inherent conscience keeps most of us away from jail, from court, from the gallows; the acquired conscience helps us to preserve the little amenities of daily life. So then, the acquired is the livelier phase, being driven into action daily; whereas the inherent may lie dormant for months, even years.
To Spurlock, in this hour, his conscience stood over against the Ten Commandments, one of which he had broken. He became primitive, literal in his conception; the ramifications were, for the nonce, fairly relegated to limbo. He could not kiss Ruth because the acquired conscience—struggling on its way to limbo—made the idea repellant. Analysis would come later, when the primitive conscience, satisfied, would cease to dominate his thought and action.
Since morning he had become fanatical; the atoms of common sense no longer functioned in the accustomed groove. And yet he knew clearly and definitely what he purposed to do, what the future would be. This species of madness cannot properly be attributed to his illness, though its accent might be. For a time he would be the grim Protestant Flagellant, pursuing the idea of self-castigation. That he was immolating Ruth on the altar of his conscience never broke in upon his thought for consideration. The fanatic has no such word in his vocabulary.
Ruth had not expected to be kissed; so the omission passed unnoted. For her it was sufficient to know that somebody wanted her, that never again would she be alone, that always this boy with the dreams would be depending upon her.
A strange betrothal!—the primal idea of which was escape! The girl, intent upon abrogating for ever all legal rights of the father in the daughter, of rendering innocuous the thing she had now named the Terror: the boy, seeking self-crucifixion in expiation of his transgression, changing a peccadillo into damnation!
It was easy for Ruth to surrender to the idea, for she believed she was loved; and in gratitude it was already her determination to give this boy her heart's blood, drop by drop, if he wanted it. To her, marriage would be a buckler against the two evils which pursued her.
There was nothing on the Tablets of Moses that forebade Spurlock marrying Ruth; there were no previous contracts. And yet, Spurlock was afraid of the doctor; so was Ruth. They agreed that they must marry at once, this morning, before the doctor could suspect what was toward. The doctor would naturally offer a hundred objections; he might seriously interfere; so he must be forestalled.
What marriage really meant (aside from the idea of escape), Ruth had not the least conception, no more than a child. If she had any idea at all, it was something she dimly recalled from her books: something celestially beautiful, with a happy ending. But the clearly definite thing was the ultimate escape. Wherein she differed but little from her young sisters.
That is what marriage is to most young women: the ultimate escape from the family, from the unwritten laws that govern children. Whether they are loved or unloved has no bearing upon this desire to test their wings, to try this new adventure, to take this leap into the dark.
Spurlock possessed a vigorous intellect, critical, disquisitional, creative; and yet he saw nothing remarkable in the girl's readiness to marry him! An obsession is a blind spot.
"We must marry at once! The doctor may put me on the boat and force you to remain behind, otherwise."
"And you want me to find a minister?" she asked, with ready comprehension.
"That's it!"—eagerly. "Bring him back with you. Some of the hotel guests can act as witnesses. Make haste!"
Ruth hurried off to her own room. Before she put on her sun-helmet, she paused before the mirror. Her wedding gown! She wondered if the spirit of the unknown mother looked down upon her.
"All I want is to be happy!" she said aloud, as if she were asking for something of such ordinary value that God would readily accord it to her because there was so little demand for the commodity.
Thrilling, she began to dance, swirled, glided, and dipped. Whenever ecstasy—any kind of ecstasy—filled her heart to bursting, these physical expressions eased the pressure.
Fate has two methods of procedure—the sudden and the long-drawn-out. In some instances she tantalizes the victim for years and mocks him in the end. In others, she acts with the speed and surety of the loosed arrow. In the present instance she did not want any interference; she did not want the doctor's wisdom to edge in between these two young fools and spoil the drama. So she brought upon the stage the Reverend Henry Dolby, a preacher of means, worldly-wise and kindly, cheery and rotund, who, with his wife and daughter, had arrived at the Victoria that morning. Ruth met him in the hall as he was following his family into the dining room. She recognized the cloth at once, waylaid him, and with that directness of speech particularly hers she explained what she wanted.
"To be sure I will, my child. I will be up with my wife and daughter after lunch."
"We'll be waiting for you. You are very kind." Ruth turned back toward the stairs.
Later, when the Reverend Henry Dolby entered the Spurlock room, his wife and daughter trailing amusedly behind him, and beheld the strained eagerness on the two young faces, he smiled inwardly and indulgently. Here were the passionate lovers! What their past had been he neither cared nor craved to know. Their future would be glorious; he saw it in their eyes; he saw it in the beauty of their young heads. Of course, at home there would have been questions. Were the parents agreeable? Were they of age? Had the license been procured? But here, in a far country, only the velvet manacles of wedlock were necessary.
So, forthwith, without any preliminaries beyond introductions, he began the ceremony; and shortly Ruth Enschede became Ruth Spurlock, for better or for worse. Spurlock gave his full name and tremblingly inscribed it upon the certificate of marriage.
The customary gold band was missing; but a soft gold Chinese ring Spurlock had picked up in Singapore—the characters representing good luck and prosperity—was slipped over Ruth's third finger.
"There is no fee," said Dolby. "I am very happy to be of service to you. And I wish you all the happiness in the world."
Mrs. Dolby was portly and handsome. There were lines in her face that age had not put there. Guiding this man of hers over the troubled sea of life had engraved these lines. He was the true optimist; and that he should proceed, serenely unconscious of reefs and storms, she accepted the double buffets.
This double buffetting had sharpened her shrewdness and insight. Where her husband saw only two youngsters in the mating mood, she felt that tragedy in some phase lurked in this room—if only in the loneliness of these two, without kith or kin apparently, thousands of miles from home. Not once during the ceremony did the two look at each other, but riveted their gaze upon the lips of the man who was forging the bands: gazed intensively, as if they feared the world might vanish before the last word of the ceremony was spoken.
Spurlock relaxed, suddenly, and sank deeply into his pillows. Ruth felt his hand grow cold as it slipped from hers. She bent down.
"You are all right?"—anxiously.
"Yes … but dreadfully tired."
Mrs. Dolby smiled. It was the moment for smiles. She approached Ruth with open arms; and something in the way the child came into that kindly embrace hurt the older woman to the point of tears.
These passers-by who touch us but lightly and are gone, leaving the eternal imprint! So long as she lived, Ruth would always remember that embrace. It was warm, shielding, comforting, and what was more, full of understanding. It was in fact the first embrace of motherhood she had ever known. Even after this woman had gone, it seemed to Ruth that the room was kindlier than it had ever been.
Inexplicably there flashed into vision the Chinese wedding procession in the narrow, twisted streets of the city, that first day: the gorgeous palanquin, the tom-toms, the weird music, the ribald, jeering mob that trailed along behind. It was surely odd that her thought should pick up that picture and recast it so vividly.
At half after five that afternoon the doctor and his friend
McClintock entered the office of the Victoria.
"It's a great world," was the manager's greeting.
"So it is," the doctor agreed. "But what, may I ask, arouses the thought?"
The doctor was in high good humour. Within forty-eight hours the girl would be on her way east and the boy see-sawing the South China Sea, for ever moving at absolute angles.
"Then you haven't heard?"
"Of what?"
"Well, well!" cried the manager, delighted at the idea of surprising the doctor. "Miss Enschede and Mr. Spurlock—for that's his real name—were married at high noon."
Emptiness; that was the doctor's initial sensation: his vitals had been whisked out of him and the earth from under his feet. All his interest in Ruth, all his care and solicitude, could now be translated into a single word—love. Wanted her out of the way because he had been afraid of her, afraid of himself! He, at fifty-four! Then into this void poured a flaming anger, a blind and unreasoning anger. He took the first step toward the stairs, and met the restraining hand of McClintock.
"Steady, old top! What are you going to do?"
"The damned scoundrel!"
"I told you that child was opal."
"She? My God, the pity of it! She knows nothing of life. She no more realizes what she has done than a child of eight. Marriage! … without the least conception of the physical and moral responsibilities! It's a crime, Mac!"
"But what can you do?" McClintock turned to the manager. "'It was all perfectly legal?
"My word for it. The Reverend Henry Dolby performed the cermony, and his wife and daughter were witnesses."
"When you heard what was going on, why didn't you send for me?"
"I didn't know it was going on. I heard only after it was all over."
"If he could stand on two feet, I'd break every bone in his worthless body!"
McClintock said soothingly: "But that wouldn't nullify the marriage, old boy. I know. Thing's upset you a bit. Go easy."
"But, Mac . . . !"
"I understand," interrupted McClintock. Then, in a whisper: "But there's no reason why the whole hotel should."
The doctor relaxed. "I've got to see him; but I'll be reasonable. I've got to know why. And what will they do, and where will they go?"
"With me—the both of them. So far as I'm concerned, nothing could please me more. A married man!—the kind I've never been able to lure down there! But keep your temper in check. Don't lay it all to the boy. The girl is in it as deeply as he is. I'll wait for you down here."
When the doctor entered the bedroom and looked into the faces of the culprits, he laughed brokenly. Two children, who had been caught in the jam-closet: ingratiating smiles, back of which lay doubt and fear.
Ruth came to him directly. "You are angry?"
"Very. You don't realize what you have done."
"My courage gave out. The thought of going back!—the thought of the unknown out there!—" with a tragic gesture toward the east. "I couldn't go on!"
"You'll need something more than courage now. But no more of that. What is done cannot be undone. I want to talk to Mr. Spurlock. Will you leave us for a few minutes?"
"You are not going to be harsh?"
"I wish to talk about the future."
"Very well."
She departed reluctantly. The doctor walked over to the bed, folded his arms across his chest and stared down into the unabashed eyes of his patient.
"Do you realize that you are several kinds of a damned scoundrel?" he began. This did not affect Spurlock. "Your name is Spurlock?"
"It is."
"Why did you use the name of Taber?"
"To keep my real name out of the mess I expected to make of myself over here."
"That's frank enough," the doctor admitted astonishedly. So far the boy's mind was clear. "But to drag this innocent child into the muck! With her head full of book nonsense—love stories and fairy stories! Have you any idea of the tragedy she is bound to stumble upon some day? I don't care about you. The world is known to you. I can see that you were somebody, in another day. But this child! … It's a damnable business!"
"I shall defend her and protect her with every drop of blood in my body!" replied the Flagellant.
The intensity of the eyes and the defiant tone bewildered the doctor, who found his well-constructed jeremiad without a platform. So he was forced to shift and proceed at another angle, forgetting his promise to McClintock to be temperate.
"When I went through your trunk that first night, I discovered an envelope filled with manuscripts. Later, at the bottom of that envelope I found a letter."
"To be opened in case of my death," added Spurlock. From under his pillow he dragged forth the key to the trunk. "Here, take this and get the letter and open and read it. Would you tell her … now?" his eyes flaming with mockery.