The doctor dallied with his teaspoon. Something about the girl had suggested an idea. It would have been the right idea, had Ruth been other than what she was. First-off, he had decided not to tell her what he had found at the bottom of that manila envelope. Now it occurred to him that to show her the sealed letter would be a better way. Impressionable, lonely, a deal beyond his analytical reach, the girl might let her sympathies go beyond those of the nurse. She would be enduing this chap with attributes he did not possess, clothing him in fictional ruffles. To disillusion her, forthwith.
"I'll tell you why," he said. "At the bottom of that big envelope I found this one."
He passed it over; and Ruth read:
To be opened in case of my death and the letter inside forwarded to the address thereon. All my personal effects to be left in charge of the nearest American Consulate.
CHAPTER XIV
Ruth lost the point entirely. The doctor expected her to seize upon the subtle inference that there was something furtive, even criminal, in the manner the patient set this obligation upon humanity at large, to look after him in the event of his death. The idea of anything criminal never entered her thoughts. Any man might have endeavoured to protect himself in this fashion, a man with no one to care, with an unnameable terror at the thought (as if it mattered!) of being buried in alien earth, far from the familiar places he loved.
Close upon this came another thought. She had no place she loved. In all this world there was no sacred ground that said to her: Return! She was of all human beings the most lonely. Even now, during the recurring doubts of the future, the thought of the island was repellent. She hated it, she hated the mission-house; she hated the sleek lagoon, the palms, the burning sky. But some day she would find a place to love: there would be rosy apples on the boughs, and there would be flurries of snow blowing into her face. It was astonishing how often this picture returned: cold rosy apples and flurries of snow.
"The poor young man!" she said.
The doctor sensed that his bolt had gone wrong, but he could not tell how or why. He dared not go on. He was not sure that the boy had put himself beyond the pale; merely, the boy's actions pointed that way. If he laid his own suspicions boldly before the girl, and in the end the boy came clean, he would always be haunted by the witless cruelty of the act.
That night in his den he smoked many pipes. Twice he cleaned the old briar; still there was no improvement. He poured a pinch of tobacco into his palm and sniffed. The weed was all right. Probably something he had eaten. He was always forgetting that his tummy was fifty-four years old.