Part 17

She tried to wrench herself from his embrace then.

“No, no, it is for eternity. I can’t, I can’t.”

“Susy,” he caught both her hands in his, “do you love me?”

“You know I do.”

“Better than any one in the world?”

“Yes.” She whispered it under her breath, as if afraid of her own temerity.

“Then listen. You shall do as you like with me. I ‘ll give up the sea, darling. I ‘ll take up a selection here, you shall teach me your creed and I ‘ll do my best to believe. There, my little girl, will that satisfy you? Who knows, in time I may become as respectable a psalm-singer as that holy swab, Clement Scott, your father’s so fond of quoting. The beggar’s got a tenderness for you, hasn’t he, Susy? Why the first week I was here I was wild with jealousy of the canting brute!”

Gently but firmly she drew herself out of his encircling arms and leaned up drearily against the rock again.

“Clement Scott,” she said, and there was a hopeless ring in her voice that went to his heart like a knife, “Clement Scott is a true Christian man, he is father’s friend, and--and--oh!--” with a sudden burst of passion, “I know--I know he is the better man.”

Ben Harper said nothing, only moved a step or two further seaward. What could he say? The girl loved him, he saw that she loved him well and truly, but she did not love him well enough. She wanted to put him aside, as her training taught her she ought to put aside all the pleasures of this life, all the sunshine and laughter of life, as things hurtful to her soul’s salvation. And because she was young, because she had been born under sunny, laughter-loving skies, his love came to her with a cruel temptation, and because of its very strength, because of the pain it cost her, she would put it aside as a thing wrongful and wicked.

He looked at the silent little figure in its pink gingham frock, leaning up against the rock with head bowed down on its clasped hands. Dimly he understood the struggle that was going on in her breast, and clearly too he foresaw the inevitable end. Her very love for him was an argument against him. Never, never, never!--the booming sea on the rocks below seemed to take up the refrain--would this woman be wife of his? Never, never, never; the play was played out. Down through the vista of years he looked, and saw her the wife of the man he hated--the man who was to him the very incarnation of hypocrisy and cant He saw the hard, loveless life; he saw the lines growing in the fair, young face that was so dear to him; he saw stern Duty take the place of Love; he saw her life grow hard and narrow; he read in her face the bitterness of unfulfilled hopes, and the longing, the unutterable longing for something that might not be put into words, and a great pity for her filled his heart. Not for worlds would he add to her pain. She had come into his life, a dainty, fair, tender thing, and he had only hurt her; by his own pain he gauged hers.

A step forward and he was looking down at the snow-white breakers thundering at the foot of the cliff. The sea was his home, the cruel, fickle sea; he would go back to it and leave the woman he loved in peace. What right had he to come into her life to spoil it? He would go back whence he came, and all should be as it had been before. Go back?--ah! we none of us can go back; surely the Greeks of old were right when they said that not even Omnipotence itself can alter the past. For him he felt, as he watched the white gulls wheel about the face of the inaccessible cliff, there could be no comfort. He had gotten a hurt that would last him a lifetime, but for her--surely he had not hurt her irredeemably.

Very slowly he walked back to her side again, and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Susy,” he said, and he strove with all his strength to banish from his voice all else but kindness, “are you--do you--are you going to marry Clement Scott?”

But she would not raise her face.

“My father--he--I mean--” and so low was her voice, he had to stoop his head to hear, “father said I should--he is a Godfearing man--my father said I--I should beware that I chose--the--the better man. It--it--would be for my soul’s salvation.”

“Susy--Susy, child, I would not harm you, not for all this world or the next could give me. See now, my darling, I must go and leave you, must I?”

She raised her face now, and the bright sunlight showed it to him white and strained. She was paying for her love, if ever woman was. It went to his heart to see her quivering lips, to read in her eyes that voiceless appeal to him, not to tempt her beyond her strength.

“My poor little girl!”

He put out his arms and drew her close to his breast again, and at the sound of his voice, at the tender touch of his hands, she broke down--broke down and cried passionately with her face hidden on his shoulder. He pushed back her hat, and some strands of her hair fell loose across his hand. He held it lightly and tenderly, noting how it shone in the sunlight, noting that it looked like spun gold.

“Don’t cry like that, my darling, it breaks my heart to hear you.”

But he knew there was no hope for him in those tears. There was resignation, heartbroken resignation to the inevitable, but not a touch of yielding, not a spark of hope for him.

“My poor little girl!” he said again. “My poor little girl!”

“It is my poor boy, I think,” she sobbed, “if you care, my poor, poor Ben!”

She was so close and yet so far, so very far away from him.

“Susy, child, I can’t bear this,” his voice was hoarse with the passion that now he could not keep under control, “you must let me go--now.”

She raised her face and looked with her tear-dimmed eyes straight into his.

“Ben, Ben, I love you, I will tell you this once, whether it’s right or wrong. I love you, I love you, I love you!” And she flung her arms round his neck, and drawing down his face to her own covered it with kisses, hot, passionate kisses in which the future, which for her stretched away into eternity, was forgotten.