Part 7

He laughed bitterly.

“Belief is not a matter of will,” he said, “or I would believe just to please you—just because I want you more than anything in the wide world. All I can do is to be honest, and tell you I can’t believe. It need never make any difference to you, dear, never, never.”

The girl laid her face down on the hard rock again.

“And if—and if—next time your ship goes past here you were to fall from the mast, and be drowned, you think—you think you would just go out like a fire—that—that would be all.”

He kicked a stone till it fell over the edge of the cliff, and they could hear it going by leaps and bounds into the sea a hundred feet below.

“And you think,” he said, “I shall be eternally damned, tormented in fire and brimstone for ever and ever. Upon my word, Susy, mine is the kinder fate.”

“I can’t bear to think of it, I can’t bear to think of it!” she cried. “Oh! Ben, Ben! I can’t bear it!”

He made a step forward then and caught her in his arms. How could he resist the upturned face and the sweet blue eyes brimming with tears. Puritan she might be, the old Covenanter blood might be strong as ever, but she loved him—there was little doubt of that, and he clasped her close in his arms and covered her face with kisses.

“What does it matter, dear, what does it matter? Let the future take care of itself.”

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.

“I must go. Susy, Susy, if you will not have me, in pity’s name let me go!”

“Go then, go, my darling.”

She drew herself out of his arms firmly, sadly, and they stood for a moment looking into each other’s eyes, only for a moment though, then with a long-drawn sigh she turned away and covered her face with her hands.

He stood a little apart and took a long farewell to all his hopes. Would the picture ever fade from his mind, he wondered. There it all lay before him, blue sea and sky and dark bushland, and the only living thing visible the trembling girl in her simple pink frock, her face hidden in her hands, and the sunlight bringing out lines of gold in her fair hair. So it ended—his month-old romance. To-day he must go back to the old dull routine that makes up the sum of a sailor’s life, and this brief madness must be but a tender memory of the past.

“Susy,” he whispered, “Susy,” but the little figure never raised its head.

“Susy, won’t you wish me good-bye. Say something to me before I go. Must I go?”

He had no hope she would change her mind. He had learned her steadfastness only too well in the last four weeks, only he asked because it gave him the faintest shadow of an excuse for stopping at her side.

“Yes, go, go!” And the command was almost prayerful in its intensity.

“But—but—one word—one word—you—”

“God bless you! God keep you! Go, go!”

He turned away then, away from the bright water sparkling in the sunlight, away from the woman he loved with all his strength; but a chimera, it seemed to him, a vague fancy, stood between them, yet it was stronger than iron bars, and with a heavy sigh he turned his face towards the dark ranges and went down to the township, five miles beyond.

The good ship Vanity had lain three long months at Port Melbourne Pier, but they were weighing anchor at last. Standing there on the poop, the second mate listened sadly enough to the chanting of the men as they walked slowly round the capstan. There was almost a wail in the tune, though the words were the essence of common-placeness, and related how the singers had courted Sally Brown for seven years, and when she had proved obdurate, with great complacency had taken her daughter instead.

“Seven long years I courted Sally, Ay, ay, roll and go! Seven long years and she wouldn’t marry, Spend my money on Sally Brown.”

“Ay! ay!” it rose loud and clear above the noise of the busy pier, above the voices of the men at work there, above the creaking and groaning of the crane that was loading the great iron tank that lay next them, “ay! ay! roll and go!”

Yes, he was going now, leaving all the sunshine of his life behind him, the best part of his life and—

“Now then, mister, bear a hand there, ain’t there longshore lubbers enough wi’out you?”

“Ay! ay! roll and go!” It was only another way of saying “Blessed be drudgery,” only a reminder that work is a universal panacea for all ills and heartaches. And after all the second mate of the sailing-ship is not likely to have much time for idle dreams—regretful or otherwise—for the life of such men is monotonous enough; and two days later when they had come through the Rip, and were out in the Southern Ocean sailing along eastward, there was little enough to remind Ben Harper of the events of a week before. True it was on this stern, forbidding coast lay the Mackie selection; it was over this expanse of sea they two had stood and looked when they said farewell—he had even heard tell that the lights from their cottage window, the bright glow from the kitchen fire, were plainly visible to ships at sea, so close was she. And he wondered to himself should he see those lights to-night. Hardly. He lay there in his bunk and listened to the row in the rigging. Things had not mended evidently since he went below. Gone was the summer and the bright November sunshine, the wind from the south was coming up cold and chill, and the prospect of four hours to-night on a very cold, wet, bleak poop was anything but inviting.

“It ‘s just going eight bells, sir.” He scrambled out of his bunk and into some clothes and oilskins, and was standing alongside the mate under the lee of the weather cloth in the rigging, by the time the watch got aft. They were the average crew of a sailing ship, men from every nation under the sun, and as they passed slowly round the capstan, their shoulders hunched to their ears, each man answered sullenly to his name. Not that they bore the second mate any ill-will, but Jack ashore spends his last weeks in riotous living and suffers a slow recovery for the first few days of the voyage. Besides the night was bitter cold, the wind that whistled shrilly through the rigging already bore on its chill breath drops of icy rain; there was no prospect of things mending, and after the hot summer days at Port Melbourne extra wraps—indeed any clothes in the fo’c’sle beyond what each man stood up in—were conspicuous by their absence. Merchant Jack is a thriftless beggar at best, and who could have foreseen wintry weather like this?

“Andersen!” called the mate, as a tall, fair haired Swede, his hairy breast bare to the cold night air, stepped forward.

“Sir.”

“Muntz!”

“Herr.”

“Reed!”

“‘Ere, sir.”

“Portross!”

“Sah-h.”

What a motley crew they were! Swedes and Germans, cockneys and niggers, they passed on till the two watches had answered to their names, and the last man was a Russian Finn, black-haired and swarthy, with a flat face and eyes like a Tartar.

“They Finns,” said the bo’sun confidentially to Harper, “is just pisen. Never knew no ship come to any good as carried em.

“Pooh!” said the second mate, who was not troubled with superstitious fears; besides the bo’sun made the same remark every time the watches were mustered, then he shouted, “Relieve the wheel and look out. Keep yourselves handy there, the watch.”

“She ‘s got the main-to’g’ll’nts’le on, mister,” said the mate, “and the outer jib. It’s been like this all the watch, steady enough. The sea’s getting up a bit, and having the spanker set makes her steer so badly, but the old man wouldn’t let me douse it;” and muttering something about the “glass going right down into the hold” the oil-skinned figure departed down the companion.

It was dark, very dark indeed, for though the moon was nearly full, heavy clouds obscured the sky, and only now and then she managed to pierce them, showing as clear as day the deserted wet decks—for the watch had all stowed away—the few sails set and just under the foot of the foresail the lookout man, banging his arms to and fro to keep himself warm.

The second mate paced briskly up and down the poop, for’ard was the lookout man, aft the man at the wheel, they three seemed to compose the whole ship’s company, and it gave him for a moment a sense of loneliness. Hardly a week ago and he had hoped for such different things.

He had lost nothing, nothing; he told himself so over and over again, as he drew his oilskins close round him, and yet there was a sense of loss in his life, a great and terrible loss. She would be nothing to him, the girl he loved so well, she would marry Clement Scott, she had as good as told him so—because—because he was the better man. The better man—the better man—the words formed themselves into a sort of rhythm that his steps kept time to—“the better man, the better man.”

“Binnacle light’s goin’ hout, sir,” said the man at the wheel, breaking in on his sad thoughts.

“Below there. One of you boys trim this light.”

Young Angus Mackie answered his hail, unshipped the light, and lingered for a moment.

“We ‘ll be right aboard t’auld place in an hour or two, sir.”

“What?”

“I was sayin’ that goin’ on this tack we ‘ll be awfu’ close in shore. Ye could pretty nigh chuck a biscuit in at the kitchen door. I wonder if they’ll be thinkin’ o’ us.”

“E—h—h?” muttered Harper, for had not his thoughts been taking the same road, though not for worlds would he have owned it.

“I’m thinkin’ Susy will. Ye see I ‘m thinkin’ Susy was a bit gone—”

“You boy, trim that lamp,” said Harper angrily. “Look here, my lad, you just keep your tongue lashed amidships, and don’t go gassing about things that don’t concern you in the least, or you and I ‘ll part brass rags.”

The boy scurried below and returned with the lamp retrimmed. He slipped the light into the binnacle and looked doubtfully at the second mate. It was dull and he was inclined to talk, but after his late rebuff hardly dared. Harper began to pace up and down again, and the boy stowed himself under the lee of the house, volunteering the information as he passed the mate.

“Bo’sun says the wind ‘s goin’ to shift ahead.”

“You be hanged, and the bo’sun too!”

But before an hour had gone by he was obliged to acknowledge that the bo’sun’s weather prophecies were very correct, for the wind shifted point after point till it was right ahead and blowing half a gale. Harper looked aloft and noted the clouds scurrying across the sky. Heavier and heavier they were growing to wind’ard.

“By Jove!” he muttered to himself, “we ‘re in for a nasty night.”

Suddenly the lookout man reported, “Light right ahead, sir.”

Harper stepped forward to the skylight and peered down into the cabin, dimly lighted by an oil lamp. It was a bare enough little place at best, but it looked comfort itself as contrasted with the wet decks above. The skipper was lying on a settee sound asleep, one hairy arm thrown out, and on the table meditatively surveying him was Dinah, the ship’s cat.

“Hallo there!” reported the mate through the skylight; “light right ahead, sir.”

Very lazily he rolled off the sofa, scared puss out of her senses by a rough sweep of his hand, and came up on deck.

“Great Scott!” he growled, “what a night!” Then he took a squint through his night glasses.

“Oh, yes, mister,” he said, “that’s all right. It’s just a small light—a leading mark for the small craft going into the creek there for lime. Fixed white light, I heard of it the day before we left. It’s deep water right up. We’ll go right in, mister, and make a long board of it on the next tack.”

The moon was completely hidden now, and both men hanging over the break of the the poop could see nothing but the bright light right ahead.

“It looks small, sir,” ventured Harper, taking another look through his glasses.

“Didn’t I tell ye it was small? If ye will be for ever—”

Harper still looked steadily through his glasses.

“By the Lord! sir, that looks uncommonly like a line of breakers! There—to port!”

The skipper made one hesitating step forward, and then the truth flashed on him like lightning.

“Great Scott!” he cried again, “so it is! Call all hands. Hands ‘bout ship!” Then he turned to the man at the wheel, who was the Russian Finn the bo’sun objected to as unlucky, “Keep her clean full for stays.”

The men came tumbling out from the holes and corners where they had stowed away, and the watch below came up growling audibly at having their rest disturbed, but none apparently understanding the danger of the situation. It is all in the day’s work that a sailor should be disturbed before he has had more than a taste of the bliss of sleep. The wild tumbling waters and the shrieking wind told them no tale; they only thought the wind had gone round and freshened a bit since they went below.

Harper standing on the fife rail at the crojack braces could have told them a different story. Clearly he saw the danger. There ahead, a little to leeward, were the long line of breakers; even in this pitchy darkness he could see their white foam-topped crests against the inky water; he fancied that even above the roaring of the wind through the rigging he could distinguish the crash with which they flung themselves hungrily against the rocks, the long-drawn sob as of disappointment with which they fell back into the sea again, there to gather strength for a fresh onslaught. Above them was the loom of the land showing only like thick cloud-bank against the horizon, and the bright light beckoning, it seemed, with friendly hands.