“I mustn’t be too hard or get angry tonight! Come, Eric! we played and fought together. I won fairly. I played fairly all the game of our wooing! You know that as well as I do; and now when I am going away, I shall look to my old and true comrade to help me when I am gone!”
“I’ll help you none,” said Eric, “so help me God!”
“It was God helped me,” said Abel simply.
“Then let Him go on helping you,” said Eric angrily. “The Devil is good enough for me!” and without another word he rushed down the steep path and disappeared behind the rocks.
When he had gone Abel hoped for some tender passage with Sarah, but the first remark she made chilled him.
“How lonely it all seems without Eric!” and this note sounded till he had left her at home—and after.
Early on the next morning Abel heard a noise at his door, and on going out saw Eric walking rapidly away: a small canvas bag full of gold and silver lay on the threshold; on a small slip of paper pinned to it was written:
“Take the money and go. I stay. God for you! The Devil for me! Remember the 11th of April.—ERIC SANSON.” That afternoon Abel went off to Bristol, and a week later sailed on the Star of the Sea bound for Pahang. His money—including that which had been Eric’s—was on board in the shape of a venture of cheap toys. He had been advised by a shrewd old mariner of Bristol whom he knew, and who knew the ways of the Chersonese, who predicted that every penny invested would be returned with a shilling to boot.
As the year wore on Sarah became more and more disturbed in her mind. Eric was always at hand to make love to her in his own persistent, masterful manner, and to this she did not object. Only one letter came from Abel, to say that his venture had proved successful, and that he had sent some two hundred pounds to the bank at Bristol, and was trading with fifty pounds still remaining in goods for China, whither the Star of the Sea was bound and whence she would return to Bristol. He suggested that Eric’s share of the venture should be returned to him with his share of the profits. This proposition was treated with anger by Eric, and as simply childish by Sarah’s mother.
More than six months had since then elapsed, but no other letter had come, and Eric’s hopes which had been dashed down by the letter from Pahang, began to rise again. He perpetually assailed Sarah with an “if!” If Abel did not return, would she then marry him? If the 11th April went by without Abel being in the port, would she give him over? If Abel had taken his fortune, and married another girl on the head of it, would she marry him, Eric, as soon as the truth were known? And so on in an endless variety of possibilities. The power of the strong will and the determined purpose over the woman’s weaker nature became in time manifest. Sarah began to lose her faith in Abel and to regard Eric as a possible husband; and a possible husband is in a woman’s eye different to all other men. A new affection for him began to arise in her breast, and the daily familiarities of permitted courtship furthered the growing affection. Sarah began to regard Abel as rather a rock in the road of her life, and had it not been for her mother’s constantly reminding her of the good fortune already laid by in the Bristol Bank she would have tried to have shut her eyes altogether to the fact of Abel’s existence.