“No, Donald, I—I like you very, very much, but I can’t ... will not ... marry you!”
Still grasping her hand, he asked huskily, “Do you mean that, Ruth?” She answered with a nod, but wishing to hear it from her own lips he repeated. “Do you mean that, Ruth?”
“Yes!”
He released her hand quickly and rose to his feet. Straightening himself up to his full height he squared his shoulders, and with moisture glistening on his forehead, turned and gazed at her. It was his Gethsemane, this spot, and the pain in his heart showed in his eyes. The girl sat on the grass with averted face, nervously tearing a spring flower to shreds. “Ruth,” he said at last in a voice charged with emotion, “With the exception of my mother, you’ve shaken my faith in women forever. Good-bye!” The farewell came from his lips like the snap of a whip, and when she raised her tear-filled eyes, it was to see him striding through the woods with his head high and his shoulders square.
When he vanished in the greenery, she gave a queer little sob and commenced to cry. For a minute she gave way to her pent-up emotions, and only when she saw Walter coming out of the sea did she arise and run back to a little stream in the woods. Bathing her eyes in the cool water, she coaxed the evidences of tears from her face and tried to console herself that the ordeal was over. But in her heart of hearts she knew that it was just beginning.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The packet steamer was slugging hot-foot for Eastville as the sun went down behind an ominous bank of clouds. Thunder was rumbling to the south’ard and Captain Westhaver was glancing every now and again out of the pilot-house window. “Only a thunder storm, I reckon,” he muttered. “But I don’t like that cussed glass an’ that blurry sky to th’ south’ard. Looks jest like a West Injy hurricane sky. But, we’ll git in afore it strikes.” The sea was smooth save for a slight swell rolling up from the south’ard, and there was but little wind. The chatter and laughter of the picnickers sounded unusually loud on the quiet air. Someone was playing a fiddle, and there was a dance going on aft.
Down on the after freight deck away from the crowd, Donald McKenzie sat on the bitts, sucking away at a dry pipe, and communing with his thoughts. Outwardly calm, yet boiling inwardly, he reviewed his years of acquaintanceship with Ruth Nickerson. Ever and anon, the memory of the night in Halifax would rise to mind, and he would vision again her upturned face with the dim light upon it, and feel the soft warmth of her body as he held her in his arms when she had said, “Kiss me, Don, and go!” Pah! He brushed his hands across his lips. It was a Judas kiss, for but a scant two months afterwards she had become engaged to another.