“My dear child, you have no reason to be sorry: I know Jack Norgate
well, and I know that a better fellow does not live: you will be happy
with him, I am sure. And as for me--well, I suppose I was a bit of a
fool to think that you----”
“Do not say that,” she cried. “I am not worthy of you--I am not worthy
of him. Oh, who am I that I should break up such a friendship as yours
and his? I begin to wish that I had never come aboard this steamer.”
“Do not flatter yourself that you have come between us, my dear,”
he said, with a little laugh. “Oh no; ‘shall I, wasting with
despair?’--well, I think not. Men don’t waste with despair except on
the lyric stage. My dear girl, he has won you fairly, and I congratulate
him; and you--yes, I congratulate you. He is a white man, as they say
on the Great Pacific slope. Listen to that banjo! Confound it! I wonder
shall I ever be able to listen to the banjo again.... Shall we join the
revellers in the saloon?”
They went into the saloon together, and took seats on a vacant sofa.
Some people eyed them suspiciously and said that Miss Compton was having
an exceedingly good time aboard the yacht.
Later on, Somers congratulated his friend very sincerely, and his friend
accepted his congratulations in a very tolerant spirit.
“Oh yes,” he said. “I suppose it’s what every chap must come to sooner
or later. Viola is far better than I deserve--than any chap deserves.”
“It’s a very poor sort of girl that isn’t better than the best chap
deserves, and although I think you are the best chap in the world, I
should be sorry to think that Miss Compton has not made a wise choice.
May you be happy together!”
“Thank you, old chap. I must confess to you frankly that some days ago I
thought that you----”
“That I?”
“Well, that you had a certain tendresse for her yourself.”
“I! Oh, your judgment must have been warped by a lover’s jealousy. ‘The
thief doth think each bush an officer’--the lover fancies that every
man’s taste must be the same as his own. May you both be happy!”
It seemed that his prayer was granted so far at least as the next day
was concerned, for certainly no two people could appear happier than the
lovers, as they sat together under the awning, watching half a dozen of
their fellow-passengers perspiring over their golf.
Mrs Compton--she was an invalid taking the cruise for her health’s
sake--was compelled to remain in her berth all day, but Jack Norgate
visited her with her daughter after tiffin and doubtless obtained the
maternal blessing, for when he came on deck alone in the afternoon his
face was beaming as Moses’ face beamed on one occasion. There was a
slight tornado about dinner-time and the vessel rolled about so as to
necessitate the use of the “fiddles” on the table. It continued blowing
and raining until darkness set in, so that the smoking-room was crowded,
and three bridge-parties assembled in the chief saloon as well as a
poker-party and a chess-party. Four bells had just been made, when one
of the stewards startled all the saloon by crying out of the pantries--
“Coming, sir!”
A moment afterwards he hurried into the saloon, putting on his jacket,
and looked round as if waiting to receive an order. The passengers
glanced at him and laughed.
“What’s the matter?” asked the doctor.
“Didn’t some one call me, sir?” the man inquired.
“Not that we heard,” replied the doctor.
“I thought I heard some one sing out, sir,” said the steward, looking
round.
“It must have been some one on deck,” suggested Colonel Mydleton. “Shall
I cut the cards for you, doctor?”
The steward went on deck. He was met by Mr Somers, who, in reply to the
man’s inquiry, said--
“Call you? No, I didn’t call you.”
“The infant Samuel,” said one of the poker players, and the others at
the table laughed.
“It’s raining cats and dogs, or whatever the equivalent to cats and
dogs is in these parallels,” said Somers. “I got wet watching the
_Bluebottle_ show a clean pair of heels to a tramp. She’s in our wake
just now. I think I’ll turn into my berth.”
He went to the bar and called for a brandy-and-soda, and then sang out
“Good night,” as he hurried to his cabin.
The next morning Miss Compton appeared at the breakfast table, and
so did Somers, but Norgate had clearly overslept himself, for he was
absent. The captain inquired for him.
“He must be on deck, sir,” said one of the stewards, “for he was not in
his cabin when I went with his chocolate an hour ago.”
“Oh, he’ll turn up before we have finished breakfast,” said Somers,
attacking his devilled kidneys.
But his prediction was not realised. A pantry boy was sent on deck in
search of Mr Norgate, but Mr Norgate was not to be found. A steward
hurried to his cabin, but returned in a few minutes, saying that his
bunk had not been slept in. The captain rose from the table with a
well-simulated laugh. A search was organised. It failed to find him. The
awful truth had to be faced: Mr Norgate was not aboard. Viola Compton
was hysterical. Teddy Somers was silent; no one had ever seen him so
deathly pale before.
Theories were forthcoming to account for Norgate’s suicide--people
took it for granted, of course, that he had committed suicide. Only one
person suggested the possibility of his having fallen overboard, and of
his cry being that which the steward had heard, for a part of the pantry
was open on the starboard side. But against this it was urged that Mr
Somers must have been on deck at the time the steward had heard, or had
fancied he heard, that cry, and Mr Somers said he had heard nothing.
For a week the gloom hung over the whole party; but by the time the Cape
was reached, Miss Compton was able to appear at the table once more. She
looked heartbroken; but every one said she was bearing up wonderfully.
Only the poet had the bad taste to offer her his sympathy through the
medium of a sonnet.
*****
On leaving the Cape the bereaved girl seemed to find a certain plaintive
consolation in the society of Mr Somers. He sat beside her in his deck
chair, and they talked together about poor Jack Norgate; but after a
week or two, steaming from Bombay to Ceylon, and thence through the
Straits to Sydney, they began to talk about other subjects, and before
long the girl began visibly to brighten. The passengers said she was a
woman.
And she proved that they were right, for when one lovely night Teddy
Somers suggested very delicately to her that his affection for her was
the same as it had always been, there was more than a little reproach in
her voice as she cried--
“Oh, stop--stop--for Heaven’s sake! My love is dead--buried with him. I
cannot hear any one talk to me of love.”
He pressed her hand and left her without another word.
She remained in her deck chair far removed from the rest of the
passengers for a long time, thinking her thoughts, whatever they may
have been. The moon was almost at the full, so that it was high in the
sky before the quartermaster made six bells, and those of the passengers
who had not already gone to their berths arose from their chairs,
murmuring that they had no notion it was within an hour of midnight. A
few of them, passing the solitary figure of the girl on her chair,
said “Good night” to her in a cheery way, and then shook their heads
suggestively together with such an exchange of sentiments as “Poor
girl!--Poor girl!”
“Very sad!”
“Melancholy affair!” but it is doubtful if their hearts were so
overcharged with sympathy as to interfere to any marked degree with
their slumbers.
The girl remained upon the deserted deck and watched the quartermasters
collecting and storing away all the passengers’ chairs which lay
scattered about, just as their owners had vacated them. When they
had finished their job no one of the ship’s company remained on the
quarterdeck. The sound of the little swish made by a leaping flying-fish
had a suggestion of something mysterious about it as it reached her
ears: it seemed like the faint whisper of a secret of the sea--it seemed
as if some voice outside the ship was saying “Hist!” to her, to attract
her attention before making a revelation to her.
But she knew what the sound was, and she did not move from her chair.
“Alas--alas!” she murmured, “you can tell me nothing. Ah! there is
nothing for me to be told. I know all that will be known until the sea
gives up its dead. He loved me, and the sea snatched him from me.”
The tears with which her heart was filled began to overflow. She wept
softly for a long time, and when at last she gave a sigh and wiped the
mist from her eyes she found that the moon, previously so brilliant, had
become dim. Its outline was blurred, so that, although the atmosphere
was full of moonlight, it was impossible to say what was the centre of
the illumination. It seemed to Viola as if a thin diaphanous silk
curtain had fallen between the moon and the sea. Every object which an
hour before had cast a black shadow athwart the deck--the spars of the
mainmast, the quarterboat hanging in its davits--was clearly seen as
ever, only without the strong contrasts of light and shade. The sea out
to the horizon was of a luminous grey, which bore but a shadowy
resemblance to the dark-blue carpet traversed by the glittering golden
pathway to the moon, over which Viola had pensively gazed in the early
night before Somers had come to her side.
She now stood at the bulwarks looking across that shadowy expanse,
marvelling at the change which had come about within so short a space of
time.
“My life--it is my life,” she sighed. “A short time ago it was made
luminous by love; but now--ah! now----”
She turned away with another sigh and walked back to her deck chair. She
was in the act of picking up her cushions from the seat when, glancing
astern, she was amazed on becoming aware of the fact that she was not
alone at that part of the ship. She saw two figures standing together
on the raised poop that covered the steam-steering apparatus at the
farthest curve of the stern.
She was amazed. She asked herself how it was possible that she had
failed to see them when she had looked astern a few minutes before.
The figures were of course shadowy in the strange mistily luminous
atmosphere, but they were sufficiently conspicuous in the place where
they stood to make her confident that, had they been there five minutes
before, she would have seen them.
She stood there wondering, the cushion which she had picked up hanging
from her hand, who the men were that had come so mysteriously before
her eyes an hour after the last of the passengers had, as she thought,
descended to their berths.
She could not recognise either of them. They were separated from her by
half the length of the stern.
Suddenly she gave a little gasp. The cushion which she had held dropped
from her hand, for one of the figures made a movement, turning his back
to the low poop rail over which he had been leaning, and that moment was
enough, even in the pale light, to allow of her recognising the features
of Jack Norgate.
She gave a little cry of mingled wonder and joy, but before she had
taken even a step toward that tableau, she had shrieked out; for in the
second that separated her exclamations, the figure whom she saw in front
of the one she knew had sprung upon him, causing him to overbalance
himself on the low rail against which he was leaning, and to disappear
over the side.
She shrieked and sprang forward; at that moment the second figure
seemed to fade away and to vanish into nothingness before her eyes. She
staggered diagonally across the deck astern, but before she had taken
more than a dozen blind steps her foot caught in the lashing of the
tarpaulin which was spread over a pile of deck chairs, and she fell
forward. One of the officers on watch, who had heard her cry, swung
himself down from the roof of the deckhouse and ran to her help.
“Good God! Miss Compton, what has happened anyway?” he cried.
“There--there,” she gasped, pointing to the poop. “He went over the
side--a minute ago--there is still time to stop the steamer and pick him
up.”
“Who went over the side? No one was aft but yourself,” said the officer.
“It was Jack--Mr Norgate. Oh, why will you make no effort to rescue him?
I tell you that I saw him go over.”
The officer felt how she was trembling with excitement. She tried to
rush across the deck, but would have fallen through sheer weakness, if
the man had not supported her. He brought her to the seat at the side of
the cabin dome-light.
“You are overcome, Miss Compton,” he said. “You must calm yourself while
I look into this business.”
“You do not believe that I saw anything; but I tell you--oh, he will be
lost while you are delaying,” she cried.
“Nothing of the sort,” he said. “But for heaven’s sake sit here. Leave
the thing to me.”
He ran astern and made a pretence of peering into the distance of the
ship’s seething wake. He was wondering what he should do. The poor girl
was evidently the victim of a hallucination. Several weeks had passed
since her lover had disappeared, and all this time her grief at his loss
had been poignant. This thing that had happened was the natural result
of the terrible strain upon her nerves. Of course he never thought of
awaking the captain or of stopping the vessel.
While he was still peering over the taffrail, her voice sounded beside
him.
“Here--it was just here,” she said.
He turned about.
“Good Lord! Miss Compton, you should not have left your seat,” he cried.
“Let me help you down to the cabin.”
“Have you not seen him in the water?”
“There is no one in the water. In this light I would be able to see a
man’s head a mile astern. I will put my arm under yours and help you to
get below. Trust to me. We would all do whatever it was in our power for
your sake. We all sympathise with you. Shall I send a quartermaster for
the doctor?”
Viola had thrown herself down on the seat where he had placed her, and
was sobbing with her hands before her face. The man did his best to
soothe her. He made a sign to a quartermaster who had come aft to
register the patent log, and told him to send the ship’s doctor aft. He
had no notion of accepting the sole responsibility of soothing a young
woman who was subject to disquieting hallucinations.
In a few minutes the doctor relieved him of his charge. Miss Compton had
become quite tranquil. Only now and again she gazed into the steamer’s
wake and pressed her hand to her side. She allowed herself to be helped
below in a short time, and did not refuse the dose of bromide which the
doctor thought it his duty to administer to her.
The next day the doctor and the fourth officer had a whispered
conference. They agreed that it would be better to say nothing to any of
the other passengers respecting Miss Compton’s hallucination.
“Poor girl--poor girl!” said the doctor. “I have been observing her for
some time, and I cannot say that I was surprised at what occurred last
night.. It is only remarkable that the breakdown did not happen sooner.”
“I am glad that none of the rest of the ship’s company heard her when
she cried out,” said the officer. “Lord! you should have seen the look
in her eyes when she stretched out her hand and insisted that she had
seen the man topple over. I thought it well to do my best to humour her
until I had a chance of sending for you. I felt that it was on the cards
that she might throw herself over the side.”
“It was touch and go,” said the doctor. “Ah, poor girl!”
A week had passed before Viola reappeared among the passengers. Her
mother explained to kind inquirers that she had remained on deck quite
too late one night and had caught a chill. The doctor bore out her
unimaginative explanation of the girl’s absence, and added that it was
much easier than most people suspected to catch a chill south of the
Line. When Viola was at last permitted to come on deck she received many
tokens of the interest which her fellow-passengers had in her progress
toward recovery.
It was not until the evening of her first day out of her cabin that
Somers contrived to get a word or two with her alone.
He was asking after her health when she turned upon him suddenly,
saying--
“Mr Somers, it was you who threw Jack overboard!”
“Good God!” he cried, starting back from her. “For heaven’s sake, Viola,
do not say so monstrous a thing! What!--I--Jack-------”
“You did it,” she said firmly.
“My dear child, how on earth have you got hold of such a notion?” he
asked her.
“It was revealed to me that night--the night before I broke down,” she
replied. “I had been sitting alone in my deck chair, and I was at the
point of going below, when there--there on the poop at the side of the
wheel astern, the whole dreadful scene was revealed to me. I tell you
that I saw it all--Jack and you: I was not sure at first that the second
figure was you, but I know now that it was you. I saw Jack turn round
and lean against the rail, and that was the moment when you sprang at
him.”
The man took some steps away from her.
He took off his hat and wiped his forehead. He returned to her in a few
moments, and said--
“My dear child--oh, Viola! how is it possible for you to entertain so
horrible a thought? Jack Norgate--my best friend!”
“You hoped to marry me--he is your rival--you murdered him!”
Somers flung up his hands with an exclamation and hurried down to his
cabin.
The next day he came to her after tiffin.
“I want to speak a word to you apart,” he said.
She went with him very far forward. Only a few passengers were on deck,
and these were in their chairs astern.
“I want to confess to you,” he said in a low voice. “I want to confess
to you that it was I who threw Jack Norgate overboard.”
She started and stared at him. She could not speak for some time. At
last she was able to say in a whisper--
“You--you--murdered him?”
“I murdered him. The temptation came over me. Oh, Viola, you do not
know how I loved you--how I love you! My God!--should do it again if I
thought it would give me a chance of you.”
She continued staring at him, and then seated herself by his side.
“You--threw him overboard?” she whispered again.
“We were standing side by side on the poop deck far aft, watching the
tramp steamer on that night; the yacht was rolling--he slipped--I gave
him a push.... I have lost my soul for love of you, and you think the
sacrifice worthless.”
“Oh, it is too horrible--too terrible!” she said. “For me--for me!”
He was silent. So was she. They sat together side by side for an hour.
His terrible confession had dazed her. She was the first to break the
silence.
“Terrible--it is terrible!” she murmured. “Who could have told me that
there was any love such as this in the world?”
“It is my love for you,” he said quietly. “It is the love that dares
all--all the powers of time and eternity. I tell you that I would do it
again; I would kill any other man who came between us. But my crime has
been purposeless; we are to part for ever at Sydney in two days.”
“Yes,” she said. “It is better that we should part.”
She gave him her hand. He held it tightly for a moment, then dropped it
suddenly, and left her standing alone on the deck.
“Was there ever such love in the world?” she murmured. “But it is
terrible--terrible!”
The next day she went to where he was sitting alone, far from the other
passengers.
“Mr Somers,” she said, “you will not really leave the yacht at Sydney?”
“If you tell me to stay, I will stay by the ship--I will stay by you,
and you shall know what love means,” he said.
“Ah,” she said, “I think I have learned that already.”
“My beloved--you tell me to stay?”
“I believe that you love me,” said she.
“My darling--my beloved! You are more to me than all the world--you are
dearer to me than my hope of heaven!”
“Yes: you have shown me that you are speaking the truth. It is very
terrible, but I know that it is the truth.”
“It is the truth. And I know that you love me.”
“I wonder if I ever loved any one else,” said she, after a pause--“that
is, I wonder if any one else ever loved me as you have done.”
That was all that passed between them at the time; but two days later
his hand was clasping hers as the steamer went past the Heads into the
loveliest harbour of the world.
*****
It was very early in the morning when he left his cabin to go on deck.
The yacht was swinging at anchor. The sound of many voices came from the
deck.
She was waiting to receive him at the door of his cabin. He put both his
hands out to her: she did not take even one of them. She stared at him.
“I suppose you are the greatest scoundrel in the world,” she said.
“Viola--dearest!”
“I say you are the greatest scoundrel that ever lived, for you tried to
obtain my love by telling me a lie--a lie--a horrible lie. You did not
murder Jack Norgate. He fell overboard by accident that night, when no
one was near him, and he was picked up by the ocean tramp which you had
been watching--not beside him, but on the bridge. You are a wicked man.
You told me that you murdered him, but you did nothing of the sort.
There he is, coming toward us. I did not tell him how false you were,
and I do not intend to tell him; but I know it for myself.”
“It was you yourself who suggested the thing to me,” said he. “Did you
not come to me accusing me of having murdered him? Did you not say that
it had been revealed to you in a vision?”
“A vision? Oh, I was in need of a dose of bromide--that’s all,” said
she.
Then Jack Norgate came up with the captain by his side. The hand that Mr
Somers offered him was limp and clammy.
“Here’s another of the ghost seers,” laughed Jack. “They all look on me
as a ghost aboard this craft.”
“It was a marvellous escape,” said the captain. “Luckily the tramp was
a fine old slow tub, and still more luckily she had a good look-out for
one hour only. Why, you couldn’t have been in the water for more than
ten minutes.”
“It seemed about a week to me, old man,” said Jack. “And as for the
tramp--well, we arrived at Sydney before you any way.”
The captain laughed.
“It was a providential escape,” said he.
“It was a providential escape,” said Viola, putting her arm through
Jack’s and walking away with him.
“MAGIC IN THE WEB OF IT.”