“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.