The little irritable man had brought true news. The report was all over the town: everybody was talking of Conway’s death. A woman living in the road called upon Mrs. Parrot to give her the story, not knowing that Mrs. Conway was within. Her husband had met Williamson, the man who found Conway, and had got the account from him clear of all exaggeration.

It was just this: Williamson was a carpenter, and was walking to Thorrold Marsh to execute a repairing job at a house there. He was this side of Hanwitch, just by the bridge facing Squire Markwell’s place, when he saw a human hand sticking out of the water. He peered and saw a man lying on his back, the water half a foot above his face, showing the drowned figure as plainly as if it were under glass. Williamson pulls off his coat, tucks up his shirt-sleeves, catches hold of the hand, and up comes the body like a cork. The moment he had the body ashore he knew who it was; left his bag of tools on the bank, and ran as hard as his legs would carry him into the town to give the alarm. The inspector and two constables, and a couple of men with a stretcher belonging to the Town Hall, start out of the High Street and are conducted by Williamson to the body. A crowd gathers about the tail of the procession, the body is put on the stretcher, covered up, and carried to the Town Hall in the sight of a multitude large enough to diffuse the news through the length and breadth of Hanwitch in ten minutes.

So dead Mr. Conway was, if ever a man was dead in this world; and now, the woman told Mrs. Parrot, people were only waiting for the coroner’s inquest, to learn how he came by his death.

But the verdict, however it might run, would be inconclusive, since there were no witnesses to show how Conway fell into the water. But this much was known; that yesterday Conway had called at the “Three Stars” and ordered a fine dinner to be got ready for him, with champagne and the best of wines; and to let the landlord understand that he meant what he said, he pulled out a handful of sovereigns and let them fall into his pocket again, chink! chink! When dinner was done, he left the house intoxicated, and what became of him the “Three Stars” didn’t know; but the “Pine Apple” did, for he came there in the afternoon and squeezed himself behind the bar, made love to the barmaid, drank some tumblers of rum, and got into an abusive argument with an ostler, whose eye he threatened to blacken if he contradicted him again. On which he was turned out.

That was his day’s history, so far as it was recorded in human knowledge. The rest could be guessed; and the public were not slow in explaining their theories. Of course he was drunk, had rolled into the water, and was too senseless to get out again, though the water where he lay was not above two and a half feet deep.

Nobody cared twopence about his death. It gave the shop-people something to talk about until customers dropped in, and then it was, “What’s the next article?” and Conway was forgotten. When a bubble explodes upon the surface of a stream, nothing mourns. The tide rolls on just the same, with sunshine or darkness in its breast, as the case may be; the pikes lose no jot of their voracity, and gudgeons swim into their maws; the minnows jump at the flies. Shall law, commerce, or anything else stop because a drunkard is drowned? Cover him up; let him hide his face until the pale jury come to take a peep; then pop him out of sight in a hole, and get back as fast as we may to dinner.

But there were two persons on whose destiny this man’s death was to exercise an influence as wonderful, and gracious, and beneficial, as though, instead of a dead drunkard, he was a good spirit—an angel charged with a mission of love, sent by God Himself to work out and complete the happiness of the man who had been heavily tried, but who, in his bitterest trial, had never been found wanting.

And I truly think that for such men—men who in their sorrow reverentially bow their heads and say, “God knows, I believe in Him; He shall lead me as a little child”—who murmur not, but, praising their Heavenly Father always, make their actions a profound heroism by obeying His voice in all seasons, not more faithfully in moments of joy than in moments of anguish—for such men we shall seldom err in prophesying a time in their lives when the heat of the day shall be shaded from them, and their burden and their conflict removed. “O man, greatly beloved, go thou thy way till the end; for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of thy days.”

Dolly had asked to be left alone with her child. Deeming Holdsworth a stranger, she had felt the restraint of his presence upon her, deeply as she was moved by his goodness. Her heart ached: misery had mastered her. The mere sense of having found a friend in this her time of piteous need could not suffice her. More was imperative: communion with God, communion with the husband who, she believed, looked down upon her from Heaven. To no mortal eyes could she lay bare the exquisite grief that lacerated her heart; and though she should find no comfort even in the Heaven she turned to, yet her full and poignant misery demanded escape in words and tears, and she asked to be left alone.

Holdsworth entered the room facing his own apartment. This was Mrs. Parrot’s drawing-room. Here she had a piano; here she had some wonderful stuffed birds under glass shades; here she herself sat on Sundays with her mother, when her house was unoccupied.

He struggled to calm himself, that he might master and appreciate all the significance of the position in which he was placed by the sudden death of Conway. But his moods were wild and hurrying; the play of emotion was quick and painful. He saw his wife in her grief; he saw her wrestling, with no eye but her child’s upon her, with the anguish that filled her; he felt her loneliness: he felt the cruel hopelessness that weighed in her heart as lead; he felt, above all, the dreadful sense of degradation which must attend her reflections upon the death of her husband, Conway; upon the wretched, miserable life she had led with him; upon the complete and bitter reversal of the sole end for which she had married him.

The barrier that divided them was gone. Could there be any scruple now to hold him back from her? If there yet lingered one feeling of delicacy to prompt him to delay his confession for a little, until the dead was buried, until something of the horror of the sudden death had yielded to time, should it not be removed by the knowledge of her misery, which he had it in his power to dissipate and turn to gladness? Why should she weep? Why should she feel one instant of pain, when he could change her tears to smiles, her grief to joy?

He stole to the door of the room she was in and listened. He heard her sobbing, and that sound vanquished his last hesitation.

He turned the handle gently and entered. She was on her knees beside the sofa, her arms twined about Nelly, her face buried in the child’s lap. She started, looked at him, and rose slowly to her feet. He approached and stood before her.

“Will you not trust me as a friend?” he said, in a voice a little above a whisper.

She tried to answer him, but her sobs choked her voice. He seated himself and took Nelly on his knee, and, whilst he smoothed the child’s hair, continued: “There is hope, there is comfort for you and this little one. Check your sobs and listen to me. I can give you comfort, for I have known what it is to lose one that is dearer to me than my heart’s blood, to lose her and to find her again. She was my wife, and I left her to go to sea. The ship I sailed in was wrecked, and for many days I lay consumed with hunger and thirst in an open boat, seeing miserable creatures like myself dying around me one by one. And when I was rescued my memory was gone; I could not remember my own name, my home, the wife I had left, the country I had sailed from. But the voice of God one day directed me to leave Australia and go to England. I reached London, and there a man spoke to me of Hanwitch, a name familiar and dear to me for my wife’s sake. And when I came to Southbourne, the beloved old village gave me back my memory. I knew whom I had come to seek, and what I had lost. They told me that my wife thought me dead, and was married and lived with my child here—in this road—in that house yonder! O Dolly! O wife!”

Her sweet sad face, as he continued speaking, had been slowly upturning to his, and, when their eyes met, he put the little child upon the floor and stretched out his arms, crying, “O Dolly! O wife!”

But she!

There was a look of petrifaction, stranger and more awful even than death, upon her face; her eyes glared, her lips were parted: and to have seen her thus stirless, thus white, thus staring, thus breathless, you would have said that she was dead, even as she sat there.

Then the life leaped into her, she started from the sofa with a loud hysterical laugh, and flung herself on her knees before him, crying, “John! John!”

“Dolly!”

“John! John!” she repeated; and she brought his hand to her eyes, and stared at it; and then grasped his knees and raised her face to his, talking to herself in hurried, inaudible whispers, and fixing a piercing gaze upon him.

“John! John!” she cried out again.

He put his arms around her, and would have pressed her to his heart, but she kept herself away with her hand against his breast, preserving that keen, unwinking, steadfast, wonderful gaze.

“Do you not know me, Dolly?” he cried. “Look at me closely; hear my voice! hear me tell you of the old dear times! We were to meet in the summer, do you remember, Dolly? and we were never more to part; and you were to keep a calendar and mark off the days. O God! what weary days—what endless days to both of us! And do you remember the walks we took the day before we parted, down by the river, where I sat and cried in your arms because the sight of your sorrow broke me down and I had no more comfort to give you?”

But still she would not let him clasp her. Still she kept her hand pressed against him, and her eyes, now growing wild and unreal with fear, upon his face.

“O God!” he cried in his agony. “Will she not know me? Has my secret come upon her too suddenly? Darling! darling! I could not see your tears, I could not hear your sobs, I could not feel the desolation and misery that was breaking your heart, and still keep myself hidden from you. Oh, bitter has the trial been to watch you—to know you to be mine—to see my little child—and to be as a stranger to you! Call me John! Call me husband! Speak to me, Dolly! Tell me that no change that pain and suffering have made in me can disguise me from your love!”

She released herself from his arms and sprang a yard away from him; and there, as she stood transfixed, watching him with large, steady eyes, her dishevelled hair about her forehead, her hands clenched, and her head inclined forward, she looked like a marble figure of madness, her habiliments carven to the life.

She had thought him dead. For many, many months she had prayed to him as one in Heaven. Did she know him now? Yes, but as a dead man might be known—with unspeakable fear and unspeakable love; with the horror of superstition and the passion of deep affection.

Thus they stood for awhile, their eyes fixed on each other: then a heavy sigh broke from him; he turned to his child.

“Nelly, my little one, come to me! I am thy father!”

He extended his arms. The action and words broke the spell. With an indescribable cry Dolly fled to him.

“John! John!” she murmured. “My husband—my very own! Come back to me from the dead! Come back to me after all this cruel waiting!”

And then she broke from him again, and watched him yet again from a distance, then ran and flung her arms around his neck, crying, “John! John! Why did you not come to me before? why did you not come to me before?”

The hot tears were streaming down his cheeks now: he held her tightly, saying, in broken tones:

“We are together—never more to part. I am thy very husband! I have loved thee always! Oh, God be praised, the merciful God be praised for this!”

“Nelly, Nelly!” she cried; and she ran from him and seized her child, and held her up.

“She is ours, John! our little one! We have found papa, Nelly! There he is! There is Nelly’s papa! God has given him back to us—we were broken-hearted just now ... O husband! ... husband!”

She broke down; a dangerous excitement had up to this moment sustained her. She sank into a weeping, sobbing, fainting woman in a moment; but his arms received her, his breast pillowed her, and there she rested for many minutes, with no sound to break the holy silence that filled the room but his deep quivering sobs.

When we peep at them again, a half-hour has passed, and the wife is seated near the husband with her arm around him; and the child is on her father’s knee. The fear that threw a film upon the exquisite emotions of the girl has passed; she is listening to his story, interrupting him often with quick exclamations of distress, then fondling him and listening again, vibrating with eagerness, with love, with amazement, which makes her pale face kaleidoscopic with expression. He is telling her of his sufferings in the boat, of his rescue, of his friends in Australia, of his return to England, of his arrival at Southbourne; and as she hears him tell the story of his noble unselfishness—how, to save her from the sorrow and the shame that must have attended his disclosure, if made while Conway lived, he held his secret, but could not keep his love from going forth to his child—she knows that he has brought back to her the same grand heart he took with him five years ago; the same magnanimous qualities; the same pure impulses; the same heroical capacity of self-sacrifice.

And then she tells him her story; and now it is for him to soothe her with the love that has transformed his face and made it beautiful with a deeper and subtler beauty than it had ever before worn. For, as she recurs to those piteous times of her distress, her tears gush forth afresh and her eyes grow wild, as though she did not believe in the happiness that had come to her at last.

I see them sitting in that room while the bright morning sunshine pours upon the window and floods the floor with its radiance; I hear the birds singing merrily in the garden, and the cosy chucking of the hens and the sound of the fresh sweet wind as it sweeps through the pear-trees and sends the red-edged leaves rustling to the ground.

I see the child’s large deep eyes wandering from father to mother, from mother to father, with the small face busy with the unformed consciousness that struggles in it.

I see the mother careworn and pale, but with the light of rapture on her face that discloses all its secret sweetness, watching, ever watching, with soft eyes shining with happy tears, the dear one whose arm is around her.

I see Holdsworth with the patches of gray upon his hair, his sunken cheeks and bowed figure symbolising while his life shall hold the unspeakable sufferings of mind and body he has known since we first beheld him. I see him, with the calmness of perfect joy mellowing his eyes, and enriching his face with a colour that owes its lustre to the spirit, so that it shall be there in darkness and in sunshine, holding his wife to his heart, often pressing his lips to his child, often glancing upwards with looks of ineffable gratitude; and I think of those two lines which Goldsmith says are worth a million:

“I have been young, and now am old: yet never saw I the righteous man forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.”

A knock falls upon the door; the door is opened, and enter Mrs. Parrot. Does she start dramatically? I promise you there is more genuine astonishment conveyed by the little jump she gives, as she falls back a step and then stands staring, than in any movement designed to express wonderment you will see performed on the stage.

So the mystery is solved, is it? So her lodger isn’t a gentleman after all, but an insidious man who, under pretence of liking Nelly’s company, has been paying attention to mamma! and now, with Conway’s body lying in the Town Hall, dead only a few hours, is actually caressing the widow in Mrs. Parrot’s respectable house!

Holdsworth and Dolly exchange glances, and Dolly hangs her head with a look of confusion on her face (and well she may, thinks Mrs. Parrot) as Holdsworth puts Nelly down and rises.

“I am really sorry to introod,” says Mrs. Parrot haughtily, “but my motive for knockin’, sir, was to inquire when you would like your breakfast sarved?”

“We’ll talk of that in a moment,” answers Holdsworth. “I have something to say to you. This lady is my wife!”

“I beg your parding,” says Mrs. Parrot, growing very pale.

“My wife, Mrs. Parrot. You have heard of Mr. Holdsworth who went to sea and was drowned? He was not drowned. I am Mr. Holdsworth!”

“You!”

She tottered, ran forward, grasped the table, and shrieked, “You!”

“Yes, Mrs. Parrot,” exclaimed Dolly, “this is John—my own darling husband, who I thought was dead.”

“And do you mean to say, sir,” gasped Mrs. Parrot hysterically, “that you knew who you was yourself all the time?”

“All the time that I have lodged with you.”

“An’ you’ve seen your lawful wife day arter day without speakin’ of it, or sayin’ who you was?”

“Yes.”

“Because,” stammered Mrs. Parrot, still clinging to the table, “because you says that a wife can’t have two husbands, and so you hid yourself that you might spare her feelin’s?”

“Yes, that is why, Mrs. Parrot,” cried Dolly.

Mrs. Parrot took a deep breath, and then, to the amazement of the others, burst into tears.

“Oh, sir, I can’t help it,” she sobbed. “I niver did hear in all my life of such beautiful conduct. Niver .. And is this your child?... Why, of course it is! Oh dear! who’d ha’ thought that any mortal man could ha’ acted so nobly! Oh, sir, let me shake your hand.”

She not only shook his hand, but actually fell against him and kissed him; and then, overwhelmed with her effrontery and her feelings, was rushing out of the room, when Holdsworth stopped her.

“One moment, dear Mrs. Parrot. You are the only person in Hanwitch—in the world I may say—who knows our secret. Will you keep it? We have many reasons for not wishing it known.”

“I will, sir, I promise you,” blubbered the honest woman, “since you ask me; but if it wasn’t for that I’d go and spread the noos everywhere, I would, for I niver heerd of such beautiful conduct before, niver, in sarmons or anywheers else; and it ’ud be the makin’ of many a man to be told of it. God bless you both, I’m sure. God bless you, little gal. You’ve found a good father—a rare good father!”

And out she ran choking.

So the curtain falls, for the end has come. No need to raise it again, for you who have sat so kindly and patiently through this little drama must know as well as I what will become of the two chief characters and their little one when they have made their bow and withdrawn. Australia is before them, with generous friends to welcome them to their new home, and listen with interest and tenderness to their strange story of bitter separation, and sweet and sacred reunion.

Enough has been written; the quill that has driven these creations to this point is but a stump; the hand that holds it is tired; the companionship of the shadows which have kept me company is broken. What fitter time, then, than now to say good-bye?