HUSBAND AND WIFE.
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?
POSTSCRIPT.
I must claim the reader’s indulgence while I speak for a moment of that
portion of the foregoing narrative which refers to the hero’s loss of
memory.
That loss of memory has been brought about by trials and sufferings
such as I have attempted to depict in the early chapters of this
narrative, is too certain to make it necessary that I should adduce
instances (which are very readily procured) as proof. That such loss
has lasted, not for months only, but for years, will be seen by the
following anecdote, which suggested this story, and which I extract
from the _Noon Gazette_ of July, 1772:--
“Last Sunday died at Winchelsea a character of whom a correspondent,
a gentleman distinguished both by his parts and benevolence, has
obligingly furnished us with the following account: That his name
was _William Stephens_, and that he was a mariner, who, many years
since, was pressed from his home to serve on board His Majesty’s ship
of war _The Vapour_; that he was then married but two weeks; that
whilst cruising off the Portugal coast _The Vapour_ was wrecked, and
_Stephens_, with some others, saved his life by clinging to a portion
of the wreck, in which condition they languished near three days, and
were then rescued by a French merchant-man, who carried them into
_Bordeau_ (_sic_): that on _Stephens_ being questioned, he was found
to have lost his memory, on which he was sent into England, and was
hired as porter by _Mr. Hudson_, of the _York Inn_, in or near to
_Folkestone_, in _Kent_, where he remained for two years in entire
ignorance of his past, until, his memory returning, he set off for
Winchelsea on foot, and arrived to find his wife married to one _Eel_,
a cobbler, whose life Stephens threatened if he did not restore him his
_Nancy_. This the cobbler did, and so the matter ended. It occasioned
much gossip, and to the end of his days Mr. Stephens (who settled down
as a carpenter, having lost all relish for the sea) was regarded with
curiosity, and had to the houses of the neighbouring gentry, whom his
singular story never failed to divert.”
There are on record many instances of loss of memory, occasioned by
various means. In some cases the deprivation has been complete, and
the restoration sudden, and resembling an abrupt revelation. In other
instances it has been accompanied by faint, glimmering, haunting
reminiscences, creating indescribable anxiety, but growing up suddenly
into a sound and permanent recovery.
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Transcriber's Note
The following apparent errors have been corrected:
p. 92 "they’d" changed to "They’d"
p. 132 "hissing spluttering" changed to "hissing, spluttering"
p. 139 "disappear" changed to "disappear."
p. 154 "Do they live?”" changed to "“Do they live?”"
p. 177 "Sherman" changed to "Sherman:"
p. 192 "to me?”" changed to "to me?"
p. 231 "channel" changed to "channel."
p. 259 "soiltude" changed to "solitude"
p. 279 "“Tut! tut!’" changed to "“Tut! tut!”"
p. 287 "They’re" changed to "“They’re"
p. 313 "pear-tears" changed to "pear-trees"
p. 316 "sufferings and" changed to "sufferings; and"
p. 360 "missis,”" changed to "missis,"
Punctuation and spelling have otherwise been kept as printed. In
particular, the following are used inconsistently:
athwartships and athwart-ships
bedroom and bed-room
foretopmast and fore-topmast
hankerchief and handkerchief
heartrending and heart-rending
inboard and in-board
quarterdeck and quarter-deck
seafaring and sea-faring
signboard and sign-board
topsail and top-sail
End of Project Gutenberg's John Holdsworth, by William Clark Russell