Christine's missing husband was taking shape as a myth among the surrounding residents;but he was still believed in as corporeally imminent by Christine herself,and also,in a milder degree,by Nicholas.For a curious unconsciousness of the long lapse of time since his revelation of himself seemed to affect the pair.There had been no passing events to serve as chronological milestones,and the evening on which she had kept supper waiting for him still loomed out with startling nearness in their retrospects.
In the seventeenth pensive year of this their parallel march towards the common bourne,a labourer came in a hurry one day to Nicholas's house and brought strange tidings.The present owner of Froom-Everard--a non-resident--had been improving his property in sundry ways,and one of these was by dredging the stream which,in the course of years,had become choked with mud and weeds in its passage through the Sallows.The process necessitated a reconstruction of the waterfall.When the river had been pumped dry for this purpose,the skeleton of a man had been found jammed among the piles supporting the edge of the fall.Every particle of his flesh and clothing had been eaten by fishes or abraded to nothing by the water,but the relics of a gold watch remained,and on the inside of the case was engraved the name of the maker of her husband's watch,which she well remembered.
Nicholas,deeply agitated,hastened down to the place and examined the remains attentively,afterwards going across to Christine,and breaking the discovery to her.She would not come to view the skeleton,which lay extended on the grass,not a finger or toe-bone missing,so neatly had the aquatic operators done their work.
Conjecture was directed to the question how Bellston had got there;and conjecture alone could give an explanation.
It was supposed that,on his way to call upon her,he had taken a short cut through the grounds,with which he was naturally very familiar,and coming to the fall under the trees had expected to find there the plank which,during his occupancy of the premises with Christine and her father,he had placed there for crossing into the meads on the other side instead of wading across as Nicholas had done.Before discovering its removal he had probably overbalanced himself,and was thus precipitated into the cascade,the piles beneath the descending current wedging him between them like the prongs of a pitchfork,and effectually preventing the rising of his body,over which the weeds grew.Such was the reasonable supposition concerning the discovery;but proof was never forthcoming.
'To think,'said Nicholas,when the remains had been decently interred,and he was again sitting with Christine--though not beside the waterfall--'to think how we visited him!How we sat over him,hours and hours,gazing at him,bewailing our fate,when all the time he was ironically hissing at us from the spot,in an unknown tongue,that we could marry if we chose!'
She echoed the sentiment with a sigh.
'I have strange fancies,'she said.'I suppose it MUST have been my husband who came back,and not some other man.'
Nicholas felt that there was little doubt.'Besides--the skeleton,'
he said.
'Yes ...If it could not have been another person's--but no,of course it was he.''You might have married me on the day we had fixed,and there would have been no impediment.You would now have been seventeen years my wife,and we might have had tall sons and daughters.''It might have been so,'she murmured.
'Well--is it still better late than never?'The question was one which had become complicated by the increasing years of each.Their wills were somewhat enfeebled now,their hearts sickened of tender enterprise by hope too long deferred.Having postponed the consideration of their course till a year after the interment of Bellston,each seemed less disposed than formerly to take it up again.
'Is it worth while,after so many years?'she said to him.'We are fairly happy as we are--perhaps happier than we should be in any other relation,seeing what old people we have grown.The weight is gone from our lives;the shadow no longer divides us:then let us be joyful together as we are,dearest Nic,in the days of our vanity;and With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.'He fell in with these views of hers to some extent.But occasionally he ventured to urge her to reconsider the case,though he spoke not with the fervour of his earlier years.
Autumn,1887.
