"And who are you, to meddle with us and our arrangements?" cried Mrs Fred. "My husband is in his own house. You would not take us into your house, Mr Edward——"

"Hold your confounded tongue, I tell you," said Fred, slowly gathering himself off the sofa. "You're a pretty fellow to speak, you are—that wouldn't lend a fellow a shilling to keep him from ruin. You had better remember where you are—in—in—as Susan says—my own house."

What outbreak of contempt might have come from the doctor's lips was fortunately lost at that moment, since a louder outcry than usual from outside, the screams of the children, and the wailings of the landlady, at length roused the mother to the length of going to the door. When she was gone the two brothers eyed each other threateningly. Fred, not without a certain intolerable sensation of shame, rose to knock his pipe upon the mantel-shelf among Nettie's pretty girlish ornaments. Somehow these aggravations of insult to her image drove Edward Rider desperate. He laid his hand on Fred's shoulder and shook him violently.

"Wake up! can't you wake up and see what you're about?" cried the doctor; "can't you show a little respect for her, at least? Look here, Fred Rider. I knew you could do anything shabby or mean, if it suited you. I knew you would consent to hang a burden on anybody that would take such a weight upon them; but, by Jove, I did not think you had the heart to insult her, after all. A man can't stand by and see that. Clear off your pipe and your brandy before she comes, or, as sure as I am made of flesh and blood, and not cast-iron——"

The doctor's threats were interrupted by the entrance of a woeful procession. Into the presence of the two brothers, eyeing each other with such lowering faces, Mrs Smith and her husband entered, carrying between them, with solemn looks, the unconscious Freddy, while his mother followed screaming, and his little brother and sister staring open-mouthed. It was some relief to the doctor's feelings, in the excitement of the moment, to rush to the window and throw it open, admitting a gust of chill December air, penetrating enough to search to the bones of the fireside loiterer. Fred was father enough to turn with anxiety to the child. But his trembling nervous fingers and bemused eyes could make nothing of the "case" thus so suddenly brought before him. He turned fiercely and vacantly upon his wife and demanded why everything was suffered to go to ruin when Nettie was away. Mrs Fred, screaming and terrified, began to recriminate. The pallid figure of the child on the table gave a certain air of squalid tragedy to the scene, to the sordid miseries of which the night air, coming in with a rush, chilling the group in their indoor dresses, and flickering the flame of the candles, added one other point of dismal accumulation. The child had dropped from his swing on the door, and was stunned with the fall. Both father and mother thought him dead in the excitement of the moment; but the accustomed and cooler eyes of the doctor perceived the true state of affairs. Edward Rider forgot his disgust and rage as he devoted himself to the little patient—not that he loved the child more, but that the habits of his profession were strong upon him. When he had succeeded in restoring the little fellow to consciousness, the doctor threw a professional glance of inquiry round him to see who could be trusted. Then, with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders and impatient exclamation, turned back to the table. Fred, shivering and helpless, stood by the fire, uttering confused directions, and rubbing miserably his own flabby hands; his wife, crying, scolding, and incapable, stood at the end of the table, offering no assistance, but wondering when ever Nettie would come back. Dr Rider took the patient in his arms, and, beckoning Mrs Smith to go before him, carried the child up-stairs. There the good mistress of the cottage listened to all his directions, and promised devoutly to obey him—to keep the room quiet, if she could—to tell everything he had said to Miss Nettie. He did not enter the desecrated parlour again when he came down-stairs. What was the use? He was glad to go out and escape the chance of a fraternal struggle. He went out into the cold night air all thrilling with excitement and agitation. It was not wonderful that a scene so strange should rouse many impatient thoughts in the young man's mind; but the most intolerable of these had the most trifling origin. That Fred should have smoked his pipe in Nettie's sitting-room, when she was out of the way, was not, after all, considering Fred's character, a very wonderful circumstance, but it exasperated his brother to a greater extent than much more important matters. That aggravation entirely overpowered Edward Rider's self-control. It seemed the culmination of all the wrong and silent insolent injury inflicted upon Nettie. He saw the stain of those ashes on the little mantel-shelf, the rolling cloud of smoke in the room, and indignation burned yet higher and higher in his breast.

When the current of his thoughts was suddenly checked and stimulated by the sound of voices on the road. Voices, one of which was Nettie's, one the lofty clerical accents of the Rev. Frank Wentworth. The two were walking arm-in-arm in very confidential colloquy, as the startled and jealous doctor imagined. What were these two figures doing together upon the road? why did Nettie lean on the arm of that handsome young clerical coxcomb? It did not occur to Dr Rider that the night was extremely dark, and that Nettie had been at Miss Wodehouse's, where the curate of St Roque's was a perpetual visitor. With a mortified and jealous pang, totally unreasonable and totally irresistible, Edward Rider, only a moment before so fantastically extreme in Nettie's defence—in the defence of Nettie's very "image" from all vulgar contact and desecration—strode past Nettie now without word or sign of recognition. She did not see him, as he observed with a throbbing heart; she was talking to young Mr Wentworth with all the haste and eagerness which Dr Rider had found so captivating. She never suspected who it was that brushed past her with breathless, exasperated impatience in the darkness. They went on past him, talking, laughing lightly, under the veil of night, quite indifferent as to who heard them, though the doctor did not think of that. He, unreasonably affronted, galled, and mortified, turned his back upon that house, which at this present disappointed moment did not contain one single thing or person which he could dwell on with pleasure; and, a hundred times more discontented, fatigued, and worn out—full of disgust with things in general, and himself and his own fate in particular—than he had been when he set out from the other end of Carlingford, went sulkily, and at a terrific pace, past the long garden-walls of Grange Lane, and all Dr Marjoribanks's genteel patients. When he had reached home, he found a message waiting him from an urgent invalid whose "case" kept the unhappy doctor up and busy for half the night. Such was the manner in which Edward Rider got through the evening—the one wonderful exceptional evening when Nettie went out to tea.



CHAPTER VII.

With the dawn of the morning, however, and the few hours' hurried rest which Edward Rider was able to snatch after his labours, other sentiments arose in his mind. It was quite necessary to see how the unlucky child was at St Roque's Cottage, and perhaps what Nettie thought of all that had occurred during her absence. The doctor bethought himself, too, that there might be very natural explanations of the curate's escort. How else, to be sure, could she have got home on a dark winter night through that lonely road? Perhaps, if he himself had been less impatient and ill-tempered, it might have fallen to his lot to supersede Mr Wentworth. On the whole, Dr Rider decided that it was necessary to make one of his earliest calls this morning at St Roque's.

It was a foggy frosty day, brightened with a red sun, which threw wintry ruddy rays across the mist. Dr Rider drew up somewhat nervously at the little Gothic porch. He was taken up-stairs to the bedroom where little Freddy lay moaning and feverish. A distant hum came from the other children in the parlour, the door of which, however, was fast closed this morning; and Nettie herself sat by the child's bedside—Nettie, all alert and vigorous, in the little room, which, homely as its aspect was, displayed even to the doctor's uninitiated glance a fastidious nicety of arrangement which made it harmonious with that little figure. Nettie was singing childish songs to solace the little invalid's retirement—the "fox that jumped up on a moonlight night," the "frog that would a-wooing go"—classic ditties of which the nursery never tires. The doctor, who was not aware that music was one of Nettie's accomplishments, stopped on the stairs to listen. And indeed she had not a great deal of voice, and still less science, Nettie's life having been too entirely occupied to leave much room for such studies. Yet somehow her song touched the doctor's heart. He forgave her entirely that walk with the curate. He went in softly, less impatient than usual with her crazy Quixotism. A child—a sick child especially—was a bearable adjunct to the picture. A woman could be forgiven for such necessary ministrations—actually, to tell the truth, could be forgiven most follies she might happen to do, when one could have her to one's self, without the intervention of such dreary accessories as Susan and Fred.

"Thank you very much for your care of this child last night, Dr Edward," said the prompt Nettie, laying down the large piece of very plain needlework in her hand. "I always said, though you don't make a fuss about the children, that you were quite to be relied on if anything should happen. He is feverish, but he is not ill; and so long as I tell him stories and keep beside him, Freddy is the best child in the world."

"More people than Freddy might be willing to be ill under such conditions," said the doctor, complimentary, but rueful. He felt his patient's pulse, and prescribed for him with a softened voice. He lingered and looked round the room, which was very bare, yet somehow was not like any of the rooms in his house. How was it?—there were no ornaments about, excepting that tiny little figure with the little head overladen with such a wealth of beautiful hair. The doctor sighed. In this little sacred spot, where she was so clearly at her post—or at least at a post which no other was at hand to take—he could not even resent Nettie's self-sacrifice. He gave in to her here, with a sigh. "Since you think he is not ill to speak of, will you drive me and the other children into Carlingford, Dr Edward?" said the courageous Nettie. "It will be a pleasure for them, you know, and I shall be able to do my business without losing so much time; besides, I want to talk to you; I can see you will in your eyes. Go down, please, and talk to Mr Smith, who has got a headache or something, and wants to see you. You need not trouble yourself seeing Susan, who is cross, of course. I don't wonder at her being cross; it must be very shocking, you know, to feel one's self of no use, whatever happens. Thank you; I shall be ready in a minute, as soon as you have done talking to Mr Smith."

The doctor went down obediently, and in an unusual flutter of pleasure, to see the master of the cottage—totally indifferent to the ailments of the virtuous Smith, and thinking only of Nettie and that drive to Carlingford, where, indeed, he should not have gone, had he considered the merely abstract matters of business and duty, which led him entirely in a different direction. He was somewhat rudely recalled to himself when he went down-stairs. Smith had no headache, but only wanted to speak to the doctor about his lodgers, whose "ways" were sadly discomposing to himself and his wife.

"You saw how it was yourself last night, sir," said the troubled landlady. "Them hangings—you know the smoke goes through and through them. After leaving all the windows open this frosty morning, and a draught enough to give you your death, the place smells like I don't know what. If it wasn't for Miss I wouldn't put up with it for a day; and the gentleman's own room, doctor; if you was just to go in and see it—just put your head in and say good morning—you'd believe me."

"I know all about it," said the doctor; "but Miss Underwood, Mrs Smith—?"

"There's where it is, sir," said the landlady. "I can't find it in my heart to say a word to Miss. To see how she do manage them all, to be sure! but for all that, doctor, it stands to reason as one can't spoil one's lodgings for a family as may be gone to-morrow—not except it's considered in the rent. It's more natural-like to speak to a gentleman like you as knows the world, than to a young lady as one hasn't a word to say against—the handiest, liveliest, managingest! Ah, doctor, she'd make a deal different a wife from her sister, that young lady would! though it isn't my part to say nothink, considering all things, and that you're relations, like; but Smith and me are both o' one mind about it, Dr Rider—unless it's considered in the rent, or the gentleman drops smoking, or——"

"I hear Miss Underwood coming down-stairs," cried young Rider. "Next time I come we'll arrange it all. But not a word to her, remember—not a syllable; and go up-stairs and look after that poor child, there's a good soul—she trusts you while she is gone, and so do I. There, there! another time. I'll take the responsibility of satisfying you, Mrs Smith," said the doctor, in a prodigious hurry, ready to promise anything in this incautious moment, and bolting out of their little dark back-room, which the local architect's mullions had converted into a kind of condemned cell. Nettie stood at the door, all ready for her expedition to Carlingford, with her two children, open-eyed and calmly inquisitive, but no longer noisy. Mrs Fred was standing sulky at the parlour door. The doctor took off his hat to her as he helped Nettie into the front seat of the drag, but took care not to approach nearer. The children were packed in behind, under charge of the little groom, and, with an exhilarating sensation of lawlessness in the present pleasure, Dr Rider turned his back upon his duty and the patient who expected him a mile on the other side of St Roque's, and drove, not too rapidly, into Carlingford.

"Mrs Smith was talking to you of us," said Nettie, flashing her penetrating eyes upon the confused doctor. "I know she was—I could see it in her face this morning, and in yours when you came out of her room. Dreadful little dungeon, is it not? I wonder what the man meant, to build such a place. Do they want to turn us out, Dr Edward, or do they want more rent? I am not surprised, I am sure, after last night. Was it not odious of Fred to go and smoke in the parlour, the only place we can have tidy? But it is no use speaking to him, you know; nor to Susan either, for that matter. Married people do stand up for each other so when you say a word, however they may fight between themselves. But is it more rent they want, Dr Edward? for I can't afford more rent."

"It is an abominable shame—you oughtn't to afford anything. It is too dreadful to think of!" cried the angry doctor, involuntarily touching his horse with his whip in the energy of the moment, though he was indeed in no hurry to reach Carlingford.

"Hush," said Nettie, lifting her tiny hand as though to put it to his incautious mouth, which, indeed, the doctor would not have objected to. "We shall quarrel on that subject if you say anything more, so it is better to stop at once. Nobody has a right to interfere with me; this is my business, and no one else has anything to do with it."

"You mistake," cried the doctor, startled out of all his prudences; "it ought to be my business quite as much as it is yours."

Nettie looked at him with a certain careless scorn of the inferior creature—"Ah, yes, I daresay; but then you are only a man," said Nettie; and the girl elevated that pretty drooping head, and flashed a whole torrent of brilliant reflections over the sombre figure beside her. He felt himself glow under the sudden radiance of the look. To fancy this wilful imperious creature a meek self-sacrificing heroine, was equally absurd and impossible. Was there any virtue at all in that dauntless enterprise of hers? or was it simple determination to have her own way?

"But not to quarrel," said Nettie; "for indeed you are the only person in the world I can say a word to about the way things are going on," she added with a certain momentary softening of voice and twinkling of her eyelid, as if some moisture had gathered there. "I think Fred is in a bad way. I think he is muddling his brains with that dreadful life he leads. To think of a man that could do hundreds of things living like that! A woman, you know, can only do a thing or two here and there. If it were not wicked to say so, one would think almost that Providence forgot sometimes, and put the wrong spirit into a body that did not belong to it. Don't you think so? When I look at Fred I declare sometimes I could take hold of him and give him a good shake, and ask him what he means; and then it all seems so useless the very idea of expecting him to feel anything. I want to know what you said to him last night."

"Not much—not half so much as I meant to have said. To see him polluting your room!" cried the doctor, with a flush growing on his face, and breaking off abruptly, not quite able to conclude the sentence. Nettie gave him a shy upward glance, and grew suddenly crimson too.

"Did you mind?" said Nettie, with a momentary timidity, against the unexpected charm of which the unhappy doctor fell defenceless; then holding out her tiny hand to him with shy frankness, "Thank you for caring so much for me," said the dauntless little girl, resolute not to perceive anything which could not be fully spoken out.

"Caring so much! I must speak to you; we can't go on like this, Nettie," cried the doctor, holding fast the little unfaltering hand.

"Oh, here is the place I am going to. Please don't; people might not understand,—though we are brother and sister in a kind of a way," said the little Australian. "Please, Dr Edward, we must get out here."

For a moment Edward Rider hesitated with a wild intention of urging his horse forward and carrying her off anywhere, out of Carlingford, out of duty and practice and responsibility, and all those galling restraints of life which the noonday light and everyday sounds about brought in with so entire a discord to break up this momentary hallucination. For half a minute only the doctor lingered on the borders of that fairyland where time and duty are not, but only one ineffable moment always passing, never past. Then with a long sigh, the breath of which dispersed a whole gleaming world of visionary delights, he got down doggedly on the commonplace pavement. Ah, what a descent it was! the moment his foot touched these vulgar flags, he was once more the hard-worked doctor at everybody's command, with a fretful patient waiting for him a mile beyond St Roque's; and all these dazzling moments, which had rapt the unfortunate young fellow into another world, were so much time lost to the prose figure that had to help Nettie down and let her go, and betake himself soberly about his own business. Perhaps Nettie felt it a little disenchanting too, when she was dropped upon the bare street, and went into the common shop, and saw the doctor's drag flash off in the red frosty sunshine with a darting movement of exasperation and impatience on the part of its aggravated driver. For once in her life Nettie felt disposed to be impatient with the children, who, unceremoniously ejected from their perch behind, were not in the most obedient frame of mind. The two young people possibly agreed in their mutual sentiment of disgust with other people's society just at that moment. However, there was no help for it. Dr Rider galloped his horse to his patient's door, and took it out of that unlucky individual, who was fortunately strong enough to be able to bear sharp practice. Nettie, when she had made her little purchases, walked home smartly to sing "The fox jumped up on a moonlight night" to little Freddy in his bedroom. This kind of interlude, however, as all young men and maidens ought to be aware, answers much better in the evening, when a natural interval of dreams interposes between it and the common work of existence. Nettie decided, thinking on it, that this would never do. She made up her mind not to have any more drives with the doctor. There was no telling what such proceedings might lead to. They were distinctly incompatible with the more serious business of her life.



CHAPTER VIII.

Such a parting, however, is sadly apt to lead to future meetings. Notwithstanding his smouldering quarrel with Fred, which was always ready to burst out afresh, Dr Rider would not give up coming to St Roque's. He came to some clandestine arrangement with Mrs Smith, of which nobody ever was aware, and which he himself was rather ashamed of than otherwise; and he attended Freddy with the most dutiful exactness till the child was quite restored. But all this time Nettie put on a coat of armour, and looked so thoroughly unlike herself in her unusual reserve and propriety, that the doctor was heartily discouraged, and could go no further. Besides, it would not be positively correct to assert that—though he would gladly have carried her off in the drag anywhere, to the end of the world, in the enchantment of the moment—he was just as ready to propose setting up a new household, with Fred and his family hanging on to it as natural dependants. That was a step the doctor was not prepared for. Some people are compelled to take the prose concerns of life into full consideration even when they are in love, and Edward Rider was one of these unfortunate individuals. The boldness which puts everything to the touch to gain or lose was not in this young man. He had been put to hard encounters enough in his day, and had learned to trust little to chance or good fortune. He did not possess the boldness which disarms an adverse fate, nor that confidence in his own powers which smooths down wounded pride, and accounts even for failure. He was, perhaps it is only right to say, not very capable of heroism: but he was capable of seeing the lack of the heroic in his own composition, and of feeling bitterly his own self-reproaches, and the remarks of the world, which is always so ready to taunt the very cowardice it creates. After that moment in which he could have dared anything for her and with her, it is sad to be obliged to admit that perhaps Dr Edward too, like Nettie, withdrew a little from that climax of feeling. Not that his heart grew colder or his sentiments changed; but only that, in sight of the inevitable result, the poor young fellow paused and pondered, obeying the necessity of his nature. People who jump at conclusions, if they have to bear the consequences of folly often enough, are at least spared those preliminary heartaches. Dr Rider, eager as love and youth could make him, was yet incapable of shutting his eyes to the precipice at his feet. That he despised himself for doing so, did not make the matter easier. These were the limits of his nature, and beyond them he could not pass.

Accordingly matters went on in this dangerous fashion for many weeks longer. The fire smouldered, strengthening its pent-up flames. Day by day malicious sprites of thought went out behind Dr Rider in his drag, leading him into the wildest calculations, the most painful complication of schemes. If Fred and his family could only be persuaded to return to Australia, his brother thought—if any bribe within Edward's means could tempt the ruined man to such a step; and when he was there, why there was Providence to take care of the helpless unlovely household, and necessity might compel the wretched father to work for his children. Such were the vain projects that revolved and fermented through the doctor's agitated brain as he went among his patients. Luckily he had a very favourable and well-disposed lot of sick people at that crisis—they all got well in spite of the doctor, and gave their own special cases and his anxiety all the credit for his grave looks; and all these half-finished streets and rough new roads in the east end of Carlingford were sown thick with the bootless suggestions of Dr Rider's love and fears. The crop did not show upon the vulgar soil, but gave lurking associations to every half-built street corner which he passed in his rounds many a day after, and served at this present momentous era to confuse doubly the chaos of his thoughts.

At last one night the crisis came. Spring had begun to show faintly in the lengthening days—spring, that so often belies itself, and comes with a serpent's tooth. Dr Rider on that particular day had met Dr Marjoribanks at some meeting convened in the interests of Carlingford. The old physician had been very gracious and cordial to the young one—had spoken of his own declining health, of his possible retirement, of the excellent prospects which a rising young man in their profession had in Carlingford; and, finally, had asked Dr Rider to go with him next day to see an interesting patient, and advise as to the treatment of the case.

The young doctor was more pleased than he could or would have told any one; and, with a natural impulse, seized the earliest moment to direct his steps towards St Roque's.

It was twilight when Dr Edward went down the long and rather tiresome line of Grange Lane. These garden-walls, so delicious in their bowery retirements within, were not interesting outside to the pedestrian. But the doctor's attention was so speedily riveted on two figures eagerly talking near Mr Wodehouse's garden-door, that the long sweep of wall seemed but a single step to him as he hurried along. Those two figures were unquestionably Nettie for one, and Mr Wentworth for another. Handsome young coxcomb, with all his Puseyitical pretences! Was Lucy Wodehouse not enough for him, that he must have Nettie too? Dr Rider hurried forward to interrupt that meeting. He was actually turning with her, walking slowly back again the very way he had just come! Edward's blood boiled in his impatient veins. He swept along in a whirlwind of sudden wrath. When he came up to them Nettie was talking low, and the curate's lofty head was bent to hear her in a manner which, it is probable, Lucy Wodehouse would no more have admired than Edward Rider. They came to a sudden pause when he joined them, in that particular conversation. The doctor's dread civility did not improve matters. Without asking himself what cause he had, this amiable young man plunged into the wildest jealousy without pause or interval. He bestowed upon Nettie the most cutting looks, the most overwhelming politeness. When the three had marched solemnly abreast down the road for some few minutes, the curate, perhaps with an intuition of fellow-feeling, perceiving how the matter was, stopped short and said good-bye. "I will make inquiries, and let you know next time I pass the cottage," said Mr Wentworth; and he and the doctor took off their hats, not without deadly thoughts on one side at least. When the young clergyman left them, Nettie and her sulky cavalier went on in silence. That intrepid little woman was not in her usual spirits, it appeared. She had no talk for Dr Edward any more than he had for her. She carried a multiplicity of little parcels in her hands, and walked with a certain air of fatigue. The doctor walked on, stealing silent looks at her, till his heart melted. But the melting of his heart displayed itself characteristically. He would not come down from his elevation without suffering her to see how angry he was.

"I fear I interrupted an interesting conversation—I that have so little hope of equalling Mr Wentworth. Priests are always infallible with women," said the doctor, betraying his ill-temper in vulgar sneers.

"I was asking him for some one to teach the boys," said Nettie. "Johnnie ought to have his education attended to now. Mr Wentworth is very good-tempered, Dr Edward. Though he was just going to knock at Miss Wodehouse's door when I met him, he offered, and would have done it if you had not come up, to walk home with me. Not that I wanted anybody to walk home with me; but it was very kind," said Nettie, with rising spirit.

"I am afraid I am a very poor substitute for Mr Wentworth," said the jealous doctor, "and I don't pretend to be kind. But I am surprised to find Miss Underwood walking so late. This is not a road for a lady by herself."

"You know I don't mind in the least for the road," said Nettie, with a little indignation. "How wonderfully cross you are sometimes! If you are going as far as the Cottage," she added, with a little sigh of fatigue, "will you please carry some of these things for me! I could not get out sooner, I have been so busy to-day. It is wonderful how much needlework it takes to keep three children going, and how many little jobs there are to do. If you take this parcel, carry it carefully, please: it is something for my bonnet. There! Don't be absurd. I am quite able to walk by myself, thank you—I'd rather, please!"

This remonstrance was called forth by the fact that the relenting doctor, much moved by having the parcels confided to his care, had drawn the little hand which gave them within his arm, a proceeding which Nettie distinctly disapproved of. She withdrew her hand quickly, and walked on with much dignity by his side.

"I can carry your parcels," said Edward, after a little pause, "but you will not let me help yourself. You take the heaviest burdens upon your shoulders, and then will have no assistance in bearing them. How long are these children of Fred's—detestable little imps!—to work you to death?"

"You are speaking of my children, sir!" cried Nettie, with a little blaze of resentment. "But you don't mean it, Dr Edward," she said, a moment after, in a slightly coaxing tone. "You are tired and cross after your day's work. Perhaps it will be best, if you are very cross, not to come down all the way to the Cottage, thank you. I don't want you to quarrel with Fred."

"Cross! Nettie, you are enough to drive twenty men distracted!" cried the poor doctor. "You know as well as I do what I have been dying to say to you these three months past; and to see you go on with these confounded children without so much as a glance for a fellow who——"

"Don't speak like that," cried Nettie, with brilliant female instinct; "you'll be sorry for it after; for you know, Dr Edward, you have not said anything particular to me these three months past."

This touch gave the last exasperation to the agitated mind of the doctor. He burst forth into a passionate outbreak of love and anger, curiously mingled, but too warm and real to leave Nettie much coolness of observation under the circumstances. She took the advantage over him which a woman naturally does in such a case. She went on softly, trembling sufficiently to her own consciousness, but not to his, suffering him to pour out that torrent without interruption. She made no answer till the whole agitated self-disclosure was complete. In the interval she got a little command of herself, and was able to speak when it came to her turn.

"Dr Edward," said Nettie, solemnly, "you know it is impossible. If we cared for each other ever so much, what could we do? I am not free to—to make any change; and I know very well, and so do you, that you never could put up with Fred and Susan and the children, were things as you say ten times over. I don't mean I don't believe you. I don't mean I might not have been pleased had things been different. But you know it is just plainly impossible. You know your own temper and your own spirit—and perhaps you know mine as well. No, no—we cannot manage it anyhow, Dr Edward," said Nettie, with a little sigh.

"Is this all you have to say to me?" cried the astonished lover.

"I am sure I do not know what else to say," said Nettie, with matter-of-fact distinctness. "I don't need to enter into all the business again, and tell you how things stand; you know as well as I do. One may be sorry, but one must do what one has to do all the same."

A painful pause followed. Nettie, with all her feminine acuteness, could not divine that this calm way of treating a business which had wrought her companion into such a pitch of passion, was the most humiliating and mortifying possible to a man in whose bosom love and pride were so combined. He tried to speak more than once, but could not. Nettie said nothing more—she was uneasy, but secure in the necessity of her own position. What else could she do or say?

"Then, I presume, this is my answer," said the doctor, at last, gulping an amount of shame and anger which Nettie could not conceive of, and which the darkness concealed from her sight.

"Oh, Dr Edward, what can I say?" cried the girl; "you know it all as well as I do. I cannot change it with a word. I am very, very sorry," said Nettie, faltering and startled, waking to a sudden perception of the case all at once, by reason of catching a sudden gleam of his eyes. They came to a dead stop opposite each other, she half frightened and confused, he desperate with love and rage and mortification. By this time they had almost reached the cottage door.

"Don't take the trouble to be sorry. I'll—oh, I'll get over it!" cried the doctor, with a sneer at himself and his passion, which came out of the bitterness of his heart. Then, after a pause—"Nettie!" cried the young man—"Nettie! do you see what you are doing?—do you choose Fred and those wretched imps instead of your own life and mine? You are not so indifferent as you think you are. We shall never get over it, neither you nor me. Nettie, once for all, is this all you have to say?"

"If I were to say all the words in the language," said Nettie, after a pause, with a breathless indistinctness and haste, "words will not change things if we should break our hearts."

The open door, with the light shining out from it, shone upon them at that moment, and Mrs Smith waiting to let the young lady in. Neither of the two dared face that sudden gleam. The doctor laid down his parcels on the step, muttered something, which she could not distinguish, into Nettie's agitated ear, and vanished back again into the darkness. Only now was Nettie awaking to the sense of what had happened, and its real importance. Perhaps another minute, another word, might have made a difference—that other word and minute that are always wanting. She gazed out after him blankly, scarcely able to persuade herself that it was all over, and then went in with a kind of stupefied, stunned sensation, not to be described. Edward Rider heard the door shut in the calm silence, and swore fierce oaths in his heart over her composure and cold-heartedness. As usual, it was the woman who had to face the light and observation, and to veil her trouble. The man rushed back into the darkness, smarting with wounds which fell as severely upon his pride as upon his heart. Nettie went in, suddenly conscious that the world was changed, and that she had entered upon another life.



CHAPTER IX.

Another life and a changed world! What small matters sometimes bring about that sudden disenchantment! Two or three words exchanged without much thought—one figure disappearing out of the landscape—and, lo! all the prismatic colours have faded from the horizon, and blank daylight glares upon startled eyes! Nettie had not, up to this time, entertained a suspicion of how distinct a place the doctor held in her limited firmament—she was totally unaware how much exhilaration and support there was in his troubled, exasperated, impatient admiration. Now, all at once, she found it out. It was the same life, yet it was different. Her occupations were unchanged, her surroundings just what they used to be. She had still to tolerate Fred, to manage Susan, to superintend with steady economy all the expenditure of the strange little household. The very rooms and aspect of everything was the same; yet had she been suddenly transported back again to the Antipodes, life could not have been more completely changed to Nettie. She recognised it at once with some surprise, but without any struggle. The fact was too clearly apparent to leave her in any doubt. Nobody but herself had the slightest insight into the great event which had happened—nobody could know of it, or offer Nettie any sympathy in that unforeseen personal trial. In her youth and buoyant freshness, half contemptuous of the outside troubles which were no match for her indomitable heart, Nettie had been fighting against hard external circumstances for a great part of her valorous little life, and had not hesitated to take upon herself the heaviest burdens of outside existence. Such struggles are not hard when one's heart is light and sound. With a certain splendid youthful scorn of all these labours and drudgeries, Nettie had gone on her triumphant way, wearing her bonds as if they were ornaments. Suddenly, without any premonition, the heart had died out of her existence. A personal blow, striking with subtle force into that unseen centre of courage and hope, had suddenly disabled Nettie. She said not a word on the subject to any living creature—if she shed any tears over it, they were dropped in the darkness, and left no witness behind; but she silently recognised and understood what had happened to her. It was not that she had lost her lover—it was not that the romance of youth had glimmered and disappeared from before her eyes. It was not that she had ever entered, even in thought, as Edward Rider had done, into that life, glorified out of common existence, which the two could have lived together. Such was not the form which this extraordinary loss took to Nettie. It was her personal happiness, wonderful wine of life, which had suddenly failed to the brave little girl. Ah, the difference it made! Labours, disgusts, endurances of all kinds: what cannot one undertake so long as one has that cordial at one's heart? When the endurance and the labour remain, and the cordial is gone, it is a changed world into which the surprised soul enters. This was what had happened to Nettie. Nobody suspected the sudden change which had passed upon everything. The only individual in the world who could have divined it, had persuaded himself in a flush of anger and mortification that she did not care. He consoled himself by elaborate avoidance of that road which led past St Roque's—by bows of elaborate politeness when he encountered her anywhere in the streets of Carlingford—by taking a sudden plunge into such society as was open to him in the town, and devoting himself to Miss Marjoribanks, the old physician's daughter. Nettie was not moved by these demonstrations, which showed her sway still undiminished over the doctor's angry and jealous heart. She did not regard the petulant shows of pretended indifference by which a more experienced young woman might have consoled herself. She had enough to do, now that the unsuspected stimulus of her life was withdrawn for the moment, to go on steadily without making any outward show of it. She had come to the first real trial of her strength and worthiness. And Nettie did not know what a piece of heroism she was enacting, nor that the hardest lesson of youthful life—how to go on stoutly without the happiness which that absolute essence of existence demands and will not be refused—was being taught her now. She only knew it was dull work just for the moment—a tedious sort of routine, which one was glad to think could not last for ever; and so went on, the steadfast little soul, no one being any the wiser, upon that suddenly-clouded, laborious way.

It is sad to be obliged to confess that Dr Rider's conduct was nothing like so heroical. He, injured and indignant and angry, thought first of all of revenging himself upon Nettie—of proving to her that he would get over it, and that there were women in the world more reasonable than herself. Dr Marjoribanks, who had already made those advances to the doctor which that poor young fellow had gone to carry the news of, not without elation of heart, on that memorable night, to St Roque's, asked Edward to dinner a few days after; and Miss Marjoribanks made herself very agreeable, with just that degree of delicate regard and evident pleasure in his society which is so soothing when one has met with a recent discomfiture. Miss Marjoribanks, it is true, was over thirty, and by no means a Titania. Edward Rider, who had retired from the field in Bessie Christian's case, and whom Nettie had rejected, asked himself savagely why he should not make an advantageous marriage now, when the chance offered. Old Marjoribanks's practice and savings, with a not unagreeable, rather clever, middle-aged wife—why should he not take it into consideration? The young doctor thought of that possibility with a certain thrill of cruel pleasure. He said to himself that he would make his fortune, and be revenged on Nettie. Whenever there was a chance of Nettie hearing of it, he paid the most devoted attentions to Miss Marjoribanks. Ready gossips took it up and made the matter public. Everybody agreed it would be an admirable arrangement. "The most sensible thing I've heard of for years—step into the old fellow's practice, and set himself up for life—eh, don't you think so?—that's my opinion," said Mr Wodehouse. Mr Wodehouse's daughters talked over the matter, and settled exactly between themselves what was Miss Marjoribanks's age, and how much older she was than her supposed suitor—a question always interesting to the female mind. And it was natural that in these circumstances Nettie should come to hear of it all in its full details, with the various comments naturally suggesting themselves thereupon. What Nettie's opinion was, however, nobody could ever gather; perhaps she thought Dr Edward was justified in putting an immediate barrier between himself and her. At all events, she was perfectly clear upon the point that it could not have been otherwise, and that no other decision was possible to herself.

The spring lagged on, accordingly, under these circumstances. Those commonplace unalterable days, varied in nothing but the natural fluctuations of making and mending,—those evenings with Fred sulky by the fire—always sulky, because deprived by Nettie's presence of his usual indulgences; or if not so, then enjoying himself after his dismal fashion in his own room, with most likely Susan bearing him company, and the little maiden head of the house left all by herself in the solitary parlour,—passed on one by one, each more tedious than the other. It seemed impossible that such heavy hours could last, and prolong themselves into infinitude, as they did; but still one succeeded another in endless hard procession. And Nettie shed back her silky load of hair, and pressed her tiny fingers on her eyes, and went on again, always dauntless. She said to herself, with homely philosophy, that this could not last very long; not with any tragical meaning, but with a recognition of the ordinary laws of nature which young ladies under the pressure of a first disappointment are not apt to recur to. She tried, indeed, to calculate in herself, with forlorn heroism, how long it might be expected to last, and, though she could not fix the period, endeavoured to content herself with the thought that things must eventually fall into their natural condition. In the mean time it was slow and tedious work enough—but they did pass one after another, these inevitable days.

One night Nettie was sitting by herself in the parlour busy over her needlework. Fred and his wife, she thought, were up-stairs. They had left her early in the evening,—Susan to lie down, being tired—Fred to his ordinary amusements. It was a matter of course, and cost Nettie no special thought. After the children went to bed, she sat all by herself, with her thread and scissors on the table, working on steadily and quietly at the little garment she was making. Her needle flew swift and nimbly; the sleeve of her dress rustled as she moved her arm; her soft breath went and came: but for that regular monotonous movement, and those faint steady sounds of life, it might have been a picture of domestic tranquillity and quiet, and not a living woman with aches in her heart. It did not matter what she was thinking. She was facing life and fortune—indomitable, not to be discouraged. In the silence of the house she sat late over her needlework, anxious to have some special task finished. She heard the mistress of the cottage locking up, but took no notice of that performance, and went on at her work, forgetting time. It got to be very silent in the house and without; not a sound in the rooms where everybody was asleep; not a sound outside, except an occasional rustle of the night wind through the bare willow-branches—deep night and not a creature awake but herself, sitting in the heart of that intense and throbbing silence. Somehow there was a kind of pleasure to Nettie in the isolation which was so impossible to her at other hours. She sat rapt in that laborious quiet as if her busy fingers were under some spell.

When suddenly she heard a startled motion up-stairs, as if some one had got up hastily; then a rustling about the room overhead, which was Susan's room. After a while, during which Nettie, restored by the sound to all her growing cares, rose instantly to consideration of the question, What had happened now? the door above was stealthily opened, and a footstep came softly down the stair. Nettie put down her work and listened breathlessly. Presently Susan's head peeped in at the parlour door. After all, then, it was only some restlessness of Susan's. Nettie took up her work, impatient, perhaps almost disappointed, with the dead calm in which nothing ever happened. Susan came in stealthy, pale, trembling with cold and fright. She came forward to the table in her white night-dress like a faded ghost. "Fred has never come in," said Susan, in a shivering whisper; "is it very late? He promised he would only be gone an hour. Where can he have gone? Nettie, Nettie, don't sit so quiet and stare at me. I fell asleep, or I should have found it out sooner; all the house is locked up, and he has never come in."

"If he comes we can unlock the house," said Nettie. "When did he go out, and why didn't you tell me? Of course I should have let Mrs Smith know, not to frighten her; but I told Fred pretty plainly last time that we could not do with such hours. It will make him ill if he does not mind. Go to bed, and I'll let him in."

"Go to bed! it is very easy for you to say so; don't you know it's the middle of the night, and as dark as pitch, and my husband out all by himself?" cried Susan. "Oh, Fred, Fred! after all the promises you made, to use me like this again! Do you think I can go up-stairs and lie shivering in the dark, and imagining all sorts of dreadful things happening to him? I shall stay here with you till he comes in."

Nettie entered into no controversy. She got up quietly and fetched a shawl and put it round her shivering sister; then sat down again and took up her needlework. But Susan's excited nerves could not bear the sight of that occupation. The rustle of Nettie's softly-moving hand distracted her. "It sounds always like Fred's step on the way," said the fretful anxious woman. "Oh, Nettie, Nettie! do open the end window and look out; perhaps he is looking for the light in the windows to guide him straight! It is so dark! Open the shutters, Nettie, and, oh, do look out and see! Where do you suppose he can have gone to? I feel such a pang at my heart, I believe I shall die."

"Oh, no, you will not die," said Nettie. "Take a book and read, or do something. We know what is about the worst that will happen to Fred. He will come home like that you know, as he did before. We can't mend it, but we need not break our hearts over it. Lie down on the sofa, and put up your feet and wrap the shawl round you if you won't go to bed. I can fancy all very well how it will be. It is nothing new, Susan, that you should break your heart."

"It's you that have no feeling. Oh, Nettie, how hard you are! I don't believe you know what it is to love anybody," said Susan. "Hark! is that some one coming now?"

They thought some one was coming fifty times in the course of that dreadful lingering night. Nobody came; the silence closed in deeper and deeper around the two silent women. All the world—everything round about them, to the veriest atom—seemed asleep. The cricket had stopped his chirrup in the kitchen, and no mouse stirred in the slumbering house. By times Susan dozed on the sofa, shivering, notwithstanding her shawl, and Nettie took up her needlework for the moment to distract her thoughts. When Susan started from these snatches of slumber, she importuned her sister with ceaseless questions and entreaties. Where had he gone?—where did Nettie imagine he could have gone?—and oh! would she go to the window and look out to see if any one was coming, or put the candle to the window to guide him, if perhaps he might have lost the way? At last the terrible pale dawn came in and took the light out of Nettie's candle. The two looked at each other, and acknowledged with a mutual start that the night was over. They had watched these long hours through with sentiments very different; now a certain thrill of sympathy drew Nettie nearer to her sister. It was daylight again, remorseless and uncompromising, and where was Fred, who loved the darkness? He had little money and less credit in the limited place where himself and his story were known. What could have become of him? Nettie acknowledged that there was ground for anxiety. She folded up her work and put out her candle, and promptly took into consideration what she could do.

"If you will go to bed, Susan, I shall go out and look for him," said Nettie. "He might have stumbled in the field and fallen asleep. Men have done such things before now, and been none the worse for it. If you will go and lie down, I'll see after it, Susan. Now it's daylight, you know, no great harm can happen to him. Come and lie down, and leave me to look for Fred."

"But you don't know where to go, and he won't like to have you going after him. Nettie, send to Edward," said Susan; "he ought to come and look after his brother: he ought to have done it all through, and not to have left us to manage everything; and he hasn't even been to see us for ever so long. But send to Edward, Nettie—it's his business. For Fred won't like to have you going after him, and you don't know where to go."

"Fred must have me going after him whether he likes it or no," said Nettie, sharply, "and I shall not send to Dr Edward. You choose to insult him whenever you can, and then you think it is his business to look after his brother. Go to bed, and leave it to me. I can't leave you shivering here, to catch something, and be ill, and laid up for weeks. I want to get my bonnet on, and to see you in bed. Make haste, and come up-stairs with me."

Susan obeyed with some mutterings of inarticulate discontent. The daylight, after the first shock of finding that the night was really over, brought some comfort to her foolish heart. She thought that as Nettie said "no more harm" could come to him, he must be sleeping somewhere, the foolish fellow. She thought most likely Nettie was right, and that she had best go to bed to consume the weary time till there could be something heard of him; and Nettie, of course, would find it all out.

Such was the arrangement accordingly. Susan covered herself up warm, and lay thinking all she should say to him when he came home, and how she certainly never would again let him go out and keep it secret from Nettie. Nettie, for her part, bathed her hot eyes, put on her bonnet, and went out, quietly undoing all the bolts and bars, into the chill morning world, where nobody was yet awake. She was a little uncertain which way to turn, but noway uncertain of her business. Whether he had gone into the town, or towards the low quarter by the banks of the canal, she felt it difficult to conclude. But remembering her own suggestion that he might have stumbled in the field, and fallen asleep there, she took her way across the misty grass. It was still spring, and a little hoar-frost crisped the wintry sod. Everything lay forlorn and chill under the leaden morning skies—not even an early market-cart disturbed the echoes. When the cock crew somewhere, it startled Nettie. She went like a spectre across the misty fields, looking down into the ditches and all the inequalities of the way. On the other side lay the canal, not visible, except by the line of road that wound beside it, from the dead flat around. She bent her steps in that direction, thinking of a certain mean little tavern which, somehow, when she saw it, she had associated with Fred—a place where the men at the door looked slovenly and heated, like Fred himself, and lounged with their hands in their pockets at noon of working-days. Some instinct guided Nettie there.

But she had no need to go so far. Before she reached that place the first sounds of life that she had yet heard attracted Nettie's attention. They came from a boat which lay in the canal, in which the bargemen seemed preparing to start on their day's journey. Some men were leisurely leading forward the horses to the towing-path, while two in the boat were preparing for their start inside. All at once a strange cry rang into the still, chill air—such a cry as startles all who can hear it. The men with the horses hurried forward to the edge of the canal, the bargemen hung over the side of their boat; visible excitement rose among them about something there. Nettie, never afraid, was less timid than ever this morning. Without thinking of the risk of trusting herself with these rude fellows alone, she went straight forward into the midst of them with a curiosity for which she could scarcely account; not anxiety, only a certain wonder and impatience, possessed her to see what they had here.

What had they there?—not a man—a dreadful drowned image, all soiled and swollen—a squalid tragic form, immovable, never to move more. Nettie did not need to look at the dread, uncovered, upturned face. The moment she saw the vague shape of it rising against the side of the boat, a heap of dead limbs, recognisable only as something human, the terrible truth flashed upon Nettie. She had found not him, but It. She saw nothing more for one awful moment—heaven and earth reeling and circling around her, and a horror of darkness on her eyes. Then the cold light opened up again—the group of living creatures against the colourless skies, the dead creature staring and ghastly, with awful dead eyes gazing blank into the shuddering day. The girl steadied herself as she could on the brink of the sluggish current, and collected her thoughts. The conclusion to her search, and answer to all her questions, lay, not to be doubted or questioned, before her. She dared not yield to her own horror, or grief, or dismay. Susan sleeping, unsuspicious, in full trust of his return—the slumbering house into which this dreadful figure must be carried—obliterated all personal impressions from Nettie's mind. She explained to the amazed group who and what the dead man was—where he must be brought to—instantly, silently, before the world was awake. She watched them lay the heavy form upon a board, and took off her own shawl to lay over it, to conceal it from the face of day. Then she went on before them, with her tiny figure in its girlish dress, like a child in the shadow of the rough but pitying group that followed. Nettie did not know why the wind went so chill to her heart after she had taken off her shawl. She did not see the unequal sod under her feet as she went back upon that dread and solemn road. Nothing in the world but what she had to do occupied the throbbing heroic heart. There was nobody else to do it. How could the girl help but execute the work put into her hand? Thinking neither of the hardship nor the horror of such dread work falling to her lot, but only this, that she must do it, Nettie took home to the unconscious sleeping cottage that thing which was Fred Rider; no heavier on his bearers' hands to-day than he had been already for years of his wasted life.



CHAPTER X.

When Nettie opened the door of the sleeping house with the great key she had carried with her in her early dreadful expedition, there was still nobody stirring in the unconscious cottage. She paused at the door, with the four men behind her carrying shoulder-high that terrible motionless burden. Where was she to lay it? In her own room, where she had not slept that night, little Freddy was still sleeping. In another was the widow, overcome by watching and fretful anxiety. The other fatherless creatures lay in the little dressing-room. Nowhere but in the parlour, from which Fred not so very long ago had driven his disgusted brother—the only place she had where Nettie's own feminine niceties could find expression, and where the accessories of her own daily life and work were all accumulated. She lingered even at that dread moment with a pang of natural reluctance to associate that little sanctuary with the horror and misery of this bringing-home; but when every feeling gave way to the pressure of necessity, that superficial one was not like to resist it. Her companions were not aware that she had hesitated even for that moment. She seemed to them to glide softly, steadfastly, without any faltering, before them into the little silent womanly room, where her night's work was folded tidily upon the table, and her tiny thimble and scissors laid beside it. What a heart-rending contrast lay between those domestic traces and that dreadful muffled figure, covered from the light of day with Nettie's shawl, which was now laid down there, Nettie did not pause to think of. She stood still for a moment, gazing at it with a sob of excitement and agitation swelling into her throat; scarcely grief—perhaps that was not possible—but the intensest remorseful pity over the lost life. The rude fellows beside her stood silent, not without a certain pang of tenderness and sympathy in their half-savage hearts. She took her little purse out and emptied it of its few silver coins among them. They trod softly, but their heavy footsteps were heard, notwithstanding, through all the little house. Nettie could already hear the alarmed stirring up-stairs of the master and mistress of the cottage; and, knowing what explanations she must give, and all the dreadful business before her, made haste to get her strange companions away before Mrs Smith came down-stairs. One of them, however, as he followed his comrades out of the room, from some confused instinct of help and pity, asked whether he should not fetch a doctor? The question struck the resolute little girl with a pang sharper than this morning's horror had yet given her. Had she perhaps neglected the first duty of all, the possibility of restoration? She went back, without answering him, to lift the shawl from that dreadful face, and satisfy herself whether she had done, that last irremediable wrong to Fred. As she met the dreadful stare of those dead eyes, all the revulsion of feeling which comes to the hearts of the living in presence of the dead overpowered Nettie. She gave a little cry of inarticulate momentary anguish. The soul of that confused and tremulous outcry was Pardon! pardon! What love was ever so true, what tenderness so constant and unfailing, that did not instinctively utter that cry when the watched life had ended, and pardon could no longer come from those sealed lips? Nettie had not loved that shamed and ruined man—she had done him the offices of affection, and endured and sometimes scorned him. She stood remorseful by his side in that first dread hour, which had changed Fred's shabby presence into something awful; and her generous soul burst forth in that cry of penitence which every human creature owes its brother. The tender-hearted bargeman who had asked leave to fetch a doctor, drew near her with a kindred instinct—"Don't take on, miss—there's the crowner yet—and a deal to look to," said the kind rough fellow, who knew Nettie. The words recalled her to herself—but with the softened feelings of the moment a certain longing for somebody to stand by her in this unlooked-for extremity came over the forlorn courageous creature, who never yet, amid all her labours, had encountered an emergency like this. She laid the shawl reverently back over that dead face, and sent a message to the doctor with lips that trembled in spite of herself. "Tell him what has happened, and say he is to come as soon as he can," said Nettie; "for I do not understand all that has to be done. Tell him I sent you; and now go—please go before they all come down-stairs."

But when Nettie turned in again, after closing the door, into that house so entirely changed in character by the solemn inmate who had entered it, she was confronted by the amazed and troubled apparition of Mrs Smith, half-dressed, and full of wonder and indignation. A gasping exclamation of "Miss!" was all that good woman could utter. She had with her own eyes perceived some of the "roughs" of Carlingford emerging from her respectable door under Nettie's grave supervision, and yet could not in her heart, notwithstanding appearances, think any harm of Nettie; while, at the same time, a hundred alarms for the safety of her household gods shook her soul. Nettie turned towards her steadily, with her face pallid and her brilliant eyes heavy. "Hush," she said; "Susan knows nothing yet. Let her have her rest while she can. We have been watching for him all night, and poor Susan is sleeping, and does not know."

"Know what?—what has happened?—he's been and killed himself? Oh, miss, don't you go for to say so!" cried Mrs Smith, in natural dismay and terror.

"No," cried Nettie, with a long sigh that relieved her breast, "not so bad as that, thank Heaven; but hush, hush! I cannot go and tell Susan just yet—not just yet. Oh, give me a moment to get breath! For he is dead! I tell you, hush!" cried Nettie, seizing the woman's hand, and wringing it, in the extremity of her terror for alarming Susan. "Don't you understand me? She is a widow, and she does not know—her husband is dead, and she does not know. Have you no pity for her in your own heart?"

"Lord ha' mercy! but wait till I call Smith," cried the alarmed landlady, shrinking, yet eager to know the horribly interesting details of that tragedy. She ran breathless up-stairs on that errand, while Nettie went back to the door of the parlour, resolutely locked it, and took away the key. "Nobody shall go gazing and talking over him, and making a wonder of poor Fred," said Nettie to herself, shaking off from her long eyelashes the tear which came out of the compunction of her heart. "Poor Fred!" She sat down on one of the chairs of the little hall beside that closed door. The children and their mother up-stairs still slept unsuspicious; and their young guardian, with a world of thoughts rising in her mind, sat still and pondered. The past was suddenly cut off from the future by this dreadful unthought-of event. She had come to a dead pause in that life, which to every spectator was so strangely out of accordance with her youth, but which was to herself such simple and plain necessity as to permit no questioning. She was brought suddenly to a standstill at this terrible moment, and sat turning her dauntless little face to the new trial before her, pale, but undismayed. Nettie did not deceive herself even in her thoughts. She saw, with the intuitive foresight of a keen observer, her sister's violent momentary grief, her indolent acceptance of the position after a while, the selfish reserve of repining and discontent which Susan would establish in the memory of poor Fred: she saw how, with fuller certainty than ever, because now more naturally, she herself, her mind, her laborious hands, her little fortune, would belong to the fatherless family. She did not sigh over the prospect, or falter; but she exercised no self-delusion on the subject. There was nobody but she to do it—nobody but she, in her tender maidenhood, to manage all the vulgar tragical business which must, this very day, confirm to the knowledge of the little surrounding world the event which had happened—nobody but herself to tell the tale to the widow, to bear all the burdens of the time. Nettie did not think over these particulars with self-pity, or wonder over her hard lot. She did not imagine herself to have chosen this lot at all. There was nobody else to do it—that was the simple secret of her strength.

But this interval of forlorn repose was a very brief one. Smith came down putting on his coat, and looking scared and bewildered; his wife, eager, curious, and excited, closely following. Nettie rose when they approached her to forestall their questions.

"My brother-in-law is dead," she said. "He fell into the canal last night and was drowned. I went out to look for him, and—and found him, poor fellow! Oh, don't cry out or make a noise: remember Susan does not know! Now, dear Mrs Smith, I know you are kind—I know you will not vex me just at this moment. I have had him laid there till his brother comes. Oh, don't say it's dreadful! Do you think I cannot see how dreadful it is? but we must not think about that, only what has to be done. When Dr Edward comes, I will wake my sister; but just for this moment, oh have patience! I had no place to put him except there."

"But, Lord bless us, he mightn't be clean gone: he might be recovered, poor gentleman! Smith can run for Dr Marjoribanks; he is nearer nor Dr Rider," cried the curious excited landlady, with her hand upon the locked door.

Nettie made no answer. She took them into the room in solemn silence, and showed them the stark and ghastly figure, for which all possibilities had been over in the dark midnight waters hours ago. The earliest gleam of sunshine came shining in at that moment through the window which last night Nettie had opened that Fred might see the light in it and be guided home. It seemed to strike like a reproach upon that quick-throbbing impatient heart, which felt as a sin against the dead its own lack of natural grief and affection. She went hurriedly to draw down the blinds and close out the unwelcome light. "Now he is gone, nobody shall slight or scorn him," said Nettie to herself, with hot tears; and she turned the wondering dismayed couple—already awakening out of their first horror, to think of the injury done to their house and "lodgings," and all the notoriety of an inquest—out of the room, and locked the door upon the unwilling owners, whom nothing but her resolute face prevented from bursting forth in selfish but natural lamentations over their own secondary share in so disastrous an event. Nettie sat down again, a silent little sentinel by the closed door, without her shawl, and with her tiny chilled feet on the cold tiles. Nettie sat silent, too much occupied even to ascertain the causes of her personal discomfort. She had indeed enough to think of; and while her little girlish figure, so dainty, so light, so unlike her fortunes, remained in that unusual stillness, her mind and heart were palpitating with thoughts—all kinds of thoughts; not only considerations worthy the solemnity and horror of the moment, but every kind of trivial and secondary necessity, passed through that restless soul, all throbbing with life and action, more self-conscious than usual from the fact of its outward stillness. A hundred rapid conclusions and calculations about the funeral, the mourning, the change of domestic habits involved, darted through Nettie's mind. It was a relief to her to leap forward into these after-matters. The immediate necessity before her—the dreadful errand on which she must presently go to her sister's bedside—the burst of wailing and reproachful grief which all alone Nettie would have to encounter and subdue, were not to be thought of. She bent down her little head into her hands, and once more shed back that hair which, never relieved out of its braids through all this long night, began to droop over her pale cheeks; and a quick sigh of impatience, of energy restrained, of such powerlessness as her courageous capable soul, in the very excess of its courage and capacity, felt in its approaching conflict with the feeble foolish creature, who never could be stimulated out of her own narrow possibilities, burst from Nettie's breast. But the sigh was as much physical as mental—the long-drawn breath of mingled weariness and restlessness—the instinct to be doing, and the exhaustion of long labour and emotion, blended together. Thus she waited while the cold spring morning brightened, and Mrs Smith went about her early domestic business, returning often into the little back-parlour with the mullioned window, of which domestic Gothic treatment had made a condemned cell, to re-express her anxieties and horrors. Nettie had an instinctive consciousness even of Mrs Smith's grievance. She knew this dismal association would ruin "the lodgings," and felt that here was another bond upon her to remain at St Roque's, however much she might long to escape and flee away.

All these crowding and breathless thoughts were a few minutes after reduced to absolute momentary stillness. It was by a step outside coming hastily with rapid purpose along the silent way. Nettie rose up to meet Edward Rider; not as the angry lover still fiercely resentful of that rejection, which was no rejection, but only a bare and simple statement of necessity; not as the suitor of Miss Marjoribanks; simply as the only creature in the world who could help her, or to whom she would delegate any portion of her own hard but inevitable work. She opened the door before he had time to knock, and held out her hand to him silently, quite unawares betraying her recognition of his step—her comfort in his presence. That meeting flushed the doctor's anxious face with a mingled shame and triumph not expressible in words, but left Nettie as pale, as preoccupied, as much absorbed in her thoughts and duties as before.

"Dr Edward, I should not have sent for you if I could have done it all myself," said Nettie; "but I knew you would think it right to be here now. And I have Susan and the children to look to. I commit this to you."

"Do they know?" said the doctor, taking the key she gave him, and holding fast, with an instinct of compassion almost more strong than love, the little hand which never trembled.

"I will tell Susan, now that you have come—I could not before," said Nettie, with another sigh. "Poor Susan! I was glad to let her sleep."

"But there is no one to think whether you sleep or not," cried Edward Rider. "And those eyes have watched all night. Nettie, Nettie, could not you have sent for me sooner? A word would have brought me at any moment."

"You were not wanted till now," said Nettie, not without a touch of womanly pride. "I have always been able to do my own work, Dr Edward. But, now, don't let us quarrel any more," she said, after a pause. "You were angry once, and I don't wonder. Never mind all that, but let us be friends; and don't let all the people, and strangers, and men who don't belong to us," cried Nettie once more, with hot tears in her eyes, "be hard upon poor Fred!"

The next moment she had vanished up-stairs and left the doctor alone, standing in the little cold hall with the key in his hand, and Mrs Smith's troubled countenance beholding him from far. Edward Rider paused before he entered upon his dismal share of this morning's work. Death itself did not suffice to endear Fred Rider to his brother. But he stood still, with a certain self-reproach, to withdraw his thoughts, if he could, from Nettie, and to subdue the thrill—the most living touch of life—which this meeting had stirred within him, before he entered that miserable chamber of death.



CHAPTER XI.

That dreadful day ebbed over slowly—tedious, yet so full of events and dismal business that it looked like a year rather than a day. The necessary investigations were got through without any special call upon Nettie. She spent the most of the day up-stairs with Susan, whose wild refusal to believe at first, and sullen stupor afterwards, were little different from the picture which Nettie's imagination had already made. The children received the news with wondering stares and questions. That they did not understand it was little, but that they scarcely were interested after the first movement of curiosity, disappointed and wounded the impatient heart, which unconsciously chafed at its own total inability to convey the feelings natural to such a terrible occasion into any bosom but its own. Nettie's perpetual activity had hitherto saved her from this disgust and disappointment. She had been bitterly intolerant by moments of Fred's disgraceful content and satisfaction with his own indulgences, but had never paused to fret over what she could not help, nor contrast her own high youthful humour and sense of duty with the dull insensibility around her. But to-day had rapt the heroic little girl into a different atmosphere from that she had been breathing hitherto. To-day she was aware that her work had been so far taken out of her hands, and acknowledged in her heart that it was best it should be so. She heard the heavy feet of men coming and going, but was not obliged to descend into immediate conflict with all the circumstances of so horrible a crisis. It was a new sensation to Nettie. A year ago, perhaps, she would not have relinquished even that dreadful business to any one;—to-day, the thought of having some one else who did it for her, and took comfort in relieving her burdened hands, fell with singular soothing power upon the heart which had come to a knowledge of its own weakness in these last tedious months; and as Nettie sat up-stairs with all the remorseful thoughts of nature in her softened heart, the impossibility of impressing her own emotions upon those around her struck her with a deeper sense of impatience, disappointment, and disgust than ever before. When she went softly into the darkened room where Susan lay in her gloomy bed, divided between wailings over the injuries which poor Fred had suffered, the harshness that had driven him out of doors, and the want of his brother or somebody to take care of him, which had brought the poor fellow to such an end—and complaints of the wrong done to herself, the "want of feeling" shown by her sister, the neglect with which she was treated, Nettie gazed at the sobbing creature with eyes unconsciously wondering, yet but half-surprised. She knew very well beforehand that this was how her dreadful tidings would be received; yet out of her own softened, awed, compunctious heart—her pity too deep for tears over that lost life—Nettie looked with the unbelief of nature at the widowed woman, the creature who had loved him, and been his wife—yet who could only think of somebody else to be blamed, and of herself injured, at that terrible moment when the companion of her life was violently withdrawn from her. And to go out of that obstinately darkened refuge of fretful sorrow, into the room where the blind had been drawn up the moment her back was turned, and where these three tearless children, totally unimpressed by the information which they had received as a piece of news with mingled curiosity and scepticism, occupied themselves with their usual sports, or listened keenly, with sharp remarks, to the sounds below, which only the utmost stretch of Nettie's authority could keep them from descending to investigate, afforded a wonderful reverse to the picture, which startled her in her momentary clearsightedness. The contrast between her own feelings—she who had no bonds of natural affection to Fred, and to whom he had been, by times, a very irksome burden—and theirs, who were his very own, and belonged to him, appeared to Nettie as no such contrast had ever appeared before. Her heart alone was heavy with regret over the ruined man—the now for ever unredeemable life: she only, to whom his death was no loss, but even, if she could have permitted that cruel thought to intervene, a gain and relief, recognised with a pang of compassion almost as sharp as grief, that grievous, miserable fate. When, a few minutes after, the noise of the children's play rose to an outburst, Nettie flushed into a momentary effusion of temper, and silenced the heartless imps with a voice and look which they dared not venture to resist. Her rebuke was, however, interrupted by a sudden call from their mother. "How can you have the heart!—Oh, Nettie, Nettie! I knew you had no feeling!—you never had any feeling since you were a baby—but how can you speak so to his poor children, now that he has left them on the cold world?" cried Susan, sobbing, from her bed. If Nettie sprang to her feet in sudden heat and disgust, and peremptorily closed the doors intervening between the children and their mother, nobody will much wonder at that movement of impatience. Perhaps Nettie's eyes had never been so entirely opened to the hopeless character of the charge she had taken upon her, as in the temporary seclusion of that day.

And meanwhile, down-stairs, Edward Rider was superintending all the arrangements of the time for Nettie's sake. Not because it was his brother who lay there, no longer a burden to any man; nor because natural duty pointed him out as the natural guardian of the orphaned family. The doctor, indeed, would have done his duty in such a hard case, however it had been required of him; but the circumstances were different now: the melancholy bustle, the shame, the consciousness that everybody knew what manner of existence this lost life had been, the exposure, the publicity—all that would have wrung with a hundred sharp wounds a spirit so susceptible to public comments—came with dulled force upon the doctor's mind to-day. When the people about saw the grave and seemly composure with which he went about this dismal business, without those starts and flushes of grievous irritation and shame which the very mention of his brother had once brought upon him, they believed, and honoured him in the belief, that death had awakened the ancient fraternal kindness in Edward Rider's heart. But it was not fraternal kindness that smoothed off the rude edges of that burden; it was the consciousness of doing Nettie's work for her, taking her place, sparing that creature, over whom his heart yearned, the hardest and painfulest business she had yet been involved in. We cannot take credit for the doctor which he did not deserve. He forgave Fred when he saw his motionless figure, never more to do evil or offend in this world, laid in pitiful solitude in that room, which still was Nettie's room, and which even in death he grudged to his brother. But Edward's distinct apprehension of right and wrong, and Fred's deserts in this world, were not altered by that diviner compunction which had moved Nettie. He forgave, but did not forget, nor defend with remorseful tenderness his brother's memory. Not for Fred's sake, but Nettie's, he held his place in the troubled cottage, and assumed the position of head of the family. Hard certainties of experience prevented the doctor's unimaginative mind from respecting here the ideal anguish of sudden widowhood and bereavement. This was a conclusion noways unnatural or surprising for such a life as Fred's—and Edward knew, with that contemptuous hardness into which incessant personal contact with the world drives most men, that neither the wife nor the children were capable of deep or permanent feeling. "They will only hang upon her all the heavier," he said to himself, bitterly; and for her, with repentant love, Edward Rider exerted himself. In all the house no heart, but Nettie's alone, acknowledged an ache of pity for Fred and his ruined life. "Mrs Rider, to be sure, will feel at first—it's only natural," said Mrs Smith; "but there wasn't nothing else to be looked for; and if it were not hardhearted to say it, and him lying in his coffin, they'll be a deal better off without him nor with him. But Smith and me, we have ourselves to look to, and it's a terrible blow, is this, to a house as was always as respectable as e'er a one in Carlingford. The lodgings is ruined! The very marks of the feet, if it was nothing else!" cried the afflicted landlady, contemplating the scratched tiles in the hall with actual tears of vexation and regret. But this was the true state of the case to every unconcerned spectator. Only Nettie, on whom the burden had fallen, and was yet to fall heaviest, felt the eyes, which were hot and heavy with watching, grow dim with tears of unspeakable compassion. From the fulness of her youth and strength—strength so burdened, youth so dauntless and dutiful—Nettie gazed with a pity too deep for words at the awful spectacle of that existence lost. That the lifeless thing in the room below could have been a man, and yet have come and gone so disastrously through the world, was terrible to think of, to that living labouring creature, in the depth of her own strange toils and responsibilities. Her heart ached over that wretched, miserable fate. Neither toil nor anguish was to be compared to the dread loss of a life sustained by that departed soul.



CHAPTER XII.

In a few days all this solemn crisis was over, and life went on again in its ordinary tame current, closing over the dishonoured grave where Fred found his rest, henceforward nameless in the world that had suffered his existence as a cumberer of the ground for so many years. Had he been the prop of his house and the light of their eyes, life would have gone on again, after that interruption, all the same, with a persistency which nothing can impair. As it was, the diminished household resumed its ordinary course of existence, after a very few days, with little more than outward marks of what had befallen them. It is true that Nettie sat down with a repugnance which she scarcely could either overcome or conceal, to dispense the domestic provisions at the table which shortly before had borne so dread a burden. But nobody thought of that except Nettie; and but for the black dresses and Susan's cap, Fred was as if he had never been.

About a week after the funeral, the doctor went solemnly to visit them in one of those lengthening spring afternoons. Dr Rider was undeniably nervous and excited about this interview. He had been at home under pretence of having luncheon, but in reality to make a solemn toilette, and wind himself up to the courage necessary for a settlement of affairs. As he dashed with agitated haste down Grange Lane, he saw Miss Wodehouse and her sister Lucy coming from St Roque's, where very probably they too had been making a visit of condolence to Nettie; and a little nearer that scene of all his cogitations and troubles appeared, a much less welcome sight, Miss Marjoribanks, whom all Carlingford, a month ago, had declared Dr Rider to be "paying his addresses" to. The guilty doctor took off his hat to that stout and sensible wayfarer, with a pang of self-disgust which avenged Nettie. Along the very road where that little Titania, eager and rapid, had gone upon her dauntless way so often, to see that comely well-dressed figure, handsome, sprightly, clever—but with such a world of bright youth, tenderness, loveliness, everything that touches the heart of man, between the two! No harm to Miss Marjoribanks; only shame to the doctor, who, out of angry love, pique, and mortification, to vex Nettie, had pretended to transfer the homage due to the fairy princess to that handsome and judicious woman. The experiment had failed as entirely as it deserved to do; and here was Edward Rider, coming back wiser and humbler, content to put that question over again, and stand once more his chance of what his pride had called a rejection, perhaps content to make still greater sacrifices, if the truth were known, and to do anything Nettie asked him, if Nettie would but condescend to ask or enter into terms at all.

He drew up before St Roque's with a dash, which was much more of agitation than display, and, throwing the reins at the head of his little groom, leaped out like a man who did not see where he was going. He saw Mr Wentworth, however, coming out of the church, and turning round amazed to look what vehicle had come to so sudden a standstill there. All the world seemed to be on the road to St Roque's Cottage that spring afternoon. The doctor made a surly gesture of recognition as he passed the curate, who gazed at him in calm astonishment from the church porch. No other intruder appeared between him and the Cottage. He hurried along past the willow-trees with their drooping tassels, surrounded by a certain maze of excitement and agitation. As he went up to the door, it occurred to him suddenly how Nettie had recognised his step that dread morning of Fred's death. The thought came like a stimulus and encouragement to the doctor. He went in with a brighter look, a heart more hopeful. She had opened the door to him before he could knock, held out to him that tiny morsel of a hand which laboured so hard and constantly, said—what did Nettie say? how many times had the doctor conned it over as he went between his patients?—"You were angry once, and, indeed, I don't wonder." The doctor went boldly in under the cordial of these simple words. If she did not wonder that he was angry once, could she think of saying over again that same conclusion which had cast him into such wrathful despair? He went in to try his fortune a second time, secure of his temper at least. That could never fail, nor sin against Nettie again.

Edward Rider went in, expectant somehow, even against his reason, to find an altered world in that house from which Fred had gone. He knew better, to be sure, but nature beguiled the young man out of his wisdom. When he went in to the parlour his eyes were opened. Upon the sofa—that same sofa where Fred had lain, all slovenly and mean in his idleness, with his pipe, polluting Nettie's sole retirement—Mrs Fred lay now in her sombre black dress, with the white cap circling her faded face. She had her white handkerchief in her hand, and was carefully arranged upon the sofa, with a chair placed near for sympathisers. At the table, working rapidly as usual, sat Nettie. Sometimes she turned a momentary glance of mingled curiosity and wonder upon her sister. Evidently she did not interfere with this development of sorrow. Nettie had enough to do, besides, with her needlework, and to enjoin a moderate amount of quietness upon Freddy and his little sister, who were building wooden bricks into houses and castles on the floor by her side. When the doctor entered the room he saw how it was with instantaneous insight. Mrs Fred was sitting in state, in the pomp of woe, to receive all the compassionate people who might come to condole with her. Nettie, half impatient, half glad that her sister could amuse herself so, sat in busy toleration, putting up with it, carrying on her own work through it all—and still, as always, those bonds of her own making closed hard and tenacious upon the prop of the house. Even the chance of speaking with her by herself died off into extreme distance. Young Rider, who came in with the full conviction that anger could never more rise in his heart against Nettie, grew pale with passion, resentment, and impatience before he had been a minute in the room. Always the same! Not relieved out of her bondage—closer bound and prisoned than ever! He took, with an impatient involuntary commotion, the chair placed beside the sofa, and sat down in it abruptly with the briefest salutations. His hopes and anticipations all went bitterly back upon his heart. The very rustle of Nettie's arm as she spread out that little black frock upon the table, and put on its melancholy trimmings, exasperated afresh the man who five minutes ago did not believe it possible that he ever could feel an impulse of displeasure against her again.