The Rector; and, The Doctor's Family/The Doctor's Family/Chapter 16

had taken her resolution all at once. Breathless in sudden conviction, angry, heated, yet seeing in the midst of her excitement no help but an immediate action, the hasty little woman had darted into the heart of the difficulty at once. Every moment she lingered wore her out and disgusted her more with the life and fate which, nevertheless, it was impossible to abandon or shrink from. Nothing was so safe as to make matters irrevocable—to plunge over the verge at once. All gleaming with resolve and animation—with the frosty, chill, exhilarating air which had kindled the colour in her cheeks and the light in her eyes—with haste, resentment, every feeling that can quicken the heart and make the pulses leap—Nettie had flashed into the little parlour, where all was so quiet and leisurely. There Susan sat in close confabulation with the Bushman. The children had been banished out of the room, because their mother's head was not equal to their noise and restlessness. When they came in with Nettie, as was inevitable, Mrs Fred sustained the invasion with fretful looks and a certain peevish abstraction. She was evidently interrupted by the rapid entrance, which was as unwelcome as it was hasty. Cold though the night was, Mrs Fred, leaning back upon her sofa, fanned her pink cheeks with her handkerchief, and looked annoyed as well as disturbed when her children came trooping into the room clamorous for tea behind the little impetuous figure which at once hushed and protected them. Susan became silent all at once, sank back on the sofa, and concealed the faded flush upon her cheeks and the embarrassed conscious air she wore behind the handkerchief which she used so assiduously. Neither she nor her visitor took much share in the conversation that rose round the domestic table. Nettie, too, was sufficiently absorbed in her own concerns to say little, and nobody there was sufficiently observant to remark what a sudden breath of haste and nervous decision inspired the little household ruler as she dispensed the family bread-and-butter. When tea was over, Nettie sent her children out of the way with peremptory distinctness, and stayed behind them to make her communication. If she noticed vaguely a certain confused impatience and desire to get rid of her in the looks of her sister and the Australian, she attached no distinct meaning to it, but spoke out with all the simplicity of an independent power, knowing all authority and executive force to lie in her own hands alone.

"When do you think you can be ready to start? My mind is made up. I shall set to work immediately to prepare," said Nettie. "Now, look here, Susan: you have been thinking of it for months, so it is not like taking you by surprise. There is a ship that sails on the 24th. If everything is packed and ready, will you consent to go on that day?"

Mrs Fred started with unfeigned surprise, and, not without a little consternation, turned her eyes towards her friend before answering her sister. "It is just Nettie's way," cried Susan—"just how she always does—holds out against you to the very last, and then turns round and darts off before you can draw your breath. The 24th! and this is the 19th! Of course we can't do it, Nettie. I shall want quantities of things, and Mr Chatham, you know, is not used to your ways, and can't be whisked off in a moment whenever you please."

"I daresay it's very kind of Mr Chatham," said Nettie; "but I can take you out very well by myself—just as well as I brought you here. And I can't afford to get you quantities of things, Susan. So please to understand I am going off to pack up, and on the 24th we shall go."

Once more, under Nettie's impatient eyes, a look and a smile passed between her sister and the Australian. Never very patient at any time, the girl was entirely aggravated out of all toleration now.

"I can't tell what you may have to smile to each other about," said Nettie. "It is no very smiling business to me. But since I am driven to it, I shall go at once or not at all. And so that you understand me, that is all I want to say."

With which words she disappeared suddenly to the multitudinous work that lay before her, thinking as little of Susan's opposition as of the clamour raised by the children, when the hard sentence of going half an hour earlier to bed was pronounced upon them. Nettie's haste and peremptoriness were mixed, if it must be told, with a little resentment against the world in general. She had ceased being sad—she was roused and indignant. By the time she had subdued the refractory children, and disposed of them for the night, those vast Australian boxes, which they had brought with them across the seas, were placed in the little hall, under the pale light of the lamp, ready for the process of packing, into which Nettie plunged without a moment's interval. While Mrs Smith told Edward Rider her story, Nettie was flying up and down stairs with armfuls of things to be packed, and pressing Smith himself into her service. Ere long the hall was piled with heaps of personal property, ready to be transferred to those big receptacles. In the excitement of the work her spirit rose. The headlong haste with which she carried on her operations kept her mind in balance. Once or twice Susan peeped out from the parlour door, and something like an echo of laughter rang out into the hall after one of those inspections. Nettie took no notice either of the look or the laugh. She built in those piles of baggage with the rapidest symmetrical arrangement, to the admiration of Smith, who stood wondering by, and did what he could to help her, with troubled good-nature. She did not stop to make any sentimental reflections, or to think of the thankless office in which she was about to confirm herself beyond remedy by this sudden and precipitate step. Thinking had done Nettie little good hitherto. She felt herself on her true ground again, when she took to doing instead. The lamp burned dimly overhead, throwing down a light confused with frost upon the hall, all encumbered with the goods of the wandering family. Perhaps it was with a certain unconscious symbolism that Nettie buried her own personal wardrobe deep in the lowest depths, making that the foundation for all the after superstructure. Smith stood by, ready to hand her anything she might want, gazing at her with doubtful amazement. The idea of setting off to Australia at a few days' notice filled him with respect and admiration.

"A matter of a three months' voyage," said Smith; "and if I might make bold to ask, Miss, if the weather ain't too bad for anything, how will you pass away the time on board ship when there ain't nobody to speak to?—but, to be sure, the gentleman"

"The gentleman is not going with us," said Nettie, peremptorily—"and there are the children to pass away the time. My time passes too quick, whatever other people's may do. Where is Mrs Smith, that I see nothing of her to-night? Gone out!—how very odd she should go out now, of all times in the world. Where has she gone, do you suppose? Not to be ungrateful to you, who are very kind, a woman is, of course, twenty times the use a man is, in most things. Thank you—not that; those coloured frocks now—there! that bundle with the pink and the blue. One would suppose that even a man might know coloured frocks when he saw them," said Nettie, with despairing resignation, springing up from her knees to seize what she wanted. "Thank you—I think, perhaps, if you would just go and make yourself comfortable, and read your paper, I should get on better. I am not used to having anybody to help me. I got on quite as well, thank you, by myself."

Smith withdrew, not without some confusion and discomfort, to his condemned cell, and Nettie went on silent and swift with her labours. "Quite as well! better!" said Nettie to herself. "Other people never will understand. Now, I know better than to try anybody." If that hasty breath was a sigh, there was little sound of sorrow in it. It was a little gust of impatience, indignation, intolerance even, and hasty self-assertion. She alone knew what she could do, and must do. Not one other soul in the world beside could enter into her inevitable work and way.

Nettie did not hear the footstep which she might have recognised ringing rapidly down the frosty road. She was too busy rustling about with perpetual motion, folding and refolding, and smoothing into miraculous compactness all the heterogeneous elements of that mass. When a sudden knock came to the door she started, struck with alarm, then paused a moment, looking round her, and perceiving at one hasty glance that nobody could possibly enter without seeing both herself and her occupation, made one prompt step to the door, which nobody appeared to open. It was Mrs Smith, no doubt; but the sudden breathless flutter which came upon Nettie cast doubts upon that rapid conclusion. She opened it quickly, with a certain breathless, sudden promptitude, and looked out pale and dauntless, understanding by instinct that some new trial to her fortitude was there. On the other hand, Edward Rider pressed in suddenly, almost without perceiving it was Nettie. They were both standing in the hall together, before they fully recognised each other. Then the doctor, gazing round him at the unusual confusion, gave an involuntary groan out of the depths of his heart. "Then it is true!" said Dr Rider. He stood among the chaos, and saw all his own dreams broken up and shattered in pieces. Even passion failed him in that first bitterness of conviction. Nettie stood opposite, with the sleeves of her black dress turned up from her little white nimble wrists, her hair pushed back from her cheeks, pushed quite behind one delicate ear, her eyes shining with all those lights of energy and purpose which came to them as soon as she took up her own character again. She met his eye with a little air of defiance, involuntary, and almost unconscious. "It is quite true," said Nettie, bursting forth in sudden self-justification; "I have my work to do, and I must do it as best I can. I cannot keep considering you all, and losing my life. I must do what God has given me to do, or I must die."

Never had Nettie been so near breaking down, and falling into sudden womanish tears and despair. She would not yield to the overpowering momentary passion. She clutched at the bundle of frocks again, and made room for them spasmodically in the box which she had already packed. Edward Rider stood silent, gazing at her as in her sudden anguish Nettie pulled down and reconstructed that curious honeycomb. But he had not come here merely to gaze, while the catastrophe was preparing. He went up and seized her busy hands, raised her up in spite of her resistance, and thrust away, with an exclamation of disgust, that great box in which all his hopes were being packed away. "There is first a question to settle between you and me," cried the doctor: "you shall not do it. No! I forbid it, Nettie. Because you are wilful," cried Edward Rider, hoarse and violent, grasping the hands tighter, with a strain in which other passions than love mingled, "am I to give up all the rights of a man? You are going away without even giving me just warning—without a word, without a sign; and you think I will permit it, Nettie? Never—by heaven!"

"Dr Edward," said Nettie, trembling, half with terror, half with resolution, "you have no authority over me. We are two people—we are not one. I should not have gone away without a word or a sign. I should have said good-bye to you, whatever had happened; but that is different from permitting or forbidding. Let us say good-bye now and get it over, if that will please you better," she cried, drawing her hands from his grasp; "but I do not interfere with your business, and I must do mine my own way."

The doctor was in no mood to argue. He thrust the big box she had packed away into a corner, and closed it with a vindictive clang. It gave him a little room to move in that little commonplace hall, with its dim lamp, which had witnessed so many of the most memorable scenes of his life. "Look here," cried Dr Rider; "authority has little to do with it. If you had been my wife, Nettie, to be sure you could not have deserted me. It is as great a cruelty—it is as hard upon me, this you are trying to do. I have submitted hitherto, and heaven knows it has been bitter enough; and you scorn me for my submission," said the doctor, making the discovery by instinct. "When a fellow obeys you, it is only contempt you feel for him; but I tell you, Nettie, I will bear it no longer. You shall not go away. This is not to be. I will neither say good-bye, nor think of it. What is your business is my business; and I declare to you, you shall not go unless I go too. Ah—I forgot. They tell me there is a fellow, an Australian, who ventures to pretend—I don't mean to say I believe it. You think he will not object to your burdens! Nettie! Don't let us kill each other. Let us take all the world on our shoulders," cried the doctor, drawing near again, with passionate looks, "rather than part!"

There was a pause—neither of them could speak at that moment. Nettie, who felt her resolution going, her heart melting, yet knew she dared not give way, clasped her hands tight in each other and stood trembling, yet refusing to tremble; collecting her voice and thoughts. The doctor occupied that moment of suspense in a way which might have looked ludicrous in other circumstances, but was a relief to the passion that possessed him. He dragged the other vast Australian box to the same corner where he had set the first, and piled them one above the other. Then he collected with awkward care all the heaps of garments which lay about, and carried them off in the other direction to the stairs, where he laid them carefully with a clumsy tenderness. When he had swept away all these encumbrances, as by a sudden gust of wind, he came back to Nettie, and once more clasped the firm hands which held each other fast. She broke away from him with a sudden cry—

"You acknowledged it was impossible!" cried Nettie. "It is not my doing, or anybody's; no one shall take the world on his shoulders for my sake—I ask nobody to bear my burdens. Thank you for not believing it—that is a comfort at least. Never, surely, any one else—and not you, not you! Dr Edward, let us make an end of it. I will never consent to put my yoke upon your shoulders, but I—I will never forget you or blame you—any more. It is all hard, but we cannot help it. Good-bye—don't make it harder, you, who are the only one that; good-bye,—no more—don't say any more."

At this moment the parlour door opened suddenly; Nettie's trembling mouth and frame, and the wild protest and contradiction which were bursting from the lips of the doctor, were lost upon the spectator absorbed in her own affairs, and full of excitement on her own account, who looked out. "Perhaps Mr Edward will walk in," said Mrs Fred. "Now he is here to witness what I mean, I should like to speak to you, please, Nettie. I did not think I should ever appeal to you, Mr Edward, against Nettie's wilfulness—but, really now, we, none of us, can put up with it any longer. Please to walk in and hear what I've got to say."

The big Bushman stood before the little fire in the parlour, extinguishing its tiny glow with his vast shadow. The lamp burned dimly upon the table. A certain air of confusion was in the room. Perhaps it was because Nettie had already swept her own particular belongings out of that apartment, which once, to the doctor's eyes, had breathed of her presence in every corner—but it did not look like Nettie's parlour to-night. Mrs Fred, with the broad white bands of her cap streaming over her black dress, had just assumed her place on the sofa, which was her domestic throne. Nettie, much startled and taken by surprise, stood by the table, waiting with a certain air of wondering impatience what was to be said to her—with still the sleeves turned up from her tiny wrists, and her fingers unconsciously busy expressing her restless intolerance of this delay by a hundred involuntary tricks and movements. The doctor stood close by her, looking only at Nettie, watching her with eyes intent as if she might suddenly disappear from under his very gaze. As for the Australian, he stood uneasy under Nettie's rapid investigating glance, and the slower survey which Dr Rider made on entering. He plucked at his big beard, and spread out his large person with a confusion and embarrassment rather more than merely belonged to the stranger in a family party; while Mrs Fred, upon her sofa, took up her handkerchief and once more began to fan her pink cheeks. What was coming? After a moment's pause, upon which Nettie could scarcely keep herself from breaking, Susan spoke.

"Nettie has always had the upper hand so much that she thinks I am always to do exactly as she pleases," burst forth Mrs Fred; "and I don't doubt poor Fred encouraged her in it, because he felt he was obliged to my family, and always gave in to her; but now I have somebody to stand by me," added Susan, fanning still more violently, and with a sound in her voice which betrayed a possibility of tears—"now I have somebody to stand by me—I tell you once for all, Nettie, I will not go on the 24th."

Nettie gazed at her sister in silence without attempting to say anything. Then she lifted her eyes inquiringly to the Australian, in his uneasy spectator position before the fire. She was not much discomposed, evidently, by that sudden assertion of will—possibly Nettie was used to it—but she looked curious and roused, and rather eager to know what was it now?

"I will not go on the 24th," cried Mrs Fred, with a hysterical toss of her head. "I will not be treated like a child, and told to get ready whenever Nettie pleases. She pretends it is all for our sake, but it is for the sake of having her own will, and because she has taken a sudden disgust at something. I asked you in, Mr Edward, because you are her friend, and because you are the children's uncle, and ought to know how they are provided for. Mr Chatham and I," said Susan, overcome by her feelings, and agitating the handkerchief violently, "have settled—to be—married first before we set out."

If a shell had fallen in the peaceful apartment, the effect could not have been more startling. The two who had been called in to receive that intimation, and who up to this moment had been standing together listening languidly enough, too much absorbed in the matter between themselves to be very deeply concerned about anything Mrs Fred could say or do, fell suddenly apart with the wildest amazement in their looks. "Susan, you are mad!" cried Nettie, gazing aghast at her sister, with an air of mingled astonishment and incredulity. The doctor, too much excited to receive with ordinary decorum information so important, made a sudden step up to the big embarrassed Australian, who stood before the fire gazing into vacancy, and looking the very embodiment of conscious awkwardness. Dr Rider stretched out both his hands and grasped the gigantic fist of the Bushman with an effusion which took that worthy altogether by surprise. "My dear fellow, I wish you joy—I wish you joy. Anything I can be of use to you in, command me!" cried the doctor, with a suppressed shout of half-incredulous triumph. Then he returned restlessly towards Nettie—they all turned to her with instinctive curiosity. Never in all her troubles had Nettie been so pale; she looked in her sister's face with a kind of despair.

"Is this true, Susan?" she said, with a sorrowful wonder as different as possible from the doctor's joyful surprise—"not something said to vex us—really true? And this has been going on, and I knew nothing of it; and all this time you have been urging me to go back to the colony—me—as if you had no other thoughts. If you had made up your mind to this, what was the use of driving me desperate?" cried Nettie, in a sudden outburst of that incomprehension which aches in generous hearts. Then she stopped suddenly and looked from her sister, uttering suppressed sobs, and hiding her face in her handkerchief on the sofa, to the Australian before the fire. "What is the good of talking?" said Nettie, with a certain indignant impatient indulgence, coming to an abrupt conclusion. Nobody knew so well as she did how utterly useless it was to remonstrate or complain. She dropt into the nearest chair, and began with hasty tremulous hands to smooth down the cuffs of her black sleeves. In the bitterness of the moment it was not the sudden deliverance, but the heartlessness and domestic treachery that struck Nettie. She, the champion and defender of this helpless family for years—who had given them bread, and served it to them with her own cheerful unwearied hands—who had protected as well as provided for them in her dauntless innocence and youth. When she was thus cast off on the brink of the costliest sacrifice of all, it was not the delightful sensation of freedom which occurred to Nettie. She fell back with a silent pang of injury swelling in her heart, and, all tremulous and hasty, gave her agitated attention to the simple act of smoothing down her sleeves—a simple but symbolical act, which conveyed a world of meaning to the mind of the doctor as he stood watching her. The work she had meant to do was over. Nettie's occupation was gone. With the next act of the domestic drama she had nothing to do. For the first time in her life utterly vanquished, with silent promptitude she abdicated on the instant. She seemed unable to strike a blow for the leadership thus snatched from her hands. With proud surprise and magnanimity she withdrew, forbearing even the useless reproaches of which she had impatiently asked, "What was the good?" Never abdicated emperor laid aside his robes with more ominous significance, than Nettie, with fingers trembling between haste and agitation, smoothed down round her shapely wrists those turned-up sleeves.

The doctor's better genius saved him from driving the indignant Titania desperate at that critical moment by any ill-advised rejoicings; and the sight of Nettie's agitation so far calmed Dr Rider that he made the most sober and decorous congratulations to the sister-in-law, whom for the first time he felt grateful to. Perhaps, had he been less absorbed in his own affairs, he could scarcely have failed to remember how, not yet a year ago, the shabby form of Fred lay on that same sofa from which Susan had announced her new prospects; but in this unexampled revolution of affairs no thought of Fred disturbed his brother, whose mind was thoroughly occupied with the sudden tumult of his own hopes. "Oh yes, I hope I shall be happy at last. After all my troubles, I have to look to myself, Mr Edward; and your poor brother would have been the last to blame me," sobbed Mrs Fred, with involuntary self-vindication. Then followed a pause. The change was too sudden and extraordinary, and involved results too deeply important to every individual present, to make words possible. Mrs Fred, with her face buried in her handkerchief, and Nettie, her whole frame thrilling with mortification and failure, tremulously trying to button her sleeves, and bestowing her whole mind upon that operation, were discouraging interlocutors; and after the doctor and the Bushman had shaken hands, their powers of communication were exhausted. The silence was at length broken by the Australian, who, clearing his voice between every three words, delivered his embarrassed sentiments as follows:—

"I trust, Miss Nettie, you'll not think you've been unfairly dealt by, or that any change is necessary so far as you are concerned. Of course," said Mr Chatham, growing red, and plucking at his beard, "neither your sister nor I—found out—till quite lately—how things were going to be; and as for you making any change in consequence, or thinking we could be anything but glad to have you with us"

Here the alarming countenance of Nettie, who had left off buttoning her sleeves, brought her new relation to a sudden stop. Under the blaze of her inquiring eyes the Bushman could go no farther. He looked at Susan for assistance, but Susan was still absorbed in her handkerchief; and while he paused for expression, the little abdicated monarch took up the broken thread.

"Thank you," said Nettie, rising suddenly; "I knew you were honest. It is very good of you, too, to be glad to have me with you. You don't know any better. I'm abdicated, Mr Chatham; but because it's rather startling to have one's business taken out of one's hands like this, it will be very kind of everybody not to say anything more to-night. I don't quite understand it all just at this moment. Good-night, Dr Edward. We can talk to-morrow, please; not to-night. You surely understand me, don't you? When one's life is changed all in a moment, one does not exactly see where one is standing just at once. Good-night. I mean what I say," she continued, holding her head high with restrained excitement, and trying to conceal the nervous agitation which possessed her as the doctor hastened before her to open the door. "Don't come after me, please; don't say anything; I cannot bear any more to-night."

"But to-morrow," said the doctor, holding fast the trembling hand. Nettie was too much overstrained and excited to speak more. A single sudden sob burst from her as she drew her hand out of his, and disappeared like a flying sprite. The doctor saw the heaving of her breast, the height of self-restraint which could go no further. He went back into the parlour like a true lover, and spied no more upon Nettie's hour of weakness. Without her, it looked a vulgar scene enough in that little sitting-room, from which the smoke of Fred's pipe had never fairly disappeared, and where Fred himself had lain in dismal state. Dr Rider said a hasty good-night to Fred's successor, and went off hurriedly into the changed world which surrounded that unconscious cottage. Though the frost had not relaxed, and the air breathed no balm, no sudden leap from December to June could have changed the atmosphere so entirely to the excited wayfarer who traced back the joyful path towards the lights of Carlingford twinkling brilliant through the Christmas frost. As he paused to look back upon that house which now contained all his hopes, a sudden shadow appeared at a lighted window, looking out. Nettie could not see the owner of the footsteps which moved her to that sudden involuntary expression of what was in her thoughts, but he could see her standing full in the light, and the sight went to the doctor's heart. He took off his hat insanely in the darkness and waved his hand to her, though she could not see him; and, after the shadow had disappeared, continued to stand watching with tender folly if perhaps some indication of Nettie's presence might again reveal itself. He walked upon air as he went back, at last, cold but joyful, through the blank solitude of Grange Lane. Nothing could have come amiss to the doctor in that dawn of happiness. He could have found it in his heart to mount his drag again and drive ten miles in celestial patience at the call of any capricious invalid. He was half-disappointed to find no summons awaiting him when he went home—no outlet for the universal charity and loving-kindness that possessed him. Instead, he set his easy-chair tenderly by the side of the blazing fire, and, drawing another chair opposite, gazed with secret smiles at the visionary Nettie, who once had taken up her position there. Was it by prophetic instinct that the little colonial girl, whose first appearance so discomposed the doctor, had assumed that place? Dr Rider contemplated the empty chair with smiles that would have compromised his character for sanity with any uninstructed observer. When the mournful Mary disturbed his reverie by her noiseless and penitent entrance with the little supper which she meant at once for a peace-offering and compensation for the dinner lost, she carried down-stairs with her a vivid impression that somebody had left her master a fortune. Under such beatific circumstances closed the evening that had opened amid such clouds. Henceforth, so far as the doctor could read the future, no difficulties but those common to all wooers beset the course of his true love.