Chronicles of Carlingford

THE DOCTOR'S FAMILY

BY

MRS OLIPHANT

NEW EDITION_WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS_EDINBURGH AND LONDON

CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 

THE DOCTOR'S FAMILY. 

CHAPTER I. 

Young Dr Rider lived in the new quarter of Carlingford: had he aimed ata reputation in society, he could not possibly have done a more foolishthing; but such was not his leading motive. The young man, being butyoung, aimed at a practice. He was not particular in the mean time as tothe streets in which his patients dwelt. A new house, gazing with allits windows over a brick-field, was as interesting to the young surgeonas if it had been one of those exclusive houses in Grange Lane, wherethe aristocracy of Carlingford lived retired within their garden walls. His own establishment, though sufficiently comfortable, was of a kindutterly to shock the feelings of the refined community: a corner house, with a surgery round the corner, throwing the gleam of its red lamp overall that chaotic district of half-formed streets and full-developedbrick-fields, with its night-bell prominent, and young Rider's name on astaring brass plate, with mysterious initials after it. M. R. C. S. Theunhappy young man had been seduced to put after his name upon that brassplate, though he was really Dr Rider, a physician, if not an experiencedone. Friends had advised him that in such districts people were afraidof physicians, associating only with dread adumbrations of a guinea avisit that miscomprehended name; so, with a pang, the young surgeon hadput his degree in his pocket, and put up with the inferior distinction. Of course, Dr Marjoribanks had all the patronage of Grange Lane. Thegreat people were infatuated about that snuffy old Scotchman--a manbehind his day, who had rusted and grown old among the soft diseasesof Carlingford, where sharp practice was so seldom necessary; and noopening appeared for young Rider except in the new district, in the smugcorner house, with the surgery and the red lamp, and M. R. C. S. On a brassplate on his door. 

If you can imagine that the young man bowed his spirit to this without astruggle, you do the poor young fellow injustice. He had been hardenough put to it at divers periods of his life. Ambition had not beenpossible for him either in one shape or another. Some people said he hada vulgar mind when he subsided into that house; other people declaredhim a shabby fellow when he found out, after the hardest night's thoughthe ever went through in his life, that he durst not ask Bessie Christianto marry him. You don't suppose that he did not know in his secretheart, and feel tingling through every vein, those words which nobodyever said to his face? But he could not help it. He could only make anindignant gulp of his resentment and shame, which were shame andresentment at himself for wanting the courage to dare everything, aswell as at other people for finding him out, and go on with his workas he best could. He was not a hero nor a martyr; men made of thatstuff have large compensations. He was an ordinary individual, with nosublimity in him, and no compensation to speak of for his sufferings--noconsciousness of lofty right-doing, or of a course of action superior tothe world. 

Perhaps you would prefer to go up-stairs and see for yourself what wasthe skeleton in Edward Rider's cupboard, rather than have it describedto you. His drag came to the door an hour ago, and he went off with Caresitting behind him, and a certain angry pang aching in his heart, whichperhaps Bessie Christian's wedding-veil, seen far off in church yesterday, might have something to do with. His looks were rather black as hetwitched the reins out of his little groom's hands, and went off at astartling pace, which was almost the only consolation the young fellowhad. Now that he is certainly gone, and the coast clear, we may goup-stairs. It is true he all but kicked the curate down for taking asimilar liberty, but we who are less visible may venture while he isaway. 

This skeleton is not in a cupboard. It is in an up-stairs room, comfortable enough, but heated, close, unwholesome--a place from which, even when the window is open, the fresh air seems shut out. There is nofresh air nor current of life in this stifling place. There is a fire, though it is not cold--a sofa near the fire--a sickening heavy smell ofabiding tobacco--not light whiffs of smoke, such as accompany a man'slabours, but a dead pall of idle heavy vapour; and in the midst of all aman stretched lazily on the sofa, with his pipe laid on the table besidehim, and a book in his soft, boneless, nerveless hands. A large man, interpenetrated with smoke and idleness and a certain dreary soddendissipation, heated yet unexcited, reading a novel he has readhalf-a-dozen times before. He turns his bemused eyes to the door whenhis invisible visitors enter. He fancies he hears some one coming, butwill not take the trouble to rise and see who is there--so, instead ofthat exertion, he takes up his pipe, knocks the ashes out of it upon hisbook, fills it with coarse tobacco, and stretches his long arm over theshoulder of the sofa for a light. His feet are in slippers, his personclothed in a greasy old coat, his linen soiled and untidy. That is theskeleton in young Rider's house. 

The servants, you may be sure, knew all about this unwelcome visitor. They went with bottles and jugs secretly to bring him what he wanted;they went to the circulating library for him; they let him in when hehad been out in the twilight all shabby and slovenly. They would not behuman if they did not talk about him. They say he is very good-natured, poor gentleman--always has a pleasant word--is nobody's enemy but hisown; and to see how "the doctor do look at him, and he his own brotheras was brought up with him, " is dreadful, to be sure. 

All this young Rider takes silently, never saying a word about it to anyhuman creature. He seems to know by intuition what all these people sayof him, as he drives about furiously in his drag from patient to patient;and wherever he goes, as plain, nay, far more distinctly than theactual prospect before him, he sees that sofa, that dusty slow-burningfire--that pipe, with the little heap of ashes knocked out of it uponthe table--that wasted ruined life chafing him to desperation with itsdismal content. It is very true that it would have been sadly imprudentof the young man to go to the little house in Grove Street a year ago, and tell Bessie Christian he was very fond of her, and that somehow forher love he would manage to provide for those old people whom thatcheerful little woman toiled to maintain. It was a thing not to be donein any way you could contemplate it; and with a heartache the poor youngdoctor had turned his horse's head away from Grove Street, and leftBessie to toil on in her poverty. Bessie had escaped all that nowadays;but who could have forewarned the poor doctor that his elder brother, once the hope of the family--that clever Fred, whom all the others hadbeen postponed to--he who with his evil reputation had driven poorEdward out of his first practice, and sent him to begin life a secondtime at Carlingford--was to drop listlessly in again, and lay a harderburden than a harmless old father-in-law upon the young man's hands--aburden which no grateful Bessie shared and sweetened? No wonder blackCare sat at the young doctor's back as he drove at that dangerous pacethrough the new, encumbered streets. He might have broken his neck overthose heaps of brick and mortar, and it is doubtful whether he wouldhave greatly cared. 

When Dr Rider went home that night, the first sight he saw when hepulled up at his own door was his brother's large indolent shabby figureprowling up the street. In the temper he was then in, this was notlikely to soothe him. It was not a much-frequented street, but the youngdoctor knew instinctively that his visitor had been away in the heart ofthe town at the booksellers' shops buying cheap novels, and orderingthem magnificently to be sent to Dr Rider's; and could guess the curiousquestions and large answers which had followed. He sprang to the groundwith a painful suppressed indignation, intensified by many mingledfeelings, and waited the arrival of the maudlin wanderer. Ah me! onemight have had some consolation in the burden freely undertaken forlove's sake, and by love's self shared and lightened: but this load ofdisgrace and ruin which nobody could take part of--which it was miseryso much as to think that anybody knew of--the doctor's fraternalsentiments, blunted by absence and injury, were not strong enough tobear that weight. 

"So, Fred, you have been out, " said Dr Rider, moodily, as he stood asideon his own threshold to let his brother pass in--not with the courtesyof a host, but the precaution of a jailer, to see him safe before hehimself entered and closed the door. 

"Yes, you can't expect a man to sit in the house for ever, " said theprodigal, stumbling in to his brother's favourite sitting-room, whereeverything was tidy and comfortable for the brief leisure of thehard-working man. The man who did no work threw himself heavily intothe doctor's easy-chair, and rolled his bemused eyes round upon hisbrother's household gods. Those book-shelves with a bust at eithercorner, those red curtains drawn across the window, those prints on thewalls--all once so pleasant to the doctor's eyes--took a certain air ofsqualor and wretchedness to-night which sickened him to look at. Thelamp flared wildly with an untrimmed wick, or at least Dr Rider thoughtso; and threw a hideous profile of the intruder upon the wall behindhim. The hearth was cold, with that chill, of sentiment rather thanreality, naturally belonging to a summer night. Instead of a familiarplace where rest and tranquillity awaited him, that room, the onlyvision of home which the poor young fellow possessed, hardened into fourwalls, and so many chairs and tables, in the doctor's troubled eyes. 

But it bore a different aspect in the eyes of his maudlin brother. Looking round with those bewildered orbs, all this appeared luxury tothe wanderer. Mentally he appraised the prints over the mantelshelf, andreckoned how much of _his_ luxuries might be purchased out of them. Thatwas all so much money wasted by the Croesus before him. What a mint ofmoney the fellow must be making; and grudged a little comfort to hisbrother, his elder brother, the cleverest of the family! The dullexasperation of selfishness woke in the mind of the self-ruined man!

"You're snug enough here, " he exclaimed, "though you shut me in up-stairsto burrow out of sight. By Jove! as if I were not good enough to faceyour Carlingford patients. I've had a better practice in my day thanever you'll see, my fine fellow, with your beggarly M. R. C. S. And you'dhave me shut myself up in my garret into the bargain! You're ashamed ofme, forsooth! You can go spending money on that rubbish there, and can'tpay a tailor's bill for your elder brother; and as for introducing me inthis wretched hole of a place, and letting me pick up a little money formyself--I, a man with twice the experience in the profession that youhave----"

"Fred, stop that, " cried the doctor--"I've had about enough. Lookhere--I can't deny you shelter and what you call necessaries, becauseyou're my brother; but I won't submit to be ruined a second time by anyman. If I am ever to do any good in this world--and whether I do anygood or not, " he added fiercely, "I'll not have my good name tarnishedand my work interfered with _again_. I don't care two straws for mylife. It's hard enough--as hard as a treadmill, and never a drop ofconsolation in the cup; though I might have had that if I had beenanything but a fool. But look here, I do care for my practice--I won'thave you put your confounded spoke in my wheel again. Keep on in yourown way; smoke and drink and dream if you will; but I'll stand nointerference with my work--and that I tell you once for all. "

This speech was uttered with great vehemence, the speaker walking up anddown the room all the while. The bitterness of ingratitude and malicehad entered into the young man's soul. All the wrongs which the cleverelder brother, to whose claims everybody else was subordinated, had doneto his family, rose upon the recollection of the younger; all the stillbitterer sting of that injury which had been personal to himself; allthe burden and peril of this present undesired visit, the discontent, the threats, the evident power of doing evil, woke the temper and spiritof the young doctor. It was not Fred's fault that his brother had madethat mistake in life which he repented so bitterly. Bessie Christian'sbridal veil, and white ribbons; her joyful face untouched with anypensive reminiscences; and the dead dulness of that house, into whichfoot of woman never entered, were not of Fred's doing; but passion isnot reasonable. The doctor gave Fred credit unconsciously for the whole. He walked up and down the room with a whole world of passionate mortifiedfeeling--vexation, almost despair, throbbing within him. He seemed tohave made a vast sacrifice for the sake of this brother who scorned himto his face. 

"You're hot, " said the disreputable figure in Dr Rider's easy-chair, "much hotter than there's any occasion for. Do I envy you your beggarlypatients, do you suppose? But, Ned, you never were cut out for theprofession--a good shopkeeping business would have been a deal betterfor you. Hang it! you haven't the notions of a gentleman. You thinkbread and water is all you're bound to furnish your brother when he isunder a cloud. As for society, I never see a soul--not even yourself, though you're no great company. Look here--I am not unreasonable; orderin some supper--there's a good fellow--and let's have a comfortableevening together. You're not the man you used to be, Ned. You used to bea fellow of spirit; somebody's jilted you, or something--I don't wantto pry into your secrets; but let's have a little comfort for once in away, and you shall have the whole business about the old colony, and howI came to leave it--the truth, and nothing but the truth. "

It was some time before the victim yielded; at last, half to escape thepainful ferment of his own thoughts, and half with a natural yearningfor some sympathy and companionship, however uncongenial, he fell out ofhis heat and passion into a more complacent mood. He sat down, watchingwith a gulp of hardly-restrained disgust that lolling figure in thechair, every gesture of which was the more distasteful for being sofamiliar, and recalling a hundred preliminary scenes all tending towardsthis total wreck and shame. Then his mind softened with fraternalinstincts--strange interlacement of loathing and affection. He wastired, hungry, chilled to his heart. The spell of material comfort, even in such company, came upon the young man. They supped together, not much to the advantage of Dr Rider's head, stomach, or temper, on thefollowing morning. The elder told his story of inevitable failure, andstrange unexplainable fatality. The younger dropped forth expressions ofdisappointment and trouble which partly eased his own mind. Thus theyspent together the unlovely evening; and perhaps a few such nights wouldhave done as much harm to the young doctor's practice as had he introducedhis disreputable brother without more ado into the particular littleworld of Carlingford. 

CHAPTER II. 

Next morning Dr Rider rose mightily vexed with himself, as was to besupposed. He was half an hour late for breakfast: he had a headache, hishand shook, and his temper was "awful. " Before he was dressed, ominousknocks came to the door; and all feverish and troubled as he was, youmay imagine that the prospect of the day's work before him did not improvehis feelings, and that self-reproach, direst of tormentors, did not mendthe matter. Two ladies were waiting for him, he was told when he wentdown-stairs--not to say sundry notes and messages in the ordinary wayof business--two ladies who had brought two boxes with them, and askedleave to put them in the hall till they could see Dr Rider. The sightof this luggage in his little hall startled the doctor. Patients do notgenerally carry such things about with them. What did it mean? Whatcould two ladies want with him? The young man felt his face burn withpainful anticipations, a little shame, and much impatience. Probably thesister who adored Fred, and never could learn to believe that he was notunfortunate and a victim. This would be a climax to the occupation ofhis house. 

As the poor doctor gloomily approached the door of the room in which hehad spent last evening, he heard a little rustle and commotion not quiteconsistent with his expectations--a hum of voices and soft stir such asyouthful womankind only makes. Then a voice entirely strange to himuttered an exclamation. Involuntarily he started and changed his aspect. He did not know the voice, but it was young, sweet, peculiar. The cloudlightened a little upon the doctor's face. Notwithstanding BessieChristian, he was still young enough to feel a little flutter of curiositywhen he heard such a voice sounding out of his room. Hark! what did shesay? It was a profoundly prosaic speech. 

"What an intolerable smell of smoke! I shouldn't wonder a bit--indeed, I rather think he must be, or he wouldn't live in a place like this--ifhe were exactly such another as Fred. "

"Poor Fred!" said a plaintive voice, "if we only can learn where he is. Hush, there is a footstep! Ah, it is not my poor fellow's footstep!Nettie, hark!"

"No, indeed! twenty thousand times sharper, and more like a man, " saidthe other, in hurried breathless accents. "Hark! here he is. "

The entire bewilderment, the amaze, apprehension, confusion with whichDr Rider entered the room from which this scrap of conversation reachedhim, is indescribable. A dreadful sense that something was about tohappen seized the young man's mind with an indescribable curiosity. Hepaused an instant to recover himself, and then went boldly and silentlyinto the room which had become mysterious through its new inmates. Theyboth turned round upon him as he entered. Two young women: one who hadbeen sitting at the table, looking faded, plaintive, and anxious, roseup suddenly, and, clasping her hands, as if in entreaty, fixed twobright but sunken eyes upon his face. The other, a younger, lighterfigure, all action and haste, interposed between him and her companion. She put up one hand in warning to the petitioner behind her, and one tocall the attention of the bewildered stranger before. Evidently the onething which alarmed this young lady was that somebody would speak beforeher, and the conduct of the _situation_ be taken out of her hands. Shewas little, very slight, very pretty, but her prettiness was peculiar. The young doctor, accustomed to the fair Saxon version of beauty given byBessie Christian, did not at the first glance believe that the wonderfullittle person before him possessed any; for she was not only slender, but _thin_, dark, eager, impetuous, with blazing black eyes andred lips, and nothing else notable about her. So he thought, gazingfascinated, yet not altogether attracted--scarcely sure that he was notrepelled--unable, however, to withdraw his eyes from that hurried, eager little figure. Nothing in the least like her had ever yet appearedbefore Dr Rider's eyes. 

"We want to inquire about your brother, " said the little stranger; "weknow this was to be his address, and we want to know whether he is livinghere. His letters were to be sent to your care; but my sister has notheard from him now for a year. "

"Never mind that!--never mind telling that, Nettie, " cried the otherbehind her. "Oh, sir! only tell me where my poor Fred is?"

"So she began to fear he was ill, " resumed the younger of the two, undauntedly; "though Susan will do nothing but praise him, he hasbehaved to her very shamefully. Do you happen to know, sir, where heis?"

"Did you say Fred--my brother Fred?" cried the poor young doctor inutter dismay; "and may I ask who it is that expresses so much interestin him?"

There was a momentary pause; the two women exchanged looks. "I told youso, " cried the eager little spokeswoman. "He never has let his friendsknow; he was afraid of that. I told you how it was. This, " she continued, with a little tragic air, stretching out her arm to her sister, andfacing the doctor--"this is Mrs Frederick Rider, or rather Mrs Rider, I should say, as he is the eldest of the family! Now will you pleaseto tell us where he is?"

The doctor made no immediate answer. He gazed past the speaker to thefaded woman behind, and exclaimed, with a kind of groan, "Fred's wife!"

"Yes, Fred's wife, " cried the poor creature, rushing forward to him;"and oh! where is he? I've come thousands of miles to hear. Is he ill?has anything happened to him? Where is Fred?"

"Susan, you are not able to manage this; leave it to me, " said hersister, drawing her back peremptorily. "Dr Rider, please to answer us. We know you well enough, though you don't seem ever to have heard of us. It was you that my brother-in-law gave up his business to before hecame out to the colony. Oh, we know all about it! To keep him separatefrom his wife cannot do you any benefit, Dr Edward. Yes, I know yourname, and all about it; and I don't mean indeed to suffer my sister tobe injured and kept from her husband. I have come all this way with herto take care of her. I mean to stay with her to take care of her. I havenot parted with my money, though she gave all hers away; and I mean tosee her have her rights. "

"Oh, Nettie, Nettie, how you talk!" cried the unfortunate wife. "Youkeep him from answering me. All this time I cannot hear--where is Fred?"

"Be seated, please, " said the doctor, with dreadful civility, "andcompose yourselves. Fred is well enough; as well as he ever is. I don'tknow, " added poor Rider, with irrestrainable bitterness, "whether he isquite presentable to ladies; but I presume, madam, if you're his wife, you're acquainted with his habits. Excuse me for being quite unpreparedfor such a visit. I have not much leisure for anything out of myprofession. I can scarcely spare these minutes, that is the truth; but ifyou will favour me with a few particulars, I will have the news conveyedto my brother. I--I beg your pardon. When a man finds he has newrelations he never dreamed of, it naturally embarrasses him at themoment. May I ask if you ladies have come from Australia alone?"

"Oh, not alone; the children are at the hotel. Nettie said it was no usecoming unless we all came, " said his new sister-in-law, with a half-sob. 

"The children!" Dr Rider's gasp of dismay was silent, and made no sound. He stood staring blankly at those wonderful invaders of his bachelorhouse, marvelling what was to be done with them in the first place. Washe to bring Fred down all slovenly and half-awakened? was he to leavethem in possession of his private sanctuary? The precious morningmoments were passing while he pondered, and his little groom fidgetedoutside with a message for the doctor. While he stood irresolute, theindefatigable Nettie once more darted forward. 

"Give me Fred's address, please, " said this managing woman. "I'll seehim, and prepare him for meeting Susan. He can say what he pleases tome; _I_ don't mind it in the very least; but Susan of course must betaken care of. Now, look here, Dr Edward; Susan is your sister-in-law, and I am her sister. We don't want to occupy your time. I can manageeverything; but it is quite necessary in the first place that you shouldconfide in me. "

"Confide!" cried the bewildered man. "Fred is not under my authority. He is here in my house much against my will. He is in bed, and not fitto be awakened; and I am obliged to tell you simply, ladies, " said theunfortunate doctor, "that my house has no accommodation for a family. Ifyou will go back to the hotel where you left the children"--and here thespeaker gave another gasp of horror--"I'll have him roused and sent toyou. It is the only thing I can do. "

"Susan can go, " said the prompt Nettie; "I'll stay here until Fred isready, and take him to see them. It is necessary he should be prepared, you know. Don't talk nonsense, Susan--I shall stay here, and Dr Rider, of course, will call a cab for you. "

"But Nettie, Nettie dear, it isn't proper. I can't leave you all byyourself in a strange house, " remonstrated her sister. 

"Don't talk such stuff; I am perfectly well able to take care of myself;I am not a London young lady, " said the courageous Nettie. "It isperfectly unnecessary to say another word to me--I know my duty--I shallstay here. "

With which speech she seated herself resolutely in that same easy-chairwhich Fred had lolled in last night, took off her bonnet, for hats werenot in these days, and shed off from her face, with two tiny hands, exquisite in shape if a little brown in colour, the great braids ofdark-brown silky hair which encumbered her little head. The gesturemollified Dr Rider in the most unaccountable way in spite of himself. The intolerable idea of leaving these two in his house became lessintolerable, he could not tell how. And the little groom outside fairlyknocked at the door in that softening moment with a message which couldbe delayed no longer. The doctor put his head out to receive the call, and looked in again perplexed and uncertain. Nettie had quite establishedherself in the easy-chair. She sat there looking with her bright eyesinto the vacant air before her, in a pretty attitude of determinationand readiness, beating her little foot on the carpet. Something whimsical, odd, and embarrassing about her position made it all the more piquantto the troubled eyes which, in spite of all their worldly wisdom, werestill the eyes of a young man. He could not tell in the world what tosay to her. To order that creature out of his house was simply impossible;to remain there was equally so; to leave them in possession of thefield--what could the unfortunate young doctor do? One thing was certain, the impatient patient could no longer be neglected; and after a fewminutes longer of bewildered uncertainty, Dr Rider went off in thewildest confusion of mind, leaving his brother's unknown familytriumphant in his invaded house. 

To describe the feelings with which the unfortunate doctor went fastingabout his day's work--the manner in which that scene returned to himafter every visit he made--the continual succession in which wrath, dismay, alarm, bitter disgust with the falsehood of the brother who, nofurther gone than last night, had pretended to confide in him, but neverbreathed a syllable of this biggest unconcealable secret, swept throughthe mind of the victim; all culminating, however, in the softening ofthat moment, in the tiny figure, indomitable elf or fairy, shedding backwith dainty fingers those soft abundant locks--would be impossible. Theyoung man got through his work somehow, in a maze of confusion andexcitement--angry excitement, indignant confusion, determination toyield nothing further, but to defend himself and his house once for allfrom the inroads of what he angrily pronounced in his own mind "anotherman's family"--yet, withal, of curiosity and interest which gave zestgreater than usual to the idea of going home. When he was able at lastto turn his horse's head towards his own dwelling, it was with feelingsvery different from the usual unexpecting blank of sullen displeasure. What he should find there, was a curious, exciting, alarming question;perhaps an entire nursery with Nettie in charge; perhaps a recusanthusband with Nettie mounting guard over him; perhaps a thrilling sceneof family explanation and reconciliation. The day had been a speciallylong and hard one. He had been obliged to snatch a hurried lunch at oneof his patients' houses, and to postpone his hard-earned dinner to themost fashionable of hours. It was indeed quite evening, almost twilight, when he made his way home at last. As he neared the scene of action, the tired man condoled with himself over the untimely excitement thatawaited him. He said to himself with pathetic self-pity that it was hardindeed for a man who had earned a little repose to go in upon all thetroubles of another man's family. He had denied himself--he had notundertaken upon his own shoulders that pleasing burden; and now whatwas he to be saddled with?--the burden without the consolation--theresponsibility without the companionship. All this Dr Rider representedto himself very pathetically as he wended his homeward way. Yet it isastonishing, notwithstanding, with what alacrity he hastened upon thatpath, and how much the curiosity, the excitement, the dramatic stir andcommotion made in his monotonous life by this entirely new unexpectedincident, occupied his mind. With expectations highly roused, he drewup once more before his own house. It was surprising to him to seehow exactly it looked like itself. The blinds half-drawn down in thegenteelest calm as they always were--no faces peeping at the windows--nomarks of an arrival on the pavement, or in the composed countenance ofMary, who stood holding the door open for him. He went in with a littlethrill of curiosity; the house was very quiet--dead-quiet in comparisonwith the commotion of his thoughts; so was the sitting-room where he hadleft Nettie resolutely planted in the easy-chair; there was nobody therenow; the boxes were out of the hall, not a sound was to be heard in thehouse. He turned rather blankly upon Mary, who was going away quitecomposedly, as if there was nothing which she wanted to tell or he tohear. 

"Where is my brother and the ladies?" said the amazed doctor. 

"They all went off to the 'otel, sir, as soon as Mr Rider camedown-stairs, " said Mary, complacently. "I assured Miss as it was thebest thing she could do, sir, for that I was 'most sure you'd never havethe children here, --as to be sure there wasn't no room neither, " saidthe doctor's factotum. "As soon as Mr Frederick came down, she called acab, did Miss, and took 'em both away. "

"Oh! so they're gone, are they?" said the doctor. 

"Hours and hours ago, " answered Mary; "dinner'll be up in two minutes. But I wouldn't say much for the potatoes, sir. When a gentleman'sirreg'lar, it's hard laws on the poor servants--nothink will keep, goingon for two hours, and not take no harm; but all's quiet and comfortablein your room. "

And with this assurance, which she evidently thought a very gratefulone, Mary went off to get the doctor's dinner. He walked to the end ofthe room, and then back again, with solemnity--then threw himself intothat easy-chair. "Blessed riddance!" said the doctor; but somehow helooked glum, wonderfully glum. There was no accounting for those blanklooks of his; he who had been condoling with himself over the excitingscene he expected, so uncomfortable a conclusion to a long day's labour, how was it he did not look relieved when that scene was spared him? Totell the truth, when one has been expecting something to happen, ofwhatever description, and has been preparing one's courage, one'stemper, one's fortitude, in anticipatory rehearsals--when one has placedone's self in the attitude of a martyr, and prepared to meet with fierytrials--it is mortifying, to say the least, when one finds all thenecessities of the case disappear, and the mildest calm replace thattragical anticipation: the quiet falls blank upon the excited fancy. Ofcourse Dr Rider was relieved; but it was with something mightily likedisappointment that he leant back in his chair and knitted his brows atthe opposite wall. Not for the world would he have acknowledged himselfto be disappointed; but the calm was wonderfully monotonous after allthose expectations. He was never so bored and sick of a night byhimself. He tried to read, but reading did not occupy his mind. He grewfurious over his charred chops and sodden potatoes. As for the tea Marybrought, he would have gladly pitched it at her by way of diversifyingthat blank evening with an incident. The contrast between what he hadlooked for and what he had, was wonderful. How delicious this stillnessshould have been, this consciousness of having his house to himself, andnobody to interrupt his brief repose! But somehow it appears that humannature takes best with not having its wishes granted. It is indescribablehow Dr Rider yawned--how dull he found his newspaper--how few booksworth reading there were in the house--how slow the minutes ran on. If somebody had chosen to be ill that night, of all nights the bestfor such a purpose, the doctor would not have objected to such aninterruption. Failing that, he went to bed early, dreadfully tired ofhis own society. Such were the wonderful results of that invasion somuch dreaded, and that retreat so much hoped for. Perhaps his ownsociety had never in his life been so distasteful to him before. 

CHAPTER III. 

Next day Dr Rider audibly congratulated himself at breakfast upon havingonce more his house to himself--audibly, as if it were really necessaryto give utterance to the thought before he could quite feel its force. A week before, if Fred had departed, however summarily, there can be nodoubt that his brother's feelings of relief and comfort would have beenunfeigned; now, however, he began to think the matter over, and tojustify to himself his extraordinary sense of disappointment. As hepoured out his own coffee with a sober face, his eye rested upon thateasy-chair which had been brought into such prominence in the historyof the last two days. He kept looking at it as he sipped that gloomycoffee. Fred had faded from the great chair; his big image threw noshadow upon it. There sat a little fairy queen, tiny as Titania, butdark as an elf of the East, putting up those two shapely tiny hands, brown and beautiful, to push aside the flood of hair, which certainlywould have veiled her little figure all over, the doctor thought, had itbeen let down. Wonderful little sprite! She, no doubt, had dragged herplaintive sister over the seas--she it was that had forced her way intoEdward Rider's house; taken her position in it, ousted the doctor; andshe doubtless it was who swept the husband and wife out of it again, leaving no trace behind. Waking up from a little trance of musing uponthis too interesting subject, Dr Rider suddenly raised himself into anerect position, body and mind, with an involuntary movement, as if toshake off the yoke of the enchantress. He reminded himself instinctivelyof his brother's falsehood and ingratitude. After throwing himself amost distasteful burden on Edward's charity for five long dreary months, the bugbear of the doctor's dreams, and heavy ever-recurring climax ofhis uncomfortable thoughts, here had Fred departed without a word ofexplanation or thanks, or even without saying good-bye. The doctorthought himself quite justified in being angry. He began to feel thatthe suspicious uneasiness which possessed him was equally natural andinevitable. Such a thankless, heartless departure was enough to put anyman out. To imagine that Fred could be capable of it, naturally went tohis brother's heart. 

That day there was still no word of the party who had disappeared somysteriously out of the doctor's house. Dr Rider went to his hard day'swork vaguely expectant, feeling sure he must hear of them somehow, andmore interested in hearing of them than was to be expected from hisformer low ebb of fraternal affection. When he returned and found stillno letter, no message, the blank disappointment of the former nightclosed still more blankly upon him. When one is all by one's self, andhas nothing at best but an easy-chair to go home to, and goes homeexpecting a letter, or a message, or a visitor who has not arrived, andhas no chance of arriving, the revulsion of feeling is not agreeable. It did not improve the doctor's temper in the first place. The chillloneliness of that trim room, with its drawn curtains and tidy pretenceof being comfortable, exasperated him beyond bearing. He felt shut upin it, and yet would not leave it. Somebody certainly might come evento-night. Fred himself perhaps, if he could escape from the rigidguardianship he was under; or was that miraculous Australian Nettie alittle witch, who had spirited the whole party in a nutshell over theseas? Never was man delivered from a burden with a worse grace than wasDr Rider; and the matter had not mended in these twenty-four hours. 

Next morning, however, this fever of fraternal suspense was assuaged. A three-cornered note, addressed in an odd feminine hand, very thin, small, and rapid, came among Dr Rider's letters. He signalled it out byinstinct, and opened it with an impatience wonderful to behold. 

"SIR, --We are all at the Blue Boar until we can get lodgings, which Ihope to be to-day. I am utterly ashamed of Fred for not having let youknow, and indeed of myself for trusting to him. I should not wonder butwe may have been under a mistake about him and you. If you could callabout one, I should most likely be in to see you, and perhaps you couldgive me your advice about the lodgings. Neither of _them_ have theleast judgment in such matters. I am sorry to trouble you; but being astranger, perhaps you will excuse me. I understand you are only at homein the evening, and that is just the time I can't come out, as I havethe whole of them to look to, which is the reason I ask you to call onme. Begging you will pardon me, I remain, "NETTIE UNDERWOOD. "

"She remains Nettie Underwood, " said the doctor, unawares. He laughed tohimself at that conclusion. Then an odd gleam came across his face. Itwas probably the first time he had laughed in a natural fashion for somemonths back, and the unusual exertion made his cheeks tingle. His temperwas improved that morning. He went off to his patients almost in a goodhumour. When he passed the great house where Bessie Christian now reigned, he recalled her image with a positive effort. Astonishing what an effectof distance had floated over the apparition of that bride. Was it a yearsince he saw her and gnashed his teeth at the thought of his own folly, or was it only last Sunday? The doctor could not tell. He put Nettie'snote in his pocket-book, and was at the hotel door punctually at oneo'clock. It was in the principal street of Carlingford, George Street, where all the best shops, and indeed some of the best houses, were. From the corner window of the hotel you could see down into the boweryseclusion of Grange Lane, and Mr Wodehouse's famous apple-trees holdingtempting clusters over the high wall. The prospect was very differentfrom that which extended before Dr Rider's window. Instinctively hemarvelled within himself whether, if Dr Marjoribanks were to die--peoplecannot live for ever even in Carlingford--whether it might not be adisadvantage to a man to live so far out of the world. No doubt itwas a temptation of the Evil One. Happily the young man did not takesufficient time to answer himself, but walked forward briskly throughthe mazy old passages of the old inn, to a room from which sundry noisesissued. Dr Rider walked in with the natural confidence of a man whohas an appointment. The room was in undisturbed possession of threechildren--three children making noise enough for six--all very small, veryprecocious, with staring round eyes and the most complete independence ofspeech and manners. The doctor confronted the little rabble thunderstruck;they were his brother's children, unrecognisable little savages as theywere. One little fellow, in a linen pinafore, was mounted on the arm of asofa, spurring vigorously; another was pursuing his sister about theroom, trying to catch her feet with the tongs, and filling the airwith repeated loud snaps of disappointment. They intermitted theiroccupations to stare at him. "Look here--here's a man, " said the youngest, meditatively, beholding his dismayed uncle with a philosophic eye. "Can't some one go and tell Nettie?" said the little girl, gazing alsowith calm equanimity. "If he wants Nettie he'll have to wait, " said theelder boy. A pause followed; the unhappy doctor stood transfixed by thesteady stare of their three pair of eyes. Suddenly the little girl burstout of the room, and ran screaming along the passage. "Mamma, mamma, here's a man come, " cried the wonderful colonial child. A few minutesafterwards their mother appeared, languid and faded as before. Perhapsshe had been even prettier than Nettie in her bright days, if any dayshad ever been bright for Fred Rider's wife. She was fairer, larger, smoother than her sister; but these advantages had lapsed in a generalfade, which transformed her colour into washy pinkness, made her figurestoop, and her footsteps drag. She came remonstrating all the way infeeble accents. It was not for her, certainly, that the doctor had takenthe trouble to come to the Blue Boar. 

"Please to sit down, " said Mrs Fred, and stood leaning on the table, looking at her brother-in-law with a calm curiosity, not unlike thatof her children. "Nettie and my husband have gone out together; but nowthat we are all so happy and united, " she continued, with a sort offeeble spitefulness, "I am sure it is quite a pity to trouble you. Youcould not take us in, you know. You said that very plain, Mr Edward. "

"It was perfectly true, madam, " said the doctor. "I have not ventured onthe step my brother has taken, and have naturally no accommodation for afamily. But I am not here for my own pleasure. Your sister, I presume itis, wrote to me. I was requested to call here to-day. "

"Oh, yes; Nettie is very self-willed--very; though, of course, we couldnot get on without her. She attacked Fred like a wild-cat for not writingyou: but I daresay, if the truth were known, you did not expect to hearfrom my husband, " said the wife, recovering her voice, and fixing avindictive gaze upon her visitor, who felt himself betrayed. 

"I came by Miss Underwood's instructions and at her request, " said theunfortunate man. "We need not enter into any question between Fred andmyself. "

"Ah, yes, that is very safe and wise for you, " laughed Fred's wife. 

The doctor was deeply exasperated, as was only natural: he eyed thefeeble helpless creature for a moment angrily, provoked to answer her;but his gaze became one of wonder and dismay ere he withdrew it. Surelyof all incomprehensible entities, the most amazing is a fool--a creatureinsensate, unreasoning, whom neither argument nor fact can make anyimpression upon. Appalled and impressed, the doctor's gaze left thatpretty faded face to turn upon the children. Dreadful imps! If Fred hadonly taken to evil ways after he became possessed of such a family, hisbrother could have forgiven him. While these thoughts passed through DrRider's mind, however, deliverance approached. He heard Nettie's voicein the passage, long before she reached the door. Not that it was loudlike the voices of this dreadful household; but the tone was sufficientlypeculiar to be recognised anywhere. With a most penetrating clearness, it came through the long passages, words inaudible, only the sound of avoice, rapid, breathless, decided--with the distant sound of Fred's long, shambling, uncertain footsteps coming in as the strange accompaniment. Then they entered the room--the one tiny, bright, dauntless, an intrepid, undiscourageable little soul; the other with his heavy large limbs, hisbemused face, his air of hopeless failure, idleness, content. EdwardRider gazed involuntarily from one to another of this two. He saw thesprite place herself between the husband and wife, a vain little Quixote, balancing these extremes of helplessness and ruin. He could not helplooking at her with a certain unconscious admiration and amazement, ashe might have looked at a forlorn hope. Thousands of miles away from herfriends, wherever and whatever they might be, with Fred and his wife andchildren on her hands, a household of incapables--what was that littlecreature to do?

"Good morning, Dr Edward, " said Nettie. "I thought I should have beenback sooner; but Fred is so slow, I cannot manage to get him along atall. We have found some lodgings a little way out of Carlingford, nearthat chapel, you know, or church, or something, that stands a littleoff the road: where it's open, and there's morning service, and such ahandsome young clergyman. Who is he? We went into the chapel, and it'sso fine, you would not believe it. Well, just a hundred yards from thereis the house. Four rooms, exactly what I wanted, with a garden for thechildren to play in--quite quiet, and fresh and pleasant. Tell me whothe people are--their name is Smith. If they're respectable, I'll goback and take it. I can afford the rent. "

"Near St Roque's? They belong to the church there. I daresay they areall right, " said the doctor, "but it is a long way off, and inconvenient, and----"

"That is just why I want it, " said Nettie. "We never were used toconveniences, and none of us want to be much in the town, so far as Iknow. It is the very thing. Why has not lunch come up?--what do thesepeople mean, Susan, by not attending to their orders? Ring the bell, Freddy--ring loud; and after lunch, as your drag is at the door, DrEdward, you'll drive me down to this place again, that I may secureit, won't you? I want to have a talk with you besides. --Lunch, please, immediately. I ordered it to be ready at one--now it is half-past. Wecan't have our time wasted this way. --Dr Edward, please, you'll stay. "

The doctor gazed with ever-increasing amazement at the little speaker. Nobody else had spoken a word. Fred had nodded to him sullenly. Fred'swife had sunk back on the sofa--everybody seemed to recognise Nettieas supreme. He hesitated, it must be confessed, to put his grievancesso entirely aside as to sit down in perfect amity with Fred and hishousehold; but to refuse to drive Nettie to St Roque's was impossible. The blood rushed to the doctor's face at the thought. What the worldof Carlingford would say to see his well-known vehicle proceedingdown Grange Lane, through Dr Marjoribanks's territories, under suchcircumstances, was a question he did not choose to consider; neither didhe enter too minutely into the special moment at which his next patientmight be expecting him. The young man was under the spell, and did notstruggle against it. He yielded to the invitation, which was a command. He drew near the table at which Nettie, without hesitation, took thepresiding place. A dull amount of conversation, often interrupted bythat lively little woman, rose in the uncongenial party. Nettie cut upthe meat for those staring imps of children--did them all up in snowynapkins--kept them silent and in order. She regulated what Susan was tohave, and which things were best for Fred. She appealed to Dr Edwardperpetually, taking him into her confidence in a way which could notfail to be flattering to that young man, and actually reduced tothe calmness of an ordinary friendly party this circle so full ofsmouldering elements of commotion. Through all she was so dainty, sopretty, her rapid fingers so shapely, her eager talk so sweet-toned, that it was beyond the power of mortal man to remain uninterested. Itwas a development of womankind unknown to Dr Rider. Bessie Christian hadexhausted the race for him until now; but Nettie was a thousand timesmore piquant than Bessie Christian. He gazed and wondered, and moralisedsecretly in his own mind, what was to become of the girl?--what couldshe do?

"You have left some of your things at my house, Fred, " said the doctor, making an attempt to approach his sullen brother, who evidently expectedno overtures of friendship. 

"Yes. Mrs Rider, you see, arrived unexpectedly, " said Fred, withconfusion--"in fact, I knew nothing about it, or--or I should have toldyou--Nettie----"

"Nettie thought it best to come off at once, without writing, " explainedFred's wife. 

"What was the use of writing?" cried that little person. "You hadwritten to Fred for six months without ever getting an answer. You madeeverybody unhappy round you with your fears and troubles about him. Iknew perfectly he was quite well and enjoying himself; but, of course, Susan would not be convinced. So what was there for it but bringing heraway? What else could I do, Dr Edward? And to leave the children wouldhave been preposterous. In the first place, I should have been miserableabout them; and so, as soon as she found Fred was all right, wouldSusan: and something would certainly have happened--scarlet fever orsomething--and at the end of all I should have had to go out again tofetch them. So the shortest way was to bring them at once. Don't youthink so? And to see us all here so comfortable, I am sure is enough torepay any one for the trouble. Fred, don't drink any more beer. "

Nettie put out her tiny hand as she spoke to arrest the bottle. Fredstared at her with a dull red flush on his face; but he gave in, in themost inexplicable way; it seemed a matter of course to yield to Nettie. The doctor's amazement began to be mingled with amusement. To see how shemanaged them all was worth the sacrifice of a little time--unconsciouslyhe became more fraternal in his thoughts. He spoke to foolish faded MrsFred with a total forgiveness and forgetfulness of her spiteful speech. He hoped she would like Carlingford; he said something to the children. But it was not easy to talk in presence of that amazing family party, the existence of which he had not dreamed of a few days ago. To seehis brother at the head of such a group had, in spite of himself, awonderful effect upon Dr Rider. Their children, of course, must besupported somehow. Who was to do it? Was their father, grown incapableand useless in the middle of his days, to be forced into the current oflife again? Was it a vague faith in Providence which had brought thehelpless household here; or was it a more distinct, if not so elevated, confidence in Nettie? The doctor's heart sank once more within him as helooked round the table. Three helpless by nature--two equally helplesswho ought in nature to have been the support of the whole--nothing butone bright ready little spirit between them all and destitution; andwhat could Nettie do to stave that wolf from the door? Once more DrRider's countenance fell. If the household broke down in its attempt atindependence, who had they to turn to but himself?--such a prospect wasnot comfortable. When a man works himself to death for his own family, he takes the pleasure with the pain; but when another's family threatensto fall upon his hands, the prospect is naturally appalling--andeven if Fred could do anything, what was Fred's life, undermined byevil habit, to depend upon? Silence once more fell over the littlecompany--silence from all but Nettie and the children, who referred toher naturally instead of to their mother. Fred was sullen, and his wifetook her cue from him. Edward was uneasy and dismayed. Family partiessuddenly assembled without due warning are seldom greatly successful;and even Nettie could not make immediate reconciliation and fraternalkindness out of this. 

CHAPTER IV. 

"Take me down this long pretty road. There must be delicious housesinside the walls. Look here; drive slowly, and let us have a peep in atthis open door, " said Nettie. "How sweet and cosy! and who is thatpretty young lady coming out? I saw her in the chapel this morning. Oh, "added Nettie, with a little sharpness, "she knows _you_--tell me who sheis. "

"That is Miss Lucy Wodehouse--one of our Carlingford beauties, " said DrRider. 

"Do you know her very well?" asked the inquisitive Nettie. "How shestares--why does she stare, do you suppose? Is there anything absurdabout my dress? Look here--don't they wear bonnets just like this inEngland?"

"So far as I am able to judge, " said the doctor, looking at the tinyhead overladen with hair, from which the bonnet had fallen half off. 

"I suppose she is surprised to see me here. Drive on faster, Dr Edward, I want to talk to you. I see Fred has been telling us a parcel ofstories. It would be cruel to tell Susan, you know, for she believes inhim; but you may quite trust me. Is your brother good for anything, DrEdward, do you suppose?"

"Not very much now, I fear, " said the doctor. 

"Not very much _now_. I suppose he never was good for much, " said theindignant Nettie; "but he was said to be very clever when he first cameout to the colony. I can't tell why Susan married him. She is veryself-willed, though you would fancy her so submissive. She is one ofthose people, you know, who fall ill when they are crossed, and threatento die, so that one daren't cross her. Now, then, what is to be donewith them? He will not go back to the colony, and I don't care to do itmyself. Must I keep them here?"

"Miss Underwood----" began the perplexed doctor. 

"It would save trouble to call me Nettie--everybody does, " said hisstrange companion; "besides, you are my brother in a kind of a way, andthe only person I can consult with; for, of course, it would not do totell one's difficulties to strangers. Fred may not be very much to dependupon, you know, but still he is Fred. "

"Yes, " said the doctor, with a little self-reproach, "still he is Fred;but pardon me, the name suggests long aggravations. You can't tell howoften I have had to put up with affronts and injuries because it wasFred. I shouldn't like to grieve you----"

"Never mind about grieving me;--_I_ am not in love with him;--let mehear all about it!" said Nettie. 

Dr Rider paused a little; seeing the abyss upon the brink of which thisbrave little girl was standing, he had not the heart to aggravate herby telling the failures of the past. Better to soften the inevitablediscovery if possible. But his hesitation was quite apparent to Nettie. With considerable impatience she turned round upon him. 

"If you think I don't know what I am doing, but have gone into thisbusiness like a fool, you are quite mistaken, Dr Edward, " she said, alittle sharply. "I see how it is as well as anybody can do. I knew howit was when I left the colony. Don't be alarmed about me. Do you thinkI am to be turned against my own flesh and blood by finding out theirfollies; or to grumble at the place God put me in?--Nothing of the sort!I know the kind of situation perfectly--but one _may_ make the best ofit, you know: and for that reason tell me everything, please. "

"But, Miss Underwood, consider, " cried the doctor, in consternation. "You are taking responsibilities upon yourself which nobody could layupon you; you! young--tender" (the doctor paused for a word, afraid tobe too complimentary)--"delicate! Why, the whole burden of this familywill come upon you. There is not one able to help himself in the wholebundle! I am shocked!--I am alarmed!--I don't know what to say toyou----"

"Don't say anything, please, " said Nettie. "I know what I am about. Doyou call this a street or a lane, or what do you call it? Oh, such nicehouses! shouldn't I like to be able to afford to have one of them, andnurses, and governesses, and everything proper for the children! I shouldlike to dress them so nicely, and give them such a good education. Idon't know anything particular to speak of, myself--I shall never beable to teach them when they grow older. If Fred, now, was only to betrusted, and would go and work like a man and make something for thechildren, I daresay I could keep up the house;--but if he won't doanything, you know, it will take us every farthing just to live. Lookhere, Dr Edward: I have two hundred a-year;--Susan had the same, youknow, but Fred got all the money when they were married, and muddled itaway. Now, how much can one do in Carlingford with three children upontwo hundred a-year?"

"Fred will be the meanest blackguard in existence, " cried the doctor, "if he takes his living from you. "

"He took his living from _you_, it appears, " said Nettie, coolly, "anddid not thank you much. We must make the best of him. We can't helpourselves. Now, there is the pretty church, and there is our littlehouse. Come in with me and answer for me, Dr Edward. You can say Iam your sister-in-law, you know, and then, perhaps, we can get intopossession at once; for, " said Nettie, suddenly turning round upon thedoctor with her brilliant eyes shining out quaintly under the littlebrow all puckered into curves of foresight, "it is so sadly expensiveliving where we are now. "

To look at the creature thus flashing those shining eyes, not without asmile lurking in their depths, upon him--to see the triumphant, undaunted, undoubting youthfulness which never dreamt of failure--to note thatpretty anxiety, the look which might have become a bride in her firsttroubles "playing at housekeeping, " and think how desperate was theposition she had assumed, how dreary the burden she had taken uponher--was almost too much for the doctor's self-control. He did not knowwhether to admire the little heroine as half-divine, or to turn fromher as half-crazy. Probably, had the strange little spirit possessed adifferent frame, the latter was the sentiment which would have influencedthe unimaginative mind of Edward Rider. But there was no resisting thatlittle brown Titania, with her little head overladen with its beautifulhair, her red, delicate mouth closing firm and sweet above that littledecided chin, her eyes which seemed to concentrate the light. She seemedonly a featherweight when the bewildered doctor helped her to alight--anundoubted sprite and creature of romance. But to hear her arranging aboutall the domestic necessities within, and disclosing her future plansfor the children, and all the order of that life of which she took thecharge so unhesitatingly, bewildered the mistress of the house as muchas it did the wondering doctor. The two together stood gazing at her asshe moved about the room, pouring forth floods of eager talk. Her wordswere almost as rapid as her step, --her foot, light as it was, almost asdecided and firm as her resolutions. She was a wonder to behold as shepushed about the furniture, and considered how it could be brightenedup and made more comfortable. Gazing at her with his silent lips apart, Dr Rider sighed at the word. Comfortable! Was she to give her mind tomaking Fred and his children comfortable--such a creature as this?Involuntarily it occurred to Edward that, under such ministrations, sundry changes might come over the aspect of that prim apartment inwhich he had seen her first; the room with the bookcase and the redcurtains, and the prints over the mantelpiece--a very tidy, comfortableroom before any bewitching imp came to haunt it, and whisper suspicionsof its imperfection--the doctor's own retirement, where he had chewedthe cud of sweet and bitter fancies often enough, without much thoughtof his surroundings. But Nettie now had taken possession of the prosaicplace, and, all unconscious of that spiritual occupation, was as busyand as excited about Mrs Smith's lodgings at St Roque's Cottage as if itwere an ideal home she was preparing, and the life to be lived in it wasthe brightest and most hopeful in the world. 

When Dr Rider reached home that night, and took his lonely meal in hislonely room, certain bitter thoughts of unequal fortune occupied theyoung man's mind. Let a fellow be but useless, thankless, and heartlessenough, and people spring up on all sides to do his work for him, saidthe doctor to himself, with a bitterness as natural as it was untrue. The more worthless a fellow is, the more all the women connected withhim cling to him and make excuses for him, said Edward Rider in hisindignant heart. Mother and sister in the past--wife and Nettie now--tothink how Fred had secured for himself such perpetual ministrations, by neglecting all the duties of life! No wonder an indignant pangtransfixed the lonely bosom of the virtuous doctor, solitary andunconsoled as he was. _His_ laborious days knew no such solace. And ashe fretted and pondered, no visions of Bessie Christian perplexed histhoughts. He had forgotten that young woman. All his mind was fullyoccupied chafing at the sacrifice of Nettie. He was not sorry, he wasangry, to think of her odd position, and the duties she had taken uponherself. What had she to do with those wretched children, and thatfaded spiteful mother? Edward Rider was supremely disgusted. He said tohimself, with the highest moral indignation, that such a girl ought notto be permitted to tie herself to such a fate. 

CHAPTER V. 

St Roque's Cottage was considered rather a triumph of local architecture. A Carlingford artist had built it "after" the Church, which was one ofGilbert Scott's churches, and perfect in its way, so that its Gothicqualities were unquestionable. The only thing wanting was size, whichwas certainly an unfortunate defect, and made this adaptation ofecclesiastical architecture to domestic purposes a very doubtfulexperiment. However, in bright sunshine, when the abundance of lightneutralised the want of window, all was well, and there was stillabundance of sunshine in Carlingford in October, three months after theentrance of Fred Rider and his family into Mrs Smith's little rooms. Itwas a bright autumn day, still mild, though with a crispness in the air, the late season showing more in the destitution of the flower-bordersthan in any more sensible sign. It was a pretty spot enough for aroadside. St Roque's stood on the edge of a little common, over which, at the other margin, you could see some white cottages, natural tothe soil, in a little hamlet-cluster, dropped along the edge of thegrey-green unequal grass; while between the church and the cottage ranthe merest shadow of a brook, just enough to give place and nutrimentto three willow-trees which had been the feature of the scene before StRoque's was, and which now greatly helped the composition of the littlelandscape, and harmonised the new building with the old soil. St Roque'sCottage, by special intervention of Mr Wentworth, the perpetual curate, had dropped no intervening wall between its garden and those trees; but, not without many fears, had contented itself with a wooden paling on theside nearest the willows. Consequently, the slope of grass at that side, which Mrs Smith was too prudent to plant with anything that could beabstracted, was a pretty slope with the irregular willow shadows sweptover it, thin, but still presenting a pale obstruction to the flood ofsunshine on this special afternoon. There a little group was collected, in full enjoyment of the warmth and the light. Mrs Rider, still faded, but no longer travel-worn, sat farther up in the garden, on the greenbench, which had been softened with cushions for her use, leisurelyworking at some piece of needlework, in lonely possession of thechrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies round her; while on the grass, dropped over with yellow flecks of willow-leaves, lightly loosened byevery passing touch of wind, sat Nettie, all brown and bright, workingwith the most rapid fingers at a child's frock, and "minding" with acorner of her eye the possessor of the same, the tiny Freddy, an imp ofmischief uncontrollable by other hand or look than hers. A little lowerdown, poking into the invisible brook through the paling, was the eldestboy, silent from sheer delight in the unexpected pleasure of coatinghimself with mud without remark from Nettie. This unprecedented escapearose from the fact that Nettie had a visitor, a lady who had bent downbeside her in a half-kneeling attitude, and was contemplating her witha mingled amaze and pity which intensified the prevailing expressionof kindness in the mildest face in the world. It was Miss Wodehouse, inher soft dove-coloured dress and large soft checked shawl. Her mild eyeswere fixed upon that brilliant brown creature, all buoyant and sparklingwith youth. These wonderful young people perplexed Miss Wodehouse; herewas another incomprehensible specimen--most incomprehensible perhaps ofall that had ever crossed her mild elderly horizon with bewilderingunintelligible light. 

"My dear, " said Miss Wodehouse, "things used to be very differentwhen I was young. When we were girls we thought about our ownpleasures--and--and vanities of all kinds, " said the good woman, with alittle sigh; "and, indeed, I can't think it is natural still to see youdevoting yourself like this to your sister's family. It is wonderful;but dear, dear me! it isn't natural, Nettie, such self-devotion. "

"I do wish you wouldn't speak!" said Nettie, with a suddenstart--"self-devotion! stuff! I am only doing what must be done. Freddycan't go on wearing one frock for ever, can he--does it stand to reason?Would you have me sit idle and see the child's petticoats drop to pieces?I am a colonial girl--I don't know what people do in England. Where Iwas brought up we were used to be busy about whatever lay nearest to ourhand. "

"It isn't Freddy's frock, " said Miss Wodehouse, with a little solemnity. "You know very well what I mean. And suppose you were to marry--whatwould happen supposing you were to marry, Nettie?"

"It is quite time enough to think of that when there is any likelihoodof it happening, " said Nettie, with a little toss of her head. "It isonly idle people who have time to think of falling in love and suchnonsense. When one is very busy it never comes into one's head. Why, you have never married, Miss Wodehouse; and when I know that I haveeverything I possibly could desire, why should I?"

Miss Wodehouse bent her troubled sweet old face over the handle of herparasol, and did not say anything for a few minutes. "It is all verywell as long as you are young, " she said, with a wistful look; "andsomehow you young creatures are so much handier than we used to be. Ourlittle Lucy, you know, that I can remember quite a baby--I am twice asold as she is, " cried Miss Wodehouse, "and she is twice as much use inthe world as I. Well, it is all very strange. But, dear, you know, _this_ isn't natural all the same. "

"It is dreadful to say so--it is dreadful to think so!" cried Nettie. "I know what you mean--not Freddy's frock, to be sure, but only one'swhole life and heart. Should one desert the only people belonging to onein the world because one happens to have a little income and they havenone? If one's friends are not very sensible, is that a reason why oneshould go and leave them? Is it right to make one's escape directlywhenever one feels one is wanted? or what do you mean, Miss Wodehouse?"said the vehement girl. "That is what it comes to, you know. Do youimagine I had any choice about coming over to England when Susan wasbreaking her heart about her husband? could one let one's sister die, do you suppose? And now that they are all together, what choice have I?They can't do much for each other--there is actually nobody but me totake care of them all. You may say it is not natural, or it is notright, or anything you please, but what else can one do? That is thepractical question, " said Nettie, triumphantly. "If you will answerthat, then I shall know what to say to you. "

Miss Wodehouse gazed at her with a certain mild exasperation, shook herhead, wrung her hands, but could find nothing to answer. 

"I thought so, " said Nettie, with a little outburst of jubilee; "thatis how it always happens to abstract people. Put the practical questionbefore them, and they have not a word to say to you. Freddy, cut thegrass with the scissors, don't cut my trimmings; they are for your ownfrock, you little savage. If I were to say it was my duty and all thatsort of stuff, you would understand me, Miss Wodehouse; but one onlysays it is one's duty when one has something disagreeable to do; and Iam not doing anything disagreeable, " added the little heroine, flashingthose eyes which had confused Edward Rider--those brilliant, resolute, obstinate eyes, always with the smile of youth, incredulous of evil, lurking in them, upon her bewildered adviser. "I am living as I like tolive. "

There was a pause--at least there was a pause in the argument, but notin Nettie's talk, which ran on in an eager stream, addressed to Freddy, Johnnie, things in general. Miss Wodehouse pondered over the handleof her parasol. She had absolutely nothing to say; but, thoroughlyunconvinced and exasperated at Nettie's logic, could not yet retire fromthe field. 

"It is all very well to talk just now, " said the gentle woman at last, retiring upon that potent feminine argument; "but, Nettie, think! If youwere to marry----"

Miss Wodehouse paused, appalled by the image she herself had conjuredup. 

"Marrying is really a dreadful business, anyhow, " she added, with asigh; "so few people, you know, can, when they might. There is poor MrWentworth, who brought me here first; unless he gets preferment, poorfellow----. And there is Dr Rider. Things are very much changed fromwhat they used to be in my young days. "

"Is Dr Rider in the same dilemma? I suppose, of course, you mean DrEdward, " cried Nettie, with a little flash of mischievous curiosity. "Why? He has nobody but himself. I should like to know why he can'tmarry--that is, if anybody would have him--when he pleases. Tell me; youknow he is my brother-in-law. "

Miss Wodehouse had been thinking of Bessie Christian. She paused, partlyfor Dr Rider's sake, partly because it was quite contrary to decorum, to suppose that Bessie, now Mrs Brown, might possibly a year agohave married somebody else. She faltered a little in her answer. "Aprofessional man never marries till he has a position, " said MissWodehouse, abstractedly. Nettie lifted upon her, eyes that danced withmischief and glee. 

"A profession is as bad as a family, then, " said the little Australian. "I shall remember that next time you speak to me on this subject. I amglad to think Dr Edward, with all his prudence, is disabled too. "

When Nettie had made this unguarded speech, she blushed; and suddenly, in a threatening and defiant manner, raised her eyes again to MissWodehouse's face. Why? Miss Wodehouse did not understand the look, norput any significance into the words. She rose up from the grass, andsaid it was time for her to go. She went away, pondering in her own mindthose singular new experiences of hers. She had never been called uponto do anything particular all her gentle life. Another fashion of womanmight have found a call to action in the management of her father'shouse, or the education of her motherless young sister. But MissWodehouse had contented herself with loving Lucy--had suffered her togrow up very much as she would, without interference--had never takena decided part in her life. When anything had to be done, to tell thetruth, she was very inexpert--unready--deeply embarrassed with the unusualnecessity. Nettie's case, so wonderfully different from anything shecould have conceived, lay on her mind and oppressed her as she went hometo Grange Lane. 

As for Nettie herself, she took her work and her children indoors aftera while, and tried on the new frock, and scolded and rehabilitated themuddy hero of the brook. Then, with those light fairy motions of hers, she spread the homely table for tea, called in Susan, sought Fred in hisroom up-stairs with a stinging word which penetrated even his callousmind, and made him for the moment ashamed of himself. Nettie bit her redlip till it grew white and bloodless as she turned from Fred's door. Itwas not hard to work for the children--to support and domineer overSusan; but it was hard for such an alert uncompromising little soul totolerate that useless hulk--that heavy encumbrance of a man, for whomhope and life were dead. She bit her lip as she discharged her sharpstinging arrow at him through the half-opened door, and then wentdown singing, to take her place at the table which her own hands hadspread--which her own purse supplied with bread. Nobody there showed theleast consciousness of that latter fact; nobody fancied it was anythingbut natural to rely upon Nettie. The strange household demeaned itselfexactly as if things were going on in the most regular and ordinarycourse. No wonder that spectators outside looked on with a wonder thatcould scarcely find expression, and half exasperated, half admiring, watched the astonishing life of the colonial girl. 

Nobody watched it with half the amount of exasperation which concentratedin the bosom of Dr Rider. He gazed and noted and observed everythingwith a secret rage, indignation, and incredulity impossible to describe. He could not believe it even when it went on before his very eyes. Doctor though he was, and scientific, to a certain extent, Edward Riderwould have believed in witchcraft--in some philtre or potion acting uponher mind, rather than in Nettie's voluntary folly. Was it folly? was itheroism? was it simple necessity, as she herself called it? Nobodycould answer that question. The matter was as incomprehensible to MissWodehouse as to Dr Rider, but not of such engrossing interest. BessieChristian, after all, grew tame in the Saxon composure of her beautybefore this brown, sparkling, self-willed, imperious creature. To seeher among her self-imposed domestic duties filled the doctor with asmouldering wrath against all surrounding her, which any momentary sparkmight set aflame. 

CHAPTER VI. 

Affairs went on in Carlingford with the usual commonplace pertinacity ofhuman affairs. Notable events happened but seldom in anybody's life, andmatters rolled back into their ordinary routine, or found a new routinefor themselves after the ordinary course of humanity. After theextraordinary advent of Nettie and her strange household--after thesetting-out of that wonderful little establishment, with all the amazedexpectation it excited--it was strange to see how everything settleddown, and how calmly the framework of common life took in that exceptionaland half-miraculous picture. Lookers-on prophesied that it never couldlast--that in the very nature of things some sudden crisis or collapsemust ensue, and the vain experiment prove a failure; but quiet natureand steady time prevailed over these moralists and their prophecies. Thewinter went on calmly day by day, and Nettie and her dependants becamelegitimate portions of Carlingford society. People ceased to wonderby degrees. Gradually the eyes of Carlingford grew accustomed to thatdainty tiny figure sweeping along, by mere impulse of cheerful willand ceaseless activity, the three open-eyed staring children, the fadedmother. Sometimes, indeed, Nettie, too clear of the necessity of herown exertions, and too simply bent upon her business, to feel anysentimental shame of her relations, was seen quickening the sluggishsteps of Fred himself, who shuffled along by her side in a certainflush of self-disgust, never perceptible upon him under any othercircumstances. Even Fred was duly moved by her vicinity. When he sawother people look at them, his bemused intellect was still alive enoughto comprehend that people were aware of his dismal dependence upon thatfairy creature, whom it was a shame to think of as the support not onlyof his deserted children, but of his own base comforts and idleness. Butthe spur, though it pricked, did not goad him into any action. When hegot home, he took refuge in his room up-stairs, in the hazy atmospheredrugged with the heavy fumes of his pipe, and stretched his slovenlylimbs on his sofa, and buried his confused faculties in his old novel. So he lived day by day, circumscribed in the most dangerous of hisindulgences by Nettie's unhesitating strictures and rules, which nobodydared break, but unlimited in his indolence, his novel, and his pipe. That stifling fire, that close room, the ashes of the pipe on the table, the listless shabby figure on the sofa, were the most dismal part of theinterior at St Roque's Cottage, so far as it appeared to the externaleye. But it is doubtful whether Mrs Fred, spiteful and useless, withher poor health, her selfish love, her utter unreason, dawdling overtrifling matters which she never completed; or the three children, entirely unrespectful of father and mother, growing up amid that wonderfulsubversion of the ordinary rules of nature, with some loyalty to Nettie, but no reverence in them, were not as appalling companions to live with. Nettie, however, did not consider the matter as a spectator might. Shedid not enter into it at all as a matter to be criticised; they simplybelonged to her as they were. She knew their faults without loving themless, or feeling it possible that faults could make any difference tothose bonds of nature. Fred, indeed, did afflict her lively impatientspirit;--she had tried to quicken him into life at first--she gave himup with a certain frank scorn now, and accepted her position. Thus hewas to be all his life long this big cumberer of the ground. Nettie, valorous and simple, made up her mind to it. He was Fred--that was allthat could be said on the subject; and, being Fred, belonged to her, andhad to be cared for like the rest. 

It all grew into a matter of routine as that winter glided along;outside and in, everybody came to take it for granted. Miss Wodehouse, who, with a yearning admiration of a creature so totally unlike herself, came often to visit Nettie, ceased to expostulate, almost ceased towonder. Mr Wentworth no longer opened his fine eyes in amazement whenthat household was named. Mrs Smith, their landlady, calmly brought herbills to Nettie, and forgot that it was not the most natural thing inthe world that she should be paid by Miss Underwood. The only persistentsceptic was the doctor. Edward Rider could not, would not, believe it. He who had so chafed under Fred's society, felt it beyond the boundsof human possibility that Nettie could endure him. He watched with aneagerness which he found it difficult to account for, to see the firstsymptoms of disgust which must ere long mark the failure of this boldbut foolish venture. It occupied his mind a great deal more than wasgood for his own comfort; perhaps more than was best for his patients. Though he had few people to visit in that quarter of the town, hisdrag was seen to pass St Roque's Cottage most days in the week; andwhen urgent messages came for Dr Rider in the evening, his littlegroom always wended his way out through the special district of DrMarjoribanks to find his master, if the doctor was not at home. Not thatall this devotion assisted him much either in increase of friendshipwith his relations, or in verification of his auguries. The disgust ofthe young doctor, when he saw his brother's slovenly figure in his ownchair, was nothing to his disgust now, when he saw that same form, soout of accordance with the neat little sitting-room which Nettie'spresence made dainty and refined in its homeliness, lounging in Nettie'sway. He could not bring himself to speak with ordinary patience toFred; and Fred, obtuse as he was, perceived his brother's disgust andcontempt, and resented it sullenly; and betrayed his resentment to thefoolish wife, who sulked and said spiteful things to Edward. It was nota pleasant family group. As for Nettie, she was much too fully occupiedto give her society or conversation to Dr Rider. She came and wentwhile he was there, busy about a thousand things, always alert, decided, uncompromising--not disinclined to snub either Fred or Susan whenopportunity offered, totally unconscious even of that delicacy withwhich a high fantastical heroine of romance would have found itnecessary to treat her dependants. It was this unconsciousness, aboveall, that irritated the doctor. If she had shown any feeling, he saidto himself--if she had even been grandly aware of sacrificing herselfand doing her duty--there would have been some consolation in it. ButNettie obstinately refused to be said to do her duty. She was doingher own will with an imperious distinctness and energy--having her ownway--displaying no special virtue, but a determined wilfulness. DrRider was half disgusted with Nettie, to see how little disgust sheshowed of her companions. He was disappointed in her: he concluded tohimself that she did not show that fine perception which he was disposedto expect from so dainty a little sprite. Yet, notwithstanding all thesedisappointed expectations, it is astonishing how he haunted that roomwhere the society was so unattractive, and bore Mrs Fred's spitefulspeeches, and suffered his eyes and his temper to be vexed beyondendurance by the dismal sight of his brother. The children, too, worriedtheir unfortunate uncle beyond description. He did not dislike children:as a general rule, mothers in the other end of Carlingford, indeed, declared the doctor to be wonderfully tender and indulgent to hislittle patients: but those creatures, with their round staring eyes, the calm remarks they made upon their father's slovenly indolence andtheir mother's imbecility--their precocious sharp-sightedness andinsubordination, moved Dr Rider with a sharp prevailing inclination, intensifying by times almost into action, to whip them all round, andbanish the intolerable brats out of sight. Such was his unpaternal wayof contemplating the rising hopes of his house. How Nettie could bear itall, was an unceasing marvel to the doctor. Yet, in spite of thesedisagreeables, he went to St Roque's all the same. 

One of these winter evenings the doctor wended his way to St Roque'sCottage in a worse frame of mind than usual. It was a clear frostynight, very pleasant to be out in, though sharp and chill; such a nightas brightens young eyes, and exhilarates young hearts, when all is wellwith them. Young Rider could hear his own footsteps echoing along thehard frost-bound road, and could not but wonder in himself, as he drewnear the group of buildings which broke the solitude of the way, whetherNettie too might hear it, and _perhaps_ recognise the familiar step. Theshadow of St Roque's fell cold over him as he passed. Just from thatspot the light in the parlour window of the cottage became perceptibleto the wayfarer. A shadow crossed the blind as he came in sight--Nettieunquestionably. It occurred to Dr Rider to remember with very sharpdistinctness at that moment, how Nettie's little shadow had droppedacross the sunshine that first morning when he saw her in his own room. He quickened his step unawares--perhaps to-night Nettie might be moreaccessible than usual, less shut in and surrounded by her family. Hepictured to himself, as he went past the willows, which rustled faintlywith their long bare branches in the night air, that perhaps, as he waslater than usual, Fred might have retired to his den up-stairs; andSusan might have gone to bear Fred company--who knows? and the childrenmight be in bed, the dreadful little imps. And for once a half-hour'stalk with the strange little head of the house might comfort the youngdoctor's fatigued mind and troubled heart. 

For he was sadly fatigued and worn out. What with incessant occupationand distracted thoughts, this year had been a very exhausting one forthe doctor. He had fagged on through the whole summer and autumn withoutany relaxation. He had chafed over Fred's presence for half of theyear, and had been occupied for the other half with matters still moreabsorbing and exciting. Even now his mind was in a perpetual ferment, and no comforting spirit spoke quietness to his soul--no stout heartstrengthened his--no lively intelligence animated his own to worthydoings. He was very cross and fretful, and knew himself to be so thatparticular evening--worried and in want of rest. What a chance, ifperhaps he found Nettie, whose very provocations were somehow moreinteresting than other people's most agreeable and tranquillisingefforts, all alone and at leisure! He went on with some palpitations ofhope. As soon as he had entered the cottage, however, he found out thedelusion he was under. The children were the first fact that presenteditself to his senses; an uproar that pervaded the house, a novel tumultwaking all the echoes; glimpses of flying figures pursuing each otherwith brushes and mops, and other impromptu weapons; one astride uponthe banisters of the stairs, sliding down from top to bottom; anotherclinging now and then, in the pauses of the conflict, to the top ofone of the doors, by which it swung back and forward. Terrible infants!there they all were in a complete saturnalia, the door of the parlourhalf open all the time, and no sound of Nettie's restraining voice. Only poor Mrs Smith standing helpless in successions of fright andexasperation, sometimes alarmed for life and limb, sometimes ready togive the little wretches over to all the penalties of poetic justice. The poor woman brightened a little when she perceived the sympathetichorror on the doctor's face. 

"How's this?" exclaimed young Rider, with a sigh of dismay. Alas!however it was, no quiet imaginary conference, no soothing glimpse ofNettie, was practicable to-night. He grew sulky and ferocious underthe thought. He seized the imp that hung on the door, and set it downsummarily with a certain moral violence, unable to refrain from anadmonitory shake, which startled its sudden scream into a quavering echoof alarm. "Do you want to break your neck, sir?" cried the wrathfuluncle. Dr Rider, however, had to spring aside almost before the wordswere uttered to escape the encounter of a hearth-brush levelled at himby his sweet little niece. "How is this, Mrs Smith?" cried the startledvisitor, with indignation, raising his voice sufficiently to be quiteaudible through the half-open door. 

"Bless you, sir, Miss is gone out to tea--don't say nothing--I don'tbegrudge the poor young lady a bit of a holiday, " whispered the frightenedlandlady under her breath; "but I can't never give in to it again. Theirmamma never takes a bit of notice exceptin' when they're found faultwith. Lord! to think how blind some folks is when it's their own. Butthe poor dear young lady, she's gone out for a little pleasure--only toMiss Wodehouse's, doctor, " added Mrs Smith, looking up with a suddenstart to catch the stormy expression on the doctor's face. 

He made no reply to the troubled landlady. He pushed the children aside, and made a stride into the parlour. To be sure, if Nettie was not here, what a charming opportunity to make himself disagreeable, and give theother two a piece of his mind! Edward Rider was anything but perfect. Hedecided on that expedient with an angry satisfaction. Since he could nothave Nettie, he would at least have this relief to his feelings, whichwas next best. 

The room was full of smoke, which came in heavy puffs from Fred's pipe. He himself lay stretched on the little sofa; Nettie's sofa--Nettie'sroom--the place sacred in the doctor's heart to that bright littlefigure, the one redeeming presence in this dismal household. Mrs Fredsat dawdling opposite her husband over some wretched fancy-work. Eyesless prejudiced than those of Edward Rider might have imagined this ascene of coarse but not unpleasant domestic comfort. To him it was adisgusting picture of self-indulgence and selfish miserable enjoyment, almost vice. The very tobacco which polluted the atmosphere of her roomwas bought with Nettie's money. Pah! the doctor came in with a silentpale concentration of fury and disgust, scarcely able to compel himselfto utter ordinary words of civility. His presence disturbed the pair intheir stolen pleasure. Fred involuntarily put aside his pipe, and MrsFred made a little movement to remove from the table the glass fromwhich her husband had been drinking; but both recollected themselvesafter a moment. The wife set down the glass with a little spiteful tossof her head; the husband, with that heated sullen flush upon his face, relighted his half-extinguished pipe, and put up again on the sofathe slovenly-slippered feet which at Edward's first appearance he hadwithdrawn from it. A sullen "How d'ye do?" was all the salutation thatpassed between them. _They_ felt themselves found out; the visitor feltwith rage and indignation that he had found them out. Defiant shame andresentment, spiteful passion and folly, on one side, encountered thegaze of a spectator outside whose opinion could not be mistaken, a knowncritic and possible spy. Little comfort could come from this strangereunion. They sat in uneasy silence for a few minutes, mutually readyto fly at each other. Mrs Fred, in her double capacity as a woman and afool, was naturally the first to speak. 

"Nettie's gone out to tea, " said that good wife. "I daresay, Mr Edward, we should not have had the pleasure of seeing you here had you knownthat only Fred and I were at home. It is very seldom we have an eveningto ourselves. It was too great a pleasure, I suppose, not to bedisturbed. "

"Susan, hold your confounded tongue, " said the ungrateful Fred. 

"I am sorry to disturb Mrs Rider, " said Edward, with deadly civility. "I was not aware, indeed, of the domestic enjoyment I was likely tointerrupt. But if you don't want your boys to break their necks, someone ought certainly to interfere outside there. "

"That is exactly what I expected, " said Mrs Fred. "My poor childrencan't have a little amusement, poor things, but somebody must interferewith it; and my poor Fred--perhaps you have some fault to find with him, Mr Edward? Oh, I can see it in your looks! so please take your advantage, now that there's nobody to be afraid of. I can tell you have ever somany pleasant things just on your lips to say. "

"I wish you'd mind your own business, Susan, " said her husband, who wasnot a fool. "Look after these imps there, and let me and Edward alone. Nettie's gone out, you understand. She's a wonderful creature, to besure, but it's a blessed relief to get rid of her for a little. A mancan't breathe under her sharp eyes, " said Fred, half apologetic, halfdefiant, as he breathed out a puff of smoke. 

Edward Rider stared at his brother, speechless with rage and indignation. He could have rushed upon that listless figure, and startled the life halfout of the nerveless slovenly frame. The state of mingled resentment, disappointment, and disgust he was in, made every particular of thisaggravating scene tell more emphatically. To see that heavy vapourobscuring those walls which breathed of Nettie--to think of this onelittle centre of her life, which always hitherto had borne in somedegree the impress of her womanly image, so polluted and vulgarised, overpowered the young man's patience. Yet perhaps he of all men in theworld had least right to interfere. 

"How is it possible, " burst forth the doctor all at once, "that you canlive upon that creature, Fred? If you have the heart of a mouse in thatbig body of yours--if you are not altogether lost and degraded, how canyou do it? And, by Jove, when all is done, to go and fill the only roomshe has--the only place you have left her--with this disgusting smokeand noise as soon as her back is turned! Good heaven! it sickens one tothink of it. A fellow like you, as strong as any hodman, to let such acreature sacrifice herself to keep him in bread; and the only bit of alittle place she can sit down in when she comes home--It's too much, youknow--it's more than she ought to bear. "

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

"Hold your confounded tongue, I tell you, " said Fred, slowly gatheringhimself off the sofa. "You're a pretty fellow to speak, you are--thatwouldn't lend a fellow a shilling to keep him from ruin. You had betterremember where you are--in--in--as Susan says--my own house. "

What outbreak of contempt might have come from the doctor's lips wasfortunately lost at that moment, since a louder outcry than usual fromoutside, the screams of the children, and the wailings of the landlady, at length roused the mother to the length of going to the door. Whenshe was gone the two brothers eyed each other threateningly. Fred, notwithout a certain intolerable sensation of shame, rose to knock his pipeupon the mantel-shelf among Nettie's pretty girlish ornaments. Somehowthese 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 thedoctor; "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 suitedyou. I knew you would consent to hang a burden on anybody that wouldtake such a weight upon them; but, by Jove, I did not think you had theheart to insult her, after all. A man can't stand by and see that. Clearoff your pipe and your brandy before she comes, or, as sure as I am madeof flesh and blood, and not cast-iron----"

The doctor's threats were interrupted by the entrance of a woefulprocession. Into the presence of the two brothers, eyeing each otherwith such lowering faces, Mrs Smith and her husband entered, carryingbetween them, with solemn looks, the unconscious Freddy, while hismother followed screaming, and his little brother and sister staringopen-mouthed. It was some relief to the doctor's feelings, in theexcitement of the moment, to rush to the window and throw it open, admitting a gust of chill December air, penetrating enough to search tothe bones of the fireside loiterer. Fred was father enough to turn withanxiety to the child. But his trembling nervous fingers and bemused eyescould make nothing of the "case" thus so suddenly brought before him. Heturned fiercely and vacantly upon his wife and demanded why everythingwas suffered to go to ruin when Nettie was away. Mrs Fred, screaming andterrified, began to recriminate. The pallid figure of the child on thetable gave a certain air of squalid tragedy to the scene, to the sordidmiseries of which the night air, coming in with a rush, chilling thegroup in their indoor dresses, and flickering the flame of the candles, added one other point of dismal accumulation. The child had dropped fromhis swing on the door, and was stunned with the fall. Both fatherand mother thought him dead in the excitement of the moment; but theaccustomed and cooler eyes of the doctor perceived the true state ofaffairs. Edward Rider forgot his disgust and rage as he devoted himselfto the little patient--not that he loved the child more, but that thehabits of his profession were strong upon him. When he had succeededin restoring the little fellow to consciousness, the doctor threw aprofessional glance of inquiry round him to see who could be trusted. Then, with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders and impatientexclamation, turned back to the table. Fred, shivering and helpless, stood by the fire, uttering confused directions, and rubbing miserablyhis own flabby hands; his wife, crying, scolding, and incapable, stoodat the end of the table, offering no assistance, but wondering whenever 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. Therethe good mistress of the cottage listened to all his directions, andpromised devoutly to obey him--to keep the room quiet, if she could--totell everything he had said to Miss Nettie. He did not enter thedesecrated 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 excitementand agitation. It was not wonderful that a scene so strange shouldrouse many impatient thoughts in the young man's mind; but the mostintolerable of these had the most trifling origin. That Fred should havesmoked his pipe in Nettie's sitting-room, when she was out of the way, was not, after all, considering Fred's character, a very wonderfulcircumstance, but it exasperated his brother to a greater extent thanmuch more important matters. That aggravation entirely overpoweredEdward Rider's self-control. It seemed the culmination of all the wrongand silent insolent injury inflicted upon Nettie. He saw the stain ofthose ashes on the little mantel-shelf, the rolling cloud of smoke inthe room, and indignation burned yet higher and higher in his breast. 

When the current of his thoughts was suddenly checked and stimulated bythe sound of voices on the road. Voices, one of which was Nettie's, onethe lofty clerical accents of the Rev. Frank Wentworth. The two werewalking arm-in-arm in very confidential colloquy, as the startled andjealous doctor imagined. What were these two figures doing together uponthe road? why did Nettie lean on the arm of that handsome young clericalcoxcomb? 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 StRoque's was a perpetual visitor. With a mortified and jealous pang, totally unreasonable and totally irresistible, Edward Rider, only a momentbefore so fantastically extreme in Nettie's defence--in the defence ofNettie's very "image" from all vulgar contact and desecration--strodepast Nettie now without word or sign of recognition. She did not seehim, as he observed with a throbbing heart; she was talking to young MrWentworth with all the haste and eagerness which Dr Rider had found socaptivating. She never suspected who it was that brushed past her withbreathless, exasperated impatience in the darkness. They went on pasthim, talking, laughing lightly, under the veil of night, quite indifferentas to who heard them, though the doctor did not think of that. He, unreasonably affronted, galled, and mortified, turned his back upon thathouse, which at this present disappointed moment did not contain onesingle thing or person which he could dwell on with pleasure; and, ahundred times more discontented, fatigued, and worn out--full of disgustwith things in general, and himself and his own fate in particular--thanhe had been when he set out from the other end of Carlingford, wentsulkily, and at a terrific pace, past the long garden-walls of GrangeLane, and all Dr Marjoribanks's genteel patients. When he had reachedhome, 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 themanner in which Edward Rider got through the evening--the one wonderfulexceptional evening when Nettie went out to tea. 

CHAPTER VII. 

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

It was a foggy frosty day, brightened with a red sun, which threw wintryruddy rays across the mist. Dr Rider drew up somewhat nervously at thelittle Gothic porch. He was taken up-stairs to the bedroom where littleFreddy lay moaning and feverish. A distant hum came from the otherchildren in the parlour, the door of which, however, was fast closedthis morning; and Nettie herself sat by the child's bedside--Nettie, allalert and vigorous, in the little room, which, homely as its aspect was, displayed even to the doctor's uninitiated glance a fastidious nicety ofarrangement which made it harmonious with that little figure. Nettie wassinging childish songs to solace the little invalid's retirement--the"fox that jumped up on a moonlight night, " the "frog that would a-wooinggo"--classic ditties of which the nursery never tires. The doctor, whowas not aware that music was one of Nettie's accomplishments, stopped onthe stairs to listen. And indeed she had not a great deal of voice, andstill less science, Nettie's life having been too entirely occupied toleave much room for such studies. Yet somehow her song touched thedoctor's heart. He forgave her entirely that walk with the curate. Hewent in softly, less impatient than usual with her crazy Quixotism. Achild--a sick child especially--was a bearable adjunct to the picture. Awoman could be forgiven for such necessary ministrations--actually, totell 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 suchdreary 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 plainneedlework in her hand. "I always said, though you don't make a fussabout the children, that you were quite to be relied on if anythingshould happen. He is feverish, but he is not ill; and so long as I tellhim stories and keep beside him, Freddy is the best child in the world. "

"More people than Freddy might be willing to be ill under suchconditions, " said the doctor, complimentary, but rueful. He felt hispatient's pulse, and prescribed for him with a softened voice. Helingered and looked round the room, which was very bare, yet somehowwas not like any of the rooms in _his_ house. How was it?--there were noornaments about, excepting that tiny little figure with the little headoverladen with such a wealth of beautiful hair. The doctor sighed. Inthis little sacred spot, where she was so clearly at her post--or atleast at a post which no other was at hand to take--he could not evenresent 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 theother 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 mybusiness without losing so much time; besides, I want to talk to you; Ican 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 nottrouble yourself seeing Susan, who is cross, of course. I don't wonderat her being cross; it must be very shocking, you know, to feel one'sself of no use, whatever happens. Thank you; I shall be ready in aminute, 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 ailmentsof the virtuous Smith, and thinking only of Nettie and that drive toCarlingford, where, indeed, he should not have gone, had he consideredthe merely abstract matters of business and duty, which led him entirelyin a different direction. He was somewhat rudely recalled to himselfwhen he went down-stairs. Smith had no headache, but only wantedto speak to the doctor about his lodgers, whose "ways" were sadlydiscomposing to himself and his wife. 

"You saw how it was yourself last night, sir, " said the troubledlandlady. "Them hangings--you know the smoke goes through and throughthem. After leaving all the windows open this frosty morning, and adraught enough to give you your death, the place smells like I don'tknow 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 seeit--just put your head in and say good morning--you'd believe me. "

"I know all about it, " said the doctor; "but Miss Underwood, MrsSmith--?"

"There's where it is, sir, " said the landlady. "I can't find it in myheart to say a word to Miss. To see how she do manage them all, to besure! but for all that, doctor, it stands to reason as one can't spoilone's lodgings for a family as may be gone to-morrow--not except it'sconsidered in the rent. It's more natural-like to speak to a gentlemanlike you as knows the world, than to a young lady as one hasn't a wordto say against--the handiest, liveliest, managingest! Ah, doctor, she'dmake 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 thatyou'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 dropssmoking, or----"

"I hear Miss Underwood coming down-stairs, " cried young Rider. "Nexttime I come we'll arrange it all. But not a word to _her_, remember--nota syllable; and go up-stairs and look after that poor child, there's agood 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 inthis incautious moment, and bolting out of their little dark back-room, which the local architect's mullions had converted into a kind ofcondemned cell. Nettie stood at the door, all ready for her expeditionto 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 frontseat of the drag, but took care not to approach nearer. The childrenwere packed in behind, under charge of the little groom, and, with anexhilarating sensation of lawlessness in the present pleasure, Dr Riderturned his back upon his duty and the patient who expected him a mile onthe other side of St Roque's, and drove, not too rapidly, intoCarlingford. 

"Mrs Smith was talking to you of us, " said Nettie, flashing herpenetrating eyes upon the confused doctor. "I know she was--I could seeit 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, tobuild such a place. Do they want to turn us out, Dr Edward, or do theywant more rent? I am not surprised, I am sure, after last night. Was itnot odious of Fred to go and smoke in the parlour, the only place we canhave tidy? But it is no use speaking to him, you know; nor to Susaneither, for that matter. Married people do stand up for each other sowhen you say a word, however they may fight between themselves. But isit 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 toodreadful to think of!" cried the angry doctor, involuntarily touchinghis horse with his whip in the energy of the moment, though he wasindeed in no hurry to reach Carlingford. 

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

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

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

"But not to quarrel, " said Nettie; "for indeed you are the only personin the world I can say a word to about the way things are going on, " sheadded with a certain momentary softening of voice and twinkling of hereyelid, as if some moisture had gathered there. "I think Fred is in abad way. I think he is muddling his brains with that dreadful life heleads. To think of a man that could do hundreds of things living likethat! A woman, you know, can only do a thing or two here and there. Ifit were not wicked to say so, one would think almost that Providenceforgot sometimes, and put the wrong spirit into a body that did notbelong to it. Don't you think so? When I look at Fred I declare sometimesI could take hold of him and give him a good shake, and ask him what hemeans; and then it all seems so useless the very idea of expecting himto 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 himpolluting your room!" cried the doctor, with a flush growing onhis face, and breaking off abruptly, not quite able to conclude thesentence. Nettie gave him a shy upward glance, and grew suddenly crimsontoo. 

"Did you mind?" said Nettie, with a momentary timidity, against theunexpected charm of which the unhappy doctor fell defenceless; thenholding out her tiny hand to him with shy frankness, "Thank you forcaring so much for me, " said the dauntless little girl, resolute not toperceive 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 notunderstand, --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 hishorse forward and carrying her off anywhere, out of Carlingford, out ofduty and practice and responsibility, and all those galling restraintsof life which the noonday light and everyday sounds about brought inwith so entire a discord to break up this momentary hallucination. Forhalf a minute only the doctor lingered on the borders of that fairylandwhere time and duty are not, but only one ineffable moment alwayspassing, never past. Then with a long sigh, the breath of which disperseda whole gleaming world of visionary delights, he got down doggedly onthe commonplace pavement. Ah, what a descent it was! the moment his foottouched these vulgar flags, he was once more the hard-worked doctor ateverybody's command, with a fretful patient waiting for him a milebeyond St Roque's; and all these dazzling moments, which had rapt theunfortunate young fellow into another world, were so much time lost tothe prose figure that had to help Nettie down and let her go, and betakehimself soberly about his own business. Perhaps Nettie felt it a littledisenchanting too, when she was dropped upon the bare street, and wentinto the common shop, and saw the doctor's drag flash off in the redfrosty sunshine with a darting movement of exasperation and impatienceon the part of its aggravated driver. For once in her life Nettie feltdisposed to be impatient with the children, who, unceremoniously ejectedfrom their perch behind, were not in the most obedient frame of mind. The two young people possibly agreed in their mutual sentiment of disgustwith other people's society just at that moment. However, there was nohelp for it. Dr Rider galloped his horse to his patient's door, and tookit out of that unlucky individual, who was fortunately strong enough tobe able to bear sharp practice. Nettie, when she had made her littlepurchases, walked home smartly to sing "The fox jumped up on a moonlightnight" to little Freddy in his bedroom. This kind of interlude, however, as all young men and maidens ought to be aware, answers much better inthe evening, when a natural interval of dreams interposes between it andthe common work of existence. Nettie decided, thinking on it, that thiswould never do. She made up her mind not to have any more drives withthe doctor. There was no telling what such proceedings might lead to. They were distinctly incompatible with the more serious business of herlife. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Such a parting, however, is sadly apt to lead to future meetings. Notwithstanding his smouldering quarrel with Fred, which was alwaysready to burst out afresh, Dr Rider would not give up coming to StRoque's. He came to some clandestine arrangement with Mrs Smith, ofwhich nobody ever was aware, and which he himself was rather ashamed ofthan otherwise; and he attended Freddy with the most dutiful exactnesstill the child was quite restored. But all this time Nettie put on acoat of armour, and looked so thoroughly unlike herself in her unusualreserve and propriety, that the doctor was heartily discouraged, andcould go no further. Besides, it would not be positively correct toassert that--though he would gladly have carried her off in the draganywhere, to the end of the world, in the enchantment of the moment--hewas just as ready to propose setting up a new household, with Fred andhis family hanging on to it as natural dependants. That was a step thedoctor was not prepared for. Some people are compelled to take the proseconcerns of life into full consideration even when they are in love, andEdward Rider was one of these unfortunate individuals. The boldnesswhich puts everything to the touch to gain or lose was not in this youngman. He had been put to hard encounters enough in his day, and hadlearned to trust little to chance or good fortune. He did not possessthe boldness which disarms an adverse fate, nor that confidence in hisown powers which smooths down wounded pride, and accounts even forfailure. He was, perhaps it is only right to say, not very capable ofheroism: but he was capable of seeing the lack of the heroic in hisown composition, and of feeling bitterly his own self-reproaches, andthe remarks of the world, which is always so ready to taunt the verycowardice it creates. After that moment in which he could have daredanything for her and with her, it is sad to be obliged to admit thatperhaps Dr Edward too, like Nettie, withdrew a little from that climaxof feeling. Not that his heart grew colder or his sentiments changed;but only that, in sight of the inevitable result, the poor young fellowpaused and pondered, obeying the necessity of his nature. People whojump at conclusions, if they have to bear the consequences of follyoften enough, are at least spared those preliminary heartaches. DrRider, eager as love and youth could make him, was yet incapable ofshutting his eyes to the precipice at his feet. That he despised himselffor doing so, did not make the matter easier. These were the limits ofhis nature, and beyond them he could not pass. 

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

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

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

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

"I fear I interrupted an interesting conversation--I that have so littlehope 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. "Johnnieought to have his education attended to now. Mr Wentworth is verygood-tempered, Dr Edward. Though he was just going to knock at MissWodehouse's door when I met him, he offered, and would have done it ifyou had not come up, to walk home with me. Not that I wanted anybody towalk home with me; but it was very kind, " said Nettie, with risingspirit. 

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

"You know I don't mind in the least for the road, " said Nettie, with alittle indignation. "How wonderfully cross you are sometimes! If you aregoing 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 outsooner, I have been so busy to-day. It is wonderful how much needleworkit takes to keep three children going, and how many little jobs thereare to do. If you take this parcel, carry it carefully, please: it issomething for my bonnet. There! Don't be absurd. I am quite able to walkby myself, thank you--I'd rather, please!"

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

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

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

"Cross! Nettie, you are enough to drive twenty men distracted!" criedthe poor doctor. "You know as well as I do what I have been dying tosay to you these three months past; and to see you go on with theseconfounded 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 thedoctor. He burst forth into a passionate outbreak of love and anger, curiously mingled, but too warm and real to leave Nettie much coolnessof observation under the circumstances. She took the advantage overhim 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 madeno answer till the whole agitated self-disclosure was complete. In theinterval she got a little command of herself, and was able to speak whenit came to her turn. 

"Dr Edward, " said Nettie, solemnly, "you know it is impossible. If wecared for each other ever so much, what could we do? I am not freeto--to make any change; and I know very well, and so do you, that younever could put up with Fred and Susan and the children, were things asyou say ten times over. I don't mean I don't believe you. I don't mean Imight not have been pleased had things been different. But you know itis just plainly impossible. You know your own temper and your ownspirit--and perhaps you know mine as well. No, no--we cannot manage itanyhow, 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, withmatter-of-fact distinctness. "I don't need to enter into all thebusiness again, and tell you how things stand; you know as well as Ido. 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, couldnot divine that this calm way of treating a business which had wroughther companion into such a pitch of passion, was the most humiliatingand mortifying possible to a man in whose bosom love and pride were socombined. He tried to speak more than once, but could not. Nettie saidnothing more--she was uneasy, but secure in the necessity of her ownposition. What else could she do or say?

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

"Oh, Dr Edward, what can I say?" cried the girl; "you know it all aswell 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 ofthe 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 andconfused, he desperate with love and rage and mortification. By thistime they had almost reached the cottage door. 

"Don't take the trouble to be sorry. I'll--oh, I'll get over it!" criedthe doctor, with a sneer at himself and his passion, which came out ofthe bitterness of his heart. Then, after a pause--"Nettie!" cried theyoung man--"Nettie! do you see what you are doing?--do you choose Fredand those wretched imps instead of your own life and mine? You are notso indifferent as you think you are. We shall never get over it, neitheryou 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 apause, 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 atthat moment, and Mrs Smith waiting to let the young lady in. Neither ofthe two dared face that sudden gleam. The doctor laid down his parcelson the step, muttered something, which she could not distinguish, intoNettie's agitated ear, and vanished back again into the darkness. Onlynow was Nettie awaking to the sense of what had happened, and its realimportance. Perhaps another minute, another word, might have made adifference--that other word and minute that are always wanting. Shegazed out after him blankly, scarcely able to persuade herself thatit was all over, and then went in with a kind of stupefied, stunnedsensation, not to be described. Edward Rider heard the door shut in thecalm silence, and swore fierce oaths in his heart over her composure andcold-heartedness. As usual, it was the woman who had to face the lightand observation, and to veil her trouble. The man rushed back into thedarkness, smarting with wounds which fell as severely upon his pride asupon his heart. Nettie went in, suddenly conscious that the world waschanged, and that she had entered upon another life. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Another life and a changed world! What small matters sometimes bringabout that sudden disenchantment! Two or three words exchanged withoutmuch thought--one figure disappearing out of the landscape--and, lo! allthe prismatic colours have faded from the horizon, and blank daylightglares upon startled eyes! Nettie had not, up to this time, entertaineda suspicion of how distinct a place the doctor held in her limitedfirmament--she was totally unaware how much exhilaration and supportthere was in his troubled, exasperated, impatient admiration. Now, allat once, she found it out. It was the same life, yet it was different. Her occupations were unchanged, her surroundings just what they used tobe. She had still to tolerate Fred, to manage Susan, to superintend withsteady economy all the expenditure of the strange little household. The very rooms and aspect of everything was the same; yet had she beensuddenly transported back again to the Antipodes, life could not havebeen more completely changed to Nettie. She recognised it at once withsome surprise, but without any struggle. The fact was too clearly apparentto leave her in any doubt. Nobody but herself had the slightest insightinto the great event which had happened--nobody could know of it, oroffer Nettie any sympathy in that unforeseen personal trial. In heryouth and buoyant freshness, half contemptuous of the outside troubleswhich were no match for her indomitable heart, Nettie had been fightingagainst hard external circumstances for a great part of her valorouslittle life, and had not hesitated to take upon herself the heaviestburdens of outside existence. Such struggles are not hard when one'sheart is light and sound. With a certain splendid youthful scorn of allthese labours and drudgeries, Nettie had gone on her triumphant way, wearing her bonds as if they were ornaments. Suddenly, without anypremonition, 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 anyliving creature--if she shed any tears over it, they were dropped inthe darkness, and left no witness behind; but she silently recognisedand understood what had happened to her. It was not that she had losther lover--it was not that the romance of youth had glimmered anddisappeared from before her eyes. It was not that she had ever entered, even in thought, as Edward Rider had done, into that life, glorified outof common existence, which the two could have lived together. Such wasnot the form which this extraordinary loss took to Nettie. It was herpersonal happiness, wonderful wine of life, which had suddenly failed tothe brave little girl. Ah, the difference it made! Labours, disgusts, endurances of all kinds: what cannot one undertake so long as one hasthat 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 surprisedsoul enters. This was what had happened to Nettie. Nobody suspected thesudden change which had passed upon everything. The only individual inthe world who could have divined it, had persuaded himself in a flush ofanger and mortification that she did not care. He consoled himself byelaborate avoidance of that road which led past St Roque's--by bows ofelaborate politeness when he encountered her anywhere in the streets ofCarlingford--by taking a sudden plunge into such society as was opento him in the town, and devoting himself to Miss Marjoribanks, the oldphysician's daughter. Nettie was not moved by these demonstrations, which showed her sway still undiminished over the doctor's angry andjealous heart. She did not regard the petulant shows of pretendedindifference by which a more experienced young woman might have consoledherself. She had enough to do, now that the unsuspected stimulus of herlife was withdrawn for the moment, to go on steadily without making anyoutward show of it. She had come to the first real trial of her strengthand worthiness. And Nettie did not know what a piece of heroism she wasenacting, nor that the hardest lesson of youthful life--how to go onstoutly without the happiness which that absolute essence of existencedemands and will not be refused--was being taught her now. She only knewit was dull work just for the moment--a tedious sort of routine, whichone was glad to think could not last for ever; and so went on, thesteadfast little soul, no one being any the wiser, upon thatsuddenly-clouded, laborious way. 

It is sad to be obliged to confess that Dr Rider's conduct was nothinglike so heroical. He, injured and indignant and angry, thought first ofall of revenging himself upon Nettie--of proving to her that he wouldget over it, and that there were women in the world more reasonablethan herself. Dr Marjoribanks, who had already made those advances tothe 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 madeherself very agreeable, with just that degree of delicate regard andevident pleasure in his society which is so soothing when one has metwith a recent discomfiture. Miss Marjoribanks, it is true, was overthirty, and by no means a Titania. Edward Rider, who had retired fromthe field in Bessie Christian's case, and whom Nettie had rejected, asked himself savagely why he should not make an advantageous marriagenow, when the chance offered. Old Marjoribanks's practice and savings, with a not unagreeable, rather clever, middle-aged wife--why shouldhe not take it into consideration? The young doctor thought of thatpossibility with a certain thrill of cruel pleasure. He said to himselfthat he would make his fortune, and be revenged on Nettie. Wheneverthere was a chance of Nettie hearing of it, he paid the most devotedattentions to Miss Marjoribanks. Ready gossips took it up and made thematter public. Everybody agreed it would be an admirable arrangement. "The most sensible thing I've heard of for years--step into the oldfellow's practice, and set himself up for life--eh, don't you thinkso?--that's my opinion, " said Mr Wodehouse. Mr Wodehouse's daughterstalked over the matter, and settled exactly between themselves what wasMiss Marjoribanks's age, and how much older she was than her supposedsuitor--a question always interesting to the female mind. And it wasnatural that in these circumstances Nettie should come to hear of itall in its full details, with the various comments naturally suggestingthemselves thereupon. What Nettie's opinion was, however, nobody couldever gather; perhaps she thought Dr Edward was justified in putting animmediate barrier between himself and her. At all events, she wasperfectly 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. Thosecommonplace unalterable days, varied in nothing but the naturalfluctuations of making and mending, --those evenings with Fred sulky bythe fire--always sulky, because deprived by Nettie's presence of hisusual indulgences; or if not so, then enjoying himself after his dismalfashion in his own room, with most likely Susan bearing him company, andthe little maiden head of the house left all by herself in the solitaryparlour, --passed on one by one, each more tedious than the other. Itseemed impossible that such heavy hours could last, and prolong themselvesinto infinitude, as they did; but still one succeeded another in endlesshard procession. And Nettie shed back her silky load of hair, and pressedher tiny fingers on her eyes, and went on again, always dauntless. Shesaid to herself, with homely philosophy, that this could not last verylong; not with any tragical meaning, but with a recognition of theordinary laws of nature which young ladies under the pressure of a firstdisappointment are not apt to recur to. She tried, indeed, to calculatein herself, with forlorn heroism, how long it might be expected to last, and, though she could not fix the period, endeavoured to content herselfwith the thought that things must eventually fall into their naturalcondition. In the mean time it was slow and tedious work enough--butthey did pass one after another, these inevitable days. 

One night Nettie was sitting by herself in the parlour busy over herneedlework. Fred and his wife, she thought, were up-stairs. They hadleft her early in the evening, --Susan to lie down, being tired--Fred tohis ordinary amusements. It was a matter of course, and cost Nettie nospecial thought. After the children went to bed, she sat all by herself, with her thread and scissors on the table, working on steadily and quietlyat 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 wentand came: but for that regular monotonous movement, and those faint steadysounds of life, it might have been a picture of domestic tranquillity andquiet, and not a living woman with aches in her heart. It did not matterwhat she was thinking. She was facing life and fortune--indomitable, not to be discouraged. In the silence of the house she sat late overher needlework, anxious to have some special task finished. She heardthe mistress of the cottage locking up, but took no notice of thatperformance, and went on at her work, forgetting time. It got to bevery silent in the house and without; not a sound in the rooms whereeverybody was asleep; not a sound outside, except an occasional rustleof the night wind through the bare willow-branches--deep night and nota creature awake but herself, sitting in the heart of that intense andthrobbing silence. Somehow there was a kind of pleasure to Nettie in theisolation which was so impossible to her at other hours. She sat rapt inthat laborious quiet as if her busy fingers were under some spell. 

When suddenly she heard a startled motion up-stairs, as if some onehad got up hastily; then a rustling about the room overhead, which wasSusan's room. After a while, during which Nettie, restored by the soundto all her growing cares, rose instantly to consideration of the question, What had happened now? the door above was stealthily opened, and afootstep came softly down the stair. Nettie put down her work andlistened breathlessly. Presently Susan's head peeped in at the parlourdoor. After all, then, it was only some restlessness of Susan's. Nettietook up her work, impatient, perhaps almost disappointed, with the deadcalm in which nothing ever happened. Susan came in stealthy, pale, trembling with cold and fright. She came forward to the table in herwhite night-dress like a faded ghost. "Fred has never come in, " saidSusan, in a shivering whisper; "is it very late? He promised he wouldonly be gone an hour. Where _can_ he have gone? Nettie, Nettie, don'tsit so quiet and stare at me. I fell asleep, or I should have found itout 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 wecould 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 themiddle of the night, and as dark as pitch, and my husband out all byhimself?" 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 lieshivering in the dark, and imagining all sorts of dreadful thingshappening to him? I shall stay here with you till he comes in. "

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

"Oh, no, you will not die, " said Nettie. "Take a book and read, or dosomething. We know what is about the worst that will happen to Fred. Hewill 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 putup your feet and wrap the shawl round you if you won't go to bed. I canfancy all very well how it will be. It is nothing new, Susan, that youshould break your heart. "

"It's you that have no feeling. Oh, Nettie, how hard you are! I don'tbelieve you know what it is to love anybody, " said Susan. "Hark! is thatsome one coming now?"

They thought some one was coming fifty times in the course of thatdreadful lingering night. Nobody came; the silence closed in deeperand deeper around the two silent women. All the world--everything roundabout them, to the veriest atom--seemed asleep. The cricket had stoppedhis chirrup in the kitchen, and no mouse stirred in the slumberinghouse. By times Susan dozed on the sofa, shivering, notwithstanding hershawl, and Nettie took up her needlework for the moment to distracther thoughts. When Susan started from these snatches of slumber, sheimportuned her sister with ceaseless questions and entreaties. Where hadhe gone?--where did Nettie imagine he could have gone?--and oh! wouldshe go to the window and look out to see if any one was coming, or putthe candle to the window to guide him, if perhaps he might have lost theway? At last the terrible pale dawn came in and took the light out ofNettie's candle. The two looked at each other, and acknowledged with amutual start that the night was over. They had watched these long hoursthrough with sentiments very different; now a certain thrill of sympathydrew Nettie nearer to her sister. It was daylight again, remorselessand uncompromising, and where was Fred, who loved the darkness? He hadlittle money and less credit in the limited place where himself and hisstory were known. What could have become of him? Nettie acknowledgedthat there was ground for anxiety. She folded up her work and put outher 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, " saidNettie. "He might have stumbled in the field and fallen asleep. Men havedone such things before now, and been none the worse for it. If you willgo 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 lookfor Fred. "

"But you don't know where to go, and he won't like to have you goingafter him. Nettie, send to Edward, " said Susan; "he ought to come andlook after his brother: he ought to have done it all through, and not tohave left us to manage everything; and he hasn't even been to see us forever so long. But send to Edward, Nettie--it's his business. For Fredwon'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, " saidNettie, sharply, "and I shall not send to Dr Edward. You choose toinsult him whenever you can, and then you think it is his business tolook after his brother. Go to bed, and leave it to me. I can't leave youshivering here, to catch something, and be ill, and laid up for weeks. Iwant to get my bonnet on, and to see you in bed. Make haste, and comeup-stairs with me. "

Susan obeyed with some mutterings of inarticulate discontent. Thedaylight, after the first shock of finding that the night was reallyover, brought some comfort to her foolish heart. She thought that asNettie said "no more harm" could come to him, he must be sleepingsomewhere, the foolish fellow. She thought most likely Nettie was right, and that she had best go to bed to consume the weary time till therecould be something heard of him; and Nettie, of course, would find itall out. 

Such was the arrangement accordingly. Susan covered herself up warm, andlay thinking all she should say to him when he came home, and how shecertainly never would again let him go out and keep it secret fromNettie. Nettie, for her part, bathed her hot eyes, put on her bonnet, and went out, quietly undoing all the bolts and bars, into the chillmorning world, where nobody was yet awake. She was a little uncertainwhich way to turn, but noway uncertain of her business. Whether he hadgone into the town, or towards the low quarter by the banks of thecanal, she felt it difficult to conclude. But remembering her ownsuggestion that he might have stumbled in the field, and fallen asleepthere, she took her way across the misty grass. It was still spring, anda little hoar-frost crisped the wintry sod. Everything lay forlorn andchill under the leaden morning skies--not even an early market-cartdisturbed the echoes. When the cock crew somewhere, it startled Nettie. She went like a spectre across the misty fields, looking down into theditches and all the inequalities of the way. On the other side lay thecanal, 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 sawit, she had associated with Fred--a place where the men at the doorlooked slovenly and heated, like Fred himself, and lounged with theirhands in their pockets at noon of working-days. Some instinct guidedNettie there. 

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

What had they there?--not a man--a dreadful drowned image, all soiledand swollen--a squalid tragic form, immovable, never to move more. Nettiedid not need to look at the dread, uncovered, upturned face. The momentshe saw the vague shape of it rising against the side of the boat, aheap of dead limbs, recognisable only as something human, the terribletruth flashed upon Nettie. She had found not him, but It. She saw nothingmore for one awful moment--heaven and earth reeling and circling aroundher, and a horror of darkness on her eyes. Then the cold light opened upagain--the group of living creatures against the colourless skies, thedead creature staring and ghastly, with awful dead eyes gazing blankinto the shuddering day. The girl steadied herself as she could on thebrink of the sluggish current, and collected her thoughts. The conclusionto her search, and answer to all her questions, lay, not to be doubtedor questioned, before her. She dared not yield to her own horror, orgrief, or dismay. Susan sleeping, unsuspicious, in full trust of hisreturn--the slumbering house into which this dreadful figure must becarried--obliterated all personal impressions from Nettie's mind. Sheexplained to the amazed group who and what the dead man was--where hemust be brought to--instantly, silently, before the world was awake. Shewatched them lay the heavy form upon a board, and took off her own shawlto lay over it, to conceal it from the face of day. Then she went onbefore them, with her tiny figure in its girlish dress, like a child inthe shadow of the rough but pitying group that followed. Nettie did notknow why the wind went so chill to her heart after she had taken off hershawl. She did not see the unequal sod under her feet as she went backupon that dread and solemn road. Nothing in the world but what she hadto do occupied the throbbing heroic heart. There was nobody else to doit. How could the girl help but execute the work put into her hand?Thinking neither of the hardship nor the horror of such dread workfalling to her lot, but only this, that she must do it, Nettie took hometo the unconscious sleeping cottage that thing which was Fred Rider; noheavier on his bearers' hands to-day than he had been already for yearsof his wasted life. 

CHAPTER X. 

When Nettie opened the door of the sleeping house with the great key shehad carried with her in her early dreadful expedition, there was stillnobody stirring in the unconscious cottage. She paused at the door, withthe four men behind her carrying shoulder-high that terrible motionlessburden. Where was she to lay it? In her own room, where she had not sleptthat night, little Freddy was still sleeping. In another was the widow, overcome by watching and fretful anxiety. The other fatherless creatureslay in the little dressing-room. Nowhere but in the parlour, from whichFred not so very long ago had driven his disgusted brother--the onlyplace she had where Nettie's own feminine niceties could find expression, and where the accessories of her own daily life and work were allaccumulated. She lingered even at that dread moment with a pang ofnatural reluctance to associate that little sanctuary with the horrorand misery of this bringing-home; but when every feeling gave way to thepressure of necessity, that superficial one was not like to resist it. Her companions were not aware that she had hesitated even for thatmoment. She seemed to them to glide softly, steadfastly, without anyfaltering, before them into the little silent womanly room, where hernight's work was folded tidily upon the table, and her tiny thimble andscissors laid beside it. What a heart-rending contrast lay between thosedomestic traces and that dreadful muffled figure, covered from the lightof day with Nettie's shawl, which was now laid down there, Nettie didnot pause to think of. She stood still for a moment, gazing at it witha sob of excitement and agitation swelling into her throat; scarcelygrief--perhaps that was not possible--but the intensest remorsefulpity over the lost life. The rude fellows beside her stood silent, notwithout a certain pang of tenderness and sympathy in their half-savagehearts. She took her little purse out and emptied it of its few silvercoins among them. They trod softly, but their heavy footsteps wereheard, notwithstanding, through all the little house. Nettie couldalready hear the alarmed stirring up-stairs of the master and mistressof the cottage; and, knowing what explanations she must give, andall the dreadful business before her, made haste to get her strangecompanions away before Mrs Smith came down-stairs. One of them, however, as he followed his comrades out of the room, from some confused instinctof help and pity, asked whether he should not fetch a doctor? The questionstruck the resolute little girl with a pang sharper than this morning'shorror had yet given her. Had she perhaps neglected the first duty ofall, the possibility of restoration? She went back, without answeringhim, to lift the shawl from that dreadful face, and satisfy herselfwhether she had done, that last irremediable wrong to Fred. As she metthe dreadful stare of those dead eyes, all the revulsion of feelingwhich comes to the hearts of the living in presence of the deadoverpowered Nettie. She gave a little cry of inarticulate momentaryanguish. The soul of that confused and tremulous outcry was Pardon!pardon! What love was ever so true, what tenderness so constant andunfailing, that did not instinctively utter that cry when the watchedlife 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 theoffices of affection, and endured and sometimes scorned him. She stoodremorseful by his side in that first dread hour, which had changedFred's shabby presence into something awful; and her generous soulburst forth in that cry of penitence which every human creature owesits brother. The tender-hearted bargeman who had asked leave tofetch 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 kindrough fellow, who knew Nettie. The words recalled her to herself--butwith the softened feelings of the moment a certain longing for somebodyto stand by her in this unlooked-for extremity came over the forlorncourageous creature, who never yet, amid all her labours, had encounteredan emergency like this. She laid the shawl reverently back over thatdead face, and sent a message to the doctor with lips that trembled inspite of herself. "Tell him what has happened, and say he is to come assoon as he can, " said Nettie; "for I do not understand all that has tobe done. Tell him I sent you; and now go--please go before they all comedown-stairs. "

But when Nettie turned in again, after closing the door, into that houseso entirely changed in character by the solemn inmate who had enteredit, she was confronted by the amazed and troubled apparition of MrsSmith, half-dressed, and full of wonder and indignation. A gaspingexclamation of "Miss!" was all that good woman could utter. She had withher own eyes perceived some of the "roughs" of Carlingford emerging fromher respectable door under Nettie's grave supervision, and yet could notin her heart, notwithstanding appearances, think any harm of Nettie;while, at the same time, a hundred alarms for the safety of her householdgods shook her soul. Nettie turned towards her steadily, with her facepallid and her brilliant eyes heavy. "Hush, " she said; "Susan knowsnothing yet. Let her have her rest while she can. We have been watchingfor 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 andterror. 

"No, " cried Nettie, with a long sigh that relieved her breast, "not sobad as that, thank Heaven; but hush, hush! I cannot go and tell Susanjust yet--not just yet. Oh, give me a moment to get breath! For he isdead! I tell you, _hush_!" cried Nettie, seizing the woman's hand, andwringing it, in the extremity of her terror for alarming Susan. "Don'tyou understand me? She is a widow, and she does not know--her husbandis dead, and she does not know. Have you no pity for her in your ownheart?"

"Lord ha' mercy! but wait till I call Smith, " cried the alarmedlandlady, shrinking, yet eager to know the horribly interesting detailsof that tragedy. She ran breathless up-stairs on that errand, whileNettie went back to the door of the parlour, resolutely locked it, andtook away the key. "Nobody shall go gazing and talking over him, andmaking a wonder of poor Fred, " said Nettie to herself, shaking off fromher long eyelashes the tear which came out of the compunction of herheart. "Poor Fred!" She sat down on one of the chairs of the little hallbeside that closed door. The children and their mother up-stairs stillslept unsuspicious; and their young guardian, with a world of thoughtsrising in her mind, sat still and pondered. The past was suddenly cutoff from the future by this dreadful unthought-of event. She had come toa dead pause in that life, which to every spectator was so strangely outof accordance with her youth, but which was to herself such simple andplain necessity as to permit no questioning. She was brought suddenlyto a standstill at this terrible moment, and sat turning her dauntlesslittle face to the new trial before her, pale, but undismayed. Nettiedid not deceive herself even in her thoughts. She saw, with the intuitiveforesight of a keen observer, her sister's violent momentary grief, herindolent acceptance of the position after a while, the selfish reserveof repining and discontent which Susan would establish in the memory ofpoor Fred: she saw how, with fuller certainty than ever, because nowmore naturally, she herself, her mind, her laborious hands, her littlefortune, would belong to the fatherless family. She did not sigh overthe prospect, or falter; but she exercised no self-delusion on thesubject. There was nobody but she to do it--nobody but she, in her tendermaidenhood, to manage all the vulgar tragical business which must, thisvery day, confirm to the knowledge of the little surrounding world theevent which had happened--nobody but herself to tell the tale to thewidow, to bear all the burdens of the time. Nettie did not think overthese particulars with self-pity, or wonder over her hard lot. She didnot imagine herself to have chosen this lot at all. There was nobodyelse to do it--that was the simple secret of her strength. 

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

"My brother-in-law is dead, " she said. "He fell into the canal lastnight 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 notknow! Now, dear Mrs Smith, I know you are kind--I know you will not vexme just at this moment. I have had him laid _there_ till his brothercomes. Oh, don't say it's dreadful! Do you think I cannot see how dreadfulit is? but we must not think about that, only what has to be done. WhenDr Edward comes, I will wake my sister; but just for this moment, ohhave 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 DrRider, " cried the curious excited landlady, with her hand upon thelocked 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 possibilitieshad been over in the dark midnight waters hours ago. The earliest gleamof sunshine came shining in at that moment through the window which lastnight Nettie had opened that Fred might see the light in it and be guidedhome. It seemed to strike like a reproach upon that quick-throbbingimpatient heart, which felt as a sin against the dead its own lack ofnatural grief and affection. She went hurriedly to draw down the blindsand close out the unwelcome light. "Now he is gone, nobody shall slightor scorn him, " said Nettie to herself, with hot tears; and she turnedthe wondering dismayed couple--already awakening out of their firsthorror, to think of the injury done to their house and "lodgings, " andall the notoriety of an inquest--out of the room, and locked the doorupon the unwilling owners, whom nothing but her resolute face preventedfrom bursting forth in selfish but natural lamentations over their ownsecondary share in so disastrous an event. Nettie sat down again, asilent little sentinel by the closed door, without her shawl, and withher tiny chilled feet on the cold tiles. Nettie sat silent, too muchoccupied even to ascertain the causes of her personal discomfort. Shehad indeed enough to think of; and while her little girlish figure, so dainty, so light, so unlike her fortunes, remained in that unusualstillness, her mind and heart were palpitating with thoughts--all kindsof thoughts; not only considerations worthy the solemnity and horror ofthe moment, but every kind of trivial and secondary necessity, passedthrough that restless soul, all throbbing with life and action, moreself-conscious than usual from the fact of its outward stillness. Ahundred rapid conclusions and calculations about the funeral, themourning, the change of domestic habits involved, darted throughNettie's mind. It was a relief to her to leap forward into theseafter-matters. The immediate necessity before her--the dreadful errandon which she must presently go to her sister's bedside--the burst ofwailing and reproachful grief which all alone Nettie would have toencounter and subdue, were not to be thought of. She bent down herlittle head into her hands, and once more shed back that hair which, never relieved out of its braids through all this long night, began todroop over her pale cheeks; and a quick sigh of impatience, of energyrestrained, of such powerlessness as her courageous capable soul, inthe very excess of its courage and capacity, felt in its approachingconflict with the feeble foolish creature, who never could be stimulatedout of her own narrow possibilities, burst from Nettie's breast. But thesigh was as much physical as mental--the long-drawn breath of mingledweariness and restlessness--the instinct to be doing, and the exhaustionof long labour and emotion, blended together. Thus she waited whilethe cold spring morning brightened, and Mrs Smith went about her earlydomestic business, returning often into the little back-parlour withthe mullioned window, of which domestic Gothic treatment had made acondemned cell, to re-express her anxieties and horrors. Nettie had aninstinctive consciousness even of Mrs Smith's grievance. She knew thisdismal association would ruin "the lodgings, " and felt that here wasanother bond upon her to remain at St Roque's, however much she mightlong to escape and flee away. 

All these crowding and breathless thoughts were a few minutes afterreduced to absolute momentary stillness. It was by a step outside cominghastily with rapid purpose along the silent way. Nettie rose up to meetEdward Rider; not as the angry lover still fiercely resentful of thatrejection, which was no rejection, but only a bare and simple statementof necessity; not as the suitor of Miss Marjoribanks; simply as the onlycreature in the world who could help her, or to whom she would delegateany portion of her own hard but inevitable work. She opened the doorbefore he had time to knock, and held out her hand to him silently, quiteunawares betraying her recognition of his step--her comfort in hispresence. That meeting flushed the doctor's anxious face with a mingledshame and triumph not expressible in words, but left Nettie as pale, aspreoccupied, 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 allmyself, " said Nettie; "but I knew you would think it right to be herenow. And I have Susan and the children to look to. I commit this toyou. "

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

"I will tell Susan, now that you have come--I could not before, " saidNettie, 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 EdwardRider. "And those eyes have watched all night. Nettie, Nettie, could notyou have sent for me sooner? A word would have brought me at anymoment. "

"You were not wanted till now, " said Nettie, not without a touch ofwomanly 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. "Youwere angry once, and I don't wonder. Never mind all that, but let us befriends; and don't let all the people, and strangers, and men who don'tbelong to us, " cried Nettie once more, with hot tears in her eyes, "behard 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 MrsSmith's troubled countenance beholding him from far. Edward Rider pausedbefore he entered upon his dismal share of this morning's work. Deathitself did not suffice to endear Fred Rider to his brother. But he stoodstill, with a certain self-reproach, to withdraw his thoughts, if hecould, from Nettie, and to subdue the thrill--the most living touch oflife--which this meeting had stirred within him, before he entered thatmiserable chamber of death. 

CHAPTER XI. 

That dreadful day ebbed over slowly--tedious, yet so full of eventsand dismal business that it looked like a year rather than a day. Thenecessary investigations were got through without any special call uponNettie. She spent the most of the day up-stairs with Susan, whose wildrefusal to believe at first, and sullen stupor afterwards, were littledifferent 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 scarcelywere interested after the first movement of curiosity, disappointed andwounded the impatient heart, which unconsciously chafed at its own totalinability to convey the feelings natural to such a terrible occasioninto any bosom but its own. Nettie's perpetual activity had hithertosaved her from this disgust and disappointment. She had been bitterlyintolerant by moments of Fred's disgraceful content and satisfactionwith his own indulgences, but had never paused to fret over what shecould not help, nor contrast her own high youthful humour and sense ofduty with the dull insensibility around her. But to-day had rapt theheroic little girl into a different atmosphere from that she had beenbreathing hitherto. To-day she was aware that her work had been so fartaken out of her hands, and acknowledged in her heart that it was bestit should be so. She heard the heavy feet of men coming and going, but was not obliged to descend into immediate conflict with all thecircumstances of so horrible a crisis. It was a new sensation to Nettie. A year ago, perhaps, she would not have relinquished even that dreadfulbusiness to any one;--to-day, the thought of having some one else whodid it for her, and took comfort in relieving her burdened hands, fell with singular soothing power upon the heart which had come to aknowledge of its own weakness in these last tedious months; and asNettie sat up-stairs with all the remorseful thoughts of nature inher softened heart, the impossibility of impressing her own emotionsupon those around her struck her with a deeper sense of impatience, disappointment, and disgust than ever before. When she went softly intothe darkened room where Susan lay in her gloomy bed, divided betweenwailings over the injuries which poor Fred had suffered, the harshnessthat had driven him out of doors, and the want of his brother orsomebody to take care of him, which had brought the poor fellow tosuch an end--and complaints of the wrong done to herself, the "want offeeling" 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 howher dreadful tidings would be received; yet out of her own softened, awed, compunctious heart--her pity too deep for tears over that lostlife--Nettie looked with the unbelief of nature at the widowed woman, the creature who had loved him, and been his wife--yet who could onlythink of somebody else to be blamed, and of herself injured, at thatterrible moment when the companion of her life was violently withdrawnfrom her. And to go out of that obstinately darkened refuge of fretfulsorrow, into the room where the blind had been drawn up the momenther back was turned, and where these three tearless children, totallyunimpressed by the information which they had received as a piece ofnews with mingled curiosity and scepticism, occupied themselves withtheir usual sports, or listened keenly, with sharp remarks, to thesounds below, which only the utmost stretch of Nettie's authority couldkeep them from descending to investigate, afforded a wonderful reverseto the picture, which startled her in her momentary clearsightedness. The contrast between her own feelings--she who had no bonds of naturalaffection to Fred, and to whom he had been, by times, a very irksomeburden--and theirs, who were his very own, and belonged to him, appearedto Nettie as no such contrast had ever appeared before. _Her_ heartalone was heavy with regret over the ruined man--the now for everunredeemable life: she only, to whom his death was no loss, but even, if she could have permitted that cruel thought to intervene, a gain andrelief, recognised with a pang of compassion almost as sharp as grief, that grievous, miserable fate. When, a few minutes after, the noise ofthe children's play rose to an outburst, Nettie flushed into a momentaryeffusion of temper, and silenced the heartless imps with a voice andlook which they dared not venture to resist. Her rebuke was, however, interrupted by a sudden call from their mother. "How can you have theheart!--Oh, Nettie, Nettie! I knew you had no feeling!--you never hadany feeling since you were a baby--but how can you speak so to his poorchildren, 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 anddisgust, and peremptorily closed the doors intervening between thechildren and their mother, nobody will much wonder at that movement ofimpatience. Perhaps Nettie's eyes had never been so entirely opened tothe hopeless character of the charge she had taken upon her, as in thetemporary seclusion of that day. 

And meanwhile, down-stairs, Edward Rider was superintending all thearrangements of the time for Nettie's sake. Not because it was hisbrother who lay there, no longer a burden to any man; nor becausenatural duty pointed him out as the natural guardian of the orphanedfamily. The doctor, indeed, would have done his duty in such a hardcase, however it had been required of him; but the circumstances weredifferent now: the melancholy bustle, the shame, the consciousness thateverybody knew what manner of existence this lost life had been, theexposure, the publicity--all that would have wrung with a hundred sharpwounds a spirit so susceptible to public comments--came with dulled forceupon the doctor's mind to-day. When the people about saw the grave andseemly composure with which he went about this dismal business, withoutthose starts and flushes of grievous irritation and shame which thevery mention of his brother had once brought upon him, they believed, and honoured him in the belief, that death had awakened the ancientfraternal kindness in Edward Rider's heart. But it was not fraternalkindness that smoothed off the rude edges of that burden; it was theconsciousness of doing Nettie's work for her, taking her place, sparingthat creature, over whom his heart yearned, the hardest and painfulestbusiness she had yet been involved in. We cannot take credit for thedoctor which he did not deserve. He forgave Fred when he saw hismotionless figure, never more to do evil or offend in this world, laidin pitiful solitude in that room, which still was Nettie's room, andwhich even in death he grudged to his brother. But Edward's distinctapprehension of right and wrong, and Fred's deserts in this world, were not altered by that diviner compunction which had moved Nettie. Heforgave, but did not forget, nor defend with remorseful tenderness hisbrother's memory. Not for Fred's sake, but Nettie's, he held his placein the troubled cottage, and assumed the position of head of the family. Hard certainties of experience prevented the doctor's unimaginativemind from respecting here the ideal anguish of sudden widowhood andbereavement. This was a conclusion noways unnatural or surprising forsuch a life as Fred's--and Edward knew, with that contemptuous hardnessinto which incessant personal contact with the world drives most men, that neither the wife nor the children were capable of deep or permanentfeeling. "They will only hang upon _her_ all the heavier, " he saidto himself, bitterly; and for her, with repentant love, Edward Riderexerted 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 nothardhearted to say it, and him lying in his coffin, they'll be a dealbetter off without him nor with him. But Smith and me, we have ourselvesto look to, and it's a terrible blow, is this, to a house as was alwaysas 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 afflictedlandlady, contemplating the scratched tiles in the hall with actualtears of vexation and regret. But this was the true state of the case toevery unconcerned spectator. Only Nettie, on whom the burden had fallen, and was yet to fall heaviest, felt the eyes, which were hot and heavywith watching, grow dim with tears of unspeakable compassion. Fromthe fulness of her youth and strength--strength so burdened, youth sodauntless and dutiful--Nettie gazed with a pity too deep for words atthe awful spectacle of that existence lost. That the lifeless thing inthe room below could have been a man, and yet have come and gone sodisastrously through the world, was terrible to think of, to thatliving labouring creature, in the depth of her own strange toils andresponsibilities. Her heart ached over that wretched, miserable fate. Neither toil nor anguish was to be compared to the dread loss of a lifesustained by that departed soul. 

CHAPTER XII. 

In a few days all this solemn crisis was over, and life went on again inits ordinary tame current, closing over the dishonoured grave where Fredfound his rest, henceforward nameless in the world that had suffered hisexistence as a cumberer of the ground for so many years. Had he been theprop of his house and the light of their eyes, life would have gone onagain, after that interruption, all the same, with a persistency whichnothing can impair. As it was, the diminished household resumed itsordinary course of existence, after a very few days, with little morethan outward marks of what had befallen them. It is true that Nettiesat down with a repugnance which she scarcely could either overcome orconceal, to dispense the domestic provisions at the table which shortlybefore had borne so dread a burden. But nobody thought of that exceptNettie; and but for the black dresses and Susan's cap, Fred was as if hehad never been. 

About a week after the funeral, the doctor went solemnly to visit themin one of those lengthening spring afternoons. Dr Rider was undeniablynervous and excited about this interview. He had been at home underpretence 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 Wodehouseand her sister Lucy coming from St Roque's, where very probably they toohad been making a visit of condolence to Nettie; and a little nearer thatscene of all his cogitations and troubles appeared, a much less welcomesight, Miss Marjoribanks, whom all Carlingford, a month ago, had declaredDr Rider to be "paying his addresses" to. The guilty doctor took off hishat to that stout and sensible wayfarer, with a pang of self-disgustwhich avenged Nettie. Along the very road where that little Titania, eager and rapid, had gone upon her dauntless way so often, to see thatcomely well-dressed figure, handsome, sprightly, clever--but with such aworld of bright youth, tenderness, loveliness, everything that touchesthe heart of man, between the two! No harm to Miss Marjoribanks; onlyshame to the doctor, who, out of angry love, pique, and mortification, to vex Nettie, had pretended to transfer the homage due to the fairyprincess to that handsome and judicious woman. The experiment had failedas entirely as it deserved to do; and here was Edward Rider, coming backwiser and humbler, content to put that question over again, and standonce more his chance of what his pride had called a rejection, perhapscontent to make still greater sacrifices, if the truth were known, andto do anything Nettie asked him, if Nettie would but condescend to askor enter into terms at all. 

He drew up before St Roque's with a dash, which was much more ofagitation than display, and, throwing the reins at the head of hislittle 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 turninground amazed to look what vehicle had come to so sudden a standstillthere. All the world seemed to be on the road to St Roque's Cottage thatspring afternoon. The doctor made a surly gesture of recognition as hepassed the curate, who gazed at him in calm astonishment from the churchporch. No other intruder appeared between him and the Cottage. He hurriedalong past the willow-trees with their drooping tassels, surrounded by acertain maze of excitement and agitation. As he went up to the door, itoccurred to him suddenly how Nettie had recognised his step that dreadmorning of Fred's death. The thought came like a stimulus and encouragementto 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 tohim 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 overas he went between his patients?--"You were angry once, and, indeed, I don't wonder. " The doctor went boldly in under the cordial of thesesimple words. If she did not wonder that he was angry once, could shethink of saying over again that same conclusion which had cast him intosuch wrathful despair? He went in to try his fortune a second time, secure of his temper at least. _That_ could never fail, nor sin againstNettie again. 

Edward Rider went in, expectant somehow, even against his reason, tofind an altered world in that house from which Fred had gone. He knewbetter, to be sure, but nature beguiled the young man out of hiswisdom. When he went in to the parlour his eyes were opened. Upon thesofa--that same sofa where Fred had lain, all slovenly and mean in hisidleness, with his pipe, polluting Nettie's sole retirement--Mrs Fredlay now in her sombre black dress, with the white cap circling her fadedface. She had her white handkerchief in her hand, and was carefullyarranged upon the sofa, with a chair placed near for sympathisers. Atthe table, working rapidly as usual, sat Nettie. Sometimes she turneda momentary glance of mingled curiosity and wonder upon her sister. Evidently she did not interfere with this development of sorrow. Nettiehad enough to do, besides, with her needlework, and to enjoin a moderateamount of quietness upon Freddy and his little sister, who were buildingwooden bricks into houses and castles on the floor by her side. When thedoctor 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 thecompassionate people who might come to condole with her. Nettie, halfimpatient, half glad that her sister could amuse herself so, sat in busytoleration, putting up with it, carrying on her own work through itall--and still, as always, those bonds of her own making closed hard andtenacious upon the prop of the house. Even the chance of speaking withher by herself died off into extreme distance. Young Rider, who came inwith the full conviction that anger could never more rise in his heartagainst Nettie, grew pale with passion, resentment, and impatience beforehe had been a minute in the room. Always the same! Not relieved outof her bondage--closer bound and prisoned than ever! He took, with animpatient involuntary commotion, the chair placed beside the sofa, andsat down in it abruptly with the briefest salutations. His hopes andanticipations all went bitterly back upon his heart. The very rustle ofNettie's arm as she spread out that little black frock upon the table, and put on its melancholy trimmings, exasperated afresh the man who fiveminutes ago did not believe it possible that he ever could feel animpulse of displeasure against her again. 

"I cannot say that I expected to see you, Mr Edward, " said Mrs Fred, lifting her handkerchief to her eyes; "indeed, when I remember the lasttime you were here, I wonder you could think of coming near us. But nowmy poor dear Fred is gone, we have nobody to protect us--and of courseyou don't mind how you hurt my feelings. If you had done your duty by mypoor fellow when he was living, he might never--never----"

Here Mrs Fred paused, choked by spiteful tears. 

"Dr Edward, don't mind what Susan says, " said Nettie. "It is very kindof you to come after everything---- If you would only tell the peoplenot to take any notice, but just to let us go on as usual. They all wantto be kind, you know--they keep coming, and asking what they can do; andyou understand very well there is nothing to do, " said Nettie, with alittle pride. "We are just as we were before--nothing is changed: onedoes not like to be unkind, but nobody needs to do anything. We shallget along all the same. "

"So it seems, indeed, " said Dr Rider, with irrepressible bitterness;"all the same! But, indeed, I came specially to ask what my sister-in-lawmeant to do, " continued the doctor, bent on one last appeal. "Now thatyou are left to yourself, Mrs Rider, what do you think of doing? Ofcourse you must have some plans about the children and your futurelife?"

Mrs Fred looked up at him with momentary alarm and dismay. She did notknow what the question meant, but a certain vague terror seized her. Itseemed to imply somehow that she was now to be left to her own resources. She gave a certain gasp of appeal to "Nettie!" and took refuge once morein her handkerchief. The doctor was desperate--he had no mercy in him. 

"Nettie! always Nettie!" cried the young man. "And is it true, Nettie--isit all the same? Are you always to go on toiling for the miserablecomforts of other people? What is to become of us? Have you soldyourself to this fate?"

Nettie laid down the little black frock out of her laborious hands. "Youhave been up all night, Dr Edward, " she said, with a certain tenderness, looking at his agitated face; "you are tired out and sick at the heart. I know it makes you say things you would not say; but after all, youknow, except poor Fred, whom none of you think of, everything is thevery same. I cannot make it different--nothing can make it different. There is Susan plain enough to be seen--and there are the children. Sometimes it has come into my mind, " said Nettie, "that as I shall neverbe able to afford a _very_ good education for the children, it would bebetter to take them out to the colony again, where they might get onbetter than here. But it is a dreadful long voyage; and we have no nearfriends there, or anywhere else: and, " concluded the steadfast creature, who had dropped these last words from her lips sentence by sentence, as if eager to impress upon her own mind the arguments against thatproceeding--"and, " said Nettie, with wistful pathetic honesty, not ableto deny the real cause of the reluctance altogether, "I don't seem tohave the heart for it now. "

Dr Rider started up from his chair. He went to Nettie's side with asudden thrill of agitation and passion. He clasped the hand with whichNettie was smoothing out that little frock, and crushed the delicatefingers in his inconsiderate grasp. "Nettie! if you must carry themalways upon your shoulders, cannot we do it together, at least?" criedthe doctor, carried away beyond every boundary of sense or prudence. Hegot down on his knees beside the table, not kneeling to her, but onlycompelling her attention--demanding to see the answer of her eyes, thequiver of her mouth. For that moment Nettie's defences too fell beforethis unlooked-for outburst of a love that had forgotten prudence. Hermouth quivered, her eyes filled. If it were possible--if it were onlypossible!---- They had both forgotten the spectators who gazed withcurious eyes, all unaware how deeply their own fate was involved; andthat fate was still trembling in the breathless interval, when a vulgarfinger touched those delicate balances of possibility, and the crisiswas over, perhaps never to return. 

"Nettie!" cried Mrs Fred, "if Edward Rider has no respect for me, norfor my poor Fred--my poor, dear, injured husband, that helped to bringhim up, and gave up his practice to him, and died, as I might say, byhis neglect--Nettie! how can you be so cruel to your sister? How can yougo taking his hand, and looking as if he were your lover? You never hadany feeling for me, though everybody thinks so much of you. And now Iknow what I have to expect. The moment my poor dear Fred's head is laidin the grave--as soon as ever you have me in your own hands, and nobodyto protect me!--oh, my Fred! my Fred!--as soon as you are gone, this ishow they are using your poor helpless family!--and soon, soon I shalldie too, and you will not be encumbered with _me_!"

Long before this sobbing speech was concluded, Dr Rider had risen to hisfeet, and was pacing through the little room with hasty steps of disgustand rage, and an agitation which overwhelmed all his attempts to masterit; while Nettie sat supporting her head in her hands, pressing herfingers upon her hot eyes, beholding that fair impossible vision breakand disappear from before her. Nettie's heart groaned within her, andbeat against the delicate bosom which, in its tender weakness, wasmighty as a giant's. She made no answer to her sister's outcry, norattempted to comfort the hysterical sobbing into which Susan fell. Nettie gave up the hopeless business without being deceived by thoseselfish demonstrations. She was not even fortunate enough to be able topersuade herself into admiring love and enthusiasm for those to whomnecessity obliged her to give up her own life. She said nothing; sheknew the sobs would subside, the end would be gained, the insignificantsoul lapse into comfort, and with a sigh of compulsory resignationNettie yielded once more to her fate. 

"Dr Edward, do not think of me any more, " she said, resolutely, risingand going out to the door with him, in her simplicity and courage. "Yousee very well it is impossible. I know you see it as well as I do. Ifwe could be friends as we once were, I should be very, very glad, but Idon't think it is possible just now. Don't say anything. We both knowhow it is, and neither of us can help it. If we could get not to thinkof each other, that would be best, " said Nettie, with another sigh; "butin the mean time let us say good-bye, and speak of it no more. "

If the doctor did not take his dismissal exactly so--if Nettie'sidentification of her own sentiments with his did lead to a warmertenderness in that farewell, which could not be final while such abond united them, it was at least with an absolute conviction of theimpossibility of any closer union that they parted. The doctor spranginto his drag and dashed away to his patients, plunging into the workwhich he had somewhat neglected during that exciting day. He was notwithout some comfort as he went about his business with Care behind him, but that very comfort embittered the pang of the compulsory submission. To think he must leave her there with those burdens upon her delicateshoulders--to believe her his, yet not his, the victim of an unnaturalbondage--drove Edward Rider desperate as he devoured the way. A hundredtimes in an hour he made up his mind to hasten back again and snatchher forcibly out of that thraldom, and yet a hundred times had to fallback consuming his heart with fiery irritation, and chafing at allthat seemed duty and necessity to Nettie. As he was proceeding on histroubled way it occurred to him to meet--surely everybody in Carlingfordwas out of doors this particular afternoon!--that prosperous wife, MrsJohn Brown, who had once been Bessie Christian. She was a very paleapparition now to the doctor, engrossed as he was with an influence muchmore imperious and enthralling than hers had ever been; but the sightof her, on this day of all others, was not without its effect uponEdward Rider. Had not she too been burdened with responsibilities whichthe doctor would not venture to take upon his shoulders, but whichanother man, more daring, _had_ taken, and rendered bearable? As thethought of that possibility occurred to him, a sudden vision of MrsFred's faded figure flashed across his eyes. In the excitement of themoment he touched too sharply with his whip that horse which had sufferedthe penalty of most of his vagaries of temper and imagination for sometime past. The long-suffering beast was aggravated out of patience bythat unexpected irritation. It was all the doctor could do for thenext ten minutes to keep his seat and his command over the exasperatedanimal, whose sudden frenzy terrified Mrs Brown, and drove her to takerefuge in the nearest shop. How little the Carlingford public, whopaused at a respectful distance to look on, guessed those emotions whichmoved the doctor as they watched him subduing his rebellious horse withvigorous arm and passionate looks! Bessie, with a little palpitation ather heart, could not refrain from a passing wonder whether the sight ofherself had anything to do with that sudden conflict. Mrs Brown knewlittle about St Roque's Cottage, but had heard of Miss Marjoribanks, who it was not to be supposed could hold a very absolute sway overthe doctor. Meanwhile Dr Rider struggled with his horse with all theintensity of determination with which he would have struggled againsthis fate had that been practicable. With set teeth and eyes that blazedwith sudden rage and resolution, he subdued the unruly brute, and forcedit to acknowledge his mastery. When he drove the vanquished animal, allquivering with pain and passion, on its further course, the struggle hadrefreshed his mind a little. Ah, if life and adverse fortune could butbe vanquished so!--but all Edward Rider's resolution and courage diedinto hopeless disgust before the recollection of Mrs Fred upon thatsofa. Even with Nettie at one hand, that peevish phantom on the other, those heartless imps in insolent possession of the wonderful littleguardian who would not forsake them, made up a picture which made thedoctor's heart sick. No! Nettie was right. It was impossible. Love, patience, charity, after all, are but human qualities, when they have tobe held against daily disgusts, irritations, and miseries. The doctorknew as well as Nettie did that he could not bear it. He knew even, asperhaps Nettie did not know, that her own image would suffer from theassociation; and that a man so faulty and imperfect as himself could notlong refrain from resenting upon his wife the dismal restraints of sucha burden. With a self-disgust which was most cutting of all, EdwardRider felt that he should descend to that injustice; and that not evenNettie herself would be safe against the effusions of his impatienceand indignation. All through the course of this exciting episode in hislife, his own foresight and knowledge of himself had been torture to thedoctor, and had brought him, in addition to all other trials, silentagonies of self-contempt which nobody could guess. But he could not alterhis nature. He went through his day's work very wretched and dejected, yet with an ineffable touch of secret comfort behind all, which sometimeswould look him in the face for a moment like a passing sunbeam, yetsometimes seemed to exasperate beyond bearing the tantalising misery ofhis fate. A more agitated, disturbed, passionate, and self-consuming manthan the doctor was not in Carlingford, nor within a hundred miles; yetit was not perfect wretchedness after all. 

Nettie, on her part, went back to Mrs Fred in the parlour after she hadparted from Edward Rider, with feelings somewhat different from thedoctor's. Perhaps she too had indulged a certain pang of expectation asto what might follow after Fred was gone, in the new world that shouldbe after that change; for Nettie, with all her wisdom of experience, wasstill too young not to believe that circumstances did change everythingnow and then, even dispositions and hearts. But before Dr Rider knewit--before he had even wound up his courage to the pitch of asking whatwas now to happen to them--the little Australian had made up her mind tothat which was inevitable. The same Susan whose ceaseless discontentsand selfish love had driven Nettie across the seas to look for Fred, wasnow reposing on that sofa in her widow's cap, altogether unchanged, ashelpless and unabandonable, as dependent, as much a fool as ever. Thesuperior wretchedness of Fred's presence and life had partially veiledSusan's character since they came to Carlingford. Now she had the fieldto herself again, and Nettie recognised at once the familiar picture. From the moment when Susan in her mourning came down-stairs, Nettieacknowledged the weakness of circumstances, the pertinacity of nature. What could she do?--she gave up the scarcely-formed germ of hope thathad begun to appear in her breast. She made up her mind silently to whatmust be. No agonies of martyrdom could have made Nettie desert her postand abandon these helpless souls. They could do nothing for themselves, old or young of them; and who was there to do it all? she asked herself, with that perpetual reference to necessity which was Nettie's sole processof reasoning on the subject. Thus considered, the arguments were shortand telling, the conclusion unmistakable. Here was this visible pieceof business--four helpless creatures to be supported and provided andthrust through life somehow--with nobody in the world but Nettie to doit; to bring them daily bread and hourly tendance, to keep them alive, and shelter their helplessness with refuge and protection. She drew upher tiny Titania figure, and put back her silken flood of hair, and stoodupright to the full extent of her little stature, when she recognisedthe truth. Nobody could share with her that warfare which was hardto flesh and blood. There was nothing to be said on the subject--nopossibility of help. She was almost glad when that interview, which sheforesaw, was over, and when Edward had recognised as well as herselfthe necessities of the matter. She went back again out of the littlehall where, for one moment and no more, the lights of youth and love hadflushed over Nettie, suffusing her paleness with rose-blushes. Now itwas all over. The romance was ended, the hero gone, and life had begunanew. 

"I can't say I ever liked this place, " sighed Mrs Fred, when the lampwas lit that evening, and Nettie had come down-stairs again after seeingthe children in bed. "It was always dull and dreary to me. If we hadn'tbeen so far out of Carlingford, things might have been very different. My poor Fred! instead of taking care of him, all the dangers that evercould be were put in his way. "

This sentence was concluded by some weeping, of which, however, Nettiedid not take any notice. Making mourning by lamp-light is hard work, asall poor seamstresses know. Nettie had no tears in the eyes that werefixed intently upon the little coat which was to complete Freddy'soutfit; and she did not even look up from that urgent occupation todeprecate Susan's tears. 

"I tell you, Nettie, I never could bear this place, " said Mrs Fred; "andnow, whenever I move, the dreadful thoughts that come into my mind areenough to kill me. You always were strong from a baby, and of course itis not to be expected that you can understand what my feelings are. AndMrs Smith is anything but kind, or indeed civil, sometimes; and I don'tthink I could live through another of these cold English winters. I amsure I never could keep alive through another winter, now my poor Fred'sgone. "

"Well?" asked Nettie, with involuntary harshness in her voice. 

"I don't care for myself, " sobbed Mrs Fred, "but it's dreadful to seeyou so unfeeling, and to think what would become of his poor children ifanything were to happen to me. I do believe you would marry Edward Riderif it were not for me, and go and wrong the poor children, and leavethem destitute. Nobody has the feeling for them that a mother has; butif I live another winter in England, I know I shall die. "

"You have thought of dying a great many times, " said Nettie, "but it hasnever come to anything. Never mind that just now. What do you want? Doyou want me to take you back to the colony all these thousands of miles, after so many expenses as there have been already?--or what is it youwant me to do?"

"You always speak of expenses, Nettie: you are very poor-spirited, thoughpeople think so much of you, " said Susan; "and don't you think it isnatural I should wish to go home, now my poor Fred has been taken awayfrom me? And you confessed it would be best for the children. We knowscarcely anybody here, and the very sight of _that_ Edward that was socruel to my poor Fred----"

"Susan, don't be a fool, " said Nettie; "you know better in your heart. If you will tell me plainly what you want, I shall listen to you; butif not, I will go up-stairs and put away Freddy's things. Only one thingI may tell you at once; you may leave Carlingford if you please, but Ishall not. I cannot take you back again to have you ill all the way, andthe children threatening to fall overboard twenty times in a day. I didit once, but I will not do it again. "

"You _will_ not?" cried Susan. "Ah, I know what you mean: I know verywell what you mean. You think Edward Rider----"

Nettie rose up and faced her sister with a little gasp of resolutionwhich frightened Mrs Fred. "I don't intend to have anything said aboutEdward Rider, " said Nettie; "he has nothing to do with it one way oranother. I tell you what I told him, that I have not the heart to carryyou all back again; and I cannot afford it either; and if you wantanything more, Susan, " added the peremptory creature, flashing forthinto something of her old spirit, "I shan't go--and that is surelyenough. "

With which words Nettie went off like a little sprite to put awayFreddy's coat, newly completed, along with the other articles of hiswardrobe, at which she had been working all day. In that momentaryimpulse of decision and self-will a few notes of a song came unawaresfrom Nettie's lip, as she glanced, light and rapid as a fairy, up-stairs. She stopped a minute after with a sigh. Were Nettie's singing days over?She had at least come at last to find her life hard, and to acknowledgethat this necessity which was laid upon her was grievous by times toflesh and blood; but not the less for that did she arrange Freddy'slittle garments daintily in the drawers, and pause, before she wentdown-stairs again, to cover him up in his little bed. 

Susan still sat pondering and crying over the fire. Her tears were agreat resource to Mrs Fred. They occupied her when she had nothing elseto occupy herself with; and when she cast a weeping glance up from herhandkerchief to see Nettie draw her chair again to the table, and laydown a little pile of pinafores and tuckers which required supervision, Susan wept still more, and said it was well to be Nettie, who neverwas overcome by her feelings. Thus the evening passed dully enough. Just then, perhaps, Nettie was not a very conversable companion. Suchinterviews as that of this day linger in the heads of the interlocutors, and perhaps produce more notable effects afterwards than at the moment. Nettie was not thinking about it. She was simply going over it again, finding out the tones and meanings which, in the haste and excitement oftheir occurrence, did not have their full force. The fulness of detailthat lingers about such pictures, which are not half apprehended tillthey have been gone over again and again, is marvellous. The pinaforeswent unconsciously through Nettie's fingers. She was scarcely aware ofSusan crying by the fire. Though it had been in some degree a final andalmost hopeless parting, there was comfort behind the cloud to Nettie aswell as to the doctor. She had forgotten all about the discussion withwhich the evening began before Susan spoke again. 

"Richard Chatham came home with the last mail, " said Susan, making afeeble effort to renew the fight. "He sent me a letter last week, youknow. I daresay he will come to see us. Richard Chatham from Melbourne, Nettie. I daresay he will not stay out of the colony long. "

Nettie, who was lost in her own thoughts, made no reply. 

"I daresay, " repeated Mrs Fred, "he will be going out again in a monthor two. I do not believe he could bear this dreadful English winter anymore than I could. I daresay he'd be glad to take care of us out--if youshould change your mind about going, Nettie. "

Nettie gave her sister a glance of resolution and impatience--aswift glance upward from her work, enough to show she marked andunderstood--but still did not speak. 

"Richard Chatham was always very good-natured: it would be such a goodthing for us to go in the same ship--if you should happen to change yourmind about going, Nettie, " said Mrs Fred, rising to retire to her room. "I am going to bed to try to get a little sleep. Such wretched nights asI have would kill anybody. I should not wonder if Richard Chatham camesome of these days to see us. Poor fellow! he had always a great fancyfor _our_ family; and it would be _such_ a thing for us, Nettie, if youshould change your mind about going, to go in the same ship!"

With which Parthian shot Mrs Fred made her way up-stairs and retiredfrom the field. Nettie woke with a startled consciousness out of herdreams, to perceive that here was the process of iteration begun whichdrives the wisest to do the will of fools. She woke up to it for amoment, and, raising her drooping head, watched her sister make her way, with her handkerchief in her hand, and the broad white bands of her capstreaming over her shoulders, to the door. Susan stole a glance roundbefore she disappeared, to catch the startled glance of that resolutelittle face, only half woke up, but wholly determined. Though Mrs Freddared not say another word at that moment, she disappeared full of theconviction that her arrow had told, and that the endless persistencewith which she herself, a woman and a fool, was gifted, need only beduly exercised to win the day. When Susan was gone, that parting arrowdid quiver for a moment in Nettie's heart; but the brave little girlhad, for that one night, a protection which her sister wist not of. After the door closed, Nettie fell back once more into that hour ofexistence which expanded and opened out the more for every new approachwhich memory made to it. Sweet nature, gentle youth, and the Magiciangreater than either, came round her in a potent circle and defendedNettie. The woman was better off than the man in this hour of theirseparation, yet union. He chafed at the consolation which was butvisionary; she, perhaps, in that visionary, ineffable solacement founda happiness greater than any reality could ever give. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

It was some months after the time of this conversation when a man, unlikethe usual aspect of man in Carlingford, appeared at the inn with acarpet-bag, and asked his way to St Roque's Cottage. Beards were notcommon in those days: nobody grew one in Carlingford except Mr Lake, who, in his joint capacity of portrait-painter and drawing-master, represented the erratic and lawless followers of Art to the imaginationof the respectable town. But the stranger who made his sudden appearanceat the Blue Boar wore such a forest of hair on the lower part of hisburly countenance as obliterated all ordinary landmarks in that region, and by comparison made Mr Lake's dainty little mustache and _etceteras_sink into utter propriety and respectableness. The rest of the figurecorresponded with this luxuriant feature; the man was large and burly, a trifle too stout for a perfect athlete, but powerful and vigorous almostbeyond anything then known in Carlingford. It was now summer, and warmweather, and the dress of the new-comer was as unusual as the otherparticulars of his appearance. In his broad straw-hat and linen coat hestood cool and large in the shady hall of the Blue Boar, with glimpsesof white English linen appearing under his forest of beard, and roundhis brown sun-scorched wrists. A very small stretch of imagination wasnecessary to thrust pistols into his belt and a cutlass into his hand, and reveal him as the settler-adventurer of a half-savage disturbedcountry, equally ready to work or to fight, and more at home in theshifts and expedients of the wilderness than among the bonds ofcivilisation; yet always retaining, as English adventurers will, certaindainty personal particulars--such, for instance, as that prejudice infavour of clean linen, which only the highest civilisation can cultivateinto perfection. He went off down Grange Lane with the swing and poiseof a Hercules when the admiring waiters directed him to the Cottage. Miss Wodehouse, who was standing at the door with Lucy, in the long greycloak and close bonnet lately adopted by the sisterhood of mercy, whichhad timidly, under the auspices of the perpetual curate, set itselfa-going at St Roque's, looked after the savage man with an instinct ofgentle curiosity, wondering where he was going and where he came from. To tell the truth, that tender-hearted soul could with more comfortto herself have stepped down a little on the road to St Roque's, andwatched whether that extraordinary figure was in search of Nettie--asuspicion which immediately occurred to her--than she could set outupon the district-visiting, to which Lucy now led her forth. But MissWodehouse had tremulously taken example by the late rector, whose abruptretirement from the duties for which he did not feel himself qualified, the good people in Carlingford had scarcely stopped discussing. MissWodehouse, deeply impressed in her gentle mind by the incidents of thattime, had considered it her duty to reclaim if possible--she who had nocircle of college dons to retire into--her own life from its habits ofquiet indolence. She consented to go with Lucy into all the charitableaffairs of Carlingford. She stood silent with a pitying face, andbelieved in all the pretences of beggary which Lucy saw through bynatural insight. But it was no more her natural element than the longgrey cloak was a natural garment for that spotless, dove-coloured woman. Her eyes turned wistfully after the stranger with suppressed impulsesof gentle curiosity and gossip. She knew very well he did not belong toCarlingford. She knew nobody in Grange Lane or the neighbourhood towhom he could belong. She wanted very much to stop and inquire at thestable-boy of the Blue Boar, their own gardener's son, who and what thisnew-comer was, and turned back to look after him before she turned outof George Street following Lucy, with lively anxiety to know whether hewas going to St Roque's. Perhaps the labours of a sisterhood of mercyrequire a special organisation even of the kind female soul. MissWodehouse, the most tender-hearted of human creatures, did not rise tothat development; and, with a little pang of unsatisfied wonder, saw theunaccustomed Hercules disappear in the distance without being able tomake out whither he was bound. 

Nobody, however, who had been privileged to share the advantages of MrsFred Rider's conversation for some time back, could be at a loss to guesswho this messenger from the wilderness was. It was Richard Chatham comeat last--he with whose name Nettie had been bored and punctured throughand through from the first day of his introduction into Susan's talk tillnow. Mrs Fred had used largely in the interval that all-potent tortureof the "continual dropping;"--used it so perpetually as, though withoutproducing any visible effect upon Nettie's resolution, to introduceoften a certain sickness and disgust with everything into that steadfastsoul. Nor did she content herself with her own exertions, but skilfullymanaged to introduce the idea into the minds of the children--ready, asall children are, for change and novelty. Nettie had led a hard enoughlife for these three months. She could not meet Edward Rider, nor heher, with a calm pretence of friendship; and Susan, always insolent andspiteful, and now mistress of the position, filled the doctor with anamount of angry irritation which his longings for Nettie's society couldnot quite subdue. That perpetual barrier between them dismayed both. Meetings which always ended in pain were best avoided, except at thoseintervals when longing love could not, even under that penalty, refuseitself the gratification; but the dismal life which was lighted uponly by those unfrequent, agitating, exasperating encounters, andwhich flowed on through a hundred petty toilsome duties to the fretfulaccompaniment of Susan's iterations and the novel persecution nowcarried on by the children, was naturally irksome to the high-spiritedand impatient nature which, now no longer heart-whole or fancy-free, didnot find it so easy to carry its own way triumphantly through thoseheavy clogs of helplessness and folly. In the days when Miss Wodehousepitied and wondered, Nettie had required no sympathy; she had carriedon her course victorious, more entirely conscious of the supremegratification of having her own way than of the utter self-sacrificewhich she made to Fred and his family. But now the time predicted byMiss Wodehouse had arrived. Nettie's own personal happiness had come tobe at stake, and had been unhesitatingly given up. But the knowledge ofthat renunciation dwelt with Nettie. Not all the natural generosity ofher mind--not that still stronger argument which she used so often, themere necessity and inevitableness of the case--could blind her eyes tothe fact that she _had_ given up her own happiness; and bitter flashesof thought would intervene, notwithstanding even the self-contempt andreproach with which she became aware of them. That doubtful complicatedmatter, most hard and difficult of mortal problems, pressed hard uponNettie's mind and heart. In former days, when she scornfully denied itto be self-sacrifice, and laboured on, always indomitable, unconsciousthat what she did was anything more than the simplest duty and necessity, all was well with the dauntless, all-enterprising soul; but growingknowledge of her own heart, of other hearts, cast dark and perplexingshades upon Nettie, as upon all other wayfarers, in these complex paths. The effect upon her mind was different from the effect to be expectedaccording to modern sentimental ethics. Nettie had never doubted ofthe true duty, the true necessity, of her position, till she becameconscious of her vast sacrifice. Then a hundred doubts appalled her. Wasshe so entirely _right_ as she had supposed? Was it best to relieve thehelpless hands of Fred and Susan of their natural duties, and bear theseburdens for them, and disable herself, when her time came, from thenobler natural yoke in which her full womanly influence might have toldto an extent impossible to it now? These questions made Nettie's head, which knew no fanciful pangs, ache with painful thought, and confusedher heart and dimmed her lights when she most needed them to burnbrightly. While, at the very time when these doubts assailed her, hersister's repetitions and the rising discontent and agitations of thechildren, came in to over-cloud the whole business in a mist of sickimpatience and disgust. Return to Australia was never out of Susan'smind, never absent from her pertinacious foolish lips. Little Freddyharped upon it all day long, and so did his brother and sister. Nettiesaid nothing, but retired with exasperated weariness upon her ownthoughts--sometimes thinking, tired of the conflict, why not give in tothem? why not complete the offering, and remove once for all into theregion of impossibility that contradictory longing for another life thatstill stirred by times in her heart? She had never given expression tothis weary inclination to make an end of it, which sometimes assailedher fatigued soul; but this was the condition in which Richard Chatham'svisit found her, when that Bushman, breathing of the wilds and thewinds, came down the quiet suburban road to St Roque's, and, filling thewhole little parlour with his beard and his presence, came stumblinginto the confined room, where Mrs Fred still lay on the sofa, and Nettiepursued her endless work. 

"Sorry to hear of the poor doctor's accident, " said the Australian, towhom Fred bore that title. "But he always was a bit of a rover; thoughit's sad when it comes to that. And so you are thinking of a return tothe old colony? Can't do better, _I_ should say--there ain't room inthis blessed old country for anything but tax-gatherers and gossips. Ican't find enough air to breathe, for my part--and what there is, istaxed--leastways the light is, which is all the same. Well, Mrs Rider!say the word, ma'am, and I'm at your disposal. I'm not particular for amonth or two, so as I get home before next summer; and if you'll onlytell me your time, I'll make mine suit, and do the best I can for youall. Miss Nettie's afraid of the voyage, is she? That's a new line forher, I believe. Something taken her fancy in this horrid old box of aplace, eh? Ha! ha! but I'll be head-nurse and courier to the party, MissNettie, if you trust yourselves to me. "

"We don't mean to go back, thank you, " said Nettie. "It is only a fancyof Susan's. Nobody ever dreamt of going back. It is much too expensiveand troublesome to be done so easily. Now we are here, we mean to stay. "

The Bushman looked a little startled, and his lips formed into a whistleof astonishment, which Nettie's resolute little face kept inaudible. "Taken your fancy very much, eh, Miss Nettie?" said the jocular savage, who fancied raillery of one kind or other the proper style of conversationto address to a young lady. Nettie gave that big hero a flashing suddenglance which silenced him. Mr Chatham once more formed an inaudiblewhew! with his lips, and looked at Mrs Fred. 

"But _your_ heart inclines to the old colony, Miss Susan?--I beg yourpardon--didn't remember what I was saying at that moment. Somehow youlook so much as you used to do, barring the cap, " said the Australian, "that one forgets all that has happened. You incline to cross the seasagain, Mrs Rider, without thinking of the expense?--and very sensibletoo. There never was a place like this blessed old country for swallowingup a man's money. You'll save as much in a year in the colony as willtake you across. "

"That is what I always say;--but of course my wishes are little thoughtof, " said Mrs Fred, with a sigh; "of course it's Nettie we have to lookto now. If she does not choose, to be sure, it does not matter what Iwish. Ah! if I don't look different, I feel different--things arechanged _now_. "

The Bushman gave a puzzled glance, first at one sister and then at theother. It occurred to him that Fred had not been so much of a strengthand protection to his family as this speech implied, and that Nettie hadbeen the person whom Mrs Rider had to "look to" even before they leftthat colony for which she now sighed. But Mrs Fred, in her sorrow andher white cap, was an interesting figure to the eyes which were not muchaccustomed to look upon womankind. He had no doubt hers was a hard case. Nettie sat opposite, very busy, silent, and resolute, flashing dangeroussudden glances occasionally at her languid sister and their big visitor. It was confusing to meet those brilliant impatient wrathful eyes; thoughthey were wonderfully bright, they put out the wild man of the woods, and made him feel uncomfortable. He turned with relief to those milderorbs which Mrs Fred buried in her handkerchief. Poor little oppressedwoman, dependent upon that little arbitrary sister! The sincerest pityawoke in the Bushman's heart. 

"Well!" he said, good-humouredly, "I hope you'll come to be of one mindwhen Miss Nettie thinks it over again; and you have only to drop me aline to let me know when your plans are formed; and it will go hardwith me, but I'll make mine suit them one way or another. All that I cando for you in the way of outfit or securing your passages--or even, ifyou would allow me----"

Here the good fellow paused, afraid to venture any further. Nettie lookedup in a sudden blaze, and transfixed him with her eye. 

"We have enough for everything we want, thank you, " said Nettie, lookingthrough and through his guilty benevolent intentions, and bringing aflush of confusion to his honest cheeks. "When I say I cannot affordanything, I don't mean to ask anybody's assistance, Mr Chatham. We cando very well by ourselves. If it came to be best for the children--or ifSusan keeps on wishing it, and gets her own way, as she generally does, "said Nettie, with heightened colour, dropping her eyes, and going on atdouble speed with her work, "I daresay we shall manage it as we didbefore. But that is my concern. Nobody in the world has anything to dowith it but me. "

"Oh, Nettie, dear, you're giving in at last!--do say you'll go! andMr Chatham promises he'll take care of us on the way, " cried MrsFred, clasping her hands. They were thin hands, and looked delicate incontrast with her black dress. She was very interesting, pathetic, andtender to the rough eyes of the Bushranger. He thought that imperativelittle creature opposite, with her brilliant glances, her small headdrooping under those heavy braids of hair, her tiny figure and rapidfingers, looked like a little cruel sprite oppressing the melancholysoul. When Nettie rose from the table, goaded into sudden intolerance bythat appeal, the climax of the "continual dropping, " and threw her workindignantly on the table, and called Freddy to come directly, and getdressed for his walk, the impression made by her supposed arbitrary andimperious behaviour was not diminished. She went out disdainful, makingno reply, and left those two to a private conference. Then Mrs Fredunbosomed her bereaved heart to that sympathetic stranger. She told himhow different everything was now--how hard it was to be dependent evenon one's sister--how far otherwise things might have been, if poor dearFred had been more prudent: one way or other, all her life through, Susan had been an injured woman. All her desire was to take the childrenback to the colony before she died. "If Nettie would but yield!" sighedMrs Fred, clasping her hands. 

"Nettie must yield!" cried the Bushranger, full of emotion; and Susancried a little, and told him how much the poor dear children wished it;and knew in her fool's heart that she had driven Nettie to the extremestbounds of patience, and that a little more persistence and iterationwould gain the day. 

In the mean time Nettie went out with Freddy--the other two being atschool--and took him across the fields for his afternoon walk. Thelittle fellow talked of Australia all the way, with a childish treacheryand betrayal of her cause which went to Nettie's heart. She walked byhis side, hearing without listening, throbbing all over with secretdisgust, impatience, and despair. She too perceived well enough theapproaching crisis. She saw that once more all her own resolution--thepurpose of her heart--would be overborne by the hopeless pertinacity ofthe unconvincible, unreasoning fool. She did not call her sister hardnames--she recognised the quality without giving it its appropriatetitle--and recognised also, with a bitterness of resistance, yet a senseof the inevitable, not to be described, the certain issue of the unequalcontest. What chance had the generous little heart, the hasty temper, the quick and vivacious spirit, against that unwearying, unreasoningpertinacity? Once more she must arise, and go forth to the end of theworld: and the sacrifice must be final now. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

"Well, it's to be hoped she's going to do well for herself--that's allwe've got to do with it, eh? I suppose so, " said Mr Wodehouse; "she'snothing to you, is she, but a little girl you've taken a deal of noticeof?--more notice than was wanted, if I am any judge. If she does go andmarry this fellow from Australia, and he's willing to take the wholebundle back to where they came from, it is the best thing that couldhappen, in _my_ opinion. Sly young dog, that doctor, though, I mustsay--don't you think so? Well, that's how it appears to me. Let's see;there was Bessie----; hum! perhaps it's as well, in present circumstances, to name no names. There was _her_, in the first instance, you know;and the way he got out of that was beautiful; it was what I callinstructive, was that. And then--why then, there was Miss Marjoribanks, you know--capital match that--just the thing for young Rider--set him upfor life. "

"Papa, pray--_pray_ don't talk nonsense, " said Miss Wodehouse, withgentle indignation. "Miss Marjoribanks is at least ten years----"

"Oh, stuff!--keep your old-maidish memory to yourself, Molly; who caresfor a dozen years or so? Hasn't she all the old Scotchman's practice andhis savings?--and a fine woman yet--a fine woman, eh? Well, yes, I thinkso; and then here's this little wretch of a sister-in-law. Why, thedoctor's taken your _rôle_, Wentworth, eh? Well, I suppose what ought tobe your _rôle_, you know, though I _have_ seen you casting glances atthe strange little creature yourself. "

"Indeed, I assure you, you are entirely mistaken, " said Mr Wentworth, hastily, with a sudden flush of either indignation or guilt. The curateglanced at Lucy Wodehouse, who was walking demurely by his side, butwho certainly did prick up her ears at this little bit of news. She sawvery well that he had looked at her, but would take no notice of hisglance. But Lucy's curiosity was notably quickened, notwithstanding; StRoque's Cottage was wonderfully handy, if the perpetual curate of thepretty suburban church saw anything worth visiting there. Lucy drew upher pretty shoulders in her grey sister-of-mercy cloak, and opened herblue eyes a little wider. She was still in circumstances to defy herreverend lover, if his eyes had declined upon lower attractions than herown. She looked very straight before her with unpitying precision downthe road, on which St Roque's Church and Cottage were becoming alreadyvisible. The whole party were walking briskly over a path hard withfrost, which made their footsteps ring. The air was still with a winterlytouch, benumbed with cold, yet every sound rang sharply through thatclear cloudless atmosphere, reddened without being warmed by the sun asit approached the west. It was Christmas again, and they were wendingtheir way towards St Roque's to assist at the holiday decorations, forwhich cartloads of laurel and holly had been already deposited withinthe church. Lucy Wodehouse was chief directress of these importantoperations. Her sister had accompanied her, partly to admire Lucy'swork, and partly to call at the cottage and see how Nettie was goingon. Mr Wodehouse himself had come merely for the pride and pleasureof seeing how much they were indebted to his little girl; and theattendance of the curate was most easily explainable. It was, indeed, astonishing how many extremely necessary and natural "calls of duty"should bring Mr Wentworth's path parallel to that of the Wodehouses. This is why they were all proceeding together on this particularafternoon in the week before Christmas towards St Roque's. 

In the church, when the party arrived, a little group of workers werebusy. The chancel arch was already bristling with glossy holly-leaves. At a little distance from the active group occupied with this pleasantwork, and full of chatter and consultation, as was natural, stood onelittle figure pointing out to two children the wonders of that decorativeart. Every one of the new-comers, except Mr Wodehouse, recognised Nettiebefore she was aware of their presence. She stood with her bonnet fallena little back, as it generally was, either by encounter of the wind, orby the quantity and luxuriance of her beautiful hair, looking upwardsto the point where she had directed the children's eyes. She looked alittle forlorn and solitary, as was natural, all by herself, so nearthat group of busy girls in the chancel--so little separated from themby age, so entirely divided by circumstances. If a certain softening ofhalf-tender pity shone in the curate's eye, could Lucy Wodehouse blamehim? But the fact was, Lucy swept past the little Australian with a verybrief salutation, and burst into sudden criticism of the work that hadbeen done in her absence, which startled her collaborateurs, while MrWentworth followed her into the chancel with a meekness quite unusualto that young priest. Nettie noted both circumstances with a littlesurprise; but, not connecting them in the most distant degree withherself, turned round with a little twitch of Freddy's arm to go away, and in doing so almost walked into the arms of her older and more faithfulfriend. Miss Wodehouse kissed her quite suddenly, touching with hersoft old cheek that rounder, fairer, youthful face, which turned, halfwondering, half pleased, with the look of a child, to receive hercaress. Nettie was as unconscious that Miss Wodehouse's unusual warmthwas meant to make up for Lucy's careless greeting, as that Lucy hadpassed her with a positive flutter of resentment and indignation, andthat she had been the subject of the conversation and thoughts of allthe party. Miss Wodehouse turned with her, taking Freddy's other hand--aproceeding to which that hero rather demurred. They went out togetherto the frosty road, where the bare willow-branches rustled betweenthe church and the cottage. When they reached the porch of St Roque's, Nettie instinctively held her breath, and stood still for a moment. Along the footpath in front of them a big figure was passing, and beyondthat bearded shadow the doctor's drag flew past with all the separatetones of the horse's feet, the wheels, the jingle of the harness, ringingclear through the sharp unsoftened medium of that frosty atmosphere. Thedoctor himself had all his attention concentrated upon the windows ofthe cottage, in which the sun was blazing red. He did not see Nettie inthe church porch. He was looking for her too intently in the crimsonedwindows, to which he turned his head back as he dashed on. UnawaresNettie clasped the fingers of her little companion tighter in her handas she watched that unexpected homage. The drag was out of sight inanother moment; and in a few seconds more the bell of the cottage pealedaudibly, and the door was heard to open, admitting the Bushman, who hadcome upon one of his frequent visits. That last sound disturbed Nettie'scomposure, and at the same time brought her back to herself. 

"I cannot ask you to go in, for Mr Chatham is there, and Susan ofcourse talking to him, " said Nettie, with a quiet breath of restrainedimpatience, "but I should like to talk to you, please. Let me take thechildren home, and then I will walk up with you. Mrs Smith is very kind;she will take off their things for them: they behave better now, when Iam out for a few minutes--though, to be sure, I never am out much to trythem. Come, children; be good, and do not make a great noise till I comeback. "

"What do you want to talk to _her_ for?" asked the little girl, gazingcoldly in Miss Wodehouse's face. 

"When Nettie went out to tea, we made as much noise as we liked, " saidFreddy, "but there was papa there. Now there's only mamma, and she's socross. I hate Chatham--mamma is always crossest when Chatham's there. What do you want to talk to people for, Nettie? Come in, and say there'sto be toast, and let us have tea. "

"We never have any tea till Nettie comes back, " added his sister, looking full once more into Miss Wodehouse's face. The calm childishimpertinence disconcerted that gentle woman. She gazed at the wonderfulcreatures with dumb amazement. Her eyes fell before their steady stare. "I should be sorry to bring you out again, dear, if it's a trouble, "began Miss Wodehouse, turning her face with a sense of relief from thehard inspection of the children to their little guardian. 

Nettie made no reply, but carried off her children to the cottage door, turned them peremptorily in, and issued her last orders. "If you make anoise, you shall not go, " said Nettie; and then came back alert, withher rapid fairy steps, to Miss Wodehouse's side. 

"Does not their mother take any charge of them?" faltered the gentleinquisitor. "I never can understand you young people, Nettie. Thingswere different in my days. Do you think it's quite the best thing to doother people's duties for them, dear? and now I'm so sorry--oh, sosorry--to hear what you are going to do now. "

"Susan is delicate, " said Nettie. "She never had any health to speakof--I mean, she always got better, you know, but never had any pleasure init. There must be a great deal in that, " continued Nettie, reflectively;"it never comes into my head to think whether I am ill or well; but poorSusan has always had to be thinking of it. Yes, I shall have to takethem away, " she added again, after a pause. "I am sorry, very sorry too, Miss Wodehouse. I did not think at one time that I had the heart to doit. But on the whole, you know, it seems so much better for them. Susanwill be stronger out there, and I have not money enough to give thechildren a very good education. They will just have to push their waylike the others; and in the colony, you know, things are so different. I have no doubt in my own mind now that it will be best for them all. "

"But, Nettie, Nettie, what of yourself? will it be best for you?" criedMiss Wodehouse, looking earnestly in her face. 

"What is best for them will be best for me, " said Nettie, with a littleimpatient movement of her head. She said so with unfaltering spirit andpromptitude. She had come to be impatient of the dreary maze in whichshe was involved. "If one must break one's heart, it is best to do it atonce and have done with it, " said Nettie, under her breath. 

"What was that you said about your heart?" said Miss Wodehouse. "Ah, mydear, that is what I wanted to speak of. You are going to be married, Nettie, and I wanted to suggest to you, if you won't be angry. Don't youthink you could make some arrangement about your sister and her family, dear?--not to say a word against the Australian gentleman, Nettie, whom, of course, I don't know. A man may be the best of husbands, and yet notbe able to put up with a whole family. I have no doubt the children arevery nice clever children, but their manner is odd, you know, for suchyoung creatures. You have been sacrificing yourself for them all thistime; but remember what I say--if you want to live happily, my dear, you'll have to sacrifice them to your husband. I could not be contentwithout saying as much to you, Nettie. I never was half the good in thisworld that you are, but I am nearly twice as old--and one does pick upsome little hints on the way. That is what you must do, Nettie. Makesome arrangement, dear. If he has promised to take them out with you, that is all right enough; but when you come to settle down in your newhome, make some arrangement dear. "

When Miss Wodehouse arrived breathless at the conclusion of a speech sounusually long for her, she met Nettie's eyes flashing upon her with theutmost surprise and curiosity. "I shall never marry anybody, " saidNettie. "What do you mean?"

"Don't say anything so foolish, " said Miss Wodehouse, a little nettled. "Do you suppose I don't know and see _that_ Mr Chatham coming and going?How often has he been seen since the first time, Nettie? and do yousuppose it's all been benevolence? My dear, I know better. "

Nettie looked up with a startled glance. She did not blush, nor betrayany pleasant consciousness. She cast one dismayed look back towards thecottage, and another at Miss Wodehouse. "Can _that_ be why he comes?"said Nettie, with quiet horror. "Indeed, I never thought of it before--butall the same, I shall never marry anybody. Do you imagine, " cried thebrilliant creature, flashing round upon poor Miss Wodehouse, so as todazzle and confuse that gentlewoman, "that a man has only to intendsuch a thing and it's all settled? I think differently. Twenty thousandChathams would not move me. I shall never marry anybody, if I live to beas old as--as you, or Methuselah, or anybody. It is not my lot. I shalltake the children out to Australia, and do the best I can for them. Three children want a great deal of looking after--and after a while inCarlingford, you will all forget that there ever was such a creature asNettie. No, I am not crying. I never cry. I should scorn to cry aboutit. It is simply _my business_. That is what it is. One is sorry, ofcourse, and now and then it feels hard, and all that. But what did onecome into the world for, I should like to know? Does anybody supposeit was just to be comfortable, and have one's own way? I have had myown way a great deal--more than most people. If I get crossed in somethings, I have to bear it. That is all I am going to say. I have gotother things to do, Miss Wodehouse. I shall never marry anybody all mylife. "

"My dear, if you are thrown upon this Mr Chatham for society all thetime of the voyage, and have nobody else to talk to----" said theprudent interlocutor. 

"Then we'll go in another ship, " cried Nettie, promptly; "that is easilymanaged. I know what it is, a long voyage with three children--they fallup the cabin-stairs, and they fall down the forecastle; and they giveyou twenty frights in a day that they will drop overboard. One does nothave much leisure for anything--not even for thinking, which is a comfortsometimes, " added Nettie, confidentially, to herself. 

"It depends upon what you think of, whether thinking is a comfort ornot, " said good Miss Wodehouse. "When I think of you young people, andall the perplexities you get into! There is Lucy now, vexed with MrWentworth about something--oh, nothing worth mentioning; and there waspoor Dr Rider! How he did look behind him, to be sure, as he went pastSt Roque's! I daresay it was you he was looking for, Nettie. I wish youand he could have fancied each other, and come to some arrangement aboutpoor Mr Fred's family--to give them so much to live on, or something. Iassure you, when I begin to think over such things, and how perverseboth people and circumstances are, thinking is very little comfort tome. "

Miss Wodehouse drew a long sigh, and was by no means disinclined to cryover her little companion. Though she was the taller of the two, sheleant upon Nettie's firm little fairy arm as they went up the quiet road. Already the rapid winter twilight had fallen, and before them, in thedistance, glimmered the lights of Carlingford--foremost among whichshone conspicuous the large placid white lamp (for professional reds andblues were beneath his dignity) which mounted guard at Dr Marjoribanks'sgarden gate. Those lights, beginning to shine through the eveningdarkness, gave a wonderful look of home to the place. Instinctivelythere occurred to Nettie's mind a vision of how it would be on the sea, with a wide dark ocean heaving around the solitary speck on its breast. It did not matter! If a silent sob arose in her heart, it found noutterance. Might not Edward Rider have made that suggestion which hadoccurred only to Miss Wodehouse? Why did it never come into his headthat Susan and her family might have a provision supplied for them, which would relieve Nettie? He had not thought of it, that was all. Instead of that, he had accepted the impossibility. Nettie's heart hadgrown impatient in the maze of might-be's. She turned her back upon thelights, and clasped Miss Wodehouse's hand, and said good-night hastily. She went on by herself very rapidly along the hard gleaming road. Shedid not pay any attention to her friend's protestation that she too wascoming back again to St Roque's to join Lucy--on the contrary, Nettieperemptorily left Miss Wodehouse, shaking hands with her in so resolutea manner that her gentle adviser felt somehow a kind of necessity uponher to pursue her way home; and, only when Nettie was nearly out ofsight, turned again with hesitation to retrace her steps towards StRoque's. Nettie, meanwhile, went on at a pace which Miss Wodehouse couldnot possibly have kept up with, clasping her tiny hands together with aswell of scorn and disdain unusual to it in her heart. Yes! Why did notEdward Rider propose the "arrangement" which appeared feasible enough toMiss Wodehouse? Supposing even Nettie had refused to consent to it, asshe might very probably have done with indignation--still, why did itnot occur to Dr Edward? She asked herself the question with a heat andpassion which she found it difficult to account for. She half despisedher lover, as woman will, for obeying her--almost scorned him, as womanwill, for the mere constancy which took no violent measures, but onlysuffered and accepted the inevitable. To submit to what cannot be helpedis a woman's part. Nettie, hastening along that familiar path, blazedinto a sudden burst of rage against Edward because he submitted. What hecould do else she was as ignorant of as any unreasonable creature couldbe. But that mattered little. With indignation she saw herself standingon the verge of that domestic precipice, and the doctor looking on, seeingher glide out of his reach, yet putting forth no violent sudden hand todetain her. All the impatience of her fiery nature boiled in her veinsas she hasted to the cottage, where Susan was discussing their journeywith her Australian visitor. No remnant of pathos or love-sickeningremained about Nettie, as she flashed in upon them in all her old hasteand self-reliance--resolute to precipitate the catastrophe which nobodytook any measures to prevent. 

CHAPTER XV. 

It was not long before the doctor was made aware of the ghost in histroubled path. Nobody in Carlingford could meet the big Bushman inthose streets, which always looked too narrow for him, without a certaincuriosity about that savage man. Dr Rider had observed him with jealousinterest on his very first appearance, but had hitherto connected noidea but that of a return to Australia, which he felt sure Nettie wouldnever consent to, with the big stranger. With such a thought he had seenhim making his way towards the cottage that very evening when he himselfturned back, as long as those crimsoned windows were visible, to lookfor Nettie, who did not show herself. The doctor was bound to see adistant patient, miles on the other side of Carlingford. As he dashedalong over the echoing road he had time to imagine to himself how Nettiemight at that very moment be badgered and persecuted; and when he hadseen his patient and done his duty, and with the lamps lighted in thedrag, and the frosty wind blowing keen on his face, and the lights ofCarlingford cheering him on in the distance, was once more returning, animpatience, somewhat akin to Nettie's, suddenly came upon the doctor. Akin, yet different; for in his case it was an impulse of sensation, aninspiration of the exhilarating speed and energy of motion with which heflew through the bracing air, master of himself, his horse, and the longsweep of solitary road before him. Again it occurred to Dr Rider to dashforward to St Roque's and carry off Nettie, oppose it who would. Theidea pleased him as he swept along in the darkness, its very impossibilitymaking the vision sweeter. To carry her off at a stroke, in gloriousdefiance of circumstances, and win happiness and love, whatever mightensue. In the flush of the moment the doctor suddenly asked himselfwhether this, after all, were not the wisest course? whether, whatevermight come of it, happiness was not worth the encounter of the darkarray of troubles behind? and whether to precipitate everything bya sudden conclusion might not be the best way of solving all theintricacies of the matter? He was still in this mood when he arrived athis own house, where dinner, as usual, was not improved by having beenready for an hour. The lamp was not lighted when he came in, and onlythe cold reflection of the street lights outside, with a particolouredgleam at the corner window from his own red and blue professional ensignat the surgery door, lighted the solitary little room, where he lookedin vain even for so much as a note or letter to bring some shadow ofhuman fellowship to his home; the fire smouldering dully, the big chairturned with a sullen back against the wall, as if nobody ever satthere--though Nettie had once and for ever appropriated it to heruse--everything in such inhuman trim and good order disgusted the doctor. He rang his bell violently for the lights and refreshments which wereso slow of coming, and, throwing himself into that chair, bit his nailsand stared out at the lamplight in the rapid access of thought thatcame upon him. The first thing that disturbed him in this was theapparition of a figure outside peering in with some anxiety at the blankwindows--somebody who was evidently curious to know whether the doctorhad yet come home. The unhappy doctor started, and rang his bell oncemore with furious iteration. He knew what was coming. Somebody else, no doubt, had taken ill, without any consideration for young Rider'sdinner, which, however, a man must manage to swallow even when tormentedwith importunate patients, and in love. But the knock of the untimelyvisitor sounded at the much-assailed door before Mary, sulky andresistant, had been able to arrange before the hungry doctor thehalf-warm half-cold viands which his impatience would not permit tobe duly "heated up;" and he had just seated himself to dispose of theunsatisfactory meal when the little groom, who was as tired as hismaster, opened the door for Mrs Smith from St Roque's. Mrs Smith was afamiliar periodical visitor at Dr Rider's. She had not ceased to holdto that hasty and unwise financial arrangement into which the doctorwas persuaded to enter when Fred's pipe had exasperated the landladyinto rebellion. He had supplemented the rent at that exciting momentrather than have Nettie disturbed; and now that poor Fred's pipe wasextinguished for ever, the doctor still paid the imposition demandedfrom him--half because he had no time to contest it, half becauseit was, however improper and unnecessary, a kind of pleasure to dosomething for Nettie, little as she knew and deeply as she would haveresented it. Dr Rider's brows cleared up at sight of Nettie's landlady. He expected some little private anecdotes of her and her ways, such asno one else could give him. He gave Mrs Smith a chair with a benignityto which she had no personal claim. Her arrival made Dr Rider's beefsteakpalatable, though the cookery and condition of the same were, to say theleast, far from perfect. Mrs Smith evidently was a little embarrassedwith the gracious reception she received. She twisted the corner of hershawl in her fingers as if it had been that apron with which womenof her class habitually relieve their feelings. She was in a falseposition. She came with the worst of news to the melancholy lover, andhe treated her as if she brought some special message or favour from thelady of his thoughts. 

"Well, Mrs Smith, and how are you all at the cottage?" said the doctor, applying himself leisurely to his beefsteak. 

"Well, doctor, nothing to brag of, " said Mrs Smith, fixing her eyes uponthe fringe of her shawl. "I haven't nothing to say that's pleasant, morethe pity. I don' know, sir, how you'll take it when you come to hear;but it's come very hard upon me. Not for the sake of the lodgings, as'lllet again fast enough, now the poor gentleman's sad fate is partlyforgotten; but you know, doctor, a body gets attached-like when one setof people stays long enough to feel at home; and there ain't many youngladies like Miss if you were to search the country through. But, nowshe's really give in to it herself, there ain't no more to be said. Inever could bring myself to think Miss would give in till to-night whenshe told me; though Smith he always said, when the stranger gentlemantook to coming so constant, as he knew how it would be. "

"For heaven's sake, what do you mean?" cried Dr Rider, pushing away hisplate, and rising hurriedly from that dinner which was fated never to beeaten. Mrs Smith shook her head and drew out her handkerchief. 

"I know nothing more, doctor, but just they're going off to Australia, "said the landlady, mournfully; "and Miss has started packing the bigboxes as have been in the hattic since ever they come: they're going offback where they come from--that's all as I know. "

"Impossible!" cried the doctor. 

"I'd have said so myself this morning, " said Mrs Smith; "but there ain'tnothing impossible, doctor, as Miss takes in her head. Don't you go andrush out after her, Dr Rider. I beg of you upon my knees, if it was mylast word! I said to Smith I'd come up and tell the doctor, that hemightn't hear from nobody promiscuous as couldn't explain, and mightn'tcome rushing down to the cottage to know the rights of it and find thegentleman there unexpected. If there's one thing I'm afeard of, it's aquarrel between gentlemen in my house. So, doctor, for the love ofpeace, don't you go anear the cottage. I'll tell you everything if youlisten to me. "

The doctor, who had snatched up his hat and made a rapid step towardsthe door, came back and seized hold of his visitor's shoulder, all hisbenignity having been put to flight by her unlooked-for revelation. "Look here! I want the truth, and no gossip! What do you mean--whatgentleman? What is it all about?" cried Dr Rider, hoarse with suddenpassion. 

"Oh, bless you, doctor, don't blame it upon me, sir, " cried Mrs Smith. "It ain't neither my fault nor my business, but that you've always beenkind, and my heart warms to Miss. It's the gentleman from Australia ashas come and come again; and being an unmarried gentleman, and Miss--youknow what she is, sir--and I ask you, candid, Dr Rider, what was anybodyto suppose?"

The doctor grew wildly red up to his hair. He bit his lips over somefurious words which Carlingford would have been horrified to hear, andgrasped Mrs Smith's shoulder with a closer pressure. "What did she tellyou?" said the doctor. "Let me have it word for word. Did she say shewas going away?--did she speak of this--this--fellow?" exclaimed thedoctor, with an adjective over which charity drops a tear. "Can't youtell me without any supposes, what did she say?"

"I'm not the woman to stand being shook--let me go this minute, sir, "cried Mrs Smith. "The Australian gentleman is a very nice-spoken civilman, as was always very respectful to me. She came into my back-parlour, doctor, if you will know so particular--all shining and flashing, likeas she does when something's happened. I don't make no doubt they hadbeen settling matters, them two, and so I told Smith. 'Mrs Smith, ' saidMiss, in her hasty way, enough to catch your breath coming all of asudden, 'I can't stand this no longer--I shall have to go away--it ain'tno good resisting. ' Them were her very words, Dr Rider. 'Get me out thebig boxes, please, ' said Miss. 'It's best done quietly. You must takeyour week's notice, Mrs Smith, from this day;' and with that she keptmoving about the room all in a flutter like, not able to rest. 'Do goand get me out those boxes; there's always a ship on the 24th, ' shesays, taking up my knitting and falling to work at it to keep her handssteady. 'The day afore Christmas!' says I; 'and oh, Miss, it's runningin the face of Providence to sail at this time of the year. You'll havedreadful weather, as sure as life. ' You should have seen her, doctor!She gave a sort of smile up at me, all flashing as if those eyes of herwere the sides of a lantern, and the light bursting out both there andall over. 'All the better, ' she says, as if she'd have liked to fightthe very wind and sea, and have her own way even there. Bless you, she'sdreadful for having her own way. A good easy gentleman now, as didn'tmind much--Dr Rider--Doctor!--you're not agoing, after all I've toldyou? Doctor, doctor, I say----"

But what Mrs Smith said was inaudible to Edward Rider. The door rang inher ears as he dashed it after him, leaving her mistress of the field. There, where he had once left Nettie, he now, all-forgetful of his usualfastidious dislike of gossip, left Mrs Smith sole occupant of his mostprivate territories. At this unlooked-for crisis the doctor had neithera word nor a moment to spend on any one. He rushed out of the house, oblivious of all those professional necessities which limit the comingsand goings of a doctor in great practice; he did not even know what hewas going to do. Perhaps it was an anxious husband or father whom he allbut upset as he came out, with sudden impetuosity, into the unfrequentedstreet; but he did not stop to see. Pale and desperate, he faced thecold wind which rushed up between the blank garden-walls of Grange Lane. At Mr Wodehouse's door he stumbled against young Wentworth coming out, and passed him with a muttered exclamation which startled the curate. All the floating momentary jealousies of the past rushed back upon thedoctor's mind as he passed that tall figure in the wintry road: how hehad snatched Nettie from the vague kindnesses of the young clergyman--thewords he had addressed to her on this very road--the answer she hadgiven him once, which had driven him wild with passion and resentment. Impossible! the Australian, it appeared, had found nothing impossible inthose circumstances in which Nettie had intrenched herself. Had thedoctor's wisdom been monstrous folly, and his prudence the blindestshortsightedness? He asked himself the question as he rushed on towardsthat lighted window shining far along the dark road--the same windowwhich he had seen Nettie's shadow cross, which had been opened to lightpoor Fred upon the way he never could tread again. Within that jealousblind, shining in that softened domestic light, what drama, murderous tothe doctor's peace, might be going on now?

CHAPTER XVI. 

Nettie had taken her resolution all at once. Breathless in suddenconviction, angry, heated, yet seeing in the midst of her excitement nohelp but an immediate action, the hasty little woman had darted into theheart of the difficulty at once. Every moment she lingered wore her outand disgusted her more with the life and fate which, nevertheless, itwas impossible to abandon or shrink from. Nothing was so safe as to makematters irrevocable--to plunge over the verge at once. All gleaming withresolve and animation--with the frosty, chill, exhilarating air whichhad kindled the colour in her cheeks and the light in her eyes--withhaste, resentment, every feeling that can quicken the heart and make thepulses leap--Nettie had flashed into the little parlour, where all wasso quiet and leisurely. There Susan sat in close confabulation with theBushman. The children had been banished out of the room, because theirmother's head was not equal to their noise and restlessness. When theycame in with Nettie, as was inevitable, Mrs Fred sustained the invasionwith fretful looks and a certain peevish abstraction. She was evidentlyinterrupted by the rapid entrance, which was as unwelcome as it washasty. Cold though the night was, Mrs Fred, leaning back upon her sofa, fanned her pink cheeks with her handkerchief, and looked annoyed aswell as disturbed when her children came trooping into the room clamorousfor tea behind the little impetuous figure which at once hushed andprotected them. Susan became silent all at once, sank back on the sofa, and concealed the faded flush upon her cheeks and the embarrassedconscious air she wore behind the handkerchief which she used soassiduously. Neither she nor her visitor took much share in theconversation that rose round the domestic table. Nettie, too, wassufficiently absorbed in her own concerns to say little, and nobodythere was sufficiently observant to remark what a sudden breath ofhaste and nervous decision inspired the little household ruler as shedispensed the family bread-and-butter. When tea was over, Nettie senther children out of the way with peremptory distinctness, and stayedbehind them to make her communication. If she noticed vaguely a certainconfused impatience and desire to get rid of her in the looks of hersister and the Australian, she attached no distinct meaning to it, butspoke out with all the simplicity of an independent power, knowing allauthority 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. Ishall 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 takingyou by surprise. There is a ship that sails on the 24th. If everythingis packed and ready, will you consent to go on that day?"

Mrs Fred started with unfeigned surprise, and, not without a littleconsternation, turned her eyes towards her friend before answering hersister. "It is just Nettie's way, " cried Susan--"just how she alwaysdoes--holds out against you to the very last, and then turns round anddarts off before you can draw your breath. The 24th! and this is the19th! Of course we can't do it, Nettie. I shall want quantities ofthings, and Mr Chatham, you know, is not used to your ways, and can'tbe whisked off in a moment whenever you please. "

"I daresay it's very kind of Mr Chatham, " said Nettie; "but I can takeyou out very well by myself--just as well as I brought you here. AndI can't afford to get you quantities of things, Susan. So please tounderstand 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 passedbetween 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, " saidNettie. "It is no very smiling business to me. But since I am driven toit, 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 thatlay before her, thinking as little of Susan's opposition as of theclamour raised by the children, when the hard sentence of going halfan hour earlier to bed was pronounced upon them. Nettie's haste andperemptoriness were mixed, if it must be told, with a little resentmentagainst the world in general. She had ceased being sad--she was rousedand indignant. By the time she had subdued the refractory children, anddisposed of them for the night, those vast Australian boxes, which theyhad 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 Smithtold Edward Rider her story, Nettie was flying up and down stairs witharmfuls of things to be packed, and pressing Smith himself into herservice. Ere long the hall was piled with heaps of personal property, ready to be transferred to those big receptacles. In the excitement ofthe work her spirit rose. The headlong haste with which she carried onher operations kept her mind in balance. Once or twice Susan peeped outfrom the parlour door, and something like an echo of laughter rang outinto the hall after one of those inspections. Nettie took no noticeeither of the look or the laugh. She built in those piles of baggagewith the rapidest symmetrical arrangement, to the admiration of Smith, who stood wondering by, and did what he could to help her, with troubledgood-nature. She did not stop to make any sentimental reflections, or tothink of the thankless office in which she was about to confirm herselfbeyond remedy by this sudden and precipitate step. Thinking had doneNettie little good hitherto. She felt herself on her true ground again, when she took to doing instead. The lamp burned dimly overhead, throwingdown a light confused with frost upon the hall, all encumbered withthe goods of the wandering family. Perhaps it was with a certainunconscious symbolism that Nettie buried her own personal wardrobedeep in the lowest depths, making that the foundation for all the aftersuperstructure. Smith stood by, ready to hand her anything she mightwant, gazing at her with doubtful amazement. The idea of setting off toAustralia at a few days' notice filled him with respect and admiration. 

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

"The gentleman is not going with us, " said Nettie, peremptorily--"andthere 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 nothingof her to-night? Gone out!--how very odd she should go out now, of alltimes in the world. Where has she gone, do you suppose? Not to beungrateful to you, who are very kind, a woman is, of course, twentytimes the use a man is, in most things. Thank you--not that; thosecoloured frocks now--there! that bundle with the pink and the blue. Onewould suppose that even a man might know coloured frocks when he sawthem, " said Nettie, with despairing resignation, springing up from herknees to seize what she wanted. "Thank you--I think, perhaps, if youwould just go and make yourself comfortable, and read your paper, Ishould get on better. I am not used to having anybody to help me. Igot on quite as well, thank you, by myself. "

Smith withdrew, not without some confusion and discomfort, to hiscondemned cell, and Nettie went on silent and swift with her labours. "Quite as well! better!" said Nettie to herself. "Other people neverwill understand. Now, I know better than to try anybody. " If that hastybreath was a sigh, there was little sound of sorrow in it. It was alittle gust of impatience, indignation, intolerance even, and hastyself-assertion. She alone knew what she could do, and must do. Not oneother soul in the world beside could enter into her inevitable work andway. 

Nettie did not hear the footstep which she might have recognised ringingrapidly down the frosty road. She was too busy rustling about withperpetual motion, folding and refolding, and smoothing into miraculouscompactness all the heterogeneous elements of that mass. When a suddenknock came to the door she started, struck with alarm, then paused amoment, looking round her, and perceiving at one hasty glance that nobodycould possibly enter without seeing both herself and her occupation, made one prompt step to the door, which nobody appeared to open. It wasMrs Smith, no doubt; but the sudden breathless flutter which came uponNettie cast doubts upon that rapid conclusion. She opened it quickly, with a certain breathless, sudden promptitude, and looked out pale anddauntless, understanding by instinct that some new trial to her fortitudewas there. On the other hand, Edward Rider pressed in suddenly, almostwithout perceiving it was Nettie. They were both standing in the halltogether, before they fully recognised each other. Then the doctor, gazing round him at the unusual confusion, gave an involuntary groan outof the depths of his heart. "Then it is true!" said Dr Rider. He stoodamong the chaos, and saw all his own dreams broken up and shattered inpieces. Even passion failed him in that first bitterness of conviction. Nettie stood opposite, with the sleeves of her black dress turned upfrom her little white nimble wrists, her hair pushed back from hercheeks, pushed quite behind one delicate ear, her eyes shining with allthose lights of energy and purpose which came to them as soon as shetook up her own character again. She met his eye with a little air ofdefiance, involuntary, and almost unconscious. "It is quite true, " saidNettie, bursting forth in sudden self-justification; "I have my work todo, 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 mustdie. "

Never had Nettie been so near breaking down, and falling into suddenwomanish tears and despair. She would not yield to the overpoweringmomentary passion. She clutched at the bundle of frocks again, and maderoom for them spasmodically in the box which she had already packed. Edward Rider stood silent, gazing at her as in her sudden anguish Nettiepulled down and reconstructed that curious honeycomb. But he had not comehere merely to gaze, while the catastrophe was preparing. He went up andseized her busy hands, raised her up in spite of her resistance, andthrust away, with an exclamation of disgust, that great box in which allhis hopes were being packed away. "There is first a question to settlebetween you and me, " cried the doctor: "you shall not do it. No; Iforbid it, Nettie. Because you are wilful, " cried Edward Rider, hoarseand violent, grasping the hands tighter, with a strain in which otherpassions 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--byheaven!"

"Dr Edward, " said Nettie, trembling, half with terror, half withresolution, "you have no authority over me. We are two people--we arenot one. I should not have gone away without a word or a sign. I shouldhave said good-bye to you, whatever had happened; but that is differentfrom 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 hisgrasp; "but I do not interfere with your business, and I must do mine myown way. "

The doctor was in no mood to argue. He thrust the big box she had packedaway into a corner, and closed it with a vindictive clang. It gave him alittle 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 youhad been my wife, Nettie, to be sure you could not have deserted me. Itis 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 discoveryby instinct. "When a fellow obeys you, it is only contempt you feel forhim; but I tell you, Nettie, I will bear it no longer. You shall not goaway. 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 shallnot go unless I go too. Ah--I forgot. They tell me there is a fellow, anAustralian, 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 uskill each other. Let us take all the world on our shoulders, " cried thedoctor, 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 notgive way, clasped her hands tight in each other and stood trembling, yet refusing to tremble; collecting her voice and thoughts. The doctoroccupied that moment of suspense in a way which might have lookedludicrous in other circumstances, but was a relief to the passion thatpossessed him. He dragged the other vast Australian box to the samecorner 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 layabout, and carried them off in the other direction to the stairs, wherehe laid them carefully with a clumsy tenderness. When he had swept awayall these encumbrances, as by a sudden gust of wind, he came back toNettie, 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--Iask nobody to bear my burdens. Thank you for not believing it--that is acomfort at least. Never, surely, any one else--and not you, not you! DrEdward, let us make an end of it. I will never consent to put my yokeupon your shoulders, but I--I will never forget you or blame you--anymore. It is all hard, but we cannot help it. Good-bye--don't make itharder, you, who are the only one that----; good-bye, --no more--don'tsay any more. "

At this moment the parlour door opened suddenly; Nettie's tremblingmouth and frame, and the wild protest and contradiction which werebursting from the lips of the doctor, were lost upon the spectatorabsorbed 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 heis 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, againstNettie's wilfulness--but, really now, we, none of us, can put up with itany longer. Please to walk in and hear what I've got to say. "

The big Bushman stood before the little fire in the parlour, extinguishingits 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 becauseNettie had already swept her own particular belongings out of thatapartment, which once, to the doctor's eyes, had breathed of herpresence in every corner--but it did not look like Nettie's parlourto-night. Mrs Fred, with the broad white bands of her cap streaming overher black dress, had just assumed her place on the sofa, which was herdomestic throne. Nettie, much startled and taken by surprise, stoodby the table, waiting with a certain air of wondering impatience whatwas to be said to her--with still the sleeves turned up from her tinywrists, and her fingers unconsciously busy expressing her restlessintolerance of this delay by a hundred involuntary tricks and movements. The doctor stood close by her, looking only at Nettie, watching her witheyes intent as if she might suddenly disappear from under his very gaze. As for the Australian, he stood uneasy under Nettie's rapid investigatingglance, and the slower survey which Dr Rider made on entering. He pluckedat his big beard, and spread out his large person with a confusion andembarrassment rather more than merely belonged to the stranger in afamily party; while Mrs Fred, upon her sofa, took up her handkerchiefand once more began to fan her pink cheeks. What was coming? After amoment's pause, upon which Nettie could scarcely keep herself frombreaking, Susan spoke. 

"Nettie has always had the upper hand so much that she thinks I amalways to do exactly as she pleases, " burst forth Mrs Fred; "and I don'tdoubt poor Fred encouraged her in it, because he felt he was obliged tomy family, and always gave in to her; but now I have somebody to standby me, " added Susan, fanning still more violently, and with a sound inher voice which betrayed a possibility of tears--"now I have somebody tostand by me--I tell you once for all, Nettie, I will not go on the24th. "

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

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

If a shell had fallen in the peaceful apartment, the effect could nothave been more startling. The two who had been called in to receivethat intimation, and who up to this moment had been standing togetherlistening languidly enough, too much absorbed in the matter betweenthemselves to be very deeply concerned about anything Mrs Fred could sayor do, fell suddenly apart with the wildest amazement in their looks. "Susan, you are mad!" cried Nettie, gazing aghast at her sister, withan air of mingled astonishment and incredulity. The doctor, too muchexcited to receive with ordinary decorum information so important, madea sudden step up to the big embarrassed Australian, who stood before thefire gazing into vacancy, and looking the very embodiment of consciousawkwardness. Dr Rider stretched out both his hands and grasped thegigantic fist of the Bushman with an effusion which took that worthyaltogether by surprise. "My dear fellow, I wish you joy--I wish youjoy. Anything I can be of use to you in, command me!" cried the doctor, with a suppressed shout of half-incredulous triumph. Then he returnedrestlessly towards Nettie--they all turned to her with instinctivecuriosity. Never in all her troubles had Nettie been so pale; she lookedin her sister's face with a kind of despair. 

"Is this _true_, Susan?" she said, with a sorrowful wonder as differentas possible from the doctor's joyful surprise--"not something said tovex us--really true? And this has been going on, and I knew nothing ofit; and all this time you have been urging me to go back to thecolony--_me_--as if you had no other thoughts. If you had made up yourmind to this, what was the use of driving me desperate?" cried Nettie, in a sudden outburst of that incomprehension which aches in generoushearts. Then she stopped suddenly and looked from her sister, utteringsuppressed sobs, and hiding her face in her handkerchief on the sofa, to the Australian before the fire. "What is the good of talking?" saidNettie, with a certain indignant impatient indulgence, coming to an abruptconclusion. Nobody knew so well as she did how utterly useless it was toremonstrate or complain. She dropt into the nearest chair, and beganwith hasty tremulous hands to smooth down the cuffs of her black sleeves. In the bitterness of the moment it was not the sudden deliverance, butthe heartlessness and domestic treachery that struck Nettie. She, thechampion and defender of this helpless family for years--who had giventhem bread, and served it to them with her own cheerful unweariedhands--who had protected as well as provided for them in her dauntlessinnocence and youth. When she was thus cast off on the brink of thecostliest sacrifice of all, it was not the delightful sensation offreedom which occurred to Nettie. She fell back with a silent pang ofinjury swelling in her heart, and, all tremulous and hasty, gave heragitated attention to the simple act of smoothing down her sleeves--asimple but symbolical act, which conveyed a world of meaning to the mindof the doctor as he stood watching her. The work she had meant to do wasover. Nettie's occupation was gone. With the next act of the domesticdrama she had nothing to do. For the first time in her life utterlyvanquished, with silent promptitude she abdicated on the instant. Sheseemed unable to strike a blow for the leadership thus snatched from herhands. With proud surprise and magnanimity she withdrew, forbearing eventhe useless reproaches of which she had impatiently asked, "What was thegood?" Never abdicated emperor laid aside his robes with more ominoussignificance, than Nettie, with fingers trembling between haste andagitation, smoothed down round her shapely wrists those turned-upsleeves. 

The doctor's better genius saved him from driving the indignant Titaniadesperate at that critical moment by any ill-advised rejoicings; and thesight of Nettie's agitation so far calmed Dr Rider that he made the mostsober and decorous congratulations to the sister-in-law, whom for thefirst time he felt grateful to. Perhaps, had he been less absorbed inhis own affairs, he could scarcely have failed to remember how, not yeta year ago, the shabby form of Fred lay on that same sofa from whichSusan had announced her new prospects; but in this unexampled revolutionof affairs no thought of Fred disturbed his brother, whose mind wasthoroughly occupied with the sudden tumult of his own hopes. "Oh yes, Ihope I shall be happy at last. After all my troubles, I have to look tomyself, Mr Edward; and your poor brother would have been the last toblame me, " sobbed Mrs Fred, with involuntary self-vindication. Thenfollowed a pause. The change was too sudden and extraordinary, andinvolved results too deeply important to every individual present, tomake 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 mindupon that operation, were discouraging interlocutors; and after thedoctor and the Bushman had shaken hands, their powers of communicationwere exhausted. The silence was at length broken by the Australian, who, clearing his voice between every three words, delivered his embarrassedsentiments 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 yoursister 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 beanything but glad to have you with us----"

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

"Thank you, " said Nettie, rising suddenly; "I knew you were honest. Itis very good of you, too, to be glad to have me with you. You don't knowany better. I'm abdicated, Mr Chatham; but because it's rather startlingto have one's business taken out of one's hands like this, it will bevery kind of everybody not to say anything more to-night. I don't quiteunderstand it all just at this moment. Good-night, Dr Edward. We cantalk to-morrow, please; not to-night. You surely understand me, don'tyou? When one's life is changed all in a moment, one does not exactlysee where one is standing just at once. Good-night. I mean what I say, "she continued, holding her head high with restrained excitement, andtrying to conceal the nervous agitation which possessed her as thedoctor 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. Nettiewas too much overstrained and excited to speak more. A single sudden sobburst from her as she drew her hand out of his, and disappeared like aflying sprite. The doctor saw the heaving of her breast, the height ofself-restraint which could go no further. He went back into the parlourlike 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, andwhere Fred himself had lain in dismal state. Dr Rider said a hastygood-night to Fred's successor, and went off hurriedly into the changedworld which surrounded that unconscious cottage. Though the frost hadnot relaxed, and the air breathed no balm, no sudden leap from Decemberto June could have changed the atmosphere so entirely to the excitedwayfarer who traced back the joyful path towards the lights of Carlingfordtwinkling brilliant through the Christmas frost. As he paused to lookback upon that house which now contained all his hopes, a sudden shadowappeared at a lighted window, looking out. Nettie could not see theowner of the footsteps which moved her to that sudden involuntaryexpression of what was in her thoughts, but he could see her standingfull in the light, and the sight went to the doctor's heart. He took offhis hat insanely in the darkness and waved his hand to her, though shecould not see him; and, after the shadow had disappeared, continued tostand watching with tender folly if perhaps some indication of Nettie'spresence 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 driveten miles in celestial patience at the call of any capricious invalid. He was half-disappointed to find no summons awaiting him when he wenthome--no outlet for the universal charity and loving-kindness thatpossessed him. Instead, he set his easy-chair tenderly by the side ofthe blazing fire, and, drawing another chair opposite, gazed with secretsmiles at the visionary Nettie, who once had taken up her positionthere. Was it by prophetic instinct that the little colonial girl, whosefirst appearance so discomposed the doctor, had assumed that place?Dr Rider contemplated the empty chair with smiles that would havecompromised his character for sanity with any uninstructed observer. When the mournful Mary disturbed his reverie by her noiseless andpenitent entrance with the little supper which she meant at once fora peace-offering and compensation for the dinner lost, she carrieddown-stairs with her a vivid impression that somebody had left hermaster a fortune. Under such beatific circumstances closed the eveningthat had opened amid such clouds. Henceforth, so far as the doctor couldread the future, no difficulties but those common to all wooers besetthe course of his true love. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

When the red gleams of the early sunshine shone into that window fromwhich Nettie had looked out last night, the wintry light came in withagitating revelations not simply upon another morning, but upon a newworld. As usual, Nettie's thoughts were expressed in things tangible. She had risen from her sleepless bed while it was still almost dark, andto look at her now, a stranger might have supposed her to be proceedingwith her last night's work with the constancy of a monomaniac. LittleFreddy sat up in his crib rubbing his eyes and marvelling what Nettiecould be about, as indeed anybody might have marvelled. With all thoseboxes and drawers about, and heaps of personal belongings, what was shegoing to do? She could not have answered the question without pain; buthad you waited long enough, Nettie's object would have been apparent. Not entirely free of that air of agitated haste--not recovered from theexcitement of this discovery, she was relieving her restless activity bya significant rearrangement of all the possessions of the family. Shewas separating with rapid fingers those stores which had hitherto lainlovingly together common property. For the first time for years Nettiehad set herself to discriminate what belonged to herself from the generalstore; and, perhaps by way of softening that disjunction, was separatinginto harmonious order the little wardrobes which were no longer to beunder her charge. Freddy opened his eyes to see all his own specialbelongings, articles which he recognised with all the tenaciousproprietorship of childhood, going into one little box by themselves indreadful isolation. The child did not know what horrible sentence mighthave been passed upon him while he slept. He gazed at those swiftinexorable fingers with the gradual sob rising in his poor little breast. That silent tempest heaved and rose as he saw all the well-known itemsfollowing each other; and when his last new acquisition, the latestaddition to his wardrobe, lay solemnly smoothed down upon the top, Freddy's patience could bear no more. Bursting into a long howl ofaffliction, he called aloud upon Nettie to explain that mystery. Was hegoing to be sent away? Was some mysterious executioner, black man, orother horrid vision of fate, coming for the victim? Freddy's appealroused from her work the abdicated family sovereign. "If I'm to be sentaway, I shan't go!" cried Freddy. "I'll run off and come back again. Ishan't go anywhere unless you go, Nettie. I'll hold on so fast, you can'tput me away; and, oh, I'll be good!--I'll be so good!" Nettie, who wasnot much given to caresses, came up and put sudden arms round her specialnursling. She laid her cheek to his, with a little outbreak of naturalemotion. "It is I who am to be sent away!" cried Nettie, yielding for amoment to the natural bitterness. Then she bethought herself of certainthoughts of comfort which had not failed to interject themselves intoher heart, and withdrew with a little precipitation, alarmed by theinconsistency--the insincerity of her feelings. "Get up, Freddy; you arenot going away, except home to the colony, where you want to go, " shesaid. "Be good, all the same; for you know you must not trouble mamma. And make haste, and don't be always calling for Nettie. Don't you knowyou must do without Nettie some time? Jump up, and be a man. "

"When I am a man, I shan't want you, " said Freddy, getting up withreluctance; "but I can't be a man now. And what am I to do with thebuttons if you won't help me? I shall not have buttons like those whenI am a man. "

It was not in human nature to refrain from giving the little savage anadmonitory shake. "That is all I am good for--nothing but buttons!" saidNettie, with whimsical mortification. When they went down to breakfast, she sent the child before her, and came last instead of first, waitingtill they were all assembled. Mrs Fred watched her advent with apprehensiveeyes. Thinking it over after her first triumph, it occurred to Mrs Fredthat the loss of Nettie would make a serious difference to her owncomfort. Who was to take charge of the children, and conduct thosevulgar affairs for which Susan's feelings disqualified her? She did herbest to decipher the pale face which appeared over the breakfast cupsand saucers opposite. What did Nettie mean to do? Susan revolved thequestion in considerable panic, seeing but too clearly that the firmlittle hand no longer trembled, and that Nettie was absorbed by her ownthoughts--thoughts with which her present companions had but little todo. Mrs Fred essayed another stroke. 

"Perhaps I was hasty, Nettie, last night; but Richard, you know, poorfellow, " said Susan, "was not to be put off. It won't make any differencebetween you and me, Nettie dear? We have always been so united, whateverhas happened; and the children are so fond of you; and as for me, "said Mrs Fred, putting back the strings of her cap, and pressing herhandkerchief upon her eyes, "with my health, and after all I have gonethrough, how I could ever exist without you, I can't tell; and Richardwill be so pleased----"

"I don't want to hear anything about Richard, please, " said Nettie--"notso far as I am concerned. I should have taken you out, and taken care ofyou, had you chosen me; but you can't have two people, you know. One isenough for anybody. Never mind what we are talking about, Freddy. It isonly your buttons--nothing else. As long as you were my business, Ishould have scorned to complain, " said Nettie, with a little quiverof her lip. "Nothing would have made me forsake you, or leave you toyourself; but now you are somebody else's business; and to speak of itmaking no difference, and Richard being pleased, and so forth, as ifI had nothing else to do in the world, and wanted to go back to thecolony! It is simply not my business any longer, " cried Nettie, risingimpatiently from her chair--"that is all that can be said. But I shan'tdesert you till I deliver you over to my successor, Susan--don't fear. "

"Then you don't feel any love for us, Nettie! It was only because youcould not help it. Children, Nettie is going to leave us, " said MrsFred, in a lamentable voice. 

"Then who is to be instead of Nettie? Oh, look here--I know--it'sChatham, " said the little girl. 

"I hate Chatham, " said Freddy, with a little shriek. "I shall go whereNettie goes--all my things are in my box. Nettie is going to take me;she loves me best of you all. I'll kick Chatham if he touches me. "

"Why can't some one tell Nettie she's to go too?" said the eldest boy. "She's most good of all. What does Nettie want to go away for? But Idon't mind; for we have to do what Nettie tells us, and nobody caresfor Chatham, " cried the sweet child, making a triumphant somersault outof his chair. Nettie stood looking on, without attempting to stop thetumult which arose. She left them with their mother, after a few minutes, and went out to breathe the outside air, where at least there was quietand freedom. To think as she went out into the red morning sunshinethat her old life was over, made Nettie's head swim with bewilderinggiddiness. She went up softly, like a creature in a dream, past StRoque's, where already the Christmas decorators had begun their prettywork--that work which, several ages ago, being yesterday, Nettie hadtaken the children in to see. Of all things that had happened betweenthat moment and this, perhaps the impulse of escaping out into the openair without anything to do, was one of the most miraculous. InsensiblyNettie's footsteps quickened as she became aware of that extraordinaryfact. The hour, the temperature, the customs of her life, were equallyagainst such an indulgence. It was a comfort to recollect that, thougheverything else in the universe was altered, the family must still havesome dinner, and that it was as easy to think while walking to thebutcher's as while idling and doing nothing. She went up, accordingly, towards Grange Lane, in a kind of wistful solitude, drifted apart fromher former life, and not yet definitely attached to any other, feelingas though the few passengers she met must perceive in her face that herwhole fortune was changed. It was hard for Nettie to realise that shecould do absolutely nothing at this moment, and still harder for her tothink that her fate lay undecided in Edward Rider's hands. Though shehad not a doubt of him, yet the mere fact that it was he who must takethe first step was somewhat galling to the pride and temper of thelittle autocrat. Before she had reached the butcher, or even come nearenough to recognise Lucy Wodehouse, where she stood at the garden gate, setting out for St Roque's, Nettie heard the headlong wheels of somethingapproaching which had not yet come in sight. She wound herself up in akind of nervous desperation for the encounter that was coming. No needto warn her who it was. Nobody but the doctor flying upon wings of hasteand love could drive in that break-neck fashion down the respectablestreets of Carlingford. Here he came sweeping round that corner at theBlue Boar, where Nettie herself had once mounted the drag, and plungeddown Grange Lane in a maze of speed which confused horse, vehicle, anddriver in one indistinct gleaming circle to the excited eyes of thespectator, who forced herself to go on, facing them with an exertionof all her powers, and strenuous resistance of the impulse to turn andescape. Why should Nettie escape?--it must be decided one way or other. She held on dimly with rapid trembling steps. To her own agitated mind, Nettie, herself, left adrift and companionless, seemed the suitor. Theonly remnants of her natural force that remained to her united in theone resolution not to run away. 

It was well for the doctor that his little groom had the eyes and activityof a monkey, and knew the exact moment at which to dart forward andcatch the reins which his master flung at him, almost without pausing inhis perilous career. The doctor made a leap out of the drag, which wasmore like that of a mad adventurer than a man whose business it was tokeep other people's limbs in due repair. Before Nettie was aware that hehad stopped, he was by her side. 

"Dr Edward, " she exclaimed, breathlessly, "hear me first! Now I am leftunrestrained, but I am not without resources. Don't think you are boundin honour to say anything over again. What may have gone before I forgetnow. I will not hold you to your word. You are not to have pity uponme!" cried Nettie, not well aware what she was saying. The doctor drewher arm into his; found out, sorely against her will, that she wastrembling, and held her fast, not without a sympathetic tremor in thearm on which she was constrained to lean. 

"But I hold you to yours!" said the doctor; "there has not been anyobstacle between us for months but this; and now it is gone, do youthink I will forget what you have said, Nettie? You told me it wasimpossible once----"

"And you did not contradict me, Dr Edward, " said the wilful creature, withdrawing her hand from his arm. "I can walk very well by myself, thank you. You did not contradict me! You were content to submit to whatcould not be helped. And so am I. An obstacle which is only removed byRichard Chatham, " said Nettie, with female cruelty, turning her eyesfull and suddenly upon her unhappy lover, "does not count for much. I donot hold you to anything. We are both free. "

What dismayed answer the doctor might have made to this heartless speechcan never be known. He was so entirely taken aback that he paused, clearing his throat with but one amazed exclamation of her name; butbefore his astonishment and indignation had shaped itself into words, their interview was interrupted. An irregular patter of hasty littlesteps, and outcries of a childish voice behind, had not caught theattention of either in that moment of excitement; but just as Nettiedelivered this cruel outbreak of feminine pride and self-assertion, the little pursuing figure made up to them, and plunged at her dress. Freddy, in primitive unconcern for anybody but himself, rushedhead-foremost between these two at the critical instant. He made aclutch at Nettie with one hand, and with all the force of the otherthrust away the astonished doctor. Freddy's errand was of life or death. 

"I shan't go with any one but Nettie, " cried the child, clinging to herdress. "I hate Chatham and everybody. I will jump into the sea and swimback again. I will never, never leave go of her, if you should cut myhands off. Nettie! Nettie!--take me with you. Let me go where you aregoing! I will never be naughty any more! I will never, never go awaytill Nettie goes! I love Nettie best! Go away, all of you!" cried Freddy, in desperation, pushing off the doctor with hands and feet alike. "Iwill stay with Nettie. Nobody loves Nettie but me. "

Nettie had no power left to resist this new assault. She dropped downon one knee beside the child, and clasped him to her in a passion ofrestrained tears and sobbing. The emotion which her pride would notpermit her to show before, the gathering agitation of the whole morningbroke forth at this irresistible touch. She held Freddy close andsupported herself by him, leaning all her troubled heart and tremblingframe upon the little figure which clung to her bewildered, suddenlygrowing silent and afraid in that passionate grasp. Freddy spoke nomore, but turned his frightened eyes upon the doctor, trembling with thegreat throbs of Nettie's breast. In the early wintry sunshine, on thequiet rural highroad, that climax of the gathering emotion of yearsbefell Nettie. She could exercise no further self-control. She couldonly hide her face, that no one might see, and close her quivering lipstight that no one might hear the bursting forth of her heart. No one wasthere either to hear or see--nobody but Edward Rider, who stood bendingwith sorrowful tenderness over the wilful fairy creature, whose words ofdefiance had scarcely died from her lips. It was Freddy, and not thedoctor, who had vanquished Nettie; but the insulted lover came in forhis revenge. Dr Rider raised her up quietly, asking no leave, and liftedher into the drag, where Nettie had been before, and where Freddy, elatedand joyful, took his place beside the groom, convinced that he was to gonow with the only true guardian his little life had known. The doctordrove down that familiar road as slowly as he had dashed furiously up toit. He took quiet possession of the agitated trembling creature who hadcarried her empire over herself too far. At last Nettie had broken down;and now he had it all his own way. 

When they came to the cottage, Mrs Fred, whom excitement had raised toa troublesome activity, came eagerly out to the door to see what hadhappened; and the two children, who, emancipated from all control, weresliding down the banisters of the stair, one after the other, in wildglee and recklessness, paused in their dangerous amusement to watch thenew arrival. "Oh! look here; Nettie's crying!" said one to the other, with calm observation. The words brought Nettie to herself. 

"I am not crying now, " she said, waking into sudden strength. "Do youwant to get them killed before they go away, all you people? Susan, goin, and never mind. I was not--not quite well out of doors; but I don'tmean to suffer this, you know, as long as I am beside them. Dr Edward, come in. I have something to say to you. We have nowhere to speak toeach other but here, " said Nettie, pausing in the little hall, fromwhich that childish tumult had died away in sudden awe of her presence;"but we have spoken to each other here before now. I did not mean tovex you then--at least, I did mean to vex you, but nothing more. " Hereshe paused with a sob, the echo of her past trouble breaking upon herwords, as happened from time to time, like the passion of a child; thenburst forth again a moment after in a sudden question. "Will you let mehave Freddy?" she cried, surrendering at discretion, and looking eagerlyup in the doctor's face; "if they will leave him, may I keep him withme?"

It is unnecessary to record the doctor's answer. He would haveswallowed not Fred only, but Mrs Fred and the entire family, had thatgulp been needful to satisfy Nettie, but was not sufficiently blindedto his own interests to grant this except under certain conditionssatisfactory to himself. When the doctor mounted the drag again hedrove away into Elysium, with a smiling Cupid behind him, instead ofthe little groom who had been his unconscious master's confidant solong, and had watched the fluctuations of his wooing with such livelycuriosity. Those patients who had paid for Dr Rider's disappointments inmany a violent prescription, got compensation to-day in honeyed draughtsand hopeful prognostications. Wherever the doctor went he saw a visionof that little drooping head, reposing, after all the agitation of themorning, in the silence and rest he had enjoined, with brilliant eyes, half-veiled, shining with thoughts in which he had the greatest share;and, with that picture before his eyes, went flashing along the wintryroad with secret smiles, and carried hope wherever he went. Of course itwas the merest fallacy, so far as Nettie's immediate occupation wasconcerned. That restless little woman had twenty times too much todo to think of rest--more to do than ever in all the suddenly-changedpreparations which fell upon her busy hands. But the doctor kept hisimagination all the same, and pleased himself with thoughts of herreposing in a visionary tranquillity, which, wherever it was to befound, certainly did not exist in St Roque's Cottage, in that suddentumult of new events and hopes. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

"I always thought there was good in him by his looks, " said MissWodehouse, standing in the porch of St Roque's, after the wedding-partyhad gone away. "To think he should have come in such a sweet way andmarried Mrs Fred! just what we all were wishing for, if we could haveventured to think it possible. Indeed, I should have liked to have givenMr Chatham a little present, just to mark my sense of his goodness. Poorman! I wonder if he repents----"

"It is to be hoped not yet, " said Lucy, hurrying her sister away beforeMr Wentworth could come out and join them; for affairs were seriouslycompromised between the perpetual curate and the object of his affections;and Lucy exhibited a certain acerbity under the circumstances whichsomewhat amazed the tender-hearted old maid. 

"When people do repent, my belief is that they do it directly, " saidMiss Wodehouse. "I daresay he can see what she is already, poor man; andI hope, Lucy, it won't drive him into bad ways. As for Nettie, I am notat all afraid about her. Even if they should happen to quarrel, youknow, things will always come right. I am glad they were not marriedboth at the same time. Nettie has such sense! and of course, though itwas the very best thing that could happen, and a great relief to everybodyconcerned, to be sure, one could not help being disgusted with thatwoman. And it is such a comfort they're going away. Nettie says----"

"Don't you think you could walk a little quicker? there is somebody inGrove Street that I have to see, " said Lucy, not so much interested asher sister; "and papa will be home at one to lunch. "

"Then I shall go on, dear, if you have no objection, and ask when thedoctor and Nettie are coming home, " said Miss Wodehouse, "and take poorlittle Freddy the cakes I promised him. Poor child! to have his mothergo off and marry and leave him. Never mind me, Lucy, dear; I do not walkso quickly as you do, and besides I have to go home first for thecakes. "

So saying the sisters separated; and Miss Wodehouse took her gentleway to the doctor's house, where everything had been brightened up, andwhere Freddy waited the return of his chosen guardians. It was still thenew quarter of Carlingford, a region of half-built streets, vulgar newroads, and heaps of desolate brick and mortar. If the doctor had everhoped to succeed Dr Marjoribanks in his bowery retirement in GrangeLane, that hope nowadays had receded into the darkest distance. Thelittle surgery round the corner still shed twinkles of red and bluelight across that desolate triangle of unbuilt ground upon the othercorner houses where dwelt people unknown to society in Carlingford, andstill Dr Rider consented to call himself M. R. C. S. , and cultivate thepatients who were afraid of a physician. Miss Wodehouse went in at theinvitation of Mary to see the little drawing-room which the master ofthe house had provided for his wife. It had been only an unfurnishedroom in Dr Rider's bachelor days, and looked out upon nothing betterthan these same new streets--the vulgar suburb which Carlingforddisowned. Miss Wodehouse lingered at the window with a little sigh overthe perversity of circumstances. If Miss Marjoribanks had only beenNettie, or Nettie Miss Marjoribanks! If not only love and happiness, butthe old doctor's practice and savings, could but have been brought toheap up the measure of the young doctor's good-fortune! What a pity thatone cannot have everything! The friendly visitor said so with a realsigh as she went down-stairs after her inspection. If the young peoplehad but been settling in Grange Lane, in good society, and with DrMarjoribanks's practice, this marriage would have been perfectionindeed!

But when the doctor brought Nettie home, and set her in that easy-chairwhich her image had possessed so long, he saw few drawbacks at that momentto the felicity of his lot. If there was one particular in which his skythreatened clouds, it was not the want of Dr Marjoribanks's practice, but the presence of that little interloper, whom the doctor in hisheart was apt to call by uncomplimentary names, and did not regard withunmixed favour. But when Susan and her Australian were fairly gone, andall fear of any invasion of the other imps--which Dr Rider inly dreadedup to the last moment--was over, Freddy grew more and more tolerable. Where Fred once lay and dozed, and filled the doctor's house with heavyfumes and discreditable gossip, a burden on his brother's reluctanthospitality, little Freddy now obliterated that dismal memory withprayers and slumbers of childhood; and where the discontented doctor hadgrumbled many a night and day over that bare habitation of his, whichwas a house, and not a home, Nettie diffused herself till the familiarhappiness became so much a part of his belongings that the doctorlearned to grumble once more at the womanish accessories which he hadonce missed so bitterly. And the little wayward heroine who, by dintof hard labour and sacrifice, had triumphantly had her own way in StRoque's Cottage, loved her own way still in the new house, and had it asoften as was good for her. But so far as this narrator knows, nothingcalling for special record has since appeared in the history of thedoctor's family, thus reorganised under happier auspices, and dischargingits duties, social and otherwise, though not exactly in society, to thesatisfaction and approval of the observant population of Carlingford. 

THE END. 

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH. 

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

 Contemporary spellings have been retained even when inconsistent or unusual. A small number of obvious typographical errors have been corrected, and missing punctuation has been silently added

 The following additional changes have been made:

 looked after the salvage man looked after the _savage_ man

 curiosity about that salvage man curiosity about that _savage_ man