"It"s you that have no feeling. Oh, Nettie, how hard you are! I don"t believe you know what it is to love anybody," said Susan. "Hark! is that some one coming now?"
They thought some one was coming fifty times in the course of that dreadful lingering night. n.o.body came; the silence closed in deeper and deeper around the two silent women. All the world--everything round about them, to the veriest atom--seemed asleep. The cricket had stopped his chirrup in the kitchen, and no mouse stirred in the slumbering house. By times Susan dozed on the sofa, shivering, notwithstanding her shawl, and Nettie took up her needlework for the moment to distract her thoughts. When Susan started from these s.n.a.t.c.hes of slumber, she importuned her sister with ceaseless questions and entreaties. Where had he gone?--where did Nettie imagine he could have gone?--and oh! would she go to the window and look out to see if any one was coming, or put the candle to the window to guide him, if perhaps he might have lost the way? At last the terrible pale dawn came in and took the light out of Nettie"s candle. The two looked at each other, and acknowledged with a mutual start that the night was over. They had watched these long hours through with sentiments very different; now a certain thrill of sympathy drew Nettie nearer to her sister. It was daylight again, remorseless and uncompromising, and where was Fred, who loved the darkness? He had little money and less credit in the limited place where himself and his story were known. What could have become of him? Nettie acknowledged that there was ground for anxiety. She folded up her work and put out her candle, and promptly took into consideration what she could do.
"If you will go to bed, Susan, I shall go out and look for him," said Nettie. "He might have stumbled in the field and fallen asleep. Men have done such things before now, and been none the worse for it. If you will go and lie down, I"ll see after it, Susan. Now it"s daylight, you know, no great harm can happen to him. Come and lie down, and leave me to look for Fred."
"But you don"t know where to go, and he won"t like to have you going after him. Nettie, send to Edward," said Susan; "he ought to come and look after his brother: he ought to have done it all through, and not to have left us to manage everything; and he hasn"t even been to see us for ever so long. But send to Edward, Nettie--it"s his business. For Fred won"t like to have you going after him, and you don"t know where to go."
"Fred must have me going after him whether he likes it or no," said Nettie, sharply, "and I shall not send to Dr Edward. You choose to insult him whenever you can, and then you think it is his business to look after his brother. Go to bed, and leave it to me. I can"t leave you shivering here, to catch something, and be ill, and laid up for weeks. I want to get my bonnet on, and to see you in bed. Make haste, and come up-stairs with me."
Susan obeyed with some mutterings of inarticulate discontent. The daylight, after the first shock of finding that the night was really over, brought some comfort to her foolish heart. She thought that as Nettie said "no more harm" could come to him, he must be sleeping somewhere, the foolish fellow. She thought most likely Nettie was right, and that she had best go to bed to consume the weary time till there could be something heard of him; and Nettie, of course, would find it all out.
Such was the arrangement accordingly. Susan covered herself up warm, and lay thinking all she should say to him when he came home, and how she certainly never would again let him go out and keep it secret from Nettie. Nettie, for her part, bathed her hot eyes, put on her bonnet, and went out, quietly undoing all the bolts and bars, into the chill morning world, where n.o.body was yet awake. She was a little uncertain which way to turn, but noway uncertain of her business. Whether he had gone into the town, or towards the low quarter by the banks of the ca.n.a.l, she felt it difficult to conclude. But remembering her own suggestion that he might have stumbled in the field, and fallen asleep there, she took her way across the misty gra.s.s. It was still spring, and a little h.o.a.r-frost crisped the wintry sod. Everything lay forlorn and chill under the leaden morning skies--not even an early market-cart disturbed the echoes. When the c.o.c.k crew somewhere, it startled Nettie.
She went like a spectre across the misty fields, looking down into the ditches and all the inequalities of the way. On the other side lay the ca.n.a.l, not visible, except by the line of road that wound beside it, from the dead flat around. She bent her steps in that direction, thinking of a certain mean little tavern which, somehow, when she saw it, she had a.s.sociated with Fred--a place where the men at the door looked slovenly and heated, like Fred himself, and lounged with their hands in their pockets at noon of working-days. Some instinct guided Nettie there.
But she had no need to go so far. Before she reached that place the first sounds of life that she had yet heard attracted Nettie"s attention. They came from a boat which lay in the ca.n.a.l, in which the bargemen seemed preparing to start on their day"s journey. Some men were leisurely leading forward the horses to the towing-path, while two in the boat were preparing for their start inside. All at once a strange cry rang into the still, chill air--such a cry as startles all who can hear it. The men with the horses hurried forward to the edge of the ca.n.a.l, the bargemen hung over the side of their boat; visible excitement rose among them about something there. Nettie, never afraid, was less timid than ever this morning. Without thinking of the risk of trusting herself with these rude fellows alone, she went straight forward into the midst of them with a curiosity for which she could scarcely account; not anxiety, only a certain wonder and impatience, possessed her to see what they had here.
What had they there?--not a man--a dreadful drowned image, all soiled and swollen--a squalid tragic form, immovable, never to move more. Nettie did not need to look at the dread, uncovered, upturned face. The moment she saw the vague shape of it rising against the side of the boat, a heap of dead limbs, recognisable only as something human, the terrible truth flashed upon Nettie. She had found not him, but It. She saw nothing more for one awful moment--heaven and earth reeling and circling around her, and a horror of darkness on her eyes. Then the cold light opened up again--the group of living creatures against the colourless skies, the dead creature staring and ghastly, with awful dead eyes gazing blank into the shuddering day. The girl steadied herself as she could on the brink of the sluggish current, and collected her thoughts. The conclusion to her search, and answer to all her questions, lay, not to be doubted or questioned, before her. She dared not yield to her own horror, or grief, or dismay. Susan sleeping, unsuspicious, in full trust of his return--the slumbering house into which this dreadful figure must be carried--obliterated all personal impressions from Nettie"s mind. She explained to the amazed group who and what the dead man was--where he must be brought to--instantly, silently, before the world was awake. She watched them lay the heavy form upon a board, and took off her own shawl to lay over it, to conceal it from the face of day. Then she went on before them, with her tiny figure in its girlish dress, like a child in the shadow of the rough but pitying group that followed. Nettie did not know why the wind went so chill to her heart after she had taken off her shawl. She did not see the unequal sod under her feet as she went back upon that dread and solemn road. Nothing in the world but what she had to do occupied the throbbing heroic heart. There was n.o.body else to do it. How could the girl help but execute the work put into her hand?
Thinking neither of the hardship nor the horror of such dread work falling to her lot, but only this, that she must do it, Nettie took home to the unconscious sleeping cottage that thing which was Fred Rider; no heavier on his bearers" hands to-day than he had been already for years of his wasted life.
CHAPTER X.
When Nettie opened the door of the sleeping house with the great key she had carried with her in her early dreadful expedition, there was still n.o.body stirring in the unconscious cottage. She paused at the door, with the four men behind her carrying shoulder-high that terrible motionless burden. Where was she to lay it? In her own room, where she had not slept that night, little Freddy was still sleeping. In another was the widow, overcome by watching and fretful anxiety. The other fatherless creatures lay in the little dressing-room. Nowhere but in the parlour, from which Fred not so very long ago had driven his disgusted brother--the only place she had where Nettie"s own feminine niceties could find expression, and where the accessories of her own daily life and work were all acc.u.mulated. She lingered even at that dread moment with a pang of natural reluctance to a.s.sociate that little sanctuary with the horror and misery of this bringing-home; but when every feeling gave way to the pressure of necessity, that superficial one was not like to resist it.
Her companions were not aware that she had hesitated even for that moment. She seemed to them to glide softly, steadfastly, without any faltering, before them into the little silent womanly room, where her night"s work was folded tidily upon the table, and her tiny thimble and scissors laid beside it. What a heart-rending contrast lay between those domestic traces and that dreadful m.u.f.fled figure, covered from the light of day with Nettie"s shawl, which was now laid down there, Nettie did not pause to think of. She stood still for a moment, gazing at it with a sob of excitement and agitation swelling into her throat; scarcely grief--perhaps that was not possible--but the intensest remorseful pity over the lost life. The rude fellows beside her stood silent, not without a certain pang of tenderness and sympathy in their half-savage hearts. She took her little purse out and emptied it of its few silver coins among them. They trod softly, but their heavy footsteps were heard, notwithstanding, through all the little house. Nettie could already hear the alarmed stirring up-stairs of the master and mistress of the cottage; and, knowing what explanations she must give, and all the dreadful business before her, made haste to get her strange companions away before Mrs Smith came down-stairs. One of them, however, as he followed his comrades out of the room, from some confused instinct of help and pity, asked whether he should not fetch a doctor? The question struck the resolute little girl with a pang sharper than this morning"s horror had yet given her. Had she perhaps neglected the first duty of all, the possibility of restoration? She went back, without answering him, to lift the shawl from that dreadful face, and satisfy herself whether she had done, that last irremediable wrong to Fred. As she met the dreadful stare of those dead eyes, all the revulsion of feeling which comes to the hearts of the living in presence of the dead overpowered Nettie. She gave a little cry of inarticulate momentary anguish. The soul of that confused and tremulous outcry was Pardon!
pardon! What love was ever so true, what tenderness so constant and unfailing, that did not instinctively utter that cry when the watched life had ended, and pardon could no longer come from those sealed lips?
Nettie had not loved that shamed and ruined man--she had done him the offices of affection, and endured and sometimes scorned him. She stood remorseful by his side in that first dread hour, which had changed Fred"s shabby presence into something awful; and her generous soul burst forth in that cry of penitence which every human creature owes its brother. The tender-hearted bargeman who had asked leave to fetch a doctor, drew near her with a kindred instinct--"Don"t take on, miss--there"s the crowner yet--and a deal to look to," said the kind rough fellow, who knew Nettie. The words recalled her to herself--but with the softened feelings of the moment a certain longing for somebody to stand by her in this unlooked-for extremity came over the forlorn courageous creature, who never yet, amid all her labours, had encountered an emergency like this. She laid the shawl reverently back over that dead face, and sent a message to the doctor with lips that trembled in spite of herself. "Tell him what has happened, and say he is to come as soon as he can," said Nettie; "for I do not understand all that has to be done. Tell him I sent you; and now go--please go before they all come down-stairs."
But when Nettie turned in again, after closing the door, into that house so entirely changed in character by the solemn inmate who had entered it, she was confronted by the amazed and troubled apparition of Mrs Smith, half-dressed, and full of wonder and indignation. A gasping exclamation of "Miss!" was all that good woman could utter. She had with her own eyes perceived some of the "roughs" of Carlingford emerging from her respectable door under Nettie"s grave supervision, and yet could not in her heart, notwithstanding appearances, think any harm of Nettie; while, at the same time, a hundred alarms for the safety of her household G.o.ds shook her soul. Nettie turned towards her steadily, with her face pallid and her brilliant eyes heavy. "Hush," she said; "Susan knows nothing yet. Let her have her rest while she can. We have been watching for him all night, and poor Susan is sleeping, and does not know."
"Know what?--what has happened?--he"s been and killed himself? Oh, miss, don"t you go for to say so!" cried Mrs Smith, in natural dismay and terror.
"No," cried Nettie, with a long sigh that relieved her breast, "not so bad as that, thank Heaven; but hush, hush! I cannot go and tell Susan just yet--not just yet. Oh, give me a moment to get breath! For he is dead! I tell you, _hush_!" cried Nettie, seizing the woman"s hand, and wringing it, in the extremity of her terror for alarming Susan. "Don"t you understand me? She is a widow, and she does not know--her husband is dead, and she does not know. Have you no pity for her in your own heart?"
"Lord ha" mercy! but wait till I call Smith," cried the alarmed landlady, shrinking, yet eager to know the horribly interesting details of that tragedy. She ran breathless up-stairs on that errand, while Nettie went back to the door of the parlour, resolutely locked it, and took away the key. "n.o.body shall go gazing and talking over him, and making a wonder of poor Fred," said Nettie to herself, shaking off from her long eyelashes the tear which came out of the compunction of her heart. "Poor Fred!" She sat down on one of the chairs of the little hall beside that closed door. The children and their mother up-stairs still slept unsuspicious; and their young guardian, with a world of thoughts rising in her mind, sat still and pondered. The past was suddenly cut off from the future by this dreadful unthought-of event. She had come to a dead pause in that life, which to every spectator was so strangely out of accordance with her youth, but which was to herself such simple and plain necessity as to permit no questioning. She was brought suddenly to a standstill at this terrible moment, and sat turning her dauntless little face to the new trial before her, pale, but undismayed. Nettie did not deceive herself even in her thoughts. She saw, with the intuitive foresight of a keen observer, her sister"s violent momentary grief, her indolent acceptance of the position after a while, the selfish reserve of repining and discontent which Susan would establish in the memory of poor Fred: she saw how, with fuller certainty than ever, because now more naturally, she herself, her mind, her laborious hands, her little fortune, would belong to the fatherless family. She did not sigh over the prospect, or falter; but she exercised no self-delusion on the subject. There was n.o.body but she to do it--n.o.body but she, in her tender maidenhood, to manage all the vulgar tragical business which must, this very day, confirm to the knowledge of the little surrounding world the event which had happened--n.o.body but herself to tell the tale to the widow, to bear all the burdens of the time. Nettie did not think over these particulars with self-pity, or wonder over her hard lot. She did not imagine herself to have chosen this lot at all. There was n.o.body else to do it--that was the simple secret of her strength.
But this interval of forlorn repose was a very brief one. Smith came down putting on his coat, and looking scared and bewildered; his wife, eager, curious, and excited, closely following. Nettie rose when they approached her to forestall their questions.
"My brother-in-law is dead," she said. "He fell into the ca.n.a.l last night and was drowned. I went out to look for him, and--and found him, poor fellow! Oh, don"t cry out or make a noise: remember Susan does not know! Now, dear Mrs Smith, I know you are kind--I know you will not vex me just at this moment. I have had him laid _there_ till his brother comes. Oh, don"t say it"s dreadful! Do you think I cannot see how dreadful it is? but we must not think about that, only what has to be done. When Dr Edward comes, I will wake my sister; but just for this moment, oh have patience! I had no place to put him except _there_."
"But, Lord bless us, he mightn"t be clean gone: he might be recovered, poor gentleman! Smith can run for Dr Marjoribanks; he is nearer nor Dr Rider," cried the curious excited landlady, with her hand upon the locked door.
Nettie made no answer. She took them into the room in solemn silence, and showed them the stark and ghastly figure, for which all possibilities had been over in the dark midnight waters hours ago. The earliest gleam of sunshine came shining in at that moment through the window which last night Nettie had opened that Fred might see the light in it and be guided home. It seemed to strike like a reproach upon that quick-throbbing impatient heart, which felt as a sin against the dead its own lack of natural grief and affection. She went hurriedly to draw down the blinds and close out the unwelcome light. "Now he is gone, n.o.body shall slight or scorn him," said Nettie to herself, with hot tears; and she turned the wondering dismayed couple--already awakening out of their first horror, to think of the injury done to their house and "lodgings," and all the notoriety of an inquest--out of the room, and locked the door upon the unwilling owners, whom nothing but her resolute face prevented from bursting forth in selfish but natural lamentations over their own secondary share in so disastrous an event. Nettie sat down again, a silent little sentinel by the closed door, without her shawl, and with her tiny chilled feet on the cold tiles. Nettie sat silent, too much occupied even to ascertain the causes of her personal discomfort. She had indeed enough to think of; and while her little girlish figure, so dainty, so light, so unlike her fortunes, remained in that unusual stillness, her mind and heart were palpitating with thoughts--all kinds of thoughts; not only considerations worthy the solemnity and horror of the moment, but every kind of trivial and secondary necessity, pa.s.sed through that restless soul, all throbbing with life and action, more self-conscious than usual from the fact of its outward stillness. A hundred rapid conclusions and calculations about the funeral, the mourning, the change of domestic habits involved, darted through Nettie"s mind. It was a relief to her to leap forward into these after-matters. The immediate necessity before her--the dreadful errand on which she must presently go to her sister"s bedside--the burst of wailing and reproachful grief which all alone Nettie would have to encounter and subdue, were not to be thought of. She bent down her little head into her hands, and once more shed back that hair which, never relieved out of its braids through all this long night, began to droop over her pale cheeks; and a quick sigh of impatience, of energy restrained, of such powerlessness as her courageous capable soul, in the very excess of its courage and capacity, felt in its approaching conflict with the feeble foolish creature, who never could be stimulated out of her own narrow possibilities, burst from Nettie"s breast. But the sigh was as much physical as mental--the long-drawn breath of mingled weariness and restlessness--the instinct to be doing, and the exhaustion of long labour and emotion, blended together. Thus she waited while the cold spring morning brightened, and Mrs Smith went about her early domestic business, returning often into the little back-parlour with the mullioned window, of which domestic Gothic treatment had made a condemned cell, to re-express her anxieties and horrors. Nettie had an instinctive consciousness even of Mrs Smith"s grievance. She knew this dismal a.s.sociation would ruin "the lodgings," and felt that here was another bond upon her to remain at St Roque"s, however much she might long to escape and flee away.
All these crowding and breathless thoughts were a few minutes after reduced to absolute momentary stillness. It was by a step outside coming hastily with rapid purpose along the silent way. Nettie rose up to meet Edward Rider; not as the angry lover still fiercely resentful of that rejection, which was no rejection, but only a bare and simple statement of necessity; not as the suitor of Miss Marjoribanks; simply as the only creature in the world who could help her, or to whom she would delegate any portion of her own hard but inevitable work. She opened the door before he had time to knock, and held out her hand to him silently, quite unawares betraying her recognition of his step--her comfort in his presence. That meeting flushed the doctor"s anxious face with a mingled shame and triumph not expressible in words, but left Nettie as pale, as preoccupied, as much absorbed in her thoughts and duties as before.
"Dr Edward, I should not have sent for you if I could have done it all myself," said Nettie; "but I knew you would think it right to be here now. And I have Susan and the children to look to. I commit this to you."
"Do they know?" said the doctor, taking the key she gave him, and holding fast, with an instinct of compa.s.sion almost more strong than love, the little hand which never trembled.
"I will tell Susan, now that you have come--I could not before," said Nettie, with another sigh. "Poor Susan! I was glad to let her sleep."
"But there is no one to think whether you sleep or not," cried Edward Rider. "And those eyes have watched all night. Nettie, Nettie, could not you have sent for me sooner? A word would have brought me at any moment."
"You were not wanted till now," said Nettie, not without a touch of womanly pride. "I have always been able to do my own work, Dr Edward.
But, now, don"t let us quarrel any more," she said, after a pause. "You were angry once, and I don"t wonder. Never mind all that, but let us be friends; and don"t let all the people, and strangers, and men who don"t belong to us," cried Nettie once more, with hot tears in her eyes, "be hard upon poor Fred!"
The next moment she had vanished up-stairs and left the doctor alone, standing in the little cold hall with the key in his hand, and Mrs Smith"s troubled countenance beholding him from far. Edward Rider paused before he entered upon his dismal share of this morning"s work. Death itself did not suffice to endear Fred Rider to his brother. But he stood still, with a certain self-reproach, to withdraw his thoughts, if he could, from Nettie, and to subdue the thrill--the most living touch of life--which this meeting had stirred within him, before he entered that miserable chamber of death.
CHAPTER XI.
That dreadful day ebbed over slowly--tedious, yet so full of events and dismal business that it looked like a year rather than a day. The necessary investigations were got through without any special call upon Nettie. She spent the most of the day up-stairs with Susan, whose wild refusal to believe at first, and sullen stupor afterwards, were little different from the picture which Nettie"s imagination had already made.
The children received the news with wondering stares and questions.
That they did not understand it was little, but that they scarcely were interested after the first movement of curiosity, disappointed and wounded the impatient heart, which unconsciously chafed at its own total inability to convey the feelings natural to such a terrible occasion into any bosom but its own. Nettie"s perpetual activity had hitherto saved her from this disgust and disappointment. She had been bitterly intolerant by moments of Fred"s disgraceful content and satisfaction with his own indulgences, but had never paused to fret over what she could not help, nor contrast her own high youthful humour and sense of duty with the dull insensibility around her. But to-day had rapt the heroic little girl into a different atmosphere from that she had been breathing hitherto. To-day she was aware that her work had been so far taken out of her hands, and acknowledged in her heart that it was best it should be so. She heard the heavy feet of men coming and going, but was not obliged to descend into immediate conflict with all the circ.u.mstances of so horrible a crisis. It was a new sensation to Nettie.
A year ago, perhaps, she would not have relinquished even that dreadful business to any one;--to-day, the thought of having some one else who did it for her, and took comfort in relieving her burdened hands, fell with singular soothing power upon the heart which had come to a knowledge of its own weakness in these last tedious months; and as Nettie sat up-stairs with all the remorseful thoughts of nature in her softened heart, the impossibility of impressing her own emotions upon those around her struck her with a deeper sense of impatience, disappointment, and disgust than ever before. When she went softly into the darkened room where Susan lay in her gloomy bed, divided between wailings over the injuries which poor Fred had suffered, the harshness that had driven him out of doors, and the want of his brother or somebody to take care of him, which had brought the poor fellow to such an end--and complaints of the wrong done to herself, the "want of feeling" shown by her sister, the neglect with which she was treated, Nettie gazed at the sobbing creature with eyes unconsciously wondering, yet but half-surprised. She knew very well beforehand that this was how her dreadful tidings would be received; yet out of her own softened, awed, compunctious heart--her pity too deep for tears over that lost life--Nettie looked with the unbelief of nature at the widowed woman, the creature who had loved him, and been his wife--yet who could only think of somebody else to be blamed, and of herself injured, at that terrible moment when the companion of her life was violently withdrawn from her. And to go out of that obstinately darkened refuge of fretful sorrow, into the room where the blind had been drawn up the moment her back was turned, and where these three tearless children, totally unimpressed by the information which they had received as a piece of news with mingled curiosity and scepticism, occupied themselves with their usual sports, or listened keenly, with sharp remarks, to the sounds below, which only the utmost stretch of Nettie"s authority could keep them from descending to investigate, afforded a wonderful reverse to the picture, which startled her in her momentary clearsightedness.
The contrast between her own feelings--she who had no bonds of natural affection to Fred, and to whom he had been, by times, a very irksome burden--and theirs, who were his very own, and belonged to him, appeared to Nettie as no such contrast had ever appeared before. _Her_ heart alone was heavy with regret over the ruined man--the now for ever unredeemable life: she only, to whom his death was no loss, but even, if she could have permitted that cruel thought to intervene, a gain and relief, recognised with a pang of compa.s.sion almost as sharp as grief, that grievous, miserable fate. When, a few minutes after, the noise of the children"s play rose to an outburst, Nettie flushed into a momentary effusion of temper, and silenced the heartless imps with a voice and look which they dared not venture to resist. Her rebuke was, however, interrupted by a sudden call from their mother. "How can you have the heart!--Oh, Nettie, Nettie! I knew you had no feeling!--you never had any feeling since you were a baby--but how can you speak so to his poor children, now that he has left them on the cold world?" cried Susan, sobbing, from her bed. If Nettie sprang to her feet in sudden heat and disgust, and peremptorily closed the doors intervening between the children and their mother, n.o.body will much wonder at that movement of impatience. Perhaps Nettie"s eyes had never been so entirely opened to the hopeless character of the charge she had taken upon her, as in the temporary seclusion of that day.
And meanwhile, down-stairs, Edward Rider was superintending all the arrangements of the time for Nettie"s sake. Not because it was his brother who lay there, no longer a burden to any man; nor because natural duty pointed him out as the natural guardian of the orphaned family. The doctor, indeed, would have done his duty in such a hard case, however it had been required of him; but the circ.u.mstances were different now: the melancholy bustle, the shame, the consciousness that everybody knew what manner of existence this lost life had been, the exposure, the publicity--all that would have wrung with a hundred sharp wounds a spirit so susceptible to public comments--came with dulled force upon the doctor"s mind to-day. When the people about saw the grave and seemly composure with which he went about this dismal business, without those starts and flushes of grievous irritation and shame which the very mention of his brother had once brought upon him, they believed, and honoured him in the belief, that death had awakened the ancient fraternal kindness in Edward Rider"s heart. But it was not fraternal kindness that smoothed off the rude edges of that burden; it was the consciousness of doing Nettie"s work for her, taking her place, sparing that creature, over whom his heart yearned, the hardest and painfulest business she had yet been involved in. We cannot take credit for the doctor which he did not deserve. He forgave Fred when he saw his motionless figure, never more to do evil or offend in this world, laid in pitiful solitude in that room, which still was Nettie"s room, and which even in death he grudged to his brother. But Edward"s distinct apprehension of right and wrong, and Fred"s deserts in this world, were not altered by that diviner compunction which had moved Nettie. He forgave, but did not forget, nor defend with remorseful tenderness his brother"s memory. Not for Fred"s sake, but Nettie"s, he held his place in the troubled cottage, and a.s.sumed the position of head of the family.
Hard certainties of experience prevented the doctor"s unimaginative mind from respecting here the ideal anguish of sudden widowhood and bereavement. This was a conclusion noways unnatural or surprising for such a life as Fred"s--and Edward knew, with that contemptuous hardness into which incessant personal contact with the world drives most men, that neither the wife nor the children were capable of deep or permanent feeling. "They will only hang upon _her_ all the heavier," he said to himself, bitterly; and for her, with repentant love, Edward Rider exerted himself. In all the house no heart, but Nettie"s alone, acknowledged an ache of pity for Fred and his ruined life. "Mrs Rider, to be sure, will feel at first--it"s only natural," said Mrs Smith; "but there wasn"t nothing else to be looked for; and if it were not hardhearted to say it, and him lying in his coffin, they"ll be a deal better off without him nor with him. But Smith and me, we have ourselves to look to, and it"s a terrible blow, is this, to a house as was always as respectable as e"er a one in Carlingford. The lodgings is ruined!
The very marks of the feet, if it was nothing else!" cried the afflicted landlady, contemplating the scratched tiles in the hall with actual tears of vexation and regret. But this was the true state of the case to every unconcerned spectator. Only Nettie, on whom the burden had fallen, and was yet to fall heaviest, felt the eyes, which were hot and heavy with watching, grow dim with tears of unspeakable compa.s.sion. From the fulness of her youth and strength--strength so burdened, youth so dauntless and dutiful--Nettie gazed with a pity too deep for words at the awful spectacle of that existence lost. That the lifeless thing in the room below could have been a man, and yet have come and gone so disastrously through the world, was terrible to think of, to that living labouring creature, in the depth of her own strange toils and responsibilities. Her heart ached over that wretched, miserable fate.
Neither toil nor anguish was to be compared to the dread loss of a life sustained by that departed soul.
CHAPTER XII.
In a few days all this solemn crisis was over, and life went on again in its ordinary tame current, closing over the dishonoured grave where Fred found his rest, henceforward nameless in the world that had suffered his existence as a c.u.mberer of the ground for so many years. Had he been the prop of his house and the light of their eyes, life would have gone on again, after that interruption, all the same, with a persistency which nothing can impair. As it was, the diminished household resumed its ordinary course of existence, after a very few days, with little more than outward marks of what had befallen them. It is true that Nettie sat down with a repugnance which she scarcely could either overcome or conceal, to dispense the domestic provisions at the table which shortly before had borne so dread a burden. But n.o.body thought of that except Nettie; and but for the black dresses and Susan"s cap, Fred was as if he had never been.
About a week after the funeral, the doctor went solemnly to visit them in one of those lengthening spring afternoons. Dr Rider was undeniably nervous and excited about this interview. He had been at home under pretence of having luncheon, but in reality to make a solemn toilette, and wind himself up to the courage necessary for a settlement of affairs.
As he dashed with agitated haste down Grange Lane, he saw Miss Wodehouse and her sister Lucy coming from St Roque"s, where very probably they too had been making a visit of condolence to Nettie; and a little nearer that scene of all his cogitations and troubles appeared, a much less welcome sight, Miss Marjoribanks, whom all Carlingford, a month ago, had declared Dr Rider to be "paying his addresses" to. The guilty doctor took off his hat to that stout and sensible wayfarer, with a pang of self-disgust which avenged Nettie. Along the very road where that little t.i.tania, eager and rapid, had gone upon her dauntless way so often, to see that comely well-dressed figure, handsome, sprightly, clever--but with such a world of bright youth, tenderness, loveliness, everything that touches the heart of man, between the two! No harm to Miss Marjoribanks; only shame to the doctor, who, out of angry love, pique, and mortification, to vex Nettie, had pretended to transfer the homage due to the fairy princess to that handsome and judicious woman. The experiment had failed as entirely as it deserved to do; and here was Edward Rider, coming back wiser and humbler, content to put that question over again, and stand once more his chance of what his pride had called a rejection, perhaps content to make still greater sacrifices, if the truth were known, and to do anything Nettie asked him, if Nettie would but condescend to ask or enter into terms at all.
He drew up before St Roque"s with a dash, which was much more of agitation than display, and, throwing the reins at the head of his little groom, leaped out like a man who did not see where he was going.
He saw Mr Wentworth, however, coming out of the church, and turning round amazed to look what vehicle had come to so sudden a standstill there. All the world seemed to be on the road to St Roque"s Cottage that spring afternoon. The doctor made a surly gesture of recognition as he pa.s.sed the curate, who gazed at him in calm astonishment from the church porch. No other intruder appeared between him and the Cottage. He hurried along past the willow-trees with their drooping ta.s.sels, surrounded by a certain maze of excitement and agitation. As he went up to the door, it occurred to him suddenly how Nettie had recognised his step that dread morning of Fred"s death. The thought came like a stimulus and encouragement to the doctor. He went in with a brighter look, a heart more hopeful.
She had opened the door to him before he could knock, held out to him that tiny morsel of a hand which laboured so hard and constantly, said--what did Nettie say? how many times had the doctor conned it over as he went between his patients?--"You were angry once, and, indeed, I don"t wonder." The doctor went boldly in under the cordial of these simple words. If she did not wonder that he was angry once, could she think of saying over again that same conclusion which had cast him into such wrathful despair? He went in to try his fortune a second time, secure of his temper at least. _That_ could never fail, nor sin against Nettie again.
Edward Rider went in, expectant somehow, even against his reason, to find an altered world in that house from which Fred had gone. He knew better, to be sure, but nature beguiled the young man out of his wisdom. When he went in to the parlour his eyes were opened. Upon the sofa--that same sofa where Fred had lain, all slovenly and mean in his idleness, with his pipe, polluting Nettie"s sole retirement--Mrs Fred lay now in her sombre black dress, with the white cap circling her faded face. She had her white handkerchief in her hand, and was carefully arranged upon the sofa, with a chair placed near for sympathisers. At the table, working rapidly as usual, sat Nettie. Sometimes she turned a momentary glance of mingled curiosity and wonder upon her sister.
Evidently she did not interfere with this development of sorrow. Nettie had enough to do, besides, with her needlework, and to enjoin a moderate amount of quietness upon Freddy and his little sister, who were building wooden bricks into houses and castles on the floor by her side. When the doctor entered the room he saw how it was with instantaneous insight.
Mrs Fred was sitting in state, in the pomp of woe, to receive all the compa.s.sionate people who might come to condole with her. Nettie, half impatient, half glad that her sister could amuse herself so, sat in busy toleration, putting up with it, carrying on her own work through it all--and still, as always, those bonds of her own making closed hard and tenacious upon the prop of the house. Even the chance of speaking with her by herself died off into extreme distance. Young Rider, who came in with the full conviction that anger could never more rise in his heart against Nettie, grew pale with pa.s.sion, resentment, and impatience before he had been a minute in the room. Always the same! Not relieved out of her bondage--closer bound and prisoned than ever! He took, with an impatient involuntary commotion, the chair placed beside the sofa, and sat down in it abruptly with the briefest salutations. His hopes and antic.i.p.ations all went bitterly back upon his heart. The very rustle of Nettie"s arm as she spread out that little black frock upon the table, and put on its melancholy tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, exasperated afresh the man who five minutes ago did not believe it possible that he ever could feel an impulse of displeasure against her again.
"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 last time you were here, I wonder you could think of coming near us. But now my poor dear Fred is gone, we have n.o.body to protect us--and of course you don"t mind how you hurt my feelings. If you had done your duty by my poor fellow when he was living, he might never--never----"