When Nettie opened the door of the sleeping house with the great key she
had carried with her in her early dreadful expedition, there was still
nobody stirring in the unconscious cottage. She paused at the door, with
the four men behind her carrying shoulder-high that terrible motionless
burden. Where was she to lay it? In her own room, where she had not slept
that night, little Freddy was still sleeping. In another was the widow,
overcome by watching and fretful anxiety. The other fatherless creatures
lay in the little dressing-room. Nowhere but in the parlour, from which
Fred not so very long ago had driven his disgusted brother--the only
place she had where Nettie's own feminine niceties could find expression,
and where the accessories of her own daily life and work were all
accumulated. She lingered even at that dread moment with a pang of
natural reluctance to associate that little sanctuary with the horror
and misery of this bringing-home; but when every feeling gave way to the
pressure of necessity, that superficial one was not like to resist it.
Her companions were not aware that she had hesitated even for that
moment. She seemed to them to glide softly, steadfastly, without any
faltering, before them into the little silent womanly room, where her
night's work was folded tidily upon the table, and her tiny thimble and
scissors laid beside it. What a heart-rending contrast lay between those
domestic traces and that dreadful muffled figure, covered from the light
of day with Nettie's shawl, which was now laid down there, Nettie did
not pause to think of. She stood still for a moment, gazing at it with
a sob of excitement and agitation swelling into her throat; scarcely
grief--perhaps that was not possible--but the intensest remorseful
pity over the lost life. The rude fellows beside her stood silent, not
without a certain pang of tenderness and sympathy in their half-savage
hearts. She took her little purse out and emptied it of its few silver
coins among them. They trod softly, but their heavy footsteps were
heard, notwithstanding, through all the little house. Nettie could
already hear the alarmed stirring up-stairs of the master and mistress
of the cottage; and, knowing what explanations she must give, and
all the dreadful business before her, made haste to get her strange
companions away before Mrs Smith came down-stairs. One of them, however,
as he followed his comrades out of the room, from some confused instinct
of help and pity, asked whether he should not fetch a doctor? The question
struck the resolute little girl with a pang sharper than this morning's
horror had yet given her. Had she perhaps neglected the first duty of
all, the possibility of restoration? She went back, without answering
him, to lift the shawl from that dreadful face, and satisfy herself
whether she had done, that last irremediable wrong to Fred. As she met
the dreadful stare of those dead eyes, all the revulsion of feeling
which comes to the hearts of the living in presence of the dead
overpowered Nettie. She gave a little cry of inarticulate momentary
anguish. The soul of that confused and tremulous outcry was Pardon!
pardon! What love was ever so true, what tenderness so constant and
unfailing, that did not instinctively utter that cry when the watched
life had ended, and pardon could no longer come from those sealed lips?
Nettie had not loved that shamed and ruined man--she had done him the
offices of affection, and endured and sometimes scorned him. She stood
remorseful by his side in that first dread hour, which had changed
Fred's shabby presence into something awful; and her generous soul
burst forth in that cry of penitence which every human creature owes
its brother. The tender-hearted bargeman who had asked leave to
fetch a doctor, drew near her with a kindred instinct--"Don't take on,
miss--there's the crowner yet--and a deal to look to," said the kind
rough fellow, who knew Nettie. The words recalled her to herself--but
with the softened feelings of the moment a certain longing for somebody
to stand by her in this unlooked-for extremity came over the forlorn
courageous creature, who never yet, amid all her labours, had encountered
an emergency like this. She laid the shawl reverently back over that
dead face, and sent a message to the doctor with lips that trembled in
spite of herself. "Tell him what has happened, and say he is to come as
soon as he can," said Nettie; "for I do not understand all that has to
be done. Tell him I sent you; and now go--please go before they all come
down-stairs."
But when Nettie turned in again, after closing the door, into that house
so entirely changed in character by the solemn inmate who had entered
it, she was confronted by the amazed and troubled apparition of Mrs
Smith, half-dressed, and full of wonder and indignation. A gasping
exclamation of "Miss!" was all that good woman could utter. She had with
her own eyes perceived some of the "roughs" of Carlingford emerging from
her respectable door under Nettie's grave supervision, and yet could not
in her heart, notwithstanding appearances, think any harm of Nettie;
while, at the same time, a hundred alarms for the safety of her household
gods shook her soul. Nettie turned towards her steadily, with her face
pallid and her brilliant eyes heavy. "Hush," she said; "Susan knows
nothing yet. Let her have her rest while she can. We have been watching
for him all night, and poor Susan is sleeping, and does not know."
"Know what?--what has happened?--he's been and killed himself? Oh, miss,
don't you go for to say so!" cried Mrs Smith, in natural dismay and
terror.
"No," cried Nettie, with a long sigh that relieved her breast, "not so
bad as that, thank Heaven; but hush, hush! I cannot go and tell Susan
just yet--not just yet. Oh, give me a moment to get breath! For he is
dead! I tell you, _hush_!" cried Nettie, seizing the woman's hand, and
wringing it, in the extremity of her terror for alarming Susan. "Don't
you understand me? She is a widow, and she does not know--her husband
is dead, and she does not know. Have you no pity for her in your own
heart?"
"Lord ha' mercy! but wait till I call Smith," cried the alarmed
landlady, shrinking, yet eager to know the horribly interesting details
of that tragedy. She ran breathless up-stairs on that errand, while
Nettie went back to the door of the parlour, resolutely locked it, and
took away the key. "Nobody shall go gazing and talking over him, and
making a wonder of poor Fred," said Nettie to herself, shaking off from
her long eyelashes the tear which came out of the compunction of her
heart. "Poor Fred!" She sat down on one of the chairs of the little hall
beside that closed door. The children and their mother up-stairs still
slept unsuspicious; and their young guardian, with a world of thoughts
rising in her mind, sat still and pondered. The past was suddenly cut
off from the future by this dreadful unthought-of event. She had come to
a dead pause in that life, which to every spectator was so strangely out
of accordance with her youth, but which was to herself such simple and
plain necessity as to permit no questioning. She was brought suddenly
to a standstill at this terrible moment, and sat turning her dauntless
little face to the new trial before her, pale, but undismayed. Nettie
did not deceive herself even in her thoughts. She saw, with the intuitive
foresight of a keen observer, her sister's violent momentary grief, her
indolent acceptance of the position after a while, the selfish reserve
of repining and discontent which Susan would establish in the memory of
poor Fred: she saw how, with fuller certainty than ever, because now
more naturally, she herself, her mind, her laborious hands, her little
fortune, would belong to the fatherless family. She did not sigh over
the prospect, or falter; but she exercised no self-delusion on the
subject. There was nobody but she to do it--nobody but she, in her tender
maidenhood, to manage all the vulgar tragical business which must, this
very day, confirm to the knowledge of the little surrounding world the
event which had happened--nobody but herself to tell the tale to the
widow, to bear all the burdens of the time. Nettie did not think over
these particulars with self-pity, or wonder over her hard lot. She did
not imagine herself to have chosen this lot at all. There was nobody
else to do it--that was the simple secret of her strength.
But this interval of forlorn repose was a very brief one. Smith came
down putting on his coat, and looking scared and bewildered; his wife,
eager, curious, and excited, closely following. Nettie rose when they
approached her to forestall their questions.
"My brother-in-law is dead," she said. "He fell into the canal last
night and was drowned. I went out to look for him, and--and found him,
poor fellow! Oh, don't cry out or make a noise: remember Susan does not
know! Now, dear Mrs Smith, I know you are kind--I know you will not vex
me just at this moment. I have had him laid _there_ till his brother
comes. Oh, don't say it's dreadful! Do you think I cannot see how dreadful
it is? but we must not think about that, only what has to be done. When
Dr Edward comes, I will wake my sister; but just for this moment, oh
have patience! I had no place to put him except _there_."
"But, Lord bless us, he mightn't be clean gone: he might be recovered,
poor gentleman! Smith can run for Dr Marjoribanks; he is nearer nor Dr
Rider," cried the curious excited landlady, with her hand upon the
locked door.
Nettie made no answer. She took them into the room in solemn silence,
and showed them the stark and ghastly figure, for which all possibilities
had been over in the dark midnight waters hours ago. The earliest gleam
of sunshine came shining in at that moment through the window which last
night Nettie had opened that Fred might see the light in it and be guided
home. It seemed to strike like a reproach upon that quick-throbbing
impatient heart, which felt as a sin against the dead its own lack of
natural grief and affection. She went hurriedly to draw down the blinds
and close out the unwelcome light. "Now he is gone, nobody shall slight
or scorn him," said Nettie to herself, with hot tears; and she turned
the wondering dismayed couple--already awakening out of their first
horror, to think of the injury done to their house and "lodgings," and
all the notoriety of an inquest--out of the room, and locked the door
upon the unwilling owners, whom nothing but her resolute face prevented
from bursting forth in selfish but natural lamentations over their own
secondary share in so disastrous an event. Nettie sat down again, a
silent little sentinel by the closed door, without her shawl, and with
her tiny chilled feet on the cold tiles. Nettie sat silent, too much
occupied even to ascertain the causes of her personal discomfort. She
had indeed enough to think of; and while her little girlish figure,
so dainty, so light, so unlike her fortunes, remained in that unusual
stillness, her mind and heart were palpitating with thoughts--all kinds
of thoughts; not only considerations worthy the solemnity and horror of
the moment, but every kind of trivial and secondary necessity, passed
through that restless soul, all throbbing with life and action, more
self-conscious than usual from the fact of its outward stillness. A
hundred rapid conclusions and calculations about the funeral, the
mourning, the change of domestic habits involved, darted through
Nettie's mind. It was a relief to her to leap forward into these
after-matters. The immediate necessity before her--the dreadful errand
on which she must presently go to her sister's bedside--the burst of
wailing and reproachful grief which all alone Nettie would have to
encounter and subdue, were not to be thought of. She bent down her
little head into her hands, and once more shed back that hair which,
never relieved out of its braids through all this long night, began to
droop over her pale cheeks; and a quick sigh of impatience, of energy
restrained, of such powerlessness as her courageous capable soul, in
the very excess of its courage and capacity, felt in its approaching
conflict with the feeble foolish creature, who never could be stimulated
out of her own narrow possibilities, burst from Nettie's breast. But the
sigh was as much physical as mental--the long-drawn breath of mingled
weariness and restlessness--the instinct to be doing, and the exhaustion
of long labour and emotion, blended together. Thus she waited while
the cold spring morning brightened, and Mrs Smith went about her early
domestic business, returning often into the little back-parlour with
the mullioned window, of which domestic Gothic treatment had made a
condemned cell, to re-express her anxieties and horrors. Nettie had an
instinctive consciousness even of Mrs Smith's grievance. She knew this
dismal association would ruin "the lodgings," and felt that here was
another bond upon her to remain at St Roque's, however much she might
long to escape and flee away.
All these crowding and breathless thoughts were a few minutes after
reduced to absolute momentary stillness. It was by a step outside coming
hastily with rapid purpose along the silent way. Nettie rose up to meet
Edward Rider; not as the angry lover still fiercely resentful of that
rejection, which was no rejection, but only a bare and simple statement
of necessity; not as the suitor of Miss Marjoribanks; simply as the only
creature in the world who could help her, or to whom she would delegate
any portion of her own hard but inevitable work. She opened the door
before he had time to knock, and held out her hand to him silently, quite
unawares betraying her recognition of his step--her comfort in his
presence. That meeting flushed the doctor's anxious face with a mingled
shame and triumph not expressible in words, but left Nettie as pale, as
preoccupied, as much absorbed in her thoughts and duties as before.
"Dr Edward, I should not have sent for you if I could have done it all
myself," said Nettie; "but I knew you would think it right to be here
now. And I have Susan and the children to look to. I commit this to
you."
"Do they know?" said the doctor, taking the key she gave him, and
holding fast, with an instinct of compassion almost more strong than
love, the little hand which never trembled.
"I will tell Susan, now that you have come--I could not before," said
Nettie, with another sigh. "Poor Susan! I was glad to let her sleep."
"But there is no one to think whether you sleep or not," cried Edward
Rider. "And those eyes have watched all night. Nettie, Nettie, could not
you have sent for me sooner? A word would have brought me at any
moment."
"You were not wanted till now," said Nettie, not without a touch of
womanly pride. "I have always been able to do my own work, Dr Edward.
But, now, don't let us quarrel any more," she said, after a pause. "You
were angry once, and I don't wonder. Never mind all that, but let us be
friends; and don't let all the people, and strangers, and men who don't
belong to us," cried Nettie once more, with hot tears in her eyes, "be
hard upon poor Fred!"
The next moment she had vanished up-stairs and left the doctor alone,
standing in the little cold hall with the key in his hand, and Mrs
Smith's troubled countenance beholding him from far. Edward Rider paused
before he entered upon his dismal share of this morning's work. Death
itself did not suffice to endear Fred Rider to his brother. But he stood
still, with a certain self-reproach, to withdraw his thoughts, if he
could, from Nettie, and to subdue the thrill--the most living touch of
life--which this meeting had stirred within him, before he entered that
miserable chamber of death.