Nettie had taken her resolution all at once. Breathless in sudden
conviction, angry, heated, yet seeing in the midst of her excitement no
help but an immediate action, the hasty little woman had darted into the
heart of the difficulty at once. Every moment she lingered wore her out
and disgusted her more with the life and fate which, nevertheless, it
was impossible to abandon or shrink from. Nothing was so safe as to make
matters irrevocable--to plunge over the verge at once. All gleaming with
resolve and animation--with the frosty, chill, exhilarating air which
had kindled the colour in her cheeks and the light in her eyes--with
haste, resentment, every feeling that can quicken the heart and make the
pulses leap--Nettie had flashed into the little parlour, where all was
so quiet and leisurely. There Susan sat in close confabulation with the
Bushman. The children had been banished out of the room, because their
mother's head was not equal to their noise and restlessness. When they
came in with Nettie, as was inevitable, Mrs Fred sustained the invasion
with fretful looks and a certain peevish abstraction. She was evidently
interrupted by the rapid entrance, which was as unwelcome as it was
hasty. Cold though the night was, Mrs Fred, leaning back upon her sofa,
fanned her pink cheeks with her handkerchief, and looked annoyed as
well as disturbed when her children came trooping into the room clamorous
for tea behind the little impetuous figure which at once hushed and
protected them. Susan became silent all at once, sank back on the sofa,
and concealed the faded flush upon her cheeks and the embarrassed
conscious air she wore behind the handkerchief which she used so
assiduously. Neither she nor her visitor took much share in the
conversation that rose round the domestic table. Nettie, too, was
sufficiently absorbed in her own concerns to say little, and nobody
there was sufficiently observant to remark what a sudden breath of
haste and nervous decision inspired the little household ruler as she
dispensed the family bread-and-butter. When tea was over, Nettie sent
her children out of the way with peremptory distinctness, and stayed
behind them to make her communication. If she noticed vaguely a certain
confused impatience and desire to get rid of her in the looks of her
sister and the Australian, she attached no distinct meaning to it, but
spoke out with all the simplicity of an independent power, knowing all
authority and executive force to lie in her own hands alone.
"When do you think you can be ready to start? My mind is made up. I
shall set to work immediately to prepare," said Nettie. "Now, look here,
Susan: you have been thinking of it for months, so it is not like taking
you by surprise. There is a ship that sails on the 24th. If everything
is packed and ready, will you consent to go on that day?"
Mrs Fred started with unfeigned surprise, and, not without a little
consternation, turned her eyes towards her friend before answering her
sister. "It is just Nettie's way," cried Susan--"just how she always
does--holds out against you to the very last, and then turns round and
darts off before you can draw your breath. The 24th! and this is the
19th! Of course we can't do it, Nettie. I shall want quantities of
things, and Mr Chatham, you know, is not used to your ways, and can't
be whisked off in a moment whenever you please."
"I daresay it's very kind of Mr Chatham," said Nettie; "but I can take
you out very well by myself--just as well as I brought you here. And
I can't afford to get you quantities of things, Susan. So please to
understand I am going off to pack up, and on the 24th we shall go."
Once more, under Nettie's impatient eyes, a look and a smile passed
between her sister and the Australian. Never very patient at any time,
the girl was entirely aggravated out of all toleration now.
"I can't tell what you may have to smile to each other about," said
Nettie. "It is no very smiling business to me. But since I am driven to
it, I shall go at once or not at all. And so that you understand me,
that is all I want to say."
With which words she disappeared suddenly to the multitudinous work that
lay before her, thinking as little of Susan's opposition as of the
clamour raised by the children, when the hard sentence of going half
an hour earlier to bed was pronounced upon them. Nettie's haste and
peremptoriness were mixed, if it must be told, with a little resentment
against the world in general. She had ceased being sad--she was roused
and indignant. By the time she had subdued the refractory children, and
disposed of them for the night, those vast Australian boxes, which they
had brought with them across the seas, were placed in the little hall,
under the pale light of the lamp, ready for the process of packing,
into which Nettie plunged without a moment's interval. While Mrs Smith
told Edward Rider her story, Nettie was flying up and down stairs with
armfuls of things to be packed, and pressing Smith himself into her
service. Ere long the hall was piled with heaps of personal property,
ready to be transferred to those big receptacles. In the excitement of
the work her spirit rose. The headlong haste with which she carried on
her operations kept her mind in balance. Once or twice Susan peeped out
from the parlour door, and something like an echo of laughter rang out
into the hall after one of those inspections. Nettie took no notice
either of the look or the laugh. She built in those piles of baggage
with the rapidest symmetrical arrangement, to the admiration of Smith,
who stood wondering by, and did what he could to help her, with troubled
good-nature. She did not stop to make any sentimental reflections, or to
think of the thankless office in which she was about to confirm herself
beyond remedy by this sudden and precipitate step. Thinking had done
Nettie little good hitherto. She felt herself on her true ground again,
when she took to doing instead. The lamp burned dimly overhead, throwing
down a light confused with frost upon the hall, all encumbered with
the goods of the wandering family. Perhaps it was with a certain
unconscious symbolism that Nettie buried her own personal wardrobe
deep in the lowest depths, making that the foundation for all the after
superstructure. Smith stood by, ready to hand her anything she might
want, gazing at her with doubtful amazement. The idea of setting off to
Australia at a few days' notice filled him with respect and admiration.
"A matter of a three months' voyage," said Smith; "and if I might make
bold to ask, Miss, if the weather ain't too bad for anything, how will
you pass away the time on board ship when there ain't nobody to speak
to?--but, to be sure, the gentleman----"
"The gentleman is not going with us," said Nettie, peremptorily--"and
there are the children to pass away the time. My time passes too quick,
whatever other people's may do. Where is Mrs Smith, that I see nothing
of her to-night? Gone out!--how very odd she should go out now, of all
times in the world. Where has she gone, do you suppose? Not to be
ungrateful to you, who are very kind, a woman is, of course, twenty
times the use a man is, in most things. Thank you--not that; those
coloured frocks now--there! that bundle with the pink and the blue. One
would suppose that even a man might know coloured frocks when he saw
them," said Nettie, with despairing resignation, springing up from her
knees to seize what she wanted. "Thank you--I think, perhaps, if you
would just go and make yourself comfortable, and read your paper, I
should get on better. I am not used to having anybody to help me. I
got on quite as well, thank you, by myself."
Smith withdrew, not without some confusion and discomfort, to his
condemned cell, and Nettie went on silent and swift with her labours.
"Quite as well! better!" said Nettie to herself. "Other people never
will understand. Now, I know better than to try anybody." If that hasty
breath was a sigh, there was little sound of sorrow in it. It was a
little gust of impatience, indignation, intolerance even, and hasty
self-assertion. She alone knew what she could do, and must do. Not one
other soul in the world beside could enter into her inevitable work and
way.
Nettie did not hear the footstep which she might have recognised ringing
rapidly down the frosty road. She was too busy rustling about with
perpetual motion, folding and refolding, and smoothing into miraculous
compactness all the heterogeneous elements of that mass. When a sudden
knock came to the door she started, struck with alarm, then paused a
moment, looking round her, and perceiving at one hasty glance that nobody
could possibly enter without seeing both herself and her occupation,
made one prompt step to the door, which nobody appeared to open. It was
Mrs Smith, no doubt; but the sudden breathless flutter which came upon
Nettie cast doubts upon that rapid conclusion. She opened it quickly,
with a certain breathless, sudden promptitude, and looked out pale and
dauntless, understanding by instinct that some new trial to her fortitude
was there. On the other hand, Edward Rider pressed in suddenly, almost
without perceiving it was Nettie. They were both standing in the hall
together, before they fully recognised each other. Then the doctor,
gazing round him at the unusual confusion, gave an involuntary groan out
of the depths of his heart. "Then it is true!" said Dr Rider. He stood
among the chaos, and saw all his own dreams broken up and shattered in
pieces. Even passion failed him in that first bitterness of conviction.
Nettie stood opposite, with the sleeves of her black dress turned up
from her little white nimble wrists, her hair pushed back from her
cheeks, pushed quite behind one delicate ear, her eyes shining with all
those lights of energy and purpose which came to them as soon as she
took up her own character again. She met his eye with a little air of
defiance, involuntary, and almost unconscious. "It is quite true," said
Nettie, bursting forth in sudden self-justification; "I have my work to
do, and I must do it as best I can. I cannot keep considering you all,
and losing my life. I must do what God has given me to do, or I must
die."
Never had Nettie been so near breaking down, and falling into sudden
womanish tears and despair. She would not yield to the overpowering
momentary passion. She clutched at the bundle of frocks again, and made
room for them spasmodically in the box which she had already packed.
Edward Rider stood silent, gazing at her as in her sudden anguish Nettie
pulled down and reconstructed that curious honeycomb. But he had not come
here merely to gaze, while the catastrophe was preparing. He went up and
seized her busy hands, raised her up in spite of her resistance, and
thrust away, with an exclamation of disgust, that great box in which all
his hopes were being packed away. "There is first a question to settle
between you and me," cried the doctor: "you shall not do it. No; I
forbid it, Nettie. Because you are wilful," cried Edward Rider, hoarse
and violent, grasping the hands tighter, with a strain in which other
passions than love mingled, "am I to give up all the rights of a man?
You are going away without even giving me just warning--without a word,
without a sign; and you think I will permit it, Nettie? Never--by
heaven!"
"Dr Edward," said Nettie, trembling, half with terror, half with
resolution, "you have no authority over me. We are two people--we are
not one. I should not have gone away without a word or a sign. I should
have said good-bye to you, whatever had happened; but that is different
from permitting or forbidding. Let us say good-bye now and get it over,
if that will please you better," she cried, drawing her hands from his
grasp; "but I do not interfere with your business, and I must do mine my
own way."
The doctor was in no mood to argue. He thrust the big box she had packed
away into a corner, and closed it with a vindictive clang. It gave him a
little room to move in that little commonplace hall, with its dim lamp,
which had witnessed so many of the most memorable scenes of his life.
"Look here," cried Dr Rider; "authority has little to do with it. If you
had been my wife, Nettie, to be sure you could not have deserted me. It
is as great a cruelty--it is as hard upon me, this you are trying to do.
I have submitted hitherto, and heaven knows it has been bitter enough;
and you scorn me for my submission," said the doctor, making the discovery
by instinct. "When a fellow obeys you, it is only contempt you feel for
him; but I tell you, Nettie, I will bear it no longer. You shall not go
away. This is not to be. I will neither say good-bye, nor think of it.
What is your business is my business; and I declare to you, you shall
not go unless I go too. Ah--I forgot. They tell me there is a fellow, an
Australian, who ventures to pretend--I don't mean to say I believe it.
You think _he_ will not object to your burdens! Nettie! Don't let us
kill each other. Let us take all the world on our shoulders," cried the
doctor, drawing near again, with passionate looks, "rather than part!"
There was a pause--neither of them could speak at that moment. Nettie,
who felt her resolution going, her heart melting, yet knew she dared not
give way, clasped her hands tight in each other and stood trembling,
yet refusing to tremble; collecting her voice and thoughts. The doctor
occupied that moment of suspense in a way which might have looked
ludicrous in other circumstances, but was a relief to the passion that
possessed him. He dragged the other vast Australian box to the same
corner where he had set the first, and piled them one above the other.
Then he collected with awkward care all the heaps of garments which lay
about, and carried them off in the other direction to the stairs, where
he laid them carefully with a clumsy tenderness. When he had swept away
all these encumbrances, as by a sudden gust of wind, he came back to
Nettie, and once more clasped the firm hands which held each other fast.
She broke away from him with a sudden cry--
"You acknowledged it was impossible!" cried Nettie. "It is not my doing,
or anybody's; no one shall take the world on his shoulders for my sake--I
ask nobody to bear my burdens. Thank you for not believing it--that is a
comfort at least. Never, surely, any one else--and not you, not you! Dr
Edward, let us make an end of it. I will never consent to put my yoke
upon your shoulders, but I--I will never forget you or blame you--any
more. It is all hard, but we cannot help it. Good-bye--don't make it
harder, you, who are the only one that----; good-bye,--no more--don't
say any more."
At this moment the parlour door opened suddenly; Nettie's trembling
mouth and frame, and the wild protest and contradiction which were
bursting from the lips of the doctor, were lost upon the spectator
absorbed in her own affairs, and full of excitement on her own account,
who looked out. "Perhaps Mr Edward will walk in," said Mrs Fred. "Now he
is here to witness what I mean, I should like to speak to you, please,
Nettie. I did not think I should ever appeal to you, Mr Edward, against
Nettie's wilfulness--but, really now, we, none of us, can put up with it
any longer. Please to walk in and hear what I've got to say."
The big Bushman stood before the little fire in the parlour, extinguishing
its tiny glow with his vast shadow. The lamp burned dimly upon the table.
A certain air of confusion was in the room. Perhaps it was because
Nettie had already swept her own particular belongings out of that
apartment, which once, to the doctor's eyes, had breathed of her
presence in every corner--but it did not look like Nettie's parlour
to-night. Mrs Fred, with the broad white bands of her cap streaming over
her black dress, had just assumed her place on the sofa, which was her
domestic throne. Nettie, much startled and taken by surprise, stood
by the table, waiting with a certain air of wondering impatience what
was to be said to her--with still the sleeves turned up from her tiny
wrists, and her fingers unconsciously busy expressing her restless
intolerance of this delay by a hundred involuntary tricks and movements.
The doctor stood close by her, looking only at Nettie, watching her with
eyes intent as if she might suddenly disappear from under his very gaze.
As for the Australian, he stood uneasy under Nettie's rapid investigating
glance, and the slower survey which Dr Rider made on entering. He plucked
at his big beard, and spread out his large person with a confusion and
embarrassment rather more than merely belonged to the stranger in a
family party; while Mrs Fred, upon her sofa, took up her handkerchief
and once more began to fan her pink cheeks. What was coming? After a
moment's pause, upon which Nettie could scarcely keep herself from
breaking, Susan spoke.
"Nettie has always had the upper hand so much that she thinks I am
always to do exactly as she pleases," burst forth Mrs Fred; "and I don't
doubt poor Fred encouraged her in it, because he felt he was obliged to
my family, and always gave in to her; but now I have somebody to stand
by me," added Susan, fanning still more violently, and with a sound in
her voice which betrayed a possibility of tears--"now I have somebody to
stand by me--I tell you once for all, Nettie, I will not go on the
24th."
Nettie gazed at her sister in silence without attempting to say anything.
Then she lifted her eyes inquiringly to the Australian, in his uneasy
spectator position before the fire. She was not much discomposed,
evidently, by that sudden assertion of will--possibly Nettie was used to
it--but she looked curious and roused, and rather eager to know what was
it now?
"I will not go on the 24th," cried Mrs Fred, with a hysterical toss of
her head. "I will not be treated like a child, and told to get ready
whenever Nettie pleases. She pretends it is all for our sake, but it is
for the sake of having her own will, and because she has taken a sudden
disgust at something. I asked you in, Mr Edward, because you are her
friend, and because you are the children's uncle, and ought to know how
they are provided for. Mr Chatham and I," said Susan, overcome by her
feelings, and agitating the handkerchief violently, "have settled--to
be--married first before we set out."
If a shell had fallen in the peaceful apartment, the effect could not
have been more startling. The two who had been called in to receive
that intimation, and who up to this moment had been standing together
listening languidly enough, too much absorbed in the matter between
themselves to be very deeply concerned about anything Mrs Fred could say
or do, fell suddenly apart with the wildest amazement in their looks.
"Susan, you are mad!" cried Nettie, gazing aghast at her sister, with
an air of mingled astonishment and incredulity. The doctor, too much
excited to receive with ordinary decorum information so important, made
a sudden step up to the big embarrassed Australian, who stood before the
fire gazing into vacancy, and looking the very embodiment of conscious
awkwardness. Dr Rider stretched out both his hands and grasped the
gigantic fist of the Bushman with an effusion which took that worthy
altogether by surprise. "My dear fellow, I wish you joy--I wish you
joy. Anything I can be of use to you in, command me!" cried the doctor,
with a suppressed shout of half-incredulous triumph. Then he returned
restlessly towards Nettie--they all turned to her with instinctive
curiosity. Never in all her troubles had Nettie been so pale; she looked
in her sister's face with a kind of despair.
"Is this _true_, Susan?" she said, with a sorrowful wonder as different
as possible from the doctor's joyful surprise--"not something said to
vex us--really true? And this has been going on, and I knew nothing of
it; and all this time you have been urging me to go back to the
colony--_me_--as if you had no other thoughts. If you had made up your
mind to this, what was the use of driving me desperate?" cried Nettie,
in a sudden outburst of that incomprehension which aches in generous
hearts. Then she stopped suddenly and looked from her sister, uttering
suppressed sobs, and hiding her face in her handkerchief on the sofa,
to the Australian before the fire. "What is the good of talking?" said
Nettie, with a certain indignant impatient indulgence, coming to an abrupt
conclusion. Nobody knew so well as she did how utterly useless it was to
remonstrate or complain. She dropt into the nearest chair, and began
with hasty tremulous hands to smooth down the cuffs of her black sleeves.
In the bitterness of the moment it was not the sudden deliverance, but
the heartlessness and domestic treachery that struck Nettie. She, the
champion and defender of this helpless family for years--who had given
them bread, and served it to them with her own cheerful unwearied
hands--who had protected as well as provided for them in her dauntless
innocence and youth. When she was thus cast off on the brink of the
costliest sacrifice of all, it was not the delightful sensation of
freedom which occurred to Nettie. She fell back with a silent pang of
injury swelling in her heart, and, all tremulous and hasty, gave her
agitated attention to the simple act of smoothing down her sleeves--a
simple but symbolical act, which conveyed a world of meaning to the mind
of the doctor as he stood watching her. The work she had meant to do was
over. Nettie's occupation was gone. With the next act of the domestic
drama she had nothing to do. For the first time in her life utterly
vanquished, with silent promptitude she abdicated on the instant. She
seemed unable to strike a blow for the leadership thus snatched from her
hands. With proud surprise and magnanimity she withdrew, forbearing even
the useless reproaches of which she had impatiently asked, "What was the
good?" Never abdicated emperor laid aside his robes with more ominous
significance, than Nettie, with fingers trembling between haste and
agitation, smoothed down round her shapely wrists those turned-up
sleeves.
The doctor's better genius saved him from driving the indignant Titania
desperate at that critical moment by any ill-advised rejoicings; and the
sight of Nettie's agitation so far calmed Dr Rider that he made the most
sober and decorous congratulations to the sister-in-law, whom for the
first time he felt grateful to. Perhaps, had he been less absorbed in
his own affairs, he could scarcely have failed to remember how, not yet
a year ago, the shabby form of Fred lay on that same sofa from which
Susan had announced her new prospects; but in this unexampled revolution
of affairs no thought of Fred disturbed his brother, whose mind was
thoroughly occupied with the sudden tumult of his own hopes. "Oh yes, I
hope I shall be happy at last. After all my troubles, I have to look to
myself, Mr Edward; and your poor brother would have been the last to
blame me," sobbed Mrs Fred, with involuntary self-vindication. Then
followed a pause. The change was too sudden and extraordinary, and
involved results too deeply important to every individual present, to
make words possible. Mrs Fred, with her face buried in her handkerchief,
and Nettie, her whole frame thrilling with mortification and failure,
tremulously trying to button her sleeves, and bestowing her whole mind
upon that operation, were discouraging interlocutors; and after the
doctor and the Bushman had shaken hands, their powers of communication
were exhausted. The silence was at length broken by the Australian, who,
clearing his voice between every three words, delivered his embarrassed
sentiments as follows:--
"I trust, Miss Nettie, you'll not think you've been unfairly dealt by,
or that any change is necessary so far as you are concerned. Of course,"
said Mr Chatham, growing red, and plucking at his beard, "neither your
sister nor I--found out--till quite lately--how things were going to be;
and as for you making any change in consequence, or thinking we could be
anything but glad to have you with us----"
Here the alarming countenance of Nettie, who had left off buttoning her
sleeves, brought her new relation to a sudden stop. Under the blaze of
her inquiring eyes the Bushman could go no farther. He looked at Susan
for assistance, but Susan was still absorbed in her handkerchief; and
while he paused for expression, the little abdicated monarch took up the
broken thread.
"Thank you," said Nettie, rising suddenly; "I knew you were honest. It
is very good of you, too, to be glad to have me with you. You don't know
any better. I'm abdicated, Mr Chatham; but because it's rather startling
to have one's business taken out of one's hands like this, it will be
very kind of everybody not to say anything more to-night. I don't quite
understand it all just at this moment. Good-night, Dr Edward. We can
talk to-morrow, please; not to-night. You surely understand me, don't
you? When one's life is changed all in a moment, one does not exactly
see where one is standing just at once. Good-night. I mean what I say,"
she continued, holding her head high with restrained excitement, and
trying to conceal the nervous agitation which possessed her as the
doctor hastened before her to open the door. "Don't come after me,
please; don't say anything; I cannot bear any more to-night."
"But to-morrow," said the doctor, holding fast the trembling hand. Nettie
was too much overstrained and excited to speak more. A single sudden sob
burst from her as she drew her hand out of his, and disappeared like a
flying sprite. The doctor saw the heaving of her breast, the height of
self-restraint which could go no further. He went back into the parlour
like a true lover, and spied no more upon Nettie's hour of weakness.
Without her, it looked a vulgar scene enough in that little sitting-room,
from which the smoke of Fred's pipe had never fairly disappeared, and
where Fred himself had lain in dismal state. Dr Rider said a hasty
good-night to Fred's successor, and went off hurriedly into the changed
world which surrounded that unconscious cottage. Though the frost had
not relaxed, and the air breathed no balm, no sudden leap from December
to June could have changed the atmosphere so entirely to the excited
wayfarer who traced back the joyful path towards the lights of Carlingford
twinkling brilliant through the Christmas frost. As he paused to look
back upon that house which now contained all his hopes, a sudden shadow
appeared at a lighted window, looking out. Nettie could not see the
owner of the footsteps which moved her to that sudden involuntary
expression of what was in her thoughts, but he could see her standing
full in the light, and the sight went to the doctor's heart. He took off
his hat insanely in the darkness and waved his hand to her, though she
could not see him; and, after the shadow had disappeared, continued to
stand watching with tender folly if perhaps some indication of Nettie's
presence might again reveal itself. He walked upon air as he went back,
at last, cold but joyful, through the blank solitude of Grange Lane.
Nothing could have come amiss to the doctor in that dawn of happiness.
He could have found it in his heart to mount his drag again and drive
ten miles in celestial patience at the call of any capricious invalid.
He was half-disappointed to find no summons awaiting him when he went
home--no outlet for the universal charity and loving-kindness that
possessed him. Instead, he set his easy-chair tenderly by the side of
the blazing fire, and, drawing another chair opposite, gazed with secret
smiles at the visionary Nettie, who once had taken up her position
there. Was it by prophetic instinct that the little colonial girl, whose
first appearance so discomposed the doctor, had assumed that place?
Dr Rider contemplated the empty chair with smiles that would have
compromised his character for sanity with any uninstructed observer.
When the mournful Mary disturbed his reverie by her noiseless and
penitent entrance with the little supper which she meant at once for
a peace-offering and compensation for the dinner lost, she carried
down-stairs with her a vivid impression that somebody had left her
master a fortune. Under such beatific circumstances closed the evening
that had opened amid such clouds. Henceforth, so far as the doctor could
read the future, no difficulties but those common to all wooers beset
the course of his true love.