The Rector and The Doctor’s Family · The Doctor’s Family · Chapter 2 16 (1/2)

XVI

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 tonight? 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 goodbye to you, whatever had happened; but that is different from permitting or forbidding. Let us say goodbye 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 goodbye, 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, anyone 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. Goodbye⁠—don’t make it harder, you, who are the only one that⁠—; goodbye⁠—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.”