“It is all very well to talk just now,” said the gentle woman at last, retiring upon that potent feminine argument; “but, Nettie, think! If you were to marry—”
Miss Wodehouse paused, appalled by the image she herself had conjured up.
“Marrying is really a dreadful business, anyhow,” she added, with a sigh; “so few people, you know, can, when they might. There is poor Mr. Wentworth, who brought me here first; unless he gets preferment, poor fellow—. And there is Dr. Rider. Things are very much changed from what they used to be in my young days.”
“Is Dr. Rider in the same dilemma? I suppose, of course, you mean Dr. Edward,” cried Nettie, with a little flash of mischievous curiosity. “Why? He has nobody but himself. I should like to know why he can’t marry—that is, if anybody would have him—when he pleases. Tell me; you know he is my brother-in-law.”
Miss Wodehouse had been thinking of Bessie Christian. She paused, partly for Dr. Rider’s sake, partly because it was quite contrary to decorum, to suppose that Bessie, now Mrs. Brown, might possibly a year ago have married somebody else. She faltered a little in her answer. “A professional man never marries till he has a position,” said Miss Wodehouse, abstractedly. Nettie lifted upon her, eyes that danced with mischief and glee.
“A profession is as bad as a family, then,” said the little Australian. “I shall remember that next time you speak to me on this subject. I am glad to think Dr. Edward, with all his prudence, is disabled too.”
When Nettie had made this unguarded speech, she blushed; and suddenly, in a threatening and defiant manner, raised her eyes again to Miss Wodehouse’s face. Why? Miss Wodehouse did not understand the look, nor put any significance into the words. She rose up from the grass, and said it was time for her to go. She went away, pondering in her own mind those singular new experiences of hers. She had never been called upon to do anything particular all her gentle life. Another fashion of woman might have found a call to action in the management of her father’s house, or the education of her motherless young sister. But Miss Wodehouse had contented herself with loving Lucy—had suffered her to grow up very much as she would, without interference—had never taken a decided part in her life. When anything had to be done, to tell the truth, she was very inexpert—unready—deeply embarrassed with the unusual necessity. Nettie’s case, so wonderfully different from anything she could have conceived, lay on her mind and oppressed her as she went home to Grange Lane.
As for Nettie herself, she took her work and her children indoors after a while, and tried on the new frock, and scolded and rehabilitated the muddy hero of the brook. Then, with those light fairy motions of hers, she spread the homely table for tea, called in Susan, sought Fred in his room upstairs with a stinging word which penetrated even his callous mind, and made him for the moment ashamed of himself. Nettie bit her red lip till it grew white and bloodless as she turned from Fred’s door. It was not hard to work for the children—to support and domineer over Susan; but it was hard for such an alert uncompromising little soul to tolerate that useless hulk—that heavy encumbrance of a man, for whom hope and life were dead. She bit her lip as she discharged her sharp stinging arrow at him through the half-opened door, and then went down singing, to take her place at the table which her own hands had spread—which her own purse supplied with bread. Nobody there showed the least consciousness of that latter fact; nobody fancied it was anything but natural to rely upon Nettie. The strange household demeaned itself exactly as if things were going on in the most regular and ordinary course. No wonder that spectators outside looked on with a wonder that could scarcely find expression, and half exasperated, half admiring, watched the astonishing life of the colonial girl.
Nobody watched it with half the amount of exasperation which concentrated in the bosom of Dr. Rider. He gazed and noted and observed everything with a secret rage, indignation, and incredulity impossible to describe. He could not believe it even when it went on before his very eyes. Doctor though he was, and scientific, to a certain extent, Edward Rider would have believed in witchcraft—in some philtre or potion acting upon her mind, rather than in Nettie’s voluntary folly. Was it folly? was it heroism? was it simple necessity, as she herself called it? Nobody could answer that question. The matter was as incomprehensible to Miss Wodehouse as to Dr. Rider, but not of such engrossing interest. Bessie Christian, after all, grew tame in the Saxon composure of her beauty before this brown, sparkling, self-willed, imperious creature. To see her among her self-imposed domestic duties filled the doctor with a smouldering wrath against all surrounding her, which any momentary spark might set aflame.
VI
Affairs went on in Carlingford with the usual commonplace pertinacity of human affairs. Notable events happened but seldom in anybody’s life, and matters rolled back into their ordinary routine, or found a new routine for themselves after the ordinary course of humanity. After the extraordinary advent of Nettie and her strange household—after the setting-out of that wonderful little establishment, with all the amazed expectation it excited—it was strange to see how everything settled down, and how calmly the framework of common life took in that exceptional and half-miraculous picture. Lookers-on prophesied that it never could last—that in the very nature of things some sudden crisis or collapse must ensue, and the vain experiment prove a failure; but
