He made no reply to the troubled landlady. He pushed the children aside, and made a stride into the parlour. To be sure, if Nettie was not here, what a charming opportunity to make himself disagreeable, and give the other two a piece of his mind! Edward Rider was anything but perfect. He decided on that expedient with an angry satisfaction. Since he could not have Nettie, he would at least have this relief to his feelings, which was next best.
The room was full of smoke, which came in heavy puffs from Fred’s pipe. He himself lay stretched on the little sofa; Nettie’s sofa—Nettie’s room—the place sacred in the doctor’s heart to that bright little figure, the one redeeming presence in this dismal household. Mrs. Fred sat dawdling opposite her husband over some wretched fancywork. Eyes less prejudiced than those of Edward Rider might have imagined this a scene of coarse but not unpleasant domestic comfort. To him it was a disgusting picture of self-indulgence and selfish miserable enjoyment, almost vice. The very tobacco which polluted the atmosphere of her room was bought with Nettie’s money. Pah! the doctor came in with a silent pale concentration of fury and disgust, scarcely able to compel himself to utter ordinary words of civility. His presence disturbed the pair in their stolen pleasure. Fred involuntarily put aside his pipe, and Mrs. Fred made a little movement to remove from the table the glass from which her husband had been drinking; but both recollected themselves after a moment. The wife set down the glass with a little spiteful toss of her head; the husband, with that heated sullen flush upon his face, relighted his half-extinguished pipe, and put up again on the sofa the slovenly-slippered feet which at Edward’s first appearance he had withdrawn from it. A sullen “How d’ye do?” was all the salutation that passed between them. They felt themselves found out; the visitor felt with rage and indignation that he had found them out. Defiant shame and resentment, spiteful passion and folly, on one side, encountered the gaze of a spectator outside whose opinion could not be mistaken, a known critic and possible spy. Little comfort could come from this strange reunion. They sat in uneasy silence for a few minutes, mutually ready to fly at each other. Mrs. Fred, in her double capacity as a woman and a fool, was naturally the first to speak.
“Nettie’s gone out to tea,” said that good wife. “I daresay, Mr. Edward, we should not have had the pleasure of seeing you here had you known that only Fred and I were at home. It is very seldom we have an evening to ourselves. It was too great a pleasure, I suppose, not to be disturbed.”
“Susan, hold your confounded tongue,” said the ungrateful Fred.
“I am sorry to disturb Mrs. Rider,” said Edward, with deadly civility. “I was not aware, indeed, of the domestic enjoyment I was likely to interrupt. But if you don’t want your boys to break their necks, someone ought certainly to interfere outside there.”
“That is exactly what I expected,” said Mrs. Fred. “My poor children can’t have a little amusement, poor things, but somebody must interfere with it; and my poor Fred—perhaps you have some fault to find with him, Mr. Edward? Oh, I can see it in your looks! so please take your advantage, now that there’s nobody to be afraid of. I can tell you have ever so many pleasant things just on your lips to say.”
“I wish you’d mind your own business, Susan,” said her husband, who was not a fool. “Look after these imps there, and let me and Edward alone. Nettie’s gone out, you understand. She’s a wonderful creature, to be sure, but it’s a blessed relief to get rid of her for a little. A man can’t breathe under her sharp eyes,” said Fred, half apologetic, half defiant, as he breathed out a puff of smoke.
Edward Rider stared at his brother, speechless with rage and indignation. He could have rushed upon that listless figure, and startled the life half out of the nerveless slovenly frame. The state of mingled resentment, disappointment, and disgust he was in, made every particular of this aggravating scene tell more emphatically. To see that heavy vapour obscuring those walls which breathed of Nettie—to think of this one little centre of her life, which always hitherto had borne in some degree the impress of her womanly image, so polluted and vulgarised, overpowered the young man’s patience. Yet perhaps he of all men in the world had least right to interfere.
“How is it possible,” burst forth the doctor all at once, “that you can live upon that creature, Fred? If you have the heart of a mouse in that big body of yours—if you are not altogether lost and degraded, how can you do it? And, by Jove, when all is done, to go and fill the only room she has—the only place you have left her—with this disgusting smoke and noise as soon as her back is turned! Good heaven! it sickens one to think of it. A fellow like you, as strong as any hodman, to let such a creature sacrifice herself to keep him in bread; and the only bit of a little place she can sit down in when she comes home—It’s too much, you know—it’s more than she ought to bear.”
“And who are you, to meddle with us and our
