“Hold your confounded tongue, I tell you,” said Fred, slowly gathering himself off the sofa. “You’re a pretty fellow to speak, you are—that wouldn’t lend a fellow a shilling to keep him from ruin. You had better remember where you are—in—in—as Susan says—my own house.”
What outbreak of contempt might have come from the doctor’s lips was fortunately lost at that moment, since a louder outcry than usual from outside, the screams of the children, and the wailings of the landlady, at length roused the mother to the length of going to the door. When she was gone the two brothers eyed each other threateningly. Fred, not without a certain intolerable sensation of shame, rose to knock his pipe upon the mantel-shelf among Nettie’s pretty girlish ornaments. Somehow these aggravations of insult to her image drove Edward Rider desperate. He laid his hand on Fred’s shoulder and shook him violently.
“Wake up! can’t you wake up and see what you’re about?” cried the doctor; “can’t you show a little respect for her, at least? Look here, Fred Rider. I knew you could do anything shabby or mean, if it suited you. I knew you would consent to hang a burden on anybody that would take such a weight upon them; but, by Jove, I did not think you had the heart to insult her, after all. A man can’t stand by and see that. Clear off your pipe and your brandy before she comes, or, as sure as I am made of flesh and blood, and not cast-iron—”
The doctor’s threats were interrupted by the entrance of a woeful procession. Into the presence of the two brothers, eyeing each other with such lowering faces, Mrs. Smith and her husband entered, carrying between them, with solemn looks, the unconscious Freddy, while his mother followed screaming, and his little brother and sister staring open-mouthed. It was some relief to the doctor’s feelings, in the excitement of the moment, to rush to the window and throw it open, admitting a gust of chill December air, penetrating enough to search to the bones of the fireside loiterer. Fred was father enough to turn with anxiety to the child. But his trembling nervous fingers and bemused eyes could make nothing of the “case” thus so suddenly brought before him. He turned fiercely and vacantly upon his wife and demanded why everything was suffered to go to ruin when Nettie was away. Mrs. Fred, screaming and terrified, began to recriminate. The pallid figure of the child on the table gave a certain air of squalid tragedy to the scene, to the sordid miseries of which the night air, coming in with a rush, chilling the group in their indoor dresses, and flickering the flame of the candles, added one other point of dismal accumulation. The child had dropped from his swing on the door, and was stunned with the fall. Both father and mother thought him dead in the excitement of the moment; but the accustomed and cooler eyes of the doctor perceived the true state of affairs. Edward Rider forgot his disgust and rage as he devoted himself to the little patient—not that he loved the child more, but that the habits of his profession were strong upon him. When he had succeeded in restoring the little fellow to consciousness, the doctor threw a professional glance of inquiry round him to see who could be trusted. Then, with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders and impatient exclamation, turned back to the table. Fred, shivering and helpless, stood by the fire, uttering confused directions, and rubbing miserably his own flabby hands; his wife, crying, scolding, and incapable, stood at the end of the table, offering no assistance, but wondering when ever Nettie would come back. Dr. Rider took the patient in his arms, and, beckoning Mrs. Smith to go before him, carried the child upstairs. There the good mistress of the cottage listened to all his directions, and promised devoutly to obey him—to keep the room quiet, if she could—to tell everything he had said to Miss Nettie. He did not enter the desecrated parlour again when he came downstairs. What was the use? He was glad to go out and escape the chance of a fraternal struggle. He went out into the cold night air all thrilling with excitement and agitation. It was not wonderful that a scene so strange should rouse many impatient thoughts in the young man’s mind; but the most intolerable of these had the most trifling origin. That Fred should have smoked his pipe in Nettie’s sitting-room, when she was out of the way, was not, after all, considering Fred’s character, a very wonderful circumstance, but it exasperated his brother to a greater extent than much more important matters. That aggravation entirely overpowered Edward Rider’s self-control. It seemed the culmination of all the wrong and silent insolent injury inflicted upon Nettie. He saw the stain of those ashes on the little mantel-shelf, the rolling cloud of smoke in the room, and indignation burned yet higher and higher in his breast.
When the current of his thoughts was suddenly checked and stimulated by the sound of voices on the road. Voices, one of which was Nettie’s, one the lofty clerical accents of the Rev. Frank Wentworth. The two were walking arm-in-arm in very confidential colloquy, as the startled and jealous doctor imagined. What were these two figures doing together upon the road? why did Nettie lean on the arm of that handsome young clerical coxcomb? It did not occur to Dr. Rider that the night was extremely dark, and that Nettie had been at Miss Wodehouse’s, where the curate of St. Roque’s was a perpetual visitor. With a mortified and jealous pang, totally unreasonable and totally irresistible, Edward Rider, only a moment before so fantastically extreme in Nettie’s defence—in the defence of Nettie’s very “image” from
