The Rector and The Doctor’s Family

up hastily; then a rustling about the room overhead, which was Susan’s room. After a while, during which Nettie, restored by the sound to all her growing cares, rose instantly to consideration of the question, What had happened now? the door above was stealthily opened, and a footstep came softly down the stair. Nettie put down her work and listened breathlessly. Presently Susan’s head peeped in at the parlour door. After all, then, it was only some restlessness of Susan’s. Nettie took up her work, impatient, perhaps almost disappointed, with the dead calm in which nothing ever happened. Susan came in stealthy, pale, trembling with cold and fright. She came forward to the table in her white nightdress like a faded ghost. “Fred has never come in,” said Susan, in a shivering whisper; “is it very late? He promised he would only be gone an hour. Where can he have gone? Nettie, Nettie, don’t sit so quiet and stare at me. I fell asleep, or I should have found it out sooner; all the house is locked up, and he has never come in.”

“If he comes we can unlock the house,” said Nettie. “When did he go out, and why didn’t you tell me? Of course I should have let Mrs. Smith know, not to frighten her; but I told Fred pretty plainly last time that we could not do with such hours. It will make him ill if he does not mind. Go to bed, and I’ll let him in.”

“Go to bed! it is very easy for you to say so; don’t you know it’s the middle of the night, and as dark as pitch, and my husband out all by himself?” cried Susan. “Oh, Fred, Fred! after all the promises you made, to use me like this again! Do you think I can go upstairs and lie shivering in the dark, and imagining all sorts of dreadful things happening to him? I shall stay here with you till he comes in.”

Nettie entered into no controversy. She got up quietly and fetched a shawl and put it round her shivering sister; then sat down again and took up her needlework. But Susan’s excited nerves could not bear the sight of that occupation. The rustle of Nettie’s softly-moving hand distracted her. “It sounds always like Fred’s step on the way,” said the fretful anxious woman. “Oh, Nettie, Nettie! do open the end window and look out; perhaps he is looking for the light in the windows to guide him straight! It is so dark! Open the shutters, Nettie, and, oh, do look out and see! Where do you suppose he can have gone to? I feel such a pang at my heart, I believe I shall die.”

“Oh, no, you will not die,” said Nettie. “Take a book and read, or do something. We know what is about the worst that will happen to Fred. He will come home like that you know, as he did before. We can’t mend it, but we need not break our hearts over it. Lie down on the sofa, and put up your feet and wrap the shawl round you if you won’t go to bed. I can fancy all very well how it will be. It is nothing new, Susan, that you should break your heart.”

“It’s you that have no feeling. Oh, Nettie, how hard you are! I don’t believe you know what it is to love anybody,” said Susan. “Hark! is that someone coming now?”

They thought someone was coming fifty times in the course of that dreadful lingering night. Nobody came; the silence closed in deeper and deeper around the two silent women. All the world⁠—everything round about them, to the veriest atom⁠—seemed asleep. The cricket had stopped his chirrup in the kitchen, and no mouse stirred in the slumbering house. By times Susan dozed on the sofa, shivering, notwithstanding her shawl, and Nettie took up her needlework for the moment to distract her thoughts. When Susan started from these snatches of slumber, she importuned her sister with ceaseless questions and entreaties. Where had he gone?⁠—where did Nettie imagine he could have gone?⁠—and oh! would she go to the window and look out to see if anyone was coming, or put the candle to the window to guide him, if perhaps he might have lost the way? At last the terrible pale dawn came in and took the light out of Nettie’s candle. The two looked at each other, and acknowledged with a mutual start that the night was over. They had watched these long hours through with sentiments very different; now a certain thrill of sympathy drew Nettie nearer to her sister. It was daylight again, remorseless and uncompromising, and where was Fred, who loved the darkness? He had little money and less credit in the limited place where himself and his story were known. What could have become of him? Nettie acknowledged that there was ground for anxiety. She folded up her work and put out her candle, and promptly took into consideration what she could do.

“If you will go to bed, Susan, I shall go out and look for him,” said Nettie. “He might have stumbled in the field and fallen asleep. Men have done such things before now, and been none the worse for it. If you will go and lie down, I’ll see after it, Susan. Now it’s daylight, you know, no great harm can happen to him. Come and lie down, and leave me to look for Fred.”

“But you don’t know where to go, and he won’t like to have you going after him. Nettie, send to Edward,” said Susan; “he ought to come and look after his brother: he ought to have done it all through, and not to have left us to manage everything; and he hasn’t even been to see us for ever so long. But send to Edward, Nettie⁠—it’s his business. For Fred won’t like to have you going after him, and you