The Rector and The Doctor’s Family

more self-conscious than usual from the fact of its outward stillness. A hundred rapid conclusions and calculations about the funeral, the mourning, the change of domestic habits involved, darted through Nettie’s mind. It was a relief to her to leap forward into these after-matters. The immediate necessity before her⁠—the dreadful errand on which she must presently go to her sister’s bedside⁠—the burst of wailing and reproachful grief which all alone Nettie would have to encounter and subdue, were not to be thought of. She bent down her little head into her hands, and once more shed back that hair which, never relieved out of its braids through all this long night, began to droop over her pale cheeks; and a quick sigh of impatience, of energy restrained, of such powerlessness as her courageous capable soul, in the very excess of its courage and capacity, felt in its approaching conflict with the feeble foolish creature, who never could be stimulated out of her own narrow possibilities, burst from Nettie’s breast. But the sigh was as much physical as mental⁠—the long-drawn breath of mingled weariness and restlessness⁠—the instinct to be doing, and the exhaustion of long labour and emotion, blended together. Thus she waited while the cold spring morning brightened, and Mrs. Smith went about her early domestic business, returning often into the little back-parlour with the mullioned window, of which domestic Gothic treatment had made a condemned cell, to re-express her anxieties and horrors. Nettie had an instinctive consciousness even of Mrs. Smith’s grievance. She knew this dismal association would ruin “the lodgings,” and felt that here was another bond upon her to remain at St. Roque’s, however much she might long to escape and flee away.

All these crowding and breathless thoughts were a few minutes after reduced to absolute momentary stillness. It was by a step outside coming hastily with rapid purpose along the silent way. Nettie rose up to meet Edward Rider; not as the angry lover still fiercely resentful of that rejection, which was no rejection, but only a bare and simple statement of necessity; not as the suitor of Miss Marjoribanks; simply as the only creature in the world who could help her, or to whom she would delegate any portion of her own hard but inevitable work. She opened the door before he had time to knock, and held out her hand to him silently, quite unawares betraying her recognition of his step⁠—her comfort in his presence. That meeting flushed the doctor’s anxious face with a mingled shame and triumph not expressible in words, but left Nettie as pale, as preoccupied, as much absorbed in her thoughts and duties as before.

“Dr. Edward, I should not have sent for you if I could have done it all myself,” said Nettie; “but I knew you would think it right to be here now. And I have Susan and the children to look to. I commit this to you.”

“Do they know?” said the doctor, taking the key she gave him, and holding fast, with an instinct of compassion almost more strong than love, the little hand which never trembled.

“I will tell Susan, now that you have come⁠—I could not before,” said Nettie, with another sigh. “Poor Susan! I was glad to let her sleep.”

“But there is no one to think whether you sleep or not,” cried Edward Rider. “And those eyes have watched all night. Nettie, Nettie, could not you have sent for me sooner? A word would have brought me at any moment.”

“You were not wanted till now,” said Nettie, not without a touch of womanly pride. “I have always been able to do my own work, Dr. Edward. But, now, don’t let us quarrel any more,” she said, after a pause. “You were angry once, and I don’t wonder. Never mind all that, but let us be friends; and don’t let all the people, and strangers, and men who don’t belong to us,” cried Nettie once more, with hot tears in her eyes, “be hard upon poor Fred!”

The next moment she had vanished upstairs and left the doctor alone, standing in the little cold hall with the key in his hand, and Mrs. Smith’s troubled countenance beholding him from far. Edward Rider paused before he entered upon his dismal share of this morning’s work. Death itself did not suffice to endear Fred Rider to his brother. But he stood still, with a certain self-reproach, to withdraw his thoughts, if he could, from Nettie, and to subdue the thrill⁠—the most living touch of life⁠—which this meeting had stirred within him, before he entered that miserable chamber of death.

XI

That dreadful day ebbed over slowly⁠—tedious, yet so full of events and dismal business that it looked like a year rather than a day. The necessary investigations were got through without any special call upon Nettie. She spent the most of the day upstairs with Susan, whose wild refusal to believe at first, and sullen stupor afterwards, were little different from the picture which Nettie’s imagination had already made. The children received the news with wondering stares and questions. That they did not understand it was little, but that they scarcely were interested after the first movement of curiosity, disappointed and wounded the impatient heart, which unconsciously chafed at its own total inability to convey the feelings natural to such a terrible occasion into any bosom but its own. Nettie’s perpetual activity had hitherto saved her from this disgust and disappointment. She had been bitterly intolerant by moments of Fred’s disgraceful content and satisfaction with his own indulgences, but had never paused to fret over what she could not help, nor contrast her own high youthful humour and sense of duty with the dull insensibility around her. But today had rapt the heroic little girl into a different atmosphere from that she had been breathing hitherto. Today she was aware that her work had been so far taken out of her hands, and acknowledged in her heart that