“A matter of a three months’ voyage,” said Smith; “and if I might make bold to ask, Miss, if the weather ain’t too bad for anything, how will you pass away the time on board ship when there ain’t nobody to speak to?—but, to be sure, the gentleman—”
“The gentleman is not going with us,” said Nettie, peremptorily—“and there are the children to pass away the time. My time passes too quick, whatever other people’s may do. Where is Mrs. Smith, that I see nothing of her tonight? Gone out!—how very odd she should go out now, of all times in the world. Where has she gone, do you suppose? Not to be ungrateful to you, who are very kind, a woman is, of course, twenty times the use a man is, in most things. Thank you—not that; those coloured frocks now—there! that bundle with the pink and the blue. One would suppose that even a man might know coloured frocks when he saw them,” said Nettie, with despairing resignation, springing up from her knees to seize what she wanted. “Thank you—I think, perhaps, if you would just go and make yourself comfortable, and read your paper, I should get on better. I am not used to having anybody to help me. I got on quite as well, thank you, by myself.”
Smith withdrew, not without some confusion and discomfort, to his condemned cell, and Nettie went on silent and swift with her labours. “Quite as well! better!” said Nettie to herself. “Other people never will understand. Now, I know better than to try anybody.” If that hasty breath was a sigh, there was little sound of sorrow in it. It was a little gust of impatience, indignation, intolerance even, and hasty self-assertion. She alone knew what she could do, and must do. Not one other soul in the world beside could enter into her inevitable work and way.
Nettie did not hear the footstep which she might have recognised ringing rapidly down the frosty road. She was too busy rustling about with perpetual motion, folding and refolding, and smoothing into miraculous compactness all the heterogeneous elements of that mass. When a sudden knock came to the door she started, struck with alarm, then paused a moment, looking round her, and perceiving at one hasty glance that nobody could possibly enter without seeing both herself and her occupation, made one prompt step to the door, which nobody appeared to open. It was Mrs. Smith, no doubt; but the sudden breathless flutter which came upon Nettie cast doubts upon that rapid conclusion. She opened it quickly, with a certain breathless, sudden promptitude, and looked out pale and dauntless, understanding by instinct that some new trial to her fortitude was there. On the other hand, Edward Rider pressed in suddenly, almost without perceiving it was Nettie. They were both standing in the hall together, before they fully recognised each other. Then the doctor, gazing round him at the unusual confusion, gave an involuntary groan out of the depths of his heart. “Then it is true!” said Dr. Rider. He stood among the chaos, and saw all his own dreams broken up and shattered in pieces. Even passion failed him in that first bitterness of conviction. Nettie stood opposite, with the sleeves of her black dress turned up from her little white nimble wrists, her hair pushed back from her cheeks, pushed quite behind one delicate ear, her eyes shining with all those lights of energy and purpose which came to them as soon as she took up her own character again. She met his eye with a little air of defiance, involuntary, and almost unconscious. “It is quite true,” said Nettie, bursting forth in sudden self-justification; “I have my work to do, and I must do it as best I can. I cannot keep considering you all, and losing my life. I must do what God has given me to do, or I must die.”
Never had Nettie been so near breaking down, and falling into sudden womanish tears and despair. She would not yield to the overpowering momentary passion. She clutched at the bundle of frocks again, and made room for them spasmodically in the box which she had already packed. Edward Rider stood silent, gazing at her as in her sudden anguish Nettie pulled down and reconstructed that curious honeycomb. But he had not come here merely to gaze, while the catastrophe was preparing. He went up and seized her busy hands, raised her up in spite of her resistance, and thrust away, with an exclamation of disgust, that great box in which all his hopes were being packed away. “There is first a question to settle between you and me,” cried the doctor: “you shall not do it. No; I forbid it, Nettie. Because you are wilful,” cried Edward Rider, hoarse and violent, grasping the hands tighter, with a strain in which other passions than love mingled, “am I to give
