The Rector and the Doctor's Family by Margaret Oliphant

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 it was best it should be so. She heard the heavy feet of men coming and going, but was not obliged to descend into immediate conflict with all the circumstances of so horrible a crisis. It was a new sensation to Nettie. A year ago, perhaps, she would not have relinquished even that dreadful business to anyone; -- today, the thought of having someone else who did it for her, and took comfort in relieving her burdened hands, fell with singular soothing power upon the heart which had come to a knowledge of its own weakness in these last tedious months; and as Nettie sat upstairs with all the remorseful thoughts of nature in her softened heart, the impossibility of impressing her own emotions upon those around her struck her with a deeper sense of impatience, disappointment, and disgust than ever before. When she went softly into the darkened room where Susan lay in her gloomy bed, divided between wailings over the injuries which poor Fred had suffered, the harshness that had driven him out of doors, and the want of his brother or somebody to take care of him, which had brought the poor fellow to such an end -- and complaints of the wrong done to herself, the "want of feeling" shown by her sister, the neglect with which she was treated, Nettie gazed at the sobbing creature with eyes unconsciously wondering, yet but half-surprised. She knew very well beforehand that this was how her dreadful tidings would be received; yet out of her own softened, awed, compunctious heart -- her pity too deep for tears over that lost life -- Nettie looked with the unbelief of nature at the widowed woman, the creature who had loved him, and been his wife -- yet who could only think of somebody else to be blamed, and of herself injured, at that terrible moment when the companion of her life was violently withdrawn from her. And to go out of that obstinately darkened refuge of fretful sorrow, into the room where the blind had been drawn up the moment her back was turned, and where these three tearless children, totally unimpressed by the information which they had received as a piece of news with mingled curiosity and scepticism, occupied themselves with their usual sports, or listened keenly, with sharp remarks, to the sounds below, which only the utmost stretch of Nettie's authority could keep them from descending to investigate, afforded a wonderful reverse to the picture, which startled her in her momentary clearsightedness. The contrast between her own feelings -- she who had no bonds of natural affection to Fred, and to whom he had been, by times, a very irksome burden -- and theirs, who were his very own, and belonged to him, appeared to Nettie as no such contrast had ever appeared before. Her heart alone was heavy with regret over the ruined man -- the now forever unredeemable life: she only, to whom his death was no loss, but even, if she could have permitted that cruel thought to intervene, a gain and relief, recognised with a pang of compassion almost as sharp as grief, that grievous, miserable fate. When, a few minutes after, the noise of the children's play rose to an outburst, Nettie flushed into a momentary effusion of temper, and silenced the heartless imps with a voice and look which they dared not venture to resist. Her rebuke was, however, interrupted by a sudden call from their mother. "How can you have the heart! -- Oh, Nettie, Nettie! I knew you had no feeling! -- you never had any feeling since you were a baby -- but how can you speak so to his poor children, now that he has left them on the cold world? " cried Susan, sobbing, from her bed. If Nettie sprang to her feet in sudden heat and disgust, and peremptorily closed the doors intervening between the children and their mother, nobody will much wonder at that movement of impatience. Perhaps Nettie's eyes had never been so entirely opened to the hopeless character of the charge she had taken upon her, as in the temporary seclusion of that day.