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CHAPTER VI.—MRS. RUTHVEN STANDS ON HER RIGHTS.

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'It is common for men to say that such and such things are perfectly right, very desirable—but, unfortunately, they are not practicable. Oh no. Those things which are not practicable are not desirable.'

MRS. RUTHVEN had snatched off her hat, and was swinging it defiantly by the strings as she walked into the room followed by her mother, whose Irish volubility was for the moment completely quenched by her new surroundings.

Behind them came Mary Parkin, consternation in every feature. Her eyes sought Nicholson's eagerly, and then wandered helplessly from Ruthven to his wife and mother-in-law, and back again to her lover. The silence began to be painful, when Mrs. Phillips broke it.

'Sure, 'tis an illigant room,' she said; and she turned herself slowly round so that she might take in all its glories thoroughly; 'an' where sud a woman be welcum but in the house av her own flesh an' blood?'

'Nellie,' said Ruthven sternly, 'take your mother into your own room. I want to speak to her.'

'Shan't,' said Nellie, seating herself in an easy-chair and defying her husband for the first time. 'Mother's agoin' to stop. It's my house as well as yours, ain't it? You brought Miss Parkin here without so much as sayin', "With your leave," an' I've brought mother, an' here she's agoin' to stop.'

'Sure, an' isn't it a cruel thing to be partin' the likes av us, an' me that fond av her, the darlint?' asked Mrs. Phillips of the company generally.

Nicholson looked at Ruthven's stormy face, and then at Mary Parkin's concerned one.

'Agnes,' she said, 'is just coming in to lay the table;' and Ruthven could have laughed aloud.

Here he had come to a point in his life there was no getting round or over, and this pretty little girl knew it as well as he did, and yet she seemed chiefly concerned lest the maid-servant, who in the ordinary course of events must lay the luncheon-table, should see anything out of the common.

Mrs. Phillips turned on her like lightning.

'Isn't it ashamed av yesself yez are,' she asked; 'you that's standhin' betwixt man an' wife?'

'It's takin' the place av the misthress av the house yez are, wid yer table-layin' an' yer flowers an' what not. Standhin' betwixt man an' wife yez are. Isn't it me darlint is misthress av this house?—the Howly Virgin have pity on her!'

'Your daughter,' said Ruthven between his teeth, 'is my wife, and she will do exactly as I tell her. She will do as I tell her!' he went on, raising his voice a little. 'Do you hear? You remember, Mrs. Phillips, the arrangement we made before I married her. If Nellie doesn't like to keep to that, she can leave my house for good and all, for I intend to be master here. No, Nicholson, you needn't go. It's no good considering my feelings now. Miss Parkin, put off luncheon for half an hour or so, will you, please? Mrs. Phillips is going home to lunch.'

Mrs. Ruthven stamped her feet defiantly on the ground in protest, and her mother raised a howl that most certainly must have penetrated to the kitchen regions, despite the fact that Mary Parkin had hastily departed and closed the door behind her.

'Oh, wurroo, wurroo!' she wailed. 'Did iver ye hear the likes av that? Me own darlint an' me not to have as much as a sup in her house?'

'We agreed to that, Mrs. Phillips, you remember.'

'Faith, Commissioner dhear'—and she crossed the room and laid a grubby hand on his arm—'sure, we all know that girls is for iver promisin' before they's married, an' it isn't the likes av yer honour's self as is goin' to be hard on poor Nellie. Sure, an' ye've a mother av yer own, maybe—the Saints protict her!—an' ye'll understand that Nellie's lonesome.'

'She should have thought of that before she married me, then,' said Commissioner Ruthven, with no sign of yielding. 'She can choose between us, but if she goes with you she can't come back here.'

'Man alive!' muttered Nicholson in his ear, 'think what you are saying. It'll never do to have your wife living apart from you in a low shanty like that. Think of the scandal in the camp.'

'You're right,' muttered Ruthven; and he turned to the old woman again. 'Now, Mrs. Phillips,' he said, 'clearly understand Nellie's future rests with you. I will not have you coming here, neither will Nellie go to your house. Do you understand? I won't have it. Nellie is my wife. She chose to be so herself; there was no compulsion; she understood the terms, and one of them was that she was to have nothing more to do with you except when I allowed her. Wasn't it so?'

'Sure, an' ye're very hard,' whined the woman; and Nellie clenched her hands and stamped her feet and looked at her husband with flashing eyes.

'Don't you mind him, mother,' she said. 'I didn't know what I was doin' then. I know now, an' I ain't agoin' his way no longer. I'm his wife, there ain't no undoin' that, an' I'll have my own way.'

It was throwing down the gauntlet. Nellie had never before openly defied him. She had fretted and cried, she had looked sad and unhappy, she had been dull and stupid, but she had always obeyed him to the best of his knowledge, and now he was face to face with a new difficulty. He could not have his wife going down to her mother's and associating with the scum and riff-raff of the camp, but how could he stop her? Suppose she defied him and left him, the scandal in the camp would be, as Nicholson pointed out, worse than ever; and yet how could he keep her at home if she decided to go? He might bribe her mother, but that would not answer long, for neither Nellie nor her mother, he felt instinctively, would have the least scruple about deceiving him. They would take his money and meet just the same. No, that would not do. He must think of something else.

'Take my advice,' murmured Nicholson in his ear; 'send her out of this. You'll never do any good with that old hag around. Send her to school—some decent, kindly, elderly woman in Melbourne who will take her in hand and teach her all she ought to know. She'll be all right away from her mother's influence.'

'Take off your bonnet, mother,' said Nellie aggressively. 'You're agoin' to stop along with me, an' those as don't like it can do the other thing. Never mind them two whisperin' there. I'm missus here;' but she trembled a little as she said it, for at bottom she was afraid of this grave husband of hers, and if it had not been for her mother's presence, she would never have dared defy him openly.

'Be reasonable, Mrs. Ruthven,' implored Nicholson. 'You mustn't go against your husband, you know.'

'Get out,' said Nellie. 'What do you want pokin' your nose in my affairs? I'll thank you to walk out of my house, Mr. Commissioner Nicholson; you can see Mary Parkin out on the ranges. I done my courtin' there;' and she laughed because she saw she had made her husband wince.

'Now, once for all, Mrs. Phillips,' said Ruthven, 'you leave this house. You will get no luncheon here. As for my wife, I know how to manage her. I'm going to Melbourne to-morrow, and I shall take her with me and leave her there till she learns how to behave herself.'

Commissioner Thomas Nicholson felt a cold shiver run down his back when he found his advice so promptly acted upon. If Mrs. Ruthven was whisked away in this unceremonious manner, it meant that Mary Parkin would have to go too. She couldn't stop here alone with Ruthven and the maid-servant. She would have to go back to Melbourne with Mrs. Ruthven and her husband. Of course, he might, as superior officer, make difficulties in the way of Ruthven's leave, but he wasn't quite prepared to do that. He read dismay on the faces of the two women, and almost sympathized when Mrs. Phillips threw up her hands with a loud, 'Ohone! ohone! the murtherin' villain! Would ye part the darlint from me that bore her?' And Nellie walked across the room, and shook her fist in her husband's face.

'I shan't go—there!'

'My dear Mrs. Ruthven,' said Nicholson, putting in a word for himself at the same time, 'it will be the best thing in the world for you. I dare say Ruthven will give you a week or so to think it over before he starts, and you'll understand then how good it will be for you. You will learn——'

'We'll start to-morrow,' said Ruthven, with no sign of yielding. 'Nellie won't learn from Miss Parkin. Then I shall just get somebody who can teach her.'

Mrs. Phillips sank into a chair, and rocked herself to and fro, moaning to herself, and every now and then relieving her overwrought feelings by giving vent to a sound between a shriek and a howl, which was very penetrating, and, Nicholson felt sure, must make itself heard half over the mining camp. As for Nellie, she stood perfectly still, with her hands clenched against her breast. Ruthven's last announcement seemed to have paralyzed her tongue.

He went up to her mother, and put his hand on her shoulder.

'Now, Mrs. Phillips, I've had enough of this. Are you going quietly, or shall I get the sergeant of police to pitch you out?'

'Yez wudn't put that dishgrace on yer wife.'

'Wouldn't I? You've disgraced her already, howling for the benefit of the camp. Everyone has heard within half a mile. Nellie can never come back here again. Now, out you go.'

The old woman looked at her daughter, whose lips seemed to move faintly, but no sound came from them. She gazed at her fixedly for a moment; then, seeing she made no sign, got up, and walked to the door, which Nicholson promptly opened for her, and she went out. He heard her muttering to herself all the way down the garden, and had not the slightest doubt that the camp would know every in and out of the Commissioner's quarrel with his wife long before another hour was over.

'Now,' said Ruthven, looking sternly at his wife, 'we will have lunch. Ring the bell, Nellie.'

But Nellie never moved.

Nicholson looked at his watch. He had had quite enough of Ruthven's unhappy family arrangements. Not even for the pleasure of seeing Mary Parkin could he stay to luncheon. He would have to trust to seeing her to-night.

'It's getting awfully late, old man,' he said. 'I'm afraid I can't stop. I'll see you again before you go. Good-bye, Mrs. Ruthven.'

But Nellie took no notice of his outstretched hand, and he left the house wondering to himself what on earth he should do about Mary Parkin. If he could persuade her to get married at once, would Ruthven let him that house as it stood?

'Let us have luncheon, Nellie,' said Ruthven, trying to speak as if nothing had happened.

'I ain't going to have lunch,' she said. 'You can ring the bell yourself;' and she turned to her own room, and banged the door behind her.

And then Ruthven called Mary Parkin in, and told her of the new arrangements he was making, and that she would have to be ready to leave by to-morrow's coach, and how he proposed to give her three months' salary instead of notice. And then he, too, forgot his lunch, and went outside to make arrangements about his approaching departure. And so it happened that no one in the household remembered the mid-day meal at all that day, for even Mary Parkin, with all her regard for keeping up appearances, felt that to sit down to a solitary meal with the thought that she might never, never see Commissioner Thomas Nicholson again was more than she could manage.

Deadman's

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