DR. BARRÈRE was left to break the news to the mother and daughter. He
never knew how he accomplished this dreadful office. They came back
when they heard the door shut, evidently not expecting to find him,
believing that he had withdrawn with his “friend”--and the anxious,
searching eyes with which his Agnes looked around the room, the mingled
terror and pleasure of her look on discovering him, never faded from
his mind. Mrs. Surtees was more disappointed than pleased. She said,
with an evident sudden awakening of anxiety, “Where is Jim?” And
then he had to tell them. How did he find words to do it? But the
wonderful thing, the dreadful thing, was that after the shock of the
first intimation there seemed little surprise in the looks of these
poor ladies. The mother sank down in her chair and hid her face in
her hands, and Agnes stood behind her mother, throwing her arms round
her, pressing that bowed head against her breast. They did not cry
out indignantly that it was not--could not be true. They were silent,
like those upon whom something long looked for had come at last. The
doctor left them after a while with a chill in his very soul. He could
say nothing; he could not attempt to console them in the awful silence
which seemed to have fallen upon them. Agnes tried to smile as he went
away--tried with her trembling lips to say something. But she could
not conceal from him that she wished him to go, that he could give no
comfort, that the best thing he could do for them in their misery was
to leave them alone. He went home very miserable in that consciousness
of being put aside, and allowed no share in the anguish of the woman
whom he loved. It was intolerable to him; it was unjust. He said to
himself as he walked along that the tacit abandonment of Jim, the
absence of all protest on their part that his guilt was impossible--a
protest which surely a mother and sister in any circumstances ought to
have made--was hard, was unjust. If all the world condemned him, yet
they should not have condemned him. He took Jim’s part hotly, feeling
that he was a fellow sufferer. Even were he dissipated and reckless,
poor fellow, there was a long, long way between that and murder.
Murder! There was nothing in Jim which could make it possible that
he could have to do with a murder. If he was hasty in temper, poor
fellow, his nature was sweet, notwithstanding all his errors. Even he,
Arnold Barrère, a man contemptuous of the manner of folly which had
ruined Jim, a man with whom wrath and revenge might have awakened more
sympathy--even he had come to have a tenderness for the erring young
man. And to think that Jim could have lain in wait for any one, could
have taken a man at a disadvantage, was, he declared to himself with
indignation, impossible. It was impossible! though the two women who
were nearest to him--his mother and his sister--did not say so, did not
stand up in vindication of the unhappy youth.
When he had exhausted this natural indignation Dr. Barrère began to
contemplate the situation more calmly, and to arrange its incidents
in his mind. The horror of the thought that he was himself the chief
witness affected him little at first, for it was to the fact only
that he could speak, and the culprit, so far as he was concerned, was
without identity, a shadow in the night, and no more. But a chill came
over that flush of indignant partisanship with which he had made a
mental stand for Jim when the other circumstances flashed upon him. He
remembered his own surprise to find Jim in the drawing-room when he
arrived at Mrs. Surtees’ house; to see his dress so unusual, though
scarcely more unusual than the fact of his being there. He remembered
how the young man held aloof, how the candles had flared upon him
neglected. The little scene came before Dr. Barrère like a picture--the
candle shades standing up in a ludicrous neglect, the light flaring
under them upon Jim’s face. And then again, to-night: the senseless
game with which he seemed to amuse himself; the tremble of his hands
over the plaything; his absence of interest in the matter which was
so exciting to the others. Why was Jim there at all? Why did he ask
no question? Why keep behind unexcited, unsurprised, while the doctor
told his story? And then the reason thrust itself upon him in Jim’s own
words--”I couldn’t be in two places at once, could I? You can prove
that I was here last night.” Good God, what did it mean? Jim--Jim!--and
his mother and sister, who had sunk into despair without a word, who
had never said as women ought, “We know him better; it is not true--it
is not true.”
Dr. Barrère went home more wretched than words can say. Hard and
terrible is an unjust accusation; but oh, how easy, how sweet, how
possible, is even the shame which is undeserved! A century of that
is as nothing in comparison with a day or hour of that which is
merited--of the horror which is true. He tried to hope still that it
was not true; but he felt coming over him like a pall, the terror which
he could now perceive had quenched the very hearts in the bosoms of
the two women who were Jim’s natural defenders. They had not been able
to say a word--and neither could he. Dr. Barrère stood still in the
middle of the dark street with the damp wind blowing in his face as
all this came before him. A solitary passer-by looked round surprised,
and looked again, thinking the man was mad. He saw in a moment as by
a revelation, all that was before them--and himself. The horrible
notoriety, the disgrace, the endless stigma. It would crush _them_ and
tear their lives asunder: but for him also, would not that be ruin too?