She went out in her excitement, moving them towards the garden door, which still stood open, haunted by some mere lookers-on to whom the news had been carried by the extraordinary rapidity of rumor, which would call forth a crowd in the midst of a desert. Though she was so slight and young, so little able to influence them, yet they yielded before her, moving out, indistinguishable in the darkness, obeying the natural right of a member of the household to clear its precincts, though with a little grumbling and remonstrance.
“We want to get hold on the murderer.” “We want to see as he doesn’t escape.” “He’s far enough off by this,” cried a sceptic. “The police get hold on a fellow like that! not as I ever heard tell on.”
“Oh, go away, go away,” cried Janet, following them to the door.
She pushed it close after them, shutting it with a sharp snap, comforted a little to have got rid of so many at least; but not, it seemed of all. As she turned back some one caught her by the arm. All Janet’s composure, her courage, her over-mastering resolution not to betray herself, could not withstand this new shock. She gave a cry. It seemed to her in her dreadful agitation as if the next thing would be that some one would thunder, “You are the woman who was with him” in her ear.
It seemed almost tame to her that the tragic whisper she heard, hoarse and miserable, emphasized by another crushing pressure of her arm, was “Is he dead? Is he dead?” and no more.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
There is nothing in the world that so suddenly sobers wild excitement and passion as to carry out its practical suggestions. A blow brings down the pulses of wrath as nothing else can do. It is a dangerous remedy, but it is a sure one.
Dolff was like a devil incarnate as he swooped down upon his victim and beat his head against the stones. The moment he had done it—the moment he had done it, he became a horrified, miserable, remorseful boy, miserable beyond any words to describe. As soon as he heard that dull thud on the pavement, and saw the white face turn unconscious in a blank which he never doubted to be that of death, his own being came back to him. His passion ended like the blowing out of a candle. What had he done? What had he done? Instinctively he sprang back under the shadow of the tree and the wall; but he had no thought of escape, or of anything but the dreadful thing he had done. After a minute, when other people crowded round the prostrate figure, he stole among the crowd and entered with them, pushing like the rest through the narrow doorway, as if he, too, were a spectator, to know all that happened. After the first awful sobering and coming to himself, there came over him a passion of eagerness and curiosity—a desire to know which for the moment made him feel himself a spectator, too. He even asked the other lads who crowded in along with him what it was, what had happened, and heard half-a-dozen versions of his own deed as he shouldered his way on to get a place near the door, with a strange feeling of being cut off from the house and all in it, of being but a wretched spectator and inquirer, though with that misery in his veins like molten fire. What was to hinder him pushing his way among them, going in boldly, he whom nobody could suspect, the son of the house, to see what was the matter? But Dolff could not do it. Janet had been stronger of mind than he. She had managed to disengage herself at once from the tumult, to steal in while attention was diverted from her, to escape in the darkness and confusion. And so might he have done: but he was incapable of thinking of himself or his own safety, though instinct made him herd among the intruders, concealing himself in the crowd. What he wanted to see was what had happened, whether it was real, and the man killed, or if it were only, as he almost hoped, a dreadful dream. He heard it said that the gentleman was not dead, but it conveyed no impression to his mind, and he pushed forward, peering over the shoulders of the others who crowded and gazed at the unknown interior, with a horrible sense of familiarity yet distance. There was the couch wheeled out of the library, the couch on which he had himself lounged so often; there was Gussy, clasping her hands together as if to keep herself up, standing as pale as death by the foot of the couch; there was—heaven! was it Janet standing behind, half concealing herself in the other’s shadow? It was not Janet then, he said in his dull brain—not Janet that was the cause of it all, only some horrible delusion to tempt him to his fate. There had been nothing wrong except in him. He it was alone who had been to blame. She could not have been there at all, since, she was here, horrified, full of pity, helping, when he had killed. Oh, God! what had he done? He had killed a man in some horrible mistake. Perhaps it was not Meredith at all; if it was, it was his friend, Gussy’s betrothed, the friend of the family. He had killed him—for what, for what? For nothing. His rage had died off like fever. He was quite calm now, like one fallen from some horrible height, shaking with the shock, and as miserable as if all the miseries of earth had gathered on his head. It did not seem to him unnatural that he should stand there among the crowd, struggling to get a glimpse of what was going on in his own home, within his mother’s open door.
He did not, however, follow the others when Janet drove them away. Though it had filled him with consternation to see her there, and the dull, dreadful thought that there had been no provocation, nothing but delusion and mistake—it was yet with a kind of stupid fury and repugnance that he saw her taking upon her to send away the crowd, to act as if the house was hers. He hung behind in the dark, and seized her arm with a wild feeling that he would like to crush her too to make her feel, though apparently she had done no wrong. But these gave way to the other anxiety, the deeper interest. After all there was but one thing that it was, or would be, now or ever, of the slightest importance to know—was he dead?
Janet gave no direct answer to his question. She said quickly,