Dolff responded with a strange cry. He did not understand it, but he felt all the same that a blow which stunned him had been directed at him, and that the ground was cut from beneath his feet.
“He has neither been tried, nor sentenced, nor anything proved against him,” cried Mrs. Harwood, carried away now by the heat of her own excitement. “All that has to be gone through before he can be put aside. And at this moment everything’s his—the roof that covers you, the money you have been spending. It is no more your house—your house!—than it is Julia’s. It is your father’s house.”
“My father is dead,” said Dolff, who had again grown very pale, the flush of passion dying out of his face.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Harwood, “and might have remained so, had it not been for your cowardly folly and Vicars’s infatuation for you. How was it the man had not the sense to see that a fool like you would spoil all?”
“You are dreaming, you are mad,” said Dolff; “you are telling me another lie.”
But, though he said this with almost undiminished passion, the young fellow’s superiority, his erect pose, his sense of being able to cow and overwhelm her, had come to an end. He fell into his usual attitude, his shoulders dropped and curved, his head hung down. He could fling a last insult at his mother, but no more. And his own mind began to be filled with unfathomable dismay.
Julia had been very uncertain what side to take. Her mind went naturally with her brother, who was most near herself. But a mother is a mother after all. You may feel her to be in some way your natural enemy when the matter is between yourself and her; but when another hand plucks at her it is different. A girl is not going to let her mother be insulted, who after all means her own side, without interposing. Julia suddenly flew forth from behind her mother’s chair and flung herself upon Dolff’s arm, seizing it and shaking him violently.
“How dare you speak to her like that?” cried Ju, “you that can’t do anything you try—not even kill Charley Meredith when you have the chance! I should be ashamed to look any one in the face. Go away, go away, and leave us quiet, you that have done it all: that brought the police into the house, and yet did not hurt him to speak of, you great, useless, disappointing boy!”
Dolff did not know how to sustain this sudden assault. He looked round stupidly at the active assailant at his shoulder with a little pang, even in his agitated and helpless state, to find that Julia was no longer on his side. His head was going round and round: already in his soul he had entirely collapsed, although he still kept his feet in outward appearance. And it would have been difficult to end this scene without an entire breakdown on one side or the other, had not the pensive little voice of the parlor-maid become audible at this moment over their heads, making them all start and draw back into themselves.
“If you please, ma’am,” said Priscilla, “for I can’t find Miss Gussy—shall I take Mr. Meredith’s tray to his room, or shall I bring it in here?”