What did he mean? They all looked at each other with perplexity; even Janet, rousing from the rigid unmeaningness to which she had condemned herself, to take share in the glance of amazement which ran round. Only Meredith did not share that amazement. He laughed, which was a sound that made Dolff frantic, and brought him a step forward with his hand clenched.
“Dolff, my good fellow,” he said, with an air of superior experience which still further irritated the furious lad, “don’t fly upon me again: for that sort of argument doesn’t do much good in a discussion. And don’t bring your ideas out of French novels here. Such things are a great deal worse when they are translated than when they are at home.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” cried Dolff, “with your French novels! nor what right you have to be here, in the midst of us all, discussing a subject—a subject which—a subject that—makes me,” cried the young man, “that I cannot endure myself, nor the house, nor so much as my mother’s name.”
“What does he mean?” said the ladies to each other, looking all round with perturbed looks. They were all united, from Julia to her mother, in the wonder to which they had no clue. Englishwomen, brought up in the very lap of respectability, not knowing even the alphabet of shame, full of faults, no doubt of their own kind, but utterly incapable even of imagining the secret horror and suspicion that lurked in Dolff’s words, they could do nothing but send round that troubled look of consultation. Was Dolff going out of his senses, too? Was it perhaps in the family, this dreadful thing, and had it assailed the boy? Mrs. Harwood grew pale with sheer fright and horror as she looked back upon her son, and then pitifully consulted his sisters with her eyes.
“Dolff,” cried Meredith, in a warning tone, “mind what you are about, my boy. I tell you to bring none of your French novels here. They don’t explain the situation. Strike me if you like then; but don’t be such an everlasting fool. Pierre et Jean, eh, here!” cried the elder man, with a half shriek of derisive laughter. He sat with a sort of careless courage, not putting himself even into an attitude of defence, but on his guard, looking towards the enraged youth—an air which transported both the young feminine hearts beside him into an ecstasy of admiration, though Gussy was so deeply offended (she began to think more and more without reason), and Janet more deeply still, hating and despising him as she thought.
Gussy darted forward between her brother, who had the air of springing upon his senior, and Meredith, warning Dolff in her turn with a loud cry.
“Mind,” she exclaimed, “what you are about! As Charley says, enough has happened already. We will tolerate no more in this house.”
Janet rose too, scarcely knowing why she did it, she who had so solemnly made up her mind that on no provocation would she take any part.
“I don’t know,” she said, “what Mr. Dolff means; but I hope no one will be angry if I say I found some papers torn in little pieces under the windows of the wing. I thought they were from an old copy-book and that they were Mr. Dolff’s. I am sure now they belonged to the poor gentleman upstairs. They were signed ‘Adolphus Charles Harwood.’ I have no right to be here at all, and I am going away.”
Dolff stood breathless, feeling the light fail in his eyes. He saw Meredith spring up and open the door for her, and with a pang watched while the little dark figure disappeared. For the moment he was only aware of her disappearance, of the final going out as he thought in eternal darkness of the little light which had made his life so different. He came back to himself with a gasp when the door closed, but scarcely knew what had been said to him for the beating of the pulses in his head.