“Yes, mother,” said Dr. Barrère, and he added under his breath, “whatever happens—whatever happens—there shall be no death of shame.”
CHAPTER V.
THE recommendation to mercy was very strong; almost all the principal people in the town interested themselves, and the judge himself had been persuaded to add a potent word; but as he did so he shook his head, and told the petitioners that their arguments were all sentimental. “What does your lordship say then to the doctor’s testimony?” was asked him, upon which he shook his head more and more. “The doctor’s testimony, above all,” he said. “Mind you, I think that probably the doctor was right, but it is not a solid argument, it is all sentiment; and that is what the Home Office makes no account of.” This was very discouraging. But still there was a certain enthusiasm in the town in Jim’s favour, as well as a natural horror that one who really belonged (if he had kept his position) to the best class, should come to such an end; and the chief people who got up this recommendation to mercy were warm supporters of the Government. That, too, they felt convinced must tell for something. And there reigned in Poolborough a certain hope which Dr. Barrère sometimes shared.
Sometimes; for on many occasions he took the darker view—the view so universal and generally received, that the more important it is for you that a certain thing should come to pass, the more you desire it, the less likely it is to happen. And then he would ask himself was it so important that it should come to pass? At the best it was still true that Jim had killed this man. If he were not hanged for it he would be imprisoned for life; and whether it is worse to have a relative who has been hanged for a crime or one who is lingering out a long term of imprisonment for it, it is hard to tell. There did not seem much to choose between them. Perhaps even the hanging would be forgotten soonest—and it would be less of a burden. For to think of a brother in prison, who might emerge years hence with a ticket-of-leave, a disgraced and degraded man, was something terrible. Perhaps on the whole it would be best that he should die. And then Dr. Barrère shuddered. Die! Ah! if that might be, quietly, without demonstration. But as it was—And then he would begin again, against his will, that painful circle of thought—”the brother was hanged.” That was what people would say. After the horror of it had died out fantastic patients would cry, “The brother of a man who was hanged! Oh, no! don’t let us call in such a person.” The ladies would say this: they would shudder yet perhaps even laugh, for the pity would be forgotten, even the horror would be forgotten, and there would remain only this suggestion of discomfort—just enough to make the women feel that they would not like to have him, the brother of a man who was hanged, for their doctor. Dr. Barrère tried all he could to escape from this circle of fatal thought; but however hard he worked, and however much he occupied himself, he could not do so always. And the thought went near sometimes to make him mad.
He had, however, much to occupy him, to keep thought away. He was the only element of comfort in the life of the two miserable women who lived under the shadow of death, their minds entirely absorbed in the approaching catastrophe, living through it a hundred times in anticipation, in despair which was made more ghastly and sickening by a flicker of terrible hope. Mrs. Surtees said that she had no hope; she would not allow the possibility to be named; but secretly dwelt upon it with an intensity of suspense which was more unendurable than any calamity. And when Agnes and her lover were alone this was the subject that occupied them to the exclusion of all others. Their own hopes and prospects were all blotted out as if they had never been. He brought her reports of what was said, and what was thought on the subject among the people who had influence, those who were straining every nerve to obtain a reprieve: and she hung upon his words breathless with an all-absorbing interest. He never got beyond the awful shadow, or could forget it, and went about all day with that cloud hanging over him, and frightened his patients with his stern and serious looks. “Dr. Barrère is not an encouraging doctor,” they began to say, “he makes you think you are going to die;” for the sick people could not divest themselves of the idea that it was their complaints that were foremost in the doctor’s mind and produced that severity in his looks.
But all this was light and easy to the last of the many occupations which filled Dr. Barrère’s time and thoughts, and that was Jim—Jim alone in his prison, he who never had been alone, who had been surrounded all day long with his companions—the companions who had led him astray. No, they had not led him astray. Langton, who was dead, whom he had killed, had not led him astray, though he now thought so, or said so, bemoaning himself. Such a thing would be too heavy a burden for any human spirit. A man cannot ruin any more than he can save his brother. His own inclinations, his own will, his love for the forbidden, his idle wishes and follies—these were what had led him astray. And now he was left alone to think of all that, with the shadow before him of a hideous death at a fixed moment—a moment drawing nearer and nearer, which he could no more escape than he could forget it. Jim had many good qualities amid his evil ones. He was not a bad man; his sins were rather those of a foolish, self-indulgent boy. His character was that of a boy. A certain innocency, if that word may be used, lay under the surface of his vices, and long confinement away from all temptation had wrought a change in him like that that came over the leper in the Scriptures, whose flesh came again as the flesh of a little child. This was what happened to Jim, both bodily and mentally. He languished in health from his confinement, but yet his eyes regained the clearness of his youth, and his mind, all its ingenuousness, its power of affection. Lying under sentence of death he became once more the lovable human creature, the winning and attractive youth he had been in the days before trouble came. All clouds save the one cloud rolled off his soul. In all likelihood he himself forgot the course of degradation through which he had gone; everything was obliterated to him by the impossibility of sinning more—everything except the one thing which no self-delusion could obliterate, the unchangeable doom to which he was approaching day by day. Jim had none of the tremors of a murderer. He concealed nothing; he admitted freely that the verdict was just, that it was he who had lurked in the dark and awaited the villain—but only he had never meant more than to punish him. “It is all quite true what the doctor says. I knocked him down. I meant to beat him within an inch of his life. God knows if he deserved it at my hands, or any honest man’s hands. And then it came over me in a moment that he never moved, that he never made a struggle. It was not because there were people coming up that I ran away. It was horror, as the doctor says. Nothing can ever happen to me again so dreadful as that,” said Jim, putting up his handkerchief to wipe his damp forehead. And yet he could tell even that story with tolerable calm. He was not conscious of guilt; he had meant to do what he felt quite justifiable—rather laudable than otherwise—to thrash a rascal “within an inch of his life.” He had expected the man to defend himself; he had been full of what he felt to be righteous rage, and he did not feel himself guilty now. He was haunted by no ghost; he had ceased even to shudder at the recollection of the horrible moment in which he became aware that instead of chastising he had killed. But when his momentary occupation with other thoughts died away and the recollection of what lay before him came back, the condition of poor Jim was a dreadful one. To die—for that!—to die on Thursday, the 3rd of September, at a horrible moment fixed and unchangeable. To feel the days running past remorselessly, swift, without an event to break their monotonous flying pace—those days which were so endlessly long from dawn to twilight, which seemed as if they would never be done, which had so little night, yet which flew noiselessly, silently, bringing him ever nearer and nearer to the end. Poor Jim broke down entirely under the pressure of this intolerable certainty. Had it been done at once, the moment the sentence had been pronounced; but to sit and wait for it, look for it, anticipate it, know that every hour was bringing it nearer, that through the dark and through the day, and through all the endless circles of thoughts that surmounted and surrounded it, it was coming, always coming, not to be escaped! Jim’s nerves broke down under this intolerable thing that had to be borne. He kept command of himself when he saw his mother and sister, but with Dr. Barrère he let himself go. It was a relief to him for the wretched moment. Save for the moment, nothing, alas, could be a relief—for whether he contrived to smile and subdue himself, or whether he dashed himself against the wall of impossibility that shut him in, whether he raved in anguish or madness, or slept, or tried to put a brave face upon it, it was coming all the time.
“It is sitting and waiting that is the horrible thing,” he said; “to think there is nothing you can do. That’s true, you know, doctor, in Don Juan, about the people that plunged into the sea to get drowned a little sooner and be done with it—in the shipwreck, you know. It’s waiting and seeing it coming that is horrible. It is just thirteen days to-day. Death isn’t what I mind! it’s waiting for it. Will it be—will it be very—horrible, do you think—at the moment—when it comes?”