The doctor moved about him not able to keep still, with that look of desperation, listening for every sound. But all was still except the broken voice of the old clergyman, who had knelt down and was praying. One of the attendants too had gone down on his knees. The other stood watching, yet distracted by a pity which even his hardened faculties could not resist. Jim sat with his hands clasped, his eyes for a moment closed, the smile still quivering about his mouth. In this stillness of intense feeling all observation save that of the ever-watchful doctor was momentarily subdued. Suddenly Jim’s head seemed to droop forward on his breast; the doctor came in front of him with one swift step, and through the sound of the praying called imperatively, sharply, for wine, wine! The warder who was standing rushed to fill it out, while Dr. Barrère bent over the fainting youth. It all passed in a moment, before the half-said sentence of the prayer was completed. The clergyman’s voice wavered, stopped—and then resumed again, finishing the phrase, notwithstanding the stir and hurried movement, the momentary breathless scuffle, which a sudden attack of illness, a fit or faint, always occasions. Then a sharp sound broke the stillness—the crash of the wine glass which the doctor let fall from his hand after forcing the contents, as it seemed, down the patient’s throat. The old clergyman on his knees still, paused and opening his eyes gazed at the strange scene, not awakening to the seriousness of it, or perceiving any new element introduced into the solemnity of the situation for some minutes, yet gazing with tragic eyes, since nothing in the first place could well be more tragic. The little stir, the scuffle of the moving feet, the two men in motion about the still figure in the chair, lasted for a little longer; then the warder uttered a stifled cry. The clergyman on his knees, his heart still in his prayer for the dying, felt it half profane to break off into words to men in the midst of those he was addressing to God—but forced by this strange break cried, “What is it?—what has happened?” in spite of himself.
There was no immediate answer. The doctor gave some brief, quick directions, and with the help of the warder lifted the helpless figure, all fallen upon itself like a ruined house, with difficulty to the bed. The limp, long, helpless limbs, the entire immobility and deadness of the form struck with a strange chill to the heart of the man who had been interceding wrapt in another atmosphere than that of earth. The clergyman got up from his knees, coming back with a keen and awful sense of his humanity. “Has he—fainted?” he asked with a gasp.
Once more a dead pause, a stillness in which the four men heard their hearts beating; then the doctor said, with a strange brevity and solemnity, “Better than that—he is dead.”
Dead! They gathered round and gazed in a consternation beyond words. The young face, scarcely paler than it had been a moment since, the eyes half shut, the lips fallen apart with that awful opening which is made by the exit of the last breath, lay back upon the wretched pillow in all that abstraction and incalculable distance which comes with the first touch of death. No one could look at that, and be in any doubt. The warders stood by dazed with horror and dismay, as if they had let their prisoner escape. Was it their fault? Would they be blamed for it? They had seen men go to the scaffold before with little feeling, but they had never seen one die of the horror of it, as Jim had died.
While they were thus standing a sound of measured steps was heard without. The door was opened with that harsh turning of the key which in other circumstances would have sounded like the trumpet of doom, but which now woke no tremor, scarcely any concern. It was the sheriff and his grim procession coming for the prisoner. They streamed in and gathered astonished about the bed. Dr. Barrère turned from where he stood at the head, with a face which was like ashes—pallid, stern, the nostrils dilating, the throat held high. He made a solemn gesture with his hand towards the bed. “You come too late,” he said.
The men had come in almost silently, in the excitement of the moment swelling the sombre circle to a little crowd. They thronged upon each other and looked at him, lying there on the miserable prison bed, in the light of the horrible grated windows, all awe-stricken in a kind of grey consternation not knowing how to believe it; for it was a thing unparalleled that one who was condemned should thus give his executioner the slip. The whisper of the sheriff’s low voice inquiring into the catastrophe broke the impression a little. “How did it happen—how was it? Dead! But it seems impossible. Are you sure, doctor, it is not a faint?”
The doctor waved his hand almost scornfully towards the still and rigid form. “I foresaw it always; it is—as I thought it would be,” he said.
“His poor mother!” said the clergyman with a sort of habitual, conventional lamentation, as if it could matter to that poor mother! Dr. Barrère turned upon him quickly. “Go to them—tell them—it will save them something,” he said with sudden eagerness. “You can do no more here.”
“It seems impossible,” the sheriff repeated, turning again to the bed. “Is there a glass to be had?—anything—hold it to his lips! Do something, doctor. Have you tried all means? are you sure?” He had no doubt; but astonishment, and the novelty of the situation, suggested questions which really required no answer. He touched the dead hand and shuddered. “It is extraordinary, most extraordinary,” he said.
“I warned you of the possibility from the beginning,” said Dr. Barrère; “his heart was very weak. It is astonishing rather that he bore the strain so long.” Then he added with that stern look, “It is better that it should be so.”