A	>>	B	>>	C	>>	D	>>	E
F	>>	G	>>	H	>>	I	>>	J
K	>>	L	>>	M	>>	N	>>	O
P	>>	R	>>	S	>>	T	>>	U
V	>>	W	>>			X	>>	Z

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "Die Geschwister"

Sara Teasdale - "Love Songs, by Sara Teasdale"

Mary Roberts Rinehart - "The After House"

Jack London - "South Sea Tales"

AFTER DARK

W >> Wilkie Collins >> AFTER DARK




"I took an oath not to tell it, Gabriel--lean down closer! I'm
weak, and they mustn't hear a word in that room--I took an oath
not to tell it; but death is a warrant to all men for breaking
such an oath as that. Listen; don't lose a word I'm saying! Don't
look away into the room: the stain of blood-guilt has defiled it
forever! Hush! hush! hush! Let me speak. Now your father's dead,
I can't carry the horrid secret with me into the grave. Just
remember, Gabriel--try if you can't remember the time before I
was bedridden, ten years ago and more--it was about six weeks,
you know, before your mother's death; you can remember it by
that. You and all the children were in that room with your
mother; you were asleep, I think; it was night, not very
late--only nine o'clock. Your father and I were standing at the
door, looking out at the heath in the moonlight. He was so poor
at that time, he had been obliged to sell his own boat, and none
of the neighbors would take him out fishing with them--your
father wasn't liked by any of the neighbors. Well; we saw a
stranger coming toward us; a very young man, with a knapsack on
his back. He looked like a gentleman, though he was but poorly
dressed. He came up, and told us he was dead tired, and didn't
think he could reach the town that night and asked if we would
give him shelter till morning. And your father said yes, if he
would make no noise, because the wife was ill, and the children
were asleep. So he said all he wanted was to go to sleep himself
before the fire. We had nothing to give him but black bread. He
had better food with him than that, and undid his knapsack to get
at it, and--and--Gabriel! I'm sinking--drink! something to
drink--I'm parched with thirst."

Silent and deadly pale, Gabriel poured some of the cider from the
pitcher on the table into a drinking-cup, and gave it to the old
man. Slight as the stimulant was, its effect on him was almost
instantaneous. His dull eyes brightened a little, and he went on
in the same whispering tones as before:

"He pulled the food out of his knapsack rather in a hurry, so
that some of the other small things in it fell on the floor.
Among these was a pocketbook, which your father picked up and
gave him back; and he put it in his coat-pocket--there was a tear
in one of the sides of the book, and through the hole some
bank-notes bulged out. I saw them, and so did your father (don't
move away, Gabriel; keep close, there's nothing in me to shrink
from). Well, he shared his food, like an honest fellow, with us;
and then put his hand in his pocket, and gave me four or five
livres, and then lay down before the fire to go to sleep. As he
shut his eyes, your father looked at me in a way I didn't like.
He'd been behaving very bitterly and desperately toward us for
some time past, being soured about poverty, and your mother's
illness, and the constant crying out of you children for more to
eat. So when he told me to go and buy some wood, some bread, and
some wine with money I had got, I didn't like, somehow, to leave
him alone with the stranger; and so made excuses, saying (which
was true) that it was too late to buy things in the village that
night. But he told me in a rage to go and do as he bid me, and
knock the people up if the shop was shut. So I went out, being
dreadfully afraid of your father--as indeed we all were at that
time--but I couldn't make up my mind to go far from the house; I
was afraid of something happening, though I didn't dare to think
what. I don't know how it was, but I stole back in about ten
minutes on tiptoe to the cottage; I looked in at the window, and
saw--O God! forgive him! O God! forgive me!--I saw--I--more to
drink, Gabriel! I can't speak again--more to drink!"

The voices in the next room had ceased; but in the minute of
silence which now ensued, Gabriel heard his sisters kissing
Perrine, and wishing her good-night. They were all three trying
to go asleep again.

"Gabriel, pray yourself, and teach your children after you to
pray, that your father may find forgiveness where he is now gone.
I saw him as plainly as I now see you, kneeling with his knife in
one hand over the sleeping man. He was taking the little book
with the notes in it out of the stranger's pocket. He got the
book into his possession, and held it quite still in his hand for
an instant, thinking. I believe--oh no! no! I'm sure--he was
repenting; I'm sure he was going to put the book back; but just
at that moment the stranger moved, and raised one of his arms, as
if he was waking up. Then the temptation of the devil grew too
strong for your father--I saw him lift the hand with the knife in
it--but saw nothing more. I couldn't look in at the window--I
couldn't move away--I couldn't cry out; I stood with my back
turned toward the house, shivering all over, though it was a warm
summer-time, and hearing no cries, no noises at all, from the
room behind me. I was too frightened to know how long it was
before the opening of the cottage door made me turn round; but
when I did, I saw your father standing before me in the yellow
moonlight, carrying in his arms the bleeding body of the poor lad
who had shared his food with us and slept on our hearth. Hush!
hush! Don't groan and sob in that way! Stifle it with the
bedclothes. Hush! you'll wake them in the next room!"

"Gabriel--Gabriel!" exclaimed a voice from behind the partition.
"What has happened? Gabriel! let me come out and be with you!"

"No! no!" cried the old man, collecting the last remains of his
strength in the attempt to speak above the wind, which was just
then howling at the loudest; "stay where you are--don't speak,
don't come out--I command you! Gabriel" (his voice dropped to a
faint whisper), "raise me up in bed--you must hear the whole of
it now; raise me; I'm choking so that I can hardly speak. Keep
close and listen--I can't say much more. Where was I?--Ah, your
father! He threatened to kill me if I didn't swear to keep it
secret; and in terror of my life I swore. He made me help him to
carry the body--we took it all across the heath--oh! horrible,
horrible, under the bright moon--(lift me higher, Gabriel). You
know the great stones yonder, set up by the heathens; you know
the hollow place under the stones they call 'The Merchant's
Table'; we had plenty of room to lay him in that, and hide him
so; and then we ran back to the cottage. I never dared to go near
the place afterward; no, nor your father either! (Higher,
Gabriel! I'm choking again.) We burned the pocket-book and the
knapsack--never knew his name--we kept the money to spend.
(You're not lifting me; you're not listening close enough!) Your
father said it was a legacy, when you and your mother asked about
the money. (You hurt me, you shake me to pieces, Gabriel, when
you sob like that.) It brought a curse on us, the money; the
curse has drowned your father and your brother; the curse is
killing me; but I've confessed--tell the priest I confessed
before I died. Stop her; stop Perrine! I hear her getting up.
Take his bones away from the Merchant's Table, and bury them for
the love of God! and tell the priest (lift me higher, lift me
till I am on my knees)--if your father was alive, he'd murder me;
but tell the priest--because of my guilty soul--to pray,
and--remember the Merchant's Table--to bury, and to pray--to pray
always for--"

As long as Perrine heard faintly the whispering of the old man,
though no word that he said reached her ear, she shrank from
opening the door in the partition. But, when the whispering
sounds, which terrified her she knew not how or why, first
faltered, then ceased altogether; when she heard the sobs that
followed them; and when her heart told her who was weeping in the
next room--then, she began to be influenced by a new feeling
which was stronger than the strongest fear, and she opened the
door without hesitation, almost without trembling.

The coverlet was drawn up over the old man; Gabriel was kneeling
by the bedside, with his face hidden. When she spoke to him, he
neither answered nor looked at her. After a while the sobs that
shook him ceased; but still he never moved, except once when she
touched him, and then he shuddered--shuddered under _her_ hand!
She called in his little sisters, and they spoke to him, and
still he uttered no word in reply. They wept. One by one, often
and often, they entreated him with loving words; but the stupor
of grief which held him speechless and motionless was beyond the
power of human tears, stronger even than the strength of human
love.

It was near daybreak, and the storm was lulling, but still no
change occurred at the bedside. Once or twice, as Perrine knelt
near Gabriel, still vainly endeavoring to arouse him to a sense
of her presence, she thought she heard the old man breathing
feebly, and stretched out her hand toward the coverlet; but she
could not summon courage to touch him or to look at him. This was
the first time she had ever been present at a death-bed; the
stillness in the room, the stupor of despair that had seized on
Gabriel, so horrified her, that she was almost as helpless as the
two children by her side. It was not till the dawn looked in at
the cottage window--so coldly, so drearily, and yet so
re-assuringly--that she began to recover her self-possession at
all. Then she knew that her best resource would be to summon
assistance immediately from the nearest house. While she was
trying to persuade the two children to remain alone in the
cottage with Gabriel during her temporary absence, she was
startled by the sound of footsteps outside the door. It opened,
and a man appeared on the threshold, standing still there for a
moment in the dim, uncertain light.

She looked closer--looked intently at him. It was Francois
Sarzeau himself.

CHAPTER II.

The fisherman was dripping with wet; but his face, always pale
and inflexible, seemed to be but little altered in expression by
the perils through which he must have passed during the night.
Young Pierre lay almost insensible in his arms. In the
astonishment and fright of the first moment, Perrine screamed as
she recognized him.

"There, there, there!" he said, peevishly, advancing straight to
the hearth with his burden; "don't make a noise. You never
expected to see us alive again, I dare say. We gave ourselves up
as lost, and only escaped after all by a miracle."

He laid the boy down where he could get the full warmth of the
fire; and then, turning round, took a wicker-covered bottle from
his pocket, and said, "If it hadn't been for the brandy--" He
stopped suddenly--started--put down the bottle on the bench near
him--and advanced quickly to the bedside.

Perrine looked after him as he went; and saw Gabriel, who had
risen when the door was opened, moving back from the bed as
Francois approached. The young man's face seemed to have been
suddenly struck to stone--its blank, ghastly whiteness was awful
to look at. He moved slowly backward and backward till he came to
the cottage wall--then stood quite still, staring on his father
with wild, vacant eyes, moving his hands to and fro before him,
muttering, but never pronouncing one audible word.

Francois did not appear to notice his son; he had the coverlet of
the bed in his hand.

"Anything the matter here?" he asked, as he drew it down.

Still Gabriel could not speak. Perrine saw it, and answered for
him.

"Gabriel is afraid that his poor grandfather is dead," she
whispered, nervously.

"Dead!" There was no sorrow in the tone as he echoed the word.
"Was he very bad in the night before his death happened? Did he
wander in his mind? He has been rather light-headed lately."

"He was very restless, and spoke of the ghostly warnings that we
all know of; he said he saw and heard many things which told him
from the other world that you and Pierre-- Gabriel!" she
screamed, suddenly interrupting herself, "look at him! Look at
his face! Your grandfather is not dead!"

At this moment, Francois was raising his father's head to look
closely at him. A faint spasm had indeed passed over the deathly
face; the lips quivered, the jaw dropped. Francois shuddered as
he looked, and moved away hastily from the bed. At the same
instant Gabriel started from the wall; his expression altered,
his pale cheeks flushed suddenly, as he snatched up the
wicker-cased bottle, and poured all the little brandy that was
left in it down his grandfather's throat.

The effect was nearly instantaneous; the sinking vital forces
rallied desperately. The old man's eyes opened again, wandered
round the room, then fixed themselves intently on Francois as he
stood near the fire. Trying and terrible as his position was at
that moment, Gabriel still retained self-possession enough to
whisper a few words in Perrine's ear. "Go back again into the
bedroom, and take the children with you," he said. "We may have
something to speak about which you had better not hear."

"Son Gabriel, your grandfather is trembling all over," said
Francois. "If he is dying at all, he is dying of cold; help me to
lift him, bed and all, to the hearth."

"No, no! don't let him touch me!" gasped the old man. "Don't let
him look at me in that way! Don't let him come near me, Gabriel!
Is it his ghost? or is it himself?"

As Gabriel answered he heard a knocking at the door. His father
opened it, and disclosed to view some people from the neighboring
fishing village, who had come--more out of curiosity than
sympathy--to inquire whether Francois and the boy Pierre had
survived the night. Without asking any one to enter, the
fisherman surlily and shortly answered the various questions
addressed to him, standing in his own doorway. While he was thus
engaged, Gabriel heard his grandfather muttering vacantly to
himself, "Last night--how about last night, grandson? What was I
talking about last night? Did I say your father was drowned? Very
foolish to say he was drowned, and then see him come back alive
again! But it wasn't that--I'm so weak in my head, I can't
remember. What was it, Gabriel? Something too horrible to speak
of? Is that what you're whispering and trembling about? I said
nothing horrible. A crime! Bloodshed! I know nothing of any crime
or bloodshed here--I must have been frightened out of my wits to
talk in that way! The Merchant's Table? Only a big heap of old
stones! What with the storm, and thinking I was going to die, and
being afraid about your father, I must have been light-headed.
Don't give another thought to that nonsense, Gabriel! I'm better
now. We shall all live to laugh at poor grandfather for talking
nonsense about crime and bloodshed in his sleep. Ah, poor old
man--last night--light-headed--fancies and nonsense of an old
man--why don't you laugh at it? I'm laughing--so light-headed, so
light--"

He stopped suddenly. A low cry, partly of terror and partly of
pain, escaped him; the look of pining anxiety and imbecile
cunning which had distorted his face while he had been speaking,
faded from it forever. He shivered a little, breathed heavily
once or twice, then became quite still.

Had he died with a falsehood on his lips?

Gabriel looked round and saw that the cottage door was closed,
and that his father was standing against it. How long he had
occupied that position, how many of the old man's last words he
had heard, it was impossible to conjecture, but there was a
lowering suspicion in his harsh face as he now looked away from
the corpse to his son, which made Gabriel shudder; and the first
question that he asked, on once more approaching the bedside, was
expressed in tones which, quiet as they were, had a fearful
meaning in them.

"What did your grandfather talk about last night?" he asked.

Gabriel did not answer. All that he had heard, all that he had
seen, all the misery and horror that might yet be to come, had
stunned his mind. The unspeakable dangers of his present position
were too tremendous to be realized. He could only feel them
vaguely in the weary torpor that oppressed his heart; while in
every other direction the use of his faculties, physical and
mental, seemed to have suddenly and totally abandoned him.

"Is your tongue wounded, son Gabriel, as well as your arm?" his
father went on, with a bitter laugh. "I come back to you, saved
by a miracle; and you never speak to me. Would you rather I had
died than the old man there? He can't hear you now--why shouldn't
you tell me what nonsense he was talking last night? You won't? I
say you shall!" (He crossed the room and put his back to the
door.) "Before either of us leave this place, you shall confess
it! You know that my duty to the Church bids me to go at once and
tell the priest of your grandfather's death. If I leave that duty
unfulfilled, remember it is through your fault! _You_ keep me
here--for here I stop till I'm obeyed. Do you hear that, idiot?
Speak! Speak instantly, or you shall repeat it to the day of your
death! I ask again--what did your grandfather say to you when he
was wandering in his mind last night?"

"He spoke of a crime committed by another, and guiltily kept
secret by him," answered Gabriel, slowly and sternly. "And this
morning he denied his own words with his last living breath. But
last night, if he spoke the truth--"

"The truth!" echoed Francois. "What truth?"

He stopped, his eyes fell, then turned toward the corpse. For a
few minutes he stood steadily contemplating it; breathing
quickly, and drawing his hand several times across his forehead.
Then he faced his son once more. In that short interval he had
become in outward appearance a changed man; expression, voice,
and manner, all were altered.

"Heaven forgive me!" he went on, "but I could almost laugh at
myself, at this solemn moment, for having spoken and acted just
now so much like a fool! Denied his words, did he? Poor old man!
they say sense often comes back to light-headed people just
before death; and he is a proof of it. The fact is, Gabriel, my
own wits must have been a little shaken--and no wonder--by what I
went through last night, and what I have come home to this
morning. As if you, or anybody, could ever really give serious
credit to the wandering speeches of a dying old man! (Where is
Perrine? Why did you send her away?) I don't wonder at your still
looking a little startled, and feeling low in your mind, and all
that--for you've had a trying night of it, trying in every way.
He must have been a good deal shaken in his wits last night,
between fears about himself and fears about me. (To think of my
being angry with you, Gabriel, for being a little alarmed--very
naturally--by an old man's queer fancies!) Come out,
Perrine--come out of the bedroom whenever you are tired of it:
you must learn sooner or later to look at death calmly. Shake
hands, Gabriel; and let us make it up, and say no more about what
has passed. You won't? Still angry with me for what I said to you
just now? Ah! you'll think better about it by the time I return.
Come out, Perrine; we've no secrets here."

"Where are you going to?" asked Gabriel, as he saw his father
hastily open the door.

"To tell the priest that one of his congregation is dead, and to
have the death registered," answered Francois. "These are _my_
duties, and must be performed before I take any rest."

He went out hurriedly as he said these words. Gabriel almost
trembled at himself when he found that he breathed more freely,
that he felt less horribly oppressed both in mind and body, the
moment his father's back was turned. Fearful as thought was now,
it was still a change for the better to be capable of thinking at
all. Was the behavior of his father compatible with innocence?
Could the old man's confused denial of his own words in the
morning, and in the presence of his son, be set for one instant
against the circumstantial confession that he had made during the
night alone with his grandson? These were the terrible questions
which Gabriel now asked himself, and which he shrank
involuntarily from answering. And yet that doubt, the solution of
which would, one way or the other, irrevocably affect the whole
future of his life, must sooner or later be solved at any hazard!

Was there any way of setting it at rest? Yes, one way--to go
instantly, while his father was absent, and examine the hollow
place under the Merchant's Table. If his grandfather's confession
had really been made while he was in possession of his senses,
this place (which Gabriel knew to be covered in from wind and
weather) had never been visited since the commission of the crime
by the perpetrator, or by his unwilling accomplice; though time
had destroyed all besides, the hair and the bones of the victim
would still be left to bear witness to the truth--if truth had
indeed been spoken. As this conviction grew on him, the young
man's cheek paled; and he stopped irresolute half-way between the
hearth and the door. Then he looked down doubtfully at the corpse
on the bed; and then there came upon him suddenly a revulsion of
feeling. A wild, feverish impatience to know the worst without
another instant of delay possessed him. Only telling Perrine that
he should be back soon, and that she must watch by the dead in
his absence, he left the cottage at once, without waiting to hear
her reply, even without looking back as he closed the door behind
him.

There were two tracks to the Merchant's Table. One, the longer of
the two, by the coast cliffs; the other across the heath. But
this latter path was also, for some little distance, the path
which led to the village and the church. He was afraid of
attracting his father's attention here, so he took the direction
of the coast. At one spot the track trended inland, winding round
some of the many Druid monuments scattered over the country. This
place was on high ground, and commanded a view, at no great
distance, of the path leading to the village, just where it
branched off from the heathy ridge which ran in the direction of
the Merchant's Table. Here Gabriel descried the figure of a man
standing with his back toward the coast.

This figure was too far off to be identified with absolute
certainty, but it looked like, and might well be, Francois
Sarzeau. Whoever he was, the man was evidently uncertain which
way he should proceed. When he moved forward, it was first to
advance several paces toward the Merchant's Table; then he went
back again toward the distant cottages and the church. Twice he
hesitated thus; the second time pausing long before he appeared
finally to take the way that led to the village.

Leaving the post of observation among the stones, at which he had
instinctively halted for some minutes past, Gabriel now proceeded
on his own path. Could this man really be his father? And if it
were so, why did Francois Sarzeau only determine to go to the
village where his business lay, after having twice vainly
attempted to persevere in taking the exactly opposite direction
of the Merchant's Table? Did he really desire to go there? Had he
heard the name mentioned, when the old man referred to it in his
dying words? And had he failed to summon courage enough to make
all safe by removing--This last question was too horrible to be
pursued; Gabriel stifled it affrightedly in his own heart as he
went on.

He reached the great Druid monument without meeting a living soul
on his way. The sun was rising, and the mighty storm-clouds of
the night were parting asunder wildly over the whole eastward
horizon. The waves still leaped and foamed gloriously: but the
gale had sunk to a keen, fresh breeze. As Gabriel looked up, and
saw how brightly the promise of a lovely day was written in the
heavens, he trembled as he thought of the search which he was now
about to make. The sight of the fair, fresh sunrise jarred
horribly with the suspicions of committed murder that were
rankling foully in his heart. But he knew that his errand must be
performed, and he nerved himself to go through with it; for he
dared not return to the cottage until the mystery had been
cleared up at once and forever.

The Merchant's Table was formed by two huge stones resting
horizontally on three others. In the troubled times of more than
half a century ago, regular tourists were unknown among the Druid
monuments of Brittany; and the entrance to the hollow place under
the stones--since often visited by strangers--was at this time
nearly choked up by brambles and weeds. Gabriel's first look at
this tangled nook of briers convinced him that the place had not
been entered perhaps for years, by any living being. Without
allowing himself to hesitate (for he felt that the slightest
delay might be fatal to his resolution), he passed as gently as
possible through the brambles, and knelt down at the low, dusky,
irregular entrance of the hollow place under the stones.

His heart throbbed violently, his breath almost failed him; but
he forced himself to crawl a few feet into the cavity, and then
groped with his hand on the ground about him.

He touched something! Something which it made his flesh creep to
handle; something which he would fain have dropped, but which he
grasped tight in spite of himself. He drew back into the outer
air and sunshine. Was it a human bone? No! he had been the dupe
of his own morbid terror--he had only taken up a fragment of
dried wood!

Copyright (c) 2007. fullstories.net. All rights reserved.