After Dark

by Wilkie Collins

  CHAPTER II.

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

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

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

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

  Francois did not appear to notice his son; he had the coverlet of thebed 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 hevery bad in the night before his death happened? Did he wander in hismind? He has been rather light-headed lately."

  "He was very restless, and spoke of the ghostly warnings that we allknow of; he said he saw and heard many things which told him fromthe other world that you and Pierre--Gabriel!" she screamed, suddenlyinterrupting herself, "look at him! Look at his face! Your grandfatheris not dead!"

  At this moment, Francois was raising his father's head to look closelyat him. A faint spasm had indeed passed over the deathly face; the lipsquivered, the jaw dropped. Francois shuddered as he looked, and movedaway hastily from the bed. At the same instant Gabriel started from thewall; his expression altered, his pale cheeks flushed suddenly, as hesnatched up the wicker-cased bottle, and poured all the little brandythat was left in it down his grandfather's throat.

  The effect was nearly instantaneous; the sinking vital forces rallieddesperately. 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 stillretained self-possession enough to whisper a few words in Perrine's ear."Go back again into the bedroom, and take the children with you," hesaid. "We may have something to speak about which you had better nothear."

  "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, bedand all, to the hearth."

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

  As Gabriel answered he heard a knocking at the door. His father openedit, and disclosed to view some people from the neighboring fishingvillage, who had come--more out of curiosity than sympathy--to inquirewhether Francois and the boy Pierre had survived the night. Withoutasking any one to enter, the fisherman surlily and shortly answered thevarious questions addressed to him, standing in his own doorway. Whilehe was thus engaged, Gabriel heard his grandfather muttering vacantly tohimself, "Last night--how about last night, grandson? What was I talkingabout last night? Did I say your father was drowned? Very foolish to sayhe was drowned, and then see him come back alive again! But it wasn'tthat--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 andtrembling about? I said nothing horrible. A crime! Bloodshed! I knownothing of any crime or bloodshed here--I must have been frightened outof my wits to talk in that way! The Merchant's Table? Only a big heapof 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'tgive another thought to that nonsense, Gabriel! I'm better now. We shallall live to laugh at poor grandfather for talking nonsense aboutcrime and bloodshed in his sleep. Ah, poor old man--lastnight--light-headed--fancies and nonsense of an old man--why don't youlaugh 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 haddistorted his face while he had been speaking, faded from it forever.He shivered a little, breathed heavily once or twice, then became quitestill.

  Had he died with a falsehood on his lips?

  Gabriel looked round and saw that the cottage door was closed, andthat his father was standing against it. How long he had occupied thatposition, how many of the old man's last words he had heard, it wasimpossible to conjecture, but there was a lowering suspicion in hisharsh face as he now looked away from the corpse to his son, which madeGabriel shudder; and the first question that he asked, on once moreapproaching the bedside, was expressed in tones which, quiet as theywere, 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, allthe misery and horror that might yet be to come, had stunned his mind.The unspeakable dangers of his present position were too tremendous tobe realized. He could only feel them vaguely in the weary torpor thatoppressed his heart; while in every other direction the use of hisfaculties, physical and mental, seemed to have suddenly and totallyabandoned him.

  "Is your tongue wounded, son Gabriel, as well as your arm?" his fatherwent 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 manthere? He can't hear you now--why shouldn't you tell me what nonsensehe was talking last night? You won't? I say you shall!" (He crossedthe room and put his back to the door.) "Before either of us leave thisplace, you shall confess it! You know that my duty to the Church bidsme to go at once and tell the priest of your grandfather's death. If Ileave 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 wanderingin his mind last night?"

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

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

  He stopped, his eyes fell, then turned toward the corpse. For a fewminutes he stood steadily contemplating it; breathing quickly, anddrawing his hand several times across his forehead. Then he facedhis son once more. In that short interval he had become in outwardappearance a changed man; expression, voice, and manner, all werealtered.

  "Heaven forgive me!" he went on, "but I could almost laugh at myself, atthis solemn moment, for having spoken and acted just now so much like afool! Denied his words, did he? Poor old man! they say sense often comesback 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 nowonder--by what I went through last night, and what I have come hometo this morning. As if you, or anybody, could ever really give seriouscredit 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 alittle startled, and feeling low in your mind, and all that--for you'vehad a trying night of it, trying in every way. He must have been a gooddeal shaken in
his wits last night, between fears about himself andfears about me. (To think of my being angry with you, Gabriel, for beinga little alarmed--very naturally--by an old man's queer fancies!) Comeout, 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 hastilyopen the door.

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

  He went out hurriedly as he said these words. Gabriel almost trembledat himself when he found that he breathed more freely, that he felt lesshorribly oppressed both in mind and body, the moment his father's backwas turned. Fearful as thought was now, it was still a change for thebetter to be capable of thinking at all. Was the behavior of his fathercompatible with innocence? Could the old man's confused denial of hisown words in the morning, and in the presence of his son, be set for oneinstant against the circumstantial confession that he had made duringthe night alone with his grandson? These were the terrible questionswhich Gabriel now asked himself, and which he shrank involuntarily fromanswering. And yet that doubt, the solution of which would, one way orthe other, irrevocably affect the whole future of his life, must sooneror 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 theMerchant's Table. If his grandfather's confession had really been madewhile he was in possession of his senses, this place (which Gabriel knewto be covered in from wind and weather) had never been visited sincethe commission of the crime by the perpetrator, or by his unwillingaccomplice; though time had destroyed all besides, the hair and thebones of the victim would still be left to bear witness to the truth--iftruth had indeed been spoken. As this conviction grew on him, the youngman's cheek paled; and he stopped irresolute half-way between the hearthand 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 delaypossessed him. Only telling Perrine that he should be back soon, andthat she must watch by the dead in his absence, he left the cottage atonce, without waiting to hear her reply, even without looking back as heclosed the door behind him.

  There were two tracks to the Merchant's Table. One, the longer of thetwo, by the coast cliffs; the other across the heath. But this latterpath was also, for some little distance, the path which led to thevillage and the church. He was afraid of attracting his father'sattention here, so he took the direction of the coast. At one spot thetrack trended inland, winding round some of the many Druid monumentsscattered over the country. This place was on high ground, and commandeda view, at no great distance, of the path leading to the village, justwhere it branched off from the heathy ridge which ran in the directionof the Merchant's Table. Here Gabriel descried the figure of a manstanding 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. Whenhe moved forward, it was first to advance several paces toward theMerchant's Table; then he went back again toward the distant cottagesand the church. Twice he hesitated thus; the second time pausing longbefore he appeared finally to take the way that led to the village.

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

  He reached the great Druid monument without meeting a living soul on hisway. The sun was rising, and the mighty storm-clouds of the night wereparting asunder wildly over the whole eastward horizon. The waves stillleaped and foamed gloriously: but the gale had sunk to a keen, freshbreeze. As Gabriel looked up, and saw how brightly the promise of alovely day was written in the heavens, he trembled as he thought ofthe search which he was now about to make. The sight of the fair, freshsunrise jarred horribly with the suspicions of committed murder thatwere rankling foully in his heart. But he knew that his errand must beperformed, and he nerved himself to go through with it; for he dared notreturn to the cottage until the mystery had been cleared up at once andforever.

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

  His heart throbbed violently, his breath almost failed him; but heforced himself to crawl a few feet into the cavity, and then groped withhis 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 tightin spite of himself. He drew back into the outer air and sunshine. Wasit a human bone? No! he had been the dupe of his own morbid terror--hehad only taken up a fragment of dried wood!

  Feeling shame at such self-deception as this, he was about to throw thewood from him before he re-entered the place, when another idea occurredto him.

  Though it was dimly lighted through one or two chinks in the stones, thefar part of the interior of the cavity was still too dusky to admitof perfect examination by the eye, even on a bright sunshiny morning.Observing this, he took out the tinder-box and matches, which, like theother inhabitants of the district, he always carried about with him forthe purpose of lighting his pipe, determining to use the piece of woodas a torch which might illuminate the darkest corner of the place whenhe next entered it. Fortunately the wood had remained so long and hadbeen preserved so dry in its sheltered position, that it caught firealmost as easily as a piece of paper. The moment it was fairly aflameGabriel went into the cavity, penetrating at once--this time--to itsfurthest extremity.

  He remained among the stones long enough for the wood to burn downnearly to his hand. When he came out, and flung the burning fragmentfrom him, his face was flushed deeply, his eyes sparkled. He leapedcarelessly on to the heath, over the bushes through which he hadthreaded his way so warily but a few minutes before, exclaiming, "I maymarry Perrine with a clear conscience now; I am the son of as honest aman as there is in Brittany!"

  He had closely examined the cavity in every corner, and not theslightest sign that any dead body had ever been laid there was visiblein the hollow place under the Merchant's Table.