After Dark

by Wilkie Collins

  CHAPTER III.

  "I may marry Perrine with a clear conscience now!"

  There are some parts of the world where it would be drawing no naturalpicture of human nature to represent a son as believing conscientiouslythat an offense against life and the laws of hospitality, secretlycommitted by his father, rendered him, though innocent of allparticipation in it, unworthy to fulfill his engagement with hisaffianced wife. Among the simple inhabitants of Gabriel's province,however, such acuteness of conscientious sensibility as this was noextraordinary exception to all general rules. Ignorant and superstitiousas they might be, the people of Brittany practiced the duties ofhospitality as devoutly as they practiced the duties of the nationalreligion. The presence of the stranger-guest, rich or poor, was a sacredpresence at their hearths. His safety was their especial charge, hisproperty their especial responsibility. They might be half starved, butthey were ready to share the last crust with him, nevertheless, as theywould share it with their own children.

  Any outrage on the virtue of hospitality, thus born and bred in thepeople, was viewed by them with universal disgust, and punished withuniversal execration. This ignominy was uppermost in Gabriel's thoughtsby the side of his grandfather's bed; the dread of this worst dishonor,which there was no wiping out, held him speechless before Perrine,shamed and horrified him so that he felt unworthy to look her in theface; and when the result of his search at the Merchant's Table provedthe absence there of all evidence of the crime spoken of by the oldman, the blessed relief, the absorbing triumph of that discovery, wasexpressed entirely in the one thought which had prompted his firstjoyful words: He could marry Perrine with a clear conscience, for he wasthe son of an honest man!

  When he returned to the cottage, Francois had not come back. Perrinewas astonished at the change in Gabriel's manner; even Pierre and thechildren remarked it. Rest and warmth had by this time so far recoveredthe younger brother, that he was able to give some account of theperilous adventures of the night at sea. They were still listening tothe boy's narrative when Francois at last returned. It was nowGabriel who held out his hand, and made the first advances towardreconciliation.

  To his utter amazement, his father recoiled from him. The variabletemper of Francois had evidently changed completely during his absenceat the village. A settled scowl of distrust darkened his face as helooked at his son.

  "I never shake hands with people who have once doubted me," heexclaimed, loudly and irritably; "for I always doubt them forever after.You are a bad son! You have suspected your father of some infamy thatyou dare not openly charge him with, on no other testimony than therambling nonsense of a half-witted, dying old man. Don't speak to me!I won't hear you! An innocent man and a spy are bad company. Go anddenounce me, you Judas in disguise! I don't care for your secret or foryou. What's that girl Perrine doing here still? Why hasn't she gone homelong ago? The priest's coming; we don't want strangers in the house ofdeath. Take her back to the farmhouse, and stop there with her, if youlike; nobody wants you here!"

  There was something in the manner and look of the speaker as he utteredthese words, so strange, so sinister, so indescribably suggestive of hismeaning much more than he said, that Gabriel felt his heart sink withinhim instantly; and almost at the same moment this fearful questionforced itself irresistibly on his mind: might not his father havefollowed him to the Merchant's Table?

  Even if he had been desired to speak, he could not have spoken now,while that question and the suspicion that it brought with it wereutterly destroying all the re-assuring hopes and convictions of themorning. The mental suffering produced by the sudden change frompleasure to pain in all his thoughts, reacted on him physically. He feltas if he were stifling in the air of the cottage, in the presence of hisfather; and when Perrine hurried on her walking attire, and with a facewhich alternately flushed and turned pale with every moment, approachedthe door, he went out with her as hastily as if he had been flyingfrom his home. Never had the fresh air and the free daylight felt likeheavenly and guardian influences to him until now!

  He could comfort Perrine under his father's harshness, he could assureher of his own affection, which no earthly influence could change, whilethey walked together toward the farmhouse; but he could do no more. Hedurst not confide to her the subject that was uppermost in his mind; ofall human beings she was the last to whom he could reveal the terriblesecret that was festering at his heart. As soon as they got within sightof the farmhouse, Gabriel stopped; and, promising to see her again soon,took leave of Perrine with assumed ease in his manner and with realdespair in his heart. Whatever the poor girl might think of it, he felt,at that moment, that he had not courage to face her father, and hear himtalk happily and pleasantly, as his custom was, of Perrine's approachingmarriage.

  Left to himself, Gabriel wandered hither and thither over the openheath, neither knowing nor caring in what direction he turned his steps.The doubts about his father's innocence which had been dissipated by hisvisit to the Merchant's Table, that father's own language and manner hadnow revived--had even confirmed, though he dared not yet acknowledge somuch to himself. It was terrible enough to be obliged to admit that theresult of his morning's search was, after all, not conclusive--thatthe mystery was, in very truth, not yet cleared up. The violence of hisfather's last words of distrust; the extraordinary and indescribablechanges in his father's manner while uttering them--what did thesethings mean? Guilt or innocence? Again, was it any longer reasonable todoubt the death-bed confession made by his grandfather? Was it not, onthe contrary, far more probable that the old man's denial in the morningof his own words at night had been made under the influence of apanic terror, when his moral consciousness was bewildered, and hisintellectual faculties were sinking? The longer Gabriel thought of thesequestions, the less competent--possibly also the less willing--he feltto answer them. Should he seek advice from others wiser than he? No;not while the thousandth part of a chance remained that his father wasinnocent.

  This thought was still in his mind, when he found himself once more insight of his home. He was still hesitating near the door, when he saw itopened cautiously. His brother Pierre looked out, and then came runningtoward him. "Come in, Gabriel; oh, do come in!" said the boy, earnestly."We are afraid to be alone with father. He's been beating us for talkingof you."

  Gabriel went in. His father looked up from the hearth where he wassitting, muttered the word "Spy!" and made a gesture of contempt but didnot address a word directly to his son. The hours passed on in silence;afternoon waned into evening, and evening into night; and still he neverspoke to any of his children. Soon after it was dark, he went out, andtook his net with him, saying that it was better to be alone on the seathan in the house with a spy.

  When he returned the next morning there was no change in him. Dayspassed--weeks, months, even elapsed, and still, though his mannerinsensibly became what it used to be toward his other children, it neveraltered toward his eldest son. At the rare periods when they now met,except when absolutely obliged to speak, he preserved total silence inhis intercourse with Gabriel. He would never take Gabriel out with himin the boat; he would never sit alone with Gabriel in the house; hewould never eat a meal with Gabriel; he would never let the otherchildren talk to him about Gabriel; and he would never hear a word inexpostulation, a word in reference to anything his dead father had saidor done on the night of the storm, from Gabriel himself.

  The young man pined and changed, so that even Perrine hardly knew himagain, under this cruel system of domestic excommunication; under thewearing influence of the one unchanging doubt which never left him; and,more than all, under the incessant reproaches of his own conscience,aroused by the sense that he was evading a responsibility which it washis solemn, his immediate duty to undertake. But no sting of conscience,no ill treatment at home, and no self-reproaches for failing in hisduty of confession as a good Catholic, were powerful enough in theirinfluence over Gabriel to make him disclose the secret, under theoppression of which his very life
was wasting away. He knew that if heonce revealed it, whether his father was ultimately proved to be guiltyor innocent, there would remain a slur and a suspicion on the family,and on Perrine besides, from her approaching connection with it, whichin their time and in their generation could never be removed. Thereproach of the world is terrible even in the crowded city, where manyof the dwellers in our abiding-place are strangers to us--but it is farmore terrible in the country, where none near us are strangers, whereall talk of us and know of us, where nothing intervenes between us andthe tyranny of the evil tongue. Gabriel had not courage to face this,and dare the fearful chance of life-long ignominy--no, not even to servethe sacred interests of justice, of atonement, and of truth.