After Dark - Wilkie Collins (affordable ebook reader .txt) š
- Author: Wilkie Collins
- Performer: -
Book online Ā«After Dark - Wilkie Collins (affordable ebook reader .txt) šĀ». Author Wilkie Collins
āAh! woe! woe!ā groaned his grandfather, sinking back exhausted on the pillow. āDarkness to you; but bright as lightning to the eyes that are allowed to see them. Drowned! drowned! Pray for their souls, GabrielāI see the White Women even where I lie, and dare not pray for them. Son and grandson drowned! both drowned!ā
The young man went back to Perrine and the children.
āGrandfather is very ill to-night,ā he whispered. āYou had better all go into the bedroom, and leave me alone to watch by him.ā
They rose as he spoke, crossed themselves before the image of the Virgin, kissed him one by one, and, without uttering a word, softly entered the little room on the other side of the partition. Gabriel looked at his grandfather, and saw that he lay quiet now, with his eyes closed as if he were already dropping asleep. The young man then heaped some fresh logs on the fire, and sat down by it to watch till morning.
Very dreary was the moaning of the night storm; but it was not more dreary than the thoughts which now occupied him in his solitudeāthoughts darkened and distorted by the terrible superstitions of his country and his race. Ever since the period of his motherās death he had been oppressed by the conviction that some curse hung over the family. At first they had been prosperous, they had got money, a little legacy had been left them. But this good fortune had availed only for a time; disaster on disaster strangely and suddenly succeeded. Losses, misfortunes, poverty, want itself had overwhelmed them; his fatherās temper had become so soured, that the oldest friends of Francois Sarzeau declared he was changed beyond recognition. And now, all this past misfortuneāthe steady, withering, household blight of many yearsāhad ended in the last, worst misery of allāin death. The fate of his father and his brother admitted no longer of a doubt; he knew it, as he listened to the storm, as he reflected on his grandfatherās words, as he called to mind his own experience of the perils of the sea. And this double bereavement had fallen on him just as the time was approaching for his marriage with Perrine; just when misfortune was most ominous of evil, just when it was hardest to bear! Forebodings, which he dared not realize, began now to mingle with the bitterness of his grief, whenever his thoughts wandered from the present to the future; and as he sat by the lonely fireside, murmuring from time to time the Church prayer for the repose of the dead, he almost involuntarily mingled with it another prayer, expressed only in his own simple words, for the safety of the livingāfor the young girl whose love was his sole earthly treasure; for the motherless children who must now look for protection to him alone.
He had sat by the hearth a long, long time, absorbed in his thoughts, not once looking round toward the bed, when he was startled by hearing the sound of his grandfatherās voice once more.
āGabriel,ā whispered the old man, trembling and shrinking as he spoke, āGabriel, do you hear a dripping of waterānow slow, now quick againāon the floor at the foot of my bed?ā
āI hear nothing, grandfather, but the crackling of the fire, and the roaring of the storm outside.ā
āDrip, drip, drip! Faster and faster; plainer and plainer. Take the torch, Gabriel; look down on the floorālook with all your eyes. Is the place wet there? Is it the rain from heaven that is dropping through the roof?ā
Gabriel took the torch with trembling fingers and knelt down on the floor to examine it closely. He started back from the place, as he saw that it was quite dryāthe torch dropped upon the hearthāhe fell on his knees before the statue of the Virgin and hid his face.
āIs the floor wet? Answer me, I command youāis the floor wet?ā asked the old man, quickly and breathlessly.
Gabriel rose, went back to the bedside, and whispered to him that no drop of rain had fallen inside the cottage. As he spoke the words, he saw a change pass over his grandfatherās faceāthe sharp features seemed to wither up on a sudden; the eager expression to grow vacant and death-like in an instant. The voice, too, altered; it was harsh and querulous no more; its tones became strangely soft, slow, and solemn, when the old man spoke again.
āI hear it still,ā he said, ādrip! drip! faster and plainer than ever. That ghostly dropping of water is the last and the surest of the fatal signs which have told of your fatherās and your brotherās deaths to-night, and I know from the place where I hear itāthe foot of the bed I lie onāthat it is a warning to me of my own approaching end. I am called where my son and my grandson have gone before me; my weary time in this world is over at last. Donāt let Perrine and the children come in here, if they should awakeāthey are too young to look at death.ā
Gabrielās blood curdled when he heard these wordsāwhen he touched his grandfatherās hand, and felt the chill that it struck to his ownāwhen he listened to the raging wind, and knew that all help was miles and miles away from the cottage. Still, in spite of the storm, the darkness, and the distance, he thought not for a moment of neglecting the duty that had been taught him from his childhoodāthe duty of summoning the priest to the bedside of the dying. āI must call Perrine,ā he said, āto watch by you while I am away.ā
āStop!ā cried the old man. āStop, Gabriel; I implore, I command you not to leave me!ā
āThe priest, grandfatherāyour confessionāā
āIt must be made to you. In this darkness and this hurricane no man can keep the path across the heath. Gabriel, I am dyingāI should be dead before you got back. Gabriel, for the love of the Blessed Virgin, stop here with me till I dieāmy time is shortāI have a terrible secret that I must tell to somebody before I draw my last breath! Your ear to my mouthāquick! quick!ā
As he spoke the last words, a slight noise was audible on the other side of the partition, the door half opened, and Perrine appeared at it, looking affrightedly into the room. The vigilant eyes of the old manāsuspicious even in deathācaught sight of her directly.
āGo back!ā he exclaimed faintly, before she could utter a word; āgo backāpush her back, Gabriel, and nail down the latch in the door, if she wonāt shut it of herself!ā
āDear Perrine! go in again,ā implored Gabriel. āGo in, and keep the children from disturbing us. You will only make him worseāyou can be of no use here!ā
She obeyed without speaking, and shut the door again.
While the old man clutched him by the arm, and repeated, āQuick! quick! your ear close to my mouth,ā Gabriel heard her say to the children (who were both awake), āLet us pray for grandfather.ā And as he knelt down by the bedside, there stole on his ear the sweet, childish tones of his little sisters, and the soft, subdued voice of the young girl who was teaching them the prayer, mingling divinely with the solemn wailing of wind and sea, rising in a still and awful purity over the hoarse, gasping whispers of the dying man.
āI took an oath not to tell it, Gabrielālean down closer! Iām weak, and they mustnāt hear a word in that roomāI took an oath not to tell it; but death is a warrant to all men for breaking such an oath as that. Listen; donāt lose a word Iām saying! Donāt look away into the room: the stain of blood-guilt has defiled it forever! Hush! hush! hush! Let me speak. Now your fatherās dead, I canāt carry the horrid secret with me into the grave. Just remember, Gabrielātry if you canāt remember the time before I was bedridden, ten years ago and moreāit was about six weeks, you know, before your motherās 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 lateāonly nine oāclock. 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 themāyour father wasnāt 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 didnāt 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, andāandāGabriel! Iām sinkingādrink! something to drinkāIām parched with thirst.ā
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:
āHe 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-pocketāthere was a tear in one of the sides of the book, and through the hole some banknotes bulged out. I saw them, and so did your father (donāt move away, Gabriel; keep close, thereās 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 didnāt like. Heād been behaving very bitterly and desperately toward us for some time past, being soured about poverty, and your motherās 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 didnāt 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 fatherāas indeed we all were at that timeābut I couldnāt make up my mind to go far from the house; I was afraid of something happening, though I didnāt dare to think what. I donāt know how it was, but I stole back in about ten minutes on tiptoe to the cottage; I looked in at the window, and sawāO God! forgive him! O God! forgive me!āI sawāIāmore to drink, Gabriel! I canāt speak againāmore to drink!ā
The voices in the next room had ceased; but in the minute of
Comments (0)