‘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 pocket-book, 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 towards 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 the 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 tip-toe to the cottage; and 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 flow ensued, Gabriel heard his sisters kissing Perrine, and wishing her good night. They were all three trying to go to sleep 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 towards 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 bed-clothes. 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 go near the place afterwards; no, nor your father either! (Higher, Gabriel! I’m choking again.) We burnt 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’m 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 hesitating—almost without trembling.
The coverlid 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 then 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 endeavouring to arouse him to a sense of her presence, she thought she heard the old man breathing feebly, and stretched out her hand towards the coverlid; 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 deathbed; 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 reassuringly—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!
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 recognised 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 François 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 coverlid 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 that 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.
François 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 François, 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 neighbouring 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 for ever. 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 am obeyed. Do you hear that, idiot?
Speak! Speak instantly, or you shall repent 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 François. ‘What truth?’
He stopped, his eyes fell, then turned towards 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 dea
th 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 François. ‘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 behaviour 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.