After Dark eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 503 pages of information about After Dark.

After Dark eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 503 pages of information about After Dark.
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.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
After Dark from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.