drip, drip! Faster and faster; plainer and plainer. Take the torch, Gabriel; look down on the floor — look with all your eyes. Is the place wet there? Is it the rain from heaven that is dropping through the roof?”
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 dry — the torch dropped upon the hearth — he fell on his knees before the statue of the Virgin and hid his face.
“Is the floor wet? Answer me, I command you — is the floor wet?” 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 grandfather’s face — the sharp features seemed to wither up on a sudden; the eager expression to grow vacant and deathlike 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.
“I hear it still,” he said, “drip! 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 father’s and your brother’s deaths tonight, and I know from the place where I hear it — the foot of the bed I lie on — that 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. Don’t let Perrine and the children come in here, if they should awake — they are too young to look at death.”
Gabriel’s blood curdled when he heard these words — when he touched his grandfather’s hand, and felt the chill that it struck to his own — when 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 childhood — the duty of summoning the priest to the bedside of the dying. “I must call Perrine,” he said, “to watch by you while I am away.”
“Stop!” cried the old man. “Stop, Gabriel; I implore, I command you not to leave me!”
“The priest, grandfather — your confession — ”
“It must be made to you. In this darkness and this hurricane no man can keep the path across the heath. Gabriel, I am dying — I should be dead before you got back. Gabriel, for the love of the Blessed Virgin, stop here with me till I die — my time is short — I have a terrible secret that I must tell to somebody before I draw my last breath! Your ear to my mouth — quick! quick!”
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 man — suspicious even in death — caught sight of her directly.
“Go back!” he exclaimed faintly, before she could utter a word; “go back — push her back, Gabriel, and nail down the latch in the door, if she won’t shut it of herself!”
“Dear Perrine! go in again,” implored Gabriel. “Go in, and keep the children from disturbing us. You will only make him worse — you can be of no use here!”
She obeyed without speaking, and shut the door again.
While the old man clutched him by the arm, and repeated, “Quick! quick! your ear close to my mouth,” Gabriel heard her say to the children (who were both awake), “Let us pray for grandfather.” 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.
“I took an oath not to tell it, Gabriel — lean down closer! I’m weak, and they mustn’t hear a word in that room — I took an oath not to tell it; but death is a warrant to all men for breaking such an oath as that. Listen; don’t lose a word I’m saying! Don’t look away into the room: the stain of blood-guilt has defiled it forever! Hush! hush! hush! Let me speak. Now your father’s dead, I can’t carry the horrid secret with me into the grave. Just remember, Gabriel — try if you can’t remember the time before I was bedridden, ten years ago and more — it was about six weeks, you know, before your mother’s 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 late — only nine o’clock. 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 neighbours would take him out fishing with them — your father wasn’t liked by any of the neighbours. 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 didn’t 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, and — and — Gabriel! I’m sinking — drink! something to drink — I’m parched with thirst.”
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:
“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 pocketbook, which your father picked up and gave him back; and he put it in his coatpocket — there 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 (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 toward 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 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 tiptoe to the cottage; I 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 now ensued, Gabriel heard his sisters kissing Perrine, and wishing her goodnight. They were all three trying to go asleep 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 toward the house,