After Dark

by Wilkie Collins

  Before Lomaque could look up from the paper to observe the impressionwhich his news produced, Rose had gained her brother's side and waskissing him in a flutter of delight.

  "Dear Louis," she cried, clapping her hands, "let me be the first tocongratulate you! How proud and glad I am! You accept the professorship,of course?"

  Trudaine, who had hastily and confusedly put his letter back in hispocket the moment Lomaque began to read, seemed at a loss for an answer.He patted his sister's hand rather absently, and said:

  "I have not made up my mind; don't ask me why, Rose--at least not now,not just now." An expression of perplexity and distress came over hisface, as he gently motioned her to resume her chair.

  "Pray, is a sub-professor of chemistry supposed to hold the rank of agentleman?" asked Madame Danville, without the slightest appearance ofany special interest in Lomaque's news.

  "Of course not," replied her son, with a sarcastic laugh; "he isexpected to work and make himself useful. What gentleman does that?"

  "Charles!" exclaimed the old lady, reddening with anger.

  "Bah!" cried Danville, turning his back on her, "enough of chemistry.Lomaque, now you have begun reading the newspaper, try if you can't findsomething interesting to read about. What are the last accounts fromParis? Any more symptoms of a general revolt?"

  Lomaque turned to another part of the paper. "Bad, very bad prospectsfor the restoration of tranquillity," he said. "Necker, the people'sMinister, is dismissed. Placards against popular gatherings are postedall over Paris. The Swiss Guards have been ordered to the ChampsElysees, with four pieces of artillery. No more is yet known, but theworst is dreaded. The breach between the aristocracy and the people iswidening fatally almost hour by hour."

  Here he stopped and laid down the newspaper. Trudaine took it from him,and shook his head forebodingly as he looked over the paragraph whichhad just been read.

  "Bah!" cried Madame Danville. "The People, indeed! Let those four piecesof artillery be properly loaded, let the Swiss Guards do their duty, andwe shall hear no more of the People!"

  "I advise you not to be sure of that," said her son, carelessly; "thereare rather too many people in Paris for the Swiss Guards to shootconveniently. Don't hold your head too aristocratically high, mother,till we are quite certain which way the wind really does blow. Who knowsif I may not have to bow just as low one of these days to King Mob asever you courtesied in your youth to King Louis the Fifteenth?"

  He laughed complacently as he ended, and opened his snuff-box. Hismother rose from her chair, her face crimson with indignation.

  "I won't hear you talk so--it shocks, it horrifies me!" she exclaimed,with vehement gesticulation. "No, no! I decline to hear another word. Idecline to sit by patiently while my son, whom I love, jests at the mostsacred principles, and sneers at the memory of an anointed king. This ismy reward, is it, for having yielded and having come here, againstall the laws of etiquette, the night before the marriage? I comply nolonger; I resume my own will and my own way. I order you, my son, toaccompany me back to Rouen. We are the bridegroom's party, and we haveno business overnight at the house of the bride. You meet no more tillyou meet at the church. Justin, my coach! Lomaque, pick up my hood.Monsieur Trudaine, thanks for your hospitality; I shall hope toreturn it with interest the first time you are in our neighborhood.Mademoiselle, put on your best looks to-morrow, along with your weddingfinery; remember that my son's bride must do honor to my son's taste.Justin! my coach--drone, vagabond, idiot, where is my coach?"

  "My mother looks handsome when she is in a passion, does she not, Rose?"said Danville, quietly putting up his snuff-box as the old lady sailedout of the room. "Why, you seem quite frightened, love," he added,taking her hand with his easy, graceful air; "frightened, let me assureyou, without the least cause. My mother has but that one prejudice, andthat one weak point, Rose. You will find her a very dove for gentleness,as long as you do not wound her pride of caste. Come, come, on thisnight, of all others, you must not send me away with such a face asthat."

  He bent down and whispered to her a bridegroom's compliment, whichbrought the blood back to her cheek in an instant.

  "Ah, how she loves him--how dearly she loves him!" thought her brother,watching her from his solitary corner of the room, and seeing the smilethat brightened her blushing face when Danville kissed her hand atparting.

  Lomaque, who had remained imperturbably cool during the outbreak ofthe old lady's anger--Lomaque, whose observant eyes had watchedsarcastically the effect of the scene between mother and son on Trudaineand his sister, was the last to take leave. After he had bowed to Rosewith a certain gentleness in his manner, which contrasted strangely withhis wrinkled, haggard face, he held out his hand to her brother "I didnot take your hand when we sat together on the bench," he said; "may Itake it now?"

  Trudaine met his advance courteously, but in silence. "You may alteryour opinion of me one of these days." Adding those words in a whisper,Monsieur Lomaque bowed once more to the bride and went out.

  For a few minutes after the door had closed the brother and sister keptsilence. "Our last night together at home!" That was the thought whichnow filled the heart of each. Rose was the first to speak. Hesitating alittle as she approached her brother, she said to him, anxiously:

  "I am sorry for what happened with Madame Danville, Louis. Does it makeyou think the worse of Charles?"

  "I can make allowance for Madame Danville's anger," returned Trudaine,evasively, "because she spoke from honest conviction."

  "Honest?" echoed Rose, sadly, "honest?--ah, Louis! I know you arethinking disparagingly of Charles's convictions, when you speak so ofhis mother's."

  Trudaine smiled and shook his head; but she took no notice of thegesture of denial--only stood looking earnestly and wistfully into hisface. Her eyes began to fill; she suddenly threw her arms round hisneck, and whispered to him: "Oh, Louis, Louis! how I wish I could teachyou to see Charles with my eyes!"

  He felt her tears on his cheek as she spoke, and tried to reassure her.

  "You shall teach me, Rose--you shall, indeed. Come, come, we must keepup our spirits, or how are you to look your best to-morrow?"

  He unclasped her arms, and led her gently to a chair. At the same momentthere was a knock at the door, and Rose's maid appeared, anxiousto consult her mistress on some of the preparations for the weddingceremony. No interruption could have been more welcome just at thattime. It obliged Rose to think of present trifles, and it gave herbrother an excuse for retiring to his study.

  He sat down by his desk, doubting and heavy-hearted, and placed theletter from the Academy of Sciences open before him.

  Passing over all the complimentary expressions which it contained, hiseye rested only on these lines at the end: "During the first three yearsof your professorship, you will be required to reside in or near Parisnine months out of the year, for the purpose of delivering lectures andsuperintending experiments from time to time in the laboratories." Theletter in which these lines occurred offered him such a position asin his modest self-distrust he had never dreamed of before; the linesthemselves contained the promise of such vast facilities for carryingon his favorite experiments as he could never hope to command in hisown little study, with his own limited means; and yet, there he nowsat doubting whether he should accept or reject the tempting honors andadvantages that were offered to him--doubting for his sister's sake!

  "Nine months of the year in Paris," he said to himself, sadly; "and Roseis to pass her married life at Lyons. Oh, if I could clear my heart ofits dread on her account--if I could free my mind of its forebodings forher future--how gladly I would answer this letter by accepting the trustit offers me!"

  He paused for a few minutes, and reflected. The thoughts that were inhim marked their ominous course in the growing paleness of his cheek,in the dimness that stole over his eyes. "If this cleaving distrust fromwhich I cannot free myself should be in very truth the mute prophecy ofevil to come--to come, I know not when--i
f it be so (which God forbid!),how soon she may want a friend, a protector near at hand, a ready refugein the time of her trouble! Where shall she then find protection orrefuge? With that passionate woman? With her husband's kindred andfriends?"

  He shuddered as the thought crossed his mind, and opening a blank sheetof paper, dipped his pen in the ink. "Be all to her, Louis, that I havebeen," he murmured to himself, repeating his mother's last words, andbeginning the letter while he uttered them. It was soon completed. Itexpressed in the most respectful terms his gratitude for the offermade to him, and his inability to accept it, in consequence of domesticcircumstances which it was needless to explain. The letter was directed,sealed; it only remained for him to place it in the post-bag, lying nearat hand. At this last decisive act he hesitated. He had told Lomaque,and he had firmly believed himself, that he had conquered all ambitionsfor his sister's sake. He knew now, for the first time, that he hadonly lulled them to rest--he knew that the letter from Paris had arousedthem. His answer was written, his hand was on the post-bag, and at thatmoment the whole struggle had to be risked over again--risked when hewas most unfit for it! He was not a man under any ordinary circumstancesto procrastinate, but he procrastinated now.

  "Night brings counsel; I will wait till to-morrow," he said to himself,and put the letter of refusal in his pocket, and hastily quitted thelaboratory.