Gilderman could not tell his wife where he had been. He was very silent and distraught all the evening. His brain tingled, and he felt that he had endured a terrible, nervous shock. He wished he had not gone to the cemetery. He knew he would not be able to sleep that night, and he did not sleep. He got up and rang the bell, and when his man came he told him to bring him a bottle of soda and some whiskey. He sat up and tried to read the paper and forget what he had seen. He was very tired of it, and wished he could obliterate it from his mind, if only for a little while. Then he went to bed again, and about three o’clock in the morning began to drop off into a broken sleep. But as he would fall asleep he would see that figure again, standing craning its neck against the black background of the vault, and then he would awaken once more with a start only to drop off again and to awaken with another start. His nerves thrilled and his muscles twitched at every sound. He wondered if he were going mad. He realized that he would go mad if he gave way to his religious vagaries. Well, he would have done with such things now and forever; henceforth he would lead a natural, wholesome life as other men of his kind lived; he would give up these monstrous speculations into unrealities–speculations that had led him into such a dreadful experience as that of the afternoon.
XI
NOTHING BUT LEAVES
GILDERMAN awoke in the morning suddenly and keenly wide-awake. The sleep, such as it had been, was of that sort that cuts sharply and distinctly across the thread of life, and for a few moments he could not join the severed skeins of thought that he held in his hand to those which had gone before. There had been something uncomfortable. What was it? Then instantly the broken ends were joined and recollection came like a flash. Oh yes; that was it!
He lay in bed inertly thinking about it. A feeling of stronger and stronger distaste grew up every instant within him, but he made no effort to detach his mind from its thought. By-and-by he found that he hated it; that he was deathly tired of it all; but still he let his thoughts dwell upon it. How unnatural, how unwholesome it had all been, how revolting to all that was sweet and lucid. Again he realized that if he tampered too much with these things he would unhinge his mind. Yesterday he had almost believed that he had seen a miracle; now, in the calmer, saner morning light of a new day, he recognized how impossible it was. It could have been nothing but a hideous trick, devised to deceive those poor, ignorant, superstitious wretches who followed that strange Man and believed in Him. No; it could not have been all a trick, either, for the grief of those two women had been a real grief and not a simulated agony. What had it been? Maybe that other man had had a cataleptic fit. Ach! how ugly it all was–how poor, how squalid. That woman who had fallen against him in a fit–he could conjure up an almost visible picture of how she had looked as she lay struggling upon the ground. She wore coarse yarn stockings, and one of her shoes was burst out at the side. He writhed upon his bed. Ach! he was sick, sick of it. He wished he could think of something pleasanter. He tried to force his mind to think of the great and coming hope of his life. In a little while now he would be a father, and he tried to forecast the joys of his coming paternity. But when he made the attempt he found he could not detach his mind from that other thing.
He got up and rang for his man, who came almost instantly at his call. But even as he dressed he found his mind groping back into the recollections of yesterday.
When he went down-stairs he found that Mrs. Gilderman had not yet come down to breakfast. He picked up the paper, but he did not read it, but went to the window and stood looking out into the street. The sky was still cloudy and gray, and there was a drizzling rain falling. The day seemed to be singularly in keeping with his mood and the strong distaste of life that lay upon him. How wretchedly he had slept the night before–that must be what ailed him now, to make him feel so depressed. It must be lack of sleep. He remembered how he had heard the clock strike four. He was just dropping off into a doze, and he had awakened almost as with a shock at the tinkling, silver stroke of the bell in the next room. He must have fallen asleep soon after that. What was so incomprehensible in the affair of yesterday was the expression of that face looking up to the sky with the tears running down the cheeks. Why did He weep? Oh, if he could only forget it all! He was sick of it–sick almost to a physical repulsion. If he went on thinking about this thing he would certainly go crazy. Again he vowed that he would give up this morbid tampering with and brooding upon religious things; it was not wholesome, and the time would surely come when his mind could no longer stand it. Why did not Florence come down to breakfast? Almost as in answer to the thought he heard the rustle of her dress, and, turning around, he found that she had come into the dining-room. “Why did you not go on with your breakfast, Henry?” she said; “why did you wait?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I wasn’t hungry.”
“What’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?” She looked briefly at him as she sat at her place smoothing back the folds of her morning-gown.