The completeness of his isolation was not due merely to external forces combined with physical and mental exhaustion. The hollow spaces of his imagination were filled with ghostly hints of an unendurable crime. In the caverns of his thought was no pageant of people or of things. No words or echoes of words sounded through the dim, unexplorable vaults. Everywhere within there was the look of sacrilege by bloodshed, the faint unendurable replication of dying groans. The marks of a red hand were on all the walls, the last moans of a murdered man filled the concave gloom.
He had heard that man Blake give his evidence freely, almost jauntily. He had seen that other man lying dead in the disordered room. As he had listened to the evidence of Blake, he had felt the air about his head grow cold with awe, while his whole frame froze with terror. All the people in the room where that accursed tale was told believed instinctively that this man, talking with such odious glibness, was a perjurer and an assassin.
Ugh! It was horrible--too horrible for a sane human being to dwell upon! He would give all he had in the world to be able to banish the memory of the past few days from his mind. But a curse had fallen upon him, and now no other event of all his life would stay with him for one brief minute to keep him away from this awful scene.
When in that room where the inquest was held he had felt very cold. Now he was hot, uncomfortably hot. This was strange; for there he had been under cover, and there had been a fire in the room. Here not only was he in the open air, but under a fierce downpour of rain. Indeed it was one of the greatest storms of rain he had ever been out in. The rain was useful in one way--it would cool him.
Ah, that was much better! To take off his hat and let the cool rain beat on his bare head was a luxury--a delicious luxury. It was indeed a luxury such as he had wished for in vain a little while ago; for it not only took away the great, unaccountable heat from which he would otherwise have suffered most severely, but, better a thousandfold, it kept his mind from running on the events of a few days back, and this day in particular. The effect of rain falling on his bare head was to banish thought from the brain, and give the brain rest.
What an extraordinary thing the brain was! Awhile ago he had been able to recall hardly any of the circumstances of the inquest; then they all rushed into his mind, causing him great disquietude; and now the mere falling of rain on his uncovered head had put him into a wholesome and almost pleasant state of mind!
The heat was gradually getting less. Yes, there could be no mistake about that. A few minutes since it seemed as though it would take hours to reduce the temperature to the degree it had already reached. Keeping the hat off was no longer necessary. In fact, it was no longer comfortable to go uncovered. He would put on his hat.
He was wet through now--thoroughly wet. He must have been soaked before that great heat came upon him. It was very extraordinary that he should feel so hot while the water was absolutely running down under his clothes.
Ah, a chill now! Unmistakably a chill, and he could see no sign of human habitation anywhere--no place which could afford him shelter. In fact, he could make nothing whatever out except the rain, and that was revealed to him by the sense of touch, not by the sense of sight. How cold the rain was, too! He had never felt rain so cold. The air must then be twenty degrees colder than it had been a few minutes ago. He had never until now experienced so sudden a fall of temperature.
He was shivering, too. His teeth were chattering. How delighted he would be to find any kind of shelter, and a good fire to warm himself at! This was very lonely and wretched. He was hardly able to walk now, and yet with his present chill anything was better than to stand. The thought of sitting down was out of the question. No one but a madman would sit down in such rain, and with clothes soaked through. He had been miserably wrong to uncover his head for so long a time. To that foolish act must be attributed this chill. Ugh! he was barely able to stagger along. This was the most dismal night he had ever passed in all his life.