THE De Witts were cousins of the Gildermans. Nearly all the great
metropolitan plutocratic families were either allied or connected with
one another, and the De Witts and the Gildermans were doubly connected
by marriage in the generation of Gilderman's father.
The De Witts had been building a country-house some little distance out
of the city and not far from the water. The architects and builders and
landscape gardeners had been at work upon it for over a year. It was
now about completed, and it was the intention of the family to open the
house in May. It was not even yet quite furnished, but it was so nearly
so that it was practically inhabitable. The stables had been filled,
and a corps of servants had been sent down under Mrs. Lukens the
housekeeper and Dolan the head-groom. Halliday, the gardener, already
had the green-houses and the palm-house looking as though they had been
in operation for twenty years. The grounds, under the direction of
Mr. Blumenthal, had been laid out in a rather elaborate imitation of
a foreign park. He had planted clumps of oak-trees nearly full-grown,
which he had transplanted at an enormous cost of money and labor. The
arrangement of the clumps of rhododendrons and other flowering shrubs
was, indeed, a work of art. The great park, together with the paddock
and the kitchen-garden, occupied nearly a mile square of ground that
had become very valuable as suburban property. The estate included
several acres of ground in the northwestern suburb of the neighboring
town.
There was very delightful society in the neighborhood: the Laceys,
the Morgans and the Ap-Johns all had country-houses in the immediate
neighborhood.
The De Witts were going down to Brookfield for a last look at the house
before its completion. They had asked Gilderman to go along. He was not
especially interested in the new house; indeed, he had become rather
bored by all the talk and discussion concerning it in the De Witt
household for a year past. He had at first declined to go, and then had
accepted, having nothing else that morning especially to interest or to
occupy him. The party who went down consisted of Tom De Witt and his
mother and two sisters and Sam Tilghman. Tilghman was engaged to be
married to Bertha De Witt, the younger daughter.
Nearly all the trains stopped at Brookfield Junction, so that one
had practically the choice of any time to reach there. It was this
accessibility to the metropolis that made the place so valuable
for suburban-residence purposes. The party went down on the eleven
o'clock express. De Witt had engaged the whole forward section of the
parlor-car, and they were entirely secluded from all the rest of the
train. They saw nobody at all but themselves, excepting the negro
porter; for the conductor collected the tickets of the party from De
Witt's man outside.
Almost as soon as they were safely ensconced in their compartment, Tom
De Witt frankly took out a newspaper from his overcoat pocket and began
to skim through it. He glanced up from it as the train began moving
out of the station, and then instantly resumed his perusal. It took
twenty minutes or more to run down to Brookfield, and De Witt read his
paper nearly all the while. The rest of the party talked together in
a dropping, intermittent sort of a fashion. The De Witt girls had a
bored, tired expression that was habitual with them, and which was due,
perhaps, to the heavy droop of their eyelids and the slight parting of
their lips. They looked very much alike, and were both handsome after a
certain fashion.
The train made no stop short of Brookfield Junction. As it whirled
swiftly and tumultuously past the several stations nearer and nearer to
Brookfield, Gilderman, looking out of the broad plate-glass windows,
could see that the platforms were nearly all more or less crowded with
people.
"I wonder what all the people are waiting for?" he said, at last. "Do
you suppose it has anything to do with that Man they are making such a
stir about?"
"I suppose so," said Tilghman.
"Isn't it dreadful?" said Clara De Witt. "There's Brookfield, such a
nice, quiet place, and now it is all full of these dreadful crowds who
come just to see the Man and to hear Him preach. I think it's perfectly
dreadful. It ought to be stopped; indeed, it ought."
"How the deuce would you stop it, Clara?" said De Witt, looking around
the edge of his newspaper. "The people have a right to go where they
please, so long as they behave themselves."
"I don't care," said Miss De Witt. "If I were in Pilate's place I
wouldn't let these wretched people come crowding after that Man the way
they do. It's dreadful; that's what it is."
Sam Tilghman burst out laughing. "Well, Clara," he said, "we'll put
you up for nomination next time. If we only had you now in the place
of poor old Herod, you'd make things hum, and no mistake, and you'd be
ever so much more proper."
Gilderman listened to the silly, vapid words as though they were
removed from him. He was thinking about the Man himself. How very
interesting it would be if he could really see Him and hear Him speak.
If he chose to go to see Him he might perhaps behold one of those
miraculous cures, and could know for himself whether they were real or
whether they were false.
"Hullo, Henry!" said Tom De Witt, suddenly. "Here's an editorial about
that blind man you were telling us about the other day--that fellow
they turned out of the Church."
"What does it say?" said Gilderman.
De Witt did not offer the paper to Gilderman. He ran his eye down the
editorial. "It doesn't seem to be very complimentary to the bishop," he
said. "The editor fellow seems to think it was no fault of the fellow's
own that he was cured, and that they oughtn't to have turned him out of
the Church just because he got his eyesight back again."
"That wasn't the reason," said Gilderman.
"It's a deuced pretty state of affairs, anyhow," said Tilghman, "if the
bishop isn't fit to decide who's fit to belong to the Church and who's
not fit. If the bishop isn't able to decide, who is able to decide?
Ain't that so, Gildy?"
"I don't know," said Gilderman.
They were coming nearer and nearer to Brookfield. The scattered frame
houses, some of them pretentiously villa-like, grew more and more
frequent. Here and there were newly projected streets sliced out across
the fields.
"You get the first view of the house just beyond here," said Mrs. De
Witt.
Gilderman leaned forward to look out of the window in the direction she
had indicated. The train was passing through a railroad cut through the
side of a little hill. As it swept rapidly out from the cut Gilderman
saw the distant slope of the hill, scattered over with clumps of trees
and bushes. In a thicker cluster of trees at the top of the rise he
could see the white gables and the long façade of the house, with
a glimpse of the conservatories behind it. As he stooped forward,
looking, a thicker cluster of frame houses arose and shut out the view.
The engine whistled hoarsely. Tom De Witt was folding up his newspaper.
The train began to slacken its speed and there was a general bustle of
preparation. De Witt's man came in the car and held his top-coat for
him while he slipped into it. Then he helped Gilderman and then Sam
Tilghman. As Gilderman settled himself into his overcoat and took out
his gloves, he could see through the window the quick-passing glimpse
of streets and thicker and thicker cluster of houses. Now there would
be an open field-like lot and then more houses. There were everywhere
groups of people. They looked up at the train as it rushed past with a
gradually decreasing speed. There was a shrieking of the brakes and a
shuddering of the train as it rapidly approached the station.
"This is Brookfield," said the negro porter, as he flung open the door
with a crash.
With a final shudder and strain, the train stopped in front of a
somewhat elaborately artistic station, the platform of which was filled
with a restless throng of people.
"Oh, what a horrid crowd!" said Bertha De Witt.
"I suppose it's got something to do with that Man we hear so much
about," said Miss De Witt.
"You can't help that," said Tom De Witt. "They have a right to go where
they please, and to crowd as they choose, and so you must just put up
with it."
The colored porter placed a carpet-covered step for them, and helped
the ladies officiously down to the platform. He touched his hat and
bowed elaborately as Gilderman gave him a dollar. The crowd stared at
them as the party descended from the coach. De Witt's man made a way
for them through the throng, and they followed after him across the
platform and through the station and out upon another covered platform
beyond.
"Fetch up the traps as quick as you can, Simpkins," said Tom De Witt.
"Yes, sir," said the man, tipping his hat.
There were a number of hacks and wagons and 'busses occupying the space
in front of the platform. De Witt's landau and dog-cart stood on the
other side of the station in front of a greenstone building that seemed
to be a drug-store and grocery-store combined. De Witt's man bustled
about urging the drivers of the hacks and 'busses to move them out of
the way to make room by the side of the platform. The De Witt party
stood in a little group crowded close together. They talked with one
another in low tones, and the people stood about staring remotely at
them. Mrs. De Witt put up her lorgnette to her eyes and stared back
sweepingly at the crowd. Presently the landau drew up to the platform
with a jingle and clinking of polished chains and bits, a pawing of
hoofs, and a switching of cropped tails. The footman, with breeches so
tight to his legs that they fairly seemed to crack, jumped down and
opened the door.
"You'll go over with the ladies, Sam," said Tom De Witt to Tilghman.
"I'll drive Gilderman myself in the dog-cart."
"All right," said Tilghman, and he stepped briskly in after Bertha De
Witt. The door closed with a crash, the footman jumped up in his place,
and the coach swung out of the way with another jingle of chains to
make room for the dog-cart.
They were all perfectly oblivious of the surrounding crowd, who stood
looking on.
The groom stood at the horse's head while Gilderman stepped into the
cart. De Witt followed him; he swung the horse's head around, and the
groom ran and scrambled up behind into the cart as it rattled away. The
train had begun to draw off from the station. The horse pulled strongly
at the reins, and De Witt drew him in with a flush of red in his thin
cheeks. Gilderman looked back at the station. It appeared flat and low
from the distance, its platform crowded with people. As the train moved
more and more swiftly, the horse began prancing. "Whoa!" said De Witt.
He gave the animal a sharp cut with the whip that made it spring with a
jerk. Then they rattled away briskly and steadily.
From the suburbs you could just catch a glimpse of the ell of the
house. It was surrounded by trees, which were intended in the
summertime to shut out the view of the town entirely. The house looked
out upon the open country and across the low hills towards the wide
water.
"That's the Ap-Johns' place," said De Witt, pointing with his whip.
Gilderman could see a brown villa in the extreme distance.
Then they rattled down the hill and through the great park gates. Two
large linden-trees, which Mr. Blumenthal had had transplanted, stood on
either side of the great gateway and shaded the two gate-houses. There
was a transplanted hedge and a bit of an old wall with carved stone
copings. Mr. Blumenthal had made the gate and the surroundings look as
though they had been standing for a hundred and fifty years.
"How do you like it?" said De Witt.
"Stunning!" said Gilderman.
Tilghman and the ladies were just getting out of the landau as the
dog-cart rattled up to the portico of the main front. Gilderman jumped
out and stood looking about him. The view was beautiful. He had not
seen it since the summer before. He was surprised at the change. When
he had last been there he had looked out upon a rather garish, sloping
meadow open to the sky. There had been a great deal of lumber scattered
about, and the earth was trampled naked and bare. There had been a
mortar-bed, and beyond, down the slope, there had been a fence and a
field, shaggy with long, rusty, feathery grass. Now everything was
trim and neat. A long gravel roadway circled in a great sweep around
a wide spread of lawn, framed in by clumps and clusters of trees and
rhododendron bushes. You got a glimpse of the stream at the bottom of
the slope and a fringe of willows; beyond that a strip of lawnlike
paddock, another hill, and then, far away, a thread of the broad
stretch of water.
The trees were bare of leaves as yet, but Gilderman could see that
it would all be very beautiful in the later spring and summer. They
stood for a while enjoying the view. Then they all went into the
house. Marcy, who was the architect, met them in the hall. With fine
tact, he had not intruded his presence upon them until now. He was a
soft, refined, gentle-spoken man, with a delicate, sensitive, almost
effeminate face. His hair was parted in the middle, and his beard
trimmed to a point. "Well, Mr. De Witt," he said, "I hope you are
satisfied with the final result."
"Yes, indeed, Marcy," said De Witt.
"You have done admirably, Mr. Marcy," said Mrs. De Witt, in her
stateliest manner. Mr. Marcy smiled indefinitely, with another flash of
his white teeth under his brown mustache.
"This hall is stunning," said Gilderman, looking about him.
Marcy turned towards him. "I'm glad you like it, Mr. Gilderman," he
said. "It'll be very much improved when the paintings are hung. I think
the stairway and the landing above is rather a happy inspiration, if I
may say so."
"Stunning!" said Tilghman.
"Where did you get those chairs, De Witt?" said Gilderman.
"Inkerman picked them up for me at the Conti sale. They came from the
Pinazi Palace, you know. Good, ain't they?" and De Witt passed his hand
over the tapestried upholstery almost affectionately.
Just then the housekeeper appeared and dropped a courtesy as she came
in at the library doorway.
"Oh, Mrs. Lukens," said Mrs. De Witt, "I wish you'd have luncheon
promptly at one o'clock. Mr. Gilderman wants to go back to town on the
half-past two o'clock train."
"Yes, ma'am," said Mrs. Lukens, dropping another courtesy, and again
Mr. Marcy smiled with a flash of his beautiful white teeth.
"I'd like to begin by taking you up-stairs, Mr. De Witt," he said.
"Very well," said De Witt. And then the whole party moved across the
hall to begin the inspection of the house.
* * * * *
Gilderman rode back to the station behind the same smart horse, and
with the same groom that had brought him over. The groom drove the
horse very much faster than Tom De Witt had done. As they spun along
the level stretch of road, Gilderman put up his hand, holding his hat
against the wind, the smoke from his cigar blowing back in his eyes.
The groom checked the horse to a walk as they ascended the steep
hill beyond which lay the town. "By-the-way, John," said Gilderman,
suddenly, "there seems to be a good deal of interest hereabouts about
that Man they're talking so much of just now."
The groom glanced quickly, almost suspiciously, at Gilderman, and then
back at the horse again. "Yes, sir," he said. "They do be running
after Him a lot, one way and another, about here."
"What do you think about Him yourself, John?" said Gilderman, curiously.
The man was plainly disinclined to talk. "I don't know, sir," he said.
"I don't know that I think anything at all about Him. It ain't no
concern of mine, sir."
"Then you don't believe in Him?" said Gilderman. "I'd really like to
know."
Again the man glanced swiftly at Gilderman. "I don't know, sir," he
said. And then, after a pause, somewhat cautiously: "He have done some
mighty strange things, sir."
"What do you mean?" said Gilderman, forbearing to look at him.
"Oh, I don't know; but He have been doing some strange things, sir.
There was a man down here a week ago last Sunday as was blind. He just
rubbed some dirt over his eyes, and they do say it cured him."
Gilderman did not say anything as to his knowledge of Tom Kettle.
Presently the groom continued: "There was a man down here was a great
friend of His'n. He died last Tuesday, and they say he wouldn't have
died if He had been here. But He was away and the man died kind of
sudden like. He had been sick, but nobody knowed he was that sick.
They do say the Man could bring him back to life if He chose. I don't
believe in it myself, sir; but that's what they do say. They've got the
dead man in a vault over at the cemetery, and they won't bury him till
the Other has seen him."
"Oh, then He isn't hereabouts?" said Gilderman.
"He was here," said the man; "but He went away last Sunday. They say
He's going down to the city some day soon, and He's making His plans
for it. He was to come back here by noon to-day."
"Oh, then that's why all those crowds were waiting at the stations, I
suppose," said Gilderman.
"Yes, sir," said the groom. "They was waiting to see Him."
"Who was the man who died?" said Gilderman, after a little pause.
"Why, sir, to tell you the honest truth," said the groom, "I've often
seen him, but I don't know much about him. He lived down in yon part
of the village"--pointing with his whip--"with his two sisters. One of
the women appears to be good enough, and nobody says anything against
her, but the other--well, sir, she's been a pretty bad lot, and that's
the truth. They tell me they used to do all they could to keep her to
home, but she wouldn't stay. She's at home now, but she was down in the
city nigh all last winter. Her brother didn't try to make her stay at
home, and he couldn't make her stay if he tried--she's just a bad lot,
and that's all there is of it. They do say she's different now, but you
know what that amounts to with that kind."
Gilderman laughed. The man, now that he was started, was disposed to
be loquacious. The groom shot a quick look at him. They had already
reached the top of the hill. The declivity upon the side stretched
away down to the town, and in the extreme distance Gilderman could
see the low, flat roof of the station. He looked at his watch; it was
twenty-seven minutes past two.
"I'll get you there in good time, sir," said the groom. Then he
chirruped to the horse. The animal gathered itself up with a start and
then sped away down the road past the scattered houses and the embryo
streets staked out across the open fields.
"Did you ever see the Man yourself, John?" said Gilderman, suddenly.
"Yes, sir," said the groom. "Me and Jackson was down in the town last
Wednesday night a week ago. He was teaching there in front of an old
frame church."
"What sort of looking man is He?" said Gilderman; and John, the groom,
answered almost exactly as Latimer-Moire had done one time before.
"Oh, I don't know; He just looks like any other man."
Then they were at the platform of the railroad station. Gilderman
jumped out of the cart. He drew a dollar out of his pocket and gave it
to the man. "Thankee, sir," said the groom, touching his hat with the
finger that held the whip. He waited a little while till Gilderman had
walked away across the platform, then he turned the horse and drove
away.
There were a few scattered people waiting for the train, which was
late. The day, which had been so clear in the morning, had become
overcast and threatening. The wind had become cold and raw. Gilderman
turned up the collar of his overcoat as he walked up and down the
platform.
Suddenly it entered his mind that he would stay over another train.
He might never again have such an opportunity of seeing this Man whom
nearly all the nether world now believed to be divine. He would have
made up his mind to stay only for the latent shame of changing his
plans for such an object. But, after all, if he choose to indulge his
curiosity no one need know. Finally he concluded if there was another
train by a quarter-past three he would stay; if not he would go back
home as he had intended. He would let that decide the question. He went
up to the ticket-office. "What time is the next train for New York?" he
asked.
"Three-twenty-two," said the clerk, without looking up.
Three-twenty-two! Well, that decided it; he would go back to the
city. As he came out upon the platform he heard the thunder of the
approaching train. Then it appeared, coming around the curve. The
brass-work on the huge engine twinkled as it came rushing forward.
There was a screaming of the brakes as the train drew shudderingly up
to the platform. Then there was an instant bustle of people getting
aboard. Gilderman walked forward along the platform to the parlor-car.
"Chair in the parlor-car, sir?" said the conductor, and he nodded his
head.
The conductor preceded him into the car and swung around a revolving
seat for him. At that moment the train began to move. Gilderman was
yet standing close to the door. As the train began moving an instant
determination came over him to stop over, after all. It overmastered
him--why he could not tell. He turned quickly to open the door. It
stuck, and he had some difficulty in pulling it open. The train was
moving more and more swiftly. A brakeman was standing on the platform.
"Look out, sir!" he cried, as he saw Gilderman preparing to jump.
Then Gilderman leaped out upon the platform. He did not know how fast
the train was going until his feet touched the earth. It nearly flung
him prostrate. He regained his balance with a tripping run. The train
swept along the curve and the platform seemed strangely deserted. Then
Gilderman felt very foolish and wished that he had not acted upon his
impulse.
He stood considering for a while, then he walked down along the open
platform to the station. He did not at all know what he should do, now
that he had stayed. In the morning, when he had come up from New York,
there had been a great sign of stir and interest; now everything seemed
unusually quiet. The few people in the neighborhood of the station
seemed almost oblivious of anything but their own affairs. How foolish
had he been to miss his train. A man came to the door of the men's
waiting-room and stood looking at him. Gilderman passed by without
speaking to him--then he suddenly turned back and asked the man whether
He whom he sought was in the town.
"Yes, sir, He is," said the man. "He came an hour or more ago."
"Where is He now?" said Gilderman.
"Well, sir," said the man, "I don't just know. He went down in the
lower part of the town, there, with a great crowd of people."
"Which way did He go?"
"Over yonder," said the man, pointing across the railroad tracks.
Gilderman stood for a moment considering. Should he stay where he was?
It looked very like rain--he hesitated--then again came that strange
propulsion forward, urging him to pursue the undertaking. He crossed
the five or six broad lines of railroad track. He walked down the road
and over the bridge. There was a steep embankment on the other side of
the bridge, and the stream went winding down the level, open lot or
field below. Gilderman wondered whether this was the place where Tom
Kettle had received his sight. He walked on for perhaps a quarter of a
mile without seeing any sign of a crowd. At last he came to a sort of
tobacco-shop that was half a dwelling-house. He hesitated for a moment
or two and then went up the two dirty steps and pushed open the door.
It stuck for a moment, and then suddenly gave way with a loud jangling
of a bell over his head. The bell continued a persistent tink-tinking
for some time. The place was full of a heavy, musty smell that was not
altogether of tobacco. A woman emerged somewhere from an inner room.
Gilderman felt very foolish. Then he asked her if she had seen anything
of the Man whom he sought. He marvelled at the freak of fancy that
seemed to thrust him forward upon his strange quest. It seemed to him
that he was suddenly becoming translated into a different sphere of
life from any that he had ever known before.
The woman stared at him for a moment or two without answering. She had
a frowsy head of hair and a shapeless figure, and was clad in a calico
dress. She told him that a crowd had gone over towards the cemetery;
that the town had been full of people all the morning, and that they
all appeared to have gone over after the Man.
"How far is the cemetery from here?" asked Gilderman.
"About a mile, I reckon."
"A mile?"
"Yes."
Gilderman lingered for a moment. Then he said, "Thank you," and he
opened the door with the same momentary resistance that finally gave
way to a repeated clamorous jangling of the bell. Again he suddenly
realized that he was entering a strange life, such as he had never
before beheld. He stood for a while uncertainly in the street. What
should he do next? He was conscious that the woman was looking at him
from the store window, and he realized how strange and remote he must
appear in these unusual surroundings. He could not go a mile to the
cemetery and back again in time for his train. A negro came driving a
farm wagon down the road towards the station. Gilderman called to the
man, who drew in the horses with a "Whoh!"
"Look here, my man," said Gilderman, "I want to go out to the cemetery,
and I want to get back again in time for the three-twenty-two train. I
will give you five dollars if you will drive me there and back." The
negro made no reply, but he drew up to the sidewalk with alacrity.
Gilderman could see the cemetery from a distance as he approached it.
It was a bleak, cheerless place, and it looked still more bleak and
cheerless under the damp, gray sky above. It was surrounded by a high,
white paling fence, and there was a wide gateway with high wooden
gate-posts, painted white. Through the palings Gilderman could see that
the cemetery was half filled with a dark crowd of people. A straggling
crowd still lingered about the other gateway. There was a ceaseless
hum of many voices. Gilderman thought he heard a voice speaking with
loud tones in the distance. "This will do," he said. "Let me out here,
and wait till I come back." As the negro drew up the farm wagon to the
road-side, Gilderman leaped out over the wheel. He hurried to the gate
of the cemetery, almost running. After he had entered he saw that the
crowd had gathered together beyond a stretch of dead, brown grass, and
between him and them were a number of poor, cheap-looking gravestones
and wooden head-boards and two or three newly made graves. The place
looked squalid and poor. The crowd had grown suddenly silent, as though
listening or waiting. Gilderman walked around the outskirts of the
throng, and then, finding an open place, he pushed his way into it. He
felt a strange eerie excitement taking entire possession of him. In
pushing his way he pressed against the shoulder of a woman. She wore a
plaid shawl, and Gilderman noticed that indescribable, musty, human
smell that seems to belong to the clothes of poor people.
"Good Lord, don't shove so!" said the woman. She moved to one side,
and Gilderman edged his way past her. The press grew more and more
dense the farther he penetrated into it, and now and then he could not
move. By-and-by he could see before him at some little distance that
the crowd surrounded a cavelike vault, and then that the keeper of the
cemetery was opening the door.
Gilderman had almost come to the very centre of the crowd. He could see
the vault very clearly. He wondered, dimly, whether he would be able to
make the three-twenty-two train, and he wished he had asked what time
was the next train. He pushed a little more forward, and then he could
see the faces of those who fronted the vault. Two of them were women,
their eyes red and swollen with crying. Some of those who stood near
them were evidently friends of the family. One of these, a woman, was
crying sympathetically, wiping her eyes with the corner of her shawl.
They were all poor people. One of the two women had that indefinable
look that belongs to a woman of ill repute. She was handsome, after
a certain fashion, but she had that hard expression about the mouth
which there is no mistaking. Now her face was wet and softened with
her crying.
They stood just behind and over against a man whom Gilderman at once
singled out as Him whom he had come to see. Gilderman looked at His
face. Tears were trickling unnoticed down the cheeks; the lips were
moving as though the Man were speaking to himself. But though He was
weeping, Gilderman knew that it was not because of sorrow for the dead
man that He wept.
"Open the door!" cried a loud, clear voice.
Gilderman heard one of the women say: "He has been dead four days and
he stinks."
The Other turned His face slowly towards her, and Gilderman heard Him
say to her: "Did I not tell you that if you would believe you should
see the glory of God?"
The cemetery-keeper had opened the door. Gilderman was watching tensely
and curiously. He wondered what the Other was going to do. He supposed
that some singular funeral ceremony was about to take place.
The Man raised His face and looked up into the gray and cheerless sky.
He began speaking in a loud, distinct voice, but just what He said
Gilderman could not understand. Presently He ceased speaking, and then
followed a perfectly dead and breathless hush. Then, suddenly, in a
loud, piercing voice, He cried out, "Lazarus, come forth!"
Again there was a pause--a pause for a single moment. Those near to
Him stood breathless and motionless. Suddenly there was the sound
of something falling with a loud clatter inside the black depths
of the vault. The cemetery-keeper, who stood near the door, sprang
backward with a shriek. Then a man suddenly appeared at the mouth of
the vault. He stood for a moment at the door of the pit, craning his
neck and peering around with a strange, bewildered look. His white,
lean face was bound about with a cloth, his eyes were somewhat dazed
and bewildered. He plucked at the cloth about his face, and then he
came up out of the vault. All about where Gilderman stood there was a
tumult of shrieks and cries--a violent commotion swept the crowd like
a whirlwind. Gilderman hardly heard it. He saw everything dizzily, as
though it were not real. What did it all mean; was he really seeing a
dreadful miracle performed; were all those people real? Suddenly he
felt some one clutch him and fall, struggling, against him. He looked
down. A woman had fallen in a fit at his feet. Gilderman awoke to
himself with a shock and began to struggle violently backward through
the crowd. He hardly knew what he was doing. He elbowed his way,
struggling and trampling, and striving to get out of the press. He
did not know himself; he was as another man. He knew in his soul that
he had, indeed, seen a miracle--a dreadful, an astounding miracle! He
was in a state of blind terror--terror of what was to happen next.
Presently he found himself out of the thick of the crowd. He ran away
across the graves. The crowd behind him was crying and screaming.
Gilderman found that he was running towards the entrance gateway. Then
he was out of the place. He seemed to breathe more freely. The negro
with the cart was still waiting for him.
"What's the matter over there?" he said. "What have they been doing?"
Gilderman did not reply. He sprang into the wagon. "Anything happened
over there?" the man asked once more. Then he added: "Why, you're as
white as a sheet."
"Can you make the three-twenty-two train?" cried Gilderman.
"I don't know. What time is it now?" said the man.
Gilderman looked at his watch, which he held in a shaking and
trembling hand. "It's a quarter-past three," he said. Had it been only
three-quarters of an hour since he had leaped from the moving train to
the platform?
"I don't know whether I can ketch her now, unless she's late," the man
was saying, but it sounded to Gilderman as though his voice came from a
great distance away.
The train was already at the station when the farm wagon rattled up to
it. As Gilderman stepped aboard of it, it began moving. He took the
first vacant seat that offered; it was in the smoking-car. There was
an all-pervading smell of stale tobacco smoke, and the floor under the
seat was foul with the sprinkling of tobacco ashes. He sat down in the
seat, pulled up his overcoat collar, and drew the brim of his hat over
his eyes; then, folding his arms, he gave himself up to thinking.
He did not know what he thought, and he did not direct his mind at
all. He thought about what he had seen, but the most trivial things
that surrounded him crept into the chinks of his broken and shattered
intelligence. He looked at the plush cover on the seat directly in
front of him--the ply was worn off in the pleats where it was gathered
at the button, and he thought trivially about it; at the same time he
saw the bleak and naked cemetery, with its white paling fence, almost
as though with his very eyes. There was a man just in front of him
smoking a pipe and reading a comic paper printed in colors. There was
a garish caricature of Cæsar on the front page. The man was looking
steadily at it, evidently ruminating upon its import. Gilderman,
staring over his shoulder, tried to see the legend below, but the paper
was too far away from him to decipher it. At the same time he thought
of that man as he had come up peering out of the vault; he could see
him with the eyes of his soul exactly as he looked. He saw the face
almost as vividly as though it really stood before him--a thin, lean
face, the unshaven beard beneath the chin. The man looked as if he had
just climbed out of his coffin; there was something horribly grotesque
about the black clothes and the starched shirt, so exactly like the
clothes an undertaker would have put upon a dead body. The man in the
seat ahead turned over the paper; there was a comic picture of a church
sociable upon the other page. Gilderman looked at it, but at the same
time he thought of the face of the Man who had raised the dead; there
was something dreadful about that, too. Why were the tears running down
the cheeks, and why was He muttering and groaning to Himself?
The cloudy day was rapidly approaching dusk and they were nearing the
tunnels. The brakeman came in and lit the lamp. Gilderman watched him
as he stood straddling between the seats like a colossus. He turned
back the chimney of the brass lamp and then lit it with the match
which he held deftly between his fingers. Gilderman watched him light
the next lamp with the same match. There was something ghastly, when
he came to think of it, about that Man living with the dead man and
his sisters. Was it possible that He could live amid such squalid,
evil surroundings, and yet be divine? Why had He cried and groaned and
muttered? What did it mean? What was He suffering? He did not seem to
have been sorrowing at the death of the other. Had that one really been
dead, or was it all a trick? Then they rushed into the tunnel with a
roar and a sudden obliteration of the outside light.
* * * * *
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.