Kitabı oku: «Rejected of Men», sayfa 7

“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.

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.

“Oh yes,” he said, “I’m all right. No, I don’t feel very well. How are you this morning, Florence?”

“Oh, I feel very well, indeed.”

She held up her face as he passed behind her, and he bent over and kissed it. Then a sudden feeling of straining pity for her coming motherhood seized him. He hesitated for a moment, and then he took her face in both his hands and, raising it, kissed it again. She laughed and blushed a little. “What is it, Henry?” she said.

“Nothing,” he answered, and then he went around to his place.

The waiter offered him a dish of fruit, but he shook his head. “Fetch me a cup of coffee,” he said.

“Aren’t you going to eat anything?” said Mrs. Gilderman as the man poured out a black stream of coffee into a cup.

“No; I’m not hungry.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing; only I didn’t sleep very well. Maybe I’ll eat something by-and-by down at the club.”

He had almost finished his cup of coffee, and had just opened the paper, when the man came in to say that Mr. Furgeson was down-stairs and wanted to know if he could see Mr. Gilderman. Furgeson was one of Gilderman’s agents, and he had gone down the day before to the Lenning sale to buy a famous hunter and two road-horses.

“Furgeson?” said Gilderman. Then he remembered that he had commissioned him to buy the roan mare. “Oh yes,” he said. “Show him into the study and tell him I’ll be down directly.” Furgeson must have bought Lady Maybell at the sale, then. As Gilderman recollected the beautiful horse and thought that she was now his own, he felt a distinct and positive ray of pleasure shoot athwart the gloomy mood of his mind. Lady Maybell was something worth having, at any rate–something that would bring a wholesome pleasure to him.

“What does Furgeson come to see you about, Henry?” asked Mrs. Gilderman.

“Well, I intended it for a surprise,” said Gilderman, “but I may as well tell you now. He went down to the sale at Mountain Brook Farm yesterday. I sent him down to buy Lady Maybell. There was a pair of road-horses, too, I thought would do for the Graystone stable.”

“Lady Maybell!” cried out Mrs. Gilderman. “Oh, I’m so glad you’ve bought Lady Maybell, Henry.”

Gilderman laughed. “Don’t be in too much of a hurry, my dear. Maybe Furgeson hasn’t bought the horse, after all.” He felt sure in his own mind, however, that his agent had bought the horse, and it made him very happy to think of it. He clung to the sense of pleasure all the more closely because he recognized that it made him forget that other thing. It was something pleasant, and he let himself take pleasure in it. He finished his cup of coffee and then went down into the study. Furgeson was sitting by the table, silently and patiently awaiting his coming. He arose as Gilderman came in, and stood holding his hat in his hand.

“Well, Furgeson,” said Gilderman, “I suppose you bought Lady Maybell yesterday. Where is she? At the stable?”

“Why–no, sir,” said Furgeson, “I didn’t buy her.”

Gilderman stood, suddenly struck motionless. Not buy the horse! What did the man mean? Why had he not bought the horse? Had there been no sale? Then the dreadful thought grew slowly into his mind. Was it possible that Lady Maybell was not to be his, after all–that he had missed obtaining what he wanted? “What!” he cried out, “you didn’t buy the horse as I told you to do? Why didn’t you buy her?”

“Why, you see, Mr. Gilderman,” said Furgeson, “Dawson–that’s Mr. Dorman-Webster’s man–was there. He ran the price up against me until six thousand dollars was bid. The horse ain’t worth the half of that, and I was afraid to go any more.”

Gilderman still stood motionless. The sudden and utter disappointment had fallen on him like a blow, and had struck down and shattered asunder all the gladness that had come to him. Was he, then, not to have Lady Maybell, after all? Was, then, this pleasure to be taken away from him? It seemed to him, almost as with an agony, that he never wanted anything so badly as he wanted that horse. There was a feeling within him that was almost like despair. What had possessed Furgeson that he had not done what he had been bidden to do? A sudden fury of anger flamed up within Gilderman. “Do you mean to tell me,” he cried, “that you didn’t buy that horse when I especially told you to buy her?” He found that his throat was choking, and as soon as he began to speak the violent rush of rage seemed to sweep him away. “Why, confound you!” he cried out, “what do you mean by coming and coolly telling me such a thing as that? What do you suppose I sent you down to Mountain Brook for?”

“I didn’t know what to do, Mr. Gilderman,” said the man. “The horse wasn’t worth the half of six thousand dollars, and I was afraid to bid any more. If I’d paid that for her and you hadn’t been satisfied–”

“Confound you!” burst out Gilderman, cutting him short. He was so furious that he hardly knew what he was saying, and he stuttered as he spoke. “Confound you! I didn’t send you down there to ap-appraise the horse, did I? I sent you down there to buy the horse, not to put a price on her. It was none of your confounded business if I chose to pay a hundred thousand dollars for her–your business was to buy her, as I told you to do.” He stood glaring at the man, his bosom panting. Furgeson stood perfectly silent, looking down into his hat. “The trouble with you is, Furgeson,” he cried out, harshly, “you’ve got too confounded much Scotch caution to suit me.” He wanted to say something savage, but that was all that came into his mind. It seemed to him to be very inadequate. “You can’t be my agent,” he said, “if you don’t do as I tell you. You’d better go now.”

“I bought the two roadsters at a bargain, sir,” said Furgeson.

“Damn the roadsters! I didn’t care anything about them.” Gilderman went straight back to the breakfast-room. What should he do; he could not bear to lose that horse. He tried to comfort himself by thinking that he owned a half-dozen horses finer and more valuable than Lady Maybell; but he found no comfort in the thought. He wanted Lady Maybell; she would have exactly suited Florence next fall, and he could not bear to have her so snatched away from him. Would Dorman-Webster sell her? Suppose he should go to him and tell him that Florence wanted the horse. Dorman-Webster was very fond of Florence; maybe he would let him have Lady Maybell for her sake. All this he thought as he walked to the dining-room. “What do you think, Florence?” he burst out, as soon as he came into the room. “That fool of a Furgeson did not buy Lady Maybell, after all.”

“Oh, Henry!” cried Mrs. Gilderman.

“Dorman-Webster’s man was there and bid against Furgeson, and Furgeson funked when the other fellow ran the price up to six thousand, and let the chance of getting her go.”

“Six thousand dollars! Lady Maybell wasn’t worth that much; was she, Henry?”

“Perhaps not; but it was the horse I wanted, and not the money.”

“It’s too bad,” said Mrs. Gilderman. “Mr. Furgeson ought to have done as you told him.”

“Of course he ought,” said Gilderman. “Confounded, stupid Scotchman!” But he felt a distinct feeling of comfort in Mrs. Gilderman’s sympathy.

“Maybe Mr. Dorman-Webster will be willing to sell her to you,” said Mrs. Gilderman.

“I don’t believe he will,” said Gilderman. Nevertheless, a sudden ray of hope came into his mind. “I’ll tell you what; I’ll ask him and see what he says,” he added. He looked at his watch. “Let me see; there’s a business meeting or something down at the International this morning. Maybe, if I go around there now, I’ll catch him before he goes down-town.”

He did find Mr. Dorman-Webster at the club. One of the club servants was just in the act of helping the old gentleman on with his overcoat. Gilderman plunged directly into the business upon which he had come. “My dear boy,” said Mr. Dorman-Webster, settling himself into his overcoat and straightening the collar, “I can’t sell you the horse. The fact is, Edith–(Edith was his youngest daughter)–Edith fell in love with the horse last summer. No matter how high your man had bid, I was bound to have the animal.”

“I’ll give you seven thousand dollars for her,” said Gilderman, making a last effort.

Mr. Dorman-Webster shook his head, smiling. “Can’t do it,” he said. And then, almost in Gilderman’s own words that morning: “It isn’t the money I want; I want the horse.”

Then he went away, leaving Gilderman full of a bitter disappointment that seemed to blacken all his life. He had not hoped for much, but now he hoped for nothing. He was not to have the horse, after all, and his heart fell away with despair. Why, oh, why had not Furgeson bought her in?

He went up into the reading-room and sat himself down in a chair and picked up a paper. As he did so, Latimer-Moire came into the room. “Hello, Gildy!” he called out. “You’re in for it, my boy!”

“In for it! In for what?” said Gilderman. “What do you mean?” He had a dreadful feeling that something else was going to happen amiss to him. Then he recollected what it must be–the yacht-race. It came to him like a flash. Yesterday was the day of the yacht-race. In the things that had happened to him he had forgotten about it. Had that also gone wrong? It could not be.

“Why, didn’t you hear?” said Latimer-Moire. “The cablegram came half an hour ago, and it’s posted up on the bulletin-board. La Normandie beat the Syrinx one minute twenty seconds, time allowance.”

Was it then true? Gilderman’s heavy heart fell away like a plummet to a still lower depth. It was not the loss of the money he had bet Ryan, but the argument they had had before all those fellows. They had all been against him, and he had been very angry and excited. He had been very positive that the Syrinx would win. What a bitter shame to be proved to have been in the wrong, after all. How could he bear to acknowledge to all those fellows that he had been in the wrong? But even yet he could not accept such defeat. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “There’s a mistake. Why, just look at the Syrinx’s time against the Petrel, and the La Normandie’s time against the Majestic.”

Latimer-Moire burst out laughing. “What’s the use of arguing now, Gildy?” he said. “Facts are facts, and the fact in this case is that Tommy Ryan and the rest of us were right and that you were wrong. Come, Gildy, knuckle under and eat your humble-pie like a man.”

“I’ll not knuckle under till I have to,” said Gilderman, savagely. “I believe there is some mistake in the cablegram, and I’ll keep on believing it till I have proof to the contrary.”

Again Latimer-Moire burst out laughing. “By Jove! Gildy, I didn’t believe the loss of a five-thousand-dollar bet would hit you in such a sore spot.”

Gilderman was so angry at being misunderstood that he did not know what to do. He shut his teeth closely. He wanted to say something savage, but he could think of nothing to say. He got up and flung down the paper, and, without another word, went into the smoking-room beyond. There were three or four men gathered at the farther window sitting looking out into the street and talking together. There was no one at the window nearest him, and he pulled up a chair and sat down, resting his feet on the window-sill and pulling his hat down over his eyes. Then he gave himself up utterly to the black gloom of the mood that lay upon him. What was there in life that was worth the living? Nothing–nothing. Everything went wrong, and there was not a single thing to give pleasure to him. How miserably depressed and gloomy he felt. What could he do to escape it? Such moods as this had come upon him before, but it seemed to him that they had never before been as black as this. It must be the wretched night he had passed that made him so depressed.

He tried to fix his mind upon some higher and nobler thought–something to lift his spirit out of its depths. He almost prayed as he sat there, feeling about in the gloomy mood for some standing place whereon to rest. But he could find nothing whereon to rest. He could not lift himself into any ray of brightness out of the vapors that beset him. Why the mischief had not Furgeson bought Lady Maybell yesterday; then he would not have been suffering as he was now suffering. And the yacht-race–confound it!–if he only hadn’t been led into that argument it would not have been so hard to bear.

Suddenly some one tapped him with a cane from behind upon the top of the hat. He turned his head sharply and saw that it was Palliser. “Hey-o, Gildy!” he said, “La Normandie’s beat Syrinx. Did you see?”

Again that blind and sudden anger flamed up in Gilderman’s heart. “Well, what if she did?” said he, almost savagely. “Is that any reason for you to come around, like a fool, knocking me over the head with your cane?” He took off his hat as he spoke, smoothed the nap with his coat-sleeve, and then put it back very carefully upon his head.

Palliser stood staring at him. “By Jove! Gildy,” he said, almost blankly; and then he asked, “Feeling rusty this morning?”

“Rusty!” said Gilderman. “No, I’m not rusty, but I don’t like a fellow to come knocking my hat over my eyes with his walking-stick.”

Palliser did not reply. He moved awkwardly over to the window and stood there for a while looking out into the street. Somehow the young fellow did not like to go away directly as though acknowledging that he was snubbed. For a while there was silence, except for a sudden burst of laughter from the men at the farther window. “By-the-way, Gildy,” said Palliser, as though suddenly recollecting something, “I was down at the Mountain Brook sale yesterday. Dorman-Webster’s man kind of knocked your man out, didn’t he, eh?”

Gilderman aroused himself almost violently. Why couldn’t the man let him alone. “See here, Palliser,” he said, “I don’t want to be rude, but I ain’t feeling well, and I wish you’d let me alone. I’ve got a headache, and don’t feel well.”

“Bilious?” inquired Palliser.

“Oh, I don’t know. I just want to be let alone–that’s all.”

“Oh, all right. I’ll let you alone,” said Palliser, and then he moved away and joined the group at the farther window, and presently Gilderman heard his high tenor voice sounding through the distant talk.

Again Gilderman sat by himself, feeling very miserable. He was ashamed of himself for being so angry, and yet he could not repent it. What should he do? He did not want to go home at this hour of the day; it would be very dull and stupid. And yet if he stayed any longer at the club all the men would be presently coming in, and he knew perfectly well that each would have something in turn to say either about the yacht-race or the Mountain Brook sale. He could not bear it. Where could he go to escape?

Then suddenly, for some unaccountable reason, the thought of the face of Him whom he had seen the day before flashed upon his mind. Was there any truth at all in what was said about Him? Maybe that Man could help him. Why not go and find Him and speak to Him? A dull, latent acknowledgment of the absurdity of the sudden notion that had seized him lay inertly beneath the thought, but the thought itself had somehow seized upon him very closely, just as it had seized upon him the day before. Why not go and find this strange Man and talk with Him? Anyhow, it would be something to do to distract him from thinking about his disappointments, and he would escape the annoyance of meeting the men as they came into the club. Maybe to-morrow, after he had had a good night’s sleep, he could better bear meeting and answering them. Just now this other thing would give him something to do.

He aroused himself and jerked back his chair. He looked at his watch and saw that it was half-past twelve. Then he went up into the dining-room and ordered himself a breakfast. As he sat looking up, passively, at Norcott’s great picture of the nude Venus surrounded by a flock of naked, fluttering Cupids, he again inertly made up his mind that he would go down to Brookfield by the two-twenty train. “Anyhow,” he repeated to himself, “it will give me something to do.” Then the waiter came, bringing the cocktail that he had ordered.