Jesus Christ -- Fiction; Religious fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
"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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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