Had he possessed one chum, to whom he could pour out this agony and who in turn could have jolted him back into a normal perspective, Jeb might have faced the issue with coolness and even gladness, as millions of other fellows were doing. But he had started wrong, and the farther he stumbled down the wrong road the harder it was to struggle back. Each hour he had let himself be confronted with agonizing thoughts of pain and death--strangling in the cruel embrace of the one, or being drawn whimpering into the mysterious uncertainty of the other; vivid prospects, these, that drew him into a state of dumb hysteria. He loathed himself, he loathed everything about him, until the untoward tomorrows were nearly effaced by the self-torment of todays. To be caught between the two was an endless terror--since tomorrows are always tomorrows, and todays face us with every dawn. Trembling at the uncertainties ahead, he longed for that peace which is only found in the finalities of yesterdays. With anguished eyes he peered into the future, and wrung his hands impotently.
When he heard Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie coming up to say goodnight, he slipped between the sheets and remained impassive while they fussed about, touching the pillow here or patting the coverlet there. At last, alone for the night, he crossed silently to the door and locked it; then drew a chair to the window and gazed moodily out into the trees, one of whose branches brushed the sill on which he leaned.
There was an agitation in the leaves that seemed to whisper eerie things to him; they were stirred by some invisible emotion--by fear, he thought. To his mind all nature was trembling before the great human sacrifice about to be demanded of this fair land; and he imagined other trees, forests upon forests of them, vines, flowers, grasses--aye, mountains and gorges, even--being obsessed by this same dumb shivering. "The world is shivering," he whispered. He was shivering! How long, he wondered, must it be before this quietly shivering world would burst into a raging frenzy, as these trees within touch of him had been whipped by storms of unbridled passion! He recalled a storm in the previous summer, when green leaves torn from their stems were driven before the hurricane and plastered on these very window panes above his head. He likened it to a man-made fury, wherein pieces of human body would be blown about with the same unrelenting indifference.