Читать книгу Look Homeward, Angel. A Story of the Buried Life онлайн

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"They call him Back-us everywhere else," said Will, including them all in a brisk wink, "but here in the family we call him Behind-us."

"I suppose," said Major Pentland deliberately, "that you've served on a great many juries?"

"No," said Oliver, determined to endure the worst now with a frozen grin. "Why?"

"Because," said the Major, looking around again, "I thought you were a fellow who'd done a lot of courtin'."

Then, amid their laughter, the door opened, and several of the others came in—Eliza's mother, a plain, worn Scotchwoman, and Jim, a ruddy porcine young fellow, his father's beardless twin, and Thaddeus, mild, ruddy, brown of hair and eye, bovine, and finally Greeley, the youngest, a boy with lapping idiot grins, full of strange squealing noises at which they laughed. He was eleven, degenerate, weak, scrofulous, but his white moist hands could draw from a violin music that had in it something unearthly and untaught.

And as they sat there in the hot little room with its warm odour of mellowing apples, the vast winds howled down from the hills, there was a roaring in the pines, remote and demented, the bare boughs clashed. And as they peeled, or pared, or whittled, their talk slid from its rude jocularity to death and burial: they drawled monotonously, with evil hunger, their gossip of destiny, and of men but newly lain in the earth. And as their talk wore on, and Gant heard the spectre moan of the wind, he was entombed in loss and darkness, and his soul plunged downward in the pit of night, for he saw that he must die a stranger—that all, all but these triumphant Pentlands, who banqueted on death—must die.