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

39 страница из 175

So ran the summer by. The last grapes hung in dried and rotten clusters to the vines; the wind roared distantly; September ended.

One night the dry doctor, Cardiac, said: "I think we'll be through with this before to-morrow evening." He departed, leaving in the house a middle-aged country woman. She was a hard-handed practical nurse.

At eight o'clock Gant returned alone. The boy Steve had stayed at home for ready despatch at Eliza's need; for the moment the attention was shifted from the master.

His great voice below, chanting obscenities, carried across the neighbourhood: as she heard the sudden wild roar of flame up the chimney, shaking the house in its flight, she called Steve to her side, tensely: "Son, he'll burn us all up!" she whispered.

They heard a chair fall heavily below, his curse; they heard his heavy reeling stride across the dining-room and up the hall; they heard the sagging creak of the stair-rail as his body swung against it.

"He's coming!" she whispered, "He's coming! Lock the door, son!"