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

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There was nothing but the white living silence.

"Ah me! Ah me!" he sighed with strong self-pity, then burst into forced snuffling sobs, which furnished a running accompaniment to his denunciation. "Merciful God!" he wept, "it's fearful, it's awful, it's croo-el. What have I ever done that God should punish me like this in my old age?"

There was no answer.

"Cynthia! Cynthia!" he howled suddenly, invoking the memory of his first wife, the gaunt tubercular spinstress whose life, it was said, his conduct had done nothing to prolong, but whom he was fond of supplicating now, realising the hurt, the anger he caused to Eliza by doing so. "Cynthia! O Cynthia! Look down upon me in my hour of need! Give me succour! Give me aid! Protect me against this fiend out of Hell!"

And he continued, weeping in heavy snuffling burlesque: "O-boo-hoo-hoo! Come down and save me, I beg of you, I entreat you, I implore you, or I perish."

Silence answered.

"Ingratitude, more fierce than brutish beasts," Gant resumed, getting off on another track, fruitful with mixed and mangled quotation. "You will be punished, as sure as there's a just God in heaven. You will all be punished. Kick the old man, strike him, throw him out on the street: he's no good any more. He's no longer able to provide for the family—send him over the hill to the poorhouse. That's where he belongs. Rattle his bones over the stones. Honour thy father that thy days may be long. Ah, Lord!