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

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The negro girl, blubbering, had fled inward.

"This looks worse than it is," observed Dr. McGuire, laying the hero upon the lounge. "Some hot water, please." Nevertheless, it took two hours to bring him round. Every one spoke highly of the horse.

"He had more sense than the nigger," said Gant, wetting his thumb.

But all this, as Eliza knew in her heart, was part of the plan of the Dark Sisters. The entrails had been woven and read long since: the frail shell of skull which guarded life, and which might have been crushed as easily as a man breaks an egg, was kept intact. But Eugene carried the mark of the centaur for many years, though the light had to fall properly to reveal it.

When he was older, he wondered sometimes if the Hilliards had issued from their high place when he had so impiously disturbed the order of the manor. He never asked, but he thought not: he imagined them, at the most, as standing superbly by a drawn curtain, not quite certain what had happened, but feeling that it was something unpleasant with blood in it.