Читать книгу The Oaken Heart онлайн

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Half-way through, when P.Y.C. (who was acting as a sort of lecturer's stooge) was being shown exactly how to make an air-lock entrance, and my mind was running over the suitability of various old curtains on the top shelf of the linen cupboard, I suddenly saw the abyss at our feet as vividly as if I had looked over the side of a house. To realise is one thing but to see is another and I saw that they were talking about a corrosive poison to be sprayed over one civilised people by what was presumed to be another. I wondered if we were all insane and so nearly squeaked aloud, as one does in nightmares sometimes, that I felt the blood rushing into my face with embarrassment. This put me out and I looked around me furtively to see if I had been noticed and saw all the well-known faces turned gravely towards the stage. There was Bill, who had been through the last war and knew something about it, and Charlotte, Albert's wife, with her fine shrewd face and wildish yellow hair, and everyone else, all intensely serious, as they certainly would not have been had they not seen the horror of the situation quite as vividly as I had. They had accepted the danger and were busy finding out what was best to be done about it and it seemed to me that the sooner I wrenched my mind out of its present super-sensitive gear and got it back on to curtains like a reasonable being the better. Clearly whatever was going to happen to Auburn would only be strange in fact. The lighting wasn't going to change much.