" And he laughed,
thrusting his head forward into the other's face.
But that laugh started the machinery of the group of waxwork figures
with the wax-white skins. Hank immediately sprang forward with a stream
of oaths so farfetched that Simpson did not recognize them as English at
all, but thought he had lapsed into Indian or some other lingo. He only
realized that Hank's presence, thrust thus between them, was
welcome--uncommonly welcome. Dr. Cathcart, though more calmly and
leisurely, advanced behind him, heavily stumbling.
Simpson seems hazy as to what was actually said and done in those next
few seconds, for the eyes of that detestable and blasted visage peering
at such close quarters into his own utterly bewildered his senses at
first. He merely stood still. He said nothing. He had not the trained
will of the older men that forced them into action in defiance of all
emotional stress. He watched them moving as behind a glass that half
destroyed their reality; it was dreamlike; perverted. Yet, through the
torrent of Hank's meaningless phrases, he remembers hearing his uncle's
tone of authority--hard and forced--saying several things about food and
warmth, blankets, whisky and the rest ... and, further, that whiffs of
that penetrating, unaccustomed odor, vile yet sweetly bewildering,
assailed his nostrils during all that followed.
It was no less a person than himself, however--less experienced and
adroit than the others though he was--who gave instinctive utterance to
the sentence that brought a measure of relief into the ghastly situation
by expressing the doubt and thought in each one's heart.
Pages:
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75