And tie his jaw up," the servant said.
_His_ eyes! _His_ jaw! I was terribly angry, in my desolation. But it
was a futile anger, though it raged through me like a storm. Could they
not understand, would they never understand, that they were grotesquely
deceived? How much longer would they continue to fuss over that body on
the bed while I, _I_, the person whom they were supposed to be sorry
for, suffered and trembled in dire need just behind them?
A ridiculous bother over pennies! There was only one penny in the house,
they decided, after searching. I knew the exact whereabouts of two
shillings worth of copper, rolled in paper in my desk in the
dining-room. It had been there for many weeks; I had brought it home
one day from the works. But they did not know. I wanted to tell them, so
as to end the awful exacerbation of my nerves. But of course I could
not. In spite of Mary's superstitious protest, my wife put a penny on
one eye and half-a-crown on the other. Mary seemed to regard this as a
desecration, or at best as unlucky. Then they bound up the jaw of that
body with one of my handkerchiefs. I thought I had never seen anything
more wantonly absurd.
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