Captures - Kostenloses Hörbuch

3 §

Christmas night—wild and windy, a shower spattering down in the street; Late—299 walking two yards before his wife, their son walking two yards behind his mother. A light figure, furred to the ears, in a doorway watching for them.

“Come along, darling. Sorry we had to bring him.”

“Of course you had to, Jack!”

“Look! He can’t even walk with mother. It’s a disease. He went to church to-day, and all through the sermon never took his eyes off—the poor old vicar nearly broke down.”

“What was it about?”

“Brotherly love. Mother says he doesn’t mean it—but it’s like—what’s that thing that stares?”

“A basilisk. I’ve been trying to put myself in his place, Jack. He must have swallowed blood and tears in there—ordered about like a dog, by common men, for three years nearly. If you don’t go under, you must become inhuman. This is better than if he’d come out crawling.”

“Perhaps. Look out—the rain! I’ll turn your hood up, darling.” A spattering shower, the whispering hushed....

A lighted open doorway, a red hall, a bunch of hanging mistletoe, a girl beneath, with bushy hair.

“Happy Christmas, Father!”

“Thanks. Do you want to be kissed?”

“As you like. Well, Mother darling! Hallo, you two! Come in! Roddy, take father’s coat.”

“How are you, sir? Beastly weather!”

“That was the advantage we had in prison. Weather never troubled us. ‘Peace and Goodwill’ in holly-berries! Very neat! They used to stick them up in there. Christianity is a really remarkable fraud, don’t you think?” ...

Once again those four in the street; and the bells chiming for midnight service.

“What an evening!”

“Let them get out of hearing, Jack.”

“Worse than ever! My God, he’d turn the milk sour! And I thought liquor might make him possible. He drank quite a lot.”

“Only a few days now, and then!...”

“Do you agree with mother that he doesn’t mean it, Mabel?”

“Oh, yes, I do.”

“The way he sits and smiles! Why doesn’t he get himself a desert to smile in?”

“Perhaps he does....”