Page 495 - women-in-love

in her white dress, neat and elegant, even beautiful. There
was a scent of eau-de-cologne in the room. The nurse went
out of the room, Gerald was alone with death, facing the
winter-black landscape.
‘Is there much more water in Denley?’ came the faint
voice, determined and querulous, from the bed. The dying
man was asking about a leakage from Willey Water into one
of the pits.
‘Some more—we shall have to run off the lake,’ said Ger-
ald.
‘Will you?’ The faint voice filtered to extinction. There
was dead stillness. The grey-faced, sick man lay with eyes
closed, more dead than death. Gerald looked away. He felt
his heart was seared, it would perish if this went on much
longer.
Suddenly he heard a strange noise. Turning round, he
saw his father’s eyes wide open, strained and rolling in a
frenzy of inhuman struggling. Gerald started to his feet,
and stood transfixed in horror.
‘Wha-a-ah-h-h-’ came a horrible choking rattle from his
father’s throat, the fearful, frenzied eye, rolling awfully in
its wild fruitless search for help, passed blindly over Gerald,
then up came the dark blood and mess pumping over the
face of the agonised being. The tense body relaxed, the head
fell aside, down the pillow.
Gerald stood transfixed, his soul echoing in horror. He
would move, but he could not. He could not move his limbs.
His brain seemed to re-echo, like a pulse.
The nurse in white softly entered. She glanced at Gerald,

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