"Rives, Hallie Erminie - In the Wake of War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rives Hallie Erminie)

rough, white hair, and two eyes shot with feline yellow, which met his and
wavered away in ferret uneasiness. The likeness clung to him with a wilful
persistence, and he swept his hand impatiently across his eyes as if to banish
the thing that baffled him.



As the two men seated themselves in the lamplight of the great room, which yet
bore the inextinguishable marks of aristocracy, Maxwell became unpleasantly
aware of a huddled object on a sofa, which seemed to create in itself a centre
of attraction. The errand was not a pleasant one, though relieved by the serene
face and low tones that belong to the gentlewoman; but in the lax face of old
Victor Brockman was another elementЧ an element of arrested progress, of piteous
recoilЧ the genius of unconscious despair. It drew Maxwell while it repelled
him. He found himself turning his head to gaze upon it.
He realized in the midst of a genial sentence that the yellow eyes had ceased
their roving, and had settled, fixed and stealthy, upon his face. The
aggravating resemblance again caught his attention.
Thereafter he ceased to be himselfЧ ceased in some inexplicable way to feel his
will and intention master of the situation. The idiot's gaze had got upon his
nerves. He found himself shifting in his seat, pushing his chair back by slow
degrees to bring the sofa between him and it. Now and then he turned his eyes
unwillingly to meet that look: the yellow eyes had ceased to twitch, and now
rested with, it seemed to him, a quiet, dreamy hatred upon his own. The gaze
affected him strangely; it angered him. He felt himself put out by this
meaningless persistence. His smooth sentences flowed with less ease, and he felt
a nervous contraction in the muscles of his throat.
Miss Mary Ann had drawn nearer to the squat occupant of the sofa, and her hand,
trembling unwontedly, he thought, reached out now and then to touch the frayed
sleeve. And surely the lawyer was looking at him closely. Maxwell felt himself
sweating, and yet internally scoffing at this strange mood that had smitten him.

The situation was a simple one, and yet it had suddenly become impossible to
him. He, Brent Maxwell, landowner, dealer in farm properties, had come to
present an official paper for signature. He had done it scores of times, and yet
the usual conversation with which custom softens the unpleasant alternatives of
business failure into kindly and courteous agreement had become suddenly a way
of painЧ a chapter of indefinable reproach. A look of vacant, yellow eyes, grown
steadfast, was making this hour one of loathing and horror.
As the last words were spoken and the necessary signatures were affixed, he
snatched the papers from the lawyer's hands, crushed them into his pocket, and
in sudden revulsion, his tense nerves released, sprang to his feet.
The effect upon the huddled figure opposite him was instantaneous and terrible.
It cringed backward, with a shrinking gesture of fear and agony. Its palsied
arms, shaking and uncertain, wavered before its face. A shriek came from its
lips, but this time not the monotonous, wordless wail of habit, but an
articulate cry: "My God! My head! Don't strike me again!"
Maxwell dimly heard the sobbing cry with which the sister's arms went round the
cowering, abject figure, and the lawyer's abrupt ejaculation of astonishment and
reassurance, as he rushed to the door and flung himself out into the frosty