American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
"Then the last thing that I could see as he turned the light out, he
fell forward with his own head pressed into the pillow of the bed.
Something in their company, something in their cowardice, helped me,
and I faced the open doorway of the room, which was outlined fairly
clearly against the dimly lighted passage. I put out one hand and
touched Mrs. Broughton's shoulder in the darkness. But at the last
moment I too failed. I sank on my knees and put my face in the bed.
Only, we all heard. The footsteps came to the door, and there they
stopped. The piece of bone was lying a yard inside the door. There was
a rustle of moving stuff, and the thing was in the room. Mrs. Broughton
was silent: I could hear Broughton's voice praying, muffled in the
pillow: I was cursing my own cowardice. Then the steps moved out again
on the oak boards of the passage, and I heard the sounds dying away. In
a flash of remorse I went to the door and looked out. There at the end
of the corridor was a small bowed figure in a gray veil--I knew it only
too well. But this time there was a pathos in the drooped head that
left me standing with my forehead bowed in shame against the jamb of
the door.
"'You can turn the light on,' I said, and there was an answering flare.
There was no bone at my feet. Mrs. Broughton had fainted. Broughton was
almost useless, and it took me ten minutes to bring her to. Broughton
only said one thing worth remembering. For the most part he went on
muttering prayers. But I was glad afterwards to recollect that he had
said that thing. He said in a colorless voice, half as a question,
half as a reproach, 'You didn't speak to her.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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