Suicide and madness,
obscure and hideous maladies of the brain herded in it. Perhaps, after
all, there had been some value in those old fairy stories. And he
remembered, with a faint movement of impatience, Francey Wilmot's final
shaft: "If there isn't a God you'll have to make one up." But even if a
man were to juggle with his own integrity, turn charlatan, there was no
faith-serum which you could inject into a patient's veins.
Cosgrave sat limply in his stall, and by the reflected light from the
stage Stonehouse could see his look of wan indifference. He was no
better. All day long he lay on his bed in the small spare room Robert
had given him and stared up at the white ceiling. There was a crack,
running zig-zag from the window to the door, which reminded him, so he
said, of a river in Angola, a beastly slimy thing trailing through
mosquito-infested swamps and villainous-tangled jungles. When he dozed
it became real, and he felt the heat descend on him like a sticky hand,
and heard the menacing drone of the mosquitoes and the splash of oars as
unfriendly natives who had tracked him along the water's edge shot out
suddenly from under the shadow of the mango trees in their long
boats--deadly and swift as striking adders.
And then, near the door, the river broke off--poured into the open
sea--or fell over a cataract--he did not know what--and he woke up with a
sweating start and took his medicine. He was so painstakingly docile
about his medicine that Robert Stonehouse guessed he had no faith in it.
Pages:
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244