And the awful little creature's screams would be going
on all the time making the blackness and dead silence of the house
below more filled with horror by contrast-more shut off and at the
same time more likely to waken to some horror which was new.
"I-I couldn't-even if I wanted to!" she quaked. "I daren't!
I daren't! I wouldn't do it--for A MILLION POUNDS?" And she flung
herself down again shuddering and burrowing her head under the
coverings and pillows she dragged over her ears to shut out the
sounds.
The screams had taken on a more determined note and a fiercer
shrillness which the still house heard well and made the most of,
but they were so far deadened for Feather that she began beneath
her soft barrier to protest pantingly.
"I shouldn't know what to do if I went. If no one goes near her
she'll cry herself to sleep. It's--it's only temper. Oh-h! what
a horrible wail! It--it sounds like a--a lost soul!"
But she did not stir from the bed. She burrowed deeper under the
bed clothes and held the pillow closer to her ears.
* * * * *
It did sound like a lost soul at times. What panic possesses
a baby who cries in the darkness alone no one will ever know and
one may perhaps give thanks to whatever gods there be that the baby
itself does not remember. What awful woe of sudden unprotectedness
when life exists only through protection--what piteous panic in
the midst of black unmercifulness, inarticulate sound howsoever
wildly shrill can neither explain nor express.
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