The first sight of her soulless face broke him like a thunderbolt.
Tears came gushing from him in shattered rain. He drew her hands prayer-wise across her bosom, and fell across her body, loving it, clutching at it. He could not cling, but he sank by the bed and spilled his limbs along the floor in a brief death.
As if his soul had run after hers to make sure that it got home safe.
CHAPTER LI
All this while Keith had stood watching, as motionless as a statue, and with as little will.
He had opened the door just as his father bent and kissed his mother through her hair. He had understood what was being done, and saw that his intervention was too late. He could not save his mother as he had planned. He had to watch her hands blindly fighting for escape, and to abstain from help. He could not rescue his father from that ineffable guilt, or rob him of his divine prerogative.
He felt as if he had stumbled upon a parental nakedness and must be forever accursed; but he could move neither forward nor back, to prevent or retreat.
The first thing that recalled his power to move was the touch of Aletta, the widow of David Junior. After hours on a rack of sympathy, she had fallen asleep at last with the covers stuffed over her ears to shut out the wails of her husband’s mother, whom she had learned to call “Mamma.”
The silence had startled her awake, the strange unusual peace, the deep comfort of the absence of outcry. She had leaped from the bed and hurried barefoot to the room.
She encountered Keith rigid on the sill and, glancing past, saw RoBards on the floor. She thought he had fallen asleep from exhaustion. In the bed Patty lay blissful.