The Scarecrow and Other Stories Part 48

He remembered the gla.s.s of cider and the piece of bread.

He could not bring himself to move to-night.

He felt the suffocating weight of the stillness crowding past him. It was expanding menacingly throughout the small room. It filled in all about him.

Presently old man Efferts would finish his pipe and would get up and shamble out of the door. He would sit there and watch him go as he always watched, wondering if perhaps old man Efferts was not real. And then he would stumble up to bed and lie awake and listen to the stillness that grew greater and greater.

He wanted the relief from that silence; wanted it desperately; pa.s.sionately.

He remembered that if he told Efferts of that thing that he had come so near forgetting in the smothering quiet that he would have what he so frantically wanted. Some human speech. Human talk that would break the silence even for a little while; the sound of human voices that would rise and answer each other.

He glanced at the old man surrept.i.tiously. He tried to think what expression would come into that stupid face with the bewildered eyes; he tried to see the thin-lipped drooling mouth as it would look with the lips of it startled into moving.

He sat very still.

Words formed themselves; lagging into his mind.

"I--am--going--to--tell--"

He would start to say it to old man Efferts that way.

He could not stand the stillness any longer.

Anything was better than the appalling agony of the quiet.

He made a little tentative movement with his thin, shaking hands.

He felt that Efferts was staring at him.

The mongrel crouching at his feet moved stealthily. He heard no sound from the animal's moving. He knew it had gotten to its feet. He saw it standing there between where he sat and where Efferts sat.

He felt his lips begin to quiver.

"I--am--going--to--"

He got the words into his head again through the menacing, waiting stillness.

He muttered something.

Old man Efferts leaned forward, his hand behind his ear.

In a sudden blinding flash of knowledge he realized that old man Efferts was deaf.

He felt his mouth twisting around his face.

He tried then to shout.

His eyes avoided the mongrel's eyes that he knew were filled with that uncanny, beaten look and were fixed on his jerking, grimacing mouth.

All about him the ominous, malignant silence.

He tried again and again to speak. He could not talk. Sweat stood out in great, glistening beads on his forehead and dribbled blindingly into his wide, distended eyes. His body shook with the stupendous effort he was making. His tongue was swollen. He could feel his throat tightening so that it hurt. He could not get his words into that hoa.r.s.e, inhuman muttering that had no sound of voice in it.

He kept on trying and trying to speak----

He saw that old man Efferts had finished his pipe. He watched him get out of his chair and go shambling across the room and through the door.

He sat there.

His hands went up to his working mouth. He wanted to hide the hideous jerking of it.

His eyes met the mongrel's eyes.

The stillness grew appalling.