发表于2024-08-23
The unbegotten; 2024 pdf epub mobi 电子书
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Chapter One<br >THE LAST BORN<br >The mother lay exhausted on the big bed; the new-born<br >babe, in the midwife s steady hands, lay on a white-draped<br >table, crying weakly. Outside, the father, tall and young<br >and emotion-torn, sat back in an old armchair, which had<br >been in this cottage for generations. He looked almost as<br >exhausted as his wife, his face porcelain white against the<br >(lense black of his hair.<br > The doctor, Reginald Maddern, M.D., who had served<br >the village and dozens around for over twenty years yet<br >was still in his middle-forties, moved across the bedroom as<br >the midwife turned the infant over on its side, impersonal<br >as if she were dealing with clay. Maddern was an ordinary-<br >l~,oking man with thinning, greying hair, tired eyes, a snub<br >nose and a weak chin, if one judged it weak if a chin fell<br >away into the neck.<br > Well, Mrs. Cray, he said in a strange, sad voice, that s<br >the last. <br > The midwife, taller than Maddern and with iron-grey,<br >wiry hair and a strong, hatchet-like face looked at him with<br >eyes as sharp as gimlets; there was hostility in her voice.<br > [ don t care what you say, she stated. It s those pills. <br > "I simply don t understand it, Maddern said.<br > "I tell you, doctor, it s those pills. <br > She was much older than he, and in many ways old-<br >fashioned, although her methods and her habits at a<br >de.livery were immaculate in their hygiene. A first-class<br >midwife, she had often attended confinements on her own.<br >The doctor admired her professional skill and her unremit-<br >
The unbegotten; 2024 pdf epub mobi 电子书