"Mercedes Lackey - EM 1 - The Fire Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

indigent. Another was a typist for Professor Cathcart at the University. Her own shabby-genteel
clothing fit in perfectly here, giving her no cause for embarrassment.
Mrs. Abernathy was a stolid woman who had not been at all disturbed when they appeared on her
doorstep after dark. She had taken in Professor Cathcart's whispered explanation and the money he
pressed into her hand with a nod, and had sent Rose to this room on the second floor, just off the
common parlor. Her trunk was still downstairs in a storage closet, but she hardly needed what was
in it. She'd brought up her carpetbag and valise herself, and had attempted to be sociable with
some of the other boarders, but fatigue and strain had taken their toll, and she had soon sought
the room and the bed.
She stopped groping for her glasses, preferring the vague shapes of furniture and windows to the
stark reality of this sad little room. She closed her eyes again, and lay quietly, listening to
the sounds that had awakened her. Down below, someone, presumably Mrs. Abernathy, was cooking
breakfast; from the scents that reached her, it was oatmeal porridge and strong coffee, cheap and
filling. Other girls in tiny rooms on either side of her were moving about. By the very faint
light, it could not be much past dawn-but these young women were working girls, and their day
began at dawn and ended long after sunset, every day except Sunday.
That was when the full impact of her situation hit home. Within the week, she would join them. She
had not realized just how privileged her life had been, even with all the economies she and her
father had practiced these last several years. She had always been something of a night-owl,
preferring to study in the late hours when she would be undisturbed; her classes had always been
scheduled in the afternoons, allowing her to enjoy leisurely mornings. Now she would obey someone
else's schedule, whether or not it happened to suit her.
Everything was changed; her life, as she had known it, was over. It lay buried with her father.
The rest of her life stretched before her, devoid of all the things that she cared for-the joys of
scholarship, the thrill of academic pursuit, the intellectual companionship of fellow scholars.
She would be a servant in someone else's house, or a hireling in someone's employ, subject to
their will, their whims. Very likely she would never again have access to a resource like the
University Library. Her life, which had been defined by books, would now be defined by her
position below the salt.
Professor Cathcart had insisted that at she think Cameron's offer over carefully before deciding,
but her options were narrower than he thought; the choices were two, really. Take Jason Cameron's
job (or search for another like it) and become a servant in the household of a wealthy, and
probably autocratic man-or take a position teaching in a public school.
The latter actually offered fewer opportunities. It was unlikely that she would find such a public
school position in Chicago; there were many aspiring teachers, and few jobs for them. She would
have to seek employment out in the country, perhaps even in the scarcely-settled West or the
backward South, where she would be an alien and an outsider.
In either case, as a private tutor or as a teacher, she would be a servant, for as a schoolteacher
she must present a perfectly respectable front at all times, attending the proper church, saying
the proper things, so as to be completely beyond reproach. Neither a schoolteacher nor a child's
private tutor could even hint that she had read the uncensored Ovid. Neither would dare to have an
original thought, or dare to contradict the men around her. The days of her freedom of thought,
action and speech were over.
She had not wept since the funeral; she had remained dry-eyed before the Ivorssons, before Mr.
Grumwelt, before his greedy minions. She had stood dry-eyed for days, but now something broke
within her at the realization of how much a prisoner of society she had become overnight.
Her eyes burned, her throat closed, and she bit her knuckle trying to hold back the tears. She was
unsuccessful, and quickly turned her face into the pillow, sobbing, smothering her weeping with
the coarse linen so that no one would overhear her. How could any of the women here hope to
understand her grief'? This prospect of life that she found intolerable was the same life that