"Шервуд Андерсен. Белый бедняк (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

a thief across the earth floor until he came to a window that looked out
upon the station. A freight train rumbled slowly past and a farmer came to
the station to get a load of goods that had arrived by freight. George Pike
came running from his house to attend to the wants of the farmer. He went
back to his house and Steve was left alone in the presence of the man on
whom he felt all of his future depended. He was as excited as a village
girl in the presence of a lover. Through the windows of the telegraph
office he could see Hugh seated at a desk with a book before him. The
presence of the book frightened him. He decided that the mysterious
Missourian must be some strange sort of intellectual giant. He was sure
that one who could sit quietly reading hour after hour in such a lonely
isolated place could be of no ordinary clay. As he stood in the deep
shadows inside the old building and stared at the man he was trying to find
courage to approach, a citizen of Bidwell named Dick Spearsman came to the
station and going inside, talked to the telegraph operator. Steve trembled
with anxiety. The man who had come to the station was an insurance agent
who also owned a small berry farm at the edge of town. He had a son who had
gone west to take up land in the state of Kansas, and the father thought of
visiting him. He came to the station to make inquiry regarding the railroad
fare, but when Steve saw him talking to Hugh, the thought came into his
mind that John Clark or Thomas Butterworth might have sent him to the
station to make an investigation of the truth of the statements he had made
in the bank. "It would be like them to do it that way," he muttered to
himself. "They wouldn't come themselves. They would send some one they
thought I wouldn't suspect. They would play safe, damn 'em."

Trembling with fear, Steve walked up and down in the empty factory. Cobwebs
hanging down brushed against his face and he jumped aside as though a hand
had reached out of the darkness to touch him. In the corners of the old
building shadows lurked and distorted thoughts began to come into his head.
He rolled and lighted a cigarette and then remembered that the flare of the
match could probably be seen from the station. He cursed himself for his
carelessness. Throwing the cigarette on the earth floor he ground it under
his heel. When at last Dick Spearsman had disappeared up the road that led
to Bidwell and he came out of the old factory and got again into Turner's
Pike, he felt that he was in no shape to talk of business but nevertheless
must act at once. In front of the factory he stopped in the road and tried
to wipe the mud off the seat of his trousers with a handkerchief. Then he
went to the creek and washed his soiled hands. With wet hands he arranged
his tie and straightened the collar of his coat. He had an air of one
about to ask a woman to become his wife. Striving to look as important and
dignified as possible, he went along the station platform and into the
telegraph office to confront Hugh and to find out at once and finally what
fate the gods had in store for him.

* * * * *

It no doubt contributed to Steve's happiness in after life, in the days
when he was growing rich, and later when he reached out for public honors,
contributed to campaign funds, and even in secret dreamed of getting into