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

uncomfortable. The man's mouth was open and he snored lustily. From his
greasy and threadbare clothing arose the smell of fish. Flies gathered
in swarms and alighted on his face. Disgust took possession of Hugh. A
flickering but ever recurring light came into his eyes. With all the
strength of his awakening soul he struggled against the desire to give way
to the inclination to stretch himself out beside the man and sleep. The
words of the New England woman, who was, he knew, striving to lift him out
of slothfulness and ugliness into some brighter and better way of life,
echoed dimly in his mind. When he arose and went back along the street
to the station master's house and when the woman there looked at him
reproachfully and muttered words about the poor white trash of the town, he
was ashamed and looked at the floor.

Hugh began to hate his own father and his own people. He connected the man
who had bred him with the dreaded inclination toward sloth in himself.
When the farmhand came to the station and demanded the money he had earned
by carrying trunks, he turned away and went across a dusty road to the
Shepard's house. After a year or two he paid no more attention to the
dissolute farmhand who came occasionally to the station to mutter and swear
at him; and, when he had earned a little money, gave it to the woman to
keep for him. "Well," he said, speaking slowly and with the hesitating
drawl characteristic of his people, "if you give me time I'll learn. I want
to be what you want me to be. If you stick to me I'll try to make a man of
myself."

* * * * *

Hugh McVey lived in the Missouri town under the tutelage of Sarah
Shepard until he was nineteen years old. Then the station master gave up
railroading and went back to Michigan. Sarah Shepard's father had died
after having cleared one hundred and twenty acres of the cut-over timber
land and it had been left to her. The dream that had for years lurked in
the back of the little woman's mind and in which she saw bald-headed,
good-natured Henry Shepard become a power in the railroad world had begun
to fade. In newspapers and magazines she read constantly of other men who,
starting from a humble position in the railroad service, soon became rich
and powerful, but nothing of the kind seemed likely to happen to her
husband. Under her watchful eye he did his work well and carefully but
nothing came of it. Officials of the railroad sometimes passed through
the town riding in private cars hitched to the end of one of the through
trains, but the trains did not stop and the officials did not alight and,
calling Henry out of the station, reward his faithfulness by piling new
responsibilities upon him, as railroad officials did in such cases in the
stories she read. When her father died and she saw a chance to again turn
her face eastward and to live again among her own people, she told her
husband to resign his position with the air of one accepting an undeserved
defeat. The station master managed to get Hugh appointed in his place, and
the two people went away one gray morning in October, leaving the tall
ungainly young man in charge of affairs. He had books to keep, freight
waybills to make out, messages to receive, dozens of definite things to do.