"Шервуд Андерсен. Триумф яйца (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

For ten or fifteen minutes Mary sat on the stone beneath the tree in
the orchard and thought of the attitude of the town toward herself and
her father. "It should have drawn us together," she told herself, and
wondered if the approach of death would do what the cloud that had for
years hung over them had not done. It did not at the moment seem to her
cruel that the figure of death was soon to visit her father. In a way
Death had become for her and for the time a lovely and gracious figure
intent upon good. The hand of death was to open the door out of her
father's house and into life. With the cruelty of youth she thought
first of the adventurous possibilities of the new life.

Mary sat very still. In the long weeds the insects that had been
disturbed in their evening song began to sing again. A robin flew into
the tree beneath which she sat and struck a clear sharp note of alarm.
The voices of people in the town's new factory district came softly up
the hillside. They were like bells of distant cathedrals calling people
to worship. Something within the girl's breast seemed to break and
putting her head into her hands she rocked slowly back and forth. Tears
came accompanied by a warm tender impulse toward the living men and
women of Huntersburg.

And then from the road came a call. "Hello there kid," shouted a voice,
and Mary sprang quickly to her feet. Her mellow mood passed like a puff
of wind and in its place hot anger came.

In the road stood Duke Yetter who from his loafing place before the
livery barn had seen her set out for the Sunday evening walk and had
followed. When she went through Upper Main Street and into the new
factory district he was sure of his conquest. "She doesn't want to be
seen walking with me," he had told himself, "that's all right. She
knows well enough I'll follow but doesn't want me to put in an
appearance until she is well out of sight of her friends. She's a
little stuck up and needs to be brought down a peg, but what do I care?
She's gone out of her way to give me this chance and maybe she's only
afraid of her dad."

Duke climbed the little incline out of the road and came into the
orchard, but when he reached the pile of stones covered by vines he
stumbled and fell. He arose and laughed. Mary had not waited for him to
reach her but had started toward him, and when his laugh broke the
silence that lay over the orchard she sprang forward and with her open
hand struck him a sharp blow on the cheek. Then she turned and as he
stood with his feet tangled in the vines ran out to the road. "If you
follow or speak to me I'll get someone to kill you," she shouted.

Mary walked along the road and down the hill toward Wilmott Street.
Broken bits of the story concerning her mother that had for years
circulated in town had reached her ears. Her mother, it was said, had
disappeared on a summer night long ago and a young town rough, who had
been in the habit of loitering before Barney Smithfield's Livery Barn,