Читать книгу Look Homeward, Angel. A Story of the Buried Life онлайн

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His last remembrance of the Fair came from a night in early autumn: with Daisy again he sat upon the driver's seat of a motor bus, listening for the first time to the wonder of its laboured chugging, as they rolled, through ploughing sheets of rain, around the gleaming roads, and by the Cascades, pouring their water down before a white building jewelled with ten thousand lights.

The summer had passed. There was the rustling of autumn winds, a whispering breath of departed revelry: carnival was almost done.

And now the house grew very still: he saw his mother very little, he did not leave the house, he was in the care of his sisters, and he was constantly admonished to silence.

One day Gant came back a second time. Grover was down with typhoid.

"He said he ate a pear at the Fair grounds," Eliza repeated the story for the hundredth time. "He came home and complained of feeling sick. I put my hand on his head and he was burning up. 'Why, child,' I said, 'what on earth——?'"

Her black eyes brightened in her white face: she was afraid. She pursed her lips and spoke hopefully.