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

99 страница из 175

But as the slow months, gummed with sorrow, dropped more clearly, the powerful germinal instinct for property and freedom began to re-awaken in Eliza, and the ancient submerged struggle between their natures began again. The children were growing up—Eugene had found playmates—Harry Tarkinton and Max Isaacs. Her sex was a fading coal.

Season by season, there began again the old strife of ownership and taxes. Returning home, with the tax-collector's report in his hand, Gant would be genuinely frantic with rage.

"In the name of God, Woman, what are we coming to? Before another year we'll all go to the poorhouse. Ah, Lord! I see very well where it will all end. I'll go to the wall, every penny we've got will go into the pockets of those accursed swindlers, and the rest will come under the sheriff's hammer. I curse the day I was ever fool enough to buy the first stick. Mark my words, we'll be living in soup-kitchens before this fearful, this awful, this hellish and damnable winter is finished."