The Common Lot. Robert Herrick. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Robert Herrick
Издательство: Bookwire
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Жанр произведения: Языкознание
Год издания: 0
isbn: 4057664573094
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       Robert Herrick

      The Common Lot

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664573094

       PART I THE WILL

       CHAPTER I

       CHAPTER II

       CHAPTER III

       CHAPTER IV

       CHAPTER V

       CHAPTER VI

       CHAPTER VII

       CHAPTER VIII

       CHAPTER IX

       PART II THE STRUGGLE

       CHAPTER X

       CHAPTER XI

       CHAPTER XII

       CHAPTER XIII

       CHAPTER XIV

       CHAPTER XV

       CHAPTER XVI

       CHAPTER XVII

       CHAPTER XVIII

       CHAPTER XIX

       CHAPTER XX

       CHAPTER XXI

       CHAPTER XXII

       CHAPTER XXIII

       PART III INTO THE RANKS

       CHAPTER XXIV

       CHAPTER XXV

       CHAPTER XXVI

       CHAPTER XXVII

       CHAPTER XXVIII

       CHAPTER XXIX

       CHAPTER XXX

       CHAPTER XXXI

       CHAPTER XXXII

       CHAPTER XXXIII

       CHAPTER XXXIV

       CHAPTER XXXV

       THE WILL

       Table of Contents

      THE COMMON LOT

       Table of Contents

      From time to time the door opened to admit some tardy person. Then the May sunlight without flooded the dim, long hall with a sudden radiance, even to the arched recess in the rear, where the coffin was placed. The late-comers sank into the crowd of black-coated men, who filled the hall to the broad stairs. Most of these were plainly dressed, with thick, grizzled beards and lined faces: they were old hands from the Bridge Works on the West Side, where they had worked many years for Powers Jackson. In the parlors at the left of the hall there were more women than men, and more fashionable clothes than in the hall. But the faces were scarcely less rugged and lined; for these friends of the old man who lay in the coffin were mostly life-worn and gnarled, like himself. Their luxuries had not sufficed to hide the scars of the battles they had waged with fortune.

      When the minister ceased praying, the men and the women in the warm, flower-scented rooms moved gratefully, trying to get easier positions for their cramped bodies. Some members of a church choir, stationed at the landing on the stairs, began to sing. Once more the door opened silently in the stealthy hands of the undertaker, and this time it remained open for several seconds. A woman entered, dressed in fashionable widow's mourning. She moved deliberately, as if she realized exactly the full effect of her entrance at that moment among all these heated, tired people. The men crowded in the hall made way for her instinctively, so that she might enter the dining-room, to the right of the coffin, where the family and a few intimate friends of the dead man were seated. Here, a young man, the nephew of Powers Jackson, rose and surrendered his chair to the pretty widow, whispering:—

      "Take this, Mrs. Phillips! I am afraid there is nothing inside."

      She took his place by the door with a little deprecatory smile, which said many things at the same time: "I am very late, I know; but I really couldn't help it! You will forgive me, won't you?"

      And also: "You have come to be a handsome young