For the Old Gentleman |For здесь никак не переводится| was coming across Fourth avenue toward his bench.
Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years the Old Gentleman had come there and found Stuffy Pete on his bench. That was a thing that the Old Gentleman was trying to make a tradition of. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had found Stuffy there, and had led him |отводил его| to a restaurant and watched him eat a big dinner. They do those things in England unconsciously. But this is a young country, and nine years is not so bad. The Old Gentleman was a staunch |преданный| American patriot, and considered himself a pioneer |«пионер» в смысле первооткрыватель| in American tradition. In order to become picturesque we must keep on doing one thing for a long time without ever letting it get away from us. Something like collecting the weekly dimes in industrial insurance |сбора еженедельных десятицентовых взносов в промышленном страховании|. Or cleaning the streets.
The Old Gentleman moved |двигался или приближался|, straight and stately, toward the Institution that he was rearing |он пестовал|. Truly, the annual feeding of Stuffy Pete was nothing national in its character, such as the Magna Charta |Великая Хартия| or jam for breakfast was in England. But it was a step. It was almost feudal |феодальное|. It showed, at least |по крайней мере|, that a Custom was not impossible to New Y —ahem! – America |в Нью-Й.., хм, в Америке|.
The Old Gentleman was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all in black, and wore the old-fashioned kind of glasses that won’t stay on your nose. His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last year, and he seemed to make more use of his big, knobby cane |сучковатая трость| with the crooked handle.
As his established benefactor came up |приблизился| Stuffy wheezed and shuddered like some woman’s over-fat pug when a street dog bristles up at him |начал дрожать и скулить как перекормленная болонка некой женщины при приближении уличного пса|. He would have flown |конструкция would have и третья форма глагола значит, что он бы что-то сделал, но не смог: он бы спасся бегством…|, but all the skill of Santos-Dumont could not have separated him |даже святая сила не оторвала бы его| from his bench. Well had the myrmidons |приспешники| of the two old ladies done their work.
“Good morning,” said the Old Gentleman. “I am glad to perceive |буквально – воспринять. Лучше – узнать| that the vicissitudes of another year have spared |превратности… пощадили| you to move in health about the beautiful world |и вы в здравии бродите по…|. For that blessing alone |так благослови…| this day of thanksgiving is well proclaimed to each of us. If you will |по правилам will здесь стоять не должно, но плевали персонажи О. Генри на правила| come with me, my man, I will provide you with a dinner that should make your physical being accord |физическое состояние в соответствие с| with the mental.”
That is what the old Gentleman said every time. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years. The words themselves almost formed an Institution |Традицию|. Nothing could be compared with them except the Declaration of Independence. Always before |Всегда ранее| they had been music in Stuffy’s ears. But now he looked up at the Old Gentleman’s face with tearful agony in his own. The fine snow almost sizzled |вскипал| when it fell upon his perspiring brow |буквально – взмокшую бровь. Лучше – разгоряченный лоб|. But the Old Gentleman shivered |поеживался| a little and turned his back to the wind.
Stuffy had always wondered why the Old Gentleman spoke his speech rather sadly. He did not know that it was because he was wishing every time that he had a son to succeed him |хотел бы, чтобы у него был сын, чтобы продолжить Традицию|. A son who would come there after he was gone – a son who would stand proud and strong before some subsequent Stuffy |какому-нибудь следующему Стаффи|, and say: “In memory of my father.” Then it would be an Institution.
But the Old Gentleman had no relatives. He lived in rented rooms in one of the decayed |ветхих| old family brownstone mansions in one of the quiet streets east of the park. In the winter he raised fuchsias |фуксии| in a little conservatory |теплице| the size of a steamer trunk |размером с дорожный сундук. A steamer – пароход|. In the spring he walked in the Easter parade |в пасхальном шествии|. In the summer he lived at a farmhouse in the New Jersey hills, and sat in a wicker |плетеном| armchair, speaking of a butterfly, the ornithoptera amphrisius, that he hoped to find some day. In the autumn he fed Stuffy a dinner. These were the Old Gentleman’s occupations.
Stuffy Pete looked up at him for a half minute, stewing |утомленный| and helpless in his own self-pity |в жалости к самому себе|. The Old Gentleman’s eyes were bright with the giving-pleasure |в порыве жертвенности|. His face was getting more lined |появлялось больше морщин| each year, but his little black necktie was in as jaunty a bow as ever |так же элегантен|, and the linen |буквально – белье, здесь же имеется в виду сорочка| was beautiful and white, and his gray mustache was curled carefully at the ends. And then Stuffy made a noise that sounded like peas bubbling in a pot. Speech was intended; and as the Old Gentleman had heard the sounds nine times before, he rightly construed |истолковал| them into Stuffy’s old formula of acceptance.
“Thankee, sir. I’ll go with ye, and much obliged. I’m very hungry, sir.”
The coma of repletion had not prevented from entering Stuffy’s mind the conviction that he was the basis of an Institution |Прострация