Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“It grieves me to write you this, but I see no advantage in presenting the case otherwise than as it is. I have requested that he leave New Haven by the day after tomorrow. I am, sir,

“Yours very sincerely,

“Austin Schemmerhorn “Dean of the College.”

What particularly disgraceful thing his son had done John Jackson did not care to imagine. He knew without any question that what the dean said was true. Why, there were houses already in this town where his son, John Jackson’s son, was no longer welcome! For a while Ellery had been forgiven because of his father, and he had been more than forgiven at home, because John Jackson was one of those rare men who can forgive even their own families. But he would never be forgiven anymore. Sitting on his porch this morning beside the gentle April rain, something had happened in his father’s heart.

“What have I had out of life?” John Jackson shook his head from side to side with quiet, tired despair. “Nothing!”

He picked up the second letter, the civic-welfare letter, and read it over; and then helpless, dazed laughter shook him physically until he trembled in his chair. On Wednesday, at the hour when his delinquent boy would arrive at the motherless home, John Jackson would be standing on a platform downtown, delivering one hundred resounding platitudes of inspiration and cheer. “Members of the association”—their faces, eager, optimistic, impressed, would look up at him like hollow moons—“I have been requested to try to tell you in a few words what I have had from life——”