Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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Only a few people recognized the short grizzled man who now got up from his chair in the rear of the platform, but when he began to speak silence settled gradually over the house.

“You didn’t hear my name,” he said in a voice which trembled a little, “and when they first planned this surprise meeting I wasn’t expected to speak at all. I’m John Jackson’s head clerk. Fowler’s my name, and when they decided they were going to hold the meeting, anyhow, even though John Jackson had gone away, I thought perhaps I’d like to say a few words”—those who were closest saw his hands clench tighter—“say a few words that I couldn’t say if John Jackson was here.

“I’ve been with him twenty years. That’s a long time. Neither of us had grey hair when I walked into his office one day just fired from somewhere and asked him for a job. Since then I can’t tell you, gentlemen, I can’t tell you what his—his presence on this earth has meant to me. When he told me yesterday, suddenly, that he was going away, I thought to myself that if he never came back I didn’t—I didn’t want to go on living. That man makes everything in the world seem all right. If you knew how we felt around the office——” He paused and shook his head wordlessly. “Why, there’s three of us there—the janitor and one of the other clerks and me—that have sons named after John Jackson. Yes, sir. Because none of us could think of anything better than for a boy to have that name or that example before him through life. But would we tell him? Not a chance. He wouldn’t even know what it was all about. Why”—he sank his voice to a hushed whisper—“he’d just look at you in a puzzled way and say, ‘What did you wish that on the poor kid for?’”