Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“I have been asked——” His voice faltered. “My dear friends, I have been asked to—to tell you what I have got out of life——”

Five hundred faces, touched and smiling, every one of them full of encouragement and love and faith, turned up to him.

“What have I got out of life?”

He stretched out his arms wide, as if to include them all, as if to take to his breast all the men and women and children of this city. His voice rang in the hushed silence.

“Everything!”

At six o’clock, when he walked up his street alone, the air was already cool with evening. Approaching his house, he raised his head and saw that someone was sitting on the outer doorstep, resting his face in his hands. When John Jackson came up the walk, the caller—he was a young man with dark, frightened eyes—saw him and sprang to his feet.

“Father,” he said quickly, “I got your telegram, but I—I came home.”

John Jackson looked at him and nodded.

“The house was locked,” said the young man in an uneasy way.

“I’ve got the key.”

John Jackson unlocked the front door and preceded his son inside.