Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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When I was eleven I unwillingly listened to the first comprehensible discussion of him. I was fidgeting on a chair in barbarous punishment when a letter arrived and I noticed my father growing stern and formidable as he read it. Instinctively I knew it concerned Uncle George—and I was right.

“What’s the matter Tom?—Someone sick?” asked my mother rather anxiously.

For answer Father rose and handed her the letter and some newspaper clippings it had enclosed. When she had read it twice (for her naive curiosity could never resist a preliminary skim) she plunged—

“Why should she write to you and not to me?”

Father threw himself wearily on the sofa and arranged his long limbs decoratively.

“It’s getting tiresome, isn’t it? This is the third time he’s become—involved.” I started, for I distinctively heard him add under his breath, “Poor damn fool!”

“It’s much more than tiresome,” began my mother. “It’s disgusting; a great strong man with money and talent and every reason to behave and get married (she implied that these words were synonymous) playing around with serious women like a silly, conceited college boy. You’d think it was a harmless game!”