Read The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald for Free Online Page A

one sitting there at all. A week after that I went to the Jesuit College in Philadelphia 4 and crawled up the last flight of stairs to the rector’s office on my hands and knees.”
    There was another silence and Lois saw that her brother’s eyes wore a far-away look, that he was staring unseeingly out over the sunny fields. She was stirred by the modulations of his voice and the sudden silence that seemed to flow about him when he finished speaking.
    She noticed now that his eyes were of the same fibre as hers, with the green left out, and that his mouth was much gentler, really, than in the picture—or was it that the face had grown up to it lately? He was getting a little bald just on top of his head. She wondered if that was from wearing a hat so much. It seemed awful for a man to grow bald and no one to care about it.
    “Were you—pious when you were young, Kieth?” she asked. “You know what I mean. Were you religious? If you don’t mind these personal questions.”
    “Yes,” he said with his eyes still far away—and she felt that his intense abstraction was as much a part of his personality as his attention. “Yes, I suppose I was, when I was—sober.”
    Lois thrilled slightly.
    “Did you drink?”
    He nodded.
    “I was on the way to making a bad hash of things.” He smiled and, turning his gray eyes on her, changed the subject.
    “Child, tell me about mother. I know it’s been awfully hard for you there, lately. I know you’ve had to sacrifice a lot and put up with a great deal, and I want you to know how fine of you I think it is. I feel, Lois, that you’re sort of taking the place of both of us there.”
    Lois thought quickly how little she had sacrificed; how lately she had constantly avoided her nervous, half-invalid mother.
    “Youth shouldn’t be sacrificed to age, Kieth,” she said steadily.
    “I know,” he sighed, “and you oughtn’t to have the weight on your shoulders, child. I wish I were there to help you.”
    She saw how quickly he had turned her remark and instantly she knew what this quality was that he gave off. He was
sweet.
Her thoughts went off on a side-track and then she broke the silence with an odd remark.
    “Sweetness is hard,” she said suddenly.
    “What?”
    “Nothing,” she denied in confusion. “I didn’t mean to speak aloud. I was thinking of something—of a conversation with a man named Freddy Kebble.”
    “Maury Kebble’s brother?”
    “Yes,” she said, rather surprised to think of him having known Maury Kebble. Still there was nothing strange about it. “Well, he and I were talking about sweetness a few weeks ago. Oh, I don’t know— I said that a man named Howard—that a man I knew was sweet, and he didn’t agree with me, and we began talking about what sweetness in a man was. He kept telling me I meant a sort of soppy softness, but I knew I didn’t—yet I didn’t know exactly how to put it. I see now. I meant just the opposite. I suppose real sweetness is a sort of hardness—and strength.”
    Kieth nodded.
    “I see what you mean. I’ve known old priests who had it.”
    “I’m talking about young men,” she said, rather defiantly.
    “Oh!”
    They had reached the now deserted baseball diamond and, pointing her to a wooden bench, he sprawled full length on the grass.
    “Are these
young
men happy here, Kieth?”
    “Don’t they look happy, Lois?”
    “I suppose so, but those
young
ones, those two we just passed—have they—are they——”
    “Are they signed up?” he laughed. “No, but they will be next month.”
    “Permanently?”
    “Yes—unless they break down mentally or physically. Of course in a discipline like ours a lot drop out.”
    “But those
boys.
Are they giving up fine chances outside—like you did?”
    He nodded.
    “Some of them.”
    “But, Kieth, they don’t know what they’re doing. They haven’t had any experience of what they’re missing.”
    “No, I suppose not.”
    “It doesn’t seem fair. Life