Read Online The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald by F. Scott Fitzgerald - Free Book Online

‘Home James’!”
    “Light opera?”
    “Yes—at a stretch. One of the characters is a Brazilian rice-planter. That might interest you.”
    “I saw ‘The Bohemian Girl’ 18 once,” reflected Horace aloud. “I enjoyed it—to some extent.”
    “Then you’ll come?”
    “Well, I’m—I’m——”
    “Oh, I know—you’ve got to run down to Brazil for the week-end.”
    “Not at all. I’d be delighted to come.”
    Marcia clapped her hands.
    “Goodyforyou! I’ll mail you a ticket—Thursday night?”
    “Why, I——”
    “Good! Thursday night it is.”
    She stood up and walking close to him laid both hands on his shoulders.
    “I like you, Omar. I’m sorry I tried to kid you. I thought you’d be sort of frozen, but you’re a nice boy.”
    He eyed her sardonically.
    “I’m several thousand generations older than you are.”
    “You carry your age well.”
    They shook hands gravely.
    “My name’s Marcia Meadow,” she said emphatically. “ ’Member it—Marcia Meadow. And I won’t tell Charlie Moon you were in.”
    An instant later as she was skimming down the last flight of stairs three at a time she heard a voice call over the upper banister: “Oh, say——”
    She stopped and looked up—made out a vague form leaning over.
    “Oh, say!” called the prodigy again. “Can you hear me?”
    “Here’s your connection, Omar.”
    “I hope I haven’t given you the impression that I consider kissing intrinsically irrational.”
    “Impression? Why, you didn’t even give me the kiss! Never fret—so long.”
    Two doors near her opened curiously at the sound of a feminine voice. A tentative cough sounded from above. Gathering her skirts, Marcia dived wildly down the last flight, and was swallowed up in the murky Connecticut air outside.
    Up-stairs Horace paced the floor of his study. From time to time he glanced toward Berkeley waiting there in suave dark-red respectability, an open book lying suggestively on his cushions. And then he found that his circuit of the floor was bringing him each time nearer to Hume. There was something about Hume that was strangely and inexpressibly different. The diaphanous form still seemed hovering near, and had Horace sat there he would have felt as if he were sitting on a lady’s lap. And though Horace couldn’t have named the quality of difference, there was such a quality—quite intangible to the speculative mind, but real, nevertheless. Hume was radiating something that in all the two hundred years of his influence he had never radiated before.
    Hume was radiating attar of roses.
    II
    On Thursday night Horace Tarbox sat in an aisle seat in the fifth row and witnessed “Home James.” Oddly enough he found that he was enjoying himself. The cynical students near him were annoyed at his audible appreciation of time-honored jokes in the Hammerstein 19 tradition. But Horace was waiting with anxiety for Marcia Meadow singing her song about a Jazz-bound Blundering Blimp. When she did appear, radiant under a floppity flower-faced hat, a warm glow settled over him, and when the song was over he did not join in the storm of applause. He felt somewhat numb.
    In the intermission after the second act an usher materialized beside him, demanded to know if he were Mr. Tarbox, and then handed him a note written in a round adolescent hand. Horace read it in some confusion, while the usher lingered with withering patience in the aisle.
    “DEAR OMAR: After the show I always grow an awful hunger. If you want to satisfy it for me in the Taft Grill just communicate your answer to the big-timber guide that brought this and oblige.
    Your friend, MARCIA MEADOW.”
    “Tell her”—he coughed—“tell her that it will be quite all right. I’ll meet her in front of the theatre.”
    The big-timber guide smiled arrogantly.
    “I giss she meant for you to come roun’ t’ the stage door.”
    “Where—where is it?”
    “Ou’side. Tunayulef. Down ee