The Wapshot Chronicle полностью

“Well, you don’t have to eat everything on the tray,” Mrs. Wapshot said kindly, “but you’ve got to eat something. Why don’t you try and eat the eggs? That’s all you have to eat; but you must eat the eggs.”

Then the girl began to cry. She laid her head sidewise on the pillow and stared into the corner of the room where she seemed to see a range of high mountains her look was so faraway and heartbreaking. The tears rolled down her cheeks. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Wapshot said. “I’m very sorry. I suppose you were engaged to him. I suppose …”

“It isn’t that,” the girl sobbed. “It’s just about the eggs. I can’t bear eggs. When I lived at home they made me eat eggs for breakfast and if I didn’t eat my eggs for breakfast well then I had to eat them for dinner. I mean everything I was supposed to eat and couldn’t eat was always juss piled up on my dinner plate and the eggs were disgusting.”

“Well, is there anything you would like for breakfast?” Mrs. Wapshot asked.

“I’d love some peanut butter. If I could have a peanut-butter sandwich and a glass of milk …”

“Well, I think that can be arranged,” Mrs. Wapshot said, and carrying the tray and smiling she went out of the room and down the stairs.

She felt no resentment at this miscarriage of her preparations and was happy to have the girl in her house, as if she was, at bottom, a lonely woman, grateful for any company. She had wanted a daughter, longed for one; a little girl sitting at her knees, learning to sew or making sugar cookies in the kitchen on a snowy night. While she made Rosalie’s sandwich it seemed to her that she possessed a vision of life that she would enjoy introducing to the stranger. They could pick blueberries together, take long walks beside the river and sit together in the pew on Sunday. When she took the sandwich upstairs again Rosalie said that she wanted to get up. Mrs. Wapshot protested but Rosalie’s pleading made sense. “I’d just feel so much better if I could get up and walk around and sit in the sun; just feel the sun.”

Rosalie dressed after breakfast and joined Mrs. Wapshot in the garden where the old deck chairs were. “The sun feels so good,” she said, pushing up the sleeves of her dress and shaking back her hair.

“Now you must let me call your parents,” Sarah said.

“I just don’t want to call them today,” the girl said. “Maybe tomorrow. You see, it always bothers them when I’m in trouble. I just don’t like to bother them when I’m in trouble. And they’ll want me to come home and everything. You see Daddy’s a priest—rector really, I mean communion seven days a week and all that.”

“We’re low church here,” Mrs. Wapshot said, “but some people I could name would like to see a change.”

“And he’s absolutely the most nervous man I ever knew,” Rosalie said. “Daddy is. He’s always scratching his stomach. It’s a nervous ailment. Most men’s shirts wear out at the collar, I guess, but Daddy’s shirts wear out where he scratches himself.”

“Oh, I think you ought to telephone them,” Mrs. Wapshot said.

“It’s just because I’m in trouble. They always think of me as making trouble. I went to this camp—Annamatapoiset—and I had this sweater with an A on it for being such a marvelous camper and when Daddy saw it he said I guess that A stands for Always in Trouble. I just don’t want to bother them.”

“It doesn’t seem right.”

“Please, please.” She bit her lip; she would cry and Mrs. Wapshot swiftly changed the subject. “Smell the peonies,” she said. “I love the smell of peonies and now they’re almost gone.”

“That sun feels so good.”

“Do you have a position in the city?” Mrs. Wapshot asked.

“Well, I was going to this secretarial school,” Rosalie said.

“You planned to be a secretary?”

“Well, I didn’t want to be a secretary. I wanted to be a painter or a psychologist but first I went to Allendale School and I couldn’t bear the academic adviser so I never really made up my mind. I mean he was always touching me and fiddling with my collar and I couldn’t bear to talk with him.”

“So then you went to secretarial school?”

“Well, first I went to Europe, I went to Europe last summer with some other girls.”

“Did you like it?”

“You mean Europe?”

“Yes.”

“Oh I thought it was divine. I mean there were some things I was disappointed in, like Stratford. I mean it was just another small town. And I couldn’t bear London but I adored the Netherlands with all those divine little people. It was terribly quaint.”

“Shouldn’t you telephone this secretarial school you go to and tell them where you are?”

“Oh no,” Rosalie said. “I flunked out last month. I blew up on exams. I knew all the material and everything but I just didn’t know the words. The only words I know are words like divine and of course they don’t use those words on exams and so I never understood the questions. I wish I knew more words.”

“I see,” Mrs. Wapshot said.