The Wapshot Scandal полностью

Her little son came to meet her when she entered the house and she took him most tenderly in her arms. When he had gone back in the kitchen she poured herself a drink in the bathroom to blunt the pain. She then telephoned her minister and asked if she could see him at once. His wife, Mrs. Bascom, answered the telephone and kindly invited Melissa to come. Mrs. Bascom, smelling pleasantly of perfume and sherry, let her into the rectory. She would have spent the afternoon playing bridge. It would be sentimental of her, Melissa knew, to long for a life that centered on bridge parties, but the woman’s simplicity and good cheer excited in Melissa a dreadful yearning. Mrs. Bascom’s containment seemed as substantial as a well-built house, its windows shining with light, while Melissa felt herself to be cruelly exposed to every inclemency. Mrs. Bascom led her into a parlor where the rector was kneeling by an open fireplace, lighting some paper and kindling with a match. “Good afternoon,” he said, “good afternoon, Mrs. Wapshot.” For some reason he pronounced her name “Wapshirt.” He was a portly man, his hair stained a discouraging gray like the last snows of winter and with a strong, plain face. “I thought we’d have a little fire,” he said. “There’s nothing quite like a fire, is there, to stimulate conversation? Sit down, do sit down. I have a confession to make.” She flinched at the word. “Mrs. Bascom’s bridge club, one of her three bridge clubs, met this afternoon and I decided to give myself a vacation and spent the whole afternoon watching television. Now I know a lot of people disapprove of television but during my, shall we say, dissipation this afternoon I saw some very interesting playlets and some splendid acting, some splendid performances. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that the standards of acting on television today are a great deal higher than those we find in the theater. I saw one very interesting playlet about a woman who was tempted—tempted, I say, there was nothing at all unsavory—by the monotony of her middle-class life to abandon her family in favor of a business enterprise. She had a most unpleasant mother-in-law. Not really unpleasant, I suppose, but a woman, you might say, whose character had been formed by a series of unfortunate circumstances. She was a possessive woman. She felt that the heroine neglected her husband. Well, the mother-in-law was wealthy and they had every reason to expect a substantial inheritance when she passed away. They took a picnic to a lake—oh, it was very well done—and during a storm the mother-in-law drowned. The next scene was in the lawyer’s office where the will was read and where they discovered to their astonishment that they had been cut off with a single dollar. Well, the wife, rather than being disappointed, discovered new sources of strength in herself at this turn of events and was able to rededicate herself—to undergird her dedication, so to speak—to her family once more. It was all very revealing and it seems to me that if we looked at television oftener and saw the sorrows and the problems of others we might be less selfish, less egotistical, less likely to be overwhelmed by our own little problems.”

Melissa had come to him for compassion but she felt then that she might better have asked for compassion from a barn door or a stone. For a moment his stupidity, his vulgarity, seemed inviolable. But if he had no compassion for her, wasn’t it then her responsibility to extend some compassion to him, to try and understand, to try at least to tolerate the image of a stout and simple man applauding the asininities on television? What touched her, as he leaned toward the fire, was the antiquity of his devotions. No runner would ever come to his door with the news that the head of the vestry had been martyred by the local police and had she used the name of Jesus Christ, out of its liturgical context, she felt that he would have been terribly embarrassed. He was not to blame, he had not chosen this moment of history, he was not alone in having been overwhelmed at the task of giving the passion of Our Lord ardor and reality. He had failed, he seemed sitting by his fire to be a failure as she was and to deserve, like any other failure, compassion. She felt how passionately he would have liked to avoid her troubles; to discuss the church fair, the World Series, the covered-dish supper, the high price of stained glass, the perfidy of Communism, the comfortableness of electric blankets, anything but her trouble.

“I have sinned,” Melissa said. “I have sinned and the memory is grievous, the burden is intolerable.”

“How have you sinned?”

“I have committed fornication with a boy. He is not twenty-one.”

“Has this happened often?”

“Many times.”

“And with others?”

“With one other but I feel that I can’t trust myself.”