ABSOLUTION by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Author:F. Scott Fitzgerald [Fitzgerald, F. Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788027235575
Publisher: Musaicum Books
Published: 2013-12-02T23:00:00+00:00

IV.

Table of Contents

They walked without speaking except when Carl Miller acknowledged automatically the existence of passers-by. Rudolph’s uneven breathing alone ruffled the hot Sunday silence.

His father stopped decisively at the door of the church.

“I’ve decided you’d better go to confession again. Go in and tell Father Schwartz what you did and ask God’s pardon.”

“You lost your temper, too!” said Rudolph quickly.

Carl Miller took a step toward his son, who moved cautiously backward.

“All right, I’ll go.”

“Are you going to do what I say?” cried his father in a hoarse whisper.

“All right.”

Rudolph walked into the church, and for the second time in two days entered the confessional and knelt down. The slat went up almost at once.

“I accuse myself of missing my morning prayers.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

A maudlin exultation filled him. Not easily ever again would he be able to put an abstraction before the necessities of his ease and pride. An invisible line had been crossed, and he had become aware of his isolation—aware that it applied not only to those moments when he was Blatchford Sarnemington but that it applied to all his inner life. Hitherto such phenomena as “crazy” ambitions and petty shames and fears had been but private reservations, unacknowledged before the throne of his official soul. Now he realized unconsciously that his private reservations were himself—and all the rest a garnished front and a conventional flag. The pressure of his environment had driven him into the lonely secret road of adolescence.

He knelt in the pew beside his father. Mass began. Rudolph knelt up—when he was alone he slumped his posterior back against the seat—and tasted the consciousness of a sharp, subtle revenge. Beside him his father prayed that God would forgive Rudolph, and asked also that his own outbreak of temper would be pardoned. He glanced sidewise at his son, and was relieved to see that the strained, wild look had gone from his face and that he had ceased sobbing. The Grace of God, inherent in the Sacrament, would do the rest, and perhaps after Mass everything would be better. He was proud of Rudolph in his heart, and beginning to be truly as well as formally sorry for what he had done.

Usually, the passing of the collection box was a significant point for Rudolph in the services. If, as was often the case, he had no money to drop in he would be furiously ashamed and bow his head and pretend not to see the box, lest Jeanne Brady in the pew behind should take notice and suspect an acute family poverty. But to-day he glanced coldly into it as it skimmed under his eyes, noting with casual interest the large number of pennies it contained.

When the bell rang for communion, however, he quivered. There was no reason why God should not stop his heart. During the past twelve hours he had committed a series of mortal sins increasing in gravity, and he was now to crown them all with a blasphemous sacrilege.

“Domini, non sum dignus; ut interes sub tectum meum; sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea….

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