Ceremony of the Innocent

by Taylor Caldwell

  What a swindler she is, thought Mrs. Eccles, now swelling with her umbrage. She pretends this is nothing to her, when she is just as flabbergasted as that deplorable May, who can do nothing but whimper and wave her hands about like an idiot. All the kindness Mrs. Eccles had once felt for aunt and niece had long since evaporated in the fury of her indignation. Now she experienced animosity towards them, and outrage that they should be tolerated here, where she was so much at home and so knowing. They’ll probably try to use the bidet instead of the toilet behind that door, she thought, and waited maliciously. But Ellen led her quivering aunt to the door and opened it for her, and then washed her hands serenely. As if unaware of Mrs. Eccles—as she was—she let down the long abundance of her hair and it caught fire in the lamplight and the waves shimmered and undulated. Ellen shook it out; it lay over her shoulders and breast and back like a burning mantle. Mrs. Eccles said, “You must really, my dear, do something about that rough hair of yours. A nice hairdresser perhaps, to tone down that awful color. Quite vulgar, I assure you.”

  But Ellen was thinking only of Jeremy as she pushed up a fresh pompadour and coiled her hair over the back of her head.

  Jeremy was pouring a glass of whiskey and soda for himself, and he thought gloomily: I should have left that damned Eccles woman home. I wonder what she is saying to Ellen. I bet it is something unpleasant.

  The ladies emerged into the living room, and Jeremy felt a wild surge of felicity again when he saw Ellen, and he went to the three women, smiling. “Cuthbert is a remarkable chef,” he said. “Will you all have a glass of sherry before dinner?”

  May was unable to speak, and visibly shaking, but Mrs. Eccles cried, “Of course, dear Jeremy! Bristol Cream, my favorite?” Ellen said, and she took his hand like a confiding child, “I don’t know anything about sherry, and neither does Aunt May, though we have seen it in your aunt’s house, and Mrs. Eccles’. Is it good?”

  “If you like sherry,” he answered, and made a wry mouth, and Ellen laughed, and the sound to him was again entrancing.

  “No strong drink for me and Ellen,” whispered May, but no one heard her, not even Ellen, who was gazing at Jeremy like one astonished and illuminated by magic. He led the girl to a chair and seated her, then bent over her, almost eye to eye, and she colored and looked aside, shyly. But her young breast lifted on a fast hard breath, and she was bemused, stormed by emotions which were both delicious and frightening.

  Cuthbert brought the sherry in tall crystal glasses, and Mrs. Eccles accepted with a coy gesture and a flirtatious look towards Jeremy as if archly admonishing him for this temptation. Ellen also accepted a glass. May took one, afraid of vexing this stately man whom she still could not accept as a servant like herself, if indeed it ever occurred to her to think of him as a servant. Again, fearful of offending him, she put the glass to her chattering teeth, but the smell of the brownish liquid sickened and affrighted her. She looked about her, a little wildly, then put down the glass on the table next to her and behind the lamp. She had never seen an electric lamp before; she became fixed at the sight of it and clung to the illumination as if it would save her, and Ellen, from a most terrible disaster. Her eyes became glassy like the eyes of a sleepwalker. She could hear voices about her but they were as far as a dream. She wanted only to sleep and wake up in her barren cold room in Mrs. Eccles’ house, with the rough blanket against her chin. She wanted to weep in her despair and her fear and against this strangeness, this dazzle of color and crystal and silk.

  Cuthbert indeed proved himself an excellent chef, with his delicate mushroom soup heavy with cream and fragrant with white wine, brook trout stuffed with crabmeat and truffles, lamb chops with fresh mint, potatoes in a delectable sauce, late peas, the new Porter House rolls, and a salad with a cheese dressing and wine vinegar and a dainty touch of garlic. With this, in the small dining room sparkling with a chandelier and the brightest silver, he served various chilled wines and little cups of coffee, and a chocolate mousse.

  May, benumbed again, would not have eaten this “heathenish food” if Ellen, for the first time, had not frowned at her pleadingly. But the meal revolted her, she who had known nothing before but the grossest of “hearty” workingman food and the coarse and heavy meals of the people for whom she had worked in Preston. She ate every small morsel with the direst suspicion and a feeling of persecution. Each morsel, she was certain, would poison her. Her “stomach was not fit for it.” She was only sure that if this was to be Ellen’s diet in the future, then her very life was in danger. She did not know the word “effete,” nor did she know “decadent,” yet she knew the import. No, this was not for Ellen or herself, and again she felt such a passion to “go home” that she almost burst into tears. She would glance imploringly at Mrs. Eccles, her benefactor, her protector, and Mrs. Eccles was again amusedly disgusted. She did not join May in timid sly derision at these delights, as May had hoped. As for Ellen, she heard and saw nobody but Jeremy, at whose right hand she sat; she was not even conscious of what she ate, nor the silver bowl of pink roses on the table, nor the lace, nor the warm luxury. It all became part of her love for him, and her absolute trust and sense of harbor and peace. At moments she reproached herself humbly that she had ever doubted the beneficence of God, who had heaped her hands with such joys. Love and trust. How had she ever forgot?

  Jeremy saw her weariness after the journey, for all the large and shining blue gaze on him, and he saw her utter innocence and pliant air of yielding, and he wanted her desperately, not only bodily but spiritually. He felt that total communion with Ellen would restore his clouded hopes, lighten his cynicism, make him less grim and full of foreboding for his country, less involved in his work—and would give him again a measure of his youth and guarded optimism. A world which could produce such as Ellen must have produced silent multitudes like her also, and in them was his reassurance that dedicated men could protect American freedom from all its enemies: the violent white-faced hysterics who talked of “social justice,” the hidden and powerful international plotters who wished to efface his country and fatten on her flesh and bring her to slavery for their own aggrandizement and rule and wealth, the Populists, the Socialists, and all the other vileness clothed in human flesh which would make of America only a soft ruin and send her people “eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves.” What we need here, he would think, are a few of the ancient Hebrew prophets who thundered at tyrants and admonished their people to remember what Moses had said: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land, and to the inhabitants thereof!”

  Liberty was a rigorous state, uncomfortable for most of the hordes of mankind who preferred to be “guided” and led. But liberty, it had been said, was the unalienable right of men. However, men had to be true men to appreciate and even die for it. The hoary enemy had already surfaced, in the persons of Marx and Engels, to relieve men of the onerous burden of being free, and to be “protected” from all of life’s vicissitudes and be reduced to placid domestic animals. Except for the “elite,” of course, who would rule them “lovingly” but sternly, and milk them always, and devour their souls and blind them to the light. (Where had he read, in the Bible, “Fear not those who would destroy the body, but those who would destroy your soul”?)

  For the first time in his life Jeremy considered the orthodox view that there was, in full reality, Satan, bent on destroying man in the persons of man’s primordial enemies. He smiled to himself. If there was a Satan, then his servants were those who passionately asserted they “loved” mankind and knew what was best for it.

  Ellen whispered to him urgently. “Aunt May is very tired,” she said. “Would you excuse us after dinner, soon?”

  Jeremy glanced at May, who was sunken in a gray and exhausted reverie, her plate almost untouched. “Certainly,” he said. “In a few minutes.” He put his hand over Ellen’s and a charge of something powerful and beautiful rushed between them, an empathy which suddenly made them one.

  He courteously rose and
bowed when the ladies indicated that they wished to retire. He hoped, he said, that they would be pleased with the quarters which had been assigned to them. Accompanied by Cuthbert, they left the room, but at the last Ellen’s blue and luminous eyes smiled at him with ardent love and trust Mrs. Eccles was exceedingly pleased with her small and luxurious suite. The one for May and Ellen looked out upon the Avenue, and was larger and even more sumptuous. May was now completely stunned. A maid came in to turn down the silk damask bedspreads, to unfold the puffed quilts, and to draw the golden satin draperies. May watched her in a humble and apathetic silence, though once she made an ashamed and protesting gesture when the maid swiftly unpacked their two small bags and hung the dreary and wilted clothing in a vast mahogany wardrobe all carvings and gilt handles and embellishments. A steam radiator hissed warmly; the sounds of traffic below reached the room in a subdued blur of sound.

  “Isn’t it all too wonderful, too unbelievable?” asked Ellen in a soft ecstatic voice. She gazed about her with innocent and almost childish glee.

  “It’s not for us,” said May. There were heavy gray lines of weariness and confusion and denial and pain about her eyes.

  But Ellen said, with that deep gentleness of hers, “I’ll get your pill, Auntie, and a glass of water—from this beautiful crystal bottle here on the table—and you will sleep well, and cozy, too.”

  May began to cry. “I want to go home,” she said, sobbing drily. “I want us to go home. Please come home with me, Ellen, please.” She reached out and took the girl by her round forearm and raised a desperate and pleading face to her. All the feeble dauntlessness she had occasionally felt some years ago had gone. All the stubborn tenacity and determination of her kind had dwindled with her increasing pain and incapacity. But she still had the pride of her class, the obdurate pride of her “place,” which was at once a defense and a defiance.

  Ellen said in a quiet contented voice, “I am home, Aunt May, home at last.”

  She began to undress, carefully stroking out the long gray flannel skirt, the cheap imitation-leather belt with its brass buckle, and the cotton blouse, now stained with soot. She hung them up, and sniffed the cedar-scented interior of the wardrobe with pleasure. May watched her in a prolonged silence, and between those intent glances she also gazed about the room. She could not bear the splendor.

  Then she said, “Ellen, there’s something else. Have you ever thought what you are doing to Mr. Jeremy, you marrying him?”

  Ellen looked at her aunt over her shoulder, in astonishment.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Auntie.”

  “Ellen, dear, think again, remember, you are only a poor servant girl, born to be a servant, by God’s will. And he’s a gentleman, and rich. You don’t know anything, Ellen. You’re as ignorant as I am. You’re out of place here, and in his life even more, my poor little girl. He has important and wealthy friends; think what they will say about him and how they’ll laugh at him, and he’s a very proud man, you can see that. They’ll make him ashamed, they’ll make him realize—Ellen, if you—if you—like him, you won’t marry him, for his sake. You will rise above your own selfishness. Don’t make a man like him miserable, Ellen, and you’ll make him miserable and ashamed if you marry him. You can’t do this thing to him, Ellen, you just can’t, not if you care a fig about him. It isn’t fair.”

  This was an aspect Ellen had never considered. She stared blankly at her aunt and her face slowly paled and became rigid. May leaned forward eagerly from where she sat on the voluptuous bed, for she saw Ellen’s expression and her hopes rose.

  “He’ll go far, Ellen, as Mrs. Eccles has told us over and over. Maybe even to Washington. Or at least Governor. That is, if you don’t marry him. But people’ll think, big people, that if he could bring himself to marry a little servant, a nobody, then he isn’t the man for them, and they’ll turn away from him and find a man with better sense. Don’t you see, Ellen? He’s the kind that wants to do great things, to amount to something. And you’ll be standing in his way, dear, and he’ll come to hate you, and himself, too. How could you possibly be his hostess? Even if he gets a tutor for you? You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

  Ellen sat down on her own bed and dropped her head on her chest. She said, “Aunt May, you truly think I could hurt him, by marrying him?”

  “Oh, yes, dear! I’ve talked to Mrs. Eccles, she is a wise woman in this world. And she said, ‘Poor Ellen, she will find out when it is too late.’ I know you don’t like her, but she knows this world, and she is sorry for you and Mr. Jeremy.”

  Sudden waves of desolation and anguish rushed over Ellen. Compared with this agony, the misery of her short life was as nothing, not even the past four years. How could she live without Jeremy, how could she go away and never see him again? Her throat became thick and breathless, and she gasped. But—how could she ruin his life by marrying him, by making him a pariah among his powerful friends? Love had taught her his strength, his ambition, his force-fulness. She had recognized these things instinctively. He would never be satisfied to be obscure, a mere pedestrian lawyer, not even if he was rich. Was she a barrier to his nobler and more distinguished life? Would her love for him eventually be nothing, and only a smothering of his aspirations? Would he be despised? Yes, it was very possible.

  But I can’t live without him, she thought, in her suffering. Then another thought came: But how dare I stand in his way? What am I, compared with him, Jeremy, my darling? I am nothing. He is all there is.

  May was watching her acutely. She saw Ellen despairingly run her hands through her hair with such violence that it fell about her in rippling folds and heavy lengths. May did not consider herself cruel, and a destroyer. She loved her niece; she sincerely believed that she could save Ellen from wretchedness, from the torment of “rising out of her station in life.” Had she not taken Mary away from the man who had wanted to marry her, that John Widdimer? Had she not truly saved Mary from such a disaster? It was sad that Mary had died of sorrow and childbirth, and that Mr. Widdimer had been killed by a horse. But better that than a lifetime of grief and dissension and ultimate unhappiness and sorrow. In the end both of them had attained peace, even if it was in the grave. May, like many of her kind, believed that as the grave was always the fate of man it was better than laboring in regret and fevered affliction. Her entire life had been centered on hymns and aphorisms about death and cemeteries. Though no longer religious, she was convinced that the grave was superior to existence. Whenever she had had leisure she had haunted graveyards, sighing sentimentally, and touching stones with a wistful hand. Her girlhood had been full of paeans to death, and one of the songs she remembered most lovingly had proclaimed: “Cradle’s empty, Baby’s gone!”

  Had Ellen died when Mary had given her birth May would have had a singular consolation, a sentimentality to remember, to cherish, with deep luxurious sighings and uplifted tearful eyes and hushed confidences to acquaintances. But Ellen had not consented to die with her mother. Unknown to her simple self, May had unconsciously resented this robust defiance, this determination to survive. Now, unconsciously again, she even more resented Ellen’s prospect for happiness. In some way it was not “proper.” Ellen had robbed her aunt of a dismal reason to live, herself, with tender memories. She had robbed her of emotional riches. Ellen had no way of understanding the complexity of her aunt’s motivations. She sat, drooping, on her bed, a tragic figure of devastation.

  May felt victorious and uplifted, and her sadness was almost sexually exciting. Misfortune, and its wailings and panoply, was the supreme dignity of the poor.

  “Let’s go home tomorrow,” she pleaded. “Back to Wheatfield, on the train, back to Mrs. Eccles and her lovely house. We were so happy there.”

  “Happy?” murmured Ellen. “I wasn’t even alive.”

  She contemplated her whole dolorous life, her famished longing for love, for protection, for contentment, for a little beauty, a little surcease, a little quiet, a litt
le privacy. She had never understood the resignation of such as her aunt, the self-righteous acceptance of wretchedness and poverty. She did not know that there was a perverse satisfaction in this, a sensual gratification, a sense of importance in being selected for submission to ordained fate. Once she had dimly guessed this, and it had outraged her. Jeremy had recognized in her an iron of the soul, a refusal to be cowed by circumstance, though in her youth she had not recognized this herself. She only knew that her very spirit had stiffened at May’s servile platitudes, and rebellion had made her smart. But that very rebellion had filled her with remorse and penitence, for she had hurt May. The girl’s thoughts became black and whirling and chaotic, suffused with her growing anguish.

  “I haven’t long to live, Ellen,” said May piteously. “For your sake and mine—let’s go back where we belong. We are poor and simple people; it never does to try to get out of our place.”

  Ellen was saying over and over in herself, in a stricken convulsion: No, I can’t hurt him. Jeremy, Jeremy. He took pity on me and tried to help me. How can I repay him with ruin? Jeremy, Jeremy.

  She stood up, trembling and distraught. Her hair fell about her white face and quivering cheeks and lips. But she said quietly enough, “Did you take your pill, Auntie?”