Ceremony of the Innocent

by Taylor Caldwell

  Ellen became depressed again at the thought of the ladies. Gentlemen were much kinder to her, but ladies were wary and had sharp critical eyes which were not deluded by her. She knew that they considered her vulgar in appearance, even tawdry and garish. No matter how much French powder she patted on her face her color intruded, like a peasant’s. Her hair was deplorable, too, always rioting out from her pompadour into little curls and tendrils, in spite of her maid’s efforts. Jeremy would frequently and teasingly pull those curls and tendrils, even at the table. It was evident, to her, that he considered them childish and unsophisticated.

  Seeing her downcast face, Cuthbert said, “Mr. Diamond Jim Brady would enjoy this dinner, Mrs. Porter.”

  All at once Ellen was nauseated and bile rose in her throat, and she caught at Cuthbert’s arm, while the housemaid stared curiously. “I think I am a little dizzy,” said Ellen. Cuthbert led her to a kitchen chair and watched her with sincere concern. He motioned to the housemaid. “A little brandy, Mabel,” he said. He returned to Ellen; he knew she was pregnant. “To settle the stomach, Mrs. Porter. You study and work too hard, perhaps.”

  “But I accomplish nothing,” Ellen gulped in a dismal voice. “I am such a disappointment to Mr. Porter.”

  Cuthbert raised his eyebrows. “You are a joy to him, madam, a joy. I have known him a long time, and I perceive what he thinks.”

  Ellen accepted the brandy, which she loathed, and sipped at it holding it in a shaking hand. But it warmed her and the nausea began to retreat. She thought, distressfully, of the coming child. Would it be as unattractive as she was, and as stupid? She could not endure the thought of Jeremy’s dismay. She hoped for a son who would resemble his father. “You are very kind, Cuthbert,” she said. She stood up, somewhat weakly. “And now I must visit my aunt. Did she eat her supper?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Porter. It was only a small cup of broth and a broiled fish and browned potatoes and a salad, and some mashed turnips and cold ham and tea and some pound cake with the caraway seeds she likes. A small supper, but she seemed to enjoy it.”

  “Thank you, Cuthbert. You are so kind.” Ellen moved towards the kitchen door with an anxious expression, thinking of her aunt. The doctor visited May every week and was very comforting to Ellen. “One must remember her pain,” he had told her. “But that new Aspirin is very helpful. One must not listen too much to the complaints of women her age; it is too melancholy. We can only console, endure—” But his comfort invariably disappeared when Ellen entered the tiny elevator which would lift her to the fourth floor, where May had a warm and pleasant suite of her own, with a nurse in attendance day and night, and a fireplace always filled with crackling red embers, and a fine view. There was even a phonograph with wax cylinders of ballads, wistful and sentimental and sorrowful—May’s favorites.

  By the time the elevator had creaked to a halt on the fourth floor Ellen was guilty again, and despondent. She had caused Aunt May so much unhappiness, so much discontent, by marrying Jeremy. Nothing pleased her; nothing assuaged her misery. She felt deprived of her normal estate, which was suffering and labor and meek acceptance of fate. In that estate she had experienced a kind of exaltation, even if it had sometimes been touched by angry rebelliousness. In her class she had been important in wretchedness. Now she was not important at all, and had no genuine status. She was only the dependent of a man she still feared and distrusted and disliked; she believed he considered her a nuisance. Her memories of Mrs. Eccles’ house were her only pleasure. Oh, if Ellen had been sensible! But Ellen was as heedless and flighty as had been Mary, and May never doubted that the girl had a disastrous future which might descend at any moment, bringing calamity to both of them. It just wasn’t “natural” for Ellen to pretend to be a great lady in this house. Half with terror, half with anticipation, May awaited the day of rout, when she could say, with tears, “I told you so, Ellen, I told you so!” The girl’s obvious bliss did not delude her or disperse the terror. In fact, May resented that bliss. She felt robbed, and frustrated. Each morning she thought forebodingly, “Perhaps this will be the day.” When the “day” passed serenely, she was chagrined, and even more foreboding. She would sometimes hear Jeremy’s distant laugh and she thought it derisive of Ellen. She would hear the murmur of men’s genial voices as they spoke to Ellen and she was convinced they were mocking. Ellen, in that great dining room all glittering crystal and elegant mahogany and silken rugs and silver and enormous chandelier and glowing velvet and lace—May cringed for Ellen. She would often whimper in sympathy. When Ellen could not understand her aunt’s remarks May was angered at the girl’s obtuseness. After all, Ellen was eighteen and a woman, and she should not be so dense! But then, Mary had been a fool, too: and had dreamed of being a fine lady.

  When Ellen would appear, for her aunt’s approval, in some gorgeous creation of Worth’s, May would say, “It’s not for you, dear, not for you. You’re, not gentlefolk, Ellen. And that diamond necklace! It looks like paste on you, really it does. It needs good blood to set such things off, and you don’t have it.” When she would see that Ellen became melancholy under this criticism she would feel, not self-reproach, but sadness. She dreaded, if hoped for, the day when Ellen would “realize, and come to her senses.” She never relinquished the happy thought of returning, chastened, to Mrs. Eccles’ house.

  At times she would say to her niece, “Have you and Mr. Jeremy been quarreling? I thought I heard him speaking real mean to you last night on your way to bed.” Ellen had replied, “Oh, Jeremy was speaking about one of our guests; an odious woman. He had overheard her say to another woman that I looked like a chorus girl.” Ellen had laughed but May had said with significance, “You see?”

  “Her husband, though, was very kind and attentive and the other gentlemen persuaded me to play a little Chopin and Jeremy was very proud. I made only one mistake.”

  “I heard you bellowing last night while you played on that piano.”

  “I know my voice isn’t very good, though my teacher says it is; he is very nice. But the gentlemen applauded. I’m sorry I disturbed you, Auntie. You should tell the nurse to keep the door shut.”

  May did not know that she was attempting to destroy Ellen. She truly believed she was rescuing her, or “hardening” her for the inevitable catastrophe. Then she also deplored Ellen’s “looking for the limelight.” It wasn’t “proper” for a girl like Ellen, who was only a servant, no matter the draped Worth gowns and the jewels and the perfumes and the scented soap and the beaded slippers, not to speak of the gemmed combs and earrings and bracelets. It was even less “proper” for Ellen to have servants of her own, Cuthbert and the housekeeper and two housemaids, and a carriage with two splendid black horses. When Ellen appeared in a long sable coat May had shuddered and had said, “That would keep us for years, Ellen, years. You’d better be careful of it; one never knows.”

  “Oh, I don’t think Jeremy will ever go bankrupt,” Ellen had said, smiling. She never suspected her aunt’s pathetic motives, though Jeremy did, with an anger he did not express to Ellen. Ellen often repeated these conversations to him, with her gentle humor, explaining that “dear Aunt May just cannot accustom herself to all these dazzling things. We must be patient with her, my darling.” Jeremy usually understood, for he was subtle and was aware of human nature, and did not, even to himself, accuse May of a malice she did not honestly feel. He knew that it was only fear for Ellen that impelled her, and he often, obliquely, tried to reassure the poor woman. That only made her mistrust him more. “He’s trying to pull the wool over my eyes,” she would tell herself. “But I’m not dippy, as he thinks.” She would stare at him with sullen suspicion as he spoke.

  She was sitting, huddled, by the fire in her small sitting room, clad in a very expensive dark-blue woolen robe, when Ellen entered tonight. She had never explored the Bible before, but now Ellen’s old Bible lay on her emaciated knees, open. She constantly searched for hortatory passages to read to Ellen, especially about “the d
aughters of Jerusalem,” happy damsels (though condemned by the severe prophets) who arrayed themselves in silks and bangles and earrings and cosmetics, and “walked haughtily” with bells on their dainty ankles. On hearing these passages Ellen puzzled why the grim prophets were so stern in denouncing joy and beauty. Did one have to live in sackcloth and ashes and wear a somber face to gain the approval of God? Ellen had begun to doubt that, for was not God the Creator of all loveliness and had He not demanded of Moses the utmost embellishments for His Temple, including music? Had not David said, “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord”? Had not Christ remarked on the splendor of the lilies of the field? Ellen, though she said nothing to her aunt, had begun to doubt the Puritan imperative of dullness and lack of grace and charm. This doubt was immediately followed by a surge of guilt, and a conviction of wickedness. Ugliness and lightlessness, it would seem, were marks of holiness.

  Once she timidly mentioned her guilt to Jeremy, who had laughed and kissed her and had told her to “consider” the gorgeousness of the peacock and the elegance of the swan and the bursting redbud trees and dogwood in the spring, and the happy laughter of winter-released brooks and rivers. “All things laugh and rejoice in their beauty,” he had told her. “And so should you, my sweet conscience-stricken imbecile.” He reminded her of the ascending cathedrals of Europe, the temples of God, and the fire of gems, and the glory of the mountains and the color of seas and skies. “Does your aunt consider them, ‘works of the Devil’?” Ellen sometimes thought it was possible. But still, when reproached by May for “ostentation” and “fine arrayal,” she became dejected again.

  She wondered, this evening, what adjuration May had prepared for her from the Bible. May looked up sourly when Ellen entered her sitting room, and said, “Ellen, that apricot color isn’t nice on a married woman all of eighteen. You should wear more ‘sober garb.’” She looked dissatisfied and ominous. “And you’re looking washed out lately, too. Is there something the matter?” she asked, almost in a tone of hope.

  Ellen had not told her aunt of her pregnancy. She was not certain why. Would it be indelicate? She had a vague intuition that May would disapprove, as she did herself, for Ellen never forgot the evil and vindictive natures of children, and their instinctive viciousness and cruelty. She had not blamed it on their parents, when she had lived in Preston, for even the most slatternly had shouted at their offspring in anger when they had persecuted Ellen too much on her way home from school or church or employment. Besides, did not the Bible admonish that man was evil from his birth and wicked from his youth? So Ellen, remembering, was often filled with disquiet concerning her own child now stirring in her womb. Would it become the enemy of Jeremy? Would it attempt to destroy and exploit him, as so many children did to their parents? Would it bring him unhappiness? When the doctor, to whom Jeremy had taken her, told her kindly that she was pregnant she had burst into tears. In her innocence she had not quite understood how marriage often led to children. Both Jeremy and the doctor had been astonished at her response to the news, but she could only stammer, “I hope—I hope—it won’t hurt my husband.” “You should be happy,” the two men had informed her. But Ellen, remembering her childhood, was not happy. Once she even fiercely thought, “If it injures Jeremy—I will kill it!”

  “I’m feeling quite well,” said Ellen, tonight, to her aunt. “Quite well. How are you today, Auntie?”

  The nurse, a Miss Ember of more than lavish proportions, and a woman of about forty, said with heartiness, “We are doing very well, Mrs. Porter! We ate a good supper, and enjoyed every morsel.”

  “You mean, you did,” said May, and then was frightened, for Miss Ember was “superior to” her in station, so she said with apology, “I didn’t mean that, ma’am. I did like my supper, though I have no appetite.” Miss Ember continued to beam but she felt inner scorn. May had confided too much to her, in her search for consolation for leaving Mrs. Eccles’ house. So Miss Ember also felt some condescension for Ellen, too, and was less polite than customary. May had repeatedly mentioned to Miss Ember—in that pathetic search for understanding—that Ellen was “only a servant, really, and out of her station, and someday she will regret it.” Consequently, Miss Ember was often impatient and overweening when Ellen questioned her about May’s condition. “I am sure, madam,” she would say with hauteur, “that me and the doctor know what her condition is, and we need no other advice.”

  To Jeremy she was obsequious. But she snickered about “the mistress,” in Cuthbert’s absence, to the other servants. Had Cuthbert not been a disciplinarian and in charge of the house and had he not had a strict knowledge of “dependents,” the household would have degenerated into chaos, with the servants in arrogant authority, and their mistress in terror. Cuthbert, fortunately, knew very much about human nature and its tendency to exigency and malice, and so did Jeremy.

  May set up her usual complaints of pain and sleeplessness before Ellen, as her niece sat near her, somewhat fixedly smiling. “I suppose you’ll have a lot of noise downstairs tonight, when I am trying to sleep,” said May.

  “You must keep your bedroom door shut, Auntie,” said Ellen. “We’ll try to be very quiet. After all, it is four floors below.”

  “And you’ll be crashing on the piano again,” said May. “Such horrible noise! You shouldn’t try to attract unbecoming attention, Ellen, from your superiors. That’s vulgar.” Miss Ember smiled nastily, and preened, as if in agreement.

  May said, “Hasn’t Mrs. Porter accepted you yet, Ellen?”

  Ellen said, with her gentle humor, “Jeremy hasn’t accepted his mother, Aunt May.”

  “How sinful! His mother! ‘Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God hath given thee.’”

  “I think parents should honor their children, too,” said Ellen. “That is, if the children are worthy of being honored.” She added, somewhat forlornly, “But most children aren’t worth honoring, are they?” She had spoken softly, as if to herself, fearing again for Jeremy and fearing the enmity of his child. She continued, “Jeremy says his mother must now make the second move, as he has made one before.”

  “But Mrs. Porter is quality, Ellen! And you’re not. You should humble yourself, and beg her pardon.”

  “For Jeremy loving me?” Ellen’s usually controlled voice rose a little.

  “You know exactly what I mean, Ellen,” said May with severity. “For you marrying him, against his parents’ wishes.”

  “Jeremy asks no one’s permission,” Ellen replied. She was suddenly very tired. The snug room almost suffocated her; the fire was too hot and close. She wanted to leave but her conscience would not let her. She was nauseated again and she felt heavy and weak. Miss Ember was watching her with smiling animosity. Such a gaudy thing! She’s used less from the paintbox today, it seemed.

  “I hope you are wearing something in keeping, and respectable tonight,” said May, with that ever-present reproof in her thin voice.

  “My black spangled velvet, and my diamonds. Jeremy wishes it.”

  “You look like a cheap actress in it, Ellen! Why not your nice brown wool, draped quietly, your day dress, and a little brooch?”

  “Jeremy would disapprove,” said Ellen.

  “At your age, and married state, Ellen, you should dress more seemingly.”

  Ellen pushed herself wearily to her feet. “I try to please Jeremy,” she said. May looked at her a little slyly. “I had a nice letter from Mrs. Eccles today, Ellen.”

  “Good,” said the girl, drawing her apricot velvet gown about her.

  “She’s delighted that Mr. Francis is now established in New-York.”

  Ellen was silent. May sighed, “If only we had stayed in Wheatfield, where we belong! Contented, peaceful, doing our duty. And Mr. Francis watching over us.”

  Again Ellen felt suffocated. She had not told Jeremy of Francis’ visit to her yesterday, and she had asked Cuthbert not to mention it, either. She knew that Jerem
y would not have liked it in the least, and her chronic guilt made her nervous. Why Jeremy would have been annoyed she was not quite certain. But in some way she intuitively guessed that Francis had relied on her keeping silent concerning his visit. She had sensed it in his lowered voice and the significant way he had of glancing over his shoulder, as if afraid of eavesdroppers or of Jeremy himself suddenly appearing.

  As she went down to the third floor to her rooms to dress—in the warm and dusky twilight enhanced by softly lighted lamps here and there—she thought of that visit. Her maid had laid out her gown for the evening and her jewelry, and the snow hissed against the windows and the wind savaged the glass. A fire danced on the black marble hearth. The rooms were large and well proportioned and beguiling with delicate furniture in the French style and with mirrors, and with thick oriental rugs underfoot. Usually Ellen rejoiced in such luxury, in gratitude and delight. Tonight she did not see it.

  She had been practicing on the black and gleaming grand piano which Jeremy had bought for her when Cuthbert came in with Francis’ card, and a scribbled message on the back: “Please see me for a few moments, Ellen.” Ellen’s first emotion was pleasure that he had remembered her out of his kindness. Her next was uneasiness, as she thought of Jeremy, who detested his cousin. But surely he would not resent Francis’ remembrance of his protegee? So Ellen asked Cuthbert to show Mr. Porter into the library, where they would have sherry and biscuits. She remembered that Francis abhorred whiskey and preferred only wine.

  She went into the library in her afternoon tea robe of pale-blue velvet and lace, holding out her hands in shy welcome to Francis. The dun winter light, glowering through the windows, made him appear very austere and rigid as he took her hands and bowed a little over them, stiffly. But his eyes, smaller now behind his pince-nez, studied her with sharpness and she became uncomfortable and bewildered.

  “How kind of you to come, Mr. Francis,” she had murmured, indicating a chair for him. “I am happy to see you.”