Ceremony of the Innocent (13 page)

“Comfort her? Seduce her, you mean, don’t you? A child!”

“Idiot,” said Jeremy. “She gave me some inkling of her life, and I tried to console her, while thinking what I could do for her. You’ve been here for days, you mewling brotherly-lover, but have you given any thought as to how you could help her? I bet not!”

But Francis looked at Ellen, whose long hair fell like curtains nearly all over her tear-wet face. “Ellen,” he said with gentleness, “did this—this man—hurt you?”

She shook her head. She was filled now with a sense of enormous guilt, inspired by Mrs. Jardin’s attack, and disgrace, though she did not know why. She was only dimly aware of the exchange between the two men, and its implications. Nevertheless, she experienced degradation.

“Don’t be afraid, Ellen,” said Francis, trying to ignore the menacing Jeremy. “Tell the truth. Did he try to—Did he ask you to go up to his bedroom with him?”

Ellen slowly lifted her head and regarded him with bewilderment. Then she slowly shook her head and gave a great heaving sob. “We talked about Thoreau,” she almost whispered. “And then, I was so sad, and I began to cry, and he put his arms around me and it was like—like—” But she had no words for the delirious happiness and content she had known, the surcease of misery, the rise of hope.

“Like what?” said Francis. But she could only shake her head dumbly. “Thoreau!” said Francis. “Oh, I am sure of that!” He looked at his cousin. “There is a law for men like you.”

“I wish there was a law for men like you, too,” said Jeremy. “God knows the country is going to need it. Now, if you’ll get out of the way I’ll take Ellen home and tell her a plan I have for her, which will rescue her from your kind.”

Darkness stood at the windows and there was a distant cannonade as the first fireworks rose in stars and streamers of many colors into the sky. But no one in that kitchen heeded it.

“You mean, in one of your brothels?” asked Francis of his cousin.

“You talk like that once more and you’ll need the tender attentions of your dentist,” said Jeremy. He grinned at Francis with ferocious derision.

Frustrated, and trembling himself, Francis said, “Do you deny that you were attempting to seduce this girl?”

“I don’t have to affirm or deny anything to you,” replied Jeremy. “What are you, anyway?” He began to stroke Ellen’s shoulder soothingly.

“I am a decent man, which you are not. I know all about you; I’ve heard the stories around Harvard Yard. And your women!”

“Don’t be so envious, Frank,” said Jeremy. “I have the wherewithal, which, I hear, you do not. Except, perhaps, for the ancient Greek caper?”

Francis was aghast, and now he felt the first pure rage of his life, and he wanted to kill. “You contemptible brute,” he said in the hushed voice of outrage and anger. “If I had not come just now you’d be torturing this girl—”

“How do you know? Have you ever deflowered a virgin? Or are you still a virgin yourself? I shouldn’t wonder. Ellen, dear, stop crying and don’t listen to this indecent babble. I will take you home—”

“I will!” said Francis. “Not you! I wouldn’t trust you a foot with her.”

Ellen spoke clearly for the first time, and with fright. “But I can’t go home! I can’t go until it is after the late supper for the folks. I’ve got to stay here.”

Francis was in a dilemma. He was also aware that he was hungry. “Of course, Ellen,” he said. “After supper, I’ll take you home. Now if you,” he said to his cousin, “will leave the room Ellen will get at her duties.”

“For your convenience,” said Jeremy. “Isn’t that always the way with your kind? You can love and love and love, and be a villain, to paraphrase Shakespeare. But not if it inconveniences you, dear me, no. Come on, Ellen.”

The girl cried in desperation and fear, “No, I can’t, Mr. Porter! I can’t. I have work to do. I need the dollar a week I get here, I do, I do. If I leave now Mrs. Porter will discharge me.”

“A dollar a week, and scraps,” said Jeremy, with reflection. “That is truly a full life, isn’t it? Well, Frank? Where is your famous rhetoric about the ‘exploited worker’? Or don’t you recognize an exploited worker when you see one?”

“She’s only a young girl, and is being trained,” said Francis, his fair face filled with congested color. “An apprentice.” He returned to the attack on his laughing cousin. “I’ve heard all about you; I’ve heard about you and that unfortunate little girl, Alice, who worked in this house.”

“What about Alice?”

“Surely you know.”

Jeremy stared at him, then threw back his head again and laughed. “Why, you imbecile, listening to kitchen gossip! I never laid a hand on that wretched child, nor did I want to.”

“Alice?” said Ellen, still weeping. “Alice got sick and she had to be sent away.”

“And where did she go, Frank?” asked Jeremy. “Or didn’t you ask, or care? But she wasn’t one of your ‘masses,’ was she? She didn’t stare into the future, with a heroic face, tramping to freedom and victory over the ‘oppressor,’ did she? She was just a homeless starving child, defenseless and alone, so she wasn’t worthy of your damned brotherly love. Ellen, do you know where Alice is?”

This conversation had both frightened and puzzled Ellen and she stopped crying. “No, Mr. Porter. I heard she went to Scranton. She had no folks here, or anywhere, I heard.”

Jeremy turned on his cousin. “Why, you crawling thing! You knew about it and never offered any help! No doubt you just shook your head sadly, and sighed, and changed the subject. If ever I wanted to smash a man I want to smash you. Now.”

“Why didn’t you help her? She was yours!”

If Ellen, intent now on her work, had not suddenly moved between the two young men, Jeremy would have seized his cousin and punched him vigorously. In fact, she and Jeremy collided for an instant and she uttered a small disconsolate cry and would have fallen had not Jeremy caught her. He looked over her head at Francis and said in an almost genial voice, “One of these days I will break your neck. I only wish it could be a collective neck.”

Dazed by words and attitudes she did not understand, Ellen started to clear the kitchen table hurriedly. After a moment, Jeremy began to assist her. She was scandalized. “Oh, no, Mr. Porter! That isn’t right.”

“Why isn’t it?” asked Jeremy. “I ate off these plates, didn’t I? But then, I’m no aristocrat. Me, I’m just a brawny workingman, full of beans after a good supper.” He glanced at his cousin. “What? Are you still here? Why don’t you go into the library and read a little Karl Marx, your favorite author?”

“I wouldn’t leave this child alone with you for an instant.”

“Tut, tut,” said Jeremy, shaking his head. “I’m not that much of an ascetic. I prefer a softer place than a kitchen floor, though perhaps you don’t.”

No one had noticed the flurry of Mrs. Jardin’s departure. She had returned, running and panting, to the park and had found May Watson, sitting dolefully alone, as usual, her nearest companions sending disdainful glances at her, and tittering. Mrs. Jardin had gasped in her ear, “It’s Ellen. No, I won’t tell you now. We’ve got to find Mrs. Porter. Hurry along there. No, I won’t tell you. No, she isn’t hurt—or sick. But she may be worse, soon.”

She dragged May along with her, and May’s weary face was white under the glare and brilliance of the fireworks, and her ears were stunned both by the news she had just heard and by the explosions. They found Mrs. Porter, and while May stood by, incredulous and shaking and horrified, Mrs. Jardin informed her employer that “that girl, Ellen, she was—she was making up to Mr. Jeremy—yes, he’s home, sooner, and if me and Mr. Francis hadn’t come in, it would have gone on and on—Oh, it’s shameful, that’s what it is! Don’t ask me, ma’am, what I saw. I haven’t the words for it; I’d never let them pass my lips, anyhow! I’m a good Christian woman, I’m a decent woman—”

“Liar!” cried the distraught May, wringing her hands.

“I am, eh?” said Mrs. Jardin, and she actually made a fist and brought it so close to May’s face that May had to throw back her head. “I never told a lie in my life! That’s left for your kind, and your dirty daughter, and everybody knows she’s your daughter and don’t you dare to deny it any longer!”

She was filled with triumph, and panted again, her face gleaming with gratified relish. May was appalled. She seized Mrs. Jardin’s arm, all her fear vanished, but Mrs. Porter said coldly, “Let her go, May. And we’ll all go to my house, at once.” She made a theatrically distracted gesture. “I won’t disturb the Mayor. This is dreadful, dreadful. Jeremy and that girl! Oh, I should have obeyed my intuitions. I knew she was wrong, and deceitful, and bad, all the time, but my generous heart—”

“You are too kind, too innocent, for bad ones like her,” said Mrs. Jardin, and the three women hurried off together, May sobbing drily, completely frantic. “Poor Mr. Jeremy,” said Mrs. Jardin, trotting beside her employer. “You know what gentlemen are, Mrs. Porter. He’s not to be blamed. It was that one, holding and hugging him and kissing him, and she wouldn’t let him go, and she was asking him—No, I can’t soil my mouth.”

“Did Jeremy say nothing, nothing at all?”

“No, ma’am. He was just trying to get away from her, and she clinging like a leech, or an alley cat, to him.”

“To think I harbored such an ugly creature in my house, such a shameless creature! Surely my poor Jerry has eyes, hasn’t he? He could see what she looks like.”

Oh, Ellen, Ellen, May sobbed inwardly. Oh, my God, my God. What wicked things these women are—what liars.

But still, she had never understood Ellen, or Ellen’s mother, Mary, for they had been “strange” to her, and incomprehensible, and all her fears that Ellen “would go the way” of Mary returned to her with smothering force, so that she staggered as she tried to keep up with the other women. I did my best, she cried in her heart to the unanswering God. I did my best, my very best, to protect and teach her. My very best. My poor Mary, my poor Ellen.

She felt a convulsion of hatred and murderous fury against Jeremy Porter. The cannonading echoed the torment and discordant clamor in her own spirit. It was as if she moved through hell, as she pushed aside crowds with staring faces, with eyes and mouths black in the screaming light, and agape.

In the kitchen of the Porter house Ellen’s shaking hands tried to cut fresh slices of ham. Jeremy took the knife from her and said, “I’ll cut it, dear. You may finish setting the table in the dining room for the hungry horde, which has been stuffing itself all day. Afterwards, I’ll take you home.”

Francis had seated himself obdurately on a kitchen chair and was staring at his cousin with the old hatred they had had for each other since childhood. Jeremy wanted to laugh at Francis’ posture of determined protection for an endangered damsel. What the hell, thought Jeremy. An ass is an ass and there is nothing one can do about it. I’m sorry for my doughty uncle, with a son like that. He should have been my parents’ son. They are three of a kind.

Ellen, her eye on the kitchen clock, was sweatily running between the kitchen and the dining room, sometimes stumbling in her haste.

When she dropped a saucer, and it shattered, she broke into wailing. “Oh, they’ll take my dollar for that! Mrs. Jardin told me.”

“Oh, surely not, Ellen,” said Jeremy, as the girl began to pick up the small wreckage. “They are good, long-suffering, holy Christians, with palpitating hearts for the poor.”

Ellen was crying again. “My dollar. Aunt May was going to buy a length of sprigged cotton and make a Sunday dress for me! And now I won’t have it.”

“Never mind, dear,” said Jeremy. “Here, here are two dollars.”

“In anticipation, no doubt,” said Francis. “Girls in her position must learn to be careful. When any money passes, it will be from me.

If Mrs. Porter and May and Mrs. Jardin had not entered just then Jeremy would have struck his cousin and there would have been a brawl. Mrs. Porter’s eyes jumped to her son, and she saw the money in his hand, and cried out, not at first seeing Francis. “Oh, Jerry, Jerry!” she exclaimed. “The ultimate disgrace! And in my house, too!” She ran to her son and enfolded him in her fat arms and began to cry, while Mrs. Jardin gloated in the doorway and May looked over her shoulder in new frenzy and disbelief.

“Mrs. Jardin’s told me everything, everything!” said Mrs. Porter. “My poor Jerry. Jerry, why didn’t you send us a telegram? All this could have been avoided!”

Jeremy gave her a brief and impatient kiss, then disentangled himself. “What could have been ‘avoided? Nothing’s happened, except that I got bored in Scranton and came home. I made up my mind suddenly.”

But Mrs. Porter clutched him. “Mrs. Jardin’s told me everything, about you—and this disgusting creature—trying to, trying to—”

“You didn’t listen to that bitch, did you? Ma, that’s too much even from you.”

Mrs. Jardin gasped at that epithet and burst into loud tears. “That I, a good Christian woman, should have to hear that word with my own cars!”

But Mrs. Porter was staring at Ellen with loathing, looking up and down the length of the girl’s figure. “Get out of my house at once, you shameless slut, you ugly revolting hussy, and never come back! We’ll drive you out of town, you bold thing, you dirty thing!”

“Mother,” said Jeremy, and now his indulgent voice was so terrible that his mother fell back from him, blinking. “Don’t speak to Ellen like that. The girl has done nothing wrong, except she got my supper, because I was hungry.” His dark eyes glittered at Mrs. Porter, and there was no affection in them.

“No,” said Francis, “Ellen has done no wrong. It was your son, Aunt Agnes, who was attempting to seduce this mere child.”

“Oh, you!” said Mrs. Porter. “I never did like you. I always suspected you, Francis. You were always sneaky. Naturally, you would come to the defense of a filthy creature like this Ellen.”

“Aunt Agnes,” said Francis, “your opinion of me means nothing. I never liked you, either. But I was here before you, and I can swear that your son was attempting to—assault—this child. I am certain I arrived just in time—”

“To save her from ‘a fate worse than death,’” said Jeremy. “You are wrong to despise my mama, Francis. You are two of a kind. Haven’t you ever felt a throb at recognizing a kindred spirit?”