Ceremony of the Innocent (14 page)

“This is intolerable,” Mrs. Porter said, and began to cry. “Jerry, I never thought to hear such disrespectful words to your mother. I can’t bear it. And all because of this wretch, this hideous wretch, a nothing, a streetwalker.”

May had pushed Mrs. Jardin aside with a new strength, and had gone to Ellen, who had been looking, dazed and uncomprehending, at Mrs. Porter. She smoothed back her disheveled bright hair with quivering hands. When May put her arm about her, Ellen started and flinched, as if she had been struck. All the color had gone from her lips and cheeks. Her hand still held the fragments of the saucer, and she had been clutching them so convulsively since the arrival of the women that they had cut into her hand, and it was seeping with her blood.

“Don’t try to defend her, please, Jeremy,” Mrs. Porter whimpered, remembering her son’s face. “It’s just like you, of course. But she isn’t worth it, she trying to do to you—she trying—”

“What, Mama? What was Ellen trying to do?”

Mrs. Porter glanced appealingly at Mrs. Jardin, whose face had become sullen and furtive. “Tell him, Florrie. Tell him what you saw yourself.”

“Yes! Tell him your lies!” exclaimed May, whose cheeks were gray and damp. Her eyes shone with her fury.

“I told you, ma’am,” the woman muttered. “I don’t want to repeat it, here among mixed company. But I saw what I saw.”

“You contemptible devil,” said Jeremy. “You saw nothing except that I was trying to comfort this poor girl, this innocent little girl who does not know what all this is about.”

“I saw what I saw,” she repeated stubbornly. There was a red stain on her cheeks, and her expression was no longer jocular. She looked at Jeremy with enmity, but she said, “I know what gentlemen are, sir. I was married twice. It’s your nature. And when a woman tries to—tries to—well, you know. It’s your nature. You can’t resist.” She glared at Francis.

“You was with me, Mr. Francis. Tell them yourself.”

Francis turned his pale-blue eyes on Mrs. Porter, who regarded him with total dislike. “He was trying to seduce her, Aunt Agnes. I’ve told you that before. I didn’t hear what he was whispering to her, but I am sure that he was trying to get her to go upstairs with him.”

Jeremy began to laugh. “Maybe you aren’t as virginal as I thought you were, Frank. And I didn’t really believe you had such an imagination. Maybe there’s some hope for you, after all, when you grow up and put on spiritual long trousers.” He turned to his mother. “Nothing happened, Ma. Nothing would have happened. I was only trying to console this poor girl for the awful life she has led—with you and others, too, probably. This money? She broke one of your damned saucers, and she knew that she would have to pay for it—out of her one dollar a week. Her one dollar. Here, take it.” He threw the bill on the kitchen table. Any affection he had had for his mother was now obliterated, and he thought that she was too abhorrent for his hatred. “Well, aren’t you going to take the blood money?”

“You can talk to your mother this way, Jerry, my son?” Mrs. Porter was stricken.

“Yes. Under the circumstances, yes. I’m sorry, but it is all you deserve. After I take May and Ellen home, I am going to leave this house, and go to the hotel, and then I’ll go back to New York. I’m afraid that I should have done it long ago.”

Mrs. Porter truly loved and even adored her son, and now she could not bear this. She swung on Ellen and slapped the girl’s face heavily, and Ellen staggered back, and May with her. She lifted her hand again, but May intervened, putting her slight body between Mrs. Porter and Ellen.

“Touch my niece again, and I’ll scratch your eyes out, Mrs. Porter. I really will! And take your clothes to someone else to be let out, after you get too fat to wear them. And don’t ever expect me in your house again. I wouldn’t dirty my feet—”

It was Francis who said sternly, “That’s enough, Mrs. Watson. You are being insolent.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Jeremy. “The really exploited must never fight back. They must bend their heads meekly to their superiors, mustn’t they? They aren’t the ‘masses.’ They don’t engage in the ‘class struggle.’”

As Mrs. Jardin secretly hated them all, she began to smile, the jaunty expression back on her face. Oh, wouldn’t she have a tale to tell her friends tomorrow!

The big kitchen was sweltering with crude emotions, and the gaslight hissed and spluttered. May said to Ellen, her voice shaking, “Don’t cry so, love, don’t cry like that. Nobody is going to hurt you. Let’s go home, love, let’s go home.”

“To your unspeakable den!” Mrs. Porter shouted. “I’ve heard the tales!”

“And I’ve heard the tales about your husband, too,” said May with her new dauntlessness. “He and his visits to Philadelphia. To his doxies, that’s what. The difference is that you are lying, and I am not.”

Mrs. Porter’s eyes narrowed on her and her eyes scintillated. “You better get out of town, the both of you, May Watson. If you aren’t gone in a few days you’ll be arrested—both of you—for immoral behavior.”

“With your son as witness against my niece, ma’am?” May was actually smiling, a smile of absolute contempt.

“May,” said Francis reprovingly, and for the first time in his life Mrs. Porter regarded him kindly for all her rage.

“Now,” said Jeremy. “Before we end this agreeable little confab, I have a word to say. May, I want to send Ellen to a good school I know of, a girl’s boarding school, in Philadelphia, where she will be treated as a human being and not a slavey, where she will have good clothes and good food, and will learn to be the lady she really is. I will pay for it myself.”

All in the kitchen were stunned, their mouths open. Ellen began to look at Jeremy and her face gleamed under its wetness. Then May stammered, “Why, Mr. Porter?”

“Because she deserves better from life, May. That’s all.”

Ellen said in a low voice, “I can’t leave Aunt May. I could never leave Aunt May, not for a boarding school.” But her soft features twisted. “Aunt May needs me.”

“We’re poor humble people,” May began. “What would Ellen do, after that school?”

Francis interrupted. “You are quite right, May. I have another thought. I have an aunt in Wheatfield, my mother’s sister, a wonderful lady. She needs a good housekeeper, and a maid. She will pay you both well, May, and you will be very comfortable. She is a very kind lady, my Aunt Hortense. Her name is Eccles.”

May’s wan face glowed. “Oh, that would be wonderful, Mr. Francis! I hate this town. I thought it would be good for us, but it hasn’t. When can we go?”

“I will send her a telegram tonight,” said Francis, and his own face glowed. “You could go day after tomorrow. I am very fond of my aunt; she has been like a mother to me. You couldn’t find a more generous lady, and she will be like a mother to Ellen, too. You have only to do your duty.”

Ellen had been listening to this, and only Jeremy saw her young despair. “Spoken like a true elitist,” said Jeremy. “Let the masses struggle, but never, but never, let them rise out of the rank and file. May, do you realize what these two offers mean? I want a better life for Ellen. If you take my cousin’s offer Ellen will never reach her potentialities. She will be a servant for the rest of her life. Do you want that?”

May had no idea of what “potentialities” meant. She had only the memories of her own life, and her sister’s. Then, she did not trust Jeremy, though she trusted Francis, for he was always soft-spoken and gentle with her, whereas Jeremy had a “bad reputation” and his voice could be harsh and ugly. Look at the way he had talked to his own mother—even if she had deserved it! Confusion swept May for a moment. Conviction also came to her that had not “God” intervened Jeremy would indeed have “taken advantage” of Ellen.

She spoke with firmness. “I’m Ellen’s legal guardian. So I must make the decision for us both. Thank you, Mr. Francis. We’ll take your offer, and get out of this town forever. Never did like it.”

She glanced at Jeremy. “We are servants, sir, and we aren’t ashamed of it. Work is work, if it’s honest. Ellen will be a good servant, after she’s trained. She’s already good. I’ll teach her to cook real well. Being a servant isn’t bad. Ellen,” and she turned to her niece, “it’s late. Let us go home.”

Ellen turned on Jeremy such a look of anguish, such a look of longing and yearning, that he took a step towards her, pushing his mother aside. But May seized the girl’s hand and pulled her out of the kitchen, out of the house.

Jeremy did not sleep that night. He had refused to listen to his father’s somewhat hysterical upbraidings. He had seen his Uncle Walter’s sympathetic eyes, and had winked at him with affection. He had not comforted his mother. He had not spoken again to Francis. He was done with them all, with the possible exception of his uncle.

There was but one thought in his mind as he gloomily tossed and turned: He would never let Ellen go. When she was old enough he would rescue her. It would be three or four years—but he would never let her go.

“What are you crying about, Ellen?” asked May the next night as she and her niece prepared for bed. “Such a wonderful thing to happen to us! You ought to get down on your bended knees and thank God. Ellen?”

But Ellen did not answer.

“And Mr. Francis is going to pay our fare! Such a good young man, a real saint. To think what he is doing for us, only servants in his aunt’s house, though I’m a dressmaker, too. Ellen?” But Ellen did not answer.

“To get out of this town!” said May, sighing blissfully as she put on her clean if ragged nightgown. “Forever. And Mr. Francis thinks his aunt will pay me eight dollars a month, and you four dollars a month. It’s a fortune! We can even save a little money, because we won’t have to buy food.”

She paused. “I’m selling this furniture tomorrow. But, Ellen. You must stop reading books. They can weaken a female’s mind. Besides, Mrs. Eccles wouldn’t like it. You’ve got to settle down, Ellen. I’m going to boil black-walnut shells tomorrow and wash your hair in the water, to tone down that color. Then maybe you’ll look almost pretty.”

She paused again, and faintly blushed. “Tell me the truth, Ellen. I’m your flesh and blood. Did that—that bad man—touch you—there?”

Now Ellen’s own white face blushed. “Aunt May! No! He only kissed me.”

May nodded grimly. “He’d have done worse, if God hadn’t been watching.”

Ellen went to bed. The guilt and shame she had been feeling for so long overcame her. She cried tonight, as she had cried all last night.

But worst of all was the sharp and terrible yearning, the desperate longing, for Jeremy, for the touch of his hand, the touch of his lips. She would never see him again. Mr. Francis had promised Aunt May that he would “see to that,” and that he was writing his aunt, “warning her.”

Never to see Jeremy Porter again, never. It was more than the girl could endure. She bit her pillow to smother her cries. For one brief moment she had glimpsed another life, another dimension, a glorious hope, a devastating love.

It was gone. Perhaps, she told herself, it was all she deserved. In some way she had forgot to “love and trust.” But she did not know in what way. She only knew she was being punished.

C H A P T E R   7

WALTER PORTER LOOKED ABOUT Jeremy’s suite in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel with urbane pleasure. “Yes,” he said, “you’ve done yourself proud, Jerry. I never come here without feeling solid pleasure and a sort of reassurance.”

“You haven’t been here for nearly a year,” said Jeremy. “That’s a long time to go without ‘pleasure and a sort of reassurance.’ Why don’t you come here more often?”

Walter’s face changed and became subtly older. His short massiveness had increased, his square and ruddy face was more sober, his white hair had thinned in four years. His hands, in contrast to his general bodily substance, were small and pale and elegant, as were his feet. He resembled Jeremy’s father to a remarkable extent, but whereas there was something meretricious in the Mayor of Preston’s appearance, Walter possessed an air of integrity and sincerity. His eyes had a candid directness and not the fraudulent sweetness of a politician’s.

He answered Jeremy with a question of his own. “Why don’t you see your parents more often, or at least invite them to visit you?”

“I’ve told you. There is just so much I can take from them. We usually end up quarreling. For instance, they are all for William Jennings Bryan, though his ideas are the absolute opposite of what they are, intrinsically. They think by agreeing with him and praising his Populist ideas, they lend themselves a certain style, a certain tolerance. They exhibit themselves as Good. Oh, I know, my father is a politician and has to pretend to be quivering like aspic with tender solicitude for the People, and my mother wants to have the cachet, among her friends, of being a lady full of the most Christian sensibility and compassion. But now they are beginning to take their public hypocrisy seriously, and that is what sickens me. A hypocrite who knows in his heart that he is a hypocrite, is often a likable rogue, and you can wink with him. But a hypocrite who believes his own self-advertising is despicable. If their pretensions changed the intrinsic rascality of their characters it wouldn’t be so bad. But my parents are still the same greedy and exigent people they always were, inside. They are still arrogant and grasping—What’s wrong? Did I say something you don’t like, Uncle Walter?”

“No. It’s not that, Jerry. I’m thinking of something—someone—else. Arrogance. Yes. It’s funny, though. Arrogance isn’t solely the sin of the crafty and the hypocrites. It’s also the sin of those who call themselves humanitarians; it’s their besetting sin. Behind it is the ancient lust for power, the very dangerous lust for power over other people.”

He stood up, his thick belly protruding, and he walked slowly to one of the large arched windows which were smothered in lace and velvet. He held the draperies aside and looked far up Fifth Avenue to the white and gray mansions of the exceedingly wealthy, with their tiny green lawns shimmering in the summer heat and surrounded by wrought-iron fences, and with their polished bronze doors. The Avenue seethed with lacquered carriages, with wagons and drays and even horsemen on fine horses, all fuming under the hot whitish sky and the glaring sun. He saw the distant church steeples, still the highest elevations in New York.