Ceremony of the Innocent (17 page)

“I’m sorry,” said Ellen, feeling that now very familiar stab of guilt and embarrassment. “I thought you said last week, ma’am, that you didn’t care for those herbs too much.”

“May’s very subtle in her seasoning. There’s a difference. Did you put more coal in the furnace?”

“Yes, Mrs. Eccles. Half an hour ago.”

“And did you give the cats their afternoon cream?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Ellen looked anxiously through the far window. The blue shine of October was dimming a little. It would soon be dark.

“Very well. You may go, Ellen. But do be discreet. Keep your eyes down, like a proper girl. Never look at people directly. It’s bold, for one of your station.”

Ellen pulled open the heavy oaken doors and walked out into the blessed cool and spicy air of an October afternoon. There was a fragrance of leaves burning, mingled with the acrid odor of fresh horse manure. A few carriages moved sedately over the cobbled stones of the streets, filled with ladies in furs and gloves and with plumed hats, their knees covered with warm robes of wool or fur. From somewhere came the exciting scents of boiling ketchup and grape jam and roasting meat. The sky was an intense blue, with here and there a mounting white cloud. It looked cold and distant, for all its color. The street was lined with big houses similar to Mrs. Eccles’, the windows polished and richly draped, the knockers bright as gold. Trees lined the walk, scarlet and yellow and russet brown, contrasting with the occasional sharp green of a fir tree. The lawns were a more vivid emerald than in summer, due to the recent heavy rains, and seemed almost artificial. The last salvia and red calla lilies burned closely in flower beds. A slight keen wind blew, and the drying leaves on the trees crackled and a drift of them raced before Ellen in swirls, as if they were still alive.

The air was chill on Ellen’s cheeks, and she moved with briskness, her long legs gliding and sure. She saw, in the distance, the hazy blue of a leaf fire rising up in the shining air, and heard a child shout. She came to the little park, which was enclosed in an iron fence, and she walked through the gates. Here were narrow paths of gravel winding through the trees, and a scattering of wooden benches. The park was patronized mostly by nursemaids with their charges in perambulators, covered with rich plaid blankets. In the center was a large rose bed, but only a hopeful bud or two shivered among the fading leaves and the bent stems. It would soon be winter. A squirrel ran before Ellen, raced halfway up a tree, and looked eagerly at her for nuts. She had purloined a few from the kitchen and she threw them on the ground and the squirrel, chittering, hurled himself down and snatched at them, sitting up on his haunches as he cracked a nut and ate it. A thin dappling of light came through the trees and moved over Ellen as she went on.

She found a bench. She saw she was almost alone in the park, except for a woman walking her dog and two women, obviously servants, who sat on a bench and furtively cackled together. No one noticed Ellen as she sat down on her bench, and placed her cheap imitation-leather purse on her knee. The wind blew a little stronger and tendrils of her flaming hair came loose and curled about her cheeks and forehead. She settled her black hat more firmly on the coiled mass. All May’s concoctions of black-walnut shells boiled in water could not dim the luster and glow of that hair, nor all the rice powder obliterate the apricot stain on cheek and mouth.

Ellen sat, conscious of her weariness. She had risen as usual at five, was in the kitchen at six, or before. She never climbed up to her bed until long after ten at night. The heat of the furnace never rose to those cold bedrooms which she and May occupied, and the blankets, if adequate, were coarse and dark, the harsh linen prickly. So Ellen always hastened through her prayers, shivering in her flannel nightgown, and then crept under the blankets, there to lie for a long time gazing through the high narrow window which boasted no curtains and no draperies. When she finally fell asleep it was only to dream distressfully, and to awaken fitfully several times.

She had no hope for anything. She could grow old and wrinkled and wan in service, until she was no longer of use. Then, with her meager savings she would go to the “poor farm,” or perhaps, if she was lucky, she would supervise children in another strange house, or do needlework or mending in some cold upper back room for a pittance, her body arthritic, her hands crooked with labor, her feet forever chilled and aching with corns and bunions, her back bent with years of toil, her skin furrowed and parched, her hair white.

She was accustomed to desolation now, and melancholy haunted her always. But it was deeper today, as the year died, and it was like a heavy battering pain in her heart.

For what was I born, and why was I born? she asked herself. There seems to be no reason, no answer. Aunt May says we are all born to suffer meekly, for it is the will of God, and we live only to please God; we cannot aspire to heaven if we neglect the duty He has assigned to us. But, dear God! I don’t want any heaven! I want a little joy, today, tomorrow, a little wonder, a little anticipation, a little hope. I want to see something of this beautiful world, to be free, if only for a short time, to be idle so I can think, to laugh, to sing, to be young as I was never young. For a brief while, before I die, I should like my own fire and my own bed and my own walls. I know I can never be like the girls who come with their mothers to call on Mrs. Eccles—the beautiful girls in their pretty summer frocks all lace and silk, and their furs in the winter, and their carriages, and their happy laughter, and the pearls at their ears and their throats. I know I shall never wear their flowered hats in the summer, their plumes in the winter, their fur-lined gloves, their lustrous muffs, their dainty shoes. I was not born to that; I was born to be a drudge, and so I must not envy, not for an instant, those girls my own age, so carefree, and with such pleasant futures.

But just for an hour, a day, a week, of peace and aloneness, of freedom from fear and dread, of time to read a book by a fire, to listen to music, to go to a theater, of time to walk in woods and by rivers with no pressing duties hurrying me along, and away, from all that is lovely! I would gladly die for that hour, that day, that week, and would ask no heaven and would petition no God for anything more. I would sleep—O God, to sleep!—never waking again, afterwards, and it would be enough. It would be more than enough.

But there was no hope for such as she, nor for countless millions like her, laboring like trolls in the dark mountains to forge and to contrive treasures of gold and gems for those who lived and laughed in the light, and rejoiced in the sun.

There was no bitterness or envy in Ellen, but only sadness that she would never see the splendor of the world in which she had been born, never see new skies or mysterious islands swarming with many-colored dancing birds, never see the ocean or the great white sails of ships, or mountains draped in snow and glaciers, or mighty cities throbbing with voices and music and the thunder of mills. She would never see the stone lace of cathedrals, or listen to the silence in their incensed vaults, or hear a choir, or walk through exotic bazaars. Of all these things she had read—she would never know them, no, not even for an hour.

She fell into fantasy, her one refuge from reality. She thought of Jeremy Porter and her lips were suddenly afire with the memory of his kiss, the enfolding strength of his arms, the pressure of his body against hers, the feel of his chest against her breasts, the stroke of his hand on her hair, his murmuring, his half-heard words of consolation and tenderness, the warmth of his flesh.

The heat at her lips spread through all her body until it tingled and yearned and urged against her poor clothing. She could see and hear and feel him so acutely that the pain in her heart rose to an inner groaning and weeping. The yearning was so fierce that it became almost unbearable. She wanted to get up and run, run into the approaching twilight, run into his arms. She could see him so intensely that it was as if he were there with her and calling to her.

She dimly heard the crunching of gravel under someone’s feet. And when she looked up, her eyes full of tears, and saw that it was Jeremy himself, clad in a heavy wool chinchilla coat and dark trilby hat, she was not surprised. In silence, she immediately got to her feet, and as he came closer to her she held out her hands, then ran to him, and she was in his arms, her face buried in his shoulder. I am dreaming, I am only dreaming, she thought incoherently, and then he was kissing her lips and a deep quiet came to her, a fulfillment, a joy she had never known before, a peace, a safety, a surcease, and the air sang in her ears.

C H A P T E R   8

THEY SAT ON THE BENCH in the cold twilight and Jeremy’s arm was about her waist and her head lay on his shoulder, and she was sheltered and secure.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“I never lost you,” he answered, and smoothed away a small curl that was blowing into her eyes. “I knew you came to this park, on Thursdays. Never mind how I knew, love, my dear love.”

She leaned against him and felt wave after wave of the utmost tranquillity and happiness flowing over her, stilling even the remembrance of pain and wistful longing and despair. She was complete, in a refuge, protected, and, incredible though it was to her, loved. Her diffidence was gone, for the first time in her life, and she talked to Jeremy with delicious confidence, and a naivete he found pathetic, and a trust which was entire. She questioned nothing; it was sufficient for her that he was here, as she had dreamed thousands of times, and though the air of the increasing twilight had become very cold she felt warmth all through her body, and a comfort so profound that it was both physical and spiritual. At moments she was frightened that this, too, was fantasy, but a glance into his face above her, reassuring and tender, made her sigh with rapture.

She had confided to him all the wretchedness of these past four years, all her fantasies of him, and her yearning, all the hopelessness, all the inability she was experiencing to “love and trust.” “I feel so guilty,” she said, “for my rebelliousness, when all this time you loved me and knew where I was, and were waiting for me.” She had told him of the “kindness” of Mrs. Eccles, who had “taken Aunt May and myself in,” and the solicitude of Francis Porter, who came to Wheatfield at least once a month to see if she was faring well. Ellen did not see that Jeremy’s face had darkened at this, though he made no comment. He only looked down into her eyes and her face, as he listened, and he saw that maturity had brought more beauty to her even though there were shadows of sadness around her mouth.

She did not ask about the future, nor did she think of it. She only knew that Jeremy was there, that he was no dream, that he had not really abandoned her, that he had thought of her always. In her timid voice she asked him, over and over, to repeat this, and then she would sigh with delight and solace. But she mourned, again and again, that she had not “loved and trusted” enough.

At this his mouth became wry and he glanced away. Finally he said, “‘Love and trust?’ My darling, there is no one you can really love and trust in this world, not parents, not brothers and sisters, not even husbands or wives, and especially not friends. Haven’t you found out yet that this is an ugly and evil world, the seven-story mountain of hell, where only malice and envy and treachery flourish?”

She drew away from him for a moment, and then he laughed slightly and pulled her to him again. “I’m a cynic,” he said. “And a pessimist, and I got that way from associating with the brotherly-lovers and the optimists.” He did not want her to realize the full hideousness of living; her shyness and innocence were part of the touching qualities which had made her adorable to him from the first. So he said, “Well, never mind. Maybe you can—er—trust in God. You do trust in Him, don’t you, my love?”

Her face became downcast and sorrowful. “Not enough, as I did when I was a child. I have been so rebellious! I hope He forgives me.

“‘Beautiful daughter of Toscar,’” he said.

“Thoreau,” she said, comforted again. “At night, when everybody is asleep, I creep down to Mrs. Eccles’ library, with a candle, and read some of her marvelous books—”

“And the books I sent you every month?”

She was startled. “Your books? I never saw them—Jeremy.”

He was silent for a minute or two, while she looked up into his face anxiously. Then he said, “I see. Yes, I see. The dragon at the gate, warned by another dragon.”

“I don’t understand, Jeremy.”

“Never mind. It’s bad enough that I understand. And what do you read in that library, Ellen?”

“Hobbes. Edmund Burke. Montaigne. Kant. Erasmus. Spinoza. Shakespeare, all Charles Dickens’ books, and Thackeray. History. Adventure. Many other things.”

“It’s very kind of Mrs. Eccles to let you read her books.” He waited for the reply he was sure he would get.

Ellen said, “Oh, she doesn’t know. She and Aunt May say that books weaken a female’s mind. Mrs. Eccles reads only business journals; she is heavily invested, she says.”

“And all that business doesn’t ‘weaken’ her mind, does it?”

Ellen laughed gently. “Mrs. Eccles is a very strong-minded lady.”

“I bet. And very religious, too, no doubt.”

“Yes. She makes Aunt May and me kneel down with her every night for prayers. She is the one who prays aloud.” Ellen felt a thrust of betrayal, and said, very hastily, “She believes absolutely that God guides our every movement.”

“Especially to the bank,” Jeremy said. “I’m sure that Mrs. Eccles believes more in banks than she does in her God, and that is very sagacious of her.”

Ellen felt vaguely uneasy, though she did not entirely comprehend. However, she said, “God brought you to me, Jeremy. He answered my prayers.” There was something like a plea in her beautiful voice, and he could not resist it.

“If it gives you consolation to believe that, love, go on believing.” He drew her tighter to him. “Now that you are eighteen—we have plans to make.”

He felt her pull away from him, and he glanced down at her. “What is wrong, Ellen?”