Ceremony of the Innocent (2 page)

When Ellen left the church this Sunday noon no one spoke to her, though eyes trailed her malignantly and mouths were twisted in ridicule. As always, she was unaware of it all. However, some other sense often made her briefly alert to dislike. She had little of the instinct of self-preservation and did not know, and would never know, that this was extremely dangerous in a most dangerous world. If only I had a pretty new dress, she thought, instead of this old thing I’ve had for ages. Then people might love me, too. Well, anyway, the Bible says God loves me and that’s all that matters. She thought of what the pastor had said: “Love or perish.” She nodded to herself. She felt a familiar bursting in her heart, a peculiar longing, and a kind of exaltation that hinted of a future full of love and joy and acceptance. She had only to work and be useful; that would answer all her yearnings.

Her long and exquisitely formed legs carried her smoothly over the rough stones of the one long street of the village. Her tumultuous hair tossed behind her in the hot and dusty wind. Her face was alight with eagerness and expectation. She thought of the coming Fourth of July celebrations and the band that would play patriotic songs in what passed for a park in Preston, just outside the village limits. Music, to her, even the roaring Sousa marches, was an ecstatic experience. When she heard a mechanical piano clamoring out a “piece” from some parlor, or heard the high grinding of the new phonographs emanating from a house, she would suddenly come to a halt on the street, incapable of moving, unaware of anything about her, her face transfigured, held in ecstasy. This would excite laughter and open jeers from passersby, particularly children, but she was always unconscious of this, transported to another dimension where all was harmony and a thousand voices sang, and everything was understood, everything revealed. She had, as yet, no discrimination; she only knew that she winced and even cringed when she heard modern and maudlin ballads sung in trembling pathos. She would say to herself, “Cheap,” but did not know exactly what she meant.

She loved music even more than she loved books. She had a little library at home, culled from garbage pails or bought for a cent at Sunday school, and this consisted of a tattered copy of
Quo Vadis?
, a coverless collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets,
David Copperfield, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
, and a sifting ancient Bible with print so small that it strained even her young eyesight. She read these over and over, elated to find something new at each reading. But she had little time to read.

As she passed the various houses along the street she heard the occasional banging of a piano and stabbing voices raised in some disharmonious hymn. She cringed at these also, but did not know why. She had a dim feeling that God deserved more grandeur than this and she also felt a vague guilt—growing in her daily now—that she ought not to object to any sound raised to a somewhat cloudy heaven. But there was something in her mind which demanded majesty and stately glory.

The longest street in Preston boasted the “finest houses in town,” houses standing arrogantly beyond careful lawns and with trees plated with dusty gold. There were water troughs for horses here, and carriage blocks, and narrow gardens behind the houses. Ellen would look at the houses with pleasure, and without envy, for she knew nothing of envy and was incapable of it. Somewhere, she insistently believed, there was a house like these waiting for her, with cool dim interiors, portieres, lace-covered windows, rich carpets and polished floors and carved doors.

She came on a lawn in which little white daisies crouched in the grass. She immediately knelt to examine them, and was filled with delight. She touched one or two flowers with the gentle finger of love and awe. The satin petals immediately conveyed to her the euphony of music, infinite dulcitude; the diapason of perfection. She gazed, marveling, at the minute golden hearts, powdered with an infinitude of almost microscopic points. It never occurred to her to pick one, to ravish one with death. They had their being, which no one should violate. She could not put these thoughts into actual words, but the emotion was there.

As she knelt there on the grass, her hair a tumbling effulgence in the sunlight, a handsome carriage rolled along the street, containing a middle-aged man and a youth of about twenty-two. The latter was holding the reins of two black horses with gleaming hides. He pulled the horses almost to a halt as he saw the girl. “What a beauty!” he exclaimed to his companion, who looked past him at the girl.

“Yes,” said the older man with admiration. “I wonder who she is. Never saw her before in this misbegotten town. Perhaps a newcomer. But a little too gaudy, isn’t she? Like a young actress.”

The young man laughed. “Look at her clothes. Hardly an actress. I wonder how old she is.”

The older man said with indulgence, “Now, now, Francis. Every pretty girl takes your eye; it’s your age. She’s probably a servant; maybe sixteen or fifteen years old. We can ask my dear brother, the Mayor, today. Look at her, indeed. What an elegant face; I wonder if that color on her mouth and cheeks is real. You can’t tell with servant girls these days. Their mistresses are too lenient with them. There was a time when servants had a half day off a month; now they have two whole days, and that can lead to—paint.”

“That face is of neither a servant nor a girl of a brothel—if there is any brothel in this town.” The young man was inexplicably annoyed. The carriage rolled away. Ellen got to her feet, not knowing she had been thoroughly inspected and commented upon. Her face was alight; she felt that she had received a revelation from eternity and she no longer heard the hymns whining from the houses. She began to run again; the street was pervaded with the robust smells of roasting beef and pork, and the delicious effluvia of frying chicken. She experienced a pang of hunger, and only smiled. She had a secret: The world was infinitely beautiful, infinitely alive, infinitely moving. Winged with this knowledge, her running feet seemed to fly over the pavement, to dance on the cobbles of the road. She wanted to impart what she knew to someone, but there was no someone and she had no words. She had no real destination.

She came to the end of the long street and there was an open place before her, unmarred by houses or people. Now she could see the distant Pocono Mountains, all mauve and gold with an opalescent mist floating over them against a sky the color of delphiniums. This was her favorite spot, wide, uncluttered, uninhabited except for high wild grass and trees, butterflies and birds and rabbits. She gazed at the far mountains and again that sensation of exalted joy came to her, the hidden joy with a hidden promise. Here she could pretend that there were no human beings about her but only peace and intimations of rapture, of poetry and music. When, as she sighed with bliss and her eyes fell on a sign which read, “Lots for Sale,” she felt a deep and nameless distress. Soon there would be imprisoning houses here, shutting off the mountains, walls and roofs and chimneys desecrating her little world.

As she stood at the edge of the street gutter, her newly restless foot scraped against a page or two of a book. She looked down at the pages and eagerly bent to seize them. But they were stained brown by some disgusting liquid, and only a line here and there was visible. She read: ‘Tope.” There was but a fragment of a poem and she read it:

“Where every prospect pleases

And only man is vile.”

A profound melancholy came to her, as usual wordless and charged only with emotion. “But, it is true,” she whispered to herself, and was startled at the new and disquieting thought. Again, she felt guilt, and shame, but why she did not know. She tucked the stained page down her neck, then ran on, though less exuberantly than before. She only vaguely understood that each day brought a new knowledge that made her briefly miserable. However, she was very young and soon she was skipping again. She remembered the daisies and their mysterious dream of hope, for herself alone.

She entered a street of little crowded houses, all bleakly illuminated by the sun and showing unkempt lawns and broken picket fences and falling porches. Here there were more people than on the long street, howling and jumping children, screaming and frowzy adults, cracked pavements, decaying paint, and scruffy steps. Above all, here, the phonographs ground away with the latest obnoxious songs. Men in dirty overalls sat on wooden stairs and drank beer. Ellen ran swiftly, and was followed, as customarily, by hoots and whistles. A sense of shyness and degradation almost overwhelmed her and she felt dirty and exposed. A dusty tree, dying for lack of water, spiraled down a dry yellow leaf on her head and she brushed it away. She had begun to sweat; her face was reddened both by mortification and by heat. Then she thought, as always: It is because I am so ugly and so big and don’t look like other people, so I must forgive these men and children and women.

She ran on more quickly, anxious to outrun the derision and hostility. Love and trust, the Reverend Beale had admonished. I am very wicked, she thought. It is all my fault—someway. I should love and trust; that is all there is.

She came to the very smallest house on the street, which contained only four diminished rooms, with an outhouse in the rear. However, Aunt May kept it clean and neat, an anachronism among its neighbors. The windows were polished, though most of them had no curtains. The grass was scythed, the little yard bare of everything but yellowing turf. A careful sign hung in the one front window: “Dressmaking and Alterations. Household Help.” Ellen ran to the one door, on the side. Aunt May had painted it pink against the gray clapboard wall. Ellen opened the door and went into the dark little kitchen, which smelled of cabbage, boiling potatoes, and spareribs. Ellen was delighted again. Spareribs was her favorite dish, and one cooked only on Sundays or other holidays. Her foot caught on the seam of the torn linoleum, and an exasperated thin voice said, “Why don’t you pick up your feet, Ellen? You are so clumsy. And you’re late. You know I have to go to the Mayor’s house at two o’clock because he has company, his brother and nephew from Scranton. Go wash. Your face is all red and wet. Dear me, what a provoking girl you are. Your hair is all messed up, too.”

“I’m sorry,” said Ellen in her resonant voice. She was always “so sorry,” so always, recently, overcome with guilt. She went to the pump and threw cold water over her face and tried to smooth down her rioting hair. She looked into the crackled mirror over the tin sink and her face and hair filled it with color and vitality, and she sighed. Why could she not look like Amelia Beale, the prettiest girl in town?

“What did that fool of a Reverend talk about today?” asked the exasperated voice near the rusting wood stove.

“He isn’t a fool, Aunt May,” said Ellen. She hesitated. “He talked about loving and trusting.”

“Loving and trusting who?” asked May Watson, rattling a plate against the pump.

“Why—everybody, I suppose, Auntie.”

“More fool he. Never love or trust anybody, Ellen. I ought to know!” She fell into a short brooding. “Set out the plates, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

Ellen set out two crocked ironware white plates on the table, and sniffed the boiling meal with anticipation. Again her exaltation came to her. “I guess there’s lot to love and trust in the world,” she said.

“What?” Her aunt’s voice was now sullen and bitter. “Ellen, you are really not very bright, as I keep telling you.”

The voice belonged to a little spare woman, flat as a shingle, with a tight thin face and hair the color of a gray squirrel. Her eyes were also that color, and disillusioned, her mouth a line in her colorless face, her nose beaked, and constantly wrinkling and twitching. Her calico dress, of gray and white, was fresh and ironed and she wore a white apron. She moved briskly; she was just forty and she was withered and wrinkled and dry as a dead weed. Her eyes sparkled only with anger and vexation, and they were sparkling now as she looked at her tall niece. Ellen could already sew carefully, and could keep house. Next year she would be put out to service, when she was fourteen, and no more nonsense about school. It was outrageous that “they” now kept young women in school until they were fourteen and would not permit them to work until they reached that age. Two or three dollars a month would come in very handy in that struggling household.

“You’ll have to clean up the kitchen and wash the sheets and pillowcases, and sweep out the outhouse and scrub the floor in your bedroom, after I go,” said May Watson. “Mind you do it well. You are so careless.”

“Yes, Auntie,” said Ellen. She looked through the minute window of the kitchen, and again the melancholy came to her.

“I am going to ask Mrs. Porter, the Mayor’s wife, if she can hire you next spring,” said May Watson. “She pays her cook eight dollars a month! A fortune. I heard she needs someone extra to wash. I hope to get the work, then you’ll have to take care of this house—after school,” she added with angry contempt.

Muttering, she put a steaming yellow bowl on the table. “Spareribs. Eights cents a pound. Outrageous. I got two pounds. Don’t eat it all. We will have the rest for dinner tomorrow night. Ellen, why are you standing there like a gawk? You fill up the whole kitchen. You are too big—like your father.” Then she caught her breath, for this was the first time she had spoken to Ellen of her paternal parent.

Ellen became alert. “My papa? What was he like, Auntie?”

“Brown-faced and black-eyed, and big as a house, and with a loud voice like yours,” said May Watson, sitting down on one of the creaking kitchen chairs. “Never mind. He was no good. Never could see what your mother saw in him. Don’t take too much of the spareribs. You’re always so hungry, and that’s funny. You don’t work.” Then she was saddened, for she loved her niece. Maybe, she thought, I can bring some scraps home for the girl; they eat well at the Mayor’s, he with that rich farm and all. Perhaps a piece of meat or the heels of fresh bread, or a slice of cake or pie. Or a handful of strawberries. Mrs. Porter is very mean, though; watched every crumb of food, and her cook’s worse. May Watson touched her wide pocket. She could slip something in there, when no one was looking. So, it was stealing and maybe it was sinful, but Ellen was still growing and was always hungry. The bitterness in May Watson’s heart increased. She was to receive one dollar for an afternoon and evening’s work; the housemaid was ill. It was said the Mayor’s son had got her “into trouble.” At any rate, she had been sent off. Lucky for me, thought May Watson. She thought of little Alice, fifteen years old, an orphan. She had worked two years for Mrs. Porter, and had never had an afternoon off in all that time. She had labored from sunrise to midnight, every day. Don’t seem right to me, thought Mrs. Watson. But then, the girl had been brought up “wrong.” No decency. May looked at Ellen with sharp intensity. No need to worry there; the girl was too ugly to attract any man. But maybe some elderly farmer might want to marry her; she was big and strong and healthy and could work well, when prodded. It was the only hope May Watson had, for herself and her niece. Before she herself died she wanted to see Ellen “settled,” with enough to eat, a Sunday dress, and a sound roof over her head.