Ceremony of the Innocent (22 page)

But I do not know these automobiles, bellowing and smoking, though I have seen a few in Wheatfield. No, they are not familiar to me as all the rest.

She looked across at Jeremy and could not stop her exclamation: “I have seen it before,” and her face beamed with delight and he reached to her and he pressed her hand tightly with understanding. But May said, almost in a whimper, “How can you say that, Ellen? You were never in New York.”

Jeremy pointed out to the girl the mansions of the Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Belmonts, and all their kin and she looked with astonished awe at the white or gray marble houses with their pillars and lighted windows and the coming and going of laughing and greeting guests. But, I have seen it, she thought, and remembered what the poet Rossetti, had said, “I have been here before.” Above the odor of wet dust and wet trees and wet stones she could smell the sea. The leaves of the trees were dripping liquid scarlet and brown and gold light and bowing and swaying in the autumn wind. Mrs. Eccles said, “I love New York. Always such liveliness,” and she yawned and looked at Ellen and May with fresh ridicule and resentment. They are nothing but menials and peasants, she thought. All this magnificence for such as these! Yes, dear Jeremy must be out of his mind.

“I must see the opera,” she said.

Jeremy said to Ellen, “Yes, I do believe Aida is here this week.”

They arrived at Jeremy’s hotel, and the doormen and bellboys in crimson and gold livery ran out to meet Jeremy’s carriage and flung open the doors with lordly gestures. May shrank, clutching her poor coat together, but Ellen took Jeremy’s hand and jumped out eagerly, looking about her with overwhelming happiness. Mrs. Eccles alighted more sedately, smoothing her sable capelet regally about her plump shoulders. They entered a red and gold lobby full of soft warm air and perfume and gentle music, and saw the distant vast dining room with its scintillating chandeliers and white napery and the bustling of black-clad waiters and the crowds of women with pale shoulders and furs, and their rich escorts. Ellen could not see enough; she shivered with a new access of delight, unaware of her shabby servant’s garb and her wilted black hat. The doormen and bellboys surveyed her with furtive astonishment, and looked offended at the sight of May. Even for servants, they thought, they are poor specimens. Still, the girl is uncommonly beautiful, like an actress with that hair and face. “Yes, Mr. Porter, thank you, Mr. Porter, and this is the luggage, sir, and we shall notify the stable for the carriage, directly.”

“We shall dine in my own dining room,” said Jeremy, well aware that he could not take Ellen and May into the great glittering room beyond. “My man, Cuthbert, has everything ready for us.”

Neither May nor Ellen had ever been in an elevator before, and May was terrified and shut her eyes against the sight of falling floors through the gilt bars. She was also nauseated and stunned. No, it was not right, any of this, for her and Ellen.

They passed down a corridor paved with soft crimson carpet and lighted by wall lamps of bronze twisted into intricate shapes, and May appeared to grow smaller and smaller as she tiptoed along in growing dismay and stupefaction. They saw carved closed doors and heard the sound of laughing voices beyond them. Then another door opened and they entered Jeremy’s suite and May halted on the threshold, unable to move. Mrs. Eccles pushed impatiently past her, chattering vivaciously, and Ellen followed. Jeremy took May by the arm and forced her across the marble step of the doorway.

A very tall and slender and distinguished elderly gentleman greeted them, bowing, and May, in her bewilderment, thought that he must be a prince at the very least, so majestic was he in striped trousers and black long coat and black cravat and pearl stickpin and polished white cuffs and shirt. She dipped her knee in a small curtsy, and peeped timidly at the grave lined face and smooth white hair. Oh, he would order them out, all of them, or perhaps call the police! Jeremy said, “Mrs. Eccles, Mrs. Watson, Miss Watson, this is my houseman, Cuthbert.”

“Good evening, ladies, Mr. Porter,” said the first butler May had ever seen. She almost cowered at this condescension, but Mrs. Eccles said brightly, “Good evening, Cuthbert,” and Ellen stared at him mutely, and with curious frankness, and smiled, and the butler thought: So, this is the young lady, Mr. Porter’s lady, and she is lovelier than any actress I have ever seen, or any other lady who came to this suite.

Ellen looked about her with candid avidity, and saw the luxury and grace of the large living room and again she said to herself, I have seen all this before, long before. She wanted to run about the room, touching the furniture, the silken walls, the cabinets of treasures, studying the pictures and gazing through the tall arched windows. Her heart was jumping with excitement and almost unbearable exhilaration. She looked at Jeremy like a bewitched child discovering enchantments, and he smiled at her, sharing her pleasure.

When Cuthbert lifted a bag May found her voice and it issued with apologetic shrillness and stammering loudness. “Oh, no, sir! I will cam my own baggage, thank you so much, sir, if you please.” Cuthbert raised a discreet eyebrow and murmured, “Oh, no, madam. I am just putting it aside for your own suite, later. The boy will deliver it.” He bowed again to the ladies and said, “Perhaps mes-dames would like to freshen up a little before dinner?”

May blinked, her mouth opening palely; she was dazzled by the lamplight and the chandeliers, and then she looked about her stupidly. Ellen took her arm and they both followed the sprightly Mrs. Eccles, who was all sparkles and worldliness, to one of the marble and gilt bathrooms which Cuthbert had indicated with another bow. Here was all scented soaps and white soft towels. Mrs. Eccles laughed gaily and said, “A bidet! Oh, the naughty boy!” She trilled like a young lark, and looked at herself in one of the long gold-framed mirrors, watching her two companions in it with a face gleaming with spite. May hobbled about the room like a blind and crippled hen, seeking its way, until Ellen caught her arm and sat her down on a plush stool and touched her cheek gently and reassuringly. “Let me wash your face and hands, Auntie,” she said. “We are very sooty, aren’t we?”

What a swindler she is, thought Mrs. Eccles, now swelling with her umbrage. She pretends this is nothing to her, when she is just as flabbergasted as that deplorable May, who can do nothing but whimper and wave her hands about like an idiot. All the kindness Mrs. Eccles had once felt for aunt and niece had long since evaporated in the fury of her indignation. Now she experienced animosity towards them, and outrage that they should be tolerated here, where she was so much at home and so knowing. They’ll probably try to use the bidet instead of the toilet behind that door, she thought, and waited maliciously. But Ellen led her quivering aunt to the door and opened it for her, and then washed her hands serenely. As if unaware of Mrs. Eccles—as she was—she let down the long abundance of her hair and it caught fire in the lamplight and the waves shimmered and undulated. Ellen shook it out; it lay over her shoulders and breast and back like a burning mantle. Mrs. Eccles said, “You must really, my dear, do something about that rough hair of yours. A nice hairdresser perhaps, to tone down that awful color. Quite vulgar, I assure you.”

But Ellen was thinking only of Jeremy as she pushed up a fresh pompadour and coiled her hair over the back of her head.

Jeremy was pouring a glass of whiskey and soda for himself, and he thought gloomily: I should have left that damned Eccles woman home. I wonder what she is saying to Ellen. I bet it is something unpleasant.

The ladies emerged into the living room, and Jeremy felt a wild surge of felicity again when he saw Ellen, and he went to the three women, smiling. “Cuthbert is a remarkable chef,” he said. “Will you all have a glass of sherry before dinner?”

May was unable to speak, and visibly shaking, but Mrs. Eccles cried, “Of course, dear Jeremy! Bristol Cream, my favorite?” Ellen said, and she took his hand like a confiding child, “I don’t know anything about sherry, and neither does Aunt May, though we have seen it in your aunt’s house, and Mrs. Eccles’. Is it good?”

“If you like sherry,” he answered, and made a wry mouth, and Ellen laughed, and the sound to him was again entrancing.

“No strong drink for me and Ellen,” whispered May, but no one heard her, not even Ellen, who was gazing at Jeremy like one astonished and illuminated by magic. He led the girl to a chair and seated her, then bent over her, almost eye to eye, and she colored and looked aside, shyly. But her young breast lifted on a fast hard breath, and she was bemused, stormed by emotions which were both delicious and frightening.

Cuthbert brought the sherry in tall crystal glasses, and Mrs. Eccles accepted with a coy gesture and a flirtatious look towards Jeremy as if archly admonishing him for this temptation. Ellen also accepted a glass. May took one, afraid of vexing this stately man whom she still could not accept as a servant like herself, if indeed it ever occurred to her to think of him as a servant. Again, fearful of offending him, she put the glass to her chattering teeth, but the smell of the brownish liquid sickened and affrighted her. She looked about her, a little wildly, then put down the glass on the table next to her and behind the lamp. She had never seen an electric lamp before; she became fixed at the sight of it and clung to the illumination as if it would save her, and Ellen, from a most terrible disaster. Her eyes became glassy like the eyes of a sleepwalker. She could hear voices about her but they were as far as a dream. She wanted only to sleep and wake up in her barren cold room in Mrs. Eccles’ house, with the rough blanket against her chin. She wanted to weep in her despair and her fear and against this strangeness, this dazzle of color and crystal and silk.

Cuthbert indeed proved himself an excellent chef, with his delicate mushroom soup heavy with cream and fragrant with white wine, brook trout stuffed with crabmeat and truffles, lamb chops with fresh mint, potatoes in a delectable sauce, late peas, the new Porter House rolls, and a salad with a cheese dressing and wine vinegar and a dainty touch of garlic. With this, in the small dining room sparkling with a chandelier and the brightest silver, he served various chilled wines and little cups of coffee, and a chocolate mousse.

May, benumbed again, would not have eaten this “heathenish food” if Ellen, for the first time, had not frowned at her pleadingly. But the meal revolted her, she who had known nothing before but the grossest of “hearty” workingman food and the coarse and heavy meals of the people for whom she had worked in Preston. She ate every small morsel with the direst suspicion and a feeling of persecution. Each morsel, she was certain, would poison her. Her “stomach was not fit for it.” She was only sure that if this was to be Ellen’s diet in the future, then her very life was in danger. She did not know the word “effete,” nor did she know “decadent,” yet she knew the import. No, this was not for Ellen or herself, and again she felt such a passion to “go home” that she almost burst into tears. She would glance imploringly at Mrs. Eccles, her benefactor, her protector, and Mrs. Eccles was again amusedly disgusted. She did not join May in timid sly derision at these delights, as May had hoped. As for Ellen, she heard and saw nobody but Jeremy, at whose right hand she sat; she was not even conscious of what she ate, nor the silver bowl of pink roses on the table, nor the lace, nor the warm luxury. It all became part of her love for him, and her absolute trust and sense of harbor and peace. At moments she reproached herself humbly that she had ever doubted the beneficence of God, who had heaped her hands with such joys. Love and trust. How had she ever forgot?

Jeremy saw her weariness after the journey, for all the large and shining blue gaze on him, and he saw her utter innocence and pliant air of yielding, and he wanted her desperately, not only bodily but spiritually. He felt that total communion with Ellen would restore his clouded hopes, lighten his cynicism, make him less grim and full of foreboding for his country, less involved in his work—and would give him again a measure of his youth and guarded optimism. A world which could produce such as Ellen must have produced silent multitudes like her also, and in them was his reassurance that dedicated men could protect American freedom from all its enemies: the violent white-faced hysterics who talked of “social justice,” the hidden and powerful international plotters who wished to efface his country and fatten on her flesh and bring her to slavery for their own aggrandizement and rule and wealth, the Populists, the Socialists, and all the other vileness clothed in human flesh which would make of America only a soft ruin and send her people “eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves.” What we need here, he would think, are a few of the ancient Hebrew prophets who thundered at tyrants and admonished their people to remember what Moses had said: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land, and to the inhabitants thereof!”

Liberty was a rigorous state, uncomfortable for most of the hordes of mankind who preferred to be “guided” and led. But liberty, it had been said, was the unalienable right of men. However, men had to be true men to appreciate and even die for it. The hoary enemy had already surfaced, in the persons of Marx and Engels, to relieve men of the onerous burden of being free, and to be “protected” from all of life’s vicissitudes and be reduced to placid domestic animals. Except for the “elite,” of course, who would rule them “lovingly” but sternly, and milk them always, and devour their souls and blind them to the light. (Where had he read, in the Bible, “Fear not those who would destroy the body, but those who would destroy your soul”?)

For the first time in his life Jeremy considered the orthodox view that there was, in full reality, Satan, bent on destroying man in the persons of man’s primordial enemies. He smiled to himself. If there was a Satan, then his servants were those who passionately asserted they “loved” mankind and knew what was best for it.

Ellen whispered to him urgently. “Aunt May is very tired,” she said. “Would you excuse us after dinner, soon?”