Ceremony of the Innocent (32 page)

She put her hand helplessly to her aching head. “I don’t think I quite remember.” She turned pleadingly to Francis, who appeared to be on the edge of collapse. “Didn’t you say, Mr. Francis, that perhaps it would not be well to tell Jeremy you came to see me, because you don’t like each other? Yes, I think that is it.” She was now more alarmed at Francis’ appearance than she was by Jeremy’s. “I should have told Jeremy from the beginning, Mr. Francis. It is all my fault.”

Jeremy said, with some savagery, “It is always your ‘fault,’ isn’t it, Ellen, when people take advantage of you, deceive you and exploit you? I am beginning to think you are right, in a way. Well, Frank, can’t you speak?”

“Ellen has told you the truth—”

“‘The whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God’?”

Francis was silent again. “Yes,” said Ellen, “it is the truth, Jeremy. Yes, I should have told you. I’ve felt so guilty, but I thought it was for the best.”

Francis said, “You have an evil mind, Jeremy, just as you are an evil man. Now, I think I will go. Ellen, I won’t trouble you with my visits any more. I only wanted to be sure you were happy—and safe.”

“Of course,” said poor Ellen, thinking all was settled agreeably now. But Jeremy was still standing stiffly with his fists clenched at his sides. He said, “If you ever bother my wife again I will kill you. Do you understand? Kill you. I’ve known you’ve been slavering for her a long time.”

“Jeremy!” Ellen cried, terrified now. “What are you talking about?” She looked from one man to the other, and swallowed against the sickness in her throat.

“Kill you,” said Jeremy again.

At this moment Cuthbert discreetly appeared, earning Francis’ coat and hat and cane. Jeremy looked at the cane, but Cuthbert deftly gave it to Francis and helped him on with his coat. Ellen took a step aside and sank into a chair, shivering heavily. Jeremy still stood in the doorway. It was Cuthbert who expertly pushed him aside so Francis could pass him, which he did very quickly. Cuthbert led him to the door, then disappeared again.

Ellen, very pale, looked up at her husband and her eyes were severe as they had never been before. “Jeremy, you were most rude to poor Mr. Francis. He has known me since I was a child; he did all he could for Aunt May and me, when your mother threatened us with the police, and everything. He only wanted to know if I was well. I’m so sorry. I should have told you from the very beginning, but he thought it best not to. And you’ve repaid his kindness to me with cruel words and abuse. I am very vexed with you.”

He looked down at her, and relaxed. It always came to him with fresh wonder, at every new experience, how little Ellen knew of people, and how vulnerable she was. But he was still enraged. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her upright, almost against him, and looked down at her. He did not know what to say to her; he did not want to destroy her innocence, but he was infuriated also. He began to shake her, though not roughly, and she timidly tried to smile, for often he shook her this way.

“Ellen, listen to me,” he said. “I’ve told you about many of my cases, and my court appearances. I thought you were listening, that finally you were beginning to understand that this is a most terrible world, and that you must be on your guard against it. But you never understood, or believed me, did you?”

“It’s also a very good and beautiful world, Jeremy. There is more goodness in it than wickedness.”

“Is that so?” he said. “Well, I’ve also told you something of world affairs, too, haven’t I? It was all for your protection, Ellen, for it is possible that I will die before you.”

“Oh, no, I could not live then!” she cried, and the child in her womb leapt in answering terror. She put her hand over it, as if to quiet its fears.

Jeremy said, with new gentleness, “You must face life, Ellen. You won’t die if I die. You will have children. Never mind. Listen carefully to me, my love. I want to tell you something about people like my dear cousin. He is of the kind which will approach anyone insidiously, for one reason: conquest and control. With you, he has used your gratitude, your pity. That is one of their big weapons, and they have others. I thought, when I have been telling you many things, that you did understand a little, and that it might be possible, in the future, that you will be on guard not only against Frank’s kind, but a thousand other predators. Yes, predators. He is one of the very worst sort, the most ruthless and merciless, as well as contemptible. You don’t understand, do you?”

“Not quite,” she said. He was now holding her lovingly, and that was enough for her. “Mr. Francis is not in the least ruthless and merciless. He is a very kind man. I know that myself.”

“I really give up,” said Jeremy, releasing her. “Ellen, you’re not stupid. You are really a very intelligent girl. You can understand music and literature and poetry and philosophy, sometimes better than I can, for you are intuitive. But your intuition doesn’t work with people, does it? Only in abstract matters, in things which can’t protect you. I’m not sure that I want you to be another Kitty Wilder. God forbid. But surely she has been telling you of this world, hasn’t she?”

“She’s very witty,” said Ellen, and felt a pang of jealousy for the first time in her existence. “But I know she is really just being funny when she talks of people; she isn’t malicious.”

“Good God,” said Jeremy. “Yes, I really give up. Ellen, listen to me. When I talk to you, really listen. When Kitty talks, really listen. I don’t want you to become hard and cynical. I just want you to be aware of what this world really is: a den of wolves, red in tooth and claw. Even the saints knew that, but it didn’t embitter them or turn them against humanity. It only saddened them, I’ve heard. So listen, Ellen. Be sad if you must, and you will. Awareness doesn’t necessarily destroy innocence; it only arms it, when necessary. What in hell am I going to do with you?”

“You can kiss me,” said Ellen. But he shook his head, sighing. “Let me tell you of a case which came to me today. A lady of great wealth. She has four adult children. She adored them all their lives, and believed they loved her, too. She is a woman something like you, though considerably older. Her husband died six months ago and left all his fortune to her. Do you know what her loving children have done to her? They have robbed her of every penny, in those short six months, her two daughters, their husbands, and her two sons, their wives. Now they are evicting her from her house. She loved and trusted. Are you listening?”

“Yes,” said Ellen. She thought of her unborn child and what that child might do to Jeremy, and her lips went white.

“She was brought today to me, by a friend who loves her, a man. She was all tears, all misery. And all bewilderment, too. She couldn’t understand why and how her devoted children could do this to her; she still couldn’t believe it, the poor woman. She desperately tried to make excuses for them, with the facts right there on my desk, before her. Her children meant no harm, she said. She was sure of that. I was so exasperated when I failed to reach her that I wanted no part of that case. I could see her blubbering in court and persuading the judge that it was ‘all a mistake,’ as she said in my office. Then I had to show her not only the eviction notice but a petition they had signed—those loving children!—to have her declared incompetent and confined in some private mental hospital—a cheap one, too. She fainted.”

“Poor thing,” said Ellen in a dim voice.

“Oh, God,” said Jeremy again. “Now, what do you think of that case, of those children, and that fool of a woman?”

Ellen considered, hoping to please him. “I think she should not have let them—take—from her. Perhaps they needed the money, though. But she should have consulted someone, such as her friend who brought her to you.”

“Excellent,” said Jeremy, patting her shoulder. “I think I am finally reaching you.”

“But a mother loves and trusts—”

He clenched his fist and put it gently but firmly under her chin.

“If I ever hear that sickening phrase again, my pet, I’ll beat you. I’ll beat some sense into you.”

She smiled. “But what has all this to do with Mr. Francis?”

“Everything. Her swinish children appealed not only to her love and her trust, but to her compassion, and if there was ever a disgusting word it is ‘compassion.’ No one uses it but predators, for their own purposes. They are always declaiming it, while they prepare to loot, subjugate, and control. Remember that, Ellen.”

“It would be a terrible world, Jeremy, if no one trusted or loved anyone, or had compassion.”

“But it is a terrible world, in spite of the poisonous pink jelly such as my cousin spreads around to disarm others, and persuade those innocent others that they have only their welfare at heart. They are all heart, the bastards, all steamed up with a desire for social justice and the ‘welfare of the toiling masses,’ and what not. I think I’ve told you before.”

“Yes, but Mr. Francis is not like that. He really cares about my welfare.”

“Let him come here once again, about your welfare, and there’ll be one fewer dangerous man in the world,” said Jeremy.

Cuthbert appeared on the threshold. “If Madam would like to look at the birds—”

“Yes, of course, Cuthbert. Jeremy, it is time to dress, isn’t it? I will just go into the kitchen for a moment.”

Jeremy looked after her as she left him, and he was filled with the grimmest forebodings. Who had corrupted Ellen’s mind long ago? he asked himself. Innocence was wonderful, but it should not be folly. The saints had been innocent, but they had not been fools. He hoped, someday, to teach Ellen the difference.

Part Two

This, indeed, is at once the hallmark and the justification of an aristocracy—that it is beyond responsibility to the general masses of men, and hence superior to both their degraded longings and their no less degraded aversions.

—H. L. MENCKEN

C H A P T E R   14

ON JULY 4, 1904, Ellen Porter’s first child was born—a son, who was named Christian Watson Porter.

The day was hot and fetid and blowing with a gritty wind and glaring with unshaded sun, which penetrated even the trees along Fifth Avenue and the house of Jeremy Porter in the East Twenties, and threw brilliant black shadows on scalding pavements.

Ellen awoke, sweating and restless beside her husband, and she recalled that it was on such a holiday that she had first seen Jeremy and for a happy moment or two she could lie on her damp pillows and smile in memory. It was eight o’clock, and though the shutters were closed and the curtains and draperies drawn across the glass of the windows, the tormenting sun shot through any chink or little opening it found to blaze on rug or wall or arm of a chair or on the high carved mahogany of the headboard of the bed. Ellen blinked against the daggers of the small beams, closed her eyes and saw a redness as of blood. She turned on her side but there was no escape. Jeremy slept, his face tired and somewhat somber and tense, and Ellen looked at his dark profile and a vast sweet melting ran through her in spite of her discomfort. Her hand crept to touch his white silk nightshirt, a touch as light as a moth, and as tenderly soft. She sighed deeply. She was afraid to move for fear of disturbing Jeremy, who needed to rest after his long hot days in the city courts and in his offices. The house on Long Island was already bought, and Ellen thought longingly of the cold gray Atlantic waves collapsing in foam on the stand near the house, and the strong sea breezes and the warm lashings of trees over cool green grass. The house awaited them, and they would go there in less than a month.

Ellen inched her way over the heated linen of her bed to lay her mouth against Jeremy’s arm. Her child was not due for another two weeks, but she was strangely uneasy. She panted a little and wiped her damp face cautiously and lifted the heavy weight of her hair from her wet neck. She wanted to get up and sit in a chair. The child in her belly moved restlessly and strongly, and seemed to burden her body with its pressure. She struggled against her fear of it; she already loved it, for it was Jeremy’s, but still she was afraid. She had spent an almost sleepless night because of the heat and her pervading apprehension, which had increased these past weeks. Boy or girl—would it become the enemy of her husband? She had never recovered from her fear of children and the monstrous things of which they were capable, the thought of which terrified her. Once Jeremy had thoughtlessly said to her, “It is the oddest thing, but the most cunning and clever crimes are committed by children under the age of ten, and are the hardest to detect.”

“I know,” Ellen had said, remembering. He had looked at her, amused.

“And how would you know that?” he had asked.

“I don’t know. I just know.” She was thinking of the children of Preston who had persecuted her and had despised and ridiculed her. She saw their gleefully beaming faces as they had chased her when she was as young as four, and their vicious catcalling, and their flung stones. She remembered the children in her school who had pointedly refused to sit near her, and had pushed her aside in the aisles and in the dusty corridors; the pushing had sometimes been so violent that she fell. She had finally decided that it had been because her aunt and she had been so poor and her clothing had been so patched.

Jeremy had remarked, “What is it that Solomon had said about children? ‘Man is wicked from his birth and evil from his youth.’ What’s wrong, Ellen?”

“There must be some good children,” Ellen had replied. “Children who love and trust and are not vicious.”

Now, this morning, the fear was sharp upon her. She argued against it. The world, surely, could not endure if all was wickedness and evil. Perhaps all the ills of the world arose because of a lack of love and trust on the part—of a few. She calmed herself, temporarily, and tried to think of the blessed quiet and coolness of the house on Long Island, with its wide white porches and white clapboards and its great gardens and open windows where the lace curtains floated like wings in the freshening winds. The thought momentarily overcame the sounds of the street outside, the rising explosions of firecrackers, and the busy rattling of carriages and the human laughter and the quick footsteps and greetings below. The clock struck half past eight. This morning they would not have breakfast in her bedroom until nine, for it was a holiday and New Yorkers did not rise as early on a holiday as did the people in the small towns of Pennsylvania.