Ceremony of the Innocent (43 page)

Jeremy tried to enlighten Ellen, without making her as cynical and despairing as himself, and without making her as worldly as Kitty Wilder. It was useless. Though she was still being tutored, her innate innocence prevented her from fully comprehending Jeremy’s exhortations. Again Jeremy was convinced that the innocent stood between man and his victory over evil.

“But Christ,” Ellen would say, “was innocent and good and without stain.”

“You forget how He drove the money changers from the Temple, dear, and how He castigated the exigent Pharisees and the scribes. You forget the Revelations of St. John.”

To this Ellen replied, with a rosy smile, “I am so glad, my darling, that you are beginning to study the Bible.”

This only increased Jeremy’s sense of impotence, and his fear for her future if he should die before her. He consulted his executors, Charles Godfrey and Walter Porter. Walter was dismayed that his son was now a Congressman and was frequently quoted, and with approval, in the press.

Jeremy was agreeably surprised that his practice of law had not been endangered by his defeat. Jochan Wilder, relieved by not living in Washington any longer, was proving himself more and more competent, and aware, though Kitty was devastated at leaving her friends in the capital city. However, she was consoled by Jochan’s mounting income, paid by Jeremy. She had feared that once leaving Washington Jeremy would also leave her. But Jeremy, more and more surfeited by Ellen’s trustfulness—though it did not affect his love for her—still found some skeptical amusement in Kitty’s company. She was like tart wine in contrast to Ellen’s resemblance to the new pink Jell-O. He still did not like Kitty. But she was a relief.

He was not in the least surprised when the British Parliament declared its “troubled reflections” on the growing intrusion of Germany in “our heretofore unchallenged dominance in world trade.” So, he thought, Germany is going to be our adversary. Germany, apparently, was also concerned, for an entirely different reason. The Kaiser began to expand his army and cavalry. This was called, in the press “Germany’s sudden warlike activity.” The conspirators, thought Jeremy, with a new fatalistic attitude, are on the move. When he read that Russia was sternly prosecuting Communists and had exiled Lenin, and that this was regarded in the world press as “unconscionable,” he knew that the end was near.

But America was newly exuberant. William Howard Taft had been elected. The new President’s pronouncements of “more and greater peace and increasing prosperity” were fully quoted in the press. The Panic had passed. Jeremy had considerable respect for President Taft, a sound and reasonable man endorsed by Theodore Roosevelt, but Mr. Taft was amiable and willing to compromise, and Jeremy was suspicious of this. When Mr. Taft tentatively expressed his approval of a federal income tax, the direct election of Senators, and a Federal Reserve System, Jeremy joined the more conservative Democratic Party, which was denouncing Mr. Taft as a Whig.

May Watson wrote to her niece Ellen, under the date of June 3, 1911:

“It has been six months since you visited me here in Wheatfield, Ellen, and two weeks since I’ve had a letter from you. I thought you’d listened to me last December when I told you how inconsiderate you are, thinking always only of yourself. I hate to bring this up again, at this late date, but you were most uncivil to my dear Mrs. Eccles, who is like a sister to me. You scarcely spoke to her, though she had invited you, kindly, to stay at her house as her guest. But no, you stayed at the hotel, with that awful maid of yours, Clarisse. What a heathen name. Well, Mrs. Eccles is still hurt. She got me a new nurse a week ago, a very good one now, not like the one your husband got for me. He never thinks of me, either. The nurse he got was impudent to Mrs. Eccles and refused to help out in the house a few hours a day. Here I am, a burden to Mrs. Eccles, though she never says a word, being a good and patient Christian woman. She is sweetness itself. The new nurse helps out as she should do. Please send me ten dollars. I need some new shawls And I think your husband should pay Mrs Eccles more for me Tell him so.

“Your letters just chatter along about your husband and your children, when you know what pain I am suffering and need cheering up. I suppose there is nothing I can say, though, to make you more concerned about me, or caring for anybody but your parties and your clothes and your family. When I think how happy we could both be now, safe in Wheatfield in this lovely house, I just cry.”

May’s letters invariably smeared Ellen’s day with despondency. She no longer showed Jeremy those letters because of his spurts of anger. He seemed obliquely to blame Ellen for the letters. Once he said, “Why the hell, Ellen, don’t you write that old—I mean, your aunt—and try to get some sense into her head? Give her a few facts, that I am paying for her lavishly to live with Eccles in Wheatfield, and paying for her nurse, and where the devil would she be now if you hadn’t married me? In the poorhouse, or dead. You might remind her, too, that I am paying her doctors’ bills, and other things. For God’s sake, don’t cry! And while we are at it, I want you to stop being Lady Bountiful with those increasing charities of yours. Yes, yes, I know there are the Poor, as you say in capitals, and I have no objections at all to helping the worthy poor, but in some damned way you always pick out the charities for malingerers who refuse to work and think the world owes them a living just because they had been born, for God’s sake! Where they come from these days only God knows. Confine, if you can, your charities to the Salvation Army and other religious organizations, who help but also expect people to help themselves, too. Ellen, if you don’t stop crying I’ll go to my club tonight.”

So Ellen, out of her housekeeping money, surreptitiously sent her aunt the ten dollars May had demanded, and from the same funds sent Mrs. Eccles five dollars extra a week “for my aunt’s care.” She confided all this to Annie Burton, the children’s nurse, and Annie said bluntly, “Mrs. Porter, as I’ve always said, you are a dear wonderful lady, but sometimes I think—”

“Think what, Annie?”

“Well, you know what I think, and I worry about you.”

“Annie, I couldn’t live if I believed everything you say about people. I just couldn’t endure living, truly. What would be the point?”

There isn’t any “point” in living that I can see! thought Annie. You’ve just got to take care of yourself; nobody else will, and the more you trust people, the more they think you are a fool. Annie knew all about Kitty Wilder, as did the rest of the staff. If Annie prayed it was a prayer that Ellen would never know.

Once Annie, in a burst of wild desperation, said to Cuthbert, “Mr. Cuthbert, if I ever had any religion at all the Madam has cured me of it! Don’t people like her ever realize—realize—”

“That they corrupt people, Annie? Yes. It is all very well to help others who deserve it, and to help with prudence. But unthinking loving kindness is a grave disservice not only to yourself but to those who receive. Generosity and charity are very exemplary virtues, yes. But one should use judgment, too, and be certain that those assisted are worthy of being assisted, and have courage and self-respect and will soon stand on their own feet. To help the unworthy, the whiners and the lazy, is to corrupt them irretrievably, and enslave them to their own bad natures. However, Mrs. Porter is one of those people who will never understand that, unfortunately.”

He paused, and his white brows drew together and he rubbed his rheumatic elbows. “One time, when I was employed by another very saintly lady, I heard her tell her little son that we were all born to help ‘others.’ The little boy asked his mother, ‘And when we’re helping others, what are the others doing?’ His mother thought about it and said, ‘They too are helping others.’ Now, children often have a lot of wisdom, Annie. The little boy said, ‘Wouldn’t it be better for everybody if they just helped themselves, instead of waiting for others to help them?’” Cuthbert laughed a little hoarsely.

“And what did his mum say to that?” asked Annie.

“I am sorry to say that she punished the little lad severely and called him unchristian. I was always afraid that she would eventually corrupt him, too.” He sighed.

“Well,” said Annie, “the Madam will never corrupt Christian and Gabrielle. They are born hardhearted devils, and they laugh at their mother behind her back. They think she is silly. And sometimes,” Annie exclaimed, throwing out her arms helplessly, “I think so, too!” The young woman almost cried. “They think more of that awful Mrs. Wilder than they do of their own mother. Wicked people do seem to understand each other, don’t they? Those kids are real wicked, Mr. Cuthbert, and if I didn’t hit them hard once in a while they’d be worse. At least they don’t dare to laugh at the Madam to her face. I warned them.”

“The master keeps a hard hand ready, too,” said old Cuthbert with grave approval. “No nonsense there. Sometimes I think that all that love the Madam bestows indiscriminately on her children helped to corrupt them. It is certainly very sad.”

Ellen did not know it was “sad.” She now believed, with happiness, that her children would never injure their father. They appeared devoted to him, and competed with each other to please him, in spite of his sternness and his insistence on manners and discipline. They never screamed at him as they screamed at her, nor did they dare to dispute his word. They listened to him with respect and open affection, a respect and affection they did not give their mother. She was not to know until much later that once eight-year-old Christian said to Kitty, “Mama’s very stupid, isn’t she?” Nor was she to know that six-year-old Gabrielle had giggled and said, “Mama’s dippy. Everybody knows it. Nobody pays any attention to her.”

To Ellen, their frank insolence to her was only “high spirits,” and their disobedience “independence.” Did not these new alienists warn parents not to inflict severe punishment on their children, but to pour out lavish love on them? Yes. Jeremy laughed at them and wondered why they did not return to Vienna and let American parents alone.

“But Americans,” he would say to Ellen, “are beginning to listen humbly to every foreign charlatan who insults them. I think Americans are now starting to feel guilty because of their own good fortune, which is the result of worth only.” Ellen did not understand why he had suddenly looked at her sharply and not with his usual tenderness, and then had shaken his head. If she ever recalled the cruel children of her childhood it was with the thought that they had been “unfortunate” in some manner, possibly their poverty. Hence her reckless charity and her unquestioning generosity.

Ellen blissfully lived her life, protected by Jeremy, Cuthbert, and Annie, and now Charles Godfrey, who was a frequent guest at dinner and had a way of gazing at her which both embarrassed and pleased her, though she did not know why. Always, he spoke gently to her, even when Jeremy had expressed his impatience at some remark of hers. It never occurred to Ellen that Charles both pitied her and loved her, and was afraid for her.

Her beauty had now matured and Charles, rather inanely, thought that she resembled a rose. But Charles was not an original poet. He was not a poet at all. He only knew that he loved this immaculate and charming young woman. He also knew that she was friendless, except for himself and the domestic staff. And, of course, her husband, and his uncle.

While Jeremy cherished his wife more than ever, he rarely spoke to her any longer of the things which were troubling him and driving him to despair. Her happiness had clouded the sun of her comprehension and perceptiveness Prolonged happiness, Jeremy would think, is also an enemy in its own way. It leaves us unguarded and open to attack. We need occasional unhappiness and misfortune as much as meat needs salt, or as nations need arms. Sharp crises added pungency to bland and sunlit existence, and nations needed to defend themselves.

C H A P T E R   21

IN JANUARY 1912, Jeremy’s mother wrote to him, as she did once a week. He was always impatient with her letters, and with his father’s, too, and they depressed him, for there was always a covert insinuation about Ellen despite the sending of “love to Ellen, too, and the Babies.” (Babies, hell! he thought. One is nearly eight, the other six.)

His mother wrote: “I have been reading so much lately in
The New York Times
and other papers about your cousin Francis, whom I never liked but who seems to have improved in the past few years. He has so much compassion for the People, and so eloquent! I read his speeches in Congress closely; what a Heart he has! It is even hinted that the New York State legislature will name him a Senator!”

Good God, thought Jeremy. Francis and his kind can talk without stopping, in Congress and the Senate and in other political situations and in their colleges and in the newspapers. They must have auxiliary bladders. They can never shut up.

“Ah, if women could only vote!” exclaimed Jeremy’s mother in her letter. “Francis endorses votes for women.” “Francis believes that a wonderful Change would come over America if we could vote. There would be no more wars or national upheavals, no more unemployment or misery, and the Children would be cared for sedulously and women would be Elevated in society, and future eras would be tranquil and everyone joyous. This, with the thoughts of noble men like Francis, and their new laws, would indeed usher in a new Golden Age.”

Jeremy sighed wearily and shut his eyes for a moment in his library on this cold winter day.

“Francis does so hope Mr. Roosevelt will be elected this year and Mr. Taft ousted. Mr. Taft, as you know, has shown much ingratitude to Mr. Roosevelt, who was really responsible for Mr. Taft being President. (You see, Jeremy, I do Read, and am not a stupid Woman, as you always think women are.) I do not blame Mr. Roosevelt for refusing to visit Mr. Taft in the White House—really such ingratitude on the part of Mr. Taft, and, as Mr. Roosevelt has said, he is guilty of ‘the grossest and most astounding hypocrisy,’ and disloyalty.”

“Francis thinks we need a Fighting Man for President, and so he will support Mr. Roosevelt. Wasn’t it wonderful what Mr. Roosevelt said recently? ‘I stand for the Square Deal for the People of our Country. My hat is in the ring. The fight is on and I am stripped to the buff.’ (A rather Indelicate Phrase, I thought, but he is such a virile man and one knows how Gentlemen talk when overwrought.)”