Ceremony of the Innocent (45 page)

“They’re grim, all right,” said Jeremy. “That is, if they haven’t been bowdlerized by now by the new child-lovers, who spare kids the gory facts of life. Why should they be spared? Besides, they are born fully equipped with those facts. Then they are taught hypocrisy, and pretense that life is really a beautiful dream, and all men are brothers. Kids know that’s a lot of damned nonsense, and it does something harmful to them later if they are taught lies. Politicians are prime examples.”

Ellen did not know that she was a source of intense amusement to her children, who mocked her behind her back to each other, and often to her face. They would listen to her in the nursery at night when she read to them and would exchange less than affectionate winks at Ellen’s expense. Christian was a great handsome lad now, and Gabrielle more Latin in appearance, and lively. They were both unusually intelligent, and both were without kindliness or illusions. To Miss Cummings they were even “worse” than her last American charges, though she could control them with ease. Like Cuthbert and Annie, she feared for their mother.

Ellen had selected one of the brothers Grimm’s less “gory” stories to read to her children this wild March night, with the snow hissing at the windows and the wind screaming in the chimneys. The nursery fire was warm and red and chuckled to itself, safe from the storm. Then, remembering what Jeremy had said, she took up another book, by Hans Christian Andersen. “The Little Mermaid” would do splendidly. She read it with deep feeling and understanding, and there were tears in her eyes when she concluded the touching story. She looked at her children, Christian in his nightshirt and blue wool robe, and Gabrielle in her silk and lacy nightgown and red robe.

“I always loved that story,” she said. “It always made me cry.”

“Why?” asked Christian. “I think it’s silly.”

“In what way?” said Ellen, dismayed.

It was Gabrielle, the pert pixie, who answered her. “The prince was too stupid to fall in love with the mermaid, and she was stupid to love a man who was more stupid. Why did she decide to give up the long life she’d have had if she’d not had her tail cut into legs and feet? She should have found a merman to love, if she wanted love that bad, and lived a long, long time. But now, with feet and legs, and all that pain when she walked and danced, she had nothing.”

“She acquired a human soul,” said Ellen, more and more dismayed.

“What made her think she or anyone else has a soul?” said Christian.

Ellen was horrified. “But, dear, you know we have souls.”

“No, Mama, I don’t know. I know what you say, and the minister and the Sunday-school teachers say, but that doesn’t prove anything. It’s only something they want themselves, and because they want it they believe it is so.”

Ellen regarded him with distress. “But the Bible says so, too. It’s something we should believe.”

“Why should we believe something you can’t prove, Mama dear?”

Ellen did not hear the taunting in her son’s voice, or the contempt. She thought she had heard only a serious question. “It is a matter of faith, dear,” she explained. “We should accept certain things on faith.”

“Why?” asked Gabrielle.

“Because God and Our Lord and the prophets said so, Gaby.” Fresh tears came into her eyes. She had a thought. Jeremy was always talking about the corrupting of children. Was it possible that Miss Cummings had taught them these upsetting ideas? Ellen had already suspected that Miss Cummings was a skeptic, for all she dutifully took the children to Sunday school and insisted on that, and quieted their protests.

“Whoever gave you these awful ideas, Christian, Gaby? Miss Cummings?”

Christian’s large blue eyes, so like Ellen’s own except for the expression, lighted up. Now here was a chance to get rid of that prig! Then he reconsidered. Mama was a fool and had no authority in this house. She would immediately report to Papa, and Papa had a way of asking very keen and telling questions, and he would question his son with no mercy. Christian remembered his last thrashing, which had been the most painful he could remember. “You’ve got to stop lying, Chris,” Jeremy had said. “The next time you’ll get double, if I catch you in it.”

So Christian, with a sullen anger perceptible even to Ellen’s doting eyes, said, “No, Mama, she didn’t. It’s just some things I asked of myself. Gaby and I often talked about it.”

“You never talked with me about it, Christian, and I’m your mother.”

More’s the pity, for Gaby and me, thought the boy. He looked at his mother with wide innocence. “We will, next time, Mama. After all, we are only little children, aren’t we?”

Gabrielle had listened to this with a dark sparkle on her pointed face, and with eyes that leapt in their sockets with hilarity. Christian was really very good, she thought, better than any of those silly actors in that dippy play last Christmas,
Peter Pan
. When Ellen looked at her, almost imploringly, Gabrielle said in an affectedly sweet voice, “You must bear with us, as Miss Cummings says, Mama.”

“Yes, darling,” said Ellen, relieved. “And now we will say our prayers together.”

That night, as usual, Gabrielle crept from her room to Christian’s. She sat on his bed and they talked of their mother and shrieked with laughter into pillows, so Miss Cummings would not hear. Tonight, their laughter was more prolonged.

C H A P T E R   22

MISS CUMMINGS HAD A splendid regard for Cuthbert, whom she considered “quite a gentleman.” For Annie she had a special fondness, for, like all the English, she respected common sense and an acquaintance with reality, and had an innate disgust for sentimentality. (She had a special liking for the Brontes for this reason.) For Clarisse, Ellen’s maid, she had cold contempt and suspicion; Miss Cummings disliked any invasion of privacy and eavesdropping, but she had overheard, without trying, some of Clarisse’s muffled and derisive remarks, in French, to Kitty Wilder.

Miss Cummings’ favorite spot, even above her delightful quarters on the third floor, was the big brick kitchen with its fireplace. There she would sit, on cold or dank and chilly days, near the fire, thoughtfully sipping China tea and nibbling at Cuthbert’s shortbread, which she admitted was as good as any she had ever tasted in England. (“A little more butter perhaps, Cuthbert, and have you tried a drop or two of vanilla bean? Just a touch; not enough to be identified, but it does give it a certain something.”) The housemaids liked her calm presence and admired her smooth oval face and the old-fashioned way she dressed her hair. A lady, they would remark to themselves. Cuthbert especially liked her to be in the kitchen, to sip his court bouillon critically, watching her for a nod of her head, or his shrimp (“prawns”) dressing for lobsters. “Mr. Jim Brady admired it also,” Cuthbert said once. “I was not impressed, however, Miss Cummings. A vulgarian.” Miss Cummings remarked wryly, “Diamonds are always an excuse for bad taste, I’ve discovered.”

Miss Cummings was becoming more and more concerned over Ellen’s children. “I well know,” she said, this brawling late March day, “that children are born wicked and intransigent, but Christian and Gabrielle seem to have few if any compensating virtues, except, perhaps, unusual intelligence. However, the evil are much more formidable when intelligent than the stupid. Despite Mr. Porter’s discipline, and Annie’s and mine, and my exhortations and their Sunday school, they have a—peculiar bent of mind. They are utterly ruthless, lacking the slightest inclination to Christian charity or kindness, or remorse, or gentleness of thought. They seem to find these exemplary traits risible. It is as if they were born without—what shall I call it?”

“Without humanity,” suggested Cuthbert.

Miss Cummings sighed. “Well, I do not have the highest regard for humanity, Cuthbert, even at its best. No. It is something else. Like a defect of the spirit—a blindness. This is not new to me.” She hesitated. “Before I accepted this post it was my misfortune to have a young lad, a little older than Christian, under my guidance and care. He, too, had a defect of the spirit, a confirmed cruelty, even more so than Christian’s. A fine boy, too, handsome, beguiling, ingratiating, when it suited his purposes. I am certain he killed his little brother, though no one suspected besides myself. He resented the child’s presence and his parents’ affection given also to another.”

Cuthbert, who was inserting slivers of garlic into a leg of lamb, paused and looked at her with intent gravity. “They were out in a boat, Cuthbert, on a large pond. The little one, about three years old, could not swim. The boat overturned. The older boy declared over and over, with tears, that he had tried to save the child, and his sorrowful parents believed him. I did not. No, there was no direct evidence, but I had watched him over many months, and so I knew. He was capable of anything that interfered with his own gratification. I left abruptly. I could not bear to look into his beautiful serious eyes when he spoke of the dead child. I could not bear to see his tears. I was afraid”—and her voice dropped—“that if I remained I might confront him—with disastrous results. I am not a meek person.”

Cuthbert continued his delicate work with somber thoughtfulness. “I have seen such myself,” he finally said. “Yes. Well, I fear you are quite correct, Miss Cummings, in your opinion of Master Christian and Miss Gabrielle. They enhance each other’s wickedness. Mrs. Porter speaks with fondness of how ‘close’ her children are. The wicked recognize and know each other at once, and complement each other. Let us be thankful, however, that they are not enemies.”

“It would be interesting to know their ancestry,” said the governess. “I do not believe in this new insistence on environment; I believe bad blood leaps over the generations, and is born in the flesh, and nothing can eliminate it. Mrs. Porter is the soul of gentleness and tenderness, and Mr. Porter is a gentleman of integrity for all his fierce glances and abrupt manners at times. Their children are nothing like them at all, in spite of the physical resemblances. It is strange, but beauty is often the delightful garb of the evil; it is as if Satan bestows that on them, to be a menace to others.”

“Yet, Mrs. Porter is very beautiful,” said Cuthbert.

“Extraordinarily so, yes. And Mr. Porter has his moments of handsomeness. Ah, well, who understands these things? We can only be perceptive and wary. I try to convey warnings to Mrs. Porter, whom her children mock and taunt, but she gazes at me in a puzzled way. I fear she dislikes me.”

“Mrs. Porter does not dislike anyone, I am afraid,” said Cuthbert. “One wonders about Mrs. Wilder—”

The two exchanged deep and significant glances, and Miss Cummings sighed again and Cuthbert poured another cup of tea for her. They listened to the rumblings of the fire and the hissing of snow against the leaded windowpanes. “I am not particularly sensitive,” said Miss Cummings, “but I have an ominous presentiment of tragedy.”

“So do I,” said Cuthbert. “I have felt it for a long time, even from the moment I first met Mrs. Porter. There are those who are marked for doom, are they not?”

“It makes one think,” said Miss Cummings. “It is very strange that the clergy talk of God loving all His children, even the most dangerous. I doubt that the Almighty has no discrimination. We are exhorted to have compassion on all things. I have not read that in the Bible. Forgive your enemies, yes. But do not weep over them.”

Jeremy spoke angrily to some of his politician acquaintances. “Why Wilson?” he demanded. “No, I will not be a delegate to the convention. That is final.”

The politicians looked at each other, and several lit fresh cigars. They were gathered in Jeremy’s office. “We need a fresh view of government,” one said.

Jeremy gave them a cynical stare.

“Such as Wilson’s ‘new progress,’ as he calls it? I have mentioned, over and over, what you already know, that he established a Communist cell in Princeton. The man is not very bright; I’ve had a series of conversations with him. But then, no Communist has any brains; he has only the lust for power. However, I doubt Wilson has even that. But he is a man who can be easily manipulated, for all his erudition. Am I correct?”

“Jerry, damned if we know what you’re talking about.”

Jeremy studied them, and carefully lit a cigarette. “Perhaps you don’t, perhaps you do. What about his friend Colonel House? Or don’t you know anything about him, either?”

The politicians were silent, studying the glowing ends of their cigars. Jeremy said, “I see. You’ve had your orders.”

“Now, what the hell do you mean by that? We’ve selected the man we feel is best for the office.”

“But what about the country?” Again they were silent. Jeremy threw his match at the fireplace with a curse. “We’ve had Roosevelt, who was a blusterer, and we have Taft, who is amiable and has some intelligence and is a prudent man. They are, at least, men who have a regard for America, though words have been put into Roosevelt’s mouth quite often. Neither would betray his country.”

“And you think Wilson would?” The politicians chuckled, but Jeremy did not.

“In one way or another, yes, perhaps without intention. He is a very weak man. And there is Colonel House, who is not weak, but a very insidious gentleman.”

“I know some of his ideas, Jerry,” said one politician. “He thinks it is about time that America took an active part in the affairs of the world. We are no longer an isolated nation; the world is at our doorstep; we can’t, any longer, be insular.”

“And why not? What is reprehensible about a man keeping his doors and windows locked against wolves—or international criminals? What is wrong with Washington’s warnings against foreign entanglements?”

“Times change, Jerry. This modem world is different.”

“Times always change, and the world is always different, from day to day. But there are certain verities, which never change, and are never different. Such as minding your own business, for one.”

“All very vague, Jerry.”

“I don’t think you believe that. Wilson’s a cloistered man without a deep measure of intelligence. Were he actually intelligent he wouldn’t have founded that Communist cell. I doubt he has a very clear idea of what Communism means. But the Communists are hellishly clever in finding men like Wilson, and putting them in power. I know. My cousin is one of the idiots himself. He calls Communism a ‘system of Love.’ I’ve heard that Wilson remarked that, too. Frank Porter, my cousin, babbles just like Wilson.”