Ceremony of the Innocent (48 page)

“Jeremy!” exclaimed Ellen. “Oh, don’t be silly, Kitty. And it’s disrespectful and insulting to Jeremy.” She looked at Kitty with her great blue eyes under the mass of her shining red hair, and laughed. “I know you just intend to amuse me, and I already feel less despondent.”

Oh, God, thought Kitty. She had had the vague intention of arousing Ellen’s suspicions and had been prepared to hint about Emma Bedford. She guessed that under Ellen’s sweet submissiveness and trust lay a blade of fire, or iron, which, once revealed, could be very damaging indeed. When she had first discerned this some years ago Kitty had been disturbed. Her natural astuteness had warned her that if Ellen ever was forced to confront treachery and absolute evil the results would be awesomely unpredictable. Could she arouse this sleeping fierceness in Ellen with regard to Jeremy and Emma Bedford? This was very tempting. But Kith’ was self-protective and cautious. She might unloose the uncontrollable and it might destroy Kitty herself.

Ellen then tried for a lightness of her own “I shouldn’t say I am lonely, or anything, though I do miss Jeremy. My neighbors invite me for tea and dinner, and the weekends are always gay. And Charles Godfrey comes nearly every Saturday and stays to Sunday night. Jeremy asked him, and he is so kind He tries to entertain Miss Cummings, too, and takes her for long walks, and he plays with Gabrielle and Christian. I often wonder why he never married. He’s very eligible.”

That very evening Charles, walking with Miss Cummings along the beach with the children racing ahead, said to the governess, “Maude, will you marry me?”

She took his hand and smiled up into his eyes and her calm face was suddenly pink with the sunset. “Of course,” she said, in the most natural voice in the world, as if she were merely affirming what she already knew.

C H A P T E R   24

IN SPITE OF HER MOST determined efforts, Ellen could not shake off her despondency. She often went into New York to help with her many charities, but it was with listlessness. She would have herself driven to her house, now attended only by a caretaker and a temporary housekeeper, who cooked for Jeremy when he was in town. It had a dark and musty smell in the heat. She opened windows, talked with the housekeeper and her assistant, examined the larder and pantry, and wandered about aimlessly. She would lunch with Kitty and shop and discuss the newest plays to be shown in the autumn. But the crowds and Kitty and her other city-bound friends could not alleviate her strange mood. Finally, she went to a new doctor Kitty had recommended, for she was beginning to lose her color. The doctor examined her closely, then, as he was a young man with all the new certainties of the year, he said with some severity, “Like most ladies, Mrs. Porter, you do not have enough to do. I suggest charity work, serious undertakings, the personal care of your children, an interest in the affairs of the world.”

Guilt turned Ellen’s face red, then all at once she felt her rare indignation. “Doctor,” she said, “I do all these things until I exhaust myself, and it is no use. I need my husband—”

“Possessiveness,” he said in a dismissing voice. “A preoccupation with self. Cultivate your mind, my dear madam. One of these days women will vote, and you must not come unprepared into the new world.”

Suddenly Ellen was smiling. She said, “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. At least, that is what my husband is always saying and I agree with him. Occasionally, though, it does get worse.”

The doctor was startled and oddly affronted. This beautiful young woman, in her gray linen and lace dress and yellow straw hat, had annoyed him from the start, for he had recognized her, he had thought, as one of the idle, rich, and pampered women who had known no anxiety or despair in her life and so had little awareness and no “compassion for the toiling masses.” Yet her eyes now were not only gently amused but brilliant with intelligence. He did not like having his conclusions challenged, and so he did not like Ellen. She left him, and her amusement lasted for several hours and lifted the depression.

The next day she received a telegram from Hortense Eccles in Wheatfield. “Your aunt quietly passed away this morning. Your presence necessary for funeral arrangements.”

Annie was out with the children for their morning walk, and Miss Cummings was in the library preparing material for Christian’s afternoon lessons. She heard Ellen, who was in the long hall, gasp and cry out, and she went to her at once. Ellen stared at her blankly and then, without speaking, gave the governess the telegram. “Oh,” said Maude. “I am so sorry. We shall go at once to Wheatfield. I will find out about the first train.”

“No,” said Ellen in a dull tone. “That is, I will take the children and Annie. That’s all I need. But thank you.” Miss Cummings’ composed face and fine eyes expressed no hurt. She only said, “We must send Mr. Porter a telegram, then. He would not want you to suffer this alone.”

Ellen shook her head slowly. “No, he is in Chicago. It is very important that he be there. He is delivering a speech at a political banquet this evening. He—he has not seen my aunt for years, though he has taken care of her. No, he must not be disturbed.”

“Then,” said Maude in a firm voice such as she used to children, “I will most certainly go with you. Annie will have too much to do with Christian and Gabrielle to be of much assistance to you in this emergency, Mrs. Porter. I will ask your maid to pack you a bag, and then will pack mine. Please sit down, Mrs. Porter. You look quite ill.”

Ellen suddenly sat down in the long wide hall which stretched from the front door to the rear. She stared at the leaves of a shaking willow and at the climbing rose trellis near it—scarlet against chartreuse fire. But she did not see the beauty. She began to whimper deep in her throat. All at once she was a child again, listening to May’s peremptory and weary voice in the little cottage in Preston. She could see her aunt’s face, gray with exhaustion and glistening with summer sweat, as she sewed. A sharp odor of cabbage and boiling beef came to Ellen’s nose then, and it was in her aunt’s kitchen that she was sitting now, hearing May’s affectionate reproaches concerning her carelessness.

“Oh, Aunt May, dear Auntie,” she whispered, and there were no years between of alienation and estrangement and guilt. She forgot that May was in her late fifties, and that she had led a comfortable life, because of her niece, for a long time, comforted by good care and attention. Ellen could only feel guilt for that alienation. There had been weeks when she had not thought of May at all, so engrossed had she been with her family and her occupations and Jeremy. She had written but once a week to her aunt; she forgot that May rarely answered those letters except to complain and rebuke and accuse. (The letters had actually been written by Hortense Eccles or May’s nurse, for May’s hands were almost totally crippled.) She could only whisper, in the sweet warm silence of the hall with but the ocean murmuring at a distance, “Oh, Auntie, I am so sorry, so sorry. I should have done something for you—I should not have neglected you so much for so long. I should have seen you more often, given you a little pleasure in your pain. All alone there, in Wheatfield, with no one to comfort or help you.” Ellen began to cry and was overwhelmed with remorse.

Miss Cummings returned with a glass of brandy, an anxious Cuthbert looking over her shoulder. “Come now, Mrs. Porter,” said Maude. “You must drink this. Your maid is packing a bag for you for two days and mine is almost ready. May I suggest that the children not go with you?”

Ellen’s wet eyes flashed at the governess now with open dislike. “Not take my children to the funeral of their aunt! How outrageous, Miss Cummings, for you to suggest that!”

Miss Cummings sighed and gave the empty glass to Cuthbert. She said, and again in her quietly firm voice, “Mrs. Porter, the children have seen your aunt, Mrs. Watson, only on scattered occasions. They have no affection for her. That is only natural. They never speak of her, and that is natural, too. Children are only concerned with themselves. Too, it is a long hot journey, and Gabrielle’s summer cold is just now subsiding. It would be better for you to go alone with me. The train for New York leaves in one hour—”

“I don’t want you with me!” cried the distraught Ellen. “It is my children’s place to be at the funeral! Oh, please, let me alone!” She jumped to her feet, in a turmoil of grief and anger. She had never liked Miss Cummings; she had been daunted by her, for there was something in the younger woman’s character which had abashed Ellen and had made her uneasy. Miss Cummings had poise and certitude and was of a piece, and women of her sort had invariably intimidated Ellen and had made her feel inferior and incompetent.

Miss Cummings said, “Very well. Shall I call Mrs. Wilder, then? She may wish to go with you.”

Ellen clasped her trembling hands tightly together. “Kitty, Kitty? Yes! No. She is visiting some friends—I don’t know where. I don’t think she told me. Philadelphia? Boston? Oh, I don’t know. She went last night.”

The slightest flicker appeared for a moment in Maude’s eyes, and there was also a flicker in Cuthbert’s. Ellen put her hands helplessly over her face. She murmured from behind them, “Oh, dear God. You are right about the children. Too long a ride, and too hot, and there is so much infantile paralysis about. No, they can’t go with me. I am afraid I will have to accept your offer, Miss Cummings.” She dropped her hands and her eyes were streaming again. “And please send Mr. Porter a telegram, too, so if he should try to call me he will know where I am. I am so confused.”

She saw Miss Cummings clearly for the first time and then was ashamed of her outburst. “I am sorry, Miss Cummings. It is just that I am so upset. Now I must change.”

Miss Cummings watched Ellen run up the stairs, and she shook her head. She was glad that she had persuaded Charles not to press for an announcement of their coming marriage in October. Mrs. Porter disliked her enough as it was, and that was open now. She suspected that she was one of the very few people whom Ellen had ever resented. Maude was not hurt by this. One never knew what deep undercurrents lay beneath human behavior and human loves and hatreds, not even those who loved or hated. Life was a very complicated matter, indeed.

Ellen barely spoke to Miss Cummings on the long, hot, and sooty ride to Wheatfield. The compartment was so stuffy that it was necessary to open the train windows, and so smoke and noise poured in and made conversation almost impossible. Composed as always, outwardly, Maude was deeply concerned over Ellen. She studied Ellen’s pale profile with the tremulous lips and the wide, almost unblinking eyes, and she was full of pity. The red hair made the pallor even more intense, and the stretched eyes had crimson edges and were swollen. How she punishes herself, thought Maude, and most unjustly. This is not mere grief she is suffering, but self-chastisement, a weakness of those who are not guilty at all. The truly wicked feel no guilt, or, if they do, they blame it not on their own actions but on others who are blameless.

Maude was several years younger than Ellen but infinitely more mature and worldly. She believed, with Spinoza, that to feel remorse is to be twice guilty. To this she had added an addendum: The innocent were always in a state of self-reproach. She wanted to say some words of consolation to Ellen but knew that she would be fiercely repulsed, for Ellen desired her self-punishment, which in some manner lessened her sorrow. Literal flagellation, mused Maude, can assuage emotional torture. Maude smoothed the black silk of her gloves and serenely surveyed the passing landscape between bouts of coughing. As usual, she wore her discreet clothing with elegance. Ellen had found a black suit to wear, too heavy for this weather, and a black silk shirtwaist with a boned collar, and a black felt hat. Sweat dripped from her temples and wide white forehead but apparently her mental suffering was greater than her physical, for she did not wipe away the drops of water and did not seem conscious of any physical discomfort.

It was twilight when the train arrived in Wheatfield and waited, puffing impatiently, for its next run to Pittsburgh. Mrs. Eccles’ carriage was waiting for the two ladies, an expensive brougham, Miss Cummings noticed, driven by a man who was obviously not employed solely as a coachman. But it was cooler here in this small city. So anxious was Ellen that she tripped on her long black skirt and Maude caught her arm to steady her. Almost wildly, Ellen shook her off and ran to the carriage, Maude following her more sedately. Ellen was already seated when Maude climbed the carriage steps, and was wringing her hands and leaning forward feverishly, as if to wing the vehicle to its destination. “Hurry, hurry, please,” she murmured, as though her aunt were still alive and she must rush to save her from death. Maude frowned. She had adored her father, the vicar, and had been his housekeeper and hostess after her mother’s death, and had quietly made his life bearable and even rich. When be had died suddenly, in his pulpit, she had believed that her own existence, at nineteen, had come to an abrupt end, and she had not desired to live. Yet, she had shown no outward evidence of mental anguish, as Ellen was now doing, and had displayed a commendable restraint at her father’s funeral, a restraint which was most admired. But then, she thought, Americans are much more emotional than the British, and it was at once their weakness and their strength.

Maude surveyed the green arches of the elms over the streets with approval, and the wide lawns and the evening light illuminating the roofs of large houses. She heard the rattle of lawn mowers and could smell the scent of cut grass and water and dust. So this was America, beyond New York, the only American city she had ever known before. It was quite a different America here, and the people on porches and sidewalks seemed more placid and content, and even the automobiles made less noise and appeared less in a hurry. There were no trolleys. The town was too small. “Hurry, hurry, please,” Ellen was still murmuring, her hands clutched together.

When the carriage, a very old-fashioned one, stopped before Hortense Eccles’ house, Maude glanced at it and decided it was in very bad taste, indeed hardly more tasteful, if larger, than its neighbors. But the lawns were wide and there were sharply colored flower beds and a very pretty small park at the end of the street, filled with playing children and their ringing calls in the twilight. The carriage had hardly stopped when Ellen, not waiting to be assisted to alight, jumped from the step and ran to the house, her black garments fluttering, her head craned forward, her hat tilted over her hair—in complete disarray. Maude, again, followed more sedately. The door was opened by Hortense herself, plump and older but still sleek, and clad in a gray silk dress and wearing a most mournful expression, at once accusing and somber. Ellen fled past her. Maude mounted the steps, gave Mrs. Eccles—whom she immediately disliked—a calm hand and a slight cool smile. “I am Maude Cummings,” she said, “and I assume you are Mrs. Eccles. I am governess to Mrs. Porter’s children.”