Ceremony of the Innocent (6 page)

Ellen’s voice trembled somewhat when she said, “I was sitting a minute in the parlor.” Her eyes became enlarged, intense. “And I saw something—I don’t know what, but it was awful rich, but it made me sad, too.”

“What on earth?” said May, pushing back her thin and grizzled hair. She put the kettle on for hot water for a cup of tea, and reminded herself that she must get more of the tea; it was the only thing which revived her after a long day’s work. “Well, aren’t you going to tell me?” For Ellen was hesitating, her ruddy head bent, her teeth biting her lower lip.

“It was just a dream,” she said in apology, “and I don’t know why it made me—gloomy, and frightened me. I never saw that before, and yet I was me, though I seemed to be older, a grown-up lady about twenty, I think. But I looked like me; I know it. And I was looking out a window, it had little leads in it like the Mayor’s stained-glass door, but this window wasn’t stained glass. Just clear. And it had heavy red silk draperies with gold tassels and fringes and silk balls on the sashes.” She stopped, again in apology, but May’s face had turned quite white and her mouth had fallen open and she was staring almost stupidly at Ellen.

The girl spoke more hurriedly. “It was only a dream. And I was looking out at the brick wall of the house, and it had a trellis with roses and leaves on it, and behind me I could feel a big room, bigger than any room in Preston, and though I didn’t see the room I knew it was full of grand furniture, and there was a big lamp of little bits of glass hanging from the ceiling, rows and rows of glass, prisms I think you would call it, and the room I was in had dark walls of wood all polished like furniture, and there were lots of books—Aunt May, what is it?” she cried, and went to her aunt again, for May Watson stood there, stupefied and almost glaring in the weak light of the table lamp.

May pushed her hair fiercely back from her face, then stared about her as if she did not know where she was. She fumbled for a chair. She sat down, and now she fixed her eyes on Ellen, distraught.

“I knew such a room, for years; I dusted and polished it for years. And I remember the wall of the house and how it looked—” Then she came to herself and clenched her hands on her bony knees and wet her lips and appeared to see Ellen fully for the first time. She was aghast. “How did you know about such a room? Who told you?” Her voice was high and acute, even terrified. She reached out and grasped Ellen’s arm and shook her. “Tell me; who told you?”

Ellen was affrighted. She tried to draw away from that hurting grasp but could not. “Nobody—told me,” she stammered. “It was just a dream, a dream. You are making my arm ache, Aunt May.”

The woman released the girl’s arm, and then she was suddenly weeping, hiding her face in her rough palms. “It can’t be,” she groaned. “It can’t be. You never saw such a place. Only I and—only I did. I must have told you about it, sometime.”

“When I was very little,” Ellen urged, eager to comfort her. “That must have been it.”

May rocked on the chair, weeping dolorously, her face still hidden. But she nodded. “That was it,” she moaned. “It could only be that. You were never there, never there.” She dropped her hands and her deep premature wrinkles were filled with water which ran down to her chin and dripped. Ellen had never seen her aunt weep before, and now she was shattered with guilt and remorse. She put her head on her aunt’s knees like a puppy deserving of the most drastic punishment.

For a long time May could only look down on that vital and disordered mass of hair on her knee. Then she put out her hand and touched it, smoothing it. Ellen sobbed. “There, there,” said May. “It’s all right. I’m just terribly tired. When I’m tired like this everything—everything—seems not right, or something.” She wiped away her tears with the sleeve of her calico dress. “Now, you just stop crying, hear me?” She tried to make her voice severe, but it broke. “You got to get up at five to be at the Mayor’s house at six, and it will be a long day for you. Ellen, Ellen? Listen to me. I told them you were just fourteen. Remember that”

Ellen raised her head; blue wet light swam in her eyes. She felt forgiven, and there was a rush of love in her for her aunt. “Fourteen,” she repeated. “Well, it isn’t quite a lie, is it? I’ll be fourteen in January, and that’s only six, seven months away. Fourteen.”

“Yes. Now you go to bed. I’ll wake you at five. You’ll work hard and be polite and obedient, won’t you, dear? Mrs. Jardin is a hard woman and Mrs. Porter is even worse. You’ve been in their kitchen a couple of times, and you’ve seen them, and they paid no more attention to you than if you’d been a fly. Never mind, though. Just work hard and earn seventy-five cents a week, and maybe they’ll let you have a good meal at supper.” Then she said savagely, “A good meal. Steal it if you must. They got plenty. They save the scraps for their dog, and you’re better than a dog. My Ellen.”

Ellen, all distress gone from her, and happy that her aunt had recovered from her mysterious collapse, kissed May warmly and went to bed. May sat for some minutes, thinking. “It can’t be,” she whispered aloud. “She can’t remember—that. She was never even there. Just me and Miss Amy and May. Why, she wasn’t even born yet! She wasn’t born in Philadelphia. She was born in Erie!”

Now May was swept with an old grief and her eyes flooded again and she bowed her head and whispered, “Mary, Mary.” Then she was horribly frightened, and she stood up and blew out the lamp and scuttled to her own bed, where she lay sleepless for some time listening to the voices of the wind and the few trees on the street. There was a gas lamp outside and it poured its ocher light into the bedroom and flickered on the damp walls and May Watson thought she saw ghosts and covered her head with her sheet.

C H A P T E R   3

“I BIN UP AN HOUR, since five,” Mrs. Jardin grumbled to Ellen, “while you were still slugging in bed. Your auntie knows that the home folks eat their breakfast at six, even though their visitors don’t eat till seven, a heathen lazy way of living, in the cities.”

“I’ll come at half past five tomorrow morning,” said Ellen, again sheepish with guilt. “But Aunt May thought you said six, Mrs. Jar-din.” It was still barely light outside; the laurels had a ghostly reflection on them as seen through the kitchen window. By bending forward over the sink and peering to her left Ellen could see that the eastern sky was a vast sheet of gold into which, at the horizon, were being intruded long thin fingers of scarlet. Birds were already arrowing through the dimness of dawn and their cries and calls made an exciting music to the girl. She had walked through the dark streets in which only a few early workers had been moving, and they still half asleep. At least she had escaped the mocking cruelty of the children on her way to this house.

“What you staring at through the window?” demanded Mrs. Jar-din. Her jaunty face became sly. “You look peakish this morning. Didn’t get to bed ‘til late, I reckon.”

“It was about half past eleven,” said Ellen, rubbing the silver.

“Oh?” asked Mrs. Jardin, pausing by the fuming stove, which crackled cheerfully with the fresh wood. “Where was you?”

“Well, I fell asleep, waiting for Aunt May,” said Ellen. She thought of the clean winds of dawn she had just encountered, the sweetness of the air even in this dusty village by the river, and she smiled happily to herself. Mrs. Jardin saw that smile, and she smirked.

“Anyone with you?” she asked in a voice deliberately uninterested.

Ellen was surprised. She turned her head to look at Mrs. Jardin. “No, there isn’t anyone living in the house but us.”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant a kind of visitor maybe,” Mrs. Jardin said, and winked at Ellen. The girl was puzzled. Yet a sense of degradation without a name attacked her, a shapeless embarrassment. “We don’t have visitors, except the ladies who come for Aunt May to make them dresses and alterations.”

Mrs. Jardin nodded significantly to herself and her smile was slyer. If ever a girl was a natural-born strumpet this one was, with all that wild red hair and bold face. You can’t fool me, my girl, she thought. I know a bad one when I sees one and you’re bad, clear through. End up on the street in Scranton most likely. Born for it. You didn’t sleep alone last night, and nobody can tell me different. While your aunt—if she is your aunt and not your mother—was out working.

The kitchen was lighted by gas, new to Preston, and its light was harsh and depressing. It also smelled badly. It flickered on Ellen’s hair and her suddenly mournful profile as she vigorously rubbed the cutlery. It was now half past six, and the Mayor and his lady had already had their breakfast. In half an hour the visitors from Scranton would have theirs. There were sounds of movements above. The Mayor’s house and furniture were considered very “grand” in Preston, but to Ellen they were both ugly. She did not yet know the full meaning of the word “elegant”; she only knew that there was something grossly missing in these large rooms, in which huge dark furniture brooded and every corner was occupied by fringed chairs and tables, ornament cases, vases filled with pussy-willow branches or violently colored plumes; draperies were everywhere, not only at the narrow slits of windows. They curved over the fireplaces, fringed and balled, and were mostly dark red or navy blue, and dripped from the grand piano and hung at the doors. They even swathed the backs of giant sofas and festooned themselves over all the pier mirrors, which reproduced only the furniture and the dim expensive rugs and windows in the wan light that pervaded the house even on bright summer days. They glimmered like ghosts and had never reflected sunlight. The ugly flowered walls were almost covered by dingy if expensive paintings of somber mountains and darkling seas or stags at bay or a glum-faced child with a basket of flowers in her hands which resembled the asphodels, the flowers of the dead.

“The Mayor’s house is a palace,” May Watson often said. But Ellen, though she had never seen a truly beautiful house in all her life, vaguely understood that this house was hideous, tasteless, oppressive. It never occurred to her to wonder why she knew this; there were so many things she knew without any experience of them. The house smelled of lavender, wax and strong soap, and mustiness; the lurking stairways were haunted in the gloom of a house where little outside light was permitted to enter. Hollow booms of no discernible source echoed constantly through the house and enhanced its ponderous dreariness. Suddenly Ellen believed she could not breathe here, that her chest was being weighted down by something beyond her knowledge, and she was both despondent and frightened and wanted to run out into the free air where there were no threatening crepuscular walls and stairways with polished brass balustrades and bowls of dried flowers and Meissen china figurines under glass bells on tables, and fringes and silk balls and crouching furniture of deep-stained mahogany, and thick creeping rugs that harbored dust. How terrible to have to live here, thought the girl. In contrast, the wretched little house she occupied with her aunt was cheerful and open, for all its poverty and destitution. Innately buoyant though she was, Ellen felt crushed and hopeless in this “mansion,” and could hardly hold herself back from cowardly flight. The black hall clock chimed a quarter to seven in a loud grave voice, and Ellen’s feeling of dismalness increased. The kitchen window was filling with sun, and Mrs. Jardin turned off the gaslight.

Ellen said, “Are there many houses in Preston like this, Mrs. Jar-din?”

Mrs. Jardin lifted her head proudly. “No. This is the grandest. But then, Mrs. Porter comes from Scranton and brought her family’s furniture with her. People love to come into this house and stare at everything. Never saw anything like it before, they didn’t.”

Ellen was not given to irony but now she said within herself: They’re lucky. This made her feel both guilty and mirthful, and she carried a dish of stewed prunes and figs into the dining room, which resolutely rejected any daylight or starlight at all and so existed in gaslight by night and duskiness by day. Aunt May had called this room “luxury,” but Ellen flinched at it. Its four long slender windows were shrouded in blue velvet draperies and almost opaque lace; the enormous buffet, to Ellen, resembled a closed coffin for all the mass of silver trays and teapots and sugar bowls and pitchers on it, and candlesticks, and for all the painting of dead fish and fruits and flowers which overhung it. The table was a gigantic wheel of mahogany, now covered with a white damask cloth centered with a silver bowl of roses and two silver epergnes. A glass chandelier hung over it, motionless in the torpid and smothering atmosphere that filled up the house. There was a china closet here which appeared to threaten the whole room with its crowded masses of porcelain and silver; it leaned slightly towards the center, scowling at the table, which was surrounded by colossal chairs paved with crimson velvet. Ellen laid the dish she was carrying on the table and looked about her, and shivered. She did not know what was wrong with the room but to her it was far more appalling than any poverty she had encountered. One day, she said to herself, I will have a house full of beautiful slender furniture, painted and pale, with delicate rugs and smiling walls and big windows full of light. She could vividly see such a dining room, scented with flowers and ferns, open to gardens wide and tranquil, and her depression lifted as if an aromatic wind had blown over it. She went back into the kitchen with a bemused but joyous expression on her face.

“Lovely room, ain’t it?” asked Mrs. Jardin with pride.

The vision of the dining room she would have someday suffused Ellen’s thoughts, and so she said without hypocrisy, “Lovely.”

In honor of the occasion of her first working day in the Mayor’s house May Watson had permitted her niece to wear the pink cotton frock usually hallowed for holidays, and a long white apron. She had found a blue ribbon to hold back Ellen’s hair and it had a flaunting look in that tumbling mass of triumphant red. Ellen brought gleaming plates from the china closet to the table and carefully laid out the silver. There were sounds on the front stairway and she fled back into the kitchen.