Ceremony of the Innocent (61 page)

“I am so happy the war is over, Francis,” said Ellen as they sat before the fire in the library and sipped sherry before dinner. “I was so afraid, thinking of Christian—if the war were to last a few years longer. When I think of the poor boys in my house on Long Island—well, I would think of my own son. I am so happy it is over.”

But the real war has just begun, Francis thought, the war for the liberation of mankind all over the world. But he nodded soberly at Ellen. She sat near him in a simple black velvet gown, and though she was still thin she now possessed an air of quiet composure and maturity. She looked up at the portrait of Jeremy over the fireplace and sighed. “It would be such a happy night for Jeremy,” she said, and if her large blue eyes filled with pain and grief her smile was gentle. She had not cut her hair in the new fashion; it was braided and heaped over her head and it caught threads of fire from the spluttering coals in the grate. The old purity, the old immaculate serenity, had returned to her translucent face. She played with the pearls at her throat, and forgot Francis. She sighed again, and her lovely rounded breasts pressed against the shimmering velvet over it. Francis could not look away from her. Ellen, Ellen, he said in himself.

The clock in the hall struck eight notes. Dinner would soon be served. “I suppose they will give the children a holiday tomorrow,” said Ellen. “Christian from Groton, Gabrielle from her day school. I think I will take them for lunch at Delmonico’s. A very special treat.”

It is now or never, thought Francis, trembling. He leaned towards Ellen urgently. “Have you ever thought, Ellen, that your children need a man’s guidance and counseling and solicitude?”

She glanced at him quickly, puzzled, then smiled. “They have you, dear Francis,” she said.

“But I have no real position of authority, Ellen.”

“They adore you, you know that. As for myself, I wouldn’t know what to do without you—and Charles. You and Charles—you are like fathers to my children, even though Christian, that bad boy, often complains of Charles.” She laughed a little and shook her head.

“Perhaps he has reason to complain,” said Francis, with meaning. Ellen was surprised.

“Oh, no, not really, Francis. Besides, Christian has you, too. The boy almost worships you, and so does Gabrielle. They are fortunate.”

“They might not always have me, Ellen.” His hands were shaking and he had to clench them. “I may marry—and leave New York.”

Ellen uttered an amazed cry. “You are thinking of marrying, Francis?”

“Yes. I am. After all, I am not young any longer. I want a family of my own.”

Ellen was intrigued. “Is it someone I know?” She had never thought of Francis marrying and leaving, and she had a faint sensation of loss and regret.

“Yes, Ellen. You know—her.”

She waited. She saw how tense he had become; she saw the drops on his forehead; she saw that his hands were clenched together.

He said, “Again, Ellen, you must think of your children, and a father’s strength behind them, to admonish, to inform, to guide. They impress me as somewhat unruly at times—a little bold, especially Gabrielle. You are too lenient with them—and they need authority. A man’s authority.” He caught his breath, while she stared at him innocently. “Ellen, have you ever thought of marrying again?”

She was freshly amazed. “But I am married!” she exclaimed.

“What?” A thundering confusion came to him, an icy throb of horror. “You are married?”

“Yes, of course. To Jeremy. I am his wife.”

The dreadful hammering of his heart slowly subsided; he moved his neck against his stiff white collar. “Ellen, my dear. You are Jeremy’s widow. You have no husband.”

The apricot color, fainter than in her youth, faded from Ellen’s cheeks and lips. She averted her head, and was silent.

“And your children have no father, and they desperately need one. Surely you can see that for yourself. You are too timid, too—inexperienced—too submissive, to be a force in their lives. This is very bad for them. Forget yourself for a moment, and think of the welfare of your children. They are at a very vulnerable age, and have no father to protect them even from themselves. You must marry again, Ellen.”

She shuddered and dropped her head. “How could I do that, loving Jeremy?” she whispered.

“He is dead, Ellen, dead. He can no longer help you, and your children. Think of how worried he would be now—about Christian, who is almost a man, and Gabrielle, who is approaching womanhood. They have only a mother, who is not strict enough, I am afraid, and is too unworldly. This is a new age, Ellen, and it will become hectic very soon. Your children need protection. How can you deny them a father?”

The old sick guilt washed over Ellen, the old shrinking, and he saw this. Her face was very white and taut and her lips had dried. He went on, relentlessly, “You must give this immediate thought, Ellen. Your children must come first, and not any lingering sentimentality concerning a dead husband and father. You must face the truth, Ellen, and the sooner the better. Christian is almost out of control as it is; I sometimes have to rebuke him sternly. As for Gabrielle—does she listen to you?”

Ellen’s head began to move from side to side, in deep pain.

“A new father would control Christian, a new father would give Gabrielle a steadfast governing. With affection, of course, and a personal influence. Fatherless children are always in danger. Christian and Gabrielle are in particular danger, for they are rich and have been denied nothing, and do not have, I fear, much in the way of principles and ideals. You are not strong enough to give them these, Ellen. You never were. They are very spirited, and often rebellious. Let me be honest with you, Ellen. They have no particular respect for you. Don’t you see how dangerous this is for them? They must respect somebody. Charles Godfrey? He has a family of his own; he has no authority over your children, except to deny them undue extravagances.”

Ellen said in a weak voice, “My children—they would not like me to marry again.” She was pleading with him, and now she turned to him and he saw the stark fear and irresolution on her face. “And how could I marry again, remembering Jeremy?”

“There you are, Ellen! Thinking only of yourself, as your poor aunt used to accuse you, with some justification. One must not be selfish in this world, Ellen. One must think of others occasionally, something, alas, which you do not do often.”

“I think of my children all the time! I live for them!”

He shook his head. “No, you do not, Ellen. If you did, only once, you would recognize the truth of what I have told you. You would see yourself as a sentimental soft woman, who believes her children are still little children, and not adolescents in desperate need of a father’s guidance, protection and care and authority. They are in peril, Ellen, desperate peril. It is almost too late as it is. I can see that for myself. I worry about them constantly.” (He actually believed this.)

He went on as she began to wring her hands together in her lap. “I have known you since you were very young, Ellen, even a little younger than Gabrielle. I know your yielding character, your inability to control your own feelings, your—again I must say it—your selfishness, your preoccupation only with your own desires and impulses. You forgot your poor aunt readily enough, and she died alone and in sorrow. Then, as now, you put yourself first. Don’t you think it is time to consider others, and especially your children?”

When she did not answer and only displayed cringing and self-reproach, he leaned even closer to her and took her hand. It was cold, but the very touch of it thrilled him unbearably. She did not shrink from him; she let her hand remain flaccidly in his. There were tears in her eyes.

“Ellen? You have been listening to me, I who have a profound regard for you, more than anyone else has? There are times I am desperate—”

She said, with faintness, “But who would marry me? I know no unattached men.”

He let a deep stillness come between them. His love had its own wisdom. When she looked at him slowly and imploringly she saw the fervor on his face, the flash of light behind his spectacles.

“You have me, Ellen,” he said, and his voice quivered. “You have me, who has always loved you. Ellen, will you marry me, and give your children a father, one who shares their own blood?”

“You, Francis? You?” She was stunned. Her mouth fell open.

“Is that so frightful a thought, Ellen? I love you; I have always loved you.”

She could not believe it. She felt dazed, removed from reality, strange, alienated, floating, whirling in a confusion that made her numb.

“I have always loved you,” he repeated. “From the moment I saw you, kneeling on the summer grass in Preston. You do remember Preston, don’t you, and the Porter house? Or have you forgotten that, too? Jeremy’s parents? They are old, and forgotten. They see their grandchildren rarely. Whose fault is that, Ellen? I know they have said disrespectful things about their grandparents, who have no one else now, and you have never corrected them. Oh, Ellen. You, too, need guidance and care, as well as your children.”

Her eyes were stretched and wide, and there was a wildness, a shifting in them.

“I love you,” he said. “I want to be your protection; I want to help you. I’ve always wanted that, Ellen. I’ve always stood near you, in thought if not in physical presence all the time. Surely you remember that I helped you many times. That was because I love you. You were never out of my thoughts. Did you never know that?”

She shook her head. She was crying silently, the tears running down her cheeks. He let her cry and still held her hand. Then she said in a far and shivering voice, “You don’t know, Francis. I—I can have no more children. I would not really be a wife to you.”

“Let me be the judge, Ellen. Let me be your husband—to care for you and be your strength.”

He drew her gently towards him and slowly put his arms about her. He bent his head and kissed her mouth, but with the artfulness of love he did not let her guess his passion for her and the urge he felt to take her lips fiercely with his own, and his overwhelming desire to stroke her breasts and kiss them.

She was suddenly conscious of a powerful exhaustion, even a prostration. She felt herself being torn away on a dull wind that would not release her. Her will was torpid. She closed her eyes and wanted only to sleep, be nothing, and forget.

“Ellen? Will you marry me? Tomorrow?”

“Yes,” she whispered to the hollow darkness before her eyes. “Yes.”

Cuthbert, frail and old, came to the door to announce dinner. Ellen never remembered if she ate that dinner or not. She did not remember even going to bed. She slept that night in a sort of stupor, comatose, unfeeling, and without a single thought.

They were married hurriedly the next morning in City Hall, by a judge hastily summoned by Francis, while the city continued to rejoice and celebrate the end of the war. That night the newspapers carried, on their front pages, news of “the quiet marriage of Congressman Francis Porter, to the widow of Jeremy Porter, once a Congressman himself, and a notable lawyer, who was murdered by persons unknown, four years ago, in New York. The Congressmen were cousins—”

Kitty Wilder read the paper that night. She could not believe it at first, and then her friends began to call. Her maid was told to inform those friends that Mrs. Wilder was out of town, briefly, for a few days. Kitty took to her bed, overcome by rage and hatred and mortification, frustrated as she had never been before in her life. She wanted to kill. She could not decide whom she hated the most-Francis Porter or Ellen. She decided later that night that Francis was the most hated by herself, after he had called to tell her, politely.

He had kept his promise.

C H A P T E R   32

“I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE IT,” said Maude Godfrey to her husband, Charles. “How could Ellen have brought herself to marry that man?”

“God knows,” said Charles glumly. “Francis Porter, of all people! I see he whisked her off to Washington fast enough, to let the dust settle, I suppose. Poor Ellen. He must have given her drugs, or something. I suspect she didn’t know what she was doing. Well. I’ll soon be out of this uniform, love. I’ll try to find out where they are staying in Washington, when I go back.”

But Francis had taken his bride to Baltimore, to a secluded hotel the management of which was discreet.

Ellen remained in the dusky if luxurious suite for the entire week after her marriage to Francis, and could not be persuaded to leave it even for the dining room. She moved in a semi-stuporous state as if her vital forces had been suspended. She thought of nothing; she could repeat only over and over to herself, “I did this for my children.” There were dim nights when she was briefly aroused to a vague aghastness and cowering at the lascivious violence Francis displayed towards her in their marriage bed. He had become a total stranger to her, a man she had never known. Sometimes she was brought to an obscure awareness of his sweaty probing and searching of all her body, his loud panting, his gripping hands on her flesh; he would bury his face in her breast, hurtingly, and would groan over and over, “Oh, Ellen, Ellen!” Driven by desire and love, he could not have enough of her; he seemed to have lost his mind. She endured all this flaccidly, like one in a drugged dream, sometimes weakly trying to avoid kisses that cut and bruised her mouth, her neck, her legs, her arms, even her feet. He would light the lamps the better to see her and examine her; sometimes she would protest faintly, conscious of shame, but this only increased his avidity. He seemed to want to devour her; there was a ferocity in his breathless lovemaking, a savagery. It was as if he hated and adored her simultaneously. He would wind his fingers in her hair and shake it, then, when she moaned and tried to free herself, he would soothe her incoherently, crushing her body to his, half smothering her.

“You don’t know, you can’t know, how long I’ve waited for this, my darling, all these years! You can’t know how I’ve dreamt of it through the long, long nights! Give me your hand; I’m your husband, give me your hand! I love you, Ellen, I love you! Do you understand? I love you!”