Ceremony of the Innocent (64 page)

Her own youth seemed infinitely remote to Ellen now, as if it were a youth that had belonged to someone else. Only one thing lived in her, wild and glowing and pristine as the morning, and that was the memory of Jeremy. She existed only in that memory, timeless, deathless, immediate. She no longer cried in anguish at the thought of him, for she felt that she lived in the strong circle of his enduring life and he had never departed from her. She would smile in her sleep as she dreamt of him and talked with him, and laughed with him. For his sake, she endured. Everything else was shadowless, of two dimensions, painted, unreal, without emotion or passion, without actual being. She withheld herself from any participation in life, and only dimly did she know that such participation would awaken her into unbearable torment, would drive her mad. Her spirit knew, and so kept up a barrier between her and vivid awareness, and the instinct of her flesh joined in the conspiracy to keep her sentient, yet safe from reality.

Even old Cuthbert’s death, two years ago, had not struck her with too much sorrow. She had attempted to feel grief; it was only another shadow, and for a time she reproached herself for being “unfeeling.” One emotion did remain with her, however, and that was her old and chronic sensation of guilt when she was forced to refuse her children something or she did not always agree with Francis. Then she would attempt to placate, to pacify, and of this her children would take ruthless advantage. Francis would merely look hurt.

“I do my best to expand your horizons, Ellen,” he would say in a stiff voice. “I do my best to educate you, you who have had little education and know so little of the world.”

“I know, I know!” she would answer, sometimes touching his arm timidly. “I am a stupid woman, but I feel—”

“What do you feel, if anything, Ellen?”

She would smile uneasily. “Well, what you have just said—I just can’t agree, Francis. I don’t know why, but I can’t agree. It is as if—Jeremy—doesn’t agree, either.”

The mention of that hated name would make Francis wince and Ellen would see that and feel guilt, a condition which Francis always tried to enhance. “I am your husband now, Ellen.”

“Yes, of course.” But she never believed it. Francis was still Mr. Francis to her, and she was always grateful to him though by now she had almost forgotten why, and sometimes she liked him as once she had liked him in her childhood. She never did anything without his permission, without consulting him. She often tried to please him, as one would try to please a solicitous friend, who had been inadvertently wounded. At these times she would remember her aunt, who lived painfully in the back of her consciousness and was always accusing and admonishing, reminding Ellen of her desertion. To appease that wraith Ellen would go to any extreme.

The acceptance, the forced tranquillity, of the years before she had married Francis, had left her. The marriage had destroyed, for her, any brave serenity in which she might have lived out her life. She had retreated to the time immediately following Jeremy’s death. In many ways she had also retreated to the terrible years in the service of Mrs. Eccles, the motionless and hopeless years, the years without light or meaning. To all things she had become apathetic.

As Maude Godfrey approached Ellen over the garden grass she felt acutely the poignancy of Ellen’s limp body in the wicker chair, the vacant blue stare Ellen fixed indifferently on her visitor. Maude made herself smile brightly.

“Good afternoon, Ellen,” she said, her voice unnaturally vivacious. “I have been visiting the Freemans in the village and I thought I’d drop in to see you for a few minutes. How are you, Ellen?”

It actually took several moments before Ellen was completely aware of Maude. Then she smiled dimly, but her eyes became wary with the old mistrust and caution. She stood up with the movements of an old woman and extended her hand, which Maude took. The grasp was flaccid. “How nice,” said Ellen. “Isn’t it a lovely day? Have you had tea?”

“No, but it doesn’t matter.”

“Margie will bring it soon, Maude. Please sit down. How is Charles?”

“Busy, as usual. What a lovely place this is, to be sure. Charles promises to look at a house in East Hampton this summer—if he has time. We get away so seldom from the city. How are Christian and Gabrielle?”

“Christian is with friends in Boston, and Gabrielle is with friends in Vermont. I see them very little these days, it seems.” For a moment white distress appeared on Ellen’s face.

“Well, young people, you know. They prefer the company of their peers, as it is called now. Very restless, but times have changed. Home is no longer the main attraction. Our own daughter is away for two weeks, too, at Plymouth, with her own friends.”

But Ellen was thinking of something else. “Francis wants me to sell this house. He says it is a needless expense. Perhaps it is. I don’t know.”

“Jeremy,” said Maude, “loved it.” She watched Ellen carefully. Ellen looked down at her clasped hands. “Yes. I love it, too. But I feel guilty—spending money these days—”

“What is wrong with ‘these days’?” asked Maude.

“So much is needed for social causes,” said Ellen. Her voice was dead. “We can’t be selfish any longer. We must have progress against injustice.”

Maude studied her in silence, hearing the echo of Francis’ pompous and reproving voice, he who would spend none of his own money on “social causes,” but used Ellen’s lavishly. Maude wondered if Ellen knew exactly what she was saying and decided not.

Maude reflected. She sat in a wicker chair, her figure as slight as a young girl’s in its beige linen and silk lace. Her brown straw hat partly covered her sleek black hair, which she still wore in an old-fashioned cluster at her nape. Her smooth pale face with its delicate features had shown little ravishing from the years. Her old stillness and composure—which so disconcerted Ellen—had increased, so that, in spite of her fragile appearance, she appeared invulnerable. It was this very invulnerability which so intimidated the other woman.

Then Maude said, “I often think of what a great saint of the Church said, or wrote, in 1654—Baltasar Gracián, a Spanish Jesuit.”

Ellen turned to her and for the first time there was quickening on her empty face. Maude continued: “‘It is not the law of self-preservation that you must wish upon yourself lifelong regret in order to provide help to another…
Never sin against your own happiness
in order to comfort another…For in every situation which spells joy to another
and pain to you
, this is the proper rule:
It is better that your friend be downcast today than that you be tomorrow, and helpless, to boot
.’”

“That sounds very selfish to me,” Ellen murmured, but there was an awakening in her eyes.

“I think Jeremy would agree with Baltasar Gracián—for he spoke common sense. If an action brings comfort and joy equally to the giver and the given, then it is good. But if it is only an exchange of misery, then it is bad. A man should care for himself first; that is a law of nature. He must always protect himself. If he does not, then he is a fool.” Maude’s calm voice rose a little.

“Then you don’t believe in self-sacrifice, as Francis does?”

Maude gulped down a derisive sound. She said, “If self-sacrifice brings pain and suffering to the sacrificer, then it is stupid. Only if it brings pleasure should it be undertaken. Altruism is not only a sort of masochism but it frequently is a disguise for self-interest, or even something worse. Ellen, the ancient Jews had a law that a man must first serve his God and his country. Then he must provide for the present and the future of all his family of his household, which included his parents and other kin as well as his wife and children. Only when he had made full provision for the security of these was he obliged to give to others. This is a very sensible law. If a man does not care first for his own and protect them as fully as possible, in order to ‘share’ with others, then he has committed a crime against his community. He has opened up the probability that those he should guard first of all will become a burden on society, an unpardonable recklessness, an offense against his fellows, no matter how ostensibly ‘noble’ it seems. But really, Ellen, I didn’t come to give you a lecture—” She saw that Ellen’s face had become flushed.

“Jeremy provided well for his family,” said Ellen in a voice which now had a little animation in it. “So there is money to spare—for others.”

Maude shrugged. “I am not only speaking of money, Ellen. I am speaking of emotion, of inner integrity and soundness. Life is not truly, at all times, a place of suffering. I believe that God, according to what the Bible says itself, made this green garden of a world for our pleasure and enjoyment and it is filled with ‘many good things’ to give happiness to mankind. Happiness, of course, is not a perpetual thing, but it surely should be accepted when offered and not rejected in the name of something or other—sacrifice, for instance.”

Ellen said, “When I’m in the city I work for many causes in which Francis is interested. It—it keeps me busy. I work for Hopewell House—”

That germinating ground for radicalism, thought Maude.

“It teaches young people, through many lecturers, to work for social justice and social consciousness, Maude Eugene Debs is a frequent speaker there.”

“I know,” said Maude in a dispassionate tone. “Wasn’t he once arrested for conspiracy to kill? Yes. Didn’t he also violate the Espionage Act? Yes. He was also Socialist candidate for President many times, wasn’t he? Do you know what Socialism is, Ellen?”

“Well, not exactly. I do think it has something to do with fair wages and equality—”

Maude smiled. “It has been said that Communism is only Socialism in a hurry. Do you know what is happening in Russia, Ellen, under a system they call Socialism? Don’t you read the newspapers?”

Ellen looked uncomfortable. “Francis says that the newspapers lie. How can they possibly know anything about Russia seeing we have no diplomatic relations with her? So the newspapers use their imaginations—Francis said.”

“They also use the reports of tens of thousands of refugees who were fortunate enough to escape the murderers.”

“Aristocrats,” said Ellen mechanically, and Maude again heard Francis’ voice. “And the bourgeoisie.”

Oh, God, thought Maude. How much of this world’s anguish has been caused by envious spite!

A maid appeared with a tea tray and Ellen poured the tea Her hands, now so frail, shook a little.

Maude said, cheered somewhat that she had aroused this pathetic woman if only to annoyance: “President Wilson said, after his first collapse, ‘It would have been better if I had died.’ What do you think he meant by that, Ellen?”

“I don’t know. Do you, Maude?”

“I think so. He had brought America to disaster through taking her into the war. He was long a Socialist, you know, or even something worse.”

But Ellen’s attention was now distracted. A look of exhaustion flowed over her face. “I’m sorry I can’t serve you wine or sherry or brandy, Maude. Francis is a strict Prohibitionist, you know He detests alcohol in any form. He worked for Prohibition—”

“I know,” said Maude. “He also worked for the franchise for women, too.”

“He says women will prevent future wars—”

“But wasn’t he a fervent advocate of this one, Ellen? So it seems to me.”

“This war was—different—from other wars. It was a war for freedom from tyranny, and the self-determination of small nations, and—democracy.”

“No wars are different. They all bring calamity—and gain to the sinister, Ellen. They profit nobody, except a few. And war, as Benjamin Franklin said, never leaves a country where it found it. Well, never mind. When do you think you will return to the city, Ellen?”

“Before Labor Day.” Ellen sighed. “I do wish Francis didn’t dislike this house so much, and insist that I sell it. Even my children don’t like it. They spent two weeks here in July with me, but I can see they are restless and bored. Only I—and Jeremy—love it.” Maude noticed that Ellen used the present tense, and she felt a spasm of compassion.

“Then you must keep it, Ellen, if it gives you peace.”

Then she was startled, for Ellen suddenly threw up her head and her face became taut and anguished, and she beat the wicker table with her fist.

“Nothing,” she cried, “will ever give me peace! Nothing, nothing. I want my husband! I want Jeremy!”

To Maude’s deep alarm Ellen flung back her chair, stumbled, then raced in a staggering swirl towards the house, her arms spread out to balance herself, her hair loosened and floating in the warm bright wind.

That night Maude said sadly to her husband, “Perhaps I shouldn’t have aroused her. What I said reminded her of Jeremy.”

“All the better, my darling. Jeremy’s memory is a buffer between the poor soul and Francis Porter’s suspect diatribes and schemes. By the way, it is rumored that he is a secret Communist.”

“I don’t doubt it at all,” said Maude.

“Still, we mustn’t get hysterical. Millions who have a vague liking for what they’ve heard of Communism are absolutely innocent of subversive intent, and don’t know what Communism is. Many are just simple idealists, ignorant and naive. We don’t want wholesale witch-burning, do we? We just need to educate the American people.”

“But Francis knows,” said Maude. “Yes, he knows.”

C H A P T E R   34

CHRISTIAN PORTER, THOUGH INDOLENT and avaricious and not a brilliant scholar, understood more than did Francis himself what Francis was actually and dogmatically propounding. Christian had few if any neurotic impulses, but he did have a discerning and cynical intellect, and grasped at once the nuances of all that Francis taught him. He understood that Francis was driven by hatred and envy and that he subconsciously was aware of his intrinsic weaknesses and lack of ability. He knew that, like all weak men, Francis lusted for power in order to revenge himself on a world which comprehended his inferiority, and refused to pretend that he was superior to other men, and thus give him the rewards he believed he deserved. When Francis became vehement on the subject of the “oppressed common man” Christian was not deceived, and with inner hilarity he remarked to himself that if anyone truly detested the “common man” it was Francis Porter.