Ceremony of the Innocent (7 page)

“They finally got up,” said Mrs. Jardin with disfavor. “In the middle of the day!” The hall clock struck seven ponderous notes. “Most folks are at work now; the Mayor’s in his office and the Missus has gone marketing. Wonder what the world’s coming to these days!”

As Ellen’s working day had been changed by Mrs. Porter from eight hours to the customary twelve and her wages to one dollar a week instead of seventy-five cents—a magnanimous gesture and one which elevated the self-approval of the lady—the girl was entitled to two meals rather than one. The first would be at dinner, at eleven, the next at supper, at about five. Ellen’s breakfast had consisted of a piece of toast and a cup of tea, the latter enhanced by a luxurious lump of sugar purloined by May Watson from this kitchen. Ellen, therefore, was hungry. Mrs. Jardin was frying sausages and pancakes and there was a sweet smell of maple syrup in the room mingling with the other fragrances, and the pungent excitement of coffee. Ellen had never tasted coffee, and she wondered if the actual beverage was as intriguing as the odor. There were pitchers of cream ready to be carried into the dining room, and a plate of hot pork chops and browned potatoes and a platter of luscious fried eggs and a basketful of fresh steaming rolls, several assortments of jams in crystal pots as well as a small oval dish of crisp hot fish. “Are just two gentlemen going to eat all this?” asked poor Ellen, her mouth watering.

“Why not? They’re healthy, ain’t they? Though Mr. Francis got the malaria in the war.” Ellen looked longingly at the sausages and the other edibles and Mrs. Jardin saw this. She said, “Be careful, and get no complaints, and you can eat the scraps from their plates, though there won’t be many, I warn you. You really ain’t entitled to anything but something at eleven and again at five—no breakfast. But do your work well and you can have the scraps and even a cup of coffee. Don’t say a word to the Missus. She has me save the scraps for Fido, out back in his kennel.”

Ellen was grateful in spite of a first shiver at the thought of eating from the plates of others. Though she and her aunt were beset by the most stringent poverty and were always hungry in consequence, they had never eaten a morsel the other had left, not even the last crumbs. However, the odors in the kitchen, the array of food she had never encountered before, incited the girl to a passionate craving which she could not control. “Fido’s too fat anyways,” said Mrs. Jar-din, congratulating herself on her charitable nature.

She placed many of the dishes on a large silver tray and motioned to Ellen to take it into the dining room, and followed her to give her her first lesson in serving. The gentlemen were just entering the room through the velvet portieres and Walter Porter said genially, “Good morning, Mrs. Jardin. Fine day, isn’t it?”

“Just lovely, Mr. Porter,” said Mrs. Jardin, giving the older man her most impish and confidential smile. (He always gave her a substantial tip on his departure, but not Mr. Francis, a poor figure of a young man, so thin and so “washed out” in appearance. In anticipation, however, she often, in a maternal fashion, urged him to “eat hearty, it’s good for you, Mr. Francis.”)

Francis, waiting courteously for his father to seat himself, suddenly saw Ellen, who was stretching her long young arms to place everything neatly on the table, as Mrs. Jardin had taught her this morning. He stopped in the very motion of sitting and both he and his father stared with pleased astonishment at the girl. She did not see this, but Mrs. Jardin, who saw everything, observed the reaction from the gentlemen and her face was avid again, bright with curiosity.

“This here is Ellen Watson, the new housemaid, Mr. Walter,” she said. “If she don’t please, just tell me. She’s new and raw and I’m trying to be patient in training her.”

“Of course. Capital,” murmured Walter Porter, shaking out the big square of white table napkin. “I’m sure she will be splendid, won’t you, Ellen?”

The girl flushed a bright rose at being addressed so directly by so distinguished a gentleman, and could not answer at once. Mrs. Jardin gave her a sharp thrust in her side and she almost dropped a platter, and she said in a trembling voice, “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

What a beautiful voice, thought young Francis. What a beautiful girl. She is like a fire in this awful room which is always chilly and dank. He was suddenly breathless. When Ellen presented him with the pancakes and sausages he could only, for a moment or two, look up into that miraculous face and see only those large blue eyes, so brilliantly shining and so timid. Mrs. Jardin keenly watched not only the table but the young man, and she felt gleeful. Another scandal in this house, unless one watched out. But what could he see in this ugly girl, such a gawk, so clumsy and with such rough hands? A real hoyden as well as a wench of bad repute, as the minister called it. Not like Miss Amelia Beale, who was a real lady though poor, too.

It isn’t possible for anyone to be so beautiful, Francis was thinking, finally looking away from Ellen. She has a noble face, the face of an aristocrat, as well as being too exquisite to be believed. And what eyes! Like a newborn infant’s, clear and glowing. His character was somewhat listless, due partly to nature and partly to the malaria he had contracted a year ago during the war with Spain. But now the listlessness was gone and he felt totally alive and moved and even joyful. He wanted to touch Ellen as a shivering man wants to move from dimness into the warm sun.

Mrs. Jardin was muttering commands to Ellen and the girl was following orders in a hurried confusion and with a desperate desire to escape admonitions. If she did well she would be permitted to eat the scraps from this banquet, and she was forced to repeated swallowings so that her mouth would not openly run. Francis saw the spasms in the white throat and he thought, with astonishment: Why, the poor child is hungry! Now he was filled with compassion, a compassion so strong that self-congratulating tears came into his eyes. She can’t be more than fourteen; that face is too immature. What a beauty she will be in a few years, if such beauty can be increased by maturity.

Walter Porter was giving Ellen swift close glances, and when she offered him a dish he smiled at her kindly. “Did you come from Philadelphia, Ellen?” he asked, extraordinarily stirred by Ellen, who so resembled the portrait in the Widdimer house. Was it possible there was some connection somewhere, though it seemed improbable? Perhaps from the wrong side of the blanket, he added to himself, and smiled again.

“No, sir,” the girl almost whispered, filling his coffee cup with extreme care, for her hands were shaking. “I was born in Erie. I’ve never been in Philadelphia.”

“You have no relatives there, child?”

“No, sir. None. Aunt May—my aunt—she was born in Erie, too, and was never in Philadelphia.”

Now Francis spoke to her for the first time, and his breathlessness had returned. “Are your parents alive, Ellen?”

Her hands empty now, Ellen stood stiff and tall, hiding those hands under the white apron. She glanced down into Francis’ candid eyes and saw there only a soft tenderness, which she could not interpret. She only knew that he was not hostile and she wanted to cry in gratitude. He was so good; he was the best person she had ever known. Who else cared about her parents, or wished to know about them? She swallowed nervously and forgot her hunger.

“No, sir, my mama and papa are dead. Papa was from New York and Mama was from Erie. They both died when I was two years old. That’s what Auntie May tells me. She was Mama’s sister.” She had never spoken so freely to anyone before, and certainly not to a stranger. Her aunt was always warning her mysteriously not to speak to strangers and never to answer them, but there was no harm in it, was there? She was overcome by shyness again and her velvety color deepened and she both wanted to run and to remain in the presence of this man who looked at her with such unrestrained gentleness and interest, as if he saw her as others never saw her.

Mr. Porter spoke then. “Have you ever heard the names of Sheldon and Widdimer, Ellen?”

She shook her head. “No, sir, never.”

“Unbelievable,” murmured Walter, shaking his head slightly.

Ellen moved back a step, feeling helpless and confused again. Mrs. Jardin was watching from the door to the kitchen, her eyes rapidly blinking as they moved from face to face. Then she said bullyingly, “Ellen, bring the gentlemen fresh coffee, and the strawberry pie.”

Ellen ran, not walked to the kitchen. Mrs. Jardin, who felt herself in a privileged position, spoke to Walter Porter. “Ellen will be all right, I think, when she’s trained. She’s still raw; her first day here, or anywhere in service, a big girl like that! She should have been in service four years ago, and learning her place and how to be useful. But things are changing and not for the better, sir. Law here won’t let a girl go into service until she’s fourteen, and that’s a scandal. Bringing up a useless lazy generation, ain’t we? Ellen ought to be in a factory.”

Walter gave his son a quick glance but Francis was laying down his knife and fork and had begun to speak. “I think it is a scandal to send very young girls into a factory, Mrs. Jardin.” His light voice was precise and almost dogmatic. “Thank God that this Commonwealth is beginning to realize that and has enacted a few tentative laws in the proper direction. I belong to a Committee—”

“May I trouble you for the rolls, Francis?” asked his father. “And save your elocutions for your professors at Harvard. I am sure Mrs. Jardin isn’t interested in your opinions. Concerning child labor, at least.”

Mrs. Jardin smirked at him knowingly. But Francis, his fair face animated at the mention of his favorite subject, could not be repressed. “When I am graduated from law school, Father, I am going into politics, much as they disgust me.”

“Yes, so you have said before,” replied his father, highly diverted. “But I think the stench will drive you out, in spite of your convictions. You see, I know politicians as you do not, my boy. Ah, well, have your dreams. You are still young and untouched, though you’ve gone through a war.”

“Which was asinine,” said Francis, and his eyes sparkled with anger.

“You didn’t think so when you enlisted in Teddy’s Rough Riders.”

“Well, I think so now. And you know my reasons for thinking that.”

“All imaginary,” said his father with a wave of his plump hand. “It was an outright, and justified war. That’s what Teddy said, anyway.”

“To seize the Philippines and Cuba,” said Francis.

“‘And the beginning of American imperialism,’ to quote you, Francis, my boy.”

“Certainly. We are now entering the Age of Tyrants.”

Mr. Porter leaned back in his chair, smiling broadly and closing his eyes. “Where you get these notions!” he said.

“From reading, which you do not do, Father, and from history.”

“Well, I was never a scholar, even in the university,” said Walter, still good-humored. He lifted his hand in defense. “Please, dear boy. Don’t bore me again. It’s a fine day. Let’s go for a ride. You still aren’t well, you know. When you entirely recover your health you will also recover—”

“My mind, too.”

“Now, now, my boy. Ah, here is fresh coffee and strawberry pie. An excellent breakfast, Mrs. Jardin. You are spoiling us.”

“I just wish Mr. Francis would eat more,” said Mrs. Jardin, her hands comfortably locked under her apron; she gave Francis a hypocritically false look of fondness. “All he had was a dish of prunes and figs, a few sausages and only two eggs, a slice or two of bacon, one small piece of fish and a little dish of potatoes, and four griddle cakes, and a couple cups of coffee and a teensy bite of pie. That’s not a breakfast for a man, sir.”

“It’s enough for four breakfasts—for four men,” said Francis, who did not like Mrs. Jardin and was not deceived by her jocular air and jaunty winking. He wanted to believe—it was a necessity for him to believe—that the “working class” was endowed with native nobility, virtue, and wisdom, and was exploited. However, his perceptiveness often refuted that theory, and Mrs. Jardin was one of those who refuted it by her very being. Therefore, he incontinently disliked her; she was an affront to his vehement idealism, an idealism which must be total and never conditioned by facts. He was beginning, lately, to accuse himself of lack of charity, or understanding, and a failure to “see deeply enough and grasp hidden factors.”

Once his father had said to him, “Of course, there are a multitude of uncountable injustices in this world. But who said this world must be ‘perfect’? Only an idiot would believe in the perfectibility of man and a Utopia where it would always be summer and no one would work very much but would wander around in an incorruptible garden singing. Who would carry out the slops, sweep the streets, and lay the crops? So long as we have bowels, and the air has dust in it, and we need to eat, we will have to work. Didn’t St. Paul say, ‘He who does not work, neither shall he eat’? Yes.”

“Science is already prophesying that soon it will not be necessary for any man to labor,” said Francis, flushing scarlet as usual when his theories were attacked. “In the meantime, labor must not be exploited; it must be given a living wage.”

“I agree with that,” said Walter Porter. “I pay my men well, far above what the new unions are asking. But man will never be freed from labor. Doesn’t the Bible say that man must earn his bread by the sweat of his face? Yes. My boy, this is a realistic world, based on objective truths, and no dreams will change it. But dreams can destroy as well as create. Remember that.”

“There are no objective truths,” Francis had replied with heat. “All is subjective.”

“Then let’s have imaginary mills, factories, ships, crops, commerce, and God knows what else,” said his father with exasperation. “In that way we’ll let the world go back to a savage wilderness, for the world is not only subjective—in the minds of men—but brutally objective, too.”

Walter had become alarmed after this conversation. Francis was not only his own child, but his son, and he expected much of him.

He knew that Francis had an excellent mind and had had a sound upbringing. Where had he acquired these new and perilous ideas which he was expounding lately? Had the war tainted him? But thousands of young men had engaged enthusiastically in that war-as Francis had done originally—and they had returned to desk and bench in a normal fashion, though many of them had become afflicted with malaria as Francis had been afflicted. Was there some rotting flaw in his nature which demanded perfection in all things, in human behavior, in the very laws of existence? It was not for some years that he became convinced that such as Francis were dangerous to all men, for they brought the unstable atmosphere of dreams to the affairs of mankind, and not muscle, not realism. One must deal with things as they are, Walter would often ponder, not as we should like them to be. I am not against dreams, if they are possible, and God knows that without dreamers we should have no poetry, no justice, no Constitution, no order, and no civilization. It is only when dreams leave the realm of the probable, or even the possible, that we are threatened. When dreams exclude fallible human nature, then we are in trouble. Human nature is not mutable, in spite of the lacy philosophers.