Ceremony of the Innocent

by Taylor Caldwell

  “To think they eat that,” she moaned. “I can’t go back there, Ellen, while they are eating such stuff. I just can’t. And the smell!”

  “The lobster just smells like fish, Auntie,” said Ellen, ‘and the pheasant is just another fowl like chicken. Please, Auntie. I know how you feel, but this is the way rich people eat, and there is nothing disgusting about it.”

  May seized Ellen’s wrist frenziedly in her twisted and swollen fingers. “Ellen! Let’s get off the train at the next stop. Let’s tell Mrs. Eccles we are going home—”

  Ellen spoke quietly. “Home? To where, Auntie? We never had a home. Mrs. Eccles will be only too glad to have us back—at a lower wage. I don’t like her, I never did, and please don’t look at me like that. She has taken our labor for a pittance over four years, and we owe her nothing. Besides, I will never leave Jeremy. I’d die if I did; I almost died a few times, thinking of him, over those long years. I am going to be his wife.”

  “We are not his kind, Ellen,” said May, beginning to weep. When Ellen offered her her own handkerchief, while May fumbled for hers, May pushed Ellen’s hand away almost savagely and glared up at her through trickling eyes. “No, we are not his kind. What will you do among his friends, Ellen? They’ll laugh at you, a servant girl, putting on airs. They’ll know you are only a servant no matter how grand he dresses you, in silks and satins and laces and furs and ribbons. You’ll look like a lady clown in such clothes, Ellen. Look in that mirror; sec yourself as you really are, only a servant girl, trying to rise out of the station to which God has called you. Pride cometh before a fall, the Good Book says, and it’s true, it’s true. I thought you had better sense, Ellen.”

  Ellen pushed up her large and lustrous pompadour, looked briefly in the mirror, and she wondered, as she had wondered many times, what Jeremy saw in her and why he wanted her. Then she said, “Jeremy is going to hire a tutor for me, Aunt May, to eliminate the gaps in my education, or, I should say, to give me the education I never had. He wants me to be at ease with his friends.” Her beautiful voice faltered. She smoothed down the gray flannel skirt, of cheap wool, which May had made for her, and she eyed the little pearl buttons on her cotton blouse to see if any of them had opened indecently over her full high breast. Then she studied the rainbow glitter of the large diamond ring Jeremy had brought for her from New York, and it seemed to her that the rainbows in it danced for her alone, with gaiety and promise. May, sobbing, saw the girl’s sudden bemusement, and she said, “Look at that ring! Do you think it’s right for you to have such a costly bauble, Ellen? I just can’t believe you’ll have anything but misery if you marry him. If he marries you.”

  “He will,” said Ellen, and her voice was rich with passion and love.

  “If only it had been Mr. Francis,” said May, desolated. “Though he has better sense, Mr. Francis.”

  Ellen thought of Francis Porter with affection. Yes, he had been kind and good, and he had done his best for two homeless servants, and Ellen was grateful. But at the absurd thought of marrying him she could not help laughing. She took her aunt’s arm. “You are all right now, Auntie. Let’s go back; it’s very impolite to stay away this long, and Mrs. Eccles will be only too happy at our—our—discomfiture. She would just love it if we turned tail and ran, and came slinking back to her.”

  “How can you talk that way about such a lovely lady, who has been like a mother to you! A mother! God will punish you, Ellen, for such ugly words.”

  Ellen took her aunt’s arm with loving firmness and raised her from the seat. “Aunt May, you don’t need to look at that food. You can eat your own sandwiches, which you brought, and have some hot tea.” She was wildly impatient to be back in the stateroom with Jeremy; it was as if she had been away for hours; he might have disappeared.

  “You can’t eat that horrible stuff either, Ellen. It will poison you; you’re not used to it. Poison you.”

  “If it doesn’t poison Mrs. Eccles it won’t poison me,” said Ellen with an ambiguous smile. May tottered with the swaying of the train and her real illness and distress, but Ellen guided her strongly into the corridor and into the stateroom. Jeremy rose, looked sharply at May and then at Ellen, who smiled into his eyes. The stateroom was filled with delicious odors and Ellen discovered she was very hungry.

  While Jeremy still stood, Ellen put her aunt into her chair, and Mrs. Eccles watched with complacent malice and smugness, her mouth dripping with melted butter. Then Ellen calmly picked up her aunt’s bag and opened it on the neatly arranged cold beef sandwiches and pound cake. She glanced at Jeremy over her shoulder and she could not read his expression, for he was trying to control both his vexation and his pity. Had he been alone with May and Ellen he would have brought himself to the limit of his capacity for solicitude, but Mrs. Eccles was there, gloating, laughing inwardly at Ellen. Smirks meant nothing to Jeremy, for himself, and he had seen them thousands of times on the faces of the meager men like Francis Porter, the greedy, cruel, bloodless men who called themselves the intelligentsia. But smirks for Ellen were another matter. He wanted to hit Mrs. Eccles.

  He rang for tea for May, then took Ellen a little unceremoniously by her arm and led her to a seat at the table, and when she would have drawn back, to stay with her aunt, he gave her his first formidable look of command and masculine force, and she sat down. She knew now that she could never successfully oppose him, but—it was strange to her—this only increased his fascination for her, and she gave him a submissive uplifted glance and he saw the deep blue shining of her eyes and was touched.

  Ellen ignored Mrs. Eccles and tried the lobster and the fowl and discovered they were delectable. She ate with her natural delicacy of gesture and plainly showed her enjoyment; her eyes kept returning to Jeremy and he smiled at her with compassion and amusement and approval, and she felt the now familiar warmth flowing over her, which made her breasts tingle and her breath momentarily short.

  May, sniffing occasionally into her handkerchief, nibbled at the sandwiches she had made, and drank the hot tea with lemon, and pretended, in her wretchedness, to gaze through the window occasionally. But she was again desolated; Ellen had become someone she did not know, through pride and vanity, both heinous crimes against God. She had always been very lonely, in her deprived life, but never this lonely before. She longed for her bare chilly room and the rough blankets and the hot bricks Ellen would bring her, wrapped in flannel, for the pain in her ankles and knees. She longed to be “home.” She was like a half-starved bird driven from its wintry nest and terrified at its eviction.

  Ellen, whose back was to her aunt, drank some of the wine and it gave her a delightful sense of elation and excitement, and her cheeks turned a deeper apricot and so did her lips. Forgetting both the other women in the coach, she talked with her naive confidence to Jeremy, and it seemed to him that the stateroom was filled with melodious music, so full of cadences was her voice. He had never seen her so beautiful, so animated, and he thought of his wedding night and his dark face colored and became hot.

  When Mrs. Eccles suggested, after the meal, that May go with her “for a little walk, for our circulation, dear,” May got painfully and meekly to her feet and went with the woman she still feared and who she still felt was her mistress. They went to the lavatory, where May became abject and tearful and clutched Mrs. Eccles’ arm. ‘Take us home, please, Mrs. Eccles, please. We want to go home.”

  Mrs. Eccles, who had been examining her own sleek brown pompadour with pleasure, stopped her patting and looked over her shoulder at May, and her expression became alert. “Do you mean that, May? With Ellen, too? Ellen wants to go back to Wheatfield?”

  May stammered, “Ellen will do whatever I say, Mrs. Eccles. I think.”

  “You’ve talked to her about it?” Mrs. Eccles gleefully considered Jeremy’s face at this announcement. She had nothing against Jeremy; she had become very attached to him these past two days, and admired him greatly, especially his money and his manner. But she was by
nature full of intrigue, and loved mischief for its own sake, and this had induced her to send Francis a telegram with the incredible news. Moreover, she deplored Jeremy’s “infatuation” for a servant girl, a girl hardly higher in station than a trollop, a streetwalker. Then, the magnificent engagement ring had inspired her with umbrage and envy.

  “Yes,” said May in a doleful voice, “I talked to Ellen about it, right here, ma’am.”

  “And what did she say?” said Mrs. Eccles eagerly.

  May hesitated, and dropped her head. “She didn’t say much, ma’am. But she didn’t say no, either.”

  Mrs. Eccles regarded her shrewdly. “Well, I reckon that means no, May. I know Ellen. A deceitful puss, with a close mouth, and bold, and disobedient and willful. She will have her way! We can only pray for her, I suppose, and she will very probably need our prayers.”

  May still clutched her arm, and her suffering wet eyes, with their red rims, were desperate. “Mrs. Eccles, after the—wedding—if it happens, and I pray it won’t, take me back to Wheatfield with you. I’ve worked for you a long time—”

  Mrs. Eccles disengaged her arm. (Take you back, indeed, you hapless cripple! A whining invalid in my house, useless, a drag on my affairs. You must think me mad, or something, throwing away money on you.) She gave May a sweet, affectionate smile. “Now, now, May, you must be sensible, even if Ellen is such a determined and ignorant and uppish little hussy, and doomed to misery, I can tell you that, after he’s tired of her. Ellen—and Jeremy Porter! It’s ridiculous. It’s insane. I agree with you. But you must stay with Ellen. It’s your duty, and we must do our duty no matter our tears and our sighs, isn’t that so?”

  May had been too wretched to hear the epithets Mrs. Eccles had called Ellen; she only received the import of her words, that she must stay with Ellen, and she laboriously got to her feet, stroked her white hair with both her moist palms, and went back to the stateroom with Mrs. Eccles, walking so feebly that Mrs. Eccles freshly despised her and thanked Heaven she was rid of this creature.

  Mrs. Eccles, who often cried copiously when her minister pleaded for the Missions, and had waved her scented handkerchief and had been conscious of the tender smiles of her friends about her, had no pity for May Watson. Mrs. Eccles could weep over the minister’s eloquent stories, and especially when he spoke of the dolorous state of Chinese women, who hobbled about on bound feet. But she had no compassion for a woman who had become disabled in her arduous service. The Chinese women, and the inhabitants of “godless jungles,” were very far away. May was near, and “a burden,” and that was a different matter. Mrs. Eccles was a very pragmatic woman.

  C H A P T E R 10

  MAY HAD BEEN BENUMBED at the clamor and roaring of Fifth Avenue, in New York, on this dusky autumnal night spitting with rain. But Ellen leaned forward, entranced, dazed, at the sight of all this traffic and the crowds, and she would wipe off the steaming carriage windows and feel an almost unbearable excitement and ebullience. Why, she thought, I’ve been here before, I know it so well! I know it’s silly, but it seems so familiar to me, all these burnished victorias and glossy landaus and the glassy carriages with the charming flowers painted on their sides, and the white and black and sorrel and dappled horses prancing on the glistening wet cobbles and their silver harnesses singing like bells, and the coachmen, and all these yellow mist-wreathed gas lamps dancing like veiled butterflies, and the shopwindows lit up like Christmas and full of beautiful jewels and dresses and objects of art, and the pounding streetcars and the endless throngs with their wet gleaming umbrellas and the gentlemen with canes, and the ladies in furs, on the walks, and the laughter and the voices and the grinding of wheels and all the side streets choked with impatient vehicles and the piercing steeples and huge buildings running with bright rain which shines like falling gems in the lamplight, and the noise which is really like fast and galloping music full of importance and gaiety, and the theaters with their brilliant white lights and the arcades, and the sense of thundering activity—I know it all, all.

  But I do not know these automobiles, bellowing and smoking, though I have seen a few in Wheatfield. No, they are not familiar to me as all the rest.

  She looked across at Jeremy and could not stop her exclamation: “I have seen it before,” and her face beamed with delight and he reached to her and he pressed her hand tightly with understanding. But May said, almost in a whimper, “How can you say that, Ellen? You were never in New York.”

  Jeremy pointed out to the girl the mansions of the Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Belmonts, and all their kin and she looked with astonished awe at the white or gray marble houses with their pillars and lighted windows and the coming and going of laughing and greeting guests. But, I have seen it, she thought, and remembered what the poet Rossetti, had said, “I have been here before.” Above the odor of wet dust and wet trees and wet stones she could smell the sea. The leaves of the trees were dripping liquid scarlet and brown and gold light and bowing and swaying in the autumn wind. Mrs. Eccles said, “I love New York. Always such liveliness,” and she yawned and looked at Ellen and May with fresh ridicule and resentment. They are nothing but menials and peasants, she thought. All this magnificence for such as these! Yes, dear Jeremy must be out of his mind.

  “I must see the opera,” she said.

  Jeremy said to Ellen, “Yes, I do believe Aida is here this week.”

  They arrived at Jeremy’s hotel, and the doormen and bellboys in crimson and gold livery ran out to meet Jeremy’s carriage and flung open the doors with lordly gestures. May shrank, clutching her poor coat together, but Ellen took Jeremy’s hand and jumped out eagerly, looking about her with overwhelming happiness. Mrs. Eccles alighted more sedately, smoothing her sable capelet regally about her plump shoulders. They entered a red and gold lobby full of soft warm air and perfume and gentle music, and saw the distant vast dining room with its scintillating chandeliers and white napery and the bustling of black-clad waiters and the crowds of women with pale shoulders and furs, and their rich escorts. Ellen could not see enough; she shivered with a new access of delight, unaware of her shabby servant’s garb and her wilted black hat. The doormen and bellboys surveyed her with furtive astonishment, and looked offended at the sight of May. Even for servants, they thought, they are poor specimens. Still, the girl is uncommonly beautiful, like an actress with that hair and face. “Yes, Mr. Porter, thank you, Mr. Porter, and this is the luggage, sir, and we shall notify the stable for the carriage, directly.”

  “We shall dine in my own dining room,” said Jeremy, well aware that he could not take Ellen and May into the great glittering room beyond. “My man, Cuthbert, has everything ready for us.”

  Neither May nor Ellen had ever been in an elevator before, and May was terrified and shut her eyes against the sight of falling floors through the gilt bars. She was also nauseated and stunned. No, it was not right, any of this, for her and Ellen.

  They passed down a corridor paved with soft crimson carpet and lighted by wall lamps of bronze twisted into intricate shapes, and May appeared to grow smaller and smaller as she tiptoed along in growing dismay and stupefaction. They saw carved closed doors and heard the sound of laughing voices beyond them. Then another door opened and they entered Jeremy’s suite and May halted on the threshold, unable to move. Mrs. Eccles pushed impatiently past her, chattering vivaciously, and Ellen followed. Jeremy took May by the arm and forced her across the marble step of the doorway.

  A very tall and slender and distinguished elderly gentleman greeted them, bowing, and May, in her bewilderment, thought that he must be a prince at the very least, so majestic was he in striped trousers and black long coat and black cravat and pearl stickpin and polished white cuffs and shirt. She dipped her knee in a small curtsy, and peeped timidly at the grave lined face and smooth white hair. Oh, he would order them out, all of them, or perhaps call the police! Jeremy said, “Mrs. Eccles, Mrs. Watson, Miss Watson, this is my houseman, Cuthbert.”

  “Goo
d evening, ladies, Mr. Porter,” said the first butler May had ever seen. She almost cowered at this condescension, but Mrs. Eccles said brightly, “Good evening, Cuthbert,” and Ellen stared at him mutely, and with curious frankness, and smiled, and the butler thought: So, this is the young lady, Mr. Porter’s lady, and she is lovelier than any actress I have ever seen, or any other lady who came to this suite.

  Ellen looked about her with candid avidity, and saw the luxury and grace of the large living room and again she said to herself, I have seen all this before, long before. She wanted to run about the room, touching the furniture, the silken walls, the cabinets of treasures, studying the pictures and gazing through the tall arched windows. Her heart was jumping with excitement and almost unbearable exhilaration. She looked at Jeremy like a bewitched child discovering enchantments, and he smiled at her, sharing her pleasure.

  When Cuthbert lifted a bag May found her voice and it issued with apologetic shrillness and stammering loudness. “Oh, no, sir! I will cam my own baggage, thank you so much, sir, if you please.” Cuthbert raised a discreet eyebrow and murmured, “Oh, no, madam. I am just putting it aside for your own suite, later. The boy will deliver it.” He bowed again to the ladies and said, “Perhaps mes-dames would like to freshen up a little before dinner?”

  May blinked, her mouth opening palely; she was dazzled by the lamplight and the chandeliers, and then she looked about her stupidly. Ellen took her arm and they both followed the sprightly Mrs. Eccles, who was all sparkles and worldliness, to one of the marble and gilt bathrooms which Cuthbert had indicated with another bow. Here was all scented soaps and white soft towels. Mrs. Eccles laughed gaily and said, “A bidet! Oh, the naughty boy!” She trilled like a young lark, and looked at herself in one of the long gold-framed mirrors, watching her two companions in it with a face gleaming with spite. May hobbled about the room like a blind and crippled hen, seeking its way, until Ellen caught her arm and sat her down on a plush stool and touched her cheek gently and reassuringly. “Let me wash your face and hands, Auntie,” she said. “We are very sooty, aren’t we?”