Ceremony of the Innocent

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Really,” said Miss Ember, obsequiously echoing Kitty. “Most improper.”

  “Birth and death are,” said Cuthbert, and Jeremy looked at him with chaotic astonishment. Then Ellen saw Cuthbert and she groaned, “Don’t leave me, please. Don’t leave me.”

  “Of course not,” said Cuthbert. “Mr. Porter, if you will just move your chair a little aside so Miss Ember—Thank you. Mrs. Wilder, towels if you please. They are in that chest near your elbow.” He held Ellen’s hand strongly and smiled down at her. “Courage,” he said. “We are brave, aren’t we?”

  Ellen suddenly smiled at him from her wet pillows. “No, Cuthbert,” she said in a faint voice. “We aren’t. Not a bit.”

  All at once she screamed, for Miss Ember had roughly inserted her large thick fingers into the birth canal. “Gently, gently,” said Cuthbert. “This is not a mare you are delivering, my dear woman. This is a young girl, a human being, if you please.”

  Kitty jeered in herself. She laid the towels on a pillow and pushed up her sleeves. Miss Ember extended Ellen’s legs, as far apart as possible; she was enraged at Cuthbert, who was watching her every move. Old fool, she thought. I’d like to kill him, and the thought so relieved her that she ministered to Ellen less rudely and brutally. The fury could be expressed in her mind and she was almost assuaged, as well as frustrated. She projected her hatred upon him and so it was like a catharsis. She looked over her shoulder at Kitty and Kitty looked aside. “Don’t we have boiling water at a time like this?” Kitty asked. “I think I heard that somewhere. Cuthbert, will you—”

  “I’d prefer not to leave, madam,” he said with the greatest courtesy. “Will you be so kind as to get a large jug of it, and a bowl?”

  Miss Ember felt the child’s small head in the canal, and the most horrible impulse came to her to crush it in her strong fingers. Then even she was appalled at that impulse, and her nurse’s training mechanically asserted itself. For an instant only she had experienced a deep nausea and her body shook very hard and briefly. A gush of blood poured from Ellen’s body, and again she was screaming. Miss Ember said, “So big a girl, but the pelvic area is uncommonly small. Mrs. Porter, bear down quickly. Can you hear me, Mrs. Porter? Stop screaming! You must help me, if you want your child to be born alive. I think the cord’s caught. Mrs. Porter! Hold Mr. Porter’s hands with both your own and push. There now.”

  Jeremy thought he would vomit at the sight of Ellen’s blood. Her wet hands clenched his. Her eyes were so distended that the glistening whites circled the pupils, and her mouth, not screaming now, was open and panting. He cursed himself for inflicting this on Ellen. Acid tears gathered in his own eyes. He kissed her mouth and murmured incoherently, as Ellen pushed down. She saw the top of his head so sharply that she was conscious of a poignant compassion for him. “Yes, yes,” she murmured. She must hurry, she thought. Jeremy could not stand much more of this. She was filled with a storm of love in spite of the fiery anguish she was enduring.

  Kitty had left the room and now she returned with a maid and a copper kettle of steaming water. The maid looked distastefully at Ellen and was pleased at her raw pain, for Ellen had always been kind to her, and considerate. She smirked and affected a delicate shudder, and poured hot water into a bowl and held it nearby.

  Miss Ember was giving Kitty orders, and, averting her eyes as much as possible, Kitty assisted under the unmoving watchfulness of Cuthbert. The smell of sweat pervaded the room. Faces dripped and itched. Jeremy rubbed his chin on his shoulder; he never released Ellen’s slipping hands.

  “Ah,” said Miss Ember, with genuine gratification. “There is the head!”

  The child’s head had emerged, streaming with blood. The tumult of the bands on Fifth Avenue seemed to increase their volume in triumph, and the whole room was thunderous with the sound of drums and trumpets and flutes. Ellen uttered such a great cry that the music of the bands was almost obliterated. She writhed and screamed again, over and over, and now she was only a primitive female animal, mindless with her unendurable travail, forgetful even of Jeremy. She threshed on the bed; Miss Ember appealed to Cuthbert and Jeremy to hold the girl down. Ellen bent her head and bit her own arm groaning. “God,” said Jeremy. “Oh, Christ!”

  Slowly now the child’s body presented itself. “There!” exclaimed Miss Ember. “Another minute—There, there is the baby! And a boy, too!”

  She was exultant. She had forgiven herself and so had forgiven Ellen. “Scissors, please, Mrs. Wilder. Mr. Cuthbert, that big towel, please, to wrap the baby in.” She tore a smaller towel into ribbons, as Ellen’s child lay between her thighs. The nurse tied the severed cord and to Ellen’s renewed screams she delivered the placenta. Jeremy retched. Through a haze he darkly saw someone lift his son and wipe him with damp linen which steamed and became bloody. It was Cuthbert now who was wrapping the child in a large soft towel. The room palpitated with relief and a kind of hysteria. Ellen was no longer screaming. She lay limp and white and dwindled, her eyes shut, her mouth gaping and silent. Jeremy felt as if he himself had passed through childbirth, and he was prostrated.

  Someone was giving him brandy, and he looked up and saw, through that trembling haze, the smiling grave face of Cuthbert. “Congratulations, sir,” said the older man. “It is a fine boy—your son. A very fine boy.”

  But Jeremy looked only at Ellen and as he looked she opened her eyes and like a child she whimpered and then began to cry and she moved into Jeremy’s arms, bloody and wet though she was, and she fell asleep, uncaring about her child. Again, she had reached surcease and comfort in her husband.

  Kitty Wilder peeped at Miss Ember, and then both women looked aside sheepishly, and wiped their faces. Each felt an aversion for the other, though nothing had ever been said, and each believed the other unspeakably guilty and detestable. In this way they absolved themselves. But they also felt a stronger aversion for Ellen, the source of their guilt.

  Shouts came from Fifth Avenue and a higher crescendo as the colors passed, and all America sang in naive exultation and a passionate and simple love of country, uncomplicated by doubt or bitter cynicism or troubled questioning. It was noon, one of the last peaceful and hopeful noons America would ever know again. Her enemies were moving.

  C H A P T E R 15

  ELLEN WENT UP IN THE elevator to see her aunt, accompanied by a nurse carrying Ellen’s son in an embroidered shawl dripping with lace. May had not as yet seen the child, nor had she asked about him. She had “cried” day and night, said Miss Ember, and her arthritis had become worse. Ellen felt guilt; she had neglected Aunt May because she herself had still been confined to bed for several days after the birth. The doctor, coming belatedly two days later, had expressed concern for the girl. “If I did not know better, sir,” he said to Jeremy, “I would believe the difficult birth—due to certain abnormalities of the—er—pelvic regions—was the result of malnutrition in childhood and severe manual labor when the bones were in the process of development. Rickets, if you will pardon me. It is rare for one to see this deplorable and painful condition in a lady like Mrs. Porter, who had, no doubt, a pampered and cherished and well-fed childhood, and all the care sedulous parents can give a little daughter. Very rare, indeed.” To which Jeremy had said nothing, though the doctor waited inquisitively.

  Ellen was still weak and pale, but she put a resolute and cheerful smile on her face as she entered May’s quarters. May was sitting, huddled in shawls, near the window, though she rarely, for lack of interest, looked through that window. She seemed older and more withered, and Ellen felt a pang of self-reproach. “Dear Auntie,” she said, “I am here at last, and with my baby, who will be christened in two weeks! Christian Watson Porter.” She motioned to the nurse, a nice young girl all rosy cheeks and starch and fair hair and efficiency. She had taken a deep fondness for Ellen, who was near her age. “Miss Burton,” added Ellen, indicating the nurse, who was peering with a sad lack of sympathy at May.

  “It’s about time you cam
e,” said May, sniffing in a watery fashion. “Never a word from you, Ellen, except for the messages you sent through Miss Ember.” Miss Ember was standing nearby like a fat grenadier, her thick arms folded across her breast. She tossed her head and stared inimically at Miss Burton, who returned her stare, for a moment or two, with a slight sneer on her full pink mouth.

  Ellen sat down near her aunt and the nurse placed the child in her arms. Ellen leaned towards May. “Look at him, Auntie. He has my red hair and eyes. Jeremy says he looks exactly like me. And eight pounds! Such a big boy.” She tried to make her voice gay and light. May glanced at the child, then averted her face and wiped her eyes. “Yes. Looks like you. Too bad. But you never did have any looks, Ellen. Well.”

  Ellen was immediately depressed. She felt a wave of prostration. She returned the child to Miss Burton, who said in a determined voice, “Mrs. Porter is the most beautiful lady I’ve ever seen, and this boy here is going to be a lady-killer when he grows up, and big too. He’s already bigger than most babies his age, and plump. Look at those pretty curls he has, and only nine days old. He wasn’t wrinkled and red, monkey-like, like all the others I’ve seen. A real killer.”

  May sent a half-glance at the baby over her shoulder, and her gray face became sullen and offended. She avoided Ellen’s placating and pleading eyes. She said, “Children aren’t no bargain, Miss—What did you say your name was? Burton. I don’t know why Ellen wanted a child; she ought to know better.”

  “And Mrs. Porter’s doing fine,” said Miss Burton, who needed no long explanations of human behavior. She had seen a great deal of it. “I’m glad you’re happy she is feeling better every day.”

  “What?” said May. “You still look awful sick to me, Ellen. That’s what women pay for having children. I still can’t understand why you wanted—And a boy, too.” Her frail voice reproached Ellen. All her former deep concern for Ellen had vanished. Ellen had been willful; Ellen had betrayed her; Ellen still insisted on pretending she was a lady born; Ellen refused to feel sorrow at deserting Mrs. Eccles, “who was so good to us, and we were happy with her. You had no right, Ellen.” Pain and resentment had completely changed May, and she lived now in a state of self-pity and tears, and in an aura of pungent ointments and lotions for her disease. A table nearby, a beautiful piece of authentic Sheraton, held all her medicines in a disorderly array. Some had spilled and had ruined the finish of the surface. Her Bible held the most prominent space on the table, and a none too clean handkerchief marked the pages. Miss Ember had twisted one curtain at the window into a rope, “for air.” The delicate lace and silk were grimy. The housemaid had refused to “do” the rooms; “It’s that nurse’s job.” So the rooms were dusty and had an odor of must and decay. May, once so insistent on cleanliness and order, no longer cared. She pined for Mrs. Eccles’ house, and daily her resentment of everything increased, and Ellen was the source of that resentment. I never thought, May would say to herself often, that Ellen’d turn out this way, so mean and selfish, and never thinking of anybody but herself, and never a thought for her poor aunt.

  Ellen looked at her earnestly, leaning forward in her pretty house robe of mauve silk and lace. “Is your pain better, Auntie?”

  Much you care, thought May. She said in a whining voice, “No, it ain’t. Worse every day. It’s this heat; can’t bear it. Wheatfield was nice and cool, even in July. Never hot like this, and so dusty. Bad for my arthritis. Can’t sleep at night, mostly. Hardly walk, now.”

  “We’ll soon be going to our house in the country, on Long Island,” Ellen pleaded. “For weeks, right on the ocean.”

  “All that water! No, sir! Water’ll make the rheumatism worse. Miss Ember told me, didn’t you, Miss Ember? We’re going to stay here.”

  Ellen was dismayed. “But, Auntie, we are closing up the house! The staff is going with us, too.”

  “We’ll manage, alone, Mrs. Porter,” said Miss Ember, tossing her head again. “It’ll be quiet here, too; good for Mrs. Watson.”

  Ellen felt helpless. “I talked to Mr. Porter last night,” Miss Ember added, with triumph. “He said it was perfectly all right, here with a maid and a temporary cook. He’s arranged it.”

  For some reason—and for which she was immediately guilty again, Ellen felt a profound relief, and a deep gratitude to her husband. Miss Ember smiled with victory, and with contempt for Ellen. “Nothing to worry about,” she said.

  If I was Mr. Porter, thought Miss Burton, I’d pack them off to some hotel and forget all about them. She felt no compunction at all. Her fondness for Ellen became stronger. She was concerned about her. The poor beautiful dear, even paler now, and so thin, and so sweet and kind, and trying to do the best for everybody: why don’t she think of herself once in a while? Only yesterday Ellen had said to her, in response to some cynical remark by Annie Burton, “But you know we have to love and trust, Annie.” Miss Burton had stared at her for a moment, in incredulity, and had then replied, “Who says so, ma’am? The parsons? What do they know about people?” She had then commented to herself with compassion: The poor dear thing talks so foolish, about people, when anybody knows what they are. She’s going to be in bad trouble, one of these days, with all that “love.” Annie had had a long talk with Cuthbert about this and Cuthbert had nodded and had shaken his head. “We’ve got to take care of her,” Annie had said. “I’m staying for a long time; Mr. Porter asked me, and that’s one good thought. That Miss Ember! And that old aunt!”

  Ellen and Annie returned to the nursery, where the nurse busied herself with the child. Ellen watched all this; her breasts were aching with milk. She said to herself: I wonder why I don’t feel the way other women say they feel about their children? Why am I always so frightened, like a premonition? I do love the baby; I’d die for him. But there’s really no one for me but Jeremy. He is always first, all the time. It seems to me far more important to be a good wife.

  While she nursed her son Ellen’s thoughts were engrossed with Jeremy, and she smiled, and Annie thought with tenderness: Her face shines like the sun. Never saw anything like it before. It’s her goodness, that’s what it is. Hope her kids appreciate that later, but you can never tell with kids. Serpents, mostly, that’s what, when they grow up and smell their parents’ money. Wish I could put some sense in her, poor darling. The good get all the kicks in this world, and all the hate and robbery, and mostly from those they love, too.

  Ellen’s face changed. Suddenly she was crying, and Annie came to her and put her firm plump arm about her shoulders. “There, there,” she said. “Every new mother feels like this for a couple of months, dear. After-birth melancholy. There’s no need to feel sad. This’ll be the first dinner you’ve had downstairs with Mr. Porter since the baby was born. We want to look pretty, don’t we?”

  Ellen tried to laugh, then was depressed again. “It’s just—I’m afraid. I don’t know why, but I am afraid for Mr. Porter, and in some way for myself, too.”

  “Don’t you worry about Mr. Porter,” said Annie in a sturdy voice. “By the way, I don’t like that maid of yours, Clarisse.”

  Ellen was surprised. “Why not?”

  But Annie was discreet. She could not tell Ellen that every day Clarisse had a hushed conversation, accompanied by derisive giggles, with Mrs. Wilder, whom Annie despised. It was all about Ellen, and Annie knew that though they spoke in French. Annie’s young face tightened and she pressed Ellen’s shoulder with more protectiveness, “Oh, I don’t know,” she answered. “Guess we’re not fated to be friends. Anyways, I wouldn’t trust her too much if I was you. Don’t talk to her so sweetly, and so kindly. Don’t chatter to her about what you think and feel all the time, and confide in her.”

  Ellen gave Annie an indulgent smile. “Oh, Annie, Annie,” she said. “What a cynic you are. I’m very fond of Clarisse.”

  All at once Annie felt helpless. How did you warn the good—they were so uncommon—that their very trustfulness was destructive to them, dangerously destructive, and o
ften fatal? If they listened, and they very seldom listened, God help them, it might change them and they would be as wicked as the general run of mankind, and in some way the world would be poorer after their full knowledge and their loss of innocence.

  Maybe, thought Annie, God will reward them someday, but I doubt it. She was an agnostic, something which shocked Ellen, as did Annie’s lack of idealism. Annie’s pink and pudgy face, with the pert upturned nose and shining gold eyelashes and eyebrows, and forthright gaze, would change and harden when Ellen talked of the “innate nobility of mankind,” and her expression would become old and withdrawn, and her sense of dismay for Ellen would increase, and her incredulity. She knew Ellen’s history by now, received from Cuthbert, Clarisse, and Miss Ember, and it seemed incomprehensible that one who had endured so much, and with such loving candor, could be so naive and so defenseless and so ominously vulnerable, and so incapable of drawing grim and obvious conclusions. There was a certain stupidity in innocence, and Annie sometimes suspected it was this that aroused the ridicule of others.

  Thank God she has a husband who is no fool, Annie would think. But what of the day when she doesn’t have him? If there is a merciful God, and I don’t believe there is, He will let her die before her husband does. She has no idea how to protect herself. She doesn’t know how to be careful. Once it came to Annie, dismally, that if everyone “watched” each other, and there was no trust or love anywhere, misery and despair and hatred would overwhelm the world of men and there would be nothing but death. Ellen, in her own gentle insidious way, born of blamelessness, had given Annie her own doubts and uncertainties about her robust view of life, though Ellen was impervious to Annie’s common sense. Neither girl understood that there must be a balance between love and trust—and realism. The ultimate in each destroyed the world as effectively as any plague. Christ was the God of wrath as well as the God of love, Ellen had yet to learn. But an absolute realist deprived the world of fantasy and beauty and mystery, and the immanence of God. Annie did not know that now. Still, in her generation she was wiser than Ellen, and much better armed against her fellow man.