A brown autumnal rain began to surge against the windows, and Walter stood up. “We Americans are becoming as concerned with soft sweet animal cozinesses and comforts as the British are also becoming. We all want to be let alone to suck on our sugar tits and have Mama sing us soothing songs, and tell us fairy tales about the wonderful future about to be granted us—by our dear friends in our government. I see that attitude creeping on deadly little feet, everywhere, even in stalwart Germany. The warm fireside is becoming more and more important to all of us, more than the heroic men who fought to make us a nation, and who gave us our liberty. Children! Where are our men now?”
“I have a faint hope they are still here. That’s the only hope we have. I’m bringing up my children to love their country.” He smiled, though not with paternal sentimentality, as if the thought of his children not only pleased him but amused him. “Christian’s only three, but he is already shouting the words of Patrick Henry, which I taught him, and his enunciation is very good, too. As for little Gabrielle, I am teaching her a few words, at her elderly age of one, and she’s already proficient. Pity she’s such an ugly little wench, resembling me.”
“On the contrary, she’s very interesting in her appearance, I think,” said Walter, with the fondness of a grandfather and not that of a mere great-uncle. “All that dark curly hair and shining dark eyes. Yes, very interesting and provocative, and intelligent. Full of mischief, even this early, and very knowing. You have two beautiful children, Jeremy. God grant they’ll be—safe.”
“Now, that’s a word I detest—safe—Uncle Walter. The world’s never been a safe place and it never will be. No, I don’t want my children to be ‘safe.’ I want them to be strong, to have moral stamina, to be able to fight. Ellen once or twice suggested that I was a little too rigorous with them and demanded too much of them. Probably remembering the hardships of her own childhood. It is useless for me to point out that Christian can be sullen and resentful at times, and disobedient. When I punish him, she almost cries, though she doesn’t interfere. That’s one thing I won’t allow from her—any dispute about how I am bringing up the youngsters. I think she’s forgot how natively wicked children are—how wicked the whole human race is, and always was. Thank God I have the nursemaid, Annie Burton, still with us. There’s a girl with rare common sense, and a hard hand on the kids. It’s very baffling, when I think of her and Ellen, for Annie had a very rough time of it, too, when she was a child, almost as bad as Ellen did, and it’s made Annie sturdy and cynical and realistic, whereas Ellen is a little Mrs. Rousseau, all by herself, even once suggesting that man was innately good and that it is ‘society’ which distorts him. I think your son Frank can be blamed for that foolishness of hers.”
“Perhaps,” said Walter with considerable glumness. “After all, he was the biggest influence in her life for the three years she was with my sister-in-law in Wheatfield.” He sighed. “Francis is becoming more and more pontifical all the time—my only son. He resembles a priggish spinster, and his intolerance grows, as does his mawkishness about something amorphous he calls the ‘masses.’ He has a look about him when he rants which makes me suspect he is thinking of you. You epitomize, for him, a world he both fears and detests, and would have vengeance on, a strong just world which neither gives quarter to nor takes quarter from—fools. He is babbling even more vociferously about ‘compassion,’ which he really doesn’t possess at all. But it has a nice pure-in-heart sound. Good God, why did I ever have such a son?”
Jeremy laughed. “Maybe he had a great-great-grandfather who was hanged. There’s such a thing as heredity, you know, though the pure-in-hearts—I love that designation!—are beginning to deny it. They’re shrieking about ‘environment’ now. Pure Karl Marx. Maybe Marx resents his own heredity, and if he does, then perhaps his screaming followers will follow his example.”
He thought of Ellen again, and looked aside. “I’ve tried to tell Ellen that her absolute loving kindness and generosity tempt people to exploit and ridicule her, for they know secretly exactly what they are, and that makes them feel guilty; because they are made to feel that way by Ellen, they get infuriated, and worse. She—corrupts—them. Why hasn’t someone yet written that some of the grossest corruption is caused by tender and unselfish people? Ellen brings out the worst in others, by her very nobility. She causes them to be more vicious than they’d ordinarily be, and even more cruel, and they hate her for it. Yes, I’ve tried to tell her, but she doesn’t understand.”
“Her grandmother was like that,” said Walter gloomily. “Maybe the old boys who used thumbscrews and the wheel and the rope and the fire on the saints had some justification. Don’t laugh. Her grandfather said to Amy, ‘Dammit, girl, you make me want to beat you!’ At least I heard he said that.”
“Sometimes I feel that way about Ellen, too,” said Jeremy, and he chuckled with some ruefulness. “It’s hard on a man to have a wife like Ellen, at times.”
Walter regarded him shrewdly. Many women, he thought, drive their husbands to more worldly and naughty women by their sheer virtue. It’s a relief for the poor men. He thought of Kitty Wilder, and frowned. Well, it was none of his business.
Jeremy said, “You haven’t met my associate yet—Charles Godfrey, though he’s been with me for a year. He takes over when I’m in Washington. One of my classmates at Harvard.” He smiled widely and his large white teeth flashed in the dusk. “I think he’s more than a little in love with Ellen, and that’s good. He is one of my executors.” Jeremy touched a bell on his desk, and sent for his friend. Walter waited with interest. Charles Godfrey entered almost immediately, and Walter was instantly impressed by him.
The young man was shorter than Jeremy, but as firm and muscular and as masculine in appearance, and he moved with quiet and sure authority. He possessed a solid square face, grave and certain, though there were humorous trenches about his large mouth. All his features expressed strength and an enormous intelligence. He had a short, powerful nose, and his gray eyes were quick and thoughtful. He is a man, thought Walter, and could think of no greater accolade. He is a man as Jeremy is a man, and God knows we need such men in these days and in the days to come. Why in hell couldn’t I have had a son like either of them?
“I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr. Porter, from Jeremy,” said Charles as the two men shook hands. His voice was resonant with command, though agreeably respectful, and Walter’s admiration increased. “I think you knew my father slightly, Charles also, in Boston?”
“Why, yes, I did,” said Walter with pleasure, and his tired face brightened. “Old Chuck. A devil on campus, too. And off campus. With the girls. I often wondered how he settled down with just one of them.”
“Mama’s a very masterful lady,” said Charles. “You knew her?”
“Yes. Very handsome; a fine figure of a woman, as we used to say. Geraldine Aspenwall. Yes. I remember dancing with her. I think she led me, instead of vice versa.”
“She doesn’t lead Papa,” said Charles, and as he smiled his face became amused and excellent to look at, even charming. “Though she is a suffragette. Heaven help our poor Congressmen if Mama, and ladies like her, ever get the vote. She even dominates her pastor, unfortunate Father Malone, though the Sisters are less cowed. Mama would like to rewrite the liturgy. Outdated, she says. Very formidable, Mama. I think she could set the Pope running if she made up her mind to it and could get entrance to the Vatican.”
The three men sat in warmth and comfort, drinking their whiskey and smoking and listening in peaceful contentment to the traffic below and the rustling of the fire, and watching the sparks blow upward.
Perhaps, thought Walter, enough of these men now and in the future can save my country. Perhaps.
Then he shivered. Perhaps not enough, not enough. He felt a sick presentiment.
C H A P T E R 17
EARLIER THAT DAY, WHEN a faint sun set its feeble flickerings over the buildings and the street, Ellen went upstairs to see her aunt before
accompanying Annie Burton during the children’s daily airing.
“I thought you’d come earlier,” May complained.
“I’m sorry, but I have to lie down after lunch, Auntie,” said Ellen. “You know that. But it won’t be long before I have all my strength back, the doctor says. May I bring the children upstairs tomorrow? You haven’t seen them for a week.”
May threw up her crippled hands and shook her head. “No, please, Ellen. They give me a headache; all that shouting, and the way Christian runs about. So restless.”
“Well.” Ellen smiled. “He can’t do that when Jeremy’s home. He’s a very active little boy, and the weather’s been’ so bad that we couldn’t go out the last couple of days or so, and he finds the nursery very confining.”
“The little girl’s just as bad, though she’s only a year old,” May whimpered. “Children in my day—seen but not heard, and seldom seen, either. You’re too indulgent, Ellen.”
As Jeremy also said that to her, repeatedly and with sternness, Ellen answered nothing. Then she changed the subject, and tried for brightness. “You look very well today, Auntie. Did you sleep well? Did you enjoy your lunch? Cuthbert ordered it especially for you.”
“Well, tell him not to do it again,” said May with a glance at Miss Ember, who was standing nearby, her heavy arms crossed over her big breast, as if with defiance. “Miss Ember didn’t like it, either. The broiled chicken was overdone, and the cauliflower had such a horrid sauce on it, cheese or something, and the potatoes—au gratin, do they call it?—had a very funny taste, and the soup had mushrooms in it, and you know I don’t like the mushrooms, you should have watched, Ellen, but you never have time for anybody but yourself, and the good Lord knows I didn’t bring you up that way. It had wine in it, too, strong drink, and the fish was too crisp and the rolls too hard, and I don’t like that sweet butter, and the coffee was too black, and the salad had a perfectly horrible dressing—the girl said it was Italian, heathen, I call it. Thank goodness I’m never very hungry, anyway.”
But you ate it all with relish, you old bitch, thought Miss Ember, and grinned and nodded. “I agree with Mrs. Watson, Mrs. Porter. Revolting. Maybe you should supervise that Cuthbert, him and his terrible cooking. Or let the regular cook do it. Good American cooking—that’s what we like, isn’t it, Mrs. Watson?”
“Yes. Just good plain food. That’s what I like best, with my poor appetite. Do try to spare a little thought now and then for others, Ellen. You do get more selfish every day.”
Ellen’s face became sad and depressed. She said, with apology, “I’ll tell Cuthbert, Auntie. What would you like for dinner? We’re having guests, I’m afraid, and there’s partridge, and I know you don’t like it. Does a thick bean soup appeal to you, and some steamed cod with cream sauce?”
Miss Ember was vexed. It was quite in order to criticize the resented Cuthbert’s excellent menus, while secretly enjoying them’ with intense satisfaction, and it was quite another thing to have to eat “plain food,” which Miss Ember had grown to dislike. May said, with a sullen downward glance, “All right, Ellen. Anything will do, except those fancy dishes. Maybe a wing of that partridge? I hate being so much trouble, and I know you get impatient with me, with all your fine friends and having to bother about me. I know I’m a burden.” She gave Miss Ember another enigmatic glance, and Ellen uneasily was aware of it. She felt an air of conspiracy in the dusty and untidy sitting room.
“You know you’re not a burden, Auntie,” she said. “You’ll never be a burden.”
Good, thought Miss Ember. Hope you holds to it. “I think,” said the nurse, “that your aunt has something to tell you.”
May hesitated. She folded a section of the shawl on her knee and stared at it with a martyred and melancholy expression, which made Ellen feel acutely at fault. “I’ve been writing to Mrs. Eccles,” said May, and glanced up sideways at her niece and there was a triumphant exultation in her red-rimmed eyes. “Yes?” said Ellen, more and more uneasy. “I know you write her, dear.”
“I’ve been writing to tell her how miserable I am.”
“Oh, no,” said Ellen, distressed. “How could you do that, Auntie?”
“So,” May went on, as if she had not heard, “she is willing to take me back.”
Ellen’s blue eyes stretched and widened in disbelief. “Take you back?” she exclaimed. “You, Auntie, who can hardly walk to the bathroom? Take you back!” She put her hand to her head, dazed.
“I don’t mean to work for her,” said May, not able to meet Ellen’s confused and aghast eyes. “I mean—well, I wrote her how I long for our lovely rooms in her house, and Wheatfield, and I said I remembered how good she was to us—how really good!—and I want to live in peace and quiet, away from those little children and all the noise they make and all the noise your friends make, and your piano playing and singing—well, she understood. I hate New York, and always did. You and me, Ellen—we got no right to be here at all, and you know it in your heart. Yes, you do!”
Now she stared at Ellen with bitter accusation and open hostility. “It’s all your fault, Ellen, and someday God will punish you for your hardheartedness—no consideration for others. Everything just for yourself—greedy, greedy, greedy. Your airs, and everything, just as if you was a lady born. I told you from the beginning, and someday you’ll admit it, on your knees, when it’s too late. Well, I’m not the one to judge you. God’ll do that—vain, conceited, proud, due for a fall.”
Ellen had heard these accusations before, but never before had they struck her so painfully. She shrank visibly; her sense of nameless guilt made her feel quite ill. She moistened her lips, but could not speak. May thought her crushed, and she experienced a happy thrill of vindication. Ellen’s long convalescence had dimmed much of her color and she was still thin and even her hair was less radiant and her eyes less lucent. Now her cheeks and her lips were pallid. “I think,” said May, “that you’re beginning to understand—when it’s too late.”
To the incredulous Ellen her aunt’s ugly words had no meaning at all, but Jeremy would have understood at once: Ellen had corrupted her aunt’s integrity with undeserved love and kindness and trust and devotion. May only knew, and without shame, that Ellen’s increasing grayness of cheek and lip pleased her, and exonerated her, for since uttering her accusations she believed she was justified and that they were true. Ellen’s very silence assured her of this. She had, in Ellen’s childhood, lifted her hand to the girl only once or twice. Now she longed to do it again, but with vigor and emotional outrage, and her drawn and sunken face flushed with righteousness. She raised her voice and spoke with emphasis.
“So, I had to think of myself, Ellen, just once, though you think only of yourself all the time. Well, anyway, to make a long story short, and after many letters, Mrs. Eccles replied graciously, out of her Christian charity, and has agreed to accept seventy-five dollars from me, a week, for those two lovely rooms and my board. And she wrote—I showed it to Miss Ember—that she’d be willing to let Miss Ember come, too, and ask her for only a few hours a day’s work, maybe four or five, and let her have your old room, and board. And Miss Ember will help me, too.”
Still speechless, Ellen looked at Miss Ember, her eyes glazed with shock and her mouth dropping, so that she appeared, to the nurse, to be more “foolish than usual.” May continued: “I said I’d help pay for Miss Ember’s keep. I’d give her four dollars a week. You can afford it.”
Now Ellen, swallowing drily, was able to answer. She said to Miss Ember in a tight and dwindled voice, “And you—you think—you want to do this?”
Miss Ember’s bulk appeared to increase, to swell, to fill half the room. “What do you take me for, Mrs. Porter? An imbecile? Of course I don’t want to do that and I won’t do it! Never heard so much crazy nonsense in my life! I think your aunt’s lost her mind, indeed I do.”
May regarded her with blank horror and amazement. “But,” she stammered, “only this morning when I got the l
etter—I showed it to you—you said, you said, you thought it was the thing to do, and you said you’d go with me, and you’d help Mrs. Eccles—I told you what a wonderful Christian lady she is, and you said—”
“I was just humoring you,” said Miss Ember, giving her a terrible and inimical smile. “Just as any nurse would do.”
Her voice was rough and cruel. She tossed her small head, so like a ball perched atop her enormous frame, and regarded both aunt and niece with smiling contempt. “What should I have done, Mrs. Porter, when she told me about it this morning? Called for a strait-jacket? I did my best. I soothed her, calmed her down, best I could, promised her anything, she was like a kid, clapping her hands—so silly. I did my best; I always did my best. I thought she ought to tell you herself.”
It was very rare for Ellen to see anyone with a clarified vision, to see another in all her ugliness, without gentle-hearted illusion, and with total recognition. The sight made her ill, caused an actual physical pain in her heart, and actual dread and loathing, as if she had encountered something unspeakably vile, beyond mortal capacity to be vile. It shattered her, made her want to run away wildly, and not to see at all, for the encounter of innocence with human evil was unbearable to her and violated her. She could not remember being so frightened before.
Now her innate fortitude returned to her, high and clear and condemning, as she looked at Miss Ember with brilliant eyes. “You know you lie,” she said. “You wanted my aunt to believe you, so you would have the opportunity to hurt her, she who had never hurt you. You wanted the opportunity to make me wretched, too, though I have always been kind to you. You are a hateful woman, a wicked woman, and I give you notice now. A week’s notice, with pay, and I want you out of this house by tomorrow morning.”
Ceremony of the Innocent Page 30
