Ceremony of the Innocent (18 page)

She looked frightened, then gazed at him beseechingly. “I’m not eighteen.”

He smiled indulgently. “Frankly, I thought you were older. Nineteen? Twenty?”

“No.” He could hardly see her face now in the dark. “I’m only seventeen. You see, I had to work, in Mrs. Porter’s house. We needed the dollar a week, and then I got two meals in that house, and Aunt May told me I should say I was fourteen, and not thirteen, as I was. If we had told the truth the law wouldn’t have let me work full time, over twelve hours a day.”

Now, that’s damned contretemps, thought Jeremy. Her aunt is still her legal guardian. Then he reminded himself that in New York State laws were somewhat different, and that children were permitted to work in factories and in shops as young as the age of five or six, and considered “a female” after puberty mature enough to marry, at her own desire, at any time.

Darkness now filled the little park and a shivering icy wedge of moon rose over the loud crackling of the trees and stars danced through the leaves. In her entrancement and joy Ellen had forgotten the time and her Duty; she was elevated into a world where all was consummation and serene perfection. She did not see the darkness or the moon, or the slowly lighting windows of the houses across from the park, nor did she feel the bitterness of the rising night wind on her face. Jeremy could see her eyes, as sparkling as the stars, even in that duskiness, and he thought that in these four years Ellen had acquired an immaculate charm and a powerful magnetism, of which she was obviously unaware. He did not know if this was because of her innocence or because no one had ever told her, surrounded as she was only by women, and especially by women who found charm and magnetism only in the prettily average. At any rate, mingled with his tenderness, his solicitude for her, his genuine love, his desire to protect and rescue, was a growing lust. He bent and kissed her lips again, in a prolonged encounter, and she opened her mouth and gently returned the kiss. He almost lost his self-control; he touched her breast, then held it, her rich young breast, covered by harsh wool. She did not flinch or draw away; in a natural surrender and still incomprehensible return she pressed her breast more firmly into his palm, and sighed, long and profound, and in absolute trust. It was this trust, this innocence, which made him hastily release her, then pat her cheek in what he hoped was a paternal gesture.

A silence, deep and content, fell between them, while Ellen nestled against him like a lost child who had come home to love and light. He reflected that even while she was telling him of the most dreary moments of these past four years she had shown no resentment, no self-pity, no petulant wonder as to why she had been chosen for this misery. He found this even more pathetic than her recital. She had obviously been assured that this was her ordained station in life and that to protest, except feebly on occasion, when driven, was “wrong” and an affront to God. Had he not been convinced years ago of her intelligence he would have thought her stupid, and his love for her would have been infinitely less.

A church bell stridently struck the hour of seven, and Ellen came out of her encompassing dream of joy with a start and a little cry. “Oh, I forgot! It’s seven, and I should have been home two hours ago! Oh, Mrs. Eccles will be so angry; she will scold Aunt May, and perhaps she will discharge both of us! What shall I do?” She looked at Jeremy with terror and dismay, and smoothed her clothing and resettled her hat. He drew her tightly to him again.

“Dear love, but I came to take you away, and to marry you as soon as possible. Didn’t you understand that?”

Her enlarged eyes, as she stared at him, became stupefied; her mouth fell open. “Marry?” she murmured, faintly, and he shook her with fond impatience.

“Of course. That’s why I came for you today.” He laughed at her stupefaction. “What did you think I came here for? Just to hold you and talk with you? Ellen, haven’t you any sense at all?”

She gripped her hands together, still staring at him with disbelief. “I—I didn’t think, Jeremy. It was enough that you were here.”

“And you thought we’d spend the rest of our lives sitting on this bench in the park, and no doubt be covered eventually by leaves and snow? What a goose you are, Ellen.”

“But you can’t mam me! You are—Jeremy Porter—a rich man and a lawyer, and I am only a servant girl!”

“Well, then, haven’t you heard of King Cophetua and the servant girl, or Cinderella and her prince? Or, in your heavy reading have you neglected the dear old myths?”

“I didn’t think at all,” she whispered, and closed her eyes and squeezed them together to shut out the glory that was suddenly visible to her: a life of bliss, with Jeremy, in his own house, in New York! She suddenly began to cry, deep shaking sobs, and he was alarmed, and then he understood that she was crying because she was overwhelmed with joy and could not bear it. He drew out his handkerchief to wipe her streaming face, and then she convulsively tore off the gloves Francis had sent her, and she spread out her swollen and reddened and burned and callused hands vehemently, to show him, in the gaslight which was now burning yellow in the park, what she believed he must see. “Look at them.” She faltered. “Are these the hands of the wife of Jeremy Porter?”

He took them in his own and kissed them. “I hope they are indeed, you little fool.”

Confused and shaken, but glowing, she pressed her hands to his lips. “I don’t believe any of this. How could I believe that a man like you would want a girl like me?”

“You should look in the mirror occasionally, and hear your own voice, too.”

She was bewildered, and blinked at him. Then she had another thought, and her face became distraught. “But I can’t leave Aunt May here, Jeremy. I can never leave her.”

“Who said you should leave her? She will come with us.” This was a new aspect of the situation he had not as yet considered. “Or if she wants her own place, in a quiet hotel, we will let her have it. God knows, she deserves what little pleasure she can get from life now, with her arthritis and her whole life of suffering.”

Ellen grasped his arm with an impetuous strength and he could see her enraptured face, beautiful again with happiness. “You mean that, Jeremy, you mean that?”

“Certainly I do. And now we’ll go to Mrs. Eccles’ house and break the glad news to your aunt. I am at the Hitchcock Hotel, and you and your aunt will pack as soon as possible, and we will all leave together, for New York, where we will be married.”

She uttered a great cry of delight, and they stood up, and hand in hand hurried towards the house. Ellen, to Jeremy’s half-amused compassion, began to skip like the child she still was murmuring little sounds of ecstasy and anticipation. When he saw her face it was shining brighter than the moon, and he was almost unbearably touched, and he held the hand in his tightly. She glanced at him with total adoration.

Lamps were burning in the lower windows of the house and it was Mrs. Eccles herself who came to the door, her plump cheeks darkly flushed with anger, her eyes jumping with fury. “Ellen, this is shameful!” she said. “You are two hours late—” Then she saw the dark shadow of Jeremy behind the girl, and she was more furious. So, the young sneak had a “follower” after all, and she would plunge this house into scandal, and would have to be sent away, and Mrs. Eccles would then be deprived of the cheapest, and best, cook and housemaid she had ever employed. “Oh,” she gasped. “Who are you, young man?” Her voice was full of contempt and umbrage.

He took off his hat and said, “Mrs. Eccles, I am Jeremy Porter, the cousin of your nephew Francis.”

Her mouth fell open and she stared at him idiotically, and for the first time she noticed his clothing. She stepped back. She recalled what Francis had told her, that this man had tried to seduce Ellen and that Ellen must be guarded from him and all letters confiscated and destroyed, and that his name—the name of a very bad and licentious man—must never be mentioned. “Best it be forgot by Ellen and May,” Francis had said. “They must be protected from a born womanizer and seducer, who tried to take advantage of a poor girl in my mother’s house.” Mrs. Eccles had thought that this had shown Francis’ wonderful heart and charity, and his concern for “the lower classes,” who all had propensities for vice and indecent behavior and were flighty and full of low passions, and never considered the results of their irresponsible acts.

She had read of Jeremy in the New York newspapers. “A rising young lawyer of considerable brilliance, who will make his mark in the world,” one account had read. So Mrs. Eccles did not know what to do. Jeremy was above her in station; Francis had informed her, with some gentle envy and resentment, that Jeremy was rich in his own right and was certainly becoming richer. He was also a gentleman, and anyone in Wheatfield would have been honored to entertain him. Her training urged her to obsequiousness and hospitality; on the other hand, she was still enraged at Ellen, and the direful thought came to her that today Jeremy had accomplished his obscene purpose. She wanted to strike the girl for this dilemma, for her morals impelled her to upbraid Jeremy, and her realism impelled her to welcome him with gratification and pride, and fawning.

She tried to make her voice severe, as the two still stood on the threshold. Ellen had become white and she was trembling. “I am amazed—Mr. Porter—this girl, a servant in my house—where did you meet her today? What is she to you, a servant, a housemaid, and you—a gentleman of New York?”

“I came,” said Jeremy, “to marry Miss Watson. Have you any objections? And may we come in? It’s very cold just now.”

“Marry—marry—” she stuttered. “Why, that’s impossible. I just don’t believe it. Ellen—and you, Mr. Porter, after all—Oh, do come in! Please forgive me for making you stand there. And Ellen”—her voice was stern and cutting—“please go at once to the kitchen. Your aunt is so distracted over your absence that she has taken a turn for the worse and can’t come down to get my supper, and you will have to get it yourself, and please, for once, remember not to brown the onions for the roast too long. Go at once to the kitchen, Ellen. I will deal with you later.” She gave the girl an accusing and threatening look, one of the most ominous Ellen had ever received, and the girl trembled so much that she almost fell over the threshold. Jeremy caught her arm and steadied her, and then she fled, tearing off her coat and hat, her face frightened and drawn.

He entered the hall, and Mrs. Porter, all sweet and welcoming smiles, took his hat and coat. “You must really join me for supper, Mr. Porter, if that—that girl—doesn’t ruin everything. You have no idea about servants these days—incredible. Shiftless, dowdy, without any self-respect or humility or responsibility. Such a trial. I am in the library, where there is a nice fire. A glass of sherry perhaps?” She added, with a sigh, “I have been like a mother to that girl, a true mother, and now she repays—” She looked at Jeremy, remembering his words, and her eyes and smile were full of significance. Of course, he intended to steal the girl away, to New York, and to “take advantage of her,” and then to, to use the current phrase, “discard her like an old glove.” Well, gentlemen were gentlemen after all; the late Mr. Eccles had taught her only too well. But that shameless girl, that wanton and conniving girl—she was a different matter. Marry, indeed! She had been betrayed by an enticement, but that was to be expected. Dear me, what deceivers men were. However, it was the girl who should be blamed, after all the careful teaching in this house, and not a man of Mr. Porter’s station in life.

While Jeremy, who had forced a genial expression onto his dark and somewhat taciturn face, followed Mrs. Eccles into the library, she felt a twinge for Ellen, of whom she was vaguely fond, for she was a fairly just woman in her heart. She was determined to protect Ellen, who must be told that a man’s promises were only his schemings to “have his way with a girl, my dear. You mustn’t believe him for an instant—for all he is a gentleman.” What had the Psalmist said about his inability to comprehend “the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a dove on her nest, the way of a serpent on a rock, and the way of a man with a maid”? Ellen must be reminded of that, with calm severity, so that she would be “warned.” (Mrs. Eccles had taken the word “maid” literally, and in the modern meaning, and so a servant.) Peremptory though she was, and unbending when it came to duties, she was no Agnes Porter. Still, she remembered what her darling Francis had said of this man. But he was really charming and very courteous, in spite of his rough look and very authoritative voice. He was a very naughty gentleman, indeed, to deceive that miserable housemaid, Ellen, like this, and Mrs. Eccles felt very coy and arch towards him, and very worldly.

Jeremy sat on one side of the very welcome (to him) fire, and Mrs. Porter sat on the other, and they sipped sherry together. Jeremy was quietly studying Mrs. Eccles, even while they engaged in pleasant chitchat on the weather and on mutual acquaintances in Philadelphia and New York. It took Jeremy only five minutes of scrutiny to know all about this short plump woman in her black silk dress with the lace ruffles about her throat and her heavy wrists. He saw that she was very shrewd and knowing and probably considerably brighter than his mother. Her eyes had a merry twinkle which he suspected did not come from her soul but was deliberate and contrived. She had a certain vivacity, also contrived. From the conversation he was having with her he knew that she spoke mostly in cliches, the origin of which she probably did not know in the least. Those who spoke in clichés, he had discovered, were not very intelligent, no matter their education. Original speech testified to an active intellect, and it was manifest in simple phrases and lucid words, and never involved. But Mrs. Eccles could not complete a sentence without a cliche, or a platitude, and she wore an air of erudition while doing so. He might have been amused by her if she had not spoken to Ellen in a bullying tone, and if she had, indeed, treated Ellen “as a daughter.”

He also saw that she believed his remark about marrying Ellen a sheer frivolity, with masculine and sinister undertones.