Ceremony of the Innocent

  Good God, thought Jeremy. Francis and his kind can talk without stopping, in Congress and the Senate and in other political situations and in their colleges and in the newspapers. They must have auxiliary bladders. They can never shut up.

  “Ah, if women could only vote!” exclaimed Jeremy’s mother in her letter. “Francis endorses votes for women.” “Francis believes that a wonderful Change would come over America if we could vote. There would be no more wars or national upheavals, no more unemployment or misery, and the Children would be cared for sedulously and women would be Elevated in society, and future eras would be tranquil and everyone joyous. This, with the thoughts of noble men like Francis, and their new laws, would indeed usher in a new Golden Age.”

  Jeremy sighed wearily and shut his eyes for a moment in his library on this cold winter day.

  “Francis does so hope Mr. Roosevelt will be elected this year and Mr. Taft ousted. Mr. Taft, as you know, has shown much ingratitude to Mr. Roosevelt, who was really responsible for Mr. Taft being President. (You see, Jeremy, I do Read, and am not a stupid Woman, as you always think women are.) I do not blame Mr. Roosevelt for refusing to visit Mr. Taft in the White House—really such ingratitude on the part of Mr. Taft, and, as Mr. Roosevelt has said, he is guilty of ‘the grossest and most astounding hypocrisy,’ and disloyalty.”

  “Francis thinks we need a Fighting Man for President, and so he will support Mr. Roosevelt. Wasn’t it wonderful what Mr. Roosevelt said recently? ‘I stand for the Square Deal for the People of our Country. My hat is in the ring. The fight is on and I am stripped to the buff.’ (A rather Indelicate Phrase, I thought, but he is such a virile man and one knows how Gentlemen talk when overwrought.)”

  “Francis says we must really wait to see who the Democrats nominate. He talks vividly of a Professor Wilson—Richard? William? Woodrow? One never knows these names, though it is not important. Mr. Wilson, Francis says, is a man of Compassion, too, and talks of a new world of peace and justice and prosperity.”

  Jeremy thought of what Thoreau had written: “For what avail the plow and sail, the land and life, if freedom fail?” Jeremy thought of his children who would live in the future. He shrugged. Paraphrasing Christ, he said to himself, “Sufficient unto the day the generation thereof.”

  “If only you had been more discreet, dear Jerry, and so had been returned to Congress! How Proud we should have been! But no, you antagonized your constituency, in your blunt and ruthless way, and made enemies. You were always a somewhat difficult child; your teachers did not love you. You were always in an argument, against something you called, when you were only ten years old, ‘sweetness and light.’ I hate to give Francis praise, but he is more attuned to people than ever you were, my dear.”

  That’s the best compliment you ever gave me, dear Mama, thought Jeremy.

  “I do wish, my dear son, that you would now refrain from writing articles for the magazines and newspapers which Francis calls ‘reactionary.’ This will only make you more enemies. I do read these articles, and your father and I are often distressed by them. You simply seem to lack Charity and Hope, and your words are bitter and offensive. After all, we don’t live in the Age of McKinley any longer. We are Advancing.”

  Yes, we certainly are, thought Jeremy.

  “Enough of politics,” wrote his mother. “We were so hurt that you and Ellen and your dear Babies did not come to Preston for the Holidays. Could it be that Ellen does not love us enough, and Influenced you? I do hope not. No woman should Influence her husband against his devoted Parents, and break their hearts. I have suspected for some time that Ellen is not in Accord with your mother and father, though we have been most kind to her and accepted her into the family. Could you not have come alone with your adorable Children, if Ellen wished to decline? Francis was here, with his father, and Mrs. Eccles. Mrs. Eccles is a most lovely Person and speaks nothing but good about Ellen, and how devoted she is to Ellen’s aunt, in Wheatfield. Such Charity!”

  Thirty dollars a week, and nurses, thought Jeremy. Charity comes high these days.

  “Mrs. Eccles, whom you do not like, I have observed, always defends Ellen.”

  He stood up and carefully drew aside the heavy draperies at the library window. I am seeing shadows, thought Jeremy. That “skulker” across the street is only a man waiting for his assignation. He returned to his mother’s letter.

  “Our only son, our only child! And he would not come Home for Christmas and New Year’s! Who has turned you from your Loving Parents? Who has made you Indifferent to them?”

  Jeremy remembered that Ellen had implored him to visit his parents at some time during the holidays. He had brusquely refused. He had learned that Francis was to be there, and his stomach, a little uncertain these days, had caused him to decline. Francis and Mrs. Eccles were too much for his constitution Besides, he had been engaged in articles for The New York Times and various magazines, not to mention some acute court cases.

  His parents had sent very expensive gifts to his children, and to himself. To Ellen, they had sent four linen handkerchiefs, for which she had been pathetically grateful. Jeremy clenched his teeth. When would Ellen stop being grateful for the slightest kindness or consideration, as if she were unworthy even of notice? Jeremy looked at the telephone. Then he reached for it and called Kitty Wilder.

  He needed a good dose of sound cynicism tonight, something to take the sweet smell from his nostrils. Ellen had put greenhouse roses in the library. He lifted the vase and dropped it in the hall. Roses in their season were excellent. When not in season they were cloying. Jeremy was beginning to find the whole world cloying, though he knew that disaster was imminent.

  He reached for the bell rope and when Cuthbert came in he said, “Please inform Mrs. Porter I will not be here for dinner tonight. I have a business arrangement I must attend. Unfortunate.”

  Yes, thought Cuthbert. Unfortunate. He said, “Yes, sir. I will inform the Madam—after you have left.” They exchanged glances, and Jeremy turned away. Cuthbert removed the roses from the hall.

  As Ellen had no frame of reference concerning the rearing of upper-class children, she sedulously read every new book pertaining to this subject. Jeremy thought this hilarious. He said, “There’s nothing to beat your precious Bible’s injunctions about sparing the rod and spoiling the child. And isn’t there something also in the Bible about a father who ‘chastens’ his children if he loves them and pampers them if he hates them? Yes. Even better, the old saying ‘A dog and a kid and a walnut tree—the more you beat ‘em, the better they be.’ I don’t agree with that concerning a dog and a tree, but a kid is different.”

  “Oh, Jeremy,” Ellen replied, smiling. “You don’t mean that. Our children adore you.”

  “That’s because I thrash them thoroughly when necessary, and so does Annie. They adore her, too.”

  This tactless remark dimmed Ellen’s bright face. Seeing this, Jeremy said quickly, “They treat you, love, as just one of themselves.”

  “Yes,” she said with an eagerness that made him both impatient and tender towards her. “They do, don’t they? You should read what Horace Mann said about that. You must be friends with your children, teach them to confide in you and love them without any restraint or mental reservations, give them all your attention, treat them seriously, play with them, reason with them rather than punish them, give them choices in conduct, respect them—”

  “I’ve read Horace Mann, too,” said Jeremy. “He’s a blithering ass, as our English cousins would say. If ever his theories take real root in America we are going to raise generations of selfish, greedy, self-adoring, whining, demanding, wild brats. Remember, love, what Solomon said about children, ‘Man is wicked from his birth and evil from his youth…The heart of a child is deceitful.’ There is nothing in your Bible which demands that parents honor their children, remember.”

  Ellen said in a very mild and smiling protest, “Horace Mann says children are born pure and blameless, and how
they develop is due only to their parents.”

  “There are times,” said Jeremy, “when I really do believe in Original Sin. Children reek of it, from the day they are born.” He became thoughtful and studied Ellen. He was understanding more and more about her as time went on, and he knew that she was attempting to alleviate the suppressed memories of her own childhood; in giving to her children she was not only giving because they were his, and so entitled to adoration, God help her, she was also giving to the little hated and derided child she herself had been. Her old pain was assuaged and soothed in the tending of Christian and Gabrielle. He knew that she delighted in the belief that never would they be stoned on the streets, never despised, never cold or hungry, never treated with contempt and jeering laughter. So now he only bent and kissed her and said with a dark gravity, “Don’t be overzealous, dear. Remember, our children are venal human beings who need constant correction and stern guidance, and must be taught respect for authority.”

  “Oh, they understand that, Jeremy. They are very intelligent.”

  Jeremy had personally selected his children’s governess, a Miss Maude Cummings, who had no illusions about children, and who treated Ellen with kind attentiveness and a gentle wonder and perhaps a considerable compassion. She was a thin little woman of about twenty-two, and highly educated, and English and a daughter of the proverbial vicar; she was a born spinster, and Jeremy often thought of the Bronte sisters when he saw her. She had an oval reflective face, smooth and pale and with delicate features, and straight black hair parted severely in the center and drawn back, in an old-fashioned way, into a round knot on her nape. She dressed severely in black silk, summer and winter, and she might have seemed an anachronism had she not had large and flashing black eyes that were never sentimental but were acutely humorous and steadfast. Had Miss Cummings ever had “carnal knowledge” of a man? Jeremy doubted it, in spite of her sparkling gaze at him and the faintest subtle smile on her colorless lips. There was something of a Mona Lisa about her, when she was silent, and she was usually silent at the dinner table. She wore a signet ring on her little left hand, which she never explained, though it was very unusual. Her voice was quiet, yet filled with authority. Jeremy’s children did not like her and often complained of her to Ellen, but they held her in a respect which even Jeremy found remarkable. She would listen to Ellen’s expoundings on the vaporings of Horace Mann with kindness and good manners, and would say, “There are so many new theories these days, aren’t there, Mrs. Porter? One has to be judicious about accepting them, and putting them to test.”

  Ellen found Miss Cummings to be a little disconcerting, for the governess made her feel somewhat jejune though that was not Miss Cummings’ intention. Kitty said of her, to Ellen, “That young woman is quite snobbish, isn’t she, and superior—at least in her own mind. Probably poor as the mythical church mouse. The English are very haughty; I never did like them. They are always forgetting that we overthrew them in America.”

  Kitty disliked the governess with her usual malice and suspicion. Miss Cummings was the very essence of politeness, but her enigmatic repose seemed to reject Kitty’s constant vivacity, loud laughter, thrusts of cruel wit, and restless movements, as if Kitty were a parvenu. Then, there was too much awareness in those undeluded eyes, too much scrutiny, too much thoughtfulness. “Secretive,” Kitty would say to Ellen. “And sly, too. I know her sort.”

  As Ellen did not find Miss Cummings congenial for all her elegant consideration and manners and kindness, she did not immediately come to the governess’s defense. Then she said, “Oh, I just don’t know. The children don’t like her, either, Kitty. Well, let’s be charitable. She’s really excellent, as a tutor. And wouldn’t she be pretty if she were a little more stylish?”

  “Nothing could help her appearance,” said Kitty. She thought of the way Miss Cummings watched her when Jeremy was present, and the way her long dark lashes would quiver with the calm intensity of her regard. I wonder, thought Kitty, if she’s ever hinted anything to that stupid Ellen? One night when she and Jeremy were alone, she said, “I just can’t endure that governess, Jerry. She’s crafty and seems to see—everything. Your children dislike her, too. It isn’t fair to impose such a woman on such young little creatures, who are so sensitive.”

  “Sensitive, hell,” replied Jeremy. “Children are as sensitive as calluses, and Cummings knows that, too. A fine understanding woman, and I’m lucky to have found her. She has private means, too, as the English say. She teaches because she likes to teach, though God knows why anyone would pick such a profession. There are no rose spectacles on Cummings; she knows all about kids and I have the feeling she doesn’t particularly love them, either, which shows she is a woman of profound sense. Now, Kitty, you don’t like children either, so don’t make such a sad mouth to me as if you are consumed with maternal passion all at once.”

  Kitty laughed. They were enjoying one of her delightful dinners in her house, as Jeremy had sent Jochan to Philadelphia to consult a client. She said, “Well, I fear she suspects something between you and me, and might confide that to Ellen.”

  “If she does suspect she’ll keep it to herself. British reticence, you know.” He considered, then winked. “Do you actually think she knows I tumble you in bed?”

  “Don’t be coarse, Jerry. I really love you, you know, and I’m available only to you.” She spoke with the deepest honesty she had ever known, and for the first time Jeremy heard it and was uncomfortable. Perhaps, he thought, I should be seeing Kitty less and less, until it is all over. Besides, there’s that little Mrs. Bedford, who’s a toothsome mite and intelligent, too, and entertaining, and very knowing, like Kitty, but in a less sharp way, and as young as Ellen. Those hard lines between Kitty’s eyes are getting heavier all the time. Come to think of it, what did I really see in her?

  The astute Kitty saw something on his face which frightened and chilled her. She said quickly, “Let us discuss something more pleasant than your Cummings, who seems to have an eye for you, too.” Kitty knew very well that no woman who loved a man—if he was not her husband—should annoy or dispute him Nor bore him. The beasts were undependable, and had a way of skittering off immediately if any demands were put upon them, or given hints they did not appreciate. What they would endure in a wife they would not endure for an instant in a mistress. They could not easily, and forever, dispose of a wife, but mistresses were expendable. Too, wives, however detestable, were their property, and men guarded their property. Women, thought Kitty with a new compassion strange to her nature, do not have the best of lives in this world, particularly if they do not have a legal hold on a man Kitty had never liked her sex; men to her were indispensable, and Jeremy particularly so. Her fear grew, and she drew on her best witticisms to amuse Jeremy tonight, and was angry with herself that she had even momentarily annoyed him.

  Ellen read to her children every night. She had been advised to in the new grave books about the rearing of children. No matter the attentions of devoted servants, nursemaids, or governesses, the books urged, children needed the tender ministrations of their mother at bedtime, and “an improving and lovely story from some selected book.” When Ellen had told this to Jeremy he said, “Read to them from The Three Musketeers. Children love blood and thunder and murder and sin. Yes, dear, they really do. You are only twenty-seven, and not too old to remember what children are like.”

  “Twenty-six,” said Ellen. “I won’t be twenty-seven until January. I know you are not serious about The Three Musketeers. I am just starting on Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”

  “They’re grim, all right,” said Jeremy. “That is, if they haven’t been bowdlerized by now by the new child-lovers, who spare kids the gory facts of life. Why should they be spared? Besides, they are born fully equipped with those facts. Then they are taught hypocrisy, and pretense that life is really a beautiful dream, and all men are brothers. Kids know that’s a lot of damned nonsense, and it does something harmful to them later if they are tau
ght lies. Politicians are prime examples.”

  Ellen did not know that she was a source of intense amusement to her children, who mocked her behind her back to each other, and often to her face. They would listen to her in the nursery at night when she read to them and would exchange less than affectionate winks at Ellen’s expense. Christian was a great handsome lad now, and Gabrielle more Latin in appearance, and lively. They were both unusually intelligent, and both were without kindliness or illusions. To Miss Cummings they were even “worse” than her last American charges, though she could control them with ease. Like Cuthbert and Annie, she feared for their mother.

  Ellen had selected one of the brothers Grimm’s less “gory” stories to read to her children this wild March night, with the snow hissing at the windows and the wind screaming in the chimneys. The nursery fire was warm and red and chuckled to itself, safe from the storm. Then, remembering what Jeremy had said, she took up another book, by Hans Christian Andersen. “The Little Mermaid” would do splendidly. She read it with deep feeling and understanding, and there were tears in her eyes when she concluded the touching story. She looked at her children, Christian in his nightshirt and blue wool robe, and Gabrielle in her silk and lacy nightgown and red robe.

  “I always loved that story,” she said. “It always made me cry.”

  “Why?” asked Christian. “I think it’s silly.”

  “In what way?” said Ellen, dismayed.

  It was Gabrielle, the pert pixie, who answered her. “The prince was too stupid to fall in love with the mermaid, and she was stupid to love a man who was more stupid. Why did she decide to give up the long life she’d have had if she’d not had her tail cut into legs and feet? She should have found a merman to love, if she wanted love that bad, and lived a long, long time. But now, with feet and legs, and all that pain when she walked and danced, she had nothing.”