It was a sweet mild day in April, sweet even in reeking New York with its streets littered with garbage and random filth, which made walking, except for the main avenues, somewhat difficult and dangerous. There were always rowdies about, and the sinister loiterers who followed women alone, with abusive language and obscene gestures. Charles was worried, then not worried. Miss Cummings was a young lady who could cope with almost anything, he decided, with fresh admiration. It would be a doughty wretch who would press her.
Miss Cummings’ wardrobe was small and not fashionable, though the materials were excellent, as Charles had noted before, and were doubtlessly expensive. She is a very mysterious girl, he had often thought, watching her at the table. Today she wore her customary black silk dress, plain in bodice with a white lace collar, handmade and weblike, and fastened with an opal brooch, the skirt slim and only slightly draped in front. Her black shoes were polished and well made, her black kid gloves impeccable. Over this she wore a black cloak of fine broadcloth. Her wide hat was of black felt, with subdued silk roses in a maroon color. It was always her desire to be inconspicuous, and so she was in her clothing, her severely dressed hair, her quiet face. She carried a purse of black leather, old but not shabby or poor.
Yet, on the trolley she had immediately attracted curious glances and speculations as she sat serenely on the rattan seat, alone. Her expression was withdrawn, though not secretive. She looked through the dusty windows at the seething streets, and her thoughts were as composed as her face, but clear and determined. She knew exactly what she intended to say, without any maidenly coyness or hesitations or pretended shyness, or fluttering protests that she knew that she should not be speaking thus, but she was compelled—No “forgive me, please.” A person must do as she must, thought the daughter of a vicar.
The shops were bustling, though the Panic had not been over long. The walks were crowded with hurrying men and women. The spires of churches reached up towards the warm and whitish sky. On each corner were ragged women selling violets, and there were many men trundling hot-roasted-chestnut carts. The trolley clanged and swayed and rattled. Why did everything in America seem so noisy? Miss Cummings reflected. Even the omnibuses roared. It was like a fever; everyone rushed, even those obviously not going anywhere in particular. The trolley banged its bell incessantly, when drays and carriages and automobiles impeded its way, though it moved hardly faster than these. Not English, thought Maude, then laughed at herself for her light snobbery. Her laughter was mainly reserved for her own foibles, for she was innately too kind to laugh much at others. Yet, for the dolt and the unworthy, the lazy and the stupid, the ignorant and the impetuous, she had nothing but a silent contempt which would gleam in her splendid dark eyes.
She found the restaurant without any wanderings and Charles met her at the curb. She thought, and not for the first time, how handsome he was in a compact and masculine fashion, and how genuinely strong and capable was his face. He did not have Mr. Porter’s restive vitality, of course, nor did his eyes flash and appear to crackle, as did Mr. Porter’s. Yet, he had an equal strength and a quiet alertness. She looked at him with pleasure as he took her hand and led her into the restaurant, with its discreet curtained booths. “We can talk easily here, Miss Cummings,” he said, “without interference or curiosity.” She knew at once what all this prudent richness implied, and smiled a little, hearing the subdued voices behind the crimson velvet curtains, voices mainly of women. She saw Charles’ sidelong glance at her, and she was somewhat amused. Did he think her naive?
The headwaiter bowed to them and led them to a booth, and before he drew the curtains together he had given Maude an admiring glance and knew instantly that she was a lady and that this was no rendezvous. The round table had a glittering white cloth upon it and heavy silver and an exquisite epergne, with violets in a polished bowl. Charles, after seating Maude, looked at her again. No, he thought, she does not resemble these violets, for all her appearance. A carnation, perhaps, and he was surprised again. Yes, possibly a carnation, though certainly she did not outwardly resemble that pungent and sensual flower. He had not thought to enjoy this meal with the governess; now he was full of anticipation. “Wine?” he said, and knew instantly that her choice would be perfect. “A Chablis, if you please,” she said. “I do not particularly care for sweet wines.”
He liked her English voice, which did not, however, have that warbling high treble so many Englishwomen affected, which made communication difficult for an American. There was a stateliness about her voice, which indicated breeding. He glanced at her clothing and thought of Shakespeare’s “rich, but not gaudy.” She was composedly removing her gloves. Her hands were superb, he thought, and delicate. The signet ring on her left hand glowed in the soft gaslight.
He consulted her about the menu, and was pleased with her taste. He wondered again why he had not seemed to see her as beautiful before. She did not possess Ellen’s incomparable and dazzling beauty, of course, but she had a distinctive charm born of worldliness and unclouded knowledge. Though younger than Ellen by several years, she yet gave the impression of profound maturity. A fine woman, he thought, a truly fine woman, and her eyes were remarkable, like black sapphires.
Maude noticed his furtive evaluation of her and she felt a stir of gentle elation. This was going to be less awkward than she had feared once or twice. She mused, for a moment, on the pleasure she was beginning to feel. All at once Charles was no stranger to her. There was a warmth of confidence between them. They talked pleasantly during the meal of many idle things, and Charles discovered that she had a wit of her own, not sharp and raucous like Kitty Wilder’s, not cruel, not darting. Nor did it have the insistent personal quality about it, like Kitty’s. Personalities were not for Maude Cummings. She did not crave attention, as Kitty did, nor was she feverishly animated. Charles disliked Kitty Wilder intensely, and knew all about her.
It was not often that Charles found a woman’s company so pleasing as he found Maude’s. She was restful; her gestures were small and few. She had absolute control of herself. As they ate their dessert and drank their coffee, however, the still light on her face began to subside, and her expression was increasingly remote and abstracted.
Now she was raising her eyes with total candor and looking at him directly. She said, “I am considering leaving my position in the house of Mr. Porter.”
“Indeed,” he said, as if they were speaking of the weather. “May I ask why, Miss Cummings?”
Now she hesitated for an instant “There is nothing I can do for Mrs. Porter, sir, though I have tried my best. She is so vulnerable. I am afraid for her. If I could do anything at all I would remain.” She hesitated again. “I know you are a friend as well as an associate of Mr. Porter’s, and that you—that you are most kindly drawn to Mrs. Porter. You are concerned about her as I am concerned.”
Charles sipped his coffee in a short and reflective silence. Then he said, “Have you discussed this with Mr. Porter?”
“No. I fear he already knows—much. About Mrs. Porter. But he does not know, fully, about his children.”
“I see,” said Charles. “But you do.”
“Yes. I know children well, perhaps too well. That is why I never married. I did not wish to have children.”
He looked at her quickly. His gray eyes were very bright, she noticed, and very intent. He slowly moved his hand over his thick light-brown hair, but did not turn his eyes from her, and now she could not read them, though a faint tingle ran over her body.
“Not all children are wicked,” he said.
She sighed and relaxed in her chair. So, she thought, I do not need to tell him anything more. He knows about Christian and Gabrielle. She said, “Quite right. But one never knows, does one? Then it may be too late. I wish”—she paused and looked at her hands—“that Mrs. Porter did not love her children so much. That is very dangerous. Still, I sometimes feel she is afraid of them. Instinct, perhaps.”
He thought about this
, and frowned, again rubbing his hair. At last he said, “You must not leave that house, Miss Cummings. I think it needs you.”
She knew he meant Ellen, and all at once she was namelessly despondent. “I will consider it,” she said. “Cuthbert and Annie want me to stay, also.”
“Yes. Well, they are both very intelligent, Miss Cummings.” He drank a sip of wine. “There are people in this world, Miss Cummings, who need protection against themselves, trusting and artless people.”
Again, she knew he meant Ellen, and she caught the corner of her mouth in her small white teeth. She glanced at her watch, which was pinned on her bodice. “I will be missed,” she said. “Thank you for your understanding, sir.”
“I will drive you home, Miss Cummings. It looks like rain now.”
“Thank you, but you must let me off a street away. It would look very odd otherwise.” She thought for a moment, then said with unusual passion, “There is Mrs. Porter’s maid, Clarisse. I know it is none of my affair, but she calls Mrs. Wilder frequently, speaking in French, concerning Mrs. Porter.”
Charles became freshly alert. Miss Cummings lowered her voice. ‘The maid speaks very—disrespectfully—of Mrs Porter. I have considered telling Mr. Porter, though that might be impertinence.”
“I don’t think so Would you rather I told him, without quoting you?”
“Oh. If you would.”
They looked at each other, thinking of Kitty. Miss Cummings said, “I fear Mrs. Wilder has a bad influence on the children. She seems very fond of them, I must admit, and I am afraid they prefer her to their mother. She is very quick and clever, Mrs. Wilder. The children seem more like her own.”
“I have observed that myself,” said Charles. “Strange, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” said Maude. “People who are alike in personality are drawn to each other.”
They stood up, while Maude drew on her gloves. Again their eyes met in awareness. “You will not leave, then?” said Charles.
When she did not answer he went on: “More than one person would miss you, Miss Cummings.”
Her pale cheeks flushed, and he touched her elbow gently and led her through the curtains, and then outside, to where his Cadillac waited. The sky had darkened, the street had grown dim, but it seemed to Maude that everything was flooded with exhilarating light and when she smiled at Charles now her whole quiet face was illuminated. “I will stay, sir,” she said.
“Good.”
The next day, with his card, he sent her a box of hothouse carnations, and she slept that night with the flowers beside her on a table, and the card under her pillow.
Two days later, over the protests of Ellen, and without explanation, Jeremy abruptly dismissed Clarisse. Kitty was dismayed when the tearful Clarisse came to her, saying, “Madam, it is that foolish woman, Mrs. Porter. She must have overheard me, though I was always discreet.” Kitty sympathized, but as Clarisse was no longer of use to her she gave her a five-dollar gold piece and patted her arm and dismissed her.
A little sly probing on Kitty’s part brought the news to her, with relief, that Ellen did not know why Clarisse had been discharged by Jeremy. Moreover, Jeremy looked at Kitty with blankness when she mentioned Clarisse’s absence to him. “Oh,” he said, “I never did like the woman, and she antagonized the rest of the staff. One must have harmony in the house, isn’t that so?”
“You are quite right,” said Kitty, and missed the hard gleam in his eyes. “I never liked her myself. I advised Ellen long ago to discharge her, but you know Ellen.”
“I do, indeed,” he replied, and she was pleased. So he knew Ellen for a fool himself!
Ellen did not know why she felt so depressed and melancholy at the beginning of summer when the family moved to its house on Long Island. It was true that Jeremy was more and more engaged in “business,” and that their circle of friends seemed to become smaller in consequence. (Ellen did not know that this was because many of them had become wary of what they called his “extreme notions,” with which they disagreed, though this did not prevent them from engaging his potent services when needed and his apparent power in Washington despite the fact that he was no longer a Congressman.) Jeremy traveled more and more, and Ellen concluded this was “business” also, and even the speeches he gave all over the country and the articles he wrote in various journals, including law journals, she considered were part of the mysterious world of men. That Jeremy was frequently discussed in the White House was unknown to her.
Even when he was home Jeremy spent several nights a week away from his family, either with Kitty, from whom he was gradually disentangling himself, or with little Mrs. Bedford, who was scandalously divorced, though not socially avoided for that reason, as she was enormously rich in her own right and of an impeccable family. Emma Bedford was much of what Kitty was, but in addition she was kind and affable and had a broad and charitable view of humanity which was not stained with sentimentality. (“What the hell, Jerry,” she would say in her light and merry voice, “we can’t help being human, can we, though some of us are more human than others, such as bitches and bastards. Who was it said that life is a tragedy to the man who feels, a comedy to the man who thinks? Yes. I think it is a great comedy, in the dramatic sense, and so long as one does not take it too seriously one is not in too much danger from his fellow man. Yes?”)
Unlike other men, Jeremy carefully concealed all signs of his infidelity from Ellen, for he loved her too much and was too solicitous of her, and his tenderness grew steadily. As for Ellen, had she known, it might have literally killed her, for her knowledge of humanity was still more instinctive than objective, and therefore not to be defined, and infidelity to her would have meant that Jeremy no longer loved her and had rejected her for some deadly fault of her own. She had not the slightest idea about the nature of the male sex and its irresistible bent for polygamy and desire for variety in women. When Kitty had once said to her, “It is totally unrealistic for a woman to expect her husband to be faithful to her,” Ellen was aghast. She had replied, “Kitty, you are exaggerating and being naughty, as usual. I would no more suspect Jeremy of being unfaithful to me than suspecting that of myself. It is an insult to Jeremy, and to all good husbands.”
Ellen never listened to gossip, or, if she could not avoid hearing it, she honestly believed that the stories were intended only to amuse, or that they were false and malicious. The very thought that a woman could be attracted to a man not her husband was not only repugnant to her but beyond belief. She was not unaware of the world about her, of the Lillian Russells and the Diamond Jim Bradys, but these existed in an incredible theatrical world and even so she was half convinced that this, also, was “exaggeration.” She read novels both in English and in French, but after all, they were “only novels,” and romances. That there were many Madame Bovarys about her she did not know, and as for Don Juans, such did not exist in Christian America. In this area Jeremy conspired with her innocence to keep corrosive knowledge from her, for her innocence, however irritating it might be to him at times, would have made her less endearing to him and his love for her might have been destroyed had she lost it.
“Ellen’s a true believer in the sanctity of the hearth and the purity of the marriage bed,” Kitty had once laughed to Jeremy. “Really, my love, she is like a child still, and,” Kitty added nastily, seeing Jeremy’s dark expression, “I think that is lovely, in a way.” When he did not answer she went on, somewhat recklessly, “Why is it, my love, that men consider chastity in women the one complete virtue, especially in their wives, when chastity is mostly lack of temptation or opportunity? Or fear of pregnancy?”
Jeremy had laughed, in spite of himself. “I suppose it all goes back to the rights of inheritance. Men want to be sure that their sons, who will inherit their property, will really be their sons, and not woods colts. And women are men’s property, too, which they don’t want to share with another man. Too messy.”
Kitty did not consider this paradoxical,
though Ellen would have thought it bewilderingly so, and incredible. The love between a man and his wife was impregnable, in her conviction. Though she was far wiser than her contemporaries in many fields of knowledge, and more intelligent, Ellen’s knowledge of the true nature of humanity and its motivations remained fragmentary and disturbing. When she had a sudden insight it devastated her and she quickly turned her thoughts to something else.
Ellen hardly gave it words, but Jeremy’s long and frequent absences, and his late homecomings, left her lonely and bereft. She was a patron of the Metropolitan Opera Company and the Metropolitan Museum and various art galleries, and had begun to collect art for her houses. She had learned to paint, originally and delicately. Her days were taken up in lunches with ladies like herself, and she spent hours at her piano, playing and singing softly to herself. Her house was meticulously managed. Her children absorbed all her thoughts when she was at home. But there were long weeks, and long nights, when Jeremy was not at home, and she would feel the old sickening ache and longing for him which she had hopelessly felt from the time she was thirteen until she had married him. The weekends were the worst of all, for even the most marauding husbands considered it their duty to spend those days with their families. Ellen was too frequently alone, then, with no company, except for Sunday-afternoon calls for tea, which were brief, and so she was thrown more and more into the company of her mocking children, whom she would never be able to understand.
That Ellen could have easily taken a lover by a mere glance of her eye did not occur to her, though her beauty increased with time and many were the long and thoughtful looks which gentlemen gave her, and many were the tentative overtures, which she never recognized. Kitty recognized all this, however, and she raged inwardly with jealousy and hatred. What could men see in this blowsy creature, this overripe pear, this mindless fool? Kitty had detested Ellen for her youth and captivating charm from the beginning, but as Kitty was now middle-aged her resentment and derision sometimes tormented her for hours, and made her fantasize on disfigurements and calamities descending on Ellen, or even death. But the only revenge which seemed close at hand and realizable were Ellen’s children. She knew all about them; at times she felt a curious affection for them. Therefore, she cultivated them; too, they were Jeremy’s children. Never overt, Kitty was able, by smiles in her eyes and certain cockings of her head and certain writhings of her painted mouth, and certain intonations of her voice, to influence Christian and Gabrielle in their contempt for their mother. It did not need much effort. The contempt was already there, almost from birth. By this summer of 1912 both the boy and the girl had lost whatever affection they had ever had for Ellen, and they thought her incurably ridiculous and so a legitimate target for their mockeries, disobedience, tauntings, and disregard.