She did not connect her fear of him with the books and literature with which he strewed the house. Jeremy had hated these things, but she did not relate his hatred to her fear. She thought Francis obsessed with his “causes,” and helped him, but she saw no reason to be frightened for herself or her children. Besides, were not the newspapers always avidly attacking the ideas which Francis proclaimed? The editorials were full of derision and warnings. A few times she had called Francis’ attention to them, and had shrank from the sudden silent rage on his face.
Francis seemed to her the least dangerous of men, yet she recoiled from him and her body and her mind pushed at him to go away from her forever. Old acquaintances did not visit her very often, nor did she visit them. There was something in the atmosphere which she could not name, but it affrighted her. Never in her life had she felt a deep alliance with the world except when Jeremy had been alive. Even then she had entered that world only because it contained him and it was not alien to him as it was to her, for earlier memory could not be obliterated. Still, memory could be dimmed when she had been with Jeremy, and she had enjoyed living, for she loved.
Her children made her feel dull and old and irrelevant. But, she would tell herself, were they not right? She rejoiced in their brilliance, their accomplishments, their popularity, their success as human beings. She would listen, rapt and humble, to their lively voices. When they visited her it was like a gift, for which she could not be grateful enough. That they wished for her death, so they could inherit, never entered her mind, for she was a mother. It was not possible for her to imagine any occasion when they would be her enemies, and injure her, or plot against her. Once Charles, desperate with anxiety for her, had said, “Ellen, you do not know your children. No parents do, and you least of all. Just be careful, please.” She had shown her first arousal in years and had screamed at him, then had gone into hysterics. It was only when her children were in the house that she lost her fear of Francis, and could speak. In Christian’s voice she heard Jeremy. In Gabrielle’s dark appearance, she saw her husband.
Jeremy’s portrait had been removed from the library. It hung on a wall in her bedroom. She would talk to it, in a drunken haze, and would smile and nod with a momentary warmth and a deep bliss.
There was but one person other than her children to whom she clung and that person was Kitty Wilder. She could talk to Kitty, and stammeringly speak of her vague but ever-present fears, and of her children and her pride in them. Kitty invariably listened with a great display of sympathy and affection, while inwardly she sneered and laughed at this fool, this ugly fool who had lost any of the looks she had once possessed. Lately, she had become more intent on Ellen’s “ramblings,” which she reported to Francis and Gabrielle. She would say to Francis, with false tears in her eyes, “I am afraid for Ellen. She doesn’t seem—quite right. She was never one to make herself clear, but now she is positively incoherent. Yes, I am afraid for her. I think she needs—care.”
“Good God,” he would exclaim. “It’s been fifteen, sixteen years since Jeremy’s death I Yet you tell me she still talks of him incessantly. Why?”
Kitty would gloat over his obvious distress and sadness. She hated him, but now she hated Ellen more. It was she who had informed Francis, sorrowfully, that Ellen “was drinking heavily. Didn’t you know, my dear?” Sometimes she would add, “You were never her husband, really.”
“I know,” he would say, and would look vulnerable and wretched and pathetic, and Kitty would rejoice. His open suffering delighted her. He had rejected her for that blowsy kitchen maid, and his misery was his own, the pleasure hers. She waited for her ultimate revenge.
Of none of these conversations was Ellen aware, nor did she even suspect them. She moved to her dressing table this cold and blustery winter day and stared at herself in the mirror. Her beautiful hair was rough and dimmed and hung in clots over her shoulders and down her back. Her face was bloated and the color of old lard, the fineness of bone and contour blurred, the chin dissolved in a roll of flesh. Her eyes no longer radiated blue fire; the whites were reddened, the lids swollen. Her enlarged body had lost its graceful lines, and sagged unevenly. Her lips, once the color of a blooming apricot, were dry and colorless. Her crimson dressing gown was wrinkled and none too clean and had a tear on the shoulder.
She pushed back her hair and looked at herself dully. Her flesh ached, her bones ached and felt as heavy as stone. But she no longer cared, for Jeremy was not there to admire her and praise her and touch her with a gentle and passionate hand. How long had he been dead? Many years—but it was now as if only yesterday, only today. She leaned her cheek on her hand; she could smell her own rancid sweat. Nearby, on a table, the breakfast which had been indifferently left for her hours ago was cold, the eggs congealed, the pot of coffee chilled. She was as apathetic to food as she was to life. There was only a vague booming and echoing in the house and no other sound, except for the wind at the window, and it was the faintest and most mournful of cries. The temperature of the room was frigid, for no one had lit the fire for her and the furnace heat was now erratic and did not reach her apartment when it was needed. But she was insensible to the cold. She could only sit and wind a strand of her extinguished hair about her fingers.
She waited for the night when all was asleep and she could creep down to the library and read some of the books there, huddled together like a cowering animal. Then her thoughts were alive, teeming, despairing, deathly. In the most dreadful days of her youth she had not had to endure this hell which was in her soul and mind. She no longer prayed. Sometimes she would pass her piano and touch the keys so lightly that they made no tinkling, no answer. There were times when her feeble instinct for self-preservation awakened, and she would take a bath in tepid water, comb her hair, and dress and even speak to the servants, or take a slow walk down the street. But the desolation in her heart never lifted. She was in a world of strangers, a shadow among shadows.
It was necessary to one such as Ellen to love and trust. It was only when her children visited her, with more and more infrequency, that a light illuminated her darkness, and she could love and trust again. She never knew how she was betrayed, as all those who love and trust and are innocent are betrayed. She never suspected how evil the world of men was, and how frightful. This, and her children, saved her life.
However, she had begun to secrete the sleeping tablets her doctor had given her so that she could sleep. She was not fully aware of why she did this. She only knew that the cache was a comfort, a promise.
She stood up, heavy with exhaustion, and found her hidden bottle of harsh bootleg whiskey and drank deeply of it without a glass or water. It began to warm her. Perhaps her children, or at least one of them, would visit her tonight. The house, and herself, would awaken, and she could believe in life again and have some hope, and deceive herself that she was loved.
President Wilson had said, when he had worked so hard for the League of Nations: “I think of what Tennyson had written: ‘The Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.’ This League is conceived in love, in trust in the innate goodness of mankind, in the generosity and desire for peace in the human spirit. War is a madness, alien to the nature of men, an evil which makes men recoil. America must lead the way to the brotherhood of mankind, with love and trust. The League will accomplish all this. My prayer is that this will be ratified, for it is the dream of my life.”
He had been as innocent as Ellen Porter, and like this woman he had never known he had dreamed a fantasy. For neither of them ever knew the boundless abysses of darkness in the human soul, the meanness and avarice, the treachery, the cruelty, the animal passion, the hatred and the lust. All these made the “dream of my life” incredible, and never to be realized.
C H A P T E R 36
DR. LUBISH HAD LISTENED FOR long over an hour to Gabrielle’s tearful pleas that he “help” her “poor mother.” He had listened to Christian’s deep voice speaking with solemnity and grave emphasis
. He had listened to Francis. He was a very intelligent man, and it had not taken him long to realize that Francis was the only one present who loved the unfortunate woman. Her children were as lethal as serpents and as guileful, and wanted only their mother’s money, and to have her removed from their lives. The silvery irises of his eyes flickered on the young people as he listened in silence.
He had no doubt that Ellen was not truly mentally ill; he also, being a cynical man, had no conviction that he could rescue her, nor had he the desire to do this. If she had withdrawn, then she had had reason to withdraw. He had asked a few astute questions and was convinced that though Ellen was probably somewhat neurotic—as who wasn’t?—she was not psychotic. She was only a suffering woman. If she still mourned her dead husband, so did multitudes of other women. He had guessed, accurately, from what he had been told of Ellen’s childhood and girlhood, that the memories could not be erased, or resolved. Memory itself could be a terror, a haunter of the future, a pouncer on even the happiest moments. Women with more joyful memories, memories of loving parents and comfort and pleasant childhoods, and laughter and play, could cope with the direst calamities later in life. But women like Ellen could not, for they had been robbed of fortitude in their infancy.
Ellen, for a few years, had been sheltered by a strong and pragmatic man who had protected her from knowing the things which could kill her. She had lost that arm and that strength, and confronted now with reality she could not endure it, though it was evident that she did not know as yet that she was being confronted and only subconsciously recognized the fact. She could not accept her husband’s death, for his life had been the only thing she had ever possessed.
No therapy could, like Hamlet attempting to exorcise the ghost of his murdered father, erase the memory of evil, or soothe the wounds of innocence. Yet the doctor felt no pity. The race was still to the swift, the battle to the strong, despite the pleas of the simple-minded. Life had no compassion for the innocent, the trusting, the kind, the generous, the tenderhearted, the self-sacrificing, the gentle, the loyal, the loving, the pure of heart. Why should it have? the doctor asked himself. These were the weak, the justifiably exploited, the eternal fools, and nature inevitably destroyed them through the offices of their fellow men. They were betrayed by their very virtues—if they were virtues, indeed, instead of lack of intelligence and acquaintance with reality, and absence of the instinct of self-preservation.
He saw before him now two exigent and pitiless young people, and a man who was as innocent, and foolish, as the woman he loved. The first would relegate their mother to a life-in-death, forgotten, obliterated from memory; they would deprive her of a significant existence, even if that existence was unbearable. They would reduce her to mere animalism in a comfortable prison—for her money, and to be rid of her inconvenient presence. (Why don’t they simply strangle or poison her? the doctor reflected, and a faint smile lifted his heavy mouth. It would be more merciful, if illegal.) Francis was another matter. He sincerely, even passionately, wanted his wife “cured,” to be made into another person entirely. He did not realize that this was impossible, nor did he realize that his very proximity in her house was making his wife’s illness more emphatic.
The doctor himself was an extremely exigent man and he frankly acknowledged this with some complacence. He saw before him the probability of a rich patient, with a rich husband, and children who would be willing for Ellen Porter to be incarcerated for life, if it would “help” her. He understood that if Francis was given the guardianship of his wife he could easily be manipulated, not only by the son and daughter of Ellen but by himself. The patient was still comparatively young—forty-two—and with care and attention could live for years, physically if not mentally. Such an incarceration would destroy her for all time—but she would live on, profitably. In a way, it was good; through drugs she would be relieved of her misery and pain and live out her life as an imbecile, a happy if mindless existence. That was not too bad. Infancy had its consolations.
He said, “There are, of course, the attorneys of Mrs. Porter. Would they accede to any—suggestions—or would they reject them? Would they fight you in court, Congressman?”
Francis pondered. “Perhaps. But then you would have to persuade them that this was best for Ellen.”
Christian said, “They wouldn’t agree. I know them. After all, they are paid for administering my father’s estate, and they wouldn’t like that threatened.”
Francis turned to him. “As a lawyer, I know we couldn’t do anything about your father’s estate, Christian, but only your mother’s income for life, which is considerable. On her death, the whole estate, hers and your father’s, would revert to you and Gabrielle. Of course, if she were declared incompetent, we would have control of her present income, and could, conceivably, dip into capital. Conceivably. For expenses, and such. I’ve told you this before.” He cleared his throat. “Naturally, as her husband, I would have a right, on her death, to a legal share in her estate. But we should not be talking of her demise. We should be discussing what is best for her now.”
Gabrielle and Christian concealed their huge mockery and contempt for him. “I am sure,” he added, “that her expenses in Dr. Lubish’s sanitarium wouldn’t devour the whole of her income.”
He did not know that Ellen’s children ardently wished for her death, so he could not understand the intent gazes fixed on him. He went on, “Ellen herself, on the advice of her attorneys, has some very good investments of her own, and the value of them is increasing in the Stock Market. It has been only lately that she has not had enough money left for investments. She would never dip into what she has herself, for she has always been very fearful of poverty, which is natural, considering her early life. In the event of her confinement, those investments, by the order of the court, would be left to our own judiciousness.”
Hie young people smiled like angels upon him, and the doctor was amused, as he was always amused at human nature. He was never horrified or revolted.
He said, “I think it best if I saw Mrs. Porter, and after some conversations come to a definite conclusion as to the state of her mind. Then, after that, I’d like to consult with her attorneys, and give them my opinion. You have spoken of Mrs. Wilder, Congressman. Would she be willing, as an old and valued and concerned friend, to testify in court as to Mrs. Porter’s condition?”
“Yes,” said Francis. “I’ve discussed all this with her. She agrees that my wife needs institutionalizing at once.”
“It is possible,” said the doctor, “that her attorneys will agree, too. They are reasonable men. I am sure they will want to do the best for their client.” When the three had left he mused to himself: “Thank God I have no children.” It was the nearest he came to compassion for Ellen.
Gabrielle had a quiet consultation with her brother, and then the two went to Ellen, dolefully. Gabrielle had thought Francis’ plan childish and ineffective: to bring Dr. Lubish into her mother’s house, ostensibly as a “friend.” Ellen would not see him under these false pretenses.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Akins, looked at the brother and sister with false regret when she admitted them to Ellen’s chill and dingy house. “Madam,” she said, significantly, and with a sigh, “isn’t very well. I know it is three o’clock—but she is still asleep.” Mrs. Akins was a tall and very thin woman, lanky of figure, sallow of face, long of feature, and with a nose that was perpetually damp. She had eyes the color of clams, and a thin tight mouth. Her lumpish brown hair was short and coarse. She was very religious. She hated Ellen, as did the other three servants, for Ellen, though vague and increasingly lost and dim of mood, had treated them all with the most timid but generous kindness, and never seemed aware of derelictions, petty thefts, dusty corners and cobwebs or badly cooked and served food. For this alone she deserved their contempt. They thought her a “booby,” and stupid, for never did she raise her voice or speak to them with the severity they merited. They had, if possible, even less regard f
or Francis, whom they considered a poor and pompous thing, but at least he studied the bills and questioned them and talked to them, frequently, concerning the “rights of the workingman,” and gave them Marxist tracts. He had solemnly informed them of his wife’s background as a servant, which made them despise her the more, and resent her. Mrs. Akins had been with the Porters since the death of old Cuthbert, who had been a tyrant, the other servants told her.
Mrs. Akins and the other servants did not know that the unusually large wages they received were due to Ellen, over the protests of her husband, nor did they know that it was Ellen’s money which supported the house, and to a great extent, Francis himself. Had they known, they would have jeered at her even more heartily, when speaking of her in their rooms or their kitchen.
Mrs. Akins was not overly fond of Gabrielle, with the delicately slashing tongue and the dark knowing eyes and the antic grin, but at least Miss Gabrielle was a lady born, unlike her mother. But the housekeeper was very fond of Christian, who always had a cheery and charming smile for her, and tipped her occasionally, and he was very handsome also and sometimes leered at her until she blushed. She was not afraid of him as she was of Gabrielle, who had sharp eyes and would pointedly remark on the dinner she was being served or stare meaningly at a dusty chandelier, or fastidiously wipe a dirty mirror with a lace handkerchief and call attention to it. So Mrs. Akins respected as well as feared Gabrielle.
Gabrielle said, with a sad and downcast face, “Well, this is very important, Mrs. Akins. Important for Mrs. Porter. Do, please, awaken her and ask her to come down to see us.”
Mrs. Akins regarded her keenly. She thought to herself: Well, miss, anytime you feel anything for your ma, please tell me. I mean, really feel. She went upstairs to awaken Ellen. A radio was playing loudly in the upper regions, and Gabrielle began to throw out her pretty silken legs in the Charleston, and after a moment Christian joined her. They snapped their fingers and whirled and kicked; Gabrielle wore her stockings rolled and her round bare knees glimmered in the dusky light. She had flung her mink coat, with the huge shawled collar, onto a chair; her bright black curls danced a miniature and sprightly dance of their own over her small and elegant head. She was the prototype of the Harry Kemp “flapper” of the era, all tinkling with very long strings of clashing beads and bangles and long sparkling earrings and cigarettes in a jutting holder. Her olive cheeks were rosy, her lips painted a vivid purplish red. Christian loved and admired her deeply and wished that she was not his sister; he often had quite incestuous ideas about Gabrielle. As for Gabrielle, though she was twenty-three, she was not considering marriage in her immediate future. Her life was too exciting, and varied, and if she had any fears at all it was of becoming pregnant. Like her brother, she had no illusions, no conscience, and lived only for herself, and her appetites. It would have surprised Christian to know that she often reflected on him as he reflected on her, but her reflections were also amused and less tentative. She knew that he wanted to marry Genevieve, the pretty fair daughter of Charles and Maude Godfrey, and sometimes Gabrielle was sick with jealousy and derided the girl to her brother as a ‘Vapid nothing with empty eyes and a little mouselike voice.” Gabrielle was exercising her derision less and less lately, for she had seen that Christian resented her criticisms and once or twice had abruptly and angrily told her to “mind your own business.”