Read Online Ceremony of the Innocent by Taylor Caldwell - Free Book Online

buffet, to Ellen, resembled a closed coffin for all the mass of silver trays and teapots and sugar bowls and pitchers on it, and candlesticks, and for all the painting of dead fish and fruits and flowers which overhung it. The table was a gigantic wheel of mahogany, now covered with a white damask cloth centered with a silver bowl of roses and two silver epergnes. A glass chandelier hung over it, motionless in the torpid and smothering atmosphere that filled up the house. There was a china closet here which appeared to threaten the whole room with its crowded masses of porcelain and silver; it leaned slightly towards the center, scowling at the table, which was surrounded by colossal chairs paved with crimson velvet. Ellen laid the dish she was carrying on the table and looked about her, and shivered. She did not know what was wrong with the room but to her it was far more appalling than any poverty she had encountered. One day, she said to herself, I will have a house full of beautiful slender furniture, painted and pale, with delicate rugs and smiling walls and big windows full of light. She could vividly see such a dining room, scented with flowers and ferns, open to gardens wide and tranquil, and her depression lifted as if an aromatic wind had blown over it. She went back into the kitchen with a bemused but joyous expression on her face.
    “Lovely room, ain’t it?” asked Mrs. Jardin with pride.
    The vision of the dining room she would have someday suffused Ellen’s thoughts, and so she said without hypocrisy, “Lovely.”
    In honor of the occasion of her first working day in the Mayor’s house May Watson had permitted her niece to wear the pink cotton frock usually hallowed for holidays, and a long white apron. She had found a blue ribbon to hold back Ellen’s hair and it had a flaunting look in that tumbling mass of triumphant red. Ellen brought gleaming plates from the china closet to the table and carefully laid out the silver. There were sounds on the front stairway and she fled back into the kitchen.
    “They finally got up,” said Mrs. Jardin with disfavor. “In the middle of the day!” The hall clock struck seven ponderous notes. “Most folks are at work now; the Mayor’s in his office and the Missus has gone marketing. Wonder what the world’s coming to these days!”
    As Ellen’s working day had been changed by Mrs. Porter from eight hours to the customary twelve and her wages to one dollar a week instead of seventy-five cents—a magnanimous gesture and one which elevated the self-approval of the lady—the girl was entitled to two meals rather than one. The first would be at dinner, at eleven, the next at supper, at about five. Ellen’s breakfast had consisted of a piece of toast and a cup of tea, the latter enhanced by a luxurious lump of sugar purloined by May Watson from this kitchen. Ellen, therefore, was hungry. Mrs. Jardin was frying sausages and pancakes and there was a sweet smell of maple syrup in the room mingling with the other fragrances, and the pungent excitement of coffee. Ellen had never tasted coffee, and she wondered if the actual beverage was as intriguing as the odor. There were pitchers of cream ready to be carried into the dining room, and a plate of hot pork chops and browned potatoes and a platter of luscious fried eggs and a basketful of fresh steaming rolls, several assortments of jams in crystal pots as well as a small oval dish of crisp hot fish. “Are just two gentlemen going to eat all this?” asked poor Ellen, her mouth watering.
    “Why not? They’re healthy, ain’t they? Though Mr. Francis got the malaria in the war.” Ellen looked longingly at the sausages and the other edibles and Mrs. Jardin saw this. She said, “Be careful, and get no complaints, and you can eat the scraps from their plates, though there won’t be many, I warn you. You really ain’t entitled to anything but something at eleven and again at five—no breakfast. But do your work well