by Vera Caspary
In our time, darling, we have seen a weak king and an old, tradition-bound chancellor welcome dangerous upstarts for the sake of protecting ancient realms and profitable attitudes. Perhaps the analogy is exaggerated. I make this association after studying the back cover of Truth Digest and noting the languages into which it is translated, and the countries into which it brings the Podolsky point of view.
Not that I consider the Barclay-Podolsky axis any worse than the rival combinations that spread misinformation so generously among our countrymen and friends. There are others who conduct the important, social business of publishing periodicals in a loose, anarchic fashion. The crime is commonplace. But this does not condone it. Are murderers let off because homicide happens every day?
What a sermon! You ask for help and I give you editorials. But you must see this objectively, just as if your name had never been Barclay. The thing that is tearing you apart is the conflict between two bone-deep desires. You know your father’s guilt and still you hope to protect him. For he is still your father, he is old and sick, and you were not born with a serpent’s tooth.
We ask little, Eleanor, but we do want our chance to live honestly. The nightmare has to be exorcised or we shall be sacrificed to the old and evil, to the dishonest and the dying. We daren’t go on cherishing fables for the sake of the paralyzed and moribund, nor for the protection of oily stooges and cuckolding conspirators. It is for our own kind, the young and healthy, that we have to speak out.
Think about this when you sit with your father on the terrace or when you see him, helpless and impotent, mocked by his wife, humiliated by the usurper. And when you open your window and look down upon that touching sight, Noble Barclay finding solace in his faithful follower and in the philosophy which he probably believes he created, remember that the creed cannot cure him.
Whatever your decision may be, I’ll keep on loving you. But it would be unfair not to tell you that I believe that we can never remain honestly ourselves unless we tell the truth wholly. Now that Wilson and Lola are dead, there are no others who know the story so intimately nor who can tell it so honestly as you and I.
Have you the courage, Eleanor?
My love to you,
John.
The End
NOTES
* * *
[1] Miss Eccles’ confession was written at my request. I had to flatter her extensively to get her to do it, and I have not yet told her why I wanted her version of the story.
J. M. Ansell, June, 1946.
[2] Treasure Chest, A Book of Testimony by the Followers of Noble Barclay, contains Miss Maierdorf’s complete letter. The asthmatic lady has never been identified.
[3] My Life Is Truth, Introduction, Page 38.
[4] According to her first deposition, Rosetta Armistead, née Beach, and not Barclay first used the phrase, Truth-Sharing.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First Edition published 1946 by Random House.
Copyright © 1946, 2013 by the Vera Caspary estate
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2903-2
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