Ceremony of the Innocent

by Taylor Caldwell

  “I think I fooled them about my own opinions,” said Jeremy. “I sang the ‘compassionate’ songs they sang, and they never heard a false note. I’m a real actor. I should be on Broadway.” He made a sour mouth. “I’m joining so I can be aware of what they are doing, and plotting. I must constantly remind myself of that. Otherwise, they’ll probably have my throat cut.”

  Walter did not smile. He nodded his head. “They are experts in coups d’etat, all over the world. Well. If you receive their full endorsement they’ll introduce you to the Committee for Foreign Studies, which, as I’ve told you, are about to instigate a world war in the near future. Perhaps 1910, ‘15, ‘20. They’ll succeed, too, through their chaps in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, St. Petersburg, Washington, Tokyo—everywhere.”

  Jeremy studied his uncle curiously. “And you don’t care very much, do you, Uncle Walter?”

  Walter slapped the arm of his red leather chair sharply. “No, son, I don’t. We’ve sent rumors whispering all over the world, and strong warnings. We’ve had consultations with kings and princes and the Kaiser himself, and the Czar, and King Edward, and God knows who else, including our raucous boy in Washington, Teddy. What good has it done? Nothing. We’re a world at peace, and every nation is getting more and more prosperous, aren’t they? And don’t all the members of academe at large sing today of endless love among various countries and ‘the rising tide of popular concern with the poor and downtrodden?’

  “We’ve tried to tell them of the conspiracy of international men who want to rule the whole damned globe, to control its industry, economics, currencies, governments—people, for their own use and their own power, and to reduce every nation to the status of slavery under their whips. Power. Power. We’ve offered proof. We’ve shown our own government in Washington the plot to have Senators elected directly by the electorate so that those Senators can be controlled and made as impotent as the Congress is going to be made. We’ve shown them proof that the conspiracy is going to push through a federal income tax—despite the fact that the U. S. Supreme Court has ruled such a tax unconstitutional at least half a dozen times. We’ve quoted Lord Acton to them—‘the power to tax is the power to destroy.’ We’ve quoted Thomas Jefferson until we were hoarse: once a national tax is levied on the people, that country is doomed.

  “Yes. What have all our efforts and money achieved? Nothing. If the American people allow the direct election of Senators and the imposition of a permanent federal income tax, then, son, the hell with them. The hell with the whole world.”

  He raised his glass. “‘Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutamus.’”

  “You don’t think we have a chance to stop these would-be Caesars in their tracks?”

  “No, son, I don’t.”

  “If it’s all futile, why did you want me to join the Scardo Society?”

  Walter stood up abruptly and began to pace up and down on the Aubusson rug in the office, his head bent, his face brooding. “I’m not a young man any longer. I hope young men like you will fight for a delaying action. I want to live out the rest of my life in comparative peace. And there’s always the preposterous possibility that we can arouse the people in time, though I doubt it.”

  He shook his head. “By the way, did the boys talk of that private banking plan of theirs, a Federal Reserve System?”

  “Yes, they spoke of it. Taking away the power of Congress to coin money, as the Constitution directed. Who are Congressmen? they asked me in fatherly tones. Many of them are ignorant farmers from the Midwest, small pols who once ran grocery stores or butcher shops, former mayors, and insignificant lawyers. Who are such, they asked me, to be given the sole power of coining our currency, when we are a rapidly growing nation? We need educated bankers, shrewd men who understand the international and national currencies, to ‘guide our economic future.’”

  “Yes,” said Walter in a grim voice, “they are quite right. They are going to do it, son. The people believe in slogans, with the assurance that their ‘betters’ know more about their needs and wants and aspirations than they do. Well, Rome died that way, and Greece and Egypt, not to mention Ninevah and Tyre.”

  “Caesars never die, do they?”

  “No, son. The ancient lust for power was born in the human race. It is in our blood. As Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun. Human nature never changes; it never will. That is our curse.”

  The winter sky was almost black now and the winter storm was screaming and hissing at the windows. The fire roared suddenly on the hearth, as if distressed and aroused. Walter and Jeremy sipped their drinks in a short silence, pondering. Then Walter said, “I am afraid Americans have lost their manhood and their valor. Oh, here and there there are still some signs of it, but we are getting womanish. The small comforts and cozinesses of life are now beginning to be of the utmost importance to us, and the little amusements. I have heard that there is some talk of ‘love’ in the schoolrooms of this nation, instead of duty and responsibility. That is fatal. There was never much love in this world, but cowardice is growing. At one time in our history the humblest farmer and small shopkeeper avidly read the Federalist Papers, and understood them. Now college students can hardly interpret them. Are we growing more stupid, Jerry? Men have forgot how to be brave, stern, masters of their government, their families, and their lives: willing to die for their country, their God above all. Now men want safety and happiness.”

  “Perhaps we should support the solid strength of the workingman, who still controls his government, his wife and his children, and should halt growth of what I call the lumpen intelligentsia,” said Jeremy. “The sterility of the so-called ‘intellectuals’! Who listens to them?”

  “The rabble,” said Walter. “The rabble that destroyed Rome.”

  “Yes,” said Jeremy. “Yes, they will destroy us as well. Didn’t Lincoln prophesy this? Yes.”

  “But governments will use them—the sort of men you met today, Jerry.”

  “It’s an old story, Uncle Walter. Nations never learn.”

  “When you were an assistant to the District Attorney,” Walter continued, “you succeeded in prosecuting those bomb throwers, although Frank opposed you with tears and sobs for ‘the poor workers,’ as though he knows anything about workers!”

  “He mistakes the workers for the street rabble. But the boys at the Scardo Society don’t! They congratulated me on my prosecution. What bastards they are! They have no particular race, no nation, no allegiances. They told me they think exactly as I do about ‘the people.’ I could have given them an argument then, saying their semantics were not mine, but I refrained. I wanted to know more about them. You are right. They despise men like Frank. But they use them, the lumpen intelligentsia.”

  “Who were those bomb throwers, anyway?” Walter asked.

  “Who knows? But someone hired them. You can be sure that they were not the real workers of America. One was given the death sentence for murder; the two others were sent up for life. Frank is going to appeal.”

  “I suppose so,” said Walter in a tired voice.

  “Frank won’t win. The judge is hard-nosed, and a respected man.”

  He looked at his watch. “It’s time to go home, Uncle Walter. I have to dress, and so do you, for the dinner party.”

  Walter turned slowly from the fire. “How is my dear Ellen?”

  “Well, she’s pregnant—”

  “Should I congratulate you or commiserate with you, son?”

  Jeremy laughed. “Ask me that in twenty years. This is a hell of world to be bringing children into.” He became serious. “I worry about Ellen. Her trustfulness, her naïveté, sometimes alarm me, though they are the qualities which I most admire. My will is drawn so it will protect her from the wolves. As you know, she is really extremely intelligent, but her intelligence is sometimes clouded by what she calls ‘love and trust.’ She isn’t afflicted with that new disease which some people call ‘compassion.’ She knows what the world is, God knows.
But she has pity, and she has strength, and some iron in her soul. Let’s hope love’ doesn’t betray and destroy her, as it has done so many others.”

  “Your friends like her?”

  “The men do. Their wives don’t. They don’t understand simplicity and honesty. Few women do. So they think Ellen is either a fool or a hypocrite. Or her bluntness outrages them when she detects some falseness. Women are very devious and elliptical, aren’t they—the majority?”

  “Indeed,” said Walter. “They’re agitating for the vote now. I’d do the same to them, if they ever get the vote, as I’d do to male voters today—demand they prove some intelligence and objectivity when it comes to politics.”

  Jeremy called for his carriage, and they wrapped themselves in their fur-lined coats and put on their heavy gloves, and went through the warmth of offices to the street. Walter said, as wind and snow assaulted him and his nephew, “I’m sure you’re convinced now, Jerry, that no President of the United States of America can henceforth be elected without the agreement of the Scardo Society and the Committee for Foreign Studies. If he opposes them he will be assassinated or impeached or otherwise be driven from office.”

  “I wonder if President Teddy knows who got him his office?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. I only know he is beginning to sound like them, especially when it comes to execrating Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, whom he once greatly admired, and visited. I have heard that the Kaiser knows, but who can tell?”

  Ellen’s music teacher said to her, “Madam, you have a genius with the piano, but you must practice.”

  Ellen said, with the note of apology in her voice which was habitual and guilty, “I know I am very stupid, but I am trying. I hear such sounds from the piano—when I am not playing on it. Such sounds!” She sighed and looked at her teacher with eyes so luminous that he was deeply touched and felt tears in his own eyes.

  “Madam Porter,” he said, “that is the soul of an artist, to hear and see and feel and taste and touch that which is not evident to grosser minds and souls. Sad it is that an artist cannot speak of these things to others, except to those of his own kind, and they are very few. What we hear and see in silence is much greater than what others hear and see in actual sight and harmony. Sometimes it is too much for the spirit to bear, for we are isolated in a desert of the mediocre. We are only grateful if they do not ridicule us. Is that not so?”

  But Ellen’s humility interposed between her understanding and what her teacher, Herr Solzer, had said. She became depressed. “I just want people to like me and accept me,” she murmured. He threw up his hands in despair.

  “The only understanding and acceptance is with the Gross Gott, madam! Let Him be your comfort. He is the one Refuge.”

  “My husband is my refuge,” she replied, and smiled with tenderness and joy.

  “He is only mortal, madam.”

  “And so am I.” Her cheek dimpled. “I don’t aspire to anything, Herr Solzer, except pleasing him.”

  He looked at her intently, and turned away. What a waste it was to give women talent or genius! They submerged these things in a dedication to a man. But did not St. Paul and Bismarck urge such an attitude for women? Herr Solzer did not agree either with St. Paul or Bismarck. He believed that gifted women should never marry, though they should have lovers. This lady—how beautiful, how gifted! She should live in a gilded palace and not in a brownstone house in New York. She should be adulated by multitudes both for her loveliness and for her perceptions. Instead she was only a wife. Herr Solzer might be German, with a Prussian’s rigidity, but he worshipped art, which was also a German trait.

  He suspected that Ellen was pregnant. What a waste, too! Genius never bestowed its brilliance on offspring. It was a great mystery. Physical attributes and characteristic features—yes. But never genius, never talent. He had known many geniuses in the sciences and arts and philosophy, but their children were drab and unendowed, if envious and resentful of their parents, and sometimes alarmingly dangerous out of their jealousy. Many a genius had been exploited and defamed by his children, and even murdered. Humanity was something to be feared more than a tiger, or even governments.

  He said with severity to conceal his agitation, “Madam, you will now practice Debussy’s Nocturne, and you will not play by the ear but the music. Tomorrow, I expect much better than today.”

  “I will try,” said Ellen, and he was more despairing than ever. “I never touched a piano, Herr Solzer, until four months ago, and you must be patient with me.”

  He kissed her hand and left, shaking his head.

  Ellen looked at her piano in the great dim music room, which was all brown and gold and ivory paneling with large arched windows suffocated with lace and pale blue velvet, and Aubusson rugs and mirrors. She was tired. She had spent hours with her tutor this morning, and he was very rigorous and had left her considerable work to be done tonight. If he found her naturally gifted in the matter of French and German, and swift of mind in other subjects, he never praised her. “Mrs. Porter,” he had said once, and ponderously, “there are vast discrepancies in your education.”

  “I know,” she said with regret. “I know very little. But I am really trying. I must be a proper wife for my husband.”

  Sometimes she felt hopeless. She was so stupid, no matter her efforts. Jeremy praised her and was delighted with her, but she believed that was so because he loved her. She lived in a constant tension of hoping to gratify him and when he fondled her and found her delicious she was afraid that he was only being patient with her out of natural charity. He was even tolerant of her “condition,” no matter her morning sickness, and she could not be thankful enough for his solicitude. When he told her he was overjoyed at the thought of a child she wanted to cry; he was so good.

  She went listlessly to one of the windows and looked down at the street, which was swirling with gray snow and the winter wind. There were few carriages about, and fewer pedestrians, and they scurried quickly along the pavement. It was twilight, and the gaslighter was scuttling up and down lighting the streetlamps, which burst into blowing golden light. Then her volatile spirits rose; she loved New York for all she had never known a city before. There was something infinitely exciting here, something always in movement, and electric. The tall ebony clock on the upper landing boomed five in silver notes, and she ran downstairs to the basement kitchen, which was warm and bright and huge, with walls of red brick and brick underfoot. The kitchen was full of fascinating odors and steam. Cuthbert was poised over the iron-and-brick stove, with a fluttering housemaid in attendance; she was peeling vegetables under Cuthbert’s stern surveillance.

  He looked at Ellen and his grave elderly face became suffused with pleasure and affection. “Mrs. Porter,” he said, “do you not think it is time to put on the roast beef?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, in that tone of apology which always touched him with its poignancy. “And the roast onions, sliced, underneath, a thick layer of them, and lots of butter and thyme and a little garlic rubbed on all sides.”

  “No one,” said Cuthbert, “can roast beef as you do, Mrs. Porter. I think the oven is hot enough now, and I will turn down the gas a little.”

  “Yes,” said Ellen, examining the beef seriously and touching it lightly with one finger. “It is very tender, isn’t it? Do you think it is enough for eight people, and the rest of the household? I think, three hours?”

  Cuthbert looked judicious. “Only twelve pounds. Two hours and a half, Mrs. Porter. That should do. And no salt or pepper until half roasted?”

  “Yes,” said Ellen. She looked about the kitchen and sighed blissfully. “Mr. Walter Porter is coming for dinner, as you know, Cuthbert. Why do gentlemen always like roast beef so much? I prefer lamb or chicken. Are the oysters good? And”—she looked apologetic again—“would you please put a dash of powdered cloves in the tomato bisque—just a dash?”

  “Very good, Mrs. Porter. And the oysters? How do you prefer them?”
/>
  “Just with lemon juice, on a bed of ice, Cuthbert. But you must select the wines. I know so little. Are the lobsters very fresh? Good. And the melons from Florida? Imagine, fruit in the winter in New York! What will there be for dessert?”

  “A chocolate mousse, an angel cake, a chestnut glace” parfait, and assorted pastries. A little austere, perhaps, but you prefer simple dinners, do you not, Mrs. Porter? Yes. I have prepared the sauce, green and pungent, for the lobsters, according to your suggestion. They are rather small, only three pounds apiece, but after the appetizers of oysters and the bisque with the sour cream and sherry, and the salad, the lobsters should be enough before the rest of the dinner, the meat and roasted potatoes and brussels sprouts and asparagus and artichokes and hot rolls and gravy. Perhaps we should have had some cold shrimp, too? They are in the icebox.”

  Ellen considered. She was always fearful that her dinners were too restricted, too plain. “Perhaps the shrimp with the lobsters? Yes, I think so. Gentlemen are always so hungry.”

  “And the ladies, too,” said Cuthbert with a smile. “They all want to resemble Miss Lillian Russell, who is somewhat plushy.” He looked at Ellen’s slim figure with approval. She wore an afternoon tea gown of apricot velvet, which matched and enhanced her cheeks and lips, and it flowed about her, glistening, revealing glimpses of delicate lace at the throat and wrists.