Once Charles said to Maude, “I am really worried about Jerry’s political activities and his polemics all over the country. He makes enemies.”
“Because he tells the truth?” said Maude. “Yes. But a man must do as he must. He must never compromise his integrity for expediency. When he does he becomes a scoundrel, a hypocrite, a liar, for he is false to his nature. Sometimes he may die for his integrity, but it is a noble death—unless when one remembers what King David said: ‘Better a live dog than a dead lion.’”
“I think,” said Charles, “that I’d rather be a live dog than a dead lion.”
Maude looked at him shrewdly, and with love. “I think not,” she said. He touched her hand with gratitude. She thought: How men delude themselves, which is not true of women, the original cynics. But a world devoid of men’s romanticism would be a very drab world, indeed. We complement each other, men and women. If that ceases, we will have a brown existence.
“It may be that it is because I am getting so old that I am frightened,” said Walter Porter to his nephew. “For you, Jeremy.”
“Oh?” said Jeremy, refilling his uncle’s glass as they sat together in the gloomy dusk of the early October day in the library of Jeremy’s house. “You never were before.”
“Well, as I said, I am getting on. But there is something in the air that smells of danger. I have no fear for myself, but I have for you. You are like a son to me, and fathers fear more for their sons than they ever fear for themselves. Now, your article in the National Gazette—”
“You don’t approve of it?”
Walter hesitated. “I approve of it highly. I only wish you hadn’t written it.”
Jeremy laughed, then stopped. He said, “I thought it about time to stop hinting to the American people. The Gazette is not only the most popular magazine in the country, but it is also both courageous and controversial. An editor or two had doubts; the others did not. I was able to give specific dates of meetings of the Scardo Society and the Committee for Foreign Studies’ discussions, and the names of those present, when the plans were laid and worked out for wars, revolutions, incendiarisms, racial conflicts, bankruptcies, panics, treasons, assassinations, the overthrow of governments, riots, the subversion of heads of state, the subornation of politicians, disorders and chaos in all the nations of the world, the destruction of currencies, and the final subjugation of the world to Communism—under the tyranny of the ‘elite,’ the powerful, the gigantically rich. The Gazette agreed with me that the time had come to name names, and not merely societies and committees, and so I did.”
When Walter did not answer, Jeremy continued. “Societies and committees and organizations are vague and diffuse, and therefore appear to be not imminently dangerous, like rumor or gossip, without names and facts and dates. Conspiracies sound exciting. Wasn’t it Disraeli who said that anyone who does not believe in the conspiratorial theory of history is a fool? So, I gave the names and facts and the dates, and was able to repeat discussions almost verbatim; I memorized them when I was a member of both conspiracies. I also made notes immediately after the meetings, so I would have an accurate record. You may have noticed that no one I mentioned has disputed what I wrote.”
“Yes. And that’s what is worrying me, Jerry. Had any of them denounced you as a fraud, a fantasizer, a muckraker, a laughable liar, and denied everything, or had ridiculed you, I wouldn’t be alarmed.”
“Maybe they think that if they ignore me I will go away, or that what I wrote will soon be forgotten by a ragtime-loving public.”
Walter shook his head. “I’d feel less worried if so many magazines and newspapers hadn’t carried editorials about your article. You’ve stirred up national speculation, and demands that the conspirators be exposed once and for all, before it is too late.”
“I’m not worried. In fact, I intend to attend many political gatherings, both Republican and Democratic, to elaborate on my article and give more incisive information. My offers of speeches have already been accepted, especially by the Republican Party. Uncle Walter, Wilson must not be elected President. I doubt he has any idea of who is manipulating him, and will manipulate him, if he is President. He was chosen because he is an innocent idealist with no notion of how a country should be governed—and who really governs it. Taft, I have heard, has already more than an inkling concerning the conspirators, and so he is dangerous to them. Teddy Roosevelt, too, is gradually becoming dimly aware. So both are scheduled to be eliminated, via the election of Wilson.”
“Jerry, I think you may be in danger. I’m frightened.”
“Oh, come, Uncle Walter! You don’t think they would confirm my accusations by murdering me, do you?” Jeremy laughed again. “They’re delicate, and will move delicately, especially at this time. They move in the dark; they would not want photographic flash powder suddenly illuminating them. So you need not worry. Besides, they save their assassinations for heads of state, not mere lawyers like me.”
Walter changed his tact. “Everything you’ve written, and spoken, Jerry, did nothing to help prevent Wilson from being nominated. What if Roosevelt is elected, and his Progressive Party comes into power?”
“I admit he would be worse.”
Walter sighed heavily. The years and anxiety had dwindled him. He watched the lamplighter skipping down the street; there were brilliant bluish arc lights, however, on the corners, spitting and blazing at shadows. “And my son is one of them,” he said in a dim voice.
After a silence, Jeremy said, “I have been reading the opinions of Freud and his brother alienists, or psychiatrists as they are beginning to call themselves. I am beginning to think that men like Frank are mentally sick. Remember what Thoreau said: ‘I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with fellows in distress-but his private ailment. Let that be righted and he will forsake his companions without apology.’”
“Perhaps that is true, Jeremy. I wonder what Francis’ ‘private ailment’ is.”
“He had too strong a father for his fragile temperament. He both hates authority and secretly longs to be submissive to it. There’s something very female about male reformers. They really want to be raped by someone more powerful, so they can adore the rapist. But if they are treated like reasonable and responsible human beings, they become arrogant and tyrannical.”
“And you think I made the mistake of treating my son as if he were a reasonable and responsible man?” Walter turned from the window and Jeremy saw his pain and was regretful.
“Well, it’s an interesting hypothesis. Yet, no man can ever know what another man is, or why he does and thinks the way he does. It is impudence to believe that this is possible.”
The dinner bell rang. Walter looked at Jeremy, seeing the increasing strength and resolution in him, the hardening maturity, and the white streaks at his temples, and Walter wished again, with a kind of despair, that the younger man were his son.
Because of Ellen’s agitated state of mind over the death of her aunt, Jeremy permitted his son, Christian, to remain at home until the following January, rather than sending him to boarding school—Groton—in September. Ellen clung to her husband and her children as to a despairing refuge against what she considered her “guilt.” Jeremy understood that she must be occupied if only in her house, for she had given up her music and language lessons, her visits to the museums and to the opera. She accepted dinner invitations, and gave dinners, only at Jeremy’s insistence. “Good God, Ellen,” he would say, “are you trying to bury us in your aunt’s grave?” But when he looked into her eyes he saw an irrational but powerful fear. She was terrified that if she relinquished her hold on those she loved or forgot them for even a moment, they would be taken from her, as her aunt had been taken. She must watch them incessantly. She had seen death for the first time and had known its irrevocable terror. Jeremy understood, but his impatience became vivid, for Ellen insisted that if he were to be late he must call and explain so that she would not be seized by a frantic
anxiety.
Her children knew, and thought their mother’s state of mind hilarious, and their ruthless taunting of her, and their demands, became more overt. She now could deny them nothing, in the vague but passionate belief that to deny them was to invite eternal separation. She would try, haltingly, to explain this to Jeremy, and while he sympathized he also would become angry. “Why do you try to order the lives of others?” he would ask her. “Ellen, we have lives of our own to live. You never understood that, even concerning your aunt. She made her decision; we make our decisions, too. You can’t clutch us forever, you know.” But this remark only made poor Ellen more frantic.
Her children had their own phonograph in the nursery, and Ellen bought records for them constantly, though Jeremy deplored their taste. They loved ragtime and would dance together for hours to the rollicking tunes, while Ellen watched them with a yearning smile, sighing over their happy childhood. But they were very careful not to play a certain maudlin song when their father was present:
She’s only a bird in a gilded cage, A beautiful sight to see;
You may think she’s happy and free from care,
She’s not, though she seems to be.
Tis sad when you think of her wasted life,
For youth cannot mate with age,
And her beauty was sold for an old man’s gold,
She’s a bird in a gilded cage!
While this record was moaning from the phonograph Ellen’s children would watch her acutely, winking at each other and sometimes pressing their hands against their mouths to restrain their cruel laughter at her. Ellen would wince at this song, and others like it, but would determinedly smile. After all, were they not just children with unformed and indiscriminate tastes, the tastes of innocent ones? That her children were not innocent, and had never been innocent, did not occur to Ellen. After a prolonged session with such maunderings she would take them downstairs to the music room and play arias for them, and sing in her entrancing voice, or run through a sonata, particularly the Moonlight Sonata, and various nocturnes. They would listen, grinning at each other. They did not think their mother had an enchanting voice; they told each other she “bawled like a calf.” They did not care for her music, finding it boring and not in tune with their endlessly restless temperaments.
They now had a male tutor, a delicate young man with a perpetual cold, pale watery blue eyes which stared pathetically, a long pallid face and a mass of straight almost colorless hair. It was soon evident to Christian and Gabrielle that Sydney Darby was in love with their mother, though Ellen was not aware of this in the least. When she appeared during their lessons, standing on the threshold just to fill her eyes with the sight of them, poor Mr. Darby would turn a bright crimson, and would begin to stammer in his weak voice, much to the children’s delight. They would purse up their mouths in maudlin moues, roll their eyes in mock agony, and whimper under their breath. If Ellen did not see this, the unfortunate Mr. Darby did, and so he hated the children with a passion which would have awed them had they known; they would have respected him. If they could have guessed at his desire to slaughter them, even they would have been intimidated. Annie alone saw and knew all this, and on several occasions she would discuss Christian and Gabrielle with the tutor.
“They’re monsters,” she would say. “But all children are, honestly, Mr. Darby.”
“Yes,” he would reply, sighing. “It’s very strange, but I like to teach, even though I know all about children. I still have the hope that in some way I can make children less terrible, less formidable. Sometimes I know it is hopeless, Annie; children merely grow up to be perilous adults. One wonders what happened to Christianity.”
“Nobody ever tried it,” Annie said once in her sturdy way. “They call us a Christian country. I don’t think any country was ever Christian. It’s against human nature to be good and decent. Except for a few. Like Madam and Cuthbert, and you, Mr. Darby.” She looked at him fondly and he returned her look, startled and pleased, noticing for the first time how pretty the nurse was and how intriguing her tilted nose and how charming her smile. Annie had become somewhat plump, and rosier, with the years, but Mr. Darby did not find this a fault. He liked robust and tender women. He suddenly wanted to kiss her, and she saw this in his shy eyes, and she wanted to respond heartily. But for Annie there would be no casual encounter. She had experienced that once and was determined that her fixed goal was the altar. In the meantime she affectionately if covertly encouraged Mr. Darby.
“I only stay here because of Madam,” she said to him. “The kids don’t need me any longer, if they ever did, except when they were babies. But Madam needs me. I guess you don’t understand that, Mr. Darby.”
He nodded his head vigorously. “Oh, but I do, Annie, believe me,” and Annie glowed. That night she sang a melodious song she had heard on the children’s phonograph: “I never knew—what love could do!” She followed this with another song: “When Irish eyes are smiling—!” It no longer mattered to the exuberantly loving Annie that Mr. Darby was not only Irish but a Catholic, too. Pragmatic Annie, suddenly remembering her Bible, could smilingly, and with secret tears, repeat to herself, “And thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” She bought herself a rosary, and instructions. One Sunday, in early October, she appeared at Mr. Darby’s side as he descended the brownstone steps. She was dressed in her newest garb, a light-blue wool suit and a large dark-blue felt hat, new black button shoes and black gloves, her golden hair quite radiant, her cheeks quite pink, her lips red and full. She said to Mr. Darby softly, “I thought I might go to Church with you this morning. If you don’t mind.”
Mr. Darby, looking down at the round and shining face and the love-filled blue eyes, became, in his sensations, at least a foot taller and very virile and aggressive, and he manfully tucked Annie’s gloved hand in his arm and strode off with her to Mass. She blessed herself when he blessed himself, and genuflected and rose when he did so, and she was very moved by the candles and the organ and the statues and the ceremony, for it was all transfigured in the ineffable light of love. However, being astute, Annie knew that at heart Mr. Darby was very timid and gentle, and an open chase of him would send him flying, so she waited.
In November 1912, Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the United States of America. It was not a surprise to Jeremy Porter, even though he was embittered. It did not surprise him, either, that in the month of January 1913 Mr. Wilson signed into law the ominous amendments to the Constitution: the federal income tax, the Federal Reserve System, and the direct election of Senators. It had been inevitable for decades, in spite of constant rulings against such sinister innovations by the U. S. Supreme Court, which had declared that these were unconstitutional. Jeremy said, “Well, the mad Emperor, Caligula, made his horse Consul of Rome. So does the American voter.”
“It will become increasingly evident, I am afraid,” said old Walter Porter to his nephew, “that we shall soon be governed by men and not by law.”
“That is always the fate of republics,” Jeremy answered. “What was it Aristotle said? ‘Republics decline into democracies, and democracies into despotisms.’ Yes. There is much to be said in favor of monarchies and Parliaments. They do exist longer, and are stable.”
In March 1913, a strange and virulent ailment known as la grippe began a tentative invasion of the whole world. It had a different characteristic than the familiar influenza. It caused more deaths and stronger and longer disabilities. It would soon be known as the Spanish Influenza, losing its more dainty and pseudo-French earlier designation.
Walter Porter died of it in late March, and very suddenly. Jeremy was his main heir. He had left his son, Francis, but a fourth of his large estate. Francis, driven almost mad by this “injustice,” fought it through the courts, and lost. If he had hated his cousin before, that hatred was nothing to what he now felt for Jeremy. The old enmity became malign.
Ellen, deeply saddened by Walter’s death, could not understand he
r grim husband and his frequent expressions of detestation for his cousin. “Jeremy,” she once said, “the money isn’t important, is it? Why not let Mr. Francis have it?”
He had looked at her incredulously. “How can you be so silly, Ellen? Uncle Walter left that money to me. Should I insult his memory by rejecting it? It’s a matter of principle, too, which you would not understand. Don’t mention it to me any more.”
Ellen had cowered at the look on his face, for it was the look of a hostile stranger and never had she encountered it before, and she cried until he took her in his arms and consoled her. He had seen the fear in her eyes and though he did not guess the reason he knew the fear.
Jeremy’s parents were elated by Walter’s will, and Agnes, forgetting her late approval of Francis, said righteously, “Walter had a right to leave his money to whom he wished. He must have had a very good reason, indeed!”
C H A P T E R 27
WHEN WOODROW WILSON BECAME President, he sonorously, in the best Princeton accents, declared his “New Freedoms” for America. He approved the Underwood Tariff, which reduced duties on foreign importations. This cheap competition with American industry threw tens of thousands of American workers out of jobs, and induced a depression, and widespread despair. There was no longer any protection for American workingmen against foreign labor, and so starvation and misery became universal.
“Things,” said Jeremy Porter with bitterness, “are right on schedule. The next step is war.” But few listened. He was not surprised that he was no longer invited to speak, though he offered to do so without a fee. Nor was he surprised when Mr. Wilson denounced President Victoriano Huerta of Mexico as a “desperate brute,” because Huerta had restored law and order to his country after it had been in a state of chaos and anarchy under the “reformer” President, Madero, who had incited the mobs in what was euphemistically called a “class struggle.” “Right out of Lenin’s mouth,” Jeremy had said. “Now, when will Wilson take military action against Huerta? Almost any day now.”
Ceremony of the Innocent Page 41