Ceremony of the Innocent (26 page)

“Ellen, Ellen,” wept the poor woman. “What has he done to you?”

Jeremy held Ellen’s arm, and he was still grinning. He had not even looked at his cousin. He glanced at Mrs. Eccles, then at his mother. He did not seem surprised to see Mrs. Porter, nor Francis.

“Ladies,” he said, and bowed, then for the first time looked fully at Francis, “and gentleman, I presume: My wife. We were married an hour ago, in City Hall, and the Mayor of New York himself was one of the witnesses.”

Only Mrs. Porter made any sound for long moments. Then she screamed, the scream loud and piercing. She fainted away in her chair.

Mrs. Eccles was calm. She could not help it, for she was mischievous: She smiled gleefully; she clapped her hands. Those faces! She would never forget them. “Someone get smelling salts for poor Agnes,” she said, and then she laughed.

Francis turned away. He was full of tumult, of agony. May leaned helplessly against her niece, and Ellen held her and bent her head and kissed the wet cheek. “I am so happy,” she said. “So very happy,” and her face glowed and she closed her eyes for a moment.

C H A P T E R   12

WALTER PORTER WAS ADMITTED to Jeremy’s office, and he was dusted coldly with snow and his full face was ruddy from the wind. He shook off his hat and hung up his walking cane and coat, then went to the rustling bright fire to warm his hands. Jeremy brought brandy and whiskey from a cabinet and two glasses. It was four of a stormy February afternoon and the sky was nearly dark.

Walter sat down before the fire and looked about the large paneled office and nodded with silent appreciation, as he always did. “Well?” he said at last. “And how did you enjoy your lunch with the lads of the Scardo Society?”

“It was about what you’ve already told me,” answered Jeremy, sipping at his brandy. “I still don’t see why they want me to be a member. I’m not that rich, or important.”

“Ah,” said Walter. “But they think you will be, and they already suspect you have political ambitions. They wanted to look you over, as they told me when they approached me six months ago. Wanted me to join years back. No. They couldn’t understand, no, sir. Here I am, one of the richest industrialists in Pennsylvania, and I couldn’t get interested in the banker boys, or the politicians. Too lazy, I said. What do I need more money for? I asked them. They thought I was mad, and kindly informed me that in ‘ancient days’ land and territory were the roots of power. Today it’s money. I agreed. I further baffled them when I said I wasn’t interested in power, either.” Walter laughed shortly. “I have an idea they think I’ve been castrated, or something. Money is power and women, to them, and control of governments. I’ve had them all; I don’t want any more.”

He peered inquisitively at Jeremy. “Are you going to join them?”

“Yes. But not for the reasons they think. You never told me. Why haven’t they invited your son, Francis? He’s one of their kind, the self-elected elite.”

Walter stared into his glass. “I thought you understood. They don’t trust him; that is, they trust him only to the extent of believing that he is sincere. But they are not sincere about the things he believes they are. They looked him over. They are cynics. While they nodded their heads solemnly over his pronouncements, and heartily approved of them, his sincerity makes them laugh. They say all the things he says, in trumpet notes which are widely quoted in the press, but they themselves speak only for public consumption. What they say privately is an entirely different matter. While Francis also wants to be one of the elect who will rule this world, he unfortunately believes what he clamors. So the Scardo Society can’t trust him. They regret that, knowing he is my son, and one of my heirs.”

“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.