Ceremony of the Innocent (33 page)

There would be a parade at twelve down Fifth Avenue. Ellen had never seen an impressive parade, and she had cajoled Jeremy into taking her in their carriage to see it. Even now there was the distant sound of a band and Ellen could almost see the fierce gold circles of light on the trumpets, and she became a little excited.

It was then that her first pain came to her, sharp in the small of her back, and penetrating. A dull wave of spasmodic pain also washed over her belly, and she was alarmed. The wave subsided and retreated, and she closed her eyes and thought she could see it leaving her. Fresh sweat broke out on her face and breast. Then she saw that Jeremy had raised himself on his elbow and was looking down at her with quick anxiety.

“It’s nothing. It’s just a little pain, and it’s gone now,” Ellen said, and lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. He lay down again and took her into his arms and kissed her wet forehead and then her mouth and held her gently but tightly against his body and she was at peace.

Cuthbert knocked at the door, then entered discreetly, as stately and magnificently aristocratic as usual. He carried a large silver tray which he deposited on the round table nearby and said, “Good morning, sir, madam.” He unfolded white linen and put it on the table. He moved deftly in the hot gloom and added, “It is a very-warm day.” Carefully, as always, he avoided looking directly at the large bed, as he laid out covered silver dishes, a silver coffee pot and a silver platter of fresh cold melon and a rack of savory toast. Then he gave Jeremy his robe and assisted him into it. Ellen waited until he had left to move heavily to the edge of the bed, where Jeremy could help her to rise. She felt heavier than usual and more clumsy, and now the pain struck her in her back again. But she was determined not to alarm Jeremy, for this was a holiday and he enjoyed the rare opportunity to rest and eat a pleasant slow breakfast with her. She went into the gold-and-marble bathroom, then sat abruptly on the short lounge. She began to gasp; the sweat on her face and body became cold and she shivered. It finally took all her power of will to wash her hands and face with the scented soap and to comb her damp and tangled hair. She saw her face in the mirror, very pale, and there were sharp lines about her nose. The pain was subsiding again, and she forced herself to smile and returned to the bedroom, where Jeremy was holding her chair.

“Is something wrong, Ellen?” he asked as she lowered herself painfully in her chair.

“Nothing,” she said. “It is the heat. And it is almost time, you know.”

“Not for two weeks. Should I call Dr. Lampert?”

“Oh, he isn’t in town. Don’t you remember that he said he would be in Boston for this holiday and the weekend, visiting his daughter? And my two nurses have gone to Newark for the holiday, too. No one expects the baby for at least fourteen days.” Ellen made herself gay and smiling. “Do sit down, dear Jeremy, and have a nice breakfast. Those lamb chops look delicious.” But the sight and smell of the food suddenly sickened her.

“And the housekeeper, Mrs. Frost, has the day off, and one of the housemaids, and your damned silly Clarisse, for the holiday, and there’s nobody here but us and Cuthbert and one of the maids, and your aunt and Miss Ember.”

“They have very few holidays, Jeremy,” said Ellen. “I must talk with you about that sometime. They deserve more.” She changed the subject and said with assumed exuberance, “And you’ve promised to take me to the parade today, at twelve.” A deep numb languor was beginning to overtake her. She looked at the plate which Jeremy had filled for her and nausea rose in her throat.

“I don’t know about the parade,” said Jeremy. “You don’t look well.”

He waited for her cry of disappointment and was alarmed when she said nothing.

“Well, it is very hot,” she said finally. “This is my first summer in New York, and it is very much warmer than Wheatfield. But you must go, Jeremy.”

“I’ve seen many a New York parade,” he replied. He lifted the morning newspaper, and frowned at one of the headlines. President Roosevelt had remarked, in view of the Day of Independence, that “our manifest destiny is to confer upon the world the civilization of our race, our form of government, our Anglo-Saxon spirit, by persuasion if possible, by force of arms if necessary.” Idiot, thought Jeremy. Doesn’t he know who has inspired him to talk such dangerous imbecilities? Or does he? Jeremy thought of the events of the Panama Canal not long ago, and Roosevelt’s part in the matter and his smug remark when congratulated: “Some people say I fomented insurrection in Panama. No, I simply lifted my foot!” Jeremy also thought of the offer Roosevelt had made Colombia for the perpetual use by the United States of the territory for the Canal: ten million dollars in cash and an annual rent of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, for three hundred square miles. When Colombia had appeared doubtful Roosevelt was infuriated and exclaimed, “Bandits! Corruptionists, blackmailers—we’ll have to give a lesson to those jackrabbits.” To Secretary of State John Hay he wrote, “Those contemptible little creatures in Bogota!” He had considered sending American troops to occupy the Isthmus.

But, oddly enough, this had not been necessary. An ambiguous lobbyist named Banau-Varilla entered the very intricate spiral of negotiations and threats. There was also William Nelson Cromwell, who represented the rights of the French company which had begun the work of the Canal and then had abandoned it. Congress had authorized the creation of the Canal through the hot jungles, and had consented to pay the “French Company” forty million dollars for their rights. Cynics might have questioned—and some did, futilely—that the French Company and the United States totally ignored the very real “rights” of the Colombian government, which governed the land, and that neither France nor the United States had absolute rights there at all, except that France had originally leased the land for two hundred and sixty million dollars.

Then entered the mysterious Banau-Varilla, who, less than a year ago, on October 14, 1903, had met with a number of Panama “secessionists” in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, and there had decided that the area of the Canal must be a separate and independent republic, apart from Colombia itself. So the new Republic of Panama was born. The Colombian garrison in Panama had meekly submitted—after considerable bribery on the part of the United States—and had withdrawn, and the new President of Panama had exclaimed joyfully, “President Roosevelt has made good! Long may he live!”

On November 6, Secretary Hay formally recognized “the free and independent Republic of Panama.” A week later the two countries signed a treaty which “gave” the United States the Canal Zone, and Panama accepted ten million dollars. The J. P. Morgan Company of New York received the forty million dollars originally offered by the United States to the French Company, but who finally got that money was never fully known. It was known, however, that the representative of the French Company, William Nelson Cromwell, the corporation lawyer, received eight hundred thousand dollars.

There had never been any doubt in Jeremy Porter’s mind that the Canal was necessary, not only for the United States but for international trade also. But the method of taking the Zone was something which aroused his intense suspicions. He was always being accused of being an exigent man, but he despised expediency, especially when it involved arrogance, force, threats, bribery and corruption, and the veritable seizure of land which did not belong to the United States or France. Roosevelt, he once said, was the real bandit, not Colombia. The fact that good relations between the United States and all South America had rapidly declined into sullen enmity on the part of the southern countries had not disturbed Roosevelt in the least. He had only repeated his epithets contemptuously concerning America’s southern neighbors, including “jackrabbits,” and worse.

On reading the paper this hot Fourth of July, Jeremy tried to be objective. One must not always be on the alert concerning the Scardo Society and the Committee for Foreign Studies; the matter of the Canal was a small thing—wasn’t it? Or did it imply that the “road to empire,” about which Roosevelt had once remarked approvingly, was already embarked upon by America? If so, who was behind it? It was not the plan of the Scardo Society and the Committee for Foreign Studies that America become a world empire all by herself. This Jeremy had learned. Rather those mysterious and invisible and powerful men wanted a world government, for themselves, with absolute despotic regimentation. Was the Canal part of the “conspiracy?” The Canal benefited all nations—Still, Jeremy thought, and rubbed his chin. He had a low opinion of President Roosevelt. It was most probable that he had no part in the conspiracy, for his intelligence was not remarkable, and at the very least the conspirators were men of extraordinary intellect and would not be inclined to include among them a man of Roosevelt’s limited cerebral capacities. He was also a chauvinist, and his patriotic perorations were obviously sincere even to the suspicious ears of Jeremy himself. Roosevelt loved his country with overwhelming pride and passion. No, he was no man for the Society and the Committee.

But someone had given him orders or suggestions in a very subtle manner which could not affront his devotion to his country, and his zeal for her. There was the matter of the “liberation” of Cuba, for instance, and the seizure of the Philippines and Hawaii, only recently. Only one thing could have moved him deeply, the insinuation that America must become an imperialistic and dominant empire, even if she retained the form of a republic. The fact that he was most probably not part of the conspiracy did not make him the less dangerous. Foolish if potent heads of state could be easily manipulated through their egotism and even their virtues, whereas wiser and more astute men would resist, for they were cynical. Roosevelt was conspicuously free of cynicism, which made him more of a menace, as all fervent fools were menaces.

He was up for re-election this November. His opponent was the gentleman Roosevelt was distinctly not, a modest Democrat named Alton B. Parker, who had been known to shudder at the mention of the incumbent President. The Democrats had some very knowledgeable, clever, and virile men among them. Why had the Democratic Party chosen as its candidate for the Presidency a man who could easily be defeated by the exuberant, shouting, howling, and belligerent Roosevelt?

The average American appeared to adore Roosevelt. Did the Democratic Party, the conservative party in America, truly believe that it was now time to offer the people a less rambunctious man, a more thoughtful and reflective man? If so, they were making a deadly error, for America was still a frontier country, as vital and noisy and active as Roosevelt himself. Surely the Democratic pols knew that. Was it possible that they had been subtly influenced to offer a colorless gentleman as opponent to Roosevelt so that the latter would win the election?

It had always been Jeremy’s intention to rid Ellen of what he considered her “damned young sentimentality and vulnerability,” while at the same time not inciting cynicism and hardness in her, and that depraved sophistication which marked Kitty and her kind. He had met a few, a very few, ladies of both elegance and sweetness, and a gentle worldliness, and he hoped that Ellen would become one of these. Yet he had a hard suspicion that it was Ellen’s very innocence which made her so dear to him, an innocence which did not distort, however, a certain astuteness and intuition; on rare occasions, she had revealed a native iron steadfastness of character which was not worldliness at all but rose out of her innocence. For she could not endure cruelty, hypocrisy, or treachery of any kind, or any falseness. (Though she seemed curiously blind to these things in her friend Kitty, which mystified Jeremy.) At last he had come to the conclusion that she could not recognize those traits if they were covert and concealed with smiles and amiability, and this dismayed him, for he never himself went unarmed.

On mornings like this, leisurely and slow and pleasant, he would not only read his newspaper without hurry but would have Ellen read the more important news as well, and would encourage her to express opinions, which often surprised him with their clarity and common sense and even subtlety. So now he said, “Ellen, read this about our bouncing President.”

He looked at his young wife and because of the radiance of her smile he did not at first see how increasingly white she had become, nor the lines of suffering about her beautiful lips. As always, her beaming adoration for him startled him as if he had been struck with light in the midst of darkness, and he thought, as he often thought: No one should love another human being as Ellen loves me. It is dangerous, deadly. Yet with this thought came a passionate tenderness as well as fear for her.

She took the newspaper from him, but first poured him a second cup of coffee, and he saw how delicate her once scored hands had become, and, in a touching way, how newly fragile. She read the President’s words, and a faint frown puckered her forehead. She put down the paper and looked at Jeremy with a long thoughtfulness. “Well?” he said.

“He’s not a very intelligent man, is he?”

“No one ever accused him of that, Ellen.”

“He seems to forget that this country is not entirely Anglo-Saxon,” said Ellen, “but is composed of many other races which have made America strong and increasingly powerful. I wonder, for instance, what the Poles, the Jews, the Hungarians, the French, and all the rest of the non-Anglo-Saxons think of such silliness?”

“I don’t think they are laughing,” said Jeremy. “If the Democrats had nominated someone of character and strength instead of that poor fish Parker, I think they could have beaten Teddy Bear. Maybe they didn’t want to.”

Ellen’s face became anxious, even brooding. “I just thought of that myself,” she said. “I often think of what you’ve told me about the Scardo Society and the Committee for Foreign Studies. It’s very hard to believe in such villainy.”

“You may believe in it,” said Jeremy.

“What is it that they want? Yes, you’ve told me. Power. But it must also be something else—”