Ceremony of the Innocent (37 page)

Walter pondered, then shook his head. “I’m counting on editors to insist on freedom of the press, one of our most important freedoms, and to fight every blackguard who intrudes on it in the name of ‘public virtue’ or ‘national safety.’”

“Editors,” said Jeremy, “are men, and men are human flesh and blood, and men have families, and men need to eat and have shelter and clothing. Their very humanity makes them vulnerable to mountebanks and malefactors. Also, many newspaper mortgages are owned by politicians and their very potent friends.”

“We need a few heroes,” said Walter, and then both men laughed cynically. After a moment or two Walter said, “Frank’s never forgiven you for beating him twice in your mutual race for Congress. Candidly, I think he’d be delirious with happiness to be in Washington. He’s made for Congress, born for it. They’d love him down there, and he’d love it, too. Of course, some would call him a dangerous radical—and some would call him a fool, and I think both designations are correct.” His square and manly face became bitter. “Of course, he’s an hysteric, but the whole damned town is hysterical, led by Teddy himself.”

“And the whole country’s hysterical, and terrified, with this Panic, and that’s understandable. But how many of us know what caused that Panic?”

“Quite a lot of us. But who’d believe us? And the deadly men know that, and they laugh at us and know how impotent we really are. We don’t have the money, we don’t have the importance, we don’t have the power to be heard by the country. When a few of us speak here and there, or write about it, we’re called insane or crackpots, for our voices are puny. It’s not that the people are apathetic. It’s just that they would not believe there is a certain terrible destiny planned for them; they just don’t believe in that much evil. We’re still a trusting and simpleminded country, and the politicians, and those who control the politicians, intend to keep us that way as long as possible. What would the people say, if they really listened, when the true cause of this Panic, which is starving them to death and terrifying them, was explained to them, and they believed it?”

“There’d be another Revolution,” said Jeremy. “But the malefactors aren’t worrying. The people will never believe it, until it is too late.”

“Well,” said Walter, in a somewhat hopeless tone, “so long as we are able to keep Washington weak and small, and we have strong local governments in the jealous states, we’ll have decentralized government, and so a measure of our freedom. But God help us if Washington ever becomes big and overpowering, with a swarm of harassing and arrogant bureaucrats who would rule by fiat and not by law. Then will come the man on horseback, attended by the bureaucratic vultures and hyenas, and that will be the end of America as it was the end of Athens and Rome, and God only knows how many other civilizations now lost to history.”

“Washington was able to put through its antitrust laws, which will destroy productive advance and efficiency, in order to ‘protect’ the backward and hidebound smaller industries, and all in the name, too, of ‘promoting competition,’ which our politicians detest, being weaklings themselves—and ‘fair practices.’ We can shout to heaven that government protection of the inefficient and weak will destroy the strong, who are the builders of a nation, and it will do no good, for our enemies know that the coddling of the inferior will eventually eliminate the strong and bold and the way will be open to absolute uncontested slavery of all our people. So, the ‘elite’ use men like your son Frank, who are vociferous and hysterical and emotional, to inform the public that punitive measures used against the strong are all in the name of ‘justice’ and humanitarianism. Not that,” added Jeremy with some ruefulness, “that I trust what we are calling the ‘oil trust.’ I’ve had the pleasure, if you can call it that, of meeting John L. Bellows, at a meeting of the Committee for Foreign Studies.”

Walter sat up alertly, his white hair glinting with red shadows from the fire. “It would seem, then, that they are confident you are with them.”

Jeremy frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe they just like to have me with them to keep an eye on me, though I’ve been very circumspect as you know. Very potent fellers. I knew all about them before, but just having knowledge is an impotent thing. You have to be in the actual presence of these men, and listen to them when they speak in confidence, to get the full impact of what they are up to. Cool and smooth as cream, and as lethal as cyanide.”

“Did they say, during their last meeting, about the coming war?”

“I think they’ve moved up the date. I doubt it will now be 1917, ‘19, ‘20. I think it is imminent, perhaps in the next few years, and no later than 1915. Their timetable for Russia has been moved up, too. They are very confident, now, of instigating a Communist revolution in Russia, with practically no opposition. They are showing fierce concern because Russia is getting more and more prosperous, and the Czar has abdicated much of his absolute monarchy, and the Duma is gaining in influence and is insisting on more and more freedom for the Russian people. If they let Russia alone for too long she will become a constitutional monarchy, like England, and there will go their long-laid plots to invade every country with Communism, or its sister, Socialism, and then seize power for themselves. There are constant meetings with bankers, including the Bellows clan, and other enormous financiers and industrialists and ‘intellectuals’ and high-placed politicians all over the world.”

Walter closed his eyes wearily. “Yes. I’ve heard rumors, too, but nothing as definite as what you have just told me. Again, thank God, I won’t live long enough to see the destruction of my country. I’m sorry for men your age, and your families. You’ll have nowhere to turn; you’ll have no hope, no refuge, no new continent to which to run and set up a new nation. Our last frontiers are vanishing, literally and figuratively. Where will men go, say, forty or fifty years from now, if they wish to be free? Religious oppression was bad enough in old Europe, but they had a young open land to flee to and make a fresh life for themselves. But the coming oppression will be universal and there will be no place for a man to hide and draw a free breath.”

Jeremy saw the profound depression on his uncle’s face, and he knew there was just reason for that depression. But he tried for cheerfulness. “Well, let’s not be too pessimistic. Remember, we are not alone. There will be millions of men, being born now and in the future, who will fight for the right to live in freedom and in peace.”

“Yes,” said Walter with heaviness, “but the chaos first, and the wars, and the tyranny and the death! The four horsemen of the Apocalypse. Why do men wait for total ruin and destruction before they act?”

“Why don’t you ask God?” said Jeremy. “He’s seen this happen scores of times for millennia. If He has any angels, why aren’t they whispering to mankind now?”

“Maybe they are, maybe they are,” said Walter. “Who knows? Yes, I am glad I am old. I may see the beginning of the end, but I won’t be around when the end comes.”

“And you won’t see men like your son Frank holding enormous power over his abject countrymen. That should really cheer you up, Uncle Walter.”

Walter grimaced. “I should never have let him go, for that year, to England, to listen to the Fabians, and come back all trembling with intensity and with shrill, savage, and vindictive hatred for manly men, men of patriotism and strength and honor. Not that I sent him to the Fabians, of course. He just wandered into their company. They’re always recruiting men like my son, all over the world. Yet, he wouldn’t have been so attracted to them if the disease wasn’t waiting for a catalyst to explode in his mind. He was born that way. He’s a born zealot, and you know what Talleyrand said about zealots.”

Jeremy said, “I suppose millions of fathers look later at their adult children, and wonder how in hell they ever begat such sons, and what they had done to deserve them.”

“I hope that won’t happen to you, Jeremy, concerning your own children. How are Christian and Gabrielle? Has Ellen fully recovered from the birth of the little girl?”

Jeremy’s face subtly became somber. “Yes. But she’ll never be able to have any more children. It seems that her early poverty and deprivation and heavy work did something—She’s healthy enough now, of course, but there’s a malformation of her pelvic bones, the doctors say. As you know, she almost died this time. Considering everything, myself and Ellen and what’s waiting for us, I’m really glad there’ll be no further additions to the family.”

A brown autumnal rain began to surge against the windows, and Walter stood up. “We Americans are becoming as concerned with soft sweet animal cozinesses and comforts as the British are also becoming. We all want to be let alone to suck on our sugar tits and have Mama sing us soothing songs, and tell us fairy tales about the wonderful future about to be granted us—by our dear friends in our government. I see that attitude creeping on deadly little feet, everywhere, even in stalwart Germany. The warm fireside is becoming more and more important to all of us, more than the heroic men who fought to make us a nation, and who gave us our liberty. Children! Where are our men now?”

“I have a faint hope they are still here. That’s the only hope we have. I’m bringing up my children to love their country.” He smiled, though not with paternal sentimentality, as if the thought of his children not only pleased him but amused him. “Christian’s only three, but he is already shouting the words of Patrick Henry, which I taught him, and his enunciation is very good, too. As for little Gabrielle, I am teaching her a few words, at her elderly age of one, and she’s already proficient. Pity she’s such an ugly little wench, resembling me.”

“On the contrary, she’s very interesting in her appearance, I think,” said Walter, with the fondness of a grandfather and not that of a mere great-uncle. “All that dark curly hair and shining dark eyes. Yes, very interesting and provocative, and intelligent. Full of mischief, even this early, and very knowing. You have two beautiful children, Jeremy. God grant they’ll be—safe.”

“Now, that’s a word I detest—safe—Uncle Walter. The world’s never been a safe place and it never will be. No, I don’t want my children to be ‘safe.’ I want them to be strong, to have moral stamina, to be able to fight. Ellen once or twice suggested that I was a little too rigorous with them and demanded too much of them. Probably remembering the hardships of her own childhood. It is useless for me to point out that Christian can be sullen and resentful at times, and disobedient. When I punish him, she almost cries, though she doesn’t interfere. That’s one thing I won’t allow from her—any dispute about how I am bringing up the youngsters. I think she’s forgot how natively wicked children are—how wicked the whole human race is, and always was. Thank God I have the nursemaid, Annie Burton, still with us. There’s a girl with rare common sense, and a hard hand on the kids. It’s very baffling, when I think of her and Ellen, for Annie had a very rough time of it, too, when she was a child, almost as bad as Ellen did, and it’s made Annie sturdy and cynical and realistic, whereas Ellen is a little Mrs. Rousseau, all by herself, even once suggesting that man was innately good and that it is ‘society’ which distorts him. I think your son Frank can be blamed for that foolishness of hers.”

“Perhaps,” said Walter with considerable glumness. “After all, he was the biggest influence in her life for the three years she was with my sister-in-law in Wheatfield.” He sighed. “Francis is becoming more and more pontifical all the time—my only son. He resembles a priggish spinster, and his intolerance grows, as does his mawkishness about something amorphous he calls the ‘masses.’ He has a look about him when he rants which makes me suspect he is thinking of you. You epitomize, for him, a world he both fears and detests, and would have vengeance on, a strong just world which neither gives quarter to nor takes quarter from—fools. He is babbling even more vociferously about ‘compassion,’ which he really doesn’t possess at all. But it has a nice pure-in-heart sound. Good God, why did I ever have such a son?”

Jeremy laughed. “Maybe he had a great-great-grandfather who was hanged. There’s such a thing as heredity, you know, though the pure-in-hearts—I love that designation!—are beginning to deny it. They’re shrieking about ‘environment’ now. Pure Karl Marx. Maybe Marx resents his own heredity, and if he does, then perhaps his screaming followers will follow his example.”

He thought of Ellen again, and looked aside. “I’ve tried to tell Ellen that her absolute loving kindness and generosity tempt people to exploit and ridicule her, for they know secretly exactly what they are, and that makes them feel guilty; because they are made to feel that way by Ellen, they get infuriated, and worse. She—corrupts—them. Why hasn’t someone yet written that some of the grossest corruption is caused by tender and unselfish people? Ellen brings out the worst in others, by her very nobility. She causes them to be more vicious than they’d ordinarily be, and even more cruel, and they hate her for it. Yes, I’ve tried to tell her, but she doesn’t understand.”

“Her grandmother was like that,” said Walter gloomily. “Maybe the old boys who used thumbscrews and the wheel and the rope and the fire on the saints had some justification. Don’t laugh. Her grandfather said to Amy, ‘Dammit, girl, you make me want to beat you!’ At least I heard he said that.”

“Sometimes I feel that way about Ellen, too,” said Jeremy, and he chuckled with some ruefulness. “It’s hard on a man to have a wife like Ellen, at times.”

Walter regarded him shrewdly. Many women, he thought, drive their husbands to more worldly and naughty women by their sheer virtue. It’s a relief for the poor men. He thought of Kitty Wilder, and frowned. Well, it was none of his business.

Jeremy said, “You haven’t met my associate yet—Charles Godfrey, though he’s been with me for a year. He takes over when I’m in Washington. One of my classmates at Harvard.” He smiled widely and his large white teeth flashed in the dusk. “I think he’s more than a little in love with Ellen, and that’s good. He is one of my executors.” Jeremy touched a bell on his desk, and sent for his friend. Walter waited with interest. Charles Godfrey entered almost immediately, and Walter was instantly impressed by him.