Ceremony of the Innocent (51 page)

“There is a matter of bills,” said Hortense, speaking for the first time. “I have detailed them for Ellen.”

“How much?” said Jeremy over Ellen’s shoulder.

Hortense licked the corner of her mouth. “I think two thousand dollars will cover everything.”

“How kind of you,” said Jeremy. “I will write you a check for the whole thing before we leave.”

“I don’t think Ellen is in a state—” Francis began. There was a red stain on each of his thin cheekbones, like a splash of blood.

“Shut up,” said Jeremy again.

“How can you be so offensive to the only friends Ellen has?” cried Hortense. “The only friends in the world! I thought highly of you, Jeremy, until just lately. Now I know you for a brutal and ruthless man, with no regard for anyone.”

“Good,” said Jeremy. “I hope your nephew remembers that.”

But Ellen was now feverishly pushing herself away from her husband. She stood before him, trembling, her white face lifted and condemning, her swollen eyes actually blazing.

“It was all your fault, Jeremy, that she died here alone, without me! You sent her away, when I was with you in Washington! When I came back you told me she had wanted it this way, to spare me the parting, but I know now it was not true! She wanted to stay with me, in New York.”

“Who told you that damned lie?” Jeremy said, with no softness in his voice.

“Mrs. Eccles. She told me that poor Aunt May often cried and said you had driven her away, to get rid of her from your house.” Ellen’s voice was hoarse.

“Don’t be an idiot, Ellen. You know very well she wanted to leave, as she told you, that day. She insisted on it. Surely you remember. Ellen, for God’s sake, face reality for once. Your aunt wanted to come back to Wheatfield; she cried about it a thousand times, as you told me yourself.”

“That is true,” said Ellen, and her voice was weaker than before. “But she wanted me to come back here, with her, to this house, and I wouldn’t.”

“Good God,” said Jeremy. “You really are an idiot, Ellen.” He wanted to say something more merciless, but restrained himself. Ellen was too distraught. He reached for her, but she sprang away, the tears flooding her face. “It was wrong, from the beginning,” she stammered. “It was always all wrong.”

“Good God,” said Jeremy again. Francis and Hortense exchanged significant glances, nodding to each other.

“I was never anything but a servant!” Ellen wailed. “If I had remembered that, Aunt May would still be alive.”

“You are out of your mind,” said Jeremy. “Sometimes I think you always were, you infernal innocent. Now, collect yourself I see Miss Cummings is at the door, with your luggage, and your hat and coat. We are going to the hotel at once.”

“No!” exclaimed Ellen, out of her confused and suffering anguish.

“Yes,” Jeremy said, and took her arm roughly. “I’ve been too patient with you, Ellen, for too long. I have a car waiting Wipe your nose and your face, for God’s sake.”

It was as if she were seeing him clearly for the first time, and she flung herself into his arms, crying, “Take me home, Jeremy, take me home!”

“Yes, dear,” he said. He pulled her to the door, where Miss Cummings was waiting. For some reason the younger woman suddenly epitomized, for Ellen, all her grief and anger and pain.

“I don’t want her with me any longer! Miss Cummings. She has turned my children against me. I know it, I know it, I can feel it! She has been very rude to me, and Mrs. Eccles, since yesterday. She is arrogant and overbearing. I refuse to have her in our house any longer. Jeremy, send her away!”

Jeremy smiled, very darkly. “You needn’t worry about that, sweetheart. She has somewhere more interesting to go, haven’t you, Maude?” Charles Godfrey had already told Jeremy of his intention of marrying Maude in September.

Maude only smiled in answer. They went out into the hot twilight and got into the waiting car. Hortense and her nephew looked at each other a long time in the parlor.

“I think,” said Francis, “that Ellen has come to her senses at last, and realizes, finally, what she really is.” He was elated.

“Just a servant,” Hortense agreed. “What’s born in the bone comes out in the flesh.”

C H A P T E R   26

ELLEN REMAINED IN A STUPEFIED condition for a considerable length of time, listless, almost unspeaking. So Jeremy had recourse to Kitty, Mrs. Bedford, and sundry other women, for relief Kitty was most sympathetic, and delicately so. “Let her recover slowly,” she said. “One must remember her background, my dear. It intrudes. The alienists from Vienna say that one’s childhood is the most emphatic influence in one’s life. I sadly don’t believe that Ellen yet realizes her position as your wife. But you must give her time. That is the kindest thing to do.”

Mrs. Bedford, who was very fond of Jeremy though not in love with him, was less mendacious. “Poor Ellen. She is always accusing herself of crimes she never committed. I had a sister like that, with a very tender conscience. It has nothing to do with Ellen’s earlier life. She was born that way; I understand. One of these days, perhaps, she will come to herself, and laugh, and all will be well. It happened to my sister, who now lives in Chicago, a very healthy and vital woman who loves life, finally.”

Ellen recovered sufficiently to be matron of honor at the wedding of Charles Godfrey and Maude Cummings, though she once said to Jeremy, “How Charles can do this, marrying Miss Cummings, is beyond me. She is so unsympathetic.”

“She has common sense,” said Jeremy. But Ellen never could come to a liking for Maude and distrusted her.

Charles had taken his bride to a brownstone house he owned not far from the brownstone where Jeremy and Ellen lived. Maude knew that Charles had for her an entirely different love than he had had for Ellen, a comfortable and confiding and companionate love, full of trust and mutual amusement and understanding. Ellen, for Charles, had been a rosy and romantic dream, teeming with almost adolescent fantasies. Men were instinctive poets, she would reflect. But a warm fire and a warm serene love were what they eventually desired, a love that did not unduly conflict with their romanticism, and was always stable and steadfast. Poetry is beautiful, she would think, and often contains profound wisdom and nuances. However, at the last, a good dinner, intelligent conversation, and tender sympathy were the foundations of men’s lives. Poetry was moonlight, but one had to deal with the day. Maude knew all about the masculine character, and she would listen to Charles’ excursions into poetry, though somewhat banal, with a gentle and loving smile, hot contradicting or obtrusively inserting common sense into the discussion. Men were very suspicious of female earthiness, and resented it. So Maude rarely suggested anything that might shake the fanciful castles of her husband’s soul. She only insinuated, when necessary for Charles’ benefit, and then he would believe it had been his own idea from the beginning.

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.