Ceremony of the Innocent (52 page)

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 her 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.”

The State Department, under Wilson, spread the rumor that German ships were unloading arms for Huerta in Veracruz, and the Department declared its indignation. “Anti-American!” it shouted, though what was “anti-American” about this private agreement between Mexico and Germany, paid for with Mexican money, was not quite clear. “So,” said Jeremy, “we are beginning to interfere with the legitimate rights of foreign nations to conduct their own policies for profit or self-protection. We are on the road to American imperialism—as planned.” Jeremy’s friends were still incredulous and laughingly accused him of “seeing conspiracy in every move in Washington.” They were somewhat sobered when, on April 21, 1914, Wilson hysterically gave orders to “take Veracruz by storm.” American warships were ordered to bombard Veracruz, and American sailors and marines seized various government buildings. Greatly alarmed, and justly so by this American, and unique, intrusion into Spanish-American governments and internal affairs, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile quietly protested to Washington and discreetly offered to mediate between the United States and Mexico, and the offer, given silkily but with determination, was reluctantly accepted by an excited State Department. Jeremy was delighted. “It is about time,” he said to his friends, “that foreign governments begin to look coldly and realistically at our government, that is, if they don’t want to be submerged in radical conspiracies which will destroy them.” But under his delight was a cynical pessimism. Again, it was justified. President Huerta mysteriously resigned—and retired to Forest Hills on Long Island, New York—he who had protested American intervention in the internal affairs of Mexico! “He must now watch proceedings with agony,” Jeremy said, as a Communist revolutionary named Venustiano Carranza became President of Mexico, with the high approval of Washington. Huerta was oddly silent, and under severe surveillance in his “exile” in the United States, an exile imposed upon him by Washington itself. “It is not an exile,” said Jeremy to his stunned friends. “It is an imprisonment. He was forced into that imprisonment in America by our very ‘concerned’ government.”

The innocent American people, struggling to survive in the depression induced by Washington, were too engrossed with their immediate predicament to note the ominous and intricate policies of their government. They had never heard of the secret Scardo Society or the Committee for Foreign Studies. Nor would they have believed in the existence of these sinister organizations which had long ago plotted the abrogation of their liberties as Americans, and the conspiracy to reduce America to a mere membership in an international organization busily and softly at work in The Hague under the title of “World Peace.” It was a working title. The ultimate name would be given later.

Jeremy went to the German Embassy in Washington in May 1914. He knew the Germans to be elaborately courteous and polite and rigid in protocol. He had been agreeably surprised to be invited on a mere cryptic letter he had written to the Embassy. The Ambassador himself received him and conducted him to private chambers. ‘Tour Excellency has heard of me?” Jeremy asked the Ambassador. The Ambassador smiled grimly under his mustache. “Herr Porter,” he said in German, “we have indeed. And we have listened.”

He introduced one of his attaches, Herr Hermann Goldenstein. “I worry,” said Herr Goldenstein, who was a young and intense man.

“Jews,” said Jeremy, “always worry, and with excellent reasons. But all of us should worry, too.” He turned to the Ambassador. “I am sure Your Excellency knows of the international plot against your country.”

“Yes,” said the Ambassador. “Unfortunately, His Majesty, the Kaiser, refuses to believe in this infamy. We have given him copies of your speeches, Herr Porter. He calls it nonsense. But someone more—shall we say, aware?—has induced him to increase our very small military forces. Sad to say, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt has suddenly become hostile to Germany, he who admired us.”