Ceremony of the Innocent (53 page)

“You are not astonished, sir?”

The Ambassador sighed. “Nothing astonishes me.” They looked at each other with significance.

“Bismarck,” said Jeremy, “was quite a Communist. He drove out the sound German middle class to America, and to other countries. It has been to our profit, though a loss to Germany. No country can afford to lose much of its middle class, the bourgeoisie as it is now being disdainfully called in America.”

“Tyrannies,” said the Ambassador, “are always at war with the middle class. It is an ancient story, from Egypt to Athens to Romero modern Germany, to France, to Spain—and now to your unfortunate America. What will be the result? As you have written, and spoken, a worldwide despotism under the self-elected elite. The straw men, the impotent, the hysterical, and the insane, the feeble creatures who know their own inherent emasculation, and so would take revenge on a world which recognizes their impotence, rejects them, and laughs at them. The so-called intellectuals, who are not intellectual at all.”

“And who are being used by the international conspiracy, which is employing Communism itself to destroy freedom in all the world. Cynically, they are using Socialistic Communism for their own rise to power, and are as much the enemy of Communism as they are of individual liberty. What shall we do, Your Excellency?”

The Ambassador threw out his hands. “Governments are powerless against those who control the monetary policies of a nation. You have said that yourself.”

“Yes,” said Jeremy. “We now have a private banking organization, the Federal Reserve System. The American people are deceived, in that they believe the word ‘Federal’ means government. Gross Gott, Your Excellency, have you any thoughts about this frightful situation and what we can do about it?”

“Herr Porter, you can help by persuading the American people not to engage in any foreign entanglements.”

“Your Excellency does not appear to be optimistic.”

“It is not the function of a diplomat to be optimistic,” said the Ambassador, and now for the first time he smiled. “We take the view that anything catastrophic is entirely probable. We are never disappointed. I have heard about the book you are writing. Tell me of it.”

“I have a book, America, Beware! I have just finished it. It will be published very shortly. What good it will do, I do not know. Possibly no good. You see, I am as realistic as Your Excellency.”

The Ambassador sighed again. “In a world where fantasy is dominant, realism is suspect. Mankind loves to dream. It will not face facts, even in the very face of its own imminent destruction.
Sic transit mundi
.”

“The world deserves its destruction,” Jeremy said, and was despondent. “If it will not listen to truth—it should die.”

“Herr Porter, it will surely die. I am older than you, and filled with dire premonitions. It grieves me, however, that I have sons.”

“I also have a son,” said Jeremy.

“Accept my condolences, Herr Porter.” He added, hesitantly, “There is always the
Gross Gott
.”

“I do not believe in Him,” said Jeremy.

Just before they parted the Ambassador said, and with sudden gravity, “Herr Porter, you do not realize your own influence. May I give you a warning? Trust no one. Look for entrapments.”

“Your Excellency means assassination? I am not that important.”

The Ambassador was silent for a few moments while he studied Jeremy. Then he said, “Have you consulted with the French Embassy?”

“I asked for an interview. I received no answer.”

“So,” said the Ambassador, “it is very ominous.
Ja?
”

On May 24, 1914, Jeremy’s book was published, with all its warnings. The American critics were incredulous, though they admitted its wide scholarship and comprehension of international and internal affairs. The critics asked, “Are we not acquainted with George Washington’s advice not to engage in foreign entanglements? The American people would not permit such involvement. Mr. Porter is pursuing dragons which do not exist.” The book sold widely.

Congressman Francis Porter denounced it as “absurd.” “The author is obviously mad.” His denunciations were included in the
Congressional Record
. “I wonder,” said Jeremy to his friends, “who wrote that for him. It is very forceful, and he has no forcefulness at all. He is just an hysteric, and incoherent, as are all radical hysterics.
You will notice that he attacks me as a person, and not my ideas, and that is typical
. Here is one review: ‘Ex-Congressman Jeremy Porter is noted as a womanizer. He is also very rich.’ What the hell has that got to do with the facts I have written in my book? Nothing, of course. The same reviewer just loves Wilson and his ‘New Freedoms.’ That, too, is typical. The self-styled intellectuals have limp penises, and that is their trouble. If physicians would concentrate on alleviating the difficulty we’d have no screaming saliva-dripping ‘reformers.’”

On June 2, Jeremy’s Cadillac suddenly exploded and burned furiously on Fifth Avenue. He died in the flames. His last thought was: “Ellen! Oh, Ellen!”

The German Ambassador was sorrowful. But he was not surprised. Nor was he surprised at President Wilson’s agitation concerning Germany in early August 1914. “He is an innocent,” he said to his associates. “But are not the American people all innocents? Alas.”

President Wilson was unequivocally aghast at the furious rush of events. He said to his friend Colonel House, “At all costs, we must be impartial.” The Colonel smiled and regarded the President with a strange expression. Unknowingly quoting the German Ambassador, he thought: He is an innocent.

C H A P T E R   28

ON THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS 1916, over a month after Mr. Wilson had been re-elected to the Presidency with the slogan “He kept us out of war,” Ellen Porter was released from the Rose Hill Sanitarium on Long Island. She was hesitantly pronounced cured of the desperate mental illness she had suffered as a result of Jeremy’s murder. The physicians said to Congressman Francis Porter, “She is still somewhat dulled and chronically depressed and usually very listless, in spite of the best treatments, but we have hopes that the return to her children will have a salutary effect. For the first six months of her—residence—here—she never spoke of her son and daughter. In fact, she rarely spoke at all, as you know, Congressman, and appeared not to be aware of her surroundings or her visitors. Dreadful, indeed. We all pray that eventually she will be restored to full health and regain an interest in life. We have done our best.”

“I am sure you have,” said Francis. With the aid of a nurse, who would live with Ellen until her complete “restoration,” he escorted Ellen to his waiting limousine. She had become very frail and unsteady; though wrapped in furs she shuddered as the wintry wind off the ocean struck her, despite the fact that her face remained vacant, her eyes aimlessly staring. However, she said to Francis in a faint and toneless voice, “I must think of my children.” It was as though she were repeating a lesson by rote she neither understood well nor knew the meaning of. She looked up at Francis with those stretched and lightless eyes which were hardly aware of him.

“Yes,” he said very gently. “They need their mother, Ellen.”

Just before entering the limousine Ellen glanced about her, and for an instant she appeared startled and confused, as if not knowing where she was. She stared at the large red-brick façade of the sanitarium, and her confusion grew. It was obvious that she did not recognize the building. One lock of her still brilliant hair escaped from under her hat and fluttered on her very white gaunt cheek. She repeated Francis’ words in her deathly voice, “They need their mother.”

She strained piteously towards him like a child in a nightmare and her dry and wasted lips were tremulous and pleading. “Yes,” he said, and she nodded obediently. Snow was falling. Flakes fell on her gloves and pursued her into the car. Francis and the nurse covered her with a fur robe, for she was trembling violently. The nurse, Miss Evans, a plump and cheerful middle-aged woman, said, ‘Tonight we must decorate the Christmas tree! What fun, home at last.”

“Yes,” said Ellen. She blinked, sightlessly. She sat between the nurse and Francis, and Francis held her hand tightly. There was no warmth in her fleshless fingers, and no response. “The children will be glad to see their mother again,” he said, and his light voice was moved. Ellen nodded with that empty acquiescence. Her profile was very sharp and resembled white stone, and there were deep lines about her mouth though she would not be thirty until January. Her face was both curiously old and wizened and as expressionless as a very young child’s. She was no longer the Ellen he had known so many years ago, Francis reflected. But he still loved her. In a few months, he told himself, her beauty and vitality would return and she would begin to forget. He had hopes that she had already begun the process. Not once had she spoken of Jeremy since his death. She had not been able to attend his funeral. Francis wondered if she thought often of her dead husband, whose death had been caused by a very sophisticated bomb which had been placed in the interior of his automobile, and whose murderer or murderers had never been known and apprehended.

Ellen did not speak on the long drive, though she smiled spasmodically once or twice when the nurse touched her arm and made some lively remark on the passing scenery. The nurse suspected that the unfortunate young woman had not even heard her, and that the smiles were merely automatic and more like grimaces. But she continued to chatter brightly. Suddenly Ellen closed her eves and fell instantly asleep. “She is tired, sir,” said the nurse to Francis. “So much excitement, getting ready for Home, and the dear little ones.”

“Christian is not very little,” said Francis in his pontifical voice. “He is twelve now, and home for the holidays from Groton, and Miss Gabrielle is ten. Still, they are but children, and very lively. I am their cousin, once removed, and they call me Cousin Francis. I am very fond of them, Miss Evans,” and his voice contained a hint of severity, as if she had questioned his word. Miss Evans regarded him shrewdly. She was not awed that he was a Congressman, for she had been employed by Senators and once by a Governor. What a stick he is, to be sure, she thought, and like a skeleton in all that black and that derby hat. You can almost count his bones. His eyes are the color of cold oysters, too, and seem to glare behind those spectacles of his, as if scolding the whole world. Forty or so, I’d guess, and his hair is either very light or is getting gray, and thin. Poor Mrs. Porter, to have no one to turn to but this cousin of her husband’s. Except, of course, that nice Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey who visited her often. As for that Mrs. Wilder, she’s nothing but a middle-aged cat, and no friend to this poor lady. Nor are the others who came, probably out of curiosity or a sense of duty.

Miss Evans compassionately squeezed Ellen’s other hand. There was no response. The nurse sighed. It was true that Ellen had never spoken of her dead husband, but the nurses had heard her wailing and calling for him during her drugged sleep, and they had seen the rivulets of unconscious tears running down her sunken cheeks. She had been brought to the sanitarium in an ambulance, as stiff and rigid as a corpse, and more than half moribund, her face and eyes without cognizance. It had been six months before she had been able to dress herself with assistance. She was still emaciated, her once beautiful figure no longer evident.

Francis said, “I hope you remember the red roses I sent you every week, Ellen.” His tone was admonishing, like a male teacher’s. Ellen awoke, dimly.

“Yes,” she said. The nurse thought: She doesn’t have the slightest idea of what he is saying. But Francis nodded with approval. The brown furs and the brown silk dress Ellen wore were like garments on a mannequin, for they did not stir. Her breath was just faintly visible in the icy interior of the vehicle, and it came and went very slowly. Again she slept, while the white and black landscape rolled past them. Then to Francis’ dismay large shimmering tears began to run down Ellen’s cheeks from under her shut lids. Miss Evans wiped them away. “She often cries in her sleep, sir,” she said. “It’s like her soul remembers, even if she doesn’t when she is awake.”

“Of course she remembers when she’s awake!” said Francis, his words heavy with rebuke. “It is just that she controls herself.”

The nurse shrugged. “Yes, sir,” she said. “She is a lady.”

Hardly that, you chattering vulgar fool, thought Francis, with his quick and pointless anger. He glanced coldly at the nurse, and saw her round red face and sparkling brown eyes and somewhat thick lips, and he was filled with distaste. Her big breasts swelled under her white uniform, and his aversion increased. Her brown hair was neatly combed under her white cap, but without luster, and she had a coarse double chin. To others, her appearance was both reassuring and comforting. To Francis, she was almost disgusting. He found overt health distasteful and plebeian. Just a farm woman, he commented to himself. But Ellen will soon be entirely well, and we can get rid of her. He was already thinking of himself and Ellen as “we.”

On his Aunt Hortense’s death a few months ago, as a result of a virulent attack of “Spanish flu,” he had inherited her entire estate, which was very considerable, and he thought of it now with pursed-lipped satisfaction. He was almost as rich as Ellen herself. He considered Jeremy’s executor, Charles Godfrey, with intense resentment and something close to hatred. By all that was decent, he should have been co-executor, despite the enmity between the cousins. But what could one expect of such as Jeremy Porter, who had had no family feeling? The fact that he himself had little if any “family feeling” did not occur to him, for always he had been dutiful to the parents of Jeremy, who were now old and still shocked by their son’s death. They had dwindled in appearance and seemed almost as vacant and listless as Ellen. Francis expected that they would not live long, and he thought of the fortune which Ellen’s children would inherit. “We” would administer it until the majority of the children. Francis pursed his lips again and slightly nodded. The lawyers in Philadelphia would not give him much trouble. They respected him as a Congressman and a New York lawyer. He knew them well and made it a point to visit them occasionally.