Ceremony of the Innocent

by Taylor Caldwell

  He leaned back and grimly surveyed them. Their smiles were fixed and mechanical, and then they faded.

  “I honestly wish you’d try something. I really do. Then I can see that you get what you deserve. By the way, Christian—and what a name was given you!—you are employed by the Rogers Foundation. I know all about them. They don’t want any scandal about their employees. Very discreet, if sinister men. They don’t want any nasty attention drawn to them; you do that, and you will no longer be corresponding secretary, as you call it. And I will follow you all the rest of my life. Believe me, I will.”

  He turned to the pert Gabrielle, who was gazing at him with raw hate. “You won’t look so soignée, Gaby, after five years’ imprisonment, for perjury. Believe me, I am not just threatening you. In fact, if it weren’t for your poor mother I’d see both of you the hell in prison. For her sake, I am temporarily—refraining from doing what I’d love to do. And, by the way, there is always a grapevine among the medical fraternity. You’ll get no more bought psychiatrists to ‘treat’ your mother and try to institutionalize her. That’s another crime. I think the law thinks that more heinous than perjury itself. It doesn’t look kindly at matricide—and that’s what you attempted—matricide.”

  He stood up. “Now get your damned bodies out of my office, before I have you both kicked out. Just remember my warning.”

  They left without another word. He felt sick. He had to take a strong drink. He had won. But how long would the victory last? Murderers like Ellen’s children could always find another way. The drink gagged him. “God damn them!” he said aloud.

  Dr. Cosgrove entered Ellen’s small hospital suite on this late warm and golden September day, and he was full of cheer. She was sitting in her sitting room, and was dressed in a becoming blue silk robe. She had lost most of her former puffiness of body and face, and her features were tranquil if sad. The blue shine of her eyes was slowly returning, and her hair, brushed and tended, was recovering its former brilliance. There was even some color in her lips, and her hands were once more smooth and white. Years had dropped from her appearance. When she saw Dr. Cosgrove she smiled timidly but trustfully.

  “Well, we are beautiful today,” he said. They were now such friends that she looked grateful when he kissed her cheek. He pressed her hand. “Look what I’ve brought you,” he added. “A bottle of Dom Pérignon—champagne. It’s my birthday, and I thought you might like to celebrate with me.” He turned to the smiling nurse who sat nearby, knitting contentedly. “Would you please get us a bucket of ice?” He sat down in a nearby chair and regarded Ellen with pride. She said, “When can my children visit me, George?”

  “Oh, in a short time, if you go on improving this way How’s your appetite?”

  “Miss Hendricks, my nurse, says it is quite good ” The sadness deepened on her face, and Dr. Cosgrove watched her keenly.

  “What’s the matter, Ellen?”

  She turned away her face. “I don’t know why I am living; I don’t really want to live. No one needs me, not even my children, for they are adults now. I’m useless. What is there for me to live for any longer?”

  “You’ve always lived for someone else, haven’t you? Don’t you know, yet, that our first duty is to ourselves? You, Ellen Porter, are unique and individual; God made you that way. He had a reason for giving you life, and that was not just to serve others. You say no one needs you. God needs you. You can’t live just through others, Ellen dear. You can’t take their reality as yours. You have your own reality. Ellen, this is a beautiful world in spite of the people in it. It is yours to know and enjoy.”

  She moved restlessly.

  Dr. Cosgrove slapped his knee. “I have a friend just outside the door, waiting. A very good friend. I’d like you to meet him, Ellen.”

  She was immediately alarmed, and shrank. “A stranger? Oh, no! Please.”

  “You disappoint me, dear. I thought you had got over your silly fears. He’s here to help me, with you, celebrate my birthday. Will you let him come in, for my sake?”

  She was silent for a moment or two; her new color faded. Then she said, “Yes, for you, George.” But her lips trembled and she looked at the closed door with trepidation. The doctor went to the door, closed it briefly behind him, then opened it again. Ellen looked at the stranger, and was surprised. He was an old tall man, almost bald, with a kind seamed face, and she recognized him as a priest at once. She visibly relaxed. A clergyman would not threaten her.

  “Father Reynolds, this is Mrs. Porter, my patient. She is going to help us celebrate my birthday. In fact, it’s his, too,” he added, much to the priest’s amusement. He raised his white eyebrows and the doctor winked at him. The priest shook Ellen’s hand and he was immediately compassionate, for her fingers were tremulous in his. But she smiled weakly at him, in silence. It had been decided that as Ellen mistrusted Charles Godfrey it would be best if Ellen were introduced to the priest by the doctor, who had her confidence.

  The priest sat down and regarded Ellen with earnest if smiling attention. “It is very kind of you, Mrs. Porter, to let George and me—celebrate our—mutual—birthday, with you. There are not many occasions in life when we can truly celebrate. We should enjoy them fully when they occur, shouldn’t we?”

  “I—I don’t know—Father. I don’t seem to have much capacity to celebrate anything, any longer.” Her voice, its old nuances almost restored, shook. She added, “No one to celebrate with.”

  He looked at her as if astonished. “Why, you have God, my dear! You also have the sun and the moon, the stars and the gardens, the trees and the clouds—all innocent things.”

  She smiled faintly. “I never thought of them being innocent. But they are, aren’t they? Yet, they are insensate.”

  “And who told you that? They are part of God, just as we are. And as that part, and living, they are aware, with a different awareness than ours. No one need be alone, even if isolated from the human world; the world teems with friends of quite another world, and a beautiful one, unlike the human creation.”

  She looked at him with an interest which made Dr. Cosgrove rejoice. “I never thought of that,” she said. She hesitated, while she thought. Her face changed. “I’m thinking of many people I’ve known. I’m beginning to realize that they weren’t all nice, as I thought at first. I know you think that is uncharitable of me, and perhaps it is.”

  “An awareness of reality is not uncharitable, Ellen. May I call you Ellen? Thank you. Not to see things clearly and as they are, and that includes people, too, is to be deliberately and foolishly blind, not charitable. It’s also dangerous. I am an old man now; I’ve been a priest for nearly sixty years. I’ve seen a multitude of people and have heard thousands of confessions. I know humanity, Ellen, I know its endless crimes and sins against God and man. I know there are very few really good people in the world, and they are very hard to find. As for the wicked, and their name is legion, we should not judge. We should have compassion, even while we recognize what they truly are. Compassion is not sentimentality or self-deception. We share the human predicament; we all have the capacity for evil. Evil is not strength; it is weakness, a violation against our immortal souls, and against God. Therefore, the strong, the good, should pity these malformed people—and pray for them.”

  Ellen pondered. “I always felt so guilty when I had uncharitable thoughts about others—”

  “There is no guilt in recognizing the truth. The truth can not only make you free—it can put you on guard and even save you. The recognition of truth does not mean you should condemn, though condemnation is often justified.”

  Her voice dropped. “There’s another thing: When I do see people for what they are—I am thinking lately of some I have known—it depresses me and makes me feel—desperate—and frightened. I think that’s what started my—illness.” She made herself smile apologetically. ‘Truth, I think, can also kill you, can’t it?”

  He nodded. “Keats was quite wrong when he said that truth
and beauty are the same. They are often mutually exclusive. But we should encourage strength in ourselves so that we can face even the worst of realities with fortitude. We can be brave. In fact”—and he smiled at her winningly—“I have presumed to add another Commandment to the Ten: ‘Thou shalt be brave.’ God knows, most of us are not brave at all. It is a virtue few possess, but it can be cultivated just as surely as the other virtues.”

  Ellen whispered, “I don’t think I was ever very brave.”

  Priest and physician exchanged glances. The priest had already been fully informed of Ellen’s life. The priest said, leaning towards her, his hands clasped between his black-clad and very thin legs, “I’ve never met you before, Ellen, but in some way I know, with absolute conviction, that you are one of the most courageous people I have ever known.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “I? Oh, you are wrong—Father! I have always been so afraid—”

  “Fear and bravery are not—like truth and beauty—sometimes mutually exclusive. I think only those who have reason to fear can be greatly brave. Your soul, perhaps, recognized that reason even if you did not, consciously, yourself.”

  She shook her head slowly, and now there were tears in her eyes. “I was quite brave, when my husband was alive. Now I am not.”

  “I’ve heard about your husband, your first husband, Ellen. He was a brave man as well as courageous. Are you disappointing him?”

  Her mouth trembled again at his use of the present tense. “I—I don’t know if he—lives—any longer, though in my dreams—” She paused. “How can I be sure he is not—dead—his spirit dead, I mean?”

  “You can be sure that he lives, for there is no death. That is a scientific fact, as well as a spiritual verity. Everything changes, but it never dies. The seas come and go, but they are never lost. Fiery stars collapse in on themselves, and are darkened. Then they explode into new fire and new life. Everything is always contemporary, Ellen. It is never the past. For present and past and future are all one and the same thing. You have surely read that love is deathless; it never dies, for it is an immortal force. So you can be absolutely certain that as your husband loved you, he still does. Can you imagine not loving him?”

  Her color was returning; all at once she looked young and eager and alive. “No, I could never stop loving him! It is wonderful to think, perhaps, that he still loves me.”

  Without that surety, she suddenly thought, I would die. She said, “The very thought that perhaps he still loves me, as he once did, makes my life—worthwhile.”

  The priest gave her a beautiful smile. “He loves you, is waiting for you, and he knows, if you do not, that you as a human soul are ‘worthwhile.’ For your own sake. Not only he knows that, but God also.”

  She looked away. “I believed in God—but when Jeremy was killed, because he was a good and noble man, I lost faith.”

  “Sad,” said the priest. “When we lose faith in the face of calamity our faith has not been so strong after all, has it?”

  She smiled a little mischievously, and the doctor rejoiced. A dimple even appeared in her cheek. “You see how weak I am, Father. I told you I was not brave.”

  He replied with slow and somber emphasis, “Ellen, I am a priest. I was always a priest, even as a child, in my heart. Yet, there have been times when my faith was shaken. Once or twice it was totally lost. Then I was desolate, for I had alienated myself from God. Once knowing Him, then rejecting Him, is our present and future Hell, for we cannot live without Him, remembering the glory of our lost faith and our adopted sonhood with God. What, in this world, can replace the bliss of our former knowledge?”

  Ellen thought of the sweet serenity which had pervaded her childhood, when she had had a child’s utter faith, in spite of the circumstances of her life, and now the tears ran over her eyes in silence.

  “How poor are they who have never known God,” said the priest, taking her hand firmly. “Don’t they deserve our utmost compassion, our prayers, our solicitude? For what is any man’s life without the reality of God? It is a dream, a fantasy; it is barren and fruitless. When such men think they know life and its teeming, they are only seeing mirages in a desert. What gives everything reality” is not there. The Godless are not alive; they are the truly dead. But then, they never lived, either.”

  Her tears, dropping heedlessly on her breast, spotted the silk darkly. But the priest knew they were healing tears. He raised his hand and blessed her, and she did not know what he was doing, though it strangely comforted her, as if a loving pact had been made between herself and a friend. When his hand dropped she took it like a child and held it, and smiled through her tears, and he knew that he did not need to promise her his prayers. She knew that he would pray for her.

  Outside the suite, the priest said to Dr. Cosgrove, “She is a beautiful woman, in her soul as well as her flesh. She is also very fragile and delicate of personality. Yet, she also has an innate fortitude. That is not a paradox. We must teach her to endure, as she has the capacity for endurance, which she is no longer exercising. We must help her.”

  “I think she is already exercising her native bravery. She doesn’t have the terrible nightmares she once had. So we have reason to hope.”

  Still, Dr. Cosgrove, natively cheerful and optimistic, felt a sudden terrible premonition. Without knowing exactly what he meant, he said, “God help her.” He and the priest returned, smiling, to Ellen, for the champagne, and she laughed, as she had not laughed for years. Her face was young.

  C H A P T E R 41

  ON OCTOBER 24, 1929, Ellen was discharged from the hospital. Charles Godfrey had warned her children, “Pretend, as you always did, that you love her and want to help her. If you don’t—then I promise you that I will do the very worst I can to you.”

  He said to Francis, “Don’t intrude on Ellen at any time, Frank. I know you care about her. The best you can do for her is to see her as little as possible.” He felt pity for the sorrowful man. “It isn’t your fault that this is necessary. She’ll never forget Jeremy. Yes, you may remain in her house. In fact, I recommend it. She needs protection from her children, and you must guard her. I know you don’t believe how frightful they are, but I know.”

  “She looks so well now! When she saw me for the first time, a few days ago, she smiled at me, as once she used to smile, when she was young.”

  “Yes. Well. Be the ‘Mr. Francis’ to her, as you were in her childhood.”

  Maude, while Ellen was in the hospital, had rid Ellen’s house of Mrs. Akins and Joey, and had replaced them with sound people. She had ordered the cleaning of the house and its redecoration, and it was as bright and as fresh as when Jeremy was alive, and filled with flowers. Ellen’s old clothes had been thrown away, by Maude. She had bought gay new ones for the sick woman. Ellen did not know what her real friends had done for her, for she had never recognized them as friends.

  So Ellen, returning to her house, felt its freshness and beauty, and it seemed alive to her with the presence of Jeremy. A surge of sweetness came to her, and comfort, and peace. She asked Gabrielle and Christian about Mrs. Akins and Joey, and Gabrielle, after a glance at her brother, said soothingly, “Oh, they were really no good, Mama. Very careless. We replaced them. I think they were stealing, too.”

  Gabrielle and her brother were simmering with hatred and frustration. They had passionately hoped that Ellen would die in the hospital, and so leave them free of her presence and, above all, give them access to her money, and the estate. They had always despised her and mocked her, from their earliest childhood. They hated her now for her renewed youth and health and the clarity of her eyes and her bright color. Her voice enraged them, because of its strength and cadences, the voice of her young womanhood. When she kissed and embraced them they wanted to strike her. They smiled at her lovingly. She had so far recovered that she could shake hands placidly with Francis, and the poor man was quite overcome. Perhaps, in spite of what the doctor had said, Ellen would forget Jeremy and
look with kindness and affection at himself, as once she had done. That would be enough for him, and he asked nothing else.

  Miss Hendricks, Ellen’s nurse, was to remain with her in her house for a week or two. She was a cheerful and motherly woman, and she had come to love Ellen. She had her orders from Dr. Cosgrove, and she was wise. After the greetings to her children and her husband, Ellen was put firmly to bed by her nurse. “We must rest as much as possible. And every day we are going to have a nice walk, aren’t we, and perhaps a nice drive. We will even go to the new talking pictures; it’s really amazing to hear the actors’ voices on the screen. Lifelike.”

  “I feel so alive,” said Ellen, as she undressed and permitted herself to be put to bed. “Don’t I have the most wonderful children? Imagine Gabrielle going to all that trouble to replace my wardrobe, and put all these flowers around, and have my house redecorated! And all those plants in the garden! I am blessed, in my children, aren’t I, Miss Hendricks?”

  “Yes,” said Miss Hendricks, and her pleasant face became grim for a moment. She was grateful that she had never married and so had no children. Ellen, softly rapturous, smiled contentedly, and fell into a deep and quiet sleep. Gabrielle and Christian had gone to Wall Street. Something appalling was happening there, and they were concerned and apprehensive.

  They had reason for this. The disquieting news had begun at ten o’clock that morning. It was a chill and cloudy day in New York, yet dusty. The gloom was not only on a frantic Wall Street, but in the natural air also. To the perceptive, it was as if the ground were rumbling in preparation for a devastating earthquake, and those tremors were reverberating all over the country, in every broker’s office. By noon the rout was on. Charles E. Mitchell of the National City Bank in New York was reputed to have appeared suddenly on Wall Street, thrusting unheard-of millions into the Market. Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Aluminum Corporation of America, and the Bethlehem Steel Company, among many others, delivered even more millions of dollars for “call money.” By one o’clock these loans had reached the incredible amount of over seven hundred and fifty millions. Now more than rumors were flying frenziedly about, and the rumors were proved true. Trading, selling, were frenzied. General Motors sold at 57 1/2, twenty thousand shares; Kennecott Copper, twenty thousand shares, at 78. Brokers spoke wildly to their customers, and the selling mounted precipitously. U. S. Steel, which had sold, only a month ago, at 261, collapsed to 194.