Hollywood

  “He plans to take it up with us, the War Conference Board, tomorrow. This won’t be easy.”

  “The Allies?”

  McAdoo nodded. “Then there are the war-mad here at home—and overseas.”

  Burden understood the war-mad at home: vast fortunes were being made legally and illegally out of the military. Burden had recently joined the Senate Naval Committee, where he had got himself a sub-committee on procurement. Every day he was solicited and lobbied. Bribes were offered both openly and subtly. He had succumbed to neither, but other senators had been weaker than he—or was it stronger? Since the morality of Washington was always relative to need, one man’s Gethsemane might be another’s Coney Island.

  “You will have your problems with the Army.” Burden offered a secret for a secret. “General Pershing will oppose any armistice. He wants to fight another year, and ride in triumph through Berlin.”

  “Pershing?” McAdoo turned to get a full look at Burden. With the sun back of his head, he looked more than ever like a giant bat. “He wouldn’t dare.”

  “I don’t know what he’ll dare, but I have it on the best authority that he’ll come out publicly against any sort of negotiated peace.”

  McAdoo shook his head. “Generals,” he murmured.

  “They are stupider than most people,” Burden agreed.

  “Thanks for the warning.” McAdoo was grateful. “But for now the problem will be the Allies. They want their ton of flesh. But we have all the trumps.”

  “We have all the money.” It had taken Burden some time to grow accustomed to the phrases “debtor nation” and “creditor nation” and why it made any difference who was what. Great Britain had been the world’s foremost lender of capital until it ran out of money in 1914. When J. P. Morgan—later backed by McAdoo’s Treasury—paid for Britain’s overdraft, the United States became the principal creditor nation. Yet New York, outside Fifth Avenue, was as shabby as ever while it was said that even after four years of war London still shone imperially.

  “We have all the money.” Burden looked at his watch. He did not want to be late two Sundays in a row. “Anyway, they’ll fall in line if the President says just three words.”

  “Which three?” McAdoo smiled. “ ‘I love you’?”

  “No. ‘A separate peace.’ We went to war not to help the Allies but to get the Germans to accept the Fourteen Points. Germany has now done so. Like it or not, the war’s over. And we’ve won it.”

  McAdoo nodded. “True. But the British and the French will have to agree at some point. Colonel House tells me, in confidence, that the British and French leaders dislike the President even more than he mistrusts them.” McAdoo shook his head. “Imagine Pershing wanting to drag out the war so that he can look like a hero.”

  “So that he can be president.”

  McAdoo gave Burden a sharp look: yes, this was the object of their Sunday game of golf. “If the people found out that just because he wanted to march down the Wilhelmstrasse one million Americans would die, he’d be hated.”

  “They voted for Grant. He killed more than a million.”

  “A different war. A different time. A better cause. Should I resign?”

  Burden had expected the question; and had prepared an answer. “No. You’ve made a huge success of the Liberty Bonds. You’re at the center of a government that’s won a war. Stay there.”

  “I am kept on a tight leash.”

  “Better that than roaming about baying at the moon for two years, trying to collect delegates.” Burden was blunt.

  McAdoo affected not to hear the part about the delegates. He was tangential. “You know the best way to get to the President? Mention someone he hates. Tell him something he doesn’t know about an enemy. Make it up, if you have to. He warms up immediately. Then you can do anything you want with him.”

  Burden rose. “Thanks for the game.”

  They shook hands. McAdoo said that he must wait for a White House car to pick him up. Out of deference to “gasless Sunday,” each had come to the club in a horse and buggy. As Burden crossed the high-ceilinged main hall of the club, he wondered what had gone wrong between father and son-in-law. He also thought, with envy, of the vast amount of Wall Street money that McAdoo could call upon if he should make the race for president. Since Burden could deliver as many votes as McAdoo could deliver dollars, the combination was irresistible; only the order was wrong. Why not Day-McAdoo? The Secretary of the Treasury was better known to the whole country than the Senate’s deputy majority leader, but where the voters were, there Burden was entrenched, a second Bryan without the first Bryan’s primitivism; also without, to be honest, his magic.

  Halfway across the hall, Burden found himself face to face with a white-faced Franklin Roosevelt, who had been weeping. Caught off-guard, Roosevelt managed a smile; then quickly covered his face with a handkerchief and blew his nose.

  “You look,” said Burden, “awful.”

  The face that emerged from behind the handkerchief was now its usual jaunty rather vacuous self. But the color was pasty; the close-set eyes glassy. “I’ve just got out of the hospital.”

  “Flu?”

  “Pneumonia. I got it in Europe. I was there two months. I’ve never been so sick.”

  For all Franklin’s Rooseveltian affectation of vigor, he was a sickly creature, as Burden remembered from the Sylph. Then the next association in his mind was abruptly anticipated. Lucy Mercer joined them; she was in civilian clothes. “Senator,” she smiled. She was dreamily beautiful. What was the gossip about them? He had heard something; and forgotten it.

  “There’s been a peace offer.” Franklin moved to deflect the subject—from what? Illness? Lucy?

  “McAdoo just told me.”

  “Is he here?”

  Burden nodded and said good-by. From Chevy Chase to Connecticut Avenue would be more than half an hour by horse and buggy. He should have asked McAdoo to drop him off in the White House car.

  Although Burden was late, she was serene. “Gasless Sunday is ghastly Sunday,” she drawled, “until now.” They were in her upstairs sitting room, panelled in rosewood. Tea had been set up in front of the fireplace. On Sunday afternoons, only her personal maid was on duty to let him in and to see that the coast was clear of other servants. Later, she would lead him down the back stairs to a side entrance. The master’s bedroom was at the opposite end of the marble palace, while the master himself was at the opposite end of the country. “He should be back tomorrow.”

  As she was so much younger than Burden, he had always taken her for granted, a part of the city’s large chorus of decorative girls. Now she poured tea for him on Sundays. Thanks to Caroline, Sunday was now associated in his mind not only with pleasure but with freedom from himself. What Sunday could mean to a woman was beyond him. After all, if they were reasonably adept at traffic management, they had six other days in the week as well.

  “Why should Franklin Roosevelt be crying at the Chevy Chase Club, with Lucy Mercer?” This was very much a Sunday question.

  “Because,” she handed him tea and a plate of Hyler’s macaroons, “that was probably their last meeting. Unless,” she was thoughtful, “it was the first meeting under the new dispensation. Eleanor has found them out.”

  “At last.” Even Kitty had been concerned at Eleanor’s slowness to discover what everyone in their small Washington knew. “How?”

  “He came back from Europe with double pneumonia, which is twice as bad as plain pneumonia, which is good enough for the rest of us. Anyway, Eleanor got him to the hospital. Then she came home, and straightened up the empty house, the children were all away. Then she went through his suits from Europe to send them to the cleaners, and there were the love letters from Lucy. It was just like one of those simple-minded plays. I must tell Caroline when she gets back.” Frederika’s laugh was low and conspiratorial, as if there were only the two of them in all the world.

  “Who told you? Alice?”

  “Amon
g others. Now comes the part where there is a difference of opinion. All are agreed that Eleanor, nobly—‘so noble,’ ” Frederika imitated Alice imitating Eleanor, “said that Franklin could have his divorce, but Lucy would have to take their five children. This was brilliant. After all, Lucy has been her secretary and she knows that those five children are like ten. Lucy agreed not to see Franklin again. And now a sad peace reigns.”

  “But they met today …”

  “At the Chevy Chase Club, where Senator Day and Mr. McAdoo and everyone would see them, see how wretched they were, and we would discuss them, just like this. I think they want us to know that she, as a Catholic virgin, confronted by a Protestant wife and mother, has decided not to go on without marriage, which is out of the question. So the man weeps helplessly, and she enters a nunnery.”

  Burden brooded comfortably on the adultery of others. Then he said, “There’s something wrong with this story.”

  “What?” Frederika brushed blond hair away from her eyes.

  “I know nothing about women …”

  “You should’ve waited for me to say that. In anger, of course, my darling.” Frederika was droll; and seldom too expected. “What’s wrong with the story?”

  “It’s too much a woman’s viewpoint. I mean, what about the man’s?”

  “Is that so different?”

  Burden nodded. “It’s always different, and when the man’s a politician—and here I know everything—it’s really different. First, Franklin could never, under any circumstances, marry a Catholic. Second, Franklin, a divorced man with five children, could never, ever—like double pneumonia—marry a Catholic and expect to win so much as a race for sheriff of Dutchess County.”

  “So—what happened?”

  “Eleanor threatened. He backed down. That’s obvious. It’s the terms that are curious. I mean, he’s always known that he could never marry Lucy. But does Lucy—did Lucy—know that?”

  “I see.” Frederika was quick. “He could’ve led her on. Yes. I see that. Then Eleanor forced the issue. And he … he is deceitful.”

  “That’s what adultery is all about.”

  “I meant,” said Frederika evenly, “doubly deceitful, which you’ll admit is once, at least, too much.”

  “Caroline thinks that he is triply deceitful. But I’m not so sure.”

  “Why triply?”

  “She thinks that Eleanor is in love with Lucy and that Franklin broke it up for everyone’s sake, meaning his own.”

  “If true, he’s a master politician.” They went to bed. In the act, he thought of Caroline not as she was now but as she had been that first time, which was indeed, to his amazement, truly her first time. In due course, he had become the father of her daughter, who was then attributed to her husband and cousin, John Apgar Sanford, whom she had promptly married. At least that secret had been well kept. Blaise knew it; but to Burden’s surprise, Frederika did not, and Frederika had been, from time to time over the years, close friend to Caroline. All in all, Burden was grateful to Blaise for not telling his wife, now Burden’s mistress in place of Blaise’s half-sister, presently living openly in California with one Timothy X. Farrell, whose latest movie, Huns from Hell, had opened to splendid reviews at the Capitol Theater in Washington and at the Strand in New York. It was the war film to end all war films and had opened, luckily, just as the war to end all wars was about to end.

  4

  Jess and the Duchess sat in the last row of the orchestra of the Capitol so that she could see the screen without her pince-nez and he could barely see it at all. But what the Duchess wanted you to do you did. Although the figures on the screen were not as vivid as the myopic Jess might have liked, what he could see was very clearly a marvelous movie. The bravery of the American mother had brought tears to his eyes, and even the usually stony Duchess was obliged to hold her smelling salts in one hand and a handkerchief in the other. The organ played mournful music, suitable for the horrors of war. The night attacks. The bursting shells. Poison gas. Men writhing on the barbed wire. The hospital with the mutilated. For the first time, Jess understood something of war. Most photo-plays about the war had been slap-dash propaganda. No one had ever really looked dead or wounded in them, and the sets had looked like sets. But this was the real thing; and it was said that much of it had been filmed in France with an actual American mother, searching for her real-life son at Belleau Wood. Everyone had commented on the mother’s beauty—like a Madonna, the papers said, a Mater Dolorosa, the high-toned ones had added. Now the organ music became ominous. The mother was in a ruined church. Jess hated anyone who would deliberately destroy a church, as these Huns had done. Worse, before the high altar, sat a bald German officer, with a monocle. How a monocle was held in place had always intrigued Jess, whose round eyes could not have held anything at all while his small nose could barely support a pince-nez. The Prussian officer was desecrating the church by using it as his office. Now the music intimated that something even more terrible was about to happen. Jess’s hands were moist. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted that the Duchess had moved forward in her seat, the great thin mouth set as if she were the grieving woman on the screen.

  The Madonna pleaded for the life of her son; begged to know where he was being held prisoner. Then—this couldn’t be really happening, Jess assured himself, heart racing—the Hun smiled evilly; got to his feet; lunged at the devoted mother, who shrank back. There was a single sound from the audience, part gasp, part moan, when they realized that the Hun was about to rape the Madonna in a church. She fought him off; he stalked her, she fled to the altar; he followed. Jess had stopped breathing. Then she raised high the crucifix.

  The audience, as one, moaned with terror and awe. The face of the Hun was a study in fear and horror as he saw the crucifix slowly descending upon him. The face of the mother was transfixed with a power higher than this earth’s; she was transcendent now, at one with God. The crucifix connected smartly with the shaved head of the Hun, who fell backward down the steps of the altar, to a powerful crescendo from the organ. The Duchess gave a single dry sob into her handkerchief. Jess exhaled, tremulously, and hoped he was not having a heart attack. The picture ended with mother and son united by the American Marines on the Marne River, and as the organ played softly “The Marseillaise,” the house lights came on and people dared not look at one another for fear that their tears would be visible as they walked, nobly, like the mother, up the aisle, to face the dull daylight of a Washington afternoon.

  The Duchess blew her nose loudly in Fourteenth Street, and said, “I know that woman.”

  “Who? The mother?”

  The Duchess nodded and studied the card in front of the theater. “Emma Traxler. That’s her name.”

  “That’s not an Ohio name.”

  “Chicago, maybe. Of course, it could be made up, like Mary Pickford.” The Duchess hailed a taxi. “The Capitol. Senate side.”

  “Well, I think it’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen,” said Jess, still shaken, “about the war, anyway. I felt like I was there, in the trenches, with all that noise.”

  The Duchess marched round to the door to the Senate cloakroom, which was behind the vice president’s throne. As she and Jess were about to go in—the Capitol guards all knew and liked the Duchess despite or because of her bullying ways—the Senator came out of the bathroom opposite, arm in arm with Senator Borah, a tall, burly, lion-headed man from Idaho, who was considered radical. It was typical of W.G. that he would go out of his way to befriend someone like Borah, who had furiously opposed the war-time draft, the Espionage Act, and Liberty Bonds. The first because you did not destroy Prussia by prussianizing the United States; the second because the First Amendment guaranteed free speech; the third because bonds pushed up prices, creating inflation. As a businessman, Jess entirely approved of number three, and so, secretly, did W.G. Although it was not politically wise to take such stands in a country mad for war, Borah was fearless while W.G. was careful. Mrs.
Borah and the Duchess were on good terms; but then they were neighbors in Wyoming Avenue.

  W.G.’s smile was huge when he saw his wife and just as huge when he greeted Jess. “Duchess, why aren’t you off at your sewing circle?”

  “War’s over, they say. How do, Mr. Borah?”

  “Mrs. Harding.” Borah also smiled at Jess, not recalling him. Jess was used to this: the smile of recognition was recognition enough. Borah’s head was like an apple whose two sections started with the part down the middle of his hair and ended with the cleft in his rounded chin. “You see the President’s answer to the Kaiser?”

  “I’ve been at the movies.” The Duchess sounded as if she had, somehow, just won the war at the Capitol Theater. “The matinee was crowded, which goes to show that the war’s about over.”

  Borah nodded. “Wilson’s told the Kaiser that he’ll have to abdicate before we talk business. First sign of gumption in a long time.”

  “I’m going to speak,” said W.G. “This is all pretty historic.”

  Jess was allowed to accompany the Hardings into the holy of holies, the Senate cloakroom, a long narrow room, reminiscent of what indeed it was, a men’s club, with a row of tall lockers along one wall, leather chairs, tables, sofas along the other. Two doors at either end gave entrance to the Senate floor.

  Like everywhere else, the Senate was sparsely attended these days: those not ill with flu avoided public places. A dozen senators were in the cloakroom; some were writing at the tables; some chatted conspiratorially; a number paid court to the senator from Pennsylvania, the Republican boss Boies Penrose, a man so enormously fat that once wedged into the largest armchair in the cloakroom, it took at least two pageboys to pull him out of his chair. Old and failing as he was, Jess knew, Penrose would decide, as he always did, who would be the Republican nominee in 1920. When he saw Harding, he waved absently; then he continued his conference with a pair of Western senators. Borah went onto the floor.

  Harding and the Duchess sat side by side on a black leather sofa, and while the Senator studied his notes, the Duchess talked to Jess. “What Daugherty would give to be here,” she observed.