“Finally,” said Burden, “when Lansing’s aide, that ass Bill Bullitt, testified to us that Lansing thought the League was useless, the President decided it was time for Lansing to walk the plank, and so he did.”
“Some months later,” added Franklin.
“The President’s stroke intervened …”
“And the regency began.” Franklin put out his unsmoked cigarette.
“I don’t think there is a regency.” Burden startled both men. “I’ve been here a number of times, and I quite like Mrs. Wilson, and no matter what you hear, I don’t think she and Grayson are running the country.”
“So who is?” asked Cox.
“Tell no one,” said Burden; then he whispered dramatically, “Nobody.”
“You mean it’s as if,” Cox frowned, “there was no president at all?”
“That’s just the way it is, and I don’t think the Republicans will ever bring up the subject, because there’s a good chance that the folks may like the idea and decide to abolish the office and save us all a lot of money.”
“Heaven,” said Franklin, “forbid.”
The thick and untidy Tumulty appeared. “He’s on his way. He’ll meet you on the south portico. Have you seen this?” He held up a pamphlet with the headline “A Negro President?” Under the headline was a blurred photograph of Harding, looking duskier than life.
“Of course,” said Cox. “Terrible stuff. I’ve said not to use it.”
“Do you think it’s true?” asked Franklin.
“Who knows?” Burden was indifferent. “Anyway, every time Harding runs for office, the same madman appears with all his so-called proofs.”
“This could give us all the South, Southwest, and a lot of Ohio and California, which we desperately need.…” Tumulty looked mournful.
“We’ve got the South,” said Cox.
“Nothing is certain in this business,” said Franklin, riffling the pages of the pamphlet.
“Anyway, forget about it. The President’s said no.” Tumulty sighed. “I think it would elect the two of you, but what do I know? And anyway, you’re going to win, but even so …”
“What does that mean, the President said no?” The small, cold, close-set eyes of Roosevelt stared at Tumulty, their sudden full level attention emphasizing the unpleasing asymmetry of the oval face.
“It means, Mr. Roosevelt, that if anyone tries to send one of these through the post office, the postmaster will confiscate it.”
“By what authority?” Franklin was now very much on edge.
“Under the President’s war-time powers, which have still not been rescinded. Specifically the Espionage Act of 1917.”
“We must,” said Burden, with a friendly smile at Franklin, “do something about all those dictatorial powers we gave to Caesar …”
“After Mr. Cox’s administration.” Franklin laughed; blew his nose; said, “Why does the Potomac affect my sinuses worse than the Hudson?”
“Home’s best, I suppose.” Burden beamed.
Tumulty was at the window. “Here he comes. Let’s go outside.”
On the south portico, Woodrow Wilson was arranged in an odd-looking wheelchair. Despite the warmth of the day, a shawl covered his paralyzed left side. Except for a Secret Service man, he was alone. Plainly, Mrs. Wilson did not wish to appear as either regent or interpreter. The President’s neck was wasted, face haggard, mouth’s left side fallen. Cox murmured to Roosevelt, “I didn’t know he was still so sick.”
As they stepped into the portico, Wilson extended his hand. “Thank you for coming. I’ve very glad you came.”
“Mr. President.” Cox appeared overwhelmed by the extent of the ruin before his eyes. “I have always admired the fight you made for the League.”
Burden thought this singularly infelicitous. Had it not been for the fatal fight, Wilson not Cox would be the nominee and in rude health, as the English put it. Wilson’s blind zealotry had wrecked the League, the party and himself. When it came to practical politics, Burden’s level of human compassion was never high.
“The fight can still be won,” said Wilson, passing on the suicide weapon, like a Japanese warrior surrendering to the next generation, a sword suitable only for disembowelling oneself. Burden noted that although Franklin floated about, as it were, exuding euphoria, he only made amiable noises, saying nothing about the League or anything else. Perhaps he was more intelligent than Burden suspected.
“You will enjoy the White House,” said Wilson. Without the left side of the mouth and tongue to help form words, the voice was indistinct; also, after he spoke, there was a tendency for the mouth to remain open. “We have done so much of the time, though now, of course …”
Cox was plainly not up to the requirements of so essential and painful a scene. “Mr. President,” he orated, “we are going to be a million percent with you and your Administration, and that means the League of Nations!”
Again, the President murmured, “I am grateful. I am very grateful.” Franklin flashed the hereditary Roosevelt teeth like talismans, and set off a string of meaningless happy syllables; then Cox and he shook hands with the President and Tumulty led them back to the executive offices. Burden would have followed had Wilson not grasped him firmly by the wrist. “Stay,” he said.
Once the candidates were out of sight, Edith came onto the portico. She greeted Burden warmly if wearily; then she and Burden sat on either side of the wheelchair. “We had trouble finding the right sort of chair until I remembered those wonderful ones at Atlantic City, you know? Where the boys push you up and down the boardwalk. So we bought one. Only five dollars.” Edith looked pleased with herself.
“I can walk now,” said Wilson.
“You can stand up and walk with help,” amended Edith.
“I can’t raise my left leg yet. But that will come soon. Too late.” Wilson struck the arm of his chair. “I should’ve fought for it. But there was Mac …” The voice trailed off.
Burden thanked whatever deity presided over the fortunes of politicians that Edith and Grayson and everyone else close to the President had managed, with the greatest difficulty, to keep him from running for a third term. He seemed as completely unaware of the extent of his unpopularity as he was of the extent of his physical debility. He had even sent the new secretary of state, Bainbridge Colby, to the Democratic convention in San Francisco to drum up support for a third term. Burden, as a delegate from his own state, had done his best to explain the political situation to Colby. But the President had given his instructions, and Colby was obliged to obey his master.
McAdoo had led on the first ballot. One word from Wilson and his son-in-law would have been the candidate and probable winner. When Postmaster General Burleson had wired the President urging him to support McAdoo, Wilson had turned into King Lear upon the heath. He threatened to fire Burleson; then he ordered Colby to present his name. In the end, not even Colby dared to present Wilson’s name to the convention.
“Mac is an excellent executive but he has not the power of execution.”
“You mean,” said Edith, who had heard this line many times before, “the power of reflection.”
“Surely, that is what I said.” Wilson turned to Burden. “I shall practice law when we leave here. In Washington, with Mr. Colby.”
Burden wished the new law partners well, as Edith looked at him oddly, not certain how he would use this information. “Of course, I’ll write history. Or try to. I’m a bit out of practice. He’s not at all like T.R., is he?”
Wilson’s attention to any one subject was no longer great, and the transitions were apt to be both abrupt and cryptic. Edith translated, “Mr. Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow means. I,” she added, “would not like to be poor Mrs. Roosevelt.”
“Surely all … that is over.”
The previous winter Lucy Mercer had married one Wintie Rutherfurd.
“But the way he treats her. Don’t think we haven’t heard all about the night that she left him at
a very lively party and then went home and found she’d forgotten her key, and so she had to sit up in the freezing vestibule until he got home at dawn.”
“I think I’d have rung for the servants,” said Burden, who had also heard many versions of the same story.
Wilson pushed himself up straight with his good arm. “You were kind to come,” he said.
Burden shook his hand. “I’m glad you’re doing so well.”
“It is remarkable, isn’t it?” Was this ironic?
Edith was bland. “And how hard he works—we both work.”
The prematurely ancient face looked up at Burden; the dull gray eyes glittered like a wolf’s in the bright sun; the long teeth, too, were distinctly lupine, while the voice was suddenly a low growl. “It is a terrible thing to be helpless.” Yes, thought Burden, the wolf knew that he was in death’s trap, yet still he wanted to kill.
An usher escorted Burden up the stairs to the main floor of the White House, which resembled a deserted hotel off-season. Rugs had been taken up in the Green, Blue, Red rooms. Only the East Room was in use, as a movie theater. Each day, the Wilsons and the Graysons sat in lonely splendor, staring at flickering images on a bedsheet hung from a crystal chandelier.
Burden shuddered, inadvertently; and then made his way to Rock Creek, where an amiable widow was waiting for him in his own shut-for-the-season house. As his car turned off Connecticut Avenue and into Rock Creek Park, he realized why Wilson had forbade the use of the so-called evidence of Harding’s Negro ancestry. Wilson wanted Cox and Roosevelt to lose: the wolf’s last kill.
TEN
1
On the fifty-fifth birthday of Warren Gamaliel Harding, November 2, 1920, the American electorate made him president. Although less than half of those who could vote actually voted, Jess could tell from the figures on the blackboard in George Christian’s living room that W.G. was winning by close to two to one. Also, both Senate and House of Representatives were securely Republican, and the age of Woodrow Wilson was now as remote as that of Cleveland.
Jess was one of a half-dozen trusted volunteers who had sat in the house that Christian had rented next to the Hardings’ and spoke by telephone to various agents around the country to get a sense of who would be coming back to the new Congress and who would not. A number of famous senators had been defeated; and new names had taken their places.
The telephone rang. Jess answered. It was that amiable war hero Charlie Forbes, calling from Seattle. “Tell the President,” said Charlie, sounding hardly drunk at all, “that he has swept the whole Northwest.”
“Whaddaya know?” said Jess; the word “president” was beginning to register.
“Tell him happy birthday, and we’ll see him in Washington.”
That, decided Jess, would be his last call. He put down the phone. From the next room he could hear W.G.’s laugh, followed by the Duchess’s familiar “Now, Warren!”
In the dining room of the rented house, the President-elect sat at the head of the dinner table, the remains of a birthday cake in front of him. Daugherty and Christian sat on either side of him while the Duchess and W.G.’s father, old Dr. Harding, studied the returns at the other end of the table.
“That was Charlie Forbes just now,” Jess said to W.G.’s end of the table. “Clean sweep in the Northwest.”
“Good old Charlie.” In his moment of triumph, W.G. was aglow with a generalized human warmth, while Daugherty was at ease for the first time in more than a year. The energetic Christian was busy with the various newspapermen who came to the house, requesting bits of “color,” as they called it. So far, the only color was that W.G. had stuck his napkin into the top of his trousers and left it there.
It was the Duchess who asked, “Why such a low turnout?”
“The ladies—God bless them.” Daugherty’s blue eye was misty not with sentiment but fatigue. “This is their first presidential election and most of them never got around to registering to vote.”
“George.” The Duchess turned to Christian. “I left two bottles of champagne by the front door of our house. You take them over to the newspaper boys. Of course, those bottles never came from us, as we observe the laws of the land.”
“The President,” said Daugherty, “technically speaking, has not yet sworn to uphold those laws, so he can, as a former senator and not yet president, commit a felony in good faith.”
“But nothing unseemly,” said W.G., chewing on the end of a dead cigar. Jess wondered what on earth it must be like to find yourself president during dinner, just like that. Of course, it hadn’t been all that fast. For more than a year, Daugherty and Harding had been at work in state after state, gathering support. Now here it all was.
“Oh, and George,” the Duchess was not yet finished, “don’t give anything to the news-reel people. I’ve told them once we’re in the White House, they won’t be let in, not after those pictures of me and Warren they took last week when we weren’t looking.”
“Now, now, Duchess.” W.G. was placating.
“I’ve also kept a book,” said Florence Kling Harding, eyes bright as blue searchlights. “Everybody who’s ever snubbed us in Washington’s been listed with the snub. Well, they’re not setting foot in our White House, ever, let me tell you.”
“Poor Alice Longworth,” Daugherty observed.
“I think we’ll make an exception for her.” W.G. grinned.
“She’s the worst, why, she—”
“Dearie, Nick’s a leader of the House. So we’re going to have to let them in the door.”
“Well, only when it’s absolutely official.”
Christian appeared in the doorway. “Associated Press wants to know, did you say, when you were nominated in Chicago, that ‘we drew to a pair of deuces, and filled’?”
“Certainly not,” said the Duchess.
Harding sighed. “Would I ever say anything so unbecoming of what was—until now—the greatest moment of my life? No. I never said it. Governor Lowden was with me. He can testify I asked him to pray for me.”
Christian disappeared. “Not that it’ll do any good,” W.G. observed, sadly. “Once they knot one of those phrases of theirs about your neck you have to wear it forever.”
Daugherty laughed. “Like Hiram Johnson’s who’s supposed to’ve said when you offered him the vice-presidential nomination, ‘You would put your heartbeat between me and the White House?’ ”
“So puffed-up,” said the Duchess. “I’m glad we got Calvin Coolidge instead. He stays out of the way. I wish I could say the same for her.”
Jess was perched on a chair between Harding and Daugherty. Outside there were cheers and, from time to time, passing automobiles would sound their horns. All Marion was up for the night to celebrate.
Hands linked behind his head, Harding summed up: “It’s like this Senate group—what did that New York Times man call them? The ‘Senate Soviet.’ They were supposed to’ve got together in Will Hays’s smoke-filled suite …”
“That part’s mine,” said Daugherty, “looking into my crystal ball last spring.”
“Then they decided—for every sort of sinister reason—that I was going to be the candidate the next morning.” Harding frowned for the first time since glory had draped him like a Smith’s Emporium Genuine Gold Thread and Chinese Dragon Silk Dressing Gown Deluxe. W.G. discarded his well-chewed stub and deliberately lit a proper Havana cigar. Despite warning hums from the Duchess, Harding puffed deeply and contentedly and said, almost dreamily, “Yet the next day, on the first four ballots, the thirteen senators who were supposed to’ve agreed the night before that I’d be their candidate all voted against me.”
To Jess’s surprise, Daugherty nodded agreement. Usually, Daugherty liked to take credit for what was supposed to have happened in Will Hays’s suite at eleven minutes after two of that famous Saturday morning. Actually, Daugherty had not known of the meeting until morning, by which time other forces were at work. “That’s why,” said Daugherty, “whe
n Lodge called for a recess, I thought I’d have a stroke.”
“That was because you didn’t know Lowden and I were having a con-fab on what to do.” W.G. gazed benignly at a group of wide-eyed young relatives gathered about the Duchess. “Even up to the ninth ballot, my senatorial colleagues were still hoping to nominate Hays. But by then Lowden and I were in accord. On the ninth ballot, ten of my supposed senatorial managers voted against me while the three who switched to me had been in the cards all along, as the press would say.”
“But does that mean,” Jess could not contain himself, “that the senators had nothing to do with getting you the nomination?”
W.G. nodded. “When the number-one and number-two candidates cancel each other out, number three is usually chosen. Well, I was number three. Simple as that. They couldn’t stop me once Governor Lowden and I had got together. The fact that some of them were still trying to get it for Hays between the eighth and ninth ballot shows how little they know about these things. Fact, most folks would’ve been pretty scandalized if the senators had managed to stop me.”
“As it is,” said Daugherty, “once we were in, that four-flusher Harvey and some of the others started talking about the smoke-filled room, pretending that they were the bosses. But they weren’t. You did it. You were the convention’s choice.”
W.G. rubbed his eyes. “And that’s pretty much the way we planned it. Of course, for a while there I was afraid …” When the President-elect did not complete his thought, Jess wondered if it might have something to do with the galleries, with all those people who truly wanted Herbert Hoover, who wasn’t even, in the party’s eyes, a candidate. Yet they kept yelling, “Hoover, Hoover!”
Christian entered, smiling. “Governor Cox has conceded.”