The American Chronicle - Hollywood Part 3

5.

ARMED WITH BADGE AND DOc.u.mENTS, Blaise Sanford entered the Capitol on the Senate side. In addition to what looked like the whole of the Was.h.i.+ngton police force, troops were stationed at every entrance, as if invasion was imminent, or were they the invasion? Would there be martial law? he wondered.

Blaise himself had written a highly balanced either-or editorial for the morning's Tribune, to the distress of the editorial writers, who were openly disrespectful of anything either he or Caroline wrote. The Tribune was essentially Republican and pro-Allies, thanks to Blaise's influence, with occasional accommodations to the Democrats, thanks to Caroline's long-standing friends.h.i.+p with James Burden Day. When half-brother and half-sister disagreed on a policy, both positions were given equal s.p.a.ce, to the consternation of those few Was.h.i.+ngtonians who took editorials seriously.

A thin warm rain demonstrated spring's arrival. Illuminated from below, the Capitol dome resembled a white gibbous moon against the black sky. There was a smell of narcissus and mud in the air, but the usual pervasive smell of horses was absent. The President's recent carriage drive to the Capitol to make his inaugural address was said to be the last such drive any president would ever make. The world was Henry Ford's at last. Blaise took refuge beneath the porte-cochere, where tonight neither cars nor carriages were permitted, thus insuring that everyone got equally, democratically, wet.

Fortunately, the Congress was inside. So no senatorial cabals could block Caesar's way. Now journalists, diplomats, wives and children were converging on the Capitol, where as each was admitted he was given a small American flag, the gift of an unknown but well-organized patriot.

In the main rotunda, Blaise was stopped by the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, Ellery Sedgwick. "I'm going in to see the President," he said. "He's in the Marble Room. Come on, let's say h.e.l.lo. Tumulty's made me a temporary member of the Secret Service. That was the only way I could get in."

Blaise looked at his watch; it was eight-thirty. The speech was scheduled for eight-thirty. But when it came to Congress, nothing was ever on time. The senators were still entering the chamber of the House of Representatives, where, for lack of chairs, many would be obliged to stand.

"I'm going to Henry Adams afterward. Are you? Informal supper. He's coming." Sedgwick indicated Henry Cabot Lodge, who was turned in their direction. White-haired, white-bearded, white-faced Senator Lodge gave them a jaunty wave; the b.u.mblebee nostrils were dilated with excitement. As Theodore Roosevelt's man in the Senate, he was the head of the war party.

At the door to the Marble Room, a Secret Service man stood guard. When the two publishers tried to enter, he stopped them. "Mrs. Wilson's just gone to the gallery, and he's about ready. You better take your seat, Mr. Sanford."

As Blaise started to do as requested, he caught sight of the President. Wilson was standing at the ornate room's center. He was quite alone, back to the door, eyes downcast. In his left hand he held the cards on which his speech was written. Blaise thought the moment too intimate to watch but, like Sedgwick, he was rooted to the spot as, slowly, like a man in a dream, Wilson walked across the room to a great dusty mirror. Then Blaise saw the President's reflected face. Everything seemed to have fallen apart. The mouth was cretinously ajar and double chins flowed over the high hard collar. The eyes were round and staring while the muscles of the face were slack. Had this been Paris and the President a French boulevardier, Blaise could have named the drug that he had been taking-Opium. But this was the Capitol; and the President was a puritan. Abruptly, Wilson became aware of the image that Blaise could see in the mirror. With both hands, he pushed up his chin, smoothed out his cheeks, blinked his eyes; and the mouth set. In an instant, he was again the lean, dour, hard-faced Woodrow Wilson, whose cold clear eyes were now as watchful as any hunter's. Metamorphosis duly noted, Blaise slipped away not wanting the President to know that he had been observed.

In the crowded galleries, great ladies begged for seats while plenipotentiaries threatened war, to no avail. Fortunately, the managing editor of the Tribune was in Blaise's seat; and gave it up. Frederika was next to him, looking pale, youthful, subdued. Next to her was Blaise's fellow press-lord Ned McLean and his wife Evalyn, bedecked with diamonds, each unluckier than the other if the press-their press-was to be believed.

"Blaise, old boy!" Ned held out a hand, across Frederika. Blaise shook it. He didn't like being called "old boy" or indeed anything by Ned, an intolerable young fool, who then proceeded to offer him a silver flask.

"This could be very dry, you know." Ned's eyes popped comically. He was like a movie comedian, thought Blaise, declining the flask from which Evalyn took a long swig. "A ridiculous time to declare war," she said, drying her lips with a fret-work gloved hand on whose fingers diamonds glittered. "Eight-thirty. Imagine! Just when we're thinking about going in to dinner. Isn't that so, Frederika?"

"But we never really think about it. We just go in. Don't we, Blaise?"

Blaise nodded, eyes on the opposite gallery, where, somehow, Caroline had got herself placed between two of the President's daughters. Mrs. Wilson was now taking her seat, with gracious smiles and waves to friends on the floor beneath.

"There's the widow Galt." Like so many Was.h.i.+ngton ladies, Evalyn enjoyed depicting the Wilsons as an amorous couple, given to never-ending venery. Blaise had been with Evalyn at the theater when the President had first appeared in public with the widow Galt; she had worn what looked to be every orchid from the White House observatory. "What," Evalyn had asked, "do you think they'll do after the theater?"

Frederika had answered: "She will eat her orchids and go to bed."

Below them, the elegant Connecticut senator, Brandegee, bowed low to the press-lords. Brandegee had tried to interest Blaise in coming to the Senate from Rhode Island, where the seat was relatively inexpensive, certainly cheaper than the cost of maintaining Blaise's inherited house at Newport. "You'll like the Senate. Despite some bounders, it's the best club in the country." But Blaise had no interest in public office. Power was something else, of course, and a newspaper publisher had more power than most, or power's illusion, which was, perhaps, all that there ever is. The image of Wilson's collapsed face in the mirror was already inscribed on memory's plate as one of those startling never-to-be-erased images. If that was true power, Blaise was willing to forgo it. Wilson's face had revealed not so much anguish as pure terror.

From the chamber below, Burden waved to them. He was standing with a group of Democratic senators at the back. "Has anyone seen the speech?" Ned McLean a.s.sumed what he took to be the appropriate keen expression required of the publisher of the Was.h.i.+ngton Post on so awesome an occasion.

"No," said Blaise, who had tried his best-cost no object, as Hearst would say-to get a copy from the White House through a friend of the President's stenographer, Charles L. Gwen. But, apparently, the President had done his own typing on the night of March 31 and into the early morning of Sunday, April 1-on April Fool's Day. Blaise was still unable to comprehend this occasion, this war.

Although Wilson had then met with the Cabinet, he chose not to show them his speech. He did say that he was still undecided as to whether he should ask for a straight declaration of war or simply acknowledge that as a state of war already existed, Congress must now give him the means to fight it. Technicalities to one side, the Cabinet proved to be unanimously for war. Just below Blaise, the pacifist secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, looking warlike, was taking his seat with the rest of the Cabinet, and the Supreme Court. The Vice President was now in his throne beside that of the Speaker of the House. Over their heads a round clock gave the time, eight-forty.

"He's late," said Frederika.

"Did you hear how, just now," Ned was leaning over the railing, "someone took a poke at Cabot Lodge? Look at that eye! All swollen up."

"Who did it?" Frederika was deeply interested in the more primitive forms of warfare.

"A pacifist," said Ned.

"What fun!" Evalyn removed a pair of diamond-studded opera gla.s.ses from her handbag, and trained them on Lodge. "Must've been a real haymaker. ..."

The Speaker got to his feet, eyes on the door opposite his dais. "The President," said the Speaker; then he added, as the chamber became silent, "of the United States." The Supreme Court rose to their feet first, followed by everyone else on the floor and in the galleries. Then Woodrow Wilson, holding himself very straight, even rigid, entered the chamber. For a moment, he paused. In the Stillness, rain tapping on the skylight was the only sound. Then, like thunder, the applause broke out. Quickly, Wilson walked down the aisle to the well of the House, not acknowledging any of the hands outstretched to him. He stepped up on the dais; turned and nodded to the Vice President and Speaker. Then they sat down, and the process of history began.

Wilson held his cards above the lectern; and spoke as if to them. But the voice was firm and the cadence, as always, uncommonly beautiful. Blaise found the voice neither American nor British, the first all nasality and the second all splutter. Wilson's voice was a happy balance between the two.

"Gentlemen of the Congress." A quick polite look up from the cards; then he addressed his text most intimately. "I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious choices of policy to be made, and made immediately. ..." Wilson outlined briefly the problem. But as Wilson was a teacher of history as well as now a maker of it, he was obliged, in the great tradition of those who must engage in war, to address a Higher Principle than mere chagrin or hurt feelings or a.s.saults on American persons and property. "The German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind." Blaise suddenly felt weak: Americans would be fighting, really fighting in France, the country where he had been born and brought up. He was forty-two; he must now go to war, for two countries.

Everything seemed unreal, the dusky ill-lit chamber, the April rain on gla.s.s, the straining faces not to mention ears, many of them cupped as half-deaf statesmen tried to amplify for themselves the voice of the nation that had broken its long silence-last heard, when? Gettysburg? "Last best hope of earth"? Government of, by, and for the people. All these ultimate, perfect, unique concepts to describe mere politics. Nations were worldless embodiments; hence, the extraordinary opportunity for the eloquent man on the right rainy April evening to articulate the collective yet inchoate ambition of the tribe. Since such an opportunity might never come again, Blaise knew what was coming next; and it came.

"The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it." What then, Blaise wondered, almost laughing, would Paraguay do? or the Gold Coast? or Siam? Firmly, Wilson drove the first nail into Peace's pretty coffin: "... armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable." More nails. "There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission. ..." There was a deep exhalation throughout the chamber, and then what sounded like a gun-shot. Bemused, the President looked up as the Chief Justice, a huge aged Southerner, held high above him his hands, which now he clapped, like a battle signal, and the troops, if that is what we are, thought Blaise, himself included, shouted in unison. Ned McLean gave a rebel yell; and took another drink from his flask. Evalyn's eyes were bright as diamonds. Across the chamber Caroline sat, very still, between Wilson's applauding daughters. There were going to be many more arguments at editorial meetings, thought Blaise.

Wilson's face was somewhat less sallow after this demonstration than before, and the voice was stronger as he drove in the last nail. "With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking ..." Tragical for whom? Blaise wondered. The dead, of course. But was Wilson saying that the nation was now embarked upon tragedy as a nation? Could so large a ma.s.s of disparate people ever share in anything so high and dreadful and intimate as tragedy? Tragedy was for individuals, or so Blaise had been imperfectly taught. Then he understood. Wilson meant himself: "... tragical character of the step I am taking." This was grandeur, even lunacy. True, Wilson was, for this instant, the personification of a people; but then the instant would pa.s.s and other vain men, some seated even now in this chamber, would take his place.

"I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States. ..." Wilson put the blame for war on Germany; then asked for war. Again, the cheering was led by the plainly drunk and weeping Chief Justice. Rebel yells sounded. Something was beginning to tear apart. Was it civilization? Blaise wondered, no enthusiast of that vague concept, but was its cloudy notion not better than men like baying hounds, howling wolves?

As if he had antic.i.p.ated what wildness he was provoking about the camp-fire, Wilson moved swiftly to high, holy ground. "We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states." Frederika, surprisingly, sardonically, murmured in Blaise's ear: "Does he know Mr. Hearst?"

Blaise almost laughed; she had at least broken the magic spell that the wizard was spinning amongst his war-drunk savages. "Or Colonel Roosevelt," Blaise whispered back, to the annoyance of the now elevated Evalyn. Ned was asleep. "... fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberations of its peoples, the German peoples included; for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy." One person began to applaud, loudly.

The President had already started his next sentence when he stopped, as if only now aware of the significance of what he had said. The applause began to mount, as others joined in. What, Blaise wondered, wearily, is democracy? And how can it or anything else so undefinable ever be a.s.sured of safety? Human slavery was something so specific that one could indeed make the world a dangerous place for it to flourish; but democracy? Tammany? The caucus? Money? Had there ever been so many millionaires in this democratic Senate?

Blaise looked up at the clock. It was now nine-fifteen. The President had been speaking for almost half an hour. Magic had been unleashed in the chamber, and ancestral voices had begun their whisperings, and old battle songs sounded in the rain's tattoo: for we'll rally round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again, shouting the battle cry of freedom.

The warlock now spun his ultimate spell. "It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts. ..." Oh yes, thought Blaise. Let us kill for peace! Frederika had broken the spell for him; yet he recognized its potency; saw it work upon the savages beneath who gave the wizard not only their belief but their fury as well, which, in turn, fueled the warlock's own. Thus, magic begets magic. "... with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood ..." There it was, at last, the exercise's object, blood. They were sinking now into pre-history, around the blazing fire. Blood. Now for the sky-G.o.d's blessing upon the tribe. It came, in the last line. "G.o.d helping her, she can do no other." So there it was: Protestant Martin Luther at the end. Never had Blaise felt more Catholic.

Wilson looked up at the gallery. The eyes were wide and bright, and-was he now all alone to himself or was he as one with the hunters all round him? Blaise could not tell, for everyone was on his feet, including Blaise, and the drooping Ned, arms knotted loosely about Evalyn's neck.

Blaise leaned over to watch the President's progress down the aisle to the door. Lodge stepped forward-the face was definitely, satisfyingly swollen-to shake Wilson's hand; and murmur something that made the President smile. Just behind Lodge, the great La Follette sat, arms crossed to show that he was not applauding the witch-doctor, as he chewed, slowly, rhythmically, gum.

"Who would have thought," said Blaise to Frederika, as they pushed their way through the crowded corridor, "that only yesterday there was a majority for peace?"

"Do you think they really know what they're doing? I mean, it's such fun-for men, and I suppose there'll be money in it."

"A lot, I should think, for those who are ..." Who are what? wondered Blaise. After all, he was son and grandson of the rich. Because he had not the urge to increase his wealth-as opposed to the circulation of the Tribune-did not mean that he was any different from Mr. Baruch, the New York speculator who had bought himself a high place in the Democratic Party as money-giver to the President himself, in order to benefit from the exchange. But Mr. Baruch was no more to be censured for his straightforward desire to make money than all the paid-up millionaire members of the Senate club who differed only in their approach to transitivity from the paid-for members.

Caroline intercepted them in the painted corridor, which smelled of damp wool and whisky. Ned McLean's had not been the only flask, "I promised Uncle Henry that I would report to him. He will feed us, he says."

Blaise said no; Frederika said yes; and so they all embarked in Caroline's Pierce-Arrow.

"How did you end up with the Wilsons?" Frederika often asked Blaise's questions for him.

"I am cultivating Mr. McAdoo because he means to be president, too, and I always like my moths better before they break out of the coc.o.o.n."

"How do you go about cultivating someone like Eleanor McAdoo?" Frederika had old Was.h.i.+ngton's sense of unreality when it came to the Federal theater that changed its program every four or eight years-sometimes sooner if a player happened to be, excitingly, a.s.sa.s.sinated.

"I begin by being inordinately kind to her very plain sister Margaret. This gains me points with everyone in the family."

"How sly you are." Frederika was equable. Blaise was constantly disappointed by the lack of friction between the sisters-in-law. He had hoped for more drama between the two Mistresses Sanford, particularly in so small a city. But each kept to her own set; and when the grand Frederika Sanford held court at Blaise's Connecticut Avenue palace, Caroline often appeared, most graciously, to smile upon old Was.h.i.+ngton, Frederika's world, and those Republican magnificoes who courted Blaise, who feted them. Caroline's court in Georgetown was smaller and more selective. Dinner was never for more than ten. Caroline's guests were notable for their conversation; this meant rather more foreigners than Americans and of the Americans more New Yorkers than Old Was.h.i.+ngton inhabitants.

The departure of the Roosevelts from the White House had restored the city to its traditional countrified dullness. Although the fat, bad-tempered President Taft was depicted as highly lovable and cheery, thanks to the journalists' inability to break with any cliche, he and his proud pompous wife had not provided much of a center to the Federal drama. The arrival of the Wilsons had been exciting; but then she became ill and he, remote at best, simply became his office. This meant that the eloquent President was most visible and successful in public, while the private bookish Woodrow Wilson was hidden away upstairs in the White House, nursing a sick wife; and adored by daughters.

Caroline's efforts to penetrate the Wilson White House had been half-hearted at best. As people, they had not interested her, but now, with this new development, everything was to be seen in a different, lurid light. History had begun to lurch forward or backward or wherever; and Wilson was astride the beast, as old John Hay used to say of poor McKinley. Suddenly, even Edith Wilson began to glow in the middle distance, while the war had created a definite nimbus about the equine head of Miss Margaret Wilson.

Henry Adams's ancient servant-as old as he? no, no one could ever be so old-showed them into the study, which had been for Caroline the center of her entire Was.h.i.+ngton life, a schoolroom and theater all in one, and presided over by the small, rosy, bald, snow-bearded Henry Adams, grandson and great-grandson of two occupants of the White House across the street. He was the historian of the old republic and, with his brother Brooks, a prophet and a seer of the world empire-to-be, if it was to be.

The old man greeted them in front of his modestly spectacular fireplace carved from a block of Mexican green onyx shot with scarlet over whose mantel hung William Blake's drawing of the mad Nebuchadnezzar eating gra.s.s, a constant reminder to Adams of that ludicrousness which tends to shadow human grandeur. In the twenty years that Caroline had known Adams, neither the beautiful room with its small Adams-scale furniture nor its owner had much changed; only many of the occupants of the chairs were gone, either through death, like John and Clara Hay, joint builders of this double Romanesque palace in Lafayette Park, or through removal to Europe, like Lizzie Cameron, beloved by Adams, now in the high summer of her days, furiously courting young poets in the green spring of theirs. To fill his life and rooms, Adams had acquired a secretary, Aileen Tone, a gentlewoman as dedicated as he to twelfth-century music, visibly represented in one corner of the library by a Steinway piano, the equivalent of a wedding ring to Caroline, who was delighted that the old man should be so well looked after. As always, there were "nieces" in attendance. Caroline had been a niece in her day. Now she had settled for friends.h.i.+p, the essential pa.s.sion of the Adams circle.

Adams embraced Caroline like a niece; and bowed to Blaise and Frederika. Like royalty, he was not much of one for shaking hands. "He has done it! I am amazed. Now tell me, what was he like?"

Adams sat in a special chair so angled that the firelight was behind him; even so, the eyes kept blinking like an owl's at noon. Caroline encouraged Blaise to describe what had happened at the Capitol; and Blaise, as always, was precise, even sensitive to detail. Caroline was particularly struck, as was Adams, by the scene before the mirror. "What could it mean?" Caroline affected innocence, the one quality Adams liked least.

"He's in too deep. That's what it means." Adams was delighted. "Anyway, it's done at last."

"You approve?" Caroline expected the usual Adams ingenious negative; instead she was surprised by the old man's enthusiasm.

"Yes! For once in my life I am with the majority-of the people we know, that is-and I don't dare say a single critical word. All my life, I've wanted some kind of Atlantic Community, and now-here it is! We are fighting side by side with England. It is too good to be true." He smiled the famous bright bitter smile. "I can now contemplate the total ruin of our old world with more philosophy than I ever thought possible."

"You see it all ending in ruin?" Blaise was still handsome, Caroline decided; a large concession, since, like Lizzie Cameron's, her taste was now beginning to run to youth in men.

"Well, things do run down. After all, haven't I predicted that from the beginning?-of time, it seems like now. And haven't I been right? The Russian Revolution-all mine. Well, Brooks can take some credit, too. Odd how proprietary one feels about one's prophecies ..."

"Unless they are wrong," said Caroline.

Then Eleanor Roosevelt and her social secretary, a blond pretty girl, entered the room, bringing the cold with them. "It's Caroline's fault." Eleanor was apologetic. "I was going straight home from the Capitol, in such a state, when she said you might receive us, and who wants to be alone right now?"

"Where's your husband? No. Don't tell me. At the Navy Department, ordering Admiral Dewey to seize Ireland."

"We buried the Admiral two months ago." Caroline found Eleanor's secretary uncommonly charming; and wondered at Eleanor's courage in engaging someone so much more attractive than herself. Unless, of course, Eleanor was in love in the Souvestrian sense.

"Send the coffin to Ireland." Adams was exuberant as William pa.s.sed around champagne. In the next room, a buffet had been set. Eleanor stared at it closely, even longingly. She liked her food, Caroline had noticed; yet she kept the worst table in Was.h.i.+ngton.

"Franklin is at the Navy Department, with Mr. Daniels. Everything's starting to happen. My head goes round. I am grateful, though, we have Mr. Wilson living across from you."

"Oh, child." Caroline recognized Adams's special ancestral voice, prophesying doom. "It makes no difference to the course of history who lives in that house. Never has. Energy-or its lack-determines events."

"Don't say that to my Franklin, please." Eleanor was unexpectedly firm. "You ought not to discourage any young person with ideals, who might accomplish something very fine." When Eleanor realized that she suddenly had the room's attention, the silvery skin turned to deepest rose-the Puritan rose, thought Caroline, fond of so much sweet humorless high-mindedness.

"I think maybe he's just the one I should say it to. Ah, the magnificoes have arrived. Like the Magi. My star, no doubt. Welcome, to my manger, or manger a la fourchette." In the doorway stood the British amba.s.sador, Sir Cecil Spring Rice, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, whose swollen, red cheek gave much delight to Adams, who enjoyed tormenting his one-time Harvard pupil. As Blaise and Frederika and Eleanor moved toward the buffet table, Caroline and the social secretary remained to greet the magnificoes.

Spring Rice was an old friend of old Was.h.i.+ngton. He had been posted to the emba.s.sy in youth; had penetrated the heart of the Adams circle, known as the Five of Hearts; had become Theodore Roosevelt's closest friend, and best man when the widower Roosevelt remarried. Now, old and ailing, he had returned in triumph as British amba.s.sador to Was.h.i.+ngton. He wore a blond-steely beard like that of his king; he had eyes not unlike those of his President. He was, it was thought, most energetically, dying.

"You have prevailed." Spring Rice gave Adams an exuberant French sort of embrace.

"I always do, Springy. Who hit you, Cabot?"

"A pacifist. But you should-"

"See him. I know all the latest argot of your charming Scollay Square. Who would have thought Wilson would ever have had the courage?"

Spring Rice indicated Lodge. "There's his backbone. With some help from Theodore, our work is done. That is, just started." He took champagne from William and raised his gla.s.s. "Now it begins." Their end of the room drank solemnly.

"Our last hygiene session." Lodge smiled within his beard at the Amba.s.sador, who explained.

"For the last two years, whenever I was about to burst, as Mr. Wilson delayed and delayed, Cabot would let me come to his office and denounce your government, until the fit had left me-hence, hygienic."

"Poor Springy," said Adams.

"Happy now," said Lodge.

"Will the Allies want American troops?" Caroline knew the answer that the readers of the Tribune did not know and that the President had avoided, except for the one reference to the "privilege" of spending America's blood.

"Surely we shall be the forge," said Lodge. "Providing arms. Food. Money. No more."

Spring Rice smiled at Caroline. "No more," he repeated, and then added with the eager indiscretion of the professional diplomat to the right audience, "but Mr. Wilson did say something odd to Mr. Tumulty on the drive back to the White House. ..."

"You know already what he said?" Adams looked like a jovial gnome, blinking in the light.

"British intelligence never sleeps, unlike British governments. ..."

"What did he say to Tumulty?" Lodge was suddenly alert. While it was understandable that his friend Roosevelt would not like the pacific professor who had taken his place as chief of state, Lodge's dislike had something queer to it, Caroline had always thought, as if a scholar from superior Harvard had been bested by one from inferior Princeton; in fact, Lodge's worst condemnation of any Wilson address was to say that although suitable, perhaps, for Princeton it was not up to Harvard's standards. Of course, Lodge had been the only intellectual in the higher politics until Wilson had, in two years' time, gone from Princeton to the governors.h.i.+p of New Jersey to the presidency. There had never been so high or so swift a rise for anyone not a general. Although it was natural for Lodge to be jealous, why to such an extent? Perhaps Alice Longworth had been right when, at the funeral of Mrs. Lodge, the previous year, she had said, "Cabot will turn merciless without sister Anne."

"As they drove through the cheering crowds, between the long rows of sombre troops at damp attention." Spring Rice smiled at Caroline, "See how I like to add color to my cold political dispatches."

"Like me." Caroline nodded. "But, perhaps, if I may be editorial, fewer adjectives, more verbs."

"More light," was Adams's contribution.

"What did he say!" Lodge was like an ancient terrier, sharp eye upon the hole to a rat's residence.

"The President said, 'Did you hear that applause ...' "

"Vain schoolteacher! No. No. A vain Maryland preacher." Lodge had found his worst epithet.

"But he was right," said Caroline. "I was there. It sounded like thunder or-"

"The breaking of a dam?" Spring Rice provided a journalistic image.

"I have never actually listened to a dam while it was breaking." Caroline was demure.

"What ... what did he say?" Lodge did a small terrier-like two-step.

"If you'll stop interrupting me, Cabot, I'll tell you. He said, 'My message was a message of death for our young men. How can they, in G.o.d's name, applaud that?' "

"Coward!" Lodge fired the word.

Caroline turned on Lodge and with none of her usual endless, or so she thought, evasive tact, fired in turn: "That comes ill from someone too old to fight."