Hollywood (42 page)

“I go, too,” he said replacing his pince-nez. “Mrs. Wilson and Grayson want me to take a rest, but I have no choice.”

“You’re taking to the stump?”

Wilson nodded. “I shall be trailing the senators from one end of the West to the other.” Wilson named the cities that he intended to speak in, and Burden quickly grasped that this intensive tour of the nation was the beginning of Wilson’s campaign for a third term, something no president had ever attempted.

Burden gave some advice on the cities to be visited. Wilson made notes. When they discussed Senate strategy, Wilson picked up the sheet of paper that he had been typing on. “This is anonymous.” He smiled at Burden. “I
want you to know about it, and Hitchcock, too. But no one else. Secretly, I am willing to compromise on the treaty.”

Burden was astonished and delighted. The mad President who would not yield because he was doing the Lord’s work was, once again, the master politician, capable of any adjustment to get his way. “I have listed four areas of interpretation of the treaty on which you—the Democratic leadership—will agree to compromise in order to get the League approved. But Lodge must never know that this comes from me. If he knew, he would want four times four in the way of adjustments. But these, I think, cover any differences and should be acceptable to all but the professional clowns.”

Burden took the paper. “I am relieved,” he said. “I think we’ll have no trouble, now we can maneuver.”

“But sooner or later the Senate—Lodge’s friends, that is—will have to take their medicine.” Wilson kept oscillating between rigid truculence and supple negotiation. Was this, Burden wondered, for effect? In many ways the mild scholarly man of 1912 was noticeably changed. He was more than ever irritable and thin-skinned while his once-formidable ability to concentrate on a subject was gone. Finally, in addition to Wilson’s congenital arteriosclerosis, the President had been extremely ill in Paris, Burden had been told. Officially, he had had the flu, unofficially there were rumors that he had had a stroke. Simultaneously, there had been a falling-out with Colonel House, which explained the disarray on the American side when the final peace treaty had been hammered out in a spirit quite at odds with the lofty “peace without victory” that Wilson had proclaimed when he led the United States to war.

There would be no third term, Burden decided, as the President began to read from an inventory. “You know that I am
personally
held responsible for the contents of the house in the Place des Etats-Unis, just as I was responsible for the Villa Murat, which is only fitting. Our government should not pay for the glasses that Mrs. Wilson and I break, though she herself broke none and I only one. Yet they have written
ten
, which is, you’ll agree, intolerable.” Wilson stared up at Burden. He brought the same gravity to the broken glass as he had to the League of Nations.

“It would seem so, Mr. President. But why don’t you turn all this over to Mr. Tumulty?”

“If only I could. But he wasn’t there. I alone know for certain about that broken glass. It was in the bathroom, the first Sunday morning after we got back to Paris and settled in the new place. The other nine glasses, if broken, were broken by someone else. I do not rule out the French themselves. After
all, every single one of them assigned to our household was a spy. I even heard two of them whispering together in English.” He stared intently at the book in front of him. “And now this! The broken frame to the Fragonard copy, not even an original but a very common sort of copy, that was hanging in Mrs. Wilson’s boudoir …”

Edith was suddenly in the room, serene and commanding. “Woodrow,” she murmured. She closed the inventory book. “That’s my work. How did you get it?”

“I saw it on Miss Benson’s desk, and of course I must check each item, including Fiume, to which Italy …”

Burden caught the look of fear in Mrs. Wilson’s eyes; more a fear of Burden being witness to … what? Wilson was not mad, as he had demonstrated with his masterful four points of compromise, but he was obsessed in some incalculable way. To him, the inventory was of equal moral weight with the League, and the two seemed to be blurring in his mind. Grayson was also in the room. Did they listen at the keyhole? Wife and doctor were resolutely cheerful and helpful.

“Time for a drive,” said Grayson.

“It’s gotten cooler.”

“Equatorial days,” said Edith. “My poor mother is near extinction in the Powhatan Hotel and she has six fans all going at once
and
a cake of ice in the middle of her sitting room.”

Wilson, perfectly sane and normal, walked Burden to the door. “Many thanks for the … information. As for the other …” He held up a finger.

Burden nodded. “Only Hitchcock is to know.”

They shook hands. Unusually, Edith did not walk him to the elevator. She and Grayson stayed with the President while Hoover, the chief usher, escorted Burden. Over the years, Burden had cultivated this dignitary. Often one could learn more from five minutes’ idle chat with the chief usher or a Secret Service man than with any of the principals. “I see where you’re going on a long trip.”

“The President, Senator. I’m staying put. I wish he would, too.”

“He seems fully recovered,” Burden fished.

“Oh, he’s fit as a fiddle except for this heat, and tiredness. We’re all pretty strung-out after Paris, and now the Senate. If you’ll excuse me, sir.”

“I’m one of the good guys.” At the elevator door, Burden was inspired to ask, “Who did break the frame of the Fragonard copy?”

There was the briefest look of alarm on Hoover’s face. Then he was the
soul of blandness. “The President is very conscientious, isn’t he? Like it was his own property, that dirty palace.”

Burden’s own palace was clean at last and furnished, too. In the afternoon light the two-story mansarded gray stone house shone against the blue-greens of Rock Creek Park. They had decided to inaugurate the house with a casual tea, a popular thing to do in August if you lived on a wooded hill above the cool and cooling swift Rock Creek.

A half-dozen Negro waiters had been hired for this occasion. Kitty was already dressed in a long yellow-green gown while Diana was not yet undressed. She would be allowed to watch the arrivals from the great window on the first landing with its view of the driveway, now presided over by a special policeman both known to the guests and knowing. Burden always called him Sergeant, like the sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, who knew every senator and his ways.

Burden showered; then put on a white suit of the sort affected by Southern statesmen as well as by the late Mark Twain, whose white hair, moustaches, suit were all perfectly coordinated as he made an occasion for applause his strategic entrances at the top of the stairs that descended into New Willards’ Peacock Alley.

Burden crossed to the side porch, his favorite spot in the house, and the coolest. Through the thick surrounding woods he could hear the shallow creek as it swirled over its rocky course. A bird—a cardinal, all scarlet—perched on a chair opposite him, waiting to be fed by Kitty. But she was too busy and Burden lacked intimacy with the wild. Fondly, Burden gazed over his two acres of woods, and wondered why anyone needed more of anything. He had started poor; he was now secure, thanks to Kitty’s inheritance and the voters’ indulgence. But the first was being spent and the second was, to say the least, volatile. Particularly now when a number of things were very much out of joint in the United States.

The war had been fraudulent. It had never been of the slightest concern to the United States whether or not Germany commanded Europe; indeed, most Americans believed, as a matter of course, that the entire point to their country was that it provided a safe refuge for those Europeans who could no longer endure the old continent’s confusions and cruelties. Wilson, for reasons obscure, had maneuvered the republic onto the world stage. If there was a design to history, then Wilson had been obliged to conform to the inevitable. If there was no design, only chance, then Wilson had—through vanity?—made a bad choice. To the extent that the American people thought
of foreign affairs at all, they inclined to tribal loyalties that, over the generations, vanished. Recent German immigrants had favored the Kaiser; recent Irish immigrants wished England ill. But neither tribe was eager to return, in any guise, to the ancient continent so thoroughly abandoned. Only the crudest, most unremitting propaganda could stir up so essentially placid a polity. As it turned out, the propaganda had been inspired and the Germans had been thoroughly demonized. But now with so much hatred still in the air, the professional politician knew, instinctively, that he himself might fall a victim to those emotions that had been called up from the deep. To make matters worse, a financial crisis had begun and the people at large were restive and in a mood to punish
them
, whoever
they
happened to be. He would soon have to decide how he would present himself for re-election in 1920.

At first the war had been deeply unpopular in the state; then, overnight, everyone had succumbed joyously to every anti-German, anti-Red, anti-Negro demagogue. The Ku Klux Klan was now reviving, this time in the cities rather than in the countryside, an ominous development. Would the voters punish Wilson—and Burden—for the war? Or would they accept the notion that, thanks to the pro-warriors, the United States was now pre-eminent in the world?—something hard to believe when you had to walk ten yards on a cold night to the privy. Not for the first time Burden wished that Bryan had been of even average intelligence, because he alone had had the ability to give voice to the confused majority. Burden and his mad father had parted company over Bryan. For the veteran of Chickamauga, all one needed to do was to organize the people so that there would be a representative government and a more perfect union for all. But Burden knew that this could never happen. One look around the Senate cloakroom was enough to demonstrate to even the most zealous populist that he had no chance to unseat the likes of Penrose. They—the true gilded They—owned it all, including himself. Was it not that clever Wall Street lawyer, McAdoo, who wanted to, in effect, hire Burden to be on his ticket as an enticement to the unrepresented?

Borah sat opposite him. “Daydreaming?”

Burden gave a start. He was apologetic. “I’m sorry, Senator. The heat …”

“And the flu.” Borah was understanding. “It clings. I came a little early.” A waiter brought them iced tea. Kitty was in the next room with Mrs. Borah, an attentive dragon, ready to scare off over-enthusiastic ladies. “Wilson’s going to take a trip.”

Burden nodded.

“Well, it should do him good. Get to see the country after all that time in Europe. See the folks. Johnson’s going to cover California. I’m starting out in the Twin Cities.”

“One hundred percent against the League?”

Borah nodded. “I’m also eager to get our boys out of Siberia.”

“So is the President.”

“But he put them there in the first place.”

“I thought you were a T.R. man.”

“I am. But I’m also for getting us out of places where we don’t belong.”

“Roosevelt thought we belonged everywhere, toting the white man’s burden.”

“I’m older now, wiser. I like to think there’s probably enough for us to do right here at home. Once we start having colonies around the world we’re their prisoner. I thought Wilson had more sense. But his head’s been turned by all those kings and chancellors and bankers.”

Burden was never sure how to handle Borah. They were personal friends with similar constituencies. But Burden had gone along with his party and Wilson, while Borah had remained in concert with what he took to be the majority of Americans. If the people were to feel betrayed by Wilsonian internationalism … Burden experienced a mild chill: he could be defeated. On the other hand, if the economy improved and the propaganda for the League made rosy the prospect, Borah would have a difficult time. “I think the League is popular, to the extent people know about it.”

“It won’t be when I finish explaining how we’d lose control over our own armed forces, and how if England ordered us to send a hundred thousand troops, say, to Constantinople, we’d have to go, like it or not.”

“I don’t think it will work quite like that.”

“It won’t,” said Borah, thin mouth no more than a straight horizontal line, “work at all. It’s the banks that are doing this to us. New York’s bad enough to have to live with. But London, too? No, thank you. We fought that war of independence once. Don’t need a second round. Siberia!” Borah shook his head, with wonder.

“Would you let Japan have it?”

“Why not? They’re next door. Anyway, whoever owns that icebox will still have to do business with us.”

“What about this hemisphere?”

“Well, Mexico’s our own back yard. So when they go grabbing our land and killing our people, I’m perfectly willing to go beat them up. I’m not a pacifist. Mexico matters to us. So we fight. Germany doesn’t.”

“What about Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, Cuba?”

“What about them?”

“Each of those supposedly sovereign states is currently occupied by American Marines, answerable only to the President. We behave to them the way the Austro-Hungarian Empire behaved to Serbia and Montenegro and Slovenia …”

“Don’t make my head ache. I don’t want to think about those old bad places. Wilson really wants to be the first president of the world, doesn’t he?”

Burden shrugged, somewhat disloyally. “He’s never
said
anything about it. And after this last round in Paris, I don’t think he wants to have anything to do with Europeans ever again. He hates the French, thinks Lloyd George a crook, the Italians vultures …”

“Well, I’m relieved that he has grasped the essentials. You know, I wasn’t all that impressed with him at the White House. Fact, I was pretty shaken. Does he lie a lot, do you think?”

Burden laughed. “You mean more than you and me?”

“I never lie,” the lion of Idaho lied; his devotion to himself was more religious than secular. To himself he was, simply, God, and he saw that he was good. Despite—or because of—this certitude, Borah was the most popular man in politics and not about to share his godhood with mere mortals. “No. What struck me was the feeble way Wilson lied to us about the secret treaties. He certainly heard about them when we heard about them, if not before, but then he says—”