The American Chronicle - Hollywood Part 5

But Roosevelt was now moving about the dining room, voice raised high. In the hallway, Alice was conferring with her sad-eyed husband, Nick, a bald man with a full moustache, who came from one of Cincinnati's greatest families, and knew the McLeans better than anyone. But then old John McLean had begun his career in Ohio when he inherited the Cincinnati Examiner; later, he bought the Washington Post. Jess took considerable pride in his state: three recent presidents, Hayes, Garfield, McKinley; and then the Longworths, the McLeans-Harding?

Harding had finally been allowed to speak. "I just happened to be in the neighborhood," he said with a shy bob of his head-and he was shy, at least in the presence of those who could never forget his, or their, origins. "So I thought I'd pay my respects, Colonel, and tell you that no matter what kind of a draft bill we come up with next, there'll be a Harding amendment added-for three, maybe four, divisions of volunteers, and the sooner we let you raise them, Colonel, the sooner we've got this war won."

As Roosevelt seized Harding's hand in both of his, Jess noticed how gray the famous face was; gray, too, moustache and hair; while behind the dusty pince-nez, there were tears. At fifty-eight Theodore Roosevelt was a very old man. But then he had nearly died the previous year from a fever that he had caught big-game hunting in some South American jungle. "I swear to you, Senator, I will be true to your trust, and let me tell you what I plan to tell the President today." The high voice suddenly lowered to a whisper, "I will go to France with my troops, at their head, and I will not return. Because I know that three months in the field will see me to the end ..."

"I think, Theodore," said Lodge, "that if you could convince Mr. Wilson that you were never coming back, you'd get your division this afternoon."

"Root's already made that sour joke," said the Colonel, far too great a man to have a sense of humor.

Alice appeared in the doorway. "Mr. Tumulty's just rung from the White House. The Logothete will see you at noon."

"President Logothete," Nick corrected Alice. Jess wondered what a logothete was: something pretty awful, probably. The Colonel liked big fierce words.

"Good! Good!" The Colonel clapped his hands. Alice poured coffee from a great pot on the sideboard. "I shall come as a beggar. On my knees. Wailing ..."

"Mr. Wilson will like that." Lodge was judicious; then W.G. nodded to Harry: time to go. But as the Ohioans stood up ready for departure, there was a disturbance from the reporters in the hall, as three more guests arrived. Jess recognized the Democrat James Burden Day, who had come to the Senate in 1915, the same year as Harding. With Day was a tall, willowy young couple, the man busy fending off reporters and the woman trying unsuccessfully either to put her large hat on or take it off.

"Senator Day!" The Colonel gave Burden a powerful hand-clasp.

"I'm your escort," said Burden. "To the White House, in case you've forgotten the way. The President thought you'd need a Democrat for protection."

"Democrats wherever I look!" Roosevelt kissed the woman's cheek. "Stop fussing with your hat, Eleanor. It's now too late to put it on or take it off."

"I think," the voice was high and fluting, "that I've driven a pin straight through my head."

This was the Colonel's niece, whom Jess had read about, and her husband, another Roosevelt, named Franklin. As Wilson's a.s.sistant secretary of the Navy, Franklin had been much cultivated by Daugherty, who was always interested in those departments of the government that let contracts.

"Well, Colonel." Franklin's smile was even wider than his cousin Theodore's; fortunately, his teeth were not reminiscent of a New England cemetery. "If ever we needed anybody here now it's you."

"Let's hope your President agrees. I've got a thousand names already." The Colonel gave his wallet pocket a tap. "Volunteers, ready to sign up the second I give the word."

"I'm sure you'll have no problem." The young Roosevelt was all easy charm and lightness and quickness of eye. He immediately shook hands with Lodge; then turned to Harding. "I hope we're still on for golf at Chevy Chase."

"Sat.u.r.day." W.G. nodded. "Weather and the d.u.c.h.ess permitting. Now, Colonel ..." Harding had turned toward Roosevelt, who had turned away from him, to his young cousin.

"What I'd give to be in your place, Franklin! And at your age, too."

"But you were in my place, in 1898, and you got us the Philippines. I'm afraid I won't have the same opportunity ..."

"Probably not. That was rare luck, finding Admiral Dewey in time, and my poor Mr. Long always out of town ..."

"While my poor Mr. Daniels is always in town, with the President." The young Roosevelt's smile was just a bit on the false side, thought the connoisseur Jess, even for a politician of the la-di-da patrician sort, who sounded more like an Englishman than an American.

"No. I don't mean the Navy Department. Once a war starts, anyone can handle that job."

Franklin's smile was fixed, while his small, close-set gray eyes stared down at his tubby cousin, who had now begun to walk about, arms flailing, just the way that Jess had enjoyed seeing him and his imitators do for so much of his life. "No. Your opportunity's more like mine now. To do battle! To enlist. As a private, if necessary. Then go where the action is. There is nothing more fitting for a man than to fight for his nation, with his bare hands, if necessary."

"But surely, Uncle Tee," the tall Mrs. Roosevelt was both diffident and firm, "anyone can shoot a gun, while very few people have Franklin's experience at the Navy Department for four years now ..."

"Job for a clerk!" The Colonel smote the dining-room table a mighty blow. "The prizes go to the warrior, to the hero, not to the clerk safe at home behind the lines."

Although Franklin's smile was now in place, his cheeks were darkening with rising blood. But he spoke smoothly. "We must serve where we can do the best for our country, not ourselves."

This last was aimed at his famous cousin, who suddenly clicked his teeth fearsomely, three times; then shouted, "If you choose to imply-"

But Alice Longworth's voice was loudest of all. "Oh, good. A quarrel! Father, go for him. Remember your j.a.panese neck-hold ..."

"I believe," began Senator Harding, moving toward the Colonel, Jess and Daugherty on either side of him.

"Try," said the elegant Senator Lodge, "what they call a right hook of the sort with which I recently floored a pacifist ..."

"Try," said Alice, "this."

To Jess's astonishment, she was, for an instant, gone. Then the room burst into laughter. Alice had done a back-flip, landing with perfect balance on her feet, dress barely ruffled.

"Really, Alice." Cousin Eleanor was unamused. But Jess was ecstatic. He couldn't wait to tell the d.u.c.h.ess that her dentist was right and that the stuck-up Alice was indeed a dope fiend.

Jess was truly sorry to leave the M Street house, where, for this particular moment anyway, the whole country's attention was focussed; and yet, except for the privileged Jess, no one was aware of the low vice and high drama those brick walls contained, all lacquered over as they were with Rooseveltian world-glory. Jess had always wanted to be a detective. Now he knew that he had the makings of a great one like the fictional Nick Carter, based on the very real Mr. Pinkerton, whose glory still continued, even after death, in the agency that bore his name. Had it not been for dry goods and a fear of the dark, Jesse Smith might have made his mark in the world of detection. Now he satisfied himself with second-best, with his position on the inside of the top world, where he knew such things as who was a secret dope fiend and who was a secret presidential candidate. "Roosevelt's running" was Daugherty's gloomy comment as the three men got onto the half-empty electric trolley car, bound for the Capitol.

"That's why I'm in his corner." Harding was mild; he smiled at an old lady, who promptly looked out the window at Pennsylvania Avenue, vast and desolate in its April mud.

"If he gets to go to France, he's got the nomination." Daugherty chewed on an unlit cigar.

"He won't be going to France." Harding smoothed his thick eyebrows with a moistened thumb. The old woman was now watching him, with obscure horror.

"Then if Wilson won't let him go, he's really got the nomination in the bag."

"Harry, sometimes you go and look just too far ahead." Harding turned to Jess, who was holding a copy of the Tribune. "Give me the sports page, Jess."

"I wonder," said Harry, popping his eyes, the brown as well as the blue, at the demoralized old woman, "just what Burden Day was doing at the Longworths'."

"He's an escort, Harry. To get the Colonel from the frying pan to the fire." W.G. was deep into the sports page. "Well, here's the real story of why the captain of Army's football team didn't get to play Navy. Hazing, it says. He locked up one of the cadets in a locker and then went and forgot all about him. d.a.m.n fool thing to do."

"That's real absent-minded," said Jess, who admired Army's captain more than any of the other football G.o.ds, including Hobe Baker.

"I suppose they'll be graduating all the West Pointers and Annapolis boys a year early, for the war." Daugherty stared at the Post Office, which always looked to Jess like one of Carrie Phillips's beloved Rhine castles that had got itself mislaid on the Potomac.

"Remember that punt of his?" W.G. sighed. "Beautiful, it was. What I'd give to be able to do something like that, all those yards."

2.

BURDEN DAY HAD INDEED BEEN CHOSEN by the President himself to get Colonel Roosevelt through the newspapermen at the north portico, not that anyone could control the Colonel, who had brought along someone called Julian J. Leary, as an extra buffer. In the motor car, Burden had found Roosevelt surprisingly small, even subdued, until they arrived under the porte-cochere to be greeted by a news-reel camera crew, a dozen overcoated journalists and photographers, and the Secret Service, whose numbers had doubled since the declaration of war. From all over the country there were scare stories: German-Americans were marching, meticulously armed, on Washington while German spies were everywhere, with dynamite, prepared to eliminate the city of Washington from the map.

There was a slight chill in the air, as Burden and Leary helped the Colonel from the car. Farther down the lawn, lilac was between bud and flower-always April, Kitty had said unexpectedly that morning, when presidents are killed, and wars declared, and the Republic imperilled. Was it something to do with the awakening of spring, with life's resurrection? Then why so much death at April and so little glory?-barring, of course, the Ned McLeans' annual Easter gala at their lordly estate, Friendship.

"Colonel!" A dozen voices said the name. Roosevelt came to swift vivid life and began to impersonate himself, left arm moving vigorously as right fist pounded, from time to time, into left palm. He seemed almost exactly like the Theodore Roosevelt who had dominated for twenty years the public imagination while reigning in this house for nearly eight of those years.

"Will Mr. Wilson run for a third term?" asked a journalist.

"You ask him. I won't. We're beyond politics now. All of us. This is war. We are not Democrats. We are not Republicans." Roosevelt could, like every politician, spin this sort of web effortlessly, but Burden watched rather than listened to him and saw how dull the eyes were while a second round face now circled, ominously, the first. It was against nature for T.R. to be old; but nature had been undone by time. Now a prematurely old man of fifty-eight was imitating himself with less and less plausibility, particularly as he tired. But Burden quite believed him when he said that he wanted to lead his own men into battle; and die upon the field. He also knew that, old or not, patriotic or not, Theodore Roosevelt had returned to the center of his party's stage and there was no one, including Wilson, who could stop him from returning as sovereign to this house which he was now entering as temporary suppliant.

In the entrance hall, a dozen old retainers waited to greet the Colonel, who spoke warmly to each. He had what all good politicians had, the gift of intimacy with strangers, the ability to cut through all shyness and preliminaries and be himself, or something very like. All good politicians with the possible exception of the slender figure standing alone at the entrance to the Red Room, watching, as if at a theater, the performance of his rival, who had accused him not only of being a dread word-monger or logothete but a coward as well, the worst Rooseveltian epithet, since the Colonel had long since convinced the nation, if not himself, that as a man he was astonishingly brave, morally as well as physically.

Suddenly, Roosevelt looked up and saw the President; and each man, simultaneously, remembered to smile. Wilson's long discolored teeth were equine while Roosevelt's, though worn down by decades of grinding and clicking, were still hugely bovine.

"Mr. President!" Roosevelt crossed the entrance hall, Burden close behind him. Mr. Leary remained with the ushers and attendants. Simultaneously, Wilson's secretary, Joseph P. Tumulty, a cla.s.sic Irish politician of the school of Jersey, appeared from the Red Room to join in the round of greetings. When Irish eyes are smiling, thought Burden, there's sure to be a knife. ... The possibilities of alternative lyrics of a murderous nature were endless. But Wilson's clear eyes were Scots, and not smiling at all despite the baring of mottled teeth, while Roosevelt's face was like a carved coconut of the sort carried into battle by Polynesian warriors.

"Colonel Roosevelt, I'm so glad you could take time to see me." The courteous-killer Virginia note. "Come in. Come in. Please, Senator Day." Thus, Burden was invited to witness an historic confrontation. The men had not met since the election of 1912. Before that, President Roosevelt had come once to Princeton, where college president Wilson had received him. Roosevelt, in turn, had acted as host to Professor Wilson at Oyster Bay, Long Island. Beyond that, the two men had existed for one another as, simply, enemies, mirroring one another as each challenged the other: Roosevelt for war at any time and in any place; Wilson for peace, or seeming to be for peace, under circ.u.mstances that had a tendency to shift rather more than the President's high-minded rhetoric could ever quite justify. Roosevelt was at least always in bellicose character; once Wilson had been obliged by events to go to war, he could now no longer depict his rival as an eccentric jingo when he himself was war-lord.

Wilson gestured for Roosevelt to sit before the fire, face to the window, an old trick that Roosevelt finessed by moving his chair so that the direct light was not in his face. Wilson sat opposite him, smiling politely; at the door Tumulty sat in a straight chair, pretending he was not present, while Burden sat comfortably in a sofa just out of range.

Roosevelt looked about him at the room. "We've moved a few things," said Wilson, vaguely. "I'm not sure what."

"Well, there was a president between the two of us-can't think of the name-and I wasn't asked here all that often in those days." Burden had never seen the Colonel try to please, if not an elder, a superior. He was startled at just how winning and boyish the Colonel could be when he wanted something. "No. I always think of this room as the room where I said, after I was elected in 1904, that I wouldn't run again in 1908."

"I wonder," said Wilson, "if you hadn't said that, if I'd be here at all."

"I don't know. But I do know that Mr. Taft would never have been here." Roosevelt was flat. "I can guarantee that. But I made a promise to the country, and I kept it."

"Never to run for re-election?" Wilson was like a kindly tutorial guide with a promising student.

"Exactly! Never to run for re-election." Roosevelt gave a dazzling smile. "In 1908." With a crash, the door to 1920 was kicked open. Wilson for a third time versus Roosevelt for a second time in his own right, though, for all practical purposes, a third term, as he'd inherited most of the murdered McKinley's second term. "But all that's past, Mr. President. To say the least. I want us to win this war, and to lead the world, and I want to do my part, as my four sons, all of age, will do theirs."

"I know. Mr. Baker has spoken to your oldest, I think. Mr. Baker was much moved ..."

"I want them to have their crowded hours of glorious life, as I've had mine, and will still have." Wisely, the Colonel did not leave the President an opening for a negative. "As a state paper, I regard your declaration, and its argument, as the equal of Washington and Lincoln. But it needs one thing yet to make it live, and that is for us, you and me, to inspire the nation to carry out your dream." When it came to flattery, Burden was amused to find that the Colonel could give as l.u.s.tily as he took. Since Wilson was entirely human when it came to simple vanity, he visibly expanded under his predecessor's praise.

The dialogue went well, better than Burden had dreamed, considering what the two had said and thought of one another, all of which was now, the Colonel exuberantly declared, so much "dust in a windy street, if only we can make your message good."

Thus, Roosevelt welcomed Wilson to Roosevelt's war. Then the volunteer division was mentioned. Before Wilson could respond, the Colonel was on his feet, superbly impersonating himself. "I am willing to go forth to my fellow Americans and preach the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. I can raise armies of volunteers of the best-the flower-of the nation, as we did once before in my time, and before that, too, in Lincoln's day ..."

"But in Lincoln's day, there were too few volunteers." Wilson's voice was suddenly urgent and, again, Burden heard not the elegant neutrality of the Princeton professor's voice but that Southern cadence of-what other word if not freedom but rebellion? "That is the problem before us. We must conscript the young men. Draft them. Find a new word for draft, if necessary, but no matter what the word, there is so little time to do so much in." The President interrupted himself. "I know that you think I should have led us into this war a year ago, but if I had, only you-worth ten divisions-would have followed me."

"All that is past." The Colonel sank into his chair. "You are president. I am not. The burden's yours. G.o.d help you. I will go, for what it's worth. Clemenceau has asked me to come to France, just as a symbol of our will to fight. ..."

Burden was fascinated to watch so skilled a politician as Roosevelt make so fundamental a mistake. For a French premier to request the aid of an ex-president was to insure a presidential veto.

"All Europe finds you fascinating, Colonel. As do we." Virginia was replaced by Princeton. "But we must not discourage those men we draft by setting up a special corps of volunteer soldiers." Before Roosevelt could interrupt, Wilson was quick to add, "Not that uses cannot be made of the volunteer spirit and of-of the sword of Gideon. I am also wary of allowing ourselves to become too much enamored of one side or the other, in which I follow General Washington, perhaps, more than yourself, which is why," and now Wilson began to weave his own artful magic, "I want peace without victory for all sides, if humanly possible, since victory for one is defeat for the other, and should that happen the cannons will sound once more, and there will be more blood in the next generation. So I have presented us not as an ally of the Allies nor indeed as an enemy of the people of the Central Powers, but as an 'a.s.sociated power,' to see peace made, justice done, and-ah, life enhanced." Adroitly, Wilson led Roosevelt away from the specifics of his visit; and spun for him one of his verbal webs, so plausible, so beautiful and so, very often, misleading. Wilson had once confessed to Burden that whenever he was faced with an office-seeker, the surest way to get him off the subject was "to control the conversation yourself and take the high moral ground. Often he will be ashamed to mention his interested errand." Of course, Roosevelt knew the trick, too; he also knew when to allow a certain smoke to obscure conflicting interests. He shifted the conversation from his own particularity to the generality.

"As you and I close ranks, so the whole country must." The Colonel turned his head toward the window and the white April light. "I suggest to you now, privately, what I shall soon be writing about in the Kansas City Star. They now want me to be a regular newspaper writer, every week, and if there were the time ..." A slight pause made it clear that if the Colonel did not get his military command he would be regularly heard from in the press, as the not-so-loyal opposition.

If Wilson had grasped the implicit warning, he chose to ignore it. Chin held high, righteousness itself embodied as a Presbyterian elder, Wilson nodded encouragingly; and let the other talk. So far, on points, they were even by Burden's calculation. "I refer now to the German-language press, which has been, from the beginning, disloyal to this country. I would, as a military necessity, shut all those papers down."

Wilson blinked his surprise. "Isn't this-arbitrary? Surely, they are guaranteed the same freedoms-"

"This is war, Mr. President. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, shut down newspapers, and we'll have to do the same ..."

"I hope not. After all, we shall have a military censorship that will apply to everyone. This should keep the Germans on a tight lead."

"They are also centers of treason-or potential treason anyway. Why run a risk? We must-you must, sir, tighten everyone's lead in the name of victory. Many would-be traitors-German sympathizers-pretend to be peace-lovers, to be-what's their phrase?-'conscientious objectors.' Well, I would treat them conscientiously! I would deny them the vote. If they are of military age and refuse to fight for their country, then they must forgo their citizenship."

Wilson was taking all this remarkably well, thought Burden. He continued to nod politely, judiciously-most judiciously when he observed mildly, "I suppose the Supreme Court could find some way to disenfranchise them."

"Supreme Court!" Roosevelt's fist struck his own knee so hard that he winced, and the pince-nez fell loose on its cord and dangled on his shirt-front. "You are the commander-in-chief. And this is war. So you, you, are president, court and congress all combined. Do what needs doing, do it fast. The world's almost ours at last!" Roosevelt was on his feet. "We have all the gold now. All the money power. England and France, Germany and Russia, they will never recover from this blood-letting. Their empires are as dead and gone as Nineveh and Tyre. Oh, what a glorious time you'll have of it!"

"Shall we trade places?" Wilson's smile was genuine.

"Yes! This minute!" Roosevelt roared with laughter. "Why, if I had enough Rough Riders I'd come in here like a Mexican bandit and take over ..."

"I'd help you," Wilson sighed. "You are more suited for this than I."

"I think so, too." Roosevelt was blunt. "But history has ruled otherwise. If these states are still under a lucky star, as we were when I was here, you shall be-glorious, Mr. Wilson, and I'll retract all my partisan statements."

"Logothete, too?"

"I thought you'd fancy that one. Secretly, of course."

Wilson laughed for the first time. "I don't like it. But I'd never deny it. I am a man of words. Like you." He thrust.

Roosevelt did not blink, and his response was mild. "But there is also action ..."

"Ah, Colonel, words are the greatest action of all, words are what bind us to Heaven-and to h.e.l.l. At the end, as well as in the beginning, there is only the word."

Roosevelt stood now in front of the fireplace, legs wide apart, hands behind his back, just as he had stood so many times in that same spot when he had been the president. "Then, perhaps," he said, smiling, "if that's the case, I should select my words with more care."

"In this matter, Colonel, you are the judge, not I."

Burden had a curious sense of time having doubled. This was 1917; yet, simultaneously, this was also 1907; and there were two presidents in one Red Room.

Then the Colonel broke the spell. He crossed to Tumulty, who rose, respectfully. "Now here's the sort of fighting Irishman I like." He slapped Tumulty on the back. "By Jove, Tumulty, you are a man after my own heart! Of course, you have six children. ..." Burden knew then, for absolute certain, that Roosevelt would be a candidate in 1920. Why else memorize the exact number of the egregious Tumulty's brood? "But I'll tell you what. You get me over to France, and I'll put you on my staff, and Mrs. Tumulty won't have a thing to worry about." Roosevelt turned to Burden. "Senator, you're still a strapping lad. You come, too."

"Shall I pack my toga?"

"No. Turn it in. Plenty of senators in this country. In fact, far too many."

"We are in perfect agreement on that." Wilson stood up. "I suppose you'll want me to volunteer, too."

"It would set a fine example." Roosevelt chuckled.

"I could go as a chaplain, I suppose."

"Don't underestimate yourself, Mr. Wilson. I would put you in charge of the great guns. You're a born artilleryman, as Mr. Taft and I discovered in 1912. Anyway, you have your place already. The first place. You are my commander-in-chief. I've come here to get my orders." Roosevelt gave a fairly smart salute, which the President gravely returned. Then in a general storm of farewells and good feeling, the Colonel was gone, leaving Burden with the President and Tumulty. From the entrance hall, Rooseveltian "bullies" could be heard. Wilson looked, quizzically, at Burden. "Well, that was an experience," he said. "He's like a great big boy."

"Who can charm the little birds out of the trees," said Tumulty.