“A round-up at the old corral.” Caroline completed the sentiment, as a heavily painted woman approached Caroline, arms outstretched.
“Allow me to present,” said Mrs. Smythe, somewhat alarmed at the tableau-in-the-making, “the Countess of Inverness.”
“Millicent.”
“Caroline.” Caroline embraced her old friend. They had been in the same class at Mlle. Souvestre’s. Millicent was the niece of an American president whom neither Caroline nor anyone else could remember as he had been one of the worthy nonentities between Lincoln and Theodore Rex. After school Millicent and her mother had stayed on in London, and Caroline had been presented at court by Millicent’s mother. Caroline had then moved on to New York while Millicent married the Earl of Inverness, a local blockhead, who had made her life miserable, as everyone had warned.
“You know each other.” Mrs. Smythe was sad. But then the arrival of Douglas Fairbanks shifted the room’s attention dramatically, leaving Millicent to weep on Caroline’s shoulder. “He is simply vile,” she moaned.
“I think him rather attractive.” Caroline gazed without shame at the small man with the not-so-large head who had captured the hearts of half the women on earth.
“I don’t mean that actor. I mean my husband.”
“Is he here?”
“If he were, would I be?” This was said with such dramatic emphasis that a bowl of orchids was nearly overturned. Plainly, Millicent was finding solace in that same drink which, when awash inside her husband, made life vile. Apparently, the Earl, like Jamie Bennett, publisher of the Paris Herald, and Ned McLean, publisher of the Washington Post, was not only given to long drinking bouts but would, if the occasion was sufficiently public and preferably grand, publicly relieve himself. Jamie had done so many years earlier in a vase at the house of his fiancée, whose brother had then horsewhipped him out of New York and across the Atlantic to Paris for good. Ned favored fireplaces, joyously putting out flames, while the Earl augmented punch bowls: “At the American embassy in front of Mr. Page, our ambassador. Everyone saw.”
“What did you do?”
“I slugged him.” Millicent held up a powerful hand, whose rings were set with numerous irregularly shaped stones.
“You must have done great damage.”
“I tapped the claret, as they say over there.” Millicent looked grimly happy. “We shall divorce once the war is over. That’s why I’m here. To get as far away as possible from my life. You know the feeling.”
“I’ve never not known the feeling. That’s why I’m here.”
Although Caroline would have liked to mingle with the famous small people, Millicent pulled her down on a sofa. Japanese servants offered them wine. The tea party was a thing of the past in this part of the West, except among the English, who, like so many Saint Teresas scrubbing floors, worked in the movies while living as if still at home in Surbiton. On the other hand, the six-thirty dinner party was a local novelty that Caroline endured only because she, too, must be up at dawn to face the early sun, which flattered her, while hiding from the noon until the sun was again aslant.
“I’m going back to Washington to live.”
“You’ll liven us up.”
“I’ll certainly liven up Alice. What airs she puts on.” Millicent had once been the only presidential relic in town; and she had not ceded her high place graciously to Alice Longworth. But Millicent’s marriage to an earl somewhat redressed the balance. Caroline saw endless trouble ahead; and news for her Society Lady. “They haven’t forgotten me, have they?” At less than fifty, Millicent had skillfully managed to erase her good looks with whisky, which she now poured into a glass from a silver flask attached to a chain about her neck. Yes, thought Caroline, she’ll be a joy at the McLeans’ if not the Wilsons’. The age of Millicent, Countess of Inverness, would occasion riot and merriment from the Gold Coast of Connecticut Avenue to the moral grandeur of Thomas Circle. “Quentin’s dead. Did you know?” Millicent drank her whisky. “A friend wired me from London. Such a nice boy. He was killed in an airplane, fighting an air duel, they said, with the Germans. How strange—an air duel!”
Caroline realized then that she had been too long out of the real world. She did not even look at the local newspapers except for the Kine Weekly, which gave news only of the movie business. She was up too early; kept too busy; asleep too soon. It was like life in a sanatorium; the only news from outside was business telegrams from Blaise. Now she must write to the Colonel and Edith Roosevelt and—what? to Alice?
One of the little people actually came to Caroline just as Millicent turned to say hello to a White Russian who had swum across the Black Sea, or some other large body of water, to freedom.
Caroline looked down into the bright, glassy, red eyes of Douglas Fairbanks, who promptly noted the state of her eyes. “Klieg eyes,” he said. “What are you doing, making a photo-play?”
“It’s like being a Mason, isn’t it? These eyes.” Caroline uncontrollably wept; tears triggered by his reminder. Quickly, gracefully, as if he were on the screen, he removed not a sword from its scabbard but an atomizer from his pocket and sprayed her eyes, having first noted that she was not wearing eye make-up. The effect was cooling. He produced a silk handkerchief. “Take it. Keep it.”
“You are kind.” Caroline mopped her eyes. “It does help,” she said; and it did. “I’m doing an appeal for Mr. Ince. For France. In French. I was brought up there, you see.” She got, she thought, wildly off the subject; but only into more confusion.
“Why French? The cards are always translated.”
“But it won’t be me, will it? Talking to my … sort of … native land.” Why should a movie star so reduce her to confusion?
“I guess not. Remember the other night, at Mr. DeMille’s, I said I’d written a book, which I wanted you to read. Well, I brought it.” Fairbanks presented her with a thin volume entitled Assuming Responsibilities.
Caroline smiled her delight. “How,” she said, as it was expected of her, “do you find the time?”
Fairbanks told her. He had astonishing charm off-screen, unlike so many of the little people, who were like dolls until properly lit and told to move about in that nine-foot-square area where the photo-play had its cramped limited life in the present, a mere prelude to the screen’s blazing immortality.
“… Theodore Roosevelt is my idol,” he ended.
“Well, you are both strenuous. I can see that.”
The smile flashed like so many light bulbs on a theater marquee. Contrary to dark rumor, the hundreds of teeth were brightly real. “That was a wonderful idea of yours at the Washington Trib, to have photo-plays reviewed by the regular drama critic.”
Caroline continued to marvel how men and women who were known, literally, to the whole world still managed to keep track of every obscure newspaper reference to themselves in the national press. Who knew what marvelous reviews Douglas Fairbanks was receiving in Shanghai and Lisbon and Caracas? He probably did, as he counted his vast revenues; yet his eye was also fixed coldly on the drama editor of the Tribune because “after that wonderful review of The Americano two years ago, he stopped reviewing movies.”
Caroline remembered none of this. “I suppose,” she improvised, “that The Americano was so important a … a breakthrough as a photo-play that he treated it as he would a real play or … or The American by Henry James.”
“Pardon?”
Caroline plunged on: never look back. “But I agree. He—or someone else—should realize that a photo-play is every bit as serious a work of art as a Belasco play …”
“I’ll say!” The handsome jaw set, as she had seen it set a dozen times on the screen. “We’re making something absolutely new in history, and we’re making it for everybody, and everybody everywhere sees us. You don’t know what a weapon this is.”
“Oh, yes, I do. I’m here from George Creel, remember. To get you to help the Allied cause.”
Fairbanks nodded vigorously, grace
fully. Caroline wondered why he did not appeal to her sexually. Was it because everyone everywhere had seen him nod his head like that? and smile? and make love? A half billion people times two represented quite a lot of horns for the actual lover of a movie player to wear. “Of course you do. I forgot. No, I came from the theater …”
“A Gentleman from Mississippi!” Caroline suddenly recalled a handsome young actor on the Broadway stage. He had been quick-moving and, yes, graceful. But now she understood why he had kept moving so restlessly about the stage; he had been shorter than the leading lady.
Fairbanks was delighted. “That show ran two years. You must’ve been a kid. That was—what? 1910. Anyway, I was like all the stage actors then—a lot now, too—I thought this was just an easy way to pick up a few bucks. But then there was Griffith, and Chaplin and …”
“Pickford.” Caroline could not resist. Fairbanks was supposed to be separated from his wife and having an affair with “America’s sweetheart.” Thus far, the starry-eyed American public had not been taken into Hollywood’s confidence. War-time censorship had also made it easy for Hollywood to control its own press; and control was necessary. Although most people had accepted the fact that Mary Pickford was a twenty-five-year-old woman who still played very young girls, if “Our Mary” had been suspected of having an affair with a thirty-five-year-old married man and father, her—and his—movies would have been boycotted and every church in the land would call for God’s wrath to strike California’s Sodom, and turn to tiny bleak salt pillars all the dolls.
Fairbanks took Pickford’s name in easy stride. “You’ve just named the members of our company. We’re starting our own studio, with our own distribution. Why should Zukor and you, Tom,” he included the newly arrived Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Ince in the conversation, “make all the money? Now we’ll keep it all, and only do photo-plays that we really like.”
Mrs. Ince smiled, vaguely, at Caroline. The wives, if they were not in the business, spent a lot of time smiling vaguely at one another, and discussing domestic problems and the superiority of Japanese over Filipino servants. From the beginning, Caroline had felt very much at home in this self-contained colony: Washington’s obsession with politics quite equalled Hollywood’s obsession with its own glamorous product. As a newspaper publisher, Caroline was in the happy position of being equally useful to both sets of colonists.
“As soon as Griffith gets back from London, we start organizing.”
Ince smiled sadly. “Well, there’s nobody like him. I’ll say that. He’s the best director there is. But don’t let him wreck you the way he wrecked Triangle, spending all that money.…”
Caroline enjoyed shop-talk, particularly now that she herself was at work in the same shop.
Later, enveloped in the icy darkness of a cold compress over her eyes, she said to Tim, as they lay in bed together, “What shall I do when everyone finds out that I’m Emma Traxler?”
“Everyone won’t. Outside of the few people you actually know, the world will only be interested in what’s on the screen, which is Emma, not Caroline. Anyway, do you care?”
“I suppose not. If I did I wouldn’t be doing this, would I?”
“I don’t know! Anyway, Emma Traxler’s going to be a real honest to God star.”
“I’m jealous of her already. She’ll have the fun and the glory, and I’ll just be Mrs. Sanford, the Washington matron.”
“I wouldn’t fuss.” Tim yawned. She removed her compress. They made love. He slept. She tried to sleep but she could not stop thinking of that crucifix, and what sort of wood it was made of that it should be so very light.
3
Burden sat on the terrace in front of the Chevy Chase Club and watched the Sunday golfers setting out or returning from the course, which in the silvery October light looked like the background of a Gainsborough, all dim green hollows and muted green leaves amid leaves already turned earth-brown. The sky was hazy; the day warm. Earlier, he had played nine holes of golf with William G. McAdoo, at Mac’s invitation. Whatever the Secretary of the Treasury had in mind, he had not managed to express it while they were enjoying the—mephitic air? For a month, the Spanish-influenza epidemic had spread throughout the western world. Kitty had been struck hard. Luckily, Diana was in good health and Burden himself stayed clear of crowds, and practiced not breathing, an impossible prophylactic against the killer plague. The Senate had been badly hit. It was indeed like a medieval plague, transmitted from person to person, but precisely why some were susceptible and others not was no more understood than why at this particular time in history the plague should occur. The Judgment of God was suspected by some; the German high command by others. Many believed that German scientists had poisoned the reservoirs of the western world. The fact that the influenza had surfaced most virulently in Germany was put down either to carelessness or, again, to God’s inscrutable judgment. Alarmists declared that many millions would die before the plague had run its course. Even greater alarmists suggested that the plague would end when the last of the human race had expired, burned first by fever, then drowned in pneumonia’s tidal wave. All this, and a world war—and in an election year.
As they were about to leave the ninth hole, a club steward had hurried up to McAdoo: the White House. Most urgent. In silence the two men had walked back to the clubhouse. McAdoo had gone inside, while Burden enjoyed the peopled solitude of the terrace, and pondered why and for what end McAdoo had been sounding him out. The why was easy. McAdoo wanted very much to be the Democratic candidate in 1920. Did he have in mind a McAdoo-Day ticket? Certainly it would be not only well balanced but probably a winner. Burden had the support of Bryan and Champ Clark and the other Southerners and Westerners who still formed the largest single bloc in the Democratic Party, while McAdoo had the Eastern city bosses, the Wall Street bankers; he had also been a highly successful secretary of the Treasury and member of the War Conference Board that currently governed the United States. The fact that he was the President’s son-in-law both hurt and helped equally, and so could be factored out of the final equation. But what of the President himself? He had only two more years in which to make the world safe for democracy.
Thus far, Germany had not been defeated—rather the contrary, and the newly arrived Americans were not yet the overpowering fresh force in the field that George Creel’s obedient press proclaimed them. Even so, the fact that there were now in France a million troops from across the Atlantic had turned, psychologically, the tide, and that wise prophet Henry Adams had been proved correct when he had said as early as 1914 that Germany was far too small and insignificant a power to be the world’s conqueror. In the end, in all honesty, Woodrow Wilson could be able to claim victory. Thanks to him, America’s timing had been impeccable. The late entry into the war meant few casualties, while the high-minded appeals to the people of the world over the heads of their selfishly partisan leaders had been, Burden thought but did not say, uncannily like those of the Bolshevik Trotsky. Finally, “peace without victory” was Utopian; hence, impossible; hence, acceptable to all. The odds were that if Wilson wanted a third term as president, he could get it. But might he not, like the American dictator in Colonel House’s novel, want to lead the whole world? If he were to establish himself as Lord Protector of Democracy somewhere in Europe, then why not McAdoo-Day in 1920? Or the other way around.
McAdoo sat down beside Burden in one of the large white-enamelled wooden chairs that characterized the club’s comfortable spaciousness. A Negro waiter brought them whisky. “To ward off the flu,” said McAdoo. He was tall, loose-knit, with a bat’s pointed ears and pursed mouth; at times, he looked like an unfinished sketch of his father-in-law. “Can the executive branch trust the legislative with secrets?”
Burden was light. “No. Never.”
“But I will. Remember, this is secret.”
“I am mute.”
“The President just got back from New York with Colonel House.…” At that point each man drank. The su
bject of the assistant president, the eminence grise, the Texas Machiavelli, was too enormous for either to embark on. “The President was just given a message from the German chancellor. Germany is ready to accept the Fourteen Points. And stop the war—now.”
Burden took this in easy stride. But then the war had never been quite real to him. Now its end was equally unreal. “What about the Allies?”
McAdoo sighed; stared at clouds. “They have made so many secret arrangements.”
“As Trotsky told the world …” In a fit of mischief, the Bolshevik government had revealed all of the Allies’ various secret treaties, so often deplored by the moralizing President, who had himself entered into something very like a secret agreement with Japan over that busy nation’s seizure of Shantung in China. Wilson had been embarrassed but unshaken. For him, the Fourteen Points were the only basis for America’s entry into the war and that was that. Now Germany had come to him for peace and not to the Allies, who were certain to be bent on revenge and recompense.
“Then we have our war-lovers.” McAdoo looked weary. “They want unconditional surrender.”
“You don’t get that until you’ve won an unconditional victory. We haven’t won much of anything, and the German army’s still intact, still in France.”
“The War Department estimates that for us to take Berlin would mean a million American lives.”
“I think even Cabot would find that high, or Colonel Roosevelt.” Although the great jingo affected euphoric pride in the wounding of one son and the death of another, those close to him said that he was quite stricken by the finality of real war so unlike the familiar noise of his own ceaseless theatrical trumpet to arms.
“They want an armistice now.”
“What does the President say?”