The American Chronicle - Hollywood Part 13

"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. j.a.panese 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 gla.s.s 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 h.e.l.lo 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, gla.s.sy, 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 ent.i.tled a.s.suming Responsibilities.

Caroline smiled her delight. "How," she said, as it was expected of her, "do you find the time?"

Fairbanks told her. He had astonis.h.i.+ng 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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, gracefully. Caroline wondered why he did not appeal to her s.e.xually. 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 censors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d'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 j.a.panese over Filipino servants. From the beginning, Caroline had felt very much at home in this self-contained colony: Was.h.i.+ngton'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 n.o.body 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 G.o.d star."

"I'm jealous of her already. She'll have the fun and the glory, and I'll just be Mrs. Sanford, the Was.h.i.+ngton 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 s.p.a.ciousness. 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 subject of the a.s.sistant 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 j.a.pan over that busy nation's seizure of Shantung in China. Wilson had been embarra.s.sed 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?"

"He plans to take it up with us, the War Conference Board, tomorrow. This won't be easy."

"The Allies?"

McAdoo nodded. "Then there are the war-mad here at home-and overseas."

Burden understood the war-mad at home: vast fortunes were being made legally and illegally out of the military. Burden had recently joined the Senate Naval Committee, where he had got himself a sub-committee on procurement. Every day he was solicited and lobbied. Bribes were offered both openly and subtly. He had succ.u.mbed to neither, but other senators had been weaker than he-or was it stronger? Since the morality of Was.h.i.+ngton was always relative to need, one man's Gethsemane might be another's Coney Island.

"You will have your problems with the Army." Burden offered a secret for a secret. "General Pers.h.i.+ng will oppose any armistice. He wants to fight another year, and ride in triumph through Berlin."

"Pers.h.i.+ng?" McAdoo turned to get a full look at Burden. With the sun back of his head, he looked more than ever like a giant bat. "He wouldn't dare."

"I don't know what he'll dare, but I have it on the best authority that he'll come out publicly against any sort of negotiated peace."

McAdoo shook his head. "Generals," he murmured.

"They are stupider than most people," Burden agreed.

"Thanks for the warning." McAdoo was grateful. "But for now the problem will be the Allies. They want their ton of flesh. But we have all the trumps."

"We have all the money." It had taken Burden some time to grow accustomed to the phrases "debtor nation" and "creditor nation" and why it made any difference who was what. Great Britain had been the world's foremost lender of capital until it ran out of money in 1914. When J. P. Morgan-later backed by McAdoo's Treasury-paid for Britain's overdraft, the United States became the princ.i.p.al creditor nation. Yet New York, outside Fifth Avenue, was as shabby as ever while it was said that even after four years of war London still shone imperially.

"We have all the money." Burden looked at his watch. He did not want to be late two Sundays in a row. "Anyway, they'll fall in line if the President says just three words."

"Which three?" McAdoo smiled. " 'I love you'?"

"No. 'A separate peace.' We went to war not to help the Allies but to get the Germans to accept the Fourteen Points. Germany has now done so. Like it or not, the war's over. And we've won it."

McAdoo nodded. "True. But the British and the French will have to agree at some point. Colonel House tells me, in confidence, that the British and French leaders dislike the President even more than he mistrusts them." McAdoo shook his head. "Imagine Pers.h.i.+ng wanting to drag out the war so that he can look like a hero."

"So that he can be president."

McAdoo gave Burden a sharp look: yes, this was the object of their Sunday game of golf. "If the people found out that just because he wanted to march down the Wilhelmstra.s.se one million Americans would die, he'd be hated."

"They voted for Grant. He killed more than a million."

"A different war. A different time. A better cause. Should I resign?"

Burden had expected the question; and had prepared an answer. "No. You've made a huge success of the Liberty Bonds. You're at the center of a government that's won a war. Stay there."

"I am kept on a tight leash."

"Better that than roaming about baying at the moon for two years, trying to collect delegates." Burden was blunt.

McAdoo affected not to hear the part about the delegates. He was tangential. "You know the best way to get to the President? Mention someone he hates. Tell him something he doesn't know about an enemy. Make it up, if you have to. He warms up immediately. Then you can do anything you want with him."

Burden rose. "Thanks for the game."

They shook hands. McAdoo said that he must wait for a White House car to pick him up. Out of deference to "gasless Sunday," each had come to the club in a horse and buggy. As Burden crossed the high-ceilinged main hall of the club, he wondered what had gone wrong between father and son-in-law. He also thought, with envy, of the vast amount of Wall Street money that McAdoo could call upon if he should make the race for president. Since Burden could deliver as many votes as McAdoo could deliver dollars, the combination was irresistible; only the order was wrong. Why not Day-McAdoo? The Secretary of the Treasury was better known to the whole country than the Senate's deputy majority leader, but where the voters were, there Burden was entrenched, a second Bryan without the first Bryan's primitivism; also without, to be honest, his magic.

Halfway across the hall, Burden found himself face to face with a white-faced Franklin Roosevelt, who had been weeping. Caught off-guard, Roosevelt managed a smile; then quickly covered his face with a handkerchief and blew his nose.

"You look," said Burden, "awful."

The face that emerged from behind the handkerchief was now its usual jaunty rather vacuous self. But the color was pasty; the close-set eyes gla.s.sy. "I've just got out of the hospital."

"Flu?"

"Pneumonia. I got it in Europe. I was there two months. I've never been so sick."

For all Franklin's Rooseveltian affectation of vigor, he was a sickly creature, as Burden remembered from the Sylph. Then the next a.s.sociation in his mind was abruptly antic.i.p.ated. Lucy Mercer joined them; she was in civilian clothes. "Senator," she smiled. She was dreamily beautiful. What was the gossip about them? He had heard something; and forgotten it.

"There's been a peace offer." Franklin moved to deflect the subject-from what? Illness? Lucy?

"McAdoo just told me."

"Is he here?"

Burden nodded and said good-by. From Chevy Chase to Connecticut Avenue would be more than half an hour by horse and buggy. He should have asked McAdoo to drop him off in the White House car.

Although Burden was late, she was serene. "Gasless Sunday is ghastly Sunday," she drawled, "until now." They were in her upstairs sitting room, panelled in rosewood. Tea had been set up in front of the fireplace. On Sunday afternoons, only her personal maid was on duty to let him in and to see that the coast was clear of other servants. Later, she would lead him down the back stairs to a side entrance. The master's bedroom was at the opposite end of the marble palace, while the master himself was at the opposite end of the country. "He should be back tomorrow."

As she was so much younger than Burden, he had always taken her for granted, a part of the city's large chorus of decorative girls. Now she poured tea for him on Sundays. Thanks to Caroline, Sunday was now a.s.sociated in his mind not only with pleasure but with freedom from himself. What Sunday could mean to a woman was beyond him. After all, if they were reasonably adept at traffic management, they had six other days in the week as well.

"Why should Franklin Roosevelt be crying at the Chevy Chase Club, with Lucy Mercer?" This was very much a Sunday question.

"Because," she handed him tea and a plate of Hyler's macaroons, "that was probably their last meeting. Unless," she was thoughtful, "it was the first meeting under the new dispensation. Eleanor has found them out."

"At last." Even Kitty had been concerned at Eleanor's slowness to discover what everyone in their small Was.h.i.+ngton knew. "How?"

"He came back from Europe with double pneumonia, which is twice as bad as plain pneumonia, which is good enough for the rest of us. Anyway, Eleanor got him to the hospital. Then she came home, and straightened up the empty house, the children were all away. Then she went through his suits from Europe to send them to the cleaners, and there were the love letters from Lucy. It was just like one of those simple-minded plays. I must tell Caroline when she gets back." Frederika's laugh was low and conspiratorial, as if there were only the two of them in all the world.