The American Chronicle - Hollywood Part 22

"Is it too late for me to act?"

"Yes." Caroline was cruel.

The nonfict.i.tious Emma appeared, face ruddy from the heat. "We've made it. In time for dinner, if that's all right."

"Of course." Caroline kissed her daughter's cheek. "Who's we?"

"Didn't I tell you? Giles." And Giles entered the room. An a.s.sistant professor of history at Bryn Mawr, Giles Decker was ten years older than Emma. He was blond and stout and eunuchoid, a type that had never not appealed to her daughter, who was put off by attractive men, none of whom, in turn, had ever presented her with a rose. Introductions were made. Millicent pulled herself together most regally; and smiled in a kindly way at the young. The kindly smile turned rapturous when Professor Decker said that he had written his dissertation on Millicent's uncle. "His foreign policy mainly."

"Did he have one?" asked Caroline. The uncle had been president in the lazy days before empire had seized the sleepy republic by the nape of the neck.

"Don't be rude!" Millicent sounded like Alice Roosevelt when anyone suggested that her father was not of G.o.d-like marble but human clay. "We had quant.i.ties of foreign policy. There was Nicaragua. Always. Festering, my uncle would say. And China, we opened up China, didn't we, Professor Decker?"

"Actually, Lady Inverness, no, the President didn't really. Actually, he ..."

"See?" Millicent poured herself more gin and this time added angostura bitters. Like a pink dawn, thought Caroline, who realized that she would not have time for a bath before the early dinner, dictated by the absence of her regular cook, whose replacement feared going home in the dark.

"So nice to see that some of the young remember our heritage. But even the immigrants are interested in us, a few of them, anyway. When I suggested to Mr. Zukor that Uncle's life would make a marvelous photo-play for Mr. Fairbanks, Mr. Zukor was very interested."

"I am sure he would be now that Mr. Fairbanks has started his own studio with Mr. Zukor's golden goose, Mary Pickford. Mr. Zukor would do anything to get back his stars. As he says, the inmates are running the asylum."

All three said, "What?" and Caroline explained that when Fairbanks, Pickford and Chaplin, with D. W. Griffith, had founded their own production company, United Artists, Zukor had made his famous, by no means in-jest remark. After all, Zukor's Famous Players-Lasky was the supreme studio, thanks to its owners.h.i.+p of hundreds of movie houses where he could show, if he chose, only his own pictures, a policy known bleakly as block-booking. First National, Fox and Loew's were lesser compet.i.tion, while United Artists, with help from McAdoo, who had got to know the stars through his Liberty Bond appeals, was now so profitable that Caroline had opened negotiations to use it for the release of Traxler Productions photo-plays.

"Giles was very upset about Mr. Farrell's movie, The Strike-Breakers."

"What-or who-is a strike-breaker?" asked Millicent; but no one answered her.

"Why upset?" Caroline gave Giles her special three-quarter Madonna smile, which had an astonis.h.i.+ng effect, a knowledgeable publicist had told her, on adolescent boys from thirteen to sixteen and sapphic women of any age, two groups unnaturally dedicated to movie-going.

Giles, as it proved, was neither adolescent nor sapphic. "I saw it in New York before it was withdrawn and I was very disturbed by the Communist message, which surprised me, knowing that you were the producer ..."

"And Mr. Farrell a Catholic," added Emma.

"One doesn't see them in London, thank G.o.d." Millicent made her contribution. "The Duke of Norfolk, yes. But even he has to mind his p's and q's, not like here where they don't even make good maids like they used to because they are always, if you'll forgive me," she smiled compa.s.sionately at the young, "pregnant."

"Well, Mr. Farrell is not pregnant." Caroline was demure. "I thought the film was simply against violence. In this case, on the part of the management."

"But that is a Communist theme, Mrs. Sanford. One must be wary when dealing with them. I know."

"How?" Caroline's tone was more blunt than she intended.

"Giles is very active with the National Civic Federation, and he writes for their review ..."

"You must know their editor, Ralph Easley?" Giles now held a pipe in one hand but did not light it. Ralph Easley was a professional publicist who had been pursuing Communists all over the United States. He had caused a furor with an article called "If Bolshevism Came to America." Apparently, everyone would have to get up before dawn to take an icy shower and then, their cars taken away from them, trudge to work, where they would break rocks for a dozen hours. Easley had found Communists everywhere in American life, particularly in the press, the churches and the schools. He had attacked the Tribune for its editorial on the necessity of bringing American troops home from Russia. Needless to say, the conservative American labor movement admired him and wished him well in rooting out those Communists hidden in their ranks. Hearst also loved him. Caroline thought him a joke in bad taste, while Blaise thought that there might be something to his charges.

Caroline said that she had not had the pleasure of meeting Easley but she was aware of his busy-ness.

"We take him very seriously, Mrs. Sanford. I'm on the academic committee for freedom from anarchy, which works closely with Mr. Easley ..."

"Giles has written an expose of all the history departments, showing how they are controlled by Marxists."

"I thought," said Caroline, gazing upon her daughter's ruddy features with mild dislike, "that your discipline is mathematics."

"Emma is also a concerned citizen ..."

"This concerned citizen," said the Countess of Inverness, "is about to change for dinner."

"So, I think, will I." Caroline would have her bath after all. She rose. "You two come as you are. It's only us-and at eight."

But Caroline was denied her bath. Just as Heloise was helping her out of her dress, Emma knocked on the door. "Come in, darling." Caroline was already feeling guilty about the sudden spasm of disaffection that she had felt for her only child. The late-afternoon light through the thick dark magnolia leaves was an intense deep hot gold.

Emma stretched out on a chaise-longue. Emma sat beneath a painting of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc. Caroline thought of her, fondly, as a little girl, playing in the grounds of the chateau as Caroline herself had once played in the last years of the old century that seemed, in this age of telephones and automobiles and heavier-than-air craft, a millennium ago.

"Giles is very worried about you, Mother."

"Tell him not to be. I still have my ... my wiles."

"He thinks you've been taken in by Tim, who is a member of the Communist Party."

"I wasn't aware there was a Communist Party in this country. After all, a condition of our freedom is that it be exercised only in support of the majority, as Mr. Debs has discovered."

Emma was humorless. "There's a secret party, just the way the anarchists are secret."

"You know their secrets?"

"Giles does, and so does Ralph Easley. They mean to overthrow the government. Look at what they did to Mr. Palmer."

"He lost a few front windows. They-whoever they were-lost their lives."

"You sound sympathetic."

"Really? I thought I sounded factual, and indifferent."

"Giles thinks-and so does Mr. Easley-that you should take a more active, a more unequivocal stand against Bolshevism."

Caroline wondered if her daughter had, somehow, been bewitched. "I have never known you to show the slightest interest in politics, and now you lecture me on the Red Menace."

Emma frowned and the stubborn jaw, so like her father's, jutted out. "I'm not. I mean, in the usual nonsense. But I'm serious about this, Mother. We could lose everything, our whole country, our freedom if they win ..."

"Who are they?"

"Trotsky, Lenin, the Hungarians, the Germans. They're everywhere. Three thousand strikes this year in the United States alone. Why? Ask Lenin. He knows. He has this special committee. In Chicago. Direct wireless to Moscow. Who do you think ordered the strike in Seattle? Trotsky. We have his directives in a code, which we broke. We ..." Emma was speaking more and more rapidly and less and less coherently. She kept interrupting herself, as a new subject exploded in her brain. But since she tended to begin in the middle of a statement, the subject was often unclear. "Naval warfare. Submarines. Under the treaty. The Red fleet now largest. Off Catalina Island. In June. Basic investment of a quarter-million dollars. La Follette, of course. Always La Follette. Connection between Moscow ... the Third International was convened March this year. For every country. Everywhere. Workers unite! La Follette knows all about it. So does Borah. That's why Tim's film with your backing ... last year ninety Communist films were made by Jews on orders from Trotsky, a Zionist. Everyone knows. Condition of the New York Times to support England in 1917. Homeland for communism in Palestine. Hearst only one who'll speak up. You must ..." Emma was temporarily out of breath.

"Must? I must what?"

"Giles-and Mr. Easley-think you should write-or be interviewed-or something-on communism in Hollywood, and how you were tricked by Tim into making that Red propaganda film-"

Caroline slapped the arm of her chaise-longue so hard that she hurt her hand. "Are you absolutely mad? You know nothing of politics or movies or anything else except mathematics. I was hardly tricked ..." Like her daughter, Caroline had veered off into what might prove to be a cul-de-sac. Tim had indeed tricked her about the film, and their relations.h.i.+p was seriously frayed. In the autumn she would go to California and see what could be done to put together the pieces. Otherwise, she might simply weigh anchor and sail splendidly off into high middle age, without human moorings of any kind.

"Well, if you made the film deliberately, then Mr. Easley's right, and you did know what you were doing, because you're basically a foreigner, and should be deported under the Immigration Act of 1918 and also under the Espionage Act ..."

"Shut up!" Caroline had never addressed herself quite so directly to her daughter. "You need help, plainly. One of those behaviorists or whatever they call them. I am not a foreigner. I've always had a foreign ... I mean, an American pa.s.sport ..."

"Your mother was foreign. I know. She killed Uncle Blaise's mother ..."

Caroline was on her feet, shouting at Emma in French.

Only Emma's superior smile at this proof of her mother's foreignness stopped Caroline cold. "You are very ... trying, Emma. I put it down to the bad influence of Mr. Decker."

"No, Mother. It's been a long time coming. Waking up, really, to the way we're losing our country to you foreigners."

"Perhaps you should find yourself a different young man." Caroline was her silky self again.

"I don't think that I could, really. You see, we were married this morning. In Maryland."

Caroline had a hard time catching her next breath but, once caught, she was at perfect ease. "Then you are a fool," she said.

"I know," Emma sighed almost, for her, theatrically. "But then it's not my fault, is it? That I'm illegitimate."

"No," said Caroline, standing up. "It is not your fault. Now-go away."

3.

THE PRESIDENT WAS AT HIS TYPEWRITER, as Grayson showed Burden into the upstairs study. "I'll be just a moment." Wilson continued to type at a near-professional rate. Burden was always impressed by such skills. Like most of the Senate, Burden relied on aides to a.s.semble his own speeches. When he did write a speech for himself, it was in near-illegible longhand. But the President could not only create his own eloquence, he could type it neatly with hardly an error. On the other hand, Wilson could not bloviate, as the windbag Harding put it: speak impromptu with incoherent pa.s.sion. Burden himself had a definite gift along these demagogic lines. But he saved it for the stump. In the Senate he prided himself on sharp brevity.

Wilson pulled the sheet from the typewriter, let it drop onto his desk; rose and shook Burden's hand. The President's face was more than usually pale-from the August heat? The Sixty-sixth Congress due to convene December 19, 1919, had been called to Was.h.i.+ngton in May. The President had returned from France in July. Now the entire government was obliged to endure the equatorial heat. The President, Burden noted, had developed a twitch at the corner of his left eye; and, all in all, seemed on edge. At Wilson's gesture, Burden settled in his usual sofa at an angle to the desk. Neither liked being face to face to anyone.

To Burden's surprise, Wilson did not mention the League, which Lodge was slowly killing with amendments in the Senate. "What would you do about labor, if you were me?"

"You mean the strikes?"

"I mean the whole arrangement between the managers and the workers."

"When in doubt, do nothing. Are you in doubt, Mr. President?"

"Yes and no. I think we proved during the war that we could run the railroads as well as the owners. Well, now ..."

"You think we-the government-should take them over?"

Wilson nodded. "It would be one way of bringing into line both managers and labor leaders."

Blaise shrugged. "I don't see much difference between the government running something and the owners running it. It will just make life more difficult for us if a railroad union strikes against the government."

"Or less difficult. Most countries keep control of vital necessities like water, electricity, transport. We don't. We allow anyone to gouge the customer, to exploit the worker."

Burden smiled. "With all your other problems, Mr. President, do you want to be called a Socialist?"

"Why not? I've been called everything else. It's because I'm terrified of Bolshevism that I think we might steal some of their thunder in order to keep them from stealing our country altogether. Have you seen my son-in-law, Mr. McAdoo?"

Burden shook his head. "I suppose he's in New York, practicing law."

Wilson sat back in his chair and allowed his head slowly to turn from left to right and then from right to left. Apparently a form of exercise. "There is pressure on me to make up my mind about next year. I've said that I don't want a third term, and my son-in-law certainly would like at least a first term." The smile was dour. "It would be useful for him if I were to rule myself out now. Then he'd have a year to get ready."

"Yes." Burden gave nothing away. He wondered if Wilson knew about the conversation at the Chevy Chase Club.

"I wish I could oblige you-him, that is-but I don't know. Until the League is safe, my work here is undone. When do you think the Senate will vote?"

"Lodge drags it out. He feels each day makes it harder and harder for us to support the League, and he's right. Why not accept his reservations, and get the thing over right now?"

"Never." Wilson's voice was unagitated. "As you probably know, this morning the Foreign Relations Committee adopted fifty amendments that would keep the United States from ever serving on nearly all those international committees that would instrument the League. Lodge also got a nine-to-eight vote reversing the Peace Conference's stand on Shantung."

As Burden spoke, the tremor in Wilson's eyelid became so p.r.o.nounced that the President took off his pince-nez and, pretending to dry his brow with a handkerchief, brought pressure to bear on the wayward nerve. "So Tumulty told me."

"Did he also report that Knox and Borah and Johnson and some of the other irreconcilables, as they call themselves, plan to stump the country, particularly the West, propagandizing against the League?"

Silently, Wilson folded the handkerchief in four. "So we must all, now, go to Caesar."

"To our masters." Burden smiled, as he always did, when he contemplated the fiction that the American people in any way controlled their own fate. The Const.i.tution had largely excluded them while custom had, paradoxically, by enlarging the franchise limited any meaningful partic.i.p.ation in government by the governed. Naturally, the emotions of the people had to be taken into account, but those emotions could be easily manipulated by demagogues and press. If the irreconcilables were to play skillfully to America's hatred of the foreign, then Wilson must play to their own high self-esteem in a world where they were now, so it was believed, not only the greatest power but the most s.h.i.+ningly innocent. It was so easy, given time. Without a thought in his head, Burden could rouse an audience to accept the League and a Pax Americana; then, as easily, he could excite them with the spectre of liberties lost to a British-dominated League, to be rejected out of hand in obedience to George Was.h.i.+ngton's sacred warning against foreign entanglements. This was all that there was to politics in the great democracy. Once Professor Wilson had grasped this, he had opted for a parliamentary system. But President Wilson now grasped the sceptre and the orb without question; and played the game.

"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 Hitchc.o.c.k, 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 leaders.h.i.+p-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 gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s. It was in the bathroom, the first Sunday morning after we got back to Paris and settled in the new place. The other nine gla.s.ses, if broken, were broken by someone else. I do not rule out the French themselves. After all, every single one of them a.s.signed 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.