Clay nodded. He had planned to telephone Blaise at Watch Hill that night, to say goodbye and seek a father-in-law’s blessing. Now Blaise had materialized in the flesh.

  “I had to fly down. Lord Beaverbrook’s arriving.”

  “At least he’s not here to see us.” Enid moved close to Clay. “This is quite a reunion. Peter back in Washington, and all of us together.”

  “Until I go.” Clay was flat.

  “Until you go. Yes. It’s awful, Daddy. Do you realize he could be killed? Can’t you keep him home, like Peter?”

  “He doesn’t want to stay home. I made him the offer. He’s stubborn.” Blaise grinned at Clay. The male world closed ranks.

  Seeing herself shut out, Enid retaliated. “Listen, Father.” When Daddy became Father, Enid meant business. “He wants a divorce.”

  “That’s not exactly what I said…” But Clay lost the initiative.

  “Yes, it was. And I think it’s silly. Don’t you, Father? At this point? With the child and Clay going off anyway to have a good time in Hawaii.”

  “Yes, I think it’s silly.” Blaise was calm. He turned to Clay. “We don’t want to lose you.”

  Clay was grateful for that sign of interest. He might yet win the game against Enid. Thought of victory inspired him. “If Enid were only more discreet, I wouldn’t mind so much, the way things are.” His boldness was rewarded.

  Enid was on her feet, with a tiger’s spring, impressing even the old tiger, her progenitor and fellow carnivore. “Discreet! He started it! I didn’t!” Her voice rose but she did not lose control. Clay watched her, fascinated, as she presented her case to the appellate court, not faltering once in the presentation, leaving no loophole through which truth might pass. As she described his adultery with the imaginary Argentine, he realized with a shock that she really believed what she was saying. He watched Blaise nervously: did he believe her? Enid paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, the Coca-Cola bottle clutched in her hand like a weapon. But luck was with Clay, for with a loud, “Hi, baby!” Joseph Bailey, Captain, United States Navy, burst into the room, arms filled with phonograph records.

  Enid came to a halt. Blaise stared in disbelief at the newcomer. Clay said, “I’m the husband,” taking the match if not the game.

  “I brought Enid some records.” Joe placed them on top of the Capehart phonograph. Enid put down the Coca-Cola bottle, a queen relinquishing her sceptre. “Daddy, this is Captain Joe Bailey, a friend of mine.”

  The two men shook hands and with a small thrill Clay saw in Blaise’s eyes the same fury directed at Joe that had once been reserved only for him. “Just passing by. On my way to the office.” Blaise’s silence spread through the room like news of plague. But Joe did not immediately get the point. “Enid’s told me a lot about you,” he said to Clay, affecting ease, not realizing that the funeral bell had already begun to toll. Enid watched her father with the fascination of a child soon to be punished.

  “Not too damaging, I hope.” Clay had begun to enjoy the situation.

  “Not at all. Not at all.” The Captain turned to Blaise and opened his second front. “We were all pretty thrilled, sir, with that editorial last week about containing Communism, after the war. It was crackerjack stuff.”

  Clay was not certain what it was that set Blaise off but he suspected that “crackerjack” might well have been the detonator. Blaise laughed. It was not the artificial booming laugh he sometimes affected to make others ill at ease. It was a genuinely merry laugh, charming in its spontaneity. Enid was shattered by it. Her hands clutched air, as though seizing invisible Coca-Cola bottles. The Captain was mystified. “I don’t think I see the joke, sir.”

  “Nothing. Nothing.” Blaise touched one eye with a stubby finger, dislodging a small diamond of a tear. “I gave him the sack, that’s all. The man who wrote that editorial.”

  “On what grounds, sir?”

  “Grounds?” The old dangerous scowl began its lengthening and deepening between brows that ought to have bristled but instead looked as if they had been painted on, bold and black, like Enid’s. “We are allied with the Soviets. We need them for the war with Japan. We must not undermine them. It is too soon to start talking about containing Communism.”

  “It is never too soon.” The Captain was now somewhat dark in the face. Ideological passion and embarrassment made his voice quiver.

  “Apparently not in the…Navy, is it?” Blaise indicated the uniform as though it might as easily have been that of a movie usher.

  “Some of us look ahead. We’d always thought of you as one of us.”

  “One of you?” The contempt was perfect. “I think what all you young fellows need is a bit of war duty, like Clay here. Washington’s a demoralizing place unless you’ve something important to do.” Having shot the Captain down, Blaise gave wings to Clay. “Want a lift? I’ve got the car outside.”

  Enid returned to life. “I want to talk to you a moment, Clay.” She turned to the ruined Captain. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Of course.” Joe’s voice reached for its original note of triumph but did not make it; without shaking hands he withdrew, a half-wave to the room his only tribute to the master he had met.

  “Father, could you wait for Clay outside?”

  “Whatever you say, my dear.” He kissed her averted cheek and left the room.

  “He seems very nice, your Navy captain.”

  “Oh, shut up. Listen, do you want a divorce or not?”

  “It’s up to you.” That was the usual answer. Enid’s hand shook as she poured herself a drink.

  “Well, I don’t. There’s the baby, though God knows you pay no attention to her. Joe takes her everywhere.”

  “I thought he’d be too busy containing Communism.”

  “You and Daddy can laugh all you like but they’re taking over the country.” Enid launched into a fierce incoherent attack on those elements which were conspiring against American virtue but then, characteristically, something she said reminded her of herself and abruptly she allowed the Republic to fall into Red hands while she saved their marriage. “I’ll stop seeing him, if you really want me to, though he’s a real man and they’re hard to come by and I don’t mean that he’s my lover or anything like that.”

  “He isn’t?”

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t,” she said, careful in her illogic. “The point is I do need a man around, to take me out, cope with things, and the baby needs him, needs a man to look up to, to do things with her. It’s very hard on her having no father and me trying to be both parents when, let’s face it, I’m not any too good at being a mother.”

  Against his will, Clay found himself liking his wife; her sudden bleak honesties about herself were endearing. “All right,” he said. “We postpone decision until I get back, if I get back.”

  “You mustn’t go! I mean go, yes, to Hawaii or some place like that. But not where there’s fighting. What on earth would I do if you were killed?”

  To this obvious rhetoric there was altogether too much answer. He was soothing. He kissed her. Arm in arm they went down the brick steps of the house to the long Cadillac in which Blaise sat, quietly reading a newspaper. The chauffeur opened the rear door. Blaise looked up from his reading. “All set?”

  Enid threw her arms about Clay as if he were certain to be killed, and perhaps he was, he thought, gently undoing her arms and climbing into the back seat. The chauffeur shut the door. Metal and glass separated him now from Enid, whose lips continued to move though he could not hear what she was saying through the closed window and the sound of the engine starting.

  As the car pulled away from the curb, Enid took a long swig from the glass she was holding and ran back into the house. He wondered if he would ever see her again.

  “She started drinking again, didn’t she?”

  “Drinking? I don’t think so. She was on Coca-Cola, wasn’t she?”

  “There was Scotch in the glass when she came outside.” Blaise’s manner was that of the impersonal recorder. “No divorce?”

  “No. At least, not now.”

  “Good.” They both were silent as the car left Georgetown and turned into a broad avenue lined with low buildings each with a false wood or brick façade like the main street of a Western town. They passed “People’s Drug Store” (yellow letters on black), one of a city chain almost as ubiquitous as the “Palace Laundries,” whose color motif was purple and gold or the green and white one-story brick huts known as “Little Taverns.” These visual points of reference made the city home to Clay, who had grown entirely used to the slow-moving, languorous town with its long empty vistas of columned public buildings and unexpected slums where Negroes lived in somber brick houses built in those summery days when McKinley reigned and Mark Hanna ruled. Elsewhere, there were the elegant tree-lined avenues, broken by circles designed to keep the dreaded mob at bay with cannon, the work of men who could not foresee to what extent the mob would govern not in the streets with musketry but in the Capitol itself, going through the motions and sometimes the reality of ruling themselves, leaving the circles to their betters who put up palaces and feared no one, not even the President they accused of wanting their ruin.

  “Sorry to go?” Blaise’s voice was low.

  Clay nodded. “But it’s something I’ve got to do.” He had not intended to strike the heroic note.

  Fortunately, Blaise did not hear it: his ear attuned only to the practical. “You must go, if we’re going to get you in Congress.”

  Clay turned to look at Blaise. “You know, I’m very grateful for the way you’re helping me, after all this business with Enid.”

  Blaise looked away, apparently shy. “Enid’s difficult. I don’t like what she’s doing with herself. This drinking. That Navy fool.”

  “I suppose I’m to blame for a lot of it.” Clay’s tentative lead was promptly followed up.

  “Yes, you are. And I can’t say you handled it very well. But it’s done and that’s that. I will say that I was very impressed when you rang me up and wanted to talk but then never said one word against Enid. I admired that.” As you were intended to, thought Clay, grimly pleased that his desperate strategy had worked. “What I don’t like is the way she’s blown this thing up out of proportion. Anyway, let’s hope all will be forgotten when you come back home a hero.”

  Clay laughed. “That’s not easy to guarantee, being a hero.”

  “I’ve told Harold Griffiths to keep an eye on you. He’ll be in the general vicinity.”

  “We’re not exactly buddies.”

  “What possible difference could that make?” In the cold voice, Clay heard power. “If you do anything notable, Harold will write about it and I’ll publish it. You see, I want you to go far.”

  “Why?” Such a simple statement invited a straight question.

  “We talked about this once, years ago at Laurel House.” Blaise was precise. “I said I didn’t want to make things easy for you to rise. I had my reasons then; I have them now. They are personal and perhaps not particularly attractive.” Blaise looked away. “I told you then that though I was a rich boy,” the husky voice managed skillfully to italicize the pejorative word, “I had wanted much the same things you do, and got them. In my way, which won’t be half as satisfactory as yours.” He frowned. “If the Republicans had won last time—never had a chance, but if they had—I was going to be Ambassador to Italy. Interesting post, nice life, and then there was Mussolini to deal with, which might have been worthwhile.” For a moment Blaise spoke of Mussolini as though he regretted not having conducted President Willkie’s embassy. Then he turned back to Clay. “You see, that would have been second-rate.”

  “To be Ambassador to Italy?”

  Blaise nodded. “For me, second-rate.” He stated it as fact. “But that’s all I could ever get because I have no future. Except to go on as I am, which isn’t bad.” He gave his sudden smile. “But you do have a future. And it could be remarkable. Do you realize that?”

  “Yes.” Clay could equal Blaise’s proud candor. “I’ve always known it.”

  Blaise laughed. “Good! You’re like me, only not being a rich boy you have a better chance.”

  “Not having money I have no chance at all for anything really big.” Clay was to the point.

  “You will have what you need, don’t worry.”

  Reflexively, Clay could not help but wonder why Blaise was helping. Certainly not for Enid’s sake for it was now plain that Blaise had exchanged daughter for son-in-law, as if he could not hold both simultaneously in his affection or perhaps “interest” was the better word since Blaise seemed not to care about anyone. Depending upon mood, he spoke with equal politeness or disdain of wife, son, daughter.

  For the present, Clay knew that he had obtained Blaise’s interest; he must make the most of it. He spoke casually of money in politics, of how difficult it was for men like Senator Day to become presidential. Mention of Burden caused Blaise to sit up straight and kick the jump seat back into place. “Nillson!”

  “What about him?”

  “You! You have any dealings with him?”

  Clay kept his voice steady, forced himself to be cool. “A great many dealings. After all, he handled the Senator’s finances in 1940.”

  “Notice anything funny?”

  Clay shook his head. “Nothing. I mean, naturally we got around the law that limits campaigning, but…”

  “No. No. Between him and the Senator, anything shady?”

  “If there was, I never knew about it.” In matters like this, truth was almost always a mistake. “What have you heard?”

  “They’re going to indict Nillson. The government. Some kind of fraud. Don’t know the details. I got it from our financial man in New York.”

  “The Senator’s not directly involved, is he?”

  “No. But to the extent that Ed raised money for him, he’s involved.”

  Clay was relieved. Apparently it was not the Indian land sale. “Guilt by association?”

  “Poor Burden. He’s got a tough primary coming up.”

  “You’ll support him?”

  Blaise nodded. “But I’m glad you’re on your own now. He could be in trouble.” Blaise offered Clay a cigar. Both men took their time lighting the tobacco. When smoke filled the car, Blaise opened a window and said mildly, “I liked Ed.” Clay noted the use of tense. “Belonged to the same club. Bad time for us.” Blaise chuckled. “Whitney was a member, too. And he went to jail. Capitalism doesn’t look so hot, does it?”

  “Maybe they won’t nail Ed.”

  But Blaise was tired of the subject. He turned to Clay, the whites of his eyes dark gold and the irises as black as the pupils. “We’re going to make it! You hear me?”

  Clay was startled by this unexpected intensity. Fortunately, before he had to respond in kind, the car stopped and as chauffeur and hotel doorman contended for the honor of opening the car door, Blaise put his hand on Clay’s thigh and gripped him hard, causing pain. Tears came to Clay’s eyes but he did not pull away. In some obscure way he was being tested. Son of a bitch sadist, he thought, as the powerful fingers continued to pinch hard the muscle of his leg. Then the chauffeur opened the door and the hand was withdrawn. But the pain continued. Blaise shook his hand perfunctorily. “Keep in touch.”

  “I will.” Clay got out of the car, his leg tingling.

  “Oh…” Blaise called him back.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Don’t get killed.”

  “I’ll try not to.” Both men laughed. Then Blaise was gone, and Clay was left with the depressing thought that he might not live to complete the grand design Blaise had so temptingly revealed to him. But the appearance of a familiar figure dispelled all doubts. The good omen was Miss Perrine. “Only I’m Mrs. Fallon now. But I’m still working for the Senator, because we need the extra money. Munson’s still at the Mint.” She smiled brightly and accepted an invitation to come to his room for a drink, after she had delivered some papers to one of the Senator’s constituents.

  FIVE

  I

  “It is the closest thing in Washington to a salon,” said Sergeant Aeneas Duncan to Warrant Officer (junior grade) Peter Sanford, as he led him into Dupont Circle.

  Peter chose to be perverse. “But what is a salon? And do we need one in Washington? And why go to the ‘closest thing to’?”

  Patiently Aeneas explained to Peter that here, at least, there was conversation, almost on a par with that of New York, the city from which Aeneas had entered the Army so that he might kill Nazis. Instead he had been sent to Washington to think up ways of encouraging troops grown bored and weary after three years of war. Before enlistment, Aeneas had taught philosophy and written dense critiques of literature and politics. Though forty-five and in bad health—he wheezed with asthma, smoked too much, and was for all military purposes blind—he had been accepted for duty and assigned to an office next to Peter’s where he produced an enormous amount of writing, much of it mimeographed. He was not happy with Washington but he did his best to make do in what he regarded as a provincial city and like a Chekhov character, he spoke wistfully of his exile from the true capital. To him, Washington did not exist. Despite a passion for political theory, he had no interest in actual politics. Until the system was entirely changed, there was no use, he declared, in even acknowledging the present power structure. But though the name and function of the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee were strange to him, he read Locke, quoted Hume, and explicated Marx. In any case, “They’ll be gone soon enough,” he would say balefully whenever Peter questioned him too closely. But whether swept away by revolution or simply withdrawn by history’s tide, he would not say.

  Often, as Aeneas talked, Peter found himself wondering what it was like to be so entirely preoccupied with moral nicety. It was this quality in Aeneas which most attracted him. Aeneas took nothing lightly. Everything must be weighed upon the fine scales of a moral sense that never slept. At first Peter found this seriousness sufficiently refreshing to imitate it, and he took to analyzing not only deeds but motives, not only the visible effects of action but the incalculable aftereffects as well. He got so he could play the game; yet in the playing he soon realized that for himself it was sport and not, as with Aeneas and his friends, the true purpose of life. At first, Peter was troubled by what he took to be his own light-mindedness. While Aeneas’s court was in constant session, his own was in permanent recess. He simply could not make final judgments. The stupidity and malice of others amused rather than alarmed him, except of course when he was the victim, in which case he knew that he was apt to behave quite as stupidly and maliciously as anyone else. But left to himself, he assumed that others were governed entirely by self-interest. This did not distress him as it did Aeneas who saw with irritable clarity the misdeeds of others and, worse, regarded himself, if not without tenderness, at least with a suspiciousness which gave him no peace.