Aeneas found Peter baffling. “You are stupid,” was his constant refrain but then the true pedagogue, he would proceed to enlighten Peter who enjoyed learning; only occasionally would Peter redress the balance and assert himself by taunting Aeneas with his ignorance of actual politics and non-Marxist history. But Aeneas, not eager to be told anything he did not really know, merely quoted Hegel: He knew what he knew.

  Since Aeneas, recently divorced, was alone in the city, he often spent his off-duty hours with Peter. Reversing the usual roles of native and visitor, Peter saw only Aeneas’s New York friends. Most were writers assigned to the Pentagon; some were said to be celebrated, though all were unknown to him. In any case, he enjoyed their fierce disdain for everything he had been taught to value. Most of them had been Communists until the Hitler-Stalin pact. All were socialist, delighting Peter, who had only known of such people at second hand. Since he had denied any relation to the infamous publisher, none suspected who he was. As a result, he learned terrible things about his father.

  Suddenly, after a year of Washington, Aeneas discovered the natives. “You know, there are some interesting people here, simply as specimens of course. The sort you read about in novels by ladies with three names, or in Henry James who was a bit of a lady himself. There’s one in particular I like. She’s the Old America at its best, if that’s not a contradiction in terms. She only invites people to her house who can read without moving their lips. That means none of your beloved politicians.”

  But Aeneas would not say who she was, beyond: yes, she was well known. No, she was not political, not really. Yes, she was rich. And married. And old. In any case, it amused him to surprise Peter, who was surprised only to find that Aeneas like everyone else was a social climber. But then he reminded himself that motion was life. All men must climb, particularly those born at the top who must make the fascinating but perilous journey down, a treacherous business since a single misstep could mean a terminal fall.

  Somewhat reluctantly, Peter agreed to go to the house of this paragon, realizing that if he knew her, the game was up and his newfound friends would know him for what he was, son of a fascist beast.

  In Dupont Circle, Aeneas was also having second thoughts; he was not at all certain if Peter would fit in. “The rich are pretty bloody, you know,” he began uneasily. “If you’re sure you feel up to her…”

  “I’ll do my best.” Peter was humble. Aeneas and the New Yorkers believed that his father was a minor functionary in the government. As a result of this necessary lie, he had for the first time in his life the sense of being entirely himself, with no need to defend or deprecate a celebrated father. It was an exhilarating sensation. Until now he had not realized just how much of his life had been taken up with discussing or, worse, deliberately not discussing Blaise and the Washington Tribune and his family’s maze of connections.

  Aeneas stopped in front of a large yellow palace with an elaborate iron-grilled gate. “This is it,” he said.

  “Millicent Smith Carhart!” Peter could not hold back the name. The masquerade was about to end.

  Aeneas was startled. “You know her? But of course you would,” he answered himself. “How could anybody living in Washington not notice this place? In those days the rich felt they had to be conspicuous.” Generalizing, Aeneas rang the bell.

  A maid admitted them. For a moment she seemed to recognize Peter who quickly pulled off his cap in such a way as to mask his face.

  “Madam is in the library,” said the maid, obviously not much liking the look of either of them. Peter started toward the library.

  “That’s right,” said Aeneas, “it’s in there. Let’s hope she doesn’t assign a topic. Sometimes she does.”

  “I thought you said this would be conversation, not a seminar.”

  “Is there a difference?” But Peter was not about to play Glaucon to Aeneas’s wise man of Attica. He was too busy preparing himself for Millicent Smith Carhart, whom he had known all his life.

  Everyone knew Millicent. She was the niece of a somewhat shadowy President who had reigned in the serene years before the century changed. As a young girl, she had lived with her widower uncle in the White House and acted as his hostess. Lacking conventional good looks, she had resolutely made herself interesting by, among other things, marrying a British peer. Unfortunately, her belted earl, as she called him, was addicted to le vice anglais, and though this might have interested Millicent, it did not please her. Finally, after an otherwise uninteresting dinner party at the American Embassy, she had, in her own phrase, belted the earl. She then returned to Washington, and built a palace on Dupont Circle with the fortune left her by the President, who had died unexpectedly rich. Millicent lived alone until the earl died when, to everyone’s surprise, she married Daniel Truscott Carhart, a dim New Englander who interested no one but Millicent. Speculation as to just how he interested her continued for many years. But now that each was seventy, it was simply assumed that he must once have been amusing and that she generously kept him on, as an extra man at dinner. His only function in Washington was an obscure link with the Smithsonian Institution to which, it was rumored, Millicent had left herself, as part of the national heritage.

  The drawing room was intended to be impressive, with elaborate boiserie and Chinese screens but like Millicent it had a seedy look of grandeur not quite achieved. The curtains were faded and torn; the chairs wobbly and in need of repair; the inevitable silver-framed portraits of royalty tarnished.

  Millicent’s servants had grown old with her: they had even become like her in the sense that they regarded the house not so much as a place to be kept up as a shrine to be tended. A portrait of the house deity hung over the mantel. The late President had been a stubby thick-jawed man with anxious eyes and curly sideburns. His administration had long been forgotten, yet here, in this room, Peter was conscious of the nineteenth century as he was nowhere else in Washington and he pondered what the city must have been like in those days of slow travel, twelve-course dinners, and interminable speeches. But Millicent gave no clue to the gilded age of her youth. In manner she was entirely modern. But then she had always been contemporary, and were it not for the obvious decay of her house and husband, one might have thought her eternal in her bright enduring middle age.

  “Mr. Duncan, how good of you to come!” She seized Aeneas’s hand as though it might bring her luck. Millicent was tall; she had the President’s heavy jaw but the pebbly eyes were her own.

  Aeneas was nervous. “Mrs. Carhart, I hope it’s all right but I brought a friend.”

  “Of course. Of course.” Millicent took Peter’s hand in both of hers. But when she heard “Peter Sanford,” she embraced him, to Aeneas’s astonishment.

  “For heaven’s sake, what’s a child like you doing in the Army?”

  “Grown up, Mrs. Carhart. Child no longer.”

  “Time!” Mrs. Carhart shouted the enemy’s name. “Where’s Blaise? Frederika?”

  Hobe Sound, Peter reported; but they would be at Laurel House in a few days, for Christmas.

  “Will they give their New Year’s Eve party this year?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Then I’ll be there. That’s really the only time I’m ever invited to Laurel House. I’m not grand enough for them. To think, in the Army. Daniel!” She called to her husband, a large, placid man whose face was stained with liver spots. “It’s Peter Sanford! And Mr. Duncan, the critic I told you about, or should I call you Captain?” Aeneas merely shook his head, bemused at the change in Peter’s estate. Before Aeneas could begin to question and accuse, Mr. Carhart took Peter around the room, while Millicent introduced Aeneas as the “famous critic” to a number of people who had never heard of him. Yet Millicent did her best to create a salon. Not that Peter had any clear notion of what a true salon was except that in addition to several brilliant talkers, there would have to be a large number of superb listeners, carefully educated to appreciate every allusion and nuance the speakers made. But he had never been in such a place. At the houses he knew, only the politics of the day was discussed; other subjects tended to confuse and bore.

  “I think your sister Enid’s coming for tea, too.” Mr. Carhart spoke slowly as he moved Peter toward a long lace-covered table where tea and coffee were being served by two elderly maids in gray uniforms. As they poured, their hands shook but they did not spill a drop. When Millicent said tea, she meant tea. There would be no alcohol served to anyone, which did not distress Peter, who was thrilled by the vista of food: thin-sliced bread and butter, as well as cucumber, watercress, and chicken sandwiches; also, on time-darkened silver plates, pyramids of chocolate-coated leaves and pale macaroons.

  Life was good. He asked for tea, devoured a chicken sandwich, and said that he had not seen much of Enid lately. “They keep me pretty busy at the Pentagon,” he invented. The chicken sandwich needed salt, which meant that the butter was fresh. He tried a hot rolled cheese sandwich: superb. Butter had been used to glaze the toast; inside, cayenne gave definition.

  “Will the war ever end?” asked Mr. Carhart politely. Expecting no answer, he vanished. It was a question to which no one, this week, had the answer. Until very recently the wearisome business seemed near its end; then both Germany and Japan had got a second wind. In the case of the Japanese “a divine wind”: kamikaze pilots flew their planes directly at the enemy, themselves dying in the explosion. In Europe, the Germans had unexpectedly stopped the Allied advance in a violent action which the newspapers referred to as the Battle of the Bulge. Casualties were high. Peter had received letters from friends with the First Army who reported that things were rough; they praised his foresight in remaining at the Pentagon. But he refused to feel guilty. He had made up his mind to survive, and so far he had.

  Diana approached. He swallowed hard, gulped tea, shook her hand.

  “I didn’t know you were one of Millicent’s.” She was amused.

  “I was brought here.” He thought she looked uncommonly pretty. “Where’s Billy?”

  “Who knows?” She was abrupt. “There’s been a row.”

  “Worse than usual?”

  “Much worse. Apparently he testified against Ed Nillson. Father’s furious. I’m furious.”

  “Who’s Ed Nillson?”

  “He raised money for Father in 1940. He’s an oil man…”

  Peter vaguely recalled a recent newspaper account of an oil man being charged with some shady doing.

  “…he’s being tried in New York. And Billy testified against him. He even got the White House involved. He couldn’t have been more proud. After all that Mr. Nillson’s done for Father, for me. It was too…lousy. I don’t suppose I could get a drink. No, it’s a serious tea.” She took a cup from one of the maids, spilled half of it in her saucer, drank the rest from the cup and seemed somewhat restored.

  During this, Peter ate a small star-shaped sandwich: tongue with a dash of mustard. He ate another, and asked, “What’re you doing here?”

  “Mr. Carhart. I’m after him. For the magazine.”

  “Still looking for a backer?”

  Diana nodded, face suddenly stern. “I’m going to get this magazine published or die…from too much tea. I’ve had tea with every dowager in Washington.”

  “Dowagers are not apt to support a socialist magazine. Goes against the grain.”

  “I don’t tell them that at this stage. I tell them that The American Idea will be devoted to art, beauty, truth…”

  “Things they secretly deplore…”

  “But must admire. And of course anti-Communist. We are, too. That always goes over well. Only…”

  “They don’t invest?”

  “They don’t invest Mr. Carhart’s almost our last hope.”

  “I don’t suppose Billy is much help raising money.”

  “None. But he is a marvelous editor. No, really. He’s got together some wonderful contributors.”

  “There’s a possibility.” Peter indicated Aeneas. Diana was impressed. Clutching a chocolate leaf in his left hand, as provision during a long circuit of the room, Peter led Diana to Aeneas, who knew Billy by reputation, and agreed that there was indeed a place for The American Idea in the literary world.

  “Of course I’ll write for it. I’ll write for anything that pays. How much do you pay?”

  “Oh, we haven’t any money yet.” Wanting to seem gay, Diana merely sounded discouraged. “But of course we will pay,” she added quickly. “As soon as we’ve raised enough for at least six issues. But it’s not easy.”

  “Not easy! What about your young friend here? The capitalist wolf in his golden fleece pretending to be an innocent lamb.” Aeneas affected a hearty tone but Peter saw that he was angry. Fences would have to be mended.

  Peter turned to Diana. “If you want me to, I’ll tackle Mr. Carhart.” He wanted very much to do something for Diana, because she was angry at Billy, and if he could be of use to her now…The pavan would continue. Sooner or later all hands touch. She was delighted, delighting him.

  Halfway to Mr. Carhart he was stopped by Lucy Shattuck. Like all Frederika’s friends she presumed that she knew him as well as she knew his mother. “Peter! Look at you, all filled out!” He pulled in his stomach; in his hand the chocolate leaf had begun to melt. Lucy introduced him to a Naval officer who turned out to be a movie star assigned to the Pentagon. The actor looked smaller than himself, and unexpectedly prim. The ladies of Washington could not get enough of him. To their astonishment he was a “gentleman.”

  “He’ll never live through another term.” Lucy was emphatic. The “he” of course was the President who obsessed them all. Yet for some reason people had accepted the fourth term more easily than they had the third, doubtless realizing that in bloody times it was only suitable that the son of morning reign over them. Peter himself found the aging Lucifer tedious and redundant; whenever he came upon his photograph in the newspaper he quickly turned to another section in order to avoid the sight of that haggard glaring face, with the curious dark splotch above the left eyebrow which looked always as if there had been some sort of flaw in the newspaper’s system of reproduction, a drop of ink that spread from year to year, edition to edition.

  The actor demurred. “Not that I’m a New Dealer,” he said softly, in the voice which had given so much pleasure to so many millions—among them Peter, who wished suddenly that this were all a film and each had been assigned an exciting part already memorized. “But I was at the White House for dinner only last week. And I thought he was in great form. And very funny about Dewey. I must say I laughed, even though I voted for Dewey.” Somehow the thought of a movie star voting was distasteful to Peter, who longed for the hero to say in that celebrated steely voice, “All right. Stay just where you are. I want the diamonds.” Then with his funny half-smile, he would turn to Peter and say, “O.K., Peter, you cover the back room.” But the voice was ordinary, not steel; the manner a mere echo of the screen self; the half-smile inauthentic. Lucy, however, was thrilled. Like most Washington ladies, she never went to the movies, but she did know about movie stars. Though it was considered good form to make fun of them, they were much in demand at parties: they dressed a room.

  Lucy rendered the star the high tribute of sharing important gossip. Apparently the President, though dying of inoperable cancer, was having an affair with the Crown Princess of Norway who had stayed much too long at the White House. “Of course Mrs. Roosevelt couldn’t care less, but Missy Le-Hand went out of her mind with grief because he is absolutely mad about this woman.” Peter noted with some amusement that even the cynical Lucy accepted the feminine convention that men were always “mad” about women when it had been his own observation that men were seldom mad about anyone.

  “Then, on top of everything, he gave her country a submarine chaser!” As Lucy roared with laughter, the top of her nose moved up and down. “Isn’t that just like him? Other men give their mistresses a diamond bracelet but he gives his a submarine chaser!”

  Across the room Peter saw Irene Bloch being greeted warmly by Millicent. He wondered if this was a new alliance. “Mrs. Carhart has the most interesting guests,” observed the actor carefully.

  “A grab-bag, I should say,” said Lucy a bit too sharply since two of the bag’s contents stood before her. “I mean,” she qualified, “it’s not like the dear old highbrow days when I wasn’t allowed in the house and Henry Adams used to lecture. That was before his wife died, of course, poor woman: he wasn’t easy. Now Millicent’s taken up with the common folk, like us.” But the folk present were neither common nor in any way related to one another except that each knew that in this room he stood, if only briefly, upon the last of the bridges between nineteenth century Washington and the new imperial city whose fleets and armies now ranged the earth from Borneo to the Rhine.