“Do what?” Inspired by Irene, he gave the Latin for “ ‘Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.’ ” Then he translated it.

  “Thanks, pal.” Diana was in a bad mood. “Now that your father’s royally snubbed her, there goes the money.”

  “Luckily I don’t think she thinks she’s been snubbed.”

  “She may be awful but she’s not stupid.”

  “But that’s the point. Don’t you see? Father’s behaving exactly the way she would want him to behave. If he were friendly, she wouldn’t be impressed and if she weren’t impressed she wouldn’t be here and then there really would be no magazine.”

  Diana was dubious. Put Peter was certain that he was right. He joined Irene, who had gone, instinctively, to the Europeans who had smiled at her French. She was telling a Frenchman, “I used to see a very great deal of your Ambassador Claudel. Do you know him?” Only by reputation, it seemed. “He was not popular in Washington, hélas. He used to read his poetry after dinner and if there is anything we Washingtonians dislike more than poetry, it is poetry in French. We are barbarians.”

  This went over well. Irene might yet pull through. Peter offered aid. “He also served bad food, which was tragic since your Embassy is the only good French restaurant in town.” Peter’s pleasantry fell flat, and Irene gave him a swift compassionate look as if to say, better leave this sort of worldly badinage to your elders.

  “Do you admire St. Jean Perse?” she asked the Frenchman, who again knew of him only by reputation. “Naturally you’ve read him.” The Frenchman looked uncomfortable. In her element now, Irene quoted St. Jean Perse in French and despite the extraordinary accent, she clearly knew her stuff. Peter slipped away.

  On Peter’s left at dinner sat a girl with black hair, pale skin, long dark eyes, and a voice so low that he had to strain to hear it. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  He said he did not, noticing an empty place across the table: Enid had not yet arrived.

  “I’m Elizabeth Watress.” The name meant nothing. “I’m Mrs. Shattuck’s daughter.” Peter recalled that Lucy Shattuck had first been married to a New Yorker named Watress, who played polo and drank heavily; one day, capriciously, he turned Lucy out. In a matter of weeks she had married Laurence Shattuck and moved to Washington. Since Elizabeth was younger than Peter, she had never come his way. “Except one weekend when Mother brought me here, before the war, and I met you but you wouldn’t remember. I was rather awful. But I did distinguish myself. I went riding with all of you, and the horse, he was called Antic, ran away.” Peter did remember this episode. “It was your sister Enid who grabbed the bridle and stopped the horse. If she hadn’t, I’d probably have been killed. She’s coming to dinner, isn’t she?”

  “She’s held up in town, she’ll be late.” Peter was perfunctory in his excuses. Actually, he was relieved Enid was not at dinner; like a cat with a bird, she could not have resisted mauling Irene.

  He found Elizabeth so attractive that after the first course, instead of turning to the lady on his right, he continued to talk to her, while drinking consommé with tiny flecks of some liver-tasting substance, all served with twisted sticks of pastry; virtuously he ate only one stick and drank no sherry.

  Elizabeth did not enjoy college. “It’s not for me, I’m afraid. I want to start life right now. This minute. School is just a postponement for a girl, unless you’re very brainy, and I’m not.”

  As they talked, he looked from time to time to see if Irene was getting on. She very definitely was. She was explaining Washington to the new member of the Cabinet, who seemed impressed. Suddenly Elizabeth asked him about the magazine. He was surprised. “You’ve heard of that?”

  “Oh, Mother and her friends do nothing but talk about it, and you.” He was flattered to think that he was a subject of interest to the grownups. He had not yet got out of the habit of thinking of himself as a boy, to whom adults were indifferent. “But then they love talking about your family and Laurel House.” That took away some of the pleasure. Only as a part of Laurel House did he really engage anyone’s interest. That must change.

  “Well, it’s to be socialist.” Automatically, he gave his spiel, watching her face as he did. She listened raptly, not in the least alarmed.

  “I can’t wait for the first issue,” she said at last.

  “Neither can I,” said Peter. The evening was not over yet. Irene could still go under, taking the treasure with her.

  “I’m very stupid,” said Elizabeth unexpectedly, helping herself to salmon but not touching the green sauce, Peter’s favorite. “You must cure me of it.”

  “I doubt if you are. But I’ll cure you anyway.” Her laugh was particularly beguiling, low and genuinely amused.

  But then from his right the lady’s voice said sternly, “I haven’t seen you since you were in diapers.” Peter dutifully turned to one of his mother’s friends, helping himself as he did to salmon although for Scotty’s sake, he took no sauce.

  After dinner, Blaise proposed that the men immediately join the ladies: there was, he said, something he wanted to tell everyone. Peter had seldom seen his father in such a good, positively puckish mood.

  “Ma foi,” said Irene at the door, “what can it be? Unconditional surrender?”

  “Ours or theirs?” Diana nervously clutched at Irene as though to steer her through a particularly stormy sea, but the adventuress, launched, had no further use for either of the small tugs that had so recently guided her through treacherous shallows to the sea itself. She slipped from Diana’s grasp and took the arm of the new Secretary. “You will be a great success in Washington. I can always tell.” Peter and Diana exchanged their by now familiar conspiratorial look: had they won?

  “This will appear tomorrow in the paper.” Blaise’s loud voice silenced the room. Peter sank into a chair. On the low table beside his chair was a silver dish containing chocolate coated mints; he took this as an omen. He had not intended to eat anything more, yet the mints were unmistakably there. Hell yawned at his feet.

  “…by Harold Griffiths.” What was by Harold Griffiths? He asked Elizabeth who, by some magic, had come to light on a straight chair beside him.

  “A dispatch,” she whispered. “From the Philippines. I love his writing, don’t you?” Peter shook his head. He preferred the old Harold and wondered what had gone wrong.

  “ ‘Dateline Pacific.’ ” Blaise’s voice became dramatic as he read Harold’s staccato sentences. “ ‘Dawn. We came ashore. They were ready for us. There was a machine gun nest to our left. Bullets whizzed like mosquitoes swarming. Only their sting was death!’ ”

  Peter hit the beach and fell full-length, burying his face in the wet coarse sand, the mosquitoes…no, the bullets criss-crossed above him and all around him—Harold’s prose. He would not move, he decided, ever.

  “ ‘Lingayen Airfield is our target. I turn to the major. His face is young but when you see his eyes you know he’s been to hell the hard way.’ ” Peter chose to go to hell the easy way. He ate one of the mints.

  “ ‘ “We gotta take the airfield.” He cut his words short like that. No fancy talk. Just simple statement. But when I said, “You’re outnumbered, why don’t you wait for reinforcements?” he just shook his head. “We got our orders.” And that was that. I was scared. But then, I’m not a hero. I’m just a witness, a witness to bravery.’ ”

  Peter felt his face grow hot with embarrassment for his old friend who had once borne such sardonic witness to Washington’s folly. Harold must be perpetrating an elaborate hoax.

  “ ‘Brave men don’t talk much. They just get the job done. Like that major. A brave man. One of the bravest I ever saw. He gave the order to attack. It was like the Fourth of July when those Japs opened fire on us.’ ”

  Suddenly Peter understood his father’s strategy.

  “ ‘…the hangar exploded. Hair and clothes on fire, the Nips ran screaming out onto the runways…’ ”

  Fire. Wrapped in the cloak of Nessus, he…No! No literary references ever again, for Scotty was dead.

  “ ‘He went into the burning hangar. When he came out he was carrying the young private, who was still alive.’ ”

  What young private? The thought of Hercules in agony—of himself in agony—had made him lose a vital part of the narrative. But whatever he had lost, it was plain that the major could easily win the war in the Pacific, for “ ‘In those minutes when that handful of brave men faced the elite of the Jap Army, I knew what intestinal fortitude really was. But then when the major ran into that burning hangar in order to save the life of a plain ordinary G.I. Joe, I saw something else. I saw a hero. As I sit now on the beach writing these words, General Krueger is recommending to the President of the United States that the Distinguished Service Cross be awarded to Major Clay Overbury.’ ” Blaise’s voice broke at the name.

  Applause filled the room. Peter looked at Diana; she had shut her eyes tight; was it the flames she saw or the President’s medal? Not for a long moment did Peter realize that what at first sounded like his own inner voice was Elizabeth whispering in his ear. “So proud! Your own brother-in-law. Isn’t Enid lucky?” Peter ate the last mint.

  SIX

  I

  Burden and Diana sat in silence as Henry drove them through the red-brick slums where Negroes lived in what Burden still believed was a happy, mindless abandon despite all evidence to the contrary. But on this watery April morning the Negroes were like everyone else, somber, mindful, restrained. They sat on the stoops of their houses and talked without smiling while their children played among ash cans in dusty yards. History had seized them all, black as well as white, and the flags of the Republic were at half mast.

  At first Burden had not believed the page who had come running into the Senate barbershop to say, “He’s dead! The President’s dead!” But it was true. The glorious enemy had died on Thursday morning at Warm Springs in Georgia, while posing for a portrait. The last words were, “I have a terrific headache,” (or “damnedest,” depending upon whose account one read) and so with the breaking of a vein in that large head all the splendor had come to an abrupt end.

  When Burden heard the news, he had leaped from the barber’s chair and though the Senate was already adjourned, he hurried toward the Chamber, still wearing the barber’s white cloth about his neck. Not until he was in the Senate cloakroom did he realize that he must resemble some togaed Senator, arrived too late at the Theatre of Pompey. He tore off the cloth, and gave it to a page. The Senators still on hand were as stunned as he. Some had hated the President; some had wanted his place; all envied him. Now he no longer mattered. But in death as in life he had triumphed for none of them would ever take his place. He had seen to that. Now there was a new President, and Burden was old.

  The buzz of gossip during the next two days was diverting. The President had had many strokes before the last one. At Yalta he had been catatonic, and Stalin’s doctor had reported that he would soon be dead. There was also scandal. At the moment of death he had been not with his wife but with an old mistress. So many rumors. So much grief.

  All spoke of Lincoln; like that paladin, Roosevelt had died at a time of victory in war, cut down at the zenith while lilacs bloomed. Whitman was quoted solemnly as the city recaptured the mood of that long ago April day when the black cart was drawn through crowded streets and the people wept. Even Burden in Rock Creek Park, thrilled by the springtime mourning, held a single cluster of purple lilac to his face until the tears came for he was allergic to new pollen. Later, seriously, he did almost weep for his own past when, on Saturday, it was put to rest in the rose garden at Hyde Park. O Captain! my Captain! how I hated you, and hate you still, for without you I am incomplete. Now what is left? wondered Burden, as the car stopped in front of Union Station.

  Diana took his arm protectively, as though he had become suddenly fragile and enormously valuable to her. He was grateful for any attention. “You’re good to come,” he said.

  “I look forward to seeing him again,” she answered, as if she meant it.

  They made their way through the waiting room, crowded with servicemen carrying duffel bags and foot lockers, all set in motion by lunatic mimeograph machines issuing orders by the mile. Fortunately the war in Europe was almost over; soon the armies would disperse and the young men would stay at home where they belonged and leave the traveling to decrepit Senators.

  Inside the station, at one of the iron-grilled gates, the police had roped off a small area where stood Blaise and Enid and Peter, surrounded by photographers. Opposite the gate, a newsreel camera unit had been set up. As usual, Blaise had seen to everything, thought Burden, straightening his forelock. Then, ready for the camera to record, ready for history to begin, he greeted Blaise.

  Diana joined Peter at the gate, and while Burden exchanged pleasantries with the excited Blaise, he watched the young couple and wondered, as usual, whether or not their interest in one another was simply the result of publishing that magazine of which he had grown so heartily sick or something more serious, as he hoped. Peter himself he found disconcertingly smooth, without edges, nothing to grasp; but despite this elusiveness, he was certainly preferable to Billy. Although Burden had been taught to disapprove of divorce, he would have preferred to see his daughter a scarlet woman, with himself as pimp, than married to Billy Thorne.

  “I didn’t think Clay had it in him, did you?” Enid’s voice was clear, the words unslurred. Only the slowness with which she spoke and the smell of gin upon the breath betrayed that she was drunk.

  “To be a hero?”

  She nodded, too precisely.

  Burden was firm and conventional. “Of course I thought he had it in him. He’s a courageous young man.”

  Then the lights for the newsreel went on, and the photographers aimed their cameras like rifles. Prematurely a single flashbulb went off. The servicemen in the immediate vicinity paused in their shoving and pushing to catch a glimpse of the celebrity, whoever he or, better, she might be.

  Then the iron gates opened and Clay appeared, suitcase in hand. Flashbulbs popped and sizzled. Burden went blind. He put out his hand as directed, and felt Clay’s hard dry hand close over his own.

  “Welcome home,” he said, voice lost beneath Blaise’s roar: “That’s right. Get a good shot with the Senator. Stand back now. Don’t shove. Let the newsreel people have a crack at him. All right. Now move over here.”

  Obediently Burden started to move, only to be shoved to one side. “Not you, Senator. Just the Colonel and his wife.” Burden scowled, forgetting cameras: for this rudeness, there must be revenge. But then this was Clay’s moment, not his; he smiled again and, as reward, regained his vision.

  Clay was standing a few yards away, facing the cameras. Burden was startled at the change in his appearance: gone the soft curve to the jaw, the smooth cheeks, the red lips. Now a man’s face looked upon the world, the flesh sunk to its mature level and the lines deep. Most striking of all, beneath pale brows, thicker than he recalled, a stranger’s eyes reflected unnatural light and in their brightness Burden saw the glory to come. He shuddered, for none of it was his.

  “Come here, Enid.” At least Clay’s voice was the same. He held out his hand. But Enid seemed not able to move. She stared dumbly into the lights, mouth ajar, disoriented.

  Blaise intervened. Roughly he took her arm, tore her up by the roots. “Here she is!” He dealt his daughter like a playing card.

  Clay took the card but not the game, for just then Enid, dazzled by the lights, got in the way of the sound boom which pushed her hat rakishly over one eye. The effect was comic. A spectator giggled; giggling turned to laughter. Blaise hurried to Enid’s side. The hat was readjusted.

  Everyone made helpful gestures except Clay, who did not move; he stood where he was, as though waiting for a train to arrive. Then Burden caught his gaze and with a smile offered encouragement. But either Clay could not see him through the lights or for some reason of his own chose not to respond. He stared at Burden without expression until Enid joined him, and said in a careful voice, each syllable precise, “I’m so glad that you are home again, safe and sound.”

  “Now kiss him,” muttered Blaise, eyes garnet with rage. Enid kissed her husband, as the cameras turned and the legend continued.

  II

  “It’s obscene!” Having decided on the word that morning, Peter had held it in readiness all day, allowing it to rhyme with other words spoken though the word itself must not be delivered until, alone with Diana on the fifth floor of the Union Trust Building in the two-room office of The American Idea, he could drop the pile of newspapers at her feet and declare “Obscene!”

  “Every newspaper?” She looked vaguely unhappy, as if a shoe pinched.

  “Every single one.” Peter kicked the pile of newspapers. Across the floor an endless series of photographs of Enid and Clay embracing; there was, apparently, no visual record of the tipped hat.

  “Father’s done it.” Peter sat heavily in the Morris chair from which he presided at editorial meetings of The American Idea, muddling print orders, misrepresenting advertising revenues, losing subscription lists and otherwise keeping, as he put it cheerfully, “on the bottom of things.”

  This time it was Diana who asked “Why?” and it was Peter who said there was no explanation of his father’s behavior, “unless he’s mad, which is possible.”

  “He’s not mad. He’s running Clay for Congress. And I know why.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Mischief. Pure mischief. What would annoy Enid more?

  Or you?”

  “You overestimate his interest in me.”