“But perhaps he’s closer to the way people are now.”

  Burden studied Clay thoughtfully. Then he nodded. “That’s my nightmare, of course. The wheel does turn in the night, without one’s knowing it.”

  “Maybe you ought to make a few liberal-sounding speeches. Not too liberal of course….” Clay was always practical and Burden wondered if he believed in anything at all. It had been his experience that, contrary to legend, young men are seldom idealistic. They want the prizes, and to rise they will do whatever needs doing, echoing faithfully the rhetoric of the day. Idealism comes late in life, if ever. After all, politics was largely twisting and turning merely to survive, and in the process even the simplest goal was lost sight of. Disgust with one’s own kind was inevitable while eternity mocked them all. Since President, Senators, and Britannic Majesties were so much stuff for worms, what did any of it matter? That question he knew to be the origin of true evil, for there was no answer to it, other than to say that the wise man did not ask it.

  Burden gave last minute instructions to the staff. Then putting on his top hat, he left the office.

  Henry started the car. “The British Embassy, Senator?” he asked for the pleasure of asking.

  “That’s right, Henry. You look very handsome, Kitty.” Burden gave his wife a kiss. She was at least presentable. For some days she and the ladies of her bridge group had debated what she was to wear to the garden party and how her hair was to be done and should she or should she not dye. This was the question currently debated among the ladies of Washington. New York women were already dyeing their hair, which was to be expected. Now honest women must face the challenge. To date, only a few had succumbed; and those few tended to be not the fading beauties but the eccentrics who had nothing to Jose. Better a head of green hair than to be thought a nice grandmother nodding over her cards.

  “I won’t dye,” said Kitty firmly. Burden took this to mean “die.” Sooner or later Kitty said everything that was on her mind.

  “I hope never!” He took her hand.

  “Of course the new hairdresser wants me to let him change me to auburn, I think he said, even though my original shade was chestnut. But I said no very firmly. I happen to know that Gladys Mergendahl’s sister in Oklahoma went insane as a result of hair dye. You see, the dye seeps through the skull and affects the brain.”

  “I like you as you are.” This was true. He could not imagine life without her.

  “I wish Diana had been invited. Goodness, the King and Queen! I never thought I’d ever meet and talk to such people. Did you ever think you would?”

  “Of course,” said Burden, who had never thought that he would not. Then he wondered what Kitty would actually say to the King or, worse, to the President. He would have to keep an eye on her.

  As they turned into Massachusetts Avenue, the crowds began. For over a mile people lined the avenue, staring intently at the chauffeur-driven cars which contained their masters.

  “Diana’s been talking about New York again, about going there to live. She can’t be serious but you know how she is once she gets a bee in her bonnet. She’s even talked to Ed Nillson about finding her a job in New York. He was very concerned.”

  “What sort of job?” Burden turned away from the crowds, suddenly alert.

  “Anything. Ed wanted to know if he should. Such a nice man. So kind. So few people are. I told him not to do a thing until we’d talked to her.”

  “We’ll talk to her.” Though what to say was another matter.

  A sweating policeman poked his head through the car window. “Got your invitation, Senator?”

  Burden flourished the invitation from Their Britannic Majesties.

  “Everybody and his brother are trying to crash this thing. Will you look at that, Senator?” The policeman indicated a long line of limousines slowly creeping up to the Embassy’s porte cochere, while at the iron gates that opened onto Massachusetts Avenue, people clung to the railings—like monkeys, Burden thought, trying to force their way into a gilded cage. The policeman motioned for Henry to drive on.

  “Many are called,” said Burden, taking Kitty’s hand in his own. “But we were chosen.”

  II

  Harold Griffiths threw open the door to his office. “Come in, come in. He sits there.” Harold imitated an ancient retainer showing off the workroom of genius. “Yes, at that plain desk, on that old typewriter, he wrote those savage reviews which thrilled a generation, and made the movies art. Notice the view: Ninth Street, with its burlesque houses and shops devoted to the sale of pornographic literature and odd devices calculated to give pleasure to twisted minds.” Harold whinnied alarmingly. Then: “Why aren’t you at the garden party?”

  “Not invited.” Peter sat on the edge of the desk and studied the film studio handouts. Harold’s job was very glamorous indeed.

  “Lies, all lies,” said Harold comfortably; he put a hat on the back of his head. “I wear this only in the office. To remind myself that I am a journalist.”

  “You are a bit of a movie yourself, aren’t you?” Peter enjoyed Harold.

  “It’s impossible to see twenty movies a week and not be affected. I close doors like Kay Francis.” Harold darted to the door; then, half smile on his lips, hand over the knob, he leaned back against the door and slowly shut it. “To denote skepticism, I suck in my cheeks…so!” He drew in his cheeks. The effect was properly droll. Peter laughed. Encouraged, Harold became Captain Dreyfus on Devil’s Island. As he staggered toward the door to the prison, eyes blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight, the door was flung open to reveal a woman in a great hat and white gloves who said, “Harold, are you all right?”

  Harold’s voice cracked; he had not spoken to anyone in twenty years. “Free…free!” Actual tears flowed down his face.

  “Oh, honey, do shut up, will you?” Hat and gloves were not charmed. “I can’t find the city editor and he’s supposed to have my invitation to the garden party, if it’s come, which I don’t know…”

  “This is Helen Ashley Barbour.” Harold said the name reverently, and Peter recognized the Tribune’s society editor, a lady of formidable presence, uncertain syntax and perfect ubiquity. The relict of an obscure Southern Congressman, she had managed to get herself invited at one time or another to almost all the great houses of Washington, except that of her employer. Frederika thought her vulgar.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Barbour?”

  “Not at all well, as you see. Am I supposed to be covering the garden party or not? That is the question. It certainly comes under Society but of course it also comes under News, and Heaven knows all the press is going to be there. Maybe Blaise will cover it. He’s always threatening to write something for the paper. This might be a good beginning for him.”

  Peter enjoyed the drop of acid in the honeyed torrent. Harold did not. “This is Peter, son of Blaise,” he said.

  Mrs. Barbour took it very well. “I should have known. You have your mother’s features, you lucky thing, such a marvelous face she has! But now just look at you, all grown up. Look at him, Harold! He’s taller than you.”

  “Everyone is taller than me, even you!”

  “You’re in your, let me see…second year at the University of Virginia. Oh, I know everything about you. That’s my job. I adore Charlottesville. In fact, I used to have a beau there when I was a girl in Atlanta. Of course that was during the siege. Well, I can see you’re no help, Harold.”

  “I never am.”

  “So nice to see you again, Peter. So very very nice. We must have a real chat one of these days.” Mrs. Barbour left the office, and Harold observed, “If you were going to build a Washington society editor from scratch, you couldn’t do better than that.”

  “I liked the gloves.”

  “I like everything. What do you think they’ll have you doing?”

  “Who knows? Father said I was to work at the paper. That’s all. I suppose I’ll be an office boy.”

  “Start at the bottom, inherit the top. That’s America.”

  “I’d hoped they would let me work with you.”

  “Movies in the morning are for the old and the failed. What do you really want to do?”

  “Be old, be failed.”

  “Naturally. But en route?”

  “I don’t know. Politics maybe. I can’t decide.”

  “I don’t suppose the Acadème of the Blue Ridge is much help.”

  “It’s not so bad.” Peter was used to defending his university against the charge that it was a country club. It was one, of course, but a good club, and between parties he found there was quite enough time to glut himself with books. He was now reading D. H. Lawrence. After the first surprise that he had by mistake selected the Lawrence who knew nothing of revolts in the desert, he found that he enjoyed very much learning about women in love.

  “What a burden, to be a rich man’s son.”

  “Is that from a movie? Or do you mean it?”

  “Both. Movies are life, after all, with the point made simple. No. You’re in a position where everything is possible, which naturally means that nothing is particularly enticing.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Peter, who often did say exactly that in long sessions with his roommate, an earnest youth who believed that very soon the Lord would come with a sword and wrathfully judge all men, thrusting sinners into the fiery pit of hell where he himself was bound to go because of masturbation and one encounter, while drunk, with a girl from Richmond who had, he swore, robbed him of his precious virginity. But when not in the grip of religious mania, this young man was both shrewd and ambitious. He planned to make a fortune by the time he was thirty. Peter had no doubt that he would, and he envied the other’s sense of purpose. He himself had none, beyond pursuing girls in Washington with his friend Scotty. Twice he had been successful. He had enjoyed the sex; but he had not enjoyed the long conversations which, sooner or later, got around to the subject of marriage, causing him to flee. Unlike Scotty, who was always what he called in love, Peter was wary with girls. Only once was he able to make himself believe that he was in love. But whenever the girl laughed she made a curious snorting noise at the back of her nose and after a dozen meetings he came to dread her laugh, knowing that with it, inevitable as death, would come the snort. So he had given her up and not loved again.

  “How is Enid? I never see her any more.”

  “Neither do I.” It was true. Enid was entirely removed from him now that she had crossed the line that separates the children from the grown-ups. “I suppose I’ll see her this weekend, at the house.”

  “With Clay?”

  “With the baby.”

  “I’ll never understand why your father wasn’t pleased to have Clay for a son-in-law.”

  “I never know how he’ll react to anything. But then, I don’t know him very well.” It pleased Peter to speak coolly of his own father. The shocked response of his more innocent contemporaries was worth a few insincerities.

  But Harold would have none of it. “Oh yes, you do. Now I must analyze the art of George Brent.” As Harold approached the typewriter, he became not George Brent but George Arliss, the weight of high office burdening aged shoulders. Peter watched appreciatively as Cardinal Richelieu sat down in his chair of state, picked up an invisible feather, and began to intrigue.

  * * *

  —

  The crowd was so dense at the Treasury Building that Peter could not cross the street; could not, in fact, move at all, as the people milled about him, eager to catch a glimpse of the King and Queen, who were soon to pass from railroad station to White House. Cardboard periscopes were raised high. Box cameras were set. To avoid the crowd, he climbed up on the railing of the Treasury and was promptly rewarded with a glimpse of majesty. The King and the President sat side by side in the back of an open car. The crowd cheered politely. The President waved, his large pink face dwarfing the King’s which was, in any case, hidden beneath the cocked hat of an admiral.

  That was all there was to it. The crowd began to break up, and Peter wondered if they were satisfied. It seemed impossible but one never knew. The people, as such, never seemed quite real to Peter. They were so out of things; and yet they seemed perfectly content to be irrelevant. Pushing through overheated irrelevancies, he entered the Willard Hotel.

  Diana was waiting for him in the lobby.

  “It was so stupid of me, asking you here. I’d forgotten all about that damned parade.”

  “I watched it, saw the King.”

  “How was he?”

  “Small. What’s so urgent? Why couldn’t you tell me on the phone?”

  “Because I couldn’t. Someone might have been listening in. Do you have any money?”

  “About twenty dollars.”

  “No. I mean money.”

  “No. Oh, maybe two hundred dollars. Why?”

  “I thought you were rich.”

  “My father’s rich. I’m not.”

  “Nothing at all of your own, before he dies?”

  “You ask the most intimate questions.” Peter was embarrassed; sexual candor was already fairly common in his set but money was never mentioned.

  “Because I must know.”

  “There’s a trust fund, when I’m twenty-one. But I don’t know what the income is.” Peter knew exactly. He would have thirty thousand dollars a year. The trust had been created when he was born by his Grandmother Delacroix. A similar trust had been made for Enid but with the proviso that she receive no income until she was twenty-five. Their grandmother had believed that if a girl is married for her money, a number of years spent waiting for that money will make her situation absolutely plain to her. But their grandmother’s considerate malice had failed to destroy Enid’s marriage. She spent whatever she liked and then forced Blaise to pay her debts. That she was poor did not in the least distress her.

  “And I thought you were already rich. Well, you’ll like him anyway. He’s in the bar.”

  “Who’s in the bar? And what are you talking about?” Peter was not used to the new Diana. Living alone had changed her for the better. In five minutes she had not blushed once; in fact, she had made him blush.

  “Billy Thorne.” Diana paused dramatically.

  “Well?”

  “Oh, you know who he is! Spanish Civil War. He lost a leg and wrote a book about the Lincoln Brigade, about the Americans who fought against Franco. He’s a hero, and now he wants to start a magazine, a political magazine.”

  “Only there’s no money.”

  “How quick you are!” Diana chuckled. Peter liked her. But he was less certain about Billy Thorne whose wooden leg creaked noisily when he moved. He was thin, small, and not at all heroic, except for a thundering bass voice.

  “Too bad about the money,” he said to Diana after she had told him the bad news. “But we’ll manage somehow.” He gave Peter a sharp suspicious look as though Peter were holding out on them.

  “I don’t have a penny,” Peter said. Then, deciding that he had sounded too apologetic, he added: “And if I did, I’m not at all sure I’d want to put it into a political magazine. What sort of politics, by the way?”

  “Liberal,” said Diana.

  “Socialist!” boomed Billy Thorne, causing several businessmen at the next table to turn around.

  “But I’m hardly a socialist,” said Peter who currently believed only in the divine right of kings, on condition of course that he was the King with a blue uniform covered with gold braid, a cocked hat, and no huge pink-faced President to tower over him as he rode in triumph through the streets of Washington. Actual power he would cede to anyone who allowed him to be figurehead.

  “Peter’s a reactionary,” said Diana.

  “His father certainly is. Worse than Hearst.”

  Peter was irritated. He turned to Diana. “Your father is hardly apt to free the serfs.”

  Billy Thorne roared his approval, alarming a waitress. “He’s got you there!”

  Diana flushed. Yes, she was still Diana. She stammered. “He’s conservative, of course, but he’s awfully liberal about a lot of things.”

  “Name one!” Billy winked at Peter, who wondered what the stump looked like. Did the bone stick through the skin? But of course not. It would look like a healed gash, still red and shiny. He tried to imagine the way the leg looked as it was torn off. He saw blood, heard Billy screaming. Very nice.

  Diana continued to defend her father. She explained that to be nominated for President one needed the support of every kind of person; besides, the United States was a highly conservative country, which is why a magazine that would give the views of the enlightened Left (she did not much like the word “socialist”: too narrowing) was definitely needed. She had more or less regained her ground by the time she finished. Billy showed a certain rudimentary caution in not continuing to tease his patroness (mistress? Peter wondered).

  Billy grunted. “Anyway, it’s needed. Something more adventurous than The Nation, more alive, for the young!”

  “I thought magazines were published in New York. Why do you want to start one here?”

  “Because Billy’s got a job with the Department of Commerce. He’s in statistics. He can’t give up the job until we’re under way.” Peter saw Billy Thorne plain. A clerk working in a large room filled with desks where the other clerks helped him add up endless rows of figures. There was a drinking fountain in one corner of the office where the clerks regularly gathered to chat about baseball. Peter could taste the white conical paper cups with that curious lime-lemon flavor from the glue, or was the taste in the paper itself? Billy Thorne had suddenly ceased to exist for Peter except as a column of numbers to be added up.