The Dream of Poor Bazin

By Jerry Stratton

“All for One, and One for All!”

When Stephen Price Blair’s letter of introduction to White House Press Secretary Bobby Trevor is stolen by a mysterious Senator, he vows revenge against the most powerful people in DC.

He risks his friends, his life, and his reputation as a journalist, to protect the President and Vice President from the plots of House Speaker Janet Richardson, and duels the Speaker’s journalists to advance the cause of beltway bipartisanship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jerry Stratton
• Release date: Aug 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781005613440

Jerry Stratton

Jerry Stratton writes at Mimsy Were the Borogoves on politics, technology, and programming for all. He has a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from Cornell University and studied guitar at the Musicians Institute of Technology in Hollywood, California. He has appeared in at least one bad movie from the eighties and participated in at least one ill-fated pre-Internet hypermedia startup.

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The Dream of Poor Bazin

Jerry Stratton

The Dream of Poor Bazin

Jerry Stratton

Copyright © 2020 by Jerry Stratton

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of this work should be emailed to [e-mail].

poorbazin.com

First published in August 2020

ISBN 979-8-67-064146-3 (print)

ISBN 978-1-00-561344-0 (ePub)

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May those who labor herein see the right and serve it with courage and intelligence for the welfare of mankind, the best interests of the United States and its peoples and for decent and dignified journalism, and may the blessing of God ever rest upon them.—Times Tower cornerstone

Closeness to power heightens the dignity of all men.—Theodore White

Before we came here, we thought of ourselves as good people… Here, ruining people is considered sport.—Deputy White House Counsel Warren Fries

Le rêve du pauvre Bazin avait toujours été de servir un homme d’Église.—Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

I was his altar boy, hoping to serve peace by serving my president.—George Stephanopoulos

Truth is a precious resource…—White House Press Secretary Robert Trevor

A young man leaves home

The gifts of Stephen Blair, Sr.

The author speaks, I believe, of the fight over a flag on the Marshall House hotel—then in Arlington County—which resulted in the deaths of a colonel and a hotelier.

On the first Tuesday of August, the year Bill Lewis ascended to the White House, the Northern Virginia county of Arlington, in which was lost the first lives of the civil war*, was host to a brawl that passed unnoticed in the journals of the era. In those times riots were common, and few days passed without some city filling its newspapers with accounts of violent protest. There were politicians who stirred violence against each other; there was the President, who stirred violence against Congress; there were Republicans, who stirred violence against the President. There were activists, fundraisers, lobbyists, preachers, and journalists, who stirred violence against anybody.

The voters always polled strongly against the Republicans–often against other politicians or Democrats—sometimes against the President’s cabinet—but never against the President himself or their own members of Congress.

The cause of the present commotion was a young journalist. We can sketch his portrait in a flash: imagine a journalist of twenty-four, a Kolchak with Olympus in hand and number two pencil above the ear, jacket open, white shirt unbuttoned at the top, tie loosened, and hat—for our young journalists always wore a fedora, especially if they were from the smaller towns, and this one was recently from Charlottesville—with a fine black band tilted backward. He wore a simple Timex on a wrist made thin by the oversized sleeves of his shirt. In a world that eschewed the dedicated timepiece, this affectation said much. Too old for a college student, too young for a lobbyist, a perspicacious eye might have taken him for a farmer’s son up on vacation, had it not been for hands stained more with graphite than dirt, or the folio whose deep red leather rubbed against the owner’s tan pants as he walked, and lay against the cracked vinyl of his car when he drove.

For our young man had a car, a Grand Marquis, two decades old, burgundy red, missing its ornament but not missing the Charlottesville Times banner on the rusted bumper, and which, though sounding like a large sewing machine, especially when threading up-hill, managed to carry our young man its three hundred miles per day.

Unfortunately, the qualities of this vehicle were so well concealed that at a time when everybody was an enthusiast in chariots, the appearance of this vehicle at Arlington—which county he had entered about a quarter of an hour before by way of the Custis Memorial Parkway—produced an unfavorable feeling, which extended to its owner.

And this feeling had been the more painfully perceived by young Stephen—for so was our journalist and second-rate Town Car owner named—from his not being able to conceal from himself the ridiculous appearance that such a vehicle gave him, suave driver as he was. He had sighed deeply, therefore, when accepting the gift of the Mercury from Mr. Stephen Blair Sr. The boat was worth at least a thousand dollars; and the words which accompanied the gift were above all price.

My son, said the old Virginia newspaperman from his sickbed, in that high southern dialect which so many Democratic presidents have been unable to shed, my son, this car was purchased new for your father’s beat twenty-three years ago, and has remained in the service of the fourth estate ever since, which ought to make you love it. Never sell it—a noble vehicle enhances your esteem, and success in the capital requires reliable transport. If you pursue a story with it, take as much care of it as you would an old typewriter, and it will carry all the equipment necessary to cover the longest campaign.

In the press room, provided you have the honor to write there, continued Stephen Blair Sr., "an honor to which, remember, your father’s and your grandfather’s name gives you right, sustain worthily your reputation as journalist, which has been borne by your ancestors in two wars and uncounted police actions.

"Endure nothing from anyone but Speaker Richardson and President Lewis. It is by courage, and only courage, that a journalist succeeds today. Whoever trembles for a second allows the beat to escape, which, during that second, fortune held out to him. You are young; you ought to be brave for two reasons—the first is that you are a Virginian, and the second is that you are my son. Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous assignments. I have taught you to handle a pen; you have a rapier wit, a quicksilver voice: debate on all occasions; argue the more for partisanship being forbidden, since, consequently, there is twice as much courage in arguing.

I have nothing to give you, my son, but fifteen hundred dollars, my Marquis, and the counsels you have just heard. Take advantage of all, and live happily and long. I have but one word to add, and that is to propose an example to you—not mine, for I myself have never appeared at the Press Corps, and have only taken part in democratic debate as a volunteer; I speak of Bobby Trevor, who was formerly my neighbor, and who had the honor in college to room with Bill Lewis, whom God preserve! Sometimes their play rose to debate, and in these arguments President Lewis was not always the stronger. Afterward, Mr. Trevor wielded public opinion many times, through wars, elections, scandals, and impeachments. So that in spite of laws, decrees, whims, and signing statements, there he is, the White House Press Secretary in the Administration of President Lewis—that is to say, leader of a legion of writers, whom the President holds in great esteem, and who the Speaker dreads—she who dreads nothing, as it is said. He began as you begin; go to him with this letter, and make him your model, that you may do as he has done.

At this, Stephen Blair Sr. handed his son an envelope and a pen. The envelope contained the aforementioned letter. The pen was his own Montblanc 146 fountain pen. He placed it into his son’s hand, tenderly wrapped his son’s fingers around the instrument, and sent him from their Oxford Road home into the world.

The singular gift of Marianne Maere

Following his paternal interview, young Stephen adjourned to the apartment of his college paramour. Miss Marianne Maere had planned to accompany Stephen on his journey north, but through curious logic difficult to unravel and despite Stephen’s expressed desire for companionship, Marianne had decided to stay on in Charlottesville, at least until Stephen could set himself up, as the phrase went. Marianne was two years younger than Stephen, and though recently graduated still lived in her college apartment near the hill. Her degree in Theatre Arts, specializing in makeup and costuming for Charlottesville theater productions, had not yet afforded her the opportunity to move to more spacious accommodations. In their evenings, Marianne was ever anxious to accompany Stephen on his adventure. But after late nights of Stephen’s trying to convince her to accompany him, she always turned herself around for reasons she could not remember after he left in the morning.

Fortunately for her confused reluctance, there was always the telephone. Stephen promised to ring Miss Maere regularly, and the mellifluous nature of that word in a world that no longer used it in conjunction with telephones, served to appease her troubled heart and fill her diary with hopeful doodlings. Young Stephen spent his first night away from his father’s home with Marianne. Their farewells lasted into the morning, and when she absolutely had to attend to her duty at the University bookstore he took his leave, for he was never a one for long goodbyes. Here the Marquis served him well, for the vehicle was well known as his father’s transport and did not fail to evoke the same stifled laugh from Marianne that it did from all his generation. Thus, neither he nor she were totally unhappy that the passenger seat of the Grand Marquis contained only Stephen’s fedora, folio, and attaché.

The Holiday Inn debate

With such gifts young Stephen was an intellectual and moral copy of that stalker of truth in the night to whom we so happily compared him when our duty as historian placed before us the necessity of sketching his portrait. The old journalist took darkness for conspiracy and every shadowed face for legion, and brooked no indignity from editor or source. Stephen Blair took every smile for an offense, every look a provocation—whence it resulted that from Charlottesville to Arlington his palm hovered constantly above the center of the Marquis’s wheel, his hand ever ready to extend the middle finger. And yet the palm did not descend upon the horn, nor the finger rise. The air conditioner hummed, or rather, exhaled loudly, unmolested through the August heat as Stephen moved up US-29 and I-66. It was not that the sight of the wretched Marquis did not excite numerous smiles from passing drivers, but as the appearance of Stephen Blair’s suit and the fedora and leather attaché by his side resembled either a lawyer or mafioso, these drivers repressed their hilarity, or if hilarity prevailed over prudence, they endeavored to laugh only on one side, like the masks of the Romans. Stephen Blair, then, remained majestic and intact in his susceptibility, until he came to the suburbs of DC.

It was there, as he parked the grand vehicle outside the local Holiday Inn, without anyone, valet or maître d’, coming to take it from him, Stephen Blair spied, across an iron fence to the outdoor seating of the hotel bar, a gentleman of stern countenance, over-built, talking with several persons who listened with respect. Stephen fancied, quite naturally, that he must be the object of their conversation. And Stephen was only partly mistaken; he himself was not in question, but his vehicle was. The gentleman was enumerating all of its qualities to his audience; and the audience, showing great deference to the orator, every moment burst into fits of laughter.

Stephen pulled the brim of his fedora to his eyes and, endeavoring to copy some of the journalistic swagger he had picked up on late-night television in Charlottesville, advanced with one hand on his cap and the other resting in his pocket. Unfortunately, his anger increased with every step as he approached the veranda and the sporty Mazda convertible parked before it. Instead of the proper and lofty speech he had prepared as a prelude to his challenge, he found nothing at the tip of his tongue but vulgarity, which he accompanied with a furious gesture.

I say, sir, you, sir, who are hiding beneath that umbrella—yes, you, sir, tell me what you are laughing at, and we will laugh together!

The gentleman raised his eyes slowly from the Marquis to its owner, as if he required time to ascertain whether it could be to him that such strange reproaches were addressed; then, when he could not possibly entertain any doubt of the matter, his eyebrows slightly bent, and with an accent of irony and insolence Stephen himself studied for future use, he replied, I was not speaking to you, sir.

But I am speaking to you! replied Stephen.

The stranger looked again at Stephen with a slight smile, set his sourdough panini aside, exited the veranda with a slow step, and placed himself before the Marquis within two paces of Stephen. His quiet manner redoubled the mirth of his audience.

This car is decidedly, or rather was before its peculiar oxidation, burgundy, resumed the stranger, addressing himself to his auditors back in the veranda without paying the least attention to Stephen, who, however, placed himself between orator and audience. It is a color well known in vineyards, but not well suited to automobiles.

There are people who laugh at the car who dare not laugh at the driver, cried the young emulator of the furious Trevor.

I do not often laugh, sir, replied the stranger, as you may perceive by the expression of my countenance; but nevertheless I retain the privilege of laughing when I please.

And I, cried Stephen, will allow no man to laugh when it displeases me!

Indeed, sir, continued the stranger, more calmly yet. Well, that is perfectly right! and turning on his heel, was about to re-enter the veranda.

Stephen’s mental exertion, combined with such a hot day in Arlington as it has been in Augusts since George Washington first surveyed the swamp from horseback, had produced a liquid sheen across his face that threatened to enter his eyelids. Stephen wiped his hand across his brow. Running his sweat-drenched finger across the Mazda’s leather seat, he said, such a fine cow’s hide as this must be from a herd of no mean latitude. From the accent of the squeak I place it in Minnesota, near the Canadian border.

Hey, that’s my car, you asshole, said one of the other two men at the table.

I see my sally has gone amiss, said Stephen. It has pierced the lackey rather than the master. I apologize.

Did your mother raise you in a barn, boy, that you know so much of livestock?

The stranger tilted his Panama to his adversary after loosing this thrust. His lips twisted as if he were twirling a mustachio, though his face was clean-shaven.

My mother? cried Stephen. My mother knows less of the farmhouse than yours of the cathouse. I believe it was your mother who offered to teach my fraternity the ways of livestock. Few accepted her offer, for rumor was she learned her trade from them. Certainly the smell of the barn remained upon her.

’Tis true, ’twas no barn you were raised in, for I now remember your mother, plying her trade upon the K-Street docks. Yet the stench of the fishmonger repelled all customers. You were raised in the gutters where the garbage floated downstream on rainy days, and stayed still and pungent on warm ones.

Your mother sniffed garbage as it were vintage wine, and—

At this, the two listeners exited around behind Stephen and the one who had raised a fuss about the Mazda hit him over the head with a beer bottle. Hops dribbled down Stephen’s head as Stephen swayed dizzily.

How annoying, said the Panama’d gentleman. Yet what a godsend he would be for the President, who is seeking everywhere for witty scribes to recruit for his Press Corps.

Mr. Trevor shall hear of this cowardice! cried Stephen as another blow sent him into the thick, red haze of unconsciousness.

The devil! Stephen’s opponent turned his head both ways and then behind as if the aforementioned spirit were expected shortly. Can Trevor have set this boy upon me? He is very inexperienced; and yet a weak obstacle is sometimes sufficient to overthrow a grand design.

The gentleman leaned forward to speak, sotto voce, to his companions. It is not necessary, he said, for Madame Speaker’s ally to be seen in our company now that we have become a spectacle. We will leave, and I will contact her later. Be assured that what I have said is as from her desk.

A search of the young man’s shirt and pants pockets produced a handful of dingy quarters, the key to the troublesome Mercury—immediately discarded in the manner of something left too long in the refrigerator—and an envelope addressed to Press Secretary Robert Trevor.

The bastard! The fucking bastard! This is a trap.

A beautiful young woman of aristocratic face and figure walked through the still-swinging gates.

Go back, said the gentleman. You should not be seen with us.

What does the Speaker, then, desire of me? she asked.

To return instantly to Maine, and await your cue.

And the votes I need? asked the fair traveler.

They are in your envelope, which you are not to open until you are safely north of the beltway.

Very well. And you, what will you do?

I return to DC.

What, without chastising that insolent boy?

There are times when Senatorial privilege is superseded by prudence.

The lady returned to the hotel. The gentleman and his companions seated themselves within the convertible. The beer-wielder drove. Even in a car as small as this, the gentleman was chauffeured.

The Mazda’s exhaust on his face awoke Stephen, who groggily—though loudly—yelled after the fleeing trio. Cowards! Yellow dogs!

As misters Dutton and Aron have shown at Capilano Canyon, such rousing trials as Stephen had just experienced enhance the natural effects of a woman’s beauty. On the lady in question such an effect was assuredly dangerous.

He stood, and brushed the parking lot debris from his white clothes as well as he could. A woman passed him as he stepped through the gates of the Holiday Inn, bearing a smile to launch a thousand headlines. After such an exertion, we can easily forgive our impetuous maverick for the red glow of admiration that filled him as she passed. He bowed, and raised his hat, and was gratified to see her ego-enhancing smile in response.*

When, thirty-five seconds later, Stephen rushed out of the Inn screaming for his letter, both Mazda and Smile were gone.

Stephen enters the beltway

Stephen slept that night in the Holiday Inn, and paid the proprietor from the paternal $1,500. In the morning he sold his burgundy chariot for $650, a good price considering he was no longer in flyover country where such vehicles are in demand. Thus Stephen entered DC afoot, crossing the gilded Arlington Memorial Bridge fedora firmly upon his head and attaché swinging by his side, with no need to pay the district’s exorbitant parking fees.

Stephen had read voraciously of the night life of the DC journalist and knew that the U Street Corridor was a major hangout of the hip young journalist. He assumed, perhaps fortuitously, if mistakenly, that this was where those journalists lived. Within an hour young Stephen wandered the pawn shops and chili bowls of U Street. He walked until he found an apartment suited to the scantiness of his means. This chamber was a sort of garret, situated on Wallach Place off of 14th, just south of the U and north of Logan Circle. And when we write a sort of garret, visualize exactly the sort of abode, paint peeling from ecru-painted brick, that a poorly-situated journalist might be able to rent on short notice and less money in the bustling capital of the greatest country world and history has known. For in that period, Shaw and Logan Circle had not gentrified. Stephen was as ever on the vanguard of his class.

Stephen spent the rest of his day at the laundromat, removing the odor of sweat and pavement from his shirts; he went to the old shops near Capitol Hill to have the nib replaced on his pen, and then returned toward the mall, inquiring of his first journalist for the offices of Robert Trevor.

Mr. Trevor lobbies from the offices of the Washington Post, was the reply. On Fifteenth, between L and M.

Stephen tipped his hat to this information; it pleased him to know that the Post was in the immediate vicinity of his newly-rented flat. Satisfied with the way in which he had conducted himself at Arlington, without remorse for the past, confident in the present, and full of hope for the future, he retired to bed and slept the sleep of the honest. This sleep, provincial as it was, brought him to nine o’clock in the morning; at which hour he rose in order to repair to the lobby of Secretary Trevor, the third personage in the nation in the paternal estimation.

The Lobby of the Washington Post

Robert Trevor, as he was still called in Virginia, or Bobby, as he styled himself in DC, had commenced life as Stephen now did; that is, wallet empty but with a fund of audacity, shrewdness, and intelligence which makes the poorest Virginia gentleman derive more in his hope from the family name than the richest Yankee businessman derives in reality from his. His outspoken bravery, his still more outspoken success at a time when op-eds poured like hail from Republican strongholds, had borne him to the top of that difficult ladder called favor, which he had climbed four steps at a time, through the DC weeklies, through sundry campaigns, through the Washington Post—where he still maintained his office—and to Pennsylvania Avenue.

Trevor was the friend of the President, who honored highly the memory of his own predecessor, President Jim York. Bobby Trevor had served York so faithfully in his wars against vast right-wing conspiracies that in default of money President York had called Mr. Trevor trusted advisor. This was a great matter in the way of honor, but very little in the way of wealth.

In the service of the party, Bobby Trevor made such use of his pen, and was so faithful to his title, that President Lewis, one of the good orators of the country, often said that if he had a friend who was about to campaign, he would advise him to choose as a speechwriter, himself first, and Trevor next—or even perhaps before himself.

As indeed many did, whether requested or not. One could barely line a birdcage in those days without reading unsolicited advice to President Lewis, all worth at least as much as the cost of writing it.

Thus President Lewis had a real liking for Trevor—a self-interested liking, it is true, but still a liking. At that unhappy period it was important to be surrounded by such men. Many might take for themselves the title advisor* but few could claim to trusted. Many in Washington were outspoken. Few in those days of leaks and highly-placed sources were known for discretion.

The Speaker of the House was not behind the President in her respect for Trevor. When she saw the formidable body of newsmen with which Lewis surrounded himself, this second-in-line desired that she, too, should have her press. These powerful rivals vied in procuring, not only from all the states of the Union, but even from European nations, England, and the Levant, the most celebrated opinion-makers. It was not uncommon for Speaker Richardson and President Lewis to dispute over their weekly meetings upon the merits of their reporters. While publicly decrying partisan arguments, they excited them secretly to quarrel. Each boasted in the clever and thrusting wit of their own journalists.

Trevor’s journalists were a legion of devil-may-care fellows, perfectly undisciplined toward all but himself. Loose, drunk, outspoken, the White House Press Corps, or rather Bobby Trevor’s Press Corps, spread themselves about in the cabarets of the District, shouting, twisting their pens, flashing their press passes, and taking great pleasure in beating the journalists of the Speaker whenever they could cross pens. Then spinning the news or planting stories in favor of the White House and against the Congress as if it were the best of all possible sports. Sometimes libeled, but sure in that case to be both wept and avenged; often libeling others, but then certain of not rotting in jail, Bill Trevor being there to claim them as his own. Thus Trevor was praised to the highest note by these men, who adored him, and who, ruffians as they were, trembled before him like pirates under the lash, obedient to his least word, and ready to sacrifice their reputation to wash out the smallest insult. Like the Pope, Trevor mounted fanatical battalions.

Bill Trevor employed this powerful weapon for the President, in the first place, and the friends of the President—and then for himself and his own friends. For the rest, in the memoirs of the period, which has left so many memoirs, one does not find this worthy gentleman blamed even by his enemies; and he had many among men of the pen as well as men of the ballot. In spite of innuendos and deadlines, he was one of the most gallant frequenters of galas, one of the most daring lobbyists, one of the softest whisperers of anonymous rumors of his day. The good fortunes of Bobby Trevor were talked of as those of President York himself had been talked of twelve years before, and that was not saying a little. The Press Secretary of the White House was therefore admired, feared, and loved; and this constitutes the zenith of human fortune.

The steps of the Washington Post, situated on 15th Street, resembled a tavern from nine ante meridiem in summer and ten in winter. From fifty to sixty journalists, who appeared to replace one another in order to always present an imposing number, paraded constantly, pens and cameras ready. On one of those immense staircases where the less sophisticated might build an entire house ascended and descended the office seekers of DC, who ran after any sort of favor—lobbyists from the states seeking votes, and couriers in all sorts of vehicles carrying messages between their masters and Mr. Trevor. In the lobby, upon long benches, reposed the elect; that is, those who were called. In this building the clamor of the city prevailed from morning to night, for the clamor of the city was favor. Bobby Trevor, in his office contiguous to this lobby, received visits, listened to complaints, gave his orders, and like a President on his White House balcony, had only to place himself at the window to review his writers and broadcasters.

This morning the assemblage was imposing, particularly for a provincial just arriving to the city. When Stephen passed the Post’s massive door covered with long square-headed nails, he fell into the midst of a gaggle of journalists who crossed one another in their passage, calling out, quarreling, and playing tricks one with another. Into this tumult and disorder our young man advanced with a beating heart, ranging his worn attaché up his lanky leg, and keeping one hand on the edge of his fedora, with that half-smile of the embarrassed rustic who wishes to put on a good face. When he had passed one group he breathed more freely; but he could not help observing that they turned to look at him. For the first time in his life Stephen, who had until that day entertained a very good opinion of himself, felt ridiculous.

At the staircase he saw four journalists sparring on the bottom steps, while a dozen comrades waited upon the landing to take their turn. One of the players, stationed upon the top stair, pen in hand, interviewed, or at least endeavored to interview, the three others ascending. Of these three, two protected their central compatriot with coat, jacket, or whatever concealing material was at hand.

He who at the moment occupied the upper step kept his adversaries marvelously in check. The conditions required that at every response the man who responded should quit the game, yielding his turn to the next on the stairs. In five minutes three were forced to respond—to allegations of mistresses, to queries of wife-beating, to opportunities to speak in hypotheticals—by the interviewer of the stair, who himself remained unmoved, a piece of skill which was worth, according to the rules agreed upon, three turns of favor.

However difficult it might be, or rather as he pretended it was, to astonish our young traveler, this joust astonished him. He had seen in his college days a few of the preliminaries of dozens; the daring of these disputants appeared to him stronger than ever he had heard at Thomas Jefferson’s university. He believed himself transported into that country of giants into which Gulliver had gone; and yet he had not gained the goal, for there were still the landing and the lobby.

On the landing they no longer sparred, but amused themselves with stories about congressional pages, and in the lobby with stories about politics. On the landing Stephen blushed; in the lobby he trembled. His warm and fickle imagination, which in Virginia had rendered him formidable to young coeds and sometimes their mothers, had never, even in moments of delirium, dreamt half the amorous wonders or a quarter the feats of reporting which were here set forth in connection with names nationally known and details unconcealed.

His morals were shocked on the landing, his respect for the Speaker scandalized in the lobby. Stephen heard the policy which made the free world tremble criticized aloud and openly, as well as the private life of the Speaker, which so many great reporters had been punished for prying into. That great woman who was so revered by Stephen Sr. served as an object of ridicule to the journalists of Bobby Trevor, who cracked jokes upon her wrinkled legs and botoxed face. Some sang ballads upon her relationship with the Senate Majority Leader, while others formed parties to annoy her journalists and aides—all things which appeared to Stephen monstrous impossibilities.

Those heady days his father had regaled him of, reporters and Congress shoulder to shoulder with President York’s administration pushing the country forward, were gone.

Nevertheless, when the name of the President was now and then uttered amid all these spoken jests, an invisible gag closed for a moment on all the jeering mouths. They looked hesitatingly around, doubted the thickness of the glass between them and Trevor’s office; but a fresh allusion soon restored the conversation to Madame Speaker. The laughter recovered its loudness and the light was not withheld from her actions.

These fellows will all be fired or shamed, thought Stephen, and I, no doubt, with them; for from the moment I heard them I became an accomplice. What would my father say, who so strongly urged me to respect the Speaker?

We have no need, therefore, to say that Stephen dared join in the conversation, yet he looked with both eyes and listened with both ears, stretching his journalist’s senses as to lose nothing; and despite his confidence in the paternal admonitions, he felt himself carried by his tastes and led by his instincts to praise rather than criticize the unheard-of things which were discussed.

As he was a stranger in the lobby he was soon noticed, and somebody came and asked what he wanted. Stephen gave his name modestly, emphasized the title of compatriot, and begged the secretary who had put the question to him to request a moment’s audience of Mr. Trevor—a request which she, with an air of protection, promised to transmit in due season.

Stephen, a little recovered from his initial surprise, had now leisure to study the dress and composure of these legendary persons.

The center of the most animated group was a newscaster of great depth and haughty countenance, dressed in a suit so peculiar as to attract general attention. He did not wear the tweed suit and bow tie—which was not obligatory in that era of fewer rights and more independence—but a cerulean-blue jacket, and over this a magnificent military-style desert scarf, worked in gold, shining against the fluorescent light. Its long crimson tail, the silk faded as if it had seen many campaigns, billowed dramatically around him as he turned from listener to listener. This journalist had just come off a long night’s filming in some frigid northern state, complained of having a cold, and coughed from time to time affectedly. It was for this reason, he said to those around him, that he had put on his keffiyeh. And while he spoke with a lofty air and twisted his pointed beard disdainfully, all admired the embroidered Arabian silk, Stephen more than anyone.

What would you have? said the newscaster. This fashion is coming in. It is a folly, I admit, but still it is the fashion. Besides, one must lay out one’s residuals somehow.

Ah, Tucker, cried one of his companions. Don’t try to make us believe you obtained that scarf by network generosity. It was given to you by that cloaked lady I met you with last Sunday, near the National Museum.

No, by my honor, I bought it with the contents of my own wallet.

Yes, about in the same manner, said another journalist, that I bought this new wallet with what my mistress put into the old one.

It’s true, though, said Tucker. And the proof is that I paid a hundred dollars for it.

The wonder was increased, though the doubt continued to exist.

Is it not true, Simon? said Tucker, turning toward another journalist.

This other journalist formed a perfect contrast to his interrogator. Simon was thin and short, about thirty-two or thirty-three, with an open, ingenuous face, a dark, mild eye, and cheeks rosy and downy as an autumn peach. His delicate mustache marked a perfectly straight line above his upper lip. He appeared to dread to lower his hands lest their veins should swell, and he pinched the tips of his ears from time to time to preserve their delicate transparency. He spoke little and slowly, bowed frequently, and laughed without noise, showing his teeth, which were fine and of which, as the rest of his person, he took great care. He answered the appeal of his friend by an affirmative nod of the head.

This affirmation dispelled all doubts regarding the scarf. They continued to admire it, but said no more. The conversation passed suddenly to another subject.

What do you think of the story Wilson’s intern relates?

And what does he say? asked Tucker.

Secretary Edward Wilson was the unfortunate Secretary of Education who resigned amid scandal during the first year of Lewis’s presidency.

"That he met Senator Jean Ward, the friend of the Speaker, in Richmond, disguised as a policeman, and that this cursed Ward, thanks to his disguise, tricked Secretary Wilson*, gullible man as he is."

Gullible, indeed! said Tucker. But is the matter certain?

I had it from Simon, replied the journalist.

Indeed?

Why, you know it, Tucker, said Simon. I told you yesterday. Let us speak no more of it.

Speak no more of it? replied Tucker. Speak no more of it! Christ, you come to your conclusions quickly. The Speaker sets a spy upon a cabinet member, has his papers stolen from him by a thief, has, with the help of this spy and thanks to these papers, Wilson fired and exiled into the country, under the stupid pretext that he wanted to embarrass the President and raise the Vice President to the Oval Office! Nobody knew a word of this enigma. You unraveled it yesterday to the great satisfaction of all, and while we are still gaping with wonder at the news, you come and tell us today, ‘let us say no more about it.’

Well, then, let us talk about it, since you desire it, replied Simon patiently.

Ward, cried Tucker, if I were the intern of poor Wilson, should pass a minute or two very uncomfortably with me.

And you would pass a rather sad quarter-hour with the Blue Queen, replied Simon.

Oh, the Blue Queen! Bravo! cried Tucker, clapping his hands and nodding his head. The Blue Queen is capital. I’ll circulate that saying, be assured. Who says Simon is not a wit? What a misfortune it is you did not follow your first vocation. What a delightful politician you would have made.

Oh, it’s only a temporary postponement, replied Simon. I shall run someday. You very well know, Tucker, that I continue to study law for that purpose.

He will be one, as he says, cried Tucker. He will be one, sooner or later.

Sooner, said Simon.

He only waits for one thing to resume his run, said another journalist.

What is he waiting for? asked another.

Only until Vice President Anderson has ended corruption in government spending.

No jesting upon that subject, gentlemen, said Tucker. Thank God there’s still billions left to spend!

They say that Governor Leyah is in DC, or soon to be, replied Simon, with a significant smile which gave to this sentence, apparently so simple, a tolerably scandalous meaning.

Simon, my good friend, this time you are wrong, said Tucker. Your wit is always leading you beyond bounds. If Trevor heard you, you would repent speaking thus.

Are you going to school me, Tucker? cried Simon, from whose usually mild eye lightning flashed.

My dear fellow, be a journalist or a politician. Be one or the other, but not both, replied Tucker. You know what Charles told you the other day; you eat at everybody’s counter. Ah, don’t be angry, I beg of you, that would be useless; you know what is agreed upon between you, Charles, and me. You go to the Secretary of State’s, and you pay court to his wife; you go to the brownstone of Rachel Sloan, the niece of Treasury Secretary Beatty, and you pass for being far advanced in the good graces of that department. Oh, good Lord! Don’t trouble yourself to reveal your good luck. No one asks your secret, all the world knows your discretion. But since you possess that virtue, why the hell don’t you make use of it with respect to the Vice President? Let anyone talk of the President and the Speaker, and how he likes; but the Vice President is sacred, and if anyone speaks of him, let it be respectfully.

Tucker, you are as vain as Narcissus; I plainly tell you so, replied Simon. You know I hate moralizing, except when it is done by Charles. You wear too magnificent a wrap to be strong on that head. I will be a politician if it suits me. Meanwhile I am a journalist. As journalist I speak the truth, and at this moment the truth is that you weary me.

Simon!

Tucker!

Gentlemen, gentlemen! cried the surrounding group.

Mr. Robert Trevor awaits Mr. Blair of Virginia, cried the secretary, opening Trevor’s office door.

At this announcement everyone became mute, and amid the general silence Stephen crossed the lobby and entered the office of the White House Press Secretary, congratulating himself at having so narrowly escaped the end of this strange quarrel.

An audience with Robert Trevor

The Press Secretary shook Stephen’s hand and welcomed him to Washington. He smiled on receiving Stephen’s response, the Virginia accent of which