Hollywood Read Online Free PDF Page B

largest lamps illuminated everyone’s worst angle.
    “It’s Caroline.” Mrs. Bingham’s blind eyes turned in Caroline’s direction. She looked older than she was, thanks to a regimen prepared for her by Dr. Kellogg himself. She lived on wheat that had been shredded; and so belched constantly from too much roughage of the sort necessary only to her late husband’s cows, source of her wealth, glory. “And Mrs. Roosevelt. Franklin, that is.” Mrs. Bingham did not even try to disguise her disappointment. But Eleanor, one of the right Roosevelts, was quite used to being taken, thanks to her husband, for one of the wrong ones.
    Mrs. Bingham took Eleanor’s hand. “Everyone speaks of your husband. So energetic. So handsome. Where is he?”
    “He’s been in Haiti and Santo Domingo, inspecting our Marines.” Eleanor did not lie; but she did know how to avoid and evade the truth. Actually, when relations with Germany had been broken off, Franklin had been called back to Washington by the Secretary of the Navy. In the best Roosevelt tradition, he was now complaining to everyone about his long-suffering chief, Josephus Daniels, an amiable Southern newspaper editor, who hated war and alcohol and so had been entrusted with the American Navy.
    “Well, he must be very busy these days. He’s pro-German, you know.” Mrs. Bingham when not spreading gossip of the most astonishing sort was given to occupying untenable positions, to the great annoyance of no one but her daughter, who was not, Caroline noted, present.
    “Really?” Eleanor was not used to Mrs. Bingham.
    “Yes. Really. Beethoven, Mozart, Goethe, Romain Rolland. Those are my idols.”
    “Rolland is French,” murmured Caroline.
    “Who said he wasn’t? Not I.” Eleanor had drifted off. Mrs. Bingham held Caroline’s arm firmly. “We must talk. Not now, of course.” The deep voice was conspiratorial. “But
he’s
here. With
her
brother. And it’s true. Seventy-five thousand dollars it cost to buy
her
off. Now the letters are in
his
hands.”
    Caroline bowed to the father of her child. Senator James Burden Day inclined his head while his wife, Kitty, smiled vaguely at her husband’s mistress of sixteen years. Caroline was certain that Kitty did not know because, if she had, there would have been terrible scenes and threats of divorce in the American style so unlike that of Paris where, at least in these matters, things were better ordered. Of course, Caroline’s husband had divorced her when he discovered the father’s identity. Happily, there was no jealousy involved, only money. She was wealthy; he was not. In any case, her cousin had known that she was pregnant with someone else’s child when he married her because he had needed money as much as she had needed a husband’s good name, which was also hers, Sanford. In time, they parted. In time, he died. In time, Caroline went on, as there is nothing else ever to do with time.
    While Mrs. Bingham told her of scandals too squalid even for the
Tribune
to publish, Caroline noted that her lover was growing stout, that the once thick bronze curls were now gray in front and fewer, and the blue eyes smaller in a lined face. Yet they still made love at least once a week: and, more important, there was always a good deal to talk about. But now she was forty, with a fleet of ships ablaze behind her. There was no going back in time, while what lay ahead was less than comforting if only because she did not know how to be old; and rather doubted that she’d ever develop the knack.
    Everyone, even Blaise, urged her to marry again, as if one simply went to a party and selected a husband. But the few possibilities were always married, as her first lover had been and still very much was. Of the possibilities, she had allowed herself several short affairs, without great joy. Now she found that she was attracted to men half her age, which would have been acceptable in France but not here, where she could well be burned at