American Front

Rather nervously, he tipped his straw hat. "Sure you know what you're doing in the car"-he proved himself a Charleston native by pronouncing it cyar -"little lady? Wouldn't you rather have a chauffeur drive you around?"

A

The policeman halted traffic on Beaufain and let the waiting vehicles on Meeting Street move. A

She was almost sorry the Charleston Hotel lay only a couple of blocks south of Beaufain. The sensation of speed in the Vauxhall exhilarated her far more than the same speed would have in a train. Here she was the engineer, her foot on the throttle. Freedom, she thought.

A pair of Negro servants came dashing out from under the columned portico of the hotel. One of them handed her down to the sidewalk. Then both of them grabbed her suitcases and followed her inside. The doorman, a fat col ored fellow in a getup that made him look like a Revolutionary soldier, threw wide the door to allow the procession to enter.

Electric fans mounted on the ceiling stirred the air without cooling it. A

"Uh, Miss Colleton, I'm uh, very sorry, ma'am," the clerk said, plainly alarmed at having to give her bad news, "but we've, uh, had to move you to the Beauregard Suite on the third floor."

She froze him with a glance. "Oh? And why is that?" Her voice was low, calm, reasonable… dangerous.

"Because, ma'am, President Wilson's in the Presidential Suite," he blurted.

"Oh," she said again. Her laugh, much to the unhappy clerk's relief, held acquiescence. "Nothing you can do about that, I suppose. I didn't know he was going to be in Charleston."

"Yes, ma'am," the clerk said. "He's come down to launch the Fort Sumter -you know, the new cruiser that just got built. That's tomorrow. Tonight there's a reception and dance here. In fact…" He turned back to the rectangular array of message slots behind the registration desk and pulled out a cream-colored envelope. "You have an invitation here. When Mr. Wilson's private secretary learned who had been booked into the Presidential Suite before him, he made sure to give you one."

"I should hope so," A

After she'd ridden upstairs in the lift and tipped the servants carrying her bags, she sat down on the bed and laughed till tears rolled down her cheeks. The Charleston Hotel was modern enough to boast telephones in its fancy suites, the Beauregard among them. She made a call. "Roger?" she said when the co

That produced a good fifteen-second silence on the other end of the line. Then Roger Kimball said, "I hope you're not going to see as much of him as you were going to see of me."

Though the submariner couldn't see her, she nodded approvingly. He had gall. She admired that. "How can I be sure?" she said. "He hasn't asked me." That made Kimball sputter, as she'd hoped. She went on, "I will see you tomorrow -unless the president sweeps me off my feet."

Kimball chuckled. "Or you sweep him off his. But he's a long ways from young. Two nights ru

"He does have gall," A

She went through the dresses she had with her. When she came to the summer-weight rose floral voile, she smiled. The full, pleated skirt would flow nicely around her legs as she moved, and the laced bodice over the white voile chemisette might draw the eye even of a president no longer young. The dress was wrinkled from its time in the suitcase. She grabbed for the bell pull by the bed. A maid knocked at the door less than a minute later. She gave the colored woman the dress for pressing.

As she'd been sure it would, it came back in plenty of time for the di

Like the Presidential Suite, the Beauregard Suite had not only cold but also hot ru

She went downstairs about half past seven. As she'd expected, a crowd of rich and prominent South Carolinians had already gathered outside the doors of the banquet hall; a couple of Negro attendants with almost the presence of Scipio made sure those doors did not open prematurely.

Being a rich and prominent South Carolinian herself, A

They pride themselves on being useless, she thought. They don't know anything, and they don't want to know anything. If you asked one of them to drive a motorcar, she'd tell you how unladylike it was, and how she had a chauffeur to take her everywhere she wanted to go. Old-fashioned, boring frumps. She wondered what they would have made of the exhibition of modern art she'd organized. Her lips pulled back in even more contempt. As if any of them could have brought off a show like that!

The women's stares turned even more poisonous when, after opening the doors, the attendants began escorting people to their seats. Not only was she placed at the president's table, but right across from him. "We were told to put you here, ma'am," her Negro guide said, "to make amends for Mr. Wilson taking your room away from you." He pulled out her chair so she could sit down.

Woodrow Wilson strode in, long and lean, at exactly eight o'clock. Everyone stood to honor him. He had something less than the almost demoniac energy of Theodore Roosevelt; you could not imagine him leading a charge across no-man's-land, as you would with the Yankee Kaiser. His appeal was more to the intellect, and he gave the impression of having that and to spare.

Which was not to say he could not be charming in his own way. Smiling across the table at A

"Quite all right. I feel I'm doing my patriotic duty by moving, Your Excellency," A