When the Cheering Stopped (13 page)

He halted. The people looked at him and he at them.

The President of the United States, standing before an audience of some several thousands of his fellow citizens, was crying.

He had come to the last words of his speech. He said:

“I believe that men will see the truth, eye to eye and face to face. There is one thing that the American people always rise to and extend their hand to, and that is the truth of justice and of liberty and of peace. We have accepted that truth and we are going to be led by it, and it is going to lead us, and through us the world, out into pastures of quietness and peace such as the world never dreamed of before.”

He turned away and the First Lady came to him. Their tears mixed.

They went to the train but traveled only a few miles when Grayson asked him if he thought a stroll in the open air might do him some good. He said he would like that, and word was sent to the engineer to halt the train. The brakes went on. The engine stood panting with steam up and the reporters were told that the President and the First Lady and Dr. Grayson were going for a little walk. They had come down out of the mountain country and were in beautiful prairie land with no houses in sight and evening coming on. It was very pleasant. The reporters got out and lay down on the grass to relax and watch the long, lovely September twilight.

The trio walked slowly down a dusty road with Starling idling behind at a little distance. They came to a bridge and paused on it, looking down at the thin Arkansas River, hardly more than a stream at that point. They went on in the comfortably warm Colorado air and saw a farmer in a small auto driving down the road. He came to a stop when he recognized the walkers and took out a head of
cabbage and some apples, saying he hoped they would eat them “for dinner tonight.” They thanked him and he drove off, raising a little cloud of dust as he went.

A man and his wife and their friend, they strolled down a silent country road. They came to a field cut off from the road by a fence. Some distance back from the road was a frame house with a soldier in uniform sitting on the porch. The President said, “That fellow looks sick to me.” Grayson said, “Yes, he certainly is.” They climbed over the low fence, Starling following, and went across to the boy and said hello. The soldier's mother and father and brothers came out and for a few minutes the visitors talked with the farm people. Then they said good-by and, carrying the cabbage and apples, strolled back toward the setting sun.

About an hour had elapsed when the reporters on the grass saw the four specks, three together and one in the rear, coming toward the train. When the group was about a hundred yards away from the
Mayflower,
Grayson and the President broke into a dog trot and ran by the men on the grass. Reporter Morton Milford said, “Pretty good! I don't know whether I could do that myself or not.” The President was smiling as he went up on the rear platform.

That night the First Lady's maid came to her room in the rolling
Mayflower
to brush her hair and give her a massage. The two spoke in the lowest of tones, for the President's compartment was next door and the First Lady thought he was asleep. But about eleven-thirty there was a knock on the intervening door and she heard his voice: “Can you come to me, Edith? I'm terribly sick.” He was sitting on the edge of his bed with his head resting on the back of a chair. “I can't sleep because of the pain. I'm afraid you'd better call Grayson.” She sent her maid to the doctor's room. He was not there, and although it was only a few minutes before he was located, it seemed to her that hours passed. But when he came there was nothing he could do to ease his patient. The tiny sleeping room oppressed the President; he said he could not stay in it; he must move about. They went into the room that he used as a study and office. His
typewriter stood on the Pullman table. They brought in some pillows and tried to make him comfortable, but he could not stay still and twisted about to try to find a position that would lessen the splitting agony in his head. The hours passed as the train rushed eastward, and about five, sitting propped upright by the pillows, he fell asleep.

The First Lady motioned Grayson to go to bed and sat alone opposite her husband, breathing as quietly as she could for fear she might awaken him. Dawn came as she sat motionless, staring at him. The room grew light. He awoke, stood, and said he must shave, for soon they would be in Wichita, Kansas, for another speech. Grayson came in and spoke with her and went to Tumulty's compartment. He knocked on the door and told Tumulty to get up and come quickly, the President was seriously ill.

The two men hurried through the train and as they moved Grayson tersely said something was terribly, terribly wrong and that to continue the trip could be fatal but that Tumulty's support would be needed to convince the President. They went in and joined the First Lady. A few minutes later the President came out of the bathroom, freshly shaven and dressed, and Grayson thought to himself that no one else would have shaven himself while in such a condition. The men said to him that he must cancel the tour, but at once he said no, no, he could not do it. As he spoke saliva came down from the left side of his mouth and they saw that the left half of his face was fallen and unmoving. His words were mumbled and indistinct.

Grayson told him that continuing was out of the question, but he said, “I must go on. I should feel like a deserter. My opponents will accuse me of having cold feet should I stop now.” It was difficult to understand his words. Grayson said, “I owe it to the country, to you and to your family not to permit you to continue. If you try to speak today you will fall down on the platform before the audience.” Still the President insisted he would go on. Tumulty urged him to obey the doctor. The President turned to him. “My dear boy, this has never happened to me before. I don't know what to do.” “You must give up the trip and get some rest,” Tumulty said. “Don't you see,” said the President, “If we cancel this
trip Senator Lodge and his friends will say that I am a quitter, that the trip was a failure. And the treaty will be lost.” Tumulty reached over to him and took both of his hands in his own. “What difference, dear Governor, does it make what they say? Nobody in the world will consider you a quitter. It is your life we must consider.”

The President was sitting with Tumulty holding his hands; he tried to move closer but found his left arm and leg refused to function. But he said, “I want to show them that I can still fight and that I am not afraid. Just postpone the trip for twenty-four hours and I will be all right.” Grayson began to protest, but the President interrupted. “No, no, no. I must keep up.”

Finally the First Lady spoke and said to him that he must give up, that he could not go on, that he must not let the people see him as he was this day. Ever after she felt it was the hardest thing she had done in her life, to tell him the truth that morning even as the train slowed down at the Wichita outskirts. And when she had said what had to be said he finally understood. “I suppose you are right,” he said. He burst into tears and the two men went out to tell the reporters. She sat with her weeping husband and she thought, I will have to wear a mask—not only to the public but to the one I love best in the world. For he must never know how ill he is and I must carry on.

*
And was later to be Ambassador to Russia and France.

PART TWO

The Second Mrs. Wilson

And I must carry on

6

Tumulty said, “Gentlemen, we are not going to Wichita. The President is very ill. It will be necessary for us to start back for Washington as soon as the railroad arrangements are completed, and we will go through with no stops other than those that are imperative.” He turned to Grayson. Grayson said, “The President has suffered a complete nervous breakdown. It is altogether against his will that he give up his speech-making tour. He did not wish to disappoint the people of Wichita. In fact, he was insistent that he would be able to take part in the parade and make his address. But my judgment as a doctor and the judgment of Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Tumulty is that we must not allow him to exert the slightest effort of any kind, and that we must get him, as soon as possible, into the restful atmosphere of the White House.” The reporters ran to get off the halted train and to telephones.

Grayson also got off and headed for a little grocery store close to where the train was standing. He made his way through a small crowd of poorly dressed Negroes, for the train stood in the heart of a colored shanty-town district, and went into the store of Mr. and Mrs. W. B. Rankin. He asked Mrs. Rankin for the number of the local telegraph office and for a moment she hunted through her telephone book for it and, not finding it, asked the operator to make the connection. Grayson then took the phone and started dictating telegrams to Washington and the President's daughters. Margaret was on a visit to New London, Connecticut, and Jessie with Frank Sayre at Harvard. Each was wired:
RETURNING TO WASHINGTON. NOTHING TO BE ALARMED ABOUT. LOVE FROM ALL OF US
. Tumulty wired a man at the Los Angeles hotel where Nellie and her husband were shortly expected:
PLEASE
TELL MR AND MRS MCADOO THAT THE PRESIDENT IS RETURNING TO WASHINGTON BUT THERE IS NOTHING TO BE ALARMED ABOUT
. He also wired a niece of the President, who had planned to board the train at Memphis:
THE PRESIDENT IS OBLIGED BECAUSE OF SLIGHT ILLNESS TO RETURN IMMEDIATELY TO WASHINGTON AND IS VERY SORRY NOT TO BE ABLE TO SEE YOU AS PLANNED
.

Meanwhile, neighborhood people clustered around the train. The Secret Service men deployed to prevent them from approaching too closely and asked them not to make any noise. But when their numbers increased, it was decided to get the train under way and circle the city for the period needed by the railroad officials to plan a route east. In Wichita itself, fifteen thousand people gathered at the municipal auditorium were told there would be no speech. Disappointed, they filed out as a quartet sang “Smile Awhile” and for the most part went down to the main depot to learn more about the reason for the cancellation. They were joined by many of the one hundred thousand waiting for the motorcade and composing the largest crowd in the history of the city. Grayson rejoined the train before it began to move and the reporters came back to ask for more concrete information than they had so far been given. Grayson told them he hoped the President would need only a short rest and that it was certain he was not seriously ill. He added there was nothing organically wrong with the President's physical or nervous system. He would say no more than that.

After two hours of slowly circling Wichita, the route was laid out, the tracks ahead were cleared, and the train picked up a pilot engine and headed for Washington, seventeen hundred miles away. But the President seemed unwilling to admit the tour was over. When Grayson urged him to try to sleep, he said, “I won't be able to sleep at all, Doctor, if you say I must cancel the trip.” He was unable to doze off, although the use of his arm and leg was returning, and so he sat with the First Lady in the office compartment of the
Mayflower.
She got out her knitting and tried to make small talk with him, but he could not be diverted and her chatting lapsed. They roared on, going at a speed greater than that of most expresses, the train whistle moaning to warn back the
people gathered by the tracks in hope of seeing the President. All across Kansas and into Missouri crowds stood by and during the few necessary stops they came up to peer into the
Mayflower
's windows. Their curiosity was unnerving and so the blinds were drawn. The darkened car was like a funeral cortege and the silence was oppressive after all the noise and cheering of the past weeks, and the President and First Lady sat together, alone. His hands were trembling.

In the club car up front, however, the reporters broke out whisky bottles—wartime prohibition notwithstanding—and celebrated their return home. For more than three weeks they had been living out of suitcases, and they had had enough of it. Most of them thought the illness to be some sort of indigestion or at the most a not unexpected reaction to the rigors of the trip. Several of them argued that the whole thing was a ruse and that the President was not sick at all, but this view was generally discounted. “It's a fraud, a ruse; he's shamming,” the reporter from the New York
Sun
said, but reporter David Lawrence answered by saying, “He's not feeling well; that's that. The doctor says he's sick; he must be sick.”

With no real work to do, the reporters passed the time playing cards and singing as they sped east. Grayson issued a bulletin for them and they dropped copies of it out of the train for station telegraphers to send to their papers: “The President has exerted himself so constantly and has been under such a strain during the last year and has so spent himself without reserve on this trip that it has brought on a serious reaction in his digestive organs.” For later editions Grayson issued: “President Wilson's condition is due to overwork. The trouble dates back to an attack of influenza last April in Paris from which he has never entirely recovered. The President's activities on this trip have overtaxed his strength and he is suffering from nervous exhaustion. His condition is not alarming, but it will be necessary for his recovery that he have rest and quiet for a considerable time.” Nothing more could be learned from the doctor, so the matter had to be left at that.

In the early hours of September 27, Saturday, as they approached St. Louis, the First Lady sent for the Secret
Service man Starling, who all along had planned to leave the train in that city in order to pay a visit to his ailing mother. She told him neither she nor the President wanted the President's condition to interfere with Starling's plans and said to him that he must stay with his mother until he was assured she was well. She added that the President wanted to say good-by to Starling and took the Secret Service man into the office, where the President, wrapped in a dressing gown, lay on a couch. It seemed to Starling as he walked up that the left side of the President's face had fallen a little, but when he looked more closely he decided he was mistaken. The President offered his right hand and Starling took it and pressed it but did not shake it, thinking that perhaps the motion would be painful. “I want you to know how sorry I am,” Starling said. “I will be praying for you until you recover and I am sure it will be soon.” The President smiled wanly and Starling saw his original thought was correct. Only the right side of the President's face was moving. “Thank you, Starling,” the President said. “I want you to take something to your mother for me.” He gave Starling a shawl. The First Lady also had a gift—two large boxes of candy. Starling found himself unable to speak. He shook the First Lady's hand and left the
Mayflower.