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“Wonderful,” she was saying. “Come about one, Ben. We’ll have some nice people in. I’ll try not to have any of those you were subjected to at L.J.’s.”
She stood. “I can’t be late picking up Emma from her lesson. She’s quite the little pianist, and I guess I’m quite the doting mother.”
I stood, and we smiled. This time, there was no kiss on the cheek.
But I watched Elizabeth walk away again, every step, until she finally disappeared behind the rooming house porch.
Chapter 47
WASHINGTON, D.C.
That same afternoon, Senator John Tyler Morgan, Democrat of Alabama, stood in the lobby of the Willard Hotel, yelling at the general manager.
“I have never been refused service in my life! That insufferable man in the elevator had the nerve to tell me he was holding the car for an important personage. He told me to get off that car and wait for another car!”
Senator Morgan was so angry that specks of saliva were speckling the lapels of the general manager’s morning coat.
“Senator, I am so sorry for the inconvenience—”
“Not an inconvenience! It’s a goddamned insult! Who the hell was he holding the elevator for, the goddamned president of the United States?”
As he roared this question, the great glass doors of the lobby flew open at the hands of two uniformed guards. In walked Theodore Roosevelt.
He took one look at John Tyler Morgan in mid rampage and the poor little cowering manager. Then Roosevelt thundered, “Unless my eyes deceive me, the man at the center of that ruckus is none other than the senior senator from the great state of Alabama. Good morning, John!”
The famous Civil War general and southern statesman was stunned into silence. No one had called him John in many years.
“Morning, Mr. President,” he finally managed to say.
“Come ride the elevator with me, John!”
A few minutes later, having deposited the red-faced Morgan on his floor, Roosevelt had a good laugh at his expense. “And the newspapers call me a gasbag? Senator Morgan, my friends, is the royal and supreme emperor of gasbags! Did you see how quickly I deflated him simply by using his Christian name?”
Appreciative laughter from his aides trailed the president to his suite. Roosevelt grew serious the moment he passed through the door.
“Good morning, Mr. President. We’re all ready for your meeting,” said Jackson Hensen, his capable assistant.
“Well, get them in here. No need to dawdle.”
“Yes, sir. They’re on their way up in the service elevator.”
Roosevelt chuckled. “How did they take to that?”
“I understand the gentleman was… displeased,” Hensen said.
Chapter 48
THE INNER DOOR OPENED and a pair of adjutants appeared, escorting a distinguished-looking black man with a Vandyke beard and a wide woman of a darker, more African appearance, with a wise face and a spectacular sweep of hair that plainly was not entirely her own.
Mr. Roosevelt bowed to the man and kissed the lady’s gloved hand. He could never be seen doing such a thing in public, but here in private he was all too happy to pay honor to W. E. B. Du Bois, the great Negro writer and crusader, and to Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the passionate antilynching campaigner, such a modern and audacious woman that she dared to append her husband’s name to her own when she married.
“My sincere apologies for the indignity of bringing you up in the… back elevator,” the president said.
Du Bois bowed slightly. “It is not the first time I have ridden in the servants’ car, Mr. President,” he said. “I am fairly sure it will not be the last.”
Mrs. Wells-Barnett perched her sizable self on the upholstered chair beside the fireplace.
“Now, Mr. Du Bois,” said the president, “I have received quite a lot of correspondence from you about these matters. I want you to know that my administration is doing everything within our power to see that these local authorities start observing the laws as—”
