“It’s not fit for any royal Queen visiting us today,” he muttered.

“We’ll have it orderly in no time,” Beecher said quickly. “You know, many Queens have stayed in this room, one of the last being Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. She left behind, as a gift, that mirror over the fireplace. The bed was said to have belonged to Andrew Jackson. The shield-back chair-”

But Dilman was no longer listening. Crystal and Diane Fuller had turned around at the sound of voices, and now, grunting and heaving, Crystal was lifting her rotund bulk upright. “Thanks, Beecher,” Dilman said. “I think I’ll pitch in and help them here. I won’t need you right now.”

The moment that the valet was gone, Dilman went directly to Crystal, taking hold of her thick arm, smiling down into her shining face. “Well, Crystal, how are you managing? It’s a little different from my beat-up five rooms on Van Buren, isn’t it?”

“Mr. President, I’ll sure take them beat-up five rooms any day. This ain’t no livin’ home. This is a museum, sure is. Why, I’d be ’fraid to go to the bathroom here!”

Dilman chuckled. “You’ll get used to it, soon enough.” He was suddenly serious. “That is, if you want to. Crystal, I haven’t had a real chance to speak to you, or I would have asked you before. Will you stay on and help me?”

Her shoulders went up and down, and her fat arms shook. “Doin’ what, Mr. Dilman-Mr. President? I’m willin’, but doin’ what with all that fancy help around?”

“Taking care of me, that’s what you can do, Crystal, as you always have done. Those servants you see are for other people-visitors, dignitaries, guests. I need someone who knows how to make my breakfast, and keep starch out of my collars, and where to put my bedroom slippers. Let’s make believe nothing has changed, Crystal, except our address. We’ll continue on the same basis, only I’ll try to arrange a raise. What do you say?”

“I say yes, and how, bless the Lord!” Crystal exclaimed. “Maybe I’ll wind up writin’ a famous book about you, what the President is really like, and I’ll get rich and famous, too, and-”

Dilman grinned. “I knew I could count on you.”

He became aware of Diane Fuller watching, listening, from the velvet-draped table. He tried not to frown. Oddly enough, while Crystal belonged here, Diane did not. Her scrawny, deferential manner, her lack of poise, her unseemly loud dresses (the one this morning was orange polka dots on yellow), her bowlegs, her stutter and nervous mannerisms, made her less of an asset here than in his Senate office, where he could relegate her to the typewriter and file cabinets. Moreover, he did not want to bring in too many of his own color. That would create unpleasant talk. Still, there was Diane, waiting. Something must be done.

“What about you, Diane?” he asked. “Would you like to stay on?”

She spoke with difficulty. “Of-of course, S-senator. I have-haven’t no place else to go, and besides-”

“Besides what?”

“This is-is-is sure enough real exciting.”

“All right. Now, it won’t be the same as before, I’m sorry to say. I’ve kept on T. C.’s personal secretary, because she’s familiar with the Executive Office routine and can guide me. However, they can always use another secretary in the East Wing downstairs. I’ll tell them I want you hired.”

“I-I’d sure be grateful, S-s-senator.” Then she amended it hastily, “I mean-Mr. President.”

Crystal had approached, taking in the entire room with the arch of her hand. “What do we do with all this stuff?”

“You keep sorting it out so it is neat and so that you know where every item is,” said Dilman. “As soon as I find out which rooms I’ll be living in, we can start moving everything where it belongs. Don’t worry about it.” He consulted his wristwatch. “Matter of fact, I don’t have much time to look around. I’ll see if I can learn which is to be my bedroom.”

He left the Rose Guest Room, lost his way a moment, then escaped the maze of rooms to find Beecher, the valet, patiently tarrying in the hall.

“Sorry to keep you,” Dilman said. “Let’s start with a bedroom for tonight. What do you suggest?”

“Well, there’s these guest bedrooms-”

“No. Too fancy.”

“That leaves two others on this floor that are used,” said the valet. “Way down there at the end is the one most used by other Presidents. It’s huge and has a good cedar closet and bathroom-why, even the bathtub has the Presidential eagle on it. It was T. C.’s bedroom before he-”

“I’m not sure about that, either,” Dilman said. He did not repeat what had passed through his mind: that the electorate might unconsciously resent a minority black politician immediately sleeping in the bed where their popular T. C. had slept for two years and seven months, a Negro enjoying that bed while their choice slept in a coffin in the earth.

“What else is there?” Dilman asked. “You mentioned another-”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President. There’s the Lincoln Bedroom right over there.”

“I thought it was a show piece. Has it ever been used in modern times?”

“Often, Mr. President. Will you have a look?” Beecher started down the hall, with Dilman a half step behind him. Unexpectedly the valet veered to his left, opened a door, and waited for Dilman to go inside.

Dilman almost entered, had meant to go right into the room, but something about it brought him to a stop, made him hang back. For the first time this morning, he had the feeling that he was neither visitor nor intruder. An accident of history had brought him to this place, and suddenly, in this room, he was a part of this place, engaged in its role, a part of its story. For the first time this morning, he felt that he belonged. It was his fancy, he told himself, yet the warmness of being wanted radiated beneath his flesh.

Hushed, he surveyed the Lincoln Bedroom. It was an old-fashioned and simple room, too calming, too reasoning, too good to permit here the invasion of violence and hate and fear. It had once been Lincoln’s Cabinet Room, he knew, and the plaque on the mantelpiece was a reminder that within these plain walls Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, prohibiting slavery in the United States and giving four million human beings of Dilman’s race their freedom.

Lincoln’s own bed, massive and grand, dominated the room.

“What’s it made of?” Dilman asked.

The valet came beside him, puzzled. “Pardon, Mr. President?”

“His bed. What’s it made of?”

“Oh. It’s solid rosewood, sir. Look at the beautiful carved headboard. That’s eight feet high above the bed. The bed itself is nine feet long.”

“Not long enough,” said Dilman. “He was taller than that.”

Dilman studied the velvet-covered tables and Victorian lamps on either side of the large bed. He studied the bureau and mirror, and the stained table on which rested one of the five copies of the Gettysburg Address written in the sixteenth President’s own hand. All these pieces had been purchased by Mrs. Lincoln, and everything in the room was probably Lincoln’s own, the painting of Andrew Jackson, the chairs in yellow and green Morris velvet, the desk, the Empire clock, everything. Even the figured rug gave Dilman comfort, a rug so much like the threadbare ones that had covered the floor of the hotel in which his mother had raised him to adulthood. Straight ahead, framed by the windows, was the spire of the Washington Monument once more.

He walked deeper into the room, and on an ashtray lay a white book of matches with the imprint “The President’s House.”

Over his shoulder he said to the valet, “You are certain this is a bedroom that’s been in ordinary use?”

“Positive, Mr. President. Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge slept in that bed. Teddy Roosevelt’s children, six of them, often slept in it at once. F. D. R. had Colonel Louis Howe, his aide, sleep in it, and Margaret Truman slept in it, and so did Mamie Eisenhower’s mother, Mrs. Doud. President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy used this bedroom while their other one was being painted. Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy, particularly, loved that bed. She liked to say it looked like ‘a cathedral.’ Later, whenever President Kennedy’s parents, former Ambassador Joseph Kennedy and Mrs. Rose Kennedy, visited, they were put up in this room. Lyndon Johnson’s relatives were here, and T. C.’s son Freddie always slept in the bed when he came here during school holidays.”