Empire

1

AS USUAL, THE APOSTLE of punctuality was late. John Hay stood in the doorway of the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, watch in hand held high to dramatize the lateness of the presidential party. Inside the church, the nave was crowded with dignitaries. To the dismay of the church elders, admission to God’s house-unlike Paradise-was only by card. The Senate, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court and the diplomatic corps were all represented, with sufficient omissions to cause social anxiety for the rest of the season. It had been Clara’s inspiration to place Henry Adams between the Chinese ambassador, Wu, and the Japanese ambassador, Takahira. As a result, the angelic Porcupine now resembled an ancient not-so-benign mandarin, engulfed in the Orient.

The Whitney family had given Hay rather more trouble than the canal treaty. The rupture was not about to be healed between William C. Whitney, with two of his children loyal to him, and his former brother-in-law, the bachelor Oliver Payne, with two of Whitney’s children loyal to him, including today’s groom, Payne. Hay had placed the Payne faction on one side of the aisle and the Whitney faction on the other. There had been even more confusion when William Whitney arrived at the church without his card, and the police had tried to stop him from entering, to the bleak joy of Oliver Payne, secure and righteous in his pew. As Hay got Whitney past the police, he was struck, as always, by the speed with which oblivion surrounded even the most celebrated of men when he no longer held office. Whitney, king-maker and king-that-might-have-been, was just another guest at his son’s wedding to Helen Hay.

Like a stagecoach pursued by rustlers, the presidential carriage came hurtling down Massachusetts Avenue, horses steaming in the cold. Before the guards in front of the church could open the carriage doors, the President sprang out, wearing a silk top hat. Then Edith Roosevelt, more majestically, descended, followed by Alice, got up like a Gainsborough painting in dark blue velvet, with a dashing black hat. Hay stood, watch held before him like the host.

“We are exactly on time,” the President lied.

“Of course. Of course.”

Church ushers appeared in the doorway. Quickly, their Republican majesties drew themselves up, and then, with hieratic-that is, to Hay’s eyes, waddling-gait, they proceeded down the aisle to their pew in the front row.

The moment that the Roosevelts were seated, the wedding march began, and Hay, curiously weak of limb yet free of pain, went to collect the terrified Helen, magnificent in white satin and tulle but no-she wanted to be original-lace; then, in due course, under official Washington’s eyes, Hay delivered his daughter over to the tall, handsome Payne Whitney, while Clara wept softly in the background, and Henry Adams, surrounded by Asia, looked incredibly old and small.

The wedding breakfast greatly appealed to Hay’s sense of drama, never entirely dormant. He had invited seventy-five guests, which meant overflow from dining room into his study, where, in the bay window, he had set a table at which, side by side, he had placed William C. Whitney and Oliver Payne. As the President and Mrs. Roosevelt were also at the round table, good behavior was assured. Hay had also added the Whitelaw Reids, whose never allayed ambition for social distinction would be temporarily sated. The President was at Clara’s right; and Mrs. Roosevelt at Hay’s right.

There was no need to fear awkward silences. Theodore, very much aware of the two men’s enmity, delivered himself of a lecture on the trusts; an occasional glance at the two money princes acted as a reminder that today, at least, and in more ways than one, they were in the same boat. The handsome Whitney was, as always, calm, but Payne, a choleric man, could barely speak for rage.

The situation was too curious for words, thought Hay, happy that Theodore’s flow of talk could not be deterred by mere curiosity of situation. For once, Edith did not give her husband a warning look, followed by a small cough, followed-if that did not staunch the flow-by “Oh, Thee!” in a stern voice. She, too, was awed by the hatred of the two men, who spoke, politely but briefly, to each other whenever the President paused for breath. The Whitelaw Reids, for once at rest in the still circle of perfect social preeminence, glowed benignly, as course after course was served, and the round table in the bay window became luminous with bright winter sunlight, an Arthurian table at the Arctic, thought Hay.

“Helen loved your gifts, Mr. Whitney.” Clara made motherly sounds. “They are so very grand, the rings, the brooch.”

“I’m glad.” Whitney was Chesterfieldian in his politeness. He had had a great deal to contend with lately. He had given up his political career. He was under fire for his various business connections. He had not been invited to his son’s bachelor dinner, held at the Arlington Hotel by Colonel Payne, the usurper. Yet he acted as if nothing in his world was amiss. On the other hand, Payne was incoherent with mysterious rage. Hay wondered why. The fact that after the death of Oliver Payne’s sister Whitney had remarried could not have been sufficient reason for so long-lasting a vendetta-long-lasting and infinitely resourceful. There was something positively Luciferian in the relentless way that Payne had gone about buying two of Whitney’s children, one of whom was now Hay’s son-in-law. Perhaps childlessness was at the root of it all. Envying Whitney’s charm and fecundity, Payne robbed him of two children; and tried to ruin him financially as well. But though Oliver Payne was the richer of the two, Whitney was the cleverer; and not made for failure.

Edith Roosevelt made the error of asking Oliver Payne what he had given the young couple. “Not much,” he said, eyes on his plate, where a quail in aspic seemed, somehow, obscene. “Diamonds, the usual,” he mumbled. Whitney drank champagne, and smiled at Mrs. Whitelaw Reid. “The house in Thomasville, Georgia,” said Payne. “They’ll honeymoon there. Good hunting, Georgia.”

The President, mouth full, could not let the subject of hunting pass unannotated. “Wild turkey!” he choked.

“Thee!”

But guns and wild turkeys were now the subject of that powerful energetic boy’s mind. “I’m also lending them my yacht,” said Oliver Payne to those of the table who were not entirely attentive to the presidential hymn to the slaughter of wildlife. “The Amphitrite. They’ll go to Europe on it, this summer…”

“An ocean-going yacht?” Mrs. Whitelaw Reid’s happiness was complete.

“Yes,” said Oliver Payne, looking not at Whitney’s face but his far shoulder. Thus he emphasized his own greater wealth.

“It’s the size of an ocean-liner,” said Hay, allowing Reid his moment with the President, who, sensing that he had lost the table in general, was now concentrating all the more on Reid, whose sycophantish smiles and bobs of the head caused the President to give a detailed history, from prehistoric times to the present, of the beagle.

“I’m also building them a place in New York.” Oliver Payne turned to Clara, as an interested party. “Your daughter said she preferred New York to Washington…”

“And you to us!” Clara’s sudden laugh cut the beagles just short of François Premier, and a hunting party at Poitier.

“She never said that,” murmured the very rich man. “But New York’s right for Payne, and her. I’ve found them a lot on Fifth Avenue near Seventy-ninth Street, where I’ll build a house…”

“And we can be,” said William Whitney, “all together, on Fifth Avenue.”

That stopped both Oliver Payne and Theodore Roosevelt. Hay wished that Henry Adams could have shared this comic interlude.

“How is young Ted?” asked Clara in the pause.

“Weak but recovered. Groton’s looking after him well enough.”

Young Ted had nearly died of pneumonia, and both Roosevelts had gone to Groton to be with him, leaving Hay as the acting president. Occasionally, he still day-dreamed of what it would be like should Theodore himself fall victim to pneumonia or an assassin’s bullet, or simply a trolley car, like the one that had smashed into the President’s carriage the previous autumn, killing a Secret Service man. Had Theodore and not the Secret Service man died, John Hay would have been the president. Old and ill as he was, the thought was not entirely without its appeal. Of course, he was too fragile to do much. On the other hand, he would have a free hand to guide the United States onto the world stage, as an equal party with England. Between the two fleets-nations, he corrected his reverie-the entire world would be theirs for the foreseeable future. Although Theodore was on the same course, he was fitful and easily diverted; he was also concerned with being elected president in his own right in 1904. Disturbingly, despite the closeness of his friendship with Cecil Spring-Rice, he resented, as only a Dutch-American could, England’s long ascendancy in the United States, achieved at the expense of his ancestors. He had even said to Hay, apropos Pauncefote, that the Englishman is “not a being I find congenial or with whom I care to associate. I wish him well but I wish him well at a distance.” This was most unlike McKinley, whose benign neutrality in the Boer War had been of such importance to England.

Whitelaw Reid spoke of Russia, and the President gave Hay a quick glance. They were not to discuss the current problems with that, to Hay, mindless grasping barbarous nation. “We can say nothing, dear Whitelaw.” Hay made of his old colleague’s first name a sort of formal title, White Law, White Rod, Black Law, Black Rod, like those ancient ceremonial servitors of the British crown. “Because Cassini is lurking on the premises, and he will tell the Tsar everything.”

“Did you see him avoid Takahira?” The President was about to be tactless.

Hay intervened. “Cassini doesn’t see too clearly. It’s the monocle, I think…”

“What will Japan do about Russia, and Manchuria?” Whitelaw had refused to take Hay’s hint. Thus a man lost a foreign mission.

“We must ask the Japanese.” Hay was bland. “Certainly, none of us wants the Russians to occupy the industrial parts of Manchuria…”

“Shansi province!” Roosevelt erupted; and Hay shuddered, as he heard Brooks Adams’s suave low voice turned into Rooseveltian falsetto. “The principal goal of every empire on earth today. Who holds Shansi province holds the key to the balance of power…”

“Theodore, they are going to cut the cake.” Edith rose in tandem with Clara, and Hay was relieved. Although Hay did not in the least disapprove of the coming American hegemony, as outlined by Brooks in his soon-to-be-published polemic The New Empire, he felt that the Administration ought never to associate itself with such un-American concepts as empire. Let the empire come in the name of-the pursuit of happiness, of liberty, of freedom. If the United States was not always high-minded, the world might take less seriously the great new-world charter that set off this extension of the British empire not only from the motherland but from all other restless, expanding nations.

Once the bay-window table had been abandoned, Whitney and Payne separated, as if by prior arrangement. The Hays escorted the Roosevelts into the dining room, where all the guests were standing, champagne glasses at the ready. Back of the huge white cake Helen and Payne stood, ready for the toasts; and the cutting of the cake.

As a bridesmaid, Caroline wore a light gray silk crepe gown, a not entirely satisfactory color or non-color, but Helen had insisted that she be a bridesmaid, “since you were supposed to be my matron-of-honor.” To this appeal, Caroline had surrendered.

Now Caroline stood between Henry Adams and Cabot Lodge, and the three responded to the various toasts, particularly an exhilarating one from the President, who had moved in between bride and groom as if, somehow, their wedding if not their marriage might have been incomplete without his nearness, even centrality.

“Theodore,” murmured Adams, “is quite drunk with himself.”

Lodge’s laugh was not the prettiest of sounds; but, under the circumstances, Caroline found it irresistible. “He can’t bear for anyone else to be the center of attention. He wants to be groom…”

“And bride,” Caroline contributed.

“Everything,” said Adams. “What, I wonder,” he added with a macabre smile, “will he be like at a funeral?”

“In the coffin,” said Lodge.

“If it’s a state funeral,” Adams agreed. “So much energy for everything, including death.”

“We’re lucky.” Lodge was now grave. “To have him where he is, at such a time.”

“Handing round cake?” Caroline was deflationary but Lodge was a true believer, and Theodore’s star was his star.

To Caroline’s surprise, Frederika Bingham was in the room, uncommonly pretty in pale green. Although Mrs. Bingham had yet to enter the gilded gates of the highest society, the crooked smile of her daughter seemed, somehow, to open every door. Caroline was admiring. After all, the pursuit of a high social career was, perhaps, the only challenge that a wealthy American girl might ever meet and, with luck, overcome. “Alice invited me,” Frederika read Caroline’s mind.

“Roosevelt?”

“Hay. I never knew there were so many people in Washington I did not know and so few,” the smile was implicit rather than visible, “so wonderfully few, congressmen.”

“Your mother has them.”

“She can keep them. I suppose these are New York people.” Frederika looked about the room as if she were in New York’s legendary lion house, where Clarence King had seen fit to go mad.

“I’m a foreigner.” Caroline still fell back on this identity; but, of course, she was now, like it or not, old Washington. “There are many people here from Ohio. Like Colonel Payne. And the Stones. And Senator Hanna.” They were bowed to by the fat, pale Mark Hanna, who resembled, for an instant, all Ohio. “Is your brother here?” asked Frederika, as the two young women followed the newlyweds and the adhesive President into the drawing room.

“No. He’s vanished. But he’s supposed to be building a house here.”

“He’s not in Baltimore?”

“Not if he can help it.” Caroline had just received, unofficially, an accountant’s report of the Examiner losses for the year just ended. The paper was going to be expensive to maintain. The Tribune, thanks to Mr. Trimble and her own inspired negligence, was profitable. Mr. McLean had even made a New Year’s offer to buy; and Caroline had declined, joyfully, to sell and, sorrowfully, he had said that he might now be obliged to buy the Post.

“I think Mr. Hearst must be fascinating.” Frederika was unexpected. As a rule, nice young ladies deplored the national villain.

“Well, if you think that, you and Blaise think alike. He’s drawn to him like… like…”

“A moth to a flame?”

“I’d hoped to avoid that phrase but then, as a publisher, I ought not, ever, to avoid the too familiar. Exactly. A moth to a flame. I hope he isn’t burned.” Caroline said exactly what she meant; but then she no longer regarded Blaise as an enemy. After all, had he not behaved as he had, she might have been simply another transatlantic young heiress of the sort that Mr. James wrote more and more elaborately about. Instead, she had made a place for herself like no other; and though Marguerite might mourn the irregularity of their situation, Caroline was delighted to be free, and-why deny it?-powerful in the world of Washington, which was becoming very much the world that mattered. She glanced at the ring that she wore on her left little finger. As Del’s fire opal had split in equal halves, she had had them set on either side of an irregular yellow sapphire. The effect was more evocative than beautiful; emblematic of a life that had broken in half, had not been lived…

At the door to the drawing room, Caroline was astonished to see Mrs. Jack Astor, like some celestial peacock-or was it hen?-in the Washington back yard. “It is like one of those Brueghel paintings,” the deep voice sounded in the crowded room. “The wedding of village swain to milkmaid.”

“Attended by a fairy godmother, all in gossamer and jewels…” Caroline began.

“… witch, dear Caroline. What am I doing in so bucolic a place?”

“It reminds you of Newport, Rhode Island, I suppose.”

“No. Rhinebeck-on-Hudson when we give our annual harvest feast to the yokels, and I see to it that their trestle tables are wreathed in poison ivy.” Mrs. Jack’s laughter was enjoyable if not precisely contagious. All round them, awed Washington ladies were staring at the fashionable Mrs. Astor, never before seen in the capital city. Caroline was agreeably aware that her own stock was rising rapidly.

“Are you a friend of the Hays?” asked Caroline.

“No, not really. But I am enamored of this creature, so young, so potentially appalling…”

Mrs. Jack had put out an arm and swept the imperious Alice Roosevelt toward her. “You see? I came. Your rustic revels are now complete.”

“So proud the Astors!” exclaimed Alice, in no way, ever, to be outdone, even by the superb Mrs. Jack. “When they were nothing but German Jews, kosher butchers, when we Roosevelts…”

“… were running away from the Indians, in your clumsy wooden shoes, which I see you’re wearing today,” she added, glancing down at Alice’s rather large squared-off slippers. “How suitable…”

“Isn’t she foul!” Alice turned, delighted, to Caroline.

“No, no. She is fair. But her bite is lethal.”

“Rabid!” Alice gazed with delight on Mrs. Jack. It was no secret that the President’s oldest child was also, in his own words, “the only one of us with any money,” inherited from her dead mother. She was also bent on being a Fashionable, something unknown in Roosevelt circles, a family not unlike the Apgars when it came to dowdy self-satisfaction.

There was a sudden murmur all about them, as the President and Mrs. Roosevelt approached, led by John Hay, like an ancient chamberlain. “Alice, we’re leaving,” the President announced.

“You’re leaving. I’m staying.”

“Alice,” murmured her stepmother.

“Mrs. Jack Astor.” Alice presented the swan to the barnyard geese.

Mrs. Jack made an elaborate curtsey.

“Do stop that!” The President was unamused.

“She does it very well.” Edith smiled a queenly smile.

“Thank you.” Mrs. Jack rose now to her full height. “Why do you call us ‘the idle rich’?” She gave the President a mocking smile. “We are never idle.”

“Some are less idle than others,” began the President, plainly not comfortable.

“While some are less rich than others,” acknowledged Mrs. Jack. “Even so, you must not generalize about your loyal subjects, or we shall all vote for Bryan next year.”

“Then everyone will be less rich.” The President was now retreating from the room. Alice remained. If nothing else, Caroline found her refreshing. But then the entire Roosevelt family was a surprise to a world that had come to look upon the White House as a seedy boardinghouse for dim politicians emeriti. Caroline’s “Society Lady,” as the woman in question signed herself in the pages of the Tribune, was thrilled with the change in Washington’s ton, as she liked to call it, rhyming the French word, to Caroline’s immeasurable joy, with the English word that denotes a measurement of weight.

“This place has possibilities.” Mrs. Jack was looking about the room. The diplomatic corps was its usual colorful self; and the few men of state were, if not actually gentlemen, got up as if they were. Only the wives-the poor wives, as Caroline thought of them-gave away the game. They were redolent of the back yards of small towns; and always frowning with anxiety, fearful of letting down the ton.

Caroline had been disagreeably surprised to meet the wife of James Burden Day. For one thing, she had not expected him to marry so unexpectedly, and, for another, to marry someone from “back home” when he had already entered the relatively great world of Washington, where he was, relatively, related to those ubiquitous gentlefolk the Apgars. Caroline assumed that Day’s wife was the price of his congressional seat. None of this was her business.

“If the wives were subtracted,” Mrs. Jack said aloud what Caroline was thinking, “the result would be a lot more amusing than anything we’ve got in New York.”

“Only,” said Caroline sadly, “they refuse to be subtracted.”

“Try division.” Mrs. Jack gave her a sudden sharp, knowing look; and Caroline, for no reason that she could ascertain, gasped.

Clara Hay gathered them up. “Come on, you two. Amuse Colonel Payne.”

“Surely, he dislikes ladies,” began Mrs. Jack.

“Who doesn’t,” whispered Caroline, taking advantage of Clara Hay’s deafness.

“All the more reason for him to make a fuss over you, Mrs. Astor.” Clara was firm, always firm; she was also generally right. Colonel Oliver Payne was thrilled to be surrounded by Mrs. Astor and Miss Sanford.

“We must,” said Mrs. Jack, voice more throaty and menacing than ever, “find you a husband-I mean, a wife, Colonel.”

2

BLAISE HAD ACCOMPANIED HIS EDITOR Hapgood to New York City to observe the election of the Chief to Congress, a foregone election, as Hearst had left nothing to chance. The original Democratic nominee, Brisbane, had stepped aside, to make way for his employer; and Hearst was duly confirmed as Tammany’s Democratic nominee in the Eleventh District. For this safe Democratic seat, the new head of Tammany, the cheerful Charles Francis Murphy, asked only that the Journal whole-heartedly support Tammany’s candidate for governor. Hearst had agreed.

Now Blaise and Hapgood stood in windy Madison Square, where some forty thousand people were gathered to hear the election results, and view the fireworks laid on by the Journal. “He sure knows how to spend the money,” observed Hapgood, with awe.

“Sometimes I think that that’s all he knows.” Blaise was sour. He, too, had spent money in Baltimore; in fact, the money spent was now at his side, a stout Teutonic man with a huge moustache, the paradigm of Hearst journalists in the copious flesh. But even Hapgood had so far failed to increase circulation figures. Currently, their hopes were based on a series about miscegenation, the one subject certain to thrill their readers, or so Hapgood, the Marylander, maintained. Blaise envied Caroline her city. When the capital was dull, there was Embassy Row; when the embassies were short of news, there was the White House, a never-ending source of “warm human interest,” to use the current phrase. Stories about the Roosevelt children and their ponies in the elevator, their appearances at state sessions on stilts, their snakes and frogs at table, and, above all, the Jovian sovereign Theodore, conducting himself like a king, destined by birth to his high estate. Caroline need do nothing to fill the columns of her paper; they filled themselves. All he had was miscegenation; and then what?

Blaise had wanted to join Hearst at the Lexington Avenue house, but Hapgood suggested that they get a sense of the crowd first. “After all, if the Chief”-although he worked for Blaise now, the Chief was still the Chief-“is going to be the candidate in ’04, we’ll get some sense of it now, from the crowd.”

“A lot of Bowery.” Blaise knew his Manhattan crowds. “Also Tammany.” Everyone was in a gala mood. Huge transparencies celebrated Hearst’s victory of fifteen thousand eight hundred votes over his dim Republican adversary; and his lead over the entire ticket by thirty-five hundred votes, which made him the largest Democratic vote-getter in the state. Tammany’s governor-to-be was not-to-be: in a close race, he had lost to the Republicans. This then was the night that Hearst had dreamed of. He had won his first election in the biggest possible way.

Blaise and Hapgood found themselves not far from a band which kept playing, rather tactlessly, “California, Here I Come,” a tribute to Hearst’s origin rather than to his adopted domicile, which was now dispatching him to Washington. Overhead a manned balloon was lit up with colored lanterns. The crowd was festive, as well they should be; free schooners of beer were being served at one end of the square beneath the legend “William Randolph Hearst, Labor’s Friend,” while nearby an electrical sign proclaimed, “Congress Must Control the Trusts,” a not-so-subtle reminder that the current president was less than arduous in his efforts to master the country’s owners.

Hearst’s socialism-if that was what it was-always bemused Blaise, who never ceased, for a moment, to be loyal to his own class and could not conceive any other loyalty. Although Hearst would have to pose as a friend of the working-man and the enemy of the rich if he wanted to replace William Jennings Bryan as the plain people’s tribune, he was not entirely the demagogue others thought him. The rich Mr. Hearst, who had inherited his money, disliked those other rich men, who had inherited theirs. He was genuinely attuned not so much to the hard-working worthy poor as he was to those excluded from society itself. Himself a sort of outlaw, he not only lived outside the law but used law to flout law. Hearst might yet strike that nerve in a still-savage land which would make him its natural leader. Blaise was, suddenly, aware that he was present at an historic moment, the genesis of what might be an astonishing, even Napoleonic career.

As if to emphasize and punctuate the Napoleonic image, Madison Square exploded-literally exploded. Blaise fell to his knees on the pavement, while Hapgood sat down beside him with a crash. Sound-waves buffeted them like Montauk surf. The band stopped playing. Then the screaming began; and the sound of ambulances. Overhead the balloon hovered; then began its descent. The electrical sign still threatened the trusts, but the various transparencies had been abandoned, as people ran, in panic, from the square, where something, Blaise could not tell what, had blown up.

“Anarchists!” Hapgood was now on his feet, ever the reporter, the Hearst reporter.

In the cool autumn air there was the acrid scent of-what?-gunpowder, Blaise decided, as he and Hapgood, like brave soldiers in a battle, hurried against the fleeing crowd. Let others run from battle; they would go to war.

The fire department arrived just as Blaise and Hapgood found the source of the explosion, a small cast-iron mortar inside of which a fireworks bomb had gone off, igniting dozens of other bombs. The principal damage had been to the windows of a building nearby. The glass had been pulverized, and like so many icy lethal bullets had laid low dozens of men, women and children. Some stood, screaming, faces bleeding; others lay ominously still on the pavement. Blaise stared down at a man, spread-eagled face down; in the back of his neck there was a diamond-shaped piece of glass which must have severed the spine. To Blaise’s amazement there was no blood, only the glass, shining in the lamplight, and the dark slit, rather like a letterbox into which someone had tried to insert a glass message.

“How many dead, wounded?” Blaise was delighted by his own coolness; and realized what a truly easy time of it Roosevelt must have had at San Juan Hill. Everything so fast, so shocking, so pointless.

“At least a hundred, I’d say.” Hapgood’s notebook was out; and he was writing and looking simultaneously; then police and firemen made them move on.

Hearst was seated at his Napoleonic desk; he had forgone, no doubt forever, the bright plaids and festive ties of his Prince Hal days. Now he was in a statesman’s black frock-coat, with a black bow tie and a white shirt. The legs once so haphazardly arranged upon the desk were set, side by side, beneath it, as he talked into the telephone to Brisbane at the Journal office. George Thompson, now elephantine in appearance, had warned Blaise that the Chief was “handling the misadventure in Madison Square.”

Blaise sat on the sofa opposite, as he had so often before in his days as apprentice. The Willson girls, each in a glittering ball gown, were at the opposite end of the museum-like room, playing Parcheesi. Somewhere, a supper party was being laid on to celebrate the victory of the rising political star. But for now, Hearst listened, murmured questions, shut his eyes as if better to visualize not the explosion in the square but the headlines that would describe it. Finally, he put down the receiver.

“I was there,” said Blaise.

With professional skill, Hearst questioned Blaise; took notes; ignored the chatter of the Willson girls. “There will be lawsuits,” he said finally, “even though the district attorney’s prepared to exonerate us. Well, it’s done. The important thing is to keep Roosevelt on the run. He’s been an ass over the coal-miners. You see, he’s the worker’s enemy.”

“Yes,” said Blaise. It was odd to hear the Chief express political opinions. As a rule, he was indifferent to the rights and wrongs of any issue. All that mattered was how to play the news. Now he himself meant to be the news. Blaise wondered if Hearst understood the risk that he was running. He who had devoted a lifetime to making lurid fictions of others was now himself a candidate for re-creation. Blaise was not certain what a petard was but he understood about self-hoisting. Meanwhile, he congratulated the newest star in the political firmament.

Hearst was matter-of-fact. “I should’ve gone for the governorship. But there wasn’t the time, and 1904’s almost here, and we’ve got nobody to put up against Roosevelt. I’ve got Los Angeles.”

“Los Angeles?”

“A paper there. The Examiner, I’m calling it. Then Boston’s next.”

“What about Baltimore?”

“I’ll need some organizing there, Blaise. Maybe you could see to it.” Hearst swung back and forth between newspapers and politics as if the two were the same, which perhaps they were to him at the moment, and if they were, Blaise saw trouble ahead. One could not be both inventor of the American world and the thing invented.

George Thompson was at the door, round face more than usually flushed with late-night celebrating. “The gentleman you are expecting, sir,” was the cryptic announcement.

Hearst leapt to his feet; as did Blaise. The Willson girls continued to play Parcheesi. The doorway now framed the unmistakable statesmanlike figure, in black alpaca frock-coat and string tie, of William Jennings Bryan.

“Colonel Bryan!” Hearst presented five fingers to the Great Commoner, as Bryan was known to the inventive press; and the Great Commoner squeezed the fingers in his experienced grasp, and smiled his thin wide smile. Blaise had never seen the idol of the masses at such close quarters; was surprised to find him as impressive close up as he was in the illuminated distance of an auditorium, the voice surging from that barrel chest like a force of nature uncontrolled by mere man, much less by Bryan himself.

“You have won the first of many victories.” Bryan’s speaking voice was agreeably low, not at all like the thunder of the hustings. “I, too, started with an election to the House of Representatives,” he added, as if, thought Blaise, this was necessarily a recommendation. After all, he had been beaten for every office since.

Hearst introduced Colonel Bryan to the Misses Willson as “my fiancée and her sister.” The Great Commoner maintained his Old Testament poise. As for Blaise, he complimented him on a recent editorial in the Baltimore Examiner, convincing Blaise that Bryan intended to be a third-time candidate for president in 1904, unless the Chief could bring him up short. “We are all three publishers,” observed Bryan, sitting in a golden throne, covered with Napoleonic bees, an original, Hearst always said, “the property of the Emperor himself,” unaware that every railroad hotel in France had a similar set of chairs. Bryan removed from his pocket several copies of his newspaper, the Commoner, published from his home town of Lincoln, Nebraska. “For your amusement, gentlemen.”

Hearst riffled the pages professionally; shook his head sadly. “I see, Colonel, you don’t follow my advice.”

“Well, Mr. Hearst, I aim at a quieter public than yours.” Bryan was benign. He even smiled, vaguely, at the Willson girls, who ignored him. Blaise found it hard to believe that this simple farmer-like man could have so seized the nation’s imagination. Was it all art-or artifice? Could oratory alone create such passionate fervor, and such enduring antipathy? For at least a third of the nation, Bryan could do no wrong, ever; and if the inventors of the American world, through the press, had not so successfully cast him as a villain, a socialist, anarchist, leveller, he would now be the country’s president, and even more popular than the sly Roosevelt, for Bryan’s popularity was just that-populist, based on the plain people at large, whose voice he was.

Bryan spoke knowledgeably-and not optimistically-of the election. “Usually, the party that’s out picks up congressional seats. But Roosevelt’s life is singularly charmed. We hold our own, and no more, which is why your election is deeply meaningful.”

Hearst nodded his agreement. Blaise wondered if the Chief would make the mistake of thinking himself not only cleverer but more popular than Bryan. The Chief was sufficiently unused to the ways of the world to be overwhelmed by an election that had been entirely arranged for by Tammany. Blaise feared that the Chief, who could be surprisingly innocent, might mistake his large vote for personal popularity of the sort which Bryan generated in such quantities that only great money, shrewdly spent by Hanna, had kept him from the presidency. “I am honored, naturally,” said’ Hearst, slowly, as if speaking to a slow-witted journalist, “by the confidence that the people-the poor people-of the Eleventh District have shown in me, and I will do my best to fight labor’s battle against labor’s sworn enemy Theodore Roosevelt.”

During this, Blaise watched Bryan’s face. Politicians, like priests, do not enjoy the exalted visions of laymen. Bryan’s square jaw and thin mouth were a study in parallel and vertical lines at precise right angles. No wonder he was so easy to caricature. “I’m sure you’ll do very well in Washington.” Bryan’s eyes shifted for an instant to the dazzling Willson girls; then, guiltily, he blinked his eyes. “If I may advise,” he began humbly, “we have yet another rich line of attack against our would-be emperor, and that is the empire itself.”

As Hearst generally supported America’s imperial presence in the Philippines, he did not quite rise to Bryan’s bait. “I think Mr. Taft has the Philippines under control…”

“No, Mr. Hearst. I’m not referring to crimes that we have already committed. I mean the one that Theodore is dreaming of. He glories in war, which I hate. Hate!” There was a rumble, like approaching thunder, in the room. The Willson girls abandoned their Parcheesi, to stare at the great-what else?-star, who seemed ready to perform. They might not care for politics, but there was nothing that they did not know about show-business, to which, all in all, Bryan, the spellbinder of the Chautauqua circuit, belonged, too. “I hate the love of war he demonstrates every time he speaks.” Bryan, aware that he had got the attention of the two girls, the equivalent now to at least two states of the union, grasped his lapels in a familiar gesture. “At West Point, he told the cadets, ‘A good soldier must not only be willing to fight, he must be anxious to fight.’ So much for Scripture, and the words of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” The voice’s famous lute-song filled the room, as did Arthur Brisbane, and a half-dozen Hearst employees, who entered, unannounced by George. “They estimate more than a hundred are dead!” Brisbane was excited; he became even more excited when he recognized the Great Commoner in the Napoleonic throne. “I’m sorry, W.R. I didn’t know…”

“That’s all right. Colonel Bryan and I are, as always, as one. We complement each other.” Blaise knew that the Chief had never worked out the differences between “compliment” and “complement”; fortunately, he did not have to.

“Would you join us, Mr. Brisbane?” This was the Chief’s polite way of telling everyone else to go, including the Willson sisters, who continued to stare at the great actor, who smiled gravely at them, as they passed him in a glitter of gold thread, a cloud of heavy perfume.

Brisbane sat opposite Bryan; he was no enthusiast of Bryan for the simple reason that no man in history had ever been great without blue eyes. When Blaise had mentioned Julius Caesar, Brisbane had replied that the written evidence was not clear; also, what evidence there was about Caesar’s life indicated sexual irregularity of the sort that would preclude greatness. Blaise thought that the conquest of the world might weigh something in the balance, but Brisbane was an American moralist, and there was no arguing with him.

“Colonel Bryan is here,” said Hearst, grasping his own lapels in imitation of Bryan, “to discuss his European tour.”

Brisbane nodded. “I’ve made all the travel arrangements, sir. You will leave in two weeks’ time; the terms are-as agreed.”

“They were, when last we corresponded, agreeable. I am, after all, just a country newspaper editor.” Blaise was both surprised and impressed. Somehow, Hearst had managed to put the Great Commoner on his payroll. Obviously, the Chief would do anything to secure the nomination in 1904, and why not? If the party’s leadership could be bought, he would pay the price. He had made, as it were, a first down payment by signing up William Jennings Bryan to tour Europe and write a series of articles for the Hearst press, now six newspapers, soon to be eight. There was something Napoleonic in the way the Chief went about his conquest of the Democratic Party; and the republic for which it hardly stood.

Brisbane spoke of details. Hearst gazed at the ceiling. Bryan seemed more than ever a monument to the common man. “I’m sending one of our best writers with you. His name is Michelson, and he’ll do the actual writing. Naturally, you’ll decide what you want to cover, of course.”

“Of course. I want to meet Tolstoi, the Russian count.” Bryan was unexpected. “From what I read of him, we have a lot in common. Fact, I am said to have had a great influence on his own speeches-books, I mean. Also, Russia is important for us, very important, and it seems that he speaks for their common man as I speak for ours.”

“I hadn’t realized,” said Brisbane, plainly startled, “that you were a reader of Count Tolstoi’s books.”

“No, I can’t say I’ve ever read one of them. But I’ve read a whole lot about him, in the magazines mostly, as he has read about me. We’ll get on like two houses afire.” Bryan rose, as a monument must rise, thought Blaise. The other three men did, too; and bowed low to the embodiment of the people. There was something formidable about the man’s gravity and serene confidence. “I look forward to the food,” he said, as he and Hearst parted at the door. “You know, I have spent most of my life at railroad counters, eating on the run, between speaking engagements. I think it was one of your reporters who wrote that Colonel Bryan has probably eaten more hamburgers than any other American.”

At this, even Hearst remembered to laugh. Then Bryan was gone.

“He’s washed up,” said Brisbane.

“But will he support me, like I supported him both times?” Hearst was fidgety; could not sit down.

“Why not? There’s no one else on the scene.”

“He’ll want it for himself, again,” said Blaise, who now understood as well as anyone the nature of the American political animal.

Hearst nodded gloomily, and said, “Which means if he can’t get it, he’ll make it impossible for me-or anyone else-to win.”

“We’re going to be sued by a lot of people.” Brisbane’s mind was on Madison Square.

“Let them try.” Hearst was indifferent. “Act of God, the law calls it.”

“Act of Hearst, Mr. Pulitzer will call it,” said Blaise.

“Same thing,” Brisbane chortled.

Hearst simply stared at both of them, hands gripping his lapels as if he could, thus, summon forth Bryan’s eloquence. This time, Blaise noted, he forgot to laugh. “Bryan’s only forty-two,” said Hearst. “Roosevelt’s forty-three. I’ll be forty in April. I’m pretty far behind. I’m taking Elihu Root’s house in Lafayette Park, right down from the White House.”

“Then you’ll only have to move across the street two years from now.” Brisbane seemed, truly, to believe in the inevitability of Hearst. Blaise did not. He saw the Chief as someone rather greater than a mere president, who did things that were news only if Hearst himself were to decide whether or not those acts were to be recorded, or reinvented, or ignored. Hearst was something new and strange and potent; and Blaise gave Caroline full credit for having perceived this novelty before anyone else that he knew. Now Hearst, the creator, was trying to create himself. It was as if a mirror, instead of reflecting an image, were to project one out of itself. Hearst could alter, in any fashion, what was there, but what was there must first be there before he could perform his curious magic. Could a distorting glass reflect itself when nothing at all was placed before it? Was Hearst real? That was the question. Blaise was glad that he would be living in Washington during Hearst’s term as congressman.

3

MRS. JAMES BURDEN DAY (“You may call me kitty, Miss Sanford”) was at home on Easter day, and Caroline, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Trimble, helped fill her home in Mintwood Place, on a bluff just off Connecticut Avenue, with a wild, even primordial, view of Rock Creek Park, abloom with white and pink dogwood and flowering Judas.

“We should get to know the Democrats,” said Caroline to Mr. Trimble, who was himself a Bryan man, and found it difficult to follow Caroline’s circumspect line in regard to Roosevelt. The Tribune was intended to be read by everyone, and this meant that true political controversy, of the sort that Mr. Trimble affected to like, was not possible in a city dominated by the Roosevelt family with its ever-increasing royal style of entertaining. The novelty of a patrician in the White House had quite undone not only Washington’s old guard, so used to looking down on White House occupants, but the diplomatic corps, traditionally condescending when it came to the social arrangements of what was still thought to be a rustic republican capital, set in the Maryland woods. Since Caroline was popular with the Roosevelts, she was careful not to do anything that might jeopardize her useful, for the Tribune, entree. Of all the Roosevelts, she was most charmed by the serene Edith, who managed the Roosevelt circus with what looked to be no effort at all.

The plump, noisy, small President, in his passion to be thought sinewy, eloquent and tall, had taken to vigorous exercise in the White House, where wrestlers and acrobats were always welcome, and he would join in their gymnastics, with such gusto that a medicine ball, stopped by his red perspiring face, had nearly knocked out one of his eyes. Although this had been kept secret from the press, Caroline had discovered from Alice what had happened; from other sources, she had later discovered that the President was blind in one eye. But the public knew nothing of this; and he continued his strenuous life, riding horses at full speed along Rock Creek’s dangerously steep trails and bridle-paths, shouting at those in his path, “Stand aside! I am the President!”

Between court life and the rarefied world of the Hay-Adams house, Caroline was far removed, as Trimble accused, from those readers who were plain folk, and followers of Bryan. “But the Post is the Democratic paper. Why shouldn’t we be the Republican?” Caroline had thought Mr. Trimble unreasonable; but, of course, he was right in the sense that a newspaper that existed largely to entertain need not ally itself so exclusively with one faction. To please him, she had taken advantage of Mrs. Day’s invitation.

The Days lived in one of a row of similar houses, with steep porches, Gothic windows, and a roof that sprouted unexpected crenellations. The overall effect was of a fortress built to dominate Rock Creek.

Kitty sat behind her silver teapot, her silver coffeepot, and her regiment of cups. With the help of what looked to be an elder sister, she poured and greeted, and spoke of the weather. Caroline recognized a number of Democratic legislators, by face if not by name. Only the minority leader of the House, John Sharp Williams of Mississippi, was known to her from dinner-parties. A sardonic, dishevelled man, never entirely sober, he was feared for his wit. He collected her by, simply, putting his arm through hers, most indecorously, and guiding her toward the dining room, where a lonely decanter of whiskey had been placed, for his use. “I’m Jim Day’s boss, you know. He’s got to look after me.” While Williams poured himself whiskey, Caroline noted the nice pattern that a number of dark tea leaves made at the bottom of her cup, escapees from Kitty’s coarse strainer. “I didn’t know you knew Kitty, Miss Sanford.”

“I don’t. I know her husband.” Caroline paused; then added, “Slightly, when he was at the comptroller’s office.”

“He’ll go far, with Kitty’s father behind him.”

“The Judge?”

“The Judge. Oh, he’s a powerhouse, that man. He’s only got the one leg, you know. He got Jim the election.”

“Is that why Mr. Day married the Judge’s daughter?” Caroline softened the bluntness of the question with what she hoped was a deprecatory laugh. “I am a working journalist, Congressman.”

“Didn’t know the Tribune went in for that kind of story.” Williams’s round red face became solemn, a look that Caroline had come to know: the politician who has said to the press more than he intended to say, and fears the result.

“We don’t. My ‘Society Lady’ might hint around if I let her. But I won’t. Marriage is sacred to us.”

“Spoken like a true guardian of the morals of this republic, which you are, Miss. I make no bones about that.” Williams looked about the room. “Why, there’s the Speaker.”

“Mr. Cannon?” Caroline looked about her, eager to see this august personage. But Williams was mistaken. Someone who bore a slight resemblance to the Speaker had entered the parlor. Caroline recognized the man, a Washington realtor whose specialty was getting members of Congress “settled.” “It’s not Mr. Cannon.” Williams seemed relieved. “But then, most everybody’s headed back home by now. I’m surprised so many of us are still lingering on…”

“Potomac fever?”

“That’s for when you’re defeated. Then you can’t leave the town, ever. But we still come and go, and the more we go-home, that is-the longer we can stay around here.”

“I can’t wait until you all come back in November.”

“That’s kind of you, Miss Sanford.” Williams beamed at her, and for an instant, Caroline felt a hand lightly brush against her hip. At least, she had been spared a pinch of the sort certain notorious senators were known to bestow on ladies whose contours pleased them, often leaving blue-black badges on delicate flesh.

“I was not thinking of Congress in general,” said Caroline, deftly sliding a dining-room chair between them, “but the arrival of William Randolph Hearst.”

Williams scowled. “He’s already sent me his first orders. He wants to be on the Ways and Means Committee and on Labor.”

“You have obliged him?”

“In hell, yes. That’s where he’ll get those committees, not from me. You know, that fool is getting himself up to run for president. He takes the cake, that one.”

“Surely, he’s not the first fool to do that, or,” Caroline added, aware that Day was approaching her, “the first fool to be elected, if he is, of course.”

Williams laughed a loud whiskey laugh. “That’s pretty funny, Miss Sanford. Yes. There have been fools galore in the White House, and there are times when I think we have a precious one there right now, with all that ‘Bully!’ nonsense, and double-dealing… Jim, I never knew you aspired to the higher social circles.”

Day smiled, at Caroline; shook her hand. “We’re old friends, or so I like to think. I knew young Mr. Hay,” he said to Williams, who looked appropriately grave.

“Struck down, as if by lightning, in his prime,” intoned John Sharp Williams; then, whiskey in hand, he left host with guest.

“We’ve not done so well,” observed Day, neutrally, an angel food cake between them from which one large slice had been taken. Ladies hovered at the table’s other end, eating small pink shiny cakes, balancing teacups, gossiping.

“You mean the election?”

“That’s all we ever mean here.” He looked at her; the eyes were what the Society Lady had lately taken to referring to as “candid blue.” Lately, Caroline had rather hoped to encounter a pair of duplicitous blue eyes, which she could confound the Society Lady with. Meanwhile, the Society Lady herself, hugely incarnate, was working her way, methodically, through a plate of ladyfingers: it was her method to begin with the “fingernail,” a glossy blanched almond, and then, in two bites, to finish off the finger, and mourn the unbaked hand that she could not bite though it fed her, thought Caroline, rather wildly, head aswim with metaphors involving food, and all because the young man, towering beside her, was attractive, and made her think of-food. Was there a connection? Would she turn praying mantis, and devour him, as if he were angel food cake, or would she surrender to him, as all the romances-and the insistent Marguerite-required, her flesh mere cake to his sweet tooth? Perhaps, she decided, tiring of food metaphors, neither would devour the other; instead, they would resemble naked statuary in the gardens of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc, where, marble arms entwined, they would strike poses, in the rain-yes, she saw them both shining and wet in a heavy summer rain, a male and a female statue, side by side-no, stomach to stomach, Venus and Mars, dripping rainwater, face to face. On the back of the hand that held the teacup, she saw a pattern of sand-colored hairs and tried to picture the statue Mars entirely covered with interesting patterns of hair; but then the rain slicked down the hairs like a wet dog’s; yes, the hairy male most resembled a dog when he was not cake or marble but warm alien flesh, wet. Caroline was not certain that she would entirely enjoy the man’s real body, even if it were placed on offer, which he showed, newly married as he was, no sign of wanting to do.

“Every day on my way to the Capitol, I watch your brother Blaise’s house going up. It’s going to be about the same size as the Capitol, I’d say.”

“I can’t think what he wants a house here for.” Caroline’s victory in Washington was by means so total that she could bear fraternal competition. After all, Blaise still controlled the Sanford fortune; and Washington was for sale even to the lowest, or only, bidder. Once Blaise had taken a wife, she would be the Mrs. Sanford, and Miss Sanford, the spinster sister, publisher though she was, would fade. Who then would come to the small house in Georgetown when there was a marble palace in Connecticut Avenue, with a court always in session? She must marry. She must build a house. She must take to bed James Burden Day. “Of course, he wants to buy the Post, but Mr. Wilkins will never sell.”

“A good thing. We need one Democratic paper here.” Caroline noticed that the pattern of light hairs on the hand vanished at the wrist and then spread out on that part of the forearm that was just visible beneath his loose cuff. Marguerite had already warned her that if her virginity were to be kept for one more season, she would, simply, dry up. Significantly, Kitty entered the room, bearing a plate of small cakes, each adorned, most ominously, with a glazed bit of preserved fruit. “No, no.” She moved the plate away from her, mildly sickened. “No, thank you,” she added graciously, aware that she had been too vehement. “So delicious, your-angel food cake.”

Kitty looked suspiciously at the great gap in the cake, and Caroline realized that Kitty now thought that she had eaten it all herself, a devouring woman, no doubt of that. “Banked fires give off the most heat” was one of Marguerite’s folkloric observations, as she observed, with disapproving eyes, her virginal and, at twenty-five, aged mistress.

“Mr. Williams says that President Cleveland will run again, for a third time.” Unlike most Washington wives, Kitty was herself a politician, trained by her father.

“I should think that he’ll think twice, and stay home in Princeton.” Day was staring at Caroline’s chin. Was it dusted, lightly, with sugar from one of Kitty’s confections? “I’m sure Bryan can have it again. I’m for him. We’re all for him where I come from.”

“I’ve never seen a man eat so much,” said Kitty; and she left them. How, Caroline wondered, had food become the prosaic leitmotif for the-with relief, she shifted to music as compelling metaphor-Liebestod so soon to sound between them? She stared not at cake but at the lean face bent down toward hers; the lips curved upwards at the corners like a Praxiteles faun. But marble fauns were not patterned with coppery hairs, and she was not quite certain how she would respond to love’s unveiling. The theory of a man’s body and the fact of it must be as unlike as the theory of American government with all its airy platitudes and the sleazy, disagreeable, democratic practice. But whatever the surprises in store for her, he was not fat, like Del.

Faun-lips shaped for love now spoke, softly, of the recent coal strike. “You know, the country was close to shutting down before the election. There was real panic back home, let me tell you! There was winter coming and no coal. We should have taken the lead, but Roosevelt got to the owners and the miners first. He’s on the owners’ side, of course. But he made them give up a few pennies, which was easy for them to do if the miners would agree to a ten-hour day, which they had to. Oh, we’ll have our showdown one of these days…”

“The Democrats and the Republicans?”

“No. The owners of the country and the people who actually do the work.”

“Surely, the owners work, too. Overtime, in fact.”

Day grinned; the teeth were white, but one of the front teeth had a curious crack in it like-again, marble; no, alabaster. But since the effect was more Mars than faun, Caroline now willed herself to be the mate of Mars, Venus. Perhaps, miraculously, her breasts would double in size between now and the union of war and love. Marguerite had proposed exercises; and plenty of cream-to be drunk. But the exercises were boring, and the cream sickening; and the breasts remained more Diana, chaste goddess of the hunt, than Venus. Caroline began to chatter nervously. “How close it was last fall, to our having Mr. Hay for president…”

“Poor old man…”

“Oh, not too old, though much frailer since Del died.” Mistake to mention Del; must not pause for condolent phrases. “Anyway, he was most excited when word came from Pittsfield that a trolley-car had run into the President’s carriage, and the Secret Service man was killed, and Mr. Roosevelt was sent sailing through the air like… like a huge doughnut,” food yet again, and inappropriate at that, “and of course no one knew just how seriously hurt he was…”

“… is. They say his brain’s addled.”

“No more than usual. I saw a good deal of him at Jackson Place, where he had to move after they started tearing up the White House. He had-has-an abscess of the leg, the bone. But that’s all. He’s still full of energy, and Mr. Hay did not become president.”

“Worse luck. I ride on Sundays.” The faun lips at last shaped expected phrases. “Along the canal. To Chain Bridge. After Sunday dinner…”

Caroline stopped any further reference to food, forever, between them. “I’ll join you,” she said.

As it turned out, he-not she-said, “I’ve never done this before.” They lay side by side, entirely nude, not the modest way to couple in the United States, if the Tribune’s Ladies’ Page was to be trusted, or interpreted correctly, for all was euphemism when it came to matters so intimate.

“Surely, you and Kitty have at least tried to do what we’ve managed to do.” Caroline’s virginal fear of the male body had, at first, been confirmed by so much overpowering muscle, hair, size. The scale was much too heroic for a mere woman. She felt not like a doll, which might have had its enchanting helpless side, but like a midget, which was definitely unattractive. The yards of male sinew beside her seemed the god-like norm and her own white slender body so like-like a rib torn out of him. Perhaps the biblical story did contain a kind of truth. Happily, he was as fascinated by her as she was by him, and he kept caressing her, as if not certain that she was indeed real. She, on the other hand, was more chary of touching him; fearful of explosions that might be set off if she were to explore too closely the brown-rose surfaces of that huge, mysteriously animated body.

“No. I meant that I haven’t been with anyone since we…” The voice trailed off.

“Well, I have been with no one at all.” She broke the news, as his hand strayed toward her groin. The hand froze where it was; she thought of the petrified citizenry of Pompeii, each last act caught and preserved in lava. Druscilla, virgin, with Marius, gladiator: in her end was her beginning.

“I’m the first?” He stared at her with unattractive amazement.

“Surely, it’s no martyrdom for you. One has to begin sometime, with someone…”

“But if I’m the first,” he repeated, eyes most unattractively fixed upon the source of all life, which Henry Adams never ceased, euphemistically, to celebrate.

“Why is there no blood?” Marguerite had explained all this to her; and she explained to him, with growing irritability, her years as a youthful equestrienne with its eventual reward not of trophies won but of hymen ruptured.

“I’ve never heard of that,” he said.

Although Caroline had not expected romance, neither had she expected so clinical a discussion after what had been, nearly, ecstasy. Firmly, she placed one hand over the faun-like mouth; with the other, she began experiments of her own, of an hydraulic nature; plainly, ecstasy was going to take a good deal of patience, not to mention hard manual work.

The second time was better than the first, and Caroline saw definite possibilities in the famous act. She was critical, however, of the Great Artificer who had designed both men and women with too little attention to detail, and too much left to chance. Nothing was quite angled right. Junctions, though possible, involved acrobatics of an undignified nature. Only childbirth, which she had witnessed, was less dignified, and, of course, exquisitely painful. Fortunately, there was no pain in all their maneuverings upon the bed; while pleasure, when it arrived, was sharp and unexpected and quite obliterated the sense of self, an unanticipated gift of Eros. Obviously, the Great Artificer intended that each be a conduit for the other, as well as for the race itself, which He had so haphazardly designed to go on and on, doing what they were doing in order to achieve pleasure, the small reward that the Artificer had thrown in, as they, doggedly, fulfilled what was the only perceivable purpose of the exercise: more, ever more, of the same until earth chilled or caught fire, and no one was left to couple.

Later, Jim, as she now called him, lolled contentedly in the tub, while Caroline followed Marguerite’s instructions with an elaborate douching in a Lowestoft china basin, involving a cold tisane guaranteed to discourage any little stranger from assembling itself in her no longer virginal loins.

Aware that Jim was watching her perhaps too expert handling of herself, she said, “Marguerite has given me full instructions. She’s also a midwife, though I pray we won’t ever need her for that.”

“Frenchwomen know an awful lot, don’t they?”

“Some know more awful things than others. But when it comes to the basic things, yes, they know a lot, and they tell one another, mother to daughter, for generations.”

“Americans never talk about-those things.”

“That is why newspapers are so necessary. We give people something to talk about. Politics, too,” she added, remembering her manners. Now, as she put on a silk peignoir, she wondered if she was going to be in love. She rather doubted it. After all, she lacked the first requisite: she was without jealousy, she had noted, watching him get into the tub. Kitty got to see this homely but also exciting spectacle every day while she could only attend the miracle play on Sundays; yet she did not envy Kitty. To have a man always with you, even one as well-proportioned and charming as Jim, was not a dream that she had ever wanted to come true. She had been a bachelor too long. Of course, she had ceased to be a virgin only an hour earlier, and who knew what fires hitherto banked-why did sex require so many similes, metaphors?-might flare up out of control, and devour her with lust, for that particular body, and no other? Je suis la fille de Minos, et de Pasiphaë, she murmured, and thought it curious that the great celebrators of woman’s lust had been men like Racine and Corneille. Nothing much was left of burning Sappho’s celebrations, while the other ladies who had written on the subject were careful not to give away the game, if indeed there was a game to be given away. Perhaps the whole thing was an invention of idle poets-of men with nothing better to do, unlike women, who had to bear and raise children and keep house, and rapidly lose their charms, leaving idle men free to invent love. But then Caroline thought of the various women that she had known who had been in love, and as she recalled their sufferings, she decided that they could not all have been acting. There had been pain or at least chagrin d’amour, which was probably worse. She wondered if she would ever suffer so much for any man, or woman-she must be honest with herself, as a pupil of Mlle. Souvestre. She doubted it; she was too used to being just herself, watchful, engrossed by others, amused by vanity, and was not jealousy simply vanity writ large? Yet when she saw Jim, fully clothed, the beautiful body that she was beginning to learn how to work for her own pleasure now covered up, she did feel a mild pang that she could not start all over again, and unveil the godhead, as she had come to think of that absurd-looking but entirely necessary organ. She would have to wait-impatiently?-until next Sunday.

The faun-lips were surprisingly soft, while the surrounding skin was scratchy, a nice contrast. He smelled of cedar, and the horse that he had been riding. “You and Kitty must come here to dinner,” said Caroline, leading him to her bedroom door.

Jim looked amazed. “Both of us?”

“Well, it is usual to invite married couples together, or so my Society Lady instructs us.”

“You’d like Kitty here?”

“Very much. We have,” Caroline smiled, “so much in common.”

“I guess you do at that.” He could be as cool as she, and that would make their relationship all the easier, she decided; and smiled, when she heard the front door slam. As it did, Marguerite, arthritis forgotten, hurtled into the room like a witch on the devil’s breath; and embraced Caroline, weeping loudly, shouting her congratulations, mixed with cautionary do’s and don’t’s and did she remember? and how was it, it, it?

“I have come through, Marguerite.” Caroline spoke to her in French; and felt a bit like Joan of Arc at the crowning of the Dauphin. “I am a saint-I mean a woman, at last.”

“Praise God!” Marguerite positively howled.