Empire

1

BLAISE STARED A MOMENT at the door to the house in Lafayette Square, exactly opposite the White House. All in all, he decided, it was a tribute to the energy and colorfulness of Theodore Roosevelt that this less than splendid house, formerly rented by Elihu Root, was now occupied by Representative William Randolph Hearst. Plainly, it was Roosevelt’s powerful magnetism that drew to sleepy backward Washington Hearst and himself, not to. mention the likes of Elihu Root, now gone back to New York to practice law, his place as secretary of war more than amply filled by that human mastodon William Howard Taft, the President’s most trusted adviser on the Philippines, where he had reigned in vice-regal splendor during the… whatever it was: no one had yet come up with the right word for the violent resistance of so many Filipinos to Yankee rule. As of February 1, 1904, a week ago, Taft had become secretary of war, complaining bitterly to everyone that he would not be able to live on his salary; yet while every officeholder made the same complaint, everyone accepted office and, somehow, got by, thought Blaise, cynically.

The familiar corpulent George opened the door, just as if they were still in a real city instead of this curious Southern village. “Mr. Blaise, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” Over the years, George had come to regard Blaise as the Chief’s young brother, or even son, a role Blaise had never once had any desire to play. But play-act both men must, the omnipotent Hearst, publisher now of eight papers (Boston had surrendered), and the wealthy Blaise, who had still to make his mark at anything, particularly since yesterday’s disastrous fire had destroyed his Baltimore printing press. Although Hapgood had made arrangements with a new press, the Examiner would not appear for several weeks.

Hearst sat, enthroned, in the wood-panelled study, listening to a small and-to Blaise-perfectly appalling Georgian named Thomas E. Watson, who had served a term in the House, as member of the Farmers’ Alliance; been vice-presidential candidate of the Populist Party; might now be the Populist candidate for president in 1904. Currently, Hearst was desperately wooing him to support the Democratic Party-and Hearst, who was weak in the Godly South, thanks to the aura of scandal about his name; yet, practically speaking, Hearst was the closest thing, politically, to a socialist or Populist among the national possibilities. Certainly, he appealed to Watson; but then Watson appealed to Watson even more.

Jim Day was seated on a sofa facing Hearst; he greeted Blaise with a smile; and continued to listen to the tiny fiery Watson, who stood at the room’s center, declaiming. Blaise’s entrance was made little of. Hearst waved him to a chair. Watson ignored him as a preacher would a late-comer to a revival meeting.

“I dedicated my book on Thomas Jefferson to you, Mr. Hearst, because I see you as Jefferson’s heir, politically, that is.”

“Lucky for me.” Lately, Hearst had begun, tentatively, to tell jokes. “He didn’t leave a cent when he died.”

“That’s to his eternal credit.” Watson’s blue eyes flashed, unamused. “I’m writing biographies of my-and your-heroes, Jackson and Napoleon, and I’ll dedicate them all to you if you continue to fight the good fight for the people, just as they did, against the trusts, the Jew bankers, the idolatrous papists, and all the rest of the foreign element that keeps down our people, the original people of this republic.” There was more in this vein. Hearst listened patiently. At the Democratic Convention in July, Watson could swing the Southern delegates to Hearst, and the nomination; at election time, Watson was worth five million votes to the nominee. But would Watson himself be a Democrat in July? or would he be the candidate of the Populists? Blaise did not envy the Chief. From what Blaise could tell of the American people-glimpsed, admittedly somewhat askew, through their tribunes-they tended to sectarian madness. Religion ran like poison through their veins, followed by-or mingled with-racism of a sort undreamed of in wicked old Europe. There was always a “they” at whom a pejorative verb could be launched, automatically transitiving “they” to the ominous all-evil “them” who must be destroyed so that Eden could be regained. Blaise would rather be a humble worker in his father’s encaustic-tile plant at Lowell, Massachusetts, than president of so strenuously mad a country as the United States. He could not fathom it; did not want to; marvelled that Caroline had got the range of the place, and all without in any way becoming one of-yes, them.

Watson spoke for another half-hour; then, with a peroration on the absolute necessity, if the United States were ever to know greatness, of a rural free mail delivery service, he stopped. “Mr. Watson,” Hearst rose; he towered over the tiny orator, “I have admired-even simulated you…”

“Emulated,” Blaise murmured automatically to himself. The Chief was still having his problems with English. “Now I know we can do great things together this summer, fall, forever. But where I need you-really need you-is your working for me. No, that’s wrong, I’d be working for you, for your ideas, if you’d only take over as editor of the New York American. You’re a natural.”

This was exceptionally well done, thought Blaise. The Chief was learning. Watson expressed gratitude for confidence placed; but did not, quite, take the bait. After more compliments exchanged, Watson left. Hearst sighed.

“Hard work,” said Blaise.

“He’s a wonderful orator,” said Jim. “But if you’re not a crowd, he’s pretty tiring.”

“What do you think, Jim?” Hearst turned to Day. Blaise was, suddenly, completely jealous. They were on a first-name basis, something rare for Hearst to be with anyone. Of course, Jim was Hearst’s senior in the House of Representatives; even so, it had taken a year before Hearst had called Blaise by his first name.

“I think Colonel Bryan’s going to try again, and I’ll be with him, as always, and he’ll fail to be nominated, so I guess you’ll be the candidate-or Cleveland, if he’s in a Lazarus mood.”

“Cleveland’s really dead.” Hearst turned to Blaise. “You know, I got on the Labor Committee, over Williams’s dead body.” To Jim: “How do you get a bill passed in the House?”

“First,” said Jim, “you get somebody to write it for you. Then… Well, Congress isn’t at all like a newspaper.”

“I figured that one out. But,” Hearst pointed toward the White House, “that place is. Roosevelt’s just like me, storming around, making news…” Hearst turned to Blaise. “Sorry about the fire. I guess you’ll start up again, won’t you?”

“Next week. There’s a chance that Caroline might sell me the Tribune.” Caroline had been, even for her, unusually intricate on the subject. He knew that she needed money to pay John Apgar Sanford’s debts. On the other hand, if she could hold out for a year, she would have her share of an estate that kept growing, despite the money he was pouring into his Connecticut Avenue Italianate palazzo. Blaise had put Houghteling to work, increasing the pressure on Sanford’s edgy creditors. If a crisis could be provoked…

“I’d love to get my hands on that paper.” Hearst was wistful. “She’s made a go of it. Amazing. A woman.”

“Galling! My own sister.”

“She even understands politics.” Jim made his contribution. “Kitty really likes her,” he added. “Kitty’s the politician in our family,” he added to his addition.

“I want to investigate the coal-railroad monopoly,” Hearst announced, more or less at Jim. “I’ve spent sixty thousand dollars of my own money, investigating how six railroads own eleven coal mines, secretly, and get this cheap coal, and then water their stock and sell it to the public, and the Attorney General, and that noisy fraud across the road, know all about it and they won’t do a thing.”

Blaise rather liked Hearst’s editorial approach to politics. He rooted about for scandal; found it; publicized it. But now instead of just selling newspapers, Hearst might be able, with a scandal of this nature, to destroy the Administration. That was direct power.

“You take this one to the House Judiciary Committee. I’ll show you how to go about it. But I don’t think you’ll be able to smoke out the Attorney General.”

“Wait and see. You know, if I’m nominated, I’m going to give the Democratic National Committee one and a half million dollars for the campaign.”

Jim whistled; then smiled. “Why after you’re nominated? Spread it around before and you will be nominated.” Hearst let that one go; he continued, “The idea is, the party, to raise money, won’t have to go to the railroads, to the trusts, the way they do when the candidate’s a conservative, with his hand out…”

“And only five fingers.” Jim smiled at Blaise, who realized that he had never had a man-friend before, except the son of his now-retired mistress.

“What?” Hearst was baffled.

“A joke. Of ours.” Blaise was delighted by Jim’s “ours.”

“Roosevelt,” declared Hearst, somberly, “has all sorts of luck.”

“Except bad,” noted Jim. “There’s never been anything like him.”

“I hate him, I think.” But Hearst’s thin voice sounded more wistful than passionate. “He calls me McKinley’s murderer.”

“Why don’t you suggest that he hired that anarchist to kill McKinley so that he could become president?” Blaise improvised, for Jim’s amusement.

“We were never able to find a connection,” said Hearst sadly, startling Blaise, who put nothing beyond the Chief, but this seemed to be, even for Hearst, a singularly grotesque caper.

“Well, when in doubt, make something up.” Jim was cheerful.

Blaise recalled, word for word, the latest Henry Adams characterization of William McKinley: “a very supple and highly paid agent of the crudest capitalism.” He decided not to repeat this to Hearst, who had accepted with his usual equanimity the fact that he would never be received at the other side of Lafayette Square.

But Hearst was now discussing the joys of parenthood with James Burden Day. Since Millicent would give birth in two months, she refused to leave New York City for fear that any child born in the District of Columbia would grow up to be a politician. “Or Negro,” said Jim. “Law of averages.”

George announced, “Miss Frederika Bingham,” to Hearst’s surprise. Blaise rose. “I asked her to meet me here. We’re going to look at my new house. She’s got ambition, as a decorator of houses. She’s read Mrs. Wharton’s book.”

Frederika was cool. Hearst was courtly. Jim was friendly; he had met her a number of times. Blaise shook her hand.

“My mother wants to know, Mr. Hearst, why you refuse to come to her congressional at-homes.” Frederika spoke to Hearst but kept her eyes on Blaise, who admired the ease with which she could handle any social situation. In this, she resembled Caroline, no recommendation, of course. Did he hate his sister? envy her? love her? He could never make up his mind. Certainly if he were the publisher of the Tribune, and she a mere society lady, they would probably get on. As it was, the primal emotion was, no doubt, envy.

“I don’t know any congressmen,” said Hearst meekly. “Except Mr. Day and Mr. Williams…”

“The Speaker,” said Jim, “swears he doesn’t know you by sight.”

“So you see, I wouldn’t be at home, would I?”

“All the more reason for coming to our house. Mother will introduce you to the right people. Mr. Sanford, I have only an hour…”

They said their farewells; and got into the Binghams’ chauffeured motor car. “Did you hear about Cissy Patterson?”

Blaise confessed that he did not know who she was; he was told; then: “Last week, after the wedding, the groom didn’t show up at the wedding breakfast in the Patterson house.” The Patterson palace was now directly in front of them as they entered Dupont Circle. “So Cissy was in tears, and a friend of the groom, this Austrian, went looking for him, and found him at the railroad station, buying a ticket for New York. Apparently, he had gone to his bank right after the service, and they had told him that the million dollars that he had been promised hadn’t been deposited.”

“Did he go?”

“He stayed. The check was still being cleared. I don’t think Cissy’s going to be very happy, do you?”

Blaise said no.

“I’d like to be like Caroline. Independent. With something to do.”

“Having children’s quite enough to do.” Blaise was patriarchal; French.

The Connecticut Avenue house was a vast and, to Blaise’s eye, most beautiful rendering in a modern way of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc, which he more and more missed. Neither he nor Caroline had returned, according to their post-Poussin treaty, and he was more than ever homesick while she was less; yet of the two, it was she who had loved the place more, and stayed on and on, while he had turned himself eagerly into a full-time American. Now they had reversed roles.

A caretaker in a heavy overcoat let them in. The interior of the house was even colder than outside. Together they explored the double drawing room, adapted from Saint-Cloud; and the ballroom, copied from a castle of Ludwig of Bavaria. There was even a lift, which Frederika thought a mistake. “The poor Walshes thought they were so clever in putting their ballroom on the top floor. But the elevator could only hold four people at a time, so when the guests all arrive at once, the party takes forever to begin.” She laughed; he found her easy, something that most American girls were not. They tended to take command.

But then, as if to prove that she, too, was American and managerial by nature, Frederika told Blaise exactly how to decorate the various rooms; and he was pleasantly surprised to discover that he did not in the least mind so much advice. As they talked, their mingled breaths like smoke in the icy air, Blaise thought seriously of marriage, not to Frederika, but to someone suitable, someone who would be able to look after the house, not to mention Saint-Cloud-le-Duc. Both Alice Roosevelt and Marguerite Cassini had appealed to him. But the first was far too self-important and the second far too Slavicly sly. Alice Hay had charmed him; but he had not charmed her, and she was now married to a New York Wadsworth. Millicent Smith, the Countess Glenellen, was not without a certain appeal. She had grown up in Washington; gone to school with Caroline; married the Earl Glenellen, from whom she was now separated after what was thought to have been the most exciting fist-fight in the history of the American embassy at London. Lord Glenellen had been knocked unconscious by the fragile Millicent, who later explained to the appalled ambassador that she had cheated, holding in her right fist, not the traditional street-fighter’s roll of coins, but a metal cigar container (cigar inside), which had added exceptional, if unfair, force to her blow. Millicent was also much admired for the strength of her character. Nevertheless, the more Blaise studied the field the less any one person appealed to him. He had considered going back to Paris; but that would have been an acknowledgment of defeat for him, and a victory for Caroline.

“I’m freezing. And I’m late,” Frederika announced, as they made their way to the front door, where the watchman let them out. “Mother’s at home Saturday,” Frederika announced, as she dropped Blaise off at Willard’s.

“I’ll be there,” he said. They shook hands, formally, and he went into the hotel. Why not, he wondered, marry Frederika? She appealed to him in an entirely practical way; that is, there was no passion of the sort that might end with a fist-fight in the White House’s Blue Room. She could certainly manage a dozen households. On the other hand, there was Mrs. Bingham, and all those cows. No, a Sanford must marry within that gilded circle where cows could be peripheral but never central, as in the Bingham case.

2

WHILE BLAISE BROODED ON COWS, Caroline paid court to Henry Adams, as a dutiful niece now matured by matrimony. He seemed smaller, older, and definitely sadder. “The fire that destroyed your brother’s printing press also made molten my little book on the twelfth century.” He sighed, stretched out his hands in a propitiatory way toward the fire, begetter of molten type-face. “I shall have to delay publication, not that I really, ever, publish. The edition is only for me, and you, and a few others…”

“Hearts?”

“We are only three now.” He frowned. “I worry about Hay. He is being slowly worn to death by that maniac across the street, and that madhouse of a Senate. Cabot…” he began; and ended. “I’m in a cheery mood, as you can see.” He gazed at her reflectively. “Why do we never see Mr. Sanford?”

“Because I thought it was the ageing Mrs. Sanford whose company you pretend to enjoy.”

“Oh, no pretense. No pretense. I find it hard to talk to some of the new girls. But then I’m very dull. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes. It’s your most attractive feature. If you were older, I might have married you instead of my cousin, who is merely-not attractively-dull.”

Adams laughed his muted dog’s bark of a laugh. “You’ll do very well.”

“Surely you like Alice.” Washington had taken to saying the name “Alice” with a slight pause between syllables, to denote that the Alice was meant.

“I like her better than her father. But then I like everyone better than I like him. Last week, I went to my first White House dinner since 1878, during the sullen reign of Rutherford B. Hayes, where lemonade flowed like champagne. I was only asked because Brooks could not come. They needed an Adams, any Adams, while the President always needs a pair of humble ears. Mine were never so humble. He did not stop talking for two hours. The contents,” Adams smiled sweetly at Nebuchadnezzar eating grass, “of that mind confound me! All history is neatly on file in that great round Dutch cheese of a head. But-so generous is he that he will share all that he knows with anyone, no matter how humble. I was awed. Speechless. Poor John, what he must go through, day after day…”

Caroline, aware that Adamsian gloom was about to overwhelm the bright room, said, “I just passed Alice and the Cassini girl bob-sledding on Connecticut Avenue. They start at Dupont Circle, and slide through the traffic, out of control.”

“A metaphor, my child, for her father’s Administration.”

“How,” asked Caroline, “does one get money?”

For the first time in their friendship, Adams looked at her with true surprise. “In our world, you select parents who have money, and they, in turn, pass it on. If one has been careless in the selection of parents, one marries someone who was not so careless. I am very good about money, by the way. I can’t think why. But I do well in financial crises. Brooks, who understands the monetary system better than anyone alive, loses money, always. It is highly gratifying. Anyway, next year-is it?-you inherit your fortune-”

“This year, I am desperate.”

“Your husband has debts.” Adams did not phrase this as a question; but then everyone knew everything in their world.

“More than I had bargained for.”

“Go to your brother.”

“He wants the paper.”

“Go to the Jews.”

“I have tried. But they don’t seem eager to lend, at a bearable rate.”

“I could lend-”

“I shall leave the room, and never return, if you ever hint at such-an impropriety.”

Adams smiled, like a contented cat. “I knew you would reject me. Otherwise, I would not have made so rude a move. Why not sell Blaise your newspaper?”

“Because it is all that I have, of my own. A child is never your own. It is also-the father’s.” Caroline enjoyed the irony. Jim had never once suspected, holding Emma on his knee, that she was his flesh and blood, blue eyes and curly hair.

“Let us be subtle. Sell Blaise half the shares of the Tribune minus one, which will give you control.”

Caroline had thought of this. “It would mean getting to know him rather more than I’d like.”

“One boy is like another.” Adams disliked all males except a half-dozen aged ironists like himself. Caroline had never known a man to whom woman-if not women-was so necessary; and she wondered, as always, why had the brilliant wife killed herself, why had he never remarried, why did he maintain his peculiar, and plainly unrequited, passion for Lizzie Cameron?

“You made do with a cousin as husband. You can certainly make do with a half-brother as-junior partner.”

William was at the door, announcing “Professor Langley.” The accident-prone secretary of the Smithsonian Institution entered the room, without once, symbolically, slipping, Caroline noted. Although Henry Adams regarded Samuel P. Langley as the best scientific mind in the Western world (Adams particularly admired Langley’s invention of something called a bolometer, “which measures the heat,” he would say gleefully, “of nothing!”), the press had, lately, taken a good deal of pleasure out of Langley’s doomed attempts to fly heavier-than-air craft. He was always on the verge of freeing man from the earth; but man continued to be earth-bound, as far as heavier-than-air craft went. Lighter-than-air craft, on the order of gliders or balloons, somehow did not count. Caroline found mystifying Langley’s obsessions; but she had seen to it that he was often, and favorably, interviewed in the Tribune. As a result, he had mistaken her for an admirer like Adams; and she had done nothing to disabuse him. Whatever pleased Adams pleased her. Besides, Langley could be interesting, when not goaded by Adams into discussing the famous dynamo that they had together glimpsed at the Paris Exhibition four years earlier. Adams wanted to find a scientific basis to history, on the order of the second law of thermodynamics. Caroline, who knew little of history and nothing of science, was convinced that there were no laws applicable to the human race, a random affair that moved neither up nor down but, simply, on, in fits and starts, for no reason. She had always found it odd that men required coherent reasons for things that women knew to be non-reasonable.

“There is a rumor that a pair of bicycle mechanics in North Carolina have flown in a heavier-than-air machine of their own devising.” This was Langley’s ponderous greeting to his old friend.

“When?” Adams was alert, as always, to the marvels of science. “And for how long did they fly?”

“Three months ago. The story’s garbled. No one seems to have got it straight. Someone sent me a clipping from a Norfolk newspaper, that made no sense…”

“We were notified,” said Caroline, recalling Mr. Trimble’s amusement at the message from two brothers to the effect that they were the first, ever, to fly in such a machine. In one day they had taken off and landed several times. She recalled that they had claimed to have flown a half-mile. She reported this to Langley, who seemed more depressed than elated. Plainly this disinterested man of science wanted for himself the glory of being the first to fly like-was it Icarus? she wondered, recalling Mlle. Souvestre’s injunction that one ought always to be ready with an apt classical allusion in order not to use it.

“I’ve heard something very like that. I don’t see how it’s possible. I mean who-what are they?”

“It is very odd that the press has not picked it up.” Adams turned to Caroline. “Why didn’t you use the story?”

“Because we get so many stories like that, out of nowhere. Also, Mr. Trimble couldn’t tell whether the machine wasn’t just another sort of glider, like the one that took off from the Eiffel Tower.”

“I shall write them, I suppose.” Langley was glum. “I am so close now, so very close to the workable machine…”

“What use is a flying machine?” Caroline was genuinely curious, not so much about the tinkering with machinery, a male madness, but the uses to which something so impractical might be put.

“Flight will change everyone’s life,” said Langley. “People can be transported at great speed over long distances.”

“I suppose that’s a good thing.” Caroline was dubious; her magnolia tree had died as a result of Alice Roosevelt’s assault upon it with a highly powered swift-moving arrangement of metal.

“It will change warfare.” Adams was thoughtful. “One could carry explosives over the enemy’s territory and blow up-anything, I suppose.”

Langley nodded. “Even in our Civil War, balloons were used, most effectively. Now, with powered air-craft…”

“But they will promptly discover a way of knocking them out of the sky.” Caroline recalled one of the President’s recent arias. He was talking of the Kaiser, whom he had come to like, thanks to Speck, the ever-charming link between the two bellicosities. Speck, according to Roosevelt, had described how the ingenious maker of munitions Krupp handled the Kaiser. “Apparently Krupp is a superb statesman.” The President’s pince-nez glittered with a light all its own. “He goes to the Kaiser and says, ‘I’ve invented a steel plating that no bullet can pierce.’ So the Kaiser immediately orders quantities of steel plating. Then, a year later, Krupp, looking very sad, comes back to the Kaiser and says, I’m afraid we’ve invented a bullet that will pierce the impenetrable steel plating.’ So the poor Kaiser must order several tons of these magical bullets, to be followed by ever-newer impenetrable plating that will eventually be penetrated by newer bullets. The Kaiser has warned me not to be taken in, the way he’s been.” When Caroline repeated this to Adams and Langley, they exchanged knowing glances; and Langley said, “The Kaiser wants us to fall behind, which is why, should there be war, we must have the first flying-machine.”

“But if they find a way to shoot it down…”

“We will invent something that cannot be shot down…” began Langley.

“Until it is,” said Caroline. “If I may give you a matronly view, this sort of contest is endless.” Caroline had been much impressed by the President’s story.

“Progress, once started, is endless.” Langley was sententious.

“Progress,” said Caroline, “implies that one is moving from one known place to another. Isn’t the problem, here, not knowing the proper terminus?”

“Serendipity is sovereign.” Adams was not his usual candid, pessimistic self.

“We proceed because we must,” said Langley. “It is like evolution.”

“You have reminded me that I am Catholic, and in no way connected, genealogically, with any monkey, no matter how charming.” Caroline rose to go.

“You were taken from Adam’s rib, as we all know, to our delight.” After Caroline had said her farewell to Langley, Adams led her out onto the landing, which smelled of out-of-season lilies-of-the-valley; in fact, the house, always overheated and filled with flowers, reminded her of the White House conservatories, now a thing of the past. “Sell Blaise a part of the paper.”

“He will try to get all of it.”

“Don’t let him. You are a clever child.” Adams patted her hand; and William showed her out.

3

JOHN HAY SAT ALONE in his moving parlor, and watched through newly washed windows the United States rush by. The Casetts of the Pennsylvania Railroad had provided the Secretary of State with their ornately furnished private car, and specially trained Negro attendants. At the President’s insistence, Hay had agreed to attend the World’s Fair at St. Louis, where he would make an address which, high-minded, witty and elegant, would be the opening gun in the coming battle for the presidency. There was no doubt that Theodore would be nominated by the Republican Party in June; there was little doubt that he would beat Bryan or Hearst or Parker or any Democrat in November. But Theodore saw lions everywhere in his path; and so he had sent the now always ailing Hay to the West. Clara had insisted that Henry Adams, an aficionado of world fairs, accompany them; and Adams had insisted on bringing his real-life niece, Abigail, a plain but interesting and interested girl.

Hay wrote slowly in a notebook. Speech-writing no longer came easily to him; but then nothing did. In addition to the pleasures of a diseased prostate, he had now developed angina pectoris, a new and boisterous ailment which could be counted on to stab him in the middle of a speech, leaving him breathless and faint. He had always known that life would end; he was constantly amazed that so many of his acquaintances were astonished when death at last came their way. On the other hand, he had not counted on all the games that were being played within his body, which seemed to him now rather like one of Henry’s dynamos, breaking down for lack of whatever it is that keeps a dynamo serenely humming.

Theodore was one of those who could not imagine his own death, or anyone else’s, which explained, perhaps, his unnatural passion for war. The one time that Theodore was forced to look death not once but twice in its bony face-when wife and mother simultaneously died-he had literally fled, like that traveller to-or was it from?-Samarra. He had abandoned his just-born daughter, career, world; to hide in the Wild West, where, presumably, the distances were so great and the terrain so flat that death could be seen coming and so avoided, by further flight, if necessary. The fact that the Secretary of State was now dying did not in the least distress Theodore, who thought only of the coming election, and his own continuing glory. John Hay was now the fine figurehead of the Republican Party, which would be a half-century old in July. Therefore, Lincoln’s young secretary and Roosevelt’s aged minister must be borne like an icon about the country, mouthing platitudes so that Theodore might become, in his own right, president, and no longer His Accidency.

Hay’s rather loose handwriting seemed to grow ever more loose with age, as he constructed his pieties and platitudes, and reined in his wit, which would never do in so crucial a year. As usual, there was the problem of the people-those famous people that the Ancient had so mysteriously exalted that hot muggy day at Gettysburg; government of, by, and for the people? Had ever a great man said anything so entirely unrealistic, not to mention, literally, demagogic? The people played no part at all in the government of the United States in Lincoln’s time, and even less now in the days of Theodore Rex. Lincoln had tended to rule by decree, thanks to the all-purpose “military necessity” which gave legitimacy to his most arbitrary acts. Roosevelt pursued his own interests in his own surprisingly secretive way; he was for empire at any cost. The people, of course, were always more or less there; they must be flattered from time to time; exhorted to do battle, or whatever the Augustus at Washington wanted them to do. The result was a constant tension between the people at large and a ruling class that believed, as did Hay, in the necessity of concentrating wealth in the hands of the few while keeping the few as virtuous as possible, at least in appearance. Hence the periodic attacks on trusts. But labor was a more delicate matter, and though Theodore was as hostile to the working-man’s demands as any Carnegie, he knew that he must appear to be their tribune, and so, to Hay’s amusement and annoyance, Roosevelt had given, in 1903, a Fourth of July speech at, significantly, Springfield, Illinois, where he had declared, “A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterward. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have.” This breathtaking announcement had caused rage in the better clubs of the republic and less than euphoria amongst those to whom the mysterious square deal had been promised. They would vote for Bryan anyway.

Even so, Hay wrote, in large letters, “The Square Deal,” with slightly embellished capitals; then he ran his pen through the phrase. He was not up to such a speech. Let Theodore do his own ranting. At the last Cabinet meeting, Root had declined the honor of serving as campaign manager; and Theodore had been plainly rattled. The post had gone to the secretary of commerce (a needless new department, created by Roosevelt), Mr. Cortelyou, a soothing presence, and reminder of McKinley’s golden age, now as remote to Hay as Lincoln’s time of blood. There would be no talk of a square deal at St. Louis.

Hay stared out the window, as one lonely village after another moved by the train’s window, an endless cyclorama of sameness. The pale spring light made the houses seem more than ever shabby, in contrast to the bright yellow-green foliage of trees and spring wheat. Was it April 15 or 16? he wondered. Without Adee-or a newspaper nearby-he never knew the date any more. If it was April 15, then it was the thirty-ninth anniversary of the murder of Lincoln. Hardly anyone was left from that time. Mary Todd had died, mad, at Springfield in 1882; her death long since preceded by that of the beloved child Tad. Only the eldest son, Robert Lincoln, survived; a chilly railroad magnate, largely indifferent to his father’s memory. Once Hay and Nicolay had finished their life of Lincoln, Hay’s connection with Robert was, for all practical purposes, at an end. They were no longer comfortable with each other; yet thirty-nine years ago, they had been drinking together when the White House doorkeeper had rushed into the room, with the news. “The President’s been shot!” And together they had gone to the boardinghouse near Ford’s Theater, to watch the Ancient die.

Hay was beginning to find concentration difficult. Usually, the familiar act of setting pen to paper caused him to think precisely. But now he wool-gathered, lulled by the regular metallic clicking of the train’s wheels on the rails. Foreign affairs would be a safer subject than the evanescent square deal. The war between Russia and Japan was of great significance; but how was he to explain it to the public, when he could never explain it to the President? He found alarming the fact that Kaiser and President were growing altogether too friendly; they were not unalike in their sense of imperial charismatic mission. Each tended to regard the collapse of the Tsar’s eastern empire as a good thing. On the other hand, Hay thought that a victorious Japan in the Pacific would mean nothing but trouble for the United States, and its new bright Pacific empire.

“Open Doors,” Hay wrote, without his usual pride in the famous histrionic formula that had worked once; and might again. Dare he mention the mysterious enlargement of the German fleet? Was there, as some suspected, a German plot to destroy the British empire, and undermine the United States by means of all those-how many millions now?-German immigrants, with their own newspapers, communities, nostalgia? But the President put no credence in such a plot. He thought he understood the Kaiser and the Germans. Hay knew that he understood this barbaric tribe; and Hay feared them. With Russia crippled by Japan to Germany’s east, the Kaiser could move west. “Piece,” wrote Hay; was he losing his mind? He crossed out the word; wrote “peace”; then “meat.” At least he spelled that right. Ever since the tainted-meat scandal during the war with Spain, government action had been called for, and, finally, Roosevelt had come up with a Meat Inspection Act, which Congress had rejected. This was definitely good government, but Hay rather doubted if he could extract much rhetorical magic from the subject.

Henry Adams coughed politely. “Do I intrude on the creative process?”

“I was trying to make lyrical the Meat Inspection Act. But nothing scans.” Hay shut the notebook. A steward appeared with tea. “Mrs. Hay says you are to drink this, sir.”

“Then I shall.”

Hay and Adams stared out the window, as if expecting to see something of great interest. But all was a sameness, thought Hay.

“Theodore Rex worries about his-Rexness,” said Hay, at last.

“No need, even with Mark Hanna dead.” The monster of corruption had died in February, busy collecting a war-chest for the nomination not of himself but of Roosevelt. The two enemies had long since come to an understanding. As for the Democratic side, their paladin William C. Whitney had also died in February. Without Whitney, there was no one-except Hearst-who could finance a winning campaign. Everything would flow Roosevelt’s way; yet Adams was puzzled. “Why didn’t Root take on the job as campaign manager?”

Hay took morbid pleasure in his reply. “He was-is, perhaps, still-convinced that he has a cancer of the breast.”

Adams’s look of surprise was highly pleasing. “Surely, only the ladies have been chosen for this especial mark of God’s favor.”

“The ladies-and Elihu Root. Anyway, he had a tumor removed, and I’m sure he’s all right now. What a president he might have made.”

“Why do you say ‘might have’?”

“He is a lawyer, too much involved with the wicked corporations and trusts. And then the miners’ strike…” The miners’ strike of 1902 had caused so much panic in the land that Roosevelt had threatened to take over the mines, as receiver; since public opinion was on the side of the miners, the threat was popular. Although public opinion was seldom heeded, Roosevelt feared that demagogues like Bryan and Hearst might try to unleash the mob, and so, to forestall revolution, he sent Root to force the ownership, J. Pierpont Morgan himself, to give the miners a wage increase while keeping them to a nine-hour day in hazardous conditions. Roosevelt took the credit for settling the strike. Root took the blame from both workers and owners for an unsatisfactory settlement; and lost forever the presidency.

“To what extent does your brother, Brooks, influence Theodore?” When in serious doubt, Hay believed in directness.

Henry Adams cocked his head, rather like a bald, bearded owl. “You are with His Majesty every day. I am not.”

“You see Brooks…”

“… as little as possible. To see him is to hear him.” Adams shuddered. “He is the most bloodthirsty creature I have ever known. He wants a war, anywhere will do, as long as we end up as custodian of northern China. Domestically, ‘We must have a new deal,’ he wrote me, so we shall have to suppress the states in favor of a centralized dictatorship at Washington. Does he write Theodore often?”

Hay nodded. “But I am not in their confidence. I don’t love war enough. What shall I say in St. Louis about our enormous achievements?”

Adams smiled, showing no teeth. “You can say that the most marvellous invention of my grandfather, the Monroe Doctrine, originally intended to protect our-note the cool proprietary ‘our’-hemisphere from predatory European powers, has now been extended, quite illegally, by President Roosevelt to include China and, again by extension, any part of the world where we may want to interfere.”

“This is not the Hay Doctrine,” Hay began.

“This is not the Monroe Doctrine either. But my grandfather’s masterpiece was already coming apart in 1848 when President Polk dared to tell Congress that our war of conquest against Mexico was justified by the Monroe Doctrine. My grandfather, by then a mere congressman, denounced the President on the floor of the House, and then dropped dead on that same floor. When Theodore recently announced that we have an obligation, somehow, inherently, through the Monroe Doctrine, to punish ‘chronic wrongdoers’ in South America, as well as ‘to the exercise of an international police power,’ I nearly dropped dead over my breakfast egg.”

Hay himself was not entirely at ease with all the implications of a national policy in which he had, for the most part, cheerfully participated. Nevertheless, he defended, “Surely, we have a moral-yes, I hate the word, too-duty to help less fortunate nations in this hemisphere…”

“And sunny Hawaii, and poor Samoa, and the tragic Philippines? John, it is empire you all want, and it is empire that you have got, and at such a small price, when you come to think of it.”

“What price is that?” Hay could tell from the glitter in Adams’s eye that the answer would be highly unpleasant.

“The American republic. You’ve finally got rid of it. For good. As a conservative Christian anarchist, I never much liked it.” Adams raised high his teacup. “The republic is dead; long live the empire.”

“Oh, dear.” Hay put down his cup, which chattered at him in its monogrammed saucer. “We have all the forms of a republic. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that everything? Why else am I now hurtling across Ohio, or wherever we are, to make a speech to persuade the folks to vote?”

“We let them vote so that they will feel wanted. But as we extend, in theory, the democracy, the more it runs out of gas.” In imitation of Clarence King, Adams now liked to use new slang expressions, often accompanied by a faintly raffish tilt to his head, like a Boston Irish laborer.

“I don’t weep.” Hay had made his choice long ago. A republic-or however one wanted to describe the United States-was best run by responsible men of property. Since most men of property tended, in the first generation at least, to criminality, it was necessary for the high-minded patriotic few to wait a generation or two and then select one of their number, who had the common-or was it royal?-touch and make him president. As deeply tiring as Theodore was on the human level, “drunk with himself,” as Henry liked to put it, he was the best the country had to offer, and they were all in luck. For good or ill, the system excluded from power the Bryans if not the Hearsts. Hay was aware that the rogue publisher was a new Caesarian element upon the scene: the wealthy maker of public opinion who, having made common cause with the masses, might yet overthrow the few.

Lincoln had spoken warmly and winningly of the common man, but he had been as remote from that simple specimen as one of Henry’s beloved dynamos from an ox-cart. One rode public opinion, Hay had more than once observed. Theodore thought that public opinion could be guided by some splendid popular leader like himself, but, in practice, Roosevelt was mildness itself, never appearing above the parapet of his office when hostile bullets were aimed his way. Hearst was different; he could make people react in ways not predictable; he could invent issues, and then solutions-equally invented but no less popular for that. The contest was now between the high-minded few, led by Roosevelt, and Hearst, the true inventor of the modern world. What Hearst arbitrarily decided was news was news; and the powerful few were obliged to respond to his inventions. Could he, also, a question much discussed amongst the few, make himself so much the news that he might seize one of the high-if not the highest-offices of state? Theodore sneered at the thought-had the American people ever not voted for one of the respectable few? And if nothing else, it was agreed by everyone (except, perhaps, the general indifferent mass of the working class) that Hearst was supremely unrespectable. Even so, Hay had his doubts. He feared Hearst.

The train clattered to a stop at the depot of a small town called, according to the paint-blistered sign, Heidegg. Clara and Abigail appeared in the doorway to the parlor. “We’re stopping,” Clara announced, in a loud authoritative voice.

“Actually, my dear, we’ve stopped.” Hay vaulted to his feet, an acrobatic maneuver which involved falling to the right while embracing with his left arm the back of the chair in front of him; gravity, the ultimate enemy, was, for once, put to good use.

Adams pointed to a small crowd at the back of the train. “We should go amongst the people in whose name we-you and Theodore, that is-govern.”

“We’ll be here fifteen minutes, Uncle Henry,” said Abigail, and led him to the back of their private car, where a smiling porter helped them onto the good Ohio (or was it now Indiana?) earth. Hay stepped into the cool day, which had been co-existing separately from that of the railroad car, whose atmosphere was entirely different, warmer, redolent of railway smells, as well as of a galley where a Negro chef in a tall white cap performed miracles with terrapin.

For a moment, the earth itself seemed to be moving beneath Hay’s feet, as if he were still on the train; slightly, he swayed. Clara took his fragile arm in her great one and then the four visitors from the capital of the imperial republic, led by John Hay, the Second Personage in the Land, mingled with the folks.

The American people, half a hundred farmers with wives, children, dogs, surrounded the Second Personage in the Land, who smiled sweetly upon them; and lapsed into his folksy “Little Breeches” manner which could outdo for sheer comic rusticity Mark Twain himself. “I reckon,” he said, with a modest smile, “that well as I know all the country hereabouts-” He was positive that he was now in Indiana, but one slip… “-I’ve never had the luck to be in Heidegg before. I’m from Warsaw myself. Warsaw, Illinois, as I ’spect you know. Anyway, we’re on our way now to the big exhibition in St. Louis, and when I saw that sign saying Heidegg, I said, let’s stop and meet the folks. So, hello.” Hay was well pleased with his own casualness and lack of side. He did not dare look at Henry Adams, who always found amusing, in the wrong sense, Hay’s Lincolnian ease with the common man.

The crowd continued to stare, amicably, at the four foreigners. Then a tall thin farmer came forward, and shook Hay’s hand. “Willkommen,” he began; and addressed the Second Personage in the Land in German.

Hay then asked, in German, if anyone in Heidegg spoke English. He was told, in German, that the schoolteacher spoke excellent English, but he was home, sick in bed. Hay ignored the strangled cries of Henry Adams, trying not to laugh. Fortunately, Hay’s German was good, and he was able to satisfy the crowd’s curiosity as to his identity. The word had spread that he was someone truly important, the president of the railroad, in fact. When Hay modestly identified himself, the information was received politely; but as no one had ever heard of the-or even a-secretary of state, the crowd broke up, leaving the four visitors alone on a muddy bank where new grass was interspersed with violets. As Abigail collected violets, Adams was in his glory. “The people!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, do shut, up, Henry!” Hay had seldom been so annoyed with his old friend, or with himself for having handled with unusual clumsiness an occasion fraught with symbolism of a sort that Adams would never cease to remind him.

As they dined, Adams talked and talked. Clara ate and ate, course after course, marvelling, occasionally, at what remarkable dishes were emerging from the small galley. Abigail stared out the window at a great muddy river, surging through the twilight, from the Great Lakes to New Orleans. “You must-Theodore must-someone must,” Adams declared, “cross the country, like this, by car, and stop-but I really mean stop, and stay, and look and listen. The country’s full of people who are strange to us, and we to them. That river,” Adams pointed dramatically at the river on whose banks were set square frame houses with square windows in which lights now began to gleam; each house was set in its own yard, strewn with scrap iron, scrap paper, cinders, “could be an estuary of the Rhine or the Danube. We are witnessing the last of the great tides of migration. We are in Mitteleuropa, surrounded by Germans, Slavs and-what were the people of Heidegg?”

“Swiss,” said Hay, deciding that he would take his chances with broiled Potomac shad and its roe.

“You were born on this river, John, and now it’s stranger to you than the Danube. When Theodore goes on and on about the true American, his grit, his sense of fairness, his institutions, he doesn’t realize that that American is as rare as one of those buffalos he helped to kill off.”

“We shall,” said Hay, mouth filled with roe, “transform those Germans and Slavs into… buffalos. All in due course.”

“No,” said Adams, revelling as always in darkness, “they will transform us. When I was writing about Aaron Burr…”

“Whatever became of that book?” asked Clara, addressing herself to what looked like a side of buffalo.

“I have burned it, of course. Publish in total secrecy, or burn…”

“In secret, too?” Hay remembered that Clover had said that her husband’s life of Burr was far superior to his published life of John Randolph. Hay had always thought Burr an ideal scamp to write about. But something in Burr’s character or life had made Henry uneasy; he had decided that Burr was not a “safe” scoundrel to deal with, and if he were let out of the history books where he had been entombed alongside Benedict Arnold, he might cheat the world all over again. Hay rather suspected that Adams had not destroyed the book but used parts of it for his study of Jefferson.

“In his old age, Burr was walking down Fifth Avenue with a group of young lawyers, and one of them asked him how he thought some aspect of the Constitution should be interpreted. Burr stopped in front of a building site, and pointed to some newly arrived Irish laborers, and he said, ‘In due course, they will decide what the Constitution is-and is not.’ He understood, wicked creature, that the immigrants would eventually crowd us out and re-create the republic in their own image.”

Abigail looked at her uncle, who had, happily, run out of breath, and said, “But the country’s not all Catholic yet. That’s something.”

“Everyone in the Swiss Indiana village of Heidegg was Catholic…”

“Lutheran,” said Hay, who was quick to learn essentials whenever votes were involved.

“Anyway, I incline now to Catholicism, too,” said Adams perversely.

“Mariolatry.” Hay’s heart fluttered disagreeably. He had a vision of himself addressing twenty thousand people at the fair; and dropping dead.

“Catholic maids are always pregnant. I can’t think why,” said Clara.

“Luckily, steam-power, like this train, is going to make all these different races into one. The way the idea of the Virgin-hardly Mariolatry-united the Europeans of the twelfth century.”

Abigail interrupted her uncle. Hay silently commended her bravery. “Why St. Louis for a world’s fair?”

Hay, as the Nation’s Second Personage, answered: “It is the fourth-largest city in the country. It is centrally located. The new Union Station is the world’s largest, or so they claim. Finally, the late revered William McKinley, whenever he was in doubt as to what the people of this great nation wanted him to do, would say, ‘I must go to St. Louis.’ The city is our heartland. Now the city fathers, to celebrate the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase-illegal purchase by Mr. Jefferson,” Hay added for Adams’s pleasure, “are holding the largest fair of its kind in the history of the world. There will be,” he added ominously, “innumerable dynamos and other pieces of dull machinery.”

“Oh, dear,” said Abigail.

“Oh, joy,” said Adams.

“Oh, waiter,” said Clara, “more beef.”

“Everyone,” Hay sighed, “will be there.”

4

MR. AND MRS. JOHN APGAR SANFORD occupied a small suite of the Blair-Benton Hotel in Market Street, the main street of St. Louis, not far from the stone-paved Front Street, locally known as the levee, since that is exactly what it was, some four miles of river-front which was used not only as a river-port but, also, as a promenade.

“We were lucky to get even this,” said Sanford, indicating the bedroom with its single four-poster bed; he had duly noted Caroline’s displeasure. They did not, except in emergencies, ever share the same bed. When Sanford had told her that a number of his inventors and their business sponsors would be at the fair, and that he, as their patent attorney, was expected to be on hand to examine all the exhibitions and determine whose patent was being infringed, Caroline had told him that she thought he should go. There was a chance, after all, of additional fees for tea-kettles that were silent, for electrical sockets that did not shock, for engines that would-what was Langley’s phrase?-“free man from earth.” When the Tribune’s best reporter took ill, Mr. Trimble had convinced Caroline that she should herself describe the Exposition, at least the inaugural ceremonies. And though Clara Hay had proposed that the Sanfords join them in their private car, Caroline had spared the Hays and the Adamses the experience of John, who had grown more and more glum, no bad thing, but more and more apologetic for his life, a very bad thing indeed.

They had been shown to the suite by the manager himself. “Everyone,” said the manager, “is in St. Louis this week.”

“I don’t mind,” said Caroline, sweetly, and thanked him for his courtesy.

As John unpacked, Caroline made dutiful notes. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, as it was properly called, covered one thousand two hundred forty acres, of which two hundred fifty were roofed over-pavilions, halls, restaurants. They had caught a glimpse of the Secretary of State and Clara riding through the brightly decorated city. As Caroline worked at an octagonal table of the shiniest black walnut, John went through a file of papers, with a worried frown. “This should be,” said Caroline, by now an expert at making marital conversation, “a paradise for a patent lawyer.”

“I certainly hope so. Except,” John was already defeated, she could tell, “there is no longer a way of really winning a patent suit. Every inventor takes out a dozen patents for the same invention. If you threaten to sue, he’ll drop three patents but keep nine others in order to confuse the courts and his rival inventors.”

“What an excellent opportunity for the lawyer, endless litigation.”

“They,” said John, at wit’s end plainly, “always settle. Is there any news?”

“Yes. I went to the Jews, as Mr. Adams would say. These particular Jews are a Yankee firm by the name of Whittaker. They are devoted Presbyterians. I asked, as you requested, for half a million dollars, at the going rate.”

“Why did they say no?” John had now been a husband long enough to be able to finish Caroline’s sentences, if not enter, as it were, her bed. A single attempt to fulfill their conjugal duties had failed. Each had been apologetic. Caroline had given what she thought was a convincing performance of a devoted wife. She had even, against her by now better judgment, followed Marguerite’s advice, which was to shut her eyes and imagine that the large body on top of her was that of James Burden Day. But the smell was wrong; the texture odd; the attack askew. She had always known that she was deficient in imagination, as their first and last attempt demonstrated; and she envied those women who could go from one new body to another, like an explorer loose in an endless archipelago of men-women, too, in Paris at least-enjoying this island for its luxuriant trees, and that for its silvery springs. She was no explorer; she was a contented land-lubber, in a familiar satisfying landscape. The attempt to leave home, as represented by James Burden Day, for John was like abandoning a perfect oasis for the surrounding Sahara. John, in no position to complain, complained. Caroline, in no position to moralize, moralized. In time, the matter was dropped. John’s sexuality was soon subdued by the financial ruin which had overtaken him. He could think of nothing else, and, lately, neither could Caroline.

“Mr. Whittaker was evasive.” At first, Caroline had been puzzled; then angry. “I gave the date, next March, when I am twenty-seven. I said there was no way that I could not get my share. He said, ‘There are complications.’ I said, ‘What?’ He wouldn’t answer.”

“Of course not.” John was bitter. “The Whittakers often retain, as counsel, our friend Houghteling.”

Caroline experienced a sudden spasm of purest hatred for her brother. “Blaise is making it appear that the estate is in trouble…”

“Or nonexistent, or that there are obscure liens, or your rights unclear.” John the lawyer was far better company than John the husband. “I’m joining some of my clients for lunch. I may be able…” He did not finish the sentence. He would try to borrow money; so would she.

“I must join the Hays. He speaks this afternoon at the Exposition. Perhaps…” She did not finish her sentence either.

But Caroline had plans which did not include the Hays. Instead, she walked in the warm sunlight along the levee, crowded with visitors from out of town. By and large the natives ignored the river; all the houses, she noted, turned their backs on what was, after all, a phenomenal if not beautiful sight, a wide expanse of yellowish swift water, no uglier than the Tiber, say, and infinitely larger.

At a waterfront saloon called the Anchor she paused. As far as she could see along the levee, black men were loading and unloading cargo from barges, ships. Caroline thought of Marseilles, turned African.

James Burden Day, in statesman’s black, approached her from the saloon. “What a surprise,” he said, and looked at his watch. “You’re exactly on time.”

“I’m always on time.” She took his arm; and they walked along the levee like a contentedly married couple, which, in effect, they were. Caroline had long since accepted as an unalloyed bit of golden good fortune the fact that they were not obliged to live together, day after day, night after night, in the same conjugal bed, listening to the midnight cries of many children, the usual marital fate in this country. Occasionally, she needed him on days other than Sunday; but that was a small price to pay for Sunday itself; and now St. Louis. “Where is Kitty?”

“She chairs the Democratic Ladies’ Committee on Suffrage all morning. She will go with them to hear Mr. Hay at the Exposition. I shall go with you.”

“Or not.”

“Or not.”

They made love in Caroline’s suite at the Blair-Benton Hotel. Jim was nervous that he might be recognized. But the lobby was so crowded that no one could actually see anyone. Also, Caroline was now something of an expert on the use of hotels. Whenever she planned to meet Jim, she insisted on a first-floor suite in a hotel with at least two separate stairways from ground to first floor. Jim thought that had she been a man, she would have been a natural general. Caroline had disagreed. “But I might have succeeded at business,” she answered. “I would have cornered something like wheat, and brought on a highly satisfying financial crisis.”

Caroline watched Jim dress, a sight almost as pleasing as the reverse. He watched her, watching him; divined her mood. “You’re thinking about money,” he said.

“Its lack,” she said. “John has got himself-us, that is-in the deepest water. And Blaise has seen to it that I can’t borrow.”

Jim frowned, as a tooth of Caroline’s comb broke in his wiry coppery hair. “I broke your comb. Sorry. Why can’t you borrow? Next March it’s all yours, anyway. Bankers love that sort of short-term loan. How can Blaise stop them from lending?”

“By lying. Through his lawyers. Pretending the estate is compromised.”

“That’s easily investigated.” Jim sat in a rocking chair, and rested his head on a spotless new antimacassar. All St. Louis had been cleaned up for the world’s delight.

Caroline got out of bed; began to dress. “In time, I could straighten all this out. But there’s no time. Blaise has been putting pressure on John’s debtors. If he does not pay up now, he will be ruined.” Although Caroline rather liked the sound of “he will be ruined,” the reality was impossible to grasp. What was financial ruin? In her own life, there had been so many financial crises, so many friends or acquaintances “ruined,” and yet they went right on eating breakfast, and seeing one another. Ruin, as such, did not mean much to her. But the thought of a forced sale of the Tribune was like a knife at her throat, a most disagreeable sensation.

“You will have to sell to Blaise.” Jim was flat.

“I would rather die.”

“What else?”

“Other than death?”

“Other than a sale. You should follow Mr. Adams’s advice, and keep control…”

“If he will let me.”

Jim stared at her in the mirror, where she was now repairing the damage that Eros does to even the simplest coiffeur. “Why not,” said Jim, “let John go under? He’s the one at fault, not you.”

“Because, my darling, he knows who the father of my child is.” Caroline looked at Jim’s face, next to hers in the mirror, smaller than hers, thanks to perspective, so ably taught by the drawing mistress at Mlle. Souvestre’s. Caroline enjoyed Jim’s look of astonishment.

“But he’s the father, isn’t he?”

“No, he’s not.”

There was a long silence, broken by Jim’s sudden laughter. He sprang to his feet, like a boy, and embraced Caroline from behind, kissed the nape of her neck, causing the hair, controlled at last, to come crashing down. “Oh, damn,” said Caroline, for the first time in her life. “My hair.”

“My child! Emma’s mine, too!”

“You sound like a horse-breeder.”

“Why not? I am the acknowledged stud. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you. Now if you come near my hair again, I shall… do something drastic.” Caroline again pinned up the mountain of cleverly coiled hair, all hers, as Marguerite used to gloat, when she did the arranging.

Jim retreated to his chair. He seemed delighted; and Caroline wondered why. Men were very odd, certainly. Jim had two children now by Kitty; and one by her. “Are there any others?” she asked.

“Other what?”

“Children of yours that I should know about? When little Emma grows up, she will want to know all her half-brothers and -sisters.”

Jim shook his head. “None that I know of.” He frowned. “How does John know it’s me?”

“He doesn’t. I was just being dramatic. All he knows is that Emma’s not his. When I discovered I was pregnant, I told him, and he married me. It was my money for his-for my respectability.”

“Why didn’t you just pretend it was his?”

“Because I’ve never really been to bed with him.”

Jim whistled, an engaging rustic sound. “You really are French,” he said at last.

Caroline was not amused. “You would be surprised just how American I am, particularly in a situation like this. I am not about to lose…” But this, she knew, even as she spoke, was hollow boasting. She was about to lose the Tribune. She had considered, seriously, allowing John to fail; but honor forbade such a course, not to mention common sense. If she did not keep her side of their bargain, he would be free to divorce her or, worse, annul the unconsummated marriage, and tell the press why.

“Shall I work on Blaise? He seems to like me.”

“More than that is my impression.”

Jim’s head suddenly filled with blood; the face became scarlet. The hydraulic system that produced a blush was, Caroline observed, with a certain wonder, the same as that which produced a man’s sex. “I don’t,” he stammered, “know what you mean.”

“Which means you know exactly what I mean. He is like a school-girl around you.” Caroline rose from her dressing table, armored for the day. “Seduce him.”

“That is definitely French,” said Jim, himself again.

“No. It’s English, actually. Le vice anglais, we call it, and not unknown in these parts, either.”

“Would you really want me to…?” Jim could not say what, after all, was unsayable in American City.

“You might like it. After all, Blaise is much better-looking than me.”

“I don’t think I could, even for you.” Jim held her, carefully, about the waist, as they walked to the door. “But I guess I could sort of flirt with him, maybe.”

“You American boys!” Caroline was now entirely amused.

“Well, it’s the least I could do, for you giving me Emma.”

In the lobby, they found themselves face to face with Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge, a lady both censorious and serene.

“Caroline,” said Mrs. Lodge, looking at Jim.

“Sister Anne. You know Congressman Day, don’t you? And Mrs. Day,” Caroline was inspired to add. Then Caroline turned to Jim, and said, “Where’s Kitty? She was here just a minute ago.”

“She left her purse upstairs.”

Sister Anne was duly taken in. “Are you going to hear Mr. Hay?” she asked.

“Hear-and record it all, for the Tribune.”

“Theodore is wicked, forcing him to come here like this. He should be home in bed at Sunapee.” Sister Anne bade them farewell; and moved on.

“You would also make a good politician,” said Jim, as they crossed over to Olive Street, where a special car would take them to the Exposition.

“Because I lie so easily?” Caroline frowned. “It’s odd, though. I never used to lie, ever. But then-you.”

“The apple in the Garden of Eden?”

“Yes. Since the serpent tempted me, I’ve not been the same. I have sinned…”

Caroline was not prepared for the astonishing beauty of the Exposition at night. Great airy palaces were lit by a million electrical candles whose light turned the prosaic Missouri sky into a spectacle like nothing that she had ever seen before. In the course of the evening, partners had been deftly switched. She was now with John, dining at the French restaurant with Henry Adams and his niece, Abigail. Representative and Mrs. James Burden Day were dining at the German restaurant in the company of the two senators from Jim’s state, of whom one was very elderly indeed, and might do the proper thing and retire or die, leaving the place to Kitty’s husband, as Caroline tended to think of Jim in his official capacity. He was entirely the creation, so people thought, of the legendary Judge, his father-in-law. Caroline suspected that the truth might prove to be otherwise, but no one was about to put the matter to the test.

“I have never seen anything so beautiful…” Adams was ecstatic; Abigail was bored. Caroline was sexually satisfied. John was in despair-his clients had been of no use to him.

“Surely, Mont-St.-Michel and Chartres…” Caroline began.

“They are different. They evolved over centuries. But this is like the Arabian nights. Someone rubbed a lantern and said, a city of light on the banks of the Mississippi. And here it is, all round us.” Actually, all around them were huge contented-looking Americans of the heartland, gorging on French cuisine. Each contributing country had its own restaurant, with France, as always, in the lead.

“The question is, are we looking at the future, all this power, humming away, or is this a last celebration of the American past?” Adams was, for him, aglow.

“The future,” said John, a subject that Caroline knew put him in a dark mood. “We’ve never achieved anything like this.”

“We’ve imagined it, which is almost the same. But will our cities in 1950 be like this one?”

“Don’t cities-like cathedrals-evolve?” Caroline nodded to Marguerite Cassini, who had just made what was intended to be-and indeed was-a dazzling entrance, on the arm of an elderly French diplomat. “And if they do, then they are bound to be hideous…”

“Like Chartres?” Adams was uncharacteristically cheerful. “Anyway, I have a mania for expositions. If only real life were constantly on display like this, always at its very best.” Then Henry Adams spoke of dynamos, and Caroline thought of money; and despaired.