Empire

1

BLAISE STOOD IN FRONT OF the four-story brownstone on Twenty-eighth Street, off Lexington Avenue. New-planted trees were in somewhat mangy leaf on either side of the chocolate-colored steps. The old Worth House was now a muddy hole in the ground. But Hearst, with his usual flair-or was it good luck?-had managed to buy the townhouse of that most fastidious and fashionable-if not the only fastidious and fashionable-of presidents, Chester Arthur.

George opened the door. “Well, it’s home now, Mr. Blaise,” he said. “Practically a palace, I’d say, from the number of rooms I have to look after.”

Blaise followed George up a flight of mahogany steps to a baronial panelled sitting room filled with crates of unopened art or “art,” while the walls were covered with paintings and tapestries and, sometimes, paintings supported by nails impatiently driven through ancient Aubusson and Gobelin tapestries. Egyptian mummy cases and statues were scattered about the room, like a newly opened pharaonic tomb, loot from the Chief’s winter on the Nile.

The Chief himself stood in front of a large map of the United States, with numerous red pins in it. Like George, he was in shirt-sleeves. Also, like George, he was somewhat larger than he had been at the Worth House. Otherwise, he was unchanged. He was still loyal to the Willson girls, but not ready to marry. For company, he currently allowed his editor, the courtly Arthur Brisbane, to live in the house. Brisbane reminded Blaise of a somewhat obsequious tutor to a somewhat dim rich boy.

“National Association of Democrat Clubs. Where they are. Each red pin is one club.” The Chief explained either too much or too little.

“And you’re the chairman.”

“I’m the chairman. I don’t know.” Hearst fell onto a sofa and kicked off his shoes: the socks were striped mauve and yellow. “It looks like Chicago,” he said at last.

“For the Democratic Convention?”

“Newspapers, too. I agreed. The Chicago Evening American. I like the word ‘American.’ For a paper.”

“What about ‘Evening’?” Blaise sat in an armchair next to a life-size sphinx, assuming that in life sphinxes were the same size as chorus girls.

“You may have to start with ‘evening.’ Then you sneak up on ‘morning.’ Takes time. I think I’ve made a joke. By accident. How’s your French lady?” Hearst could never remember any French names.

“In France. Where French ladies live.”

“She’s very well-dressed,” said the Chief thoughtfully. “The girls like her clothes a lot. And her, too,” he added, staring at the mummy case, which, Blaise hoped, did not remind the Chief too much of his mistress.

“Who did you agree with?”

“About what? Brisbane says that mummy case is a fake, but how would he know?”

Blaise let Brisbane slip by. “About starting a paper in Chicago.”

“The Democratic National Committee. They said they won’t have a chance this year without a Chicago paper, so after they made me chairman of all those clubs-all across the country, see? Three million members.” He waved his hand at the map. This was to be his power-base within the party. “So I said I’d start up a paper. First issue is July second, two days before the Democratic Convention. Bryan is going to start up the presses.”

“Bryan’s the nominee?”

The Chief grunted. “I’m not,” he said, neutrally. “This is going to cost a lot.” From under the sofa he pulled out the dusty banjo. He ran his thumb across the strings; in defiance of the law of averages, each was out of tune. Happily, Hearst did not try to play.

Blaise prepared himself for what he knew was the Chief’s next move. But Hearst did not make the expected move. “Mother’s luck is better than Father’s ever was,” he said. “She’s in on the Homestead Mine. South Dakota Gold. They’re making six million dollars a year now and she’s chief shareholder.”

“That takes care of money.” Blaise was, momentarily, relieved.

“That could. Croker’s on his way here. He’s got Tammany lined up for Bryan. That’s the city. I’ll get him the rest of the state.”

“Do you want Bryan?”

“Can’t stop him. But he’s promised to go easy on silver. He owes me a lot. You’ll come in on Chicago?” That was the way that Hearst got Blaise to invest. Although Hearst maintained full ownership of all his papers, he was obliged to take out personal loans, involving pieces of paper which were, in effect, IOUs. The idea of sharing a newspaper-or power-with anyone was unthinkable. The detail about the Homestead Mine was to remind Blaise that Mrs. Hearst would always bail out her son. According to Hearst’s man of business, Solomon Carvalho, Mrs. Hearst’s fortune was now larger than the one that her husband had left her. Luck was a Hearst family friend.

“I suppose so. I’ll talk to Carvalho.” Blaise preferred to do business with businessmen and not with-but what was the Chief? A visionary? Hardly. More an innovator, entrepreneur, fact of nature.

“You do that. How’s the Washington paper?”

“My sister hangs on.”

“She can’t forever.”

“John McLean has said he’ll stake her if she ever needs money, to keep you out of town.”

Hearst’s thin mouth ceased to be a mouth; a thin fissure now split the white face. “I’ll buy the Post one day. To keep McLean out of town. He wants it. But old Wilkins won’t sell to him. He will to me.”

Blaise both admired and deplored the Chief’s certainty that, in time, he would have everything that he had ever wanted. “I’m looking at the Baltimore Examiner.”

“Not bad,” said Hearst. “Cheap. Potential for growth.” He echoed, unconsciously, Carvalho’s businessman’s talk. “They need it-or they could need it-in Washington.”

George announced Mr. Richard Croker, lord of Tammany and the Democratic equivalent of Senator Platt, with whom he was never too proud to do business. In fact, the Irish-born Croker regarded himself as nothing more than a simple businessman who, for a fee, would work with any other businessman. He controlled the politics of the city. He enjoyed the company and even the friendship of the magnates of the Democratic Party, particularly William C. Whitney. But then each kept stables, and raced horses. Croker had stud farms not only in New York State but in England. He was an impressive figure, all gray from hair and beard to expensive English tweeds.

Croker shook Hearst’s hand as languidly as Hearst shook his; then he shook Blaise’s hand vigorously. Blaise was somewhat awed by this street youth who had risen so high. He had begun as a henchman of the infamous Boss Tweed, in whose behalf he might or might not have murdered a man on a long-ago election day. The jury-twelve bad men and false-had been unable to make up its mind; and so he was allowed to go free; and rise. “I seen my opportunities,” he would say of his long career, “and I took ’em.” He took “clean graft,” money for city contracts. Dirty graft was the sort of thing that the police went in for, extorting protection money from saloon-keepers and prostitutes. Although Croker highly disapproved of dirty graft and never touched it himself, he had once said, almost plaintively, to Blaise, “We’ve got to put up with a certain amount. It’s only common justice. After all, the police see us doing all this good business, and then they see the Astors making all that money out of all those tenements, and breaking every law, which, Heaven forgive us, we let them do because we do business with the Four Hundred like everyone else who’s respectable, so how can I be too hard on an overworked police sergeant with ten children who asks for ten dollars a week from some saloon-keeper for a bit of protection?” Blaise had had several fascinating talks with Croker; and tended to admire him more than not. Croker was particularly fierce on the subject of the reformers. He now displayed his ferocity to Hearst and Blaise.

“I have never known such a bunch of hypocrites in my life.” He lit his cigar; puffed smoke at the Chief, who coughed, unnoticed by his guest. “The worst is Roosevelt, because he knows the game. He plays the game…”

“He takes money?” Blaise regretted his question, as two sets of pitying eyes were turned, briefly, on him.

Neither man bothered to answer so naive a question. “He acts, every day, as if he’s just discovered sin when his family and every other grand family in this city is supported by us, by the city, by the way we get around the laws he and his sort make, so a man can do business here, and do well here. Who is Platt?“ The deep voice rumbled stagily. The gray eyes turned on Blaise, who was wise enough to attempt no answer. “Platt’s Croker and Croker’s Platt, with a brogue and no education. But we do business the same way. We get out the vote of the quick and the dead and the immigrants, including the ones who think they’re living in Australia. Heaven help us! Well, I’ve no heart to tear the scales from their eyes, you can be sure.” Croker continued, comfortably, in this vein until the Chief signalled for him to stop.

“You know, Mr. Croker, whenever I want to know what the Republicans are up to, I ask you, and when I want to know about the Democrats, I ask Platt.“

Croker nodded; and nearly smiled. “You’ll get something close to the truth, going round the back way, you might say.”

The Chief nodded; and put his feet up on the back of the sphinx, a creature plainly puzzling to Croker. “What’s Platt doing about Roosevelt?”

“He wants him out of the state fast. We all do. It’s not that he does anything. Don’t get me wrong. But he talks so much. He gets the rich folks all riled up on account of us, not that they don’t know better.”

“He’s a demagogue.” Blaise made his vital contribution.

Croker nodded. “You could call him that. Poor old Platt’s gone and broken a lot of ribs. He’s in plaster of paris up to here.” Croker indicated the place where his own neck was, assuming that he had such a feature, hidden back of gray beard, gray tweed. “He’s poorly, today. With a fever. But he’s made up his mind he won’t let Teddy run again for governor.”

“How does he stop him?” asked Blaise.

“Throw us the election is one way. Teddy didn’t do all that well first time around. It’s not like Platt and me haven’t arranged an election together before. But Platt’s got other plans this year. He wants McKinley to take Teddy on as vice-president.”

Hearst scratched his stomach, idly; gazed into the middle distance at a cow-headed Egyptian goddess, who stared back. “Dewey’s done for,” he told the goddess.

Croker laughed, an unpleasant sound. “That interview in the World did the trick.”

“I could have managed him.” Hearst shut his eyes. “I could’ve elected him president.”

“But you couldn’t have managed Mrs. Dewey, and that’s the truth.”

Like everyone else, Blaise had read, with wonder, the Admiral’s interview. After a bit of thought, the Admiral had declared his readiness to be president, an easy sort of job, he declared, where you simply did what Congress told you to do. Mrs. Dewey was given full credit for the resulting farce.

“No one,” said the Chief, opening one eye and keeping it firmly on Croker, “wants Teddy.”

“Since when does that matter? Platt wants him out of New York. The only way is to make him vice-president. Boss Quay in Pennsylvania-”

“Got thrown out of the Senate.”

“A bag-,” said Croker, enjoying each syllable, “a-telle. Who needs the Senate? But everyone needs Pennsylvania, and Matt Quay’s got that. New York and Pennsylvania will make Teddy vice-president.”

“Bosses.” Hearst’s tone was neutral; he had now widened both eyes in imitation of the cow-goddess.

“So what’s Mark Hanna? He’s boss of the whole Republican Party.”

“No.” Hearst was unexpected. „McKinley runs the show, and lets Hanna collect the loot, and take the blame. Teddy was in Washington last week, begging for the job, and Hanna said, no, never, and McKinley said, may the best man win. McKinley wants Allison.”

Blaise had yet to learn the entire roster of American statesmen. Vaguely, he was aware of an elderly Iowa senator named Allison, who, with serene fidelity, represented not Iowans but corporations in the Senate. “McKinley won’t get Allison,” said Croker. “Which means he don’t really want him.”

“Maybe that’s why he says he wants him.” The Chief, each day, sounded more like a politician than an editor. Blaise doubted the wisdom of this metamorphosis. Bright butterflies ought not to change into drab caterpillars. “Dolliver’s the man the White House boys like. Dawes wants him.”

“Dolliver.” Croker allowed the name to remain in that perpetual limbo from which those who might have been figures of the highest degree in the great republic fail to rise even to the surface, like iridescent scum, wrote Blaise in his head. He was beginning to get the knack of newspaper writing. Whatever phrase came first and most shamefully to the mind of someone who read only newspapers was the one to be deployed in all its imprecise familiarity.

“Lodge supports Long. New England supports Long.” Hearst plucked at a single string of his banjo, and even the hardened Croker winced at the sound.

“Lodge works day and night-for Teddy.” Croker stared at the banjo as if it were a city judge whose price had doubled. “He has to be for Long. That’s the cover. The New England candidate, like Dolliver-not Allison-is the real Midwesterner. Now Root…”

“Yes, Root…” Hearst frowned. Blaise could follow only so far into the maze when politicians lapsed into their own curious vernacular, so similar to that of Paris thieves. Plainly, Root impressed each man. Plainly, Root was a non-starter.

“Who do we want, Mr. Hearst?” Croker was, finally, direct.

“Anyone but Teddy.” Hearst was as direct.

“That’s you, of course. Me, I’m like Platt. I want him out of New York. He’s tiresome to do business with.”

Hearst turned to Blaise. “I’ve fixed it. He says you’re the only gentleman we’ve got around here. So you can go down with him, in his car. Make all the notes you can every day and telephone them in and we’ll write it up.”

“By ‘he’ you mean Colonel Roosevelt?”

Hearst stared at a splendid school-of-Tintoretto painting, the work, to Blaise’s eyes, of a student destined not to matriculate. Anyone could sell the Chief anything if it was Art. “You’re booked into the Walton Hotel, same floor as Teddy. You leave Friday. Pennsylvania Station. Noon. All your badges and so on are at the office. The convention don’t start till Tuesday, so Teddy’s getting a headstart. He’s going to be rushing around telling everyone how he’s not a candidate, too young to be put on the shelf, too poor for the job. You don’t have to take any of that nonsense down. Mr. Brisbane can write the usual Teddy interview in his sleep-in their sleep.” The Chief had finally made something close to a joke. The thin voice was asthmatic with uncontrollable laughter.

“As good as Weber and Fields,” beamed Croker, suddenly turning before their eyes into a dear wee leprechaun, straight from the Emerald Isle.

Blaise was less indulgent. “Where’s Hanna in all this?”

“He’s staying with rich friends in Haverford. He’ll be at the Walton by Saturday. But Charlie Dawes is the man to keep your eye on. He’s the one who’ll be talking on the telephone to McKinley in the White House. If Teddy starts to bore you, head for Dawes.” Blaise had a vague memory of a reddish-haired young man, said to be one of the President’s few intimates. “He’ll be with the Illinois delegation.” Hearst gave a few more instructions; then Blaise said farewell to Chief and Boss.

As Blaise left the room, he heard, once again, the sly sing-song voice of the leprechaun. “And then we’ll be needing a governor all our own, once Teddy’s gone to Washington, a fine famous sort of man, Mr. Hearst, with whom we can do business.”

“I’m for reform, Croker.”

“Who isn’t? As autumn leaves fall and the first Tuesday in November, that precious gift of our brave forebears who fell at Bunker Hill, comes round, and we elect a new governor of this state-a reforming governor-why not William Randolph Hearst?”

Unfortunately, George shut the door before Blaise could hear the Chief’s reply to the siren’s song.

2

THEODORE ROOSEVELT WELCOMED Blaise heartily into his rail-road car, a somewhat shabby affair for the governor of so great a state, with dirty antimacassars on dirty green armchairs; and filled, for the most part, with aides, journalist friends, and the upright remains of Senator Platt, who seemed to have been dead for some time. The face was pale blue, in nice contrast with the white whiskers, while the upper torso beneath the frock-coat was encased in plaster, giving the effect not only of death but of advanced rigor mortis as well.

“Delighted you could come!” For once Roosevelt did not make three or even two words of “delighted.” He seemed uncharacteristically subdued, even nervous. With a sudden shake, the train started. Blaise and Roosevelt fell together against Senator Platt’s chair. From the chair came a soft cry. Blaise looked down and saw two accusing eyes set in a livid face, glaring up at them.

“Senator. Forgive me-us. The train…” Roosevelt stuttered apologies.

“My pills.” The voice was of a man dying. The pills were brought by a porter. The Senator took them, and sleep-opium, not death-claimed the Republican boss.

“He’s in great pain,” said Roosevelt, with some satisfaction. Then he frowned. “But so am I.” He tapped one of his huge teeth on which Blaise always expected to see engraved “RIP.” “Agony. No time to have it pulled either, with so many speeches to give. Wouldn’t do. Must suffer. I am simply a delegate-at-large, you know. I am not a candidate for vice-president. Why won’t people believe me?”

Blaise restrained himself from saying, “Because you’re lying.”

Roosevelt read his silence correctly. “No, I’m not being coy,” he said. “It’s a complicated business. There’s one thing being a true choice of all the people, and quite another being forced over a convention by,” from force of habit, he struck left hand with right fist, “the bosses.”

The boss of New York heard this; opened his drugged eyes; sneered slightly beneath his white moustache; and resumed his drugged sleep.

“Well, you’ve got Platt and Quay behind you,” Blaise began.

“What is a boss, finally, but someone led by the people?” This was a new variation. “They make judges and mayors and justices of the peace and-deals, yes. I know all that. But he,” Roosevelt lowered his voice and pointed to Platt, whose back was now to them, “didn’t want me for governor, and doesn’t want me for vice-president either, but the people push and push and so the bosses get out in front like… like?”

“Mirabeau.”

“Yes! The very man! When the mob was loose in the street, he said, I don’t know where they’re going but as their leader I must lead them, wherever it is, he said.”

“Or something like that,” Blaise murmured. But Roosevelt never heard what he did not want to hear. Blaise, however, forced him to explain why, if he was not a candidate, he should want to be in Philadelphia three days before the convention started; and Mark Hanna was out of town.

“Senator Lodge says I’m making a great mistake. He always says that, of course. No matter what anyone does.” Roosevelt swung a fat thigh over the arm of his chair. A waiter brought him tea. Blaise ordered coffee. Covertly, the other journalists watched Blaise, waiting for him to vacate the chair beside the Governor. But Roosevelt seemed to need the company of a gentleman at so delicate a moment in his history. Blaise got the impression that the Governor was not only nervous but undecided what to do. In effect, he was arriving at a convention controlled, in McKinley’s name, by his enemy Hanna. The Colonel was a national hero, but conventions were no respecters of popularity of the sort bestowed by a press so easily manipulated and its gullible readers.

Roosevelt acknowledged this. “I got the governorship on a hurrah, after Cuba. But how long can a hurrah last in politics?”

“With Admiral Dewey only a few months.”

“To have thrown all that away.” Roosevelt shook his head with wonder. “I captured one hill. He captured the world. Now they laugh at him, and that permanent victory arch of his is falling to pieces in Fifth Avenue. I just told the Mayor to tear it down. But he doesn’t-the Mayor-listen to me. Because I’m not a war hero any more. I’m just a hard-working governor, who’s taken on the trusts, the Whitneys, the insurance companies…” The Governor’s voice was now a high and, to Blaise, familiar drone. When there was a pause in the litany of brave achievement, Blaise surrendered his chair to the New York Sun, the Roosevelt paper.

Toward journey’s end, Platt opened his drug-dimmed eyes; saw Blaise; motioned for him to draw near. “Mr. Sanford, of the Roman Catholic Sanfords.” A smile’s shadow made hideous the corpse-like face. “How is Mr. Hearst?”

“Expanding, Senator.”

“In circulation? Weight? Politically? As chairman of all those clubs?”

“Into other cities. More newspapers.”

“Well, he knows papers.” Platt sat up even straighter and grimaced with pain.

“I wonder, sir, what you think of Senator Hanna’s support for Cornelius Bliss, as vice-president.”

“I think it shows what a damn fool Hanna is, and always has been.” Two marks of red, like thumb-imprints, appeared at the center of each ashen cheek. “What is Hanna but a stupid tradesman-a grocer? No, don’t quote me. Let me say it in the Senate first-or last. All Hanna knows how to do is raise money for McKinley. But he don’t know nothing about politics. Bliss, damn his eyes, is mine!” Twice, the religious Platt had sworn in Blaise’s presence. The opiates had had an effect; he was also feverish.

“Yours, sir?”

“Bliss is from New York. I am New York. Hanna is Ohio. How can he work for someone from my state?” Platt shut his eyes; and appeared to have fainted. The scarlet thumbprints faded to ash.

Roosevelt insisted that Blaise ride with him and his secretary in a carriage to the Walton. “You’ll be able to tell Mr. Hearst, firsthand, how I have not sought the nomination.” As Roosevelt spoke, he kept poking his head out the carriage window, smiling aimlessly at the crowds in Broad Street. But as no one expected a non-candidate to arrive so early, he was not, to his chagrin, noticed. The secretary sat between Blaise and the Governor, a round black box on his knees.

Blaise had never been in Philadelphia before. For him, the city was simply a stop on the railroad between Washington and New York. Curiously, he stared out the window, and thought that he was in some sort of Dutch or Rhineland city, all brick and neatness; but the people were unmistakably American. There were numerous Negroes, mostly poor; numerous whites, mostly well-to-do, in light summer clothes. Blaise, who was hatless, noted that almost every man wore a hard round straw hat to shield its owner from the near-tropical heat.

As the carriage stopped in front of the Walton, a considerable crowd had gathered, to watch the great men appear, as it were, on stage. There were all sorts of colored placards, among them eulogies to “Rough Rider Roosevelt.” But over all brooded the round smiling face of McKinley, like a kindly American Buddha.

“Quick!” Roosevelt tapped the box on his secretary’s lap. The man opened the box just as the doorman opened the carriage door and the crowd moved forward to see who was inside. Roosevelt took off his bowler; gave it to the secretary; then he took from the black box his famous Rough Rider’s sombrero, which he jammed on his head at an angle. Then with an airy gesture, he pushed up part of the brim and, aching tooth forgotten, he turned on the famous smile, like an electrical light; and leapt from carriage to sidewalk.

The cheering was instant, and highly satisfying to the Governor, who shook every hand in sight, as he made his way into the hotel.

“It’s my impression,” said Blaise to the secretary, “that the Governor is available for the nomination.”

“Whatever the people want, he wants.” The secretary was smooth. “But he does not seek the office, and he will certainly not accept anything from the bosses.”

Although the boss of Pennsylvania, Senator Quay, was not in Roosevelt’s suite to greet him, his deputy, Pennsylvania’s other senator, Boies Penrose, was on hand; and the two men communed in the bedroom while the sitting room filled up with Roosevelt supporters.

Blaise went to his own room, farther along the musty hall, already heavily scented with cigar smoke and whiskey. He prepared his notes; then he went to the telephone room off the lobby and rang Brisbane in New York. “The story is the hat,” said Blaise, highly pleased with himself. For once, he had got the lead into a story right. Brisbane was delighted. “Would you say that it was an acceptance hat?”

“If I don’t say it, you will, Mr. Brisbane.”

“Good work, Mr. Sanford. Keep us posted. Tomorrow’s the day.”

“But-tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Politicians-and Moslems-do not observe the Sabbath. Keep your eyes open. Roosevelt wants to stampede the convention before it starts.”

Sunday the Governor of New York did indeed neglect the Sabbath. As far as Blaise could tell, no church pew held him that day, nor did he, as the Lord enjoined, observe a day of rest. He resembled, in his hotel suite, a Dutch windmill, arms constantly flailing high and low as he made his points; arms descending at regular intervals to shake, vigorously, proffered hands.

Blaise sat, unobserved, in a corner with an elderly political reporter from the Baltimore Sun, who advised Blaise to warn Hearst against buying the Baltimore Examiner. “The paper’s a regular jinx,” said the old man, removing a dented silver flask from his pocket and taking a swig of what smelled like corn whiskey. “Philadelphia’s dry on Sunday,” he said, as if in explanation. Opposite them, back to the window with its view of the surprisingly narrow Broad Street, Roosevelt was spluttering to the delight of delegates whose eyes reflected not only excitement-even lust-but anxiety: the drama was not yet written, and until it was, this entirely self-conscious chorus had no idea whom to laud. If Dolliver, the current favorite, were to be nominated on Wednesday, there would be no chorus in the Roosevelt suite, and the now exuberant windmill in front of the window would no longer revolve once the warm winds of choric frenzy had ceased.

“What is happening?” asked Blaise. When in doubt, ask someone knowledgeable, was Brisbane’s obvious but too often ignored advice to journalists.

“Everything. Nothing. The dude,” he pointed to Roosevelt, “can’t make up his mind. He thinks if he gets to be vice-president he’s done for. They sort of disappear, by and large. He’d like to be reelected governor, but Platt won’t let him. So should he take on Platt? Fight it out? He don’t dare. This is about all he’s got left.”

“He’s still young.” Blaise was now used to referring to the fat little governor, almost twenty years his senior, as “young.”

“He’s aiming to be president next time around. But he knows that every vice-president’s been passed over since Van Buren. But governors of New York are always in line. Now Platt’s kicking him out-or upstairs. That’s why he’s going around in circles.”

Indeed this seemed a proper description of the Governor, who was now, literally, marching about the room in circles, talking, talking, talking. Senator Penrose had withdrawn, having declared that Pennsylvania’s delegation was for Roosevelt. “Machine,” said the old man from Baltimore. “Funny thing for a reformer, to be the number-one choice of the bosses.”

But the next delegation was un-bossed California. There was cheering from Roosevelt’s supporters, and a brilliant smile from the Governor, as he greeted, by name, a number of the Californians. “We’re with Roosevelt all the way!” shouted the chairman of the delegation.

“The West for Roosevelt!” someone else shouted.

“The ‘rest’?” asked the old man, beginning to make notes on his large dirty cuff.

“The West,” Blaise said.

“I’m a bit deaf.” The old man smiled. Huge dentures moved about his mouth. “There’s your key. That’s what Teddy’s looking for. He doesn’t want people to think of him as Platt and Quay’s invention. But to be the candidate of the West…”

“A cowboy…?”

“A cowboy. A Rough Rider. Now he’s getting it together.”

“Can Hanna stop him?”

“Will McKinley stop him? That’s the question.”

“McKinley can keep him from being nominated?”

“McKinley can put him out to pasture for good-in the badlands. But will he?”

Monday morning Blaise was in the crowded hotel” lobby when Mark Hanna made his not-so-triumphant entrance. The once thick-set, rather doughy political manager, made famous by a thousand cartoons of which the wickedest were Hearst’s, was now a stooped haggard figure who walked with a noticeable limp. Behind him, to Blaise’s surprise, was Senator Lodge, Roosevelt’s closest friend, whose support of Secretary of the Navy Long was considered to be no more than a holding operation for an eleventh-hour strike by the Governor. The eleventh hour was now striking. Blaise tried-but failed-to get near Hanna. He caught Lodge’s eye; and received a courtly nod, no more. But then Lodge had always taken the firm line that if a gentleman were to work for Hearst either he was not a gentleman or the word was in need of redefining.

Blaise then retreated to the marble stairs to the mezzanine, where he knew Hanna would be quartered. The day was oppressingly hot; and the smell of the delegates overwhelming. Blaise felt like Coriolanus as, trying not to inhale, he climbed the stairs to the mezzanine, which was filled with huge portraits of McKinley trimmed with red, white and blue bunting. A large placard, over an exit door to a fire escape, announced, humorously, “Republican National Committee.”

James Thorne, a San Francisco Examiner reporter, took Blaise in hand. He was a young, thin, hard man, who did the actual work of the Washington bureau which Ambrose Bierce adorned, weaving his verbal wreaths, in prose and verse, of marvellous poison ivy. “Hanna’s using this room,” said Thorne. “Does he know you by sight?”

“I doubt it.”

“He knows me, so I’m keeping my hat down over my eyes. If I do get kicked out, you’ll take notes, won’t you, Mr. Sanford?”

“I think I probably can,” said Blaise. He was used by now to being treated as a feeble-minded rich boy.

Thorne and Blaise occupied two straight-backed chairs in front of a window. “That’s so the light will be in his eyes,” said Thorne. “He won’t be able to see us. I hope. One thing about a national convention. Nobody’s ever seen anybody before. So you can get away with a lot by just pretending you belong wherever you happen to be.”

Blaise did his best to look as if he belonged in front of an open window in a large room filled with gilt sofas and chairs. In the corner of the room there was-most important of all-a telephone booth. “It’s rigged up to the White House,” said Thorne.

Suddenly the room was filled with politicians, and Hanna was carefully placed in an armchair. He was, Blaise decided, not long for this world. Lodge was nowhere in sight.

One by one the state leaders were admitted to the presence. Hanna questioned each carefully; each questioned Hanna. Was it true that McKinley was taking no position?

Hanna’s response was always the same. He was in close touch with the President. The convention was open. Everyone hoped that the best man would win. Wherever Roosevelt was alluded to as a potential “best man,” Hanna would glower. Then he would speak of Dolliver, Allison, Long, Bliss: seasoned men, good Republicans, reliable. But after each delegation had come and gone, Hanna was more and more drained. He sweated; and the dull red eyes were glazed.

‘One of Hanna’s aides came out of the telephone booth. “No word, Senator.”

“In that case,” said a Roosevelt supporter from the West, whose name neither Thorne nor Blaise had heard, “the convention’s under your control, Senator.”

Hanna glared at the Westerner. “My control? No, it is not. Everyone’s doing what he damn well pleases.”

One of Hanna’s aides tried to stop him; but the fit was upon him. “I am not in control. I should be. But I’m not. McKinley won’t let me use the power of the presidency to defeat Roosevelt. He’s blind or afraid, or something. I’m finished. I’m out. I’m not running this campaign. I’m quitting as national chairman.” The tirade went on. Thorne and Blaise both made rapid notes.

A California delegate entered the room, unaware that he was interrupting Hanna’s definitive performance as King Lear. “Well, Senator, the whole West is now for Roosevelt…”

“Idiot!” Hanna bawled. The Californian reeled back as though struck. With the help of three men, Hanna staggered to his feet. “Don’t you fools realize that there would be only one man’s life between that madman and the presidency?”

At this propitious moment, the madman entered the room, clicking his teeth with what could have been joy or, Blaise thought more likely, a carnivore’s hunger. “Senator Hanna, dee-light-ed.”

Roosevelt seized the hand of the swaying Hanna. The room was now filled with Roosevelt supporters. “I’m sorry to cause so much commotion.” Roosevelt adjusted the Rough Rider’s hat. “I thought I’d just slip into town, as a humble delegate-at-large…”

Softly, Hanna screamed. But no one paid the slightest attention to him. At the eleventh hour the madman held center stage. “I had not realized how undecided everyone is…”

Hanna found his voice. “Undecided? We’re all decided. You’re not going to be the nominee. You come in here, dressed up like a cowboy, and try to stampede the convention, when Long and Dolliver are the true candidates.”

“Senator Lodge tells me that Mr. Long is not all that serious, and…”

“If I say he’s serious, Governor, he’s serious.”

“What does the President say?” Blaise admired this instinctive leap for the jugular.

“May the best man win. That’s what we all say. That’s what’s going to happen, too. All you’ve got, Governor, is Platt and Quay. Well, we can’t go into an election with Bryan with a candidate who’s the invention of the big-city machines. McKinley speaks for the heartland, not Boss Platt, not Boss Quay…”

“Not Boss Hanna?” asked a voice in the doorway.

“Boss? Me, a boss! I do like I’m told. Don’t go believing what you read in those Hearst papers. I follow orders, and I’ve got one from the President which I’m going to follow to the end. No deal with the big-city bosses. They may want you, Governor. But we don’t want nothing to do with them. Is that clear?”

Roosevelt was now very red in the face and breathing hard. “My support is from reform; from the West…”

“Platt and Quay. Platt and Quay!” Hanna drowned him out, and Blaise could tell that Roosevelt had been, momentarily, beaten back.

“Naturally, I stand where I’ve always stood.” Roosevelt’s hand touched the tooth which Blaise knew to be aching. “I would like renomination as governor of New York…”

“Make a statement to that effect. By four this afternoon, we’ll want it for the wire services.” Hanna had pulled himself together. “I’ll get the word to Platt, and the New York delegation. You may think you have the West, but we have the South, and Ohio.” Hanna was now in the doorway, surrounded by his revivified troops. “May the best man win!” he shouted at Roosevelt, who was staring at Blaise, and not seeing him, or anyone else. The teeth that had been clicking so ominously were now set close together. Behind the gold pince-nez the small dull blue eyes were unfocussed. What next? Blaise wondered.

The next day was Hanna’s. He was given an ovation when he appeared on the stage of the convention hall, a vast hot building set in West Philadelphia. Blaise was seated in the press section, with a good view of the state delegations below him. New York’s banner was close to the stage; but there was no hatted Rough Rider to be seen. The Governor had indeed done as he was told by Hanna; he had given a statement to the press that he would prefer to continue as governor. When asked to comment, Senator Platt had said that he was in such exquisite pain that he no longer cared who was elected what. According to Roosevelt’s secretary the Governor had made no move to woo the Southern delegates away from Hanna; instead, he was searching desperately for a dentist who could stop the pain in his tooth without removing it. The thought of a huge gap in those tombstone teeth was terrifying to all Roosevelt supporters.

As the speeches began, Blaise sat next to Thorne. During the night Thorne had spent some time with Dawes, who was now the President’s eyes and ears at the convention. “Something’s happened between McKinley and Hanna.” Thorne was mystified. But Blaise, who knew nothing of politics but a good deal about human vanity, had the answer. “He’s tired of those cartoons of ours, showing him being led around by Boss Hanna.”

But Thorne suspected all sorts of dark intrigue. Meanwhile, the New York State delegation was trying to make up its mind whom to endorse. For some mysterious reason, Theodore Roosevelt was not even considered; then, on the second day of the convention, word swept the hall that the New York delegation had selected as a favorite-son non-candidate Lieutenant Governor Timothy L. Woodruff, one of Platt’s less gorgeous inventions. Simultaneously came the news that Roosevelt had defied Platt. “This makes no sense,” said Blaise to Thorne, as each tried to cool himself with a palmetto fan in the airless hall.

But for once the political reporter could instruct the man of the world. “Teddy’s pulled it off, and so has Platt. Teddy can’t ever appear to be Platt’s candidate, so they cooked this up to make the West and the South and the country think that Roosevelt’s fallen out with the boss of his own state.”

“This is all Platt’s doing?”

Thorne nodded; and smiled. “It’s smooth work, Mr. Sanford. Seamless, you might say.”

By afternoon, the West and Wisconsin had come out for Roosevelt. Then the permanent committee chairman, Senator Lodge, was escorted to the platform by his old friend the Rough Rider himself. As Roosevelt and Lodge appeared on stage, the convention hall exploded with sound. “It’s all over!” Thorne shouted into Blaise’s ear.

Roosevelt stood to one side of the lectern where Lodge had been installed. Roosevelt appeared to be genuinely surprised by the ovation. First, he looked at Lodge; then he gestured for Lodge to take a bow; but the elegant Lodge merely smiled a small smile, and folded his arms, and bowed to Roosevelt.

At that moment the band struck up “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” Roosevelt removed his hat and waved it like a plume. Under the Ohio banner, Senator Hanna fell back in his chair, and shut his eyes.

On Thursday, the matter was settled. Blaise had talked to Dawes, whom he found to be intelligent as well as charming, a rare combination in a professional courtier. “It’s no secret the President started out not wanting Roosevelt. Now he thinks it’s all for the best.”

From the press section, the convention floor was, suddenly, colorful as plumes of red, white and blue pampas grass were waved, worn, held. The Kansas delegation, wearing yellow silk sunflowers, demonstrated for Roosevelt. Then Lodge banged his gavel for order; and introduced Senator Foraker of Ohio, who proceeded with due pomp and collegial zeal to renominate for president William McKinley. A demonstration resulted. The band played “Rally ’Round the Flag” in memory of the Civil War, of the origins of the party itself and of Major McKinley. Afterward, there was silence, as Lodge took his place at the lectern, and the elegant voice sounded throughout the hall, “To second the nomination of President McKinley, the Governor of New York…”

With that, the hall was in eruption. Even Blaise found himself excited. Whoever had stage-managed Roosevelt was a master. Again the band played “There’ll be a Hot Time,” by now the anthem of the Spanish-American War. Rough Rider hat held high, the stout small near-sighted man raced down the corridor from his post beneath New York State’s banner and up the steps to the stage. Again, the ovation was fortissimo, and Roosevelt seemed to grow ever larger as the cheering filled him up, as hot air does a balloon. The teeth shone (the pain must somehow have been killed); the hat was held above his head like victor’s laurel.

Lodge, much moved, shook his hand and led him to the lectern. Roosevelt’s shrill voice resounded throughout the hall. He said nothing memorable; but he himself was memorable as… Blaise could not think what. Taken detail by detail, he was as absurd a creature as Blaise had ever met, but taken as the whole that was now being presented to the nation, he seemed all high-minded probity, fuelled by the purest energy; he was, literally, phenomenal. As Roosevelt seconded the nomination of McKinley, he himself seized the crown. At last he was at the center of the republic’s stage, and he would never again leave it, Blaise thought, suddenly conscious of history’s peculiar inexorableness. The speech was mercifully short. History does not enjoy too close an examination of its processes.

The roll-call of the states began. But there were so many cries to make unanimous the renomination of McKinley that Lodge, in a general storm of confused parliamentarianism, did precisely that, and Iowa jumped the gun and nominated Roosevelt for vice-president. There was more confusion. Finally, Lodge declared that Governor Roosevelt was indeed the unanimous choice of the convention for vice-presidential candidate, having received every vote save one. The Governor, in a paroxysm of modesty, had declined to cast a vote for himself. At that glorious moment, a huge stuffed elephant appeared in the hall, attended by waving red, white and blue pampas grass. History had been made.

As Blaise entered the Walton Hotel, Senator Platt was leaving, surrounded by members of the press. The Easy Boss was more than ever easy; and the ashen color of the weekend had been replaced by his normal pallor; but he moved stiffly, carefully, as though afraid he might break. “Are you pleased at Governor Roosevelt’s nomination?”

“Oh, yes. Yes,” murmured Platt.

“But, Senator, weren’t you for Woodruff?”

“We are all of us for the Republican Party,” said Platt gently. “And the full dinner pail.”

“The full what?”

“Dinner pail,” another reporter answered.

This must be, Blaise thought, a campaign phrase, to emphasize the new prosperity in the land, thanks to McKinley’s policy of expansion and, of course, high tariffs.

“Any other thoughts, Senator?”

“Naturally, I am glad,” said Platt, now at the door, “that we had our way.”

“What?” asked a journalist, affecting surprise. “I mean, who’s ‘we’?”

Platt covered himself smoothly. “The people have had their way.” The Senator disappeared through the door.

Blaise found Thorne in the bar, not yet crowded with delegates. The convention was still in session. The two men sat at a small round marble-topped table, more suitable for an ice-cream parlor;than a serious hotel bar-room. Blaise joined Thorne in whiskey, not his favorite drink. “I’ve already filed,” said Thorne, contentedly. “In fact, I filed this morning before the convention. The whole story.”

“You knew what would happen?”

Thorne nodded. “Easy to see it all coming. Now I’ve sent on the details. The Examiner’s going to have everything first. In the West, that is.”

“I just telephoned Mr. Brisbane. Then he makes it all up.”

“Same thing. Now Bryan will be renominated in July, and we’ll have the election of ’96 all over again. I can write that one in my sleep. Sixteen to one silver versus solid money…”

“What about imperialism?”

“The party of Lincoln,” said Thorne quickly, “has freed from the yoke of Spanish bondage ten million Filipinos.”

3

JOHN HAY SAT with the President in the Cabinet room.

Dawes had finished his report of the convention. McKinley was seated at his usual odd angle to the end of the Cabinet table, left elbow resting on the table, his legs, as always, off to the right and never under the table. He even wrote with his weight on his left elbow, his right arm crossing the considerable waistcoated paunch. He seemed to regard the entire seating arrangement as being, in some way, temporary. Hay occupied his usual Cabinet chair. Dawes sat across from them. Overhead, an electrical fan slowly stirred the humid air. To Dawes’s left the large globe of the world needed dusting. In fact, thought Hay glumly, the entire White House needed a thorough cleaning. It was curious how quickly in the absence of an energetic presidential wife the place took on the appearance of a politician’s somewhat sleazy clubhouse.

“I suppose, all in all,” said McKinley at last, “it was the hat that did it,”

Hay laughed inadvertently. The President could be mildly droll, but seldom humorous. “The acceptance hat, it was called.” Hay quoted a newspaper story.

“What’s the proper name for those Rough Rider hats?” McKinley seemed genuinely curious.

“I think they’re called sombreros,” said Dawes. “Teddy never took it off, the whole time. Except to wave it, of course.”

“A curious creature,” said McKinley, stretching his legs so that the great paunch, as large and round as the globe of the world itself, rested comfortably on his huge thighs. “I suppose we can live with him. Of course, we’re going to hear a lot about the bosses from Bryan.” McKinley frowned; removed his eyeglasses; rubbed his eyes.

“Mark Hanna’s taken the whole thing very well,” said Dawes, picking up rather too rapidly, thought Hay, on the President’s reference to Platt and Quay.

“He’s poorly, I think. He’s a bad color. I worry about him. What did he say?” McKinley looked over his left shoulder at Dawes, who was nicely reflected in the glass of a mahogany credenza, containing documents that no one, as far as Hay could tell, had ever examined.

Dawes chuckled. “He said he was going along with the party, as always. But with Roosevelt as vice-president, it was your constitutional duty to survive the next four years, to save us from the wild man.”

McKinley smiled. “Well, that’s the constitutional minimum, I suppose. Who was the last vice-president to be elected president when the president’s term was up?”

“Martin Van Buren,“ said Hay. “More than sixty years ago. Poor Teddy’s on the shelf, I’m afraid.”

Dawes laughed. “You know what Platt said when they asked him if he was coming to the inauguration? He said, ‘Yes. I feel it my duty to be present when Teddy takes the veil.’ ”

Hay’s own feeling toward Roosevelt, never entirely sympathetic, was now more hostile than not. In March, Lodge had risen in the Senate to denounce the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, using language similar to Roosevelt’s but adding the insufferable thesis that the treaty-making power was, essentially, the Senate’s preserve. Hay had then written out his resignation, and given it to the President at the end of the Cabinet meeting. McKinley had responded with charm and firmness. Hay was to remain until the end. They would fight side by side for virtue. Hay remained, as he knew all along that he would. Without good health, without office, there would be, simply, no life left. Also, he had enjoyed a considerable success with his marvellously imaginative approach to collapsing China. Hay had serenely announced, as the world’s policy, an “open door” approach to China. He had informed the relevant predatory nations that this was the only sensible course for them to pursue, and though the Russians and the Germans had been privately outraged, they were obliged to subscribe, if only by silence, to the cause of international virtue and restraint. Overnight, Hay had become a much applauded world statesman. Even Henry Adams praised his friend’s guile. The formula is meaningless, of course, the Porcupine had noted, but no less powerful for its lack of content. Hay regarded the “open door” as buying time until the United States was in a stronger position to exert its will on the Asian mainland. For the American press, the popular author of “Jim Bludso” had acted in a straightforward, decent, American way; he would, one editorial maintained, “Hole her nozzle agin the bank, ’til the last galoot’s ashore.” McKinley had read this editorial to the Cabinet, sonorously quoting “Jim Bludso.” Hay had felt his usual hatred for the poem that had made him famous.

Dawes asked for news of the disturbances in China. McKinley sighed; and turned to Hay, who said, “ ‘The righteous, harmonious fists’-better known as the Boxers-are pounding away. We’ve had no word out of Peking. Most of the foreign diplomats are in the grounds of the British legation.”

“Are they dead?” asked Dawes.

“I assume not.” It was Hay’s view that the Chinese zealots who had risen up to drive the foreigners out of China would be the first to tell the world if they had, indeed, been able to kill the various ambassadors who had taken refuge in Peking’s Tartar City. After all, that was the object of their desperate enterprise.

“This is very delicate.” McKinley pushed his chair farther away from the table so that now his back was to Dawes, the papal left profile to Hay, the eyes on the lighting fixtures, a new tangle of wires from the ceiling now able to incapacitate several Laocoöns and their sons. “Bryan will talk imperialism for the rest of the year, as he’s been talking all along…”

“Anything to get away from silver.” Dawes was the Administration’s authority on Bryan.

“Whatever.” McKinley had no personal interest in any of his opponents, which made him unlike any other politician that Hay had known. Even Lincoln enjoyed analyzing McClellan’s character. But McKinley was papal. He was, to himself, so securely right and in the place where he ought to be that he seemed hardly to notice those who tried to unseat him. In any case, he allowed the devoted, the impassioned, the-why not the word?-besotted Mark Hanna to lay about him, bloodily, in order to secure the McKinley throne.

“I think we are-home free on the Philippines issue.” McKinley gazed, without visible pleasure, at the tangle of electrical cords. “I speak only for the purposes of the election,” he added. He looked at Hay. The dark circles beneath the large eyes gave him the look of an owl in daytime, deceptively brilliant of eye, intensely staring, blind. “Judge Taft is a popular choice, I think.”

McKinley had gone to the Federal bench and appointed a circuit judge from Cincinnati-always Ohio, thought Hay, himself a beneficiary of that state’s political mastery of the union. Although Judge William Howard Taft had not been, as Taft himself had somewhat nervously put it, an imperialist, McKinley had persuaded him to take charge of the commission whose task would be to restore a degree of civilian rule to the archipelago, where the fighting continued to be fierce and Aguinaldo continued to assert his legitimacy as the first president of the Philippine republic, now supported, he had recently maintained from his jungle retreat, by the Democratic Party and its anti-imperialist leader Bryan. Bryan’s Marble Chamber work for the treaty in February of 1899 was apparently unknown to Aguinaldo.

“How do we keep from the press Judge Taft’s problems with General MacArthur?” Dawes was not supposed to know of Judge Taft’s reception in Manila on June 3 when the General-filled with proconsular self-satisfaction-refused to greet in person the commission. But the next day he had deigned to tell the commission that he regarded their existence as a reflection upon his regime and that, further, he disapproved of bringing any sort of civilian rule to the islands while a war was being fought.

Hay had been in favor of the immediate removal of MacArthur, an unsatisfactory if not entirely unsuccessful military commander. McKinley had murmured a few words, half to himself, in which the only word that Hay had heard clearly was “election,” while Root had said that he would be more than happy to explain to his insolent subordinate the meaning of civilian rule. Hay was reminded of Lincoln’s complaints about generals in the field who spoke with the authority of Caesar while performing with the incompetence of Crassus.

“We shall have to do something in China.” The Major looked more than ever like a Buddha.

“Surely, an ‘open door’ is more than enough.”

“Unfortunately, the Boxers have shut the door. We must open it again, Colonel Hay, or seem to. First, the Boxers.” The Buddha smiled, for no reason other than delight in the perfection of his enlightenment. “Then the Boers-”

“Yes, the Boers,” said Dawes, frowning. He was directly involved in the reelection of the candidate. China was far away; and the Boxers were exciting but exotic. As long as they did not kill any Americans, they would not affect the election one way or another. Even their evil genius, the sinister Dowager Empress, had her admirers in the popular press. But the Boers were a matter of immediate concern. German and Irish voters hated England. For them, the Boers were honest Dutch folk, fighting a war of independence against England. Therefore, all right-thinking Americans must be against England, except the intelligent ones, like Hay himself, who saw the Boers as primitive Christian fundamentalists at war with civilization in all its forms.

McKinley inclined to Hay’s view. But he needed the votes of the Irish and the Germans. Meanwhile, earlier in the spring, a delegation of Boers had appeared in Washington. Hay had received them with all the charm that he could simulate. Del had written him alarming reports from Pretoria. Apparently, England could lose the war. Hay’s earlier offer to mediate between the two sides was no longer possible. England would lose any mediation. McKinley had been willing to play the honest broker, but Hay persuaded him that between the Boers and the English, the United States needed England. He reminded the President of England’s support during the war with Spain, when Germany threatened to move against American forces in the Far East.

“I believe, Mr. Dawes,” Hay looked straight at the little man across the table, “that I must be given full credit for being a dupe of England, while the President is above the battle, working hard for American interests.” The Buddha’s smile was more than ever sublime during this. “As well as German and Irish interests,” Hay added; and the smile did not lessen.

“We must be wary,” said McKinley. “Did you know that Judge Taft weighs three hundred pounds?” He looked thoughtful. “While, according to the Sun, his fellow commissioners each weigh over two hundred pounds.”

“Does this create a good impression, Major?” Dawes-small and lean-frowned.

Absently, McKinley patted his own fawn waistcoated belly. “In Asia, it seems that, inadvertently, I am regarded as a political genius. Fat men are held in the highest esteem, and the Filipinos have never before seen so many truly large white Americans as I have sent them. I am sure that it is now only a matter of weeks before Aguinaldo surrenders to… to…”

“American weight?” Hay provided the image.

“I must,” said McKinley, sadly, “exercise more.”

Dawes reported on Bryan’s mood. He would attack the Republican management of the new empire but not the empire itself. Silver would be soft-peddled, as a result of Congress’s acceptance, in March, of the gold standard for American currency.

Mr. Cortelyou announced General Sternberg, the surgeon general of the Army. Hay and Dawes rose to leave. McKinley sighed. “Imperialism may cease to be an issue,” he said, “if we don’t stop the yellow fever in Cuba.”

“It’s just the result of all that filth, isn’t it?” asked Dawes.

General Sternberg overheard Dawes, as he entered the Cabinet room. “We think it’s something else.”

“But what?” asked the President, giving the small general his largest warmest handclasp.

“I’m sending out a commission of four medical men to investigate, sir. With your permission, of course.”

“Of course. There is nothing, in my experience, quite so efficacious as a commission.” Thus, McKinley made one of his rare excursions into the on-going humor of government’s essential inertia, in itself the law of energy in reverse, thought Hay. If nothing could possibly be done, nothing would most certainly be, vigorously, done.

Hay returned, alone, to the State Department. Already there were signs that the government was shutting down for the hot months. Except for important-seeming naval officers, the steps to the colonnaded masterwork were empty.

Adee hissed a warm welcome. “I am writing some more open doors for you, Mr. Hay. I do love writing open doors.”

“Don’t let me stop you. Any word from Peking?”

“The diplomats have vanished, as far as we can tell. They are, probably,” Adee giggled, inadvertently, Hay hoped, “all dead.”

As Hay entered his office, he glanced at a stack of newspapers to see which ones contained stories about him-marked in red by Adee, with an occasional marginal epithet. Except for the Journal, which maintained that he was England’s secret agent in the Cabinet and a sworn enemy to the freedom-loving Boers, the press was not concerned with the Secretary of State. The vice-presidential candidate governed the headlines.

Wearily, Hay took up his “tactful” silver pen, the gift of Helen. For some reason this particular pen, once set to work upon the page, could, in a most silvery way, celebrate whomever he was writing to, in a tone of perfect panegyric, with no wrong notes struck. This letter was, of course, to “Dear Theodore.”

Without thought or pause, Hay’s hand guided the pen across his official stationery: “June 21, 1900. As it is all over but the shouting, I take a moment of this cool morning of the longest day in the year to offer you my cordial congratulations.” With any other pen Hay might have been tempted to add, “and my congratulations to Platt and Quay who have given us you, a precious gift,” but the silver pen lacked iron as well as irony. “You have received the greatest compliment the country could pay you…” This brought a tear to Hay’s own eye: he must have his blood pressure taken; such tears were often a sign of elevated pressure. “… and although it was not precisely what you and your friends desire,” Hay had a glimpse of the sweating Roosevelt slapping mosquitoes as governor-general of the Philippines while sly Malays shot at him from behind jungle trees, “I have no doubt it is all for the best.” Here, Hay and his silver pen were as one. There was no mischief that a vice-president could make under a president as powerful as McKinley. More gracious phrases filled up the page. What small liking that Hay had ever had for Roosevelt was currently in abeyance, thanks to his sabre-rattling over the canal treaty, abetted by the treacherous Lodge. Henry had promised to bring Lodge around; and Henry had failed. Hay’s pen signed the letter, warmly. Hay himself sealed it. As he did, Adee entered. “I sent around the copy of Del’s letter to Miss Sanford. But she is gone.”

“Where to?”

But Adee was looking out the window; and heard nothing. Hay shouted, “Where has she gone?”

“No answer to your letter to the Mikado.” Adee liked to pretend that his hearing was acute at all times. “You know how long Tokyo takes to answer anything.”

“Miss Sanford’s gone where?”

“There is no news from Port Arthur either. We should be thankful that Cassini is abroad. The Tsar is supposed to be ready to recognize his daughter.”

“As the Tsar’s?” Hay was momentarily diverted by the usual Adee confusion.

Adee opened a box of Havana cigars; and offered one to Hay, who took it, in defeat. As Adee lit the Havana cigar he said, as if he’d heard all along, “Miss Sanford’s gone to Newport, Rhode Island. She left us her address. She stays with Mrs. Delacroix. Her half-brother’s grandmother.”

“How do you know such details?” Hay was curious; and impressed.

“In the absence of a court and a Saint-Simon, someone must keep track.”

“We have so many courts in this country.”

“There is only one Newport, Rhode Island.” Adee, without a by-your-leave, helped himself to a cigar. Then the two old friends methodically filled the office with fragrant smoke, successfully eliminating the cloying odor of summer roses, arranged in every vase. “She left me a note, saying that anything that she hears from Del she will let you know, and hopes that you will do the same.”

“Yes.” The pains in the lower back had, ominously, ceased. For some reason, Hay had always felt that a degree of pain was not only reasonable but a sign that the body was correcting itself, as new things went awry in the furnace, the plumbing and the electrical arrangements. But now there was only a general weakness in every limb; and a sensitivity to heat, which made him constantly sleepy, a condition that sleep itself did not improve. He must soon withdraw to New Hampshire or die; or both, he thought, without fear, glad that he could at least enjoy, in the present instant, Adee’s inspired misunderstanding of the word “Tsar.”

The appearance in the doorway, unannounced, of the Secretary of War caused Adee, graciously, like Saint-Simon indeed, to withdraw, never turning his back on the great ones while never ceasing to puff at his cigar.

Root sat on the edge of Hay’s desk. “The Major wants all Americans out of China.”

“How are we to do that, with the Boxers surrounding them in Peking?”

“I’ve told him I thought it was a bad idea, unless the Russians were to go, too, which they won’t. He’s worried about the effect on the election.”

Hay sighed. “I now leave Asia in your hands. I leave the State Department in your hands. I leave…”

“You leave too much.”

“Well, I don’t leave you Teddy.” Hay looked at the now sealed letter to the Governor of New York. “He will speak in every state, he says.”

“It will be interesting to see if he mentions the President.” Root’s contempt for Roosevelt was entirely impersonal and spontaneous. At the same time, they got on well politically: two practical men who needed each other. Teddy had already written Root his version of the convention, which Root had shown Hay: “It was a hard four days in Philadelphia.” Teddy made his own nomination sound like a war won. “What will the Major do?”

“He is going home to Canton,” said Hay. “He will sit on his front porch until election day, chatting to the folks…”

“… and waiting for the telephone to ring.”

“We’re weak on the Philippines.” Root was abrupt. “Taft’s too easy-going. MacArthur’s too much of the military proconsul.”

“You can handle the General,”

Root chuckled. “Oh, I’ll break him to sergeant if he disobeys me. But I can’t give Taft a backbone. If there’s trouble between now and November…”

“Bryan won’t know what to do about it. We shall be reelected, and I shall no longer be the heir-presumptive to the republic. Are you certain you wouldn’t like my place?”

Hay, genuinely, for the moment at least, wished to relinquish office. But Root would have none of it. “We make a good team, the way we are.” He picked up a copy of the Washington Tribune from a side-table where the national press was each day arranged, much as Hay himself used to prepare it for President Lincoln. But unlike Lincoln, who had never been a journalist, Hay should have known better than to take seriously the press. But fabulists, Hay knew, tend to believe tall tales.

“Del’s fiancée seems to be making a go of this.”

“She says that she does not lose money,” said Hay, “and she is amused.”

4

BUT CAROLINE HAD LOST MONEY since spring; and she was not amused. She had spent far too much money covering the national conventions. Since Hearst had given every journalist in the country an exaggerated idea of his worth, she had been obliged to pay a former New York Herald journalist more than she could afford to write what proved to be, surprisingly, an excellent account of the Philadelphia convention. Could it be that Hearst was right? that one did get what one paid for? Now she sat on the lawn of the Delacroix “cottage” and read the Tribune’s account of the nomination of William Jennings Bryan at Kansas City on July 5. As a running mate, Bryan had selected Grover Cleveland’s ancient vice-president, Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. Caroline carefully compared the account in her paper to that of the rival press. Although Hearst was hearty in his endorsement of Bryan, nothing much was said about silver, while Bryan’s anti-imperialist views were barely acknowledged by imperialist Hearst. Happily, Hearst and Bryan were at one on the “Criminal Trusts,” whatever they were, thought Caroline, turning to Hearst’s new paper, the Chicago American, officially launched on July 4, with all of the Chief’s characteristic energy and rich inaccuracy.

“It is curious indeed,” said a deep feminine voice, “to see a young lady reading the vulgar press, and getting ink on her gloves in the process.”

“Then I shall take off the gloves.” Caroline dropped the stack of newspapers onto the grass, and removed her white gloves. “But I must keep on reading my competition; and perfect my own vulgar art.”

Curiosity had, finally, brought them together. When Caroline, vanquished at last by Washington’s heat, had agreed to spend July with Mrs. Jack Astor, Mrs. Delacroix had written her that she must stay with what was, after all, the nearest thing that she had to a grandmother. And so Caroline had transferred herself from Mrs. Jack’s to the splendors of the Grand Trianon, set high on Ochre Avenue above the bright cool Atlantic; and from this sea-fragrant height the steaming heat of Washington was soon forgotten.

Mrs. Delacroix was small and thin, with a face whose lines resembled an intricate spider’s web, framed by silver-gray hair so elaborately curled and arranged-not to mention thick-that half Newport was convinced she wore a wig like her contemporary Mrs. Astor. But hair-and spider’s web-were all her own. When the old lady spoke, her speech was swift with oddly clipped syllables, a reminder of her New Orleans origin. As Mrs. Delacroix approached Caroline, she held a parasol between pale skin and bright sun; she seemed, to Caroline, like some highly purposeful ghost; with truly bad news from the other side.

“Mr. Lispinard Stewart, our neighbor, has come to call. I said that I thought that you were indisposed. But of course if you are disposed…”

“I am entirely at your disposition.”

“They do teach you girls how to talk over there in Europe.” A footman in livery appeared from behind a hedge of lilac, and placed a chair behind Mrs. Delacroix, who sat in it without once looking to see if the chair was in place. “Mr. Lispinard Stewart owns the White Lodge down the road. He is very snobbish.”

“Like everyone else here. Or so I’ve been told,” Caroline added; she had vowed not to be critical, in conversation.

“Some of us have more occasion to be snobbish than others. Mr. Stewart is a bachelor whom everyone would like to marry. But I suspect he will remain in his current state of immaculate chastity, as the nuns used to say in my youth, until he is one day called to a higher station, as a bridegroom of Christ.”

Caroline could never tell when the old lady was being deliberately droll. In either case, she laughed. “It was my impression that Jesus contents himself only with brides.”

“We must not,” said Mrs. Delacroix serenely, “question the mysterious ways of the Almighty.” With the point of her parasol she was turning over the pile of newspapers on the lawn. “You’re the first young lady that I have ever known who reads the front part of the newspapers.”

“I am the first young lady you have ever known to publish a newspaper.”

“I would not,” said Mrs. Delacroix, “boast.”

“Boast? I had hoped to arouse your sympathy.”

“I have none.” Mrs. Delacroix looked quite pleased with herself.

“None at all-for anyone?”

“Not even for myself. We get what we deserve, Caroline.” From the first day, the old woman had addressed the young woman as both child and relative. “But what I most particularly deserve, you don’t have.” She abandoned turning over the newspapers; and frowned with disappointment. “It’s not here.”

“What were you looking for?”

“Town Topics. I read nothing else. It’s always wise to know what the servants think of us. The things that that paper prints!”

“It’s what they don’t print-the omissions-that I study it for.”

Mrs. Delacroix carefully readjusted her huge pastel yellow hat with its swept-back veil of lace. Gold ornaments clung haphazardly to her bust. “Surely those not mentioned are virtuous, and so of no concern to our servants.”

“Or they pay Colonel Mann large sums of money to keep their names out of his ‘Saunterings.’ ”

“Cynical!” Mrs. Delacroix’s voice tolled like the sea-bell on the sharp rocks beneath the house. “That’s what comes of reading newspapers! They soil one’s soul as surely as they soil white gloves.”

Caroline held up her gloves. They were indeed smudged with ink. “I must change again,” she said.

“Wait until we dress for lunch.” Caroline had been relieved to discover that Newport required no more than five changes of dress a day, assuming that one did not play tennis or go yachting or riding. In Paris, seven changes of costume was thought the fashionable minimum. As a result of this new dispensation, the asthmatic Marguerite was in Paradise: enraptured by the sea-air’s coolness, as well as by the thousand or so French maids employed along the ridge where Newport’s “cottages” were set apart from the old town whose year-round inhabitants had been dubbed by Harry Lehr, in a literal translation of Louis XIV, “our Footstools.” Although the Footstools loathed the fashionable Feet, they served them grimly during the eight-week season of July and August; after the last fête, Mrs. Fish’s Harvest Festival Ball, the huge palaces were then shut for the remaining ten months of the year and Newport was again the property of the Stools.

“Why must you quarrel with Blaise?” Suddenly, disconcertingly, Mrs. Delacroix resembled a withered version of her grandson.

“We only quarrel over money. Surely, that’s usual-and permissible.”

“One disagrees over money but one does not quarrel. You could be such a good influence on him.”

“Does he need a good influence? I thought,” Caroline was mischievous, “that Madame de Bieville now stood in loco parentis.”

With some effort, Mrs. Delacroix managed not to smile. “I am in loco parentis. The poor boy’s last blood relation-except for you, of course.’ ”

“And I am so young, inexperienced, still a jeune fille, while Blaise is a man of the world, with Madame to guide him-when you are not there, of course.”

“Now you make fun of me.” The dowager looked almost girlish. “But you seem more at ease in these parts than Blaise. You select your friends with care…”

“Girls never select. We are selected.”

“Well, you have, somehow, acquired the Hay family. Helen dotes on you. She’s arriving today, with Payne Whitney. Naturally, they go to different houses. We are not French, yet. But Blaise comes and goes and, except for the delightful Madame de Bieville, he has no friends in Newport…”

“No friends? Why, there is Payne, and Del Hay, when he’s here, and all those Yale classmates…”

“He thinks only of Mr. Hearst and newspapers…”

“Like me. I sometimes think our wet-nurse must have fed us ink instead of milk.”

Mrs. Delacroix put her hands over her ears. “I did not hear that!” A footman arrived with a silver tray on which two near-transparent cups of bouillon were placed. “Drink up,” said the old woman. “You’ll need your strength. We have a formidable season prepared.”

“You are good to invite me.” Caroline looked at her hostess; and began to be fond of her. Although she had not expected to find anything but a dragon, breathing fire, the invitation (summons?) had proved to be a sign of belated-not quite affection but deep curiosity: of the two emotions always the more interesting one in Caroline’s view. But then she, too, was curious about Mrs. Delacroix for many reasons.

Thus far, there had been no talk of the past. A portrait of Denise Sanford hung in the drawing room; she looked very young, and rather startled; except for her expression, she looked like Blaise. There was no portrait of their father, William Sanford. “I must have put it away,” said Mrs. Delacroix. “Would you like to have it?”

“Yes, I would.”

“He is in uniform. In the war, he fought on the Yankee side.”

“Hardly fought,” Caroline could not resist.

“That is the best thing I have heard said of him. We continued to know one another only because of Blaise, who is my last living grandchild, my last relative, in fact, outside New Orleans, that is, where I am related to everyone.”

“What a burden!”

Mrs. Delacroix took Caroline’s arm and they walked, carefully, up the lawn to the pink marble terrace. “Mamie Fish is giving us lunch. She’s very curious about you.”

“I am not,” Caroline said, “curious about her.”

“Do tell her! She will be shattered. She thinks herself the most interesting woman on earth, and now that old Mrs. Astor’s started to fade, Mamie means to take her place, or, rather, Harry Lehr means to install Mamie as our uncrowned queen.”

“Such excitement,” murmured Caroline, wondering if there might not be a story to be passed on, most anonymously, to the Tribune.

They entered the cool boiserie-lined study, where a marble bust of Marie Antoinette gazed, like a regal sheep, out the window at a lawn ready for munching. “When Mrs. Leiter was here, she asked me if Rodin had made that head.”

On principle, Caroline laughed at any mention of the wealthy Chicago lady who had launched, successfully, three splendid girls into the great world’s marriage market, of whom the most attractive married Lord Curzon, now viceroy of India, where the vice-reine was known as Leiter of India. “Naturally I told Mrs. Leiter that Rodin had sculpted the entire French royal family, starting with Charlemagne. She said that she was not surprised as he did only the best people. In fact,” Mrs. Delacroix suddenly inhaled, making a sound that could only have been described as a snort, “Mrs. Leiter said that I must see the bust that he has just done of her daughter’s hand.”

Then Mrs. Delacroix proposed that they drive to the Casino, a rustic shingle-and-wood building which provided marble Newport with a sort of village center, a Petit Trianon for would-be simple folk. Here tennis was played on grass courts, while in the Horse Shoe Piazza, Mullalay’s orchestra could be heard throughout the day as unenergetic ladies took the air, often together, while the energetic men were all at sea in sailboats and the unenergetic ones had withdrawn to the Casino’s Reading Room, where they were safe from ladies, cads and books.

But Caroline said that she had-she almost said the unsayable word “work” but quickly remembered the common phrase-“letters to write,” and clothes to be changed. Mrs. Delacroix let her go; and took to her carriage alone except for a poor relation called Miss Spinals, who acted as companion during the high season. The rest of the year, Miss Aspinall rusticated at Monroe, Louisiana, where she could enjoy the quiet pleasures of a pastoral spinsterhood.

Marguerite had laid out an elaborate costume from Worth; perfection, except that it was three years old, a fact that the sharp eyes of Newport’s ladies would be quick to notice. But Caroline’s reputation for eccentricity had its social uses. Also, was she not a Sanford? and had she not been taken in by Mrs. Delacroix, supposedly a mortal enemy of her mother, Emma?

Supposedly? Caroline sat in an armchair covered with worn Aubusson and looked out at the sea where sailboats tacked this way and that, and white spinnakers filled with wind; blasphemously, she found herself thinking of pregnant nuns; the influence, no doubt, of her hostess. What indeed did the old woman feel about her mother? What indeed did she feel about her mother’s daughter? and why the sudden peremptory invitation that had taken precedence over the annoyed Mrs. Jack? Yet they had come to enjoy each other’s company; also, there were, despite the high season, no other houseguests, something of an oddity. Vague references to Louisiana relatives who were too ill to travel suggested to Caroline that she might be a stopgap, a last-minute improvisation. If anything, the emptiness of the huge marble house was more to be revelled in than not. The servants were well-trained; that is, invisible when not needed; and a number were French, to Marguerite’s uninhibited joy. The great cool, sunlit rooms smelled of roses, lemon furniture-wax and, always, the iodine-scented sea-air.

There was a good deal to be said for idle luxury, thought Caroline, carefully placing side by side on the parquet floor the front pages of the nine newspapers that were her daily reading. By now, each newspaper was like an old acquaintance. She knew why one newspaper relentlessly played up-when the editors did not invent-every Boer victory in South Africa: the publisher’s wife and daughter had not been received at the Court of St. James’s; while another newspaper spoke only of British victories, a tribute to the managing editor’s long affair with a British lady whose husband owned an auction house in New York City. Caroline was now able to predict how any American newspaper would respond to almost any important event. Only Hearst occasionally baffled her, because he was, in his way, an artist: mercurial, unpredictable and devoted to invention.

Newport itself was featured inside two New York City papers; and not much elsewhere. Currently, Newport was in the news because William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., had driven a French motor car from Newport to Boston and back, some one hundred sixty miles, in three hours and fifty-seven minutes. She memorized the item. This would get her nicely through Mrs. Fish’s lunch, where Harry Lehr was now full-time major-domo. Old Mrs. Astor no longer entertained as much as she had; she preferred to remain in her cottage, receiving only the faithful. Power was shifting-everyone said-to Mrs. Fish, though Mrs. Ogden Mills, born Livingston, was the ranking American archduchess at Newport, and when Mrs. Astor let the sceptre fall she should, by the very number of her democratic quarterings, succeed. When asked her views of the Four Hundred, Mrs. Mills had said coldly, “There are really only twenty families in New York.” Mrs. Mills did have one marvellous, even unique, gift: she could make absolutely anyone feel ill at ease in her presence. “A priceless gift,” Mrs. Delacroix had observed, mournfully, unaware of the permanently terrified expression of the spinster Aspinall, always at her side.

Other, lesser, candidates for the throne included the lively, clever Mrs. Oliver Belmont, “the first lady ever to marry a Vanderbilt,” she would say with some satisfaction, particularly if there was a descendant of the old tugboat commodore in the room, “and the first lady ever to get a divorce, on her own terms. I was also the first American lady to marry her daughter to a duke of Marlborough, for which I shall, doubtless, suffer in the afterlife. But I meant well. And, of course, I am the first lady ever to marry a Jew, my darling Oliver Belmont. Now,” she would say, with a formidable glare in the dark intelligent eyes that fascinated Caroline, “I shall be the first woman-not lady-to see to it that every American woman will one day have the vote. For women are the hope of this country. If you doubt this, then pray to God,” she had said when she first met Caroline, and tried to recruit her for women’s suffrage, “and She will help you.” Caroline revelled in Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, but no one else in the great world did. She was too shocking and too advanced to be popular; she was also too rich and too powerful to be ignored. But she was definitely not in the line of succession to Mrs. Astor; nor wanted to be, any longer. There had been a time when Alva had threatened to replace the Astor-Plantagenets with the Vanderbilt-Tudors. But divorce had intervened; and, more dismally, good works.

Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, heiress-presumptive, greeted her guests in the great hall at Crossways, a Colonial-style mansion, with a dining room that could seat two hundred, said Harry Lehr, greeting Caroline warmly.

“That means you must eliminate half the Four Hundred,” said Caroline. “So which will it be? The gentlemen or the ladies?”

“We shall never experiment, because Morton won’t let us. Sixteen is now his limit for lunch.”

Morton was the English butler, who had served rather too many dukes, thought Caroline, who also wondered why Mrs. Fish was so impressed by the number of his grand employers while ignoring the briefness of his service with each. Morton was a tall florid man, who treated Mrs. Fish and her guests with a disdain that they may have deserved but ought not to have allowed. Caroline was not charmed.

The ladies proved to be the season’s best; the men were not. The young and vigorous were sailing off Hazard’s Beach; or driving motor cars. Lispinard Stewart was present, however; he seemed to have stepped from the pages of a “silver fork” novel of the early nineteenth century; he was elegant, effeminate and wondrously boring. He fluttered about Caroline; who fluttered, as best she could, in the general direction of Mrs. Fish, who stood, one eye on the door to the dining room, to make sure that the magnificent Morton would not be kept waiting once he had announced that dinner was served.

Mrs. Fish received Caroline with an interest that might have passed for warmth had Caroline been less experienced in the social wars. Mamie Fish was a plain but interesting-and interested-looking-woman with deep-set wide eyes beneath arched brows; but the rest of the face had not been worked out with the same care: the jaw was large but characterless and the mouth had been crudely sketched in, rather as if the Divine Artist-plainly, a woman, as Mrs. Belmont maintained-had decided not to undermine with incongruous beauty the easy wit of Mamie Fish, who had, in any case, captured early in life a descendant of not only the Puritan but the Dutch founders of the nation, one Stuyvesant Fish, known fondly to Mamie in Puritan parlance as “the Good Man.” As it was, the good man preferred his old house at Garrison on the Hudson to Newport or New York, an arrangement that perfectly suited Mrs. Fish and the sparkling Harry Lehr, now grown plump and somewhat less sparkling of eye.

“I feared we should never capture you.” Mrs. Fish stared interestedly at Caroline. “We are used to Blaise in New York. But you are the enigma of Washington, a city no one ever visits. Old Mrs. Astor-not well, you know, not well at all-thinks you a great addition. But to what? I asked.”

“Washington, perhaps.” Caroline was tentative. “Where, if you’re right, no one will ever visit me.”

“Washington does not matter, dear child. If you like that sort of a place, try Charleston, during the azalea season, or New Orleans, where Mrs. Delacroix still keeps slaves. Oh, she’ll deny it! But the war has never been accepted in that part of the world. Just as we don’t accept Washington. Are you quite sure you don’t want to marry one of us?” The question was delivered with the famous Mamie Fish drawl.

Caroline was surprised to find herself blushing. “There is so much to choose from.” Caroline indicated the nearest man, James Van Alen, a moneyed widower, who had modelled himself on the sort of English gentleman seen not so much in London society as on the Broadway stage. When Van Alen had first met Caroline at Mrs. Belmont’s, he had said, loudly, “Zounds!”-a word Caroline had never before heard spoken in real life-then, as he withdrew, still staring at her, he announced, “A most delectable wench, forsooth”; and placed a monocle over one eye.

“I think,” said Mrs. Fish, “nothing could be simpler than for you to become the bride of Mr. Van Alen.”

“I am rather near-sighted.” Caroline blinked her eyes. “I didn’t see who it was.”

“But then you are going to marry Del Hay. You see? We do keep up. But when will he come back from South America?”

“South Africa.”

“It’s all the same, sweet pet. Anyway, here’s Helen. And Payne.”

Caroline and Helen embraced. Payne’s wrist was in a sling, from tennis. “Otherwise, I’d be in the race today.” He looked with youthful displeasure at the room filled with elderly beaux, each armed, as it were, with his hereditary silver spoon as well as fork.

“Father’s in New Hampshire. New Hampshire!” Helen seemed more than usually exuberant. “He’s been told to spend at least two months there, even if all his open doors slam shut.”

“Has he heard from Del?”

“Nothing since you heard last week. Everything’s diplomatic pouch. So he can’t say what he means. But the English are losing. Losing! It’s horrible!”

At that moment Morton, ominously, announced lunch, and, dutifully, even hurriedly, Mrs. Fish took the ranking gentleman’s arm and hurried to her place at the Sheraton mahogany table, which, although set for Morton’s optimum sixteen, had all its leaves in place, giving each guest a considerable amount of room to accommodate the season’s enormous skirts. Down the center of the table an elaborate solid gold series of pagodas and bridges complemented the somewhat chinoiserie appearance of the hostess.

Caroline was placed-as she knew that she would be-between Lispinard Stewart and James Van Alen. Longingly, she thought of her small office in Market Square, and of the flies, both living and dead, her familiars.

“The test of a good cook,” announced James Van Alen, “is codfish cakes.”

“Is Mrs. Fish’s cook going to give us some?”

“Egad, Miss! This is not breakfast.”

Lispinard Stewart explained to her, in elaborate detail, his relationship to the Stuarts, and why his family had modestly replaced the “u” with “ew” in order not to embarrass the current ruling house of England, who feared, more than anything else, a claimant from his family to their throne, “which, by rights, is ours, as they know.”

“And of what kingdom,” asked Caroline, remembering at last how to make conversation, “is Lispinard the royal house?”

There was a dance that night at The Elms, given by the Burke-Roches. When Mrs. Delacroix announced that she was going home early, Caroline went with her. “Tomorrow,” she said, “I must spend the morning on the telephone, talking to Washington.”

“When I was young, I danced all night. I was always in love.”

“I am not in love, Mrs. Delacroix. So I sleep… and talk on the telephone.”

“We enjoyed ourselves more. There were no telephones, of course.” They were seated in the small study off the drawing room. Although it was late July, the night was cool and a fire was burning. Mrs. Delacroix poured herself brandy, while Caroline took Apollinaris water. The old woman laughed. “Mamie’s completely under that butler’s thumb. He’s convinced her that in all great English houses, Apollinaris water must first be boiled.”

“I would boil him if I were her.”

Mrs. Delacroix held up a small painting on ivory. “This is your father, and my daughter.”

“I thought you had no painting of him except in uniform?”

“I suppose that’s because I never look at him when I look at this. I see only Denise. She was so happy. Can you tell?”

But Caroline, like the old woman, only saw what she wanted to see-not the pretty rather banal girl but the round-faced, small-lipped young man whom she had never known, and could not associate with the red-faced loud figure of her own youth. “They were both happy,” said Caroline, neutrally; and gave the picture back.

“Your mother came here once in the summer of ’76. She was beautiful.”

“She was happy, too. Wasn’t she?”

“My daughter died, giving birth to Blaise.” The spider’s web across the old woman’s face tautened suddenly: had a fly been trapped? was the spider, ever watchful, close by? “Your mother was her best friend, at that time.”

“This is all before I was born.” Caroline did not like the direction that the conversation was taking. “My father never spoke-to me, at least-of his first wife. He seldom spoke of my mother, either. So Blaise and I are each motherless.”

“Yes.” Mrs. Delacroix crossed her tiny ankles, just visible beneath the watered pale blue silk of her evening gown. “It is curious how Emma died in much the same way as Denise, as a result of giving birth.”

“Emma. At last. You have said her name. Now tell me, was she really so dark? And why?” Caroline hurled the question at the old lady, who visibly winced; then rallied. “Your mother,” she said, most evenly, “killed my daughter, and that is the precise nature-and quality-of her darkness.”

Caroline had often observed women swoon either from too-tight corseting or as an act of desperate policy. She wondered whether or not this was a proper moment for her to experiment, entirely as a matter of policy, with a sudden dead-faint. But she recalled herself. She would give blow for blow. “How was this… murder, as you do not quite call it, achieved?”

“Denise had been warned that she could never have a child. Your mother encouraged her to have one, by the man your mother wanted to marry, even then, your father-to-be, Colonel Sanford.”

Caroline bared her teeth in what she hoped might be mistaken by firelight for a young girl’s sweet smile. “I find no darkness here. Only your surmise. How does one woman encourage another to have a child, when each knows the consequences?”

“There was a lady-I use the word ironically-who specialized in such matters. Emma sent for her. Emma got her to say-paid her to say-that Denise would survive. Since my daughter wanted a child very much, she had one. Then she died, and her husband went on to marry…”

“Darkness?”

“Yes. Then you were born, and in due course she died, a proper vengeance I always thought.”

“I do not believe your story, Mrs. Delacroix, nor can I understand why you choose to tell me so terrible a thing, assuming you believe what you’ve told me, when I am a guest-briefly, may I say-in your house.”

“I hope not briefly.” The old woman poured herself more brandy. “I have told you because I cannot tell my grandson.”

“Are you afraid-of Blaise?”

The head, silver hair aglitter with diamonds, nodded. “I am afraid. I don’t know what Blaise might do, if I were to tell him.”

“As he seems to have been born entirely without conscience, he will do nothing at all. He will not be interested.”

“Now you are unkind to him. You see, he is so like her.” Quite unexpectedly, tears began to leak from the bright black eyes. “I look at him, and it’s Denise come back to me. You see, I’d given her up. The way we must always give up the dead until such time… So, having forgot my child, let her go, kept only a picture or two, poor likenesses all, she suddenly comes back to me, alive and young, and I look at her-him-and can’t believe what I see. Think I am dreaming. I see the same eyes, hair, skin, voice…”

“Blaise is very much a male.”

“A beloved child is without gender to its creatrix, as you may have the good-or bad-fortune to discover.” Mrs. Delacroix withdrew a lace glove from her left hand; dried her eyes with the wadded glove. “He is my heir, not that I am as wealthy as people suppose.”

“Good. Perhaps you can then persuade him to give me my share of our father’s estate.”

But the old woman was now removing, one by one, her huge old-fashioned diamond rings, a slow and complicated process, for the fingers were bent with arthritis. “I shall also remember you in my will.”

“I trust that when you come to write it you will not mistake a one for a seven like my father.” But Caroline knew that there is no egotism to compare with that of someone old, embarked upon a crucial venture, involving money.

“Blaise has treated you badly. I don’t know why. But I suspect why. I think, somehow, he knows what happened.”

Caroline shook her head. “If he knew, he would have told me long ago. Also, if he knew, he would not, I’m afraid, care at all. He lives only for himself.”

“Your father knew.” Mrs. Delacroix now only heard what she chose to hear. “He never dared to see me, not that I would have spoken to him. He settled in France to avoid me, and what he’d done, what she had done.”

Caroline rose. “I am tired, Mrs. Delacroix. I am also ill-pleased.” In anger, Caroline’s English began to take on a somewhat archaic sound. She longed to burst into a proper French tirade.

“Surely not with me, my dear.” The old lady was now her gracious, formidable self again. She swept her rings into her reticule; and rose. “I have taken you into my confidence because, when I am dead, I want you to tell Blaise the true story.”

“I suggest,” said Caroline, “that you put it all in writing, as part of your will. Let him find out at the same time he gets the money. If you like, I’ll help you put it into French Alexandrines. They are particularly useful for this sort of-theater.”

“It’s not theater, my child. I only want you to-”

“Why want me for anything, since I am the daughter, in your eyes, of so much darkness?”

To Caroline’s astonishment, Mrs. Delacroix crossed herself, and whispered something in Latin. Then: “I believe in atonement.”

“I am to atone for my mother?” Without thinking, Caroline crossed herself, too.

“I think you must. Besides, you and Blaise are all that’s left of the Sanfords, the real ones, that is. So you must make up. This is one of the ways.”

“I can think of less hazardous ways.”

“I am sure you could.” In the falling firelight the small room had taken on a rosy color, and Mrs. Delacroix looked almost girlish, spider’s web erased. “Blaise is in Newport,” said the suddenly young-faced old woman, taking Caroline’s arm. “He’s at Jamie Bennett’s Stone Villa. Poor Jamie’s still an exile in Paris. But, of course, you know all that. Anyway, each year he leases his cottage. Blaise has taken it for August.”

“I’m sorry that I’ve kept him from staying here, with you.”

“No, no. I want you here. He’s close enough.”

“Too close, perhaps, for me.” But Mrs. Delacroix had preceded Caroline from the room.

The next morning Caroline arrived alone at Bailey’s Beach, where she was greeted with a smart salute by the gold-braided field marshal whose task it was to know not only members but their friends by sight. How he was able to discern a member from an intruder was a source of wonder to all Newport. But he was infallible, and the small beach, awash with slimy dark green and dull red seaweed, was the most exclusive patch of sand in the world, as well as, Caroline noted, one of the most malodorous. In the night, an armada of Portuguese men-of-war had attacked Bailey’s, and today their iridescent, bloated, gelatinous shapes were strewn upon the pale sands. Although the field marshal’s helpers-boyish Footstools, as Harry Lehr would say-raked as hard as they could, corpses of the men-of-war still outnumbered Bailey’s members beneath the brilliant sky.

Caroline made her way to the tented pavilion maintained by Mrs. Delacroix; nearby, the Fish house-party was already on the beach, the ladies in morning frocks. There would be no bathing for them this day, but, like a sea-god, Harry Lehr was costumed for his native element. The upper vest of his emerald-green bathing suit had been cut in daring décolleté to show off an alabaster-white chest and neck, while the ruddy face was barely visible beneath a curious sort of burgundy-red sunbonnet which kept the sun from his face as surely as Caroline’s parasol protected hers. The legs, however, gave great joy to the beach. The suit stopped just above two large dimpled knees which were, in turn, covered by sheer peach-colored silken stockings that set off shapely calves that he liked to compare, complacently, with those of Louis XIV. To Caroline, they were more reminiscent of the legs of certain Paris lady circus-riders. In any case, he was a marvel of androgynous charm; and as indifferent to the sniggers of the boyish Footstools as they raked up the gummy jellyfish as he was proud of the true admiration with which his circle regarded him. Harry Lehr was an original, which he proceeded to demonstrate to Caroline, to the chagrin of the Fish party farther along the beach. “Such beauty!” he exclaimed. “All alone at Bailey’s!”

“Yours, Mr. Lehr? or mine?”

“You make fun of me. I love that, you know.” The laugh was rippling, and sincere. Then he sat beside her, cross-legged on the sand. The legs were beautiful, Caroline decided; but then nature always had a habit of mixing things up. Blaise, who dearly wanted a moustache, could not grow one, while Mrs. Bingham, who did not want a moustache, was obliged, each day, with wax, to rip hers off. Caroline would not in the least have minded exchanging Harry’s legs for her own, which were too slender for contemporary taste. At school, numerous references to the taut beauty of Diana of the Hunt had not appeased her. “You could be such a success here. You know that, don’t you?”

“But aren’t I? A success, that is. Within my limits, naturally.”

“Well, you are you, of course, and so you’re a success by birth, and the way you look. Though I’d dress you better. More Doucet, less Worth.”

“Less Worth, more money?”

“What’s money for? I’m like Ludwig of Bavaria. I hate the bareness of everyday life. It withers my soul. But I don’t have money, like you. Like everyone here.” Beneath the sun-visor, the blue eyes narrowed. “So I make my way by amusing others. It’s certainly better than sweating in an office.”

“But harder work, I should think.” To Caroline’s surprise she found herself growing interested in Harry Lehr, as a human case. Was she now falling victim to his famous-or infamous-charm?

“Oh, easier than you might think. Most people are fools, you know, and the best way to live harmoniously with them and make them like you is to pander to their stupidity. They want to be entertained. They want to laugh. They’ll forgive you anything as long as you amuse them.”

“But when you grow old…”

“I shall marry soon. That will take care of that.”

“Have you picked the… girl to be honored?”

Lehr nodded. “You know her, in fact. But you’ll probably think…” Lehr’s concentration was broken by the approach of two young men. One very slender, even gaunt, and the other smaller, more compact, muscular. It was the second youth that caused Lehr to frown. “Would you say his legs are better than mine?”

“Oh, no!” Caroline was all tact. “He has too many muscles, like a jockey. And, like a jockey, see? his legs are slightly bowed, while yours are exquisitely straight.”

“You must be very far-sighted to see him in such detail.” Lehr gave her a mischievous womanly smile.

“Oh, I know nearly all his details. You see, he’s my brother.”

“Blaise Sanford! Of course.” Lehr was excited. “I should have recognized him. So attractive, so elegant.”

“If you like stable-boys from Brittany, he is attractive; I would not call him elegant.”

“Well, the other one is. He’s like a stork but the face is interesting.”

“I’m afraid, dear Mr. Lehr, he is yet another of my brothers. The beach is littered with them today, like Portuguese men-of-war.”

Now the two young men had joined them, and Lehr greeted the bemused Blaise with coquettish charm; and bowed low as he took the hand of Caroline’s oldest half-brother, the Prince d’Agrigente, known as Plon, who looked twenty-five but was thirty-seven; and separated from his wife, by whom he had had five children, each, it was rumored at the Jockey Club, where everything interesting is known, miraculously his own.

“Plon wanted to escape from Paris. I wanted to escape from New York. So we took old Jamie’s villa. It’s full of mildew,” Blaise added, staring at Lehr as if he were, somehow, responsible.

“The servants don’t air the Stone Villa properly. Because the owner never comes. I must introduce you two splendid creatures to Mrs. Fish-”

“I know her.” Blaise was flat.

“ ‘Fish’ as in poisson?” murmured Plon in his deep voice.

“We have splendid names in America-” Caroline began.

“But not Lehr as in menteur,” said Lehr, taking the lead; and the match. Suddenly, the two young men laughed; and Lehr was able to withdraw in triumph to Fishland.

“We have one of those at Paris.” Plon was thoughtful. “I didn’t know you had one here, too.”

“You must travel more, chéri.” Caroline gave him the sisterly kiss she withheld from Blaise. “We have everything here. Including the most exclusive beach in the world.”

“Is it always covered with garbage?” Plon rubbed his nose, as if the smell might be pushed away.

“Only human,” said Blaise.

At that moment, Mrs. Jack appeared on the boardwalk that ran the length of the clubhouse. She was in what she called “tennis costume”: white tennis shoes, black stockings, white silk blouse and skirt beneath which could be seen-daringly-bloomers; on her head a sailor hat held in place two veils like mosquito netting. When Mrs. Jack saw them, she swept aside her veils so that they could see her. “Caroline,” she called. “Do come here, and bring your young men.” Caroline did as she was ordered. The young men pleased Mrs. Jack, who delighted them when they heard her name, and listened to her imperious nonsense, all delivered in a husky Comédie Française tone. “You are exactly what I want. You both play tennis?”

“Yes, but-” Blaise began.

“Perfect,” said Mrs. Jack. “I gave up tennis for bridge when my husband took up tennis. Now he has taken up bridge again, and is giving a bridge party. So I shall take to the court with you two splendid young men. You are clever, Caroline, to have so many brothers.”

“Half-brothers…”

“Better and better. One needs only to be half-fond of them.” Mrs. Jack was gone.

“We have one of those in Paris, too,” said Plon, “but she’s very old.”

“That’s the Mrs. Astor. This is her daughter-in-law. La Dauphine. She’ll make you laugh. She hates everything.”

“She’s quite good-looking,” said Plon. “Is she… vivacious?”

“This is America. The ladies are all pure.” Caroline was warning.

“I know,” said Plon, glumly. “I shouldn’t have come.”

Half the Astor house-party played tennis, and the other half played bridge. Mrs. Jack took over Blaise as a partner, leaving Caroline with Plon, who was as vague and kindly and impecunious as ever. “When Blaise heard my purse was vide … how you say?”

“Broke.”

“Broke. He offered to pay to bring me over for the summer. So here I am.”

“Looking for a new wife?”

“We are still Catholic. Aren’t we, Caroline?”

“Yes. But there are always arrangements.”

Plon shook his head, his eyes on Mrs. Jack’s elegant figure, and haphazard game of tennis. “Maybe I could give tennis lessons,” he said. “They play very badly here.”

Idly, they gossiped beneath the huge copper beech tree. Occasionally, Colonel Astor would come out on the verandah and gaze, rather bewilderedly, at his wife. He was an eccentric man, with a full moustache and a bald forehead that receded in agreeable sympathy with his chin. He was happiest, it was said, on his yacht, the Nourmahal, away from Mrs. Jack. Since Mrs. Belmont had so fiercely blazed an exciting new path through the wilderness of society, the sword not Excalibur but divorce in her hand, it was now, for the first time, conceivable that even an Astor might get a divorce. Admittedly, the Vanderbilts were still a number of rungs beneath the Astors on the gilded ladder, but what Alva Vanderbilt Belmont had done Ava Willard Astor might also do. “Divorce will become a commonplace.” Caroline was sententious, a habit that was growing upon her now that she was being taken seriously as a newspaper publisher, and general authority.

“Not in France. Not with us,” said Plon. “I like your Mrs. Astor.”

“But only to seduce. You are so French, Plon.”

“You are so American,” said her half-brother bleakly. “I am told that that curious creature with you on the beach…”

“The pretty man?”

“The lovely man… that he sells champagne to these rich Americans. Perhaps I could do that. I know a good deal about wine.” He blinked his dark seemingly depthless eyes, and Caroline realized that she was looking into her dead mother’s eyes. Mrs. Delacroix had inspired her to search for likenesses, clues.

“You have our mother’s eyes,” she said.

“So they say.” Plon was watching for the occasional glimpse of Mrs. Jack’s ankles as she careened wildly about the grassy court.

“What was she like?”

“What was who like?” Plon’s mind was on the court.

“Emma. Your mother. My mother.”

“Oh, it was so long ago. She was American like you.”

“Plon, are you really so stupid or is this your idea of how to charm American ladies?”

The handsome aquiline face was turned toward her; he smiled, and showed good teeth. “Surely, I don’t have to charm a half-sister. Or is there something a trifle Egyptian about this Newport of yours?”

Caroline allowed this tasteless gallantry to go unnoticed. “Do you think Emma might have-”

“Killed the first Mrs. Sanford?” Plon was still staring at the court, where Mrs. Jack had just, for the first time, perhaps ever, scored a match point. “Bravo!” Plon shouted. Mrs. Jack turned, her usual look of annoyance in place, but when she saw the lean admiring Frenchman, she gave a small curtsey.

“You should get at least a cigarette case,” said Caroline sourly, “for attendance.”

“I’m afraid I shall need more than a cigarette case.”

“You’ve heard the rumors?”

“Only what everyone hears. The dull Colonel Astor prefers his boat to his wife. They have a son, so she has done her duty…”

“I speak of Emma!”

“You do have a thing about the past, don’t you? All right. She was, for me, adorable. When I went driving with her, I always hoped that people would mistake her for my mistress. Yes, yes, I know. I am very French. I was also fourteen when she died, and full-grown for my age.”

Caroline tried to imagine the boy Plon and the dark lady of the portraits together in an open carriage, driving through the Bois de Boulogne; and failed. “I was prejudiced, of course, against your father. I thought him very… very…”

“American?”

“The exact epithet I was searching for. He was very American except that he had no energy at all, an impossible combination, we thought. But Maman always did her best to bring us together. She was very weak those last months, particularly after…”

“I was born.”

“Yes. She just faded away. We were sorry, my brother and I, to see her go like that.”

“No more than sorry?”

“Boys are like that. One develops a heart much later.”

“If at all.”

“Maman would never have killed anyone.”

“Then why the rumor, which I’ve just heard, yet again, right here.”

Plon gave a stage Frenchman’s shrug, and crossed his long legs. “Rumors are eternal in our world. No, chéri, if anyone killed the first Mrs. Sanford-which I highly doubt-it was your abominable father, who was capable of anything to get his way.”

Caroline felt as if she had been given a sudden electric shock. “I don’t believe you,” was the best that she could do.

“I couldn’t care less what you believe.” The dark eyes stared at her, with an expression that she had never seen before. Could this be Emma, she wondered, looking, so directly, into her daughter’s eyes?

“Now you credit him with energy.” Caroline turned away. Plon’s eyes were suddenly neither human nor animal; they were of another order of nature altogether, a mineral that reflected nothing at all.

“He would have had the energy for that.” Plon yawned. “Anyway, it’s all done. It’s very American,” he suddenly grinned, “to think always of the past.”

Caroline was horrified to find herself suddenly unmistakably attracted to the Prince d’Agrigente in a way quite different from the perverse attraction of the golden enemy, Blaise. “I must,” she said, “go in.”

Mrs. Jack had already preceded Caroline into the house. She was removing her tennis veil; the pale face was agreeably flushed; a young plain boy, clutching a nurse’s hand, stared up at her.

“Caroline! This is my son. He’s nine. Say how-de-do to Miss Sanford.”

The boy bowed politely from the waist. “How do you do?” Caroline was as polite as she would have been to the father, whose back could be seen in the drawing room, at one of the dozen bridge-tables, all occupied.

“Is he to be John Jacob the Fifth or the Sixth?” asked Caroline. “Your family is getting like the Hanovers with all their Georges.”

“I’ve broken the line. He’s William Vincent. Frightfully plain, isn’t he?” said Mrs. Jack, as the boy was led away. “It is one of those rare cases when the paternity is absolutely certain. He has Jack’s depressing features, and hangdog eyes. But the maternity’s very much in doubt. He doesn’t look a bit like me. Tell me about that handsome creature, your half-brother.”

As Caroline told her about Plon, Mrs. Jack looked very interested. “We must have him to dinner, with Blaise, too,” she added. “I’ll ask all the Stone Villa, and you, of course, and Mrs. Delacroix, if she doesn’t disapprove of me this year.”

“Just don’t smoke in her face.”

“How petty the old are! He looks very young for thirty-seven,” she added. Poor Plon; Caroline was compassionate. He already had more cigarette cases than he knew what to do with. Presently, he could have yet another one. In the long run, he would have to go back to his wife, who at least paid for the cigarettes that filled the cases.

If Caroline imagined that she could see in Plon their dead mother, she saw nothing at all of her father in Blaise. Doubtless, Mrs. Delacroix was not exaggerating when she had alluded to his remarkable resemblance to Denise. As Caroline dressed for dinner, she imagined Emma’s eyes staring out of Plon’s face, and watching Denise’s face as worn by Blaise. What would the two young men make of that? she wondered, and if Mrs. Delacroix’s mad story proved true, was Blaise in danger? Rather the opposite, she decided, as Marguerite laced her into a ball gown, from unfashionable Worth. “We should come here more often,” said Marguerite, putting the last touches to Caroline’s ivory-colored gown. “It’s almost like civilization.”

“You don’t have to speak English all day is what you mean.”

“And your two brothers are here. That is very right, you know. To have a family.” As a spinster entirely devoted to herself, Marguerite liked delivering homilies on the pleasures, duties and rewards of family life. She could not wait for Caroline to marry; and be truly unhappy like all the other ladies of her class. Happiness in others tended to have a chilling effect on Marguerite, who liked nothing better than offering desperate ladies sympathy, and a spotless cambric handkerchief scented with lemon verbena in which they might harvest bitter tears.

Plon was waiting for Caroline in the marble hall. Mrs. Delacroix had taken herself to bed, and Plon would escort Caroline to the Casino, where a dance in celebration of something was to be held. Neither Plon nor Caroline could remember what the something was. Plon thought that it might have to do with Mr. Vanderbilt’s motor car. He himself had hired an open carriage, and they drove through the warm moonlit night to the Casino, which was lit with Japanese lanterns and filled with Mullalay’s music. Plon brought her up to date. Mrs. Jack had proved incredibly cold, even for an Anglo-Saxon; no cigarette case would arrive from that quarter; worse, despite the fact that he had made a considerable point of his total marriedness, hostesses kept putting him next to single girls at table or, even more ominously, vivacious widows, eager for a second chance. “I can’t tell them that I only like married women.”

“No,” said Caroline, “you can’t.”

They made a stately entrance into the Casino. Plon soon vanished, taken over by Lady Pauncefote and one of her numerous unmarried daughters. Lord Pauncefote looked curiously unimpressive in plain evening clothes. Caroline much preferred him in gold braid, with decorations pinned to his stomach. He had quickly found Helen Hay, and Caroline joined them, to help out Helen, who was being given a thorough and entirely misleading account of the British war against the Boers. Helen embraced Caroline. “But you will have heard the latest, from Del. From Del.”

“I mailed the last letter he wrote me straight to your father in New Hampshire.”

“The young man has made an excellent impression in Pretoria.” Lord Pauncefote pronounced judgment.

“Don’t you wish you’d gone?” Helen was mischievous.

“Oh, I would be so useful in the… veldts? Is that the word?”

“So close to the German word for wealth,” said Blaise, at Caroline’s back. “Payne’s looking for you,” he said to Helen, liberating her from Pauncefote, who was now, in turn, taken captive by James Van Alen.

“Zounds, my lord!” he boomed; and led the Ambassador off to the bar. “Methinks you have a dry look to you.”

“There are,” said Caroline, “many very serious bores here at Newport.”

“Do you include half-brothers?”

“Only as half-bores, I suppose. I thought we were not speaking this year.”

Blaise took her arm; and led her, somewhat against her will, to a flowery alcove at the edge of the dance floor, as far as it was possible to get from Mullalay’s orchestra. Here they sat, side by side, primly, as if at school, on wooden chairs. “I saw my grandmother at lunch. At Mrs. Astor’s. You have charmed her.”

“Mrs. Aston!”

“Mrs. Delacroix, a much more difficult lady to… charm.”

“You make me sound as if I had designs upon your grandmother.”

“Don’t you?”

Caroline looked at him; and thought of his mother, Denise. “I have no designs on anything except my own property.”

“The courts-”

“No, Blaise. The clock. The calendar. Each breath I breathe brings me closer to what is mine.”

“Don’t tempt fate.” Blaise made the sign to ward off the evil eye. “My mother was dead before she was twenty-seven.”

“I shall not have children. That’s one safeguard.”

“You’ll never marry?”

“I didn’t say that. But I don’t want children.”

“Such things are not so easily arranged.”

“How is Madame de Bieville?”

Blaise responded serenely. “At Deauville. What news of Del?”

“At Pretoria.”

“The Chief’s giving Mr. Hay a hard time.”

“But that’s the Chief’s specialty, isn’t it?”

“This summer, anyway. He’s going all out for Bryan.”

“All out?” Caroline smiled. “He doesn’t take seriously Bryan’s nonsense about silver, and he loves the empire that Bryan keeps attacking.”

Blaise laughed in spite of himself. “Well, they don’t like the trusts, and they don’t like Mark Hanna.”

“Very statesmanlike. The Chicago American is losing money, I hear.”

“Quantities.”

“My money?” asked Caroline.

“Some of it is my money, yes. But most of it is old Mrs. Hearst’s. They keep finding gold in South Dakota.” Harry Lehr swept by, a plain young woman on his arm.

“Elizabeth Drexel.” He said the name as if half-brother and half-sister were wholly interested. “I,” he added, with a lizard’s swift blink at Blaise, “am the Funmaker.”

“You must make some fun for my numerous half-brothers.” As Caroline sensed Blaise’s furious disapproval, she found herself quite liking Lehr.

“First, you must let Wetzel make your suits, and Kaskel your pajamas and underwear…”

Lehr’s public association of Blaise with pajamas, much less the pruriency of any reference to underwear, brought a coughing fit as Blaise’s phlegm, mistakenly inhaled, choked him-with wrath, of course, thought Caroline with satisfaction. Lehr was delighted to have caused so much distress, while the Drexel girl-the future Mrs. Lehr?-looked as embarrassed as Blaise. They were saved by the majestic approach of Mrs. Astor, with her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Jack. Caroline felt as if she ought to curtsey, while even Blaise-no longer choking-bowed low at the great ladies’ approach. Lehr pranced about the old sovereign like some huge blond dog. The two Mrs. Astors regarded him with stares worthy of the two bronze owls that decorated the gateposts to the Casino. Plainly, Lehr was going to pay for his defection to Mamie Fish.

“You must come see me, Miss Sanford.” The huge dark wig was aglitter with rubies. “You, too, Mr. Sanford, though I have heard that you have no time for old ladies.”

Blaise blushed becomingly. “We’ve only arrived, Mrs. Astor, my step-brother and me…”

“The Prince has a great deal of time for ladies,” said Mrs. Jack in her low drawl, “of any and every age.”

“How you comfort me.” Mother-in-law smiled with dislike at daughter-in-law, who was now examining Blaise speculatively.

“Don’t,” said Mrs. Jack, “get married.”

“I have no intention of marrying.” Blaise recovered his poise. He was a match for Mrs. Jack if not her mother-in-law.

“Like dear Harry?” asked Mrs. Astor, finally acknowledging the fawning creature at her side.

“I don’t know about that.” Blaise was staring boldly at Mrs. Jack, who suddenly looked away. Was she cold? Caroline wondered; and what, after all, was coldness but a strategy in the dangerous American world where a lady’s fall from grace could cause her extrusion-no matter how resonant her name or heavy her wealth-from the only world that mattered? Paris was filled with extruded American ladies, paying dearly for adulteries of the sort for which a French lady would have been applauded.

“I won’t be a bachelor forever,” Lehr trilled. The Drexel girl pursed her lips, as if to kiss the air. She was the one, poor creature, thought Caroline. But, then, perhaps, they were well-matched. She might be another Mlle. Souvestre.

“We are told,” said Mrs. Astor, “that you and Mamie-so original, isn’t she?-” Mrs. Astor’s malice was royal in its self-assurance-“plan to give a dinner for dogs.”

“Dogs?” Mrs. Jack’s deep voice dropped to an even lower, almost canine register.

“Dogs, yes.” Lehr yelped. “Each with its owner, of course.”

“How amusing.” Mrs. Astor made of “amusing” three full evenly emphasized syllables.

“At the same table?” asked Caroline.

“There will be different tables, of course.”

“So that you can tell the dogs from their masters?” As Caroline spoke, she knew that she had, once again, gone too far. Wit had always been disliked and feared at Newport, while wit in a woman was sufficient cause to be burned as a witch anywhere in the republic.

The Astor ladies chose to ignore Caroline’s slip. But she knew that each would give damning evidence should she, indeed, be tried for witchcraft.

Lehr took charge of the Astor ladies and swept them into the party. “He’s awful,” said Blaise.

“But think how much duller this place would be without him.”

“Plon needs a rich widow.” Blaise changed the subject.

“Don’t look at me. I’m no help. I’m outside this world. In Washington…”

“Why don’t you take him there, in the fall?”

“I’ll take Plon anywhere, of course. I adore him, as you know…”

“As I know.” They stared at each other. The orchestra was now playing Tales of Hoffmann. “I hear that Cousin John’s wife is dead.”

Caroline merely nodded; and said, “How is Mr. Houghteling?”

“Lawyers!” Blaise let the subject go. Neither had much emotion left to bear on the subject of the money that divided them. “I’ve told Plon that Mrs. Astor-the young one-only flirts.”

“I think he’s worked that out. But he thinks that he understands American women better than he does because he has seduced so many of them in Paris,”

“Does he tell you such things?”

“Doesn’t he tell you?”

“Yes, but I’m a man.”

“Well, I’m not an American woman. Anyway, what those creatures do in Paris is one thing.” Caroline thought of the beautiful Mrs. Cameron with her beautiful boy poet, of the majestic antlers once again sprouting from Don Cameron’s head, not to mention a delicate unicorn’s horn from the pink marble baldness of Henry Adams’s brow.

Lord Pauncefote joined them, having no doubt exhausted Helen Hay with his notorious and habitual long answers to questions not put to him. “Your friend Mr. Hearst is in splendid form.” He acknowledged Blaise’s identity. “He accuses poor Mr. Hay of being England’s creature.”

“Oh, that’s just to fill space,” said Blaise.

“Between murders,” Caroline added:

“Actually, he’s going to have some more fun with Roosevelt!”

Pauncefote shut his eyes for a long instant, always a sign that he was interested; that a message to the Foreign Office would soon be encoded. “Yes?” Pauncefote’s eyes were again open…

“The Chief’s been in touch with some of the leading goo-goos…”

“The leading what?”

“Goo-goo,” said Caroline, “is what reformers of the American system are called by those who delight in the system. Goo-goo is an-abbreviation?-of the phrase ‘good government,’ something Governor Roosevelt, like all good Americans, holds in contempt. Isn’t that right, Blaise?”

“Not bad.” Her brother’s praise was grudging.

“Goo-goo,” murmured Pauncefote without relish.

“The goo-goos are attacking Roosevelt because he’s a creature of the bosses but likes to talk about reform, which he’s really as much against as Senator Platt. The Chief’s going to have some fun with all this when the campaign starts.”

“I suppose,” said Pauncefote, “Governor Roosevelt is too much the soldier for this-heady political life.”

“Soldier!” Blaise laughed delightedly. “He’s just a politician who got lucky in Cuba.”

“But that was a famous victory over Spain, and he was part of it.”

“As architect, yes,” said Blaise, and Caroline was surprised that her brother seemed to know of the plotting that had gone on amongst Roosevelt and Lodge and the Adamses and Captain Mahan. “But not as a soldier. The real story in Cuba-which the Chief will never print-is not how we bravely defeated the Spanish but how seven hundred brave Spaniards nearly beat six thousand incompetent Yanks.”

Pauncefote stared, wide-eyed, at Blaise. “I have never read this in any newspaper.”

“You never will, either,” said Blaise. “In this country, anyway.”

“Until I publish it.” Caroline was indeed tempted to puncture the vast endlessly expanding balloon of American pomposity and jingoism.

“You won’t.” Blaise was flat. “Because you’d lose the few readers you’ve got. We create news, Lord Pauncefote.”

“Empires, too?” The Ambassador had recovered his professional ministerial poise.

“One follows on the other, if the timing’s right.” Blaise was indifferent; and most Hearstian, thought Caroline.

“I shall reexamine the careers of Clive and Rhodes, with close attention to the Times of their day.”

“Lord North’s career would be more to the point.” Blaise was hard. Caroline wondered who had been educating him; certainly not Hearst. Plon joined them; and Pauncefote withdrew.

“Have you found a rich lady?” asked Caroline.

“Oh, they are-what do the English say?-thick upon the ground. But they cannot talk.”

“Bring him to Washington.” Caroline turned to Plon. “We are rich in ladies whose husbands are under the ground. And they talk-the ladies, that is.”

“Perhaps we’ll both come, after the election.” Blaise stared, idly, at a pale blond girl who was approaching them, on the arm of a swarthy youth. What color, wondered Caroline, would the children of so contrasted a couple be? “But New York is more Plon’s sort of oyster.”

“Oyster?” Plon’s grasp of idiom was weak. “Huître?” He translated, tentatively.

To Caroline’s amazement the blond girl greeted her warmly. “Frederika, Miss Sanford.” The voice was Southern; the manner shy; the profile, turned to Caroline, noble. “I’m Mrs. Bingham’s daughter. From Washington. Remember?”

“You’ve grown up.” Caroline had hardly noticed the child in Washington; a child, literally, until this summer.

“It’s the dress, really. Mother won’t let me dress up at home.”

“Mrs. Bingham is Washington,” Caroline declared.

“Is she a widow?” asked Plon, in French.

“Not yet,” murmured Caroline. The swarthy young man proved to be from the Argentine embassy, a representative of what John Hay wearily termed “the dago contingent” until Caroline had allied herself sternly with the entire Latin race and “dago” was no longer a word used in her volatile presence:;

Frederika was thrilled by the half-brothers; they were characteristically indifferent to her. She was too young and pure for Plon; and Blaise’s mind-Caroline never thought to associate the word “heart” with so blond and fierce a beast-was elsewhere.

“Is your mother here?” Caroline knew that there was no earthly way, as yet, for Mrs. Benedict Tracy Bingham, wife to Washington’s milk king, to break into Newport’s Casino on such a night.

“Oh, no. I visit friends. You see, Mother likes Washington in the summer.” There was a sudden mischievous, even collusive, look in Frederika’s eyes. As Caroline was deciding that the girl had possibilities, the Argentine swept her away.

“Her father,” said Caroline, to Plon, “makes all of Washington’s milk.”

“How funny!” Plon laughed delightedly.

“Why funny?”

“It’s my English, I suppose, but for a moment I thought you said he made ‘milk.’ ” Caroline let the subject go. Plon was better in Paris. Blaise-and she-were better suited to this new world of energetic and mindless splendor, of waste-of absolute waste of everything and, she wondered, suddenly feeling disagreeably faint, of everyone?