Gore Vidal - Empire

“You’ll be going back to American City now…?”

Jim nodded. As the mouth still had its appeal for her, she gazed upon Block Island instead. “On Monday. Kitty’s pregnant.”

“Oh, no!” Caroline’s astonishment was so genuine that she feared that she had given herself away.

But Jim simply grinned. “Well, that’s what you get married for, you know.”

“I don’t-know.” Caroline saw a good deal of gallows humor in the situation. “I can imagine, naturally.” She was her usual self now. “Is she ill? I mean does she have-spells of sickness?”

Jim nodded, without much interest. “There’s always a bit of feeling bad, I guess.”

“When will it… the child, that is, be born?”

“October, the doctor thinks.”

The same month that Caroline’s would be due. He had gone from one bed to the other, perhaps even on the same day, like a rooster. For the first time, she realized just how dangerous the male was. The superior physical strength was bad enough, but the ability to start new life, with a single inadvertent thrust, was truly terrifying. Mlle. Souvestre had been right. Better the Sapphic life, the “white marriages” between ladies, than this sweaty black magic.

Blaise appeared in the doorway. “Lunch is ready.” For once, Caroline was grateful for his interruption.

“I have no appetite,” she said, accurately, and entered the ship’s salon just as a gong sounded from the dining room. Harry Lehr took her arm, as if for a cotillion.

“I had no idea our congressmen were so attractive.” For a guilty instant, Caroline wondered if Harry Lehr knew. But, of course, he could not know, and her heart beat less rapidly. She wondered if she was going to become entirely furtive in character, thus giving away her game to everyone.

“You mean Mr. Day?” Caroline smiled at Mamie Fish, who nodded in a queenly way. “He’s Blaise’s friend.”

“They’re an attractive couple, aren’t they?” Lehr laughed, musically. Caroline joined in; she had, suddenly, a plan.

AT EXACTLY NOON, Caroline entered the Waldorf-Astoria’s Peacock Alley, now largely deserted. Fashionable New York could not be found within a hundred miles of the city, while working New York was largely shut down. The emptiness and stillness of the great rooms was somewhat alarming. Paris must have been like this, she thought, when Bismarck was at the gates.

Beneath a potted palm sat John Apgar Sanford, somewhat balder, somewhat grayer than the year before when they had last met in Washington, and he had reported his usual failure to budge Mr. Houghteling. Since she would inherit soon, no matter what, they had given up the case. “You didn’t say in your telegram what you wanted to see me about, but I assumed it would be the case, so I’ve brought the key documents.” He held up a leather case.

“That’s all right,” she said, and seated herself opposite him. “It’s not about the case, actually.” She had rehearsed a number of openings but none was right. She would, she had decided, depend on inspiration; but now that she was with him, there was none, only a mild panic.

John asked about various Washington Apgars. Caroline began with a wrong move. “One has even been elected to Congress. James Burden Day. I think his mother was an…”

“Grandmother, I believe,” John nodded, “was an Apgar. I’ve met her.”

“The wife is charming.” Then Caroline abandoned this most dangerous of subjects. “You must find…” She could not finish this sentence.

But John took in stride the sentiment. “Yes, it is quite lonely for me. In spite of a plentitude of Apgars, I have no family life now, none at all.”

“We Sanfords are also few.”

“Very few indeed. Blaise…” John did not finish.

Caroline did not begin. That subject was abandoned, stillborn. “I have been thinking,” she said at last, in lieu of inspiration, “about getting married.”

“I suppose that is natural, of course.” John seemed unsurprised; also, uninterested.

“Soon, there will be the inheritance.” She played her great card at once.

“Yes. You will be very well-off indeed. From what I gather, Blaise did not-do as we feared. There are still certain loans to Mr. Hearst outstanding, but Mr. Hearst is good for them. Otherwise, the inheritance is intact. I hope,” John smiled wanly, “you are not being married for your fortune…”

“Like one of Mr. James’s poor ladies? No, I don’t think that enters my… calculation, so far. Is patent law so difficult?”

John looked surprised. “It is not difficult, no. But it is not easy to make a living at it. I’ve changed firms, as you know. But my wife’s long illness…” The voice trailed into embarrassed silence.

“Things have not been easy for you, John. I know that. I’m sorry. Truly,” she added, pleased by her own display of warmth. She quite liked him; she also liked very much her liking him. “You once did me the,” Caroline stared up at the palm tree, half expecting to see if not a monkey a coconut ready to fall, “honor of proposing to marry me.”

“Oh, I do apologize,” John stammered; turned pale. “It was after… after…”

“She had died. I wished that I had known her. She was a…”

“… a saint,” John filled in.

“Exactly the word that I was going to use. I have now thought over your proposal-somewhat slowly, I must admit. It’s been-what? Four years at least. And I accept.” It was done.

Caroline decided that John’s look of astonishment was not the greatest tribute ever paid her. Had she, somehow, imperceptibly, aged? Or was he otherwise engaged? Certainly, she knew nothing of his life. For all she knew, he might have a full-time and exigent mistress, perhaps a Negress, living in Flushing like Clarence King’s secret wife. “But… but, Caroline…”

“You cannot say that this is so sudden, John.” Caroline was beginning, almost, to enjoy herself.

“No. No. Only I never dreamed… I mean… why me?”

“Because you asked me. Remember?”

“But surely others have…”

“Only Del Hay, and he is dead. You and I, we are both-survivors.”

“I can’t think what to say.” John looked as if a coconut had indeed fallen from the trees, and struck him a sharp blow.

“You can say yes, dear John. Or you can say no. I can accept either. But I can’t accept indecision. You must not think it over in your deliberate legalistic way. I want the answer now, one way or the other.”

“Well, yes. Yes. Of course. But…”

“What is the but?”

“I have lost everything. We were-my family, that is-wiped out two years ago, when the Monongahela Combine failed, and then her illness…”

“I have,” said Caroline softly, “enough for two. Or I will have soon enough.”

“But it’s not right that the wife support the husband…”

“Of course it’s right. It is done all the time, even in Newport, Rhode Island,” she added for dramatic emphasis.

“I don’t know what to think.”

She was relieved that there was no sexual aura to John. He was more like a brother to her, a conventional American brother, she felt obliged to note in her deposition to the high tribunal of her conscience which was now sitting in judgment on her. Blaise, though only half a brother, was possessed of the same sort of dynamo that she had responded to in Jim. But John Apgar Sanford was like Adelbert Hay; he was comfortably, undisturbingly present; and no more.

“I shall be able to help you financially,” she said, abandoning any attempt at coquetry, which even if it were her style was irrelevant to the current proceeding.

“That would be mortifying.” John was acutely uncomfortable.