Gore Vidal - Empire

“ ‘A fair exchange is no robbery,’ as the French say.” Caroline gazed at the palm fronds overhead. “So I shall explain exactly what is to be exchanged for what. I know that you are, of all the family here, the most worldly, the most experienced.” Caroline saw fit to lay it on rather heavily, as she was by no means certain what his response was going to be. “You handled Blaise superbly, and I am, of course, grateful.” The fact that John had done nothing at all for her was beside the point, as she methodically set him up for man-of-the-worlddom.

“I did what I could… He’s difficult, yes.” John was at sea.

Caroline threw out her net. “In marrying me, you will not only get the support that you need in your… uh, endeavors but you will be able to provide me with a father for my child.” Caroline gazed at him, with what she hoped were luminous, madonna-like eyes.

John had gone pale. John had misunderstood. “Naturally, in marrying, the thought of a family is all-important to me, to carry on the name…”

“ Our name,” Caroline murmured, wondering how to explain herself.

“Our name, yes. We are both Sanfords. So your monogram won’t change, will it?” He laughed without mirth. “I always regretted not having children with my wife, my first wife, but her illness…” The voice again trailed off.

“I think, John, I have not expressed myself with that clarity which you, as a lawyer, so rightly pride yourself in.” Caroline now felt rather like one of Henry James’s older European ladies, ready to launch some terrible bit of information at a dim-witted American ingénue. “I was not speaking of a future hypothetical fatherhood for you, but of an imminent motherhood for me… in October to be precise, which is why I am eager to be married this week, at City Hall, where I have already made inquiries.”

John gasped, but at least he had understood. “You…” But he exhausted all his breath in startled exhalation.

As John inhaled, Caroline said, “Yes, I am pregnant. I cannot tell you who the father is, as he is a married man. But I can tell you that he was my first-and only-lover. I feel like that chaste king of Spain who…” But caution stopped her from repeating Mlle. Souvestre’s favorite story about how the ascetic King Philip had finally gone to bed with a woman and promptly contracted syphilis. John might not be ready for this story.

“He-the father is in Spain?” John was doing his best to grasp the situation.

“No, he is in America. He is an American. He has visited Spain,” she improvised, hoping to erase King Philip from the court-courtship?-record.

“I see.” John stared at his shoes.

“I realize that I am asking for a very great deal, which is why I said at the very beginning that there would be an exchange between us, useful to each.” Caroline wondered what she would do in John’s place. She would, probably, have laughed, and said no. But she was not in John’s place, and she could not measure either his liking for her person or his need for her fortune. These two imponderables would determine the business.

“Will you continue to see him?” John came swiftly to the necessary, for him, point.

“No.” Caroline lied so seldom that she found it quite easy to do. Would she now become addicted to lying, and turn into another Mrs. Bingham?

“What will you do about the newspaper?”

“I shall go on with it. Unless you would like to be the publisher.” This was definitely Mrs. Binghamish: Caroline had no intention of ever losing control of the Tribune .

“No. No. I am a lawyer, after all, not a publisher. I must say, I have never come across a… a case like this.” He looked at her, worriedly; a lawyer mystified by a client.

“I thought that pregnant ladies were always getting married in the nick of time.”

“Yes. But to the man who… who…”

“Made them pregnant. Well, that is not possible for me.”

“You are in love with him.” John was bleak.

“Don’t worry, John. I shall be as good a wife as I can, given my disposition, which is not very wifely, in the American way, that is.”

“I suppose you will want to look at my books…”

“You are a collector?”

“My financial books…”

“I am not an auditor. You have debts. I’ll pay what I can now. When I inherit, I’ll pay the rest. I assume,” Caroline suddenly wondered if she ought not to bring in an auditor; she laughed uneasily, “I assume that your debts are not larger than my income.”

“Oh, much less. Much less. This is embarrassing for both of us.”

“In France our relatives would be holding this discussion, but we’re not in France, and I can’t imagine Blaise handling any of this for me.” When Caroline rose from her chair, John sprang to his feet: yes, he was hers, she decided. So far so good. Now all that needed to be worked out was the marital bed. She had no intention of sleeping with John, and it was plain that he had every intention of claiming his conjugal rights. For the moment she was safe: her family history of difficult, even fatal, pregnancies could be invoked to keep him at a distance. Later, she would, she was certain, think of something.

Caroline took John’s arm, as a wife takes a husband’s. “Dear John,” she said, as they made their way down the deserted Peacock Alley, the only sound that of the revolving overhead fans.

“It’s like a dream,” said John.

“ Exactly what I was thinking,” said Caroline, who had never felt more awake.

JOHN HAY COULD STILL NOT BELIEVE the change in the White House. The entire upstairs was now home to the Roosevelts and their six children, who seemed, to Hay, more like twelve. The entrance hall which had been so long graced by President Arthur’s Tiffany screen was now an impressive eighteenth-century foyer to a sort of Anglo-Irish country house whose drawing rooms, en suite , were now directly accessible to the hall, where the old pols’ wooden staircase had been replaced by a marble affair down which the presidents could descend in glory. The west staircase had been removed in order to enlarge the state dining room, whose new fireplace had been inscribed with the pious Rooseveltian hope that only men as noble as he would ever preside in this republican palace.

Then, as ushers opened doors, Hay entered the new west wing, where the executive offices were comfortably quartered. The President’s architects had nicely duplicated the oval of the Blue Room for his office, which looked south toward the Potomac. The Cabinet had its own room at last, with the office of the President’s secretary separating it from the sovereign’s oval.

Theodore was standing in front of his desk throwing a medicine ball at the tiny German ambassador, a particular friend, and the source of remarkable trouble for Hay because Cassini was now convinced that Theodore and the Kaiser were in secret league against the Tsar. Hay was required, at least once a week, to soothe the Russian. The new French ambassador, Jusserand, was more worldly and less excitable than his predecessor, while Sir Michael Herbert, Pauncefote’s successor, was himself like a member of the President’s own family, and rode each day with Theodore through Rock Creek Park, and joined him in loud, clumsy games of tennis where the President’s ferocity and near-blindness made for every sort of exciting danger.

Hay bowed to President and Ambassador. “If I am interrupting,” he began.

“No. No, John.” Theodore heaved the medicine ball at von Sternberg, who caught it easily. “That was splendid, Speck!” Hay was always amused at how like his numerous imitators the President could sound, except for the clicking of the teeth, which no one had ever quite duplicated.