Gore Vidal - Empire

They were now in the back parlor, overlooking the small garden where, because of the season, only late ominous chrysanthemums grew. The trees had lost their leaves; and in the small goldfish pond, a large goldfish had bellied up, a victim to overeating.

“Serene. The same, actually. John’s mostly in New York with his law firm. I’m mostly here with the paper; and the child.”

The two-month-old Emma Apgar Sanford was less noisy than Caroline had anticipated, and though not yet the best of company, she was a benign presence in the house, and Caroline, against Marguerite’s advice-no longer heeded, ever-breast-fed her daughter, and noted with awed wonder how large her gravid breasts had become. She was, for the first time in her life, à la mode in the grand fleshy world.

Marguerite Cassini now made her hardly climactic entrance. Caroline admired her beauty; but nothing more. The shadow of Del seemed, mysteriously, attached to her. Caroline had heard it said that the opal ring that had broken in half on the New Haven pavement had been a gift from Countess Cassini. Plainly, fiction’s war with truth was never-ending. Marguerite went straight toward the open box of chocolates from Huyler’s, the city’s principal confectioner. Each Washington house ordered its own mixture, and Caroline had introduced white chocolate to Washington, a novelty still controversial in those circles where the Tribune’s Society Lady so hungrily moved. “You shouldn’t eat chocolate. You’ll get fat,” Alice announced. “I never eat dessert. Just meat and potatoes, like Father.”

“Perhaps you’ll be as stout as he is,” said Marguerite, looking suddenly Mongol-or was it Tartar?-or were they the same? The friendship between La Cassini and Alice was the talk of the town, and by no means confined to the Society Lady’s circles. In the current troubles between Russia and Japan, President Roosevelt tended to take the Japanese side, to the fury of Cassini, who had roared in Caroline’s presence, “The man’s a pagan! We are a Christian nation like the United States, and he sides with yellow savage pagans.” At the White House, Russian greed was sadly deplored. The Administration was ready to acquiesce in Japan’s proposal that Russia might annex Manchuria if Japan could be allowed to take over Korea as well. The Tribune tried to be even-handed but tended, thanks to Mr. Trimble, to favor Russia, to the President’s fury. At the center of the new Cabinet room, he had made Caroline a long speech on the tides of history while a portrait of Abraham Lincoln looked wearily away from the seated woman, the marching President. Lately, Cassini tended to kiss rather too warmly Caroline’s hand at receptions, and Marguerite had thanked her for her editorial support. “It’s so difficult for me,” she had sighed, “now that I am doyenne of the diplomatic corps.” With Pauncefote’s death, Cassini had become the senior chief of mission at the capital. As his hostess, Marguerite sailed first into every official gathering; meanwhile, the President’s daughter defied her father and made Marguerite her friend, all because, as only Caroline knew, the President had refused to allow Alice to own a red automobile, and so Alice had commandeered the Russian Ambassador’s machine. The previous summer Alice and Marguerite, like Arctic explorers, had driven together to Newport, to the fearful applause of the public, to the horror of pedestrians run down, of motorists forced off the road. After today’s collision, Caroline was fairly certain that the relationship between Alice and Marguerite was about to undergo a sea-change. Cassini would deny them the use of his car; and Japan would triumph over Russia. The causal links , as Brooks Adams liked to say.

“What am I wearing tomorrow at the British embassy?” asked Alice, opening her handbag, removing a cigarette case and, as expertly as any clubman, lighting up. Caroline still experienced mild shock whenever she saw this; and had said so. “But,” Alice had assured her, “everyone will be doing it now that I do.”

“But you don’t do it beneath your father’s roof.”

“I do it out the window, a technicality he has come to respect. So what am I wearing?”

“The dark blue velvet, with lace at the throat…” Caroline began.

“I won’t lend you my sable again.” Marguerite was squashing the chocolates with her fingers; she liked only soft centers.

Both Mrs. Roosevelt and Alice liked to invent elaborate costumes, which they did not possess, and then give the White House press secretary descriptions of these fabulous creations, which would be written of, ecstatically, in every “Society Lady” page. As it was, neither lady could afford much of anything to wear, though, of the two, Alice was somewhat richer. When Caroline had caught on to the White House game, Alice had asked her to help invent costumes, which Caroline would describe in the Tribune , to the amazement of those who had actually seen what the Roosevelt ladies had been wearing.

The maid-of-all-work appeared with tea. Caroline had planned to move to larger quarters and hire what the Apgars would call a proper staff, but John’s liabilities had used up her own income for the year; fortunately, the newspaper had begun, shyly, to flourish, and she could live, comfortably, as a Mrs. Sanford in Georgetown instead of the Mrs. Sanford, which she would not be until March 5, 1905, some fifteen months in the future. Worse, she suspected that John had even greater debts than he had admitted to. Even worse, she suspected that Blaise knew just how insolvent her unexpected bridegroom was, because he had only recently suggested that she sell him the Tribune , if she were so minded. She was not so minded, she said, and continued to watch, as did all Washington, his palace take shape on Connecticut Avenue, rivalling in its ornate marble splendor those Dupont Circle palaces where reigned the Leiters and now the Pattersons, whose daughter, Eleanor, known as Cissy, a restless nineteen-year-old, entered on the arm of the most elegant member of the House of Representatives, one Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, a dapper figure in his early thirties, most glitteringly bald. One day it was rumored that he was supposed to marry Marguerite Cassini; the next, Alice Roosevelt; the day after, no one at all, for “he is,” his mother had confided to the press, “a born bachelor.”

Caroline poured tea; made conversation, not that much of that ever had to be made in a room containing Alice, who never stopped talking, particularly when inspired to shock, and Long-worth seemed her particular butt of the moment. While Marguerite Cassini glowed, in her Tartar way, and Alice spoke rudely of the House of Representatives, Cissy Patterson told Caroline her problems. Cissy’s face was that of a dull red-haired Pekinese, with a small pink nose; eyes, too, for she had been weeping. “Yes, I’ve been crying on Nick’s shoulder,” she murmured to Caroline.

“The Pole?”

“The Pole. I can’t believe Mother is doing this to me.”

“But he is handsome…”

“I don’t think I care for men,” said Cissy, staring at Caroline in a way that made that new mother-new woman, too-somewhat uneasy; the gaze was too like Mlle. Souvestre’s.

“Oh, you’ll get used to them. They are too large, of course, for most uses.” Caroline thought fondly of Jim, who visited her every Sunday, after his ride along the canal. He smelled, always, of horse. In fact, she now so connected sex with horses that she had suggested that perhaps he send her the horse on a Sunday, and himself go home to Kitty. He had been shocked.

“It’s not that. At least, I don’t think it is. Of course, I’m a virgin.”

“Of course,” said Caroline. “We all were once. Such happy carefree days.”