Gore Vidal - Empire

“That’s my impression, too. The girl’s nice. But he does want to be like Mr. Hearst…”

“No more than I do…”

“Caroline! You are a lady.”

“But foreign.”

“Even so, you could never want to be like that dreadful man. Henry James returned our latch-key.” Clara’s mind was so constituted that she could make the leap from yellow journalism to the fact that Henry James, who had gone off with the key to the front door of the Hay house, had returned it; and make the non sequitur seem part of some significant whole, which perhaps it was, un-grasped by Caroline, who suddenly recalled her discussion of keys with Blaise, both real and metaphysical.

“Will you see Mr. James in London?”

“If we have the chance. I don’t want John to see anyone except old friends. But the King insists. So we go to Buckingham Palace.”

“The King is political.”

“He likes John. I said, No food! The King eats for hours. We shall stay exactly one half hour, I said, no longer.” The two women sat on a bench, and watched the others at tea. Adams was walking up and down excitedly, a good sign. Hay sat huddled in his throne, a study in gray and white. Blaise sat on the edge of his chair like an attentive schoolboy. “Divorce still shocks me.” Clara hurled the commandment down the length of her figure, which even seated suggested Mount Sinai.

“We were never really married.” Caroline started to tell the truth, but then, not wanting to spend the rest of her life in France, she told not the truth but something true. “I was alone, after Del died. So I married a cousin for-protection.” Caroline hoped that she could successfully portray herself as helpless.

She could not, to Clara, at least. “I know.” She was peremptory. “Rebound. From grief. Even so, one might have waited until there was not a cousin but a true husband.”

“That’s all past. I’m alone now, and quite content. There’s Emma. What,” asked Caroline, imitating the manner of Clara, the non sequitur without ellipsis, “ever became of Clarence King’s children by the Negress?”

Clara blushed. Caroline knew victory. “They are still in Canada, I think. John and Henry help out. They tell me nothing, and I never ask.” Clara rose, ending the subject. Attended by Caroline, the mountain returned to the tea-table.

Hay was describing his meeting with the French foreign minister. “I was expressly forbidden by the President to speak to him, since I hadn’t first seen the Kaiser. But I, too, must be allowed my diplomacy. All the troubles in Morocco-no, not Perdicaris, not Raisuli…”

“Spare us your high drama.” Adams ceased pacing and sat in a chair too large for him. The two tiny glittering black patent-leather shoes were an inch from the ground.

“… are coming to a head, and the Kaiser is imposing himself on the French, and threatens to go to Morocco himself to take it away from them. Poor Delcassé is filled with gloom. With Russia on the verge of a revolution, the Kaiser has the only important army in Europe. The French don’t breed enough, he complained, and the English army is too small, so the Kaiser can do as he pleases, unless Theodore puts down his great boot…”

“Stick, isn’t it?” Adams interjected. “The one he says he carries when he speaks with a soft voice. The reverse, of course, is the case. He bellows, and there is no stick at all.”

“A large navy, Henry, is a big stick…”

“When war comes in Europe, it will be on land, and it will be won by land armies, and that will be Germany’s last chance to be king of the mountain.”

“We,” Clara said the last word, “will stay out.”

As the perfect day ended with a golden light breaking through the leaves of the west park, Caroline and Blaise and Frederika saw the last of the Hearts into their motor cars. Adams was off to join the Lodges, “part of my secret diplomacy to keep Cabot from John’s throat.” Caroline remembered too late that she had not mentioned to Adams the fragments of Aaron Burr’s memoirs. Fortunately, from the healthy look of him, there would be time during the winter in Washington.

“You must come see us at Sunapee.” Hay took Caroline’s hand; she almost recoiled from the coldness of his touch.

“I’ll come in July.”

“Come for the Fourth. We will all be there.” Clara kissed Caroline’s cheek. Then they were gone.

The young trio regarded the departure of the old trio with, on Caroline’s side, considerable regret. “They are the last,” she said.

“Last of what?” Frederika gazed bemusedly at her, hair suddenly dark gold in the slanting light.

“Last-believers.”

“In what?” Blaise turned to go inside.

“In… Hearts.”

“I believe in hearts.” Frederika had misunderstood. “Don’t you, Caroline?”

“I meant something else by Hearts, and what they were, and tried to be, made them different from us.”

“They aren’t different from us.” Blaise was final. “Except that they are old, and we aren’t. Yet.”

JOHN HAY SAT in a rocking chair on the verandah of The Fells and stared across the green New Hampshire lawn to the gray New Hampshire mountains with Lake Winnepesaukee between, so much flat shining water that reflected the deep clear blue summer sky. Exhaustion did not describe his condition. He had returned on June 15, and after a day at Manhasset with Helen, he had gone on to Washington, despite firm instructions from the President to go home. For a week in the damp heat of the tropical capital, he had done the business of his department, and plotted with Theodore on how-and where-to get the Japanese and the Russians to sign a peace treaty. He had found Theodore more than ever regnant, and the mammoth Taft apparently indispensable. The last bit of business that they had set in motion was to put an end to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which earlier administrations had used to keep the Chinese from immigrating to the United States. With the rise of Japan, paradoxically, the Yellow Peril must be put to rest as a means for politicians to frighten the people.

The house in Washington was depressing, with white sheets over everything, closed shutters and windows, and a musty smell. Clarence, now grown and amiable if not brilliant, kept him company, and together they had left the city on June 24 for Newbury, on the overnight sleeper, where Hay had caught his inevitable sleeper-cold. Today he was better; but mortally tired. He had also developed a habit of falling asleep in the middle of a sentence, and dreaming vividly; then he’d wake up, disoriented, with the sensation, yet again, of being, simultaneously, in two places, even two epochs of time. But now Clarence sat beside him in a noisy rocker, made noisier by the instinct of the young to rock vigorously, while that of the old is to be rocked gently.

“Of course, I’ve been lucky.” Hay stared at the sky. “There must be a kind of law. For every bit of bad luck Clarence King-for whom we named you-had, I got a prize. He wanted to make a fortune, and lost everything ten times over. I didn’t care one way or another, and everything I did, just about, made me rich, even if I hadn’t married an heiress.” Hay wondered if this was entirely true. When he had worked for Amasa Stone, he had been drilled thoroughly in business. Of course, he had been an apt student, but without Stone’s coaching he might have ended up as just another newspaper editor, earning extra money on the lecture-circuit.

“I’ve never really been sick till now, or, as old Shylock says, ‘never felt it till now.’ The family’s turned out better than I ever had any right to hope.” He turned and gazed at the attentive Clarence. “I’d go to law school, if I were you. Also, don’t marry young. It’s a mistake for a boy to tie himself up-or down-too young.”