Gore Vidal: Empire

Mrs. Cameron was now ablaze with August light. “Why did he exile himself?” Mrs. Cameron was suddenly almost personal; as opposed to inquisitive.

“I’ve never known.” But of course Caroline and her half-brother, Blaise, had their suspicions, not to be voiced even to an earth-goddess. “It was after he married my mother. You see, she was really French. I mean, she was born in Italy, but her first husband was French.”

“She was born a Schermerhorn Schuyler.” Mrs. Cameron was prompt. Everyone knew everyone else’s connections in the grand American world, so unlike Paris, where only a few deranged spinsters in the Faubourg Saint-Germain busied themselves with genealogy. “Your mother was a bit before my time, of course. But people still talked of her when I was young.”

Actually, Caroline knew that Mrs. Cameron had married the Senator in the obviously astounding year of her own birth and Emma’s death, 1878: a silver box on a console gave the wedding date, a gift from Mrs. Cameron’s other famous uncle, a longtime senator who had been, until that spring, President McKinley’s secretary of state. The great career had been brought to an abrupt and ignominious end when Secretary Sherman had had a lapse of memory while talking to the Austrian minister at Washington, no bad thing in itself but when it developed that he thought that he was the Austrian minister and lapsed into German, which he did not know, President McKinley was obliged, sadly, to let him depart. Mrs. Cameron was still upset. “After all, Uncle John signed my passport,” she would say.

Now Mrs. Cameron wanted to know what would become of the Colonel’s celebrated place at Saint-Cloud. Caroline said, truthfully, that she did not know. “Everything has been left to Blaise and me. But the will hasn’t been properly-what is the word?”

“Probated,” said the goddess brightly. “Let us hope the division will be equal.”

“Oh, I’m sure it probably is.” But Caroline had her doubts. Over the years, Colonel Sanford had progressed from pronounced eccentricity to the edge of madness, obliging the butler to double as taster at mealtimes: the Colonel feared poison. In the warm weather, the Colonel preferred daughter to son; then, just as the leaves started to turn, he preferred son to daughter. During alternating equinoxes, new wills would be drawn. As luck would have it, he had died in cold weather, when the horse he was riding across the railroad track at Saint-Cloud shied, and threw him in the path of the Blue Train itself. Death was swift. That was a year ago; and the lawyers in New York were still unravelling the various wills. In September, Caroline and Blaise would know who had got what. Fortunately, the Sanford estate was supposed to be large enough for two. The “house” at Saint-Cloud was a palace built by one of Louis XV’s less able-and so enormously wealthy-finance ministers. In Caroline’s youth there had never been fewer than forty servants in the chateau while two villages on the estate provided farm labor. But as madness began to claim the Colonel, potential murderers were summarily dismissed until there was hardly anyone left to keep up the splendor paid for by Sanford Encaustic Tiles (made in Lowell, Massachusetts) as well as the Cincinnati-Atlanta Railroad, a profitable postwar invention, built to replace the railroad that Mrs. Cameron’s Uncle Cump (William Tecumseh Sherman-hence, Cump) had smashed to bits on his exuberant march to the sea.

Six children now filled the room as if they were twelve. There were two nieces of Mrs. Cameron, her stolid twelve-year-old daughter, Martha, one Curzon girl, two small Herbert boys, and Clarence, the plain young brother of Adelbert Hay and son of the house celebrity, John Hay, American ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. Mrs. Cameron now directed their revels with brisk authority. “You are to go outside, girls. To the stables. There’s a cart. And Mr. Adams-Uncle Dordie-has got you two ponies. Boys, there is lawn tennis in Pluckley…”

“We’ve won the war, Mrs. Cameron,” said Clarence, in a voice that kept cracking. “On Father’s terms, too. Cuba’s forever free,” he suddenly boomed, as the voice dropped an octave, to everyone’s delight. “But we get to keep Puerto Rico. For ourselves.”

“The question, actually,” said the grave Herbert child, all nose and high color, “is the matter of the Philippines. You Americans must really keep them, you know. In all of this-”

“We shall decide the Philippines at lunch,” said Mrs. Cameron; and dismissed the lot.

Caroline had now moved to the great table between the terrace windows. Cameron stationery, Surrenden Dering stationery, United States embassy stationery were scattered over the worn pear-wood surface. Blaise must be written: her hand hovered over the table. Although it was tempting to write on embassy paper, she decided that that might be misrepresenting herself, and so she reached for the pale gray Surrenden Dering writing paper. As she did, she saw a small stock of old-ivory note-paper, each sheet emblazoned with five small Chinese-red hearts, arranged like those of a playing card.

“What is this, Mrs. Cameron?” Caroline held up one of the sheets.

“What’s what?” Mrs. Cameron shut the door after the last of the children.

“Writing-paper. With,” Caroline looked down at the tiny scarlet hearts, “the Five…”

“… of Hearts.” Mrs. Cameron took the stationery from Caroline. “I can’t think who left them here. I would appreciate it if you said nothing about it.”

“A secret society?” Caroline was intrigued.

“Something of a secret, yes. And something of a society, too.”

“But what… who are the Five of Hearts?”

Mrs. Cameron smiled with no great evident joy. “You must guess. Besides, there are only four now. Like those ladies-in-waiting to Mary Queen of Scots.”

“ They were four to begin with.”

“Well, these were five. But like the old ballad, where once there were five, there were then four, where four three…” Mrs. Cameron suddenly swallowed very hard. “In time, there will be none.”

“Are you one?”

“Oh, no! I am not so good as that.” Mrs. Cameron was gone, the mystery clutched in her long capable hand.

Caroline was halfway through her letter to Blaise when Del Hay came in from the terrace. He was very like his mother, Clara Hay, a heavy, large-boned, handsome woman who had produced an equally heavy, rather broad-hipped son, with more face below the eyes than above, the reverse of Caroline, whose face tended to the triangular and broad-browed. “We’ve won the war,” said Del.

“As a general greeting, I prefer good-morning.” Caroline was cool. “So far, today, everyone’s told me that we’ve won the war, and no one’s mentioned the weather. Besides, I haven’t won the war. You and your father have.”

“You, too. You’re an American. Oh, it’s a great day for all of us.”

“A very hot day. I’m writing your former classmate. Any message?”

“Tell him he should be happy. At least his employer should be. The New York Journal must be frothing at the mouth, like some rabid…”

“Eagle. May I write him on your father’s stationery?”

“Why not? This is the summer embassy.” A young man with hair parted neatly in the middle looked into the room. “Have you seen the Ambassador?”

“He’s in the library, Mr. Eddy. Did you just come down from London?”

“I was here last night for dinner.” Mr. Eddy was reproachful. “Of course, there were so many people.”

“I’m sorry,” said Del. “But there were so many. What’s the latest news?”

“I don’t know. The telegraph office in the village has either broken down or just shut down. They’ve never had so much work, they say. But Mr. White’s on his way from London. He’ll have the latest news.” Mr. Eddy left the room to Caroline and Del, who left the room altogether. Caroline held on to Del’s arm as they stepped out onto the stone terrace with its long view of the Weald of Kent. Although Caroline did not know just what a weald was, she assumed that it must contain green woods and distant hills-the vista before them, in fact. They moved toward the one end of the terrace that was in shade, from a giant gnarled diseased oak. The soft green English countryside was beginning to shimmer as the before-noon sun burned a hole in a sky that ought to have been pale blue but instead was white from heat.