Gore Vidal - Empire

For company, Caroline had taken up with the Europeans, particularly with Cambon, the French minister; and with the recently ennobled British ambassador, Lord Pauncefote. Although she found the twice-divorced Russian ambassador, Count Arthur (surely, Arturo? she had said) Cassini, amusing and predictably gallant, she had followed Mrs. Hay’s advice and steered clear of him and his beautiful sixteen-year-old “niece,” who was, actually, his daughter by a one-time “actress,” now installed at the Russian embassy as the girl’s governess. The Washington newspapers had been almost as savage as the Washington gossips. Out of deference to Clara Hay, Caroline had avoided the Cassinis and the McLeans. Now she felt exhilarated as she stepped into the gilded room. Where the Hays and the Adamses and the Lodges were discreetly wealthy, and lived lives of muted splendor, prisoners to good taste and devotees of civilization at its most refined, the McLeans flaunted the inexhaustible contents of their hard pan. Guiltily, Caroline was more delighted by the vulgar kingdom than by the known one.

Caroline and Del made their way down the receiving line. The Admiral was gracious. “Tell Mr. Hay how much I appreciated his letter.”

“I will, sir.”

“Is Mr. Hay coming?” asked Millie, a pretty woman, Caroline decided, for forty-nine.

“I believe he is with the President tonight,” Del lied smoothly, and Caroline was pleased that he had taken so well to the world that he would be obliged to make his way in.

“We expected the President.” The new Mrs. Dewey smiled hugely; the teeth were discolored. But the huge doll’s eyes were a marvelous blue.

“There is a crisis,” murmured Del. “In the Philippines.”

The small, imperial Mrs. Washington McLean regarded the young couple with mild curiosity. “We don’t see much of you, Mr. Hay,” she said. “We don’t see you at all, Miss Sanford.” This was neutral. The style was very much that of the Mrs. Astor.

“I hope,” said Caroline, “that that will change.”

“I do, too.” A thin smile hardly lit a face entirely shadowed by a diamond-studded bandeau lodged half an inch above small eyes. “I shan’t be here forever.”

“You go back to Cleveland, to be renewed?”

“No. To Heaven, to be redeemed.”

Then Caroline found herself face to face with John R. McLean himself. He was tall, with the limpid blue eyes of his sister, and a neatly trimmed moustache. “Well, it’s you,” he said, staring down into Caroline’s face. “Come on. Let’s talk. Unless you want money from me. I don’t give money, outside the family.”

“How wise.” Then, exquisitely pretentious, Caroline began to quote Goethe in the original German: apropos a father’s duties.

Startled, McLean completed the quotation, in German. “How did you know I speak German?”

“You were at school at Heidelberg. You see? I study my fellow publishers.”

McLean began to hiccup, eyes misty with pleasure, or so Caroline hoped. “My stomach,” he said, “has been eroded by its own acids. Come into the library. Away from these people.”

They sat before a huge fireplace, where great logs burned. The firelight was reflected in the dark blue leather bindings of the books, arranged like so many Union soldiers on parade in their mahogany shelves. “You can never make that paper a success.” He gave her a glass of champagne; he poured himself soda water. The library door was firmly shut to the other guests. When McLean noticed that her eyes were on the door, he laughed. “Two publishers can’t compromise each other.”

“Let us hope Mr. Hay sees our relations so practically.”

“I am told that he’s an agreeable young man. We’re all of us from Ohio, you know. At least Clara Stone is. John Hay’s from nowhere. A sort of gypsy who’s taken to stealing power instead of babies.”

“How else,” asked Caroline, displeased, “is power obtained if it is not taken from someone else? I realize, of course, some power is inherited, the way you inherited the Enquirer …”

McLean was amused. “Me, an idle heir! Well, that’s a new one. I built on an inheritance, you might say-like your friend Hearst.” From a log, bright blue Luciferian flowers suddenly bloomed.

McLean stared at Caroline a moment. “I won’t ask you why you’re doing this,” he said finally. “I get pretty tired of people asking me that. If they can’t see why you-why we-do it,” he was suddenly attractive to her, now that he was collegial, “there’s no way of telling them. But since you’re a handsome young woman with a fortune, and Del Hay to marry, how long can you be so… original?”

“As long as you, I suppose.”

“I’m a man. We’re allowed to marry and we’re allowed-delighted to do business. No lady that I know of has ever set out, so young, while single, to do anything like this.”

Caroline studied the white smoke which had replaced the blue flame-flowers. “Why,” she asked, “are you so eager to be president?”

“How do you know I am?”

“That’s coy, Mr. McLean. That is maidenly. You give me the sort of answers that I’m supposed to give you. Why do you want it so badly that you took on the President in his own home state, and lost, as you knew you were going to?”

McLean’s hiccups returned, louder than the fire’s hissing and sputtering. “I didn’t expect to lose. It was close. The President’s on spongy ground back home. This empire business isn’t popular with the folks.”

“But prosperity is, and the President’s clever. That war of his ended the bad times, and even the farmers are complaining less than usual, which means that McKinley will defeat Bryan again.” How proud, Caroline thought, Mlle. Souvestre would be: one of her girls dealing with a man on equal terms.

McLean stared at Caroline with true wonder. “Somehow or other, I got the impression that you were only interested in the more revolting contents of our city’s morgue.”

Caroline laughed. “I’m not entirely ghoulish. In fact, I don’t like the contents of the morgue at all. But I am curious as to how living people manage to end up on marble slabs, and I share my curiosity with our readers, few as they are.”

“Mr. Hay-the father-must talk freely with you.”

“I listen-freely-to everyone.” Caroline stood up. “We’ve been here too long. I am compromised. Shall I scream?”

“I would be deeply flattered, and Mrs. McLean would be deeply proud-of me.” McLean got to his feet. They stood in front of the fire. Over the mantel hung a splendid fraudulent Rubens. Caroline had seen two exact copies of the same painting in New York. In dealing with innocent Americans, Old Europe’s forgers had grown careless. “You are interested in our political life, and I am surprised. Most young… most women are not. How did this happen?”

“I went to a good school. We were taught to question everything. I do. Now then, Mr. McLean, which of us-the Enquirer or the Tribune -shall question the war?”

“The war?” McLean blinked. “What war?”

“The Filipino war of independence, what else? We seem to be losing it.”

“Losing it? I guess you didn’t see this morning’s Associated Press wire. General Otis has captured the president of the so-called Philippines Congress, and has made secure all of central Luzon. The war, as you call it, is just about over.”

“Aguinaldo is still free. But you know far more than I about all this.” Half-heartedly, Caroline turned herself into polite jeune fille . “I had only hoped that someone might explain just how the… the morgues in those islands got so filled up, and why.”

McLean took her arm; he was suddenly paternal, and almost, for him, affectionate. “You know more than any young woman I’ve ever met. But you haven’t quite got the clue to all of this…”