Gore Vidal - Empire

“Clue?”

McLean nodded. They were at the door. “I’m not going to tell you, either. You’re too smart as it is.”

The door was flung open, and there stood Mrs. John R. McLean, small of chin, blue of eyes, dark of skin. “You two are a scandal,” she observed mildly.

“We are at that.” McLean was wry. “But then that’s our business. Now, young lady, a question.”

“Before my very eyes,” said Mrs. McLean, plainly not disturbed.

“And ears,” her husband added. He turned to Caroline. “Do you mean to sell out to Hearst?”

“No. I also don’t mean, if I can help it, to sell out to my brother-half-brother-Blaise.”

“If you can help it?” McLean watched her face closely, as though studying a clock which may or may not be keeping correct time.

“Blaise has tied up my share of our inheritance. I may not get what is mine until 1905. It is possible that I shall run out of money before then…” Caroline could see that Mrs. McLean was far more shocked by this talk of money than she would ever have been by the thought of a romantic interlude between husband and young woman. But McLean had seized the point.

“If you ever need money for the Tribune ,” he said, “come to me.”

“Pop!” Mrs. McLean’s dark complexion seemed smeared with ash by firelight. The pale eyes protruded.

“Mummie!” McLean responded in kind, their princely eminence abandoned for the homely lowland of the common hard pan. McLean turned to his wife and took her arm. “Don’t you see that the best thing in the world is for me to have this lovely child running the Tribune , with my money, rather than have her go sell it to that bastard…”

“Pop!” The voice resounded like thunder.

“I have heard the word,” said Caroline. “In Market Square,” she added, demurely.

“… William Randolph Hearst.” McLean concluded; and led the two ladies back into the ballroom.

Caroline was greeted by her new friends of the diplomatic corps. Jules Cambon was a lively cricket of a man, always pleased to see what he regarded as a countrywoman. He was also, he liked to say, an American bachelor: Madame Cambon had refused to join him in the Washington wilderness. Lord Pauncefote was a lawyer turned diplomat; he had been posted to Washington for ten years, and knew the intricacies of the capital even better, Hay liked to say, than the Secretary of State. Pauncefote’s face was wide, made even wider by fleecy side-whiskers, whose white was emphasized by the rich red claret color of the huge face. Pauncefote was also an expert on the legal intricacies governing international canals. He had been involved in the creation of the Suez Canal; now he was again at work, with Hay, drawing up the protocols which would govern the canal that the United States was planning to build across the Central American isthmus. Once Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were connected, America’s military power would be doubled, while, it was whispered in the Senate cloakroom, England’s would be halved.

“We are hopeful,” said the old man to the group of government officials surrounding him. As Congress was not yet in session, there were few tribunes of the people present to celebrate the hero of Manila Bay. Pauncefote bowed to Caroline. “Miss Sanford. I am speaking shop, and will now desist.”

“Don’t! Go on. It is my shop, too. The Tribune has already thundered its approval of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty.”

“Would that the Senate will do the same next month.” Actually, the Tribune editorial, the work of Trimble, had suggested that since the United States was building-and paying for-the canal, the United States must have the right to fortify the canal, which the treaty, out of deference to an 1850 convention between England and the United States, would deny. But just as Pauncefote began to express his government’s views of canals, Mrs. Admiral Dewey joined them, a sumptuous doll, Caroline decided, who had at last found herself a proper doll’s house. She explained to Caroline, “We couldn’t live in that tacky house in Rhode Island Avenue. So I’ve bought Beauvoir, a pretty place in Woodley Lane. Do you know it?”

Caroline did not.

“It’s like being in the country, but still in the town. I can’t wait to start fixing it up. For years I’ve owned quantities of the most lovely blue-and-white Delft tiles, and now I’m going to be able to use them.”

“In the kitchen?”

Mrs. Dewey’s huge doll’s eyes blinked like-a doll’s. “No. In the drawing room. Of course, the house is rather small, but then we don’t need anything large. There are no children now. Only my husband’s trophies. And what trophies! You saw the gold sword the President gave him at the Capitol?”

“From a great distance.” The ceremony had been impressive, if somewhat bizarre. Never before had a reigning president sat in front of the portico while the center of attention was not himself, the sovereign, but a military man. McKinley had carried off his difficult assignment with his usual papal charm, and Caroline had accepted, gratefully, Hay’s characterization of the President as a medieval Italian prelate. While the Admiral was being celebrated by the vast crowd, the President had smiled beautifully at no one. Only once was he utilized. He was obliged to present a gold sword to the Admiral, with a few murmured words, no doubt in Church Latin.

“The sword’s only gold plate, by the way. Too shocking! Congress said that it was to be solid gold, of the highest quality…”

“And from the hardest pan?” Caroline could not resist.

But Millie Dewey seemed not to know the phrase. “I would have thought solid gold would be the only thing suitable for the first admiral we’ve had in thirty years. The Admiral now outranks every military man in the country,” she added proudly. “Which is causing all sorts of problems, I can tell you. You see, General Miles,” and, indeed, Caroline could, literally, see that warrior, formidable in appearance with his equally formidable wife, Mary Sherman, the older sister of Lizzie Cameron, “well, General Miles may be chief of staff of the Army but he is only a lieutenant general, while my husband is admiral of the Navy, the first to hold that rank since Farragut, who only won a little victory in Mobile Bay during the War of Secession while my admiral gave us all Asia…”

“Surely, not all . There is still China.”

“We shall have that, too, he says, if the Russians and Japanese don’t get there first. Speaking of Russians, this is my Aunt Mamie.” They were joined by a small, fat woman with dyed red hair; quantities of huge jewels, set in massive gold, were attached to her ears, bosom, waist. She looked Byzantine; and she was. “Madame Bakhmetoff lives in St. Petersburg, far, far from home.”

“About as far as one can get,” Caroline agreed. The ramifications of the hard-pan families never ceased to amaze her. One sister might be a farmer’s wife in Iowa; another Duchess of Devonshire.

“The Russians aren’t civilized,” said Madame; then added, unexpectedly, “That’s why I feel at home there. We’re so much alike, Americans and Russians. Here’s mine.”

Mamie’s Russian was as ugly as she. He wore a monocle; and presented to the world a gargoyle’s face, scarred deeply from smallpox. He kissed Caroline’s hand; and without thinking-or did he calculate?-slipped into French, presumably excluding Mamie and Millie. “You are an unexpectedly splendid apparition for this bleakest of capitals.” Bakhmetoff’s tone was agreeably flattering; and sharp.

“How could you tell I am not a native?”

“First, I know who you are…”

“You have been to Saint-Cloud-le-Duc…”