Gore Vidal - Empire

But Del did not mind; quite the contrary. “Look!” He showed Helen the ring, as she sat down.

“Good Heavens! How beautiful! How daring! How unlucky!”

“Not for me, the opal,” said Del.

“My father wore it, and lived a long time; happily, I suppose.”

“He died in an accident,” Helen began.

“Rather a better end than most of his contemporaries made,” said Caroline. “He was old,” she added.

“As a poet, I am thrilled. Thrilled!” Helen had published one volume of verse quite as good, if not as popular, as her father’s youthful work. “As a sister, I think we should take a mutual vow of silence until you two are safely married.”

The three drank to that, and Caroline felt herself, suddenly, part of a most agreeable family, something she had never known at home and only caught glimpses of on visits to the houses of school friends. Was it possible, she wondered, as they took the sleigh back to the city, that she would not always be alone?

BLAISE STOOD IN FRONT OF the four-story brownstone on Twenty-eighth Street, off Lexington Avenue. New-planted trees were in somewhat mangy leaf on either side of the chocolate-colored steps. The old Worth House was now a muddy hole in the ground. But Hearst, with his usual flair-or was it good luck?-had managed to buy the townhouse of that most fastidious and fashionable-if not the only fastidious and fashionable-of presidents, Chester Arthur.

George opened the door. “Well, it’s home now, Mr. Blaise,” he said. “Practically a palace, I’d say, from the number of rooms I have to look after.”

Blaise followed George up a flight of mahogany steps to a baronial panelled sitting room filled with crates of unopened art or “art,” while the walls were covered with paintings and tapestries and, sometimes, paintings supported by nails impatiently driven through ancient Aubusson and Gobelin tapestries. Egyptian mummy cases and statues were scattered about the room, like a newly opened pharaonic tomb, loot from the Chief’s winter on the Nile.

The Chief himself stood in front of a large map of the United States, with numerous red pins in it. Like George, he was in shirt-sleeves. Also, like George, he was somewhat larger than he had been at the Worth House. Otherwise, he was unchanged. He was still loyal to the Willson girls, but not ready to marry. For company, he currently allowed his editor, the courtly Arthur Brisbane, to live in the house. Brisbane reminded Blaise of a somewhat obsequious tutor to a somewhat dim rich boy.

“National Association of Democrat Clubs. Where they are. Each red pin is one club.” The Chief explained either too much or too little.

“And you’re the chairman.”

“I’m the chairman. I don’t know.” Hearst fell onto a sofa and kicked off his shoes: the socks were striped mauve and yellow. “It looks like Chicago,” he said at last.

“For the Democratic Convention?”

“Newspapers, too. I agreed. The Chicago Evening American . I like the word ‘American.’ For a paper.”

“What about ‘Evening’?” Blaise sat in an armchair next to a life-size sphinx, assuming that in life sphinxes were the same size as chorus girls.

“You may have to start with ‘evening.’ Then you sneak up on ‘morning.’ Takes time. I think I’ve made a joke. By accident. How’s your French lady?” Hearst could never remember any French names.

“In France. Where French ladies live.”

“She’s very well-dressed,” said the Chief thoughtfully. “The girls like her clothes a lot. And her, too,” he added, staring at the mummy case, which, Blaise hoped, did not remind the Chief too much of his mistress.

“Who did you agree with?”

“About what? Brisbane says that mummy case is a fake, but how would he know?”

Blaise let Brisbane slip by. “About starting a paper in Chicago.”

“The Democratic National Committee. They said they won’t have a chance this year without a Chicago paper, so after they made me chairman of all those clubs-all across the country, see? Three million members.” He waved his hand at the map. This was to be his power-base within the party. “So I said I’d start up a paper. First issue is July second, two days before the Democratic Convention. Bryan is going to start up the presses.”

“Bryan’s the nominee?”

The Chief grunted. “ I’m not,” he said, neutrally. “This is going to cost a lot.” From under the sofa he pulled out the dusty banjo. He ran his thumb across the strings; in defiance of the law of averages, each was out of tune. Happily, Hearst did not try to play.

Blaise prepared himself for what he knew was the Chief’s next move. But Hearst did not make the expected move. “Mother’s luck is better than Father’s ever was,” he said. “She’s in on the Homestead Mine. South Dakota Gold. They’re making six million dollars a year now and she’s chief shareholder.”

“That takes care of money.” Blaise was, momentarily, relieved.

“That could. Croker’s on his way here. He’s got Tammany lined up for Bryan. That’s the city. I’ll get him the rest of the state.”

“Do you want Bryan?”

“Can’t stop him. But he’s promised to go easy on silver. He owes me a lot. You’ll come in on Chicago?” That was the way that Hearst got Blaise to invest. Although Hearst maintained full ownership of all his papers, he was obliged to take out personal loans, involving pieces of paper which were, in effect, IOUs. The idea of sharing a newspaper-or power-with anyone was unthinkable. The detail about the Homestead Mine was to remind Blaise that Mrs. Hearst would always bail out her son. According to Hearst’s man of business, Solomon Carvalho, Mrs. Hearst’s fortune was now larger than the one that her husband had left her. Luck was a Hearst family friend.

“I suppose so. I’ll talk to Carvalho.” Blaise preferred to do business with businessmen and not with-but what was the Chief? A visionary? Hardly. More an innovator, entrepreneur, fact of nature.

“You do that. How’s the Washington paper?”

“My sister hangs on.”

“She can’t forever.”

“John McLean has said he’ll stake her if she ever needs money, to keep you out of town.”

Hearst’s thin mouth ceased to be a mouth; a thin fissure now split the white face. “I’ll buy the Post one day. To keep McLean out of town. He wants it. But old Wilkins won’t sell to him. He will to me.”

Blaise both admired and deplored the Chief’s certainty that, in time, he would have everything that he had ever wanted. “I’m looking at the Baltimore Examiner .”

“Not bad,” said Hearst. “Cheap. Potential for growth.” He echoed, unconsciously, Carvalho’s businessman’s talk. “They need it-or they could need it-in Washington.”

George announced Mr. Richard Croker, lord of Tammany and the Democratic equivalent of Senator Platt, with whom he was never too proud to do business. In fact, the Irish-born Croker regarded himself as nothing more than a simple businessman who, for a fee, would work with any other businessman. He controlled the politics of the city. He enjoyed the company and even the friendship of the magnates of the Democratic Party, particularly William C. Whitney. But then each kept stables, and raced horses. Croker had stud farms not only in New York State but in England. He was an impressive figure, all gray from hair and beard to expensive English tweeds.

Croker shook Hearst’s hand as languidly as Hearst shook his; then he shook Blaise’s hand vigorously. Blaise was somewhat awed by this street youth who had risen so high. He had begun as a henchman of the infamous Boss Tweed, in whose behalf he might or might not have murdered a man on a long-ago election day. The jury-twelve bad men and false-had been unable to make up its mind; and so he was allowed to go free; and rise. “I seen my opportunities,” he would say of his long career, “and I took ’em.” He took “clean graft,” money for city contracts. Dirty graft was the sort of thing that the police went in for, extorting protection money from saloon-keepers and prostitutes. Although Croker highly disapproved of dirty graft and never touched it himself, he had once said, almost plaintively, to Blaise, “We’ve got to put up with a certain amount. It’s only common justice. After all, the police see us doing all this good business, and then they see the Astors making all that money out of all those tenements, and breaking every law, which, Heaven forgive us, we let them do because we do business with the Four Hundred like everyone else who’s respectable, so how can I be too hard on an overworked police sergeant with ten children who asks for ten dollars a week from some saloon-keeper for a bit of protection?” Blaise had had several fascinating talks with Croker; and tended to admire him more than not. Croker was particularly fierce on the subject of the reformers. He now displayed his ferocity to Hearst and Blaise.