Gore Vidal - Empire

“Teddy was not in town very long,” said Adams. “He presided over the Senate on March fourth. Then Congress adjourned until next December, and he went home to that ugly house of his on Long Island.”

“I wonder,” said the practical Clara, “where they will live. And how. Edith says there’s no money, and all those children. Bamie-his sister-has found a house here, but only for herself.”

“Our Madame Maintenon?” asked King, moving from fireplace to an armchair too low and narrow for the second-largest of the Hearts. Clara, the largest, had her own special non-Adams-proportioned chair. “Otherwise, I shall simply stand when I’m in your study.”

“We could do worse.” Adams extended alabaster hands toward jonquil-yellow flames. “She’s sounder than Teddy. But he’ll vanish from public life. He was astonished to find that between March fourth and next December, the vice-president has no duties at all. He will probably write another half-dozen books.”

“No,” said Hay, delighted that he could delight his fellow Hearts with the higher gossip. “Teddy has suddenly succumbed to ambition. He means to… what word shall I use? He means to do something that only Clarence among us has ever done.”

“Lechery in the South Seas?” Adams’s eyes were bright.

“No. Something more unusual, more… alarming.”

“What?” cried Clara.

“Work!” shouted Hay.

“Oh, Lord save us! Save him !” Clarence sank from chair to floor, on his knees-no great distance-hands clasped in prayer. “Theodore Roosevelt will actually work for a living?”

“Something Henry and I would never dream of doing…”

“No, no. You are not pure, John.” Adams was stern. “You have worked as an editor and a journalist and a businessman. I have never worked…”

“Professor at Harvard? Editor of the North American Review ?”

“Neither was proper work. Certainly, I did not make my living from all that showing off…”

“What, please tell me,” King was still on his knees, “is the vice-president going to work at?”

“The law! He is going to go to law school.” Hay was pleased by the general excitement.

“An American vice-president, in office, at law school?” Adams’s horror was not affected.

“I can’t imagine your great-grandfather taking courses at Columbia while waiting for General Washington to die, but Teddy…”

“… is out of sight,” said King, an addict of Bowery slang. Then he pulled himself, with some difficulty, Hay noticed, back into the tiny armchair. “How do you know this?”

“At the White House, he cornered the Chief Justice, and told him that as he was still quite young with a lot of time on his hands, he wanted to qualify for the bar. The Chief Justice was alarmed, of course. But when he saw how serious Teddy was, he said that he’d give him a reading list for the summer, and once Congress convenes, he’ll tutor Teddy, ‘quiz him’ was the phrase he used to me, every Saturday night.”

“Theodore is not like other people,” said Clara, as neutrally as she could say anything!

“If Clarence is our Renaissance man…” Adams began.

“… Teddy is our Baroque boy,” completed King. “We live in wondrous times. What does the Major think of all this?”

“If I didn’t know, I’d tell you,” Hay repeated Seward’s favorite line. “Actually, the President is more than ever the Buddha these days. He’s leaving at the end of the month for a six-week trip around the country, accompanied by, among others, me. At last,” said Hay, turning to King, “I shall see your California. The President launches a battleship at San Francisco, and I’ll be there, chatting of open doors and peace, while General MacArthur continues his slaughter of Filipinos.” Hay wondered what errant electrical circuit in his brain had made him advert to the one subject that he-and the Administration-never acknowledged. Particularly now, when the war-no other word for it, privately-was over. Aguinaldo had been captured in March, shortly after the inauguration. Presently, before they started across the country, the President would issue a decree declaring the “insurrection” at an end.

Hay did not allow the others to pick up on his unexpected use of the word “slaughter.” “By the end of the month, of course, the business is over.” He spoke rapidly, and was aware of a shortening of breath. Heart? To die, suddenly, at the heart of the Hearts would be poetic. “I shall get them, by the way.”

“Get what?” asked King, through a series of dry coughs. Perhaps all the Hearts might stop at once, like four clocks someone had forgotten to wind.

“The Philippines. The Major thinks that the State Department, not the War Department, should administer them. Root agrees, I am happy to say. In October I shall be lord of all the isles.”

“What about the canal?” King coughed. “Will you be lord of the isthmus, too?”

“We must get the treaty through the Senate first.” Hay was again short of breath: must not panic. “They’ve rejected two versions so far, despite England’s surprising complaisance. Pauncefote and I are now ready with a third version, which we will submit to our masters in the Senate come December.” Hay took a deep breath; felt better; noticed that Clara was watching him with some alarm, which, in turn, alarmed him. Did he look-did he sound?-so ill? He glanced at Adams to see if the Porcupine had noticed anything wrong, but the Porcupine was looking at Clarence King, whose lower face was covered with a handkerchief, even though the fit of coughing had stopped. How fragile we have become, thought Hay; then he rallied. “Of all our friends I hate Cabot Lodge the most.”

“John.” Clara was reproving.

“Oh, Cabot’s hateful.” Adams turned his gaze from the dying King to the blazing fire. “I’ve always detested him, while delighting in his friendship. I think that Cabot’s problem is shyness.”

“No senator was ever shy.” King chiselled out the sentence as if on marble.

“Shyness?” Hay had not thought the ever-grinding Cabot shy. But perhaps he was, and disguised the fact with endless commentaries broken by sudden acts of treachery toward friends.

“Yes, shyness,” Adams repeated. “He is one of nature’s Iagos, always in the shadows, preferring to do evil to nothing…”

“And nothing to good.” Hay made his addition to the indictment. “So if Cabot’s Iago, McKinley must be his Othello.”

“No, no.” Adams was firm. “After all, Othello trusted Iago. I think it most unlikely that our Ohioan Augustus trusts-or even notices-Cabot. No. I see Theodore in the part of Othello. They complement each other. Theodore all action and bluster, Cabot all devious calculation. Cabot is the rock on which Theodore will sink.”

“I like Cabot.” Clara put a stop to the conversation. “He is also Brooks’s brother-in-law. He is practically your relative, Henry.”

“That is no recommendation, Clara, to a member of the house of Atreus…”

“From Quincy, Mass.” King liked to deflate the Adamses. Their peculiar self-esteem was matched only by their sense of general unworthiness. All in all, Hay was happy not to be the member of a great family’s fourth generation. Better to be one’s own ancestor; one’s own founding father. What would Del become, he wondered, in the twentieth century that had begun, as Root had maintained, January 1, 1901? Hay had already spent four months in the new century (Queen Victoria had wisely died after three weeks of the new epoch) and was more than ever convinced that it was just as well that he would miss nearly all of it. Del, on the other hand, might experience more than half the century. Father wished son luck.