Gore Vidal - Empire

“Effete snob!” Roosevelt glared.

“Prince Henry of Prussia.” Hay retrieved the lost subject.

“Oh, yes. He’s to come in February, to pick up the yacht we’re building for the Kaiser, or so I was informed at church by old Holleben, who had converted to Presbyterianism, at least for the day. What do we do?”

“Give him a state dinner. But try to keep him from getting around the country…”

“Since I am a debutante,” said Alice, “I shall be asked to charm him. Is he married?” Alice was now moving about the room in imitation of her father, only as she walked, she swept her long dress this way and that, as if it were a royal train. “If I married him, I’d be Princess Alice of Prussia, wouldn’t I? So much nicer than Oyster Bay…”

“Princess Henry, I should think.” Adams was in his avuncular glory. “You will civilize the Teuton. If that’s possible.”

“Barbarize them even more.” Roosevelt was brisk. “Anyway, he’s married, and no Roosevelt’s going to marry a Prussian.”

“Unless the next election looks very close,” added Hay.

“Extraordinary!” Roosevelt added at least one too many syllables to the word. “The loyalty common Americans have to Germany. Imagine if we felt the same way about Holland.”

“We’ve been away longer,” said Alice. “Come on, girls.” She swept from the room with Hay’s daughters in tow.

“You are good to take Alice in.” Roosevelt sat in the chair vacated by Helen. “She is so-strenuous.”

“Like her father.” Hay thought of black women; and spoke of Prince Henry. “He’s here for one purpose. To stir up the German-Americans.”

“We won’t allow that. He’s supposed to be a gentleman. Not like his brother. The Kaiser’s a cad, all in all. Well, one day he’ll go too far. He’ll put out his neck and place it on the block.” Roosevelt clapped right hand with left; the sound was like a pistol shot. “No head. No Kaiser.”

“Then we shall be king of the castle?” Adams’s voice was mild, always, Hay knew, a dangerous sign. Adams was growing more and more restive not only with the bellicose President but with his own brother, Brooks, who never ceased to make the American eagle scream.

“That may be.” Roosevelt was equally mild; and guarded.

“Brooks believes that we are now at the fateful moment.” Adams smiled at Nebuchadnezzar. “The domination of the world is between us and Europe. So-which will it be?”

“Oh, you must come on Thursdays, and enlighten us.” Roosevelt was not to be drawn out. He was wily, Hay had discovered, rather to his surprise. Under all the noise, there was a calculating machine that never ceased to function. “We meet at nine o’clock and listen-”

“To my brother. I could not bear that, Mr. President. I’m obliged to hear him whenever I- he likes.”

“We’ll pick a Thursday when he’s not there.” Roosevelt was on his feet. “Your breakfast guests will be coming soon. Gentlemen.” Adams and Hay rose; their sovereign beamed upon them; and departed.

“He will have us at war.” Adams was bleak.

“I’m not so sure.” Hay approached the fire, suddenly cold. “But he wants the dominion of this earth, for us…”

“For himself. Curious little man,” said Adams, himself as small as Theodore, as small as Hay; three curious little men, thought Hay. “Now there are three of us.” Adams looked at Hay, forlornly.

“Three curious little men?”

“No. Three Hearts where once there were five.”

Hay felt a sudden excitement of a sort that had not troubled him for years; certainly, not since he had begun to die. “Is there a photograph?” he asked, voice trembling in his own ears. “Of her?”

“Of who?” Adams was bemused by firelight.

“The black woman.” The phrase itself reverberated in Hay’s head, and his mind was, suddenly, like a boy’s, filled with images of feminine flesh.

“As the trustee of his will, I suppose you could ask her for one. Droit de l’avocat , one might say. King outdid us all. We died long ago, and went on living. He kept on living long after he should’ve been dead.”

Two Hearts gone, thought Hay; three left. Who would be next to go? he asked himself, as if he did not know the answer.

AS USUAL, THE APOSTLE of punctuality was late. John Hay stood in the doorway of the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, watch in hand held high to dramatize the lateness of the presidential party. Inside the church, the nave was crowded with dignitaries. To the dismay of the church elders, admission to God’s house-unlike Paradise-was only by card. The Senate, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court and the diplomatic corps were all represented, with sufficient omissions to cause social anxiety for the rest of the season. It had been Clara’s inspiration to place Henry Adams between the Chinese ambassador, Wu, and the Japanese ambassador, Takahira. As a result, the angelic Porcupine now resembled an ancient not-so-benign mandarin, engulfed in the Orient.

The Whitney family had given Hay rather more trouble than the canal treaty. The rupture was not about to be healed between William C. Whitney, with two of his children loyal to him, and his former brother-in-law, the bachelor Oliver Payne, with two of Whitney’s children loyal to him, including today’s groom, Payne. Hay had placed the Payne faction on one side of the aisle and the Whitney faction on the other. There had been even more confusion when William Whitney arrived at the church without his card, and the police had tried to stop him from entering, to the bleak joy of Oliver Payne, secure and righteous in his pew. As Hay got Whitney past the police, he was struck, as always, by the speed with which oblivion surrounded even the most celebrated of men when he no longer held office. Whitney, king-maker and king-that-might-have-been, was just another guest at his son’s wedding to Helen Hay.

Like a stagecoach pursued by rustlers, the presidential carriage came hurtling down Massachusetts Avenue, horses steaming in the cold. Before the guards in front of the church could open the carriage doors, the President sprang out, wearing a silk top hat. Then Edith Roosevelt, more majestically, descended, followed by Alice, got up like a Gainsborough painting in dark blue velvet, with a dashing black hat. Hay stood, watch held before him like the host.

“We are exactly on time,” the President lied.

“Of course. Of course.”

Church ushers appeared in the doorway. Quickly, their Republican majesties drew themselves up, and then, with hieratic-that is, to Hay’s eyes, waddling-gait, they proceeded down the aisle to their pew in the front row.

The moment that the Roosevelts were seated, the wedding march began, and Hay, curiously weak of limb yet free of pain, went to collect the terrified Helen, magnificent in white satin and tulle but no-she wanted to be original-lace; then, in due course, under official Washington’s eyes, Hay delivered his daughter over to the tall, handsome Payne Whitney, while Clara wept softly in the background, and Henry Adams, surrounded by Asia, looked incredibly old and small.

The wedding breakfast greatly appealed to Hay’s sense of drama, never entirely dormant. He had invited seventy-five guests, which meant overflow from dining room into his study, where, in the bay window, he had set a table at which, side by side, he had placed William C. Whitney and Oliver Payne. As the President and Mrs. Roosevelt were also at the round table, good behavior was assured. Hay had also added the Whitelaw Reids, whose never allayed ambition for social distinction would be temporarily sated. The President was at Clara’s right; and Mrs. Roosevelt at Hay’s right.