Empire: A Novel

by Gore Vidal

  “Just don’t smoke in her face.”

  “How petty the old are! He looks very young for thirty-seven,” she added. Poor Plon; Caroline was compassionate. He already had more cigarette cases than he knew what to do with. Presently, he could have yet another one. In the long run, he would have to go back to his wife, who at least paid for the cigarettes that filled the cases.

  If Caroline imagined that she could see in Plon their dead mother, she saw nothing at all of her father in Blaise. Doubtless, Mrs. Delacroix was not exaggerating when she had alluded to his remarkable resemblance to Denise. As Caroline dressed for dinner, she imagined Emma’s eyes staring out of Plon’s face, and watching Denise’s face as worn by Blaise. What would the two young men make of that? she wondered, and if Mrs. Delacroix’s mad story proved true, was Blaise in danger? Rather the opposite, she decided, as Marguerite laced her into a ball gown, from unfashionable Worth. “We should come here more often,” said Marguerite, putting the last touches to Caroline’s ivory-colored gown. “It’s almost like civilization.”

  “You don’t have to speak English all day is what you mean.”

  “And your two brothers are here. That is very right, you know. To have a family.” As a spinster entirely devoted to herself, Marguerite liked delivering homilies on the pleasures, duties and rewards of family life. She could not wait for Caroline to marry; and be truly unhappy like all the other ladies of her class. Happiness in others tended to have a chilling effect on Marguerite, who liked nothing better than offering desperate ladies sympathy, and a spotless cambric handkerchief scented with lemon verbena in which they might harvest bitter tears.

  Plon was waiting for Caroline in the marble hall. Mrs. Delacroix had taken herself to bed, and Plon would escort Caroline to the Casino, where a dance in celebration of something was to be held. Neither Plon nor Caroline could remember what the something was. Plon thought that it might have to do with Mr. Vanderbilt’s motor car. He himself had hired an open carriage, and they drove through the warm moonlit night to the Casino, which was lit with Japanese lanterns and filled with Mullalay’s music. Plon brought her up to date. Mrs. Jack had proved incredibly cold, even for an Anglo-Saxon; no cigarette case would arrive from that quarter; worse, despite the fact that he had made a considerable point of his total marriedness, hostesses kept putting him next to single girls at table or, even more ominously, vivacious widows, eager for a second chance. “I can’t tell them that I only like married women.”

  “No,” said Caroline, “you can’t.”

  They made a stately entrance into the Casino. Plon soon vanished, taken over by Lady Pauncefote and one of her numerous unmarried daughters. Lord Pauncefote looked curiously unimpressive in plain evening clothes. Caroline much preferred him in gold braid, with decorations pinned to his stomach. He had quickly found Helen Hay, and Caroline joined them, to help out Helen, who was being given a thorough and entirely misleading account of the British war against the Boers. Helen embraced Caroline. “But you will have heard the latest, from Del. From Del.”

  “I mailed the last letter he wrote me straight to your father in New Hampshire.”

  “The young man has made an excellent impression in Pretoria.” Lord Pauncefote pronounced judgment.

  “Don’t you wish you’d gone?” Helen was mischievous.

  “Oh, I would be so useful in the … veldts? Is that the word?”

  “So close to the German word for wealth,” said Blaise, at Caroline’s back. “Payne’s looking for you,” he said to Helen, liberating her from Pauncefote, who was now, in turn, taken captive by James Van Alen.

  “Zounds, my lord!” he boomed; and led the Ambassador off to the bar. “Methinks you have a dry look to you.”

  “There are,” said Caroline, “many very serious bores here at Newport.”

  “Do you include half-brothers?”

  “Only as half-bores, I suppose. I thought we were not speaking this year.”

  Blaise took her arm; and led her, somewhat against her will, to a flowery alcove at the edge of the dance floor, as far as it was possible to get from Mullalay’s orchestra. Here they sat, side by side, primly, as if at school, on wooden chairs. “I saw my grandmother at lunch. At Mrs. Astor’s. You have charmed her.”

  “Mrs. Astor?”

  “Mrs. Delacroix, a much more difficult lady to … charm.”

  “You make me sound as if I had designs upon your grandmother.”

  “Don’t you?”

  Caroline looked at him; and thought of his mother, Denise. “I have no designs on anything except my own property.”

  “The courts—”

  “No, Blaise. The clock. The calendar. Each breath I breathe brings me closer to what is mine.”

  “Don’t tempt fate.” Blaise made the sign to ward off the evil eye. “My mother was dead before she was twenty-seven.”

  “I shall not have children. That’s one safeguard.”

  “You’ll never marry?”

  “I didn’t say that. But I don’t want children.”

  “Such things are not so easily arranged.”

  “How is Madame de Bieville?”

  Blaise responded serenely. “At Deauville. What news of Del?”

  “At Pretoria.”

  “The Chief’s giving Mr. Hay a hard time.”

  “But that’s the Chief’s specialty, isn’t it?”

  “This summer, anyway. He’s going all out for Bryan.”

  “All out?” Caroline smiled. “He doesn’t take seriously Bryan’s nonsense about silver, and he loves the empire that Bryan keeps attacking.”

  Blaise laughed in spite of himself. “Well, they don’t like the trusts, and they don’t like Mark Hanna.”

  “Very statesmanlike. The Chicago American is losing money, I hear.”

  “Quantities.”

  “My money?” asked Caroline.

  “Some of it is my money, yes. But most of it is old Mrs. Hearst’s. They keep finding gold in South Dakota.” Harry Lehr swept by, a plain young woman on his arm. “Elizabeth Drexel.” He said the name as if half-brother and half-sister were wholly interested. “I,” he added, with a lizard’s swift blink at Blaise, “am the Funmaker.”

  “You must make some fun for my numerous half-brothers.” As Caroline sensed Blaise’s furious disapproval, she found herself quite liking Lehr.

  “First, you must let Wetzel make your suits, and Kaskel your pajamas and underwear …”

  Lehr’s public association of Blaise with pajamas, much less the pruriency of any reference to underwear, brought a coughing fit as Blaise’s phlegm, mistakenly inhaled, choked him—with wrath, of course, thought Caroline with satisfaction. Lehr was delighted to have caused so much distress, while the Drexel girl—the future Mrs. Lehr?—looked as embarrassed as Blaise. They were saved by the majestic approach of Mrs. Astor, with her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Jack. Caroline felt as if she ought to curtsey, while even Blaise—no longer choking—bowed low at the great ladies’ approach. Lehr pranced about the old sovereign like some huge blond dog. The two Mrs. Astors regarded him with stares worthy of the two bronze owls that decorated the gateposts to the Casino. Plainly, Lehr was going to pay for his defection to Mamie Fish.

  “You must come see me, Miss Sanford.” The huge dark wig was aglitter with rubies. “You, too, Mr. Sanford, though I have heard that you have no time for old ladies.”

  Blaise blushed becomingly. “We’ve only arrived, Mrs. Astor, my step-brother and me …”

  “The Prince has a great deal of time for ladies,” said Mrs. Jack in her low drawl, “of any and every age.”

  “How you comfort me.” Mother-in-law smiled with dislike at daughter-in-law, who was now examining Blaise speculatively.

  “Don’t,” said Mrs. Jack, “get married.”

  “I have no intention of marrying.” Blaise recovered his poise. He was a match for Mrs. Jack if not her mother-in-law.

  “Like dear Harry?” asked Mrs. Astor, finally acknowledging the fawn
ing creature at her side.

  “I don’t know about that.” Blaise was staring boldly at Mrs. Jack, who suddenly looked away. Was she cold? Caroline wondered; and what, after all, was coldness but a strategy in the dangerous American world where a lady’s fall from grace could cause her extrusion—no matter how resonant her name or heavy her wealth—from the only world that mattered? Paris was filled with extruded American ladies, paying dearly for adulteries of the sort for which a French lady would have been applauded.

  “I won’t be a bachelor forever,” Lehr trilled. The Drexel girl pursed her lips, as if to kiss the air. She was the one, poor creature, thought Caroline. But, then, perhaps, they were well-matched. She might be another Mlle. Souvestre.

  “We are told,” said Mrs. Astor, “that you and Mamie—so original, isn’t she?—” Mrs. Astor’s malice was royal in its self-assurance—“plan to give a dinner for dogs.”

  “Dogs?” Mrs. Jack’s deep voice dropped to an even lower, almost canine register.

  “Dogs, yes.” Lehr yelped. “Each with its owner, of course.”

  “How amusing.” Mrs. Astor made of “amusing” three full evenly emphasized syllables.

  “At the same table?” asked Caroline.

  “There will be different tables, of course.”

  “So that you can tell the dogs from their masters?” As Caroline spoke, she knew that she had, once again, gone too far. Wit had always been disliked and feared at Newport, while wit in a woman was sufficient cause to be burned as a witch anywhere in the republic.

  The Astor ladies chose to ignore Caroline’s slip. But she knew that each would give damning evidence should she, indeed, be tried for witchcraft.

  Lehr took charge of the Astor ladies and swept them into the party. “He’s awful,” said Blaise.

  “But think how much duller this place would be without him.”

  “Plon needs a rich widow.” Blaise changed the subject.

  “Don’t look at me. I’m no help. I’m outside this world. In Washington …”

  “Why don’t you take him there, in the fall?”

  “I’ll take Plon anywhere, of course. I adore him, as you know …”

  “As I know.” They stared at each other. The orchestra was now playing Tales of Hoffmann. “I hear that Cousin John’s wife is dead.”

  Caroline merely nodded; and said, “How is Mr. Houghteling?”

  “Lawyers!” Blaise let the subject go. Neither had much emotion left to bear on the subject of the money that divided them. “I’ve told Plon that Mrs. Astor—the young one—only flirts.”

  “I think he’s worked that out. But he thinks that he understands American women better than he does because he has seduced so many of them in Paris.”

  “Does he tell you such things?”

  “Doesn’t he tell you?”

  “Yes, but I’m a man.”

  “Well, I’m not an American woman. Anyway, what those creatures do in Paris is one thing.” Caroline thought of the beautiful Mrs. Cameron with her beautiful boy poet, of the majestic antlers once again sprouting from Don Cameron’s head, not to mention a delicate unicorn’s horn from the pink marble baldness of Henry Adams’s brow.

  Lord Pauncefote joined them, having no doubt exhausted Helen Hay with his notorious and habitual long answers to questions not put to him. “Your friend Mr. Hearst is in splendid form.” He acknowledged Blaise’s identity. “He accuses poor Mr. Hay of being England’s creature.”

  “Oh, that’s just to fill space,” said Blaise.

  “Between murders,” Caroline added.

  “Actually, he’s going to have some more fun with Roosevelt!”

  Pauncefote shut his eyes for a long instant, always a sign that he was interested; that a message to the Foreign Office would soon be encoded. “Yes?” Pauncefote’s eyes were again open.

  “The Chief’s been in touch with some of the leading goo-goos …”

  “The leading what?”

  “Goo-goo,” said Caroline, “is what reformers of the American system are called by those who delight in the system. Goo-goo is an—abbreviation?—of the phrase ‘good government,’ something Governor Roosevelt, like all good Americans, holds in contempt. Isn’t that right, Blaise?”

  “Not bad.” Her brother’s praise was grudging.

  “Goo-goo,” murmured Pauncefote without relish.

  “The goo-goos are attacking Roosevelt because he’s a creature of the bosses but likes to talk about reform, which he’s really as much against as Senator Platt. The Chief’s going to have some fun with all this when the campaign starts.”

  “I suppose,” said Pauncefote, “Governor Roosevelt is too much the soldier for this—heady political life.”

  “Soldier!” Blaise laughed delightedly. “He’s just a politician who got lucky in Cuba.”

  “But that was a famous victory over Spain, and he was part of it.”

  “As architect, yes,” said Blaise, and Caroline was surprised that her brother seemed to know of the plotting that had gone on amongst Roosevelt and Lodge and the Adamses and Captain Mahan. “But not as a soldier. The real story in Cuba—which the Chief will never print—is not how we bravely defeated the Spanish but how seven hundred brave Spaniards nearly beat six thousand incompetent Yanks.”

  Pauncefote stared, wide-eyed, at Blaise. “I have never read this in any newspaper.”

  “You never will, either,” said Blaise. “In this country, anyway.”

  “Until I publish it.” Caroline was indeed tempted to puncture the vast endlessly expanding balloon of American pomposity and jingoism.

  “You won’t.” Blaise was flat. “Because you’d lose the few readers you’ve got. We create news, Lord Pauncefote.”

  “Empires, too?” The Ambassador had recovered his professional ministerial poise.

  “One follows on the other, if the timing’s right.” Blaise was indifferent; and most Hearstian, thought Caroline.

  “I shall reexamine the careers of Clive and Rhodes, with close attention to the Times of their day.”

  “Lord North’s career would be more to the point.” Blaise was hard. Caroline wondered who had been educating him; certainly not Hearst. Plon joined them; and Pauncefote withdrew.

  “Have you found a rich lady?” asked Caroline.

  “Oh, they are—what do the English say?—thick upon the ground. But they cannot talk.”

  “Bring him to Washington.” Caroline turned to Plon. “We are rich in ladies whose husbands are under the ground. And they talk—the ladies, that is.”

  “Perhaps we’ll both come, after the election.” Blaise stared, idly, at a pale blond girl who was approaching them, on the arm of a swarthy youth. What color, wondered Caroline, would the children of so contrasted a couple be? “But New York is more Plon’s sort of oyster.”

  “Oyster?” Plon’s grasp of idiom was weak. “Huître?” He translated, tentatively.

  To Caroline’s amazement the blond girl greeted her warmly. “Frederika, Miss Sanford.” The voice was Southern; the manner shy; the profile, turned to Caroline, noble. “I’m Mrs. Bingham’s daughter. From Washington. Remember?”

  “You’ve grown up.” Caroline had hardly noticed the child in Washington; a child, literally, until this summer.

  “It’s the dress, really. Mother won’t let me dress up at home.”

  “Mrs. Bingham is Washington,” Caroline declared.

  “Is she a widow?” asked Plon, in French.

  “Not yet,” murmured Caroline. The swarthy young man proved to be from the Argentine embassy, a representative of what John Hay wearily termed “the dago contingent” until Caroline had allied herself sternly with the entire Latin race and “dago” was no longer a word used in her volatile presence.

  Frederika was thrilled by the half-brothers; they were characteristically indifferent to her. She was too young and pure for Plon; and Blaise’s mind—Caroline never thought to associate the word “heart” with so blond and fierce a beast—was
elsewhere.

  “Is your mother here?” Caroline knew that there was no earthly way, as yet, for Mrs. Benedict Tracy Bingham, wife to Washington’s milk king, to break into Newport’s Casino on such a night.

  “Oh, no. I visit friends. You see, Mother likes Washington in the summer.” There was a sudden mischievous, even collusive, look in Frederika’s eyes. As Caroline was deciding that the girl had possibilities, the Argentine swept her away.

  “Her father,” said Caroline, to Plon, “makes all of Washington’s milk.”

  “How funny!” Plon laughed delightedly.

  “Why funny?”

  “It’s my English, I suppose, but for a moment I thought you said he made ‘milk.’ ” Caroline let the subject go. Plon was better in Paris. Blaise—and she—were better suited to this new world of energetic and mindless splendor, of waste—of absolute waste of everything and, she wondered, suddenly feeling disagreeably faint, of everyone?

  EIGHT

  – 1 –

  FOUR OF THE original Five Hearts were gathered in Henry Adams’s study, to John Hay’s delight. Although the pale April sun filled the study, Adams as always had a fire blazing and the smell of wood-smoke mingled agreeably with that of the masses of daffodils and lilies-of-the-valley the incomparable servant, Maggie, had placed everywhere. The fourth Heart—Clarence King—stood with his back to the fire, Adams to his right, all admiration like a schoolgirl, and Clara to his left, all fondness like a sister, while King talked rapidly and brilliantly and coughed and laughed at his own coughing, and coughed again. “I have a spot on my lung now, the size of a dollar—why always a dollar, I wonder? But better the coin than the greenback. I thought the sun would cure me, as it always has before, but Florida has failed me, as Florida has failed so many before me, including you, John. Didn’t you want to be a congressman from there in 1864?”

  “From there, oh, yes,” said Hay. “I like to pretend it was President Lincoln’s idea, to get friends into Congress. But the carpetbag I took to Florida was all my own …” And then, Hay completed to himself, just as I was about to quit as the President’s secretary, he was shot. Hay wondered, yet again, how strange it was that he, who dreamed now so much at night, no longer encountered the Ancient in his dreams.