Empire

by Gore Vidal

  “Yours, Mr. Lehr? or mine?”

  “You make fun of me. I love that, you know.” The laugh was rippling, and sincere. Then he sat beside her, cross-legged on the sand. The legs were beautiful, Caroline decided; but then nature always had a habit of mixing things up. Blaise, who dearly wanted a moustache, could not grow one, while Mrs. Bingham, who did not want a moustache, was obliged, each day, with wax, to rip hers off. Caroline would not in the least have minded exchanging Harry’s legs for her own, which were too slender for contemporary taste. At school, numerous references to the taut beauty of Diana of the Hunt had not appeased her. “You could be such a success here. You know that, don’t you?”

  “But aren’t I? A success, that is. Within my limits, naturally.”

  “Well, you are you, of course, and so you’re a success by birth, and the way you look. Though I’d dress you better. More Doucet, less Worth.”

  “Less Worth, more money?”

  “What’s money for? I’m like Ludwig of Bavaria. I hate the bareness of everyday life. It withers my soul. But I don’t have money, like you. Like everyone here.” Beneath the sun-visor, the blue eyes narrowed. “So I make my way by amusing others. It’s certainly better than sweating in an office.”

  “But harder work, I should think.” To Caroline’s surprise she found herself growing interested in Harry Lehr, as a human case. Was she now falling victim to his famous-or infamous-charm?

  “Oh, easier than you might think. Most people are fools, you know, and the best way to live harmoniously with them and make them like you is to pander to their stupidity. They want to be entertained. They want to laugh. They’ll forgive you anything as long as you amuse them.”

  “But when you grow old…”

  “I shall marry soon. That will take care of that.”

  “Have you picked the… girl to be honored?”

  Lehr nodded. “You know her, in fact. But you’ll probably think…” Lehr’s concentration was broken by the approach of two young men. One very slender, even gaunt, and the other smaller, more compact, muscular. It was the second youth that caused Lehr to frown. “Would you say his legs are better than mine?”

  “Oh, no!” Caroline was all tact. “He has too many muscles, like a jockey. And, like a jockey, see? his legs are slightly bowed, while yours are exquisitely straight.”

  “You must be very far-sighted to see him in such detail.” Lehr gave her a mischievous womanly smile.

  “Oh, I know nearly all his details. You see, he’s my brother.”

  “Blaise Sanford! Of course.” Lehr was excited. “I should have recognized him. So attractive, so elegant.”

  “If you like stable-boys from Brittany, he is attractive; I would not call him elegant.”

  “Well, the other one is. He’s like a stork but the face is interesting.”

  “I’m afraid, dear Mr. Lehr, he is yet another of my brothers. The beach is littered with them today, like Portuguese men-of-war.”

  Now the two young men had joined them, and Lehr greeted the bemused Blaise with coquettish charm; and bowed low as he took the hand of Caroline’s oldest half-brother, the Prince d’Agrigente, known as Plon, who looked twenty-five but was thirty-seven; and separated from his wife, by whom he had had five children, each, it was rumored at the Jockey Club, where everything interesting is known, miraculously his own.

  “Plon wanted to escape from Paris. I wanted to escape from New York. So we took old Jamie’s villa. It’s full of mildew,” Blaise added, staring at Lehr as if he were, somehow, responsible.

  “The servants don’t air the Stone Villa properly. Because the owner never comes. I must introduce you two splendid creatures to Mrs. Fish-”

  “I know her.” Blaise was flat.

  “ ‘Fish’ as in poisson?” murmured Plon in his deep voice.

  “We have splendid names in America-” Caroline began.

  “But not Lehr as in menteur,” said Lehr, taking the lead; and the match. Suddenly, the two young men laughed; and Lehr was able to withdraw in triumph to Fishland.

  “We have one of those at Paris.” Plon was thoughtful. “I didn’t know you had one here, too.”

  “You must travel more, chéri.” Caroline gave him the sisterly kiss she withheld from Blaise. “We have everything here. Including the most exclusive beach in the world.”

  “Is it always covered with garbage?” Plon rubbed his nose, as if the smell might be pushed away.

  “Only human,” said Blaise.

  At that moment, Mrs. Jack appeared on the boardwalk that ran the length of the clubhouse. She was in what she called “tennis costume”: white tennis shoes, black stockings, white silk blouse and skirt beneath which could be seen-daringly-bloomers; on her head a sailor hat held in place two veils like mosquito netting. When Mrs. Jack saw them, she swept aside her veils so that they could see her. “Caroline,” she called. “Do come here, and bring your young men.” Caroline did as she was ordered. The young men pleased Mrs. Jack, who delighted them when they heard her name, and listened to her imperious nonsense, all delivered in a husky Comédie Française tone. “You are exactly what I want. You both play tennis?”

  “Yes, but-” Blaise began.

  “Perfect,” said Mrs. Jack. “I gave up tennis for bridge when my husband took up tennis. Now he has taken up bridge again, and is giving a bridge party. So I shall take to the court with you two splendid young men. You are clever, Caroline, to have so many brothers.”

  “Half-brothers…”

  “Better and better. One needs only to be half-fond of them.” Mrs. Jack was gone.

  “We have one of those in Paris, too,” said Plon, “but she’s very old.”

  “That’s the Mrs. Astor. This is her daughter-in-law. La Dauphine. She’ll make you laugh. She hates everything.”

  “She’s quite good-looking,” said Plon. “Is she… vivacious?”

  “This is America. The ladies are all pure.” Caroline was warning.

  “I know,” said Plon, glumly. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  Half the Astor house-party played tennis, and the other half played bridge. Mrs. Jack took over Blaise as a partner, leaving Caroline with Plon, who was as vague and kindly and impecunious as ever. “When Blaise heard my purse was vide … how you say?”

  “Broke.”

  “Broke. He offered to pay to bring me over for the summer. So here I am.”

  “Looking for a new wife?”

  “We are still Catholic. Aren’t we, Caroline?”

  “Yes. But there are always arrangements.”

  Plon shook his head, his eyes on Mrs. Jack’s elegant figure, and haphazard game of tennis. “Maybe I could give tennis lessons,” he said. “They play very badly here.”

  Idly, they gossiped beneath the huge copper beech tree. Occasionally, Colonel Astor would come out on the verandah and gaze, rather bewilderedly, at his wife. He was an eccentric man, with a full moustache and a bald forehead that receded in agreeable sympathy with his chin. He was happiest, it was said, on his yacht, the Nourmahal, away from Mrs. Jack. Since Mrs. Belmont had so fiercely blazed an exciting new path through the wilderness of society, the sword not Excalibur but divorce in her hand, it was now, for the first time, conceivable that even an Astor might get a divorce. Admittedly, the Vanderbilts were still a number of rungs beneath the Astors on the gilded ladder, but what Alva Vanderbilt Belmont had done Ava Willard Astor might also do. “Divorce will become a commonplace.” Caroline was sententious, a habit that was growing upon her now that she was being taken seriously as a newspaper publisher, and general authority.

  “Not in France. Not with us,” said Plon. “I like your Mrs. Astor.”

  “But only to seduce. You are so French, Plon.”

  “You are so American,” said her half-brother bleakly. “I am told that that curious creature with you on the beach…”

  “The pretty man?”

  “The lovely man… that he sells champagne to these rich Americans. Perhaps I
could do that. I know a good deal about wine.” He blinked his dark seemingly depthless eyes, and Caroline realized that she was looking into her dead mother’s eyes. Mrs. Delacroix had inspired her to search for likenesses, clues.

  “You have our mother’s eyes,” she said.

  “So they say.” Plon was watching for the occasional glimpse of Mrs. Jack’s ankles as she careened wildly about the grassy court.

  “What was she like?”

  “What was who like?” Plon’s mind was on the court.

  “Emma. Your mother. My mother.”

  “Oh, it was so long ago. She was American like you.”

  “Plon, are you really so stupid or is this your idea of how to charm American ladies?”

  The handsome aquiline face was turned toward her; he smiled, and showed good teeth. “Surely, I don’t have to charm a half-sister. Or is there something a trifle Egyptian about this Newport of yours?”

  Caroline allowed this tasteless gallantry to go unnoticed. “Do you think Emma might have-”

  “Killed the first Mrs. Sanford?” Plon was still staring at the court, where Mrs. Jack had just, for the first time, perhaps ever, scored a match point. “Bravo!” Plon shouted. Mrs. Jack turned, her usual look of annoyance in place, but when she saw the lean admiring Frenchman, she gave a small curtsey.

  “You should get at least a cigarette case,” said Caroline sourly, “for attendance.”

  “I’m afraid I shall need more than a cigarette case.”

  “You’ve heard the rumors?”

  “Only what everyone hears. The dull Colonel Astor prefers his boat to his wife. They have a son, so she has done her duty…”

  “I speak of Emma!”

  “You do have a thing about the past, don’t you? All right. She was, for me, adorable. When I went driving with her, I always hoped that people would mistake her for my mistress. Yes, yes, I know. I am very French. I was also fourteen when she died, and full-grown for my age.”

  Caroline tried to imagine the boy Plon and the dark lady of the portraits together in an open carriage, driving through the Bois de Boulogne; and failed. “I was prejudiced, of course, against your father. I thought him very… very…”

  “American?”

  “The exact epithet I was searching for. He was very American except that he had no energy at all, an impossible combination, we thought. But Maman always did her best to bring us together. She was very weak those last months, particularly after…”

  “I was born.”

  “Yes. She just faded away. We were sorry, my brother and I, to see her go like that.”

  “No more than sorry?”

  “Boys are like that. One develops a heart much later.”

  “If at all.”

  “Maman would never have killed anyone.”

  “Then why the rumor, which I’ve just heard, yet again, right here.”

  Plon gave a stage Frenchman’s shrug, and crossed his long legs. “Rumors are eternal in our world. No, chéri, if anyone killed the first Mrs. Sanford-which I highly doubt-it was your abominable father, who was capable of anything to get his way.”

  Caroline felt as if she had been given a sudden electric shock. “I don’t believe you,” was the best that she could do.

  “I couldn’t care less what you believe.” The dark eyes stared at her, with an expression that she had never seen before. Could this be Emma, she wondered, looking, so directly, into her daughter’s eyes?

  “Now you credit him with energy.” Caroline turned away. Plon’s eyes were suddenly neither human nor animal; they were of another order of nature altogether, a mineral that reflected nothing at all.

  “He would have had the energy for that.” Plon yawned. “Anyway, it’s all done. It’s very American,” he suddenly grinned, “to think always of the past.”

  Caroline was horrified to find herself suddenly unmistakably attracted to the Prince d’Agrigente in a way quite different from the perverse attraction of the golden enemy, Blaise. “I must,” she said, “go in.”

  Mrs. Jack had already preceded Caroline into the house. She was removing her tennis veil; the pale face was agreeably flushed; a young plain boy, clutching a nurse’s hand, stared up at her.

  “Caroline! This is my son. He’s nine. Say how-de-do to Miss Sanford.”

  The boy bowed politely from the waist. “How do you do?” Caroline was as polite as she would have been to the father, whose back could be seen in the drawing room, at one of the dozen bridge-tables, all occupied.

  “Is he to be John Jacob the Fifth or the Sixth?” asked Caroline. “Your family is getting like the Hanovers with all their Georges.”

  “I’ve broken the line. He’s William Vincent. Frightfully plain, isn’t he?” said Mrs. Jack, as the boy was led away. “It is one of those rare cases when the paternity is absolutely certain. He has Jack’s depressing features, and hangdog eyes. But the maternity’s very much in doubt. He doesn’t look a bit like me. Tell me about that handsome creature, your half-brother.”

  As Caroline told her about Plon, Mrs. Jack looked very interested. “We must have him to dinner, with Blaise, too,” she added. “I’ll ask all the Stone Villa, and you, of course, and Mrs. Delacroix, if she doesn’t disapprove of me this year.”

  “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. Aston!”

  “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.”