Empire (75 page)

The house in Washington was depressing, with white sheets over everything, closed shutters and windows, and a musty smell. Clarence, now grown and amiable if not brilliant, kept him company, and together they had left the city on June 24 for Newbury, on the overnight sleeper, where Hay had caught his inevitable sleeper-cold. Today he was better; but mortally tired. He had also developed a habit of falling asleep in the middle of a sentence, and dreaming vividly; then he’d wake up, disoriented, with the sensation, yet again, of being, simultaneously, in two places, even two epochs of time. But now Clarence sat beside him in a noisy rocker, made noisier by the instinct of the young to rock vigorously, while that of the old is to be rocked gently.

“Of course, I’ve been lucky.” Hay stared at the sky. “There must be a kind of law. For every bit of bad luck Clarence King—for whom we named you—had, I got a prize. He wanted to make a fortune, and lost everything ten times over. I didn’t care one way or another, and everything I did, just about, made me rich, even if I hadn’t married an heiress.” Hay wondered if this was entirely true. When he had worked for Amasa Stone, he had been drilled thoroughly in business. Of course, he had been an apt student, but without Stone’s coaching he might have ended up as just another newspaper editor, earning extra money on the lecture-circuit.

“I’ve never really been sick till now, or, as old Shylock says, ‘never
felt it till now.’ The family’s turned out better than I ever had any right to hope,” He turned and gazed at the attentive Clarence. “I’d go to law school, if I were you. Also, don’t marry young. It’s a mistake for a boy to tie himself up—or down—too young.”

“I’ve no intention,” said Clarence.

“Good boy. Poor Del.” Hay’s chest seemed to constrict a moment; and his breath stopped. But, for once, there was no sense of panic. Either he would breathe again, or he would not, and that was that. He breathed; he sighed. “But Del’s life was splendid for someone so young. We got used to that, my generation, to dying young. Just about everybody I knew my age was killed in that terrible trouble. Name me a battle, and I can tell you which of my friends fell there, some never to rise again. Say Fredericksburg and I see Johnny Curtis of Springfield, his face blown away. Say …” But already Hay was beginning to forget both battles and youths. Things had begun to fade; past, present mingled.

“I thought I’d die young, and here I am. I thought I wouldn’t amount to much and … I really believe that in all history, I never read of a man who has had so much—and such varied—success as I have had, with so little ability and so little power of sustained industry. Nothing to be proud of. Something to be grateful for.” Hay looked at Clarence, thoughtfully, and was somewhat surprised—and mildly irritated—to find him reading a stack of letters.

“You’re busy, I see.” Hay struck the sardonic note.

“You should be, too.” Clarence did not look up. As he finished reading a letter, he would let it fall to the floor of the verandah, in two piles. Obviously one pile was to be answered; the other not. Who used to do that? Hay wondered. Then he thought of himself again, soon to be no self at all, and he wondered why he had been he and not another, why he had been at all and not simply nothing. “I have had success beyond all the dreams of my boyhood,” he proclaimed. But that was not true. The poet John Hay, heir to Milton and Poe, had come to nothing but a pair of very “Little Breeches.” “My name is printed in the journals of the world without descriptive qualifications.” Who had said that that was the only proof of fame, as opposed to notoriety? It sounded like Root, but Hay had forgotten.

Hay turned to Clarence, who was now on his feet. For the first time Hay noticed that the boy had grown a long pointed beard, not the style of the young these days. He must tell him, tactfully, that when the summer was over he must face the world clean-shaven.

“The President wants to see you,” said Clarence.

Hay leapt—to his own amazement—to his feet, and crossed the crowded corridor to the President’s office. Obviously he had been dreaming of New Hampshire while napping in the White House, awaiting Theodore’s summons. The Japanese …

In the office, Hay found the President staring out the window at the Potomac, and blue Virginia beyond. The President was hunched over, and was unlike his usual exuberant noisy self. Over the fireplace, the portrait of Jackson glowered at the world.

“Sit down, John.” The familiar high voice sounded deathly tired. “I’m sorry you’ve been sick.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” and Hay realized that he had made a mistake in hurrying so quickly across the corridor. Exhausted, he sat in the special visitor’s chair with all the maps of battle in full view, and a yellow curtain ready to cover them up, if the visitor was not to be trusted.

Abraham Lincoln turned from the window, and smiled. “You look pretty seedy, Johnny.”

“You don’t look too good yourself, if I may say so, sir.”

“When did I ever?” Lincoln went to his pigeon-holed desk, and took out two letters. “I’ve got a couple of letters for you to answer. Nothing important.” Lincoln gave Hay the letters; then he sat very low in the chair opposite, so that the small of his back would press against hard wood, while one long leg was slung over the chair’s arm. Hay realized with some excitement that he had, at last, after so many years, been able to remember Lincoln’s face from life as opposed to ubiquitous effigy. But what was he thinking? This
was
the President, he realized, on a Sunday afternoon, in summer. “I can’t sleep,” the Ancient was saying. “I
think
I’m sleeping but then I find I’m only day-dreaming and I wake up, and by the time it’s morning, I am plumb worn out, or as the preacher said to his wife …”

Hay felt, suddenly, as one with the President, as the melancholy dark green walls, picked out with tiny golden stars, swirled all about the two of them like the first attack of sleep which always starts, no matter how restless one has been, with a nothingness out of which emerges, first, one image, then another, and, finally, mad narratives unfold which take the place of the real world stolen now by sleep, unless sleep be the real world stolen by the day, for life.

C
AROLINE
had promised to look in on Adams before the White House dinner in celebration, for once, of nothing; and true to her word, she arrived, wearing in her hair the diamonds that she had inherited that autumn from Mrs. Delacroix, who had proved, after all, not to be immortal; who had proved, above all, to be grateful for whatever “expiation” that Caroline might have made in her coming to terms with Blaise, and their common past.

Adams sat beside his Mexican onyx fireplace, looking more small and isolated than usual. “I see no one. Except nieces. I am no one. Except an uncle. You
are
beautiful as nieces go …”

“You should be happy.” Caroline settled before the fire; and refused William’s offer of sherry. “You have Mrs. Cameron in the Square. What more can you want?”

“Yes, La Dona makes a difference.” The previous year, Mrs. Cameron had reinstalled herself and Martha at 21 Lafayette Square. She was, again, queen of Washington, for what that might be worth: to Adams, apparently, nothing. Although a year had passed, he was still not reconciled to John Hay’s death on July 1, 1905. Adams had been in France when the news came; and so had not been able to go to Cleveland, where Hay was buried, beside Del, in the presence, of all the great of the land. Ironically, Adams had been with Cabot and Sister Anne Lodge when the news came; and it was said that the Benevolent Porcupine had, one by one, shot each of his poisoned quills into the fragile senatorial hide, blaming, not entirely unfairly, Lodge for Hay’s death.

“Anyway, I’m bored. I’m mouldy. I’m breaking fast. I’ve nothing, nothing to live for …”

“Us. The nieces. Your twelfth-century book, which you must have finished for the twelfth time now. And, best of all, as you said yourself, you will never again have to see, in this life, Theodore Roosevelt.”

Adams’s eyes were suddenly bright. “You do know how to cheer me up! You’re absolutely right. I shall never set foot in that house again. The relief is enormous. I have also quarantined Cabot, and if it weren’t for Sister Anne, I’d relieve myself of all Lodges. Why are
you
going tonight?”

“I am still a publisher. I’m also the only publisher of the
Tribune
who’s welcome. The President is furious with Blaise, for helping out in the Hearst campaign.”

“Hearst.” Adams managed to hiss the “s”; thus the serpent in Eden celebrated evil. “If he is elected governor of New York, he’ll be living over there in two years’ time.”

Caroline tended to agree. Although Hearst had lost the election for mayor of New York, in a three-way race, he had come within a handful of votes of winning it. Only a last-minute burning of ballots by Murphy of Tammany Hall had secured the election for McClellan. Hearst was now behaving like a Shakespearean tragic hero, in search of a fifth act.

With remarkable skill, Hearst had created his own political machine within New York State, and now he was prepared to seize the governorship, with Blaise’s help. Caroline was not certain quite why her apolitical brother had decided to come to the aid of a publishing rival, unless
that
was the reason. If Hearst were to become governor, president—Cawdor, Scotland—he might be obliged to sell off his newspapers, and Blaise would want them. So, for that matter, would Caroline.

“I’ve always hoped that in my senility I wouldn’t, like the first three Adamses, turn against democracy. But I detect the signs. Racing pulse, elevated temperature; horror of immigrants—oh, the revelation in Heidegg! Even John was horrified to what an extent we’ve lost our country. Roman Catholics are bad enough. Yes, my child, I know you’re one, and even I tend, at times, to the untrue True Church, but the refuse of the Mediterranean, the detritus of
Mitteleuropa
, and the Jews, the Jews …”

“You will have a stroke, Uncle Henry.” Caroline was firm. “One day your hobby-horse will throw you.”

“I can’t wait to be thrown. But I’m always astride. That’s because I’m nobody. Power is poison, you know.”

“I don’t know. But I’d like to taste it.”

“The problem is what I call Bostonitis. The habit of the double standard, which can be an inspiration for a man of letters, but fatal to a politician.” Adams picked up a folder beside his chair. “Letters to John Hay. Letters by John Hay. Clara’s been collecting them. She wants to publish.”

Caroline had, from time to time, received a note from Hay. He was a marvelous letter-writer, which meant that he was always indiscreet. “Is that a good idea?”

“Probably not. I’m sure Theodore will think not. Hay liked him, but saw all his faults. Worse, his absurdities. Great men cannot bear to be thought, ever, absurd.”

“Publish! And be praised.”

“I think I
will
edit them.”

“Why not write his life?”

Adams shook his head. “It would be my life, too.”

“Write that, then.”

“After St. Augustine, I’d look more than usually inept. He did best what cannot be done at all—mix narrative and didactic purpose and style. Rousseau couldn’t do it at all. At least Augustine had an idea of a literary form—a notion of writing a story with an end and object, not for the sake of the object, but for the form, like a romance. I come at the wrong time.”

“But you occupy the right space,” said Caroline. “Anyway, I don’t believe in time …”

“Are you content?” Adams looked at her closely.

“I think so. I wanted to be—myself, not just a wife or mother or …”

“Niece?”

“That I wanted most of all.” Caroline was entirely serious. “But then I have never confessed to you just how ambitious I am. You see,” she took the great plunge, “I wanted to be a Heart.”

“Oh, my child!” Adams struck a note that she had never heard before. There was no irony, no edge to that beautiful voice. “You
are
one. Didn’t you know?”

“I wanted to—know.” She was tentative.

“That is it. That is all there is, to want to know …”

Elizabeth Cameron and Martha entered; each was dressed appropriately for the White House dinner.

“We’ve heard from Whitelaw Reid,” said Lizzie, after her usual
warm but not too warm greeting of Caroline. “Martha’s to be presented at court, June the first, and you know what Martha said?”

“ ‘I’d rather stay in Paris’ is what Martha said,” said Martha.

“You must give pleasure to Whitelaw. He has so many presentations to make and so few presentables.” Adams had greeted Whitelaw Reid’s appointment as ambassador to the Court of St. James’s with exuberant derision. Reid’s pursuit of office and its attendant pomp had, finally, been rewarded by the President, who had required that all ambassadors and ministers resign after the election. Everyone had now been moved round—or out.

“I do it for Mother.” Martha would never be beautiful, Caroline decided, but she might yet cease to be plain.

The clocks were carefully checked, and it was agreed that the three ladies share the same carriage to get them across the perilous wintry waste of Pennsylvania Avenue, a matter of so many icy yards.

Adams rose and showed them to the door of his study; he kissed each on the cheek.

“I hope Cabot won’t be there,” said Lizzie. “I have a permanent grudge against him, since John died.”

“Be forgiving, Dona.” Adams smiled his secret smile. “Life is far too long to hold a grudge.”

The Lodges were not present; the dinner was relatively small; and there was no theme, which Caroline enjoyed. Of the Cabinet, only Hay’s successor, Elihu Root, was present. He and Caroline gravitated toward each other in the Red Room, where the company was gathered before dinner. The Roosevelts never made their regal entrance until everyone was present.

“What
is
your brother doing?” was Root’s less than ceremonious greeting.

“He is travelling through New York State, enjoying the scenery.”

“I am alarmed. We’re all alarmed. You know, Hearst was really elected mayor of New York. Then Tammany destroyed the ballots.”