Empire

City Hall, where I have already made inquiries.”

John gasped, but at least he had understood. “You…” But he exhausted all his breath in startled exhalation.

As John inhaled, Caroline said, “Yes, I am pregnant. I cannot tell you who the father is, as he is a married man. But I can tell you that he was my first-and only-lover. I feel like that chaste king of Spain who…” But caution stopped her from repeating Mlle. Souvestre’s favorite story about how the ascetic King Philip had finally gone to bed with a woman and promptly contracted syphilis. John might not be ready for this story.

“He-the father is in Spain?” John was doing his best to grasp the situation.

“No, he is in America. He is an American. He has visited Spain,” she improvised, hoping to erase King Philip from the court-courtship?-record.

“I see.” John stared at his shoes.

“I realize that I am asking for a very great deal, which is why I said at the very beginning that there would be an exchange between us, useful to each.” Caroline wondered what she would do in John’s place. She would, probably, have laughed, and said no. But she was not in John’s place, and she could not measure either his liking for her person or his need for her fortune. These two imponderables would determine the business.

“Will you continue to see him?” John came swiftly to the necessary, for him, point.

“No.” Caroline lied so seldom that she found it quite easy to do. Would she now become addicted to lying, and turn into another Mrs. Bingham?

“What will you do about the newspaper?”

“I shall go on with it. Unless you would like to be the publisher.” This was definitely Mrs. Binghamish: Caroline had no intention of ever losing control of the Tribune.

“No. No. I am a lawyer, after all, not a publisher. I must say, I have never come across a… a case like this.” He looked at her, worriedly; a lawyer mystified by a client.

“I thought that pregnant ladies were always getting married in the nick of time.”

“Yes. But to the man who… who…”

“Made them pregnant. Well, that is not possible for me.”

“You are in love with him.” John was bleak.

“Don’t worry, John. I shall be as good a wife as I can, given my disposition, which is not very wifely, in the American way, that is.”

“I suppose you will want to look at my books…”

“You are a collector?”

“My financial books…”

“I am not an auditor. You have debts. I’ll pay what I can now. When I inherit, I’ll pay the rest. I assume,” Caroline suddenly wondered if she ought not to bring in an auditor; she laughed uneasily, “I assume that your debts are not larger than my income.”

“Oh, much less. Much less. This is embarrassing for both of us.”

“In France our relatives would be holding this discussion, but we’re not in France, and I can’t imagine Blaise handling any of this for me.” When Caroline rose from her chair, John sprang to his feet: yes, he was hers, she decided. So far so good. Now all that needed to be worked out was the marital bed. She had no intention of sleeping with John, and it was plain that he had every intention of claiming his conjugal rights. For the moment she was safe: her family history of difficult, even fatal, pregnancies could be invoked to keep him at a distance. Later, she would, she was certain, think of something.

Caroline took John’s arm, as a wife takes a husband’s. “Dear John,” she said, as they made their way down the deserted Peacock Alley, the only sound that of the revolving overhead fans.

“It’s like a dream,” said John.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” said Caroline, who had never felt more awake.

3

JOHN HAY COULD STILL NOT BELIEVE the change in the White House. The entire upstairs was now home to the Roosevelts and their six children, who seemed, to Hay, more like twelve. The entrance hall which had been so long graced by President Arthur’s Tiffany screen was now an impressive eighteenth-century foyer to a sort of Anglo-Irish country house whose drawing rooms, en suite, were now directly accessible to the hall, where the old pols’ wooden staircase had been replaced by a marble affair down which the presidents could descend in glory. The west staircase had been removed in order to enlarge the state dining room, whose new fireplace had been inscribed with the pious Rooseveltian hope that only men as noble as he would ever preside in this republican palace.

Then, as ushers opened doors, Hay entered the new west wing, where the executive offices were comfortably quartered. The President’s architects had nicely duplicated the oval of the Blue Room for his office, which looked south toward the Potomac. The Cabinet had its own room at last, with the office of the President’s secretary separating it from the sovereign’s oval.

Theodore was standing in front of his desk throwing a medicine ball at the tiny German ambassador, a particular friend, and the source of remarkable trouble for Hay because Cassini was now convinced that Theodore and the Kaiser were in secret league against the Tsar. Hay was required, at least once a week, to soothe the Russian. The new French ambassador, Jusserand, was more worldly and less excitable than his predecessor, while Sir Michael Herbert, Pauncefote’s successor, was himself like a member of the President’s own family, and rode each day with Theodore through Rock Creek Park, and joined him in loud, clumsy games of tennis where the President’s ferocity and near-blindness made for every sort of exciting danger.

Hay bowed to President and Ambassador. “If I am interrupting,” he began.

“No. No, John.” Theodore heaved the medicine ball at von Sternberg, who caught it easily. “That was splendid, Speck!” Hay was always amused at how like his numerous imitators the President could sound, except for the clicking of the teeth, which no one had ever quite duplicated.

The Ambassador said good-morning to Hay and left the room, carrying the medicine ball with him.

Roosevelt mopped his face with a handkerchief. “The Kaiser affects indifference.” He was very unlike his imitators when he was at work; and there was now a great deal to be done. “You have the telegram?”

Hay gave him the draft which he and Adee had just completed. Four days earlier, a junta had declared Panama independent of Colombia. The arrival, the previous day, November 2, 1903, of the USS Nashville, Boston and Dixie had inhibited the Colombians, who might, otherwise, have put down the insurrection. The presence of the American Navy had been necessary, according to the President, because American citizens might have come to harm during the course of a revolution, which had not, as of November 2, taken place. Neither Roosevelt nor Hay had been particularly pleased with their somewhat hollow explanation, but the thing had turned out marvellously well. The revolution, which had started November 3, ended on the fourth, when the Republic of Panama was proclaimed, and now, on the sixth, the United States was preparing to recognize this splendid addition to the concert of nations, freed at least from Colombian bondage.

“ ‘The people of Panama,’ ” read the President, in a grave voice, “ ‘have, by an apparently unanimous movement,’ I like that, John, ‘dissolved their political connection with the Republic of Colombia…’ Very like Jefferson, that.”

“You flatter me.”

“It’s better than these jackrabbits deserve.” Roosevelt read the rest of the telegram quickly; then gave it back to Hay. “Send it.”

“I’m also drawing up a treaty for the canal, which we should get signed before the end of the month. Then, if Cabot allows the Senate to ratify…”

“Cabot will call for a voice vote, and his own voice will be the loudest.” Roosevelt was plainly delighted. “There were casualties, after all,” he said. “Root just sent over a message. One dog was killed, and one Chinaman.” With a laugh, the President settled into his chair. Hay also sat, not with a laugh but a groan.

“The terms for Panama will not be the best, of course…” Hay wondered how much pain the body could take