Empire

before death provided anesthesia.

“They are independent, aren’t they? Well, we made that possible. So we deserve something, I’d say.”

“I’m thinking of next year.”

Roosevelt nodded; and frowned, as he always did when he contemplated his reelection or, to be precise, his first election to the presidency. “Well, the anti-imperialists can’t really fault us. We must have a canal, and it has to be somewhere along the isthmus.”

“But it could have been in Nicaragua, with no fuss, no fleet, no dead dog or Chinaman; no hint, shall we say, of collusion, between us and the Panamanian junta.”

“Of course there was collusion.” Roosevelt pounded left fist into right hand. “We are for free people everywhere, and against foolish and homicidal corruptionists of the sort that govern Colombia…”

“… and now Panama.”

“You have never favored the canal, have you?”

Hay often forgot that under all the noise, the President was both shrewd and watchful. “I’ve always thought,” said Hay, “that the railroads could do the job quite as well as a canal, which will be difficult and expensive not only to build but troublesome-in the future, anyway-politically. Yes,” Hay added before the President could taunt him, “I’m a large investor in the railroads, but that’s not to the point.”

Idly, Roosevelt spun the globe of the world beside his desk. “The point, John, is that we have done something useful for our country. Our fleets can go back and forth, quickly, between Atlantic and Pacific.”

“You see a future so filled with war?” Hay wished, suddenly, that he had not allowed the President to talk him out of the July resignation.

“Yes, I do.” The high harsh voice was suddenly low and almost, for its owner, mellifluous. “I also see our own mission, which is to lead where once England led, but on a world scale…”

“All the world?”

“It could come to that. But so much depends on the sort of people we are, and continue to be.” He grimaced. “There is a weakness running through our people, a love of ease, a lack of courage…”

“You must continue your demonstrations, and inspire us.”

“That is exactly what I try to do.” Roosevelt was entirely serious. Hay thought of Henry Adams’s phrase, “the Dutch-American Napoleon.” Well, why not? How else is an empire to begin?

“And now, Mr. President, I shall provide the legal underpinnings to our latest acquisition.”

“The Attorney General has assured me that we must not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.” Roosevelt’s laughter was like that of a frenzied watchdog.

As Hay rose, the room appeared to be full of dark green smoke, through which small golden stars shone. For a moment, he thought that he was about to faint. But Theodore was now suddenly at his side, holding him up.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes.” The room was itself again. “I’m often faint when I get up too quickly. But the odd thing was-I thought I was in Mr. Lincoln’s office. You know, with its dark green walls, and the gold stars, one for every state, we used to say, that was trying to get away.”

Roosevelt walked Hay to the door, his thick arm firmly through the older man’s. “I see him sometimes.”

“The President?”

Roosevelt opened the door to his secretary’s office. “Yes. That is, imagine him vividly. It’s usually at night in the corridor, upstairs, at the far end…”

“The east end.” Hay nodded. “There was a water-cooler in the hall, outside his office. He would drink cup after cup of water.”

“I’ll look for that next time I see him. He is always sad.”

“There was a good deal to be sad about.”

“My problems are so slight compared to his. Curious, to measure oneself with him. I don’t think I’m immodest when I say I’m very much superior to most of the politicians of our time. But when I think of what greatness he had…” Roosevelt sighed, a most un-Rooseveltian sound. “You must get some rest, John.”

Hay nodded. “Once the treaty’s done, I’m going south.”

“Bully!” Roosevelt was again his own best imitation.

4

THE GREAT HOLLOW SOUND of metal striking the thick bole of a magnolia tree brought Caroline and Marguerite to the window of the Georgetown house. A motor car had, somehow, got from N Street onto the sidewalk and into the largest of Caroline’s two magnolias. At the wheel was Alice Roosevelt, a feathered hat now jammed over her implacable blue eyes, while at her side Marguerite Cassini, looking both beautiful and terrified, waved her hands in front of her, in a gesture which Caroline took to be, literally, the wringing of hands, something that only her own histrionic Marguerite ever did.

Caroline hurried into the street, where an elderly Negro man was working hard to open the door on Alice’s side of the car; it had jammed.

“The brakes!” Alice was accusing. “They don’t work. It’s your chauffeur’s fault.”

“It’s my fault, when Father finds out.” Marguerite got out of the car. Caroline helped the Negro to free the Republican Princess, who then shoved her hat back in place; leapt to the ground; thanked the Negro; and said, “Tell the police to take this bit of junk back to the Russian embassy, in Scott Circle. It is the ugliest house there. They can’t miss it.”

“My father-” Marguerite began.

“Your father? My father. That’s the problem. He wouldn’t let me buy a car, you know.” Alice led Caroline into her own house, while Marguerite Cassini gave the Negro elaborate instructions. “I can’t fathom him. There are times when he seems to be living in another century. I had picked out this splendid roadster. Too killing. And he said, no. Never. Women are not to drive, or smoke, or vote. I agree on the vote, of course. It will just double the same old vote. Even so… What’s it like, being married?”

They were now in the back parlor, overlooking the small garden where, because of the season, only late ominous chrysanthemums grew. The trees had lost their leaves; and in the small goldfish pond, a large goldfish had bellied up, a victim to overeating.

“Serene. The same, actually. John’s mostly in New York with his law firm. I’m mostly here with the paper; and the child.”

The two-month-old Emma Apgar Sanford was less noisy than Caroline had anticipated, and though not yet the best of company, she was a benign presence in the house, and Caroline, against Marguerite’s advice-no longer heeded, ever-breast-fed her daughter, and noted with awed wonder how large her gravid breasts had become. She was, for the first time in her life, a la mode in the grand fleshy world.

Marguerite Cassini now made her hardly climactic entrance. Caroline admired her beauty; but nothing more. The shadow of Del seemed, mysteriously, attached to her. Caroline had heard it said that the opal ring that had broken in half on the New Haven pavement had been a gift from Countess Cassini. Plainly, fiction’s war with truth was never-ending. Marguerite went straight toward the open box of chocolates from Huyler’s, the city’s principal confectioner. Each Washington house ordered its own mixture, and Caroline had introduced white chocolate to Washington, a novelty still controversial in those circles where the Tribune’s Society Lady so hungrily moved. “You shouldn’t eat chocolate. You’ll get fat,” Alice announced. “I never eat dessert. Just meat and potatoes, like Father.”

“Perhaps you’ll be as stout as he is,” said Marguerite, looking suddenly Mongol-or was it Tartar?-or were they the same? The friendship between La Cassini and Alice was the talk of the town, and by no means confined to the Society Lady’s circles. In the current troubles between Russia and Japan, President Roosevelt tended to take the Japanese side, to the fury of Cassini, who had roared in Caroline’s presence, “The man’s a pagan! We are a Christian nation like the United States, and he sides with yellow savage pagans.” At the White House, Russian greed was sadly deplored. The Administration was ready to acquiesce in Japan’s proposal that Russia might annex