Empire

“Go to the Jews.”

“I have tried. But they don’t seem eager to lend, at a bearable rate.”

“I could lend-”

“I shall leave the room, and never return, if you ever hint at such-an impropriety.”

Adams smiled, like a contented cat. “I knew you would reject me. Otherwise, I would not have made so rude a move. Why not sell Blaise your newspaper?”

“Because it is all that I have, of my own. A child is never your own. It is also-the father’s.” Caroline enjoyed the irony. Jim had never once suspected, holding Emma on his knee, that she was his flesh and blood, blue eyes and curly hair.

“Let us be subtle. Sell Blaise half the shares of the Tribune minus one, which will give you control.”

Caroline had thought of this. “It would mean getting to know him rather more than I’d like.”

“One boy is like another.” Adams disliked all males except a half-dozen aged ironists like himself. Caroline had never known a man to whom woman-if not women-was so necessary; and she wondered, as always, why had the brilliant wife killed herself, why had he never remarried, why did he maintain his peculiar, and plainly unrequited, passion for Lizzie Cameron?

“You made do with a cousin as husband. You can certainly make do with a half-brother as-junior partner.”

William was at the door, announcing “Professor Langley.” The accident-prone secretary of the Smithsonian Institution entered the room, without once, symbolically, slipping, Caroline noted. Although Henry Adams regarded Samuel P. Langley as the best scientific mind in the Western world (Adams particularly admired Langley’s invention of something called a bolometer, “which measures the heat,” he would say gleefully, “of nothing!”), the press had, lately, taken a good deal of pleasure out of Langley’s doomed attempts to fly heavier-than-air craft. He was always on the verge of freeing man from the earth; but man continued to be earth-bound, as far as heavier-than-air craft went. Lighter-than-air craft, on the order of gliders or balloons, somehow did not count. Caroline found mystifying Langley’s obsessions; but she had seen to it that he was often, and favorably, interviewed in the Tribune. As a result, he had mistaken her for an admirer like Adams; and she had done nothing to disabuse him. Whatever pleased Adams pleased her. Besides, Langley could be interesting, when not goaded by Adams into discussing the famous dynamo that they had together glimpsed at the Paris Exhibition four years earlier. Adams wanted to find a scientific basis to history, on the order of the second law of thermodynamics. Caroline, who knew little of history and nothing of science, was convinced that there were no laws applicable to the human race, a random affair that moved neither up nor down but, simply, on, in fits and starts, for no reason. She had always found it odd that men required coherent reasons for things that women knew to be non-reasonable.

“There is a rumor that a pair of bicycle mechanics in North Carolina have flown in a heavier-than-air machine of their own devising.” This was Langley’s ponderous greeting to his old friend.

“When?” Adams was alert, as always, to the marvels of science. “And for how long did they fly?”

“Three months ago. The story’s garbled. No one seems to have got it straight. Someone sent me a clipping from a Norfolk newspaper, that made no sense…”

“We were notified,” said Caroline, recalling Mr. Trimble’s amusement at the message from two brothers to the effect that they were the first, ever, to fly in such a machine. In one day they had taken off and landed several times. She recalled that they had claimed to have flown a half-mile. She reported this to Langley, who seemed more depressed than elated. Plainly this disinterested man of science wanted for himself the glory of being the first to fly like-was it Icarus? she wondered, recalling Mlle. Souvestre’s injunction that one ought always to be ready with an apt classical allusion in order not to use it.

“I’ve heard something very like that. I don’t see how it’s possible. I mean who-what are they?”

“It is very odd that the press has not picked it up.” Adams turned to Caroline. “Why didn’t you use the story?”

“Because we get so many stories like that, out of nowhere. Also, Mr. Trimble couldn’t tell whether the machine wasn’t just another sort of glider, like the one that took off from the Eiffel Tower.”

“I shall write them, I suppose.” Langley was glum. “I am so close now, so very close to the workable machine…”

“What use is a flying machine?” Caroline was genuinely curious, not so much about the tinkering with machinery, a male madness, but the uses to which something so impractical might be put.

“Flight will change everyone’s life,” said Langley. “People can be transported at great speed over long distances.”

“I suppose that’s a good thing.” Caroline was dubious; her magnolia tree had died as a result of Alice Roosevelt’s assault upon it with a highly powered swift-moving arrangement of metal.

“It will change warfare.” Adams was thoughtful. “One could carry explosives over the enemy’s territory and blow up-anything, I suppose.”

Langley nodded. “Even in our Civil War, balloons were used, most effectively. Now, with powered air- craft…”

“But they will promptly discover a way of knocking them out of the sky.” Caroline recalled one of the President’s recent arias. He was talking of the Kaiser, whom he had come to like, thanks to Speck, the ever-charming link between the two bellicosities. Speck, according to Roosevelt, had described how the ingenious maker of munitions Krupp handled the Kaiser. “Apparently Krupp is a superb statesman.” The President’s pince-nez glittered with a light all its own. “He goes to the Kaiser and says, ‘I’ve invented a steel plating that no bullet can pierce.’ So the Kaiser immediately orders quantities of steel plating. Then, a year later, Krupp, looking very sad, comes back to the Kaiser and says, I’m afraid we’ve invented a bullet that will pierce the impenetrable steel plating.’ So the poor Kaiser must order several tons of these magical bullets, to be followed by ever-newer impenetrable plating that will eventually be penetrated by newer bullets. The Kaiser has warned me not to be taken in, the way he’s been.” When Caroline repeated this to Adams and Langley, they exchanged knowing glances; and Langley said, “The Kaiser wants us to fall behind, which is why, should there be war, we must have the first flying-machine.”

“But if they find a way to shoot it down…”

“We will invent something that cannot be shot down…” began Langley.

“Until it is,” said Caroline. “If I may give you a matronly view, this sort of contest is endless.” Caroline had been much impressed by the President’s story.

“Progress, once started, is endless.” Langley was sententious.

“Progress,” said Caroline, “implies that one is moving from one known place to another. Isn’t the problem, here, not knowing the proper terminus?”

“Serendipity is sovereign.” Adams was not his usual candid, pessimistic self.

“We proceed because we must,” said Langley. “It is like evolution.”

“You have reminded me that I am Catholic, and in no way connected, genealogically, with any monkey, no matter how charming.” Caroline rose to go.

“You were taken from Adam’s rib, as we all know, to our delight.” After Caroline had said her farewell to Langley, Adams led her out onto the landing, which smelled of out-of-season lilies-of-the-valley; in fact, the house, always overheated and filled with flowers, reminded her of the White House conservatories, now a thing of the past. “Sell Blaise a part of the paper.”

“He will try to get all of it.”

“Don’t let him. You are a clever child.” Adams patted her hand; and William showed her out.

3

JOHN HAY SAT ALONE in his moving parlor, and watched through newly washed windows the United States rush by. The Casetts of the Pennsylvania Railroad had provided the Secretary of State with their ornately furnished private car, and specially trained Negro attendants. At the President’s insistence, Hay had agreed to attend the World’s Fair at St. Louis, where he would make an address which, high-minded, witty and elegant, would be the opening gun in the coming battle for the presidency. There was no doubt that Theodore would be nominated by the