Empire

“Splendid thoughts. Anyway, the latest information is that the Kaiser, after pushing his stupid cousin, the Tsar, into declaring war on Japan, now realizes that Russia is too weak, even for his purposes, so he now is making frantic love to Japan, and to Theodore, too.”

“They are made for each other.”

“Not yet. But the Kaiser has a plan. Would to God I could go to Berlin to see him. He may be a reckless orator but he is a cold calculator.”

Two menservants appeared, pushing a tea-table; and the croquet players joined them. Frederika did the honors, while Caroline and Clara walked beside the lake, keeping a careful distance from the swans. “He seems better.” Caroline could think of nothing else to say on that subject.

Clara was now huge, even monumental; her manner, as always, secure, declamatory. “He could live another year. Maybe more, if only he would leave Washington.”

“He won’t?”

“Not yet. We go to London, incognito, June second. Then we sail on the Baltic. Then he insists on going back to the State Department before we go on to New Hampshire. He does not trust Theodore.” Clara exhorted a willow tree’s reflection in the lake.

“Perhaps it’s best, to keep on, till…” Caroline did not finish.

“I wonder about you and Del.” Clara spoke for the first time to Caroline about her son. “I’m not sure-now-it would’ve been for the best.”

“We’ll never know, will we?”

“No. We never will. It’s when I see all this, I realize you are foreign. He was not.”

“I’m both. Or, maybe, neither.” Caroline was amused that Clara was still making censorious divisions between what was foreign, and probably bad, and what was American and entirely good. “At least I don’t publish the Tribune in French.”

Clara smiled, as she always did when she suspected that someone had made a joke. “Do you and Blaise get on?”

“We do now. We probably won’t in the future.” Caroline was surprised, as always, when she said what she actually thought.

“That’s my impression, too. The girl’s nice. But he does want to be like Mr. Hearst…”

“No more than I do…”

“Caroline! You are a lady.”

“But foreign.”

“Even so, you could never want to be like that dreadful man. Henry James returned our latch-key.” Clara’s mind was so constituted that she could make the leap from yellow journalism to the fact that Henry James, who had gone off with the key to the front door of the Hay house, had returned it; and make the non sequitur seem part of some significant whole, which perhaps it was, un-grasped by Caroline, who suddenly recalled her discussion of keys with Blaise, both real and metaphysical.

“Will you see Mr. James in London?”

“If we have the chance. I don’t want John to see anyone except old friends. But the King insists. So we go to Buckingham Palace.”

“The King is political.”

“He likes John. I said, No food! The King eats for hours. We shall stay exactly one half hour, I said, no longer.” The two women sat on a bench, and watched the others at tea. Adams was walking up and down excitedly, a good sign. Hay sat huddled in his throne, a study in gray and white. Blaise sat on the edge of his chair like an attentive schoolboy. “Divorce still shocks me.” Clara hurled the commandment down the length of her figure, which even seated suggested Mount Sinai.

“We were never really married.” Caroline started to tell the truth, but then, not wanting to spend the rest of her life in France, she told not the truth but something true. “I was alone, after Del died. So I married a cousin for- protection.” Caroline hoped that she could successfully portray herself as helpless.

She could not, to Clara, at least. “I know.” She was peremptory. “Rebound. From grief. Even so, one might have waited until there was not a cousin but a true husband.”

“That’s all past. I’m alone now, and quite content. There’s Emma. What,” asked Caroline, imitating the manner of Clara, the non sequitur without ellipsis, “ever became of Clarence King’s children by the Negress?”

Clara blushed. Caroline knew victory. “They are still in Canada, I think. John and Henry help out. They tell me nothing, and I never ask.” Clara rose, ending the subject. Attended by Caroline, the mountain returned to the tea- table.

Hay was describing his meeting with the French foreign minister. “I was expressly forbidden by the President to speak to him, since I hadn’t first seen the Kaiser. But I, too, must be allowed my diplomacy. All the troubles in Morocco-no, not Perdicaris, not Raisuli…”

“Spare us your high drama.” Adams ceased pacing and sat in a chair too large for him. The two tiny glittering black patent-leather shoes were an inch from the ground.

“… are coming to a head, and the Kaiser is imposing himself on the French, and threatens to go to Morocco himself to take it away from them. Poor Delcasse is filled with gloom. With Russia on the verge of a revolution, the Kaiser has the only important army in Europe. The French don’t breed enough, he complained, and the English army is too small, so the Kaiser can do as he pleases, unless Theodore puts down his great boot…”

“Stick, isn’t it?” Adams interjected. “The one he says he carries when he speaks with a soft voice. The reverse, of course, is the case. He bellows, and there is no stick at all.”

“A large navy, Henry, is a big stick…”

“When war comes in Europe, it will be on land, and it will be won by land armies, and that will be Germany’s last chance to be king of the mountain.”

“We,” Clara said the last word, “will stay out.”

As the perfect day ended with a golden light breaking through the leaves of the west park, Caroline and Blaise and Frederika saw the last of the Hearts into their motor cars. Adams was off to join the Lodges, “part of my secret diplomacy to keep Cabot from John’s throat.” Caroline remembered too late that she had not mentioned to Adams the fragments of Aaron Burr’s memoirs. Fortunately, from the healthy look of him, there would be time during the winter in Washington.

“You must come see us at Sunapee.” Hay took Caroline’s hand; she almost recoiled from the coldness of his touch.

“I’ll come in July.”

“Come for the Fourth. We will all be there.” Clara kissed Caroline’s cheek. Then they were gone.

The young trio regarded the departure of the old trio with, on Caroline’s side, considerable regret. “They are the last,” she said.

“Last of what?” Frederika gazed bemusedly at her, hair suddenly dark gold in the slanting light.

“Last-believers.”

“In what?” Blaise turned to go inside.

“In… Hearts.”

“I believe in hearts.” Frederika had misunderstood. “Don’t you, Caroline?”

“I meant something else by Hearts, and what they were, and tried to be, made them different from us.”

“They aren’t different from us.” Blaise was final. “Except that they are old, and we aren’t. Yet.”

5

JOHN HAY SAT in a rocking chair on the verandah of The Fells and stared across the green New Hampshire lawn to the gray New Hampshire mountains with Lake Winnepesaukee between, so much flat shining water that reflected the deep clear blue summer sky. Exhaustion did not describe his condition. He had returned on June 15, and after a day at Manhasset with Helen, he had gone on to Washington, despite firm instructions from the President to go home. For a week in the damp heat of the tropical capital, he had done the business of his