Empire

looking at Caroline, the question was to Abbott.

“No, Chief. But I suppose we could write or cable him and inquire…”

“Nothing in writing!” Hearst was firm. “Send someone to Manila, to sound him out. If he’s willing, we’ll nominate him to run against McKinley.”

“Is the Admiral a Democrat?” asked Blaise.

“Who cares? I’m sure he doesn’t.”

“But,” asked Caroline, “does he want to be president?”

“Oh, everyone does over here. That’s why we call ourselves a democracy. Fact, just about anyone can be president, particularly if the Journal promotes him right.”

“You, too?” Caroline was bold; despite Blaise’s evident dismay.

But Hearst was bland. “Do you like Weber and Fields?”

“The shoemakers?” Caroline had heard the names before. “In Bond Street.”

The Willson girls giggled in harmonic unison. “No. Comedians. In vaudeville. I can’t get enough of them. We must take her with us sometime,” Hearst said to Blaise; then to Caroline, “Now get this. Weber and Fields are in this fancy French restaurant, and the waiter comes up after dinner and the waiter asks Weber if he wants a demitasse, and Weber says yes. Then the waiter asks Fields if he’d like a demitasse, too, and Fields says, ‘Yes,’ ” at this point Hearst began to laugh, “ ‘Yes, I’d like a demitasse, too, and,’ ” Hearst was now shaking with laughter while the Willson sisters clung to one another, giggling, “ ‘and I’d also like a cup of coffee.’ ” The office echoed with laughter; and Caroline assumed that her question had been dramatically answered.

Blaise drove her back to the Waldorf-Astoria; escorted her to the suite where old Marguerite, in her night- dress, greeted him with a cascade of pent-up French. “She will not learn English,” said Caroline, presenting Blaise with a new bottle of brandy, which he opened. As he filled a glass for each, Marguerite delivered herself of a tirade celebrating the beauties and comforts of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc as contrasted with the horrors of New York; then she went to bed.

Every vase in the Louis XVI sitting room was filled with chrysanthemums despite Marguerite’s piteous pleas that they be taken away, for, as the civilized world knows, chrysanthemums are flowers suited only to memorialize the dead. Although Caroline told her not to be superstitious, she herself was somewhat troubled by those memento mori. But she kept them where they were, all bronze and yellow, as a proof of her new unsuperstitious Americanism.

“Do you like the Chief?” Blaise sipped at his cognac. Caroline poured herself Vichy water.

“I don’t think I’d ever find him very easy to like. But he’s certainly fascinating to watch-to listen to. Is he so powerful?”

Blaise nodded. “He can really make someone president…”

“But he didn’t say someone. He said anyone.”

“Well, he exaggerates at times.”

Caroline laughed. “At times? I should think that that’s his power. He exaggerates all the time.”

“It sells newspapers.”

“That’s all that he cares about?”

Blaise refused to be led into deeper waters. “As a publisher, yes. That’s what I want to be.”

“With Mr. Hearst?”

“No. I want to be my own Mr. Hearst.”

“He doesn’t know that yet, does he?”

“How can you tell?” Blaise gave her his best boyish smile; and it was still most boyish even though she knew the amount of adult calculation that went into it. Charm was Blaise’s most formidable weapon. Charm was Caroline’s most fragile defense.

“The way he treats you. With everyone else, he is very grand seigneur. He is polite, the way we are to servants. But he treats you as an equal, which means that he expects you to invest money- perhaps all your money-in his papers.” Caroline had not intended to get so directly to the will but she trusted her instinct about Hearst’s attitude to Blaise.

Blaise frowned, not at all boyishly. In fact, he looked like his father at the card table, trying to recall the bidding. “I’m not about,” he said finally, “to make this kind of investment.”

“But you’ve allowed him to think that you will.” Caroline understood Blaise. Did he, she wondered, hardly for the first time, understand her? “That could be dangerous, with a man so-unusual.”

“Father meant twenty-seven.” Blaise struck hard. “Mr. Houghteling ought to know. He was his lawyer. He says there is no doubt of intention.”

Caroline sat very straight in her chair. Back of Blaise’s head a mass of bronze chrysanthemums were arrayed as for a funeral. An omen? If so, his funeral or hers? “It was a lucky accident for you that Father’s pen slipped. We both know what he meant. But what I want to know is what you mean. Why do you want my share of the estate? Surely, there’s enough for both?”

“There isn’t. For what I want to do.” Blaise looked at her bleakly.

“To start a newspaper?”

Blaise nodded. “I’m learning how it’s done now. When I’m ready, I’ll start my own, or buy one. Maybe here…”

For once, Caroline could not stop herself from smiling. “In competition with Mr. Hearst?”

“Why not? He’d understand.”

“There’s no doubt he’d understand! He’d understand that you had betrayed him. He’d also understand that if you tried to compete with him, he’d be obliged to crush you, as he seems to have crushed Mr. Pulitzer.”

“The World’s doing all right. Mr. Pulitzer just isn’t number one any more.”

“So there might yet be Hearst, Pulitzer and Sanford?”

“Yes,” Blaise said; and said no more.

Caroline was impressed; and appalled. “You will lose the entire inheritance.”

“No,” Blaise said; and said no more.

“Lose or gain, for six years you will have the use of my capital. Then-what happens?”

“According to Mr. Houghteling,” Blaise was deliberate, “you’ll inherit the amount which represents half the estate at the time the will was probated.”

Caroline began to see her way through the labyrinth; and not as a victim but as the Minotaur. “Should you double my share of the estate, you will keep half?”

“That seems only fair. I will have doubled it, not you.”

“If you lose…”

“I won’t lose…”

“If you lose, what do I get?”

Blaise’s smile was radiant: “Half of nothing.”

“So I lose everything if you are unfortunate and gain nothing if you are lucky.”

“You’ll be paid thirty thousand dollars a year for the next six years. You can live very nicely on that here. Even better, back at Saint-Cloud.”

Caroline began to see a way through to-the treasure. She was not yet sufficiently New York predator to demand living flesh for her dinner. She had begun by wanting what was hers. Now she was eager to take what was his, as well. Although family history had always bored her, she had been sufficiently intrigued by her father’s cryptic references to the fact that Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, her grandfather, had been an illegitimate son of Aaron Burr. At Mlle. Souvestre’s school she had had the good luck to have a history teacher who did not, like all the others, disdain American history. Together they had read all that they could-which was not much-about her great- grandfather, who seemed more artist than rogue, more Lord Chesterfield than Machiavelli-and, of course, Burr was her maternal ancestor, not Blaise’s, which gave her an advantage if there should be anything to the laws or, rather, whims of heredity. Burr had been narrowly cheated of the presidency; had been rather less narrowly, to say the most, cheated of the crown of Mexico; had lived long enough to see another illegitimate son, if the gossip was true, become president. Burr had been called a traitor but, in actual fact, he had been something far worse and more dangerous to his world, a dreamer. Because of this sublime subversive trait, he had enchanted Caroline. Finally, as Aaron Burr had treated his only legitimate child as if she were a son, so Caroline