Empire

mother of presidents, having produced, through unlikely presidential lust, a consul to Pretoria, which was-where? Australia? She had not liked the geography teacher at Allenswood.

“South Africa could be a turbulent post,” said Adams; he, too, was gauging Hay’s response to his son’s abrupt elevation. “What is our policy, between the English and those Dutch lunatics?”

“Extreme benign neutrality,” said Del, looking at his father. “In public, that is.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes.” Hay shook his head and smiled broadly. “Neutral on England’s side. The great fun will be if there’s a war down there…”

“Splendid, perhaps?” Adams smiled. “Little?”

“Little-ish. Hardly splendid. The fun will be how our own Irish Catholic voters will respond. They are for anyone who’s against England, including these Dutchmen, these Boers, who are not only Protestant but refuse to allow the Catholics to practice their exciting rites. I predict Hibernian confusion hereabouts. I also predict that though it’s only noon, and I must greet, soberly and responsibly, the Diplomatic Corps, there is champagne no farther than the flight of a porcupine’s quill. We drink to Del!”

Adams and Caroline cheered; Del’s forehead remained, as always, oddly pale, while his face turned to rose.

After champagne had been ceremoniously drunk to the new consul general, Caroline announced, “I can’t think why I am celebrating. Now that I’m settled into N Street, Mr. Adams deserts me for Sicily, and Del for South Africa.”

“You still have my wife and me,” said Hay. “We’re more than enough, I should say.”

“And I don’t go till fall,” said Del. “The President still has some work for me to do, at the White House.” Again Caroline noted the father’s perplexed look.

“Then I have a few months of cousinhood if not unclehood.” Caroline was pleased that Del should still be at hand. She must learn Washington at every level, and as quickly as possible. “One must be like Napoleon, Mlle. Souvestre always said, never without a plan.”

“Even a woman must always have a plan?” Caroline had asked.

“Especially a woman. We don’t often have much else. After all, they don’t teach us artillery.”

Caroline had indeed worked out a plan of action. John Apgar Sanford could not believe it when she told him. He begged her to think twice; to do nothing; to let the law take its course. But she was convinced that she could bring Blaise around in a more startling and satisfying fashion; assuming, of course, that she had Napoleonic luck as well as cunning. But the key to her future was here in a strange tropical city, among strangers. She needed Del. She needed all the help that she could get. John-as a cousin, she now called him by his first name-was more than willing to help her; but he was, by nature, timid. He was also, at last, a widower. One night at Delmonico’s showy new restaurant, and with the witty Mrs. Fish at the next table, straining to hear every word (for once Caroline blessed Harry Lehr’s never-failing laughter), John had lost his timidity and proposed that once his term of mourning was at an end, she take his hand in marriage. Caroline’s eyes had filled with genuine tears. She had done her share of flirting in Paris and London, but aside from Del no one, as far as she could determine, had ever wanted to marry her; nor had she met anyone that she wanted to marry; hence, the comfortable image of herself alone, and in command-of her own life. Yet Caroline had been touched by John’s declaration; she would, she had said, have to think it over very carefully, for was not marriage the most important step in a young woman’s life? As she began to unfurl all the sentences that she had learned from Marguerite, the theater, novels, she started to laugh, while the tears continued to stream down her face.

“What are you laughing at?” John had looked hurt.

“Not you, dear John!” Mrs. Fish’s not unpiscine face was now costive with attention. “At myself, in the world, like this.”

Adams insisted that Caroline remain behind, as father and son departed together for the State Department across the street and what would doubtless be a very serious conversation indeed. “That,” said Adams, when the Hays had gone, “was a bit of a shocker.”

“Mr. Hay seemed unenthusiastic.”

“You felt that?” Adams was curious. “What else did you feel?”

“That the father expects the son to fail in life, and that the son…” She stopped.

“The son… what?”

“The son has tricked him.”

Adams nodded. “I think you’re right. Of course, I know nothing of sons. Only daughters-or nieces, I should say. I can’t think what it is that goes on or does not go on between fathers and sons. Cabot Lodge’s son George is a poet. I would be proud, I suppose. Cabot is not.”

“It is sad that you have no heir.”

Adams glared at her, with wrath. Whether real or simulated, the effect was disconcerting. Then he gave his abrupt laugh. “It has been four generations since John Adams, my great-grandfather, wrote the constitution of the state of Massachusetts, and we entered the republic’s history by launching, in effect, the republic. It’s quite enough that Brooks and I now bring the Adamses to a close. We were born to sum up our ancestors and predict-if not design-the future for our, I suspect, humble descendants. I refer,” he smiled mischievously, “not to any illicit issue that we have but to the sons of our brother Charles Francis.”

“I cannot imagine humility ever devouring the Adamses, even in the fifth generation.” Caroline enjoyed the old man. It was as if Paul Bourget had been wise as well as witty.

Adams now came to his point. “I am aware of your connection with Aaron Burr, and I seem to remember you mentioning, last summer, that you had some of his papers.”

“I do. Or I think I do. Anyway, I don’t have to share them with Blaise. They came to me from my mother. They are in leather cases. I’ve glanced at them, but that’s all. It seems that Grandfather Schuyler persuaded Burr to write some fragments of memoir. Grandfather worked in Burr’s law office, when Burr was very old. There is also a journal grandfather kept during the years that he knew Burr. There is also,” she frowned, “a journal, which I’ve never looked at, because my mother, I think it was she, wrote on the cover, ‘Burn.’ But it is still in its case, and no one has ever burned it-or probably read it! At least I haven’t and I don’t think my father ever did.”

“Clearly, your bump of curiosity is less than ordinary. It is not like my family, where everyone has been writing down everything for a hundred years, and if anyone were to write ‘Burn,’ we would obey, with relief.” Adams placed two small, highly polished shoes on the fender to the fireplace. “Some time ago I wrote a book about your ancestor Burr…”

“Perhaps my ancestor. Though I am absolutely certain that he was. He is romantic.”

“I thought him, forgive me, a windbag.”

Caroline was startled. “Compared to Jefferson!”

Adams’s laugh was loud and genuine, no longer the stylized bark of approval. “Oh, you have me there! Do you read American history?”

“Only to find out about Burr.”

“American history is deeply enervating. I can tell you that firsthand. I’ve spent my life reading and writing it. Enervating because there are no women in it.”

“Perhaps we can change that.” Caroline thought of Mlle. Souvestre’s battles for women’s suffrage.

“I hope you can. Anyway, I’ve done with our history. There’s no pattern to it, that I can see, and that’s all I ever cared about. I don’t care what happened. I want to know why it happened.”

“I think, in my ignorance, I am the opposite. I’ve always thought that the only power was to know everything that has ever happened.”

Adams gave her a sidelong glance. “Power? Is that what intrigues you?”

“Well, yes. One doesn’t want to be a victim-because of not knowing.” Caroline thought of Blaise and Mr. Houghteling; thought of her father, whom she had known too little about; thought of the dark woman painted in the style of Winterhalter, who was completely unknown to her, and always referred to, with a kind of awe, as “dark.”

“I think you must come join your uncle in Paris. I give graduate courses to girls, too; girls, mind you, not