Empire

women.”

Caroline smiled. “I shall enroll.” She rose to go. He stood; he was smaller than she. “I shall also let you read the Burr papers.”

“I was going to ask you that. I destroy a good deal of what I write. Probably nowhere near enough. I have been considering adding my Burr manuscript to the ongoing bonfire.”

“Why a windbag?” Caroline was curious. “After all, he never theorized, like the others.”

“He was the founder of the Tammany Hall-style politics, and that is windbagging. But I am unfair. He made one prescient remark, which I like, when he said farewell to the Senate. ‘If the Constitution is to perish, its dying agonies will be seen on this floor.’ ”

“Will it perish?”

“All things do.” At the door Adams kissed her chastely on each cheek. She felt the prickling of his beard; smelled his cologne-water. “You must marry Del.”

“And leave all this for Pretoria?”

Adams laughed. “Except for my unique, avuncular presence, I suspect that Washington and Pretoria are much the same.”

Del thought not. Caroline and Helen Hay dined with Del at Wormley’s, a small hotel with numerous dining rooms, both small and large, and, traditionally, the best food in Washington. Whenever the young Hays wanted to escape the medieval splendor of the joint house with Adams, they would cross Lafayette Square to the hotel at Fifteenth and H Streets, where the mulatto Mr. Wormley presided. As the senior Hays were committed that evening to the British embassy, Del and Helen invited Caroline to dinner, to celebrate Pretoria. They were joined in a small upstairs dining room by a lean young Westerner named James Burden Day. “He’s the assistant comptroller of the United States, for the next few hours,” said Del, as they took their seats in the low-ceilinged room with its view of the vast granite Treasury Building down the street.

“What do you assist at controlling?” asked Caroline.

“The currency, ma’am.” The voice was softly Western. “Such as it is.”

“He’s a Democrat,” said Del, “and so he’s devoted to silver, sixteen to one.”

“I,” said Helen Hay, large and comfortable-looking, like her mother, with dimples like Del, “am devoted to shad-roe, which is coming in now, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” Helen had a habit of repeating phrases. The courtly black waiter, more family butler than mere restaurant worker, said that it was, it was, and proposed diamond terrapin, a house specialty, and, of course, canvasback duck, which would be served, Caroline knew, bloody and terrible. But she agreed to the menu. Del continued with the champagne, begun at Mr. Adams’s breakfast.

“I should be giving the dinner,” said Caroline. “In the consul general’s honor.”

“You must start to do things jointly.” Helen Hay even sounded like her mother, the amiable voice, which always spoke a command. In a well-run world, what splendid generals Clara and Helen Hay would have made. During the shad course, Caroline decided that she could do a lot worse than marry Del; on the other hand, she could imagine nothing worse than a season (unless it be a year) in Pretoria. Plainly, her interest in him was less than romantic. She had often wondered what it was that other girls meant when they said that they were “in love,” or deeply attracted or whatever adhesive verb a lady might politely use. Caroline found certain masculine types attractive, as types, quite apart from personality-the young man on her right, addressed by Del as Jim, was such a one. Del himself was too much, physically, created in his mother’s baroque mould. But had she not always been taught that fineness of character is the best that any woman could hope for in a mate? And Del’s was incomparably fine.

Thinking of Del’s fineness, Caroline turned to the figure on her right; he was definitely not baroque, she decided. Gothic, in fact-slender, aspiring, lean; she tried to recall Henry Adams’s other adjectives in praise of Gothic; and failed. Besides, the young man’s hair was curly and its color was not gray stone but pale sand; yet the eyes were Chartres blue. Was-what was his name? there were three, of course, to indicate noble birth in the South: James Burden Day-was his character incomparably fine? She was tempted to ask him; but asked instead how a Democrat enjoyed working for a Republican administration. “I like it better than they do.” He smiled; the incisors were oddly canine; would he bite? she hoped. “But it’s just another job to them, and that’s all government is-in this country, anyway. Jobs. Mine should belong to a Republican, and it will in September when I go home.”

“To do what?”

“To come back here,” Del answered for his friend. “He’s running for Congress.”

“Don’t tempt the gods.” Day looked worried; and Caroline found this appealing.

“Then you’ll have an elected job. The best kind,” she said.

“Oh, the worst! The worst!” Helen was adding yet more shad-roe to a Berninian figure that threatened to erupt into extravagant rococo. The arms in their puffed sleeves already looked like huge caterpillars, ready to burst and spread huge iridescent wings. “Every two years Mr. Day will have to go home and persuade the voters that he is still one of them, that he’ll get the government to give them things. It’s a tiring business. Father’s job is best.”

“But the Secretary of State must please the President, mustn’t he? And if he doesn’t, he goes.” Caroline addressed the question not to Helen but to Del.

Predictably, Helen answered. “Oh, it’s more complicated than that. The Major must also please the Secretary of State. If Father should leave-let’s say before an election-that would hurt the Major. Truly hurt the Major. So they must please each other.”

“Both,” said Del, “must please the Senate. Father hates the Senate and everyone in it, including his friend Mr. Lodge.”

“Even so,” Helen had miraculously consumed, in a minute, ten thousand shad’s eggs, “secretary of state is the best of all the jobs in this funny place.”

“I’m sure,” said Caroline. She turned to Del. “I keep forgetting to ask your father. What does a secretary of state do?”

Del laughed. Helen did not; she said, “He conducts all foreign relations…”

Del said, through her, “Father says he has three jobs. One is to fight off foreign governments when they make claims against us. Two, to help American citizens in their claims against foreign governments, usually fraudulent; and, three, to provide jobs that don’t exist for the friends of senators who do.”

“What senator got you Pretoria?” asked Day.

Del looked contented. “That was the President. Every now and then he gets a job he can give away himself, and so Pretoria is mine.”

“We hate the Boers.” Helen helped herself to a roast, whose weight on the serving-dish was such a strain on the liveried butler that his forearms trembled; but without compassion she hacked and shoved at the lamb. “We are for the British everywhere.”

“Maybe you are, but we’re not back where I come from,” said Day.

“Actually, we’re neutral.” Del frowned at Helen. “That’s my job in South Africa, to be neutral.”

“I won’t give you away.” Day grinned. “But Colonel Bryan’s positive your father and the Major have made all sorts of secret arrangements with the British.”

“Never!” Del seemed truly alarmed. “If we have any policy it’s to get the British out of the Caribbean, out of the Pacific…”

“Out of Canada?” asked Caroline.

“Well, why not? The Major ran as a believer in the eventual, mutual, more perfect, union between Canada and the United States, because we’re all of us English-speaking, you see…”

“Except,” said Caroline, “for the millions who speak French.”

“That’s right,” said Del, not listening. It was a characteristic of Washington, Caroline had noticed-or was it politics?-that no one ever listened to anyone who did not have at least access to power. But Day had heard her; and he murmured in her ear, “Back home we figure these fancy folks here are no better than foreigners.”

“I should love to go back home with you. Where is it?”

Day listed, very briefly, the pleasures of his Southwestern state. Then the latest rumors about Admiral Dewey were discussed. Would he be the Democratic choice for president? Day thought that Dewey could defeat Bryan at the convention. But could Dewey then defeat McKinley? He thought not. The country was, suddenly, marvellously prosperous. The war had given a great impetus to business. Expansion was a tonic; even the farmers-Day’s future constituency-were less desperate than usual. Finally, Helen shifted the subject to Newport, Rhode Island, and Day