Empire

Marguerite, glowed at his side, the only youthful, beautiful object in the room. If Hay had been Del, he would have carried her off and married her.

The ambassadors greeted Hay with the punctiliousness that his rank required. Clara flattered the wives. In the entrance hall, the Marine band played.

Mr. Cortelyou drew Hay to one side. “We have a problem, sir.”

“Never say ‘we’ to me. You have a problem, and I won’t take it on.”

“Well, sir. It’s protocol…”

“Ask Mr. Adee. He loves protocol.”

“It’s the Navy, sir.”

Hay was now interested. “They want to take precedence over the Army?”

“Yes, sir. It’s been a terrible week. It’s due to the war, and what the Navy did…”

Hay knew the problem; all Washington did. “Admiral Dewey outranks General Miles,” said Hay promptly, “so he wants the Navy to go in to see the President ahead of the Army.”

“Then you do know, sir?”

“No, I didn’t know. But I’m pretty good at figuring out this sort of thing. Stupidity has always been kind of a specialty of mine. Now I suggest the person you deal with…”

“… is me.” Elihu Root now stood between them. “I gave a very hard ruling. Since the beginning of the country, the Army has taken precedence over the Navy. And that’s that, I told Dewey.”

“What did he say to you, sir?”

“He said I should talk to Mrs. Dewey.” The Root smile glittered like a knife. “I told him I was much too busy. I also have no small talk.”

“I never realized that before,” said Hay comfortably. “Is all your talk big?”

“Gargantuan.”

“Well, mine’s all small. So I guess I don’t ever really understand a word you say.”

Cortelyou hurried away; unamused by senior-statesman facetiousness. Root then came to the point. “Ten dollars, Hay. Fork it over. I win.”

“About the start of the century?”

Root nodded; he withdrew a press cutting from his frock-coat. “This is authority,” said Root. “The Review of Reviews.”

“Hardly…” Hay began.

But Root was inexorable; he read: “ ‘With December 31 “… Dr. Shaw is referring to yesterday…’we completed the year 1899-that is to say, we round out ninety-nine of the hundred years that are necessary to complete a full century.’ Now, dear Hay, attend closely to his reasoning…”

“You know I’m hopeless when it comes to figures, dear Root.”

“As your vast real estate holdings testify. Anyway, you are sufficiently numerate to get this point. ‘We must give the nineteenth century the three hundred sixty-five days that belong to its hundredth and final year, before we begin the year one of the twentieth century.’ You will like this part.” Root beamed contentedly. Just back of him, Hay noted that Mrs. Dewey, all sapphire blue, had somehow got herself to the Blue Room’s center, where Cortelyou stared at her, deeply alarmed.

Root continued, unaware of the drama in the making. “ ‘The mathematical faculty works more keenly in monetary affairs than elsewhere…’ One would think that Dr. Shaw knew you personally, Hay.”

“I am Everyman, Root. You know that. An on-going exemplar of the ordinary and the modest. Something to be found on any grandmother’s sampler.”

“Be that as it may, none of the people who have prepared to allow ninety-nine years to go for a century would suppose that a nineteen-hundred-dollar debt had been fully met by a tender of eighteen hundred and ninety-nine dollars. Well?”

“You are brutal.” Hay gave Root ten dollars. “You win. And now it is possible-probable even-that I shall have my wish and die in the nineteenth century.”

“What a curious ambition. My God, there’s Mrs. Dewey.”

“She has captured Mr. Long. He is her Cavite Bay.”

The great china-doll eyes of Mrs. Dewey were turned on the Secretary of the Navy, while a tiny doll’s hand rested gently, imploringly, on his forearm.

“Mischief is afoot,” Hay began; but then the Marine band broke into “Hail to the Chief,” and the guests who had been waiting in Green, Red, and Blue Rooms now stationed themselves at the foot of the stairs as the President and-to general amazement-Mrs. McKinley made their slow, stately descent. She clung to him; he held her upright. There was something poignant, Hay felt, in their perfect ordinariness. The other guests were already crowded into the East Room.

McKinley nodded, first, to Hay, who bowed; and then fell in behind the last of the diplomatic corps, the Cabinet behind him.

Suddenly, Hay was aware that Mrs. Dewey had moved into position at his left elbow, while clinging to the right arm of the Secretary of the Navy. “Happy New Year, Mr. Hay!” She was brightly innocent; even the eyelashes were like those of a doll, in odd clusters, giving a starry artificial look to the china-blue eyes.

“What a joy,” murmured Hay, never so happy as when he was able to indulge in a minor insincerity, “to find you here with us, in the Cabinet.”

“It was dear Mr. Long who took me in. I told him that the Admiral and I must leave early, and if we were to wait until Cabinet, Court, diplomats, Congress and Army went through the line, why, we’d be here longer than my Admiral’s whole war, and Mr. Long said he’d take me through. So kind…”

Hay felt Clara’s disapproval on his right; and saw Root’s amused anger or angered amusement at Mrs. Dewey’s bold victory over the Army, and himself.

At the door to the East Room, the President paused; and looked anxiously down at Mrs. McKinley, who looked up, wanly, at him. Then the President made his entrance, going straight to the throne-like blue chair at the room’s opposite end; here he deposited Mrs. McKinley, who sank into the chair, clutching a bouquet of orchids to her bosom.

As Hay and Clara entered the crowded room, he was careful to avoid, as always, his single superstition, the cleared space at the center, where Lincoln had lain in his coffin. Otherwise, the East Room had no particular significance for Hay. It had always been a sort of theater, whose star was the president of the moment, whose audience were the dignitaries who came and went, usually without trace; yet, simultaneously, Washington was a city that although it never missed anyone never forgot anyone, either. Again, Hay thought of the house-the city, too, and the republic beyond-as a theater, with a somewhat limited repertory of plays; and types. The only time the East Room had ever come alive was during the weeks that a Kentucky regiment of volunteers, eager to protect President Lincoln, had bivouacked in the room, where they had used the fireplaces for cooking. Later, Mrs. Lincoln would make the East Room splendid, at a stunning cost to the government and to her husband, who insisted on paying for some of her madder luxuries. Now the East Room was, again, shabby, and depressing; rather like a resort hotel out of season. Where Mrs. Lincoln’s glorious sea-green carpet had unfurled its expansive expensive length there was now a bright yellow mustard-colored carpet, presently a bright perfect foil for muddy footprints. Between windows and fireplaces rows of shabby, pumpkin-shaped seats were placed, each with a stricken palm tree rising from its center. The effect was peculiarly dismal in the glare of the huge electrified chandeliers.

Mrs. McKinley endured her high estate for an hour; then the President himself took her upstairs; and the guests were now free to roam outside their hierarchical orders. Mrs. Dewey’s preemptory strike had been noticed by all; and General Miles looked very grim indeed. The Admiral seemed not to have noticed anything as he and triumphant wife departed, while Hay was taken to one side by Lord Pauncefote. Across the room the Russian Ambassador glared at the two conspirators. Hay knew that Cassini regarded him as not only an Anglophile but a dupe of England. Actually, in most matters of any consequence to the United States, England followed America’s lead; in exchange, the Administration reciprocated by tacit encouragement in South Africa. Hay was prepared to discuss the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, soon to go to the Senate, but to his surprise, Pauncefote had not canals but China on his mind. “You know, Mr. Hay,” the old man’s seductive barrister’s voice buzzed agreeably in Hay’s ear, “that the dismemberment of China continues, with the Russians busiest of us all…”

“ ‘Us’? We are not busy.”

“I speak of wicked Europe, of course, not innocent America.”