Empire

“Thank you.”

“They are consolidating Manchuria. They will soon be Russifying Peking and North China, an essential market for your textile industries, which the Russians mean to close.”

Cassini, a few yards away, clamped his monocle into his left eye-socket; and glared at them over the head of Cambon. Cassini seemed to be listening to every word.

“The New England delegation to Congress is very sensitive to all this.” Hay was soothing. “And so am I. Did you know that Mr. Henry Adams thinks that Russia will disintegrate in the next twenty-five years, and that we shall then be obliged to Americanize Siberia, the only territory worth having in Asia?”

Lord Pauncefote gave Hay a sharp look to see if this might be some sort of Yankee joke to which he had not got the point. When Hay said no more, Pauncefote smiled. “Mr. Adams does not hold office, does he?”

“No. Alas. For us.”

“Yes,” said Pauncefote, Adams forever dismissed from his mind. He then steered Hay to one of the depressing pumpkin seats, where, beneath a palm whose fronds were brown from overheating, he came to his point. “Unlike Russia, China is already disintegrating. The question is, who shall pick up the pieces? Russia and Japan have got the most already. The Kaiser fishes wherever he can. The French…”

“As you know, we are the only non-fishers.” Hay wondered to what extent he should take Pauncefote into his confidence. Hay had already worked out a formula which, he was certain, would place the United States at the center of the entire China equation; yet cost nothing. Hay proceeded, by instinct. “We sit on our extremely uncomfortable Philippines and stare with dismay at the Gold Rush for China. Of course we’re nervous about the Shansi province. Will Russia shut the north of China to us? If they do, will our textile industry collapse? I have,” Hay decided to take a shallow, experimental plunge, “gone round Cassini, who is impossible to deal with, as we all know. He is vain and somewhat silly. Worse, he’s also been ambassador in China, and he knows, perhaps, too much for… our good. So I’ve been dealing directly with Count Mouravieff in Petersburg. Last week he wrote me a straightforward letter-straightforward, that is, for a Russian. I had asked for only one thing. An open door to China for all nations. He wrote me that outside of the territories currently leased by China to Russia-”

“Leased!” Pauncefote shook his head; shut his eyes, to blot out the extent of human perfidy.

“Isn’t Kowloon leased to England by China?”

“A straightforward business, involving a single port.” Pauncefote was quick. “Nothing like taking over all Manchuria, and Port Arthur, a whole kingdom.”

“Anyway, he guarantees Russia will honor the old Chinese treaties with each of us.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Of course not. But I have forced him to make a move, something Russians hate. They want nothing spelled out, ever. Well, now he’s given me an opening to put as large a construction as I can on his words. So, in a few months, I shall make my move. I think that I-that we, dear Pauncefote-can box them all in.”

“You seem to be getting the hang of this.” Pauncefote was dry.

“I appeal only to the decent instincts of all mankind.”

“Wait till you deal with the Japanese. They are not decent. They are not even mankind.”

“Extra-terrestrial?”

“Lunatics, yes! Moon-men.”

The President was again in the East Room. But this time he was accompanied not by Mrs. McKinley but by Del and Caroline. “They look like son and daughter,” said Pauncefote, without much tact.

“Surely son and daughter-in-law,” Hay rallied. He had yet to comprehend what attraction Del had for the President. Certainly, Del told him nothing. Only by accident did he ever learn that Del had had a family dinner with the McKinleys or that he had accompanied the President on a drive. Plainly, the boy was a born courtier.

Caroline had thought the same but now she was not so certain. For the first time, she had been invited to “supper” with the McKinleys. The other guests were Del and Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Dawes. She now inclined to the son-that-he-never-had view. It was the President who played courtier to Del, advising him on everything, including what to eat. As it was, the food in the family dining room was plentiful. The conversation was not. Mrs. McKinley drank consomme; and ate a chicken wing. The Daweses talked and laughed enough for four, their function, Caroline decided. The President ate for two; and Del was demure.

Now they stood in front of a marble fireplace at one end of the truly, to Caroline’s eye, hideous East Room, and the President shook hands and made stately conversation with those who came up to him. In the brief intervals between what Caroline had come to think of as the laying on of hands, the President talked to her of Del. “As long as I am here,” he said, in his mellifluous, even to Caroline’s critical ear, voice, “he will go very far indeed. He is the sort of person we need in this place where…” Somehow or other, McKinley never allowed any potentially interesting sentence to arrive at a conclusion; thus, he avoided, masterfully, ever being quotable. Caroline had first been bored by the President; then she was fascinated by the perfect caution with which he spoke, allowing fortune not a single hostage. If not intelligent, he was highly subtle in the practice of his political art. But then Caroline had already realized that her own criterion for intelligence was both conventional and European. For her, intelligence was, simply, to what degree a mind had been civilized. As a result, she had been in no way prepared for a mind that, innocent of civilization, was still capable of swift analysis and shrewd action. McKinley barely knew of Caesar and Alexander; yet he had conquered almost as much of the earth as either, without once stirring from the ugly national house with its all-important telegraph-machine and no less potent telephone.

“He’s very much,” said McKinley, “the way his father must have been when he was here.” Del had told Caroline that the President seldom mentioned any of his predecessors by name, a perhaps unique trait that he shared with Lincoln. “I think Pretoria will season him and then…” The appearance of Senator Lodge caused the President to smile with what looked to be genuine warmth. There was, thought Caroline, a lot to be learned about acting from Mr. McKinley. Meanwhile, Del, out of earshot, was screening would-be celebrators of the new year-new century- with the President. At the far end of the room, Marguerite Cassini looked very lovely; indeed, like a ballet girl, dressed up, thought Caroline with swift unkindness, as a lady. She was enchanting a number of elderly congressmen, her eyes on Del; apparently, he had flirted more seriously with Marguerite than he had ever admitted to Caroline, who was disturbed to find herself jealous; and was not jealousy a sign of love? she asked her own Marguerite, who had replied sourly, “More likely a sign of a very selfish disposition.”

The President had finished congratulating Senator Lodge on his awesome brilliance; and Lodge turned to Caroline, with a foxy smile. “You are still enjoying this barbaric country?”

“ ‘Barbaric’ is your word, Mr. Lodge. I am enamored of your-our civilization. A light to all the world, I should say.”

“You do say in the Washington Tribune.”

“Oh, I never read the leaders. I only like…”

“Murders?”

“Lost children is our current passion. But I didn’t think that you read our paper.”

“Oh, I keep careful track of you.”

“Our murders?”

“Lost children, too.”

“Treaties?” Caroline struck, sweetly she hoped. She had the pleasure of producing a frown on the stern senatorial face. Lodge was suspected of working against his friend Hay’s canal treaty.

“My dear Miss Sanford. A treaty is only a Platonic essence before it comes to the Senate. Then we-two-thirds of us-make it corporeal.”

“May I quote you?”

“Let me quote myself first in the Senate. Then it is all yours. You will go on?”

Caroline was now quite used to the question. “Why not? Besides, Mr. McLean is willing to finance me.”

“McLean? Why?”

“So that I won’t be obliged to sell out to Mr. Hearst.”

“Oh!” Lodge was delighted. “You’ll find a lot of us will pay you anything you like to keep him out of Washington.” Lodge looked at Del. “When does he go to Pretoria?”

“Next month.”