want of a better word-but they did.
The three swarmed over Uncle Henry; receiving chaste touches of his hands, now raised in papal blessing. Helen was more and more like Clara, while Alice was like himself. The President’s Alice was, happily, not like her father, except for a thin mouth full of large snaggled teeth. Alice Roosevelt was more handsome than pretty, with a slender figure, and gray marbly eyes; she stood very straight, and comported herself like the regal princess she saw herself as. She was also given to demonstrations of manic energy, and there were already signs of a dexterous, most undemocratic-yet hardly royal-wit. Henry Adams affected to find her intimidating. Eager to please, she proceeded to intimidate Uncle Henry. “You must come to the party. It’s not every day I have a debut in the White House…”
“I am too old, dear child…”
“Of course you are. So we’ll prop you up like who was it at the feast?”
“Themistocles…”
“Mr. Hay, make him come!” Alice Roosevelt turned to Hay, one arm raised high like the goddess of victory.
“I’ll do what I can.”
Helen threw herself, with rather too much of a crash, into the chair opposite Adams, the large chair consecrated to her mother, who was still larger, Hay was relieved to note, than their daughter. He was also relieved that Helen would marry Payne Whitney the following month. Were she to become even larger… He dared not think of what it would be like to live in a house between that massive Scylla, his wife, and a prospective spinster of equal grandeur, Helen, as Charybdis.
“Everyone
“Surely punch is suitable for young people.” Hay, making kindly grandfatherly sounds, could think only of voluptuous black women, heavy-breasted and sinuous, crabs to his relevant shell, to appropriate Henry’s ugly image. How lucky King had been. Even as he was dying, he had had “a woman,” and, apparently, such a woman as the unadventurous Hay had not known since he was a very young man, living a bachelor life in Europe. Was it now too late? Of course, he was dying, but then King had been dying, too. Where there was a will, there was Eros. There was, also, Thanatos, he grimly completed his reverie. He would never again touch warm silken skin.
“We’re to have a hardwood floor in the East Room instead of that awful mustard carpet, and those round seats with the palms sprouting out of them. It’s a horrible house, isn’t it, Uncle Henry?”
“Well, it has never been a
“Father is going to redo everything, as soon as he makes Congress cough up the money. It’s intolerable, all of us upstairs, and Father’s office, too, in such a small place. We’re going to do over the entire floor, from west to east…”
“And where will the President have his office?” In Hay’s memory, every administration had tried to change the White House; and except for the odd Tiffany screen, nothing much had been altered since Lincoln’s time.
“Father’s going to tear down the conservatories, and put his office where they were. So he’ll be practically next door to you at the State Department.”
“Is this wise?” Even the iconoclast Adams-and what mustier icon than the White House was better suited for his smashing?-was dismayed.
“Either our family grows smaller or the house grows larger.” Thus the Republican princess decreed.
“Alice knows her mind, her mind!” Helen applauded.
William was again at the door; this time he stood very straight, as he announced, “The President.”
All rose, including the Republican princess, as Roosevelt, dressed in morning suit, skipped into the room, as if he were still racing upstairs, two at a time, his usual practice, which would, sooner or later, Hay thought, with true pleasure, cause that thick little body to break down. “I’ve been to church!” The President shared the great news with all of them. Lately, he had taken to dropping in on Hay after church, which gave sovereign and minister a few often crucial moments alone together, away from secretaries and callers. The President, Hay had duly noted, could not be alone. Even when he was reading, a family passion, he liked to have fellow-readers all about him. “I heard you were over here, for breakfast…”
“Join us, Mr. President.” Adams was silky.
“Oh, no! Your food’s much too good for the likes of me.”
“Chipped beef will do for the President.” Alice grimaced. “And a nice hash with an egg on it. And ketchup.”
“Perfect breakfast! If Alice ever exercised, she’d eat hash, too. Prince Henry of Prussia.” Roosevelt flung the name at Hay; then took up an imperial position before the fire; and clicked his teeth three times.
“Father!” Alice shuddered. “Don’t do that. You know, the slightest breeze makes my bottom teeth sway…”
“I’m not making a breeze.”
“But you’re clicking your teeth, which reminds me… Look,” Alice opened wide her mouth, “the horror!”
But all Hay could see was a lower tier of teeth somewhat smaller than the tombstones above.
“Do shut, please!” Roosevelt, in turn, as if by paternal example, pursed his own lips tight-shut.
“I should have had them all pulled out. Every debutante in America would have imitated me, of course. A nation of toothless girls-like the Chinese women, with their bound feet…”
“Alice, your teeth have exhausted us as a subject…”
“I,” said Adams, “was just beginning to enjoy this dental-permutation on Henry James’s American girl…”
“Effete snob!” Roosevelt glared.
“Prince Henry of Prussia.” Hay retrieved the lost subject.
“Oh, yes. He’s to come in February, to pick up the yacht we’re building for the Kaiser, or so I was informed at church by old Holleben, who had converted to Presbyterianism, at least for the day. What do we do?”
“Give him a state dinner. But try to keep him from getting around the country…”
“Since I am a debutante,” said Alice, “I shall be asked to charm him. Is he married?” Alice was now moving about the room in imitation of her father, only as she walked, she swept her long dress this way and that, as if it were a royal train. “If I married him, I’d be Princess Alice of Prussia, wouldn’t I? So much nicer than Oyster Bay…”
“Princess Henry, I should think.” Adams was in his avuncular glory. “You will civilize the Teuton. If that’s possible.”
“Barbarize them even more.” Roosevelt was brisk. “Anyway, he’s married, and no Roosevelt’s going to marry a Prussian.”
“Unless the next election looks very close,” added Hay.
“Extraordinary!” Roosevelt added at least one too many syllables to the word. “The loyalty common Americans have to Germany. Imagine if we felt the same way about Holland.”
“We’ve been away longer,” said Alice. “Come on, girls.” She swept from the room with Hay’s daughters in tow.
“You are good to take Alice in.” Roosevelt sat in the chair vacated by Helen. “She is so-strenuous.”
“Like her father.” Hay thought of black women; and spoke of Prince Henry. “He’s here for one purpose. To stir up the German-Americans.”
“We won’t allow that. He’s supposed to be a gentleman. Not like his brother. The Kaiser’s a cad, all in all. Well, one day he’ll go too far. He’ll put out his neck and place it on the block.” Roosevelt clapped right hand with left; the sound was like a pistol shot. “No head. No Kaiser.”
“Then we shall be king of the castle?” Adams’s voice was mild, always, Hay knew, a dangerous sign. Adams was growing more and more restive not only with the bellicose President but with his own brother, Brooks, who never ceased to make the American eagle scream.
“That may be.” Roosevelt was equally mild; and guarded.
“Brooks believes that we are now at the fateful moment.” Adams smiled at Nebuchadnezzar. “The domination of the world is between us and Europe. So-which will it be?”
“Oh, you must come on Thursdays, and enlighten us.” Roosevelt was not to be drawn out. He was wily, Hay had discovered, rather to his surprise. Under all the noise, there was a calculating machine that never ceased to
