Empire

function. “We meet at nine o’clock and listen-”

“To my brother. I could not bear that, Mr. President. I’m obliged to hear him whenever I-he likes.”

“We’ll pick a Thursday when he’s not there.” Roosevelt was on his feet. “Your breakfast guests will be coming soon. Gentlemen.” Adams and Hay rose; their sovereign beamed upon them; and departed.

“He will have us at war.” Adams was bleak.

“I’m not so sure.” Hay approached the fire, suddenly cold. “But he wants the dominion of this earth, for us…”

“For himself. Curious little man,” said Adams, himself as small as Theodore, as small as Hay; three curious little men, thought Hay. “Now there are three of us.” Adams looked at Hay, forlornly.

“Three curious little men?”

“No. Three Hearts where once there were five.”

Hay felt a sudden excitement of a sort that had not troubled him for years; certainly, not since he had begun to die. “Is there a photograph?” he asked, voice trembling in his own ears. “Of her?”

“Of who?” Adams was bemused by firelight.

“The black woman.” The phrase itself reverberated in Hay’s head, and his mind was, suddenly, like a boy’s, filled with images of feminine flesh.

“As the trustee of his will, I suppose you could ask her for one. Droit de l’avocat, one might say. King outdid us all. We died long ago, and went on living. He kept on living long after he should’ve been dead.”

Two Hearts gone, thought Hay; three left. Who would be next to go? he asked himself, as if he did not know the answer.

TEN

1

AS USUAL, THE APOSTLE of punctuality was late. John Hay stood in the doorway of the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, watch in hand held high to dramatize the lateness of the presidential party. Inside the church, the nave was crowded with dignitaries. To the dismay of the church elders, admission to God’s house-unlike Paradise- was only by card. The Senate, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court and the diplomatic corps were all represented, with sufficient omissions to cause social anxiety for the rest of the season. It had been Clara’s inspiration to place Henry Adams between the Chinese ambassador, Wu, and the Japanese ambassador, Takahira. As a result, the angelic Porcupine now resembled an ancient not-so-benign mandarin, engulfed in the Orient.

The Whitney family had given Hay rather more trouble than the canal treaty. The rupture was not about to be healed between William C. Whitney, with two of his children loyal to him, and his former brother-in-law, the bachelor Oliver Payne, with two of Whitney’s children loyal to him, including today’s groom, Payne. Hay had placed the Payne faction on one side of the aisle and the Whitney faction on the other. There had been even more confusion when William Whitney arrived at the church without his card, and the police had tried to stop him from entering, to the bleak joy of Oliver Payne, secure and righteous in his pew. As Hay got Whitney past the police, he was struck, as always, by the speed with which oblivion surrounded even the most celebrated of men when he no longer held office. Whitney, king-maker and king-that-might-have-been, was just another guest at his son’s wedding to Helen Hay.

Like a stagecoach pursued by rustlers, the presidential carriage came hurtling down Massachusetts Avenue, horses steaming in the cold. Before the guards in front of the church could open the carriage doors, the President sprang out, wearing a silk top hat. Then Edith Roosevelt, more majestically, descended, followed by Alice, got up like a Gainsborough painting in dark blue velvet, with a dashing black hat. Hay stood, watch held before him like the host.

“We are exactly on time,” the President lied.

“Of course. Of course.”

Church ushers appeared in the doorway. Quickly, their Republican majesties drew themselves up, and then, with hieratic-that is, to Hay’s eyes, waddling-gait, they proceeded down the aisle to their pew in the front row.

The moment that the Roosevelts were seated, the wedding march began, and Hay, curiously weak of limb yet free of pain, went to collect the terrified Helen, magnificent in white satin and tulle but no-she wanted to be original-lace; then, in due course, under official Washington’s eyes, Hay delivered his daughter over to the tall, handsome Payne Whitney, while Clara wept softly in the background, and Henry Adams, surrounded by Asia, looked incredibly old and small.

The wedding breakfast greatly appealed to Hay’s sense of drama, never entirely dormant. He had invited seventy-five guests, which meant overflow from dining room into his study, where, in the bay window, he had set a table at which, side by side, he had placed William C. Whitney and Oliver Payne. As the President and Mrs. Roosevelt were also at the round table, good behavior was assured. Hay had also added the Whitelaw Reids, whose never allayed ambition for social distinction would be temporarily sated. The President was at Clara’s right; and Mrs. Roosevelt at Hay’s right.

There was no need to fear awkward silences. Theodore, very much aware of the two men’s enmity, delivered himself of a lecture on the trusts; an occasional glance at the two money princes acted as a reminder that today, at least, and in more ways than one, they were in the same boat. The handsome Whitney was, as always, calm, but Payne, a choleric man, could barely speak for rage.

The situation was too curious for words, thought Hay, happy that Theodore’s flow of talk could not be deterred by mere curiosity of situation. For once, Edith did not give her husband a warning look, followed by a small cough, followed-if that did not staunch the flow-by “Oh, Thee!” in a stern voice. She, too, was awed by the hatred of the two men, who spoke, politely but briefly, to each other whenever the President paused for breath. The Whitelaw Reids, for once at rest in the still circle of perfect social preeminence, glowed benignly, as course after course was served, and the round table in the bay window became luminous with bright winter sunlight, an Arthurian table at the Arctic, thought Hay.

“Helen loved your gifts, Mr. Whitney.” Clara made motherly sounds. “They are so very grand, the rings, the brooch.”

“I’m glad.” Whitney was Chesterfieldian in his politeness. He had had a great deal to contend with lately. He had given up his political career. He was under fire for his various business connections. He had not been invited to his son’s bachelor dinner, held at the Arlington Hotel by Colonel Payne, the usurper. Yet he acted as if nothing in his world was amiss. On the other hand, Payne was incoherent with mysterious rage. Hay wondered why. The fact that after the death of Oliver Payne’s sister Whitney had remarried could not have been sufficient reason for so long- lasting a vendetta-long-lasting and infinitely resourceful. There was something positively Luciferian in the relentless way that Payne had gone about buying two of Whitney’s children, one of whom was now Hay’s son-in-law. Perhaps childlessness was at the root of it all. Envying Whitney’s charm and fecundity, Payne robbed him of two children; and tried to ruin him financially as well. But though Oliver Payne was the richer of the two, Whitney was the cleverer; and not made for failure.

Edith Roosevelt made the error of asking Oliver Payne what he had given the young couple. “Not much,” he said, eyes on his plate, where a quail in aspic seemed, somehow, obscene. “Diamonds, the usual,” he mumbled. Whitney drank champagne, and smiled at Mrs. Whitelaw Reid. “The house in Thomasville, Georgia,” said Payne. “They’ll honeymoon there. Good hunting, Georgia.”

The President, mouth full, could not let the subject of hunting pass unannotated. “Wild turkey!” he choked.

“Thee!”

But guns and wild turkeys were now the subject of that powerful energetic boy’s mind. “I’m also lending them