Empire

my yacht,” said Oliver Payne to those of the table who were not entirely attentive to the presidential hymn to the slaughter of wildlife. “The Amphitrite. They’ll go to Europe on it, this summer…”

“An ocean-going yacht?” Mrs. Whitelaw Reid’s happiness was complete.

“Yes,” said Oliver Payne, looking not at Whitney’s face but his far shoulder. Thus he emphasized his own greater wealth.

“It’s the size of an ocean-liner,” said Hay, allowing Reid his moment with the President, who, sensing that he had lost the table in general, was now concentrating all the more on Reid, whose sycophantish smiles and bobs of the head caused the President to give a detailed history, from prehistoric times to the present, of the beagle.

“I’m also building them a place in New York.” Oliver Payne turned to Clara, as an interested party. “Your daughter said she preferred New York to Washington…”

“And you to us!” Clara’s sudden laugh cut the beagles just short of Francois Premier, and a hunting party at Poitier.

“She never said that,” murmured the very rich man. “But New York’s right for Payne, and her. I’ve found them a lot on Fifth Avenue near Seventy-ninth Street, where I’ll build a house…”

“And we can be,” said William Whitney, “all together, on Fifth Avenue.”

That stopped both Oliver Payne and Theodore Roosevelt. Hay wished that Henry Adams could have shared this comic interlude.

“How is young Ted?” asked Clara in the pause.

“Weak but recovered. Groton’s looking after him well enough.”

Young Ted had nearly died of pneumonia, and both Roosevelts had gone to Groton to be with him, leaving Hay as the acting president. Occasionally, he still day-dreamed of what it would be like should Theodore himself fall victim to pneumonia or an assassin’s bullet, or simply a trolley car, like the one that had smashed into the President’s carriage the previous autumn, killing a Secret Service man. Had Theodore and not the Secret Service man died, John Hay would have been the president. Old and ill as he was, the thought was not entirely without its appeal. Of course, he was too fragile to do much. On the other hand, he would have a free hand to guide the United States onto the world stage, as an equal party with England. Between the two fleets-nations, he corrected his reverie-the entire world would be theirs for the foreseeable future. Although Theodore was on the same course, he was fitful and easily diverted; he was also concerned with being elected president in his own right in 1904. Disturbingly, despite the closeness of his friendship with Cecil Spring-Rice, he resented, as only a Dutch-American could, England’s long ascendancy in the United States, achieved at the expense of his ancestors. He had even said to Hay, apropos Pauncefote, that the Englishman is “not a being I find congenial or with whom I care to associate. I wish him well but I wish him well at a distance.” This was most unlike McKinley, whose benign neutrality in the Boer War had been of such importance to England.

Whitelaw Reid spoke of Russia, and the President gave Hay a quick glance. They were not to discuss the current problems with that, to Hay, mindless grasping barbarous nation. “We can say nothing, dear Whitelaw.” Hay made of his old colleague’s first name a sort of formal title, White Law, White Rod, Black Law, Black Rod, like those ancient ceremonial servitors of the British crown. “Because Cassini is lurking on the premises, and he will tell the Tsar everything.”

“Did you see him avoid Takahira?” The President was about to be tactless.

Hay intervened. “Cassini doesn’t see too clearly. It’s the monocle, I think…”

“What will Japan do about Russia, and Manchuria?” Whitelaw had refused to take Hay’s hint. Thus a man lost a foreign mission.

“We must ask the Japanese.” Hay was bland. “Certainly, none of us wants the Russians to occupy the industrial parts of Manchuria…”

“Shansi province!” Roosevelt erupted; and Hay shuddered, as he heard Brooks Adams’s suave low voice turned into Rooseveltian falsetto. “The principal goal of every empire on earth today. Who holds Shansi province holds the key to the balance of power…”

“Theodore, they are going to cut the cake.” Edith rose in tandem with Clara, and Hay was relieved. Although Hay did not in the least disapprove of the coming American hegemony, as outlined by Brooks in his soon-to-be- published polemic The New Empire, he felt that the Administration ought never to associate itself with such un-American concepts as empire. Let the empire come in the name of-the pursuit of happiness, of liberty, of freedom. If the United States was not always high-minded, the world might take less seriously the great new-world charter that set off this extension of the British empire not only from the motherland but from all other restless, expanding nations.

Once the bay-window table had been abandoned, Whitney and Payne separated, as if by prior arrangement. The Hays escorted the Roosevelts into the dining room, where all the guests were standing, champagne glasses at the ready. Back of the huge white cake Helen and Payne stood, ready for the toasts; and the cutting of the cake.

As a bridesmaid, Caroline wore a light gray silk crepe gown, a not entirely satisfactory color or non-color, but Helen had insisted that she be a bridesmaid, “since you were supposed to be my matron-of-honor.” To this appeal, Caroline had surrendered.

Now Caroline stood between Henry Adams and Cabot Lodge, and the three responded to the various toasts, particularly an exhilarating one from the President, who had moved in between bride and groom as if, somehow, their wedding if not their marriage might have been incomplete without his nearness, even centrality.

“Theodore,” murmured Adams, “is quite drunk with himself.”

Lodge’s laugh was not the prettiest of sounds; but, under the circumstances, Caroline found it irresistible. “He can’t bear for anyone else to be the center of attention. He wants to be groom…”

“And bride,” Caroline contributed.

“Everything,” said Adams. “What, I wonder,” he added with a macabre smile, “will he be like at a funeral?”

“In the coffin,” said Lodge.

“If it’s a state funeral,” Adams agreed. “So much energy for everything, including death.”

“We’re lucky.” Lodge was now grave. “To have him where he is, at such a time.”

“Handing round cake?” Caroline was deflationary but Lodge was a true believer, and Theodore’s star was his star.

To Caroline’s surprise, Frederika Bingham was in the room, uncommonly pretty in pale green. Although Mrs. Bingham had yet to enter the gilded gates of the highest society, the crooked smile of her daughter seemed, somehow, to open every door. Caroline was admiring. After all, the pursuit of a high social career was, perhaps, the only challenge that a wealthy American girl might ever meet and, with luck, overcome. “Alice invited me,” Frederika read Caroline’s mind.

“Roosevelt?”

“Hay. I never knew there were so many people in Washington I did not know and so few,” the smile was implicit rather than visible, “so wonderfully few, congressmen.”

“Your mother has them.”

“She can keep them. I suppose these are New York people.” Frederika looked about the room as if she were in New York’s legendary lion house, where Clarence King had seen fit to go mad.

“I’m a foreigner.” Caroline still fell back on this identity; but, of course, she was now, like it or not, old Washington. “There are many people here from Ohio. Like Colonel Payne. And the Stones. And Senator Hanna.” They were bowed to by the fat, pale Mark Hanna, who resembled, for an instant, all Ohio. “Is your brother here?” asked Frederika, as the two young women followed the newlyweds and the adhesive President into the drawing room.

“No. He’s vanished. But he’s supposed to be building a house here.”

“He’s not in Baltimore?”

“Not if he can help it.” Caroline had just received, unofficially, an accountant’s report of the Examiner losses for the year just ended. The paper was going to be expensive to maintain. The Tribune, thanks to Mr. Trimble and her own inspired negligence, was profitable. Mr. McLean had even made a New Year’s offer to buy; and Caroline had declined, joyfully, to sell and, sorrowfully, he had said that he might now be obliged to buy the Post.

“I think Mr. Hearst must be fascinating.” Frederika was unexpected. As a rule, nice young ladies deplored the