Empire

national villain.

“Well, if you think that, you and Blaise think alike. He’s drawn to him like… like…”

“A moth to a flame?”

“I’d hoped to avoid that phrase but then, as a publisher, I ought not, ever, to avoid the too familiar. Exactly. A moth to a flame. I hope he isn’t burned.” Caroline said exactly what she meant; but then she no longer regarded Blaise as an enemy. After all, had he not behaved as he had, she might have been simply another transatlantic young heiress of the sort that Mr. James wrote more and more elaborately about. Instead, she had made a place for herself like no other; and though Marguerite might mourn the irregularity of their situation, Caroline was delighted to be free, and-why deny it?-powerful in the world of Washington, which was becoming very much the world that mattered. She glanced at the ring that she wore on her left little finger. As Del’s fire opal had split in equal halves, she had had them set on either side of an irregular yellow sapphire. The effect was more evocative than beautiful; emblematic of a life that had broken in half, had not been lived…

At the door to the drawing room, Caroline was astonished to see Mrs. Jack Astor, like some celestial peacock- or was it hen?-in the Washington back yard. “It is like one of those Brueghel paintings,” the deep voice sounded in the crowded room. “The wedding of village swain to milkmaid.”

“Attended by a fairy godmother, all in gossamer and jewels…” Caroline began.

“… witch, dear Caroline. What am I doing in so bucolic a place?”

“It reminds you of Newport, Rhode Island, I suppose.”

“No. Rhinebeck-on-Hudson when we give our annual harvest feast to the yokels, and I see to it that their trestle tables are wreathed in poison ivy.” Mrs. Jack’s laughter was enjoyable if not precisely contagious. All round them, awed Washington ladies were staring at the fashionable Mrs. Astor, never before seen in the capital city. Caroline was agreeably aware that her own stock was rising rapidly.

“Are you a friend of the Hays?” asked Caroline.

“No, not really. But I am enamored of this creature, so young, so potentially appalling…”

Mrs. Jack had put out an arm and swept the imperious Alice Roosevelt toward her. “You see? I came. Your rustic revels are now complete.”

“So proud the Astors!” exclaimed Alice, in no way, ever, to be outdone, even by the superb Mrs. Jack. “When they were nothing but German Jews, kosher butchers, when we Roosevelts…”

“… were running away from the Indians, in your clumsy wooden shoes, which I see you’re wearing today,” she added, glancing down at Alice’s rather large squared-off slippers. “How suitable…”

“Isn’t she foul!” Alice turned, delighted, to Caroline.

“No, no. She is fair. But her bite is lethal.”

“Rabid!” Alice gazed with delight on Mrs. Jack. It was no secret that the President’s oldest child was also, in his own words, “the only one of us with any money,” inherited from her dead mother. She was also bent on being a Fashionable, something unknown in Roosevelt circles, a family not unlike the Apgars when it came to dowdy self- satisfaction.

There was a sudden murmur all about them, as the President and Mrs. Roosevelt approached, led by John Hay, like an ancient chamberlain. “Alice, we’re leaving,” the President announced.

“You’re leaving. I’m staying.”

“Alice,” murmured her stepmother.

“Mrs. Jack Astor.” Alice presented the swan to the barnyard geese.

Mrs. Jack made an elaborate curtsey.

“Do stop that!” The President was unamused.

“She does it very well.” Edith smiled a queenly smile.

“Thank you.” Mrs. Jack rose now to her full height. “Why do you call us ‘the idle rich’?” She gave the President a mocking smile. “We are never idle.”

“Some are less idle than others,” began the President, plainly not comfortable.

“While some are less rich than others,” acknowledged Mrs. Jack. “Even so, you must not generalize about your loyal subjects, or we shall all vote for Bryan next year.”

“Then everyone will be less rich.” The President was now retreating from the room. Alice remained. If nothing else, Caroline found her refreshing. But then the entire Roosevelt family was a surprise to a world that had come to look upon the White House as a seedy boardinghouse for dim politicians emeriti. Caroline’s “Society Lady,” as the woman in question signed herself in the pages of the Tribune, was thrilled with the change in Washington’s ton, as she liked to call it, rhyming the French word, to Caroline’s immeasurable joy, with the English word that denotes a measurement of weight.

“This place has possibilities.” Mrs. Jack was looking about the room. The diplomatic corps was its usual colorful self; and the few men of state were, if not actually gentlemen, got up as if they were. Only the wives-the poor wives, as Caroline thought of them-gave away the game. They were redolent of the back yards of small towns; and always frowning with anxiety, fearful of letting down the ton.

Caroline had been disagreeably surprised to meet the wife of James Burden Day. For one thing, she had not expected him to marry so unexpectedly, and, for another, to marry someone from “back home” when he had already entered the relatively great world of Washington, where he was, relatively, related to those ubiquitous gentlefolk the Apgars. Caroline assumed that Day’s wife was the price of his congressional seat. None of this was her business.

“If the wives were subtracted,” Mrs. Jack said aloud what Caroline was thinking, “the result would be a lot more amusing than anything we’ve got in New York.”

“Only,” said Caroline sadly, “they refuse to be subtracted.”

“Try division.” Mrs. Jack gave her a sudden sharp, knowing look; and Caroline, for no reason that she could ascertain, gasped.

Clara Hay gathered them up. “Come on, you two. Amuse Colonel Payne.”

“Surely, he dislikes ladies,” began Mrs. Jack.

“Who doesn’t,” whispered Caroline, taking advantage of Clara Hay’s deafness.

“All the more reason for him to make a fuss over you, Mrs. Astor.” Clara was firm, always firm; she was also generally right. Colonel Oliver Payne was thrilled to be surrounded by Mrs. Astor and Miss Sanford.

“We must,” said Mrs. Jack, voice more throaty and menacing than ever, “find you a husband-I mean, a wife, Colonel.”

2

BLAISE HAD ACCOMPANIED HIS EDITOR Hapgood to New York City to observe the election of the Chief to Congress, a foregone election, as Hearst had left nothing to chance. The original Democratic nominee, Brisbane, had stepped aside, to make way for his employer; and Hearst was duly confirmed as Tammany’s Democratic nominee in the Eleventh District. For this safe Democratic seat, the new head of Tammany, the cheerful Charles Francis Murphy, asked only that the Journal whole-heartedly support Tammany’s candidate for governor. Hearst had agreed.

Now Blaise and Hapgood stood in windy Madison Square, where some forty thousand people were gathered to hear the election results, and view the fireworks laid on by the Journal. “He sure knows how to spend the money,” observed Hapgood, with awe.

“Sometimes I think that that’s all he knows.” Blaise was sour. He, too, had spent money in Baltimore; in fact, the money spent was now at his side, a stout Teutonic man with a huge moustache, the paradigm of Hearst journalists in the copious flesh. But even Hapgood had so far failed to increase circulation figures. Currently, their hopes were based on a series about miscegenation, the one subject certain to thrill their readers, or so Hapgood, the Marylander, maintained. Blaise envied Caroline her city. When the capital was dull, there was Embassy Row; when the embassies were short of news, there was the White House, a never-ending source of “warm human interest,” to use the current phrase. Stories about the Roosevelt children and their ponies