in the elevator, their appearances at state sessions on stilts, their snakes and frogs at table, and, above all, the Jovian sovereign Theodore, conducting himself like a king, destined by birth to his high estate. Caroline need do nothing to fill the columns of her paper; they filled themselves. All he had was miscegenation; and then what?
Blaise had wanted to join Hearst at the Lexington Avenue house, but Hapgood suggested that they get a sense of the crowd first. “After all, if the Chief”-although he worked for Blaise now, the Chief was still the Chief-“is going to be the candidate in ’04, we’ll get some sense of it now, from the crowd.”
“A lot of Bowery.” Blaise knew his Manhattan crowds. “Also Tammany.” Everyone was in a gala mood. Huge transparencies celebrated Hearst’s victory of fifteen thousand eight hundred votes over his dim Republican adversary; and his lead over the entire ticket by thirty-five hundred votes, which made him the largest Democratic vote-getter in the state. Tammany’s governor-to-be was not-to-be: in a close race, he had lost to the Republicans. This then was the night that Hearst had dreamed of. He had won his first election in the biggest possible way.
Blaise and Hapgood found themselves not far from a band which kept playing, rather tactlessly, “California, Here I Come,” a tribute to Hearst’s origin rather than to his adopted domicile, which was now dispatching him to Washington. Overhead a manned balloon was lit up with colored lanterns. The crowd was festive, as well they should be; free schooners of beer were being served at one end of the square beneath the legend “William Randolph Hearst, Labor’s Friend,” while nearby an electrical sign proclaimed, “Congress Must Control the Trusts,” a not-so-subtle reminder that the current president was less than arduous in his efforts to master the country’s owners.
Hearst’s socialism-if that was what it was-always bemused Blaise, who never ceased, for a moment, to be loyal to his own class and could not conceive any other loyalty. Although Hearst would have to pose as a friend of the working-man and the enemy of the rich if he wanted to replace William Jennings Bryan as the plain people’s tribune, he was not entirely the demagogue others thought him. The rich Mr. Hearst, who had inherited his money, disliked those other rich men, who had inherited theirs. He was genuinely attuned not so much to the hard-working worthy poor as he was to those excluded from society itself. Himself a sort of outlaw, he not only lived outside the law but used law to flout law. Hearst might yet strike that nerve in a still-savage land which would make him its natural leader. Blaise was, suddenly, aware that he was present at an historic moment, the genesis of what might be an astonishing, even Napoleonic career.
As if to emphasize and punctuate the Napoleonic image, Madison Square exploded-literally exploded. Blaise fell to his knees on the pavement, while Hapgood sat down beside him with a crash. Sound-waves buffeted them like Montauk surf. The band stopped playing. Then the screaming began; and the sound of ambulances. Overhead the balloon hovered; then began its descent. The electrical sign still threatened the trusts, but the various transparencies had been abandoned, as people ran, in panic, from the square, where something, Blaise could not tell what, had blown up.
“Anarchists!” Hapgood was now on his feet, ever the reporter, the Hearst reporter.
In the cool autumn air there was the acrid scent of-what?-gunpowder, Blaise decided, as he and Hapgood, like brave soldiers in a battle, hurried against the fleeing crowd. Let others run from battle;
The fire department arrived just as Blaise and Hapgood found the source of the explosion, a small cast-iron mortar inside of which a fireworks bomb had gone off, igniting dozens of other bombs. The principal damage had been to the windows of a building nearby. The glass had been pulverized, and like so many icy lethal bullets had laid low dozens of men, women and children. Some stood, screaming, faces bleeding; others lay ominously still on the pavement. Blaise stared down at a man, spread-eagled face down; in the back of his neck there was a diamond- shaped piece of glass which must have severed the spine. To Blaise’s amazement there was no blood, only the glass, shining in the lamplight, and the dark slit, rather like a letterbox into which someone had tried to insert a glass message.
“How many dead, wounded?” Blaise was delighted by his own coolness; and realized what a truly easy time of it Roosevelt must have had at San Juan Hill. Everything so fast, so shocking, so pointless.
“At least a hundred, I’d say.” Hapgood’s notebook was out; and he was writing and looking simultaneously; then police and firemen made them move on.
Hearst was seated at his Napoleonic desk; he had forgone, no doubt forever, the bright plaids and festive ties of his Prince Hal days. Now he was in a statesman’s black frock-coat, with a black bow tie and a white shirt. The legs once so haphazardly arranged upon the desk were set, side by side, beneath it, as he talked into the telephone to Brisbane at the
Blaise sat on the sofa opposite, as he had so often before in his days as apprentice. The Willson girls, each in a glittering ball gown, were at the opposite end of the museum-like room, playing Parcheesi. Somewhere, a supper party was being laid on to celebrate the victory of the rising political star. But for now, Hearst listened, murmured questions, shut his eyes as if better to visualize not the explosion in the square but the headlines that would describe it. Finally, he put down the receiver.
“I was there,” said Blaise.
With professional skill, Hearst questioned Blaise; took notes; ignored the chatter of the Willson girls. “There will be lawsuits,” he said finally, “even though the district attorney’s prepared to exonerate us. Well, it’s done. The important thing is to keep Roosevelt on the run. He’s been an ass over the coal-miners. You see, he’s the worker’s enemy.”
“Yes,” said Blaise. It was odd to hear the Chief express political opinions. As a rule, he was indifferent to the rights and wrongs of any issue. All that mattered was how to play the news. Now he himself meant to be the news. Blaise wondered if Hearst understood the risk that he was running. He who had devoted a lifetime to making lurid fictions of others was now himself a candidate for re-creation. Blaise was not certain what a petard was but he understood about self-hoisting. Meanwhile, he congratulated the newest star in the political firmament.
Hearst was matter-of-fact. “I should’ve gone for the governorship. But there wasn’t the time, and 1904’s almost here, and we’ve got nobody to put up against Roosevelt. I’ve got Los Angeles.”
“Los Angeles?”
“A paper there. The
“What about Baltimore?”
“I’ll need some organizing there, Blaise. Maybe you could see to it.” Hearst swung back and forth between newspapers and politics as if the two were the same, which perhaps they were to him at the moment, and if they were, Blaise saw trouble ahead. One could not be both inventor of the American world and the thing invented.
George Thompson was at the door, round face more than usually flushed with late-night celebrating. “The gentleman you are expecting, sir,” was the cryptic announcement.
Hearst leapt to his feet; as did Blaise. The Willson girls continued to play Parcheesi. The doorway now framed the unmistakable statesmanlike figure, in black alpaca frock-coat and string tie, of William Jennings Bryan.
“Colonel Bryan!” Hearst presented five fingers to the Great Commoner, as Bryan was known to the inventive press; and the Great Commoner squeezed the fingers in his experienced grasp, and smiled his thin wide smile. Blaise had never seen the idol of the masses at such close quarters; was surprised to find him as impressive close up as he was in the illuminated distance of an auditorium, the voice surging from that barrel chest like a force of nature uncontrolled by mere man, much less by Bryan himself.
“You have won the first of many victories.” Bryan’s speaking voice was agreeably low, not at all like the thunder of the hustings. “I, too, started with an election to the House of Representatives,” he added, as if, thought Blaise, this was necessarily a recommendation. After all, he had been beaten for every office since.
Hearst introduced Colonel Bryan to the Misses Willson as “my fiancee and her sister.” The Great Commoner maintained his Old Testament poise. As for Blaise, he complimented him on a recent editorial in the
Hearst riffled the pages professionally; shook his head sadly. “I see, Colonel, you don’t follow my advice.”
“Well, Mr. Hearst, I aim at a quieter public than yours.” Bryan was benign. He even smiled, vaguely, at the
