receiving lines over the years; the moves were as ritualized as dance steps and he had learned from a master.
Repeat the person's name when it's spoken to you, shake their hand—unless you're the Queen; one notable perquisite of royalty—accept their obligatory compliment with modesty and a poised facial expression suggesting an abstract fascination with the person, offer brief thanks and a neutral see-you-later: Next please. He'd been through the drill many times at home, although as with everything else he'd encountered during his first day in New York, never on such a colossal scale. By the time Doyle had dutifully worked his way to the end of this wave of wellwishers, his palm throbbed like a beaten timpani; what strange custom led these American tycoons to believe that crushing the bones of a stranger's hand would be interpreted as a sign of friendship?
After the first hour, the crowd merged into one bejeweled and black-tied thousand-headed beast, which put him at a distinct disadvantage as he circulated the floor; it seemed that once you'd been introduced to a person in this country, he could just walk right up and start talking to you. How ghastly! Flanks unprotected, vulnerable to attack from every direction, he felt like a partridge flushed into an open meadow.
And why weren't they sitting down to eat a proper dinner? Another American innovation, Innes explained, as they ducked behind a pillar: no big meal. Only enough champagne to float a gunship and an open field of raw mollusks. More circulation of the guests, less outlay of cash, and this way multiple affairs could be scheduled on the same night and the same four hundred socialites could attend them all without offending anyone by taking an early leave. What did it matter? thought Doyle. They'll all see each other an hour later at the next party, anyway. What an exhausting schedule to maintain; half their time spent dressing up to go out, the rest in transit hurtling through the night perpetually troubled by the nagging possibility that somebody somewhere else might be having a better time.
'Sorry about Pinkus, by the way,' said Innes. 'The way I behaved on board. Afraid I was quite taken in by him at first. My fault entirely.'
'Quite all right,' said Doyle, secretly delighted. 'Happen to anyone.'
'Visions of show girls dancing in my head; quite the silly ass—look lively, Arthur, trouble off the starboard bow.'
Innes drew his attention to an approaching flock of matrons who had him locked directly in their sights, ravenous admiration firing their eyes; Doyle pretended not to notice their advance and took flight while Innes waded into their midst to stage a rearguard delay.
But in his haste to escape, Doyle strayed into a boxed thicket under a flight of stairs and found himself penned in by a wedge of sweaty faces, glowing with sun and unnatural health. Where was Pepperman? The Major had kept pace with Doyle as they made the rounds, repeating the name of each assailant as they closed in on him —why couldn't they wear little buttons printed with their names instead of these silly boutonnieres?—but he had been swept aside by the rush of some mad Italian tenor. Doyle could see the Major's shaggy head poking out of the fray nearby beyond his reach and he realized he would have to fend off the pugnacious, buck-toothed predator at the head of this pack alone. What was the man's name again?
Roosevelt? That was it. 'Theodore: call me Teddy.' Ruling-class family—although there weren't supposed to be any in this land of the free, it would take an idiot only one glance at this room to know differently. Roughly Doyle's age. Blunt and stubby as that fat cigar in his mouth, packing enough fearless will in his eyes to stare down a rhinoceros; fanatical eyes, magnified by thick lenses, jutting out of a perfectly square head.
Roosevelt had been introduced as the Commissioner of Something or Other, Parks or Commerce or the Interior of the Exterior. Americans made a national pastime of bestowing on each other titles that strung together like railroad cars, ripe with redundancy and a dearth of imagination. Vice Superintendent of the Assistant Commissioner's Office for Health and Safety Regulations. Administrative Supervisor of the Public Transit Authority, Horse and Buggy Department, Bootstraps and Stirrups Division. Nothing like the poetic lyricism of English offices: the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Home Secretary. Viceroy of the Sub-Continent, The Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod.
'Been on a lecture tour,' said Roosevelt, chomping maniacally on his cigar. 'Boston, Philadelphia, Atlantic seaboard. Can't stray too far from home now; my younger brother died two months ago. Alcohol. Dissolute living. Epilepsy. Hallucinations. Confinement in sanitariums. Tried to throw himself out a window. Family's in turmoil. Dreadful. You can't imagine, Arthur.'
Why is he telling me this? wondered Doyle. And why is he calling me Arthur?
'Terribly sorry,' said Doyle. What else could he say?
'Appreciate it. What can you do when someone you love so fiercely wants no part of living? Nothing. Not a thing. You have to let them go.' With no other sign of emotion, and without shame, Roosevelt wiped away a tear that dropped beneath his glasses. 'Life goes forward. It's for the living. Wrestle with it, contend. Don't give in, to your dying breath. Time will have us all in the ground soon enough.'
The man's muscular fortitude struck a sympathetic note. This was what he admired most in Americans, wasn't it?
Forthrightness, candor. Expressing strong emotion freely. None of the stiff formality and ritualized chatter that his repressed countrymen hid behind like field mice in a Sussex hedgerow.
Roosevelt took the cigar from his mouth and leaned closer to Doyle.
'My view on such excesses as killed my brother are these: Look around this room and all you see is wealth, refinement, sophistication. Let me tell you that elsewhere there is open warfare on the streets of this city; gangs of toughs and hooligans on the Lower East Side control entire neighborhoods, unmolested. The city's helpless to respond. Here, starkly illustrated, are the two lines along which the human race is evolving: One through the self- improvement and philanthropy of the morally strong, striving to increase their knowledge and broaden their minds; they carry society forward.
'The second is accomplished unknowingly by the morally bankrupt, through drink and immorality; two invisible hands plucking weeds from the garden of life. I predict that by three generations from now the strains of the drunkard, the hedonist, and the criminal, interbreeding as they tend to do, will be extinct or on their way out. Why? Because they weaken the blood line, their bodies give out under their excesses or their crimes kill them before they have a chance to breed. Thus the rotten branch is pruned and over time the average of the race is elevated to a higher standard. Nature has its own devices.' He stepped back to assess the impact of his theory.
Doyle stared at him. 'Are you running for office, Mr. Roosevelt?'
'I have been a candidate in the past for the office of mayor of this great city, and we do not rule it out in the future,' said Roosevelt. The supporters behind Roosevelt came to life and stood a little taller at the mere suggestion. 'Do you plan to get out to the West while you're here, Arthur?'
'I'm not certain all the stops on the tour have been arranged,' said Doyle, still reeling from the man's quicksilver transformation from grieving brother to Malthusian geneticist.
'My advice to you, tour be damned: See the West. A hard and dangerous place, the wild parts of it. And a more proper setting for the contemplation of man's puny insignificance you could never hope to find.'
'Do that often, do you?' said Doyle.
'But you'll find that man has gone west for a larger purpose; it's the particular fate of the American to conquer this frontier and the doing of it will shape his character for hundreds of years to come.'
'Really? How so?'
Roosevelt slowly rotated his cigar and stared into Doyle's eyes; clearly he was not used to having his pronouncements questioned, but Doyle did not flinch.
'The American will come to believe in his own God-given ability to master nature. Eventually, he will be handed the responsibility of running the civilized world. But he must manage it with respect; indeed, with reverence. And only through exposure to nature will we cultivate the proper attitude for the shouldering of this enormous task. If you visit the West, Arthur, at every turn you will see vistas of such stunning magnificence it will transform the way you think of the world forever. I urge you not to miss it.'
'I have always wanted to see some Indians,' said Doyle.
Roosevelt's eyes narrowed, focusing his magnetism down to a concentrated beam. 'Listen; there's been a lot of warped, sentimental, backward talk in this country about holding up the expansion of our empire to preserve the lives of a few scattered tribes of the plains whose lives are but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid, and ferocious than the wild beasts with whom they held ownership before we came along.'
'I have read that, in their own savage way, of course— scalpings and so forth—they're really quite
