Empire

by Gore Vidal

  “Don’t wait too long,” was Mrs. Delacroix’s conventional wisdom.

  Blaise and the young congressman stood in the doorway. They wore white cotton shirts, flannel trousers; they were sweating. It was a sign of great old age, thought Hay, when congressmen looked like schoolboys.

  “Don’t come in!” ordered Mrs. Delacroix. “Go change, both of you.”

  The young men vanished, to the apparent sorrow of the Louisiana ladies. “I want,” said Payne, to Mrs. Delacroix, “to ask all of you to come out on Uncle Oliver’s yacht, for lunch.”

  “I hate boats.” Mrs. Delacroix was firm. “But I’m sure the young people will want to go. Caroline?”

  “Oh, yes. I love boats.” Suddenly she stood up. Hay noted that she had ripped in two the lace handkerchief that she had been playing with. Was she ill, too? Or was so much talk of spinsterhood disturbing to her?

  “I’ll be right back,” she said; and slipped out of the room.

  “Their reconciliation has been the joy of my life,” said Mrs. Delacroix, with somber joy.

  “Funny, isn’t it? how family quarrels are always about money,” said Hay, who had had his problems with his own wealthy father-in-law.

  “What else is there to quarrel about?” asked Payne, unexpectedly, himself the victim of a family quarrel, whose origin, whatever it was, was not money.

  “Unrequited love,” said Hay, and observed with pleasure that his son-in-law had blushed. Hay had always suspected that Colonel Payne had been in love with brother-in-law Whitney, and as a love so sulphurous in its possibilities could never manifest itself, Oliver Payne had allowed it to turn so violently to hate that at least the same quantity of violent emotion might be used up in the process.

  CAROLINE STOOD OVER THE COMMODE in her bathroom; and vomited. She felt as if she might turn herself inside out, so powerful were the spasms and of such long duration. She would not, she decided, ever commit suicide by poisoning. Then the spasms ceased, and she washed her face in cologne, noting how red and swollen her eyes had become.

  Suddenly, Marguerite was at her side. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

  “Dear Marguerite, you, of all people, how can you ask me that?” Caroline put down the linen towel. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “In my fifth month.” Then, before Marguerite could cry out, Caroline placed her hand firmly over the old woman’s mouth. “Maintenant le silence,” Caroline whispered.

  BLAISE, IN A BATHROBE, entered Jim’s room, which adjoined his own. The bathroom door was open and his tennis partner stood, eyes shut, beneath the shower. When it came to plumbing, Mrs. Delacroix did not share the prejudice of so many old Newporters, who believed that hot water was not really luxurious unless humanly transported in metal cans up many steps from cellar kitchen. Every bedroom of her Grand Trianon had its own bath with huge copper fixtures kept perfectly polished. Blaise stared, thoughtfully, at his tennis partner; and wished that he himself were as tall and well-proportioned. Where his own legs were short and muscular, Jim’s were long and slender, like the rest of him; he had a classical body in every sense, heroic even, suitable for showing off in a museum, once a suitably large leaf had been found.

  Jim opened his eyes, and saw Blaise, and smiled, without self-consciousness. “We can’t buy a shower anything like this in Washington,” he said. “Kitty’s looked and looked.”

  “I think you have to have them specially made.” Blaise turned away, as Jim shut off the shower, and picked up a towel. “How did you like Brisbane?”

  While Hearst was abroad with his new wife, Arthur Brisbane was in charge not only of the newspapers but of Hearst’s political career. Hearst had wanted to know James Burden Day, who had wanted to know Hearst. As Democratic members of Congress, each could be useful to the other. Unfortunately, Day could only be in New York when Hearst was abroad. But Blaise had arranged a meeting with Brisbane, followed by an invitation to join Blaise at Newport, which Day had accepted without his wife. Caroline seemed glad to have the young congressman as a guest, and Blaise was now able to observe his half-sister in a new light as she and Day talked politics like two professionals. Certainly, she made more sense than Hearst, her model, she liked to claim, knowing how much it annoyed Blaise.

  Jim dressed himself quickly, from long habit, he said. “I rush from boardinghouse to picnic ground to depot, no time to dress, think, do anything except politics.”

  “I couldn’t imagine that sort of a life.”

  “I couldn’t-can’t imagine being rich, like this.” Jim looked around the bedroom, all, more or less, in the style of the original Grand Trianon.

  “It’s sort of like being born with six fingers instead of five. You don’t pay attention to it, but others do. So, what was your impression of Brisbane?”

  Jim was now combing out his wet curls, and wincing with pain as the comb’s teeth struck snarl after snarl. “He doesn’t know as much about politics as he thinks he does. At least not our kind, in the West and the South. He thinks Bryan’s some sort of fool…”

  “Isn’t he?”

  Jim laughed. “I reckon you think all of us Westerners are yokels, which we are when you coop us up in a place like this, but we know a thing or two about the country that people with six fingers to the hand don’t know.”

  Then Blaise laughed; and could not resist saying, “If you know so much, why do we keep beating you in these elections?”

  “Money. Give me what Mark Hanna gave McKinley and gives Roosevelt, and I’ll be president, too.”

  “You’d like that?”

  The boyish head was turned toward a gilded mirror but the mirror reflected both their heads. Jim looked at Blaise through the glass. “Oh, yes, why not? It’s there, after all.”

  “But you need six fingers.”

  “I need friends with six fingers.” Jim sat on the foot of the bed and tied his shoelaces. “Except when there’s trouble, the money power isn’t really everything. There’s a lot of labor out there, and the farmers, and all the new people coming in from Europe. We’ll get most of them. That’s why Hearst interests me. He’s set up all these Democratic clubs, which is the best way of enrolling them, but I’m afraid he’s so busy trying to use the clubs to get the nomination for himself that they aren’t much use to us, to the party, that is… so far.”

  “Do you think he has a chance?”

  Jim shook his head. “He’s too rich for us Democrats. He’d be better off with you people. But those papers of his have done him in with all the respectables. You know, I’d like to let Bryan try again, but…”

  “He’d lose.”

  Jim nodded, somewhat forlornly. “They’ve turned him into a sort of national fool, the papers. They always do that when somebody comes along who wants to help the working-man.”

  Blaise could never tell with any politician where truth ends and expedient cant begins. Did this handsome, god-like youth, admittedly a rustic god, more Pan than Apollo, really give a damn about the working-man or the price of cotton or the tariff? Or were these the noises that he was obliged to make, like a bird’s mating call, to gain himself what he wanted in the world? Blaise did not pursue the question. Instead, he reminded Jim that Hearst had helped to invent the populist if not popular Bryan. “So they, the six-fingered owners of the country, haven’t totally distorted him. He has his rich admirers, too.”

  “Yes, that’s been lucky for us. Hearst has done us some good, no doubt of that-and no matter why.” Jim stood up; and Blaise realized that he himself was not dressed. Blaise walked toward the open door to his own bedroom. “We’re having lunch on Payne’s ocean-liner,” he said. He paused at the door. “Did Brisbane say that you would go far in politics?”

  Jim laughed. “Yes, he did. And he told me why.”

  “Because you have blue eyes.”

  “Exactly. Is Hearst just as crazy?”

  “Crazier in a way.”

  “We must,” said Jim, as he left the room to rejoin the house-party, “keep an eye on him.”
/>
  “A cold blue eye.”

  “On those six fingers, particularly.”

  DESPITE MARGUERITE’S PLEAS, Caroline joined the yachting party. “I must seem absolutely all right,” she said, “until…”

  “Until… what?”

  “I do what I have to do.” This sentence released a torrent of mercifully silent tears. Actually, Caroline had no plan for the coming catastrophe. She must be cool, she told herself; do nothing rash; tell no one, certainly.

  The father of her child-to-be looked very handsome, as he lounged on the after-deck of the yacht, the unlovely bulk of Block Island just back of him. The other guests were in the main salon, waiting for lunch to be announced. Although Caroline had been careful to avoid Jim, she had not been able to resist fresh air. She who had never in her life fainted now feared just that. The sensations inside her body were ominous, to say the least; and anything could happen.

  “I probably shouldn’t have come.” Jim smiled. “But Blaise insisted, and I’m in his debt-for Mr. Hearst, or Mr. Brisbane, I suppose.”

  “I’m glad you’re here.” Caroline managed to animate her voice. “Of course,” she added.

  “I’d no idea people really lived like this.”

  “Does it tempt you?”

  “No. What I do is more interesting. I’m never bored, while these folks…”

  “Give dinner-parties for their dogs.”

  “I just met Mr. Lehr.“ Jim grimaced.

  “I will not protect you…”

  “That poor girl he’s married to…”

  “You saw that?”

  “We’re not all that simple back home.”

  “I never thought you were.” Caroline was pleased that, thanks to the shock of her situation, she felt no desire at all for Jim. He, on the other hand, was radiating sexual energy like one of Henry Adams’s dynamos. She would have to discourage him, she decided, not quite certain what the etiquette of a pregnancy at this point required, or allowed. The doctor that she had visited, anonymously, in Baltimore, had been so interested in his fee for the planned abortion that she had not gone back to him. Instead, she had waited; she did not know for what.

  “You’ll be going back to American City now…?”

  Jim nodded. As the mouth still had its appeal for her, she gazed upon Block Island instead. “On Monday. Kitty’s pregnant.”

  “Oh, no!” Caroline’s astonishment was so genuine that she feared that she had given herself away.

  But Jim simply grinned. “Well, that’s what you get married for, you know.”

  “I don’t-know.” Caroline saw a good deal of gallows humor in the situation. “I can imagine, naturally.” She was her usual self now. “Is she ill? I mean does she have-spells of sickness?”

  Jim nodded, without much interest. “There’s always a bit of feeling bad, I guess.”

  “When will it… the child, that is, be born?”

  “October, the doctor thinks.”

  The same month that Caroline’s would be due. He had gone from one bed to the other, perhaps even on the same day, like a rooster. For the first time, she realized just how dangerous the male was. The superior physical strength was bad enough, but the ability to start new life, with a single inadvertent thrust, was truly terrifying. Mlle. Souvestre had been right. Better the Sapphic life, the “white marriages” between ladies, than this sweaty black magic.

  Blaise appeared in the doorway. “Lunch is ready.” For once, Caroline was grateful for his interruption.

  “I have no appetite,” she said, accurately, and entered the ship’s salon just as a gong sounded from the dining room. Harry Lehr took her arm, as if for a cotillion.

  “I had no idea our congressmen were so attractive.” For a guilty instant, Caroline wondered if Harry Lehr knew. But, of course, he could not know, and her heart beat less rapidly. She wondered if she was going to become entirely furtive in character, thus giving away her game to everyone.

  “You mean Mr. Day?” Caroline smiled at Mamie Fish, who nodded in a queenly way. “He’s Blaise’s friend.”

  “They’re an attractive couple, aren’t they?” Lehr laughed, musically. Caroline joined in; she had, suddenly, a plan.

  2

  AT EXACTLY NOON, Caroline entered the Waldorf-Astoria’s Peacock Alley, now largely deserted. Fashionable New York could not be found within a hundred miles of the city, while working New York was largely shut down. The emptiness and stillness of the great rooms was somewhat alarming. Paris must have been like this, she thought, when Bismarck was at the gates.

  Beneath a potted palm sat John Apgar Sanford, somewhat balder, somewhat grayer than the year before when they had last met in Washington, and he had reported his usual failure to budge Mr. Houghteling. Since she would inherit soon, no matter what, they had given up the case. “You didn’t say in your telegram what you wanted to see me about, but I assumed it would be the case, so I’ve brought the key documents.” He held up a leather case.

  “That’s all right,” she said, and seated herself opposite him. “It’s not about the case, actually.” She had rehearsed a number of openings but none was right. She would, she had decided, depend on inspiration; but now that she was with him, there was none, only a mild panic.

  John asked about various Washington Apgars. Caroline began with a wrong move. “One has even been elected to Congress. James Burden Day. I think his mother was an…”

  “Grandmother, I believe,” John nodded, “was an Apgar. I’ve met her.”

  “The wife is charming.” Then Caroline abandoned this most dangerous of subjects. “You must find…” She could not finish this sentence.

  But John took in stride the sentiment. “Yes, it is quite lonely for me. In spite of a plentitude of Apgars, I have no family life now, none at all.”

  “We Sanfords are also few.”

  “Very few indeed. Blaise…” John did not finish.

  Caroline did not begin. That subject was abandoned, stillborn. “I have been thinking,” she said at last, in lieu of inspiration, “about getting married.”

  “I suppose that is natural, of course.” John seemed unsurprised; also, uninterested.

  “Soon, there will be the inheritance.” She played her great card at once.

  “Yes. You will be very well-off indeed. From what I gather, Blaise did not-do as we feared. There are still certain loans to Mr. Hearst outstanding, but Mr. Hearst is good for them. Otherwise, the inheritance is intact. I hope,” John smiled wanly, “you are not being married for your fortune…”

  “Like one of Mr. James’s poor ladies? No, I don’t think that enters my… calculation, so far. Is patent law so difficult?”

  John looked surprised. “It is not difficult, no. But it is not easy to make a living at it. I’ve changed firms, as you know. But my wife’s long illness…” The voice trailed into embarrassed silence.

  “Things have not been easy for you, John. I know that. I’m sorry. Truly,” she added, pleased by her own display of warmth. She quite liked him; she also liked very much her liking him. “You once did me the,” Caroline stared up at the palm tree, half expecting to see if not a monkey a coconut ready to fall, “honor of proposing to marry me.”

  “Oh, I do apologize,” John stammered; turned pale. “It was after… after…”

  “She had died. I wished that I had known her. She was a…”

  “… a saint,” John filled in.

  “Exactly the word that I was going to use. I have now thought over your proposal-somewhat slowly, I must admit. It’s been-what? Four years at least. And I accept.” It was done.

  Caroline decided that John’s look of astonishment was not the greatest tribute ever paid her. Had she, somehow, imperceptibly, aged? Or was he otherwise engaged? Certainly, she knew nothing of his life. For all she knew, he might have a full-time and exigent mistress, perhaps a Negress, living in Flushing like Clarence King’s secret wife. “But… but, Caroline…”

  “You cannot say that this is s
o sudden, John.” Caroline was beginning, almost, to enjoy herself.

  “No. No. Only I never dreamed… I mean… why me?”

  “Because you asked me. Remember?”

  “But surely others have…”

  “Only Del Hay, and he is dead. You and I, we are both-survivors.”

  “I can’t think what to say.” John looked as if a coconut had indeed fallen from the trees, and struck him a sharp blow.

  “You can say yes, dear John. Or you can say no. I can accept either. But I can’t accept indecision. You must not think it over in your deliberate legalistic way. I want the answer now, one way or the other.”

  “Well, yes. Yes. Of course. But…”

  “What is the but?”

  “I have lost everything. We were-my family, that is-wiped out two years ago, when the Monongahela Combine failed, and then her illness…”

  “I have,” said Caroline softly, “enough for two. Or I will have soon enough.”

  “But it’s not right that the wife support the husband…”

  “Of course it’s right. It is done all the time, even in Newport, Rhode Island,” she added for dramatic emphasis.

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  She was relieved that there was no sexual aura to John. He was more like a brother to her, a conventional American brother, she felt obliged to note in her deposition to the high tribunal of her conscience which was now sitting in judgment on her. Blaise, though only half a brother, was possessed of the same sort of dynamo that she had responded to in Jim. But John Apgar Sanford was like Adelbert Hay; he was comfortably, undisturbingly present; and no more.

  “I shall be able to help you financially,” she said, abandoning any attempt at coquetry, which even if it were her style was irrelevant to the current proceeding.

  “That would be mortifying.” John was acutely uncomfortable.

  “ ‘A fair exchange is no robbery,’ as the French say.” Caroline gazed at the palm fronds overhead. “So I shall explain exactly what is to be exchanged for what. I know that you are, of all the family here, the most worldly, the most experienced.” Caroline saw fit to lay it on rather heavily, as she was by no means certain what his response was going to be. “You handled Blaise superbly, and I am, of course, grateful.” The fact that John had done nothing at all for her was beside the point, as she methodically set him up for man-of-the-worlddom.