“Praise God!” Marguerite positively howled.
ELEVEN
1
JOHN HAY LOOKED OUT over the Atlantic, and thought of Theodore Roosevelt; but then practically everything reminded Hay of the President, who had summoned him to the strenuous confusions of Oyster Bay to concert a policy toward Russia, which had refused to accept a protest, forwarded by the President, deploring the Easter massacre of the Jews of Kishineff. American Jewry, headed by one Jakob Schiff, was up in arms; and, on the opposite side, so was Cassini in Washington. The President, like the Atlantic, obeyed his own tides, mindless tides, Hay had decided, entirely directed by the moon of his destiny. In the confusion of children, ponies, neighbors, it was decided to make no official remonstrance to the Tsar, but to play up, in the American press, the refusal of the Tsar’s government to accept a message on the subject.
“I believe the country would follow me if I were to go to the extreme.” Roosevelt was standing before his house, jaw held high; but since jaw and neck were all of a piece, Hay thought, queasily, of a chunk of roast beef.
“You mean war with Russia?” Hay leaned his back against the bole of a sycamore tree; and the pressure relieved, somewhat, the pain.
“I could lead the people in such a war…”
“Well, if you couldn’t, there wouldn’t be much of a war, would there?” In a year the Republicans would hold their convention, and Roosevelt dearly wanted to be the nominee. As a war leader, at the head of his legions in Manchuria, he would be, he thought, another Lincoln and so, overwhelmingly, elected. Hay lived now in dread of Theodore’s activism, like the Atlantic when the moon was at the full and the wind north-northwest.
“I favor only splendid little wars, as you know…” Hay began.
But Theodore Rex was now in full repetitive flow. “Who holds Shansi province dominates the world.” Hay wished that Brooks Adams had been born mute or, better, not at all. As Theodore trumpeted the Brooks Adams line, Hay made the usual demurs; then, inspired, he said, “Now if you want a useful small war, there’s Colombia.”
“I’d hoped you would say Canada.” Roosevelt suddenly laughed; and stopped playing emperor. “Yes. We’ve got good cause to send the troops to Bogotá. They are endless cheats. I know you’d just as soon place the canal in Nicaragua, but Panama’s the more likely spot, and if the Colombians don’t come to terms…” More Atlantic menace flowed up and down the lawns of Sagamore Hill; then the President went off to play tennis, and Hay fled to Edith for comfort.
Now Hay was again at Newport, Rhode Island, in the house that Helen and Payne had rented for the season. “The sea-air will do you good,” even Henry Adams had said that, as he fled to France; and the sea-air had indeed done him so much good that he had, that very morning, written out his resignation as secretary of state. The strain of keeping Theodore in line was too much for a sick man. Root was far better suited than he; also, Root rather frightened Theodore, which Hay certainly did not. Finally, Root was planning to give up his post as secretary of war; therefore, the graceful thing for Hay to do would be to stand aside, allowing Root to take his place, as Theodore’s keeper.
“I shall be free.” Hay addressed the Atlantic, which indifferently glittered in the bright July light. “I shall be able to enjoy life.” Then he laughed aloud when he recalled what Henry Adams had said when he had heard Hay fretting that by the time he left office he might have lost all zest for life.
“Don’t worry, sonny,” said his old friend, with exuberant malice, “you’ve already lost it.”
Slowly, Hay descended the curved marble staircase to the round marble entrance hall-inspired by Palladio’s Villa Rotunda. Colonel Payne rented only the best for his stolen Whitney son. Hay did not like Colonel Payne; but, to the Colonel’s credit, he did not thrust himself upon the family of Helen Hay Whitney. Thus far, he had not been seen in Newport; nor had William C. Whitney. Each maintained the symmetry of their feud through absence.
In a panelled study that resembled the interior of a cigar box, Clara was writing letters beneath the portrait of the house’s owner, a railroad magnate, gone abroad. “You have resigned,” she said, without looking up.
“How did you know?” Hay was no longer astonished by Clara’s astonishing knowledge of him.
“The way you walk on your heels when you think you’ve-put your foot down. I’m writing Edith. Shall I say anything about your resignation?”
“No. No. Theodore must hear it only from me.” Hay produced the letter. “My freedom.”
“Yes, dear.” Clara continued to write; and Hay felt robbed of all drama.
“It’s not every day the secretary of state resigns,” he began.
“Well, it seems like every day in your case. I wish,” Clara signed her letter with a flourish, and turned the entire huge bulk of her body toward him, “that you really would go through with it. I want to get you back to Bad Nauheim, to the treatments, to…”
“Clara, I’ve done it! We can leave for Europe next month. Adee keeps the department running smoothly whether I’m living or dead, and the President…”
“… will stop you, as always. He wants you for next year, for the election. You’ll have to stay on, worse luck. Of course, the sea-air…”
“… agrees with me. But, how can I take another year of the Senate and Cabot…?” Hay shuddered at the thought of that narrow pompous man whom he had once thought of as a friend.
“We must put up with him because of Sister Ann. She’s worth a dozen of him…”
“And he is a dozen truly dreadful senators rolled into one…”
Helen swept, very like her mother, into the room. Marriage had enlarged everything about her. “Mrs. Fish gives a reception for the Secretary of State Saturday. So Mr. Lehr has decreed, decreed…”
“What dogs are to be asked?” Hay had been rather more pleased than shocked by the Lehr-Fish dinner party for the dogs of the Four Hundred. Roman decadence had always appealed to his frontiersman soul. The fact that decadence so enraged Theodore was also a point in its favor, particularly now that Theodore was himself showing late-imperial signs.
“Alice is arriving.” It was no longer necessary to ask which Alice. The Alice always arriving was Roosevelt. The press revelled in her; and called her Princess Alice. She delighted; she shocked; she powdered her nose in public, something no lady was supposed to do even in private, and it was even whispered that she, secretly, smoked cigarettes. Plainly, late, very late, Roman decadence now luridly lit up the White House, and the President had even joked to Hay that he himself had been taken to task by a lady in Canada who had read that he had actually drunk a glass of champagne at Helen Hay’s wedding, thereby placing in jeopardy his immortal soul.
“Your father has resigned.”
“I suppose she’ll stay at the Stone House. But we could always have her here…”
“Is that all that you have to say at the close of my long career?” Hay realized that his affectation of melancholy was too close to the real thing to be convincing.
“Oh, you won’t resign. You won’t really. Don’t be silly, Father. You’d have nothing at all to do. Anyway, the President won’t let you. So that’s that, isn’t it?” Helen appealed to Clara, who nodded, with sibylline dignity.
Hay was ill pleased, for he had, indeed, meant to resign once and for all, and now every omen was wrong. Only death could free him of office; and that would come soon enough. “You two are merciless,” he observed.
“You must also see to it that we get that canal from Colombia,” said Helen, adjusting her hair in a mirror. She was now nearly as large as her mother; and dressed in the same dramatic style. “Why are they being so difficult?”