“They are dawdling because next year the old French Concession for a canal, which we took on, runs out, and then they’ll want us to pay all over again.”
“Thieves,” said Helen, curling a lock of hair with a finger.
“To put it mildly. We may have to-intervene. The people who actually live in the isthmus, the Panamanians, hate the Colombian government.”
“We must give them their freedom.” Helen was emphatic. “That is the least we can do, the very least.”
“You and the President think alike,” said Hay. “Four times in the last two years the Panamanians have revolted against Colombia…”
“The next time we’ll help them, and then they can enter the union like… like Texas.”
“Oh, surely, not like Texas,” said Clara, obscurely.
“One Texas may be too much.” Helen was reasonable. “But if Panama wants to belong to us, we should let them.”
“Or,” said Hay, “we should say that we’ll build the canal in Nicaragua. Just the threat will bring Colombia round.” This had been Hay’s policy; and Roosevelt had concurred, for the time being. “I shall resign,” he repeated, as he left the room. Neither lady responded. Helen’s hair had fallen, disastrously, down her back, while Clara’s letter-writing totally absorbed her.
In the marble hall, Hay gave the butler his letter to be mailed to the President at Oyster Bay; and the butler presented Hay with a newly arrived dispatch-case, full of business from Cinderella at Washington.
As Payne came down the stairs, Hay gave the dispatch-case to the butler. “I’m playing hooky today,” he said. “Put this in my room.”
“I’ll take you driving, sir.” Payne gazed down at his tiny father-in-law. “The Pope Toledo’s just arrived.”
“The what?”
“The Pope Toledo, my new motor car…”
“It sounds like a picture you might see hanging in the Prado.”
“Shall we ask the ladies?” Payne looked toward the study.
“No,” said Hay. “I’m no longer speaking to them. I’ve resigned as secretary of state, and they simply won’t accept it-my resignation, that is.”
“Let’s drive by old Mrs. Delacroix’s. Caroline and Blaise are there.”
Had Payne heard him? Hay wondered, as he followed the young man through the front door to the porte-cochere, where stood a marvellously intricate, shining piece of machinery.
The butler helped Hay into the front seat beside Payne, who showed as little interest in Hay’s resignation as the ladies of the family. Perhaps I am already dead, thought Hay, and everyone’s too polite to tell me. Perhaps I am dreaming all this. Lately, Hay’s dreams had been getting more and more life-like-and unpleasant-while his waking life was more than ever dream-like, and almost as unpleasant. Surely, it was all a dream that young Teddy was president and that he had just been to see him at Sagamore Hill and Teddy had discussed the possibility, even desirability, of a war with Russia. This sort of thing happened in dreams. In real life, there were real presidents, like Lincoln and McKinley; and real secretaries of state like Seward, not himself in masquerade, little Johnny Hay from Warsaw, Illinois, barely grown, with a new moustache, in a horse and buggy, driving down the rutted mud main street of Springfield, not being sped along inside an elegant contraption on rubber wheels that gave the sense they were floating on air, as Bellevue Avenue slipped past them, its palaces more suitable for Paradise-or Venice-than mere earth.
The Secretary of State was recognized as he was borne by Pope Toledo to the Delacroix cottage, and hats were raised, and he nodded graciously at the strangers who held him-or rather, his office-in such awe. When one was dead did one actually know it? as in the sort of dreams when the dreamer knows he dreams? That seemed an urgent question to put to Henry Adams, who knew everything.
In the Delacroix drawing room they were greeted by Caroline, who held in one hand a dozen newspapers. “You catch me with my knitting,” she said.
“Mine, too,” said Hay, “only I’ve sworn off reading the stuff until September.”
“If only I could.” Caroline greeted Payne rather as if she were the sister-in-law that he might have had, and Hay wondered what sort of marriage she and Del would have had. He was fairly certain that Del would not have wanted her to go on publishing a newspaper, and he was equally certain that she would not have given it up. She had a good deal of will, Hay had long ago decided; and if there was one quality that he himself would not have wanted in a wife it was will, of Caroline’s sort, which was like a man’s, unlike Clara’s, which was formidable, in its way, but entirely womanly, wifely, motherly.
“Mrs. Delacroix is surrounded by Louisiana ladies, and Blaise is playing tennis with Mr. Day.”
“Which rhymes with Hay,” said Hay, “and who is Mr. Day?”
“James Burden Day. He’s an Apgar, too. He’s in Congress.”
“Why isn’t he home, looking after the folks, like all the other tribunes of the people?” Hay looked with longing at an armchair, but the sound of ladies’ voices kept him on his feet; he could no longer bear too many standing ups and sitting downs.
“He wanted to see Mr. Hearst in New York. Mr. Hearst wants to be elected president next year. He is very ambitious.”
“He married the chorus girl,” said Payne, who had moved, before his marriage, in glamorous Broadway circles.
“She will make a stunning first lady.” Caroline was solemn.
“What a lucky country!” Hay was amused; until the room filled up with ladies from Louisiana.
Mrs. Delacroix had aged, she told everyone, but she looked no different to Hay from the way that she had always looked during the thirty years that he had casually known her. “I am now aged beyond recognition,” she said, giving Hay her hand, while she removed a large hat with the other.
“You are unchanged,” said Hay. “But the hat shows its age.”
“How rude! It’s only ten years old.” A chorus of approval from the ladies, who were now taking cups of tea from the Irish housemaid, circulating among them. “Sit down, Mr. Hay. Please. You look peaked.”
“It was the Pope Toledo,” said Hay, sinking into an armchair.
“Pope who?” Mrs. Delacroix looked anxiously at the Irish maid. Catholicism, Hay knew, was always a delicate subject in the presence of servants.
“My new car,” said Payne.
“Blaise is here, too. Isn’t it wonderful?” Mrs. Delacroix addressed this sentiment to Payne, as Blaise’s one-time classmate.
“But doesn’t he always come to see you?” Payne’s own strong familial life was so rich in furious drama that he had little appetite for the family dramas of others.
“Not when Caroline’s with me. Now they have made up.” Mrs. Delacroix turned to Caroline, and smiled.
“No, we haven’t. We simply ignore any differences when we’re under your roof. It is our affection for you, not one another. It is also my-atonement.”
“Yes. Yes.” Mrs. Delacroix smiled at Caroline; then sat opposite Hay, while the Louisiana ladies hovered around the grand piano, as if they expected to break into song.
“Is it still the inheritance?” asked Hay, who had once known, from Del, all the intricacies of the Sanford testament, which had proved to be every bit as stupid as Sanford himself, Hay’s exact contemporary.
“Yes. But in less than two years I shall inherit under the mysterious terms of the will…”
“The one that looks like a seven?” Hay recalled the portentous detail.
“Exactly. Well, when I am twenty-seven, the one will at last be a seven; and what is mine will be mine…”
“You must marry.” Mrs. Delacroix frowned. “You’re much too old to be a single girl.”
“I am a spinster, I am afraid.”