“I have never been more serious. No.” She stopped herself. “That’s not true. What I mean to say is that I have never been serious about anything until now.”
“Caroline, this is… this is…” He launched like an anathema the word. “Corruption.”
“Corruption? Of what? The newspaper readers of Washington? Hardly. They know it all. Of the Tribune, a dull, dying paper? The word doesn’t apply. I see no corruption in what I mean to do. Perhaps,” she was judicious, “we shall offer a true reflection of the world about us. But you cannot blame a mirror for what it shows.”
“But your mirror willfully distorts…”
“A newspaper has no choice. It must be partisan in one way or another. But where is the corruption in this case?”
“An appeal to base appetites…”
“Will increase circulation. I did not make those appetites base.”
“But that is corrupt, to pander to them.”
“To gain readers? Surely, a small price to pay for…” Caroline stopped; a herdic cab had seen them, and now drew up to the front step.
“To pay for what?”
“To pay, Cousin John, for power. The only thing worth having in this democracy of yours.” More than a generation separated Caroline from Henry Adams’s Mrs. Lightfoot Lee; now, Caroline decided, it was possible for a woman to achieve what she wanted on her own and not through marriage, or some similar surrogate. She had not realized to what an extent Mlle. Souvestre had given her confidence. She not only did not fear failure, she did not expect it. “Which is probably proof that I am mad,” she said to Cousin John, as he helped her down from the cab, in the dense lemon-scented shade of the twin magnolia trees.
“I don’t need any proof of that,” he said, quite ignoring the non-sequitur nature of her remark: they had been talking of Blaise and Mr. Houghteling and the ever more intricate games that were now being played at law.
Caroline led her cousin into the house, to be greeted by Marguerite with complaints about the cook, who appeared, rumbling what sounded like powerful voodoo curses against Marguerite. As usual, the crisis was based upon misunderstanding. Parisian French and Afro-American seemed always at cross-purposes. Caroline was placating the confusion of two languages, as she led Cousin John into the narrow, dim, cool drawing room that ran the length of the small house, where they sat in front of a fireplace of white marble, filled now with ceramic pots containing early roses, an innovation that had caused deep laughter in the kitchen: “Flowers is for the yard. Wood’s for the fire.”
“I wish you were more enthusiastic.” Caroline wished there was a stronger word that she could use. But their relationship was insufficiently comfortable. He seemed to think that they might yet be engaged; and she allowed him to think this on the sensible ground that as anything is possible most things are improbable. Their cousinage was also a complication. He was, above all, a Sanford; and took himself seriously, in loco parentis.
“You must,” said Cousin John, surprisingly, “meet my cousins, the Apgars. They live in Logan Circle. It’s not the West End, of course; but old Washington still prefers that neighborhood. You should have some solid friends here.”
“Unlike the Hays?” She was mischievous.
“The Hays are too grand to be of use, if you should need them, while the Apgars are always here and ready to…”
“In dry goods still?”
“One branch, yes. Apgar’s Department Store is the second largest after Woodward and Lothrop. Most are lawyers. I have told the ladies to call.”
“I’ll ask the department store Apgars to advertise in the Tribune.” Caroline was serious. “The spring sales-is that what they call them?-have started.” She had become a devoted reader of advertisements.
“Well you could ask, I suppose.”
“Is Mr. Vardeman common?” Caroline suddenly recalled the reddish tight curls, sand-colored face.
“I should think very.”
“No, I meant is it common for mulattoes to mix with the white people?”
Cousin John was amused. “No. But he has been allowed, in many circles, to pass, and that does happen here, in certain circles. I’d be much happier if you’d settle in New York, where you belong.”
Caroline surveyed the naval mementoes on the wall opposite. A crude painting of a ship in flames, from the War of 1812, about which she knew nothing, beneath crossed sabres topped by a commodore’s hat. Under glass, a torn British ensign. “I feel as if I’ve been transported to the Roman empire,” she said. “You know, the interesting part, toward the end.”
Cousin John laughed. “We think it’s hardly begun, the United States.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” But Caroline was sure of nothing about this peculiar country except that its excessiveness appealed to her: there was far too much of everything except history. But that would come, inexorably, and she meant to be, somehow, in the mainstream of it. Suddenly, she saw history as nothing more than the Potomac River, swift yellow and swirling about dun-colored rocks that seemed to have been hurled down from the severe wooded heights of Virginia, where grew vines whose laurel-like leaves could cause human skin to erupt in itching sores. The likeness between victor’s laurel and victim’s poison ivy had not been lost upon Caroline when she had first been warned by Helen Hay as they drove out to the bronze memorial that Henry Adams had commissioned Saint-Gaudens to create, a memorial to that dead Heart, Clover Adams. Almost as symbolic of the city as the poisoned laurel was the seated, sorrowing veiled figure, with no inscription and, oddly, no agreed-upon sex: it could be a young man, or a young woman. Characteristically, Henry Adams would not say which.
“I shall see Apgars.” Caroline was reassuring. “Besides, I shall have no choice, this summer, with everyone gone.”
“You won’t stay either.” Cousin John was firm. “The heat is intolerable.”
“I can tolerate quite a lot. But I shall occasionally long for the cool of…” She stopped.
“Newport, Rhode Island?”
“No. Saint-Cloud. Is the house mine or not?”
“Divided, until a decision’s made. What next-with Blaise?”
“I don’t know. I shall see what he has to offer me now.”
During the next week Caroline spent most of each day at the office of the Tribune. She got to know Mr. Trimble as well as she thought she should know an employee who was also a man and not a servant, a new sort of relationship for her. She spoke to the printer in German; tried to inspire him to an even greater output of visiting cards, wedding and funeral announcements, invitations of every sort, but the season was drawing to a close and not even her exhortations could inspire the government ladies to pay more calls on one another, or to excite even more young couples to the altars of Protestant St. John’s or of Catholic St. Mary’s. Most of her evenings were spent behind the magnolia sentinels, teaching Marguerite-and the African woman-English. Del was put off for the moment while she considered the awesome fact of matrimony and Pretoria, in reverse order, actually; but Del did not know that Cousin John had retreated to New York and his other life, the law. Mr. Hay was trying to avoid a war with England over Canada or with Canada over England. Caroline was amused to note that Hay never referred to Canada by name; only as “Our Lady of the Snows.” Thus far, no Apgar lady had called at N Street. Thus far, no new advertisers had called at the Tribune offices. But Caroline was well pleased by Trimble’s efforts to emulate Hearst. A corpse or two had found its way to the front page for the first time, ever. Each corpse had resulted in a dozen cancellations; each corpse had sold a thousand more newspapers on the stands. Caroline now knew what it was to be Hearst; but without his resources.