“I won’t give up any part of the estate,” said Blaise.
“I won’t give up the Tribune.”
“Unless you go broke.”
“Or sell it to Mr. Hearst, and not to you.”
Blaise was pale now; he looked exhausted. Caroline recalled a precocious girl at Allenswood who had actually been seduced. The girl’s highly secret report to Caroline, her best friend, was the only firsthand account that Caroline had ever received from that Strange country where men and women committed the ultimate act. Although Caroline had pressed for specific details (the statuary in the Louvre had created a number of confusions, those leaves), the girl had been, maddeningly, spiritual in her report. She spoke of Love, a subject that always mystified, when it did not annoy, Caroline; and could not be persuaded to tear the leaf from the mystery. But the girl had described the transformation in the young man’s face from the archangel that she saw him to satyr or, a kindly second thought, wild animal, and how the face, all scarlet one moment, went gray-white, with exhaustion, or whatever, the next. So Blaise now resembled a lover at transport’s end. But what, Caroline wondered, was the transport itself like? Mlle. Souvestre had suggested that if her students were really curious about what she always referred to with not-so-delicate irony as “married life,” they study Bernini’s Saint Teresa at Rome. “Allegedly, the saint is in the throes of religious ecstasy, the eyes are closed, the mouth is disagreeably ajar. The expression is cretinous. It is said that Bernini was inspired not by God but by the grandest of human passions.” When asked if “married life” at its peak was similar to a confrontation with the Holy Ghost, Mademoiselle had said firmly, “I am a freethinker and a virgin. You must apply elsewhere for instruction in ecstasy, and after you have left Wimbledon.”
“Come,” said Caroline graciously, “let me show you the paper.”
Together they entered the long compositors’ rooms. Trimble, in shirt-sleeves, was correcting a galley at the long table. The cat was still asleep in the window. The city reporter was writing on a new typewriter-machine, bought by Caroline during the second day of her proprietorship. “I find the noise of typing soothing,” she said to the silent Blaise. “I am responsible for the Remington. It’s what Henry James uses.” Caroline looked at her pale brother expectantly; but his silence, if possible, deepened. “I’ve asked the reporters not to achieve the same results. Fortunately, they only admire Stephen Crane and Richard Harding Davis. This is the managing editor, Mr. Trimble.”
The two men shook hands, and Caroline said, as an afterthought, “My half-brother Blaise Sanford. He works with Mr. Hearst, at the Journal.”
“Now there is a paper.” Trimble was flattering. “You know, last winter we heard a rumor that you people were going to buy us.”
“Since then Mr. Hearst has drawn in his horns,” said Caroline. “He’s not acquiring for the moment.”
“What’s your paid circulation?” asked Blaise.
“Around seven thousand,” said Trimble.
“I was told ten last winter.”
“Mr. Vardeman liked to exaggerate, I guess. Our advertising’s increased in the last month,” he added.
“Cousin John got us Apgar’s Department Store. They are having their sales now.”
The political reporter, thin of neck, red of cheek and eye, already partly drunk, approached. “Mr. Trimble, here’s an item. I don’t suppose it’s worth bothering with. From the White House.”
“Oh, dear,” said Caroline. Although she was personally fascinated by politicians if not politics, she found the subject, as dealt with by the press, sinister in its dullness. Only those who were themselves political could find exciting or even fascinating the Tribune’s political news. Happily, most of newspaper-reading Washington was involved in government and they would read any political news. But Caroline, as always in imitation of Hearst, wanted to extend the readership to those who found politics as dull as she did, the majority. Graphic details of murders, robberies, rapes were what people wanted to read, a lurid golden thread running through the gray pages. But she wanted even more diversions for her readers-or readers-to-be. The political reporter, as if sent by Heaven, now gave her exactly what she wanted.
“I was over talking to Mr. Cortelyou…”
“The President’s secretary,” said Caroline, helpfully, to Blaise, who was again turning a healthy pre-transport red.
“He said there’s no news from the Philippines. Then when asked what the President was doing at the moment, he said, ‘He’s out driving,” and I said, ‘Well, that’s not much of a story,’ and he said, ‘Well, he’s driving in a motor car for the first time.’ So there’s an item, I guess. A smallish item, I guess.”
Trimble sighed. “A very smallish item. For the social page.”
“No,” said Caroline. “For the front page.” She had never felt so entirely heroic as she did now, showing off to Blaise.
“What’s the lead?” asked Trimble.
“First president ever to drive in an automobile.” Caroline was prompt.
“But is that true?” asked Trimble.
“Mr. Hearst wouldn’t care, and, I’m afraid, I don’t either.”
“I think it’s true,” said the political reporter. “Grover Cleveland tried to get into a motor car several years ago. But because he’s so fat, he wouldn’t fit. Fact, nothing fits him except this one orange summer suit that his young wife hates, and finally got him to give away when she threatened to denounce him to the Irish as an Ulsterman.”
“Wonderful!” Caroline was indeed pleased. “That’s what we want in your story. Do write it all. Now.”
As the reporter was shuffling toward the Remington, Caroline stopped him. “What sort of motor car was it?”
“A Stanley Steamer, Miss Sanford.”
Caroline turned to Trimble. “Put that in the sub-head. Then we shall ask the Stanley Steamer people to advertise.”
“Well…” Trimble was grinning now; he had got her range. Then both started as the door to the room was slammed shut. Blaise had fled.
“Your brother’s kind of… moody?”
“Well, his mood is certainly black today. He and Mr. Hearst did want this paper, in fact, he just asked me to sell it to him, and I said no.”
Trimble frowned. “Would you make a profit?”
“Yes.”
“You should sell. We haven’t a chance. The Star and the Post have us beat.”
Caroline’s pleasure in the Stanley Steamer story was now replaced by that sense of doom which often visited her when she awakened in the early hours of the morning, and wondered what on earth she was doing in a small house in Georgetown, publishing a newspaper that might, eventually, ruin her. “If it’s so hopeless, why does Hearst want to buy?”
“He’ll pour in money. He don’t care what he loses. And he’ll have a Washington power-base. He’s running for president.”
Caroline was momentarily distracted. “How do you know that?”
“Friend at the Journal told me. Hearst thinks Bryan can’t win, and he can.”
“How curious! The first time I spoke to him, he said he wanted Admiral Dewey.” But Caroline had grasped a point interesting to her in a way that politics was not. “You haven’t been talking to the Journal about a job, have you?”
Trimble’s pale blue eyes now avoided her own, she hoped, steady gaze. “We’re losing circulation every month,” he said.
“Not on the newsstands.”
“That’s no money really. Advertising rates are fixed by your paid subscriptions.”
“Then we’ll hold a-what is it?-you know, money for nothing? A lottery.”