“With what money?”
“If you stay, I’ll go in deeper.”
Trimble looked at her, most curiously. “Why are you doing this?”
“I want to.”
“Is that all?”
“I should think that that was everything.”
“But no woman… no lady has ever run a newspaper that I know of, and there aren’t many men who have the knack either.”
“You will,” said Caroline, no question in her voice and no appeal, “stay.”
Trimble smiled. They shook hands gravely.
FIVE
1
FROM ONE END TO THE OTHER of the Brooklyn Bridge, electric lights spelled out “Welcome, Dewey,” so many points of arctic light against the night sky; while downriver, the Admiral’s flagship, the Olympic, was equally illuminated. Sirens blared. Occasional fireworks exploded along the Palisades. The hero of Manila had come home.
Blaise sat beside the Chief in the back of his motor car, the top put down the better to enjoy the display, and the cool autumn night. Madame de Bieville sat in the seat opposite, next to Millicent and Anita Willson. To Blaise’s surprise, Anne was amused by the girls and, like all women, bemused by the Chief. For a week, Anne had taken the girls shopping in order to dress them up-or rather down-for Europe. Hearst had decided to go to Europe in November; winter would be spent aboard a yacht, on the Nile. Although Blaise had been cheated of his return to Europe, Anne’s arrival was consolation. Together they had gone to Newport, Rhode Island, and the fierce Delacroix grandmother had been openly scandalized and privately thrilled by the liaison between her youthful grandson and this French woman of the world. But like all good Newporters, Mrs. Delacroix dearly loved a French lady and a moneyed one was even more loveable. She had installed Madame in the east wing of her Grand Trianon and Blaise in the west wing, and when Mrs. Fish had suggested that there might be wedding bells between June and October, Mrs. Delacroix had said, in a voice, reputedly, of thunder, “Mamie, mind your own business.” Mrs. Fish had done so: a business that included a picnic on the rocks by the sea, with Harry Lehr in charge of an artificial waterfall; but instead of water, champagne, sold by Lehr on commission, cascaded over the rocks.
Anne had said to Blaise that she now understood the French Revolution. Blaise had said that he now understood why there could never be an American revolution. The sumptuous extravagance of the rich suited everyone, particularly the readers of the Journal It was still believed, he was magisterial, that in the United States anyone could strike it rich, like the Chief’s father, and, once rich, “anyone” was obliged to live out every dream that everyone had ever had. There was still wealth to be had for the lucky; as for the rest, they could daydream, their imaginations fed by the Journal. Anne could not believe that it was possible to keep the unlucky forever content with stories of the fortunate and their extravagances, but Blaise thought it possible to string them, as the Chief would say, along forever, or as long as there were still mountains of gold and silver to be broken into and new inventions to be thought of. The native-born American still believed that hard work would earn him all the beef his family required; believed, also, that blind luck might translate him overnight to a palace on Fifth Avenue. The immigrants were somewhat different.
Blaise recalled a conversation with a manufacturer at Mrs. Fish’s dinner table: “The Germans are the best workers, if they haven’t been told about socialism and labor unions. The Irish are the worst, and always drunk. Dagos and niggers are lazy. All in all, the best worker is still your average Buckwheat.” A “Buckwheat,” it turned out, was the name employers gave to any sturdy young native-born Protestant from the countryside. The Buckwheat obeyed orders, worked hard and stayed sober. If he dreamed, he dreamed only the right sort of dreams, which might even come true. Anne found all of this mystifying. In France everyone knew his place; and wanted to change it or, more exciting, change someone else’s for the worst. Of course, France was filled up, while the United States was still relatively empty. Although the frontier had ended with the invention of California, the newly acquired Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean were now American lakes, filled with rich islands and opportunities, and the far-away look could once again be detected in the noble Buckwheat’s eyes. Blaise had composed a panegyric to the Buckwheat, and gave it to the managing editor, Arthur Brisbane, who took out everything original, including the word “Buckwheat,” and published it in the Sunday Journaclass="underline" “No derogatory nicknames for the native-born American,” said Brisbane.
The Chief told the chauffeur to drive them downtown. “I want to see the arch lit up,” he said. “I want to see Dewey,” he added, looking at Blaise, as if Blaise were the Admiral’s keeper. “I want to talk to him.”
Blaise did his best to give an impression that he would deliver the Admiral to the Journal offices for the next day’s editorial meeting. “The messenger to Manila,” as the Chief’s courier was known at the paper, had got nothing at all out of the old hero, who seemed interested only in his new admiral-ate. Mention of the presidency bored him, the courier had reported.
As the motor car glided through the cool autumnal darkness of Central Park, the Willson girls broke beautifully into song: “I Met Her by the Fountain in the Park,” a particular favorite of the Chief, as well as of the girls, whose father, a buck-and-wing dancer-singer, had made the song famous in vaudeville. Hearst’s high toneless voice joined in. Anne beat time with a gloved hand, and smiled at Blaise, who felt embarrassed. It was always hard to present the Chief to the world as a serious man; yet he was.
Just north of Madison Square on Fifth Avenue, the crowds began. Everyone was moving toward the arch which had been built over the avenue at Twenty-third Street. Special lights had been craftily arranged to illuminate the white magnificence of what the Journal had called the most splendid triumphal arch ever shaped by the hand of man. Mr. Brisbane, not Blaise, was the author of this hyperbole. But the huge version of Rome’s arch of Septimius Severus was indeed impressive, despite the streetcars that passed, diagonally, in front of it, toward Broadway as it converged with Fifth Avenue. Three sets of columns on either side of the avenue made an approach to the arch. On top of the arch, a statue of Victory held a laurel wreath. Life-size military figures, entwined with banners, sabres, guns, adorned column-bases; upon the arch itself, the Admiral was depicted, a latter-day Nelson come home to glory in a confusion of flood-lights, hansom cabs, motor cars and red-white-and-blue bunting, courtesy of Knox’s Hats on the Avenue’s east side. The Hearst car stopped in front of Knox’s, and even the Chief was impressed by the masses of people who, although it was after midnight, wanted to pay homage to the hero-or his monument.
As the horse of a hansom cab predictably reared in passing the alien motor car, the Chief observed with predictable pleasure, “Roosevelt must be chewing up the carpet with those big teeth of his.” But Anne said, shrewdly, Blaise thought, “Why should he chew? The Admiral’s old. He’s young.”
“Dewey’s sixty-two. That’s not too old to be president.” The Chief looked uncharacteristically sullen. “He’s in love.”
“At sixty-two?” The Willson girls spoke as one; and everyone laughed. A newsboy, selling the Journal, waved a paper in Hearst’s face. “Evening, Chief!”
“Hello, son.” The Chief was again smiling; he gave the boy ten cents, to the ragged accompaniment of a group of Sixth Avenue types who were now singing “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” Opposite them, beneath a column, a well-dressed woman wept. “He’s all set to marry John McLean’s sister. She’s a general’s widow. He’s a widower. She’s Catholic,” the Chief added, brightening somewhat.