With a cry, Roosevelt turned to Hay. “I said it was a mistake to put a lawyer in the War Department, and a corporation lawyer at that…”
“What,” asked Root, innocently, “is wrong with a corporation lawyer? What, after all, was President Lincoln?”
“What indeed?” Hay was enjoying himself hugely. “Of course, Lincoln was just beginning to make money as a railroad lawyer when he was elected president, while you, Mr. Root, are the master lawyer of the age.”
“Do not,” whispered Root, with a delicate gesture of humility, “exaggerate.”
“Oh, you are both vile!” Roosevelt suddenly began to laugh. Although he had no humor at all, he had a certain gusto that eased relationships which might have proven otherwise to be too, his favorite word, strenuous. “Anyway, I don’t want the vice-presidency, which others, Mr. Root, want for me, starting with Senator Platt…”
Root nodded. “He will do anything to get you out of New York State.”
“Bully!” The small blue eyes, half-hidden by the plump cheeks, shone. “If Platt wants me out I must be a pretty good reformer.”
“Or simply tiresome.”
Roosevelt was now on his feet, marching, as to war, thought Hay. He never ceased to play-act. “I’m too young to spend four years listening to senators make fools of themselves. I also don’t have the money. I have children to pay for. On eight thousand dollars a year, I could never afford to entertain the way Morton and Hobart did.” At the mantel, he stopped; he turned to Hay. “How is Hobart?“
“He is home. In Paterson, New Jersey. He is dying.” The President had already warned Hay that in accordance with the Constitution, the Secretary of State would soon become, in the absence of an elected vice-president, heir to the presidency should the President himself die. Hay was agreeably excited at the thought. As for poor Hobart himself, Hay had only a secular prayer; and the practical hope that, were the Vice-President to die, Lizzie Cameron could return to the Tayloe house in Lafayette Square a year before she had planned, thus keeping happy the Porcupinus, who was still in Paris, porcupining for Lizzie, who, in turn, was in love with an American poet, twenty years her junior. As she had made Adams suffer, so the poet made her suffer; thus, love’s eternal balance was maintained: he loves her, and she loves another who loves-himself. Hay was quite happy to have forgotten all about love. He had not Adams’s endless capacity; or health.
“I’ve proposed you, Mr. Root, for governor, if I don’t run again.” Roosevelt gave a small meaningless leap into the air.
“I have never said that you were not kindness itself.” Root was demure. “But Senator Platt has already told you that I’m not acceptable to the organization.”
“How did you know?” There were times when Hay found the essentially wily Roosevelt remarkably innocent.
“I have an idle interest in my own affairs.” Root was equally demure. “I hear things. Happily, I don’t want to be governor of New York. I don’t want to know Platt any better than I do; and then, like Admiral Dewey, I dislike Albany.”
“But the Admiral does like the governor’s mansion,” Hay contributed.
“He is a simple warrior, with simple tastes. I am sybaritic. In any case, Governor, you’ll be happy to know that I have surrendered to you. Next month your friend Leonard Wood will become military governor of Cuba.”
“Bully!” Two stubby hands applauded. “You won’t regret it! He’s the best. Who’s for first governor-general of the Philippines?”
“You?” asked Root.
“I would find the task highly tempting. But will the President tempt me?”
“I think he will,” said Root, who knew perfectly well, as did Hay, that the farther away McKinley could send Roosevelt, the happier the good placid President would be. The Philippines were Roosevelt’s anytime he wanted them, once the bloody task of pacification was completed. Tens-some said hundreds-of thousands of natives had been killed, and though General Otis continued to promise a complete submission on the part of Aguinaldo and the rebels, they were still at large, dividing the United States in what would soon be an election year, while Mark Twain’s answer to Rudyard Kipling would, Hay had been told by their common friend Howells, soon be launched. Meanwhile, the old Mississippi boatman, now of Hartford, Connecticut, had told the press that the American flag’s stars and stripes should be replaced with a skull and crossbones, acknowledging officially the United States’ new role as international pirate and scavenger.
“The Major,” Hay was cautious, “has said you’d be an ideal governor once the fighting stopped.”
“I might be helpful there,” said Roosevelt, wistfully: he truly liked war, as so many romantics who knew nothing of it tended to. One day’s outing with bullets in Cuba was not Antietam, Hay thought grimly, where five thousand men died in less than an hour. It was generally assumed that because Roosevelt’s father had so notoriously stayed out of the war, the son, filled with shame, must forever make up for his father’s sin of omission. Hay could never decide whether he very much liked or deeply disliked Roosevelt. Adams was much the same: “Roosevelts are born,” he had observed, “and never can be taught,” unlike Cabot Lodge, a creature of Adams’s own admittedly imperfect instruction.
“Save yourself, Governor.” Root rose; and stretched. “We have so much to do right now. There is an ugly mood out there.” An airy wave of an arm took in the mud-streaked glass of the White House conservatories. “And an election next year.”
“Ugly mood?” Roosevelt sprang to his feet. For a man so plump, he did exert himself tremendously, thought Hay, whose every rise from a chair was a problem in logistics, and a source of pain.
“Yes,” said Hay. “While you have been enjoying the company of Platt and Quay and the refinements of the Albany mansion, we-the Cabinet and the Major-have been ricocheting about the country for the last six weeks. As there were elections in-”
“Ohio and South Dakota. I’m a Dakotan myself. When I-” Roosevelt got everything back to “I.”
Root raised a hand. “We shall all read The Winning of the West. To think! You are not only our Daniel Boone but our Gibbon, too!”
Roosevelt blew out his upper lip so that lip and moustache fluttered against the tombstone teeth. “I hate irony,” he said with, for once, perfect sincerity.