Toward journey’s end, Platt opened his drug-dimmed eyes; saw Blaise; motioned for him to draw near. “Mr. Sanford, of the Roman Catholic Sanfords.” A smile’s shadow made hideous the corpse-like face. “How is Mr. Hearst?”
“Expanding, Senator.”
“In circulation? Weight? Politically? As chairman of all those clubs?”
“Into other cities. More newspapers.”
“Well, he knows papers.” Platt sat up even straighter and grimaced with pain.
“I wonder, sir, what you think of Senator Hanna’s support for Cornelius Bliss, as vice-president.”
“I think it shows what a damn fool Hanna is, and always has been.” Two marks of red, like thumb-imprints, appeared at the center of each ashen cheek. “What is Hanna but a stupid tradesman-a grocer? No, don’t quote me. Let me say it in the Senate first-or last. All Hanna knows how to do is raise money for McKinley. But he don’t know nothing about politics. Bliss, damn his eyes, is mine!” Twice, the religious Platt had sworn in Blaise’s presence. The opiates had had an effect; he was also feverish.
“Yours, sir?”
“Bliss is from New York. I am New York. Hanna is Ohio. How can he work for someone from my state?” Platt shut his eyes; and appeared to have fainted. The scarlet thumbprints faded to ash.
Roosevelt insisted that Blaise ride with him and his secretary in a carriage to the Walton. “You’ll be able to tell Mr. Hearst, firsthand, how I have not sought the nomination.” As Roosevelt spoke, he kept poking his head out the carriage window, smiling aimlessly at the crowds in Broad Street. But as no one expected a non-candidate to arrive so early, he was not, to his chagrin, noticed. The secretary sat between Blaise and the Governor, a round black box on his knees.
Blaise had never been in Philadelphia before. For him, the city was simply a stop on the railroad between Washington and New York. Curiously, he stared out the window, and thought that he was in some sort of Dutch or Rhineland city, all brick and neatness; but the people were unmistakably American. There were numerous Negroes, mostly poor; numerous whites, mostly well-to-do, in light summer clothes. Blaise, who was hatless, noted that almost every man wore a hard round straw hat to shield its owner from the near-tropical heat.
As the carriage stopped in front of the Walton, a considerable crowd had gathered, to watch the great men appear, as it were, on stage. There were all sorts of colored placards, among them eulogies to “Rough Rider Roosevelt.” But over all brooded the round smiling face of McKinley, like a kindly American Buddha.
“Quick!” Roosevelt tapped the box on his secretary’s lap. The man opened the box just as the doorman opened the carriage door and the crowd moved forward to see who was inside. Roosevelt took off his bowler; gave it to the secretary; then he took from the black box his famous Rough Rider’s sombrero, which he jammed on his head at an angle. Then with an airy gesture, he pushed up part of the brim and, aching tooth forgotten, he turned on the famous smile, like an electrical light; and leapt from carriage to sidewalk.
The cheering was instant, and highly satisfying to the Governor, who shook every hand in sight, as he made his way into the hotel.
“It’s my impression,” said Blaise to the secretary, “that the Governor is available for the nomination.”
“Whatever the people want, he wants.” The secretary was smooth. “But he does not seek the office, and he will certainly not accept anything from the bosses.”
Although the boss of Pennsylvania, Senator Quay, was not in Roosevelt’s suite to greet him, his deputy, Pennsylvania’s other senator, Boies Penrose, was on hand; and the two men communed in the bedroom while the sitting room filled up with Roosevelt supporters.
Blaise went to his own room, farther along the musty hall, already heavily scented with cigar smoke and whiskey. He prepared his notes; then he went to the telephone room off the lobby and rang Brisbane in New York. “The story is the hat,” said Blaise, highly pleased with himself. For once, he had got the lead into a story right. Brisbane was delighted. “Would you say that it was an acceptance hat?”
“If I don’t say it, you will, Mr. Brisbane.”
“Good work, Mr. Sanford. Keep us posted. Tomorrow’s the day.”
“But-tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“Politicians-and Moslems-do not observe the Sabbath. Keep your eyes open. Roosevelt wants to stampede the convention before it starts.”
Sunday the Governor of New York did indeed neglect the Sabbath. As far as Blaise could tell, no church pew held him that day, nor did he, as the Lord enjoined, observe a day of rest. He resembled, in his hotel suite, a Dutch windmill, arms constantly flailing high and low as he made his points; arms descending at regular intervals to shake, vigorously, proffered hands.
Blaise sat, unobserved, in a corner with an elderly political reporter from the Baltimore Sun, who advised Blaise to warn Hearst against buying the Baltimore Examiner. “The paper’s a regular jinx,” said the old man, removing a dented silver flask from his pocket and taking a swig of what smelled like corn whiskey. “Philadelphia’s dry on Sunday,” he said, as if in explanation. Opposite them, back to the window with its view of the surprisingly narrow Broad Street, Roosevelt was spluttering to the delight of delegates whose eyes reflected not only excitement-even lust-but anxiety: the drama was not yet written, and until it was, this entirely self-conscious chorus had no idea whom to laud. If Dolliver, the current favorite, were to be nominated on Wednesday, there would be no chorus in the Roosevelt suite, and the now exuberant windmill in front of the window would no longer revolve once the warm winds of choric frenzy had ceased.
“What is happening?” asked Blaise. When in doubt, ask someone knowledgeable, was Brisbane’s obvious but too often ignored advice to journalists.
“Everything. Nothing. The dude,” he pointed to Roosevelt, “can’t make up his mind. He thinks if he gets to be vice-president he’s done for. They sort of disappear, by and large. He’d like to be reelected governor, but Platt won’t let him. So should he take on Platt? Fight it out? He don’t dare. This is about all he’s got left.”
“He’s still young.” Blaise was now used to referring to the fat little governor, almost twenty years his senior, as “young.”
“He’s aiming to be president next time around. But he knows that every vice-president’s been passed over since Van Buren. But governors of New York are always in line. Now Platt’s kicking him out-or upstairs. That’s why he’s going around in circles.”
Indeed this seemed a proper description of the Governor, who was now, literally, marching about the room in circles, talking, talking, talking. Senator Penrose had withdrawn, having declared that Pennsylvania’s delegation was for Roosevelt. “Machine,” said the old man from Baltimore. “Funny thing for a reformer, to be the number-one choice of the bosses.”
But the next delegation was un-bossed California. There was cheering from Roosevelt’s supporters, and a brilliant smile from the Governor, as he greeted, by name, a number of the Californians. “We’re with Roosevelt all the way!” shouted the chairman of the delegation.
“The West for Roosevelt!” someone else shouted.
“The ‘rest’?” asked the old man, beginning to make notes on his large dirty cuff.
“The West,” Blaise said.