“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Blaise was never entirely sure just what his relationship to the Chief was. Principally, he was a money-lender. He would have preferred to be an investor, but Hearst allowed no one to buy any part of a Hearst newspaper. Also, casual as Hearst was about money, he always paid back his debts to Blaise, with interest. Meanwhile, Blaise learned the business; learned it better, in a sense, than Hearst himself, for Blaise saw the business as just that, while Hearst, more and more, regarded his newspapers as mere means to an all-important end: his own presidency in 1904, followed, no doubt, by a Napoleonic dictatorship and self-coronation.
Although Blaise had no political ambition, he quite liked the power that went with the ownership of a newspaper. A publisher could make and break local, if not national, figures. Blaise had also watched, with a degree of fury, Caroline achieving what he ought to have done by now. She was taken very seriously in Washington because her newspaper was read and she no longer lost money. Inadvertently, he had driven her to be what he wanted to be. The irony of the situation was peculiarly unbearable. More than once, he had considered handing over her inheritance in exchange for the Tribune; yet such an exchange would have been an admission that she had, totally, won. Also, he was by no means certain that she would agree to the arrangement. In a few years, she would not only have her inheritance but the newspaper, too-not to mention the President’s secretary for a husband, while Blaise would still be in Hearst’s shadow, holding a purse that was less and less needed, as gold flowed from the Dakotas into Phoebe Hearst’s account. At the corner of the hotel, Blaise vowed that he would buy the Baltimore newspaper, jinx though it was supposed to be. He must start his life.
“I suppose the best time of my life was here at Yale.” Payne at twenty-four was nostalgic. “I don’t suppose there’ll be anything to top having rowed for Yale at Henley, even if I was a substitute oar.”
“Oh, I’m sure something else will happen to you, during the next fifty years.”
“I’m sure it will, too. But don’t you see? I’ll be old by then. I was young here.” This threnody was cut short by a sudden eruption of young men and women from the hotel lobby into the street. Blaise and Payne were shoved against a wall. To Blaise’s amazement, one of the young people was Caroline; in her right hand she held high an empty champagne glass, as if she were about to propose a toast.
“Caroline!” Blaise shouted. But if she heard him, she paid no attention, as she hurried to join the others, now gathered in a circle on the sidewalk opposite an ice-cream vendor. To an idle observer, it looked as if a dozen young people had been possessed, like so many medieval zealots, by an overpowering passion if not for God for ice cream. But then, as Blaise and Payne hurried to join the party, the ice-cream vendor abandoned his livelihood and joined the circle, from whose center a loud cry sounded, chilling Blaise’s blood. He had never before heard Caroline so much as weep, much less cry out like a wounded animal.
Blaise pushed to the crowd’s center, where he found Caroline on her knees, still holding the empty champagne glass carefully balanced, as if she were fearful of spilling its long-since-spilled contents. In front of her, on his back, was Del Hay, arms and legs flung wide, akimbo, like a comic doll.
Caroline touched Del’s face with her unencumbered hand; Del’s mouth was ajar, and blood streamed down his chin, while the gray eyes stared, intelligently, upward at his recent friends.
“Stand back! Stand back!” A voice of authority was heard. But no one heeded it. “Caroline,” Blaise murmured in her ear; she did not look at him but she did give him her glass to hold. “He fell, from the third floor,” she said. “He was sitting in the open window, talking to us, and leaned back, and fell. Like that.” Blaise helped her up. The others had now made a passage for two policemen, who stared, dumbly, at the figure on the sidewalk. Then one of them squatted down and felt for the pulse in the right wrist; as he did, the hand flopped over, revealing a gold ring, without its jewel.
“My ring,” said Caroline. Blaise had never seen her so marvellously collected; or so entirely mad, from shock. “The opal’s gone.” While the policeman examined Del for signs of life, Caroline got down on her hands and knees on the red-brick sidewalk and searched for the missing jewel. Amazed-and embarrassed-bystanders stood back, as she, politely, said, over and over again, “I’m sorry. Do you mind moving? His ring is broken, you see. The stone fell out.”
“He’s dead,” said the policeman, who was now checking the neck for a pulse; then he shut the staring eyes.
“Oh, good,” Caroline exclaimed, “I’ve found it!” She got to her feet, triumphantly. “Look,” she said to Blaise, as the policemen carried away Del’s body, and the crowd dispersed. “Here’s the fire opal-for luck, for some, they say. But,” she frowned at the stone in the palm of her hand, “it’s cracked in two.” Sunlight struck the stone in such a way that for a moment Blaise’s eyes were dazzled by what seemed to be firelight. “I wonder if it can be fixed.” Caroline’s hand shut over the stone. Blaise took one arm. Payne took the other.
“I’m sure it can,” said Blaise. “Let’s go inside.”
The lobby was dim and cool after the bright heat of the street. Just inside the door, Caroline became herself again. She turned to Payne. “How do we tell Mr. Hay?”
“I don’t know.” Payne was now in shock. “Thank God Helen isn’t here.”
“Let Mr. Hay find out on his own.” Blaise was practical. “There’s nothing we can do…”
“That we’ve not done.” Caroline put the broken stone in her handbag. “I should have taken the warning seriously, that opals are bad luck.” Happily, they were joined by Marguerite, loudly wailing; and as Caroline comforted her maid, Blaise knew that she would be all right. On the other hand, he wondered, briefly, about the universe. Was it all right? or was the whole thing meaningless and random, and insensately cruel?
NINE
1
“WHY,” ASKED LIZZIE, “are autumn flowers darker than summer flowers, which are darker than spring flowers?”
“Is that a question?” Caroline sat on the lawn, a shawl between her and the damp grass. “If it is, you’ve asked the wrong person. I was brought up to believe that what is out-of-doors should stay there, and not be encouraged in any way.”
“The French love flowers.” Lizzie was assembling bouquets of zinnias and early chrysanthemums; she, too, sat on the lawn, a blanket beneath her, a wide-brimmed straw hat pushed to the back of her head: she looked like a handsome country boy.
“But we like to discover them indoors, in vases. You’re not afraid of chrysanthemums?”
“No. But then I’m not afraid of anything,” said the niece of General Sherman; and Caroline believed her.
“I’m glad Marguerite’s not here. She would make a scene. Chrysanthemums are only for the dead, we believe. She believes, that is.”
“She will come back?”
Caroline nodded. “The end of this month, when I go back to Washington. Thank you for my holiday.”
“Thank you. Without you, I would have gone mad in this house, with only my loved ones to keep me company.”
“The Senator’s less restless than he was.” Caroline was neutral. Don Cameron was ageing visibly; and drinking invisibly. Although never exactly drunk in their presence, he was never entirely sober. Daughter Martha was at what promised to be the sort of awkward age that might well last a lifetime. She was large, ungainly, unhappy; an exact opposite to her beautiful and gallant mother. Lizzie, wanting to do her best for the girl, did her worst. They had nothing in common but blood, that least of bonds. It was Henry Adams who had arranged that they take this house at Beverly, on Massachusetts’s north shore, not far from Nahant, where the Cabot Lodges summered. Only this summer, the Lodges and Adamses had gone to Europe, leaving the Camerons to their own devices, with only the Brooks Adamses for company, at not-so-nearby Quincy.