“Father’s going to tear down the conservatories, and put his office where they were. So he’ll be practically next door to you at the State Department.”
“Is this wise?” Even the iconoclast Adams-and what mustier icon than the White House was better suited for his smashing?-was dismayed.
“Either our family grows smaller or the house grows larger.” Thus the Republican princess decreed.
“Alice knows her mind, her mind!” Helen applauded.
William was again at the door; this time he stood very straight, as he announced, “The President.”
All rose, including the Republican princess, as Roosevelt, dressed in morning suit, skipped into the room, as if he were still racing upstairs, two at a time, his usual practice, which would, sooner or later, Hay thought, with true pleasure, cause that thick little body to break down. “I’ve been to church!” The President shared the great news with all of them. Lately, he had taken to dropping in on Hay after church, which gave sovereign and minister a few often crucial moments alone together, away from secretaries and callers. The President, Hay had duly noted, could not be alone. Even when he was reading, a family passion, he liked to have fellow-readers all about him. “I heard you were over here, for breakfast…”
“Join us, Mr. President.” Adams was silky.
“Oh, no! Your food’s much too good for the likes of me.”
“Chipped beef will do for the President.” Alice grimaced. “And a nice hash with an egg on it. And ketchup.”
“Perfect breakfast! If Alice ever exercised, she’d eat hash, too. Prince Henry of Prussia.” Roosevelt flung the name at Hay; then took up an imperial position before the fire; and clicked his teeth three times.
“Father!” Alice shuddered. “Don’t do that. You know, the slightest breeze makes my bottom teeth sway…”
“I’m not making a breeze.”
“But you’re clicking your teeth, which reminds me… Look,” Alice opened wide her mouth, “the horror!”
But all Hay could see was a lower tier of teeth somewhat smaller than the tombstones above. “They are all loose,” she said triumphantly, mouth still open, diction suffering.
“Do shut, please!” Roosevelt, in turn, as if by paternal example, pursed his own lips tight-shut.
“I should have had them all pulled out. Every debutante in America would have imitated me, of course. A nation of toothless girls-like the Chinese women, with their bound feet…”
“Alice, your teeth have exhausted us as a subject…”
“I,” said Adams, “was just beginning to enjoy this dental-permutation on Henry James’s American girl…”
“Effete snob!” Roosevelt glared.
“Prince Henry of Prussia.” Hay retrieved the lost subject.
“Oh, yes. He’s to come in February, to pick up the yacht we’re building for the Kaiser, or so I was informed at church by old Holleben, who had converted to Presbyterianism, at least for the day. What do we do?”
“Give him a state dinner. But try to keep him from getting around the country…”
“Since I am a debutante,” said Alice, “I shall be asked to charm him. Is he married?” Alice was now moving about the room in imitation of her father, only as she walked, she swept her long dress this way and that, as if it were a royal train. “If I married him, I’d be Princess Alice of Prussia, wouldn’t I? So much nicer than Oyster Bay…”
“Princess Henry, I should think.” Adams was in his avuncular glory. “You will civilize the Teuton. If that’s possible.”
“Barbarize them even more.” Roosevelt was brisk. “Anyway, he’s married, and no Roosevelt’s going to marry a Prussian.”
“Unless the next election looks very close,” added Hay.
“Extraordinary!” Roosevelt added at least one too many syllables to the word. “The loyalty common Americans have to Germany. Imagine if we felt the same way about Holland.”
“We’ve been away longer,” said Alice. “Come on, girls.” She swept from the room with Hay’s daughters in tow.
“You are good to take Alice in.” Roosevelt sat in the chair vacated by Helen. “She is so-strenuous.”
“Like her father.” Hay thought of black women; and spoke of Prince Henry. “He’s here for one purpose. To stir up the German-Americans.”
“We won’t allow that. He’s supposed to be a gentleman. Not like his brother. The Kaiser’s a cad, all in all. Well, one day he’ll go too far. He’ll put out his neck and place it on the block.” Roosevelt clapped right hand with left; the sound was like a pistol shot. “No head. No Kaiser.”
“Then we shall be king of the castle?” Adams’s voice was mild, always, Hay knew, a dangerous sign. Adams was growing more and more restive not only with the bellicose President but with his own brother, Brooks, who never ceased to make the American eagle scream.
“That may be.” Roosevelt was equally mild; and guarded.
“Brooks believes that we are now at the fateful moment.” Adams smiled at Nebuchadnezzar. “The domination of the world is between us and Europe. So-which will it be?”
“Oh, you must come on Thursdays, and enlighten us.” Roosevelt was not to be drawn out. He was wily, Hay had discovered, rather to his surprise. Under all the noise, there was a calculating machine that never ceased to function. “We meet at nine o’clock and listen-”
“To my brother. I could not bear that, Mr. President. I’m obliged to hear him whenever I-he likes.”
“We’ll pick a Thursday when he’s not there.” Roosevelt was on his feet. “Your breakfast guests will be coming soon. Gentlemen.” Adams and Hay rose; their sovereign beamed upon them; and departed.
“He will have us at war.” Adams was bleak.
“I’m not so sure.” Hay approached the fire, suddenly cold. “But he wants the dominion of this earth, for us…”
“For himself. Curious little man,” said Adams, himself as small as Theodore, as small as Hay; three curious little men, thought Hay. “Now there are three of us.” Adams looked at Hay, forlornly.
“Three curious little men?”
“No. Three Hearts where once there were five.”
Hay felt a sudden excitement of a sort that had not troubled him for years; certainly, not since he had begun to die. “Is there a photograph?” he asked, voice trembling in his own ears. “Of her?”
“Of who?” Adams was bemused by firelight.
“The black woman.” The phrase itself reverberated in Hay’s head, and his mind was, suddenly, like a boy’s, filled with images of feminine flesh.
“As the trustee of his will, I suppose you could ask her for one. Droit de l’avocat, one might say. King outdid us all. We died long ago, and went on living. He kept on living long after he should’ve been dead.”
Two Hearts gone, thought Hay; three left. Who would be next to go? he asked himself, as if he did not know the answer.
TEN
1
AS USUAL, THE APOSTLE of punctuality was late. John Hay stood in the doorway of the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, watch in hand held high to dramatize the lateness of the presidential party. Inside the church, the nave was crowded with dignitaries. To the dismay of the church elders, admission to God’s house-unlike Paradise-was only by card. The Senate, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court and the diplomatic corps were all represented, with sufficient omissions to cause social anxiety for the rest of the season. It had been Clara’s inspiration to place Henry Adams between the Chinese ambassador, Wu, and the Japanese ambassador, Takahira. As a result, the angelic Porcupine now resembled an ancient not-so-benign mandarin, engulfed in the Orient.
The Whitney family had given Hay rather more trouble than the canal treaty. The rupture was not about to be healed between William C. Whitney, with two of his children loyal to him, and his former brother-in-law, the bachelor Oliver Payne, with two of Whitney’s children loyal to him, including today’s groom, Payne. Hay had placed the Payne faction on one side of the aisle and the Whitney faction on the other. There had been even more confusion when William Whitney arrived at the church without his card, and the police had tried to stop him from entering, to the bleak joy of Oliver Payne, secure and righteous in his pew. As Hay got Whitney past the police, he was struck, as always, by the speed with which oblivion surrounded even the most celebrated of men when he no longer held office. Whitney, king-maker and king-that-might-have-been, was just another guest at his son’s wedding to Helen Hay.