Bright sunshine made him blink. The bad weather had blown past Philadelphia the day before; now he could believe spring was at hand. Soon-all too soon-summer would grip the eastern seaboard of the United States in its hot, sweaty fist.
Down from Germantown the carriage made its way, dodging among others like it, rumbling wagons, men on horseback, men on bicycles with improbably high front wheels, and swarms of men and women on foot. And then, as had happened to Schlieffen coming back from the War Department, a political rally snarled traffic that would have been bad without it. Now red flags rippled in a friendly breeze; now not only the most dedicated Socialists, those fearing neither catarrh nor pneumonia, assembled under the flags. Now nervous-looking soldiers helped police route buggies and horses and pedestrians around the streets the demonstrators clogged.
Schlieffen and Schlozer never came within two blocks of the rally. Even so, the Socialists' shouts rose above the clatter of horses' hooves, the rattle of iron tires on paving, and the squeals and groans of axles needing grease. "Can you make out what they are saying, Your Excellency?'' Schlieffen asked.
"I believe the cry is, 'Justice!' " Schlozer clicked his tongue between his teeth. "If I were petitioning the Almighty, or even my government, I would sooner ask for mercy. But then, I am an old man, and well aware of how much I need it. Waving flags in the street is not an old man's sport."
Because of the rally, they got to the Powel House fifteen minutes late. President Blaine brushed aside Kurd von Schlozer's apologies. "Don't trouble yourself about it, Your Excellency," Blaine said. "I want to tell you that I received yesterday a telegram from the U.S. minister in Berlin informing me that his talks with Chancellor Bismarck continue to go well, and that prospects look bright for increased cooperation in all spheres between our two great countries."
"I am delighted to hear this, Mr. President," Schlozer said, and Schlieffen nodded, knowing all spheres included the military. But the German minister looked grim as he continued, "I also received yesterday a telegram from Berlin, whose contents I wish to discuss with you now. I must tell you that the governments of Britain, France, and the Confederate States are most dissatisfied with the dilatory pace of negotiations with your government. Since Germany is neutral in this conflict, they have united in asking Chancellor Bismarck to make me the channel through which they express to you their dissatisfaction. If you refuse to meet their demands, I cannot answer for the consequences."
Blaine flushed. His large, bulbous nose went redder than the rest of his face. "Their demands are outrageous, impossible!" he shouted, as if he were on the rostrum rather than sitting in his office. "How am I to yield so large a portion of my home state to the invaders? How am I to acquiesce in the Confederacy's acquisition of lands to which that nation has no right?"
"If you had yielded Sonora and Chihuahua before, you would not now the loss of part of Maine face," Schlieffen said. "You have lost the war. 'Vae victis,' as Brennus the Gaul said to the Romans he had beaten."
Blaine glared at him. "The Romans ended up whipping the Gauls, so that 'Woe to the conquered' applied to the conquerors. We can fight on, too."
Sadly, Schlieffen shook his head. "No, Your Excellency, not in this war. You are defeated."
Kurd von Schlozer said, "The reason we were tardy, Mr. President, was the large Socialists demonstration that forced traffic to make a detour around it."
Blaine 's complexion darkened once more. "Socialists!" he said, as if pronouncing an obscenity. "Most of them are traitors to the Republican Party, nothing else."
"As may be," Schlozer said. "Would you not agree, though, that they leave your own political future more… uncertain than it was before the schism in your party took place?"
Now Blaine had heard blunt talk from both the German attache and the German minister. "You tread close to the edge, sir," he growled. Schlozer sat impassive, waiting for a more responsive answer. At last, obviously hating every word, Blaine said, "You may be right."
That was the response for which Schlozer had waited. "Being now without hope and so without fear, Your Excellency, can you not act as a disinterested statesman and serve with a whole heart the needs of your country? You have the chance, Mr. President, and a rare chance it is for an elected official, to do just that without considering your own future political advantage, for you can have none."
Had Blaine not been in the room, Schlieffen might have smiled. Schlozer could not have urged a more sensible, more logical course on the president of the United States. The only question remaining was whether sense and logic could still reach James G. Blaine.
Schlieffen added a few words of his own: "If you do not do this, Your Excellency, your country will only suffer more. In your heart, you must know this is so."
Again, Blaine stayed silent a long time. At last, very low, he repeated, "You may be right." He let out a long, shuddering sigh. "Making peace with the enemies of my country is like looking into my open grave. But, as you say, I am already dead, so what does it matter how I am buried?"
"Think of your country," Schlozer said.
"Think of the future, and what your country and mine may do there," Schlieffen said. Slowly, Blaine nodded.
Philander Snow spat a brown stream into a drift of the stuff whose name he bore. Theodore Roosevelt had changed the calendar from March to April a couple of days before. He'd seen spring snow in New York State; seeing it in Montana Territory did not delight him, but it did not surprise him, either.
His mind had a way of running toward what would be. "We've got to plant as soon as we can, Phil," he said. "We shan't have a long growing season-we never do, not here, but it will be even shorter this year. Everything must be in readiness to move the moment conditions permit."
Snow spat again. "It will be, Colonel." He'd taken to calling Roosevelt that since his boss' return from commanding the Unauthorized Regiment. Having been mustered out of the U.S. Army, Roosevelt no longer had any formal right to the title. The next time he corrected the ranch hand about it would be the first.
"That's good, Phil. That's what I want to hear," he said, now, adding, for about the hundredth time, "I know I can rely on you. If I'd ever had any doubts-which I haven't-the way you and the rest of the hands who didn't join my regiment brought in the harvest last fall would have shot them right between the eyes."
"That's white of you, Colonel. We reckoned it was the least we could do, seein' how you and the Unauthorized Regiment was doin' everything you could to keep them goddamn English bastards from comin' down and burnin' us out." Snow loosed yet another stream of tobacco juice. "Ask you somethin'?"
"You may ask," Roosevelt said. "I don't promise to answer."
"Fair enough." Snow nodded. "All kinds of talk been goin' around about how you'll up and sell this here ranch and go back to New York to do some politicking there. Is it so, or is it a pile of humbug?"
"I'd love to go back to New York and politic there," Roosevelt answered. "The only trouble with the notion is that, in order to run for the State Assembly, I must have attained the twenty-fifth year of my age. I am old enough to have fought for my country and to have commanded men in battle, but not old enough to help legislate for my state."
"Plumb crazy, you ask me," Philander Snow opined. " 'Course, nobody asked me."
"Crazy it may be," Roosevelt said. "The law of the state it is. And so I shall stay here in Montana Territory, here on the ranch, a while longer, at any rate." He did his best to speak lightly, as if that mattered to him only a little. Inside, he seethed with worry lest the fickle populace forget him before he reached the age where he could offer himself for approval.