Empire (20 page)

“Colonel Bryan, we’re all agreed that there will be no long-term annexation. We’re all anti-imperialists.” Lodge lied with perfect sincerity.

“We’d better be,” said Bryan; and left the room in order to avoid his nemesis, fat, white Mark Hanna.

“I can’t stand seeing that anarchist in this place,” growled Hanna. “Where’s Hobart?”

No one had seen the Vice-President, an obscure New Jersey corporation lawyer who had been chosen to be vice-president by Hanna for no reason that Hay could see other than his wealth. Would wealthy men one day buy the great offices of state as they had during Rome’s decadence? Adams thought that the practice was already common. After all, state legislatures elected United States senators. Many legislators were for sale. Hadn’t New York’s sardonic Roscoe Conkling boasted that he had paid only two hundred thousand dollars for his seat? a bargain price back in the seventies? Hay argued that the presidency was still different. A party leader, like McKinley, slowly and openly evolved; or, thanks to a sudden shift in popular opinion, he emerged like Bryan. In neither case could the leadership have been bought, assuming that the would-be leader had had the money, or access to it. But it was on the word “access” that Adams looked dour. Hanna had financed McKinley on a scale unknown until now. What would prevent a Carnegie or a Jay Gould from selecting some nonentity and then, through adroit expenditure, securing for himself the presidency’s power, all in the nonentity’s name? Hay felt that Adams, once again, took too dark a view.

They were joined by another of McKinley’s intimates, Charles G. Dawes, a personable, red-haired young politician from Nebraska, who had played a significant role in the election of McKinley. When Bryan began to take the country by storm and the multitude thought him the greatest orator in American history, Hanna panicked. Although the money interest was solidly behind McKinley, the South and the West were for Bryan. Since the farmers were penniless, Bryan promised to increase the money supply. Silver coins would be minted, sixteen to one in relation to gold. America, intoned Bryan, in speech after speech to the largest crowds anyone could remember, would not be crucified upon a cross of gold. Meanwhile, McKinley seldom strayed from his
hometown of Canton, Ohio, where he conducted his own low-key campaign from his own comfortable front porch, a gift of admirers. After twelve years in the House of Representatives and four as Ohio’s governor, he was a poor man; hence, honest. Hanna thought McKinley should take to the stump. McKinley was tempted; but, as Hay had heard it, young Mr. Dawes persuaded the Major to stay right where he was. When it came to demagoguery, he could not compete with Bryan; so why try? As McKinley recounted it later to Hay, “If I hired a train to campaign in, he’d hire a single car. If I bought a Pullman car berth, he’d buy a cheap seat. If I bought a cheap seat, he’d ride the freight. So I decided to stay put.” In response to Bryan’s cross of gold, McKinley was vigorous and vague. He was, he declared, in favor of
both
gold and silver money, an admirable sentiment as acceptable as it was unintelligible, to get the largest popular vote. Finally, crucially, a majority preferred the Major’s placid solidity to Bryan’s fieriness. For a moment, class war was in the air. Then the border states, which had made Lincoln president, shifted from Bryan to McKinley; and he was elected with the largest popular vote of any president since Grant.

Young Mr. Dawes had been astonished not to be included in the Cabinet; but the Major had soothed him with the office of comptroller of the currency, where he could amuse himself with the chimera of bimetallism while his wife, Caro, amused Ida McKinley.

Dawes greeted Hay warmly; introduced him to a tall young man named Day, the assistant comptroller and a Democrat. “On his way home to run for Congress, something I should be doing. You, too, Mr. Hay.”

“Oh, not me. Not now. I’m not even an Ohioan any longer.” Neither Adams nor Hay, as full-time residents of the District of Columbia, ever voted in those presidential elections which so entirely absorbed them. If the irony had been, by some accident, lost on them, Lodge and a host of others were quite willing to torment the self-disenfranchised statesmen. Hay had been offered a seat in Congress in 1880; but the price quoted by the local Republican boss was too high, or so his father-in-law decreed. Then came the move to Washington; and a limbo that was now quite filled with power’s unexpected rainbow.

“I think we’ll win, with three votes to spare.” Dawes had taken a notebook out of his pocket. Hay could see that it contained a list of senators with pluses and minuses and question marks next to each name.

“I think we’ll win it,” said Mr. Day. “Colonel Bryan’s changed a half-dozen votes for you folks.”

“You anarchists ain’t winning nothing today,” said Hanna; and, Hay noted, there was no twinkle in those dull red eyes. A buzzer sounded: a Senate roll-call. “I got to go join the animals. If anybody sees Hobart, tell him I’m looking for him.” Hanna waddled toward the Senate chamber.

Day looked after Hanna, with some distaste. “Personally, I wish Colonel Bryan had let the thing go hang.”

“And let Senator Gorman take over the party? No,” said Dawes, “that’s not in the cards. Bryan’s riding two horses just fine.”

Hay turned to Eddy. “I don’t seem to be needed, after all.”

Dawes took Hay’s arm, companionably. “Let’s go up in the gallery and watch the vote.” He turned to Day. “Come on, anarchist,” he said. “Now’s your chance to throw a bomb.”

Hay took his seat in the front row of the distinguished visitors’ gallery. Nearby, the press had filled up their section; while Washington’s ladies were out in force. As always, on such senatorial occasions, Hay was reminded of the bull-fights in Madrid. Admittedly, Washington’s ladies, all in winter furs, were not so vivid as Spanish women in summer, but there was the same excited focus on the arena—in this case, the Senate chamber beneath them.

A senior senator presided in the Vice-President’s chair, high on its dais. The roll-call was about to begin. Senators were now taking their seats opposite the dais. Hay’s presence had been noted. Graciously, he bowed to this one and to that, as this one and that waved or bowed to him; happily, he had no idea who anyone was. He was getting like the nearly blind Chief Justice Chase, who, toward the end of his life, had taken to greeting everyone with the same, solemn, studied joy on the ground that he did not want to offend anyone who might still see in him a potential president.

As the roll-call was being taken, Dawes chattered: “There’s a story going to break that we provoked those natives to attack us, but it won’t hit the papers till tomorrow, and by then it won’t make any difference.”

“No difference?” Mr. Day was not shy, Hay decided, mildly curious as to how a Bryan Democrat could be holding office in an administration which took very seriously the notion that to the victors belong the spoils. Naturally, Civil Service reform was dear to every progressive Republican heart; but office for the worthy was dearer. “Do you realize what a difference it will make if people find out that it was us who started trouble over there?”

“It meant no difference to the vote today, which is what matters. I’m also not saying we started it. I don’t know. It’s just a rumor.” Dawes turned to Day. “You folks have been getting nowhere with silver since they found all that gold in the Klondike, so now you’ve got to hit us with something new, like going into the empire business.”

“Are you related to my predecessor, Judge Day?” Hay found the young man personable, for an anarchist. From his accent he could have been from Indiana, too; in fact, he was not unlike, Hay thought, his own young self, only taller, stronger.

“No, sir. But I do know your son, Del.”

Hay was not surprised. As he himself saw Del so little nowadays, he had no idea whom his son saw. “Then tell me, what has become of him?”

“I think he’s in New York. I haven’t seen him since last month when he took me over to the White House, to play billiards, down in the cellar.”

Hay was truly startled. “In the cellar of the White House?”

“Yes, sir. It’s a terrible place, too. Slimy—like a dungeon. But there’s a billiard room where some of the staff meet …”

“And the President?”

“He looked in, while we were playing.”

Before Hay could unravel the secret life of his son and the President, Vice-President Hobart, now in his chair, entertained a motion from the floor that the peace treaty be, herewith, voted upon. As the senators answered with an aye or a nay when their names were called, Dawes would scribble in his notebook and mutter “Hell” or “Maria,” presumably “bad” and “good.” When the name Elkins was called, Dawes said, “Now we’ll see if your man Bryan’s done his work.” The whole chamber was still. Elkins was a Democrat; and an anti-imperialist. Elkins allowed the silence after his name to last as long as possible; then he shouted, “Aye!” Applause exploded in the gallery. Hobart, resembling an aged gray walrus, struck his gavel hard on his desk. While a familiar la-di-da voice intoned, “Bravo!”

Day turned to Dawes. “Well, Colonel Bryan’s gone and got you your empire.”

“
You
don’t follow your leader?” asked Hay.

“I think he’s made a mistake. We have enough to do here at home without …”

But cheering had again filled the chamber: the necessary two-thirds vote had been achieved, with one vote to spare. The Senate had voted fifty-seven to twenty-seven to uphold the Administration’s peace
treaty, and annex the Philippine Islands, now in rebellion against their newly legitimate, by act of Congress, masters.

“Hell and Maria!” shouted the delighted Dawes. “I must go tell the Major.”

Eddy helped Hay to his feet. Various dignitaries shook his hand, as if this had been his treaty rather than the President’s. At the foot of the gallery stairs, Lodge met Hay with the words: “We have done it.” Hay noted that Lodge looked distinctly unwell. “I have never in my life gone through such an ordeal.”

Hay gave him the praise that he wanted; and deserved. In the end, only two Republicans had voted against the treaty: Lodge’s colleague Hoar, who had somewhat startlingly offered to be beheaded in the Senate if that would stop the annexation, and Hale, the hereditary senator from Maine, who had kept his hard head, and said no. Otherwise, Hanna’s money and patronage, Bryan’s eloquence and smile, and Lodge’s perseverance had carried, just barely, the day. “The ship of state is in the open sea at last,” said Hay, bowing to left and right, as he and Lodge crossed the rotunda where Washington’s ladies now mingled with the weary proud legislators.

“Ship is the right image,” said Lodge, somewhat grimly. “And I’ve just spent a month in the engine room …”

“The cloakrooms of the Senate.”

“Exactly. I’m caked with grime.”

At that moment, as if to emphasize the nature of the grime, a tall burly youthful man, surrounded by admirers, all simple Western folk, passed them without a glance, or a pause in his tirade: “I never thought I’d live to see the day when any man dare try to give, openly and in broad daylight, a bribe to a United States senator so as to get him to change his vote.”

“Who,” asked Hay, “was that?”

“The honorable senator from Idaho, Mr. Heitfeld, who in a well-run world would be, at this moment, planting wheat back home.”

“Not, dear Cabot, in Idaho, in February.
Was
he offered a bribe?”

Lodge shrugged. “Not by me. But Hanna’s been from one end of the cloakroom to the other, whispering. Bryan, too. So who knows? Anyway, all that matters is that the ship is now full speed ahead. We are on the high seas at last, Mr. Hay. What England was, we are now, as of today. Asia is ours.”

“Well, not yet.” They were outside the Capitol. The sky was black; a cold wind blew. Fortunately, the Secretary of State took precedence
over everyone but Vice-President and Speaker; and in no time at all, the State Department carriage creaked and rattled to a halt, at the head of a long line of carriages, their waiting horses blanketed against the cold. Hay completed the nautical image. “Let’s hope the barometer’s not falling, now that we’re on the high seas.”

“Oh,” said the driver, thinking that he had been addressed, “there’s a blizzard on its way, sir. Worst of the season, they say.”

“That,” said Hay to Lodge, “is not a good omen.”

“So I’ll keep killing Capitoline geese until I find one whose liver predicts good sailing weather.” Lodge and Eddy helped Hay into the carriage. “Seriously,” said Lodge, seriously, “this was the closest, hardest fight I have ever known. I doubt if we’ll see another in our time, when so much was at stake.”

“I make no predictions when it comes to earthly matters.” An elaborate burst of pain at the bottom of Hay’s spine brought earth into its true material perspective; the inexorable refuge for the lot of them and, for him, more soon than late. “As opposed to heavenly ones. Let us say the ships are afloat, and the legions are fighting on the Asian marches.”

“Ave Caesar!” Lodge laughed.

“Hail McKinley.” Hay smiled in the icy darkness. “Pacific lord of the Pacific Ocean.”

A
T THE END
of the long broad corridor that divided the ground floor of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, Blaise waited in what was known from one end of the political city to the other as the Amen Corner. He had yet to discover why the corner was so named. Presumably it was here that “amen” was put to fervent prayers by the current master of the Corner, Senator Thomas Platt. Seated at the center of a gilded horsehair sofa, the so-called Easy Boss presided over the fortunes and misfortunes of all members of the so-called organization, the machinery that controlled the Republican Party in the state of New York and, presumably, the new Republican governor, Theodore Roosevelt, who had promised to give Blaise an interview after his weekly breakfast meeting with Platt. When Congress was in session, the Senator came up from Washington on Friday evening and returned to the capital on Monday morning. The fact that each Saturday the Governor came down the river from Albany to breakfast with the Easy Boss indicated the nature of their relationship, or so the Chief darkly maintained.