Empire (66 page)

“Oh, do shut, up, Henry!” Hay had seldom been so annoyed with his old friend, or with himself for having handled with unusual clumsiness an occasion fraught with symbolism of a sort that Adams would never cease to remind him.

As they dined, Adams talked and talked. Clara ate and ate, course after course, marvelling, occasionally, at what remarkable dishes were emerging from the small galley. Abigail stared out the window at a great muddy river, surging through the twilight, from the Great Lakes to New Orleans. “You must—Theodore must—
someone
must,” Adams declared, “cross the country, like this, by car, and stop—but I really mean stop, and stay, and look and listen. The country’s full of people who are strange to us, and we to them. That river,” Adams pointed dramatically at the river on whose banks were set square frame houses with square windows in which lights now began to gleam; each house was set in its own yard, strewn with scrap iron, scrap paper, cinders, “could be an estuary of the Rhine or the Danube. We are witnessing the last of the great tides of migration. We are in
Mitteleuropa
, surrounded by Germans, Slavs and—what were the people of Heidegg?”

“Swiss,” said Hay, deciding that he would take his chances with broiled Potomac shad and its roe.

“You were born on this river, John, and now it’s stranger to you than the Danube. When Theodore goes on and on about the true American, his grit, his sense of fairness, his institutions, he doesn’t realize that that American is as rare as one of those buffalos he helped to kill off.”

“We shall,” said Hay, mouth filled with roe, “transform those Germans and Slavs into … buffalos. Ail in due course.”

“No,” said Adams, revelling as always in darkness, “they will transform us. When I was writing about Aaron Burr …”

“Whatever became of that book?” asked Clara, addressing herself to what looked like a side of buffalo.

“I have burned it, of course. Publish in total secrecy, or burn …”

“In secret, too?” Hay remembered that Clover had said that her husband’s life of Burr was far superior to his published life of John Randolph. Hay had always thought Burr an ideal scamp to write about.
But something in Burr’s character or life had made Henry uneasy; he had decided that Burr was not a “safe” scoundrel to deal with, and if he were let out of the history books where he had been entombed alongside Benedict Arnold, he might cheat the world all over again. Hay rather suspected that Adams had not destroyed the book but used parts of it for his study of Jefferson.

“In his old age, Burr was walking down Fifth Avenue with a group of young lawyers, and one of them asked him how he thought some aspect of the Constitution should be interpreted. Burr stopped in front of a building site, and pointed to some newly arrived Irish laborers, and he said, ‘In due course,
they
will decide what the Constitution is—and is not.’ He understood, wicked creature, that the immigrants would eventually crowd us out and re-create the republic in their own image.”

Abigail looked at her uncle, who had, happily, run out of breath, and said, “But the country’s not all Catholic yet. That’s something.”

“Everyone in the Swiss Indiana village of Heidegg was Catholic …”

“Lutheran,” said Hay, who was quick to learn essentials whenever votes were involved.

“Anyway, I incline now to Catholicism, too,” said Adams perversely.

“Mariolatry.” Hay’s heart fluttered disagreeably. He had a vision of himself addressing twenty thousand people at the fair; and dropping dead.

“Catholic maids are always pregnant. I can’t think why,” said Clara.

“Luckily, steam-power, like this train, is going to make all these different races into one. The way the idea of the Virgin—hardly Mariolatry—united the Europeans of the twelfth century.”

Abigail interrupted her uncle. Hay silently commended her bravery. “Why St. Louis for a world’s fair?”

Hay, as the Nation’s Second Personage, answered: “It is the fourth-largest city in the country. It is centrally located. The new Union Station is the world’s largest, or so they claim. Finally, the late revered William McKinley, whenever he was in doubt as to what the people of this great nation wanted him to do, would say, ‘I must go to St. Louis.’ The city is our heartland. Now the city fathers, to celebrate the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase—
illegal
purchase by Mr. Jefferson,” Hay added for Adams’s pleasure, “are holding the largest fair of its kind in the history of the world. There will be,” he added ominously, “innumerable dynamos and other pieces of dull machinery.”

“Oh, dear,” said Abigail.

“Oh, joy,” said Adams.

“Oh, waiter,” said Clara, “more beef.”

“Everyone,” Hay sighed, “will be there.”

M
R. AND MRS
. John Apgar Sanford occupied a small suite of the Blair-Benton Hotel in Market Street, the main street of St. Louis, not far from the stone-paved Front Street, locally known as the levee, since that is exactly what it was, some four miles of river-front which was used not only as a river-port but, also, as a promenade.

“We were lucky to get even this,” said Sanford, indicating the bedroom with its single four-poster bed; he had duly noted Caroline’s displeasure. They did not, except in emergencies, ever share the same bed. When Sanford had told her that a number of his inventors and their business sponsors would be at the fair, and that he, as their patent attorney, was expected to be on hand to examine all the exhibitions and determine whose patent was being infringed, Caroline had told him that she thought he should go. There was a chance, after all, of additional fees for tea-kettles that were silent, for electrical sockets that did not shock, for engines that would—what was Langley’s phrase?—“free man from earth.” When the
Tribune’s
best reporter took ill, Mr. Trimble had convinced Caroline that she should herself describe the Exposition, at least the inaugural ceremonies. And though Clara Hay had proposed that the Sanfords join them in their private car, Caroline had spared the Hays and the Adamses the experience of John, who had grown more and more glum, no bad thing, but more and more apologetic for his life, a very bad thing indeed.

They had been shown to the suite by the manager himself. “Everyone,” said the manager, “is in St. Louis this week.”

“I don’t mind,” said Caroline, sweetly, and thanked him for his courtesy.

As John unpacked, Caroline made dutiful notes. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, as it was properly called, covered one thousand two hundred forty acres, of which two hundred fifty were roofed over—pavilions, halls, restaurants. They had caught a glimpse of the Secretary of State and Clara riding through the brightly decorated city. As Caroline worked at an octagonal table of the shiniest black walnut, John
went through a file of papers, with a worried frown. “This should be,” said Caroline, by now an expert at making marital conversation, “a paradise for a patent lawyer.”

“I certainly hope so. Except,” John was already defeated, she could tell, “there is no longer a way of really winning a patent suit. Every inventor takes out a dozen patents for the same invention. If you threaten to sue, he’ll drop three patents but keep nine others in order to confuse the courts and his rival inventors.”

“What an excellent opportunity for the lawyer, endless litigation.”

“They,” said John, at wit’s end plainly, “always settle. Is there any news?”

“Yes. I went to the Jews, as Mr. Adams would say. These particular Jews are a Yankee firm by the name of Whittaker. They are devoted Presbyterians. I asked, as you requested, for half a million dollars, at the going rate.”

“Why did they say no?” John had now been a husband long enough to be able to finish Caroline’s sentences, if not enter, as it were, her bed. A single attempt to fulfill their conjugal duties had failed. Each had been apologetic. Caroline had given what she thought was a convincing performance of a devoted wife. She had even, against her by now better judgment, followed Marguerite’s advice, which was to shut her eyes and imagine that the large body on top of her was that of James Burden Day. But the smell was wrong; the texture odd; the attack askew. She had always known that she was deficient in imagination, as their first and last attempt demonstrated; and she envied those women who could go from one new body to another, like an explorer loose in an endless archipelago of men—women, too, in Paris at least—enjoying this island for its luxuriant trees, and that for its silvery springs. She was no explorer; she was a contented land-lubber, in a familiar satisfying landscape. The attempt to leave home, as represented by James Burden Day, for John was like abandoning a perfect oasis for the surrounding Sahara. John, in no position to complain, complained. Caroline, in no position to moralize, moralized. In time, the matter was dropped. John’s sexuality was soon subdued by the financial ruin which had overtaken him. He could think of nothing else, and, lately, neither could Caroline.

“Mr. Whittaker was evasive.” At first, Caroline had been puzzled; then angry. “I gave the date, next March, when I am twenty-seven. I said there was no way that I could
not
get my share. He said, ‘There are complications.’ I said, ‘What?’ He wouldn’t answer.”

“Of course not.” John was bitter. “The Whittakers often retain, as counsel, our friend Houghteling.”

Caroline experienced a sudden spasm of purest hatred for her brother. “Blaise is making it appear that the estate is in trouble …”

“Or nonexistent, or that there are obscure liens, or your rights unclear.” John the lawyer was far better company than John the husband. “I’m joining some of my clients for lunch. I may be able …” He did not finish the sentence. He would try to borrow money; so would she.

“I must join the Hays. He speaks this afternoon at the Exposition. Perhaps …” She did not finish her sentence either.

But Caroline had plans which did not include the Hays. Instead, she walked in the warm sunlight along the levee, crowded with visitors from out of town. By and large the natives ignored the river; all the houses, she noted, turned their backs on what was, after all, a phenomenal if not beautiful sight, a wide expanse of yellowish swift water, no uglier than the Tiber, say, and infinitely larger.

At a waterfront saloon called the Anchor she paused. As far as she could see along the levee, black men were loading and unloading cargo from barges, ships. Caroline thought of Marseilles, turned African.

John Burden Day, in statesman’s black, approached her from the saloon. “What a surprise,” he said, and looked at his watch. “You’re exactly on time.”

“I’m always on time.” She took his arm; and they walked along the levee like a contentedly married couple, which, in effect, they were. Caroline had long since accepted as an unalloyed bit of golden good fortune the fact that they were not obliged to live together, day after day, night after night, in the same conjugal bed, listening to the midnight cries of many children, the usual marital fate in this country. Occasionally, she needed him on days other than Sunday; but that was a small price to pay for Sunday itself; and now St. Louis. “Where is Kitty?”

“She chairs the Democratic Ladies’ Committee on Suffrage all morning. She will go with them to hear Mr. Hay at the Exposition. I shall go with you.”

“Or not.”

“Or not.”

They made love in Caroline’s suite at the Blair-Benton Hotel. Jim was nervous that he might be recognized. But the lobby was so crowded that no one could actually see anyone. Also, Caroline was now something of an expert on the use of hotels. Whenever she planned to
meet Jim, she insisted on a first-floor suite in a hotel with at least two separate stairways from ground to first floor. Jim thought that had she been a man, she would have been a natural general. Caroline had disagreed. “But I might have succeeded at business,” she answered. “I would have cornered something like wheat, and brought on a highly satisfying financial crisis.”

Caroline watched Jim dress, a sight almost as pleasing as the reverse. He watched her, watching him; divined her mood. “You’re thinking about money,” he said.

“Its lack,” she said. “John has got himself—us, that is—in the deepest water. And Blaise has seen to it that I can’t borrow.”

Jim frowned, as a tooth of Caroline’s comb broke in his wiry coppery hair. “I broke your comb. Sorry. Why can’t you borrow? Next March it’s all yours, anyway. Bankers love that sort of short-term loan. How can Blaise stop them from lending?”

“By lying. Through his lawyers. Pretending the estate is compromised.”

“That’s easily investigated.” Jim sat in a rocking chair, and rested his head on a spotless new antimacassar. All St. Louis had been cleaned up for the world’s delight.

Caroline got out of bed; began to dress. “In time, I could straighten all this out. But there’s no time. Blaise has been putting pressure on John’s debtors. If he does not pay up now, he will be ruined.” Although Caroline rather liked the sound of “he will be ruined,” the reality was impossible to grasp. What was financial ruin? In her own life, there had been so many financial crises, so many friends or acquaintances “ruined,” and yet they went right on eating breakfast, and seeing one another. Ruin, as such, did not mean much to her. But the thought of a forced sale of the
Tribune
was like a knife at her throat, a most disagreeable sensation.

“You will have to sell to Blaise.” Jim was flat.

“I would rather die.”

“What else?”

“Other than death?”

“Other than a sale. You should follow Mr. Adams’s advice, and keep control …”

“If he will let me.”

Jim stared at her in the mirror, where she was now repairing the damage that Eros does to even the simplest coiffeur. “Why not,” said Jim, “let John go under? He’s the one at fault, not you.”

“Because, my darling, he knows who the father of my child is.” Caroline looked at Jim’s face, next to hers in the mirror, smaller than hers, thanks to perspective, so ably taught by the drawing mistress at Mlle. Souvestre’s. Caroline enjoyed Jim’s look of astonishment.

“But
he’s
the father, isn’t he?”