Free Empire by Gore Vidal

serious.”
    “Serious?” James frowned. The light in the garden was turning from silver to deep gold. “Serious, as a jingo—yes, he is that. And also serious, I suppose you mean,
purely
as an American …?”
    “Oh, James, you are too suspicious of a man who after all embodies the spirit of our race, as we now move onto the world stage, and take our part, the leading part, which history’s law requires.”
    “What law, may I ask, is that?” James was mischievous.
    “That the most efficient will prevail.”
    “Ah, your brother’s law! Yes, that the world will go to the … uh, cheapest economy. Of course. And why not? We should do well to get ourselves an empire on the cheap, assuming that the British will let theirs go, which I don’t see them ever doing, not while German kaiser and Russian tsar and Japanese mikado are all rattling their sabres in the once peaceful stillness of the Orient.…”
    “A stillness we have broken. You know, Brooks is close to Theodore. Brooks is also close to Admiral Mahan. The three of them are constantly plotting our imperial destiny.”
    “According to Brooks’s immutable laws of history?”
    “Yes. Of course he likes to apply laws. I don’t. I prefer to understand them.”
    “The Adamses … !” James’s exclamation was both comic and fond; and on that note, tea ended; and the electrical-motor car returned them, without incident—though not without numerous warnings from James that they might yet become the martyred subjects for one of Hay’s dread Transportation Ballads—to Surrenden Dering.
    When Caroline came down to dinner, she found Clara Hay, swathed in pastel colors that made her large bulk seem more than ever monumental, at a desk, writing letters. “I am never caught up any more,” she said, smiling at Caroline. Is she to be my mother-in-law? Caroline wondered. Am I, at last, grown-up? She asked herself this question adozen times a day. It was as if the prison door of childhood had simply opened of its own accord and she, without thinking and, certainly, without a plan—had stepped into the outside world. She had always wanted to do as she pleased; had never dreamed that such a thing was possible. Then the Colonel vanished, which was how she thought of his death; and she had slipped through the open door.
    “Did you meet Clarence King this summer in Paris?” Clara continued to write.
    “No. I met a George King, who had just married a girl from Boston.”
    “That was Clarence’s brother. They were all together. Then Clarence went off—someplace. To look for gold, or whatever. He is our
brilliant
friend.…”
    Caroline saw that the letter-paper was the same that Elizabeth Cameron had confiscated. “The Five of Hearts,” she said.
    Clara put down her pen; and looked at Caroline. “How do you know about that?”
    “I saw the letter-paper, on the desk. Mrs. Cameron was very mysterious. She said I was not to mention the subject to Mr. Adams.”
    “She’s right. You mustn’t. You see, once upon a time there were five of us, and we called ourselves the Hearts. This was in the early eighties, in Washington. There was Mr. Adams, Mr. King, Mr. Hay. There was also Mrs. Adams—now dead—and me. So there are only four Hearts left, of which three, I am happy to say, are here in this house, as I write to the fourth, in British Columbia.”
    “But did you have—do you have a secret society? With passwords, and curious handshakes, like the Masons?” Colonel Sanford had been devoted to Masonry.
    Clara laughed. “No, nothing like that. We were just five friends. Three brilliant men, and two wives, of whom one was brilliant and the other’s me.”
    “How—nice that must have been.” Caroline was aware of the inadequacy of the word “nice” but then she was equally aware of the inadequacy of Clara’s explanation. “Mr. Adams never speaks of Mrs. Adams?”
    “Never. But he does like it when people speak of the memorial to her, Saint-Gaudens’s