The President's Daughter Read online

  “What does it say?” Archie asked.

  I cleared my throat. “It's from Father,” I said. “It says, ‘President McKinley died two-fifteen this morning. Theodore Roosevelt.’ ”

  Archie's eyes widened. “Oh,” he said. He went to help Ted and Kermit load the bags onto the train. I folded the note and gave it back to Mother, who put it into the pocket of her traveling suit.

  It was odd that Father wrote his last name on a note meant for Mother. Sister would say it was a posterity letter, written not just for us but to be saved for history, and maybe she would be right. Father was Theodore Roosevelt. Colonel Roosevelt, the hero of San Juan Hill. Governor Roosevelt, of the state of New York. Since the past March, Vice President Roosevelt, and now, because of an assassin's bullet, President Roosevelt.

  President of the United States.

  As I climbed onto the train I thought, Now I am the pres-ident's daughter.

  It was a long ride back to Sagamore, our home on Long Island. We had been planning to move to Washington, D.C., in a few weeks, but Mother said that would have to be speeded up now. Still, we had a few days to catch our breath at Sagamore, and I was glad. No matter where else we lived, we always came home to Sagamore. I loved the fields and the orchard there; I loved swimming in the sound. I loved Cooper's Bluff, the sand cliff Father always led us down on our scrambles. I loved the huge barn where Father built us obstacle courses through the hay, and I loved Christmas mornings in the big drafty parlor. I loved the way the air smelled at Sagamore. I'd heard Mother say that the air in Washington was choky and thick.

  Everything was different now. Instead of the little house we'd planned to rent for Father's vice presidency, we would be living in the Executive Mansion.

  “Just think,” I said, “it's the same house George Washington lived in.” I tried to feel excited, but I didn't, not yet.

  “Is not,” said Kermit.

  “Is too!” I kicked him.

  “Is not,” Ted cut in. “Washington never lived in it, Ethie. Adams did.”

  “Oh.”

  “Adams was the second president. John Adams.”

  “I know that,” I said. “Well, we'll be staying in the same house Lincoln did.”

  “Yes, we will,” Miss Young said encouragingly.

  “You are still coming, aren't you?” I asked. Pinckney, Annie, and Mame always came wherever we went, and usually our cook came too. The housemaids and grooms sometimes came and sometimes didn't; the gardeners never did. I didn't know about Miss Young. She'd only been with us since Albany.

  “I think so. Your mother and I will discuss it,” said Miss Young.

  Quentin had laid his head in Mame's lap. Both of them looked terrible. Quentin's face was red, and he kept digging at the ear with the pebble in it. Mame looked white and groaned whenever the train rattled especially hard. “Mame's still coming,” Quentin murmured.

  “Oh, Quenty, I don't know,” Mame said. “I'm such an old woman now.”

  “You're not old,” he said. “You're comfy.”

  She patted him, but I was alarmed. Mame had been coming to the rented house for sure. I knew she was old— she had been Mother's nurse—but we needed her. If she didn't come to the Executive Mansion, who on earth would take care of Archie and Quentin? And if Miss Young wasn't there, who would take care of me?

  Mame shuddered, and Quentin cried out again. Mother took him onto her lap. I'd ask Mother about it later, I decided.

  Archie's hat had slid down over one eye. He was sitting next to a window and looking out with a dreamy expression. I didn't think he was seeing anything at all. “Algonquin,” he said, and smiled.

  Algonquin was our calico pony. We had all learned to ride on him, but Archie loved him best.

  I didn't pay Archie any mind. Kermit was reading a newspaper he'd gotten at North Creek, and I held out my hand for it.

  “The president,” Archie continued, more loudly now, “must be a very important man.”

  “Yes,” said Ted, “but so must the vice president. Anyhow, it's still just Father. Don't get a big head.”

  Archie shot Ted a look but otherwise ignored him. “The president,” he continued, “must be a very important man, with very, very large stables. The president would have room for Algonquin in his very large stables in Washington, D.C.”

  “Ah,” said Kermit. When Father was vice president we couldn't afford to bring Algonquin to Washington. Mother said livery board in the capital was expensive; all our horses except Father's and Mother's saddle horses and one carriage pair were going to have to stay at Sagamore.

  “I bet that's right,” I said. “I bet the mansion has a big stable.” Archie and I grinned at each other. I loved horses too. If the president had his own stable, I thought, then we could take Algonquin, Yagenka, Renown, Texas, Diamond, and Wyoming, the horse I usually rode. Maybe even both carriage pairs. “Mother?” I asked. “Will we need both carriage pairs?”

  Mother looked up. She had been writing notes to herself. “At least,” she said. “And yes, Archie, Algonquin may come.”

  “He'll love Washington,” Archie said, “and I will ride him to school every day.”

  “What about Wyoming?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Mother said. “Yes, I'm sure we can bring Wyoming.”

  The news didn't make Ted or Kermit all that happy. They knew they'd be spending most of their time at school. But Archie and I grinned and grinned. Washington, D.C., seemed much more interesting now that I knew I could ride there.

  Every time we stopped at a station, Ted or Kermit ran out and bought an extra newspaper so that we could read more and more about Father as we went. He had taken the oath of office in Buffalo, New York, where President McKinley's Cabinet had assembled once his death seemed certain. Fa-ther's inaugural speech to the Cabinet was the shortest one ever. The paper reprinted it. Kermit read it aloud. “It shall be my aim to continue absolutely unbroken the policies—” “Is it a good speech?” Ted asked Mother anxiously. He sat very upright on the train's velvet seat. It was nighttime now. We would sleep on the train and reach New York City midmorning.

  “What do you think?” Mother asked.

  “Yes,” said Kermit. “He said what he meant and sat down.” Father believed in quick words, punchy language.

  Quentin slept with his head in Mame's lap. Mame looked more and more unwell. “Madam,” she said, “will you need me immediately in Washington?” Her voice quavered.

  “Oh, my,” Mother said. She looked at Mame sympathetically. “Not at first, I'm sure. I'll have to send for you, Mame, once I find out how things are.”

  “If you're sure, madam,” Mame said. I could tell she was relieved.

  “No Mame?” said Quentin.

  I saw Mother glance at Miss Young, and saw Miss Young nod the smallest bit. She put her arm around Quentin. “It'll be all right,” she told him. “It will.”

  I hoped so. Too many things were changing.

  Monday morning, the day before President McKinley's funeral, I woke very early and watched as Mother, all dressed in black, sipped a cup of tea and waited for the carriage to be brought around. She was taking the first train to Washington. “Will you see Father?” I asked her. Outside, clouds blanketed the still-dark sky. I sat beside Mother on the bench in the front hall and wrapped the hem of my nightgown around my cold toes.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. She pushed my hair back from my forehead and kissed me. “I'll tell him you send your love. Take care of things while I'm gone, will you? Take care of Mame.”

  “Yes, ma'am.” The doctor had come the day before. He'd removed the pebble from Quentin's ear and told Mame that she had a kidney infection, a bad one. It was no wonder her back had hurt so much. Mame wouldn't be able to go to Washington anytime soon. “I'll take care of everything,” I promised. Ted had left for school already, so I was second oldest after Kermit. Mother could count on me.

  “Thank you.” Mother brushed her lips against my forehead again, and then th
e carriage pulled up and she left, her head bent against the strong wind as she walked out the door.

  I got dressed and checked to see that everything was all right in the kitchens. Our cook was making breakfast. I poured a fresh cup of tea and took it up to Mame.

  “Thank you, dear.” Mame lay propped by pillows. She looked very tired, and the wrinkles on her forehead were deep. “Your mother's gone?”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “I thought I heard the horses.”

  “I wish I could have gone with her,” I said.

  “To the funeral?” Mame said. “Dear heart, you don't want to see that. It'll be a sad, sad time.”

  That was why I wanted to see Father so badly. I wanted to know how he was now that he was president. Father had not changed much when he went from being governor to vice president, though he had been a little less happy. Would he be happy now? Could he be happy, when everyone was so sad? The newspaper was full of stories, how President McKinley's friends had wept at his bedside and begged him not to die. Some of the Cabinet members had wanted to quit, but Father had convinced them all to stay.

  “Is it bad luck, Father becoming president this way?” Mame knew all about luck. Her bedtime stories were full of fairies and magic.

  Mame shook her head. “A body makes its own luck, Ethel. Your father must have been destined to be president. Why else would he have been vice president?” She sighed and handed me back the teacup. “Go on now, darling. Let this old woman rest.”

  I ate breakfast, then went outside. Kermit was partway up the windmill, straddling one of the crosspieces. Our windmill was tall but easy to climb. The boards were thick and you could grab them. I stuck my toes against the lowest board and pulled myself up. My dress caught on a splinter and tore a little. I pulled it loose and scooted next to Kermit.

  “Hello,” he said quietly. “I'm watching Archie and Quentin.” I looked down. They were wrestling on the dew-wet lawn. They were both naked except for their short pants, and pieces of wet grass stuck to them.

  “They're playing assassination,” Kermit said. “First Archie is the assassin, and Quentin tackles him and saves Father. Then Quentin is the assassin, and Archie tackles him and saves Father.”

  I nodded. “What would you do?”

  Kermit turned his pale eyes toward me. “If there was an assassin? I'd tackle him and save Father.”

  “Me too,” I said. I moved closer to Kermit. “Do you remember what that one man said in the paper? When everyone else was trying to make Father be the vice president?”

  Kermit grinned. “Which man? Which paper? There are such an awful lot of them, and they say such awful things.” Father said we were never, not ever, to believe what we saw printed in any newspaper without checking with him first.

  “About why Father shouldn't have been vice president.”

  Kermit's face clouded. “You mean, ‘Don't any of you realize there's only one life between this madman and the presidency?’ Senator Hanna said that.”

  “I was thinking about it,” I said. “Because it turned out to be true.”

  “One life,” Kermit said. “Yes. But Father's not a madman. He'll be a good president.”

  “Why doesn't Senator Hanna like him?”

  “I don't know.” Kermit shifted his seat. “Politics, I guess. He liked McKinley. He thinks Father's a cowboy.”

  “Father is a cowboy.” I knew all about his adventures on his cattle ranches. He used to brand calves during the spring roundup, and he shot panthers and tracked down thieves. It was true he'd lost most of his money when the cattle died in a blizzard before I was born, but Mother always said that what Father gained was more important than money. She said Father had been sick all the time when he was a boy, and that he was not strong when he was first grown up. Working on the ranch gave him his health, something money couldn't buy. Being a cowboy had saved him. I thought it was something people liked about him. A lot of the Rough Riders had come from out West and joined up just because of Father. “So why is that a bad thing?” I asked Kermit.

  He squirmed. “They don't mean cowboy the way you mean cowboy,” he said. “They mean somebody who's rough, who doesn't take baths or use good manners.”

  “Oh, but that's not Father.”

  “I know,” Kermit said. “But I think some people feel— well, there's businesses, you know, that make a lot of money, because they've got things set up so no one else can compete with them. They're monopolies, like the railroads, or the steel companies. Father thinks they ought to be regulated. The people who run the businesses don't like that.”

  On the lawn below us, Archie and Quentin were punching each other. I couldn't tell who was supposed to be the assassin. “What's ‘regulated'?” I asked.

  “Controlled,” said Kermit. “With laws. Something like that. You'll have to ask Ted. Or ask Father, he won't mind. It's complicated.”

  I sighed. “Do you think Father'll like being president?”

  “Better than he liked being vice president, I'm sure.”

  Father had not wanted to be vice president. Mother had not wanted it for him. Sister, who had gone with them to the nominating convention, had been disgusted by the very idea. Father would have refused if he had known how, because he thought he was being asked to be vice president to keep him from continuing as governor of New York. When Father was governor he got to make a lot of decisions about important things. As vice president, he didn't get to.

  “Where's Senator Hanna now?”

  “In the Senate, silly. He's from Ohio.” Kermit swung down off his plank. He reached for me and helped me jump down. “Let's go feed the guinea pigs. I'm taking them all to Washington.”

  Archie cried out in his sleep at night. Quentin insisted on having all the dogs in bed with him, under the covers, even though the nights were still warm. We made black armbands for our dolls to wear, out of respect for President McKinley. Archie made one for Algonquin, but Algonquin didn't like it and kept stamping it off. Finally Kermit made Archie stop trying to put it back on. He said it was ridiculous to put animals into mourning. I kept an eye on the household, as Mother had asked, and tried not to miss her and Father.

  On Wednesday morning we read the newspaper accounts of President McKinley's funeral as we waited for Mother to come home. Father had ridden with President McKinley's body on a special funeral train all the way from Buffalo to Washington. At every station along the way, men and women stood in lines along the tracks. Bands played hymns in honor of the dead president, and women laid flowers on the rails. When the train pulled in, Father would stand on the platform at the back of the train, a black armband over his sleeve and his hat in his hand, and silently acknowledge the crowd. Once, as they entered Washington, people began to cheer him. Father's head snapped up, and he glared so fiercely that the noise stopped instantly. No one should cheer a funeral train. Father knew better.

  It rained throughout the funeral service. Poor Mrs. McKinley could hardly stand. After eating dinner with Mother, Father got back onto the train with President McKinley's body to escort it to Canton, Ohio, for burial.

  It was raining at Sagamore, too, and gray and cold. The postman had brought the mail along with the newspaper, and Miss Young sorted it at the breakfast table, setting aside some letters but opening many others herself. “My goodness,” she said, shaking her head, “your mother will need a secretary. Listen. The editors of Ladies’ Home Journal wish to photograph all of you children for an article on Amer-ica's new First Family, to be published as soon as possible. The editors of the Washington Post wish to know where the young Roosevelt children will attend school. The headmaster of Groton writes that he has received several requests to interview Ted and will deny them all until he receives instructions to the contrary.” She shook her head. “Poor Ted.”

  Mame was still in bed, so Miss Young was presiding at the table. Kermit sat at the foot, in Father's place. He whistled. Miss Young smiled. “Then there are the letters from schools. Fully nine pri
vate academies in Washington have offered their services, countless tutors—”

  I spoke up. “I don't need a school. Sister and I have you.”

  Miss Young smiled. “I've enjoyed our studies, dear. But a school might be a nice environment for Alice and you. The Executive Mansion may be a lonely place.”

  Archie laughed. “Not with us in it,” he said.

  When Mother came home she had answers for everything. A president needed a lot of carriage horses, so Father was going to buy three more pairs to keep in Washington, and we were going to leave both of our current pairs at Sagamore to use whenever we were home. All the other horses would come with us to Washington. “Except Pony Grant,” Mother said. “Pony Grant is too old.” We had had him forever; Sister's other grandparents had bought him for her before I was born.

  We could take all the guinea pigs, as well as Eli Yale, Sis-ter's macaw, and Emily Spinach, Sister's snake. We could take Tom Quartz, our new kitten, and Kermit's kangaroo rat and my rabbits. We could take some of our dogs, but not the ones that would be miserable living in a city. They would stay at Sagamore and live with the carriage horses.

  “Has there been a letter from Sister?” Mother asked. I shook my head. Mother pursed her lips and looked disappointed. “Well,” she said, “I'm sure we'll hear from her soon. She must be exposed to news in some form, even among the people with whom she currently associates.”

  Mother began to sort the mail into stacks, putting all the letters from schools to one side. “You know Mame can't come with us,” she said to me. I nodded. “Miss Young has graciously agreed to take her place with Archie and Quentin, and …” Mother set the mail aside and turned toward me. “Your father and I have decided to send you and Sister to the National Cathedral School for Girls in Washington. It'll be an excellent opportunity for you. You'll get a fine education, and best of all, you'll be able to be home with us every weekend.”

  My breathing stopped. “What do you mean ‘every weekend'?” I said. “School doesn't last all night.”