Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

“There’s no reason you should have to,” said Senator Don Cameron. “None of us is leaving for Europe until July. The Exposition opens on May first. Sometime in May, I’ll lay on a few private railroad cars and we’ll all go together for a few days. Are you game, Adams?”

Henry Adams grumbled but looked at Lizzie Cameron and then nodded his assent.

“Hay?”

“Absolutely. We’re with you, Don.”

“Mr. Holmes, will you join us?” asked Cameron. “We’ll park the cars right at the entrance to the Fair and there will be sleeping rooms for everyone.”

“Thank you for the invitation,” said Holmes with a nod. “I may have to be at the Exposition earlier than that. We shall see.”

Helen Julia Hay didn’t actually clap her hands, but she folded them like a little girl preparing to pray. Her smile, thought James, truly earned that tired descriptor of “radiant”.

In a departure from usual dining protocol, the remove, what Henry James knew as the relevé , this evening a saddle of mutton sliced very thin and set on a warm plate with a little gravy, was carved in the dining room by Chef Ranhofer and served between the two entrees. Servants glided in and refilled everyone’s champagne glass.

“I say,” said Senator Don Cameron, “this is smashing-good champagne. I seem to recognize it and then I don’t. What is it, John?”

“Royal Charter,” said Hay.

“I thought only Delmonico’s was allowed to lay in Royal Charter!” boomed Roosevelt.

“It is,” said Hay. “It does.”

“Well, I’d rather spend the whole summer at the Chicago Exposition than in boring old Europe, boring old Switzerland,” said Helen.

“I believe we’ll be in Zermatt and Lucerne this summer with the Camerons and the Lodges and Mr. Adams for only a few weeks,” said Clara Hay. “The July and August months of the Fair will just have to get along without us.”

“Best thing,” said Adams. “I went to the Bicentennial in ’seventy-six and, other than the warning that the telephone was about to invade our homes, the whole affair was overblown and useless. More boring than Switzerland, Helen.”

“Except for the part where they scalped Custer,” said John Hay. “ That was entertaining.”

“John!” said Clara.

Hay folded his hands meekly in his lap and looked chastened.

“Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show will be at the Chicago Exposition,” said Roosevelt. “I hear that they may re-enact the Custer debacle with Sitting Bull acting his part. Sounds like great fun.”

“Wasn’t Crazy Horse with Sitting Bull when they ambushed Custer?” asked Del.

“Yes, yes,” boomed Roosevelt, turning his entire upper body so that everyone could be the recipient of his grin. “But we killed Crazy Horse in ’seventy-seven.”

“You have a history of the Wild West coming out soon, don’t you, Mr. Roosevelt?” said Lizzie Cameron.

Roosevelt nodded but also ducked his massive head almost shyly. “I do. It’s called The Winning of the West and Volumes One and Two should be published this summer. But even though I’ve spent years working on it, I hesitate to mention my scribbling in the company of the great historians at this table.”

It was true, thought James. Henry Adams was perhaps the most honored living American historian and his volumes on the Jefferson administrations were masterpieces of their kind. John Hay’s book about his former boss, Abraham Lincoln, written in collaboration with his old friend John Nicolay, had sold well in both America and Europe and was considered the reference book on Lincoln’s presidency. Henry Cabot Lodge’s ancestors had not only known George Washington on a first-name basis, but Lodge had just finished a magisterial history of Washington. Young Roosevelt, although obviously a dynamo of energy and intellectual accomplishment, had much to be modest about in this evening’s company of fellow historians.

Or in politics for that matter , thought James.

Suddenly Don Cameron piped up and his voice was surprisingly strong. James had almost forgotten that the Husband with the Doleful Countenance was also a U.S. Senator. “You have nothing to fear from me, Commissioner Roosevelt. I’ve not written a history of anything or anybody. Nor shall I. I prefer to read histories and biographies in the quiet of my study.”

“But you have so much you could write about, Don,” said John Hay. “You were Secretary of War under President Grant during the Great Sioux Wars, yes?”

Cameron nodded.

“It’s an interesting age we live in,” said Adams. “In a few years . . . or at least it seems like only a few years to an Ancient such as myself . . . we’ve gone from watching the Indians wipe out Custer’s entire troop and terrorizing the western territories to paying to watch Sitting Bull playacting himself in Mr. Cody’s Wild West Show. A massacre with no blood. A battle with no death.”

“Mr. Roosevelt,” said Nannie Lodge, “you have a ranch out west somewhere . . . or you did have one. Have you ever had to shoot at an Indian?”

James looked carefully at the young man. He knew that Roosevelt had bought and moved to that ranch when his beloved first wife, Alice, had died in February of 1884 just after giving birth to a daughter. As with Adams and Clover, Roosevelt had never mentioned his wife Alice again in public. Shortly after her death, Roosevelt had left his new daughter—named Alice—to be raised by his sister while he moved out to the Badlands of Dakota Territory to begin life anew as a rancher and cowboy.

Roosevelt gave Nannie an even larger grin than he’d shown so far, something Henry James would have not thought possible.

“Mrs. Lodge, I’ve shot at Indians, White desperadoes, drunken Mexicans, sober Mexicans, grizzly bears, wolves, scorpions, rattlesnakes, and a hundred more varieties of God’s most miserable creatures. And I tend to hit what I shoot at.”

“Do you think Indians are among God’s more miserable creatures, Mr. Roosevelt?” asked Lizzie Cameron.

The bright candlelight reflected from the chandelier’s crystal prisms made Roosevelt’s pince-nez gleam like two round beacons of light as he turned his gaze toward Lizzie.

“As your husband knew well when he was Secretary of War, Mrs. Cameron,” said Roosevelt, his grin never quite disappearing, “the most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages . . . though it’s true that such a war is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settlers who drove the savages from our western lands with Remington rifles and Bowie knives have laid all of civilized mankind under a debt to them.”

“So you think there’s no place for the various Indian nations in our national future?” asked John Hay, his voice soft but intense.

“American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar, New Zealander and Maori,” barked Roosevelt. “In each case the White victor, horrible though many of his deeds had to be, has laid deep the foundations for the future greatness of a mighty people. It is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races.”

Chef Ranhofer had wheeled in his pièce de résistance for the evening—a rich and elaborate meat pie made from sliced goose-liver terrine and cooked truffles that were glazed in aspic and arranged in layers in a raised pastry shell that had been baked in an intricate mold in the shape of a nautilus—and now the servants were cutting the pie and setting the warmed plates in place, but no one but Roosevelt began eating even after everyone was served and an obviously piqued chef had retired to the kitchen. Everyone was waiting for Roosevelt’s next words.