Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

Between large and voracious bites, he continued. “You see,” he said, glancing up from the steaming goose-liver pie to Lizzie Cameron, “as my modest volumes of The Winning of the West will show in detail, hard-earned White supremacy over the savages and savage lands of this continent has given birth to a new race of mankind . . . the American Race.”

Henry Adams cleared his throat. “My British publisher has sent me an advance manuscript copy of Charles H. Pearson’s new book—I believe it will be published early next year—titled National Life and Character . Oh, have you heard of Mr. Pearson by any chance, Mr. Holmes? Or met him perhaps?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of him,” said Holmes. “I’ve not met him. I believe he only recently retired from Parliament.”

“Quite so,” said Adams. He was fumbling in his jacket and waistcoat pockets. “I’d copied down one of his . . . for possible reviewing purposes . . . just at . . . oh, here it is.” He removed a folded piece of paper, flattened it next to his untouched but still-steaming meat pie, leaned forward so the intense candlelight from the chandelier glowed on his bald pate, and said, “Mr. Pearson’s fear for the coming new century . . . and for the near future here and in Europe as well . . . was put this way.”

Adams’s reading voice was smooth and assured.

“ ‘The day will come, and perhaps is not far distant, when the European observer will look round to see the globe girdled with a continuous zone of the black and yellow races, no longer too weak for aggression or under tutelage, but independent, or practically so, in government, monopolising the trade of their own regions, and circumscribing the industry of the Europeans; when Chinamen and the natives of Hindostan, the states of Central and South America, by that time predominantly Indian . . . are represented by fleets in the European seas, invited to international conferences and welcomed as allies in quarrels of the civilized world. The citizens of these countries will then be taken up into the social relations of the white races, will throng the English turf or the salons of Paris, and will be admitted to inter-marriage. It is idle to say that if all this should come to pass our pride of place will not be humiliated . . . We shall wake to find ourselves elbowed and hustled, and perhaps even thrust aside by peoples whom we looked down upon as servile and thought of as bound always to minister to our needs. The solitary consolation will be that the changes have been inevitable.’ ”

Adams folded up the paper and his tiny spectacles and looked down the length of the table to see young Theodore Roosevelt still grinning at him.

“You don’t agree, Mr. Roosevelt?” asked Adams.

“Pearson’s speaking primarily about the Black and Yellow races,” said Roosevelt. “By the time they will have the capability of threatening us militarily or in trade, the descendants of the Negro and today’s Chinaman may be as intellectual as the Athenian. The American Race . . . and the English as well, of course . . . shall simply then be dealing with another civilized nation of non-Aryan blood, precisely as we now deal with Magyar, Finn, and Basque. This is as it should be, since White Europeans and Americans were never designed by their Creator to live and propagate permanently in the hot regions of Africa, South America, and India. It’s only here on our continent—and the White Russians on theirs, the White Australians on theirs—that we must essentially eliminate savages and their cultures so that the American Race shall rule in its own home.”

“Perhaps you’d like to review Mr. Pearson’s book,” said Adams.

“I would!” said Roosevelt with an even broader grin.

“I’ll ask his publisher to send you an advance copy.”

“In the meantime, I heartily recommend the pie,” said Clara Hay. “The truffles are especially tasty and I hope that everyone had a chance to notice their artful arrangement by Chef Ranhofer. And after the pie, we shall have some sorbet and then . . . then . . . the teal duck, I believe.”

“Teal?” said Henry Cabot Lodge. “Not canvasback?”

“Evidently canvasback are all but impossible to procure these days,” said John Hay. “Possibly due to lack of their favored wild celery, or the disappearance of their wetlands, or some say due to overhunting.”

“It’s most likely a deliberate shortage,” said Henry Adams. “A ploy to raise the price of canvasback in the restaurants and butcher shops. Did you know that almost two-thirds of the decent restaurants in New York are owned, directly or indirectly, by Jews?”

No one paused in their eating save for Del Hay, who said, “Really?”

“It’s the truth,” said Adams. “Creating a canvasback shortage to drive up the price of the duck is precisely what those people—the Jews—are so clever at doing.”

There was another moment of silence.

“Well,” said Henry Cabot Lodge turning to his left to look at the obviously distraught Clara Hay, “teal is every bit as tasty as canvasback and I don’t believe anything could surpass tonight’s pâté de foie-gras, Bellevue that amazing goose-liver terrine. My compliments not only to the chef but to our lovely hostess.”

Clara smiled and blushed. Servants cleared glasses of Steinberger Cabernet that had accompanied the foie-gras and filled everyone’s new and larger glasses with Clos de Vougeot. The conversation at the table moved on.

It was almost two and a half hours since dinner had commenced and if everything simply ended now—if everyone had gone home immediately after the fromage course—several lives would have had different futures. But the glacée à la napolitaine had revived sagging spirits and the closing wines of the evening (before brandy in the library for the men, of course)—the Château Lafite and Old Reserve Madeira—were especially fine, although Del Hay looked as if he had drunk enough wine for the evening as early as the Duque Port with the fromage or even the Clos de Vougeot that had come with the teal pie. The eighth and ninth wines of the evening made Del grow quiet, perhaps even a little morose, but it loosened the already glib tongues of the majority of the people at the table. Only Sherlock Holmes and Senator Cameron were saying almost nothing; Henry Cabot Lodge had told a funny story with the fromage and was still in a talkative mood.

Suddenly Helen raised her wine glass. “We’ve toasted other things, but we haven’t toasted Uncle Harry returning to the United States!”

“Hear, hear!” cried John Hay, and everyone drank to Henry James’s return.

“I hope and trust that Mr. James will be staying in America this time,” said Theodore Roosevelt. The younger man’s eyes were bright but James had noticed all through the meal how very little wine the Civil Service Commissioner had drunk.

James smiled his appreciation at the comment, but said, “Alas, I must soon return to my modest little flat in London at De Vere Gardens. I scribble for a living and ever more rarely can find time to enjoy delightful nights out such as tonight. A true delight, Clara. John.”

Clara Hay flushed pink and smiled and her husband nodded.

“No, I mean it,” said Roosevelt. “This new American Race needs its writers. America needs its expatriate writers to come home and to write about America. Don’t you agree, Mr. Holmes?”

Holmes, who had been listening in silence for so long, showing no reaction other than a polite smile, merely nodded recognition of Roosevelt’s misplaced question. Perhaps Roosevelt hadn’t noticed that he was English.

“But Uncle Harry does write about Americans,” protested Helen.