Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

In the meantime, he was happy to have this invitation from John Hay. James felt like a man who, in leaning over a ship’s railing to get a better view of something below, has fallen overboard. This invitation had felt like a life ring, complete with attached line to pull him in, tossed to him with happy, expert aim.

Benson answered the bell and, after silently directing a footman to take James’s wet coat, top hat, and walking cane, led the writer directly to Hay’s now-familiar study. Upon looking up from a formidable stack of papers to see James standing in his doorway after being announced, John sprang to his feet, was around the desk in a minute, and used one hand to shake James’s while clasping the author firmly on the shoulder with his other hand. It came close to being a hug—which, of course, would have horrified and appalled Henry James—but now it made him feel that glow of good feeling that he’d been certain he had lost.

“I am so happy to see you, Harry,” said Hay as he escorted James to the comfortable chair just opposite Hay’s across the broad desk. Hay had kept in literal contact, holding James by the elbow as he walked the few paces to the chair. When James had taken his seat, Hay perched on the corner of his desk—amazingly spry for a man who would turn 55 in October, was James’s thought (and not his first on that subject about Hay)—and cried, “Well, it’s quarter past the old Five of Hearts’ tea time, always precisely at five y’know, but we can have tea anyway—Clover’s ghost would not object although we may hear a disembodied rap or two from the table there—or perhaps some really good whisky instead.”

James hesitated. It was far too early for such a strong drink for him, he rarely touched whisky anyway, but this rainy afternoon, with the fire crackling and popping in John Hay’s study’s fireplace, he found the idea of a strong drink attractive—almost compelling.

“Is this an honest Scotch whisky, with no ‘e’ in the word?” asked James. “Or one of your American sour-mash whiskeys with the ‘e’ inserted?”

Hay laughed. “Oh, Scotch whisky, I assure you, Harry. I’d never offend your Anglicized sensibilities with either sour mash or a sneaky, unwanted ‘e’.” Hay gestured to Benson who seemed more to dissolve in thin air than step away.

“I have a twelve-year-old single-malt Cardhu from Speyside, matured in oak casks, that I find better than most twenty-one-year-old single-malt whiskeys,” continued Hay, going around the desk to take his place in the high-backed and leather-tufted chair there. “Its only drawback is that one can purchase it only at Speyside, so I must either travel there each time I’m in England or constantly be paying a man to travel to Speyside, purchase it, pack it, and ship it.”

“I look forward to tasting it,” said James, knowing that he’d sipped 12-year-old Cardhu single malts with Paul Joukowsky and even in Lady Wolseley’s salon, the latter thanks to the tastes of her husband, Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, the inspiration for the “very model of a modern major general” in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance .

Even before Hay began speaking again, Benson was back with a silver tray holding the decanter of Cardhu, crystal whisky glasses, a spritzer of soda water, a pitcher of regular water, and a short stack of leather coasters with John Hay’s crest on them. When Benson turned toward the writer and raised one eyebrow, James said, “Neat please.”

“The usual dash of water for me, Benson,” said Hay.

When they had their whisky glasses and Benson had left, silently closing the study door behind him, each man raised his glass—the desk was too broad for any clinking of crystal—and Hay said, “Amicus absentibus.”

James was surprised by the toast—to which absent friends, exactly, would they be drinking?—but he nodded and drank some of the amber whisky. It was excellent. James knew enough about judging whiskies to know that the palate on this one was smooth and well-balanced, the finish bringing out some lingering, sweet smoke in the aftertaste, but never overpowering. Never “showing off” as so many single malts had the tendency to do.

James nodded again, this time acknowledging the quality of the whisky, all the while thinking— Which absent friend or friends?

“Harry, I won’t beat about the bush,” said Hay leaning forward and cradling his Scotch glass with both hands above the papers on his desk. “Clara and I are hoping that you might consider moving back in with us for as long as you stay in Washington.”

Is this related to last night? James’s heart was pounding painfully—all the men in the James family had bad hearts that would get them someday—so he drank a bit more of the Cardhu to give him time to think. No, he couldn’t believe that Holmes would have told anyone about James’s presence in the cemetery and in Clover’s tomb-sculpture interior. He’d promised that he wouldn’t. What is a promise to a man who is not really a gentleman?

“Why, John?” he said softly. “Surely I spent enough time here as your guest that you must welcome the quiet household after our disruption.”

“You were here with Holmes,” said Hay, “or here when Holmes was impersonating that Norwegian explorer, Jan Sigerson, which was enjoyable in its own way. But Clara and I felt that we never really had a chance to talk to you.”

James set his chin on his chest in a posture that would, half a century later, come to be called “Churchillian”.

“Unless,” continued Hay, leaning far back in his chair now and drinking the whisky almost hurriedly, as if enjoying its fragrance weren’t part of the process of enjoying it, “unless you plan to leave the city soon. To Cambridge? Perhaps then on to England? Paris?”

“No, I have no immediate plans to leave.” James realized that he’d decided that even as he spoke the words. “But my room at Mrs. Stevens’s is quite adequate.”

Hay grinned beneath his carefully trimmed whiskers. “Adequate for a bachelor junior congressman, perhaps, Harry, but certainly not for a writer. You are doing some writing, aren’t you?”

Too little, too little , thought James. But then, the plan had been to commit suicide in Paris and part of the attractiveness of that plan had been to end all the deadlines, to get his agent and stage producers and publishers and everyone else with their baby beaks wide open and waiting to be fed to—how did the Americans put it?—then get off his neck .

“Some very modest attempts at my next play,” said James, his tone as doleful as his countenance. “Little more than notes.”

Hay grinned again. “I trust that your room was comfortable when you and Holmes were staying here, but we have a much larger suite of guest rooms at the far end of the wing opposite to the one where you stayed before. We didn’t place you there during your last stay because it’s inconveniently far from the main stairway, but if you’d honor us with another visit, that suite will be yours—bedroom and much larger sitting room, both with fireplaces, of course, the sitting room with its own rather pleasant library. The colored tiles around the large bathtub are somewhat brighter than those in your former bathroom, but the wash basins are marble, the taps are silver, and I can promise you that the water will be hot as well as cold.”

James took a breath, trying to frame his refusal in the politest way possible. In truth, it was the proximity to Henry Adams—the man whose secrecy he’d so callously invaded—that was preventing him from saying yes.

“And as nice as Mrs. Stevens’s little place is,” continued Hay, the whisky gone from his glass, “I don’t believe that she can provide you with as excellent a manservant as we can.”