The Fifth Heart (21 page)

“I read your book,” ‘Jan Sigerson’ said almost diffidently to King. “
Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada
. I enjoyed it immensely.”

“That old tome,” laughed King. “It’s more than twenty years out of date. And half the chapters are about my Early Pleistocene period around the summer and fall of eighteen sixty-four. But tell me, Mr. Sigerson . . . did you enjoy the section where I described conquering Mount Whitney?”

Sherlock Holmes only smiled.

John Hay said, “Now, Clarence . . .”

“I used two chapters to describe clambering up Mount Tyndall,” boomed King. “Half the book to describe hiking all over other peaks around Yosemite. But only two subordinate clauses to describe my triumph atop the mighty Mount Whitney.”

“Not all peaks are ascendable upon one’s first attempt,” Holmes said softly.

King laughed and nodded. To Henry James he said, “Here were my two subordinate clauses in toto, Harry—and I quote:
‘After trying hard to climb Mt. Whitney without success, and having returned to the plains . . . ’ ”

King was the only one in the room laughing, but that did not seem to inhibit his mirth. James watched him closely, seeing the deeper bitterness that had settled into the old friend of his old friends—no, more a damp rising from within than something settling from without, as Dickens used to describe the damp rising from tombs under an old church until it chilled the entire congregation.

“Young, fit, outfitted, motivated to greatness,” said King, “and not only could I not get within four hundred feet of that summit on the first attempt, but when I finally returned and climbed it,
it was the wrong mountain
. Somehow, in the exertion of the climbing, I’d managed to misplace an entire mountain . . . all fourteen thousand five hundred feet of it.”

“But you did return again and make the summit,” John Hay said softly.

“Yes,” said King, “but only after other white men had joined the Indians who’d made the summit before I did. And I named the mountain!”

“And you have one named for you,” said Holmes. “Mount Clarence King . . . northwest of Mount Whitney in the Sierra Nevada range, I believe.”

“Our exploration group was keen on naming mountains after one another,” said King, holding out his sherry glass so the silent but ever-present male servant could refill it. “It’s called ‘Mount Clarence King’ because there was already a peak in the Yosemite named after a preacher called Thomas Starr King. My hill is twelve thousand nine hundred and five feet tall. Somehow I always manage to be the runt of the litter. How high was that pass you crossed to get into Tibet from Sikkim, Mr. Sigerson?”

“Jelep La?”
said Holmes. “Thirteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine feet at the pass’s summit.”

“Admit it now,” said King. “Weren’t you a tiny bit tempted to pile up a little rock cairn, just a foot or so tall? Then you could have said you summited a ‘fourteener’. Fourteeners are highly thought of in the American West.”

Without waiting for an answer, King began to question Sigerson/Holmes about climbing; it was almost a staccato interrogation. Holmes answered each question promptly and succinctly, evidently understanding the terms well enough. Sometimes he posed counter questions that made Clarence King laugh and say that he’d been burrowing into and under mountains the last two decades or so, not climbing them. James could only note the arcane terms that were filling the air: belay, being on belay, going
off
belay, debating the best new forms of belay, rappelling, rappel ropes, anchors high and anchors low, stemming and counterforce, manteling, methods of chimneying, fist-jamming, using one’s bootlaces for Prusik knots when dangling from a rope after a fall from an overhang . . . James understood none of it, but Holmes made it sound as if
he
understood it all.

Finally Clarence King sighed. “Well, I leave the mountains to you younger generation of climbers. My days on belay—or being belayed—are finished, I fear.”

Rather than let this set the tone again, John Hay said to King, “I’m sure Adams will be damnably sorry he missed you.”

“As well he should be,” muttered King, holding his glass out for another refill of sherry.

“You should tell our other guest of how you met Henry Adams,” said Hay.

Clarence King seemed to ponder a minute on whether it would be worth anyone’s time to hear the story, but then he drank down his sherry and turned to Holmes. “You’ve not met Adams yet, is that right, sir?”

“I’ve not yet had the pleasure of making his acquaintance.”

King grunted. “Way back in eighteen sixty-seven, not being able to find honest work—and not especially wanting to—I convinced Congress to create a Survey of the Fortieth Parallel and to put me in charge of it. In eighteen seventy-three I was headed from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Long’s Peak in Colorado Territory to meet up with one of my partners, a certain Arnold Hague . . . Do you happen to know about Long’s Peak, Mr. Sigerson?”

“No,” said Holmes.

“It’s one of those much-loved Colorado fourteeners . . . fourteen thousand and ninety-three feet, I seem to remember . . . named after Lieutenant Long of Zebulon Pike’s expedition and it happens to be at the easternmost bend in the spine of the Rocky Mountains in all of North America. Which is all irrelevant to my story . . .”

James smiled. He’d almost forgotten how Clarence King had the born raconteur’s ability to let his tales meander like a mountain stream without making his audiences impatient. James had often pondered why that gift rarely translated from verbal storytelling to the written page.

“Anyway, I’d only reached the valley of Estes Park by the time the sun had set that night when I was trying to get to Long’s Peak, so I got the loan of one of the little shacks there in which I could spend the night.

“Well, the shack had a bed but no stove and the night was cold. I was shivering under every blanket I’d brought with me when I heard this sound from outside and I carry a lantern out and there’s . . . Mr. Henry Adams on muleback. I’m not sure which one looked more relieved to have found a human habitation . . . Adams or his mule.

“At any rate, Henry had just finished his first year as an assistant professor of history at Harvard and had recently become interested in geology after writing an article about the British geologist Charles Lyell for the
North American Review
. A friend had suggested to Adams that he come out west for the summer to see the work of our survey party, so he had. I guess Henry figured that there had to be some geology involved in so much surveying. Adams actually knew Arnold Hague from Boston and had been hanging around his camp on Long’s Peak when Henry decided that he’d board a mule and do some fishing. Naturally he got lost, but Adams had the good sense to give the mule her head . . . if there’s one sure way to find cooking and civilization, it’s by giving a hungry mule its head. So he ended up at my little cabin in Estes Park at about ten o’clock at night.”

Here Clarence King grinned and James could see that John and Clara Hay were smiling in anticipation of the finale of the explorer’s little story.

“I’d actually briefly crossed paths with Henry before that night,” continued King. “Once in Washington and again in Cheyenne the week before this. But I didn’t think I knew him well enough for the giant bear hug he gave me when he got down off that mule and came into the light of that cabin. Henry had grown hungry and, I imagine, a mite anxious. Anyway, Estes Park is high up and it was a cold night for August, it can snow in August up there, so after sharing some cold beans, we crawled fully dressed into that bed—the only one the cabin had to offer naturally—and talked almost ’til dawn. We’ve been fast friends ever since.”

“Adams will be so sorry he missed you,” said John Hay.

“Yessirree, but I have to get to that silver mine in Mexico or head back to the high Sierras and find gold if I’m ever going to add a Constable to my Turners.”

John Hay smiled at Holmes. “Harry knows this story, but it’s worth repeating. Some years ago Clarence was in England buying art—amongst other things—and Ruskin had two wonderful Turners for sale. When he asked King which one he wanted, Clarence bought both, saying ‘One good Turner deserves another.’ ”

King smiled wanly. “In those years I was buying twin Turners. These days I am forced by penury to come to my best friends’ formal dinner party in a faded velvet-corduroy traveling suit.”

“Corde du roi,”
murmured Henry James. “The corded-cloth of a king. And such a beautiful wale.”

“Those were Captain Ahab’s last words before Moby Dick sank the
Pequod
out from under him,” said King.

When Holmes raised one eyebrow in query, John Hay said, “It was a novel that came out more than four decades ago and wasn’t really noticed by most readers and reviewers, but Clover had recommended it and all of us in the Five of Hearts loved it and referred to it frequently. It’s about Ahab, a whaler sea captain who becomes obsessed with a white whale that took his leg years earlier.”

“Ahab’s policy toward his white whale has become my attitude toward life in general these days,” said Clarence King.

“Which policy is that?” asked Henry James.

“ ‘ . . . to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee’,” recited King, leavening the ferocity of the statement with a boy’s sweet smile.

Clara Hay, who had slipped out of the parlor a few minutes earlier, returned with her hands clasped together. Her smile was radiant. “Emissary Helmer Halvorsen Vollebæk, Mrs. Vollebæk, and their daughter have arrived. It’s a bit crowded and warm in here, so I thought we might take our drinks into the conservatory. Cook assures me that dinner will be ready in less than an hour.”

H
enry James had known an elderly duchess who may have been the cruelest person he’d ever met. When she returned for the London Season after months in Venice, her habit upon arriving at her townhome was to throw an initial dinner party that might have been designed by the Borgias. James had been invited to one of these autos-da-fé to fill out the complement of bachelors at the table (and perhaps, as part of his role, to serve as observer of the rites of cruel sacrifice to be explored that night) and, although he’d long since been forewarned of the duchess’s venom, he had attended out of sheer curiosity. The turn of the social screw at the dinner party he had attended included inviting five couples who—although none of them rising to the duchess’s social circle and not socially acquainted with one another—were comprised of four of the women having illicit affairs with no fewer than five of the men present. In addition were the brace of bachelors—Henry James foremost amongst them in both age and social ranking—and five unmarried young ladies, each of whom (the duchess well knew) were (or had been) involved in disastrous liaisons with some of the single or married men.

In no case was the spouse aware of the connections with others at the table.

That dinner had been fairly leaking with tensions, but Henry James found himself far more tense at this cozy dinner on Sunday, March 26, 1893, where the Hays—perhaps the least cruel couple James had ever known—were happily hosting their old friend Harry, Mr. Sigerson, Clarence King, and the Norwegian emissary and his wife and daughter.

The emissary, Mr. Helmer Halvorsen Vollebæk, was not the ambassador to the United States from the Kingdom of Scandinavia only because King Oskar II of Scandinavia preferred to have two emissaries in Washington at all times—one from Sweden and one from Norway, titularly united under Oskar II but still proud of separate origins—and currently the Swedish emissary was the official Scandinavian Ambassador. In two years, it would be Mr. Vollebæk’s turn.

James judged Vollebæk’s age at around 60, but his wife, Linnea, if James had heard correctly during introductions, must have been at least 20 years younger. Their daughter Oda, who was also present, was in her late adolescence and was reputed to be the most sought-after debutante on Embassy Row. They all spoke English flawlessly.

James was disappointed—or perhaps relieved, it was hard for him to record his emotions at the moment—when “Sigerson” was introduced to Mr. Vollebæk, and the two men clicked heels and bowed at the same moment, but exchanged greetings in English.

The early courses were passed in easy conversation. John and Clara Hay were experts at involving everyone at a table in conversation. The only element even approaching politics was the Vollebæks’ united enthusiasm at the pageantry of Grover Cleveland’s inauguration a few weeks earlier and their eagerness to look in on the Columbian Exposition—Chicago’s World’s Fair—in May before they returned to Norway for the summer. Miss Vollebæk appeared to have given her attention only to the many inaugural balls around the city that night and weekend of March 4.

“Oda is of the age now where every ball is an opportunity to meet eligible young men,” said Mrs. Linnea Vollebæk in her soft Scandinavian accent.

“Mother!” cried Oda, blushing fiercely.

“Well, it is true, is it not?” laughed her father. Emissary Vollebæk dabbed at his lips with the napkin. “My baby girl will soon be finding herself a husband.”

While Oda blushed more deeply, Clara Hay smiled and said, “Why, we have two of America’s most eligible bachelors at this table, Your Excellency.”

When Mr. Vollebæk raised an eyebrow in polite interrogation, Clara went on, “Mr. James and Mr. King have long been considered prize catches for the young lady who finally lands one or the other.”

“Is this true, Mr. James? Mr. King?” asked Mrs. Vollebæk in a tone that actually sounded interested. “Are you both still eligible bachelors?”

Henry James hated this. He always hated it when he was teased about this at someone’s table. He’d been irritated by it for decades, but at least he knew his response by heart.

Smiling softly and bowing his head ever so slightly as if he were being knighted by the Queen, James said, “Alas! I am on the cusp of turning fifty years old and at that age an old bachelor may no longer be called ‘eligible’, but, rather, ‘confirmed’. It appears all but certain now that the only marriage I shall enjoy in this lifetime is to my art.” When he saw a flicker of confusion in Mrs. Vollebæk’s lovely eyes, he added, “To my writing, that is, since I am only a poor scribbler and currently a playwright.”