Later, the two of them stumbling and leaning into each other in a frail balance, Franklin put Nate in the guest room down the hall from his, right next to Jane’s. Before parting, Franklin pointed to the light coming from under her door, and the two of them broke into giggles, as if they were college pranksters sneaking back into their dormitory with the dean still awake.
* * *
In the morning, Franklin awaited Nate at the breakfast table in the state dining room. He thought it would be amusing for the two of them to eat their oatmeal in the grand chamber beneath the glinting chandelier. But when Hawthorne entered and took his seat Franklin could see his friend had lost the humor of the night before.
“The whiskey was good, though perhaps we swam too deep in it,” Franklin said in sympathy.
“I slept poorly, it’s true.”
“Oh? There was a disturbance?”
“Yes.” Hawthorne poured himself coffee from the silver pot but didn’t drink it. “A remarkable disturbance.”
Franklin saw his friend’s upset through the lines of his face that had been deepened overnight. Penciled striations etched in his forehead and temples as if from the effort of holding his eyes tightly shut for hours.
“This sounds like the sort of thing one of your narrators would say before embarking on a wondrous tale,” Franklin said.
“There’s not the form for a tale. It was an occurrence.”
“What sort?”
“A noise.”
“Ah. So a yelp? A whinny? A cry of—”
“A child’s voice. Coming from the bedroom in the northwest corner.”
Franklin placed his cup down so hard he was surprised the saucer didn’t crack.
“There are no children here,” he said.
“That’s why I rose and went to the door where the sound was coming from. When I entered—” He caught himself from speaking something he was not prepared to say aloud.
“The furnishings,” he went on finally, choosing a different course. “They were Benjamin’s, weren’t they?”
“Jane brought them here.”
“I’m not certain that’s all she brought.”
At this, Franklin suspected a joke. The hangover, the buried rivalry between Nate and Jane, the setup of breakfast in the mansion’s finest dining room. It must be a continuation of last night’s teasing. Because if he was describing an actual “occurrence,” it wasn’t Nate’s way to talk around a thing, even if he sometimes brought an excess of poetry to the point. So the president waited for his friend’s piqued expression to melt into laughter. But Hawthorne’s unease only doubled as he struggled to bring his mind to where it didn’t want to go.
“There was no child in the room,” Nate said. “But it wasn’t unoccupied.”
“Who was there? The staff have been forbidden to enter. I will take it up with Webster.”
“There was no person, Frank. Yet there—”
He stopped. Sipped from his cup. Winced as he swallowed.
“It’s not my place to tell you what to do,” Hawthorne continued. “But I wouldn’t enter that room. Never. I certainly wish I hadn’t.”
“For God’s sake, you’re jabbering like one of the bloody witches in the Scottish play!”
Franklin was hoping this would, at last, pull a laugh out of Hawthorne. But the author remained severe, his pallor bleached.
“I’ve forged my vocation on the translation of experience into words,” he said. “But there are no words for what I experienced last night. Or if there are, I choose not to speak them. I’m sorry.”
This was absurd. Franklin tried to convince himself of it. He was mostly successful, as he was now concerned for his friend’s state of mind, given he was saying such nonsense as this. He sounded like Jane. And yet a part of Franklin thought he understood him, believed him. Just as part of him understood and believed Jane.
“I’m sorry too,” Franklin said, shaking his head. “I realize this is a strange old house. And I feel even stranger for having to live in it.”
“You are committed to these walls,” Nate said, rising from the table. “But I’m not. I won’t stay here another night.”
Franklin was astonished. Hawthorne was serious. More than serious—he was leaving. Running away.
“Dear Nate, don’t go. We drank too much last night, and you slept poorly. Dreamed poorly. But we’re not children.”
“No, we’re not,” Hawthorne said, and took another step away from the table. “We’re fathers. Which is why I must go.”
“You miss your little ones so much after only one night?”
“I cannot explain this to you. But it’s not just that I miss them. I feel that I must be near them. Protect them.”
As you failed to do for yours. Franklin heard this, even if it went unsaid.
Hawthorne started for the door. At the sight of his retreat, Franklin felt at once a powerful sadness and stirring temper.
“You came here at my invitation!” the president shouted. “To leave like this—you couldn’t blame a man for taking offense.”
“I don’t blame you for it,” Nate said, looking back at him.
“Then make it right.” As abruptly as it arrived, the anger in Franklin drained away, leaving only a gutted desolation. “Stay on, my friend.”
Hawthorne didn’t move. Even this plea wouldn’t draw him back, though the regret of it knotted his brow and shrunk his frame.
“There’s no way I will risk another hour here. I apologize for that,” he said. “Not for the impoliteness of it, which I know you will forgive, but for my cowardice.”
“Will you not speak directly of what you saw?”
“I won’t. For my sake, for yours. For Jane’s.”
“And what of Jane? Why do you speak of her?” Franklin said, his voice rising again. “Your condescension toward me is one thing, but to direct it at my wife is another. Once Jane is well, I will be sure to bring this up with—”
“Jane is no longer of this world! I’m not sure she ever was!”
Franklin lurched in his chair as if he’d been punched. Nate had insulted his wife. No matter how troubled their union since coming to the mansion—no matter how right Hawthorne might be—he would not stand for anyone to hurt her.
“I believe you were right,” Franklin said, standing himself, fists clenched. “You must go. And I ask you to do it now.”
Hawthorne left the room and was gone from the premises before Franklin could find him to take back the threat in his tone, if not the words themselves. For the rest of that day the president hoped, after some conciliatory correspondence, his friend would return and stay longer his next visit. But the first letter came from Hawthorne. While it made clear his fondness for Pierce, it made clearer his intention to never set foot in the presidential mansion again.
Despite Franklin’s repeated invitations, he never did.
* * *
Within the fortnight, Pierce awarded Nathaniel Hawthorne a choice post: United States consul in Liverpool.
“He will like it there,” Jane remarked, not unkindly, when Franklin told her.