The Master

by Colm Toibin

  HE HAD FORGOTTEN, until he saw Holmes, how much his old friend loved the English; as soon as Holmes alighted from the train at Rye, he filled the air with stories of whom he had seen and how they were, how deaf Leslie Stephen had become since Julia had died, how Margot Tennant was not the same since her marriage, how charming his new friend Lady Castletown was and how grand. Henry did not even consider speaking, and he knew that if he had, he would have been interrupted immediately. Holmes was bright-eyed, almost fervid, and managed, despite the years, to look even more handsome than ever before, more gallant. Perhaps his time with Lady Castletown, Henry thought, had made him so.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he said when he finally found a gap in Holmes’s narrative, ‘I’m afraid there are no lords and ladies at all in Rye. It will be very quiet. Indeed, it is very quiet.’

  Holmes clapped him on the back and smiled as if he had just now noticed him. His elevation to the bench seemed to have made him less reserved, if anything. Maybe this was the way, Henry mused, eminent men in their fifties were behaving in America now, but then he pictured William Dean Howells and his brother William and understood that it was merely Holmes who was behaving like this. He tried to explain to Holmes that he had been working on not one but two novels and had not had much company over the previous months other than his servants. Holmes was extolling the landscape and too busy to listen and Henry was suddenly glad that he was staying at Point Hill for only one night. He knew from William and from Howells and others that Holmes had become a famous judge whose theories were discussed in the higher circles of law and politics as the theories of Darwin were discussed by scientists and the clergy. Henry remembered that he had asked William what these theories were and William had put it bluntly that Holmes did not believe in anything and had managed to make this view seem both reasonable and popular. His position was, William said, that he had no position. Howells, on the other hand, was not given to bluntness; he explained merely that Holmes had sought rather forcefully to apply the human and practical element rather than the historical or the theoretical or indeed the moral elements to law. Like Darwin, Howells said, Holmes had developed a theory of winners, but it was his pointed and plain rhetoric that won the day as much as anything else.

  He had often wondered, Holmes now said as they made their way through Rye, if he should have come to England to live. He did not suppose, he added, that they would take him to their bosom if he planned to stay. Henry nodded in assent, but soon his mind was elsewhere.

  They dined on the terrace, and having eaten they sat in repose watching the great plain below in the fading evening light. Holmes groaned and stretched his legs as though settling down for a long and relaxed evening while Henry wished it were an hour later and he could excuse himself. The talk between them was desultory as they carefully avoided the subjects which would divide them, such as William, with whom Holmes seemed to have quarrelled, and Mrs Holmes, who languished in Boston, and Henry’s novels, on which he knew that Holmes had views. The subjects which they could discuss, the gossip about private and public America, the law and politics, soon petered out. Henry found that he had asked too many questions about too many old friends and Holmes had replied too many times that he hardly saw them and knew very little about them. He suspected, he said several times, that Henry knew more about them than he did.

  The twilight lingered and the two men grew silent until Henry felt that they would never think of anything to say again. He moved his chair so that he could study Holmes and saw him now in the gloaming as a deeply contented fellow, at home with himself, and he felt a mild distaste for the aura of good-humoured complacency which Holmes gathered around him.

  ‘It is strange how time goes,’ Holmes said.

  ‘Yes,’ Henry replied, stretching. ‘I used to think it went more slowly in England, but having lived here for so long I know that to be an illusion. I depend now on Italy as the place where time goes most slowly.’

  ‘I was thinking of that summer when we were all together,’ Holmes said.

  ‘Yes,’ Henry said. ‘That glorious, heroic summer.’

  Henry now expected Holmes to say that time had flown since then or that it seemed like yesterday and he wondered how he would respond to Holmes’s banalities. He was already preparing a missive to William, telling him that Holmes as a conversationalist had been laid low.

  ‘I can remember every moment of that month. Better than I can remember yesterday,’ Holmes said.

  They both were silent then; Henry did not know how soon he could take his leave without being rude. Holmes cleared his throat as though to speak and then stopped again. He sighed.

  ‘It is as though time has moved backwards for me,’ Holmes said, turning towards Henry to make sure he was paying attention. ‘Once that summer was over, I could, as I said, remember it perfectly, but during those long days, with all that talk and all that company, it was as though there existed a great curtain around everything. I felt sometimes as if I were under water, seeing things only in vague outline and desperately trying to come up for air. I do not know what the war did to me, save that I survived. But I know now that fear and shock and bravery are merely words and they do not tell us – nothing does – that when you experience them day in day out, you lose part of yourself and you can never get it back. After the war I was diminished and I knew this; part of my soul, my way of living and feeling, was paralysed but I could not tell what part. Nobody recognized what was wrong, not even myself most of the time. All that summer I wanted to change, to cease watching and standing back. I wanted to join and become involved, drink up the life that was offered to us then as those wonderful sisters did. I longed to be alive, just as I long for it now, and the time passing has helped me, helped me to live. When I was twenty-one and twenty-two normal feelings dried up in me and since then I have been trying to make up for that, as well as live, live like others live.’

  Holmes’s voice was almost angry now, but oddly distant and low. Henry knew how much it had taken for him to speak like this, and he knew also that what he said was true. Once more they remained silent, but the silence was filled with regret and recognition.

  Henry did not think he could say anything. He did not have a confession of his own. His war had been private, within his family and deep within himself. It could not be mentioned or explained, but it had left him too as Holmes described. He lived, at times, he felt, as if his life belonged to someone else, a story that had not yet been written, a character who had not been fully imagined.

  He thought that Holmes had said all that he wanted to say, and he was ready to remain a while as a tribute to his candour and let Holmes’s confession settle. But slowly he realized, by the way Holmes faced him, and by Holmes’s filling his glass with brandy as though the night were long, that his guest had something else to say. He waited, and finally when Holmes spoke again his tone had changed. He was back to his role as judge, public figure, man of the world.

  ‘You know, finally,’ Holmes said, ‘The Portrait of a Lady is a great monument to her, although the ending, I have to say that I did not care for the ending.’

  Henry stared at the encroaching night and did not reply. He did not wish to discuss the ending of his novel, but nonetheless he was pleased and satisfied that Holmes had finally mentioned the book, having never referred to it before.

  ‘Yes,’ Holmes said, ‘she was very noble and I think you caught that.’

  ‘I think we all adored her,’ Henry said.

  ‘She remains for me a touchstone,’ Holmes said, ‘and I wish she were alive now so that I could find out what she thought of me.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Henry said.

  Holmes took a sip of his drink.

  ‘Do you ever regret not taking her to Italy when she was ill?’ he asked. ‘Gray says she asked you several times.’

  ‘I don’t think ask is the word,’ Henry said. ‘She was very ill then. Gray is misinformed.’

  ‘Gray says that she asked you and you did not of
fer to help her and that a winter in Rome might have saved her.’

  ‘Nothing could have saved her,’ Henry said.

  Henry felt the sharp deliberation of Holmes’s tone, the slow cruelty of it; he was, he thought, being questioned and judged by his old friend without any sympathy or affection.

  ‘When she did not hear from you she turned her face to the wall.’ Holmes spoke as though it were a line he had been planning to say for some time. He cleared his throat and continued.

  ‘When finally she knew no one would help her she turned her face to the wall. She was very much alone then and she fixed on the idea. You were her cousin and could have travelled with her. You were free, in fact you were already in Rome. It would have cost you nothing.’

  By the time either of them spoke again it was night, and the darkness seemed strangely grim and complete. Henry told the servant that they would not need a lamp as they were ready to retire. Holmes sipped his drink, crossing and recrossing his legs. Henry could hardly remember how he got to bed.

  IN THE MORNING Henry was still considering at what point he should have spoken to defend himself, or when he should have ended the discussion. Clearly, the matter had been festering in Holmes’s mind throughout the years and clearly he had discussed it with Gray and the two lawyers were at one on the subject and at home accusing people of things. Now Holmes would be able to tell Gray what had been said.

  At breakfast, Holmes was calm and steadfast as though the night before he had delivered a difficult but considered judgement and now thought better of himself for having done so. He arranged that he would return the following weekend, and, as he did so, Henry worked out how he would cancel these arrangements. He did not wish to see Holmes for a long time.

  IN THE WEEK that followed he worked hard, even though the pain in his hand had become at times excruciating. He avoided the terrace and left the desk only to eat and sleep. He wrote to Holmes after a few days to say that in order to meet a deadline he was hard at work on a story and could not, unfortunately, entertain him for a weekend. He hoped, he said, to see him in London before Holmes departed for the United States.

  For some days then he basked in the solitude his letter had won him, but he could not stop going over the conversation with Holmes in his mind; he began to compose letters to Holmes, but did not even get as far as writing them down. He believed that the accusation was unfair and unfounded and Holmes’s discussing the matter so coldly and finally was outrageous.

  He could not be sure what his cousin in her final months had written to Gray. He was aware that Gray had kept her letters, and he too in his apartment in London had stored away those letters which Minny had written to him in the last year of her life. He knew that she had accused him of nothing, but he now wished to know what terms she had used all those years before in her expressed desire to go to Rome. Slowly, he stopped working. His waking hours were consumed with memories of his early days in London and Italy and his receipt of these letters. He imagined finding them again – he knew perfectly where they were stored – and unfolding and rereading them, and he thought about this so incessantly that he knew he would have to travel to London. Like a ghost, he would enter his apartment in Kensington, flit through the rooms until he came to the cupboard where the letters were, and he would read them, and then he would return to Rye.

  As he waited for the train, he dreaded meeting anyone he knew and having to pretend that he had business in London.

  He dreaded speaking at all, so that even telling the servants that he would be leaving, and speaking with the cab driver and the purchasing of his ticket, had an enervating effect on him. He wished he could be invisible now for a day or two. He recognized, and this pressed down on him most as he travelled towards London, that the letters might yield nothing, might fill him with further uncertainty. He might not know, having read them again, any more than he knew now.

  It struck him forcefully as he made his way from the station how calm his life had become once more after the disaster of his play. This was the first time since then that the equilibrium he had worked so intensely to achieve had disappeared. He began to feel that when he opened the cupboard in the apartment in which he kept his cousin’s letters something palpable would emerge, and he tried to tell himself that this imagining was too much, too feverish, but it was no use.

  He found the letters easily, and was surprised at how flimsy and brief they were, how the folds of the paper seemed to have corroded the ink on both sides and made some of her writing illegible. Nonetheless, they were from her and they were dated. He allowed his lips to move as he read:

  I shall miss you, my dear, but I am most happy to know that you are well and enjoying yourself. If you were not my cousin I would write to ask you to marry me and take me with you, but as it is, it wouldn’t do so I will have to console myself, however, with the thought that in that case you might not accept my offer.

  He read on: ‘If I were, by hook or by crook, to spend next winter with friends in Rome, should I see you at all?’ And then, in one of the last letters he received from her: ‘Think, my dear, of the pleasure we would have together in Rome. I am crazy at the mere thought. I would give anything to have a winter in Italy.’

  He put the letters aside and sat with his head in his hands. He did not help her or encourage her, and she was careful never to ask outright. If she had insisted on coming, he forced himself to complete this thought now, he would have stood aside or kept his distance or actively prevented her coming, whatever was necessary. He had himself, in that year, escaped into the bright old world he had longed for. He was writing stories and taking in sensations and slowly plotting his first novels. He was no longer a native of the James family, but alone in a warm climate with a clear ambition and a free imagination. His mother had written to say that he must spend what money he needed in feasting at the table of freedom. He did not want his invalid cousin. Even had she been well, he was not sure that her company, so full of wilful charm and curiosity, would have been entirely welcome. He needed then to watch life, or imagine the world, through his own eyes. Had she been there, he would have seen through hers.

  He went to the window and looked down at the street. Even now, he felt that he had every right to leave her behind, to follow the path of his own talent, his own nature. Nonetheless, her letters filled him with sorrow and guilt, and added to these a sort of shame when he realized that she must have spoken to others, to Gray at least, about his refusal to entertain her. Holmes’s phrase ‘she turned her face to the wall’ echoed in his mind now and did battle with his sense of his own ruthlessness, his own will to survive. And finally, as he turned back into the room, he felt a sharp and unbearable idea staring at him, like something alive and fierce and predatory in the air, whispering to him that he had preferred her dead rather than alive, that he had known what to do with her once life was taken from her, but he had denied her when she asked him gently for help.

  He sat on a chair in his living room for most of the afternoon, letting his thoughts sink and glide and come to the surface again. He wondered if he might burn these letters, if nothing good could come of them in the future. He put them aside for the moment and returned to the cupboard where he had found them and rummaged there until he discovered the red notebook he had been looking for. He knew what he was seeking, it lay in the opening pages, written a few years earlier; its outline was fresh in his mind but its details were not. He carried the notebook into the better light of the living room.

  During the time since Holmes’s visit and in the midst of all his worry and suffering, his interest in the picture of a young American woman slowly dying, which he had noted down, had intensified. It was the story of a young woman with a large fortune on the threshold of a life that seemed boundless in its possibilities. She would come to Europe so that she could live, live passionately and intensely if only for a short time.

  He read through his notes about a young Englishman, penniless, clever, handsome, who is in love with som
eone else, but whose task becomes to save the American girl, love her, help her to live, despite the fact that he is hopelessly compromised, a matter of which the dying girl knows nothing. His intended, penniless as well, also befriends the girl.

  As he read his notes, he was horrified by the sheer callousness of the story. The young man pretending to love the girl, and perhaps get her money, his love a sort of treachery, and his real love watching over this, knowing that she could marry if they could get the money. The story, he thought, was vulgar and ugly, and yet it came to him powerfully now.

  He took the letters in his hand again, looked at Minny’s trusting, clean handwriting, the hand of someone who expected only good from the world. He saw her clearly coming to Europe for her last look at life. He gave her money, he imagined her as having inherited a fortune, and saw too his hero, one part of him full of love and pity for her, and the other part hardened and needy and ready to betray. The story was vulgar and ugly only if the motives were so, but what if the motives were mixed and ambiguous? Suddenly, he sat up straight and then stood and walked to the window. He had, in that second, seen the other woman, had caught a sharp view of her strange moral neutrality, how much she was sacrificing in letting the dying girl know love, how much she was gaining also and how careful she was, in her practical way, never to allow the two to appear on opposite sides of the weighing scales.

  He had them now, all three of them, and he would embrace them, hold on to them and let them improve with time, become more complex and less vulgar, less ugly, more rich, more resonant, more true not to what life was, but to what it might be. He crossed the room again and gathered up the letters and the notebooks and brought them to the cupboard and put them brusquely on a shelf and closed the cupboard doors. He would not need them again. He would need to work now, apply his mind. He would, he determined, travel back to Rye and be ready again, when the call came, to explore one more time the life and death of his cousin Minny Temple.