The Master

by Colm Toibin

  Burgess Noakes began to assist Smith, opening doors for him, urging him silently towards stability. Henry hoped that the problem would right itself, or even remain as it was. He did not want to take action because he knew what the action would have to be. He tried not to think about the Smiths.

  ONE AFTERNOON, from an upstairs window, he saw Mrs Smith’s sister approach the house. He heard her being let in and supposed that she was in the kitchen with her sister. He had not met her since the time she had spent in his apartment and though he had seen little of her then he had formed an impression of a solid and sensible person. He decided he would speak to her, and, on descending the stairs, and finding Burgess Noakes in the hallway, he asked Burgess to inform Mrs Smith’s sister that he wished to see her when she had a moment. He would wait in the front sitting room.

  Mrs Smith’s sister soon arrived accompanied by Mrs Smith. While the former was a picture of respectability and good grooming, the latter was even more slovenly than usual and wore the brazen expression to which he had become accustomed.

  ‘I am glad to see you well, madam,’ he said to Mrs Smith’s sister.

  ‘I am very well, sir, much recovered, and many thanks to you for all your kindness.’

  Mrs Smith watched him and studied the back of her sister’s head with the attitude of someone who had been much put out.

  ‘Are you visiting the area?’ he asked.

  ‘No, sir, I am married to the gardener at the Poet Laureate’s. We live in the gardener’s cottage there.’

  ‘The Poet Laureate?’

  ‘Mr Austen, sir, at Ashford.’

  ‘Of course, of course, Alfred Austen.’ He had thought for a moment that she was working for Lord Tennyson.

  He was about to ask if he could see her alone when he realized that he had clearly interrupted a difficult conversation between Mrs Smith and her sister, from which Mrs Smith was still smarting. While the sister was doing what she could to disguise this, Mrs Smith continued to glower at both of them.

  ‘I expect we shall see more of you then?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh I don’t wish to disturb you, sir.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘You find your sister well?’

  He looked at her plainly and made no effort to assist her when she lowered her gaze and said nothing. She had taken in the meaning of his question; he now left time for the implications of her failure to respond to become clear to the three of them. When he felt that this had been achieved, he decided that he did not wish to see her alone, that enough had been said. He smiled warmly and bowed to her as she left the room, paying no attention to Mrs Smith. He now knew where to find Mrs Smith’s sister should he need her.

  ALICE, his sister, would have laughed uproariously at his predicament; she would have made him describe the Smiths in detail. But she would also, he thought, have become imperious and demand that he take action forthwith. Alice, his sister-in-law, was the most practical of the family. She would calmly and cleverly work out a way of getting rid of the Smiths. He could not tell her, however, because he could not bear a letter from William on the subject. Nor was there anyone in London to whom he could turn. All of his English friends would, he thought, have dismissed the Smiths at the first sign of inebriation and sullenness.

  He began to have imaginary conversations with Constance Fenimore Woolson. She would have been fascinated by the scenes in the kitchen, and indeed in the room off the pantry. She also would have known what to do; she would have worked out some way to convince the Smiths to go without rancour, or to reform. He thought about her calm grace, her easy warmth, her mixture of curiosity and sympathy; and he thought about her last days in Venice, the days before she hurled herself from the window. He sighed and closed his eyes.

  AMONG HIS family and most friends, his closeness to Constance was not generally known. Neither William nor his wife was part of the small group who had been in Florence in those months when he had shared a large house with Constance on Bellosguardo (and when, he presumed, their relationship had been much discussed). But those who knew continued to mention Constance in their letters to him, their references to her vague and mysterious; they regularly voiced their wonder at her death. But only one friend had asked him directly if he knew why she had committed suicide. Lily Norton was the charming daughter of his friend Charles Eliot Norton and the niece of one of his favourite Bostonians, Grace Norton. Lily had known Constance in Italy and, though being more than twenty years younger, had admired her and formed a great attachment to her.

  He wrote to Lily as frankly and directly as he could. He explained that, as she knew, he had not been in Venice at the time, and had merely gathered information from others. Constance was out of her mind with fever and illness, he wrote, but that was not all. There was as well something that Constance managed to keep hidden from the wider world, and that was, he told his young friend, a condition of chronic and absorbing melancholy which was much sharpened by loneliness. He left it at that; Lily had been brave enough to ask, and now she should be brave enough to read the stark truth.

  Lily Norton had never returned to the subject, but her Aunt Grace had mentioned in passing that her niece had been upset by the coldness and certainty of the tone in his letter. When Lily Norton accepted his invitation to Rye, and he knew that they would be alone for the first day, he wondered whether she would raise the subject of Constance. They would have, after all, many other things to discuss. Lily had become Europeanized. She would have, in the European way, many subjects on which to muse while studiously avoiding the dangerous. Discussion of her relatives alone, and their associates, should provide her and her host with several delightful hours. His interest in the Nortons, the Sedgwicks, the Lowells, the Dixwells and the Darwins, he imagined, could occupy at least one long meal, and perhaps a walk with his young friend through the streets of the town.

  When he met her at the station, he realized quickly how formidable and interesting she had become. On alighting from her carriage, she saw him but did not smile. Her eyes were alert, her expression serious and self-conscious and beautifully placid. She had the air of a young duchess, someone who managed to be obeyed without ever having the need to be imperious. As soon as she started to walk towards him, however, Lily began to beam, her face opened out, as if she had suddenly and impetuously decided she was an American, one who knew how to play her natural and her created selves against each other to her host’s delight.

  Lily briefly glanced at Burgess Noakes as he and the porter loaded her luggage onto his wheelbarrow; she took this in and suggested her approval for the enterprise without making a single gesture. Once in the house, she promised Henry that she would never say the word ‘pretty’ ever again, but she would have to point out that the house itself was very pretty and the gardens were immensely so, and even the little parlour he had offered her in case she wanted to write letters was pretty, and her room, well, that too. She smiled at him warmly and touched his shoulder, now she had stopped admiring everything. She was so glad to be here, she said.

  As they sat in the garden taking tea, he studied her carefully. She exuded a mixture of a mobile mind and personal charm in a greater degree than the women of the earlier generations of her family on either side. She had inherited something of the horse-face of the Nortons, but in her it was improved and softened. She had her mother’s eyes and her mother’s way of smiling before she spoke and often smiling while she listened. But when she abandoned her smile, and allowed her face its full elegant gravity, he saw a young woman whose tone and manners, her way of being both formal and friendly, were new to him. He looked forward to spending time with her.

  He accompanied her through the town, proud of her glamour and enjoying her conversation, which ranged from the playful to the sharply observant. She knew how much he was watching her and how closely, in turn, they were both being observed by the townspeople. He admired her all the more for how deeply thoughtful she became as they moved along, how happy she seemed after a time to let si
lence reign between them and how easily now she let her face seem shadowy and meditative, her expression almost dark and forbidding, as though the mark of her ancestors had not left her.

  She was over thirty now and something in her personality, something distant and ironic, suggested what her Aunt Grace had already told him – that she would not marry. She had a private income, not very large, but enough to allow her to wander freely in Italy and England and venture back to her homeland when it suited her, much as Constance Fenimore Woolson had done. He wished she had a great house to tend to, or a great name, and he sensed in her a kind of sorrow that she had settled for less, or perhaps settled for more, her independence. A few times, as they walked back towards Lamb House, her tone, the largeness of her judgement, the strange freedom in her phrases, and certain inflections in her accent, reminded him of his sister Alice. Both came from similar households where ideas were sacred, second only to good manners, where there was a pull between an ordered community who knew God and an idealism, a readiness to trust the spirit in all its flickering. Whereas all the restlessness within the Jameses had further unmoored Alice, Lily had inherited the calmness of the Nortons without sacrificing her sharp judgement. He would have given anything for his sister to have had Lily’s poise and equanimity.

  Before dinner was served, he left Lily alone in the upstairs sitting room so that he might inspect the dining room. He found Burgess Noakes standing at an open dining-room door, his small face wrinkled in worry, his movements nervous. Burgess indicated to him that the cause of his concern lay in the dining room, and when Henry entered the room he found a large fresh purple stain on the tablecloth.

  ‘This should be replaced at once,’ he said.

  ‘She says it will do fine,’ Burgess said.

  ‘Mrs Smith?’ he asked.

  Burgess nodded. ‘She won’t allow it be replaced, sir.’

  When he opened the kitchen door, he saw Mr Smith at the large table resting his head on his arms. Mrs Smith was by the stove stirring a pot. When she saw him, she did not speak but shrugged to suggest her own powerlessness and indifference. He spoke as loudly as he could.

  ‘The tablecloth must be replaced instantly and the butler must resume his duties.’

  Mrs Smith put the spoon down and moved towards the table. She stood stoically behind her husband and manfully grabbed his shoulders from above; she lifted him firmly and when he was standing straight she let him go. He had his usual glazed look as he acknowledged his employer’s presence in the kitchen, and then, in his stilted and forced way, he began to move towards the dresser in the corner.

  ‘In fifteen minutes, we will dine,’ Henry said. ‘I expect everything to be in order, beginning with the tablecloth.’

  When he accompanied Lily Norton to the dining room, he saw immediately that the tablecloth had been replaced and the table reset to perfection. He situated Lily with her back to the door. He did not know whether Smith would serve their meal, or if Burgess Noakes or indeed Mrs Smith herself would take his place. When eventually Smith came in with the first course and began to pour the wine, it struck Henry more forcefully than ever that he was barely able to remain on his feet and could hardly see in front of him. It was a strange kind of drunkenness. Smith did not sway or stagger; it was rather the opposite – he walked straight as though along an invisible line; otherwise, he remained rigid. He was utterly silent. The alcohol seemed to have turned him into a block of wood.

  Henry was careful not to look at Smith for too long; he attempted to make ordinary conversation even as Smith was pouring the wine. As far as he could ascertain, Lily Norton noticed nothing, yet he knew now that he would have to make arrangements for the Smiths’ departure. He had two further guests for luncheon the following day and Lily and one of the friends for dinner the next evening. Then he would take action, although he did not know how he would begin, or what form the action would take.

  ‘You know,’ Lily said, ‘I have not been in Venice since Constance died, but I have met others who have been there, and all of them say that there is something in that street, the place she fell. They all have to avoid it. And nobody can quite believe that she killed herself. It seems so unlike her.’

  Her eyes lit calmly on him and then she glanced at the plate in front of her, as though some fresh thought had occurred to her. She looked up at him again.

  ‘I spoke at length to someone who knew her sister,’ she said. ‘The family are concerned that so many of her papers are lost, letters and diaries and other personal papers. And how she spent her last weeks is a mystery to everybody.’

  ‘It was,’ Henry said, ‘a sad affair.’

  Smith opened the door and stood silently, peering into the room as though it were in darkness. Lily turned around and saw him. He was still for half a minute, his presence in the doorway a cross between a ghost and someone who has seen a ghost. Then he moved slowly towards the table to collect the plates. He picked them up in a set of muted and stylized gestures and left the room again without incident.

  ‘She was, of course, quite a sad person and very lonely,’ Henry said.

  He knew as soon as he finished that he had spoken too quickly and brusquely.

  ‘She was a very talented novelist and a great lady,’ Lily Norton said.

  ‘Yes, quite,’ Henry said.

  They waited without speaking for Smith to return. Henry realized that he could not change the subject now, Lily Norton’s tone somehow prevented that.

  ‘I think she deserved a better life,’ Lily said, ‘but it was not to be.’

  In her last phrase there was no air of resignation or acceptance, but rather one of blame and bitterness. It struck Henry that she had planned this conversation, that what was happening in his small dining room was being quietly and effectively manipulated by her. At each moment he watched for Smith, hoping that no matter how drunk he was he would come to interrupt this strained talk between them which led so inevitably to strained silence.

  ‘All of us were there with her that summer,’ Lily continued, ‘she was so busy and so full of dreams and plans. All of us remember someone who was happy, despite her melancholy disposition. But it was shattered.’

  ‘Yes,’ Henry said.

  Smith opened the door with Burgess Noakes in view behind him. Burgess was wearing a jacket which was much too large for him. He had the look of a tramp. Smith carried a plate of meat with the movements of someone who was about to expire. Burgess followed behind with other plates. Lily Norton turned and studied them, and in one second Henry watched her grasp what was happening at Lamb House. All her subtlety and self-control failed her. She seemed most sharply alarmed, and her smile when she turned away from the two servants was forced. Smith at that moment began to pour more wine into her glass but could not keep his hand steady. The other three watched him helplessly as he allowed some of the wine to spill and then, as he tried to correct himself, poured a quantity of wine directly onto the tablecloth. When he turned from the table, his movements became a set of doddering, staggering steps as he left the room, abandoning the serving of the meal to Burgess Noakes.

  They ate in silence, the subject he wished to change now accompanied by another subject which could not be mentioned. He knew that if he asked Lily some particular question about her aunt or her plans, she would either laugh or become heated. He resigned himself to saying nothing; she would decide the flow of conversation.

  Eventually, she spoke.

  ‘I do not think she would have come to Venice for solitude. It is not a place to be alone at any time, but certainly not in the winter.’

  ‘Yes, she might have been wiser to have moved,’ he said. ‘It is hard to tell.’

  ‘Of course Mrs Curtis and she both believed that you planned to take a pied-à-terre in Venice,’ Lily said. ‘I believe that they even searched for a while on your behalf.’

  He saw where she was going and knew that it was essential to stop her.

  ‘I’m afraid they misunderstood my enth
usiasm for its beauties and its pleasures,’ he said. ‘Yes, whenever I was there, I longed to hold the grand watery city, as it were, by owning a view, however modest. But these fancies can be entertained but briefly, I’m afraid. The rest is dull. It is called work and it makes demands.’

  Her look was darkly pointed, but with a tinge of sympathy. She smiled.

  ‘Yes, I can imagine,’ she said drily.

  IN THE MORNING he told Mrs Smith that he wished her husband to remain in bed where he would in the course of the day be examined by a doctor. Luncheon would be served by the parlour-maid with assistance from Burgess Noakes, who should be found a jacket which fitted him. He asked her if she could come out to the garden with him, knowing that Lily Norton was writing a letter in a room not overlooking the garden, and would not witness this scene. He wished to study Mrs Smith in clear daylight, and when he did so he saw that she could not continue in his kitchen, that she did not seem to have washed or changed her clothes in a very long time.

  ‘I trust your guest is enjoying her stay,’ she said. ‘I trust everything is in order for her and there are no complaints.’

  Her tone was almost insolent. When he understood that she was about to say something else, he stopped her by raising his right hand, and then he bowed gently and returned to the house.

  He found Burgess Noakes and asked him to enquire urgently among the shopkeepers of Rye to discover the name of Mrs Smith’s sister who lived in the gardener’s cottage at Ashford. Soon, Burgess returned with the news that her name was Mrs Ticknor. As he turned towards his study, Burgess touched him on the shoulder, put his finger to his lips and guided him to the garden.

  Henry watched amazed as Burgess checked that no one else could see them, his expression cautious and watchful. As Burgess led him to the outbuildings behind the kitchen, Henry wondered what his diminutive houseboy could possibly want him to see. Checking to ensure that Henry was following, Burgess motioned to him to enter one of the sheds and pulled back a stretch of canvas to disclose an enormous cache of empty whisky, wine and sherry bottles, which gave off a foul, sour smell.