The Master

by Colm Toibin

  As Peggy took her time to consider what he had said, a noise came from the room above them where William and Alice were sleeping. It sounded as though one of them had fallen out of the bed. Then they heard William’s voice shouting and moaning and Alice’s voice pleading with him and further sounds as though one of them were banging something against the floor. Peggy stood up and moved towards the door as Henry gestured to her to wait, to hesitate.

  ‘No,’ she said, brushing him aside. ‘We must go upstairs now.’

  She glanced back at him, her expression set and firm, her mouth and her chin an exact image of his mother’s face. Her eyes were different, however, almost kindly, as she reached and caught his hand.

  ‘We must go upstairs now,’ she repeated.

  Peggy led him upstairs to her parents’ room and she opened the door without knocking. William lay on the floor in his nightshirt, his bare legs white in the lamplight. He was calling out and hammering the floor with his fists. Alice stood above him, fully dressed, motionless, her face like a mask.

  ‘You have seen it and it is gone,’ she said to William as though she desperately needed her words to be heeded and believed.

  ‘It came to you and now it has left and we will all hold you, we will all stay with you. You will never be alone.’

  She repeated these last words but nothing would calm William as his moaning went on.

  Henry did not speak but when Burgess Noakes came down the stairs was brisk in directing him to return to his quarters. He was careful to remain in the doorway in case his presence distressed William further. Soon he stood back into the shadows as he saw Alice helping William to his feet and leading him to the bed and pulling back the blankets.

  ‘We will stay with you all night, William,’ Alice said, ‘and if you wake, no matter what time it is, you will find one of us here.’

  William called out quietly and softly and curled up under the blankets.

  ‘All of us are here, and all of us will stay here,’ Alice said. ‘Peggy will fetch a chair from her room and she will sit with us until you are soundly asleep. But I will not leave you. And Harry is watching you too.’

  She moved to turn off the lamp on William’s side of the bed.

  ‘Sleep, now, sleep.’

  She kept her hand on his head, exuding an unruffled kindness and a determination mixed with sadness. When Henry sought to capture her attention to ask if she wanted anything from the kitchen, she did not respond to him. Eventually, when William appeared to be asleep, she walked over to an armchair in the corner of the room and, once she sat down, did not take her eyes off her husband. Peggy had found a chair and was sitting close to her parents’ bed. Henry withdrew, but did not close the door; he went noiselessly downstairs where he attempted to rekindle the fire. He found his book and kept it on his knee, but did not read, waiting instead for some sound to come from upstairs.

  William had seemed to him in a state of rage as much as in a trance. He wondered, since William wrote of such matters, what name he would give this state and in what terms he might describe his wife and daughter’s response to it. He wondered when William recovered whether he would remark on what happened.

  Some time later, he heard footsteps on the stairs and he sat up, having fallen into a half-sleep. His sister-in-law came into the room.

  ‘Peggy has fallen asleep and I have made her comfortable there. If he needs me, I will go to him quickly. But he will not need me, he will sleep now for hours and hours, nothing will wake him.’

  She smiled at Henry.

  ‘You are a very patient person,’ she said.

  ‘And you?’ he asked. ‘How will I describe you?’

  ‘I am someone,’ she said, ‘who has learned a great deal, having known very little.’

  ‘I wish I possessed some of your wisdom and your calm,’ he said.

  ‘You have much more. Your niece adores you, she thinks you are the finest gentleman. And so do I.’

  ‘It is the season for such compliments,’ he said.

  ‘William suffers sometimes. His dark dreams overwhelm him, and when I first learned that about him I wanted him away from me. I wished to be elsewhere when he seemed ready to give into the darkness. There was nothing I could do for him, but I have learned, just as the boys and Peggy have learned, that it does not take much to comfort him.’

  Henry attempted to convey by his silence that he would listen to her with sympathy for as long as she wished to speak.

  ‘Peggy was a very difficult child,’ Alice went on, ‘and night after night she would scream when she was in bed as the light was turned off. And because we thought that she would have to learn to sleep in the dark we left her screaming. We thought that there was no earthly reason for it, but there was. A nun had assured her that her not being a Catholic would mean eternal damnation and she believed her. That was why she screamed. We realized that if we had asked her at the beginning why she was afraid, she might have told us.’

  Henry moved to put more logs on the fire and they sat in a silence broken only by the mild sea wind and the crackling of the burning wood. Alice sighed. When Henry offered her a glass of port, she accepted. He poured one for her and one for himself, and, smiling gently, he handed her the drink.

  ‘When I went to my first medium,’ Alice said, ‘when I first met Mrs Piper, neither of us could make sense of the messages that came. And then one day, perhaps the third time, we were alone with her and concentrating very hard, she asked me if my father had committed suicide and I said that he had, and then she asked if my mother and I and my sisters were far away from him then and I said that we were. And she said that someone was desperately urging me not to be afraid, that it would not happen again and I was to disregard my fear, which made me want William miles away from me when I felt his desolation. I would not let him near me when the night closed in on him. I wanted him in London when his father died and I did not want him to return. Mrs Piper could never say who it was, but they were telling me that I was to bring him close and be calm with him and that nothing would part us then, nothing terrible would happen to us then.’

  She looked at Henry across the room and smiled.

  ‘William will be fine now, he will be fine,’ she said. ‘In ways, it is easier for both of us when he is low, it is much more difficult when we are both in good sorts. We argue too much.’

  They both looked into the fire. Henry guessed that it was after one o’clock in the morning.

  ‘Harry,’ Alice spoke very quietly, ‘there was something we did not say to you about Mrs Fredericks.’

  ‘You said that my mother is at rest.’

  ‘Yes, she is, Harry, but there was something which concerned her.’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘Something, yes. She asked me to come to you if you should need me. She did not wish you to be alone if you should fall ill.’

  ‘She watches over us, then?’

  Alice swallowed as though she were holding back tears.

  ‘You will be the last, Harry.’

  ‘You mean that William will die before me.’

  ‘Her message was clear.’

  ‘And Bob?’

  ‘You will be the last, Harry, and I will come to you when you call for me. You will not be alone when you are dying. And I must ask you for nothing in return except your trust.’

  ‘You have that,’ he said.

  ‘Then I have given you her message. She wanted you to know that you would not be alone.’

  When Alice returned to her bedroom to watch over William, Henry sat by the embers and pictured his mother as he had last seen her, the day after her death, her face in repose and lit by flickering candlelight, the idea of her love for him as an exquisite stillness as he sat in vigil; she was all noble and tender as his great protector and guardian. It did not surprise him in this dark house as the year came to a close that she would think of the end, as she had put such abundant energy into the beginning. The idea that she would not rest until he was a
t rest did not seem strange to him. He was humbled, and he felt afraid, but he was also grateful and ready for whatever might come now.

  FOR NEW YEAR’S DAY, they invited Edmund Gosse to lunch. William had spent the previous few days in his study; his humour had returned and there was, Henry noted, a glitter in his remarks at the table. He discovered a short walk in Rye which he and Maximilian enjoyed and for several days in succession arrived back at Lamb House much refreshed, having spoken to several of the locals and having begun, he said, further to appreciate the topography of the place, the colour of the brick and the cobbles, and the manners of those he met. No mention was made of what Henry had witnessed in the bedroom.

  Henry had not encouraged any visitors to Lamb House and had turned down all invitations, but when he said that he had received a letter from Edmund Gosse announcing that he would be in Hastings and could easily travel to Rye, William insisted that Gosse be invited and added several times how glad he would be to see him, not having done so for a very long time and being an admirer of his father’s work.

  Once more, Alice and Peggy moved into action, involving Henry in much discussion about Gosse’s tastes and how they might pander to them. Alice had developed a set of jokes with Burgess Noakes which ranged from the quality of his footwear, of which she pretended to disapprove, to his haircuts, which she thought too severe. Burgess felt free now to inform her that Gosse had stayed at Lamb House many times and had had no reason to complain, but he enjoyed the fuss being made and entered into the spirit of the occasion, which Alice and Peggy tried to make as elaborate as possible while keeping everything simple, a formula of words which seemed to amuse them and which they rehearsed many times as they prepared the drawing room and the dining room and Burgess Noakes for the arrival of Gosse.

  Henry explained to Peggy in the presence of her parents, much to their hilarity, that while Gosse himself was not great, he knew greatness when he saw it, and not only that but he knew the prime minister and the one before him as he would know the one after and the one after that. Peggy wrinkled up her nose and asked if he were old.

  ‘He is not as old as I am, my dear,’ Henry said, ‘and I am old indeed. In fact, the word ancient comes to mind. So let me say that he is less than ancient. But the main fact about Gosse is that he loves London more than he loves life. So when your father mentions the quiet intellectual life in Boston, he will not understand. The man who is tired of London is tired of life, that is his motto. So you, my dear girl, had better find a subject on which your father and our guest can agree.’

  In the days after William’s recovery, Lamb House was turned into a club with many rules established by Peggy and Henry sometimes in consultation with Peggy’s parents, sometimes in opposition to them. Rule number one concerned Peggy’s bedtime which, Henry and she agreed, was extended to the same hour as the adults in the house, not only because of her semi-adult state, but because Peggy had discovered Charles Dickens, had devoured Hard Times in a matter of days and was now reading Bleak House. Rule number two governed Peggy’s right to leave the table once she had eaten the main course and take her dessert with her to whatever room in which she wished to continue her reading. Rule number three gave William the right to snore unmolested in any part of the house. Other rules allowed Burgess Noakes to wear whatever he liked on his feet, and gave Alice the right to dip her morning biscuit into her cup of coffee as long as nothing dripped onto the Duchess’s rugs, as Peggy called them. William insisted on a rule that would permit Henry to read a large two-volume biography of Napoleon without feeling guilty about wasting his time. All these rules were relayed to Alice’s mother in Cambridge and read by Peggy’s three brothers who were being looked after by her. Since they were all to sign the letter, Alice and Peggy had to adjudicate between William’s desire for many exclamation marks and drawings and Henry’s insistence that these be kept to a minimum.

  Gosse arrived with small presents from London, and immediately declared that he was the happiest man in England now that he had quit the city, that it was a hateful place during the festive season with far too frivolous a social life and an unspeakable fog, some of which had entered into the crania of the very best minds of his generation.

  William smiled in appreciation as Peggy glanced at Henry.

  ‘I told my niece that you love London more than you love life,’ Henry said.

  ‘And so I do,’ Gosse replied. ‘But that does not say much for life.’

  Gosse turned then to William who stood at the mantelpiece sipping his sherry. His tone was formal, having suddenly changed from being amused and charming, as he addressed William.

  ‘May I say how much pleasure it gives me to meet you again? I have been reading you for many years. I share with Leslie Stephen the habit of reading you for pleasure, just as I read your brother for pleasure. I find very little nowadays which possesses such precision and such energy and such poetry, if I may say so, at the same time.’

  William smiled and nodded and returned the compliment. Alice seemed to glow with happiness that someone had come to visit who would not annoy William. She smiled at Henry knowingly.

  As the meal was served, Gosse informed them of the controversy over the day of prayer announced as a result of the defeat by the Boers. He did not, Henry noticed, make his own view clear on the matter but managed to let them know that he had listened to the Prince of Wales discuss the topic as well as Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr Asquith and Mr Alfred Austen. As he continued to outline the various positions of those he named, fixing each of them at the table with a significant stare as a new dignitary was mentioned, Henry noticed Alice becoming agitated and looking at William in a manner which he had not seen before, almost threateningly.

  ‘Yes,’ William said, when Gosse had left a gap in his narrative, ‘I wrote a letter to The Times on the subject but they have failed to print it.’

  ‘William!’ Alice interjected.

  ‘A letter to The Times?’ Gosse asked. ‘What line did you take?’

  William hesitated and then stared into the middle distance.

  ‘I said that I was an American travelling in this country and that I had noted the controversy over the proposed day of prayer and I would suggest that the principles established by one of the early Montana settlers might be the most useful and generally acceptable.’

  ‘And what were they?’ Gosse asked.

  ‘Our settler was met by a very formidable and angry grizzly bear and he fell on his knees and his prayer was as follows: "O Lord, I hain’t never asked you for help, and ain’t agoin’ to ask you for none now. But for pity’s sake, O Lord, please don’t help the bear." The Times, in its wisdom, did not print the letter.’

  ‘I hope that you gave the outback as your address,’ Henry said.

  ‘I gave my address as care of Lamb House, Rye,’ William replied.

  ‘I think that is one of the main differences,’ Gosse said, ‘between the United States and our country. One can be sure about many things here and one is that The Times would not print that letter.’

  ‘So much the better for The Times,’ Henry said.

  ‘So much the worse for my poor letter,’ William replied.

  ‘I’m sure there are a number of Irish periodicals that would print it,’ Gosse said. ‘You should not let it go to waste.’

  ‘It has not gone to waste,’ Alice said. ‘He has just told us its contents, having made me a promise that he would never mention it again to a living soul.’

  ‘Nor shall I,’ William said.

  ‘Perhaps you could convey the contents of the letter to the Prince of Wales,’ Henry said to Gosse.

  Gosse looked at him sharply.

  ‘I wonder, since it is the beginning of the new year, if both of you, the writers here, might tell us what you have in store,’ Gosse said.

  ‘My brother,’ Henry said, ‘is to deliver the Gifford lectures at Edinburgh.’

  ‘On the new science of psychology?’ Gosse asked.

  ‘On th
e old science of religion,’ William replied.

  ‘Have you written the lectures?’ Gosse enquired.

  ‘I have notes and ideas and some pages and a bad heart,’ William said. ‘So it takes time.’

  ‘What position will you adopt?’

  ‘I believe that religion, in its broadest sense, is indestructible,’ William said. ‘I believe the mystical experience of the individual, in any of its manifestations, to be a possession of an extended subliminal self.’

  Henry made a sign to Peggy that if she wished to leave them now and return to her book, then she could do so. Her mother nodded in agreement. She excused herself and left the room.

  ‘But what,’ Gosse asked, ‘if religion should be proved false?’

  ‘I wish to argue,’ William said, ‘that religious feeling cannot be disproved since it belongs so fundamentally to the self. And if it is a belief that belongs so fundamentally to the self then it must be good, and, insofar as that goes, it must be true.’

  ‘But if you look at what Darwin and his supporters can show, surely they can prove that certain beliefs are untrue?’

  ‘I am interested in religious feeling or experience rather than religious argument,’ William said. ‘I wish to make clear that even the very words I use are open and evasive and sometimes useless, that there are no precise words because there are no precise feelings. We have mixed feelings and complex sensibilities and we must allow for that in our lives and in our law and in our politics, but most importantly, in the deepest core of ourselves.’

  ‘In which the transcendental plays a part?’ Gosse asked.

  ‘Yes, but it may be more fundamental than that,’ William said. ‘The world beyond the sense, in which a sphere of life more powerful and larger than ourselves exists, may be continuous with our consciousness and we may know this and this may cause us to believe or have religious feeling, however vague, in a more satisfying way than we have religious argument.’