The Master

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ANDERSEN, HIMSELF SO FULL of plans, had asked him casually on his last morning in Rye what his plans were – where, for example, he proposed to travel, or what he thought he might write, or, indeed, if he had any visitors coming to Lamb House who would occupy the space which Andersen was about to vacate. Henry had hesitated and then smiled and said that he believed that he would spend the coming months working on stories and perhaps be fortunate enough not to have the inspiration for a new novel until well into the new year.

Later, when Andersen had gone, Henry had regretted not telling him that he was, indeed, expecting visitors, his brother William, his sister-in-law Alice and his niece Peggy. He regretted also that he had not told Andersen about his appearance on the stage at the end of the opening performance of Guy Domville. It had been easier to present a self in full possession of pride and confidence. He wondered if this might have changed had his friend stayed for two or three more days, but he thought not. Past failure did not interest Andersen who remained fascinated by future triumph. He knew that the young man would be puzzled by his involvement in something as dire and disastrous as Guy Domville and he was glad that he had preserved his own thick shell during Andersen’s stay in Rye.

He was taken aback at how ready Andersen was to attack his own father, or discuss, in casual terms, his close and difficult relationship with his older brother. Since Henry had not responded by discussing the many vagaries of Henry James senior, or his own brother’s constant willingness to wound him, believing that his father and his brother had first call on his loyalty, then he could not blame Andersen for feeling that he had nothing to say on these matters.

Andersen had made several references, during their meetings in Rome, and again in Rye, to the wealth of the James family, having heard of it discussed in Newport. He was, Henry knew, surprised at the modesty of his hotel in Rome and at the relative smallness of Lamb House. He had presumed that Henry’s industry arose from his desire for regular publication rather than an income. Before his arrival, the matter of money had been at the front of Henry’s mind and had become entwined with William’s proprietorial interest in the family’s business, William’s need to offer advice when none was sought.

Lamb House, whose owner had died, had been offered for sale some time earlier by the widow for two thousand pounds. The prospect of possessing the place filled Henry with an anxiety to move quickly in case it should be lost to him and a deep satisfaction at the idea that he could shut his door and turn the key without anyone having the right to enter his domain. The money would have to be raised quickly, however, and he did not have ready money. He covered his expenses by his writing and paid great attention to the money he received for stories and serializations. His inheritance, his capital and the dividends which came from them were controlled by William. They consisted mainly of the rents received from certain buildings in the town of Syracuse, which he had seen once and hoped never to have to view again, which William managed with, as far as he could make out, competence and prudence. But he did not think, even as he wrote to William, that he would need to take money from the capital, or borrow money using the Syracuse properties as the bond. The money, he believed, could be raised more simply from his own bank and paid back quickly by the fruits of his own industry.

Since William was coming to Europe, he had written to him to say that his apartment in Kensington, which had been briefly sublet, would now be free, and he hoped William and his family would install themselves there for a time before coming to Lamb House. He had meant the offer in all kindness, but William made clear that he wished to make his own arrangements. William James and Alice, Henry was told, would be travelling first to Germany where he would go to Nauheim to take the cure and then to England. He seemed to be declining the offer of the apartment.

Henry wrote to him at Nauheim about his interest in purchasing Lamb House. Later, he realized that he had explained far too much, as though he were an errant son writing to a parent, or indeed a profligate younger brother writing to his wiser, older sibling.

He had not asked William for advice, or for money. In retrospect, he wondered why he had written to him at all, why he had not gone ahead and purchased Lamb House without consulting a living soul other than his bank’s manager. He had described his new opportunity unthinkingly, in great excitement, and then had suffered the consequences.William had written him two letters in quick succession; the tone of the first was hortatory and hectoring: William as expert on the purchasing and disposal of real estate, on interest rates, and on the need for toughness and cunning in negotiation. Then, having met someone in Nauheim who had once seen the house and having discussed the entire matter freely with him, William wrote a second time to say that he believed the asking price was very extravagant and advising Henry that he should consult some wary business friend before in any way committing himself.

On receipt of the latter missive, Henry intended to write to him tersely to say that he had the matter under control and was not in need of any further advice. In fact, he would be grateful if William would not discuss the purchase of Lamb House at the price mentioned, or at any other price, with anyone, or indeed with him when they met.

He began the letter a number of times and then found himself, despite his original intention to be brief and cold, making clear that he would buy Lamb House in any case simply because he wanted to, but going on to explain its value and the reasonable asking price. He insisted that he was not yet wholly senile. He added to this letter when a further message came from his sister-in-law offering, with William’s approval, to lend him money from her own funds to buy Lamb House. He emphasized proudly to both William and Alice that he would not, in fact, need to borrow a penny, and wished to underline that, while he was grateful to Alice, William should understand that the decision to buy the house outright would not depend on his opinion or be influenced by it.

Henry pointed out that he had never lacked faith in his brother’s purchases nor sent him advice not sought for. He added that his joy at the prospect of getting the house had shrivelled under his brother’s warnings, but would, he was sure, rebloom. It was such a rare joy for him to want anything as he wanted Lamb House, he wrote, and he expected his brother to understand this.

He finished the letter late at night and, without reading it over, sealed the envelope and left it in the hall to be posted early in the morning. Alice, his sister-in-law, he was sure, had meant her offer kindly, and William’s advice had not been ill-intentioned, but they both suffered from a need, he felt, so deep-seated as to be well beyond their understanding, to have him act on their advice. And they would find it easier to spend time under his roof, had it been purchased on terms suggested by them.

When William wrote again apologizing for rubbing his brother up the wrong way, as he himself put it, he offered money from the Syracuse sinking fund which could in case of need be taken out. This merely added to Henry’s resentment which had also been smouldering over William’s refusal to accept definitely the offer of the flat in Kensington, and further resentments at his decision to go to Germany before he came to England. William was so proud of himself as a practical man, a family man, a man who did not write fictions but gave lectures, an American man plain in his habits and his arguments, representing gruff masculinity against his brother’s effete style; his refusal to take Henry’s flat seemed lacking in all common sense.

What Henry did not consider during this correspondence was his brother’s reason for being in Nauheim. Although William had written to say that he had a bad heart and Henry had made sympathetic references to this, it did not seem to him that his brother’s health might be in any serious danger. When, however, he met his brother from the train in early October, not having seen him for seven years, he was shocked at how much William had been weakened, although he sought to give no sign that this had been his first impression.

William had descended from the train looking as though he had woken from a deep sleep. He did not see Henry and stood waiting for his wife to step onto the platform before searching for him among the small crowd. As Burgess Noakes rushed to procure his luggage, William saw Henry and moved towards him, discarding instantly the pose of an old man and becoming enthusiastic in his movements. His face was thinner, Henry saw. When they had embraced and been joined by Alice, they walked back to supervise the loading of the luggage onto the wheelbarrow. William insisted on carrying one of the cases while Alice argued that he should not, and Henry pointed out that there was more room on the wheelbarrow and that Burgess Noakes was a champion athlete, much stronger than he looked. Burgess took the case, put it on the wheelbarrow and moved ahead.

William then stood and looked at Henry and smiled again. He had, Henry saw as if for the first time, an extraordinary face. His expression was open and perceptive, his eyes roved about as though he needed to take in the many competing aspects of the scene in front of him before making up his mind. His considerable and sparkling intelligence was close to charm in the way it manifested itself. His gaze was both provocative and amused; in his eyes and in the lines of his face there were signs of compassionate judgements and complex distinctions that he was clearly in the habit of making with great confidence and wit and clarity of thought. He did not look like an American, nor indeed like a member of the James family. He had developed a physiognomy entirely his own. Alice, Henry felt, was easier to place, handsome and well-groomed, her kindness not masking her intelligence nor diminishing it, demonstrating only that her sympathy would always come first. Before they were halfway up the hill, he felt that they had come as parents might, the father slightly distracted and withdrawn and the mother all smiles. He was glad that he had written to them so sharply about his purchase of Lamb House so that it would now be beyond their criticism, as he hoped he himself might be, during their stay.

It was apparent that Alice had decided that she would like Rye from the start, and put care into her remarks so that they would not sound too gushingly enthusiastic and undiscriminating. She spoke about how beautifully old the town seemed, about how private Lamb House was, like a country house in the town, she said. William assented to this as they stood in front of it. The garden, Henry explained, was not at its best, they must come in the summer for that, and the recent weather had not helped. Immediately on entering the house he showed William the study he might use, then accompanied his guests to their bedroom, stopping at the room their daughter would sleep in when she arrived. Then he took them to view the dining room, the downstairs sitting room, the garden room, soon to enter its period of hibernation, and the kitchens. He introduced them to the staff and then led them upstairs once more to see his own room, saving the largest room, the drawing room, for last, presuming that William and Alice, so used to the proportions available in Cambridge and Boston, would perceive the other rooms as small.

He showed them the house as though they were prospective buyers; and they managed to make positive and supportive remarks. Over supper that evening, it struck him that were the Smiths to reappear, drunken and slatternly, Alice would have something cheerful to say about the quality of the service at Lamb House and William would nod in manly agreement.

AFTER LUNCH the next day, when the dishes had been cleared, Alice James closed the door of the dining room and asked Henry if she and William could speak to him, uninterrupted, on a matter of some importance. Henry found Burgess Noakes in the hallway and asked him if he could ensure that they were not disturbed in the dining room. When he came back into the room, Alice was sitting with her hands joined at the table and William was standing by the window. Their expressions were serious. Had a lawyer appeared at that moment to read a long and complicated will, Henry would not have been surprised.

‘Harry,’ Alice said, ‘we have been to see another medium, a Mrs Fredericks.We have been a number of times. I went alone at first and I am absolutely certain that she did not know who I was or anything about me.’

‘And then I accompanied her,’ William said, ‘and all in all we have had four sessions with her.’

‘We thought to write to you,’ Alice said, ‘after the first session with her, but then as they went on we decided we would wait until we came to England. Harry, your mother has been in touch with us.’

‘She spoke through Mrs Piper,’ William interrupted, ‘we know that, but there was something more personal in her message this time.’

‘Is she at rest? Is my mother at rest?’ Henry asked.

‘Harry, she is at rest, she is simply watching over us all,’ William said, ‘through the mysterious gauze between her state and ours, in the vast white radiance that lies beyond.’

‘She wishes you to know that she is at rest,’ Alice said.

‘Has she said anything about my sister?’ Henry asked.

‘No, nothing about Alice,’ William replied.

‘About Wilky or my father?’ he asked.

‘In none of the sessions did she allude to the dead,’ William said.

‘What did she say then? To whom did she allude?’ Henry asked.

‘She wishes you to know that you are not alone, Harry,’ Alice said.

She looked at him gravely as he took this in without speaking.

‘Her consciousness has not been extinguished, then,’ he said.

‘She is at rest, Harry,’ Alice said. ‘She wishes you to know that.’

William moved across the room and sat at the table. Henry could see more clearly now that he had lost flesh around his jaw; his eyes were sad but seemed to shine as he spoke.

‘Our medium described this house. There were things she could not have known about. Yesterday when we walked through these rooms it was all confirmed for us.’

‘Harry,’ Alice said, ‘she described that statue over the mantelpiece.’

All three of them examined Andersen’s statue of the young count.

‘And there is something even stranger in the front room,’ Alice went on, ‘it is a painting of a deserted landscape.’

Henry stood up suddenly and walked across the room.

‘I don’t know if you noticed me studying it yesterday,’ Alice said. ‘Harry, I did so because she described it in detail. She said that it meant something very special to you, but when I asked you about it yesterday, you said nothing.’

‘It belonged,’ Henry said, ‘to Constance Fenimore Woolson. It is the only object of hers in this house. I brought it from Venice.’

‘Mrs Fredericks described these rooms,’ Alice said, ‘the windows, the colours, but these two objects – the statue and the painting – she said were special. We have to believe her, Harry, we have to believe her.’

Henry moved towards the door and opened it. He stood in the hallway for a moment until the appearance of Burgess Noakes made him retreat once more into the dining room. William and Alice sat at the table watching him.

‘I need some time alone,’ he whispered.

They both stood up.

‘We did not mean…’ Alice began.

‘Nothing,’ Henry replied. ‘Nothing. Give me a day or two to think. This is a great shock and I promise we will return to the matter when I am ready to accept the idea that my mother’s voice is calling to us.’

IN THE AFTERNOON, he walked for miles and when he returned he made his way quickly and silently to the garden room but he could neither read nor write and he was cold. He wished above all that William and Alice might go now, having carried the message. At supper, however, as soon as he sat down, he felt an immense warmth towards them. He realized that his brother and sister-in-law, operating in unison, had saved many anecdotes about mutual friends until now. He watched William being funny and judicious and deeply informative on the rise of Oliver Wendell Holmes and the lives of John Gray and Sargy Perry, old before their time, he said, and William Dean Howells, whom he admired still. William told stories, moving towards pure malice before saving the moment with a remark which was so well phrased as to cause his brother a pure and self-forgetful delight.

That night when he had retired he wished his sister Alice were in the house with them too; he would have enjoyed her acid version of this formidable couple in their soft-spoken intimacy, a pair who were ostensibly offering an open smile while, in fact, operating like a great fortress built to repel all intruders. He wished he knew how to introduce the subject of his sister, and her contempt for mediums and her belief that seances were pure nonsense. Her diary, he was aware, had not spared her brother and sister-in-law.

Their dabblings in the occult were, for Alice, the grossest sort of idolatry. She had made this clear to them, but no one had ever told them that she had unmercifully mocked them by sending them, when they asked for a lock of her hair to use at a seance, hair belonging to a dead friend. She had cackled in glee at the solemnity of their reports from these sessions, but now, he recognized, despite the passing of the years, that William and his wife still could not be told of her trick, so elaborate and deeply serious was the system of protection they had wound round themselves and how firm their belief. He was still not sure what he himself believed. It was easier, he felt, to listen and make as little comment as possible.

WILLIAM FOUND his small downstairs study congenial and discovered a sheltered spot in the garden which caught the sun in the morning where he could sit reading. William and Alice went on walks in the vicinity, taking the dog Maximilian with them, and became known very quickly in several Rye establishments where they had coffee in the afternoon and bought cakes to take back to Lamb House. William walked slowly, but managed to suggest that it was deep thought that made him so deliberate in his movements. At first Henry attached no importance to the fact that Alice never let him out of her sight. If William were in the garden, she was at a window overlooking the garden; if he were in his makeshift study, she was across the hall with the door open. If he prepared to go for a walk, Alice immediately fetched her coat, even if Henry himself were to accompany him, or if he gently indicated that he wished to go alone. After a while, however, such watchfulness on her part, such attentive shadowing of her husband, seemed to Henry almost perverse and he noticed William being irritated by it. Since Alice was known for her tact, since she had a reputation for being neither perverse nor irritating, this display of solicitude, both obvious and without respite, was unlike her. Henry, once he began to notice it, longed for it to stop.

Suddenly, one afternoon, when they had been with him for ten or eleven days, he understood why his sister-in-law watched William with such care. He himself was in the drawing room upstairs after breakfast; he had been reading, when he chanced to go to the window, as he often did in the days when his brother was seated in the garden. William was obviously in pain and Alice was with him, standing over him, as he held his hands on his chest and closed his eyes in a sort of agony. Henry could not see her face, but could discern from her movements that she was unsure whether William should move or stay still. Henry stood back as his sister-in-law turned preparing to hold William in her arms. He then went downstairs as quickly as he could to the garden.

Henry learned in the days that followed that William’s heart was damaged, that his reason for going to Nauheim was not to avoid his brother’s hospitality. William was ill. Alice had been watching him in case he had a sudden heart attack, having been told that such an attack could be fatal. William was not yet sixty.

The next day on the train to London to see the best heart specialist in England, William insisted on reading and taking notes, refused to have a blanket placed over his knees and promised them both that if they should look at him one more time with pity or worry or the slightest interest beyond the normal, then he would expire on them immediately and leave his money to a dogs’ and cats’ home.

‘And I should warn you both that the hauntings will not be normal. No medium will be required. I will pounce directly.’

Alice did not smile, but stared out the window, stony-faced. Henry wondered if the story of his sister and the lock of her hair might lighten their journey, but realized that it might have precisely the opposite effect. While William could joke about such matters, he did so from a serious perspective. The aura his brother and his sister-in-law created, in which such a story could not be told, seemed to have strengthened with William’s illness.

Dr Bezly Thorne, the most recommended among Harley Street doctors who dealt with delicate hearts, was, William thought, far too young to know of such matters, but he was soon persuaded by Henry and Alice that this new doctor was uncontaminated by out-of-date remedies and was fully conversant with the new ones.

‘I dislike young people, all of them,’ William retorted, ‘medical or non-medical, conversant or non-conversant, from the bottom of my heart.’

‘Your heart indeed,’ Alice said drily.

‘Yes, I know, my dear, the part that is fully intact.’

Dr Thorne asked to see the patient alone, and when he emerged after a few minutes from the bedroom in which William lay resting in Henry’s flat in Kensington, he remarked that Alice and Henry would now find Professor James much chastened, ready to rest, ready to maintain a strict diet with no starch, and ready, since the doctor had advised it, to be really ill, to be gravely and precariously ill, so that he should become better.

‘My instructions are clear,’ Dr Thorne said, ‘he is to live. I have told him so. And in order to do that he must act precisely as he is told, and he must stay in London until I say he can move. He can read if he pleases, but he cannot write.’

They agreed to remain in Henry’s flat in Kensington and in the days that followed, as William began his diet, and Alice awaited the arrival of their daughter Peggy, Henry and Alice had much time to converse.

William’s ill health had not softened Henry’s resolve that his own circumstances were closed to criticism. His sister-in-law, whose scent for what was suitable for discussion was, he thought, refined in the extreme, thus kept matters general, rarely even mentioning the attributes of her own children unless Henry specifically asked. One evening, however, when Peggy, who had arrived from France, had gone to bed and William was sleeping, Alice raised the matter of her own sister-in-law, now dead seven years. She did so carefully, her tone serious and considered. She spoke of Alice’s dislike for her and reminded Henry that, at the time of her wedding, Alice had taken to her bed.

Henry became uncomfortable. His sister’s memory was, as the years went by, increasingly tender for him; her suffering was something he was prepared to talk about only with sorrow and much sympathy. If there had been a battle between the two Alices, the one who was speaking now had plainly been the victor and he realized, as she spoke, that the spoils of victory included a right to discuss the vanquished one freely. His sister-in-law, he saw, mistook his relationship with his sister, thought that Alice James, on her arrival in England, had posed the same problem for Henry and that her peculiar nature could be spoken of between them as though Henry and his sister-in-law would take the same measure of it. Alice’s tone was matter of fact.

‘Alice James,’ she said, ‘might have found something more useful to do with her wit than direct it inwards at herself.’

Henry was tempted to stand up and excuse himself. He had presumed that his silence might have been enough to hush his sister-in-law on the subject.

‘And,’ Alice went on, ‘she always managed to find some lucky person to take care of her and listen to her. Your poor Aunt Kate was not receptive enough, and that is why she came to England.’

It became apparent to Henry that his sister-in-law might be conscious of his discomfort, and that this was the thing that was encouraging her to go on. The idea was so unlikely that he watched her with interest, scarcely believing his own impression. Now, as if to confirm to his satisfaction the truth of his idea, instead of wishing to end the conversation or change the subject or leave the room, he wanted Alice to continue for as long as she pleased while he remained as coldly unreceptive as he could manage.

‘I think Alice and Miss Loring were made for each other,’ his sister-in-law went on. ‘Miss Loring was a strong woman in search of a weak friend to care for. You know, any time I saw them together I thought that they were the happiest pair on God’s earth.’

Alice’s face had brightened and her eyes began to sparkle as she spoke. She was no longer the wise and sensible wife of William James, but someone with her own mind indulging her need to speak it. It appeared that if her views of the world should cause offence or verge on the scandalous, then so much the better. Henry had never before seen any sign of this in her. He wondered if she were like this when she was alone with William. He also wondered why he himself was so interested in it, why watching her speak gave him a strange pleasure.

‘I’ve always said to William that Alice and Miss Loring might have had very good reasons for coming to England away from all their relatives and friends.’

Henry looked at her in disbelief.

‘You know, Harry, the maid at home would talk, and, indeed, Aunt Kate might not always knock on the bedroom door before entering, and I think that in England Miss Loring and Alice could have found the sort of happiness together that is not mentioned in the Bible.’

As his sister-in-law glowed with satisfaction, Henry realized why he was listening so attentively. He calculated quickly that Alice could not have known Minny Temple, but she could have known about her. Her way of saying the unsayable in the company of a gentleman, without losing her poise and her wonderful and original curiosity at how the world was and how it might be, was what had distinguished Minny from her sisters and her friends. Minny’s mind had the same capacity to run forward, and then hit home with a question or a remark which would make certain members of the company wish to leave the room, but, be prevented from doing so because of the charm of her delivery. Alice, thirty years after Minny’s death, was performing with the same verve and courage.

‘Women, you know, are not above suspicion in these matters, or in any others,’ she concluded.

Henry now asked himself if she discussed his own private affairs in the same way. He thought back to the pointed questions she had asked about the visit of Hendrik Andersen, which she had heard about in Boston, and the presence of Burgess Noakes in Lamb House, which she had remarked upon. Indeed, he had noticed her observing Burgess, and now wondered if she were seeking material for further speculation about the personal lives of members of her husband’s family and their servants. He found himself having to resist the temptation to smile at the image of his Aunt Kate opening a door on Miss Loring and Alice. Then his sister-in-law stood up and said that she would return the teapot to the kitchen and then see if William were still asleep. Henry announced that he would retire to bed. Calmly, they wished each other goodnight.

HENRY RETURNED to Lamb House while William, Alice and Peggy remained in London until Dr Thorne sent his patient to Malvern for treatment which quickly, according to William, made him worse. As London was cold and inhospitable and the Atlantic Ocean too tumultuous to cross for a man in his frail state of health, William and his wife and daughter came back to Rye as their surrogate home and seemed so happy and grateful when Henry met them at the station that he looked forward to having them at Lamb House for the festive season.

Despite his doctor’s orders, William worked in the morning; then he rested in the afternoon and spent the evening making light of his ailments. He also made many jokes about his doctor and members of his family and remarks both pithy and interesting on the nature of the human dilemma. His daughter, Henry could see, adored him and, at times, to his delight, vied with him in his efforts to mock himself and his predicament.

When Lady Wolseley sent a note to say that she was in the vicinity, Henry thought a lunch for her at Lamb House with his family might interest William without overtiring him and allow Alice and Peggy to view an amusing and rare specimen of modern English womanhood. He was careful not to say too much about her in advance in case he intimidated Alice and Peggy, but once they realized that Lady Wolseley was married to the Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty’s forces and that she was a lady who had, as it were, earned her title, then Alice insisted on taking over the kitchen, doing so with efficiency and sweetness. Both she and her daughter tried on many dresses and costumes in preparation for the arrival of the Duchess, as Peggy constantly called Lady Wolseley in the days before her visit. Alice accompanied Burgess Noakes to the local tailor to have both a suit and a uniform made for him in double quick time so that he too would be suitably attired for the visit of her majesty, as William encouraged his daughter to call Lady Wolseley, but not, he warned, to her face.

When both Alice and Peggy noticed that Henry had removed a piece of faded tapestry from the wall at the top of the stairs on the day before the visit, and replaced it with a view of Rye, they teased him lightly about putting on his best show and taking down worn objects in readiness for the Duchess. He did not tell them that he had bought it in a London antique shop in Lady Wolseley’s absence and against her wishes and was now afraid to face her with his wilful and perhaps foolish purchase.

LADY WOLSELEY was wearing scarlet silk which appeared immensely dramatic when her long black cloak had been removed. Her cheeks had been rouged, and even her hair, he felt, had received some reddening, thus making it brighter, indeed more brilliant, than he had ever seen it. Her manners too were brilliant and nothing that William or Alice or Peggy said did not meet with responses of great effusion. It was as though a thunder and lightning storm of the happiest kind had arrived by carriage at Lamb House in plenty of time for lunch and was playing itself out cheerfully in the drawing room.

‘We all know, my dear,’ she said directly to Peggy whose light blue dress and cardigan and light blue ribbons in her hair seemed almost colourless against the blazing fire of the speaker, ‘that your country has the largest democracy in the known world and has bequeathed many gifts in its short history to civilization, but the most valuable gift of all, please be assured, is your uncle. He is the most wonderful flowering of your young country, and notice that he does not even deny it, for it is so generally agreed to be the truth.’

Henry was looking at William who was smiling warmly at Lady Wolseley, offering her all the soft weight of his irony.

Over lunch, their visitor asked many questions about Harvard and Cambridge and the difference between psychology and philosophy and what the lives of young girls were like in the wonderfully intellectual environment of the United States. She managed to listen to the answers very carefully so that her further questions displayed genuine interest in what was being said. William, Henry noticed, was almost flirting with her while his daughter stared at Lady Wolseley with her mouth open rather too wide. Alice fixed her eyes evenly on their guest in the calm and happy knowledge, Henry believed, that having listened to Lady Wolseley, she would now be able to write to her mother about the visit and discuss it with her husband over many days.

As the meal came to an end, William expressed much disapproval at the quantity of social life in London, insisting that, in comparison, their quiet life at Cambridge was bliss. He could hardly bear even the thought of so much activity, he said.

‘Oh yes, it’s true. You are quite right,’ Lady Wolseley said. ‘Cambridge must be bliss.’

Henry noticed his niece and thought that she was going to have to excuse herself from the room so close was she to a fit of nervous laughter.

‘And the theatre in London is so ridiculous, so very vulgar,’ Lady Wolseley continued. ‘One cannot tolerate it. In fact, when poor Henry came to stay with us in Ireland, his wonderful play had just been insulted by the public. My husband, as you know, runs the army. I thought it was one night when there would have been a perfect excuse for his soldiers to shoot into the crowd. Perhaps it is fortunate that he has the command rather than I.’

Peggy excused herself from the table.

‘Yes, England is ghastly. But of course Ireland, on the other hand, has changed so much,’ Lady Wolseley went on, ‘even since we left it. It is, I am told, the most peaceful part of the entire empire.’

‘I wonder how long it will remain so?’ William asked.

‘Oh forever, I’m told,’ Lady Wolseley replied.

William looked up quizzically as though one of his students had spoken out of turn.

‘I met Lady Gregory, Henry, your old friend, in London,’ Lady Wolseley said. ‘Her estates are in the very interior. She says that there is no social outrage of any sort in Ireland. And more, she herself has begun to learn Celtic, and says it is full of many beautiful words and phrases. It is very old, she says, older than both Greek and Turkish.’

‘I think the language is called Gaelic,’ William said.

‘No, Celtic,’ Lady Wolseley replied. ‘Lady Gregory assured me that it is called Celtic, and I do so wish I had known about it when I was in Ireland. I would have learned it myself and given parties in it.’

She smiled at Alice who smiled at her in return. William, Henry could see, was no longer prepared to flirt with Lady Wolseley.

‘I travelled in Ireland a number of times,’ he said. ‘And I do believe that England has much to answer for in the way the country has been run.’

‘Oh I quite agree,’ Lady Wolseley said. ‘And my husband spoke to the queen personally about the matter before he went there, and they both took the view that once Mr Parnell was removed and not replaced, then all the Fenianism would die down. And you should go there now, or speak to Lady Gregory. I believe that Ireland has been transformed.’

‘Have you been to the United States?’ Alice asked.

‘No, dear, no. And I should love to go,’ Lady Wolseley said. ‘I long to see the Wild West. I should like to go there.’

She spoke sadly, as though her not having been there was the regret of her life, and then smiled warmly at Peggy as the young girl returned to the room.

‘Henry, I am so glad we bought this dining-room table,’ Lady Wolseley said.

‘Lady Wolseley was of great assistance when I was furnishing Lamb House,’ Henry said.

‘My dear, we must get more rugs,’ Lady Wolseley said. ‘You cannot go into the new year without some extra rugs. I am told that a marvellous consignment has arrived in London and I must go upstairs again and look at the drawing room so that we can decide on the colours we need.’

‘Yes,’ Henry said. ‘Let us repair to the drawing room.’

As they walked into the hallway, Henry came face to face with Hammond, whom he had last seen in Ireland when he was a guest of the Wolseley’s. Hammond’s face had changed, his eyes seemed larger and more gentle. He smiled shyly at Henry and stood aside to let him pass.

‘Oh of course,’ Lady Wolseley said, ‘you know each other. I did remember that.’

Henry led them upstairs to the drawing room, leaving Hammond in the hallway.

‘Yes,’ Lady Wolseley said, ‘Hammond remains with us. He is part of Lord Wolseley’s guard.’

Lady Wolseley found herself a chair near the window while Alice and Peggy sat on the sofa. William stood at the mantelpiece, his face grave.

‘We miss Ireland so much, Mr James,’ Lady Wolseley addressed William directly. ‘We brought Hammond back with us and two gardeners. And all our guests love them, Casey and Leary the gardeners, they delight everybody. I have to tell all of our guests "don’t pay any attention to their charm, they don’t mean it", but it’s lovely how they talk.’

Henry left the room quietly before his brother had an opportunity to reply and made his way slowly down the stairs. Hammond was still standing in the hallway, as though he had been waiting for him.

‘I did not know that you had come back to England,’ Henry said.

‘Yes, sir, I followed his lordship and I travel sometimes with her ladyship.’

His voice had lost none of its calmness which Henry felt as a warm relief.

‘I am so glad that you have come to my house,’ Henry said. ‘I hope you have been looked after.’

‘Your boy, sir,’ Hammond said, ‘made sure that I was well fed.’

When Henry continued to look at him, Hammond lifted his eyes. Hammond was beginning to blush. He seemed younger than when Henry had known him in Ireland almost five years earlier. His smile broadened but he did not move.

‘I should like to show you the garden here and the garden room,’ Henry said.

‘Would you, sir?’ Hammond’s tone was gentle.

‘It is better, of course, in the summer,’ Henry said, walking into the dining room and opening the doors into the garden. The air was cold and dry. ‘And your family in London, how are they?’ Henry asked.

‘Very well, sir.’

‘And your sister is well?’

‘It is strange that you remembered, sir. She is wonderful.’

They moved around the garden slowly, Hammond stopping for a second each time Henry spoke so that he could properly take in what was being said.

‘You must come back in the summer when everything is in bloom,’ Henry said.

‘I should like to do that,’ Hammond replied.

Henry turned the key to the garden room and they entered. He felt as though they had both walked into some half-forbidden territory, but when he turned and saw Hammond’s face, he realized that Hammond did not share this perception. He was interested in the desk and the papers and the books. He went to the window and looked at the view.

‘This is a most beautiful room, sir.’

‘It is cold in the winter,’ Henry said, ‘too cold to use.’

‘You must be a happy man here in the summer, sir,’ Hammond said.

He moved over to the books on the wall.

‘I have read some of your books, sir. One of them I have read three times.’

‘One of my books?’

‘The Princess Casamassima, sir. I felt that I was living in that book. All those streets of London are the streets I know. And the sister. It was much better than Dickens, sir.’

‘You like Dickens?’

‘Yes, sir. Hard Times and Bleak House.’

Hammond turned and began to inspect the books closely, kneeling to see the books on the bottom shelves. He turned and spoke softly.

‘You must excuse me, sir, but some of these titles I have not seen before.’

He was loath to accept any books as gifts, and would only agree when Henry could demonstrate that he had a number of copies of the same edition on the shelves. Finally, after much discussion, he allowed three books to be set aside for him, Henry having become aware that his embarrassment and hesitation arose from the fact that he did not want Lady Wolseley to see him with the package and ask what it was. He wrote his address in London in clear letters on a sheet of paper and Henry promised that he would send these books by post.

‘And I shall say nothing to her ladyship,’ Henry said.

Hammond smiled gratefully.

‘Nor shall I, sir.’

As they walked to the spot in the garden where Henry was proposing to build a new glasshouse, Henry could not help noticing that they were being watched with shameless interest by Lady Wolseley. She stood with William, Alice and Peggy at the drawing-room window. Lady Wolseley was pointing to something in the garden and, when Henry caught her gaze, she waved. As he bowed to her, he saw his brother observing him and Hammond with a sort of bemused intensity. He did not look directly at his sister-in-law or his niece.

IN THE DAYS that followed, he supposed that his brother and sister-in-law and niece discussed Lady Wolseley at length among themselves, but while Alice and Peggy seemed to have been much animated by her visit, William’s mood had darkened. Henry did not know if something more had been said by Lady Wolseley after he left the room, believing that what he had heard might have been sufficient in itself. On her departure, as Hammond stood in the background, she had made clear, even more so than she had during her visit, her proprietorial interest in Henry and her admiration for him. He noted that she did not include his family in the invitation to see her both in the country and in London, which she had extended to Henry. She did not seem to think that William James and family merited any great attention, and Henry felt that this, as much as her views on the Irish question, might have irritated William profoundly.

As Christmas approached, Alice and Peggy, feeling snugly sentimental, began to plan a truly American festival, not understanding the extent to which the customs of their country coincided with those of England. William read and slept and spoke enough not to draw too much attention to his own deeply preoccupied state. After lunch one day when Alice and Peggy were making themselves busy in the kitchen, he asked Henry to wait in the dining room as he wished to speak to him. Henry politely closed the door behind him and sat at the table opposite William.

‘Harry, I have, I know, offered before my doleful views on your not having stayed in America, and said how much we miss you as a chronicler of our society. I think America still awaits the novelist with eyes as sharp as yours and sympathy as wide ranging.’

‘Indeed,’ Henry said and smiled.

‘But I do not think that you have found your subject in this country,’ William said sternly. He stared towards the window as he spoke, as though he were rehearsing a speech or a sermon. ‘I do not believe that The Spoils of Poynton or The Awkward Age or The Other House are worthy of your talent. The English have no spiritual life, only a material one. The only subject here is class and it is a subject of which you know nothing. The only striving is material striving and that you know nothing of either.You do not have in your possession the knowledge which Dickens or George Eliot or Trollope or Thackeray possessed of the mechanics of English greed. There is no yearning in England, no crying out for truth.’

‘Thank goodness for that,’ Henry said.

‘In short,’ William continued, as though Henry had not spoken, ‘I believe that the English can never be your true subject. And I believe that your style has suffered from the strain of constantly dramatizing social insipidity. I think also that something cold and thin-blooded and oddly priggish has come to the fore in your content.’

‘I am grateful to you for your opinion,’ Henry said.

‘Harry, I am an avid reader of you, and an admirer of your work.’

‘You seem to feel that I should have remained at home,’ Henry said and lifted his hand refusing to allow William to interrupt him, ‘charting the lives of the pinched intellectuals of Boston. Yes, that would have been a supreme subject.’

‘Harry, I find I have to read innumerable sentences you now write twice over to see what they could possibly mean. That is the long and the short of it. In this crowded and hurried reading age you will remain unread and neglected as long as you continue to indulge in this style and these subjects.’

‘I shall,’ Henry replied, ‘as I work in the future then, strive to gratify you, but perhaps I should add that I might be even more humiliated if you should like what I do and thereby merge it in your affection with things for which I have heard you express admiration. Things which I would sooner descend to a dishonoured grave than have written.’

‘No one is suggesting that you should lie in a dishonoured grave,’ William said, ‘but I did have a concrete proposal for you, a novel that is crying out to be written which would confound your critics, win you a large audience and give you immense satisfaction.’

‘A novel I should write?’

‘Yes, a novel with no grand English people, but dealing with the America you know.’

‘You speak with great confidence.’

‘Yes,’ William said, ‘I have put some thought into the matter. A novel which would deal with our American history rather than the small business of English manners, bad indeed as they are. A novel about the Puritan Fathers as told by you…’

Henry stood up and went to the window, forcing William to turn as he spoke. Henry felt that he had the advantage now by standing close to what light was left while his brother sat at the table in the deepening shadows.

‘May I interrupt you?’ Henry asked. ‘Or is this a lecture whose finish will be marked by the ringing of a bell?’

William turned his chair around and seemed ready to continue what he had begun to say.

‘May I put an end to this conversation,’ Henry said, ‘by stating clearly to you that I view the historical novel as tainted by a fatal cheapness and if you want a statement from me on the matter in clear American and since you wish me to pander to the crowded, hurried age as you call it, might I tell you my opinion of a novel to be written by me about the Puritan Fathers?’

He stopped, waiting for an answer.

‘Yes, please,’ William said. ‘I cannot stop you.’

‘It would be all one word,’ Henry said. ‘One simple word. It would be all humbug!’ he said and smiled gently, almost patronizingly at his brother.

AT SUPPER it struck him that William had not confided in Alice that he had bravely attempted to lecture his brother on the failure of his fiction. William’s eyes, he insisted, were sore and Alice tried to ensure that he slept more and did not read as much, while William, Henry saw, played the part of the unwilling and recalcitrant patient. William had begun to roam uneasily around Lamb House so that Henry was never sure in what room he would find him, or indeed at what time of the day or the night he would discover his brother restlessly creaking the floorboards in his bedroom or on the stairway.

He understood that William was attempting to fill Lamb House with his presence, using an invisible system, Henry believed, of imposing his authority, making subtle but insistent changes to meal times, for example, and how meals were served. William began to unnerve Burgess Noakes and the other household staff. At one point, until Alice forced him to desist, he even tried to alter the arrangement of the furniture in the drawing room and asked Burgess to remove certain ornaments from the mantelpiece which he did not like.

Henry avoided him; if he found him in the drawing room or one of the downstairs rooms, he quietly and diplomatically left him there. Alice still shadowed William. Although she seldom sat in the same room, she was always hovering close by, seeming to be busy. Peggy, on the other hand, buried herself in books, moving from classic novel to classic novel without lifting her head from them if she could help it. When she had finished with Jane Austen, she embarked on The Portrait of a Lady. Henry was surprised and amused to find that her parents felt free to express openly their disapproval of her latest choice, but was satisfied the next day that she had persisted with the book. She was, as she told them, too far involved in it now not to finish it. She would skip any passage which was too difficult or not suitable for her, she said. She was almost grown up, she added proudly. She looked at Henry calmly, without embarrassment, when he told her that, especially when compared with her Emmet cousins who spoke so badly, she was the most perfect young lady of his acquaintance.

WILLIAM, HENRY remembered, when he had come to London as part of a sabbatical in the year their mother died, had stayed with Henry also, and exuded the same strange resentment of his London life which extended to the very objects in the flat. And Henry had allowed William’s disapproval to dictate where he went and where he did not go; he had allowed William to organize the household to William’s satisfaction.

He recalled how it became apparent during that sojourn of William’s that their father had not long to live. He remembered a telegram saying that their father’s brain was softening and adding, as though with the same urgency, that William should not return. It was December in London. Alice,William’s wife, was staying with her mother who was helping to care for her two young sons. Alice James, the other Alice, was looking after their father with Aunt Kate. Both Alices had, for once, concurred: neither of them wanted William to return. Both of them, on the other hand, wished Henry to be there. Their father, the telegram insisted, could possibly live for months, and thus it seemed easy to persuade William that, since he had given up his house in Cambridge, his return would involve inhabiting cramped quarters with no lectures to give at Harvard and no other duties there. Instead, he should continue his sabbatical in Europe, enjoy his leisure, make new contacts and write and read in freedom. The wording of the telegram had been, Henry realized, immensely clever. By stating that their father’s brain was softening, both Alices had made clear to William that he would not be able, in his father’s dying days, to discuss with him how their divergent ideas of the soul and the purpose of life might finally and beautifully be made to converge.

Henry had sailed alone for New York and when the boat docked he discovered that the funeral had taken place that very day. He was too late now to do anything other than listen to accounts of how his father had died peacefully and easily, inhabit the house so recently the house of the dead and read his father’s will. In the years that followed, he never allowed himself to brood on the date of his father’s burial and on their decision to consign Henry senior to the winter earth without Henry there to witness the burial or touch his father’s dead face before the lid was placed on the coffin, though he was so close.

He came to understand that this decision had been firmly made by his sister Alice and he found himself too fascinated by her sudden brisk grasping of the reins of decision, in a family where she had never been allowed to decide anything, to be bruised by his strange exclusion. And in the weeks after the funeral he came to understand as well his sister’s desperate need to keep William in England, to insist that Wilky, too ill to travel, stayed in Milwaukee and that Bob returned there. With William present, Alice James could not have been as deliberately rude to and impatient with Aunt Kate as she now was, since William would have stood between them, since his presence would have held everyone’s attention, thus ensuring that Alice’s efforts to belittle her aunt could not be as starkly successful. Nor would she have felt as free to cling so openly to Miss Loring, nor would Miss Loring, with the entire family present, have taken the same liberties in the James household before moving Alice into her own house.

Henry did nothing, once in Boston, to encourage William to return. William, without speaking or lifting a finger, would have replaced their father. Henry could not have had the silence of the house to himself, with only his Aunt Kate, whom he loved, for company. He could not have slept in his father’s bed, feeling it his duty somehow to do so, nor come to possess the house in all its aura of absence waiting to be filled with as open a heart as he did now that William was so far away.

The fact that he, rather than William, had been made executor of his father’s estate could not have pleased William. And that he could make the details of his father’s last days known to William and the wishes and the kind condolences of old friends such as Francis Child and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and that he had placed himself in control without seeking advice, could not, he knew, have improved William’s temper.

ABOUT A WEEK after his father was buried, a letter came in William’s hand addressed to Henry James. Since Henry was awaiting news of William, it did not occur to him that the letter had been written to his father and that he should not open it. He had read the first paragraph before he realized his mistake, even though, as he subsequently noticed, the letter had begun ‘Dear Father’. He held the letter for several days, telling no one about it, and then on a Sunday morning, the last day of the year, when it was quiet, the snow deep and the light scarce, he made his way to the cemetery where his parents lay close together.He was alone and he made sure as he approached the grave that no one was watching him. He hoped that his presence now might help his parents to feel the great ease he wished for them, to know how grateful he was to them and how raw with sadness he remained at their departure from the earth. He took William’s letter out of his pocket and in a voice clear and audible he began to read it to the old ghost for whom it had been intended. But gradually, as the tears came, he reduced his voice to a whisper and several times he had to stop and put his hand over his face as these words, meant so tenderly, moved him more than any of his own words, or any words about his father he had heard since he arrived. He forced himself to continue:

‘As for the other side, and Mother, and all our possible meeting I can’t say anything. More than ever at this moment do I feel that if that were true, all would be solved and justified. And it comes strongly over me in bidding you good-bye how life is but a day and expresses mainly but a single note. It is so much like the art of bidding an ordinary good-night. Good night my sacred old Father! If I don’t see you again – Farewell! A blessed farewell!’

Somewhere in the depths of the cold earth, Henry felt, his father’s spirit lingered, enough for Henry to long for the letter to last, so that he would not have to walk away in silence, leaving his parents there in a place he now viewed as the most sacred and forgiving. He hated the barrenness of the winter season and the sounds of his own footsteps on the ice as he moved away.

He walked from the graveyard to the house where his sister-in-law was staying to find that William was, once more, threatening to come home. Alice showed him their sparse accommodation. In deep despair she explained that she was exhausted by caring for her father-in-law in his last days, when she had joined Alice and Aunt Kate beside his bed. Her children were also becoming a great toll on her energy, she said, and explained further that having a husband in a state of desolation in these few small rooms was something she desperately wished to avoid. Henry said that he would write once again to William. He almost told her that he understood what a burden William’s idle and distressed presence could be in any household, but, since the intensity of her feeling on the matter struck him as somewhat odd, and so different from the way his own mother had dealt with his father, he did not speak.

That evening, Henry sat at his father’s desk and told William what he had done in the cemetery, trying to bring to life for his brother how his final words to his father had been solemnly offered to the old man’s spirit. He added his belief that William coming home would be an idle step and begged him to let the interest subside. But even as he did so, he knew that William, on hearing what Henry had done with his private and heartfelt letter, would resent such liberties being taken, no matter how solemnly.

He awaited his brother’s reply and when it came it was full of hatred for the London he was being forced, almost against his will, to inhabit. William wrote of the filthy, smeary, smoky fog and the universal stupidity of the population whose like did not exist, he believed, anywhere else under the sun.

HENRY WAS BUSY. As the executor he had many meetings with the lawyers. He had been appalled by his father’s decision to leave Wilky out of the will, his father having believed that Wilky had been given enough in his lifetime. Henry presumed that his siblings agreed that this was not to be tolerated and he set about correcting it by asking each of them to offer a portion of their legacy to Wilky, enough to make his legacy equal to theirs. He planned to travel to Milwaukee to see both Wilky and Bob and made further arrangements to go to Syracuse to see at first hand his father’s properties there and consider whether it would be wiser to dispose of them or keep them and arrange for the dividends from the rents to be disbursed as the rents came in.

As he organized these matters, with much discussion of share value and income, percentages and bonds, William’s regular missives from London, displaying self-pity and containing threats to return, made him impatient. His sister-in-law seemed increasingly agitated at the possibility of her husband’s sudden and precipitous return. She showed him each letter William wrote, sighing at their tone.

Although he remained uneasy about having read these letters, and wondered about the state of his brother’s marriage, Henry had no difficulty writing to William once more, demanding that he see reason. As he finished the letter late at night, adding many details arising from his role as executor, he felt a strange power which increased in the morning as he realized how hurt and infuriated William would be on reading it. He experienced a sense of lightness at that prospect coupled with a distinct feeling of being fully in the right and acting for the best.

William, in response to Henry’s provocations, made clear his indignation at being treated like a small child who did not understand his own motives or interests. He made many insulting remarks about London and Henry’s flat, and had attempted to break ranks on the plan to make up to Wilky for the injustice their father had done him. Then he had returned to Cambridge before his sabbatical in Europe was over, whereupon Henry had informed him that he would make his own share of the estate over to his sister Alice, and would allow William the control he desired by leaving the family finances in his hands. He was going to apply himself, he had told his brother, to his work in the very London which William so despised, from which work he, in any case, derived sufficient income not to have to bother with any further discussions about his father’s estate and its management.

The death of Wilky the following year, followed by the death of Herman, William and Alice’s baby boy, and then the death of their sister Alice, brought respite from their disputes, and the many sweet and healing letters, full of kindness and emotional generosity, written to Henry over the years by William’s wife helped to restore tenderness to the relationship between Henry and William, as indeed the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean between them managed to pour calming waters on both sides.

NOW, HOWEVER, two decades later, it was as though an afterglow of the rancour of those months after their father’s death continued to burn at Lamb House. Henry could continue his routine; he had his work, his servants, his books, and constant messages from friends and publishers. William was away from home. When William left his house in Cambridge to walk to Harvard Yard, he would be observed with a respect bordering on awe and greeted warmly, his fame gathering like a large protective shadow. This fame did not stretch to Rye; and its failure to do so, it seemed to Henry, appeared to depress William even further so that eventually he did not wish to go out at all. Yet staying indoors day after day made him behave like an animal in a cage who had lost none of the ability to snarl.

One evening as he was preparing to go to his room for the night, and in search of the book he had been reading, Henry found his niece in one of the downstairs rooms. She seemed disturbed; he wondered if her father’s mood had affected her and this made him concerned. As her warmth and delight at the Christmas season had managed to lift some of the gloom that hung over Lamb House, he had come to view her as a young figure of charm and intelligence, a source of much amusement for him as well as pride. When he asked her if anything was wrong she was at first unwilling to tell him why she appeared so listless and almost despondent. When he asked her if she were missing her brothers and her friends in Cambridge, she shook her head. When he was weighing in his mind whether he should allude to William’s state of mind, his niece suddenly asked him if he intended to write a second volume, a sequel, to The Portrait of a Lady. She told him that she had, less than one hour before, finished the book. Henry told her that he had written the book twenty years earlier and had long forgotten it; he did not think he would write a sequel to it.

‘Why did she go back?’ Peggy asked.

‘You mean, return to her husband?’

‘Why did she do it?’

Peggy seemed almost angry. Henry sat down opposite her and tried to think, knowing that, above all, he must not say to her that when she was older she would come to realize how such decisions, matters of duty and resignation, were often more easily made than other decisions which might appear right to an imaginative young girl.

‘It is very difficult for anyone in their lives,’ Henry began, ‘to make leaps into the dark. Isabel’s going to Europe from Albany, leaving all her family behind, and then against everyone’s advice and her own better judgement marrying Osmond, were leaps into the dark. Making such leaps requires us to be brave and determined, but doing so also may freeze any other possibilities. It is easier to renounce bravery rather than to be brave over and over. It could not, in her case, be done again. The will and the nerve needed for such actions do not come to us often, any of us, least of all Isabel Archer from Albany.’

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 at 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 the 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.’

William spoke naturally and easily, his good humour adding to the almost conversational tone of his delivery, a tone Henry had never heard before.

‘You sound as though you have written the lectures,’ Gosse said.

‘I have formulated them,’ William said. ‘Writing does not come naturally to me. I prefer talking but since in this case they want to publish them too, then I will have to write them out word for word.’

‘Perhaps The Times will publish them when they are delivered,’ Gosse said.

‘The Times will receive no further communication from me. It had its opportunity.’ William laughed and lifted his glass and drank.

‘Henry,’ Gosse said, ‘it is your turn.You must tell us now what you will write so that we can look forward to it.’

‘I am a poor story-teller,’ Henry said, ‘a romancer, interested in dramatic niceties.While my brother makes sense of the world, I can only briefly attempt to make it come alive, or become stranger. Once I wrote about youth and America and now I am left with exile and middle age and stories of disappointment which are unlikely to win me many readers on either side of the Atlantic.’

‘Harry, you have many devoted readers,’ Alice said.

‘I have in mind a man who all his life believes that something dreadful will happen to him,’ Henry said. ‘He tells a woman of this unknown catastrophe and she becomes his greatest friend, but what he does not see is that his failure to believe in her, his own coldness, is the catastrophe, it has come already, it has lived within him all along.’

‘Is that the end?’ William asked.

‘Yes, but there is also a man in a different story who goes to Paris from New England. He is an American of middle age, with much intelligence and a sensuous nature which has remained hidden throughout his life. He sees Paris and understands, like the man in the earlier story, that it is our duty to live all we can, but it is too late, or perhaps it is not.’

‘And were a clergyman here,’ William asked, smiling warmly, ‘and were he to ask you what is the moral of these stories, what should he conclude from them?’

‘The moral?’ Henry thought for a moment. ‘The moral is the most pragmatic we can imagine, that life is a mystery and that only sentences are beautiful, and that we must be ready for change, especially when we go to Paris, and that no one,’ he said raising his glass, ‘who has known the sweetness of Paris can properly return to the sweetness of the United States.’

‘And which of these stories will you write first?’ Gosse asked.

‘I may already have embarked on both,’ Henry said.

‘And you, sir, what shall you write?’ William asked Gosse.

‘When I find the tone and the courage,’ Gosse said, ‘I shall write a book about my father.’

‘But you have already written one and I very much admire it,’ William said. ‘The tension between the religious spirit and the quest for scientific truth is something which has mattered very much to me.’

‘I shall write now,’ Gosse replied, ‘about the tension between my father and his son, and I shall spare neither of us. I must find a new style for it, however, and I must find time, but I do not think that this book will gain my father any new admirers.’

‘That might be a great pity,’ William said.

‘And, no doubt, a great book,’ Henry added.

WHEN WILLIAM returned from his walk, Gosse having left them an hour before darkness fell, he found the Lamb House Club in full swing. Alice and Peggy sat one on each side of the sofa, a lamp on the table, quietly reading. Burgess Noakes with his bad shoes came and went with logs and coal until a huge fire was blazing. The curtains were drawn. Henry sat with his biography of Napoleon in the armchair beside the fire.

‘It was a winter’s day,’ William said, ‘and now it is a winter’s night.’

‘In the morning,’ Alice said, ‘we must write another letter to the boys. I think they long for us to come home.’

‘I don’t want to write any more letters,’ Peggy said.

‘It is a new rule of our club that you are excused,’ Henry replied.

William went out of the room and returned with a book.

‘This was my mother’s dream for us,’ Henry said.

‘That we would end up in England?’ William asked.

‘No,’ Henry said, smiling. ‘She always dreamed that we would, each of us, sit enjoying our books while she and Aunt Kate did their work, that there would not be a sound for hours but the turning of pages.’

‘Was it never like that, Harry?’Alice asked.

‘Never,’ Henry said. ‘My father would start an argument or your husband would kick something over or the younger ones would begin a quarrel.’

‘And you, Uncle Harry,’ Peggy looked up from her book. ‘What would you do?’

‘I would dream of an old English house and the fire blazing and nothing being kicked over.’

‘I will refrain, if that is any comfort to you,’ William said. ‘My kicking days have passed in any case.’

As the night wore on, the wind blew up and the windows rattled. Peggy, concentrating fiercely on every word she read, had curled up against her mother who had left her book down and was staring into the fire. They had supper served on trays in the drawing room. When Burgess Noakes took the supper things away, Henry poured drinks for William and Alice and chocolate was found for Peggy. William returned to his book, taking notes. They could hear the scratching of his pen against the paper, and as time passed each of them became engrossed in their books again or in their thoughts so that no one noticed that William was sleeping until he began to snore.

‘We will put more logs on the fire,’ Henry whispered, ‘but we will do it without waking him.’

Alice sighed.

‘It is late,’ she said.

‘The rules say that I can stay up,’ Peggy said.

‘And allow William to snore,’ Henry said gently, ‘as much as he pleases.’

BY THE TIME they were ready to leave, having arranged to spend the rest of the winter in the gentler climate of the south of France, Peggy had finished several more novels by Dickens and was, Henry noticed on the morning of their departure, deeply engrossed in David Copperfield. She did not have to skip pages, Henry assured her, she could take the volume with her and any other books she cared to pack for her journey and her stay in France, except his two-volume biography of Napoleon, from which nothing would part him, he said, until he had read the final page.

After breakfast when William saw Peggy’s book, he laughed.

‘That’s the one that got Henry caught,’ he said.

Peggy looked up at Henry.

‘He was sent to bed in our house on Fourteenth Street,’ William said, ‘because a cousin of ours had come from Albany with the first instalment of David Copperfield, which she was going to read aloud, and my mother did not think that it would be suitable for a small boy. Instead of doing what he was told, however, he hid.’

‘What did you do, Papa?’ Peggy asked.

‘I was not such a small boy,’ William said.

‘He was a year older,’ Henry said.

‘And did she read it?’

‘Yes, and there was much drama as she imitated all the voices. But suddenly sobs of sympathy rang from a corner of the room where Harry had been listening to the story and snapped under the strain of the Murdstones and had to be effectively banished. He was a great crybaby.’

‘Did you not cry too, Papa?’

‘I have a heart of stone,’ William said and touched his chest and smiled.

Henry thought of the room in New York in which the chapter of David Copperfield had been read, all heavy furniture and screens and tasselled tablecloths, and his mother’s voice rather than his cousin’s, his mother cross at him when he was first discovered and then his mother taking him into her arms when she realized that he was crying. All this became vivid to him as though no barrier had been placed between that evening and now. He knew how far away it must seem to Peggy and he felt that for William, too, it belonged in the past. William had told the story as it had been told in the family for years, he had picked it up with the same good-humoured, businesslike air as he picked up his suitcases. Henry came out of the dining room and glanced at William as he prepared for departure. Henry shook his head and sighed.

Alice had left five pounds for Burgess Noakes who had appealed to Henry with a look as if to say that it was too much.

‘Take it,’ he said. ‘My sister-in-law comes from the wealthy branch of the family.’

Burgess went ahead with the wheelbarrow, followed by Henry and William, Alice and Peggy, the three visitors having been long enough at Rye to be offered fond farewells by several of the locals. William, it struck Henry now, could not wait to get away, and it came to him that William had always been thus, impatient, ready for novelty, longing for new adventures, even if it were just leaving one room to go into another, or standing when he had just been sitting. When they were small, he would turn the page of the picture book before Henry had had time to absorb fully each illustration, and then refuse to turn back; eventually he would tire of even the picture book and want to go outdoors, leaving Henry free to start the book again alone and study it in peace before going to the window to see what William was doing now.

They were going to Dover and then to France. As the train came, Henry could sense that they did not know whether to smile or be sad. Peggy, he was aware, was desperate to return to her book. He accompanied her onto the train and found her a window seat, and then he stood back as their luggage was being loaded, while Alice urged William not to lift the cases. He embraced both William and Alice before descending to the platform once more. He watched with Burgess as the heavy door was closed.

Lamb House was his again. He moved around it relishing the silence and the emptiness. He welcomed the Scot who was waiting for him to begin a day’s work, but he needed more time alone first. He walked up and down the stairs, going into the rooms as though they too, in how they yielded to him, belonged to an unrecoverable past, and would join the room with the tasselled tablecloths and the screens and the shadowed corners, and all the other rooms from whose windows he had observed the world, so that they could be remembered and captured and held.