Master, The by Tóibín Colm

Author:Tóibín, Colm [Tóibín, Colm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novel, Fiction
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2008-01-01T02:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

June 1898

HE WATCHED HIS FRIEND the novelist moving towards the window in the drawing room, but did not suggest to her that she might be more comfortable where he had originally placed her. She sought a position with her back to the light. He wondered if she remembered that two, or even three, of her heroines had entered rooms in this way and sat happily and deliberately with their backs to a large window so that the company might view them in the most flattering light.

Once seated, however, Mrs Florence Lett did not seem to care about her face as she wrinkled her brow and grimaced. She could not utter a sentence without making passionate changes to her expression, smiling and frowning, and puckering up her rather perfect nose. He wondered how her face had withstood so many changes in its weather. Soon, he thought, there would be a landslide, something would have to give. In the meantime, he enjoyed her talk of her time in Italy, her next book, her charming daughter, the slowness of the train to Rye, her sorrow that she could stay only a short time, and back again to her beautiful daughter, aged six, who was being fêted in the kitchen by the staff, her daughter’s education and inheritance, and then back to Italy and the death, by suicide, of Henry’s great friend, the novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson.

‘In Venice,’ she said, ‘they spoke of you and why you departed so abruptly and why you have not returned. He is an artist, I told them, a supreme artist, not a diplomat, but they long to see you. Venice is sad, it was always sad, but more so now, and people whom I don’t think ever knew Constance claim to miss her. Poor Constance, you know I could not walk in those streets. I had to turn back, I don’t know what you will do.’

Slowly, the door opened and Mrs Florence Lett’s daughter came quietly into the room. Her mother was in mid-sentence and did not stop. The little girl studied the room, her expression placid. She was wearing a long blue dress. Henry noticed also the intensely soft blue of her eyes and her clear fair skin. In that moment, as she stood there, respectful of her mother’s conversation, he thought her immensely beautiful. From the sofa, he put out his arms to her and, without any further consideration, she came stealthily towards him and embraced him, sitting herself on his lap and putting her arms around him.

‘We’ve all gone to see her grave, of course,’ his visitor continued. ‘With some graves you know that the person is at rest, that their lying there is part of nature. But I did not feel that at all with poor Constance, although that graveyard is the most perfect place. She would have loved it. But I don’t feel she is at rest. I don’t feel that at all.’

Henry listened as Mrs Florence Lett held forth. He did

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