The Master (19 page)

As he studied the lease, he knew that its twenty-one years would take him to the tomb. The walls of the house had witnessed men and women come and go for almost three hundred years; now it had
invited him to sample briefly its charm, it had enticed him there and offered him its unlasting hospitality. It would welcome him and then see him out, as it had seen others out. He would lie
stricken in one of those rooms; he would lie cold in that house. The idea both froze his blood and comforted him at the same time. He had travelled without hesitation to meet his own place of
death, to remove its mystery, one of its unknown dimensions. But he would also go there to live, to spend long days working and long evenings by the fire. He had found his home, he who had wandered
so uneasily, and he longed for its engulfing presence, its familiarity, its containing beauty.

H
E GAINED
strength that winter and early spring in the determination of practical matters. When Howells came to London, they spent a long morning
together, the fog thick outside, discussing, among other matters, the American market for story and serialization. Howells’s visit and his calm advice, and his intervention on his return to
the United States, which resulted in commissions and approaches from editors there, were part of the magic of the season.

Slowly, other things fell into place. Lady Wolseley discovered his new acquisition, and insisted on visiting it and offering advice. She was, he knew, a great and talented gatherer of objects;
her taste was practical and she did not baulk at furnishing small rooms and intimate spaces. She knew the dealers and their shops, and over years she had instilled respect and fear in the best of
them, while taking the measure of the worst. She had also read
The Spoils of Poynton
, as it had appeared in serial form, having had it sent to her from America, and she believed that the
widowed Mrs Gareth, prepared to lay down her life for the carefully collected treasures of Poynton, was based on her.

‘Not the greed,’ she said, ‘and not the foolishness and not the widowhood. I have never gone in for widowhood. But the eye, the eye that misses nothing, can see how a Queen
Anne chair can be restored, or a faded tapestry hung in the shadows, or a painting bought for the frame.’

She presumed that he had no money to spend, and she presumed that his taste equalled hers, and she got to know each room of his new house and its requirements in every detail. She thought Lamb
House a perfect piece. She had wished that she could carry it home, but since she could not, then she would console herself by taking him shopping in London, showing him corners and side alleys of
the antiques trade and the old furniture trade. He learned, to his surprise, that the years when she collected most of her small treasures were the years when she and her husband had almost no
money, had inherited nothing, and managed on his salary and her slight private income. Her eye, she said, was sharpened by penury.

As the days grew shorter, he moved through London with her, pushing open the doors of dimly lit shops presided over by watchful dealers who knew Lady Wolseley of old, some of them remembering
ancient purchases of hers, bargains she had procured and objects she had added to her collection which had seemed at the time eccentric and part of her general wilfulness. This London, its shops
all lit and its streets busy and its social life at its most rich and pressing, was a world which he had already begun to miss as he prepared to retreat into the safety and solitude of provincial
life. He loved the late afternoon light and the freshness of the cold and he also loved, despite all his protestations, the promise of the evening. As he walked the streets with his acquisitive
companion, he studied London fondly, and then, as they stood in the old storerooms and show rooms, conducted here and there by dealers who seemed the essence of decorum and discretion as though
they were selling privacy itself, he imagined his new life and his new furniture, his newly painted walls or stripped-down wood, and he felt oddly light, happy that he was merely halfway towards
his goal, that Lamb House in Rye remained for the moment in the realms of imagination.

S
INCE THE
elevation of Lord Wolseley to his position as Commander of Her Majesty’s Forces, and since their return from Ireland in triumph, Lady
Wolseley had grown more imperious with Henry, but she seemed gentle now, quite polite with the dealers. He had never known her to keep her voice down, but in the dusty old shops, as she studied the
new arrivals or asked for old maps, her new obsession, to be presented to her, she seemed demure, and indeed seemed more so as the winter progressed. Nevertheless, she was full of certainty about
what was worth buying and what was not, and she had a firm picture in her mind of each portion of Lamb House. He had to battle with her constantly due to her enthusiasm and her lack of patience,
and on a few occasions he had to be careful to keep secret his longing for an object which she had casually dismissed.

Lady Wolseley provided him with a secret guide to London, to the hidden places from which he could fill and furnish Lamb House; she offered him also a version of London at its most densely
packed, most resonantly inhabited. Each object he fingered and handled possessed a wondrous history which would never be known, suggesting England to him in all its old wealth and purpose.

In these months he worked hard, writing articles and stories, but on days when he had fulfilled his contract with himself and written his allotted number of words, keeping his Scot busy all
morning, he would decide suddenly to go to the dealers again, mingle once more with the dust and the left-over objects, the untidy sold-off heritage, move from one shop to another aimlessly
selecting a frame or a chair or a set of cutlery, but not buying, waiting until he was in a more decisive mood, or in the company of Lady Wolseley.

One afternoon, in the hour between four and five when the light became ambiguous and faded, he found himself in an antique shop in a Bloomsbury street which he had visited only once with Lady
Wolseley. He remembered the dealer vividly for his extraordinary pair of eyes. The dealer had managed then to exert a sort of coercion on Lady Wolseley and her friend without speaking; he had
succeeded in putting subtle pressures on them, managing also to throw a shadow of solemnity over the occasion by a mere glance. Henry recalled his slim light fingers, with neat nails, touching
objects on his counter at moments, briefly, nervously, tenderly. He had noted Lady Wolseley’s huge resistance, silent also, to making any purchases, even though the owner had shown them some
perfect pieces, including a French tapestry, small but splendid, and some old velvet brocade, with a texture which both the dealer and Lady Wolseley agreed was almost impossible to find nowadays.
She bought nothing, but studied certain objects at such length that the dealer’s wise, patient gaze took on a hint of irony. Outside, she said the prices were too high, even though money had
been barely mentioned, and said she believed that the owner, many years in business, should no longer be encouraged.

Henry had been thinking for some time about purchasing one object, something useless and perhaps overpriced, and certainly expensive, something that would catch his eye, an object he would want
to have with him, close to him, which would have a meaning beyond its value. The French tapestry was something he thought of, the scene it depicted took its bearings from one of the Italian
masters, Fra Angelico or Masaccio, and the pink threads running through the cloth had held their tone. He thought he would examine it again now, discuss it further with the dealer and perhaps
decide to buy it without consulting Lady Wolseley, who, he knew, never changed her mind.

He found the door of the shop open and went into the lamp-lit interior, closing the door noiselessly behind him. It was typical, he thought, of the dealer’s strange tact to allow a
customer to enter thus. The front part of the shop was narrow and cluttered, but he remembered that down some steps was a much longer room leading to a large storeroom with stairs to a loft. He
idled for a while waiting for the owner to appear and then began to study a teacup which he thought might be Sèvres. Having casually examined several other objects, he walked to the back of
the shop until he had a full view of the store below. There, huddled over a chaise longue, discussing its covering and testing its strength, were Lady Wolseley and the dealer. Feeling for a second
like a trespasser, he moved back into the shadows and waited. He had not expected to find Lady Wolseley there and he thought it might be better if she were left in peace. This was her territory; he
had not sought permission. He believed now that it would be wholly proper for him to remove himself silently and forthwith from the shop.

Just then, however, another customer opened the door and did so noisily. He was a well-dressed gentleman in early middle age who seemed to have as much trouble closing the door as he had had
opening it. The dealer, when he came up the stairs, seemed to ascertain immediately that the two gentlemen had come separately and were not connected. He appeared surprised by the two arrivals, but
quickly covered this up with fond recognition for Henry and something less than that for the more recent arrival. This time he seemed more clever than before, more foreign, more deeply intelligent
and fine-featured; his dark eyes shone with a clever penetrating warmth. It was clear that he did not know that Henry had already observed Lady Wolseley and Henry watched him as he calculated
smilingly what he should do. The dealer asked Henry if he could possibly wait for one moment and then made his way back down the steps. Henry heard words murmured below as he saw his fellow shopper
take hold of an old silver bell with a carved wooden handle. He waited then for Lady Wolseley to appear, wondering what he, the intruder, could possibly say to her.

As soon as the shop owner reappeared, Henry noticed a tinge of concern in his expression. He was soon followed by Lady Wolseley at her most regal, and, he could not help feeling, at her most
loud.

‘I was not aware that you ventured out alone,’ she said. ‘Are you lost?’ She smiled a glittering smile and let out a short laugh.

He bowed to her and noticed as he lifted his head that she knew the other gentleman. Both she and the dealer seemed anxious about his presence. When Henry looked towards him, he saw that in
those seconds between his bow and his turning of the head, something urgent and almost alarmed had passed in glances between Lady Wolseley and the gentleman.

‘Most of the objects in here are beyond your means,’ she said to Henry. Both of them knew instantly that the remark, although meant as a joke, was too brusque and too sharp.

‘A poor man can always look,’ he said, waiting for her to retrieve the situation and wondering how she would do so.

‘Come then and I will show you,’ she said. She led him down the stairs, calling for another lamp.

He knew that it was a signal for the gentleman to go and was not surprised to hear the front door of the antique shop being shut once more. As Lady Wolseley ordered the lamp to be placed on an
Italian cabinet, he wondered who the gentleman was and why they had not been introduced, and why the strain in the room had been so palpable and the encounter, considering Lady Wolseley’s
great social experience, so badly managed. Could Lady Wolseley, he wondered, have come close to compromising herself in an antique shop in London on an ordinary winter’s afternoon? And what
form would such a compromise take? And in what way was the dealer implicated? Both Lady Wolseley and the dealer now began to extol the virtues and beauties of the cabinet, Lady Wolseley agreeing
vehemently with each phrase the dealer uttered, repeating some of them for emphasis, both of them insisting that a price could not even be mentioned, it would cause shock or scandal, it had better
remain unknown to the current visitor who loved beauty but had limited means.

As they both spoke, and then as the dealer fell silent and the conversation was carried by Lady Wolseley, Henry was sure that he had understood perfectly the outlines of the scene just witnessed
but not its meaning. Lady Wolseley had arranged to meet a gentleman here, but that alone meant nothing, as she moved freely in London and had taken Henry shopping without the smallest hesitation.
The strain had arisen from her unwillingness to greet the gentleman or introduce him. Henry could make no sense of this, could not fathom why she had not either ignored the man totally or made
light of knowing him. The conversation which resumed between Lady Wolseley and the dealer seemed to gather up silences and fill them noisily. He realized that he had witnessed a strange London
moment whose essences belonged to others and would be kept from him no matter how much he speculated and how long their awkward loitering in the antique shop went on.

While walking up the steps towards the front part of the shop, his eye was caught by the tapestry, which had been moved since his last visit. Now it seemed even more rich and more beautiful. His
two companions stopped behind him. He presumed that they too would see the pure delicacy of the colouring, the bright threads working against the faded, the texture suggesting a vast realm long
gone.

‘Is it eighteenth century?’ he asked.

‘Look a little and perhaps you’ll make out,’ Lady Wolseley said.

He looked again as the dealer brought the lamp nearer.

‘Do you like it?’ he asked her, wondering if she remembered seeing it on their previous visit.

‘I don’t think “like” is quite the word,’ she said. ‘It’s flawed. It’s been restored, some of the work is recent. Can’t you see?’

He studied it more carefully, following the pink and yellow threads which seemed to him faded too, even though they stood out against the rest of the work.

‘It was made to fool us all,’ Lady Wolseley said.

‘It’s quite striking, quite beautiful,’ Henry said as though he were speaking to himself.

‘Oh, if you don’t see the restoration in all its vulgarity, then you need me even more than you know,’ Lady Wolseley said. ‘You must under no circumstances ever venture
out alone again.’