The Master by Colm Tóibín Page A

in, a house full of doors and corridors, strange creakings and odd night sounds. He thought of his hostess and Mr Webster and his mocking
tone. He wished he could leave now, have his bags packed and move into a city hotel. But he knew that he could not go, the ball was the following night and to leave before the ball would be to
offend. He would leave on the morning after the ball.
    He felt hurt and wounded, knowing that his hostess had conspired against him. He thought about what Webster had said. He had never spoken to anyone in Lady Wolseley’s circle about County
Cavan. It was not a secret or a matter of shame, although by his sneering tone Webster had made it seem so. It was simply the place where his grandfather had been born and his father had visited
almost sixty years earlier. What could it mean to him? His grandfather had come to America in search of freedom, and in America he had found more than freedom. He had found great wealth, and that
had changed everything. County Cavan did not cost Henry a thought.
    He put his hands behind his head in the darkness of the bedroom, the firelight having fully dimmed. He was disturbed by the idea that he longed, now more than ever before, in this strange house
in this strange country, for someone to hold him, not speak or move even, but to embrace him, stay with him. He needed that now, and making himself say it brought the need closer, made it more
urgent and more impossible.
    L ATE THE FOLLOWING morning he sat by the window, watching the sheer blue sky over the Liffey. It was another freezing day and thus he was surprised to
see the child Mona on the lawn, unaccompanied and bare-headed. He himself had been for an early walk and had been glad to get back inside the house. The girl, he noticed, had her arms outstretched
and she was moving in circles; the lawn was wide and he searched with his eyes for her nurse or her mother, but there was no one.
    If anyone, he thought, saw her they would feel as he did. She must be rescued, there was too much lawn, too much broad, unwatched territory around her. It was appalling that she was there in the
cold March morning unprotected. She was still moving about the centre of the lawn, half-running and then stopping, following a route of her own devising. Her coat, he saw, was open. As time passed
and no protector arrived to take her indoors, he imagined a figure in the shadows watching her, or a figure emerging from the shadows. Suddenly, she stopped her movements and stood still, facing
him. He could see that she was shivering with cold. She made a gesture and shook her head. He realized that she must be in silent contact with someone at another window, presumably her mother or
her nurse. She did not move again, but stood there on the lawn alone.
    It was the dead, inert silence of her long gaze which held his attention. In her stillness, she seemed both frightened and acquiescent, and he could not begin to imagine what her watcher at the
window was indicating.
    He fetched his coat from the stand near the door. He could not resist inspecting the scene at first hand, and he planned to turn the corner casually and glance up at the window, without losing a
moment, as soon as he came into view. He believed that the person at the window, whoever she was, would pull back once he appeared. Anyone, he thought, would be ashamed to conduct the minding of a
young girl, who should, in any case, be indoors, from an upstairs window. He found his way to the side door without meeting anyone.
    The day had become colder and he shivered as he walked around the house to the lawn. He waited at the corner for a second and then turned sharply, staring immediately up at the windows along his
floor even before checking that Mona was there. He saw no one at the windows, no one withdrew into the shadows as he had expected. Instead, directly in front of him, wearing a blue hat and with her
coat fastened, stood Mona with her nurse. The child was being