He was concerned lest her neighbours should hear her and with his hand he cautioned her that she should lower her voice.

Mona was the focus of attention, the most honoured guest. Mr Webster, who was close to her, continually roared flattering remarks and ambiguous compliments at her; Lady Wolseley, sitting close to her husband, was high with excitement.

Hammond moved with a bottle in his hand pouring drinks. He remained calm and unflustered no matter how busy he was. He had, Henry felt, the most beautiful temper in the hall that night.

Henry did not dance, but had he done so he would surely have had to dance with Mona, because all the gentlemen did. As each dance ended, a new partner awaited her. In flirting with her and treating her as an adult, they succeeded, Henry thought, in mocking her. They paid no attention to the fact that she was a little girl who had dressed up and should be going to bed. Henry watched Hammond watching her, understanding that he might be the only other person in the room who viewed Mona’s frolics with something less than complacency.

Most of the time Henry stood alone, or with another gentleman or pair of gentlemen, observing the dancing, the candles slowly burning down, the gowns and wigs increasingly tawdry in their appearance, the cheeks of the dancers burning red and the orchestra clearly tired. It suddenly struck him that what he longed for now was an American, preferably someone from Boston, a compatriot who would understand or at least appreciate, as nobody present seemed to, the strangeness here.

These were the English in Ireland. This building was an oasis with chaos and squalor all around. The Wolseleys had imported their silver as they had their guests and their manners. He liked Lord Wolseley and did not wish to judge him harshly. Nonetheless, he wished for the view of an American brought up on ideals of freedom and equality and democracy. For the first time in years, he felt the deep sadness of exile, knowing that he was alone here, an outsider, and too alert to the ironies, the niceties, the manners and, indeed, the morals to be able to participate.

As he woke from his reverie, he saw Hammond in front of him carrying still the deportment of high sympathy that he had exuded all evening. He seemed extraordinarily handsome. Henry took a glass of water from the tray and smiled at him, but neither of them spoke. In all likelihood, Henry realized, they would not meet again.

Across the hall, Mona was sitting on Webster’s knee. He was holding her hands, rocking her up and down. Henry smiled at the thought of his imaginary American friend coming into the room now and witnessing this less than edifying scene. As he watched them, Webster caught his eye and shrugged carelessly.

It was late now and Hammond had joined the servants taking away glasses and cleaning the wax which had fallen from the candles onto the tables and the floor. Already he missed the glow of pleasure which Hammond ’s calm face had given him. Soon, it would be lost to him, and this made him feel that he was a great stranger, with nothing to match his own longings, a man away from his own country, observing the world as a mere watcher from a window. Abruptly, he left the Hall and walked briskly back to his own quarters.

CHAPTER THREE

OVER THE YEARS HE HAD learned something about the English which he had quietly and firmly adapted to his own uses. He had watched how men in England generally respected their own habits until those around them learned to follow suit. He knew men who did not rise until noon, or who slept in a chair each afternoon, or who ate beef for breakfast, and he noticed how these customs became part of the household routine and were scarcely commented on. His habits, of course, were sociable and, in the main, easy; his inclinations were civil and his idiosyncrasies mild. Thus it had become convenient to himself, and simple to explain to others, that he should turn down invitations, confess himself busy, overworked, engaged both day and night in his art. His time as an inveterate dinner guest in the great London houses had, he hoped, come to an end.

He loved the glorious silence a morning brought, knowing that he had no appointments that afternoon and no engagements that evening. He had grown fat on solitude, he thought, and had learned to expect nothing from the day but at best a dull contentment. Sometimes the dullness came to the fore with a strange and insistent ache which he would entertain briefly, but learn to keep at bay. Mostly, however, it was the contentment he entertained; the slow ease and the silence could, once night had fallen, fill him with a happiness that nothing, no society nor the company of any individual, no glamour or glitter, could equal.

In these days after his opening night and his return from Ireland he discovered that he could control the sadness which certain memories brought with them. When sorrows and fears and terrors came to him in the time after he woke, or in the night, they were like servants come to light a lamp or take away a tray. Carefully trained over years, they would soon disappear of their own accord, knowing not to linger.

Nonetheless, he remembered the shock and the shame of the opening night of Guy Domville. He told himself that the memory would fade, and with that admonition he tried to put all thoughts of his failure out of his mind.

Instead, he thought about money, going over amounts he had received and amounts due; he thought of travel, where he would go and when. He thought of work, ideas and characters, moments of clarity. He controlled these thoughts, he knew that they were like candles leading him through the dark. They could easily, if he did not concentrate, be snuffed out and he would again be pondering defeats and disappointments, which if not managed could lead to thoughts that left him desperate and afraid.

He woke early sometimes and when such thoughts took over he knew that he had no choice but to rise. By operating decisively, as though he were rushing somewhere, as though the train were on time and he was late, he believed that he could banish them.

Nonetheless, he knew that he had to allow his mind its freedoms. He lived on the randomness of the mind’s workings, and, now, as the day began, he found himself involved in a new set of musings and imaginings. He wondered how an idea could so easily change shape and appear fresh in a new guise; he did not know how close to the surface this story had been lurking. It was a simple tale, made simpler still by his friend Benson’s father, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had tried to entertain him one evening after the failure of his play. He had hesitated too much and stopped too often as he attempted to tell a ghost story, knowing neither the middle nor the end and unsure even of the contours of the beginning.

Henry had set it down as soon as he arrived home. He wrote in his notebook:

Note here the ghost story told me at Addington (evening of Thursday 10th), by the Archbishop of Canterbury: the mere vague, undetailed, faint sketch of it: the story of the young children (indefinite number and age), left to the care of servants in an old country house, through the death, presumably, of parents. The servants, wicked and depraved, corrupt and deprave the children: the children are bad, full of evil to a sinister degree. The servants die (the story vague about the way of it) and their apparitions return to haunt the house and children.

He did not need to look back at his notebook to be reminded of the story; the events remained with him. He thought of setting it in Newport, in a remote house by the rocks, or in one of the newer mansions in New York, but none of these settings captured him, and gradually he abandoned the idea of an American family. It became an English story set in the past; and in the early and slow elaboration of the story he reduced the children to merely two – a boy and his younger sister.