‘Rest,’ she said. ‘Rest will be enough. You’ll need to rest for the next few days after your long journey.’

Henry remembered that he watched his father and wondered if he was going to tell her the true prognosis but his father just then seemed to be having difficulty taking off his coat and had to be assisted. As soon as his coat was hanging in the hallway, his father found a book and settled down to read it. Henry guessed that even in the privacy of the night his father would not reveal what the doctor had really said. Yet there was no conspiracy between Henry and his father to deceive his mother. Henry felt now that his father had never told her that her son was perfectly healthy because it would have involved such a clear rebuttal of her own judgement, and implied a criticism of her. It would also have forced her to face the possibility that Henry’s weakness and disability had been a search for attention and sympathy. This would undermine Henry’s moral character in a household where illness was too serious a matter for such games not to be a sort of sacrilege, and this would be too unsettling for everyone, including his father.

His father needed time, Henry thought, to mull over the great discrepancy between the words ‘Up early, out early’ and the treatment Henry was receiving. He was conscious that his father’s propensity for change could make itself felt at any stage; he knew how much it tended towards the irrational, if it were not controlled and channelled. He knew that idling in his room all summer, being cosseted by his mother and his aunt, could cause his father suddenly to stand up, leave his book aside, and with fire in his eyes declare that something would have to be done about Henry.

He moved carefully, consulting William about the advisability of a course at Harvard and then his friend Sargy Perry who was about to enter the college. He did not allude directly to his father’s unpredictability and the course it could take. He maintained a high tone, explaining that it was time he ceased to idle at the family’s expense and considered a career. William nodded.

‘Have you considered the ministry? There will never not be a need for you, especially if you study divinity at Harvard, where the bedside manner, with exhortation to repent, is taught with such emphasis and zeal.’

He allowed William to joke, but did not let him stray from the subject. He was young enough still to care more about his immediate circumstances than any long-term vision of his career. Thus being left alone all summer reigned supreme among his desires. And when William said ‘law’, he realized that it was the only plausible option. His family, he knew, could number among their familiars some whose sons had taken a similar route. But more than anything, the study of law sounded serious and decisive, and it was also a change of direction. It would offer their father a brief thrill, and this would prevent him from wanting another such thrill – at least as far as Henry was concerned – for some time.

His mother, perhaps as a result of a chance remark or merely because of his father’s silence on the matter, began to ask him if his back was not, in fact, much improved. She wondered one day if more exercise rather than more rest might not be the solution. He thought from her uncertainty and her vague worried air that his father had said nothing directly, but he was also aware of how close the danger was now, that he could easily have a decision made for his future without his being consulted. It would take just one night, his parents beginning their discussions before they went to bed and continuing in muffled tones until they would have a decision and it would be announced at breakfast as a fact, something which had been decided and could not be amended.

Henry waited for the moment. He would need both of them together. He would begin by discussing his own unsettled state and his urge to make a decision about his future. He would suggest that he had no clear idea what to do; but he was alert to the danger here – if he left this door open for too long, his father would be capable of closing it and locking it very quickly by proposing he join the Union forces and, having made the proposal, allowing it to become more gravely and deeply the entire focus of the discussion to the exclusion of other possibilities. He would need to move the discussion forward quickly, to say perhaps that he had spoken to William, although that would also be a risk as William went in and out of favour depending on nothing more than the vagaries of his father’s thinking. He could not say that he wished ‘to be’ a lawyer as his father would pounce on the words ‘to be’ and lecture him about his own being as a precious gift to be cultivated with energy but also with subtle wisdom and consideration. Thus, his father would say, you cannot ‘be’ a lawyer nor can you ‘become’ one. Such language, his father would insist, is a way of offering offence to the greatest gift of our Creator – life itself and the grace our Creator offers us to move on from our being and become.

No, he would have to discuss his urge to study law rather than become a lawyer, to attend lectures about law, to broaden his intellect by applying it directly to a discipline. Such words, if uttered with spontaneity and sincerity, if he could speak as though his high hopes had focussed on this solution only now, as a result of this discussion, he might fire his father with enthusiasm at this change, and his mother would nod in agreement, carefully weighing up the consequences.

He thought of going to his mother first and telling her of his plan, but he knew that things had gone too far for that. In any case, his father would suspect both of them of conspiring at his exclusion. Henry’s injured back would also have to be mentioned, but it would have to be delicately brought into the conversation, as neither a deciding factor nor an impediment, but as something that might fade from the horizon, annihilated once and for all by the force of a new decision.

He found them as he dreamed of finding them, his father reading and his mother moving quietly about the room.

‘I need to discuss with you my present circumstances,’ he said.

‘Sit down, Harry,’ his mother said, moving to a tall chair by the table and sitting there with her hands joined in front of her.

‘I know that it is time for me to make a choice, and I have given it much thought, but perhaps not enough thought, and I have come to you both to see, perhaps, if you could help me clarify how I must live my life, what I must do.’

‘Each of us needs to clarify how he must live his life,’ Henry senior said. ‘It is a matter for all of us.’

‘I am aware of that, Father,’ Henry said and then left silence. He knew that his father could not now declare a career for him or suggest that he get up early and go out early. He had left things open for discussion rather than decision. He could see his father becoming bright-eyed and excited that an ordinary morning with his family in Newport had suddenly been transformed and was awash with possibility.

No one mentioned the army, but it hovered over the conversation, swooping to eye level now and then; nor did any of them mention his ailment, but it too lingered in the atmosphere. Henry was careful not to mention anything specific at first, merely his restlessness and his ambition and his need to clarify – he used the word several times – what he might do now.

‘I have become interested in America itself, Father, its traditions and history and indeed its future.’

‘Yes, but that is a subject for all Americans, we all must devote time and energy to the study of our heritage,’ his father said.

‘ America is developing and changing,’ Henry said, ‘in ways which are unique and require a serious approach.’

He wondered if the word ‘serious’ had not been a mistake, if it had not suggested that his father’s approach to his chosen subject had been less than serious. His father was easily wounded, but his mind was too busy now, and his bustling confidence too complete to take offence. Henry watched him pondering the full implications of the last remark and then noticed his eyes become steely, his expression hard. He loved how his father could change like this and regretted that it occurred so seldom. He did not look at his mother.