A telegram had told me to come to a town ten miles from the house, so I
was saved the crawling train to the local station, and traveled down by
an express. As soon as we left London the fog cleared off, and an autumn
sun, though without heat in it, painted the landscape with golden browns
and yellows. My spirits rose as I lay back in the luxurious motor and
sped between the woods and hedges. Oddly enough, my anxiety of overnight
had disappeared. It was due, no doubt, to that exaggeration of detail
which reflection in loneliness brings. Frances and I had not been
separated for over a year, and her letters from The Towers told so
little. It had seemed unnatural to be deprived of those intimate
particulars of mood and feeling I was accustomed to. We had such
confidence in one another, and our affection was so deep. Though she was
but five years younger than myself, I regarded her as a child. My
attitude was fatherly.
In return, she certainly mothered me with a solicitude that never
cloyed. I felt no desire to marry while she was still alive. She painted
in watercolors with a reasonable success, and kept house for me; I
wrote, reviewed books and lectured on aesthetics; we were a humdrum
couple of quasi-artists, well satisfied with life, and all I feared for
her was that she might become a suffragette or be taken captive by one
of these wild theories that caught her imagination sometimes, and that
Mabel, for one, had fostered. As for myself, no doubt she deemed me a
trifle solid or stolid--I forget which word she preferred--but on the
whole there was just sufficient difference of opinion to make
intercourse suggestive without monotony, and certainly without
quarrelling.
Drawing in deep draughts of the stinging autumn air, I felt happy and
exhilarated. It was like going for a holiday, with comfort at the end of
the journey instead of bargaining for centimes.
But my heart sank noticeably the moment the house came into view. The
long drive, lined with hostile monkey trees and formal wellingtonias
that were solemn and sedate, was mere extension of the miniature
approach to a thousand semidetached suburban "residences"; and the
appearance of The Towers, as we turned the corner with a rush, suggested
a commonplace climax to a story that had begun interestingly, almost
thrillingly. A villa had escaped from the shadow of the Crystal Palace,
thumped its way down by night, grown suddenly monstrous in a shower of
rich rain, and settled itself insolently to stay. Ivy climbed about the
opulent red-brick walls, but climbed neatly and with disfiguring effect,
sham as on a prison or--the simile made me smile--an orphan asylum.
There was no hint of the comely roughness of untidy ivy on a ruin.
Clipped, trained, and precise it was, as on a brand-new protestant
church. I swear there was not a bird's nest nor a single earwig in it
anywhere. About the porch it was particularly thick, smothering a
seventeenth-century lamp with a contrast that was quite horrible.
Extensive glass-houses spread away on the farther side of the house; the
numerous towers to which the building owed its name seemed made to hold
school bells; and the windowsills, thick with potted flowers, made me
think of the desolate suburbs of Brighton or Bexhill. In a commanding
position upon the crest of a hill, it overlooked miles of undulating,
wooded country southwards to the Downs, but behind it, to the north,
thick banks of ilex, holly, and privet protected it from the cleaner and
more stimulating winds. Hence, though highly placed, it was shut in.
Three years had passed since I last set eyes upon, it, but the unsightly
memory I had retained was justified by the reality. The place was
deplorable.
It is my habit to express my opinions audibly sometimes, when
impressions are strong enough to warrant it; but now I only sighed "Oh,
dear," as I extricated my legs from many rugs and went into the house. A
tall parlor-maid, with the bearing of a grenadier, received me, and
standing behind her was Mrs. Marsh, the housekeeper, whom I remembered
because her untidy back hair had suggested to me that it had been burnt.
I went at once to my room, my hostess already dressing for dinner, but
Frances came in to see me just as I was struggling with my black tie
that had got tangled like a bootlace. She fastened it for me in a neat,
effective bow, and while I held my chin up for the operation, staring
blankly at the ceiling, the impression came--I wondered, was it her
touch that caused it?--that something in her trembled. Shrinking perhaps
is the truer word. Nothing in her face or manner betrayed it, nor in her
pleasant, easy talk while she tidied my things and scolded my slovenly
packing, as her habit was, questioning me about the servants at the
flat. The blouses, though right, were crumpled, and my scolding was
deserved. There was no impatience even. Yet somehow or other the
suggestion of a shrinking reserve and holding back reached my mind. She
had been lonely, of course, but it was more than that; she was glad that
I had come, yet for some reason unstated she could have wished that I
had stayed away. We discussed the news that had accumulated during our
brief separation, and in doing so the impression, at best exceedingly
slight, was forgotten. My chamber was large and beautifully furnished;
the hall and dining room of our flat would have gone into it with a good
remainder; yet it was not a place I could settle down in for work. It
conveyed the idea of impermanence, making me feel transient as in a
hotel bedroom. This, of course, was the fact. But some rooms convey a
settled, lasting hospitality even in a hotel; this one did not; and as I
was accustomed to work in the room I slept in, at least when visiting, a
slight frown must have crept between my eyes.
"Mabel has fitted a work-room for you just out of the library," said the
clairvoyant Frances.
"No one will disturb you there, and you'll have fifteen thousand books
all catalogued within easy reach. There's a private staircase too. You
can breakfast in your room and slip down in your dressing gown if you
want to." She laughed. My spirits took a turn upwards as absurdly as
they had gone down.
"And how are you?" I asked, giving her a belated kiss. "It's jolly to be
together again. I did feel rather lost without you, I'll admit."
"That's natural," she laughed. "I'm so glad."
She looked well and had country color in her cheeks. She informed me
that she was eating and sleeping well, going out for little walks with
Mabel, painting bits of scenery again, and enjoying a complete change
and rest; and yet, for all her brave description, the word somehow did
not quite ring true. Those last words in particular did not ring true.
There lay in her manner, just out of sight, I felt, this suggestion of
the exact reverse--of unrest, shrinking, almost of anxiety. Certain
small strings in her seemed over-tight. "Keyed-up" was the slang
expression that crossed my mind. I looked rather searchingly into her
face as she was telling me this.
"Only--the evenings," she added, noticing my query, yet rather avoiding
my eyes, "the evenings are--well, rather heavy sometimes, and I find it
difficult to keep awake."
"The strong air after London makes you drowsy," I suggested, "and you
like to get early to bed."
Frances turned and looked at me for a moment steadily. "On the contrary,
Bill, I dislike going to bed--here. And Mabel goes so early." She said
it lightly enough, fingering the disorder upon my dressing table in such
a stupid way that I saw her mind was working in another direction
altogether. She looked up suddenly with a kind of nervousness from the
brush and scissors.
"Billy," she said abruptly, lowering her voice, "isn't it odd, but I
hate sleeping alone here? I can't make it out quite; I've never felt
such a thing before in my life. Do you--think it's all nonsense?"
And she laughed, with her lips but not with her eyes; there was a note
of defiance in her I failed to understand.
"Nothing a nature like yours feels strongly is nonsense, Frances," I
replied soothingly.
But I, too, answered with my lips only, for another part of my mind was
working elsewhere, and among uncomfortable things. A touch of
bewilderment passed over me. I was not certain how best to continue. If
I laughed she would tell me no more, yet if I took her too seriously the
strings would tighten further. Instinctively, then, this flashed rapidly
across me: that something of what she felt, I had also felt, though
interpreting it differently. Vague it was, as the coming of rain or
storm that announce themselves hours in advance with their hint of
faint, unsettling excitement in the air. I had been but a short hour in
the house--big, comfortable, luxurious house--but had experienced this
sense of being unsettled, unfixed, fluctuating--a kind of impermanence
that transient lodgers in hotels must feel, but that a guest in a
friend's home ought not to feel, be the visit short or long. To Frances,
an impressionable woman, the feeling had come in the terms of alarm. She
disliked sleeping alone, while yet she longed to sleep. The precise idea
in my mind evaded capture, merely brushing through me, three-quarters
out of sight; I realized only that we both felt the same thing, and that
neither of us could get at it clearly.
Degrees of unrest we felt, but the actual thing did not disclose itself.
It did not happen.
I felt strangely at sea for a moment. Frances would interpret hesitation
as endorsement, and encouragement might be the last thing that could
help her.
"Sleeping in a strange house," I answered at length, "is often difficult
at first, and one feels lonely. After fifteen months in our tiny flat
one feels lost and uncared-for in a big house. It's an uncomfortable
feeling--I know it well. And this is a barrack, isn't it? The masses of
furniture only make it worse. One feels in storage somewhere
underground--the furniture doesn't furnish. One must never yield to
fancies, though--"
Frances looked away towards the windows; she seemed disappointed a
little.
"After our thickly-populated Chelsea," I went on quickly, "it seems
isolated here."
But she did not turn back, and clearly I was saying the wrong thing. A
wave of pity rushed suddenly over me. Was she really frightened,
perhaps? She was imaginative, I knew, but never moody; common sense was
strong in her, though she had her times of hypersensitiveness. I caught
the echo of some unreasoning, big alarm in her. She stood there, gazing
across my balcony towards the sea of wooded country that spread dim and
vague in the obscurity of the dusk. The deepening shadows entered the
room, I fancied, from the grounds below. Following her abstracted gaze a
moment, I experienced a curious sharp desire to leave, to escape. Out
yonder was wind and space and freedom. This enormous building was
oppressive, silent, still.
Great catacombs occurred to me, things beneath the ground, imprisonment
and capture. I believe I even shuddered a little.
I touched her shoulder. She turned round slowly, and we looked with a
certain deliberation into each other's eyes.
"Fanny," I asked, more gravely than I intended, "you are not frightened,
are you? Nothing has happened, has it?"
She replied with emphasis, "Of course not! How could it--I mean, why
should I?" She stammered, as though the wrong sentence flustered her a
second. "It's simply--that I have this ter--this dislike of sleeping
alone."
Naturally, my first thought was how easy it would be to cut our visit
short. But I did not say this. Had it been a true solution, Frances
would have said it for me long ago.
"Wouldn't Mabel double-up with you?" I said instead, "or give you an
adjoining room, so that you could leave the door between you open?
There's space enough, heaven knows."
And then, as the gong sounded in the hall below for dinner, she said, as
with an effort, this thing:
"Mabel did ask me--on the third night--after I had told her. But I
declined."
"You'd rather be alone than with her?" I asked, with a certain relief.
Her reply was so gravely given, a child would have known there was more
behind it: "Not that; but that she did not really want it."
I had a moment's intuition and acted on it impulsively. "She feels it
too, perhaps, but wishes to face it by herself--and get over it?"
My sister bowed her head, and the gesture made me realize of a sudden
how grave and solemn our talk had grown, as though some portentous thing
were under discussion. It had come of itself--indefinite as a gradual
change of temperature. Yet neither of us knew its nature, for apparently
neither of us could state it plainly. Nothing happened, even in our
words.
"That was my impression," she said, "--that if she yields to it she
encourages it. And a habit forms so easily. Just think," she added with
a faint smile that was the first sign of lightness she had yet betrayed,
"what a nuisance it would be--everywhere--if everybody was afraid of
being alone--like that."
I snatched readily at the chance. We laughed a little, though it was a
quiet kind of laughter that seemed wrong. I took her arm and led her
towards the door.
"Disastrous, in fact," I agreed.
She raised her voice to its normal pitch again, as I had done. "No doubt
it will pass," she said, "now that you have come. Of course, it's
chiefly my imagination." Her tone was lighter, though nothing could
convince me that the matter itself was light--just then. "And in any
case," tightening her grip on my arm as we passed into the bright
enormous corridor and caught sight of Mrs. Franklyn waiting in the
cheerless hall below, "I'm very glad you're here, Bill, and Mabel, I
know, is too."
"If it doesn't pass," I just had time to whisper with a feeble attempt
at jollity, "I'll come at night and snore outside your door. After that
you'll be so glad to get rid of me that you won't mind being alone."
"That's a bargain," said Frances.
I shook my hostess by the hand, made a banal remark about the long
interval since last we met, and walked behind them into the great dining
room, dimly lit by candles, wondering in my heart how long my sister and
I should stay, and why in the world we had ever left our cozy little
flat to enter this desolation of riches and false luxury at all. The
unsightly picture of the late Samuel Franklyn, Esq., stared down upon me
from the farther end of the room above the mighty mantelpiece.
He looked, I thought, like some pompous Heavenly Butler who denied to
all the world, and to us in particular, the right of entry without
presentation cards signed by his hand as proof that we belonged to his
own exclusive set. The majority, to his deep grief, and in spite of all
his prayers on their behalf, must burn and "perish everlastingly."