I DISCOVER MANY THINGS
TWO days later I had settled down fairly well to life at The Towers.
My responsibilities were varied. It was mine to superintend the early
toilet of Judith and Jack: mine to keep a watchful eye on the vagaries
of the parlourmaid, who was given to dreaming when laying the table, and
possessed a disregard, curious in one of her calling, for the placing of
correct spoons and forks. She admitted her limitations, but nevertheless
deeply resented my existence. I arranged flowers in all the
sitting-rooms, gave out linen, prepared picnic luncheons and teas, cut
sandwiches, helped to pick fruit, saw that trains were met whenever
necessary, wrote letters for Mrs. McNab, played accompaniments or
dance-music when desired, did odd jobs of mending, and, in short, was
required to be always on hand and never in evidence. Incidentally and
invariably, there were Judith and Jack.
They were a curious pair, alike in appearance and character; untamed
young savages in many ways, but with a kind of rough honesty that did
much to redeem their pranks. I used to wonder what was their attitude
towards their father; it would have been a comfort to think that they
paid him any reverence, for it was a quality conspicuously lacking in
their dealings with anyone else. Their mother made spasmodic efforts to
control them, generally ending with a resigned shrug and a sigh. For the
greater part of each day they pursued their own sweet will, unchecked.
Never had I met two youngsters so urgently needing the common sense
discipline of a good boarding-school, and it rejoiced me to learn that
after the holidays this was to be their portion; since their governess,
after leaving for her holidays, had decided that she was not equal to
the task of facing them again, and had written to resign her position.
Judy and Jack rejoiced openly. I inferred, indeed, that they had
deliberately laboured towards this end.
That the pair had a reputation for evil ways, and were determined to
uphold it, was plain to me from my first evening in the house. They
regarded every one as fair game: but the “holiday governess” was their
especial prey, and, so far as I could gather, their treatment of the
species partook of the nature of vivisection. Ostensibly, we were
supposed to be a good deal together, for I found that I was invariably
expected to know where they were; but as my duties kept me busy for the
greater part of the day, and the children were wont to follow their own
devices, we seldom foregathered much before afternoon tea, for which
function I wildly endeavoured to produce them seemly clad. We dined
together in the schoolroom at night, and afterwards descended decorously
to the drawing-room for an hour—if they did not give me the slip; and
Mrs. McNab had conveyed to me that there was no need for me to sit up
after their bed-time. It was this considerate hint that made me realize
what my employer meant by “rest and change.”
On that first evening I had my introduction to the merry characteristics
of Judy and Jack. Mrs. McNab had excused us from attendance in the
drawing-room, at which they had uttered yells of joy, forthwith racing
down the kitchen stairs to parts unknown. It did not seem worth while to
follow them, so I sat in the schoolroom, writing a letter to Colin and
Madge. I spread myself on description in that letter: Madge told me
later on that my eye for scenery had amazed them both. I hoped the
letter sounded more cheerful than I felt. But the writing of it made me
more homesick than ever, and when I had finished there seemed nothing
worth doing except to go to bed.
The sight of my room brought me up all standing. My luggage had come up
too late for me to do more than begin unpacking: and Judy and Jack had
been before me to complete the task. The engaging pair had literally
“made hay” of my possessions. My trunk stood empty, its contents
littering the floor; the bedposts were dressed in my raiment and crowned
with my hats, my shoes were knotted and buckled together in a wild heap
on the bed. On the table stood my three photographs—Father, Colin, and
Madge; each turned upside down in its frame. There was no actual damage:
merely everything that an impish ingenuity could suggest. It was
apparent that they had enjoyed themselves very much.
I was very tired, and my first impulse was of wild wrath, followed
swiftly by an almost uncontrollable desire to cry. Happily, I had
sufficient backbone left to check myself. I walked across the room,
rescued a petticoat which fluttered, flag-wise, from the window,
attached to my umbrella, and began to reverse the photographs. As I did
so, I heard a low giggle at the door.
“Come in,” I said politely. “Don’t be frightened.”
There was a moment’s pause, a whispered colloquy, and two flushed faces
appeared.
“We’re not frightened,” said Judy defiantly.
“So glad—why should you be?” I asked cheerfully. “Sit down, won’t
you?—if you can find a space.” I took up Colin’s outraged photograph
and adjusted it with fingers that itched for a cane, and for power to
use it.
“That your young man, Miss Earle?” Jack asked, nudging Judy.
“That is my brother,” I said.
“Oh! What does he do?”
“He does a good many things,” I answered. “He used to be pretty good at
athletics at school and Trinity.”
“I say!—was your brother at Trinity? Why, Harry’s there!”
“He was,” I said. “He was a medical student when this was taken.”
Sudden comprehension lit Judy’s face.
“Not Earle who was captain of the university football team?”
“Yes.”
“By Jupiter!” Jack uttered. “Why, I’ve read about him—he’s the chap
they call ‘the record-breaker.’ My word, I’d like to know him!”
“Would you?” I remarked pleasantly, polishing Colin’s photograph
diligently with my handkerchief. “Perhaps you and he wouldn’t agree very
well if you did meet; there are some things my brother would call
‘beastly bad form.’ He is rather particular.”
There was dead silence, and my visitors turned very red. Then Jack
mumbled something about helping me to tidy up, and the pair fell upon my
property. Jack disentangled my shoes while Judy unclothed the bedposts:
together they crawled upon the floor picking up stockings and
handkerchiefs, and laying them in seemly piles; and I sat in the one
chair the room boasted and polished Colin’s photograph. It was
excessively bright when my pupils said good night shamefacedly, and
departed, leaving order where there had been chaos. So I kissed it, and
went to bed. We met next morning as though nothing had occurred.
I scored again the following evening, through sheer luck, which sent me
before bed-time to my room, in search of a handkerchief. It was only
chance that showed me the pillow looking suspiciously dark as I turned
off the electric light. I switched it back, and held an inspection.
Pepper.
I knew a little more of my pupils now, and realized that ordinary
methods did not prevail with them. Jack’s room was across the passage: I
carried the peppered pillow there, and carefully shook its load upon the
one destined to receive his innocent head. Then I went downstairs and
played accompaniments for Harry McNab, who had less voice than anyone I
ever met.
The subsequent developments were all that I could have wished. The
children hurried to bed, so that they might listen happily to what might
follow; and the extinguishing of Jack’s light was succeeded by
protracted and agonized sneezing, interspersed by anxious questioning
from Judy, who dashed, pyjama-clad, to investigate her ally’s distress.
Some of the pepper appeared to come her way as well, for presently she
joined uncontrollably in the sneezing exercise. It was pleasant hearing.
When it abated, smothered sounds of laughter followed.
The pair were good sportsmen. They greeted me at breakfast next day with
a distinct twinkle, and—especially on Jack’s part—with an access of
respect that was highly gratifying. We went for a walk that day, and I
improved their young minds with an eloquent discourse on the early trade
from the Spice Islands. They received it meekly.
As for The Towers, in any other circumstances, to be in such a place
would have been a sheer delight. The house itself was square and
massive, with two jutting wings. It was built of grey stone, and crowned
by a square tower, round the upper part of which ran a small balcony.
Originally, I learned, the name had been The Tower House, but local
usage had shortened it to The Towers, in defiance of facts. All the
rooms were large and lofty, and there were wide corridors, while a very
broad veranda ran round three sides of the building. It stood in a
glorious garden, with two tennis-courts, beyond which stretched a deep
belt of shrubbery. Then came a tree-dotted paddock, half a mile wide
between the Wootong road and the house; while at the back there was but
three minutes’ walk to the sea.
Such a coast! Porpoise Bay, which appeared to be the special property of
the McNabs, was a smooth stretch of blue water, shut in by curving
headlands: wide enough for boating and sailing, but scarcely ever rough.
The shore sloped gently down from low hummocks near the house, making
bathing both safe and perfect. A stoutly-built jetty ran out into the
water, ending in a diving-board; and there were a dressing-shed,
subdivided into half a dozen cubicles, and a boat-house with room for a
powerful motor-launch and a twenty-foot yacht, besides several
rowing-boats.
The McNabs were as nearly amphibious as a family could be. All, even
Mrs. McNab, swam and dived like the porpoises that gave their bay its
name. I was thankful that Father and Colin had seen to it that I was
fairly useful in the water, but I wasn’t in the same class with the
McNabs. It seemed to be a family tradition that each child was cast into
the sea as soon as it could walk, and after that, took care of itself.
Weather made no difference to them; be the morning never so rough and
cold they all might be seen careering over the paddock towards the sea,
clad in bathing-suits. Mrs. McNab was the only one who troubled to add
to this attire, and on hot mornings she usually carried her Turkish
towelling dressing-gown, a confection of striped purple-and-white, over
her arm. My employer was, in the main, a severe lady; to see her long,
thin legs twinkling across the back paddock filled me with mingled
emotions.
Not alone in the early mornings did the McNabs bathe: at all times of
the day, and even late at night, they seemed to feel the sea calling
them, and forthwith fled to the shore. Visitors accompanied them or not,
as they chose. I realized, early in my stay, that to shirk bathing would
be a sure passport to the contempt of Judy and Jack, and accordingly I
swam with a fervour little short of theirs, though I realized that I
could never attain to their finished perfection in the water. They were
indeed sea-urchins.
Mrs. McNab took me over most of the house on the morning after my
arrival, and explained, in a vague way, what my duties were to be.
“You may have heard,” she remarked, “that I am a writer.”
I admitted that this was not news to me—wildly hoping that she would
not cross-question me as to my acquaintance with her works. Fortunately,
this did not seem to occur to her. Probably she thought—rightly—that I
should not understand them.
“My work means a great deal to me,” she went on. “Not from the point of
money-making: I write for the few. Australia does not understand me; in
America, where I hope to go next year, when Judith and Jack are at
school, I have my own following. That matters little: but what I wish
you to realize, Miss Earle, is, that when I am writing I must not be
disturbed.”
“Of course,” I murmured, much awed.
“Quiet—absolute quiet—is essential to me,” she went on. “My thoughts
go to the winds if I am rudely interrupted by household matters. Rarely
do my servants comprehend this. I had a cook who would break in upon me
at critical moments to inform me that the fish had not come, or to
demand whether I would have colly or cabbage prepared for dinner. Such
brutal intrusions may easily destroy the effects of hours of thought.”
I made sympathetic noises.
“Colly—or cabbage!” she murmured. Her hard face was suddenly dreamy.
“Just as the fleeting inspiration allowed itself to be almost captured!
Even the voices of my children may be destructive to my finest efforts:
the ringing of a telephone bell, the sound of visitors arriving, the
impact of tennis-balls against rackets—all the noises of the outer
world torture my nerves in those hours when my work claims me. And yet,
one cannot expect one’s young people to be subdued and gentle. That
would not be either right or natural. I realized long ago that the only
thing for me was to withdraw.”
“Yes?” I murmured.
“In most houses, to withdraw oneself is not easy,” said Mrs. McNab.
“Here, however, the architecture of the house has lent itself to my aid.
I will show you my sanctum: the part of The Towers in which I have my
real being.”
We had been exploring the linen-press and pantry before the opening of
this solemn subject; I had listened with a mind already striving to
recollect the differences between the piles of best and second-best
sheets. Now my employer turned and led the way up a narrow winding
staircase that led from the kitchen regions to the upper floor. Here it
grew even narrower, I followed her as it curved upward, and presently it
ended on a small landing from which one door opened, screened by a heavy
green curtain.
“These are the Tower rooms,” Mrs. McNab said. “No one enters this door
without my permission; no one, except on some very urgent matter,
ascends to this landing. Here, and nowhere else, I can have the quiet
which is necessary to my work.”
She opened the door, using a latch-key, and waved me into a room about
twelve feet square. It was thickly carpeted and very simply furnished;
there were a small heavy table, a chesterfield couch and a big
easy-chair, and, in a corner, a big roll-top writing desk. Low,
well-filled book-cases ran round the walls, which were broken on all
four sides by long and narrow windows. In another corner a tiny
staircase, little more than a ladder, gave access to the upper part of
the tower.
“Sit down,” said Mrs. McNab. “This is the sanctum, Miss Earle, and here
I am supposed to be proof against all invasion. My husband had these
rooms fitted up just as I desired them: my study as you see it, and
above, a tiny bedroom and a bathroom. The balcony opens from the
bedroom, and on hot nights I can work there if I choose. Sometimes I
retire here for days together, the housemaid placing meals at stated
intervals upon the table on the landing. In hot-water plates.”
“It’s a lovely place,” I said. “I don’t wonder you love to be here
alone, Mrs. McNab. It must help work wonderfully.”
She gave me a smile that was almost genial.
“I see you have comprehension,” she said approvingly. “But only a writer
could fully understand how dear, how precious is my solitude. It is your
chief duty, Miss Earle, to see that that solitude is not invaded.”
“I’ll do my very best,” I said. I didn’t know much about writing books,
but any girl who had ever swotted for a Senior Public exam. could
realize the peace and bliss of that silent room. There was nothing fussy
in it: nothing to distract the eye. The walls, bare save for the low
bookshelves, were tinted a deep cream that showed spotless against the
glowing brown of the woodwork; the deep recesses of the four windows
were guiltless of curtains; there were no photographs, no ornaments, no
draperies. The table bore a cigarette-box of dull oak, and a bronze
ash-tray, plain, like a man’s: the chair before the desk was a man’s
heavy office-chair, made to revolve. I pictured Mrs. McNab twirling
slowly in it, in search of inspiration, and I found my heart warming to
her. She looked rather like a man herself as she stood by the window,
tall and straight in her grey gown.
“Now and then, when I have not the wish to work, I let the housemaid
come up, to clean and polish,” she went on. “At all other times I keep
the rooms in order myself. A little cupboard on the balcony holds brooms
and mops—all my housekeeping implements. The exercise is good for me,
and, as you see, there is not much to dust and arrange; my little
bedroom is even more bare. A housemaid, coming daily with her battery of
weapons, would be as disturbing as the cook with her ill-timed questions
about vegetables for dinner. So I keep my little retreat to myself, and
my work can go on unchecked.”
I listened sympathetically, but more than a little afraid. It would be
rather terrible if my employer went into retreat for a week or so before
I knew my way about the house. The little I had seen of Beryl McNab did
not make me feel inclined to turn to her for instructions. But Mrs.
McNab’s next words were comforting.
“Just at present I am doing only light work,” she said. “A few hours
each day: more, perhaps, during the night. With so many in the house I
can scarcely seclude myself altogether. But I do not want to be
continually troubled with household matters. I shall, of course,
interview the cook each morning, to arrange the daily menu. Otherwise,
Miss Earle, I shall be glad if you will endeavour to act as my buffer.”
I was not very certain that I had been trained as a buffer. How did one
“buff,” I wondered? I tried not to look as idiotic as I felt.
“If I can, I shall be very glad to help,” I mumbled. “You must tell me
what to do.”
She sighed.
“Ah, that is where your extreme youth will be a handicap, I fear,” she
said. “I should have preferred an energetic woman of about forty: and
yet, Judith and Jack have such an aversion to what they call ‘old
frumps,’ and have contrived to cause several to resign. And I liked your
letter: you write a legible hand, for one thing—a rare accomplishment
nowadays. I can only hope that things will go smoothly. Just try to see
that the house runs as it should, and that the children do nothing
especially desperate. You will need to be tactful with the servants;
they resent interference, and yet, if left to themselves, everything
goes wrong. Should emergencies arise, try to cope with them without
disturbing me. I want my elder son and daughter to enjoy their visitors;
fortunately, their main source of delight seems to be an extraordinary
liking for picnics, and the basis of a successful picnic would appear to
be plenty to eat. Try to get on good terms with Mrs. Winter, the cook;
her last employer told me that she possessed a heart of gold, and you
may be able to find it. Tact does wonders, Miss Earle.”
As she delivered this encouraging address her gaze had been wandering
about: now raised to the ceiling, now dwelling on the roll-top
writing-desk. Towards the latter she began to edge almost as if she
could not help it.
“And now, I begin to feel the desire for work,” she said. “It comes upon
me like a wave. Just run away, Miss Earle, and do your best. It is
possible that I may not be down for luncheon.” And the next moment I
found myself on the landing, and heard the click of the Yale latch
behind me.
I went downstairs torn between panic and a wild desire to laugh. It
seemed to me that my employer was a little mad—or it might merely be a
bad case of artistic temperament, a disease of which I had read, but had
never before encountered in the flesh. In any case my job was likely to
be no easy one. I was only eighteen; and my very soul quailed before the
task of unearthing the golden heart of the cook.
In my bedroom I found Julia, the housemaid, flicking energetically with
a duster. She was an Irish girl, with a broad, good-natured face. I
decided that I might do worse than try to enlist her as an ally. But I
was not quite sure how to begin.
I looked out of the window, seeking inspiration.
“It’s pretty country, Julia,” I said affably.
“For thim as likes it,” said Julia. She continued to flick.
It was not encouraging. I sought in my mind for another opening, and
failed to find one. So I returned to my first line of attack.
“Don’t you care for the country, Julia?”
“I do not,” said Julia, flicking.
“Did you come from a town?” I laboured.
“I did.”
My brain felt like dough. Still, I liked Julia’s face, sullen as it
undoubtedly was at the moment. Her eyes looked as though, given the
opportunity, they might twinkle.
“Mrs. McNab told me you came from Ireland,” I ventured. “I’ve always
heard it’s such a lovely country.”
“It is, then,” said Julia. “Better than these big yalla paddocks.”
“Don’t you have big paddocks there?”
“Is it paddocks? Sure, we don’t have them at all. Little green fields we
do be having—always green.”
“It must look different from Australia—in summer, at all events,” I
said. “I’d like to see it, Julia.”
She glanced at me, for the first time.
“Would you, now? There’s not many Australians says that: they do be
pokin’ fun at a person’s country, as often as not. Maybe ’tis yourself
is pokin’ fun too?”
“Indeed, I’m not,” I said hastily. “My grandmother was Irish, and though
she died when I was a little girl, I can remember ever so many things
that she used to tell us about Ireland. My father said she was always
homesick for it.”
“And you’d be that all your life, till you got back there,” said Julia.
She looked full at me now, and I could see the home-sickness in her
eyes.
“Well, I’m homesick myself, Julia, so I can imagine how you feel,” I
said. She wasn’t much older than I—and just then I felt very young. “My
home is only a little flat in a Melbourne suburb, but it seems millions
of miles away!”
“Yerra, then, I suppose it might,” said Julia, half under her breath.
“An’ you only a shlip of a gerrl, f’r all you’re that tall!”
“And I’m scared of my job, Julia,” I said desperately. “I think it’s a
bit too big for me.”
She looked at me keenly.
“Bella’s afther sayin’ you’re only here to spy on us and interfere with
us,” she said. “But I dunno, now, is she right, at all?”
“Indeed, I’m not,” I said hastily. “I’d simply hate to interfere. But
Mrs. McNab says I am to see that the house runs smoothly, because of
course she can’t be disturbed when she’s at work: and that is what she
is paying me to do. I say, Julia—I do hope you’ll help me!”
The twinkle of which I had suspected the existence came into the Irish
girl’s eyes.
“Indeed, then, I’ve been lookin’ on you as me natural enemy, miss!” she
said. “Quare ould stories of the other lady-companions Mrs. Winter and
Bella do be havin’. Thim was the ones ’ud be pokin’ their noses into
everything, an’ carryin’ on as if they were the misthress of all the
house.”
“I won’t do that!” I said, laughing. “I’m far too frightened.”
“A rough spin was what we’d been preparin’ for you,” Julia said. “The
lasht was a holy terror: she’d ate the face off Mrs. Winter if the
grocer’s order was a bit bigger than usual—an’ you can’t run a house
like this without you’d have plenty of stores. Mrs. Winter’s afther
sayin’ she’d not stand it again, not if she tramped the roads lookin’
for work.”
“But doesn’t Mrs. McNab do the housekeeping?” I inquired.
“Her!” said Julia with a sniff. “Wance she gets up in them quare little
rooms of hers, you’d think she was dead, if it wasn’t for the amount
she’d be atin’. There’s the great appetite for you, miss! Me heart’s
broke with all the food I have to be carryin’ up them stairs! She’s the
quare woman, entirely.” She dropped her voice mysteriously. “Comin’ an’
goin’ like a shadow she do be, at all hours of the day an’ night, an’
never speakin’. I dunno, now, if people must write books, why couldn’t
they be like other people with it all? An’ the house must go like
clockwork, an’ no one bother her about annything! Them that wants to
live in spacheless solitude has no right to get married an’ have
childer. ’Tis no wonder Miss Judy an’ Master Jack ’ud be like wild asses
of the desert!”
I had a guilty certainty that I should not be listening to these
pleasant confidences. But I was learning much that would be as well for
me to know, and I hadn’t the heart to check Julia just as she showed
signs of friendliness. So far, Dicky Atherton was the only friend I had
in the house, and it was probable that Julia would be far more useful to
me than he could ever be. So I murmured something encouraging, and Julia
unfolded herself yet further.
“’Tis a quare house altogether. None of them cares much for the others,
only Miss Judy for Master Jack, an’ he for her. Swimmin’ an’ divin’ they
do be, at all times, an’ sailin’ in the sea, an’ gettin’ upset, an’
comin’ in streelin’ through the house drippin’ wet. An’ there’s
misfortunate sorts of sounds in the night: if ’twas in Ireland I’d say
there was a ghost in it, but sure, there’s no house in this country with
pedigree enough to own a ghost!”
“No—we haven’t many ghosts in Australia, Julia,” I said, laughing. “I
expect you hear the trees creaking.”
Julia sniffed.
“’Tis an unnatural creak they have, then. I don’t get me sleep well, on
account of me hollow tooth, an’ I hear quare sounds. If it wasn’t for
the money I can send home to me ould mother I’d not stay in it—but the
wages is good, an’ they treat you well on the whole. It’s no right thing
when the misthress is no real misthress, but more like a shadow you’d be
meetin’ on the stairs. But I oughtn’t to be puttin’ you against it,
miss, when you’ve your livin’ to make, same as meself. It’s terrible
young you are, to be out in the worrld.”
“I’m feeling awfully young for this job, Julia,” I said. “And I’m scared
enough without thinking of queer sounds, so I hope they won’t come in my
way. But I do want you and Bella and Mrs. Winter to believe that I’m not
an interfering person, and that I shall do my work without getting in
your way any more than I can help.”
“Sure, I’m ready enough to believe that same, now that I’ve had a quiet
chat with you,” replied Julia. “You’ve your juty to do, miss, same as
meself, an’ I’ll help you as far as I can. Bella’s not the aisiest
person in the worrld to get on with: she’s a trifle haughty, ’specially
since she got her head shingled along of the barber in Wootong: but Mrs.
Winter’s all right, wance you get on the good side of her. And Bence,
that’s the chauffeur, is a decent quiet boy. Sure, there’s none of us
’ud do annything but help to make things aisy for you, if you do the
same by us.”
She had gathered up her brooms and dustpan, and prepared to go. At the
door she hesitated.
“And don’t you be down-trodden by Miss Beryl, miss,” she said. “That
one’s the proud girl: there’s more human nature in Miss Judy’s little
finger than in her whole body.”
“Oh, I don’t think we’ll quarrel, Julia,” I said. “I can only do my
best. At any rate, I’m very glad to think I can count on you.”
She beamed on me.
“That you can, miss. An’ if there’s much mendin’, an’ I’ve a spare hour
or two, just you hand some of it over to me: I’m not too bad with me
needle. Sure, I knew Bella had made a mistake about you the minute I
seen your room, left all tidy an’ the bed made. I’ll be off now, an’
I’ll tell me fine Bella that I know a lady when I see one. Anyone that’s
reared in the County Cork can tell when she meets wan of the ould
stock!”
Father’s picture seemed to smile at me as she tramped away. I think he
was glad he had given me an Irish grandmother.