Chapter IV
With the instinct of the healthy bachelor I always try to make myself anest in the place I live in, be it for long or short. Whether visiting,in lodging-house, or in hotel, the first essential is this nest--one'sown things built into the walls as a bird builds in its feathers. It maylook desolate and uncomfortable enough to others, because the centraldetail is neither bed nor wardrobe, sofa nor armchair, but a good solidwriting-table that does not wriggle, and that has wide elbowroom.
And The Towers is vividly described for me by the single fact that Icould not "nest" there.
I took several days to discover this, but the first impression ofimpermanence was truer than I knew. The feathers of the mind refusedhere to lie one way. They ruffled, pointed, and grew wild.
Luxurious furniture does not mean comfort; I might as well have tried tosettle down in the sofa and armchair department of a big shop. Mybedroom was easily managed; it was the private workroom, preparedespecially for my reception, that made me feel alien and outcast.
Externally, it was all one could desire: an antechamber to the greatlibrary, with not one, but two generous oak tables, to say nothing ofsmaller ones against the walls with capacious drawers.
There were reading desks, mechanical devices for holding books, perfectlight, quiet as in a church, and no approach but across the hugeadjoining room. Yet it did not invite.
"I hope you'll be able to work here," said my little hostess the nextmorning, as she took me in--her only visit to it while I stayed in thehouse--and showed me the ten-volume Catalogue.
"It's absolutely quiet and no one will disturb you."
"If you can't, Bill, you're not much good," laughed Frances, who was onher arm. "Even I could write in a study like this!"
I glanced with pleasure at the ample tables, the sheets of thickblotting paper, the rulers, sealing wax, paper knives, and all the otherimmaculate paraphernalia. "It's perfect," I answered with a secretthrill, yet feeling a little foolish. This was for Gibbon or Carlyle,rather than for my potboiling insignificancies. "If I can't writemasterpieces here, it's certainly not your fault," and I turned withgratitude to Mrs. Franklyn. She was looking straight at me, and therewas a question in her small pale eyes I did not understand. Was shenoting the effect upon me, I wondered?
"You'll write here--perhaps a story about the house," she said,"Thompson will bring you anything you want; you only have to ring." Shepointed to the electric bell on the central table, the wire runningneatly down the leg. "No one has ever worked here before, and thelibrary has been hardly used since it was put in. So there's no previousatmosphere to affect your imagination--er--adversely."
We laughed. "Bill isn't that sort," said my sister; while I wished theywould go out and leave me to arrange my little nest and set to work.
I thought, of course, it was the huge listening library that made mefeel so inconsiderable--the fifteen thousand silent, staring books, thesolemn aisles, the deep, eloquent shelves. But when the women had goneand I was alone, the beginning of the truth crept over me, and I feltthat first hint of disconsolateness which later became an imperative No.The mind shut down, images ceased to rise and flow. I read, made copiousnotes, but I wrote no single line at The Towers.
Nothing completed itself there. Nothing happened.
The morning sunshine poured into the library through ten long narrowwindows; birds were singing; the autumn air, rich with a faint aroma ofNovember melancholy that stung the imagination pleasantly, filled myantechamber. I looked out upon the undulating wooded landscape, hemmedin by the sweep of distant Downs, and I tasted a whiff of the sea. Rookscawed as they floated above the elms, and there were lazy cows in thenearer meadows. A dozen times I tried to make my nest and settle down towork, and a dozen times, like a turning fastidious dog upon a hearthrug, I rearranged my chair and books and papers. The temptation of theCatalogue and shelves, of course, was accountable for much, yet not, Ifelt, for all. That was a manageable seduction. My work, moreover, wasnot of the creative kind that requires absolute absorption; it was themere readable presentation of data I had accumulated. My notebooks werecharged with facts ready to tabulate--facts, too, that interested mekeenly. A mere effort of the will was necessary, and concentration of nodifficult kind. Yet, somehow, it seemed beyond me: something foreverpushed the facts into disorder ... and in the end I sat in the sunshine,dipping into a dozen books selected from the shelves outside, vexed withmyself and only half-enjoying it. I felt restless. I wanted to beelsewhere.
And even while I read, attention wandered. Frances, Mabel, her latehusband, the house and grounds, each in turn and sometimes all together,rose uninvited into the stream of thought, hindering any consecutiveflow of work. In disconnected fashion came these pictures thatinterrupted concentration, yet presenting themselves as broken fragmentsof a bigger thing my mind already groped for unconsciously. Theyfluttered round this hidden thing of which they were aspects, fugitiveinterpretations, no one of them bringing complete revelation. There wasno adjective, such as pleasant or unpleasant, that I could attach towhat I felt, beyond that the result was unsettling. Vague as theatmosphere of a dream, it yet persisted, and I could not dissipate it.
Isolated words or phrases in the lines I read sent questions scouringacross my mind, sure sign that the deeper part of me was restless andill at ease.
Rather trivial questions too--half-foolish interrogations, as of apuzzled or curious child: Why was my sister afraid to sleep alone, andwhy did her friend feel a similar repugnance, yet seek to conquer it?Why was the solid luxury of the house without comfort, its shelterwithout the sense of permanence? Why had Mrs. Franklyn asked us to come,artists, unbelieving vagabonds, types at the farthest possible removefrom the saved sheep of her husband's household? Had a reaction set inagainst the hysteria of her conversion? I had seen no signs of religiousfervor in her; her atmosphere was that of an ordinary, high-mindedwoman, yet a woman of the world. Lifeless, though, a little, perhaps,now that I came to think about it: she had made no definite impressionupon me of any kind. And my thoughts ran vaguely after this fragileclue.
Closing my book, I let them run. For, with this chance reflection camethe discovery that I could not see her clearly--could not feel her soul,her personality. Her face, her small pale eyes, her dress and body andwalk, all these stood before me like a photograph; but her Self evadedme. She seemed not there, lifeless, empty, a shadow--nothing. Thepicture was disagreeable, and I put it by. Instantly she melted out, asthough light thought had conjured up a phantom that had no realexistence. And at that very moment, singularly enough, my eye caughtsight of her moving past the window, going silently along the gravelpath. I watched her, a sudden new sensation gripping me. "There goes aprisoner," my thought instantly ran, "one who wishes to escape, butcannot."
What brought the outlandish notion, heaven only knows. The house was ofher own choice, she was twice an heiress, and the world lay open at herfeet. Yet she stayed--unhappy, frightened, caught. All this flashed overme, and made a sharp impression even before I had time to dismiss it asabsurd. But a moment later explanation offered itself, though it seemedas far-fetched as the original impression. My mind, being logical, wasobliged to provide something, apparently. For Mrs. Franklyn, whiledressed to go out, with thick walking-boots, a pointed stick, and amotor-cap tied on with a veil as for the windy lanes, was obviouslycontent to go no farther than the little garden paths. The costume was asham and a pretence. It was this, and her lithe, quick movements thatsuggested a caged creature--a creature tamed by fear and cruelty thatcloaked themselves in kindness--pacing up and down, unable to realizewhy it got no farther, but always met the same bars in exactly the sameplace. The mind in her was barred.
I watched her go along the paths and down the steps from one terrace toanother, until the laurels hid her altogether; and into this mereimagining of a moment came a hint of something slightly disagreeable,for which my mind, search as it would, found no explanation at all. Iremembered then certain other little things. They
dropped into thepicture of their own accord. In a mind not deliberately hunting forclues, pieces of a puzzle sometimes come together in this way, bringingrevelation, so that for a second there flashed across me, vanishinginstantly again before I could consider it, a large, distressingthought. I can only describe vaguely as a Shadow.
Dark and ugly, oppressive certainly it might be described, withsomething torn and dreadful about the edges that suggested pain andstrife and terror. The interior of a prison with two rows of occupiedcondemned cells, seen years ago in New York, sprang to memory after it--the connection between the two impossible to surmise even. But the"certain other little things" mentioned above were these: that Mrs.Franklyn, in last night's dinner talk, had always referred to "thishouse," but never called it "home"; and had emphasized unnecessarily,for a well-bred woman, our "great kindness" in coming down to stay solong with her. Another time, in answer to my futile compliment about the"stately rooms," she said quietly, "It is an enormous house for so smalla party; but I stay here very little, and only till I get it straightagain." The three of us were going up the great staircase to bed as thiswas said, and, not knowing quite her meaning, I dropped the subject. Itedged delicate ground, I felt. Frances added no word of her own. It nowoccurred to me abruptly that "stay" was the word made use of, when"live" would have been more natural. How insignificant to recall! Yetwhy did they suggest themselves just at this moment ...?
And, on going to Frances's room to make sure she was not nervous orlonely, I realized abruptly, that Mrs. Franklyn, of course, had talkedwith her in a confidential sense that I, as a mere visiting brother,could not share. Frances had told me nothing. I might easily have wormedit out of her, had I not felt that for us to discuss further our hostessand her house merely because we were under the roof together, was notquite nice or loyal.
"I'll call you, Bill, if I'm scared," she had laughed as we parted, myroom being just across the big corridor from her own. I had fallenasleep, thinking what in the world was meant by "getting it straightagain."
And now in my antechamber to the library, on the second morning, sittingamong piles of foolscap and sheets of spotless blotting-paper, alluseless to me, these slight hints came back and helped to frame the big,vague Shadow I have mentioned. Up to the neck in this Shadow, almostdrowned, yet just treading water, stood the figure of my hostess in herwalking costume. Frances and I seemed swimming to her aid. The Shadowwas large enough to include both house and grounds, but farther thanthat I could not see.... Dismissing it, I fell to reading my purloinedbook again. Before I turned another page, however, another startlingdetail leaped out at me: the figure of Mrs. Franklyn in the Shadow wasnot living. It floated helplessly, like a doll or puppet that has nolife in it. It was both pathetic and dreadful.
Any one who sits in reverie thus, of course, may see similar ridiculouspictures when the will no longer guides construction. The incongruitiesof dreams are thus explained. I merely record the picture as it came.That it remained by me for several days, just as vivid dreams do, isneither here nor there. I did not allow myself to dwell upon it. Thecurious thing, perhaps, is that from this moment I date my inclination,though not yet my desire, to leave. I purposely say "to leave."
I cannot quite remember when the word changed to that aggressive,frantic thing which is escape.