“He put out a long arm and mysteriously produced some
jelly, with which he fed me.” (Page 240.)
The Tower Rooms] [Frontispiece

THE

TOWER ROOMS

BY

MARY GRANT BRUCE

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED

LONDON AND MELBOURNE

1926

Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London

CONTENTS

THE TOWER ROOMS

CHAPTER I
I ANSWER AN ADVERTISEMENT

NATURALLY it was not news to me when old Dr. Grayson told me I was tired. There are some things one knows without assistance: and for two months I had suspected that I was getting near the end of my tether. The twelve-year-olds I taught at school had become stupider and more stupid—or possibly I had; and Madame Carr—there was no real reason why she should be called “Madame,” but that she thought it sounded better than plain “Mrs.”—had grown stricter and more difficult to please. She had developed a habit of telling me, each afternoon, when school had been dismissed, what a low standard of deportment I exacted from my form. This also I knew; twelve-year-olds are not usually models of deportment, and I suppose I was not very awe-inspiring. But the daily information got on my nerves.

Then the examinations had been a nightmare. I used to wonder how the girls who grumbled at the questions would have liked the task of correcting the papers—taking bundles home at night and working at them after I had cooked the dinner and helped Colin to wash up. I made several mistakes, too; and of course Madame found them out. One is not at one’s best, mentally, after a long day in school, and the little flat in Prahran was horribly hot and stuffy. Colin had wanted to help me, but of course I could not let him; the poor old boy used to work at his medical books every evening, in a wild hope that something might yet turn up to enable him to take his degree. I did my best at the wretched papers, but after an hour or so my head would ache until it really did not matter to me if I met the information that Dublin was situated on the Ganges. There had been a hideous interview with Madame after the breaking-up, in which she hinted, in an elephantine fashion, that unless my services were shown to be of more value she would hardly be justified in paying me as well as letting Madge have her education free.

It was scarcely a surprise, but, all the same, it staggered me. Housekeeping, since Father died, had not been an easy matter. Colin was just the best brother that ever lived, and when we found how little money there was for us, he had promptly left the University—he was in his fifth year, too, my poor boy. And how he loved the work! Father’s practice brought something that we invested, and Colin got a position in an office. His salary was not much; he helped it out by working overtime whenever he could get the chance, and he had two pupils whom he coached for their second year. The big thing was that nothing must interfere with Madge’s work.

Madge, you see, was the really brilliant one of the family: if we could keep her at school for another two years, she had a very good chance of a scholarship that would take her on to the University; and she had passed so many music exams that it would have been a tragedy not to have kept that up, too. I was not at all brilliant, and it seemed wonderful luck when Madame Carr offered me a minor post, at a small salary, with Madge’s education thrown in. Of course, we knew that Madge was likely to be a very good advertisement for the school; still, it might not have happened, and that tiny salary of mine made all the difference in our finances. We managed, somehow—Colin and I; Madge could not be allowed to do any of the housework, for she was only fifteen, and she was working furiously. She fought us very hard about it, especially when we insisted that she should stay in bed to breakfast on Sunday mornings, but we were firm: so at last she gave in, more or less gracefully. And then I would find her sitting up in bed, darning my stockings. As I told her, it gave me quite a lot of extra work on Saturday night, hiding away everything she might possibly find to mend.

There never was anyone like Colin. He used to get up at some unearthly hour and do all the dirty work until it was time for him to rush to the office: and at night he helped just as cheerfully again. He was always cheerful; to see him washing-up you would have thought it was the thing he loved best on earth. I hated to see him scrubbing and polishing, with the long, slender hands that were just made for a doctor’s. Nobody could imagine how good he was to me; and we managed as I said, somehow. But as I looked at Madame Carr’s hard face I did not know how we could possibly manage without my little salary.

She relented a little towards the end of that unpleasant interview, and said she would think it over, and give me another chance; and she advised me to have a good rest, eat nourishing food, and take a few weeks in the hills. I suppose I must have looked pretty white, and she didn’t want me to be ill there; at any rate, she said good-bye in a hurry, wished me a Merry Christmas, and hustled me off. I have no very clear memory of how I got down the hill to my train. But when I reached home I was idiotic enough to faint right off, which frightened poor Madge horribly, and sent her tearing to the nearest telephone for old Dr. Grayson, who had known us all our lives.

Dr. Grayson came, and was very kind, though his remarks were curiously like Madame’s. He sounded me thoroughly, asked me innumerable questions, and finally told me there was nothing organically wrong—I was just tired, and needed rest and change. “Country air,” he said cheerfully. “You won’t get well in a back street in Prahran. Get away for a month—it’s lucky that it is holiday time!” And he went off, airily oblivious of the fact that he might just as well have ordered me a trip to Mars.

It did not worry me much, although the bare idea of the country made me homesick. One expects doctors to say things, but it is not necessary to acquaint one’s brother with all they say. Unfortunately, however, the old man met Colin on the doorstep, and must needs say it all over again to him; and Colin came in with the old worry-look in his eyes that I hated more than anything. I could hear him and Madge consulting in stage-whispers, in the kitchenette—they might have known that no variety of whisper can fail to be heard in a flat the size of ours, the four rooms of which would easily have fitted into our old dining-room at home. One could almost hear them adjusting the cheerful looks with which they presently came in.

They wouldn’t let me do anything but lie on the sofa. Madge cooked the chops in a determined fashion that made the whole flat smell of burned fat; and Colin did everything else. After dinner was over—it was a gruesome meal, at which Colin was laboriously funny all the time—I was graciously allowed to sit in the kitchenette while they washed up, and we held a council of war.

All the talking in the world could not alter the main fact. There were no funds to pay for country holidays. Our friends—they were not so many as in the old days—were all in Melbourne: our only relations were distant ones, distant in every sense of the word, for they lived in Queensland, and might as well have been in Timbuctoo, Madge sourly remarked, for all the practical use they were. Discuss it as we might, there was no earthly chance of following my prescription.

Poor old Colin looked more like thirty-three than twenty-three as he scrubbed the gridiron with sand-soap.

“You needn’t worry yourselves a bit,” I told them. “All I need is to be away from that horrid old school and Madame Carr, and I’ve got two whole beautiful months. Doctors don’t know everything. I’ll go and sit in Fawkner Park every day and look at the cows, and imagine I’m in Gippsland!”

Colin groaned.

“I don’t see why we haven’t a country uncle or something,” said Madge vaguely: “a red-faced old darling with a loving heart, and a red-roofed farm, and a beautiful herd of cows—Wyandottes, don’t you call them? If we were girls in books we’d have one, and we’d go and stay with him and get hideously fat, and Doris would marry the nearest squatter!” She heaved a sigh.

“Hang the squatter!” Colin remarked; “but I’d give something to see either of you fat. I’m afraid you’re a vain dreamer, Madge. Put down that dish-cloth and let me finish: I’m not going to have you showing up at a music-lesson with hands like a charlady’s.”

Madge gave up the dish-cloth with reluctance. She was silent for quite three minutes—an unusual thing for Madge.

“Look here,” she said at length, with a funny little air of determination. “There’s one thing a whole lot more important than music, and that’s Doris’s health. I wonder we didn’t think of it before!”

“Well, I’d hate to contradict you,” Colin answered, slightly puzzled. “But I don’t see that this highly-original discovery of yours makes it any the more necessary for you to scour saucepans while I’m about.”

“Oh, bother the saucepans!” said Madge impatiently. “I didn’t mean that—though it’s more my work than yours to wash them, anyhow. Washing-up isn’t a man’s job.”

“There isn’t any man-and-woman business about this establishment,” said Colin firmly, “except that I’m boss. Just get that clearly in your young mind. And what did you mean, if you meant anything?”

“Why, it’s as clear as daylight,” Madge announced. “Doris’s health is more important than music: you admitted that yourself. Well, then, let’s sell the piano!”

We looked at each other in blank amazement. Sell the piano! Madge’s adored piano, Father’s last gift to her. Beneath her fingers it was a very wonder-chest of magic and delight: all the fairies of laughter, all the melody of rippling water, all the dearest dreams come true were there when Madge played. Already old Ferrari, her Italian music-master, talked to us of triumphs ahead—triumphs in a wider field than Australia. And she sat on the kitchen table, swinging her legs, and talked of selling her Bechstein! No wonder we gasped.

“Talk sense!” growled Colin, when his breath came back.

“It is sense,” Madge retorted. “It’s worth ever so much money: a cheaper piano would do me just as well to practise on. Even if I gave up music altogether it would be worth it to give Doris a rest. She can’t go on as she is—you can see that for yourself, Colin Earle!”

“I certainly can’t go on hearing you rave!” I said. “Why, when you’re a second Paderewski you have got to be the prop of our declining years. It would be just about the finish for Colin and me if your music were interfered with, and——” at which point I suddenly found something hard in my throat. I suppose it was because I was a bit tired, for we aren’t a weepy family, but I just howled.

It alarmed Colin and Madge very badly. They patted me on the back and assured me I shouldn’t be bothered in any way, and begged me to drink some water: and when I managed to get hold of my voice again I seized the opportunity to make Madge promise that she wouldn’t mention the word “selling” in connection with the Bechstein again, unless we were really at our last gasp. This accomplished, we dispatched her to practice, and Colin returned to the washing-up.

Madge went, rather reluctantly, and Colin rubbed away at the saucepans, with the furrow deepening between his brows. I was in the midst of explaining clearly to him that I did not need a change, quite conscious the while of my utter failure to convince him, when there was a clatter in the passage, and Madge burst in, waving a newspaper, and incoherent with excitement.

“What on earth is the matter with the kid?” Colin asked, a little wearily. “Do go easy, Madge, and say what you want to, when you have finished brandishing that paper in your lily hand. Meanwhile, get off my sand-soap.” He rescued it, and turned a critical eye on the bottom of a saucepan. We were more or less used to Madge’s outbreaks, but to-night they seemed to be taking an acute form.

“It’s the very thing!” she cried, the words tumbling over each other. “Just what we want, and it’s in this morning’s paper, so I don’t suppose anyone has got it yet, and now she’ll really get fat, and you needn’t be scornful, Colin, so there!”

“I’m not,” said Colin. “But I’d love to know what it’s all about.”

“Why, this advertisement,” said Madge excitedly. “Listen, you two:

Lady requiring rest and change offered pleasant country home, few weeks, return light services. Teacher preferred. References exchanged.”

There followed an address in the south-west of Victoria.

“Oh, get out!” Colin said. “Doris doesn’t want to leave off work to carry bricks!”

“But it says ‘light services,’ don’t you see?” protested Madge. “There might not be much to do at all—not more than enough to keep her from ‘broodin’ on bein’ a dorg’! And she’d get rest and change. It says so. And ‘references exchanged’—it’s so beautifully circumspect.” Our youngest put on a quaint little air of being at least seventy-five. “Personally, I think it was made for Doris!”

“You always had a sanguine mind,” was Colin’s comment on this attitude. “What does the patient think about it?”

“I’m not a patient,” I contradicted. “But—I don’t know—it sounds as if it might be all right, Colin. The ‘pleasant country home’ sounds attractive. I wouldn’t mind any ordinary housework, if they were nice people.”

“But they might be beasts,” said my brother pithily. “I don’t feel like letting you risk it.” He paused, frowning. “Wish I knew which might be the greater risk. There’s no doubt that you ought to get away from here.”

“Well, write for particulars—and references,” suggested Madge. “No harm in that, at all events.”

Colin pondered heavily.

“I believe the kid has made an illuminating remark,” he said at length. “You don’t commit yourself by writing: perhaps it would be as well to give it a trial. Though I wouldn’t dream of it for a moment if I saw the remotest chance of sending you out of Melbourne in any other way, old white-face!” He put his arm round my shoulders as we went into the dining-room—which was very unusual for Colin, and affected me greatly. I began to wonder was I consumptive or something, but cheered up on remembering that the doctor had said I was “organically sound.”

I wrote my letter, enclosing a testimonial from Dr. Grayson, as to my general worth; he was very kind, and drew so touching a picture of my character and capabilities that I was quite certain in my own mind I could never live up to it. I told him so, after he made me read it, but he would not alter it, and threatened me with all kinds of pains and penalties if I failed to prove every word he had said about me. After that, it seemed scarcely prudent to ask Madame Carr for a letter—the difference between my two “references” might have been too marked. Much to Madge’s disgust, I insisted on telling my prospective employer that I was only eighteen. This excited the gloomiest forebodings in my sister.

“You’ll queer your pitch altogether,” she said. “Eighteen’s awfully young; ten to one she wants an old frump of thirty!”

“Well, if she does, she had better not have me,” said I. “I don’t want her to expect some one old and staid, and then have heart-failure when she sees my extreme youth.”

“Perhaps not,” Madge agreed reluctantly. “Everything depends on first impressions, and I suppose heart-failure wouldn’t be the best possible beginning. Anyhow, you might say that you’re five feet eight and not shingled. That would give her a vision of some one impressive and dignified.”

“Then she might get a different kind of shock,” I said. “But I don’t think we need worry; you may be certain that she’ll have dozens and dozens of applications, and it isn’t a bit likely that she will want me. I’m going to forget all about it, as soon as the letter has gone—and you can look out for other advertisements. It’s foolish to expect to catch your fish the moment you throw in the first bait.”

“I’m not at all certain that I want to catch her,” said Colin gloomily. “It’s not much fun to catch your fish and find you’ve hooked a shark!”

CHAPTER II
I BEGIN MY ADVENTURE

THE letter went, and we waited for a reply: Madge feverishly, I apathetically, and Colin with a good deal of unhappy anticipation: he hated the whole business. I know the poor boy made frantic efforts during those days to earn some extra money, and he did manage to secure some overtime from a fellow-clerk who did not want it. But of course it was very little.

“If I could only rake up enough to send you for a fortnight to Frankston!” he said one evening. “That would be absolute rest for you; far better than slogging at alleged ‘light duties’ in some strange house. I can’t stick the idea of your going away to work, Dor.”

“But I’m quite able to work—truly, old boy,” I told him. “It was only the long hours in school that knocked me up, and the rush every morning.”

“And that will be just the same after the holidays,” he growled. It was quite amazing to hear Colin growl: he had always been so cheery over our misfortunes, and had never once shown that he minded his own bitter disappointment. “If only I could earn enough to keep you at home! I believe it would be more sensible if I worked as a dock labourer: I’d make more money then, and my own expenses would be hardly anything.”

“Yes, and then a strike would come along, and you would go out with your Union, and we should be worse off than ever,” I said practically. “I wish you wouldn’t talk such absolute nonsense. I only needed a rest, which I’m getting now. Don’t I look ever so much fitter already?”

“You do look a bit less like a scarecrow,” he admitted. “But I know that you’re not getting the nourishing things the doctor ordered, and you ought to be right away from Melbourne. January in Prahran isn’t going to be any sort of a picnic for you.”

“When I have finished that bottle of Burgundy you brought home yesterday you won’t know me,” I said. “Just you wait, and don’t worry. Something may turn up at any time; and meanwhile, I’m going to spend every day in the Gardens or on the beach. Isn’t it lucky that it costs so little to get to them?” But all my well-meant efforts failed to cheer him much. He got into a way of looking at me, with his forehead all wrinkled with worry, that made me positively ache for a favourable answer from the advertisement lady. Without telling him or Madge, I went into Melbourne and spent a weary afternoon going round the registry-offices in search of a holiday job in the country. But no one seemed to have the least desire for my services except as a “general.” There, indeed, I could have had my pick of hungry employers, only I didn’t dare to meet them—with the prospect of facing Colin afterwards.

Christmas came and went, and we gave up all idea of getting any answer to my letter. It was a very small Christmas we had—just sandwiches and a thermos of coffee in a quiet corner of the Botanical Gardens, watching the dabchicks in the lake, and building all sorts of castles for the future. We made a solemn compact that no one should worry during the day, and Colin kept to it nobly and played the fool all the time. So it was really a very jolly Christmas, and we all felt better for it.

On Boxing Day Colin wanted to spring-clean the flat; but at that point Madge and I felt we must put our collective feet down, and we did. So we packed the basket again, and went to one of the nearer beaches—one where it is still possible to find quiet corners in the scrub: and we bathed and picknicked, and enjoyed watching Colin smoke the cigarettes we had given him for Christmas—after Father died he had given up smoking, declaring that it made his head ache. It was beautiful to see how peaceful he looked. Altogether, the Earle family agreed that it was probable that a good many people had not enjoyed the holidays as much as we did.

And the next day came the answer to my letter—just as we had given up all hope.

It arrived by the evening post, which was late. Colin had come home, and we knew what it was by the way Madge came clattering along the corridor and burst into the flat. She waved a thick white envelope round her head.

“It’s her!” she shouted. “I know it is!”

“I wish Madame could hear you,” I said. “Is it for me?”

“Of course it is. Doesn’t it look opulent and splendid! Hurry up and open it, Doris, or I’ll explode!”

My fingers were a little shaky as I tore open the envelope and read the letter aloud:

“Dear Miss Earle,—

“I have received several letters in answer to my advertisement, but, after consideration, yours seems the most suitable. I require a lady in my home for a few weeks, to take off my hands some of the duties of caring for a house-party, and to assist in looking after my younger children during the absence of their governess, who is away on holiday. As the employment is light, I offer a salary of £1 per week, and would pay your travelling expenses to and from Melbourne.

“I have hesitated in accepting your application because you are very young.”

“I told you so!” breathed Madge disgustedly.

“However, your testimonial is excellent; and the teaching experience to which it alludes should enable you to control the children. I trust that you are firm and tactful.”

“Firm and tactful!—I like that!” uttered Colin. “Will she let you control the little beasts with a stick?”

“Be quiet—there’s more yet. ‘My house is large, and I keep three maids. A dinner-dress is advisable, should you have one. If you decide to come to me, I should like you to leave Melbourne on the second of January.’ ” And she was mine faithfully, Marie McNab.

“Born—or christened, rather—plain Mary, I’ll bet,” was Colin’s comment. “What’s the enclosure?”

The enclosure was the “references exchanged”: a vague sort of assurance from the clergyman in Wootong that Mrs. McNab of “The Towers” was all that she ought to be. Colin remarked that it seemed to deal more with her religious beliefs than her ideas on feeding-up tired assistants, which latter was the point on which he was more curious; but he supposed it was all right. And then he and Madge sat and looked at me, waiting for me to speak.

“I think I’ll go,” I said, when the silence was becoming oppressive. “There can be no harm in trying—and, thank goodness, it doesn’t cost anything.”

“The old cat might have offered you a bit more screw,” said Madge, with that extreme elegance of diction which marks the college girl. “Apparently she’s wading in wealth—three maids, and lives in Towers, and has a crest as big as your head on her notepaper. Flamboyant display, I call it. How about striking for more pay after you get there?”

“Not done,” said Colin. “Doris doesn’t belong to a Union. I say, Dor, have you got enough clothes for living in Towers?”

“Oh, they’ll do, I think,” I answered; “there’s some advantage of being in half-mourning. I shall have to fix up a few little things, but not much. Shoes are the worst; I do need a new pair. My brown ones are put away; old Hoxon can stain them black for me.”

Madge sighed.

“I hate blacked-up brown,” she said. “And they were such pretty shoes, Dor.”

“I can get new ones when you are a learned professor,” I told her, laughing. “And you’ll be that in a year or two, if you leave off slang. Gloves are an item—thank goodness we take the same size, and I can borrow from you!”

Madge echoed my gratitude. She hated gloves.

“And you may have my big hat,” she said—“it’s just the sort of hat you may need in the country. And my dressing-jacket; I’ll bet that will impress the three maids!”

“My dear, I’m not going to rob you in that wholesale fashion,” I said. “Also, I don’t contemplate parading before the staff in my dressing-jacket—in the servants’ hall, I suppose. Possibly there is a chauffeur, too!”

“Well, he’d love it,” Madge grinned. “All chauffeurs have an eye for clothes; and it’s such a pretty blue. I wish you could wear it in to dinner. What will you wear for dinner, by the way, my child?”

“I’ll have to get out my old lace frock. It’s quite good, and I can make it look all right with a little touching-up. Then there’s my black crêpe de Chine: so suitable and dowagerish. Mrs. McNab will approve of it, I’m sure. I know I could control the children well in black crêpe de Chine!”

In which I spoke without knowing the Towers children. The words were to come back to me later.

“What a mercy we’ve got decent luggage!” said Madge. “I’d hate you to face battlemented Towers and proud chauffeurs with shabby suitcases.”

I echoed her thankfulness. Father had brought us up to think that there was nothing like leather; our trunks, even as the Bechstein piano, were among the few relics of a past in which money had never seemed to be a consideration. It was comforting to think that one need not face the unknown McNabs with a dress-basket.

Then Colin spoke.

“You’ve made up your mind to go, then, Doris?”

I looked at him. I knew how he hated it all.

“Don’t you think it is best, old boy?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” he said half savagely. He got up, looking for his hat. Presently the door of the flat banged behind him.

I was glad when the next few days were over. They went with a rush, for I was terribly busy: even if you are in half-mourning, and you think your clothes are pretty well in order, you are sure to find heaps to do when it comes to going away. Madge helped me like an angel; worked early and late, took all the housekeeping off my shoulders, and found time to do ever so many bits of mending. Between us, we just managed enough clothes; as Madge said, it was very fortunate that her only wish was to live the simple life during the holidays; but I felt horribly mean to take her things. Still, I did not see what else to do. One must be clad.

We puzzled a good deal over what I should and should not take. Music had not been mentioned by Mrs. McNab, but it seemed as well to put in a little; and I found corners for a few of my best-beloved books, in case the Towers should be barren in that respect. I looked longingly at my golf-clubs, not used for eighteen months, with all their lovely heads tied up in oily flannel. But I decided they were not in keeping with my situation. I had an instinctive belief that my light duties would not include golf. My tennis racket went in—but well at the bottom of my trunk, where I thought it highly probable it would remain throughout my stay at The Towers.

I packed on New Year’s night, with Colin and Madge both sitting on my bed, offering flippant advice. Colin had spoken very little since Mrs. McNab’s letter had come, and I knew he was making a violent effort to “buck up.” Not that he had not always been a dear; but he could not bear the idea of my going to strangers in such a way. He had come home on New Year’s Eve with the loveliest pair of shoes for me. I don’t know how he had managed to buy them—and they were such good ones, too, the very sort my soul loved. I nearly cried when he gave them to me; and he patted me on the back, very hard. He made me go to bed as soon as the packing was over, and Madge brewed cocoa and made toast, with a spendthrift lavishness of butter. We all had a midnight supper on my bed. I often thought of that light-hearted supper in the days that followed. It was very cheerful, and we drank the health of everybody, including Mrs. McNab and the cat.

It was all a rush next morning. The carrier came very early for my trunk, and I rushed round making final preparations and packing my little suit-case. There seemed ever so much to say at the last moment. Madge was quite cross with me because I stopped when I was putting on my hat to tell her how to thicken soup. Just as I was ready to make a dash for the train, to my joy Colin appeared—he had got an hour off from the office, and had raced home to carry my things for me and save me any trouble. They put me into the train at Spencer Street, and Colin recklessly flung magazines and sweets into my lap. I have always said that few could adorn riches better than Colin—his ideas are so comfortable.

Then they hugged me vigorously, and the guard shouted “Stand clear!” and the train started.

Colin ran alongside the window as long as he could.

“Mind—you’re to come back at once if it isn’t all right,” he said authoritatively. “You understand, Doris?” I nodded—I couldn’t speak. Then the porter yelled angrily at Colin, and he dropped back. I leaned out until the train went round the curve, while he and Madge stood waving on the platform.

I cried a little at first—I couldn’t help it. I had never been away by myself before; it was so suddenly lonely, and they had been such dears to me. It was not pleasant, either, to picture little Madge going back to the flat by herself, to tidy up; then to spend all the afternoon, until Colin came home, over dull old lesson-books. And I knew Colin would miss me: we were such chums. I was missing him horribly already.

After awhile I cheered up. The thing had to be, and I might as well make the best of it, and remember that my whole duty in life, according to Madge, was to get fat. The country was pretty, too: it had been a wet season, and all the paddocks were green and fresh, and the cattle and sheep looked beautiful. Fate had made Father a doctor, but he had always said that his heart lay in farming, and I had inherited his tastes. To Colin and Madge a bullock was merely something that produced steak, but to me it was a thing of beauty. It was so long since I had been for any kind of a journey that the mere travelling was a pleasure. Mrs. McNab had sent money for a first-class fare, which we all thought very decent of her: she had explained in a stiff little note that she did not approve of young girls travelling alone second-class. Colin had snorted, remarking that he had never had the slightest intention of letting me do so: but it was decent, all the same. I sent her a brainwave of thanks as I leaned back in comfort, glad to rest after the racket of the last few days. I did not even want to read my magazines, though a new magazine was unfamiliar enough to us, nowadays, to be a treat. It was delightful to watch the country, to do nothing, to enjoy the luxury of having the compartment to myself.

That lasted for nearly half the journey. Then, just as the engine whistled and the train began to move slowly out of a little station, a porter flung open the door hurriedly, and some one dashed in, stumbling over my feet, and distributing golf-clubs, fishing-rods, and other loose impedimenta about the carriage. The porter hurled through the window other articles—a stick, a kit-bag, an overcoat; and the new-comer, leaning out, tossed him something that rattled loudly on the platform. Then he sat down and panted.

CHAPTER III
I MAKE A FRIEND

‟I  BEG your pardon for tumbling over you in such a way,” he said. “Awfully rude of me—but I hadn’t time to think. The car went wrong, and I never thought we’d catch the train—had to sprint the last two hundred yards. I do hope I didn’t hurt you?”

He was a tall young man with the nicest ugly face I had ever seen. His hair was red, and he was liberally freckled: he had a nondescript nose, a mouth of large proportions, and quite good blue eyes. He seemed to hang together loosely. There was something so friendly about his face that I found myself answering his smile almost as if he were Colin.

“No, you didn’t hurt me,” I told him. “I would have moved out of the way if I hadn’t been dreaming—but I had no time.”

“I should think you hadn’t!” he said, laughing. “It was the most spectacular entry I ever made. But I’d have hated to miss the train.”

I murmured something vaguely polite, and relapsed into silence, bearing in mind the fact that well-brought-up young persons do not talk in railway carriages to strange men, even if the said men have fallen violently over their feet. My fellow-traveller became silent, too, though I felt him glance at me occasionally. The placid content which had seemed to fill the carriage was gone, and I began to feel tired. I read a magazine, wishing the journey would end.

Presently we stopped in a large station, and the red-haired man disappeared. He was back in a few moments, looking a little sheepish, as one who is afraid of his reception.

“I’ve brought you a cup of tea,” he said—“please don’t mind. You look awfully tired, and you’ve a long way to go yet. I read the address on your suit-case.” He cast a glance towards the rack, and held out the cup meekly.

My training in etiquette had not covered this emergency, and I hesitated. But he was so boyish and friendly—just as Colin would have been—and so evidently afraid of being snubbed, that I couldn’t hurt him; and also I wanted the tea very badly. It was quite good tea, too, and the scone that accompanied it was a really superior one.

I felt much better when I had finished, and my fellow-traveller came back for my cup, which he presented to a porter, for the train was about to start.

“Girls are so various,” said he, sitting down opposite me, with his friendly smile. “Some would hate you to offer them tea, and some would hate you not to, and some would be just nice about it. I felt certain you belonged to the third lot! It’s such a beastly long way to Wootong, too: I’m going there myself, so I suppose that might be considered a sort of introduction. And you looked just about knocked-up. Know Wootong well?”

“I’ve never been there,” I said. “I’m going to a place called The Towers.”

“What!—the McNabs?” exclaimed my companion. “But how ripping!—I’m going there myself. I’m Dick Atherton; Harry McNab and I share rooms at Trinity. I don’t think I’ve met you there before, have I? No, of course, what an ass I am: you said it was your first visit.”

“I’m hardly a visitor,” I said. It wasn’t easy, but I thought it best to have things on a straight footing. “I’m . . .” It came to me suddenly that I hardly knew what I was. “I’m—a sort of governess, I suppose. I’m going up, just for the holidays, to help Mrs. McNab.”

“What a shame!” said Mr. Atherton promptly—apparently, before taking thought. He pulled himself up, reddening. “At least—you know what I mean. Those kids ought to have some one about six feet, and weighing quite twelve stone, to keep them in order. They’re outlaws. Anyway, I’m sure to see an awful lot of you, if you’ll let me. Won’t you tell me what to call you?”

I told him, and we chatted on cheerfully. He was the most transparent person possible, and though I am not considered astute—by Colin and Madge, who should know—it was quite easy to find out from him a good deal about my new post. I inferred that my appearance might be a shock to Mrs. McNab, whose previous assistants had been more of the type graphically depicted by Mr. Atherton—he referred to them simply as “the cats.” Also, the children seemed to be something of a handful. There were two, a boy and a girl, besides the brother at Trinity—and a grown-up sister. It was only when I angled for information on the subject of Mrs. McNab that my companion evaded the hook.

“She writes, you know,” he said, vaguely. I said I hadn’t known, and looked for further particulars.

“ ’Fraid I haven’t read any of her books,” said the boy. “I suppose I should, as I go to stay there: but I’m not much of a chap for reading, unless it’s American yarns—you know, cowboy stuff. I can tackle those: but Mrs. McNab’s would be a bit beyond me. I tried an article of hers once, in a magazine my sister had, but even a wet towel round my head couldn’t make it anything but Greek to me. And the Prof. could tell you how much good I am at Greek!”

“She writes real books, then?” I asked, greatly thrilled. I had never met anyone who actually wrote books, and in my innocence it seemed to me that authors must be wholly wonderful.

“Oh, rather! She’s ‘Julia Smale,’ you see. Ever heard of her?”

I had—in a vague way: had even encountered a book by “Julia Smale,” lent me by a fellow-teacher at Madame Carr’s, who had passed it on to me with the remark that if I could make head or tail of it, it was more than she had been able to do. I had found it a novel of the severe type, full of reflections that were far too deep for me. With a sigh for having wasted an opportunity that might be useful, I remembered that I had not finished it. How I wished that I had done so! It would have been such an excellent introduction to my employer, I thought, if I could have lightly led the conversation to this masterpiece in the first half-hour at The Towers. Now, I could only hope that she would never mention it.

Mr. Atherton nodded sympathetically as I confided this to him.

“I’m blessed if I know anyone who does read them,” he said. “They may be the sort of thing the Americans like: she publishes in America, you know. Curious people, the Yanks: you wouldn’t think that the nation that can produce a real good yarn like ‘The Six-Gun Tenderfoot’ would open its heart to ‘Julia Smale.’ I’m quite sure Harry and Beryl—that’s her daughter—don’t read her works. Certainly, I’ll say for her she doesn’t seem to expect anyone to. She locks herself up alone to write, and nobody dares to disturb her, but she doesn’t talk much about the work. Not like a Johnny I knew who wrote a book; he used to wander down Collins Street with it in his hand, and asked every soul he knew if they’d read it. Very trying, because it was awful bosh, and nobody had. Mrs. McNab isn’t like that, thank goodness!”

“And Mr. McNab?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s a nice old chap. Not so old, either, when I come to think of it: I believe they were married very young. A bit hard, they say, but a good sort. He’s away: sailed for England last month, on a year’s trip.”

I did not like to ask any more questions, so the conversation switched on to something else, and the time went by quite quickly. The train was a slow one, crawling along in a leisurely fashion and stopping for lengthy periods at all the little stations; it would have been a dull journey alone, and I was glad of my cheery red-haired companion. By the time we reached Wootong we were quite old friends; and any feeling that I might have had about the informality of our introduction to each other was completely dissolved by the discovery that he had a wholesome reverence for Colin’s reputation in athletics, which was apparently a sort of College tradition. When Mr. Atherton found that I was “the” Earle’s sister he gazed at me with a reverence which I fear had never been excited by Mrs. McNab, even in her most literary moments. It was almost embarrassing, but not unpleasing: and we talked of Colin and his school and college record until we felt that we had known each other for years. I didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry when, after a long run, the train slackened speed, and Mr. Atherton began hurriedly to collect our luggage, remarking, “By George, we’re nearly in!” And a moment later I was standing, a little forlornly, on the Wootong platform.

Two girls were waiting, both plump and pretty, and very smart—perhaps a shade too smart for the occasion, but very well turned-out. They greeted my companion joyfully, and there was a little babel of chatter, while I stood apart, hardly knowing what to do. Then I heard one of the girls break off suddenly.

“We’ve got to collect one of Mother’s cats,” she said, not lowering her voice at all. “Seen anything of her, Dicky? She was to come on this train.”

Mr. Atherton turned as red as his hair. I had already done so.

“S-sh!” he said. “Steady, Beryl—she’ll hear you.” Apparently he thought I should not hear him, but there wasn’t any escaping his voice. He came over to me, and conducted me across the platform. “This is Miss Earle, whom you are to collect,” he told her. “Miss Beryl McNab, Miss Earle—and Miss Guest.”

Neither girl proffered a hand, and I was wildly thankful for the impulse that had kept mine by my side. Instead, there was blank amazement on their faces.

“Then you’ve known each other before?” Beryl McNab said.

“No—I introduced myself on the way down,” explained Mr. Atherton hurriedly. “Tumbled into Miss Earle’s compartment, and fell violently over her; and then I found she was coming here. It was great luck for me.”

“Quite so,” said the elder girl; and there was something in her tone that made me shrivel. “I needn’t ask if you had a pleasant journey, Miss Earle. If you’re ready, we can start: the cart will bring your luggage.” We all went out to a big blue motor, manned by a chauffeur who came up to all Madge’s forecasts; and whisked away along a winding road fringed with poplar-trees and hawthorn hedges.

Mr. Atherton made gallant attempts to include me in the conversation, but there was a weight on my spirits, and I gave him back monosyllables: I hope they were polite ones. The girls did not worry about me at all. They chatted in a disjointed fashion, but I was quite ignored. This, I realized, was the proper status of “a cat” at The Towers; probably a shade more marked in my case, because I was a young cat, and had sinned. Deeply did I regret that a friend of the family should have hurtled into my carriage: bitterly I repented that welcome cup of tea. It seemed ages, though it was really less than ten minutes, before we turned into a big paddock, where, half a mile ahead, a grey house showed among the box-trees fringing a hill.

We skimmed up a long drive, skirted a wide lawn where several people were having tea under a big oak, and stopped before the hall-door. A short, thick-set youth in a Trinity blazer, who was tormenting a fox-terrier on the veranda, uttered a shout of welcome and precipitated himself upon Mr. Atherton, who thumped him affectionately on the back. Then there came racing through the hall a boy and girl of twelve and fourteen, ridiculously alike; and beneath their joyful onslaught the guest was temporarily submerged. Nobody took the slightest notice of me until a tall angular woman in a tailor-made frock came striding along the veranda, and, after greeting her son’s friend, glanced inquiringly in my direction.

“Oh—this is Miss Earle, Mother,” Beryl McNab said. “She and Dicky came down together.”

There was evident surprise in my employer’s face as she looked me over. She gave me a limp hand.

“Then you and Mr. Atherton have met before?” she asked.

Dicky Atherton rushed into his explanation, which sounded, I must admit, fairly unconvincing. I was conscious of a distinct drop in the temperature: certainly Mrs. McNab’s voice had frozen perceptibly when she spoke again.

“How curious!” she said: I had not imagined that two words could make one feel so small and young. “You have met my daughter, of course: this is my eldest son, and Judith and Jack are your especial charges.”

The college youth favoured me with a long stare, and the boy and girl with a short one. Then Judith smiled with exceeding sweetness and put out her hand.

“I wish you luck!” she said solemnly.

There was a general ripple of laughter.

“Miss Earle will need all the luck she can get if she’s to manage you two imps,” said Harry McNab, shaking hands. “You might as well realize, Miss Earle, that it can’t be done: at least no one has succeeded yet in making them decent members of society.”

Mrs. McNab interposed.

“Don’t talk nonsense, Harry,” she said, severely. “If you will come with me, Miss Earle, I will show you your room.” She led the way into the house, and I followed meekly, my heart in my shoes.

A huge square hall, furnished as a sitting-room, opened at one end into a conservatory. From one corner ascended a splendidly-carved staircase, with wide, shallow steps, which formed, above, a gallery that ran round two sides of the hall. Up this I trailed at my employer’s heels, and, passing down a softly-carpeted passage, found myself in a room at the end; small, but pleasant enough, with a large window overlooking the back premises and part of the garden. Beyond the back yard came a stretch of lightly-timbered paddock, which ended abruptly in what, I found later on, was a steep descent to the beach. The shore itself was hidden from the house by the edge of the cliff: but further out showed the deep-blue line of the sea, broken by curving headlands that formed the bay near which The Towers stood. It was all beautiful; in any other circumstances I should have been wildly happy to be in such a place. But as it was, I longed for the little back street in Prahran!

Mrs. McNab was speaking in her cool, hard voice.

“This is your room, Miss Earle. Judith’s is next door, and Jack’s just across the passage. Judith will show you the schoolroom, which will be your sitting-room, later on. You will generally have your evening meal there with the children. To-morrow I will take you over the house and explain your duties to you. You are probably tired after your journey; I will send you up some tea, and then you had better rest until the evening.”

The words were kind enough, but the voice would have chilled anyone. I stammered out something in the way of thanks, and Mrs. McNab went out, her firm tread sounding briskly along the passage. Presently a neat maid brought in a tray and put it down with a long stare at me—a stare compounded equally of superciliousness and curiosity; and I was left alone in my new home.

“ ‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea,’ he said—
‘please don’t mind. You look awfully tired.’ ”
The Tower Rooms] [Page 30

CHAPTER IV
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.

CHAPTER V
I WALK ABROAD AT NIGHT

HAPPILY for me, the spirit of work did not claim Mrs. McNab very violently during my first week at The Towers. There were occasional periods during which she remained in seclusion, and from the window of my room, which commanded a view of her eyrie, I sometimes saw her light burning far into the night; certainly she used to look pale and heavy-eyed in the morning. But for the greater part of each day she mingled with her family, and showed less vagueness in letting me know what were my duties. I was kept pretty busy, but there was nothing especially difficult. Already the seabathing and the country air were telling upon me: I lost my headaches, and began to sleep better, and it was glorious to feel energy coming back to me. I had visions of returning to Colin and Madge fattened out of all recognition.

Julia had evidently paved the way for me with Mrs. Winter, the cook. I found her a somewhat dour person, but by no means terrifying; she unbent considerably when she found that I did not leave the kitchen in a mess when I cut sandwiches. The last holder of my office, she told me, had always made her domain into “a dirty uproar.” We exchanged notes on cookery; she taught me much about making soup, and was graciously pleased to approve of a recipe for salad that was new to her.

Bella was a harder nut to crack. She was a thoroughly up-to-date young person with an excellent opinion of herself and a firm belief that I was her natural enemy. Also, she was “work-shy,” and did just as little as was possible, with a fixed determination to do nothing whatever that did not fall within the prescribed duties of a parlourmaid. We clashed occasionally: that was inevitable, though I tried hard to let the clashing be all on her side. I recalled Mrs. McNab’s advice as to tact, and struggled to cultivate that excellent commodity. But I don’t believe that anyone of eighteen has much tact in dealing with a bad-tempered parlourmaid of five-and-twenty. I did my best, but there were moments when I ached to throw aside tact and use more direct measures.

The house-party increased rapidly, friends of Beryl and Harry McNab arriving almost every day, until there was not a room to spare. They were a cheery, good-hearted crowd, making their own amusements, for the most part: they bathed, fished, yachted, played tennis and picnicked, and there was dancing every night, interspersed by much singing. Madge was the musical genius of our family, but I could play accompaniments rather decently, and for that reason I was constantly in request. I refused, at first, to dance, for it was quite evident that Beryl McNab preferred me to remain in the background; but there were more men than girls, and occasionally they made it impossible for me to refuse. I protested to Harry McNab, who was one of the chief offenders, but my remarks had not the slightest weight with him.

“Oh, rubbish!” he said. “Why on earth shouldn’t you dance? No one expects you to work all day and all night, too—and you dance better than nearly any girl here! Don’t tell me you don’t like it!”

“Of course I like it,” I said, with some irritation. “But I’m not here to dance, Mr. McNab, and you know that very well. Ask your sister, if you have any doubt on the matter.”

“Oh—Beryl!” he said with a shrug. “Who cares what she thinks? She’s not your boss, Miss Earle.”

“She’s the daughter of the house,” I answered firmly. “And I think you would find that your mother thinks as she does.”

“We’ll ask her,” he said. He dragged me up the long room to where his mother was sitting. Mrs. McNab never stayed downstairs for long in the evening; soon after the music was at its height she would slip away quietly to the Tower rooms and be seen no more until the morning. She greeted him with a smile that lit her rather grim face curiously. Affection was not a leading characteristic among the McNabs, but Harry was certainly first in his mother’s favour.

“Miss Earle says she won’t dance, Mother! Tell her it’s ridiculous—three of us are standing out because we haven’t got partners.”

“Possibly Miss Earle does not care for dancing?”

“Yes, she does, though. Only she’s got a stupid idea that you don’t want her to.”

“I have no objection,” said his mother. “Still I do not think it would be wise for you to tire yourself, Miss Earle.”

“Oh, we won’t let her do that. But I’m hanged if you’re going to act Cinderella all the time, Miss Earle,” said Harry. “Come along—we’ve wasted too much of this already.” He swept me out into the crowd, and I gave in more or less meekly: it wasn’t difficult when every nerve in me was already beating time to the music. And Harry danced so very much better than he sang!

All the same, I never remained downstairs long after Mrs. McNab had disappeared. I had next day to consider, and my days began pretty early: besides which, I couldn’t help feeling an ugly duckling amongst the other girls. My two dinner dresses were by no means up to date; I was fully aware of their deficiencies beside the dainty, exquisite frocks of which Beryl McNab and her friends seemed to have an unlimited supply. I used to breathe a sigh of relief when I escaped from the drawing-room, racing up the stairs until I gained the shelter of my own little room.

Judy and Jack were supposed to be in bed by nine o’clock. It was one of the few rules that they did not scorn, since their days were strenuous enough to make them feel sleepy early, and they had few evening occupations. They loathed dancing, and neither was ever known to read a book if it could possibly be avoided. The crowded state of the house had made it necessary for them to give up their rooms to guests: they slept on the balcony, and Judy used my room to dress, while Jack made his toilet in a bathroom. Judy was a restless sleeper, and I had formed the habit of going out to tuck her in before I went to bed.

I slipped away from the drawing-room one hot night when the dancing was fast and furious. A little breeze from the sea was beginning to blow in at my window, and I leaned out, enjoying its freshness and wondering if Colin and Madge were grilling very unpleasantly in the stuffy Prahran flat. Above my head a faint glimmer from the Tower rooms showed that Mrs. McNab was at work—one never imagined her as doing anything but writing steadily, once she had vanished to her sanctum. Sometimes she wrote on her little balcony, which was fitted with electric light: the scent of the cigarettes she continually smoked would drift down to my window on still nights.