Changes in The Towers, Frances told me, had been made during Mabel's
year of widowhood abroad--an organ put into the big hall, the library
made livable and re-catalogued--when it was permissible to suppose she
had found her soul again and returned to her normal, healthy views of
life, which included enjoyment and play, literature, music and the arts,
without, however, a touch of that trivial thoughtlessness usually termed
worldliness. Mrs. Franklyn, as I remembered her, was a quiet little
woman, shallow, perhaps, and easily influenced, but sincere as a dog and
thorough in her faithful Friendship. Her tastes at heart were catholic,
and that heart was simple and unimaginative. That she took up with the
various movements of the day was sign merely that she was searching in
her limited way for a belief that should bring her peace. She was, in
fact, a very ordinary woman, her caliber a little less than that of
Frances. I knew they used to discuss all kinds of theories together, but
as these discussions never resulted in action, I had come to regard her
as harmless. Still, I was not sorry when she married, and I did not
welcome now a renewal of the former intimacy. The philanthropist she had
given no children, or she would have made a good and sensible mother. No
doubt she would marry again. "Mabel mentions that she's been alone at The Towers since the end of
August," Frances told me at teatime; "and I'm sure she feels out of it
and lonely. It would be a kindness to go. Besides, I always liked her." I agreed. I had recovered from my attack of selfishness. I expressed my
pleasure. "You've written to accept," I said, half statement and half question. Frances nodded. "I thanked for you," she added quietly, "explaining that
you were not free at the moment, but that later, if not inconvenient,
you might come down for a bit and join me." I stared. Frances sometimes had this independent way of deciding things. I was convicted, and punished into the bargain. Of course there followed argument and explanation, as between brother
and sister who were affectionate, but the recording of our talk could be
of little interest. It was arranged thus, Frances and I both satisfied. Two days later she departed for The Towers, leaving me alone in the flat
with everything planned for my comfort and good behavior--she was rather
a tyrant in her quiet way--and her last words as I saw her off from
Charing Cross rang in my head for a long time after she was gone:

"I'll write and let you know, Bill. Eat properly, mind, and let me know
if anything goes wrong." She waved her small gloved hand, nodded her head till the feather
brushed the window, and was gone. Chapter II


After the note announcing her safe arrival a week of silence passed, and
then a letter came; there were various suggestions for my welfare, and
the rest was the usual rambling information and description Frances
loved, generously italicized.

" ...and we are quite alone," she went on in her enormous handwriting
that seemed such a waste of space and labor, "though some others are
coming presently, I believe. You could work here to your heart's
content. Mabel quite understands, and says she would love to have you
when you feel free to come. She has changed a bit--back to her old
natural self: she never mentions him. The place has changed too in
certain ways: it has more cheerfulness, I think. She has put it in, this
cheerfulness, spaded it in, if you know what I mean; but it lies about
uneasily and is not natural--quite. The organ is a beauty. She must be
very rich now, but she's as gentle and sweet as ever. Do you know, Bill,
I think he must have frightened her into marrying him. I get the
impression she was afraid of him." This last sentence was inked out, I
but I read it through the scratching; the letters being too big to hide. "He had an inflexible will beneath all that oily kindness which passed
for spiritual. He was a real personality, I mean. I'm sure he'd have
sent you and me cheerfully to the stake in another century--for our own
good. Isn't it odd she never speaks of him, even to me?" This, again,
was stroked through, though without the intention to obliterate--merely
because it was repetition, probably. "The only reminder of him in the
house now is a big copy of the presentation portrait that stands on the
stairs of the Multitechnic Institute at Peckham--you know--that
life-size one with his fat hand sprinkled with rings resting on a thick
Bible and the other slipped between the buttons of a tight frock-coat. It hangs in the dining room and rather dominates our meals. I wish Mabel
would take it down. I think she'd like to, if she dared. There's not a
single photograph of him anywhere, even in her own room. Mrs. Marsh is
here--you remember her, his housekeeper, the wife of the man who got
penal servitude for killing a baby or something--you said she robbed him
and justified her stealing because the story of the unjust steward was
in the Bible! How we laughed over that! She's just the same too, gliding
about all over the house and turning up when least expected." Other reminiscences filled the next two sides of the letter, and ran,
without a trace of punctuation, into instructions about a Salamander
stove for heating my work-room in the flat; these were followed by
things I was to tell the cook, and by requests for several articles she
had forgotten and would like sent after her, two of them blouses, with
descriptions so lengthy and contradictory that I sighed as I read them--
"unless you come down soon, in which case perhaps you wouldn't mind
bringing them; not the mauve one I wear in the evening sometimes, but
the pale blue one with lace round the collar and the crinkly front. They're in the cupboard--or the drawer, I'm not sure which--of my
bedroom. Ask Annie if you're in doubt. Thanks most awfully. Send a
telegram, remember, and we'll meet you in the motor any time. I don't
quite know if I shall stay the whole month--alone. It all depends...."
And she closed the letter, the italicized words increasing recklessly
towards the end, with a repetition that Mabel would love to have me "for
myself," as also to have a "man in the house," and that I only had to
telegraph the day and the train.... This letter, coming by the second
post, interrupted me in a moment of absorbing work, and, having read it
through to make sure there was nothing requiring instant attention, I
threw it aside and went on with my notes and reading. Within five
minutes, however, it was back at me again. That restless thing called
"between the lines" fluttered about my mind. My interest in the Balkan
States--political article that had been "ordered"--faded. Somewhere,
somehow I felt disquieted, disturbed. At first I persisted in my work,
forcing myself to concentrate, but soon found that a layer of new
impressions floated between the article and my attention. It was like a
shadow, though a shadow that dissolved upon inspection.