Following her abstracted gaze a
moment, I experienced a curious sharp desire to leave, to escape. Out
yonder was wind and space and freedom. This enormous building was
oppressive, silent, still. Great catacombs occurred to me, things beneath the ground, imprisonment
and capture. I believe I even shuddered a little. I touched her shoulder. She turned round slowly, and we looked with a
certain deliberation into each other's eyes. "Fanny," I asked, more gravely than I intended, "you are not frightened,
are you? Nothing has happened, has it?" She replied with emphasis, "Of course not! How could it--I mean, why
should I?" She stammered, as though the wrong sentence flustered her a
second. "It's simply--that I have this ter--this dislike of sleeping
alone." Naturally, my first thought was how easy it would be to cut our visit
short. But I did not say this. Had it been a true solution, Frances
would have said it for me long ago. "Wouldn't Mabel double-up with you?" I said instead, "or give you an
adjoining room, so that you could leave the door between you open? There's space enough, heaven knows." And then, as the gong sounded in the hall below for dinner, she said, as
with an effort, this thing:

"Mabel did ask me--on the third night--after I had told her. But I
declined." "You'd rather be alone than with her?" I asked, with a certain relief. Her reply was so gravely given, a child would have known there was more
behind it: "Not that; but that she did not really want it." I had a moment's intuition and acted on it impulsively. "She feels it
too, perhaps, but wishes to face it by herself--and get over it?" My sister bowed her head, and the gesture made me realize of a sudden
how grave and solemn our talk had grown, as though some portentous thing
were under discussion. It had come of itself--indefinite as a gradual
change of temperature. Yet neither of us knew its nature, for apparently
neither of us could state it plainly. Nothing happened, even in our
words. "That was my impression," she said, "--that if she yields to it she
encourages it. And a habit forms so easily. Just think," she added with
a faint smile that was the first sign of lightness she had yet betrayed,
"what a nuisance it would be--everywhere--if everybody was afraid of
being alone--like that." I snatched readily at the chance. We laughed a little, though it was a
quiet kind of laughter that seemed wrong. I took her arm and led her
towards the door. "Disastrous, in fact," I agreed. She raised her voice to its normal pitch again, as I had done. "No doubt
it will pass," she said, "now that you have come. Of course, it's
chiefly my imagination." Her tone was lighter, though nothing could
convince me that the matter itself was light--just then. "And in any
case," tightening her grip on my arm as we passed into the bright
enormous corridor and caught sight of Mrs. Franklyn waiting in the
cheerless hall below, "I'm very glad you're here, Bill, and Mabel, I
know, is too." "If it doesn't pass," I just had time to whisper with a feeble attempt
at jollity, "I'll come at night and snore outside your door. After that
you'll be so glad to get rid of me that you won't mind being alone." "That's a bargain," said Frances. I shook my hostess by the hand, made a banal remark about the long
interval since last we met, and walked behind them into the great dining
room, dimly lit by candles, wondering in my heart how long my sister and
I should stay, and why in the world we had ever left our cozy little
flat to enter this desolation of riches and false luxury at all. The
unsightly picture of the late Samuel Franklyn, Esq., stared down upon me
from the farther end of the room above the mighty mantelpiece. He looked, I thought, like some pompous Heavenly Butler who denied to
all the world, and to us in particular, the right of entry without
presentation cards signed by his hand as proof that we belonged to his
own exclusive set. The majority, to his deep grief, and in spite of all
his prayers on their behalf, must burn and "perish everlastingly." Chapter IV


With the instinct of the healthy bachelor I always try to make myself a
nest 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's
own things built into the walls as a bird builds in its feathers. It may
look desolate and uncomfortable enough to others, because the central
detail is neither bed nor wardrobe, sofa nor armchair, but a good solid
writing-table that does not wriggle, and that has wide elbowroom. And The Towers is vividly described for me by the single fact that I
could not "nest" there. I took several days to discover this, but the first impression of
impermanence was truer than I knew. The feathers of the mind refused
here to lie one way. They ruffled, pointed, and grew wild. Luxurious furniture does not mean comfort; I might as well have tried to
settle down in the sofa and armchair department of a big shop. My
bedroom was easily managed; it was the private workroom, prepared
especially for my reception, that made me feel alien and outcast. Externally, it was all one could desire: an antechamber to the great
library, with not one, but two generous oak tables, to say nothing of
smaller ones against the walls with capacious drawers. There were reading desks, mechanical devices for holding books, perfect
light, quiet as in a church, and no approach but across the huge
adjoining room. Yet it did not invite. "I hope you'll be able to work here," said my little hostess the next
morning, as she took me in--her only visit to it while I stayed in the
house--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 on
her arm. "Even I could write in a study like this!" I glanced with pleasure at the ample tables, the sheets of thick
blotting paper, the rulers, sealing wax, paper knives, and all the other
immaculate paraphernalia. "It's perfect," I answered with a secret
thrill, yet feeling a little foolish. This was for Gibbon or Carlyle,
rather than for my potboiling insignificancies. "If I can't write
masterpieces here, it's certainly not your fault," and I turned with
gratitude to Mrs. Franklyn. She was looking straight at me, and there
was a question in her small pale eyes I did not understand. Was she
noting 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." She
pointed to the electric bell on the central table, the wire running
neatly down the leg. "No one has ever worked here before, and the
library has been hardly used since it was put in. So there's no previous
atmosphere to affect your imagination--er--adversely." We laughed. "Bill isn't that sort," said my sister; while I wished they
would go out and leave me to arrange my little nest and set to work.