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.”