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.