The Tower of Nort stood in a deep angle of the downs; formerly an old
road led over the hill, but it is now a green track covered with turf;
the later highway choosing rather to cross a low saddle of the ridge,
for the sake of the beasts of burden. The tower, originally built to
guard the great road, was a plain, strong, thick-walled fortress. To
the tower had been added a plain and seemly house, where the young Sir
Mark de Nort lived very easily and plentifully. To the south stretched
the great wood of Nort, but the Tower stood high on an elbow of the
down, sheltered from the north by the great green hills. The villagers
had an odd ugly name for the Tower, which they called the Tower of
Fear; but the name was falling into disuse, and was only spoken, and
that heedlessly, by ancient men, because Sir Mark was vexed to hear it
so called. Sir Mark was not yet thirty, and had begun to say that he
must marry a wife; but he seemed in no great haste to do so, and loved
his easy, lonely life, with plenty of hunting and hawking on the down.
With him lived his cousin and heir, Roland Ellice, a heedless
good-tempered man, a few years older than Sir Mark; he had come on a
visit to Sir Mark, when he first took possession of the Tower; and
there had seemed no reason why he should go away; the two suited each
other; Sir Mark was sparing of speech, fond of books and of rhymes.
Roland was different, loving ease and wine and talk, and finding in
Mark a good listener. Mark loved his cousin, and thought it
praiseworthy of him to stay and help to cheer so sequestered a house,
since there were few neighbours within reach.
And yet Mark was not wholly content with his easy life; there were
many days when he asked himself why he should go thus quietly on, day
by day, like a stalled ox; still, there appeared no reason why he
should do otherwise; there were but few folk on his land, and they
were content; yet he sometimes envied them their bondage and their
round of daily duties. The only place where he could else have been
was with the army, or even with the Court; but Sir Mark was no
soldier, and even less of a courtier; he hated tedious gaiety, and it
was a time of peace. So because he loved solitude and quiet he lived
at home, and sometimes thought himself but half a man; yet was he
happy after a sort, but for a kind of little hunger of the heart.
What gave the Tower so dark a name was the memory of old Sir James de
Nort, Mark's grand-father, an evil and secret man, who had dwelt at
Nort under some strange shadow; he had driven his son from his doors,
and lived at the end of his life with his books and his own close
thoughts, spying upon the stars and tracing strange figures in books;
since his death the old room in the turret top, where he came by his
end in a dreadful way, had been closed; it was entered by a
turret-door, with a flight of steps from the chamber below. It had
four windows, one to each of the winds; but the window which looked
upon the down was fastened up, and secured with a great shutter of
oak.
One day of heavy rain, Roland, being wearied of doing nothing, and
vexed because Mark sat so still in a great chair, reading in a book,
said to his cousin at last that he must go and visit the old room, in
which he had never set foot. Mark closed his book, and smiling
indulgently at Roland's restlessness, rose, stretching himself, and
got the key; and together they went up the turret stairs. The key
groaned loudly in the lock, and, when the door was thrown back, there
appeared a high faded room, with a timbered roof, and with a close,
dull smell. Round the walls were presses, with the doors fast; a large
oak table, with a chair beside it, stood in the middle. The walls were
otherwise bare and rough; the spiders had spun busily over the windows
and in the angles. Roland was full of questions, and Mark told him all
he had heard of old Sir James and his silent ways, but said that he
knew nothing of the disgrace that had seemed to envelop him, or of the
reasons why he had so evil a name. Roland said that he thought it a
shame that so fair a room should lie so nastily, and pulled one of the
casements open, when a sharp gust broke into the room, with so angry a
burst of rain, that he closed it again in haste; little by little, as
they talked, a shadow began to fall upon their spirits, till Roland
declared that there was still a blight upon the place; and Mark told
him of the death of old Sir James, who had been found after a day of
silence, when he had not set foot outside his chamber, lying on the
floor of the room, strangely bedabbled with wet and mud, as though he
had come off a difficult journey, speechless, and with a look of
anguish on his face; and that he had died soon after they had found
him, muttering words that no one understood. Then the two young men
drew near to the closed window; the shutters were tightly barred, and
across the panels was scrawled in red, in an uncertain hand, the words
CLAUDIT ET NEMO APERIT, which Mark explained was the Latin for the
text, _He shutteth and none openeth_. And then Mark said that the
story went that it was ill for the man that opened the window, and
that shut it should remain for him. But Roland girded at him for his
want of curiosity, and had laid a hand upon the bar as though to open
it, but Mark forbade him urgently. "Nay," said he, "let it remain
so--we must not meddle with the will of the dead!" and as he said the
word, there came so furious a gust upon the windows that it seemed as
though some stormy thing would beat them open; so they left the room
together, and presently descending, found the sun struggling through
the rain.
But both Mark and Roland were sad and silent all that day; for though
they spake not of it, there was a desire in their minds to open the
closed window, and to see what would befall; in Roland's mind it was
like the desire of a child to peep into what is forbidden; but in
Mark's mind a sort of shame to be so bound by an old and weak tale of
superstition.
Now it seemed to Mark, for many days, that the visit to the
turret-room had brought a kind of shadow down between them. Roland was
peevish and ill-at-ease; and ever the longing grew upon Mark, so
strongly that it seemed to him that something drew him to the room,
some beckoning of a hand or calling of a voice.
Now one bright and sunshiny morning it happened that Mark was left
alone within the house. Roland had ridden out early, not saying where
he was bound. And Mark sat, more listlessly than was his wont, and
played with the ears of his great dog, that sat with his head upon his
master's knee, looking at him with liquid eyes, and doubtless
wondering why Mark went not abroad.
Suddenly Sir Mark's eye fell upon the key of the upper room, which
lay on the window-ledge where he had thrown it; and the desire to go
up and pluck the heart from the little mystery came upon him with a
strength that he could not resist; he rose twice and took up the key,
and fingering it doubtfully, laid it down again; then suddenly he took
it up, and went swiftly into the turret-stair, and up, turning,
turning, till his head was dizzy with the bright peeps of the world
through the loophole windows. Now all was green, where a window gave
on the down; and now it was all clear air and sun, the warm breeze
coming pleasantly into the cold stairway; presently Mark heard the
pattering of feet on the stair below, and knew that the old hound had
determined to follow him; and he waited a moment at the door, half
pleased, in his strange mood, to have the company of a living thing.
So when the dog was at his side, he stayed no longer, but opened the
door and stepped within the room.
The room, for all its faded look, had a strange air about it, and
though he could not say why, Mark felt that he was surely expected. He
did not hesitate, but walked to the shutter and considered it for a
moment; he heard a sound behind him. It was the old hound who sat with
his head aloft, sniffing the air uneasily; Mark called him and held
out his hand, but the hound would not move; he wagged his tail as
though to acknowledge that he was called, and then he returned to his
uneasy quest. Mark watched him for a moment, and saw that the old dog
had made up his mind that all was not well in the room, for he lay
down, gathering his legs under him, on the threshold, and watched his
master with frightened eyes, quivering visibly. Mark, no lighter of
heart, and in a kind of fearful haste, pulled the great staple off the
shutter and set it on the ground, and then wrenched the shutters back;
the space revealed was largely filled by old and dusty webs of
spiders, which Mark lightly tore down, using the staple of the
shutters to do this; it was with a strange shock of surprise that he
saw that the window was dark, or nearly so; it seemed as though there
were some further obstacle outside; yet Mark knew that from below the
leaded panes of the window were visible. He drew back for a moment,
but, unable to restrain his curiosity, wrenched the rusted casement
open. But still all was dark without; and there came in a gust of icy
wind from outside; it was as though something had passed him swiftly,
and he heard the old hound utter a strangled howl; then turning, he
saw him spring to his feet with his hair bristling and his teeth bare,
and next moment the dog turned and leapt out of the room.
Mark, left alone, tried to curb a tide of horror that swept through
his veins; he looked round at the room, flooded with the southerly
sunlight, and then he turned again to the dark window, and putting a
strong constraint upon himself, leaned out, and saw a thing which
bewildered him so strangely that he thought for a moment his senses
had deserted him. He looked out on a lonely dim hillside, covered with
rocks and stones; the hill came up close to the window, so that he
could have jumped down upon it, the wall below seeming to be built
into the rocks. It was all dark and silent, like a clouded night, with
a faint light coming from whence he could not see. The hill sloped
away very steeply from the tower, and he seemed to see a plain beyond,
where at the same time he knew that the down ought to lie. In the
plain there was a light, like the firelit window of a house; a little
below him some shape like a crouching man seemed to run and slip among
the stones, as though suddenly surprised, and seeking to escape. Side
by side with a deadly fear which began to invade his heart, came an
uncontrollable desire to leap down among the rocks; and then it seemed
to him that the figure below stood upright, and began to beckon him.
There came over him a sense that he was in deadly peril; and, like a
man on the edge of a precipice, who has just enough will left to try
to escape, he drew himself by main force away from the window, closed
it, put the shutters back, replaced the staple, and, his limbs all
trembling, crept out of the room, feeling along the walls like a
palsied man. He locked the door, and then, his terror overpowering
him, he fled down the turret-stairs. Hardly thinking what he did, he
came out on the court, and going to the great well that stood in the
centre of the yard, he went to it and flung the key down, hearing it
clink on the sides as it fell. Even then he dared not re-enter the
house, but glanced up and down, gazing about him, while the cloud of
fear and horror by insensible degrees dispersed, leaving him weak and
melancholy.
Presently Roland returned, full of talk, but broke off to ask if Mark
were ill. Mark, with a kind of surliness, an unusual mood for him,
denied it somewhat sharply. Roland raised his eyebrows, and said no
more, but prattled on. Presently after a silence he said to Mark,
"What did you do all the morning?" and it seemed to Mark as though
this were accompanied with a spying look. An unreasonable anger seized
him. "What does it matter to you what I did?" he said. "May not I do
what I like in my own house?"
"Doubtless," said Roland, and sate silent with uplifted brows; then he
hummed a tune, and presently went out.
They sate at dinner that evening with long silences, contrary to
their wont, though Mark bestirred himself to ask questions. When they
were left alone, Mark stretched out his hand to Roland, saying,
"Roland, forgive me! I spoke to you this morning in a way of which I
am ashamed; we have lived so long together--and yet we came nearer to
quarrelling to-day than we have ever done before; and it was my
fault."
Roland smiled, and held Mark's hand for a moment. "Oh, I had not given
it another thought," he said; "the wonder is that you can bear with an
idle fellow as you do." Then they talked for awhile with the pleasant
glow of friendliness that two good comrades feel when they have been
reconciled. But late in the evening Roland said, "Was there any story,
Mark, about your grandfather's leaving any treasure of money behind
him?"
The question grated somewhat unpleasantly upon Mark's mood; but he
controlled himself and said, "No, none that I know of--except that he
found the estate rich and left it poor--and what he did with his
revenues no one knows--you had better ask the old men of the village;
they know more about the house than I do. But, Roland, forgive me once
more if I say that I do not desire Sir James's name to be mentioned
between us. I wish we had not entered his room; I do not know how to
express it, but it seems to me as though he had sate there, waiting
quietly to be summoned, and as though we had troubled him, and--as
though he had joined us. I think he was an evil man, close and evil.
And there hangs in my mind a verse of Scripture, where Samuel said to
the witch, 'Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?' Oh," he went
on, "I do not know why I talk wildly thus"; for he saw that Roland was
looking at him with astonishment, with parted lips; "but a shadow has
fallen upon me, and there seems evil abroad."
From that day forward a heaviness lay on the spirit of Mark that could
not be scattered. He felt, he said to himself, as though he had
meddled light-heartedly with something far deeper and more dangerous
than he had supposed--like a child that has aroused some evil beast
that slept. He had dark dreams too. The figure that he had seen among
the rocks seemed to peep and beckon him, with a mocking smile, over
perilous places, where he followed unwilling. But the heavier he grew
the lighter-hearted Roland became; he seemed to walk in some bright
vision of his own, intent upon a large and gracious design.
One day he came into the hall in the morning, looking so radiant that
Mark asked him half enviously what he had to make him so glad. "Glad,"
said Roland, "oh, I know it! Merry dreams, perhaps. What do you think
of a good grave fellow who beckons me on with a brisk smile, and shows
me places, wonderful places, under banks and in woodland pits, where
riches lie piled together? I am sure that some good fortune is
preparing for me, Mark--but you shall share it." Then Mark, seeing in
his words a certain likeness, with a difference, to his own dark
visions, pressed his lips together and sate looking stonily before
him.
At last, one still evening of spring, when the air was intolerably
languid and heavy for mankind, but full of sweet promises for trees
and hidden peeping things, though a lurid redness of secret thunder
had lain all day among the heavy clouds in the plain, the two dined
together. Mark had walked alone that day, and had lain upon the turf
of the down, fighting against a weariness that seemed to be poisoning
the very springs of life within him. But Roland had been brisk and
alert, coming and going upon some secret and busy errand, with a
fragment of a song upon his lips, like a man preparing to set off for
a far country, who is glad to be gone. In the evening, after they had
dined, Roland had let his fancy rove in talk. "If we were rich," he
said, "how we would transform this old place!"
"It is fair enough for me," said Mark heavily; and Roland had chidden
him lightly for his sombre ways, and sketched new plans of life.
Mark, wearied and yet excited, with an intolerable heaviness of
spirit, went early to bed, leaving Roland in the hall. After a short
and broken sleep, he awoke, and lighting a candle, read idly and
gloomily to pass the heavy hours. The house seemed full of strange
noises that night. Once or twice came a scraping and a faint hammering
in the wall; light footsteps seemed to pass in the turret--but the
tower was always full of noises, and Mark heeded them not; at last he
fell asleep again, to be suddenly awakened by a strange and desolate
crying, that came he knew not whence, but seemed to wail upon the air.
The old dog, who slept in Mark's room, heard it too; he was sitting up
in a fearful expectancy. Mark rose in haste, and taking the candle,
went into the passage that led to Roland's room. It was empty, but a
light burned there and showed that the room had not been slept in.
Full of a horrible fear, Mark returned, and went in hot haste up the
turret steps, fear and anxiety struggling together in his mind. When
he reached the top, he found the little door broken forcibly open, and
a light within. He cast a haggard look round the room, and then the
crying came again, this time very faint and desolate.
Mark cast a shuddering glance at the window; it was wide open and
showed a horrible liquid blackness; round the bar in the centre that
divided the casements, there was something knotted. He hastened to the
window, and saw that it was a rope, which hung heavily. Leaning out he
saw that something dangled from the rope below him--and then came the
crying again out of the darkness, like the crying of a lost spirit.
He could see as in a bitter dream the outline of the hateful hillside;
but there seemed to his disordered fancy to be a tumult of some kind
below; pale lights moved about, and he saw a group of forms which
scattered like a shoal of fish when he leaned out. He knew that he was
looking upon a scene that no mortal eye ought to behold, and it seemed
to him at the moment as though he was staring straight into hell.
The rope went down among the rocks and disappeared; but Mark clenched
it firmly and using all his strength, which was great, drew it up hand
over hand; as he drew it up he secured it in loops round the great oak
table; he began to be afraid that his strength would not hold out, and
once when he returned to the window after securing a loop, a great
hooded thing like a bird flew noiselessly at the window and beat its
wings.
Presently he saw that the form which dangled on the rope was clear of
the rocks below; it had come up through them, as though they were but
smoke; and then his task seemed to him more sore than ever. Inch by
painful inch he drew it up, working fiercely and silently; his muscles
were tense, and drops stood on his brow, and the veins hammered in his
ears; his breath came and went in sharp sobs. At last the form was
near enough for him to seize it; he grasped it by the middle and drew
Roland, for it was Roland, over the window-sill. His head dangled and
drooped from side to side; his face was dark with strangled blood and
his limbs hung helpless. Mark drew his knife and cut the rope that was
tied under his arms; the helpless limbs sank huddling on the floor;
then Mark looked up; at the window a few feet from him was a face,
more horrible than he had supposed a human face, if it was human
indeed, could be. It was deadly white, and hatred, baffled rage, and a
sort of devilish malignity glared from the white set eyes, and the
drawn mouth. There was a rush from behind him; the old hound, who had
crept up unawares into the room, with a fierce outcry of rage sprang
on to the window-sill; Mark heard the scraping of his claws upon the
stone. Then the hound leapt through the window, and in a moment there
was the sound of a heavy fall outside. At the same instant the
darkness seemed to lift and draw up like a cloud; a bank of blackness
rose past the window, and left the dark outline of the down, with a
sky sown with tranquil stars.
The cloud of fear and horror that hung over Mark lifted too; he felt
in some dim way that his adversary was vanquished; he carried Roland
down the stairs and laid him on his bed; he roused the household, who
looked fearfully at him, and then his own strength failed; he sank
upon the floor of his room, and the dark tide of unconsciousness
closed over him.
Mark's return to health was slow. One who has looked into the Unknown
finds it hard to believe again in the outward shows of life. His first
conscious speech was to ask for his hound; they told him that the body
of the dog had been found, horribly mangled as though by the teeth of
some fierce animal, at the foot of the tower. The dog was buried in
the garden, with a slab above him, on which are the words:--