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.
Marks 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:
EUGE SERVE BONE
ET FIDELIS
A silly priest once said to Mark that
it was not meet to write Scripture over the grave
of a beast. But Mark said warily that an inscription
was for those who read it, to make them humble, and
not to increase the pride of what lay below.
When Mark could leave his bed, his
first care was to send for builders, and the old tower
of Nort was taken down, stone by stone, to the ground,
and a fair chapel built on the site; in the wall there
was a secret stairway, which led from the top chamber,
and came out among the elder-bushes that grew below
the tower, and here was found a coffer of gold, which
paid for the church; because, until it was found,
it was Mark’s design to leave the place desolate.
Mark is wedded since, and has his children about his
knee; those who come to the house see a strange and
wan man, who sits at Mark’s board, and whom
he uses very tenderly; sometimes this man is merry,
and tells a long tale of his being beckoned and led
by a tall and handsome person, smiling, down a hillside
to fetch gold; though he can never remember the end
of the matter; but about the springtime he is silent
or mutters to himself: and this is Roland; his
spirit seems shut up within him in some close cell,
and Mark prays for his release, but till God call
him, he treats him like a dear brother, and with the
reverence due to one who has looked out on the other
side of Death, and who may not say what his eyes beheld.