The closed window by A. C. Benson. 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 walking on the down.
With him lived his cousin and heir Rowland Elise, 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.
Rowland 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 neighbors
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 he was 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 grandfather, an evil and secret man who had dwelt at
nought 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 a 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 Rolin'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 of rooms 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
were scrawled in red in an uncertain hand, the words clouded at 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 words, 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 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. Rowland 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 quay of
the upper room, which lay on the window ledge where he had thrown it,
and a 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 peats
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 shutter's 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
strain 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 hill side 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 fire lit 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 the 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 center 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 by 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 quarreling 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 a while with the
pleasant glow of friendliness. That two good comrades feel when they have been reconciled.
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 Rowland 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 lightheartedly
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 Rowland 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
cast 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, Rowland 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 somber 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
center 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 were 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 Rowland 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. There.
The hound leaped 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 a 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 other
words huij 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 Nought was taken down stone by stone to the ground, and
a fair chapel built upon 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 Rowland. His spirits 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 dw to one who has looked out on the other side
of death, and who may not say what his eyes beheld. End of
the Closed Window recording by raf Bull