Cursed be the treasure
the fire to our room he had climbed out of the window which opened on
a back-yard, no one seeing him, and had hidden himself in the heather.
His plan was to have found me, and together we would have fled away,
every one supposing we had perished in the flames. But somehow he had
missed me, and later seeing me with Picardino he had stalked us, hoping
somehow to steal me back, but fearing that his ruse had failed.
But one question worried me. "Did you really burn it on purpose?" I
asked.
"Ah!" was all he replied.
And I fell asleep, too tired and confused to solve the hundred
mysteries which were beating in my mind. Who fired the inn? And why?
And how was it Picardino had returned and carried me away? And why had
he vanished so suddenly?
CHAPTER IX
SUNSET TOWERS
We must have lain low for a long while, or the summer must have broken
very suddenly, for when one late afternoon we set out for our new home,
my father telling me we should be able to rest quietly now, there was
more than a breath of winter in the keen clear air. I remember as we
strode forward, silent for a time, how I watched my breath making a
cloud about my face, which I conjured into airy visions of Fairyland;
though my Fairyland wasn't a place of beautiful enchantment, but
rather one of subtle spells and secret workings which mingled with
our human destinies, thwarting them and twisting them awry like the
under-currents in a river, or like the oozy bed-weeds that cling about
a swimmer's legs entangling him and dragging him downward into the
mud. The curling vapour of my breath, tinged to a faint blue, was
like some evil emanation, formless yet with a thousand forms melting
and merging into one another, like a menacing spirit hesitating to
strike, still hovering about its victim, soon to assume its final
shape of doom. I think perhaps my mind was dimly aware of the story
of the genii imprisoned for a thousand years in a shard beneath the
sea, and when at length drawn to earth and set free by some miserable
fishermen, steaming out in a towering cloud above the terrified wretch,
and threatening him with ruin. For there seemed to be a presence and a
shadow beside us and above us as we stepped together across the lonely
swelling rises of the moor, and I was vaguely troubled, half wondering
whether like the fisherman in the story we should be able to lure the
menacing thing back into its prison, or whether we should be enfolded
in its snares.
All this time we had been making northward; and as we topped a rise we
saw on a hill before us, lying away to our left, a great straggling
mass of grey stone which my father told me was our new home. I stopped
to gaze at it, and felt a throb of delighted awe at the prospect of its
huge loneliness standing up into the evening, grave and like a creature
on guard, with eyes fixed steadily on the empty distance. Instinctively
I looked away to the right, where all was a desolate stretch of
abandoned moorland, so lonely that it seemed like the sea, and sniffing
I thought I caught a scent of salt and weed.
"How will it be, Tommy?" asked my father, and for answer I tightened my
grip of his hand and gave a glad sigh.
We stepped down into the valley, and lost the setting sun; but rising
again as we approached our new home we saw its red rim dipping below
the line of hill before us, washing the western sky in a scarlet glow,
against which the walls and towers of the great building stood out
black and secret, as though now the eyes of the creature were turned
in upon itself, brooding on some dark and terrible mystery in its own
breast.
"Daddy," I said, "we will call it Sunset Towers."
As we drew nearer, its immense form seemed to grow above us like a dark
cloud rising out of the earth, and it was as though we were walking
into the heart of a shadow; but though with each step we took the
feeling of awe and wonder increased upon me, and though a low murmur as
of sad voices strengthened as we approached, it wasn't till our feet
set the echoes ringing under the archway that I realized we were in the
haunted house of which Picardino had told us.
We found some cold food laid for us, but there was no other sign of
any inhabitant besides ourselves. And yet the fire was ready for
lighting, and the lamp was full of oil, and when I went to bed I found
everything laid ready as at an inn. But I was too tired to puzzle out
what all this meant. We had had a long tramp, and I was soon asleep.
But once in the night I awoke to hear that same strange moaning in the
air. It seemed to come from nowhere, yet filled the whole house like
a presence, as though indeed the house was a living creature that was
hurt and was sobbing dumbly to itself.
With the morning of course the vapours of the night were dispelled
before the disillusioning white clearness of the day, which lays bare
our mysteries with a mocking shrug, as it were, revealing the secret
workings, and laughing at our childish credulity.
For the preparations of the evening before were easily explained by the
arrival of an old dame from the nearest village, some three miles yet
to the northward, and hidden down by a river valley. She was busy about
the house before I was stirring, and had prepared a savoury breakfast
by the time we were dressed. She was an ill-favoured old creature,
battered as it looked by the storms and weather of that wild region
rather than shrivelled with age; but beneath her crust of wretchedness
she had a kindly enough heart.
During the morning I heard my father expostulating with her. As far as
I could tell he was trying to persuade her to come and lodge in the
house, but though she was perfectly willing to work there during the
day rather than let the poor bairn die of neglect, yet she would rather
cross through a blizzard morning and evening than spend a single night
in the evil place. And then it was her turn to expostulate with my
father, wondering, as she said, to find us alive in the morning, and
telling him it was wicked to bring a child to such a house. At this he
laughed, and dismissed the subject.
So the old dame continued to come with the morning and vanish with
the night, at each parting fervently praying that we might be spared
through the darkness. I think she was surprised to find us day by day
not only spared but flourishing on the haunted atmosphere.
We had only one other visitor, the landlord. How my father had rented
the house, I don't know; but the landlord, a ferrety little man, must
have been glad to find a tenant, and called to see how we were faring.
He found us very gay, and by no means wishing to quit.
And then my father conceived the idea of sending me to school. At
first I was excited at the prospect, and tramped willingly enough the
few miles to Rancey Bridge, where there was a fair-sized school for
boarders and day scholars, standing on a hill that sloped down to the
Rancey River. But as my school-days have nothing to do with my story,
except that it was at Rancey Bridge where I met Worthing Bright, I
needn't dwell on them. Indeed the only thing I learnt there was how
abnormal my life had been, and what a wonderful father I had; but
judging by what I heard I had no desire to change either the one or the
other, for the normal and the ordinary smacked of tameness to one of my
experiences.
Not that life was entirely uneventful. For I soon found that
scholarship wasn't the best fun in the world, and after a period of
grumpiness I set to work to enliven the dull hours of study, and with
such success that there was a sort of revolution in the affairs of
Rancey Bridge, initiated by my drawing my knife on Staggers, the usher,
who was threatening to birch me, and driving him from the room.
Naturally this created an uproar, and for a moment I was heralded as
the hero of a new age; but the excitement was short-lived, for the time
at any rate, for Worthing Bright appeared at the door, and the tumult
died down.
Now Worthing Bright was smaller than myself, though some three years
older; but there was something in his presence and personality, and
in his straight, neat, commanding little figure, that cowed the most
rebellious. I had frequently tried to make a stand against this
domination, which my reason told me was absurd, but I had never come
off victor. A cutting word and a cold stare seemed to melt all the
strength from my nerves and muscles, and my fists would fall open
foolishly, and bowing my head I would slink away.
It was much the same on this occasion. He stood at the door and looked
at me. I summoned up all my bravado, but there was no moral support to
be had from my fellows, already subdued. I was flushed and excited, and
raising my knife I made it quiver above my head. But he gave me a look
of pitying scorn, and said, "Let's play at being pirates," in a tone of
such sneering emphasis that I felt convicted of conduct fit only for a
girl of three.
A minute later Staggers returned reassured, and I took my thrashing
without a struggle.
When it was over I turned away and would have left the school, not
intending to stay any longer at such a place. But at the door I found
Worthing still on guard. "That was well done," he said. "Now, don't
spoil it."
I faced him for a minute, but he pointed me back to the room; and I
obeyed.
I spent many troubled nights puzzling out my conduct, trying to whip
myself into a fury against Worthing, for I knew well that if I were to
be revenged on him it would only be in a moment of frenzy. But all was
of no avail. I was struggling against something which had mastered
me; and that wasn't the greater strength of my antagonist, but the
strange knowledge that somehow I loved and admired him, and would give
my life if he were in danger. It may have been his spiritual power
which dominated me, or it may have been the admiration in his voice,
usually so scornful, when he had said, "That was well done," which set
vibrating some chord of affection in me; but however it was, I knew for
a certainty that I had found not an enemy but a friend.
And the friendship deepened, though it was a strange one; for Worthing
was my opposite in every way. He had an intellect like a sharpened
knife, making my brain in comparison like a cushion or a cloud, a dull
soft sort of thing. Naturally he was high up in the school, which
added to the strangeness of our friendship, and his whole outlook and
morality were as yet things unknown to me. For he was intending to
study law, and already he had a large share of the lawyer's coldness
and aloofness, looking clean through the human elements of a question
to the legal considerations beyond. And this was one of the things
which marked him out unique among his fellows, for though respected
and even feared by everybody he hadn't a single friend; and naturally
so; for being deeply impressed by the dignity of law and order, living
as it were in the shadow of his future career, he had constituted
himself a sort of self-elected champion of the authorities, lending
them the support of his extraordinary influence, lecturing us even on
the necessity of obedience, and somehow impressing us with the absurd
childishness of rebellion against established rule, though needless to
say the impression melted with the closing of the door behind him.
But though his intellect was so keen and his personality so electric,
he had nothing of the bulk and muscle which about this time I was
beginning to develop at a prodigious pace. I could have crushed him
with a finger, yet he subdued me with a glance.
I don't intend to describe the full course of our growing friendship.
At first indeed I struggled against the feeling of affection which