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 in my heart I knew I felt for him. I think it must have been the sort of affection a dog feels for the master who is gradually taming and training it and breaking it to his will. Perhaps in my feelings towards him there was even an element of pity which helped to cement our comradeship, for he was so utterly lonely that in my heart, though inveighing against him, I yearned towards him. And certainly his courage, though not of the hardy physical type which I was best fitted to understand, appealed to my sense of the heroic.

I think the clinching incident which at length united us was the result of one of my yarns to my fellows. For living as I did in the famous haunted house, and having been the companion of smugglers, not to mention the stories I had drunk in from my father's lips, I must have seemed to my mates a very treasure-house of yarns, and my vanity didn't urge me to hide my light under a bushel. It was during one of these yarns that I looked up to find Worthing listening to me. I stopped, feeling guilty somehow of babyish superstition, for my story was one of ghosts, and the scene of it I had laid quite unwarrantably at Sunset Towers.

I waited for Worthing to speak, and at last he said, "Of course you know that's all rubbish."

I felt wounded in my pride, especially as the story was one of my father's, and the insult seemed to glance off me and strike him; so I answered hotly, "You may sneer, but you wouldn't spend a night alone in our haunted room."

"I'll do it to-night," he answered without hesitation.

I was taken aback, for first of all our house had no special haunted room that I was aware of, though I knew several rooms where a night alone would be distinctly unpleasant. But chiefly I was alarmed because I knew I had committed myself. Worthing would insist on the ordeal; I knew him well enough for that; and I was frightened at the possible consequences.

Whether I believed the old place was haunted or not, I can't rightly say, but the mysterious wailing voices still clung about the air more like a pervading feeling than an articulate sound, though on some nights when the wind was high there seemed to mingle with it a shaken sobbing unspeakably desolate that caught at one's very heart and set it throbbing with an ominous presentiment of impending evil. And lately the crying had taken on such a note of human pain that I had often started awake at night shaken to the soul with pity, and feeling an urgency upon me to rise and search out the suffering thing wherever it might be hid, and soothe it with what consolation the living might bring the dead. And looking at Worthing with the memory of these things in mind I felt a reluctant compunction at submitting him to such a trial. For I knew something of that creeping terror that comes with a strange sighing on the night, and I didn't think he fully realized what he was undertaking. And at this moment it came to me with a shock how dearly I held him, and if possible I would have drawn back.

"Not to-night," I said, feeling about for some way of evasion, "To-morrow, if you like."

"So that you can prepare a ghost for me?" he said coldly.

"No," I cried, "no, on my honour. But--but I must tell my father, and get a bed ready for you, and so on."

"To-morrow then," he agreed.

Now the next day was Saturday and a holiday, so I said, "Come in the morning and we'll spend the day together. Have a look round the place, and that."

"Right," and he turned away.

I didn't tell my father till the next morning, when I was already expecting Worthing to arrive. I didn't at all know how my father would take the information, but as it happened it seemed to amuse him, and he raised no objection. It seemed to me as though he saw no danger, and I said questioningly, "But suppose there is a ghost, daddy?"

"Ghosts," he answered with a laugh, "are like miracles. They only happen to people who believe in them."

Worthing arrived early, and we spent a splendid day clambering about the old mansion. Half of it was in ruins, and the habitable part had been partially bricked and partially boarded up. My father and I shared a room at the top of the first flight of the great oaken stairs. It was a huge room, and its mere spaciousness made it an eerie place at night, for the little circle of the candlelight intensified the shadows in the corners. And there was a great wardrobe by the fireplace which suggested secret things, and facing it across the room a tall mirror by my bed which played unholy tricks with my reflection in the dark. This was bad enough; but at least the room was in the main body of the house. But before we could reach the room which Worthing was to occupy, an archway on the landing, which had been closed before we took possession, had to be opened again. The room lay out among the ruins, and was fairly easily approachable, though not always under cover, by a long and tortuous passage and one flight of stairs; but though in the ruined part of the house the room itself was still sound and weatherproof. I had frequently been in it, having chosen it indeed as my own private sanctum; but my method of approach had been by an unorthodox route up a broken wall or two and along a perilous causeway, not to be attempted in the night.

Especially on such a night. For during the day the wind began to rise, and before sunset half a gale was sweeping across from the north-east, howling dismally among the turrets and corridors of our ruinous home, and wailing down the great chimney of our dining-room, puffing the smoke out in great blue clouds.

It was a night for strange stories, but there were no stories as it happened. In spite of the increasing wind, which tore at the great lonely house, shaking it to its foundations as though envying it its place there on the hill, and grappling with it like a foe to root it up and send it flying headlong, Worthing remained calmly by the fire talking to my father in the most matter-of-fact voice as though nothing unusual were to take place that night. As for me I was straining out to catch the first echo of that bitter cry which I knew would soon come wailing in the heart of some great burst of wind, thinner but more piercing than the gale itself. And when at last I thought I heard it I looked quickly across at Worthing, but he seemed to have heard nothing; and my father was evidently lost in the conversation, for he showed no sign of having heard anything other than the wind.

I felt left out in the cold, as though all the responsibility of what might happen this night were thrown upon my shoulders. Or rather upon my heart, for it beat heavily, and with the deepening darkness throbbed with uneasier forebodings. And then there came a crash at which I sprang to my feet, so unstrung was I with anxiety. But my father listening for a moment said, "Some old chimney, I suppose," and resumed the conversation. I sat down again, and tried to listen to what the two were talking about, but I remember nothing, for all my attention was strained out for that coming cry. And suddenly it came, sharp, as though at a swift sting, shrill, and breaking into sobs of self-pitying abandonment to anguish, to die away in a forlorn moan.

Again I sprang to my feet, and cried, "Listen!"

"You mustn't be afraid," said my father to Worthing, "the wind does that kind of thing."

"Oh, daddy, it isn't the wind," I cried.

"Yes, Tommy, just the wind," he answered, looking at me, and throwing a half glance towards Worthing. I took his hint to mean that my friend mustn't be alarmed before the ordeal. So I tried to possess myself in calmness. But when it was time to go to bed I was shaking with fear, so much so that Worthing noticed it and said, "It looks as though you're to sleep in the haunted room instead of me."

"Oh, Worthing, don't go," I said.

He looked at me coldly and answered, "Oh, so that's what all this little farce is about, is it? You want to frighten me from the attempt? Come."

That stung me, and without a word I handed him his candle and took my own, and together we went up the echoing stairs, out under the archway, and wound our way along through the twisting corridor, shielding our candles as well as we could when we came to some half exposed space, sometimes standing crouched against the wall till a gust had spent its fury and swept by, and then on again, till puffing with the journey we arrived at the haunted room. Once more I would have begged him to turn back, and I did say, "Let me stay with you," but he froze me away from him, and I turned and left him there alone, beating my way back through the night and wind to my chamber. But once I heard a moan so near me that I stopped as though petrified, and held my breath to listen. But just as I breathed again, a deep draught, I thought I heard the sound repeated, but it was drowned in my breathing. But what I did hear sounded strangely like a little chuckle of some mocking and evil thing, so that I stepped on hastily, heedless of my footing, and arrived at my room in a fine state of terror. And there I sat on my bed, hearkening to the sounds of the night, and bitterly reproaching myself, but unable to still the absurd thumping of my heart and quivering of my limbs.

At length I controlled myself sufficiently to pull off my clothes and scramble into bed. But there was no sleep for me. Long after my father had crept in beside me I lay listening, listening for I knew not what; for I felt the growing conviction that soon there would come a clear call for me, and I should have to arise and go to meet what fate should send.

And all the while the wind came rushing from the moors, to whirl about the ruins as in a witches' dance, shrieking and clamouring and tugging at the walls, and raced away in scampering gusts far into the distance. And through it I caught faint echoes of that ghostly moan, a kind of _Ughh! Ughh!_ of unutterable pain. I couldn't help thinking of Worthing, alone there among the crazy ruins, and wondering how the night was passing for him. Likely enough, I thought bitterly, he was serenely sleeping while I was tossing in a fever on his account; for I knew that if it hadn't been for him I wouldn't have suffered all this terror, for this night was no worse than others had been; and to me ghosts weren't alarming things, but creatures that gave to the night a delicious shuddering thrill. And so tossing and listening I fell at length into a troubled sleep, to be awakened by a shattering cry that rang in my ears like an echo. I sat bolt upright, my heart hammering; but my father didn't move. How was it possible? I asked myself. How could he sleep through it? I felt out towards him and whispered, "Daddy!" I didn't notice till then that I was gasping as though I had run a race. I touched him, and felt his chest rising and falling calmly and evenly. I lay down again, but I was wide-awake, and I was telling myself that Worthing was in danger, and I ought to go to him. But I dared not. So I lay awhile listening to the wind as it howled through the night, till I grew calmer, strangely calm, and a new courage came to me. "This is all nonsense," I said. "I'll go and see."

I crept noiselessly out of bed and pulled on a few clothes; lit my candle and left the room, turning at the door to see that my father hadn't awakened. On the landing it was very gusty, and a racing puff caught at my flame, nearly extinguishing it. I guarded it with my hand, and made for the archway. Going was very slow, for with each step my candle nearly blew out, and in the darkness I should have been lost. So I crept on slowly, my attention fixed to the flame. It was an eerie journey, for I could give no heed to what lay ahead of me, only sparing a glance now and again into the darkness around, and feeling that if anything lay in wait for me I should be an easy prey. This feeling of helplessness increased upon me as I pushed further and further into the night, and felt the first bite of the cold air that warned me I was coming to the more open parts. How I expected to keep my candle alight I don't know; but I managed it through the first exposed space, waiting for a pause in the wind before I crossed, and reaching shelter as a huge gust raced out of the north and screamed overhead with a hundred mingled cries of pain and wrath and laughter. I rested a moment, for somehow my slow passage left me strangely breathless and exhausted, and I was all a-quiver with nervous apprehension, feeling that I was stepping deeper and deeper into some unknown snare. In spite of the crying gale, the air seemed to be tightening around me, the darkness closing in. Again and again I stopped, peering about me and ahead, and always it seemed that a luring shadow sank into the blackness as though dragging me on and still on. But I kept my attention on the flame of my candle, guarding it as though it were the last spark of my life, till I came to the stairway. I felt for it with my foot, but couldn't find it. I took a step forward and felt again, but it wasn't there. I held out the candle and gazed into the dark. There was no stairway at all, only a black length of corridor as far as the little light could pierce, and I began to wonder where I was. I traced over in my mind the way I had come, with the growing fear at my heart that I was lost somewhere in that wild ruin in the dead of a tempestuous night. But I wouldn't give in. Again I felt for the stairs as though they might have miraculously grown there while I was thinking; and again I retraced in imagination the way I had come. And then faintly behind me I heard a low clang as of a closing gate, and the blood ran cold under my feet. I turned quickly; too quickly; for a breath caught at my candle, and with a leap and a flutter the flame went out. But with the last of the light I saw a pale face at my shoulder, very thin and filmy, with black hollows at the eyes; and as I gazed horror-stricken it faded into the darkness, and I heard a low sigh breathed so close to me that the thin breath seemed to fan my hair. For a moment I was too terrified to move. Then I think a frenzy must have possessed me, for with a courage not my own I stepped boldly forward and clutched at the empty air. It yielded to my outstretched hands, and I stumbled and struck against a wall, but steadying myself I felt my way forward till my fingers closed on something cold and hard; and again I heard a sad moaning. And then a sudden horror struck like a knife at my heart, for I was gripping the fleshless fingers of a skeleton. I shrieked, and fell to the floor unconscious.

It was in Worthing's room that I came to myself, and Worthing was throwing water on my brow. The horror was still upon me, for waking to see his face above me it was as though I were again in that dreadful corridor with the face of the spectre fading from my eyes. I tried to scream, but Worthing clapped his hand to my mouth, and bade me be quiet in a voice of such command that at once I felt in possession of my wits.

I sat up and looked about me.

"That's better," said Worthing; and added, "So you've had enough of playing the ghost, have you?"

At first I didn't understand, and then I cried indignantly, "Worthing!" and with my anger my courage came back to me.

"So?" he questioned.

"Do you think...." I began.

"Think?" he retorted.

"I tell you; I swear to you," I blurted out; "I thought I heard you scream, and I came to you. But I lost my way in the dark, and a door closed behind me, and my candle went out, and I saw a face, and I felt a skeleton, and I tell you...."

But he laughed cuttingly into my speech:

"Well, you've had a bad time of it; you'd better lie down and go to sleep."

It was only after long protestation that I succeeded in persuading him to believe my story; and then he seemed strangely uneasy.

"There's something I can't understand," he muttered.

"Why, it's the ghost," I said easily.

"Bah!" he scoffed me down.

So we lay down together till the morning, and the wind died away, and the winter sun shone bleakly over a frozen earth.

But though we spent the day searching the ruins, for it was Sunday and of course there was no school, we couldn't solve the mystery of the night. We retraced my path as well as I could judge it, but there was no skeleton anywhere; and where Worthing had found me--for hearing my shriek he had come to my aid--there was only a solid wall.

"You must have gone clean through there," he said seriously, "otherwise you couldn't have lost your way without tumbling head first from the ruins." But though we shook at it, and examined it for possible springs and locks, the wall refused to give up its secret. The only thing that marked it as different from the adjacent masonry was a patch of little punctures as though a shot-gun had been emptied into it at close range. So we searched and probed and questioned, but discovered nothing; nor did we even find my candle which to Worthing was the greatest confirmation of my story.

We didn't tell my father of the adventure of the night, but somehow from that hour we felt sworn friends, and I never received again from Worthing the cold chaff which made him so feared and hated at Rancey Bridge.

He visited several times at Sunset Towers, and my father was loud in his praises. He considered him a sane, level-headed fellow, just the kind of friend to have behind one. But it didn't seem to me that Worthing felt the same esteem for my father, and this was perhaps the one shadow on our friendship. And even I, watching the two, realized how my father needed such a friend himself.

Then the Christmas holidays came, and all except a few of the boarders went home for the vacation.