The Closed Window - Arthur Christopher Benson

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1:01Plus, personal seedless watermelons or cantaloupe are 199 each with digital coupon. Enjoy fresh and delicious savings for every meal. Hurry in, these deals won't last. Visit vons or Albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save. The Closed Window by AC Benson The Tower of Nought 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 seemingly house where the young Samark do not live to very easily and plentifully. To the south stretched the Great Ward of Nought, but the Tower stood high on an elbow of

2:01the 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 discus and was only spoken and that heedlessly by ancient men because Samark was vexed to hear it so called. Samark was not yet thirty and had begun to say that he must marry a wife, but he seemed 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, Roland Elise, a heedless, good-tempered man, a few years older than Samark. He had come on a visit to Samark when he first took possession of the Tower and there had seemed no reason why he should go away. The two suited each other. Samark 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.

3:04Mark 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 Samark was no soldier, and even less of a courtier, he hated tedious gayity and it was a time of peace. So because he loved solitude and quiet, he lived at home and sometimes taught himself but half a man, yet he was happy after a sort but for a kind of little hunger of the

4:04heart. What gave the tower so dark a name was the memory of old Sir James DeNought, 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. This is death, the old room in a tarot top where he came by his end in a dreadful way had been closed. It was entered by a tarot 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 weary of doing nothing and vexed because Mark sat so still in a great chair reading in a book, set his cousin at last that he must

5:07go 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 tarot stairs. The key groaned loudly in the lock and when the door was thrown back, they 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

6:09pulled 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 taught, 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 bit dabbled 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 neymor apparent, which Mark explained was the Latin for the text,

7:10he shuteth 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. Neh 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. Although 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 before. In Roland's mind it was like the desire of a child to peep into what is forbidden, but

8:12in 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 sunshiney 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 want, 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 some arcs I fell upon the key 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

9:16came 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.

10:18He 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 whacked his tails 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 fright and 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 likely tore down using the staple of the shutter to do this. It was with a strange shock of surprise that he saw that the window was dark or nearly

11:21so. It seemed as though there were some further obstacle outside, yet Mark knew that from below the lidded pains 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 how. Then turning, he saw him sprint to his feet with his hair bristling and his teeth bare, and next moments the dog turned and let out of the room. Toyota's easy choice sales event is on. Whether you're looking for the performance of a camera, the versatility of a RAV4, the efficiency of a Corolla, or all electric driving in the BZ. There's a Toyota that's just right for you, and with great deals across the lineup, it's time to find yours. But hurry, these deals won't last long.

12:23Toyota's easy choice sales event and soon. We make it easy. Toyota, let's go places. Looking for the best of Verbo? Discover vacation rentals of the year, top quality homes, guest love from across the country. Our curated list takes the guest work out of planning, so you can spend less time searching and more time packing. Book your next day now with Verbo. The thumbs is putting value back on the menu. Whether you're craving a Big Mac, McNuggets, or sausage egg and cheese McGrittle's, make it a meal and save. Your favorite is now your wallet's favorite too. Extra value meals are back. Get a big something extra. With a Big Mac or 10 piece McNuggets, fries and a medium coke all for just $9. Limited time only, promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Mark, left alone, tried to curb a tide of horror that swept through his veins. He looked round at the room, flooded with the subtly sunlight, and then he turned again

13:28to 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. When 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 for all below seeming to be built into the rocks. It was all dark and silent. Like a clouded night, with a faint light coming from once he could not see. The hill sloped away very steeply from the tower, and he seemed to see a plane beyond, where at the same time he knew that the down ought to lie. In the plane 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

14:31desire 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 a 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 pulsed 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, with glanced up and down, gazing about him while the cloud of fear and horror by insensible degrees dispersed, leaving him weak and melancholy.

15:39Presently Roland returned full of talk, but broke off to ask if Mark were ill. Mark, with a kind of surliness and unusual mood for him, denied it somewhat sharply. Roland raised his eyebrows and said no more, but prattled on. Shortly 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 safe to silent, with uplifted brows. Then he come to tune, and presently went out. They say to dinner that evening with long silences contrary to their want, though Mark bestirt himself to ask questions. When they were left alone, Mark stretched out his hand to Roland, saying, Roland, forgive me.

16:40I 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 today 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. 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.

17:42But 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 sat there waiting quietly to be summoned, 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 has 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 set himself, as though he had meddled lightheartedly with something far

18:46deeper 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. Of 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! Mary 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.

19:51Then Mark, seeing in his words a certain likeness, with a difference to his own dark visions, pressed his lips together and sat looking stonely 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 weirdness 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 robe in talk.

20:55If 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, weird, and yet excited with an intolerable heaviness of spirit, went early to bed, leaving Roland in the hall. After a short and a 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. Like last he fell asleep again, to be suddenly awakened by a strange and desolate crying that came he knew not once, but seemed to wail upon the air.

21:59The 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 around the room, and then the crying came again, this time very faint and desolate. Mark cast a shuttering glance at the window. It was wide open, and showed a horrible, liquid blackness. Around the bar in the centre that divided the casements, there was something noted. He hastened to the window, and saw that it was a rope which hung heavily. Leading out, he saw that something dangled from the rope below him, and then came the crying

23:03again 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 shoulder 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 around 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.

24:05Presently 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 dropped 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-sil. 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

25:05face 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 onto the window-sil. 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 a dark outline of the down, with a sky sewn 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.

26:07He routed 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, O'Ey a Sir of a Borneet Fidelis. A silly priest once said to Mark that it was not meat to write scripture over the grave of a beast, but Mark said wearily that an inscription was for those who read it to make them humble and not to increase the pride of what lay below.

27:07When Mark could leave his bed, his first care was to send for builders, and the old tower of naught 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 one man, who sits at Mark's board, and whom he uses very tenderly. As 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 muttased himself, and this is Roland.

28:09His 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. End of the closed window, recording by Rafe Ball. McDonald's is putting value back on the menu. Whether you're craving a Big Mac, McNuggets or sausage egg and cheese McGrittle's, make it a meal and save. Your favorite is now your wallet's favorite too. Extra value meals are back. Get a big something extra. With a Big Mac or 10 piece McNuggets, fries and a medium Coke all for just $9. Limited time only, promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Stop wasting your nights on a mattress that doesn't get you.

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