by Graeme Davis
Mr. Little was not at all surprised at the fact of having made this extraordinary discovery. Although in no way a conceited man, he was accustomed to think of himself as connected with extraordinary matters, and in some way destined for an extraordinary end. He was one of those men who, without ever having done, or even said, or perhaps even thought, anything especially remarkable, are yet remarkable men. Whenever he came into a room, he felt people’s eyes upon him, and knew that they were asking, “Who is that young man?” And still Mr. Decimus Little did not consider himself handsome, nor did any one else consider him so, to his knowledge. From the matter-of-fact point of view, all one could say was that he was of middle height, more inclined to be fat than thin, with small not irregular features, hair varying between yellow and gray, a slight stoop, a somewhat defective sight, and a preference for clothes of ample cut and of neutral tints. But then the matter-of-fact eye just missed that something indefinable which constituted the remarkable character of Mr. Little’s appearance. As it was with his person, so likewise was it with his history; there was more significance therein than could easily be defined. A distant relative, on the female side, of the illustrious border house of Hotspur, Mr. Little possessed a modest income and the education of a gentleman. He had never been to school, and had left college without taking his degree. He had begun reading for the law, and left off. He had tried writing for the magazines, but without success. He had at one time inclined to HighChurch asceticism and the moralizing of Whitechapel; he had also been addicted to socialism, and spent six months learning to make a chest of drawers in a Birmingham co-operative workshop. He had begun writing a biography of Ninon de Lenclos, studying singing, and forming a collection of rare medals; and he was now considerably interested in Esoteric Buddhism and the Society for Psychical Research, although he felt by no means prepared to accept the new theosophy, nor to indorse the conclusions concerning thought transference. And finally, and quite lately, Mr. Decimus Little had also been in love, and had become engaged to a cousin of his, a young lady studying at Girton College; but he was not quite sure whether the engagement was absolutely binding on either side, or whether marriage would be certainly conducive to the happiness of both parties. For Mr. Decimus Little was gradually maturing a theory to the effect of his being a person with a double nature, reflective and idealistic on the one hand, and capable, on the other, of extraordinary impulses of lawlessness; and it is notorious that such persons, and indeed, perhaps, all very complex and out-of-the-common personalities are not very fit for the marriage state. It was consonant with what Mr. Little often lamented as the excessive skepticism of his temper, that he should not have made up his mind about the hidden chamber at Hotspur Hall, and the strange stories concerning it. He had often discussed the matter, which, as he remarked, was a crucial one in all questions of the supernatural. He had triumphantly argued with a physiologist at his club that mere delusion could not be a sufficient explanation for so old and diffused a belief, as, indeed, mere delusion could not account for any belief of any kind. He had argued equally triumphantly with a clergyman in the train against the notion that the occupant of the secret chamber was the Evil One, and had added that the existence of evil spirits offered serious, very serious, difficulties to a thoughtful mind. And Mr. Little, being, as he often remarked, open to arguments and evidence on all points, had elaborated various explanations of the mystery of the hidden chamber, and had even attempted to sound the inhabitants of Hotspur Hall on the subject. But the servants had not understood his polished but rather shadowy Oxford English, or he had not understood their thick Northumbrian, and the members of the family had dropped the subject with a somewhat disconcerting sharpness of manner; and Mr. Little was the last man in the world to rudely invade the secrets of others, by experiments of towels hung out of windows, and such like; indeed, the person capable of such courses would have inspired him with horror.
And by an irony of fate—Mr. Little believed in the irony of fate, and was occasionally ironical himself—it had been given to him, to this skeptical and unobtrusive man, to discover that room hidden in the thickness of the Norman wall, and whose position had baffled so much ingenious, pertinacious, and impertinent inquiry.
There could no longer be any doubt about it; this door, revealed only by its hollow sound and its rusty iron bolt, against which Mr. Little had accidentally leaned that day when the shame of having intruded upon a flirtation (and a flirtation, too, between the heir of Hotspur and the heiress of his hereditary foes the Blenkinsops) had made him rush, like a mad creature, along unknown passages and up the winding staircase of the peel tower—this door, whitewashed to look like stone and hidden just under the highest battlements of Hotspur, could only be that of the mysterious chamber. It had flashed across Mr. Little’s mind when first he had leaned, confused and panting, against the wall of the staircase, and the wall had yielded to his pressure and creaked perceptibly; and the certainty had grown with every subsequent examination of the spot, and of the exterior of the castle. People had hitherto wasted their ingenuity upon seeking a window in Hotspur Hall which should correspond with no ostensible room; accident had revealed to Mr. Little a room which corresponded with no window visible from without. It now seemed so simple that it was impossible to conceive how the secret could so long have been kept. The secret chamber was, could be, only in the oldest portion of the castle, in the peel tower, built for the protection of stock and goods from the Scottish raids; and it was, it could be, only under the very roof of the tower, taking air and light through some chimney or trap-door from the battlements above. There could be no doubt about it; and as Mr. Decimus Little sat in the window-seat of the great drawingroom at Hotspur, with on the one side the crowd of guests brilliant in the yellow candle-light, and the great darkwave of fell and moor rising into the blue twilight on the other, he thought how strange it was that of all these people there was only one, besides the master of Hotspur, who knew the position of the fatal room: only one besides the heir of Hotspur who might—who knows?—penetrate into its secrets, and that one person should be himself. Strange; and yet, somehow, it did not take him by surprise.
And, after all, what was the secret of that chamber? A monstrous creature, or race of creatures, hidden away by the unrightful heirs? An ancient ancestor, living on by diabolic arts throughout the centuries? A demon, a specter, some horror nameless because inconceivable to those who had not seen it, or perhaps some almost immaterial evil, some curse lurking in the very atmosphere of the place? It was notorious that the something, whatever it was, made it impossible for a Hotspur ever to marry a Blenkinsop; that the heir of Hotspur was introduced to this mystery on coming of age; and that no Hotspur, after coming of age, had ever been known to smile: these were well authenticated facts; but what mystery or horror upon earth or in hell could be sufficient cause for these well ascertained results, no one had ever discovered. Every explanation was futile and insufficient.
These were the thoughts which went on in Mr. Little’s mind throughout that week of coming of age at Hotspur Hall. All day and all night—at least, as much of the night as he could account for—these questions kept going round and round in his mind, presenting now one surface, now another, but ever present and ever active. He walked about, ate his dinner, talked, danced automatically, knowing that he did it all, but as one knows what another person is doing, or what one is reading in a book, without any sense of its being one’s self or its being real; nay, with a sense of being removed miles and miles from it all, living in a different time and place, to which this present is as the past and the distant. The secret chamber—its mystery; the door, the color of the wall, the shape of the iron bolt, the slant of the corkscrew steps—these were reality in the midst of all this unrealness. And withal a strange longing: to stand again before that door, to handle once more that rusty bolt; a wish like that for some song, or some beloved presence, the desire for that ineffable consciousness, that overwhelming sense of concentrated life and feeling, o
f being there, of realizing the thing. No one, reflected Mr. Little, can know what strange joys are reserved for strange natures; how certain creatures, too delicate and unreal for the every-day interests and pleasures of existence to penetrate through the soul atmosphere in which they wander, will vibrate, with almost agonized joy, live their full life on contact with certain mysteries. Every day Mr. Little would seek that winding staircase in the peel tower; at first with hesitation and shyness, stealing up almost ashamed of himself; then secretly and stealthily, but excited, resolute, like a man seeking the woman he loves, bent upon the joy of his life. Once a day at first, then twice, then thrice, counting the hours between the visits, longing to go back as soon as he had left, as a drunkard longs to drink again when he has just drunk. He would watch for the moment when the way was clear, steal along the corridors and up the winding stairs. Then, having reached close to the top of the staircase, near a trap-door in the ceiling which led on to the battlements of the tower, he would stop, and lean against the shelving turning wall opposite the door, or sit down on the steps, his eyes fixed on the tower wall, where a faint line and the rusty little bolt revealed the presence of the hidden chamber.
What he did it would be hard to say; indeed, he did nothing, he merely felt. There was nothing at all to see, in the material sense; and this piece of winding staircase was just like any other piece of winding staircase in the world: it was not anything external that he wanted, it was that ineffable something within himself. So at least Mr. Little imagined at first, frequently persuading himself that, to a nature like his, all baser satisfaction of curiosity was as nothing; telling himself that he did not care what was inside the room, that he did not even wish to know. Why, if by the pulling of that bolt he might see and know all, he would not pull it. And, saying this to himself, by way of proving it, he laid his fingers gently on the bolt. And in so doing he discovered the depth of his self-delusion. How different was this emotion when he felt—he actually felt—the bolt begin to slide in his hand, from what he had experienced before, while merely contemplating it! The blood seemed to rush through his veins, he felt almost faint. This was reality, this was possession. The mystery lay there, with the bolt, in the hollow of his hand; at any instant he might. . . . Mr. Little had no intention of drawing the bolt. He never reasoned about it, but he knew that that bolt never must, never should, be drawn by him. But in proportion to this knowledge was the entrancing excitement of feeling that the bolt might be drawn, that he grasped it in his fingers, that a little electric current through some of his nerves, a little twitch in some of his muscles, and the mystery would be disclosed.
It was the last of the seven days’ revelry of the coming of age. All the other neighboring properties of the Hotspurs had been visited in turn; tenants had been made to dine and dance on one lawn after another; innumerable grouse had been massacred on the moors; endless sets of Venetian lanterns had been lighted, had caught fire, and tumbled on to people’s heads; Sir Hugh’s old port and Johannisberg, and the strange honey-beer, called Morocco, brewed for centuries at Hotspur, had flowed like water, or rather like the rain, which freely fell, but did not quench that northern ardor. There was to be a grand ball that night, and a grand display of fire-works. But Mr. Little’s soul was not attuned to merriment, nor were the souls, as he suspected, of Sir Hugh Hotspur and his son. For, according to popular tradition, it was on this last night of the seven days’ merry-making that the heir of Hotspur must be introduced into the hidden chamber.
Throughout lunch Mr. Little kept his eyes on the face of his host and his host’s son. What might be passing in their mind? Was it hidden terror or a dare-devil desperation at the thought of what the night must bring? But neither Sir Hugh nor young Harry showed the slightest emotion; their faces, it seemed to Mr. Little, were imperturbable like stone.
Mr. Little waited till the family and guests were safely assembled on the tennis-lawn, then hastened along the corridor and up the steps of the peel tower. The afternoon, after all the rain, was hot and steamy, clearly foreboding a storm; and as Mr. Little groped his way up the tower steps, he felt his heart moving slackly and irregularly, and a clamminess spread over his face and hands; he had to stop several times in order to take breath. As usual, he seated himself on the topmost step, holding his knees with his arms, and looking at the piece of wall opposite, which concealed the mysterious door.
Mr. Little sat there a long time, while the tower stairs grew darker and darker, the faint line betraying the door grew invisible, and even the bolt was lost in the general darkness. To-night—the thought, nay, almost the sentence in which it was framed, went on like a bell in Mr. Little’s mind—to-night they would creep up those stairs, they would stand before that door. Sir Hugh’s hand would be upon that bolt: he saw it all so plainly, he felt every tingle and shudder that would pass through their bodies. Mr. Little rose and gently grasped the bolt; how easily it would move? Sir Hugh would not require the smallest effort. Or would it be young Harry Hotspur? No; it would doubtless be Sir Hugh. He would pause like that a moment, his hand on the bolt, whispering a few words of encouragement, perhaps a prayer. No; he would be silent. He would hold the bolt, little guessing how recently another hand had been upon it, little dreaming that, but a few hours before another member of the family of Hotspur (for Mr. Little always regarded himself in that light) had had it in his power to. . . .
The thought remained unfinished in Mr. Little’s mind. With a cry he fell all of a heap upon the steps, a blinding light in his eyes, a deafening roar in his ears. He had opened the secret door.
He came slowly to his senses, and with life there returned an overwhelming, vague sense of horror. What he had done he did not know; but he knew he had done something terrible. He slid, it seemed to him that he almost trickled—for his limbs had turned to water—down the stairs. He ran, and yet seemed to be dragging himself, along the corridors and out of one of the many ivy-grown doorways of the old border castle. To the left hand of the gate, at a little distance, was the tennis-court; a long beam of sun, yellow among the storm-clouds, fell upon the grass, burnishing it into metallic green, and making the white, red, yellow, and blue of the players’ dresses stand out like colored enamel. Some of them shouted to him, among others young Harry Hotspur; but Mr. Little rushed on, heedless of their shouts, scaling the banks of grass, breaking through the hedges, scrambling up hillside after hillside, until he had got to the top of the fells, where the short grayish-green grass began to be variegated with brown patches of bog and lilac and black patches of heather, and cut in all directions by the low walls of loose black stones. He stopped and looked back. But he started off again, as he saw in the distance below, among the ashes and poplars of the narrow valley which furrowed those treeless undulations of moorland, the chimney-stacks of Hotspur Hall, the battlements of the square, black peel tower, reddened by the low light.
On he went, slower, indeed, but still onward, until every vestige of Hotspur and of every other human habitation was out of sight, and the chain of fells had closed round him, billow upon billow, under the fading light. On he went, looking neither to the right nor to the left, save when he was startled by the bubbling of a brook, spurting from the brown moor bog on to the stony road; or by the bleating of the sheep who wandered, vague white specks, upon the grayish grass of the hillside. The clouds accumulated in gray masses, with an ominous yellow clearing in their midst, and across the fells there came the sound of distant thunder. Presently a few heavy drops began to fall; but Mr. Little did not heed them, but went quickly on, among the bleating of the sheep and the cry of the curlews, along the desolate road across the fells; rain-drop sueceeding rain-drop, till the hill-tops were enveloped in a sheet of rain.
But Mr. Little did not turn back. He was dazed, vacant, quite unconscious of all save one thing: he had opened the hidden door at Hotspur Hall.
At length the road made a turn, began to descend, and in a dip of the fells some light shone forth in the darkness and the mist. Mr.
Little started, and very nearly ran back: he had thought for a moment that these must be the lights of Hotspur: but a second’s reflection told him that Hotspur must lie far behind, and presently, among the blinding rain which fell in cold sheets, he found himself among some low black cottages. In the window of one of them was a light, and over the door, in the darkness, swung an inn sign. He knocked, and entered the inn kitchen, a trickle of water following him wherever he went, and, in the tone and with the look of a sleep-walker, said something about having been overtaken by a storm during a walk on the moors, and wanting a night’s shelter. The innkeeper and his wife were evidently too pastoral-minded to reflect that gentlemen do not usually walk on the fells without a hat, and in blue silk socks and patent-leather shoes; and they heaped up the fire, by the side of which Mr. Little collapsed into an arm-chair, indifferent to the charms of bacon and beer and hot griddlecakes.
