by Paul Hazel
was a cold, little town by the edge of the sea.”
She hesitated.
“Truly, it was a wonderful gift,” she had said. “But I will
never go again to Bodp.”
“One day you may have need of it.”
She had told him then how she had slept in the wood
and, meeting Plum, the thing she had given her to mail back
to the steamship agent.
He had taken her arm.
The house stood above the great sweep of the lawn.
Seeing it for the first time, she had held her breath. But he
had been with her and she had not dared, had not wanted to
loosen the touch of his hand. He had moved her up the steps,
past the tangle of junipers and the thorns, into darkness.
When he had closed the wide doors, she had stood perfectly
still. She had made herself smile because her hopes had been
so much greater than the worst of her dread.
The house was enormous. For a few hours she had been
alone in it with him. From the start she had been aware of
the quiet. She had gone carefully from room to room, knowing that whenever she heard a board creak or a door pull to,
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WINTERKING
it had been Wykeham. He had said no other word to her and
when he had gone into the village, she had simply waited.
The room he had given her had a close, sweetish smell.
Nora guessed it had been ages since anyone had slept there.
Steeling herself, she poked into corners and knocked on the
plaster. There were only cobwebs and silences. But there was
slut’s wool under the bed and grime on the windows. She had
let in the air. A little breeze (here there was always a breeze,
she had noticed, either blowing or just about to) made the
dusty shutters creak. She discovered bed linen folded on one
of the shelves in the closet. In a trunk there were blankets.
Nonetheless she did not set to work. Instead she stood at the
open window. The trees along the drive obscured the approach to the house. Yet, if she stood there, he would be able to see her when he came up from the gate. The window
would shine like a beacon. She need show no sign of her
presence. The lamps lit her face. In the light her skin had a
gentle radiance. Although she was tired, she held her head
proudly. Turned to the proper angle, the line of her neck, she
knew, was inviting. That much had not changed.
She felt a strange giddiness. She thought of the long,
glowing evenings when she had strolled through the streets
of her village. After the bleakness of winter the world then
had seemed unbelievably light. The brightness had touched
the golden hairs on her neck. Boldly, she had walked under
the eyes of the sailors. “Let us come with you,” they had
called to her. But though her heart pounded, she had looked
ahead steadily. When they are old men, she had thought
joyfully, and I myself am an old woman, they will remember
this moment. Yet, when she had come to the end of the pier,
she had realized that her beauty must vanish if flushed and
out of breath she were forced to climb the street again past
them. Gravely she had loosened her dress from her shoulders. When she leapt, it must have appeared to the sailors that she had plunged to her death in the sea.
While they had searched for her, she had scrambled up
on the rocks. She had tied a kerchief over her hair and, when
the last of the men had gone, had returned by another village
to her mother’s house. Seeing her, the quiet old woman,
abandoned herself by a sailor, had said nothing. When Nora
slept she would mend the tears where the dress had caught
and torn on the rocks.
The Hill and the Tower
87
Her mother had clear dark eyes, like her own. Once a
year, on her birthday, a man from the town would ride out to
deliver a letter. Nora would stand by her chair as the old
woman tried to decide whether she would open it. The
letters from other years lay sealed on a table beside her cot.
But always her mother would shake her head. For the
briefest moment her eyes would flash with defiance. “No,
child,” she would say this time as she had said the last, “you
are gift enough.”
A door slammed. But there was no tread on the stair.
Just the wind.
Nora gathered the bedding. When she had finished,
because he had still not come, she climbed up and propped
her elbows on the pillow. Staring down at herself, she saw
how ludicrously little there was of her and, even beyond the
kick of her feet, how much bed. I am as small as this beside
him, she thought as if she were the child, passing lightly over
the fact that while he had money to give away steamship
tickets, he was a boy really and still in school. To her mind he
simply did not seem so. He was taller, for one thing, than any
man she had known; the directness of his look matched his
bearing. Abruptly, without a young man’s shyness, presuming
an intimacy as though by right, he had reached out his hand
to her.
Toward midnight she woke.
She had wriggled out of her skirt. Having no other
clothing, she had not switched on the lamp but had found the
stair to the upper story by tracing her fingers carefully along
the wall. The air was cool on her skin. Somewhere other
windows must have been open. She took the steps two at a
time. She was excited by the prospect of his finding her, this
time deliberately, naked. More immediately, she thought of
his bed. She would be warm there, warm, safe and high
under the eaves of his house. It was surely the best place to
wait for him, the one place he was certain to come. She
wondered whether he would be tired or if tramping about in
the night would leave him restless. Either would be agreeable, provided he slipped in beside her. She could content herself with touching his hand or, should it please hi m. . . Nora
smiled at the darkness. The door to his room opened with a
reassuring sigh.
*
*
*
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WINTERKING
Wykeham cut across the dark meadow. He took the
shortest path, passing quickly among the caretakers’ sheds.
The roofs had fallen. Vines and tendrils obscured the stones
just as thick tufts of grass now grew in the best garden beds.
Wykeham grunted without truly noticing. Long ago the roses
had turned into lawn. Unconcerned, he vaulted over a wall.
There was an open stretch for a hundred yards and then more
trees. He ducked under the branches. At last, against the
blackness of the hill, he saw the stables. He remembered he
had not met the hostler Longford had hired. He knew he
ought to check on the mare. He did not permit himself
another glance at the house. She would be waiting in any
case. He entered the tackroom hurriedly and took a brush
from the shelf, disturbed that there was so little time now
that he had need of it.
It did not matter that he had other lives. In each he
seldom had the use of more than a do
zen years. Too soon
friends with whom he had no hope of lingering began to
notice the remarkable preservation of his changeless face.
Sometimes, unwilling to renounce affection, he had stayed.
But there is no welcome for an ageless man among grown
children and enfeebled wives. Now and then he had invented
his own death. More often he had simply turned his back.
The longest voyages, to Maui and around the Horn, even
under sail, were short to him. Afterward there were other
years on land, at Heidelberg, at Oxford twice, at Yale, nights
in the crowded libraries and peaceful mornings in the empty
lecture halls, brief years among young men who themselves
were swiftly gone to other lives. He was well aware such
moments were a dream, crammed with the kind of promise
which came, by rights, to nothing. He turned aside advice,
declined— kindly when he could— offers from old men who,
startled by his learning, saw him as the heir to labors that had
cost them, without conclusion, half their lives. He knew he
was no scholar. He had merely read the books before. Under
their tutelage he had begun a thousand things and finished
little. When he came back to the old university towns, those
men were dead. He went back less often. But the shallow
trough of the Housetenuc drew him. Now, after barely fifty
years away, still haunted by its miles of squalid woods and low
gray hills, he had reentered the valley. I must get on to
Devon, he had thought when he had finally set foot again in
The Hill and the Tower
8 9
the harbor. And although for the better part of three years,
kept to his studies, he had not gone, it had been the reason
he had settled on the college. From his rooms, looking out
over the court, there had been a perfect view of the river.
Certainly, there had been other reasons. Callaghan, for one,
had been getting old and would need to be replaced. Duties
had lain ahead of him, as they had each time he moved the
trust from one hand to the next. Yet he had waited for this
moment, indeed had welcomed it and in much the same way
he had welcomed the sight of the unkempt and empty
house. It was not a matter of choice. Houseman was dead.
Longford, though a fool, was proving less a fool than he
should have been. His wife was dangerous. Charon Hunt,
despite'its evident impossibility, was killing Indians. Wykeham
let out a puzzled sigh. He gave a perfunctory pat to the
mare’s dry rump and wondered, this time, how he would
manage.
He closed the door on the stalls and set the latch.
Tomorrow he must introduce himself to the hostler. Then too,
the roof of John Chance’s cottage needed patching. That at
least was no great trouble. In the morning he would send
George Tennison down with fresh pitch and shingles, a
reward for keeping Nora from the wood while Hunt was in it.
Wykeham smiled speculatively. He wondered what the old
lame bachelor thought of her. It had not been something he
would have asked with Nora standing, half unclothed, between them. In his own kitchen he had asked the crow. But he had got no useful answer. He hoped she was pretty. It
made no difference that he found her so. His own tastes had
been set too long ago. In the markets of Maracaibo or in the
streets of Lyme he had too often turned back to stare at
women whom the men walking with him, captains of her
Majesty’s ships and London merchants, found common or, at
the very least, unworthy of the effort of looking back. It had
helped, of course, that he had seen that face before. In
profile there had been no mistaking it. He had not been more
than a few moments in her husband’s shop when he recognized the tilt of the head, the exquisite line of the neck. He had had no need to ask why she was so far from home. His
idea of justice was clear and literal: given sufficient opportunity, all things returned. Life especially came back, even across cold tides and oceans.
9 0
WINTERKING
He had come up onto the porch and through the massive
front doors. It was late; the house was quiet. On the first
landing he looked in at Nora’s room. The breeze, still pouring
in through the small window, had driven off some of the dust
and dampness. Even in the shadows he saw that the bed was
made and that she had gone from it. He unbuttoned his coat.
Knowing more or less what to expect, he climbed the last
stairs to his room. She was asleep on his pillow, the edge of
her tangled hair curled around her throat. He tried to
imagine how she had looked at fifteen or twenty. It did not
matter. He was not disappointed.
For a moment he stood silently, unwilling to wake her.
Her face had turned toward him, dreaming. Her dark eyes
were open. He supposed there was sadness in those eyes but,
although there was every right to be, there was no despair.
Nora moved suddenly, driving her mouth against the pillow.
He knew she could only add to his troubles, now when he
had troubles enough. Yet he was comforted. He would protect her if he could.
When she had quieted, he retraced his steps. Reluctantly,
the hour pressing him, with too many matters demanding his
attention and too little time, Wykeham closed the door
noiselessly, letting his daughter sleep.
III.
Faces in the Earth
1.
Dr. Holmes spread the photographs along the examination
table in his surgery. The emulsion was still wet and he
handled each print with a pair of small forceps. He had drawn
up the lamp as he had when he had examined the corpse.
Not that he saw much improvement. In the print’s glossy
surface he could make out little more than his own disappointed reflection. At one com er of the print, caught at the edge, there was a slender filament. Because of the magnification it might have been an eyelash or no more than the grain in the negative. There was honestly no way of knowing. He
lay aside his pipe. Smoke no longer curled from the bowl.
Muttering, he pushed another photograph under the lamp.
He had had such hopes. When he had set up his camera,
Houseman’s body had only just begun to stiffen. Such opportunities were in fact rare. He had attended a hundred deaths during the course of his practice. But nearly always there had
been family. He had seen to the living. At such times they
could not be expected to view his investigations with the
detachment of science. Normally, hours later, he had had to
prop open the taut lids in the narrow back rooms of morticians’ chambers, had to focus his lenses on pupils that had already hardened. By then the image of whatever had held
the sight at life’s last moments had gone. But there had been
no one to mourn Houseman, merely his employer, who,
although he had shown a delicate interest, had not interrupted
his journey. Peering crossly over his spectacles, Dr. Holmes
edged the lamp nearer.
He was the same Dr. Holmes who wrote verses and
sketches for T he A tlantic, the same whimsical sketches and
doggerel which in a u
niverse not too far distant had earned
9 3
9 4
WINTERKING
him a minor but respected place in American letters. But
here (having been bom merely a decade, not a century,
before the Great War) his writings seemed only quaint, the
easy Latinity of his prose an impediment to popular acceptance. Instead he had made his mark as a physician and would be longer remembered as an anatomist.
Nonetheless, the outline of his early life was here not
substantially altered. He had been bom on the outskirts of
Boston and had spent the first years of his manhood on
Montgomery Place. After a dozen years of marriage, he
removed to Bristol and the house inherited from his maternal
great-grandfather. He knew Cornelius Mathews and James T.
Fields but not Melville or Hawthorne, although assuredly
their places were taken by others. (For in one form or
another both are indispensable. A New World cannot be
made without them.) Only his later years pulled atom by
atom away from his other existence. In this world he would
not die in his own bed and his oldest son, with whom he
shared his name and many of his sympathies, would never
become a supreme court justice. I will not judge which life
better suited the man. In either world there had always been
some who suspected that beneath the gentle satire of the
poems, the strained didactism of the novels, there was a pure
vein of venom. It is certain that here that same bitterness had
quietly deepened, had given him an added astringency and,
when at last it was required of him, a sterner, more courageous imagination. Whatever the cause, something was changed in him. Perhaps there is no defense against doubt. At least it
is not as unusual as it may seem that a man who felt himself
nourished by the regard of an intelligent woman, buoyed and
uplifted by the affection of able, caring children, devoted his
private hours to the study of the possibility that all life, his
own included, was without meaning. In any event, he did not
dismiss the next photograph although at first glance it appeared
much the same as the rest.
He was sitting still, deep in thought. After a while, with
a weary swipe of his hand, he pulled the lamp nearer.