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“No, we have no news of any kind,” said Dr. Mortimer
in answer to my friend’s questions. “I can swear to one thing, and that is that
we have not been shadowed during the last two days. We have never gone out without keeping
a sharp watch, and no one could have escaped our notice.”
“You have always kept together, I presume?”
“Except yesterday afternoon. I usually give up one day to
pure amusement when I come to town, so I spent it at the Museum of the College of
Surgeons.”
“And I went to look at the folk in the park,” said
Baskerville. “But we had no trouble of any kind.”
“It was imprudent, all the same,” said Holmes,
shaking his head and looking very grave. “I beg, Sir Henry, that you will not go
about alone. Some great misfortune will befall you if you do. Did you get your other
boot?”
“No, sir, it is gone forever.”
“Indeed. That is very interesting. Well, good-bye,”
he added as the train began to glide down the platform. “Bear in mind, Sir Henry, one
of the phrases in that queer old legend which Dr. Mortimer has read to us and avoid the
moor in those hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted.”
I looked back at the platform when we had left it far behind
and saw the tall, austere figure of Holmes standing motionless and gazing after us.
The journey was a swift and pleasant one, and I spent it in
making the more intimate acquaintance of my two companions and in playing with Dr.
Mortimer’s spaniel. In a very few hours the brown earth had become ruddy, the brick
had changed to granite, and red cows grazed in well-hedged fields where the lush grasses
and more luxuriant vegetation spoke of a richer, if a damper, climate. Young Baskerville
stared eagerly out of the window and cried aloud with delight as he recognized the
familiar features of the Devon scenery.
[700]
“I’ve been over a good part of the world since I left it, Dr. Watson,” said
he; “but I have never seen a place to compare with it.”
“I never saw a Devonshire man who did not swear by his
county,” I remarked.
“It depends upon the breed of men quite as much as on the
county,” said Dr. Mortimer. “A glance at our friend here reveals the rounded
head of the Celt, which carries inside it the Celtic enthusiasm and power of attachment.
Poor Sir Charles’s head was of a very rare type, half Gaelic, half Ivernian in its
characteristics. But you were very young when you last saw Baskerville Hall, were you
not?”
“I was a boy in my teens at the time of my father’s
death and had never seen the Hall, for he lived in a little cottage on the South Coast.
Thence I went straight to a friend in America. I tell you it is all as new to me as it is
to Dr. Watson, and I’m as keen as possible to see the moor.”
“Are you? Then your wish is easily granted, for there is
your first sight of the moor,” said Dr. Mortimer, pointing out of the carriage
window.
Over the green squares of the fields and the low curve of a
wood there rose in the distance a gray, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim
and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a
long time, his eyes fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to
him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so
long and left their mark so deep. There he sat, with his tweed suit and his American
accent, in the corner of a prosaic railway-carriage, and yet as I looked at his dark and
expressive face I felt more than ever how true a descendant he was of that long line of
high-blooded, fiery, and masterful men. There were pride, valour, and strength in his
thick brows, his sensitive nostrils, and his large hazel eyes. If on that forbidding moor
a difficult and dangerous quest should lie before us, this was at least a comrade for whom
one might venture to take a risk with the certainty that he would bravely share it.
The train pulled up at a small wayside station and we all
descended. Outside, beyond the low, white fence, a wagonette with a pair of cobs was
waiting. Our coming was evidently a great event, for station-master and porters clustered
round us to carry out our luggage. It was a sweet, simple country spot, but I was
surprised to observe that by the gate there stood two soldierly men in dark uniforms who
leaned upon their short rifles and glanced keenly at us as we passed. The coachman, a
hard-faced, gnarled little fellow, saluted Sir Henry Baskerville, and in a few minutes we
were flying swiftly down the broad, white road. Rolling pasture lands curved upward on
either side of us, and old gabled houses peeped out from amid the thick green foliage, but
behind the peaceful and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky,
the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister hills.
The wagonette swung round into a side road, and we curved
upward through deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side, heavy
with dripping moss and fleshy hart’s-tongue ferns. Bronzing bracken and mottled
bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun. Still steadily rising, we passed over a
narrow granite bridge and skirted a noisy stream which gushed swiftly down, foaming and
roaring amid the gray boulders. Both road and stream wound up through a valley dense with
scrub oak and fir. At every turn Baskerville gave an exclamation of delight, looking
eagerly about him and asking countless questions. To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to
me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the
waning year. Yellow leaves carpeted the [701]
lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we
drove through drifts of rotting vegetation–sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature
to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles.
“Halloa!” cried Dr. Mortimer, “what is
this?”
A steep curve of heath-clad land, an outlying spur of the
moor, lay in front of us. On the summit, hard and clear like an equestrian statue upon its
pedestal, was a mounted soldier, dark and stern, his rifle poised ready over his forearm.
He was watching the road along which we travelled.
“What is this, Perkins?” asked Dr. Mortimer.
Our driver half turned in his seat.
“There’s a convict escaped from Princetown, sir.
He’s been out three days now, and the warders watch every road and every station, but
they’ve had no sight of him yet. The farmers about here don’t like it, sir, and
that’s a fact.”
“Well, I understand that they get five pounds if they can
give information.”
“Yes, sir, but the chance of five pounds is but a poor
thing compared to the chance of having your throat cut. You see, it isn’t like any
ordinary convict. This is a man that would stick at nothing.”
“Who is he, then?”
“It is Selden, the Notting Hill murderer.”
I remembered the case well, for it was one in which Holmes had
taken an interest on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the wanton
brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin. The commutation of his death
sentence had been due to some doubts as to his complete sanity, so atrocious was his
conduct. Our wagonette had topped a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the
moor, mottled with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors. A cold wind swept down from it and
set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man,
hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race
which had cast him out. It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness of the
barren waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky. Even Baskerville fell silent and
pulled his overcoat more closely around him.
We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We
looked back on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of
gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad tangle of the
woodlands. The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive
slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled
and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down
into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and
bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees. The
driver pointed with his whip.
“Baskerville Hall,” said he. 
Its master had risen and was staring with flushed cheeks
and shining eyes. A few minutes later we had reached the lodge-gates, a maze of fantastic
tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either side, blotched with
lichens, and surmounted by the boars’ heads of the Baskervilles. The lodge was a ruin
of black granite and bared ribs of rafters, but facing it was a new building, half
constructed, the first fruit of Sir Charles’s South African gold.
Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the
wheels were again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a
sombre tunnel [702] over our
heads. Baskerville shuddered as he looked up the long, dark drive to where the house
glimmered like a ghost at the farther end.
“Was it here?” he asked in a low voice.
“No, no, the yew alley is on the other side.”
The young heir glanced round with a gloomy face.
“It’s no wonder my uncle felt as if trouble were
coming on him in such a place as this,” said he. “It’s enough to scare any
man. I’ll have a row of electric lamps up here inside of six months, and you
won’t know it again, with a thousand candle-power Swan and Edison right here in front
of the hall door.”
The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house
lay before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of
building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch
clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil.
From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenellated, and pierced with many
loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A
dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose
from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke.
“Welcome, Sir Henry! Welcome to Baskerville Hall!”
A tall man had stepped from the shadow of the porch to open
the door of the wagonette. The figure of a woman was silhouetted against the yellow light
of the hall. She came out and helped the man to hand down our bags.
“You don’t mind my driving straight home, Sir
Henry?” said Dr. Mortimer. “My wife is expecting me.”
“Surely you will stay and have some dinner?”
“No, I must go. I shall probably find some work awaiting
me. I would stay to show you over the house, but Barrymore will be a better guide than I.
Good-bye, and never hesitate night or day to send for me if I can be of service.”
The wheels died away down the drive while Sir Henry and I
turned into the hall, and the door clanged heavily behind us. It was a fine apartment in
which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge baulks of
age-blackened oak. In the great old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a
log-fire crackled and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb
from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window of old stained glass,
the oak panelling, the stags’ heads, the coats of arms upon the walls, all dim and
sombre in the subdued light of the central lamp.
“It’s just as I imagined it,” said Sir Henry.
“Is it not the very picture of an old family home? To think that this should be the
same hall in which for five hundred years my people have lived. It strikes me solemn to
think of it.”
I saw his dark face lit up with a boyish enthusiasm as he
gazed about him. The light beat upon him where he stood, but long shadows trailed down the
walls and hung like a black canopy above him. Barrymore had returned from taking our
luggage to our rooms. He stood in front of us now with the subdued manner of a
well-trained servant. He was a remarkable-looking man, tall, handsome, with a square black
beard and pale, distinguished features.
“Would you wish dinner to be served at once, sir?”
“Is it ready?”
“In a very few minutes, sir. You will find hot water in
your rooms. My wife and I will be happy, Sir Henry, to stay with you until you have made
your fresh [703]
arrangements, but you will understand that under the new conditions this house will
require a considerable staff.”
“What new conditions?”
“I only meant, sir, that Sir Charles led a very retired
life, and we were able to look after his wants. You would, naturally, wish to have more
company, and so you will need changes in your household.”
“Do you mean that your wife and you wish to leave?”
“Only when it is quite convenient to you, sir.”
“But your family have been with us for several
generations, have they not? I should be sorry to begin my life here by breaking an old
family connection.”
I seemed to discern some signs of emotion upon the
butler’s white face.
“I feel that also, sir, and so does my wife. But to tell
the truth, sir, we were both very much attached to Sir Charles and his death gave us a
shock and made these surroundings very painful to us. I fear that we shall never again be
easy in our minds at Baskerville Hall.”
“But what do you intend to do?”
“I have no doubt, sir, that we shall succeed in
establishing ourselves in some business. Sir Charles’s generosity has given us the
means to do so. And now, sir, perhaps I had best show you to your rooms.”
A square balustraded gallery ran round the top of the old
hall, approached by a double stair. From this central point two long corridors extended
the whole length of the building, from which all the bedrooms opened. My own was in the
same wing as Baskerville’s and almost next door to it. These rooms appeared to be
much more modern than the central part of the house, and the bright paper and numerous
candles did something to remove the sombre impression which our arrival had left upon my
mind.
But the dining-room which opened out of the hall was a place
of shadow and gloom. It was a long chamber with a step separating the dais where the
family sat from the lower portion reserved for their dependents. At one end a
minstrel’s gallery overlooked it. Black beams shot across above our heads, with a
smoke-darkened ceiling beyond them. With rows of flaring torches to light it up, and the
colour and rude hilarity of an old-time banquet, it might have softened; but now, when two
black-clothed gentlemen sat in the little circle of light thrown by a shaded lamp,
one’s voice became hushed and one’s spirit subdued. A dim line of ancestors, in
every variety of dress, from the Elizabethan knight to the buck of the Regency, stared
down upon us and daunted us by their silent company. We talked little, and I for one was
glad when the meal was over and we were able to retire into the modern billiard-room and
smoke a cigarette.
“My word, it isn’t a very cheerful place,”
said Sir Henry. “I suppose one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the
picture at present. I don’t wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all
alone in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will retire early to-night,
and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in the morning.”
I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out
from my window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall door.
Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind. A half moon broke through
the rifts of racing clouds. In its cold light I saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of
rocks, and the long, low curve of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling that
my last impression was in keeping with the rest.
[704]
And yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet wakeful, tossing
restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would not come. Far away a
chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay
upon the old house. And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound
to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was the sob of a woman, the muffled,
strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow. I sat up in bed and
listened intently. The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house.
For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound
save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall.
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