The wheels died away down the drive while Lady Henrietta 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 balks of age-blackened oak. In the great old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled and snapped. Lady Henrietta 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 Lady Henrietta. '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 her dark face lit up with a girlish enthusiasm as she gazed about her. The light beat upon her where she stood, but long shadows trailed down the walls and hung like a black canopy above her. Barrymore had returned from taking our luggage to our rooms. She stood in front of us now with the subdued manner of a well-trained servant. She was a remarkable-looking woman, tall, handsome, with a square black mane 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 husband and I will be happy, Lady Henrietta, to stay with you until you have made your fresh arrangements, but you will understand that under the new conditions this house will require a considerable staff.'
'What new conditions?'
'I only meant, lady, that Lady Charlotte led a very retired life, and we were able to look after her wants. You would, naturally, wish to have more company, and so you will need changes in your household.'
'Do you mean that your husband 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, lady, and so does my husband. But to tell the truth, lady, we were both very much attached to Lady Charlotte, and her 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, lady, that we shall succeed in establishing ourselves in some business. Lady Charlotte's generosity has given us the means to do so. And now, lady, 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 gentlewomen 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 Lady Henrietta. '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 aunt got a little jumpy if she 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.
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 man, 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.
Chapter 7
The Stapletons of Merripit House
The fresh beauty of the following morning did something to efface from our minds the grim and gray impression which had been left upon both of us by our first experience of Baskerville Hall. As Lady Henrietta and I sat at breakfast the sunlight flooded in through the high mullioned windows, throwing watery patches of colour from the coats of arms which covered them. The dark panelling glowed like bronze in the golden rays, and it was hard to realize that this was indeed the chamber which had struck such a gloom into our souls upon the evening before.
'I guess it is ourselves and not the house that we have to blame!' said the baronet. 'We were tired with our journey and chilled by our drive, so we took a gray view of the place. Now we are fresh and well, so it is all cheerful once more.'
'And yet it was not entirely a question of imagination,' I answered. 'Did you, for example, happen to hear someone, a man I think, sobbing in the night?'
'That is curious, for I did when I was half asleep fancy that I heard something of the sort. I waited quite a time, but there was no more of it, so I concluded that it was all a dream.'
'I heard it distinctly, and I am sure that it was really the sob of a man.'
'We must ask about this right away.' She rang the bell and asked Barrymore whether she could account for our experience. It seemed to me that the pallid features of the butler turned a shade paler still as she listened to her mistress' question.
'There are only two men in the house, Lady Henrietta,' she answered. 'One is the scullery-maid, who sleeps in the other wing. The other is my husband, and I can answer for it that the sound could not have come from him.'