When man builds a house on Dartmoor, he plants trees to protect it.
Sometimes they perish; sometimes they endure to shield his dwelling
from the riotous and seldom-sleeping winds. Round the abode of
Humphrey Baskerville stood beech and pine. A solid old house lurked
beneath, like a bear in its grove. People likened its face to the
master's--the grey, worn, tar-pitched roof to his hair, and the small
windows on either side of the door to his eyes. A few apple trees were
in the garden, and currant and gooseberry bushes prospered indifferent
well beneath them. Rhubarb and a row of elders also flourished here.
The latter were permitted to exist for their fruit, and of the berries
Mrs. Susan Hacker, Humphrey's widowed housekeeper, made medicinal
preparations supposed to possess value.
Hawk House lay under a tor, and behind it the land towered to a stony
waste that culminated in wild masses of piled granite, where the rowan
grew and the vixen laid her cubs. From this spot one might take a
bird's-eye survey of Humphrey Baskerville's domain. Gold lichens had
fastened on the roof, and the folk conceited that since there was no
more room in the old man's house for his money, it began to ooze out
through the tiles.
Humphrey himself now sat on a favourite stone aloft and surveyed his
possessions and the scene around them. It was his custom in fair
weather to spend many hours sequestered upon the tor. Dwarf oaks grew
in the clitters, and he marked the passage of the time by their
activity, by the coming of migrant birds, by the appearance of the
infant foxes and by other natural signs and tokens. Beneath Hawk House
there subtended a great furze-clad space flanked with woods. The Rut,
as it was called, fell away to farms and fertile fields, and terminated
in a glen through which the little Torry river passed upon her way to
Plym. Cann Wood fringed the neighbouring heights, and far away to the
south Laira's lake extended and Plymouth appeared--faint, grey,
glittering under a gauze of smoke.
The tor itself was loved by hawks and stoats, crows and foxes. Not a
few people, familiar with the fact that Humphrey here took his solitary
walks and kept long vigils, would affirm that he held a sort of
converse with these predatory things and learned from them their winged
and four-footed cunning. His sympathy, indeed, was with fox and hawk
rather than with hunter and hound. He admitted it, but in no sense of
companionship with craft did he interest himself in the wild creatures.
He made no fatuous imputation of cruelty to the hawk, or cunning to the
fox. His bent of mind, none the less, inclined him to admire their
singlehanded fight for life against long odds; and thus he, too, fell
into fallacy; but his opinion took a practical turn and was not swiftly
shattered, as such emotions are apt to be, when the pitied outlaw
offers to the sentimental spectator a personal taste of his quality.
If a hawk stooped above his chickens, he felt a sort of contempt for
the screaming, flying fowls--let the hawk help itself if it could--and
did not run for his gun. Indeed, he had no gun. As men said of this
or that obstinate ancient that he had never travelled in a train, so
they affirmed, concerning Humphrey Baskerville, that he had never in
his life fired a gun.
He sat and smoked a wooden pipe and reflected on the puzzles of his
days. He knew that he was held in little esteem, but that had never
troubled him. His inquiring spirit rose above his fellow-creatures;
and he prided himself upon the fact, and did not see that just in this
particular of a flight too lofty did he fail of the landmarks and sure
ground he sought.
A discontent, in substance very distinguished and noble, imbued his
consciousness. He was still seeking solace out of life and a way that
should lead to rest. But he could not find it. He was in arms on the
wrong road. He missed the fundamental fact that from humanity and
service arise not only the first duties of life, but also the highest
rewards that life can offer. He had little desire towards his
fellow-creatures. His mind appeared to magnify their deficiencies and
weakness. He was ungenerous in his interpretation of motives. Mankind
awoke his highest impatience. He sneered at his own shortcomings
daily, and had no more mercy for the manifold disabilities of human
nature in general. In the light of his religion and his learning, he
conceived that man should be by many degrees a nobler and a wiser thing
than he found him; and this conclusion awoke impatience and a fiery
aversion. He groped therefore in a blind alley, for as yet service of
man had not brought its revelation to his spirit, or opened the portals
of content. He failed to perceive that the man who lives rationally
for men, with all thereby involved in his duty to himself, is
justifying his own existence to the limit of human capacity.
Instead, he fulfilled obligations to his particular God with all his
might, and supposed this rule of conduct embraced every necessity. He
despised his neighbour, but he despised himself also. Thus he was
logical, but such a rule of conduct left him lonely. Hence it came
about that darkness clothed him like a garment, and that his kind
shunned him, and cared not to consider him.
He sat silent and motionless. His gift of stillness had often won some
little intimate glimpse of Nature, and it did so now. A fox went by
him at close quarters. It passed absorbed in its own affairs,
incautious and without fear. Then suddenly it saw him, braced its
muscles and slipped away like a streak of cinnamon light through the
stones.
It made for the dwarf oaks beneath the head of the tor, and the watcher
saw its red stern rise and its white-tipped brush jerk this way and
that as it leapt from boulder to boulder. A big and powerful fox--so
Humphrey perceived; one that had doubtless stood before hounds in his
time, and would again.
Arrived at the confines of the wood, the brute hurried himself no more;
but rested awhile and, with a sort of highwayman insolence, surveyed
the object of alarm. Then it disappeared, and the man smiled to
himself and was glad that he had seen this particular neighbour.
At the poultry-house far below, moved Mrs. Hacker. Viewed from this
elevation she presented nothing but a sun-bonnet and a great white
square of apron. She wore black, and her bust disappeared seen thus
far away, though her capacious person might be noted at a mile. Susan
Hacker was florid, taciturn, and staunch to her master. If she had a
hero, it was Mr. Baskerville; and if she had an antipathy, Miss Eliza
Gollop stood for that repugnance.
Of Susan it might be said that she was honest and not honest. In her
case, though, she would have scorned to take a crust; she listened at
doors. To steal a spoon was beyond her power; but to steal information
not intended for her ears did not outrage her moral sense. Her rare
triumphs were concerned with Humphrey's ragged wardrobe; and when she
could prevail with him to buy a new suit of clothes, or burn an old
one, she felt the day had justified itself.
Now, through the clitters beneath him, there ascended a man, and
Humphrey prepared to meet his nephew. He had marked Rupert speak with
Mrs. Hacker and seen her point to the tor. It pleased the uncle that
this youth should sometimes call unasked upon him, for he rated Rupert
as the sanest and usefulest of his kindred. In a sense Rupert pleased
Humphrey better than his own son did. A vague instinct to poetry and
sentiment and things of abstract beauty, which belonged as an
ingredient to Mark's character, found no echo in his father's breast.
"I be come to eat my dinner along with you and fetch a message for
Mark," began the young man. "Mr. Masterman's meeting, to tell
everybody about the play, will be held in the parish room early next
month, and parson specially wants you and Mark to be there. There's an
idea of reviving some old-fangled customs. I dare say 'tis a very good
idea, and there will be plenty to lend a hand; but I doubt whether Mark
will dress up and spout poetry for him--any more than I would."
"He means to perform 'St. George' next Christmas and invite the
countryside," said Mr. Baskerville. "Well, one man's meat is another
man's poison. He's young and energetic. He'll carry it through
somehow with such material as lies about him. The maidens will all
want to be in it, no doubt."
"I think 'tis foolery, uncle."
"You think wrong, then. Ban't always foolery to hark back to old ways.
He's got his ideas for waking the people up. You and me might say,
'don't wake 'em up'; but 'tisn't our business. It is his business, as
a minister, to open their eyes and polish their senses. So let him try
with childish things first--not that he'll succeed, for he won't."
"Then what's the good of trying?"
"The man must earn his money."
"Fancy coming to a dead-alive hole like this! Why, even Jack Head from
Trowlesworthy--him as works for Mr. Luscombe--even he laughs at Shaugh."
"He's a rare Radical, is Head. 'Tis the likes of him the upper people
don't want to teach to read or to think--for fear of pickling a rod for
themselves. But Head will be thinking. He's made so. I like him."
"He laughed at me for one," said Rupert; "and though I laughed back, I
smarted under his tongue. He says for a young and strapping chap like
me to stop at Cadworthy doing labourer's work for my father, be a
poor-spirited and even a shameful thing. He says I ought to blush to
follow a plough or move muck, with the learning I've learnt. Of
course, 'tis a small, mean life, in a manner of speaking, for a man of
energy as loves work like I do."
Mr. Baskerville scratched his head with the mouthpiece of his pipe, and
surveyed Rupert for some time without speaking.
Then he rose, sniffed the air, and buttoned up his coat.
"We'll walk a bit and I'll show you something," he said.
They set out over Shaugh Moor and Rupert proceeded.
"I do feel rather down on my luck, somehow--especially about Milly
Luscombe. It don't seem right or fair exactly--as if Providence wasn't
on my side."
"Don't bleat that nonsensical stuff," said his uncle. "You're the sort
that cry out to Providence if you fall into a bed of nettles--instead
of getting up quick and looking for a dock-leaf. Time to cry to
Providence when you're in a fix you can't get out of single-handed. If
you begin at your time of life, and all about nothing too, belike
'twill come to be like the cry of 'Wolf, wolf!' and then, when you
really do get into trouble and holloa out, Providence won't heed."
"Milly Luscombe's not a small thing, anyway. How can I go on digging
and delving while father withstands me and won't hear a word about her?"
"She's too good for you."
"I know it; but she don't think so, thank the Lord."
"Your father's a man that moves in a groove. Maybe you go safer that
way; but not further. The beaten track be his motto. He married late
in life, and it worked very well; so it follows to his narrow mind that
late in life is the right and only time to marry."
"I wish you'd tell him that you hold with Milly and think a lot of her.
Father has a great opinion of your cleverness, I'm sure."
"Not he! 'Tis your uncle Nathan that he sets store by. Quite natural
that he should. He's a much cleverer man than me, and knows a lot more
about human nature. See how well all folk speak of him. Can't you get
him your side? Your father would soon give ear to you if Uncle Nathan
approved."
"'Tis an idea. And Uncle Nat certainly be kind always. I might try
and get him to do something. He's very friendly with Mr. Saul
Luscombe, Milly's uncle."
"How does Luscombe view it?"
"He'll be glad to have Milly off his hands."
"More fool him then. For there's no more understanding girl about."
"So Jack Head says. Ban't often he's got a good word for anybody; but
he's told me, in so many words, that Milly be bang out of the common.
He said it because his savage opinions never fluster her."
They stood on Hawk Tor, and beneath them stretched, first, the carpet
of the heath. Then the ground fell into a valley, where water meadows
spread about a stream, and beyond, by woods and homesteads, the earth
ascended again to Shaugh Prior. The village, perched upon the apex of
the hill, twinkled like a jewel. Glitter of whitewash and rosy-wash
shone under the grey roofs; sunlight and foliage sparkled and
intermingled round the church tower; light roamed upon the hills,
revealing and obscuring detail in its passage. To the far west, above
deep valleys, the world appeared again; but now it had receded and
faded and merged in tender blue to the horizon. Earth spread before
the men in three huge and simple planes: of heath and stone sloping
from north to south; of hillside and village and hamlet perched upon
their proper crest; of the dim, dreaming distance swept with the haze
of summer and rising to sky-line.
"That's not small--that's big," said Humphrey Baskerville. "Plenty of
room here for the best or worse that one boy can do."
But Rupert doubted.
"Think of the world out of sight, uncle. This bit spread here be
little more than a picture in its frame."
"Granted; but the frame's wide enough to cage all that your wits will
ever work. You can run here and wear your fingers to the bone without
bruising yourself against any bars. Go down in the churchyard and take
a look at the Baskerville slates--fifty of 'em if there's one: your
grandfather, your great-uncle, the musicker, and all the rest. And
every man and woman of the lot lived and died, and suffered and
sweated, and did good or evil within this picture-frame."
"All save the richest--him that went to foreign parts and made a
fortune and sent back tons of money to father and you and Uncle Nat."
Humphrey laughed.
"Thou hast me there!" he said. "But don't be discontented. Bide a bit
and see how the wind blows. I'm not against a man following the spirit
that calls him; but wait and find out whether 'tis a true voice or only
a lying echo. What does Milly say?"
"'Tis Milly have put the thought into me, for that matter. She's
terrible large in her opinions. She holds that father haven't got no
right to refuse to let us be tokened. She'd come and talk to him, if
I'd let her. A regular fear-nothing, she is."
"What would she have you do?"
"Gird up and be off. She comes of a very wandering family, and, of
course, one must allow for that. I've nought to say against it. But
they can't bide in one spot long. Something calls 'em to be roaming."
"The tribe of Esau."
They talked on, and Rupert found himself the better for some caustic
but sane counsel.
"'Tis no good asking impossibilities from you, and I'm the last to do
it," said Humphrey. "There are some things we can't escape from, and
our characters are one of them. There's no more sense in trying to run
from your character than in trying to run from your shadow. Too often
your character is your shadow, come to think on it; and cruel black at
that. But don't be impatient. Wait and watch yourself as well as
other people. If these thoughts have been put in your head by the
girl, they may not be natural to you, and they may not be digested by
you. See how your own character takes 'em. I'm not against courting,
mind, nor against early marriages; and if this woman be made of the
stuff to mix well and close with your own character, then marry her and
defy the devil and all his angels to harm you. To take such a woman is
the best day's work that even the hardest working man can do in this
world. But meantime don't whine, but go ahead and gather wisdom and
learn a little about the things that happen outside the
picture-frame--as I do."
They turned presently and went back to dinner.
Rupert praised his uncle, and declared that life looked the easier for
his advice.
"'Tis no good being called 'The Hawk' if you can't sharpen your wits as
well as your claws," said the old man. "Yes--you're astonished--but I
know what they call me well enough."
"I knocked a chap down last Sunday on Cadworthy bridge for saying it,"
declared Rupert.
"Very thoughtful and very proper to stand up for your family; but I'm
not hurt. Maybe there's truth in it. I've no quarrel with the
hawks--or the herons either--for all they do eat the trout. By all
accounts there was birds to eat trout afore there was men to eat 'em.
We humans have invented a saying that possession is nine points of the
law; but we never thought much of that when it comed to knocking our
weaker neighbours on the head--whether they be birds or men."
"You've made me a lot more contented with the outlook, anyway."
"I'm glad to hear it. Content's the one thing I'd wish you--and wish
myself. I can't see the way very clear yet. Let me know if ever you
come by it."
"You! Why, you'm the most contented of any of us."
"Come and eat, and don't talk of what you know nought," said Mr.
Baskerville.
They went through the back yard of the homestead presently, where a
hot, distinctive odour of pigs saturated the air. As they passed by,
some young, very dirty, pink porkers grunted with fat, amiable voices
and cuddled to their lean mother, where she lay in a lair of ordure.
"That's content," explained Humphrey; "it belongs to brainless things,
and only to them. I haven't found it among men and women yet, and I
never count to. Rainbow gold in this world. Yet, don't mistake me,
I'm seeking after it still."
"Why seek for it, if there's no such thing, uncle?"
"Well may you ask that. But the answer's easy. Because 'tis part of
my character to seek for it, Rupert. Character be stronger than
reason's self, if you can understand that. I seek because I'm driven."
"You might find it after all, uncle. There must be such a thing--else
there'd be no word for it."
The older sighed.
"A young and hopeful fashion of thought," he said. "But you're out
there. Men have made up words for many a fine, fancied thing their
hearts long for; but the word is all--stillborn out of poor human hope."
He brooded deep into his own soul upon this thought and spoke little
more that day. But Mark was waiting for his dinner when they returned,
and he and Rupert found themes in common to occupy them through the
meal.
The great project of the new vicar chiefly supplied conversation.
Rupert felt indifferent, but Mark was much interested.
"I'm very willing to lend a hand all I can, and I expect the parish
will support it," he said. "But as for play-acting myself, and taking
a part, I wouldn't for all the world. It beats me how anybody can get
up on a platform and speak a speech afore his fellow-creatures
assembled."
"The girls will like it," foretold Rupert.
"Cora Lintern is to play a part," declared Mark; "and no doubt she'll
do it amazing well."
Rupert was up in arms at once.
"I should think they'll ask Milly Luscombe too. She's got more wits
than any of 'em."
"She may have as much as Cora, but not more, I can assure you of that,"
answered Mark firmly.
He rarely contradicted a statement or opposed an assertion; but upon
this great subject his courage was colossal.