The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(85)
And the fact was Wells had not been mistaken. He had tried several times during the long journey to Dartmoor to bring the topic up but had failed miserably. Fortunately, Jane had managed to lighten things up by asking Doyle about the match he had played at Lord’s with the Marylebone Cricket Club a few days earlier, an epic game that was the talk of the town, and Doyle had launched into a blow-by-blow account of bats hitting balls according to some whimsical rules only he appeared to understand. To cap it all, they were moving so ludicrously slowly that Wells was expecting the slumbering figure of the coachman to fall off his perch at any moment.
Dejected, he ignored Doyle’s exploits and glanced out of the window. Although they were still driving through pretty countryside, and the road was flanked with green meadows dotted with neat thatched cottages, Wells could feel a sadness descending on the landscape: the moor announced its presence like a brewing storm. If he pressed his forehead against the glass, he could make out an ominous line of hills in the distance, silhouetted against a sky so dark it resembled a swamp. And that desolate, gloomy place was where they were headed . . . Wells was no longer in any doubt: it was going to be an awful day.
After half an hour of negotiating narrow lanes bordered with ever more sinister pines and oaks, the carriage reached the top of a small knoll and came wearily to a halt. Doyle finally broke off his interminable story, and they all looked out of the windows. The ground sloped away into a deep hollow, and the dreamlike moor stretched before them like a threadbare carpet, a barren, endless expanse with only three or four buildings several miles apart and dotted with clusters of reddish rock and the odd crooked tree bent by the prevailing wind. The moor was solitude in earthly form, so to speak. Death had laid down its mantle here and was roaming the world naked.
“Brook Manor,” the coachman said in a somber voice, pointing with his whip at the first of the houses.
As they made their way down to the mansion, a gloomy silence descended on them, broken only by the sound of the horses’ hooves and the creak of the carriage wheels as they contemplated the colossal shape of the house towering before them: an impressive mass of stone from which two identical crenellated towers rose up into the darkening sky. To the right, the desolate moor stretched out, marked in the distance by what looked like a tiny hamlet and a couple of farms. Wells remembered that they were only four or five miles from Dartmoor prison, renowned throughout the land for its harsh regime. Moments later, the carriage ground to a halt outside the mansion’s impressive wrought-iron gate, flecked with rust and flanked by two dilapidated stone pillars.
The travelers stepped out of the carriage to take a closer look and to stretch their legs, but no sooner had their feet touched the ground than an icy gust of wind forced them to wrap their cloaks and coats around them. They approached the bars, shivering, and nervously contemplated the tree-lined driveway that stretched beyond the gates, at the end of which, enveloped in mist, was the mansion. It seemed to pulsate imperceptibly, like some malevolent creature brought back to life by an evil spell. For a few moments, they all remained silent, clutching the bars of the gate as if that gloomy hole were threatening to suck out their very souls. The wind buffeted them, whipping their clothes before sweeping down the driveway, transforming the fallen leaves into a flock of demented crows.
“If the devil himself wanted to meddle in the affairs of men, he couldn’t wish for a more perfect setting,” sighed Wells.
“I couldn’t agree with you more!” Doyle boomed, turning toward him. “Admit it, George: in spite of all your skepticism, if a gruesome hound were to appear on that driveway and come charging toward us, baring its teeth, wouldn’t you think it came directly from hell?”
“I expect so . . .”
Wells scanned the driveway nervously and couldn’t help remembering the Norfolk legend of Black Shuck, the big hairy dog that killed people with its eyes. Murray would need to spend a fortune on electric lightbulbs before Wells agreed to set foot in that dreadful house.
“Forgive me for butting in,” said the coachman, who had climbed down off his perch and approached them quietly, “but I tell you, if I saw an evil dog running toward me, the last thing I’d care about is where it came from. I’d run like a man possessed by the devil and hide behind the nearest door.”
They all looked at the coachman, slightly puzzled.
“Don’t you like dogs?” Jean inquired politely.
The old man shook his head vigorously.
“You wouldn’t believe how much I detest them, Miss Leckie. I’m afraid that anyone who was bitten by one as a child can never trust the perfidious creatures again.”
“It is true that a lot of people have an aversion to them,” Jane butted in, smiling sympathetically at the coachman. “But you have to admit some breeds are absolutely adorable, and harmless.”
The old man gazed at her for a few seconds in silence, smiling with a strange tenderness.
He chuckled at last. “They all have teeth, Mrs. Wells.”
“You’re quite right,” replied Jane, joining in his laughter.
“It’s too cold out here!” Wells then muttered, annoyed by his wife’s apparent empathy with Murray’s coachman. All of a sudden, he wondered what the devil they were doing in the middle of that godforsaken moor, enduring that icy cold as they discussed with the old fellow his fear of dogs. “I think we’d better wait for Emma and Montgomery inside the carriage.”