HERON DYKE AND ITS INMATES.
The Denisons--or Denzons, as they used formerly to spell their
name--were one of the oldest families in that part of Norfolk in which
Heron Dyke was situated. They could trace back their descent in a
direct line as far as the reign of Henry the Third, but beyond that
their pedigree was lost in the mists of antiquity. Who was the first
member of the family that settled at Heron Dyke, and how he came by
the estate, were moot points which it was hardly likely would ever be
satisfactorily cleared up after such a lapse of time. The Denisons had
never been more than plain country squires. Several female members of
the family had married people of title, but none of the males had ever
held anything more than military rank. James the Second had offered a
barony to the then head of the family, and the second George a
baronetcy to the Squire of that day, but both offers had been
respectfully declined.
No family in the county was better known, either by name or
reputation, than the Denisons--the "Mad Denisons," as they were often
called, and had been called any time these three hundred years. Not
that any of them had ever been charged with lunacy, or had been shut
up in a madhouse; but they had always been known as an excitable,
eccentric race, full of "queer notions," addicted to madcap pranks and
daredevil feats, such as seldom failed to astonish and sometimes
frighten their quiet neighbours, and had long ago earned for them the
unenviable sobriquet mentioned above.
A Gilbert Denison it was who, in the reign of William and Mary,
wagered a hundred guineas that on a certain fifth of November he would
have a bigger bonfire than his near friend and neighbour, Colonel
Duxberry. A bigger bonfire he certainly had, for with his own hand he
fired three of the largest hayricks on the farm, and so won the wager.
A later Squire Denison it was who, when his father died and he should
have come into the estate, was nowhere to be found, and did not turn
up till two years afterwards. He had quarrelled with his parents and
run away from home; and he was ultimately found earning his living as
bare-back rider in a country circus. He it was who, when his friend
the clown called upon him a year or two later to beg the loan of a
sovereign, dressed the man up in one of his own suits and introduced
him to his guests at table as a distinguished traveller just returned
from the East. Old Lord Fosdyke, who sat next the clown at dinner and
was much taken with him, made a terrible to-do when he was told of the
hoax that had been played off upon him: ever afterwards he refused to
speak or recognise Mr. Denison in any way.
Two other heads of the family lost their lives in duels; one of them
by the hand of his dearest friend, with whom he had had a difference
respecting the colour of a lady's eyebrows: the other by a stranger,
with whom he had chosen to pick a quarrel "just for the fun of the
thing." There was an old distich well known to the country-folk for
twenty miles round Heron Dyke, which sufficiently emphasised the
popular notion of the family's peculiarities. It ran as under:
"Whate'er a Denzon choose to do,
Need ne'er surprise nor me nor you."
The existing mansion at Heron Dyke was the third which was known to
have been built on the same site, or in immediate proximity to it. The
present house bore the date 1616, the one to which it was the
successor having been destroyed by fire. There was a tradition in the
family that the whilom lord of Heron Dyke set fire to the roof-tree of
the old mansion with his own hand, hoping by such summary method to
exorcise the ghost of a girl dressed in white and having a red spot on
her breast, which would persist in rambling through the upper chambers
of the house during that weird half-hour when the daylight is dying,
and night has not yet come. He had lately brought home his bride, and
the young wife vowed that she would go back to her mother unless the
ghost were got rid of. It is to be presumed that the means adopted
proved effectual, since there seems to be no further record of the
girl in white ever having put in an appearance afterwards.
The present mansion of Heron Dyke formed three sides of an oblong
square. A low, broad, lichen-covered wall made up the fourth side,
just outside of which ran the moat, a sluggish stream some ten or
dozen feet broad, spanned by an old stone bridge grey with age. The
house, which was but two stories high, was built of the black flints
so common in that part of the country, set in some sort of cement
which age had hardened to the consistency of stone. Here and there the
dull uniformity of the thick walls was relieved by diaper-patterned
pilasters of faded red brick. The high, narrow, lozenge-paned windows
were set in quaintly carved mullions of reddish freestone, the once
sharp outlines of which were now blurred with age. The steep,
high-pitched roof was covered with blue-black tiles which at one time
had been highly glazed, but the rains and snows of many winters had
dimmed their brightness, while in summer many-coloured mosses found
lodgment in their crevices and patched them here and there with
beauty. The tall, twisted chimneys of deep-red brick lent their warmth
and colouring to the picture.
There were dormer windows in the roofs of the two wings, but none in
the main building itself. The grand entrance was reached by a flight
of broad, shallow steps, crowned with a portico that was supported by
five Ionic columns: a somewhat incongruous addition to a house that
otherwise was thoroughly English in all its aspects. In front of the
house was a large oval lawn clumped with evergreens and surrounded by
a carriage-drive. The stables and domestic offices were hidden away at
the back of the house, where also were the kitchen-garden, the
orchard, and a walled-in flower garden, into which looked the windows
of Mr. Denison's favourite sitting-room. Just inside the low, broad
wall, that bounded the moat, grew seven tall poplars, known to the
cottagers and simple fisher-folk thereabouts, as "The Seven Maidens of
Heron Dyke."
The park was not of any great extent, the distance from the moat to
the lodge-gates on the high-road to Nullington being little more than
half a mile. But it was well wooded, and had nothing formal about it,
and such as it was it seemed a fitting complement to the old house
that looked across its pleasant glades. The house was built in a
sheltered hollow not quite half a mile from the sea. It was protected
on the north by a shelving cliff that was crowned with a lighthouse.
Behind it the ground rose gradually and almost imperceptibly for a
couple of miles, till the little town of Nullington was reached. Not
far from the southern corner of the Hall, was an artificial hillock of
considerable size and some fifty or sixty feet in height, which was
thickly planted with larches. The park in front of the house swept
softly upward to its outermost wall. Beyond that, was a protecting
fringe of young larches and scrub-wood, then the ever-shifting
sand-dunes, and, last of all, the cold grey waters of the North Sea.
For miles southward the land was almost as flat as a billiard-table.
The fields were divided by dykes which had been dug for drainage
purposes, with here and there a fringe of pollard willows to break the
dead level of monotony. The sea was invisible from the lower windows
of the Hall, but there was a fine view of it from the dormer windows
in the north wing; and here Ella Winter had had a room fitted up
especially for herself. Had you ever slept at Heron Dyke on a winter
night, when a strong landward breeze was blowing, you would have been
hushed to rest by one of nature's most majestic monotones. When you
lay down and when you arose, you would have had in your ears the
thunderous beat of countless thousands of white-lipped angry waves on
the long level reaches of sand, that stretched away southward for
miles as far as the eye could reach.
When Gilbert Denison, uncle to the present Squire of Heron Dyke, died
from the results of an accident, at his lodgings in Bloomsbury Square,
and when the strange nature of his will came to be noised abroad,
there was no lack of ill-advisers, who did their best to induce the
youthful heir to contest the validity of the dead man's last
testament. But young Gilbert knew that his uncle had never been saner
in his life than when he planned that particular proviso; besides
which, he was far too proud of his family name to drag the will of a
Denison through the mire of the law courts. His uncle, who had always
been looked upon as a sober, thrifty, bucolic-minded sort of man, had
not failed to redeem the family reputation for eccentricity at the
last moment, and young Gilbert had an idea that it was just the sort
of thing he himself would have been likely to do under similar
circumstances.
To the surprise of his boon companions, he quietly accepted the
situation thus forced upon him, and determined to make the best of it.
After giving a farewell symposium to the friends who had so kindly
helped him to sow his wild oats, London saw him no more for several
years. He settled down at Heron Dyke, and became as staid and sober a
specimen of a country gentleman as a Denison was ever likely to
become. His somewhat shattered constitution was now nursed with all
due care and tenderness. If it were in the power of man to defeat that
last hateful clause in his uncle's will, he was the man to do it.
"He will be sure to choose a wife before long," said all the anxious
matrons in the neighbourhood, who had eligible daughters waiting to be
mated. But Gilbert Denison did nothing of the kind. Years went by. He
became a middle-aged man, then an elderly man, and all hope of his
ever changing his bachelor condition gradually died out. There was a
constantly floating rumour in the neighbourhood of a romantic
attachment and a disappointment when he was young; but it might be
nothing more than an idle story. It was even said that the lady had
jilted him in favour of his cousin, and that there would have been
bloodshed between the two men had not the other Gilbert hurried away
with his young wife to Italy.
It was this other Gilbert, or his descendants, who would come in for
the Heron Dyke estates, should the present Squire not live to see his
seventieth birthday. There was no love lost between the senior and
junior branches of the family. The estrangement begun in early life
only widened with years. Its continuance, if not its origin, was
probably due to the Squire's hard and unforgiving disposition. The
other side had more than once made friendly overtures to the head of
the house: but the Squire would have none of them. He hated the whole
"vile crew," root and stump, he said; and if any one of them ever
dared to darken his threshold, he vowed that he would shoot him
without compunction. It was Squire Denison's firm and fixed belief
that the spies sometimes seen around his house--for spies he declared
them to be--were emissaries of his relatives, sent to see whether he
was not likely to die before the all-important birthday.
We made the Squire's acquaintance at his interview with Captain
Lennox, after the return of the latter from London. His sixty-ninth
birthday was just over. Could he but live eleven months more, all
would be well. Ella Winter, in that case, would be heiress to all he
had to leave, for he should will it to her; and his hated cousin, and
his cousin's family, would be left out in the cold, as they deserved
to be. As everybody knew, the Squire had been more or less of an
invalid for many years; but latterly his complaint had assumed a
rather alarming character, and there were weeks together when he never
crossed the threshold of his own rooms. His disorder was a mortal
one--one that would most certainly carry him off at no very distant
date--but that was a fact known to himself and Dr. Spreckley alone.
For the last twenty years the Squire had not kept up an establishment
at the Hall in accordance with his income and position in the county.
There was Aaron Stone, his faithful old body-servant and major-domo,
and Aaron's wife, who was almost as old as he was. There was the old
couple's handsome grandson, Hubert, who was the Squire's steward,
bailiff, gamekeeper, and sometimes secretary and companion. There
were the gardener and his wife at the lodge on the Nullington road.
When to these were added a coachman, a stable-boy, and two or three
women-servants, the whole of the establishment was told. Mr. Denison
had not given a dinner-party for years; or, for the matter of that,
gone to one. Now and then an old acquaintance--such as the vicar, or
Sir Peter Dockwray, or Colonel Townson--would drop in unceremoniously,
and take the chance of whatever there happened to be for dinner; but
beyond such casual visitants, very little company was kept.
Mr. Denison had been compelled to give up horse-exercise some few
years ago. He took his airings in a lumbering, old-fashioned brougham,
which might have been stylish and handsome once. Very often nothing
occupied the shafts but a grey mare, that was nearly as lumbering as
the vehicle itself. Old Aaron could get its best paces out of it when
he drove it in the dog-cart to Nullington market and back. Ella Winter
had a young chestnut filly for riding, powerful yet gentle, for which
her uncle had given quite a fancy price. Another horse in the Squire's
stables was a big, serviceable hack, which Hubert Stone looked upon as
being for his sole use; indeed, no one but himself ever thought of
mounting it. He rode it here and there when about the Squire's
business; and sometimes, perhaps, when about his own. Better than all
else he liked to accompany Ella when she went out riding. He would be
dressed somewhat after the style of a gentleman farmer, in cut-away
coat, buckskins, and top-boots. He did not ride by the side of Ella as
an equal would have done, nor yet so far behind her as a groom. Many
were the comments passed by the gossips of Nullington when they
encountered Miss Winter and her handsome attendant cantering along the
country roads, or quiet lanes that led to nowhere in particular.
Mr. Denison was well seconded in his saving propensities by his old
servant, Aaron Stone. Aaron was born on the Heron Dyke estate, as had
been his ancestors before him for two hundred years. Thus it fell out
that, at the age of nineteen, he was appointed by the late Squire to
attend his nephew when he set out on the Grand Tour, and from that day
to the present he had never left him. There were many points of
similarity in the tempers and dispositions of master and man. Both of
them were obstinate, cross-grained men, with strong wills of their
own, and both of them were inclined to play the small tyrant as far as
their opportunities would allow. They grumbled at each other from
January till December, but were none the less true friends on that
account. No other person dare say to the Squire a tithe of the things
that Aaron said with impunity, and probably no other servant would
have put up with Mr. Denison's wayward humours and variable temper as
Aaron did. Twenty times a year the Squire threatened to discharge his
old servant as being lazy, wasteful, and good-for-nothing; and a month
seldom passed without Aaron vowing that he would pack up his old hair
trunk, and never darken the doors of Heron Dyke again. But neither of
them meant what he said.
Aaron's wife, Dorothy, had been a Nullington girl, and had heard
people talk about the Denisons of Heron Dyke ever since she could
remember anything. She was now sixty-five years old: a little,
withered, timid woman, slightly deaf, and very much in awe of her
husband. She believed in dreams and omens, and was imbued with all
sorts of superstitious fancies local to the neighbourhood and to the
Hall. Perhaps her deafness had something to do with her reticence of
speech, for she was certainly a woman of few words, who went about her
duties in a silent, methodical way, and did not favour strangers.
One son alone had blessed the union of Aaron and Dorothy. He proved to
be something of a wild spark, and ran away from home before he was
one-and-twenty. Subsequently he joined a set of strolling players, and
a year or two later he married one of the company. The young lady whom
he made his wife was reported to come of a good family, and, like
himself, was said to have run away from home. Anyhow, they did not
live long to enjoy their wedded happiness. Four years later the little
boy, Hubert, fatherless and motherless, was brought to Heron Dyke, and
then it was that Aaron Stone learnt for the first time that he had a
grandson.
The Squire was pleased with the lad's looks, and took pity on his
forlorn condition. He was sent to Easterby, and brought up by one of
the fishermen's wives, and when he was old enough he was put to a good
school, Mr. Denison paying all expenses. He always spent his holidays
at the Hall, and there it was, when he was about twelve years old,
that he first saw Ella, who was his junior by two years. Children, as
a rule, think little of the differences of social rank; at all events,
Ella did not, and she and handsome, bright-eyed Hubert soon became
great friends. Mr. Denison, if he noticed the intimacy, did not
disapprove of it. They were but children, and no harm could come of
it; and perhaps it was as well that Ella should have some one with her
besides Nero, the big retriever, when she went for her lonely rambles
along the shore, or gathering nuts and blackberries in the country
lanes. This pleasant companionship--both pleasant and dangerous to
Hubert, young though he still was--was renewed and kept up every
holiday season till the boy was sixteen. Then all at once there came a
great gap. Ella was sent abroad to finish her education, and although
she saw her uncle several times in the interim, Hubert, as it
happened, saw no more of her till she came home for good at nineteen
years of age. But before this came about, Hubert's own career in life
had been settled: at least, for some time to come. When the boy was
seventeen the Squire decided that he had had enough schooling, and
that it was time for him to set about earning his living. How he was
to set about it was apparently a point that required some
consideration; meanwhile, the boy stayed on at Heron Dyke. He was a
bold rider and a good shot. He wrote an excellent hand, and was quick
at figures. In fact, he was an intelligent, teachable young fellow,
who had made good use of his opportunities at school: moreover, he
could keep his temper well under control when it suited him to do so;
and, little by little, the Squire began to find him useful in many
ways. He himself was growing old, and Aaron got more stupid every year
that he lived. By-and-by nothing more was said about Hubert having to
earn a living elsewhere. He relieved the Squire of many duties that
had become irksome to him; and when a man of his years has once
dropped a burden he rarely cares to pick it up again. In short, by the
time Hubert was twenty years old he had made himself thoroughly
indispensable to the Squire.
No one but Hubert himself ever knew with what a fever of unrest he
awaited the coming home of Ella Winter. Had she forgotten him? Would
she recognise him after all these years? How would she greet him? He
tormented himself with a thousand vain questions. He knew now that he
loved her with all the devotion of a deeply passionate heart.
Miss Winter came at last. The moment her eyes rested on Hubert she
recognised him, changed though he was. She came up to him at once, and
held out her hand.
"When I see so many faces about me that I remember, then I know that I
am at home," she said, looking into his eyes with that sweetly serious
look of hers.
Hubert touched her hand, blushed, and stammered; although, as a
rule, there were few young men more self-possessed than he was.
At the same moment a chill ran through him. His heart seemed as
if it must break. The Ella of his day-dreams--the bright-eyed,
sunny-haired little maiden, who had treated him almost like a
brother, who had grasped his wrist when she leaped across the
runlets in the sands, who had imperiously ordered him to drag
down the tall branches of the nut-trees till the fruit was within
her reach--had vanished from his ken for ever. In her stead
stood Miss Winter, a strangely-beautiful young lady, whose face
was familiar and yet unfamiliar. As he saw and recognised this, he
saw, too, and recognised for the first time, the impassable gulf that
divided them. She was a lady, the daughter of an ancient house: he was
not a gentleman, and nothing could ever make him one, at least in her
eyes, or in the eyes of the world to which she belonged. He was a son
of the soil. He was Gurth the swineherd, and she was the Lady Rowena.
What folly, what madness, to love one so utterly beyond his reach!