There were other people beside Mrs. Carlyon who had cause to remember the night of Ella Winter's birthday party.
As already stated, Captain Lennox and Mr. Bootle left the house together. They were walking along, arm-in-arm, smoking their cigars, when whom should they run against but Philip Cleeve, who had bid them goodnight half an hour before.
"Why, Phil, my boy, what are you doing here?" cried Mr. Bootle. "I thought you were off to roost long ago."
"I am taking a quiet stroll before turning in," answered Philip. "I thought the cool night air would do my head good, and I'm happy to say it has."
"Then you can't do better than come along to my hotel with Mr. Bootle," said Lennox. "Let us have one last bottle of champagne together."
Freddy seconded the proposition; and Philip, who seldom wanted much persuasion where pleasure was concerned, yielded after a minute's hesitation. He had come up to London for a few days' holiday, and there was no reason why he should not enjoy himself.
A cab was called, and the three gentlemen presently found themselves at the Captain's rooms. There they sat chatting, and smoking, and drinking champagne, till the clock on the chimney-piece chimed the half hour past two. By this time they had all had more wine than was good for them, Mr. Bootle especially so, while Philip was, perhaps, the coolest of the three.
"We'll see him into a hansom, and then we shall be sure that he will get home all right," whispered Lennox to Philip as they assisted Freddy downstairs.
A hansom being quickly found, Mr. Bootle was safely stowed inside and the requisite instructions given to the driver. Then they all shook hands and bade each other goodnight with a promise to meet again next afternoon.
It was near noon the next day, and Freddy Bootle was still in bed, when some one knocked at his door, and Captain Lennox entered the room, looking well, but lugubrious.
"Not up yet!" he said, in anything but a cheerful voice. "I breakfasted three hours ago."
"My head is like a lump of lead," moaned Freddy, "and my tongue is as dry as a parrot's."
"Have you any soda; and where's your liqueur-case? I'll concoct you a dose that will soon put you right."
"You'll find lots of things in the other room: but Lennox, how fresh you look. You might never have had a headache in your life."
"You are not so well seasoned as I am," returned Captain Lennox. "What business do you suppose has brought me here?"
"Not the remotest idea; unless it be to gaze on the wretched object before you."
"Oh, you'll be well enough in an hour or two. Are you aware that I had my pocket picked of my purse while in your company last night--or, rather, early this morning?"
Mr. Bootle stared at his friend in blank surprise, but said nothing.
"It contained all the cash I had with me," continued the Captain; "and I must ask you to lend me a few pounds to pay my hotel bill and carry me home."
"Was there much in it?"
"A ten-pound note, and some gold and silver."
Mr. Bootle was sitting up in bed by this time, his hands pressed to his head, his eyes fixed intently on the Captain. "By Jove!" he said, at last, and there was no mistaking his tone of utter surprise. "Do you know, Lennox, that your telling me about this brings back something to my mind that I had forgotten till now. I believe my pocket also was picked. I have a vague recollection of not being able to find my watch and chain when I got home this morning, but I tumbled into bed almost immediately, and thought nothing more of the matter till you spoke now. Just hand me my togs and let me have another search."
Mr. Bootle examined his clothes thoroughly; but both watch and chain were gone. The two men looked at each other in dismay. "It was the governor's watch," said Freddy, dismally, "and I am uncommonly sorry it's gone. Bad luck to the scoundrel who took it!"
"You had better get up and have some breakfast, and then we'll go down to Scotland Yard. The police may be able to trace it into the hands of some pawnbroker."
"I shall never see the old watch again," said Mr. Bootle, with a melancholy shake of the head. "And as for breakfast--don't mention the word."
At this juncture, Philip Cleeve came in, looking none the worse for last night's vigil. The story of the double loss was at once poured into his ears by Freddy. Captain Lennox noticed how genuinely surprised he looked.
"Youlost nothing, I suppose?" asked the Captain, in a grumbling tone, as if he could not get over his own loss.
"Why, no," said Philip, with a laugh. "I had nothing about me worth taking--only a little loose silver and this ancient turnip--a family relic, three or four generations old." As he spoke he drew from his pocket a large old-fashioned silver watch, of the kind our great-grandfathers used to carry, and held it up for inspection. "Almost big enough for a family clock, is it not?" he asked, with another laugh, as he put it away again.
There was silence for a minute or two, Lennox seeming lost in a reverie. Then he turned to Bootle. "Do you recollect at what time during the evening you looked at your watch last?"
"My memory as to what happened during the latter part of the evening is anything but clear," said Freddy. "I seem to have a hazy recollection of pulling out my watch and looking at it when the clock in your room chimed something or other."
"That would be half-past two," interrupted Lennox.
"But I can't be quite sure on the point. How about your purse?--portemonnaie, or whatever it was?"
"As to that, I only know that I missed it first when I came to undress. I might have been relieved of it hours before, or only a few minutes."
"Don't you remember two or three rough-looking fellows hustling past us," asked Philip, "as we stood talking for a minute or two at the street corner just before Bootle got into the cab?"
Lennox shook his head. "I can't say that I recollect the circumstance you speak of," he answered.
"But I recollect the affair quite well," said Philip, positively. "One of the men nearly hustled me into the gutter. Nasty low-looking fellows they were. I think it most likely that they were the pickpockets."
The Captain shrugged his shoulders, remarking that all he knew was that his money was gone; he crossed the room, and began to stare out of the window. Freddy Bootle was looking dreadfully uncomfortable.
"I am sorry that I can't join you fellows at dinner to-day," said Philip. "From a letter I received this morning I find I must get back home at once."
"Oh, nonsense!" both of them interrupted. "That won't do, Cleeve."
"It must do. My mother has written for me. She's ill."
"You can go down the first thing tomorrow," said Captain Lennox.
"A few hours can't make much difference," added Bootle.
Philip shook his head. "When it comes to the mother writing and confessing she is ill--which she seldom will confess--I know she is ill, and that she expects me. Perhaps I'll look in again on my way to the train," added Philip, as he went out. "I have a call or two to make first."
In the course of the day the Captain and Mr. Bootle went down to Scotland Yard and reported their losses: though they both seemed to feel that their doing so was little better than a farce. They dined together afterwards, and went to the theatre.
Next day the Captain's brief visit came to an end, and he travelled back to Norfolk.
The evening clock was striking nine as Captain Lennox reached Nullington station. He secured the solitary fly in waiting, and told the driver to take him to Heron Dyke. Late though it was, he thought he would tell the Squire that his gift had reached Miss Winter safely. What with this robbery and that, it behoved people to be cautious. Dismissing the fly when he reached the gates of Heron Dyke, Captain Lennox took out his cane and a small handbag, and rang at the door.
Everything looked dark about the old house. There was not a glimmer of light anywhere. The shrill clang of the bell broke the deathlike silence rudely. Presently came the sound of footsteps, and then a man's voice could be heard as he grumbled and muttered to himself, while two or three heavy bolts were slowly, and, as it were, reluctantly withdrawn. "It's old Aaron Stone, and he's in a deuce of a temper, as he always is," said the Captain to himself. The great oaken door seemed to groan as it turned on its hinges. It was only opened to the extent of a few inches, and was still held by the heavy chain inside.
"Who are you, and what do you mean by disturbing honest folk at this time o' night?" queried a harsh voice from within.
"I am Captain Lennox. I have just returned from London, and I should like a few words with the Squire, if not too late."
"The Squire never sees anybody at this time o' night. You had better come in the morning, Captain."
"I cannot come in the morning. I have a message for Mr. Denison from his niece, Miss Winter."
"Why couldn't you say so at first?" grumbled the old man. He seemed to hesitate for a moment or two; then he turned on his heel and went slowly away down the echoing corridor; a distant door was heard to shut, and after that all was silence again.
Captain Lennox turned away and whistled a few bars under his breath. The night was cloudy, and few stars were visible. Here and there one of the huge clumps of evergreens, in front of the house, was dimly discernible; and against the background of clouded sky, the black outlines of the seven tall poplars, that stood on the opposite side of the lawn, were clearly defined. A brooding quiet seemed to rest over the whole place, except that every now and then, borne from afar, came the sound of a faint murmurous monotone, at once plaintive and soothing. It was the voice of the incoming tide, as it washed softly up the distant sands.
Captain Lennox shivered, although the night was warm and oppressive. "What a dismal place!" was his thought. "I Would far sooner live in my own pretty little cottage than in this big, rambling, draughty, haunted old house--and it has a haunted look, if house ever had--and itis, if all tales are true. What was that?" he asked himself, with a start. It seemed to him that he had heard the sound of stealthy footsteps behind him. His fingers tightened on his cane, and he peered cautiously around: but nothing was to be seen or heard. Again came the noise of a far-off door, and again the sound of slow, heavy footsteps across the stone-floor of the hall. Next minute the chain was unloosed, and the great door opened a few inches wider. Then was the rugged face and bent form of old Aaron Stone discernible, as he cautiously held the door with one hand, while the other held a lighted lantern.
"You may come in," he said, in ungracious accents. "As you have brought a message from Miss Ella, the Squire will see you; but it's gone nine o'clock, Captain, and he never likes to be kept up past his time--ten."
Captain Lennox stepped inside, and the door behind him was rebolted and chained. The dim light from the lantern flung fantastic shadows on wall and ceiling as Aaron went slowly along, but left other things in semi-darkness. At the end of a passage leading from the opposite side of the hall was a door, which the old man opened with a pass-key, and they turned to the right along a narrower passage, into which several rooms opened. At one of these doors Aaron halted, opened it, and announced Captain Lennox.
The room into which Lennox was ushered, after leaving his handbag and cane outside, was a large apartment, with a sort of sombre stateliness about it which might be imposing, but which was certainly anything but cheerful. Cheerful, indeed, on the brightest day in summer it was hardly possible that this room could be. Its panelled walls were black with age. Here and there a family portrait, dim and faded, and incrusted with the accumulated grime of generations, stared out at you with ghostly eyes from the more ghostly depths of blackness behind it. Whatever colour the ceiling might once have been, it was now one dull pervading hue of dingy brown. Two or three Indian rugs on the floor; a bureau carved with leaves and flowers, from the midst of which queer faces peeped out; two or three tables with twisted legs; an Oriental jar or two, and a few straight-backed chairs, formed, with two exceptions, the sole furniture of the room. The windows were high and narrow, and three in number. They were filled with small lozenge-shaped panes of thick greenish glass, set in lead; through which even the brightest summer sunlight penetrated with a chastened lustre, as though it were half afraid to venture inside. It was night now, and in the silver sconces over the chimney-piece, and in the silver candlesticks on one of the tables, some half-dozen wax-candles were alight; but in that big gloomy room their feeble flame seemed to do little more than make darkness visible. High up in the middle window was the family escutcheon in painted glass, and below it a scroll with the family motto:What I have, I hold.
The two exceptions in question were these: a high screen of dark stamped leather, the figures on which, originally gilt, showed nothing more than a patch here and there of their whilom lustre; and a huge chair, which was also covered with the same dark leather. In this chair was seated the Master of Heron Dyke. The screen was drawn up behind him, and although the evening was close on midsummer, in the big open fireplace, in front of which he was sitting, the stump of a tree was slowly burning; crackling and sputtering noisily every now and then, as though defying till the last the flames that were gradually eating it away.
Gilbert Denison sat in this huge leather chair, propped up with cushions, his legs and feet covered with a bear-skin. The reader at first might hardly have believed him to be the fine young fellow he saw in London, sitting by his uncle's death-bed, Gilbert the elder. But forty-five years suffice to change all of us. He was a very tall, lean, gaunt old man now: so lean, indeed, that there seemed to be little more of him than skin and bone. His head was covered with a black velvet skull-cap, underneath which his long white hair straggled almost on his shoulders. He had bold, clearly-cut features, and must, at one time, have been a man of striking appearance. His cheeks had now fallen in, and his long, straight nose looked pinched and sharp. His white eyebrows were thick and heavy, but the eyes below them gleamed out with a strange, keen, crafty sort of intelligence, that was hardly pleasant to see in one so old. He was clad, this evening, in a dressing-gown of thick grey duffel, from the sleeves of which protruded two bony hands, their long fingers just now clutching the arms of the easy-chair as though they never meant to loosen their hold again. Finally, on one lean, yellow finger gleamed a splendid cat's-eye ring, set with brilliants.
Captain Lennox walked slowly forward till he stood close by the invalid's chair: for an invalid Mr. Denison was, and had been for years. The latter spoke first. "So--so! You have got back from town, eh, and brought me a message from my little girl?" said he, looking up at his visitor with sharp, crafty eyes. "I hope that the London smoke and London hours have not quite robbed her of her country roses? But sit down--sit down."
"Miss Winter could hardly look better than when I saw her the day before yesterday," replied Captain Lennox. "She desired me to present her dearest love to you, and to tell you that she would not fail to be back at Heron Dyke on Monday evening next."
"I knew she would be back to her time," chuckled the Squire. "Though, for that matter, she might have stayed another fortnight had she wanted to."
He had a harsh, creaking, high-pitched voice, as though there were some hidden hinges somewhere that needed oiling; and it was curious to note that Aaron Stone's voice, probably from listening to that of his master for so many years, had acquired something of the same harsh, high-pitched tone, only with more of an inherent grumble in it. At a little distance, a person not in the habit of hearing either of them speak frequently, might readily have mistaken one voice for the other.
"I fancy, sir," said the Captain, "that Miss Winter is never so happy as when at Heron Dyke. She strikes me as being one of those exceptional young ladies who care but little for the gaieties and distractions of London life."
"Aye, the girl's been happy enough here, under the old roof-tree of her forefathers. She has been brought up on our wild east coast, and our cold sea winds have made her fresh and rosy. She is not one of your town-bred minxes, who find no happiness out of a ball-room or a boudoir. But she is a child no longer, and girls at her age have sometimes queer fancies and desires, that come and go beyond their own control. There have been times of late when I have fancied my pretty one has moped a little. Maybe, her wings begin to flutter, and to her young eyes the world seems wide and beautiful, and the old nest to grow duller and darker day by day."
His voice softened wonderfully as he spoke thus of Ella. He sat and stared at the burning log, his chin resting on his breast. For the moment he had forgotten that he was not alone.
Captain Lennox waited a minute and then coughed gently behind his hand. The Squire turned his head sharply. "Bodikins! I'd forgotten all about you," he said. "Well, I'm glad you've called to-night, Captain, though if you had come much later I should have been between the blankets. We are early birds at the Dyke. And she was looking well, was she!--forgetting a bit, maybe, the trouble here. You gave my little present safely into her hands, eh?"
"I did not fail to deliver it speedily, as I had promised. Miss Winter will tell you herself how delighted she was with its contents."
The Squire chuckled and rubbed his bony hands. "Ay, ay, she was pleased, was she? I shall have half a dozen kisses for it, I'll be bound."
The Captain rose to go. "I thought you would like to hear of her welfare, Squire, or I should not have intruded on you before tomorrow. And also that I had carried your present to her in safety. London seems full of mysterious robberies just now."
"It's always that; always that. I won't ask you to stay now," added the Squire; "you must drop in and see us another time. There's not much company comes to the Dyke nowadays. But at odd times a friend is welcome, eh? I've been thinking lately that perhaps my pretty one would be more lively if she saw more company: she finds it a bit drear, I fancy, since--since that matter in the winter. You, now, are young, but not too young; you have travelled, and seen the world, and you can talk. So you may call--once in a way, you know, eh--why not?"
As soon as Captain Lennox had gone Aaron came in. One by one, he slowly and with much deliberation extinguished the candles in the sconces over the chimney-piece, but not those on the table. He then proceeded to close and bar the shutters of the three high, narrow windows. It was a whim of Mr. Denison to have the windows of whatever room he might be sitting in left uncurtained and unshuttered till the last moment before retiring for the night. "I hate to sit in a room with its eyes shut," he used to say: and he never would do so if he could help it.
The clatter made by Aaron roused Mr. Denison from the reverie into which he had fallen. He lifted his head and watched Aaron bar the shutters of the last window. "As I drove home this afternoon, master," said Aaron, "I saw two strangers loitering about the park gates. They crossed the stile into the Far Meadow when they saw me, and then they slipped away behind the hedges."
"Ay, ay--spies--spies!" said the Squire. "They are at their old tricks again!--I've felt it for weeks. But we'll cheat them yet, Aaron--yes, we'll cheat them yet. Why, only an hour ago, when it was growing dark, just before you brought in the candles, as I sat looking out of the middle window, all at once I saw a man's face above the garden wall, staring straight into the room. I stared back at it, you may be sure. But at the end of two minutes or so, I could bear the thing no longer, so I up with my stick and shook it at the face, and next moment it was gone."
"I should like to shoot them--and them that send them!" exclaimed Aaron, viciously.
"They'll prowl about more than ever till the next eleven or twelve months have come and gone," said the Squire. "If they could see my coffin carried across the park to the old church, what a merry show that would be for them!--there'd be no more spying here then. That's ten o'clock striking. Put out the other candles and let us go."
Captain Lennox left the hall, carrying his cane and his little bag, and set off homewards. It was a balmy June evening, and the walk through the park would be a pleasant one. As soon as the door was shut behind him he proceeded to light a cigar, and, after crossing the lawn and the old bridge over the moat, he turned to the left and struck into a narrow footpath through the park, which would prove a shorter cut to the high road than the winding carriage-drive. Darkness and silence were around him: the stars gave but little light. He seemed to follow the pathway by instinct rather than by sight. It was a thinner line of grass that wound like a ribbon through the thicker grass of the park. His own footsteps were all but inaudible to him as he walked.
The pathway took a sudden turn round two gnarled thorn-trees, when all at once, and without a moment's warning, Captain Lennox found himself face to face with a dark-hooded figure--hooded and cloaked from head to foot--which might have sprung out of the ground, so silently and suddenly did it appear to his sight. The Captain, bold man though he was, felt startled, and an involuntary cry escaped his lips. The figure was startled too--it appeared to have been gazing intently at the windows of the house through the branches of the trees--and would have turned to run away. But Captain Lennox took a quiet step forward, and laid his hand upon its shoulder.
"Who are you?--and what are you doing here?" he sternly demanded.
The hood fell back, and in the dim starlight Captain Lennox could just make out the face of a woman, young and pale, her eyes cast pleadingly up to his own.
"Oh, sir, don't hold me!--don't keep me!" was the answer, given in a tone of wailing entreaty, though the voice was one of singular sweetness. "Please let me go!"
"What are you doing here?" he reiterated, still keeping his hold upon her. "What were you peeping at the house for?"
"I am looking for Katherine," whispered the girl. "I come here often to look for her."
"For Katherine!--and who is Katherine?" asked Captain Lennox. But the next moment he remembered the name, as being the one connected with that strange mystery that so puzzled Heron Dyke.
"For my sister," softly repeated the girl. "I do no harm, sir, in coming here to look for her."
"But, my good girl, she is not to be seen, you know; she never will be seen," he remonstrated, a shade of compassion in his tone.
"But I do see her," answered the girl, her voice dropped to so low a pitch that he could scarcely hear it. "I have seen her once or twice, sir; at her own window."
Perhaps Captain Lennox felt a little taken aback at the words. He did not answer.
"People say she must be dead; I know that," went on the speaker, in the same hushed tone. "Even mother says that it must be Katherine's ghost I see. But I think it is herself, sir. I think she is somewhere inside Heron Dyke."
If Captain Lennox felt a shade of something not agreeable creeping over him, he may be excused. The subject altogether bordered on the supernatural.
"My poor girl, had you not better go home and go to bed?" he said, compassionately. "You can do no possible good by wandering about here at this time of night."
"Oh, sir, I must wander; I must find out what has become of her," was the girl's pleading answer. "I can't rest night or day; mother knows I can't. When I go to sleep it is Katherine's voice that wakes me again."
"But----"
"Hark! what was that?" she suddenly cried out, laying her hand lightly, for protection, on the Captain's arm. And he started again, in spite of himself.
"I heard nothing," he said, after listening a moment.
"There it is again; a second scream. There were two screams, you know, sir--her screams--heard that snowy February night."
"But, my good girl, there were no screams to be heard now. It is your imagination. The air is as still as death."
Ere the words were well spoken, the girl was gone. She had vanished silently behind the thorn-trees. And Captain Lennox, after waiting a minute or two, and not feeling any the merrier for the encounter, pursued his walk across the park.
Suddenly, however, as a thought struck him, he turned to look at the windows of the house. They lay in the shade, gloomy and grim, no living person, no light, to be seen in any one of them.
"It is a curious fancy of hers, though," muttered the Captain to himself, as he wheeled round again and went on his way.
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."
"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!