CHAPTER I

ACQUAINTING THE READER WITH A FAIR DOMAIN AND THE MAKER THEREOF

In that fortunate hour of English history, when the cruel sights and

haunting insecurities of the Middle Ages had passed away, and while, as

yet, the fanatic zeal of Puritanism had not cast its blighting shadow

over all merry and pleasant things, it seemed good to one Denzil

Calmady, esquire, to build himself a stately red-brick and freestone

house upon the southern verge of the great plateau of moorland which

ranges northward to the confines of Windsor Forest and eastward to the

Surrey Hills. And this he did in no vainglorious spirit, with purpose

of exalting himself above the county gentlemen, his neighbours, and

showing how far better lined his pockets were than theirs. Rather did

he do it from an honest love of all that is ingenious and comely, and

as the natural outgrowth of an inquiring and philosophic mind. For

Denzil Calmady, like so many another son of that happy age, was

something more than a mere wealthy country squire, breeder of beef and

brewer of ale. He was a courtier and traveler; and, if tradition speaks

truly, a poet who could praise his mistress's many charms, or wittily

resent her caprices, in well-turned verse. He was a patron of art,

having brought back ivories and bronzes from Italy, pictures and china

from the Low Countries, and enamels from France. He was a student, and

collected the many rare and handsome leather-bound volumes telling of

curious arts, obscure speculations, half-fabulous histories, voyages,

and adventures, which still constitute the almost unique value of the

Brockhurst library. He might claim to be a man of science, moreover--of

that delectable old-world science which has no narrow-minded quarrel

with miracle or prodigy, wherein angel and demon mingle freely, lending

a hand unchallenged to complicate the operations both of nature and of

grace--a science which, even yet, in perfect good faith, busied itself

with the mysteries of the Rosy Cross, mixed strange ingredients into a

possible Elixir of Life, ran far afield in search for the Philosopher's

Stone, gathered herbs for the confection of simples during auspicious

phases of the moon, and beheld in comet and meteor awful forewarnings

of public calamity or of Divine Wrath.

From all of which it may be premised that when, like the wise king, of

old, in Jerusalem, Denzil Calmady "builded him houses, made him gardens

and orchards, and planted trees in them of all kind of fruits"; when he

"made him pools of water to water therewith the wood that bringeth

forth trees"; when he "gathered silver and gold and the treasure of

provinces," and got him singers, and players of musical instruments,

and "the delights of the sons of men,"--he did so that, having tried

and sifted all these things, he might, by the exercise of a ripe and

untrammeled judgment, decide what amongst them is illusory and but as a

passing show, and what--be it never so small a remnant--has in it the

promise of eternal subsistence, and therefore of vital worth; and that,

having so decided and thus gained an even mind, he might prepare

serenely to take leave of the life he had dared so largely to live.

Commencing his labours at Brockhurst during the closing years of the

reign of Queen Elizabeth, Denzil Calmady completed them in 1611 with a

royal house-warming. For the space of a week, during the autumn of that

year,--the last autumn, as it unhappily proved, that graceful and

scholarly prince was fated to see,--Henry, Prince of Wales,

condescended to be his guest. He was entertained at Brockhurst--as

contemporary records inform the curious--with "much feastinge and many

joyous masques and gallant pastimes," including "a great slayinge of

deer and divers beastes and fowl in the woods and coverts thereunto

adjacent." It is added, with unconscious irony, that his host, being a

"true lover of all wild creatures, had caused a fine bear-pit to be

digged beyond the outer garden wall to the west." And that, on the

Sunday afternoon of the Prince's visit, there "was held a most mighty

baitinge," to witness which "many noble gentlemen of the neighbourhood

did visit Brockhurst and lay there two nights."

Later it is reported of Denzil Calmady, who was an excellent

churchman,--suspected even, notwithstanding his little turn for

philosophy, of a greater leaning towards the old Mass-Book than towards

the modern Book of Common Prayer,--that he notably assisted Laud, then

Bishop of St. David's, in respect of certain delicate diplomacies. Laud

proved not ungrateful to his friend; who, in due time, was honoured

with one of King James's newly instituted baronetcies, not to mention

some few score seedling Scotchfirs, which, taking kindly to the light

moorland soil, increased and multiplied exceedingly and sowed

themselves broadcast over the face of the surrounding country.

And, save for the vigorous upgrowth of those same fir trees, and for

the fact that bears and bear-pit had long given place to race-horses

and to a great square of stable buildings in the hollow lying back from

the main road across the park, Brockhurst was substantially the same in

the year of grace 1842, when this truthful history actually opens, as

it had been when Sir Denzil's workmen set the last tier of bricks of

the last twisted chimney-stack in its place. The grand, simple masses

of the house--Gothic in its main lines, but with much of Renaissance

work in its details--still lent themselves to the same broad effects of

light and shadow, as it crowned the southern and western sloping

hillside amid its red-walled gardens and pepper-pot summer-houses, its

gleaming ponds and watercourses, its hawthorn dotted paddocks; its

ancient avenues of elm, of lime, and oak. The same panelings and

tapestries clothed the walls of its spacious rooms and passages; the

same quaint treasures adorned its fine Italian cabinets; the same air

of large and generous comfort pervaded it. As the child of true lovers

is said to bear through life, in a certain glad beauty of person and of

nature, witness to the glad hour of its conception, so Brockhurst, on

through the accumulating years, still bore witness to the fortunate

historic hour in which it was planned.

Yet, since in all things material and mortal there is always a little

spot of darkness, a germ of canker, at least the echo of a cry of

fear--lest life being too sweet, man should grow proud to the point of

forgetting he is, after all, but a pawn upon the board, but the sport

and plaything of destiny and the vast purposes of God--all was not

quite well with Brockhurst. At a given moment of time, the diabolic

element had of necessity obtruded itself. And, in the chronicles of

this delightful dwelling-place, even as in those of Eden itself, the

angels are proven not to have had things altogether their own gracious

way.

The pierced stone parapet, which runs round three sides of the house,

and constitutes, architecturally, one of its most noteworthy features,

is broken in the centre of the north front by a tall, stepped and

sharply pointed gable, flanked on either hand by slender, four-sided

pinnacles. From the niche in the said gable, arrayed in sugar-loaf hat,

full doublet and trunk hose, his head a trifle bent so that the tip of

his pointed beard rests on the pleatings of his marble ruff, a

carpenter's rule in his right hand, Sir Denzil Calmady gazes

meditatively down. Delicate, coral-like tendrils of the Virginian

creeper, which covers the house walls, and strays over the bay windows

of the Long Gallery below, twine themselves yearly about his ankles and

his square-toed shoes. The swallows yearly attempt to fix their gray,

mud nests against the flutings of the scallop-shell canopy sheltering

his bowed head; and are yearly ejected by cautious gardeners armed with

imposing array of ladders and conscious of no little inward reluctance

to face the dangers of so aerial a height.

And here, it may not be unfitting to make further mention of that same

little spot of darkness, germ of canker, echo of the cry of fear, that

had come to mar the fair records of Brockhurst For very certain it was

that among the varying scenes, moving merry or majestic, upon which Sir

Denzil had looked down during the two and a quarter centuries of his

sojourn in the lofty niche of the northern gable, there was one his

eyes had never yet rested upon--one matter, and that a very vital one,

to which had he applied his carpenter's rule the measure of it must

have proved persistently and grievously short.

Along the straight walks, across the smooth lawns, and beside the

brilliant flower-borders of the formal gardens, he had seen generations

of babies toddle and stagger, with gurglings of delight, as they

clutched at glancing bird or butterfly far out of reach. He had seen

healthy, clean-limbed, boisterous lads and dainty, little maidens laugh

and play, quarrel, kiss, and be friends again. He had seen ardent

lovers--in glowing June twilights, while the nightingales shouted from

the laurels, or from the coppices in the park below--driven to the most

desperate straits, to visions of cold poison, of horse-pistols, of

immediate enlistment, or the consoling arms of Betty the housemaid, by

the coquetries of some young lady captivating in powder and patches, or

arrayed in the high-waisted, agreeably-revealing costume which our

grandmothers judged it not improper to wear in their youth. He had seen

husband and wife, too, wandering hand in hand at first, tenderly

hopeful and elate. And then, sometimes, as the years lengthened,--they

growing somewhat sated with the ease of their high estate,--he had seen

them hand in hand no longer, waxing cold and indifferent, debating

even, at moments, reproachfully whether they might not have invested

the capital of their affections to better advantage elsewhere.

All this and much more Sir Denzil had seen, and doubtless measured, for

all that he appears so immovably calm and apart. But that which he had

never yet seen was a man of his name and race, full of years and

honours, come slowly forth from the stately house to sun himself,

morning or evening, in the comfortable shelter of the high, red-brick,

rose-grown garden walls. Looking the while, with the pensive

resignation of old age, at the goodly, wide-spreading prospect. Smiling

again over old jokes, warming again over old stories of prowess with

horse and hound, or rod and gun. Feeling the eyes moisten again at the

memory of old loves, and of those far-away first embraces which seemed

to open the gates of paradise and create the world anew; at

remembrances of old hopes too, which proved still-born, and of old

distresses, which often enough proved still-born likewise,--the whole

of these simplified now, sanctified, the tumult of them stilled, along

with the hot, young blood which went to make them, by the kindly torpor

of increasing age and the approaching footsteps of greatly reconciling

Death.

For Sir Denzil's male descendants, one and all,--so says tradition, so

say too the written and printed family records, the fine monuments in

the chancel of Sandyfield Church, and more than one tombstone in the

yew-shaded church-yard,--have displayed a disquieting incapacity for

living to the permitted "threescore years and ten," let alone

fourscore, and dying decently, in ordinary, commonplace fashion, in

their beds. Mention is made of casualties surprising in number and

variety; and not always, it must be owned, to the moral credit of those

who suffered them. It is told how Sir Thomas, grandson of Sir Denzil,

died miserably of gangrene, caused by a tear in the arm from the antler

of a wounded buck. How his nephew Zachary--who succeeded him--was

stabbed during a drunken brawl in an eating-house in the Strand. How

the brother of the said Zachary, a gallant young soldier, was killed at

the battle of Ramillies in 1706. Dueling, lightning during a summer

storm, even the blue-brown waters of the Brockhurst Lake in turn claim

a victim. Later it is told how a second Sir Denzil, after hard fighting

to save his purse, was shot by highwaymen on Bagshot Heath, when riding

with a couple of servants--not notably distinguished, as it would

appear, for personal valour--from Brockhurst up to town.

Lastly comes Courtney Calmady, who, living in excellent repute until

close upon sixty, seemed destined by Providence to break the evil chain

of the family fate. But he too goes the way of all flesh, suddenly

enough, after a long run with the hounds, owing to the opening of a

wound, received when he was little more than a lad, at the taking of

Frenchtown under General Proctor, during the second American war. So he

too died, and they buried him with much honest mourning, as befitted so

kindly and honourable a gentleman; and his son Richard--of whom more

hereafter--reigned in his stead.