Dickon Hawkes

Dickon Hawkes is the one-legged, hard-faced watchman of Bartram-Haugh, a figure who moves between the estate’s boundaries and its hidden passages. Known variously as Pegtop, Old Hawkes, and Zamiel, he presents himself as a keeper of rules and a poor working man, yet his vigilant presence serves the house’s secret violence. His treatment of his daughter Meg and his part in concealing Madame de la Rougierre’s murder reveal the gulf between his professed duties and his actual conduct.

Identity and Position

Dickon is identified by his wooden leg, sooty locks, swarthy face, and weather-stained red coat. Maud first meets him at the paling, where he insists that no one may enter without Silas Ruthyn’s permission and invokes his work of watching against poachers, thieves, gypsies, and robbing lads. He argues that he has followed the rules and has neither set the dogs on Maud nor struck her, while warning that the estate cannot be managed if people do as they please. His account makes him sound like a rough but dutiful gatekeeper; the firm boundary he enforces also gives him control over who can reach the grounds.

Milly calls him Pegtop Dickon and identifies him as the man who has stopped her pranks, including throwing stones at cattle. Their exchange shows that his authority over the estate is not new to her: he claims to have checked her before and threatens to do so again, while Milly answers with open defiance. The name Zamiel, which accompanies his recurring appearance among the trees, gives him an almost demonic aspect in Maud’s perception, but the narrative ultimately roots the menace in his human actions rather than the supernatural.

Violence Toward Meg and the Household

The menace of Dickon’s authority is most direct in his treatment of Meg. On a winter walk, Maud and Milly hear angry voices beneath the trees and see him strike his daughter twice with his stick, one blow across her head. Meg runs only a short distance before her father pursues her, cursing and brandishing the cudgel. Maud is so shocked that she can scarcely speak before protesting against the assault. The scene turns the earlier dispute over boundaries into a more intimate abuse of power: the man who insists that others obey rules uses physical force against someone under his own authority.

Later, when Maud and Milly visit the gravely ill Meg, Dickon appears in the yard, steadying himself with his stick and touching his hat gruffly to Maud. His manner remains surly, and he responds to concern for his daughter by complaining that her illness will cost him money, comparing the expense to that of her dead mother. He says that the doctor and a deaf older woman are doing no good, dismisses Meg’s painful efforts as foolishness, and accuses those around him of deceiving him. While speaking, he cuts tobacco on the window-stone, then pokes the deaf woman with his stick to signal for a light. The small, deliberate gesture echoes his violence toward Meg and makes his contempt part of the ordinary management of the household, not an isolated outburst.

Dickon also avoids intervening when conflict might endanger him. During a confrontation involving Dudley Ruthyn, Maud asks him to mediate and prevent a fight. He declines with a grin, observing that he would risk being beaten by both sides. His willingness to enforce Silas Ruthyn’s rules at the estate’s boundary contrasts with this refusal to use his position to protect others: his loyalty is practical and self-preserving, not a general commitment to order or safety.

Hidden Access and the Murder Plot

Dickon’s role as a watcher extends beyond the visible boundaries of Bartram-Haugh. When Maud and Mary Quince enter a dark room, Maud believes she has recognized Dudley Ruthyn’s foot on a ladder and insists that he has never gone aboard the ship as claimed. Mary sees only Dickon, standing by the door; his awkward, wooden-legged descent from the loft and his careful locking of the trapdoor provide a physical explanation for the concealed access, even as Maud’s certainty points toward a wider deception. Dickon dismisses the episode as a problem with flour stores and says he will speak to Silas Ruthyn, a mundane pretext that leaves the hidden passage unexplained.

Mary later discovers what the concealment serves. In Madame de la Rougierre’s room, she finds the window frame removed and sees Dickon supporting it while Madame talks by the hearth. A third figure, dressed like a glazier and carrying tools, is Dudley Ruthyn. Madame quickly steps between Mary and the men, explaining that they are repairing her broken glass and ushering Mary back into the passage. Dickon is thus present not merely as a servant who knows the house’s irregular spaces, but as a participant in the covert arrangement that brings Dudley into the room.

During Maud’s escape on the night of Madame’s murder, Dickon again appears in the house’s concealed routes. She sees him descending rapidly from an open skylight by a ladder, despite his maimed condition, then sitting on its lowest rung to tighten the strap of his wooden leg. Later, while she hides in a recess, he passes with a lantern, stops beside her hiding place, extinguishes its candle, and listens. He then moves stealthily toward the chamber where the crime has just occurred and its discovery is imminent. The movements make his apparent disability no simple obstacle: he can negotiate the hidden passages quickly enough to patrol them, while his lantern and practiced silence turn the architecture into an instrument of surveillance.

The novel’s final account confirms the extent of his complicity. Nearly a year after the events at Bartram, Dickon is arrested and imprisoned on an old charge connected to a crime committed in Lancashire. After conviction, he tries to save himself by disclosing the circumstances of the Frenchwoman’s unsuspected death. Her body is found where he indicates, buried in Bartram-Haugh’s inner court, and is later interred in the churchyard of Feltram after a legal inquiry. His disclosure spares Maud the ordeal of the witness box and the burden of keeping a dreadful secret, but it also confirms that the watchman who had claimed to guard the estate’s rules helped conceal a killing within its grounds. The double meaning of his role—as both gatekeeper and keeper of secrets—gives his earlier vigilance its darker significance.

Hidden Access and the Murder Plot

Dickon’s role as a watcher extends beyond the visible boundaries of Bartram-Haugh. When Maud and Mary Quince enter a dark room, Maud believes she has recognized Dudley Ruthyn’s foot on a ladder and insists that he has never gone aboard the ship as claimed. Mary sees only Dickon, standing by the door; his awkward, wooden-legged descent from the loft and his careful locking of the trapdoor provide a physical explanation for the concealed access, even as Maud’s certainty points toward a wider deception. Dickon dismisses the episode as a problem with flour stores and says he will speak to Silas Ruthyn, a mundane pretext that leaves the hidden passage unexplained.

Mary later discovers what the concealment serves. In Madame de la Rougierre’s room, she finds the window frame removed and sees Dickon supporting it while Madame talks by the hearth. A third figure, dressed like a glazier and carrying tools, is Dudley Ruthyn. Madame quickly steps between Mary and the men, explaining that they are repairing her broken glass and ushering Mary back into the passage. Dickon is thus present not merely as a servant who knows the house’s irregular spaces, but as a participant in the covert arrangement that brings Dudley into the room.

During Maud’s escape on the night of Madame’s murder, Dickon again appears in the house’s concealed routes. She sees him descending rapidly from an open skylight by a ladder, despite his maimed condition, then sitting on its lowest rung to tighten the strap of his wooden leg. Later, while she hides in a recess, he passes with a lantern, stops beside her hiding place, extinguishes its candle, and listens. He then moves stealthily toward the chamber where the crime has just occurred and its discovery is impending. His movements show that his disability does not prevent him from negotiating the hidden passages quickly enough to patrol them; his lantern and practiced silence make the architecture an instrument of surveillance.

The novel’s final account confirms the extent of his complicity. Nearly a year after the events at Bartram, Dickon is arrested and imprisoned on an old charge connected to a crime committed in Lancashire. After conviction, he tries to save himself by disclosing the circumstances of the Frenchwoman’s unsuspected death. Her body is found where he indicates, buried in Bartram-Haugh’s inner court, and is later interred in the churchyard of Feltram after a legal inquiry. His disclosure spares Maud the ordeal of the witness box and the burden of keeping a dreadful secret, but it also confirms that the watchman who had claimed to guard the estate’s rules helped conceal a killing within its grounds. The double meaning of his role—as both gatekeeper and keeper of secrets—gives his earlier vigilance its darker significance.