The Small House at Allington
He was close in small matters of money, and yet in certain family
arrangements he was, as we shall see, capable of much liberality. He
endeavoured to do his duty in accordance with his lights, and had
succeeded in weaning himself from personal indulgences, to which
during the early days of his high hopes he had become accustomed. And
in that matter of his unrequited love he had been true throughout.
In his hard, dry, unpleasant way he had loved the woman; and when at
last he learned to know that she would not have his love, he had been
unable to transfer his heart to another. This had happened just at
the period of his father's death, and he had endeavoured to console
himself with politics, with what fate we have already seen. A
constant, upright, and by no means insincere man was our Christopher
Dale,--thin and meagre in his mental attributes, by no means even
understanding the fulness of a full man, with power of eye-sight very
limited in seeing aught which was above him, but yet worthy of regard
in that he had realized a path of duty and did endeavour to walk
therein. And, moreover, our Mr. Christopher Dale was a gentleman.
Such in character was the squire of Allington, the only regular
inhabitant of the Great House. In person, he was a plain, dry man,
with short grizzled hair and thick grizzled eyebrows. Of beard, he
had very little, carrying the smallest possible gray whiskers, which
hardly fell below the points of his ears. His eyes were sharp and
expressive, and his nose was straight and well formed,--as was also
his chin. But the nobility of his face was destroyed by a mean mouth
with thin lips; and his forehead, which was high and narrow, though
it forbad you to take Mr. Dale for a fool, forbad you also to take
him for a man of great parts, or of a wide capacity. In height, he
was about five feet ten; and at the time of our story was as near to
seventy as he was to sixty. But years had treated him very lightly,
and he bore few signs of age. Such in person was Christopher Dale,
Esq., the squire of Allington, and owner of some three thousand a
year, all of which proceeded from the lands of that parish.
And now I will speak of the Great House of Allington. After all, it
was not very great; nor was it surrounded by much of that exquisite
nobility of park appurtenance which graces the habitations of most of
our old landed proprietors. But the house itself was very graceful.
It had been built in the days of the early Stuarts, in that style of
architecture to which we give the name of the Tudors. On its front
it showed three pointed roofs, or gables, as I believe they should
be called; and between each gable a thin tall chimney stood, the two
chimneys thus raising themselves just above the three peaks I have
mentioned. I think that the beauty of the house depended much on
those two chimneys; on them, and on the mullioned windows with which
the front of the house was closely filled. The door, with its jutting
porch, was by no means in the centre of the house. As you entered,
there was but one window on your right hand, while on your left there
were three. And over these there was a line of five windows, one
taking its place above the porch. We all know the beautiful old
Tudor window, with its stout stone mullions and its stone transoms,
crossing from side to side at a point much nearer to the top than
to the bottom. Of all windows ever invented it is the sweetest. And
here, at Allington, I think their beauty was enhanced by the fact
that they were not regular in their shape. Some of these windows were
long windows, while some of them were high. That to the right of the
door, and that at the other extremity of the house, were among the
former. But the others had been put in without regard to uniformity,
a long window here, and a high window there, with a general effect
which could hardly have been improved. Then above, in the three
gables, were three other smaller apertures. But these also were
mullioned, and the entire frontage of the house was uniform in its
style.
Round the house there were trim gardens, not very large, but worthy
of much note in that they were so trim,--gardens with broad gravel
paths, with one walk running in front of the house so broad as to
be fitly called a terrace. But this, though in front of the house,
was sufficiently removed from it to allow of a coach-road running
inside it to the front door. The Dales of Allington had always been
gardeners, and their garden was perhaps more noted in the county than
any other of their properties. But outside the gardens no pretensions
had been made to the grandeur of a domain. The pastures round the
house were but pretty fields, in which timber was abundant. There
was no deer-park at Allington; and though the Allington woods were
well known, they formed no portion of a whole of which the house was
a part. They lay away, out of sight, a full mile from the back of
the house; but not on that account of less avail for the fitting
preservation of foxes.
And the house stood much too near the road for purposes of grandeur,
had such purposes ever swelled the breast of any of the squires of
Allington. But I fancy that our ideas of rural grandeur have altered
since many of our older country seats were built. To be near the
village, so as in some way to afford comfort, protection, and
patronage, and perhaps also with some view to the pleasantness of
neighbourhood for its own inmates, seemed to be the object of a
gentleman when building his house in the old days. A solitude in the
centre of a wide park is now the only site that can be recognized as
eligible. No cottage must be seen, unless the cottage orné of the
gardener. The village, if it cannot be abolished, must be got out of
sight. The sound of the church bells is not desirable, and the road
on which the profane vulgar travel by their own right must be at a
distance. When some old Dale of Allington built his house, he thought
differently. There stood the church and there the village, and,
pleased with such vicinity, he sat himself down close to his God and
to his tenants.
As you pass along the road from Guestwick into the village you see
the church near to you on your left hand; but the house is hidden
from the road. As you approach the church, reaching the gate of it
which is not above two hundred yards from the high road, you see the
full front of the Great House. Perhaps the best view of it is from
the churchyard. The lane leading up to the church ends in a gate,
which is the entrance into Mr. Dale's place. There is no lodge there,
and the gate generally stands open,--indeed, always does so, unless
some need of cattle grazing within requires that it should be closed.
But there is an inner gate, leading from the home paddock through
the gardens to the house, and another inner gate, some thirty yards
farther on, which will take you into the farm-yard. Perhaps it is a
defect at Allington that the farm-yard is very close to the house.
But the stables, and the straw-yards, and the unwashed carts, and the
lazy lingering cattle of the homestead, are screened off by a row
of chestnuts, which, when in its glory of flower, in the early days
of May, no other row in England can surpass in beauty. Had any one
told Dale of Allington--this Dale or any former Dale--that his place
wanted wood, he would have pointed with mingled pride and disdain to
his belt of chestnuts.
Of the church itself I will say the fewest possible number of
words. It was a church such as there are, I think, thousands in
England--low, incommodious, kept with difficulty in repair, too often
pervious to the wet, and yet strangely picturesque, and correct too,
according to great rules of architecture. It was built with a nave
and aisles, visibly in the form of a cross, though with its arms
clipped down to the trunk, with a separate chancel, with a large
square short tower, and with a bell-shaped spire, covered with lead
and irregular in its proportions. Who does not know the low porch,
the perpendicular Gothic window, the flat-roofed aisles, and the
noble old gray tower of such a church as this? As regards its
interior, it was dusty; it was blocked up with high-backed ugly pews;
the gallery in which the children sat at the end of the church, and
in which two ancient musicians blew their bassoons, was all awry,
and looked as though it would fall; the pulpit was an ugly useless
edifice, as high nearly as the roof would allow, and the reading-desk
under it hardly permitted the parson to keep his head free from the
dangling tassels of the cushion above him. A clerk also was there
beneath him, holding a third position somewhat elevated; and upon
the whole things there were not quite as I would have had them. But,
nevertheless, the place looked like a church, and I can hardly say
so much for all the modern edifices which have been built in my days
towards the glory of God. It looked like a church, and not the less
so because in walking up the passage between the pews the visitor
trod upon the brass plates which dignified the resting-places of the
departed Dales of old.
Below the church, and between that and the village, stood the
vicarage, in such position that the small garden of the vicarage
stretched from the churchyard down to the backs of the village
cottages. This was a pleasant residence, newly built within the last
thirty years, and creditable to the ideas of comfort entertained by
the rich collegiate body from which the vicars of Allington always
came. Doubtless we shall in the course of our sojourn at Allington
visit the vicarage now and then, but I do not know that any further
detailed account of its comforts will be necessary to us.
Passing by the lane leading to the vicarage, the church and to the
house, the high road descends rapidly to a little brook which runs
through the village. On the right as you descend you will have seen
the "Red Lion," and will have seen no other house conspicuous in any
way. At the bottom, close to the brook, is the post-office, kept
surely by the crossest old woman in all those parts. Here the road
passes through the water, the accommodation of a narrow wooden bridge
having been afforded for those on foot. But before passing the
stream, you will see a cross street, running to the left, as had run
that other lane leading to the house. Here, as this cross street
rises the hill, are the best houses in the village. The baker lives
here, and that respectable woman, Mrs. Frummage, who sells ribbons,
and toys, and soap, and straw bonnets, with many other things too
long to mention. Here, too, lives an apothecary, whom the veneration
of this and neighbouring parishes has raised to the dignity of a
doctor. And here also, in the smallest but prettiest cottage that can
be imagined, lives Mrs. Hearn, the widow of a former vicar, on terms,
however, with her neighbour the squire which I regret to say are not
as friendly as they should be. Beyond this lady's modest residence,
Allington Street, for so the road is called, turns suddenly round
towards the church, and at the point of the turn is a pretty low iron
railing with a gate, and with a covered way, which leads up to the
front door of the house which stands there. I will only say here, at
this fag end of a chapter, that it is the Small House at Allington.
Allington Street, as I have said, turns short round towards the
church at this point, and there ends at a white gate, leading into
the churchyard by a second entrance.
So much it was needful that I should say of Allington Great House,
of the Squire, and of the village. Of the Small House, I will speak
separately in a further chapter.
CHAPTER II.
THE TWO PEARLS OF ALLINGTON.
"But Mr. Crosbie is only a mere clerk."