The Small House at Allington | Page 2

fortune
of which depended on the safety of a glass goblet. We all know the
story. If the luck of Edenhall should be shattered, the doom of the

family would be sealed. Nevertheless I was bidden to drink out of the
fatal glass, as were all guests in that house. It would not have contented
the chivalrous mind of the master to protect his doom by lock and key
and padded chest. And so it was with the Dales of Allington. To them
an entail would have been a lock and key and a padded chest; but the
old chivalry of their house denied to them the use of such protection.
I have spoken something slightingly of the acquirements and doings of
the family; and indeed their acquirements had been few and their
doings little. At Allington, Dale of Allington had always been known
as a king. At Guestwick, the neighbouring market town, he was a great
man--to be seen frequently on Saturdays, standing in the market-place,
and laying down the law as to barley and oxen among men who knew
usually more about barley and oxen than did he. At Hamersham, the
assize town, he was generally in some repute, being a constant grand
juror for the county, and a man who paid his way. But even at
Hamersham the glory of the Dales had, at most periods, begun to pale,
for they had seldom been widely conspicuous in the county, and had
earned no great reputation by their knowledge of jurisprudence in the
grand jury room. Beyond Hamersham their fame had not spread itself.
They had been men generally built in the same mould, inheriting each
from his father the same virtues and the same vices--men who would
have lived, each, as his father had lived before him, had not the new
ways of the world gradually drawn away with them, by an invisible
magnetism, the upcoming Dale of the day--not indeed in any case so
moving him as to bring him up to the spirit of the age in which he lived,
but dragging him forward to a line in advance of that on which his
father had trodden. They had been obstinate men; believing much in
themselves; just according to their ideas of justice; hard to their
tenants--but not known to be hard even by the tenants themselves, for
the rules followed had ever been the rules on the Allington estate;
imperious to their wives and children, but imperious within bounds, so
that no Mrs Dale had fled from her lord's roof, and no loud scandals
had existed between father and sons; exacting in their ideas as to
money, expecting that they were to receive much and to give little, and
yet not thought to be mean, for they paid their way, and gave money in

parish charity and in county charity.
They had ever been steady supporters of the Church, graciously
receiving into their parish such new vicars as, from time to time, were
sent to them from King's College, Cambridge, to which establishment
the gift of the living belonged--but, nevertheless, the Dales had ever
carried on some unpronounced warfare against the clergyman, so that
the intercourse between the lay family and the clerical had seldom been
in all respects pleasant.
Such had been the Dales of Allington, time out of mind, and such in all
respects would have been the Christopher Dale of our time, had he not
suffered two accidents in his youth. He had fallen in love with a
lady--who obstinately refused his hand, and on her account he had
remained single; that was his first accident. The second had fallen upon
him with reference to his father's assumed wealth. He had supposed
himself to be richer than other Dales of Allington when coming in upon
his property, and had consequently entertained an idea of sitting in
Parliament for his county. In order that he might attain this honour he
had allowed himself to be talked by the men of Hamersham and
Guestwick out of his old family politics, and had declared himself a
Liberal. He had never gone to the poll, and, indeed, had never actually
stood for the seat. But he had come forward as a liberal politician, and
had failed; and, although it was well known to all around that
Christopher Dale was in heart as thoroughly conservative as any of his
forefathers, this accident had made him sour and silent on the subject of
politics, and had somewhat estranged him from his brother squires.
In other respects our Christopher Dale was, if anything, superior to the
average of the family. Those whom he did love he loved dearly. Those
whom he hated he did not ill-use beyond the limits of justice. He was
close in small matters of money, and