The Squire of Allington
Of course there was a Great House at Allington.
How otherwise should there have been a Small House?
Our story will, as its name imports, have its closest
relations with those who lived in the less dignified
domicile of the two; but it will have close relations
also with the more dignified, and it may be well that
I should, in the first instance, say a few words as
to the Great House and its owner.
The squires of Allington had been squires of Allington
since squires, such as squires are now, were first
known in England. From father to son, and from
uncle to nephew, and, in one instance, from second
cousin to second cousin, the sceptre had descended
in the family of the Dales; and the acres had remained
intact, growing in value and not decreasing in number,
though guarded by no entail and protected by no wonderful
amount of prudence or wisdom. The estate of Dale
of Allington had been coterminous with the parish
of Allington for some hundreds of years; and though,
as I have said, the race of squires had possessed
nothing of superhuman discretion, and had perhaps been
guided in their walks through life by no very distinct
principles, still there had been with them so much
of adherence to a sacred law, that no acre of the
property had ever been parted from the hands of the
existing squire. Some futile attempts had been
made to increase the territory, as indeed had been
done by Kit Dale, the father of Christopher Dale,
who will appear as our squire of Allington when the
persons of our drama are introduced. Old Kit Dale,
who had married money, had bought outlying farms,—a
bit of ground here and a bit there,—talking,
as he did so, much of political influence and of the
good old Tory cause. But these farms and bits
of ground had gone again before our time. To
them had been attached no religion. When old
Kit had found himself pressed in that matter of the
majority of the Nineteenth Dragoons, in which crack
regiment his second son made for himself quite a career,
he found it easier to sell than to save—seeing
that that which he sold was his own and not the patrimony
of the Dales. At his death the remainder of these
purchases had gone. Family arrangements required
completion, and Christopher Dale required ready money.
The outlying farms flew away, as such new purchases
had flown before; but the old patrimony of the Dales
remained untouched, as it had ever remained.
It had been a religion among them; and seeing that
the worship had been carried on without fail, that
the vestal fire had never gone down upon the hearth,
I should not have said that the Dales had walked their
ways without high principle. To this religion
they had all adhered, and the new heir had ever entered
in upon his domain without other encumbrances than
those with which he himself was then already burdened.
And yet there had been no entail. The idea of
