THE DENNES OF DAUNDELYONN. CHAPTER XXXII. FRESHFIELD. "But here, oh here, Where all is coldly, comfortlessly costly, MILMAN. HAD I travelled the wide world over in search of a house to contrast with No. 9, High Street, Whirlingham, I could not have found one better suited to my purpose than Angelica's home. Home! did I say? I can scarcely bring my VOL. III. B self to call anything so unhomelike by that endearing appellation. Everything pertaining to Freshfield was handsome, staid, costly, perfectly new, and inexpressive. No one could possibly call it comfortable, though all must have assented to its being costly. My brother-in-law was one of those persons who possess just wit enough to be aware of his own deficiences, without a glimmering perception of how he should correct them. With an irresistible craving to achieve something above the common herd of country gentlemen, he was utterly unable to devise that something. He feared to implicate himself by asserting a taste of his own, be that taste never so strong, lest the world should call it a bad one. Everything around him was influenced by this fear. Although naturally fond of brilliant colours, he dared not indulge the fondness, lest the tone of his rooms should be considered questionable. His taste for ornament was similarly fettered lest it might be pronounced "Roccoco." Fear of the opinions of his acquaintances compelled him, greatly against his will, to be for ever selling his horses and purchasing others. In the matter of pictures, he so dreaded ridicule for possessing bad ones, that he resolved to escape the dilemma by having none at all. Freshfield and its contents certainly defied criticism: if there was nothing to praise, there was nothing to condemn; nothing to admire, nothing to abuse. The house was plain, solid, spacious, and externally utterly featureless: large, square, in excellent repair, and built of a pale-coloured stone, it stood at one end of a grassy valley, which sloped down to the sea in one expanse of yellowish grass, fringed with stunted fir-trees of a dark and mournful brownish green. Upon this rather desolate-looking half-lawn, half-paddock, the windows of both dining and drawing-rooms opened. The garden was at one side of the house, the stables and offices on the other. In the rear was a large square yard, paved with flints always in a state of semihumidity, and containing a dog-kennel full of ferocious inmates-at whose daily liberation persons indulging them in their amusements always stood at a respectful distance, for fear of any unpleasant playfulness on their sudden rush into daylight. Beyond this yard ran a few fields, sloping rather abruptly upwards until the scene was closed by a formal well kept holly-hedge of ancient growth. The general aspect of these arrangements was not a pleasing one, more particularly when contrasted with the rich and varied panorama which always greeted our eyes at dear old Daundelyonn. Within the mansion things were not much better. The drawing-room was large and lofty; stonecoloured carpets, drab silk curtains, and pale normal grey walls, unrelieved by the faint fawncoloured tone of the doors, window-sills, and satinwood furniture, wearied the eye by their dreary continuity. The ornaments, few in number, were more costly than graceful: a square uncompromising time-piece, always painfully exact in point of time, a pair of large alabaster vases with griffins for handles, and a couple of massive glass candelabra, completed the embellishments of the broad expanse of marble chimney-piece; while on a table, in solitary state, the undisputed occu pant of one side of the room, stood a huge glass shade, sheltering from dust and inquiring fingers a whole aviary of humming-birds, stuffed to perfection. Order and regularity are very desirable arrangements; no house can ever be long endurable without them: but like salt and pepper in cookery, one may have too much of a good thing; and certainly here they were administered with an unsparing hand. Since his marriage, Sir Brutus had aged remarkably: most old husbands of young wives either do, or seem to do so; and his habits appeared to have acquired a corresponding rigidity. From being simply a staunch adherent to these laws, Sir Brutus had now become their apostle; his existence seemed to be given him only for the purpose of proving to what an extent both order and regularity could be enforced. Even at the dinner-table he sat, his eye everywhere, with a slip of paper and pencil hidden under his plate; whence he drew it every now and then to note down any misadventure which might occur: and woe betide on the morrow the luck |