THE LITTLE HOUSE
By Coningsby Dawson
With Illustrations By Stella Langdale
New York: John Lane Company
1920
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TO
THE LITTLE LADY
THE LITTLE HOUSE
CHAPTER I
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HE little house, tell this story. It was lived within my walls; not a
line is invented and it was I, by my interfering, who brought about the
happy ending. Who wants a story that does not end happily, especially a
Christmas story? To have been responsible for the happy ending is pretty
nearly as clever as to have made the story up out of one's own head or,
as we houses say, out of one's own walls.
Perhaps you never heard before of a house telling a story. If that be
so, it is because you don't listen or because you go to bed too early.
Unlike people, we houses sleep all day long; but after midnight we wake
up and talk. When the clock strikes twelve, our stairs begin to crack
and our windows to rattle and our floors to creak. If you ever hear
these sounds, don't be frightened; they simply mean that the kind old
walls that shelter you have begun to remember and to think. And we have
so many things to remember and to think about, especially we old houses
who have been standing for almost two hundred years. We have seen so
much; we have been the friends of so many generations. More little
children have been born beneath our roofs than we have stairs on which
to count. We reckon things on our stairs, just as people reckon things
on their fingers. When our stairs crack after midnight, it's usually
because we're counting' the births and love-makings and marriages we
have watched. We very often get them wrong because there are so many of
them. Then the doors and windows and floors will chip in to correct us.
“Ha,” a window will rattle, “you've forgotten the little girl who used
to gaze through my panes in 1760 or thereabouts.” One of the doors will
swing slowly on its hinges and, if anyone disputes with it, will bang,
shouting angrily, “Wrong again--all wrong.” Then the walls and the
windows and the doors and the floors all start whispering, trying to
add up correctly the joys and sorrows they have witnessed in the years
beyond recall.
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When that happens, if you're awake and listening, you'll hear us start
adding afresh, from the lowest to the topmost stair.
I am a London house and a very little house, standing in a fashionable
square near Hyde Park. I have known my ups and downs. Once was the time
when I was almost in the country and the link-boys used to make a fuss
at having to escort my lady so far in her sedan-chair. It's a long way
to the country now, for the city has spread out miles beyond me. Within
sight through the trees at the end of the square red motor-buses pass,
bumping their way rowdily down to Hammersmith and Kew. In my young days
these places were villages, but I am told they are full of noises now.
I have at least escaped that, for our square is a backwater of quiet and
leads to nowhere, having an entrance only at one end. All the houses
in the square were built at the same time as I was, which makes things
companionable. We all look very much alike, with tiny areas, three stone
steps leading up from the pavement, one window blinking out from the
ground-floor, two blinking out from each of the other floors and a
verandah running straight across us. In summer-time the verandah is
gay with flowers. Our only difference is the colour we are painted,
especially the colour of our doors. Mine is white; but some of our
neighbours' are blue, some green, some red. We're very proud of the
front-doors in our square. In the middle stands a railed-in garden,
to which none but our owners have access. Its trees are as ancient as
ourselves. Behind us, so hidden that it is almost forgotten, stands
the grey parish-church, surrounded by a graveyard in which many of the
people who have been merry in us rest.
For some years we were what is known as a “gone down neighborhood,”
till a gentleman who writes books bought us cheap, put us in repair and
rented us to his friends. This has made us very select; since then we
have become again fashionable.
Now you know all that is necessary to form a mental picture of us.
Because we are so small, we are sometimes spoken of as “Dolls' House
Square.” All the things that I shall tell you I do not pretend to
have witnessed, for houses have to spend their lives always in the one
place--they cannot ride in taxis and move about. We gain our knowledge
of how the world is changing by listening to the conversations of people
who inhabit us; when night has fallen we mutter among ourselves, passing
on to one another beneath the starlight down the lamp-lit streets
the gossip we have overheard. Whatever of importance we miss, the
churchbells tell us. Big Ben, with his sweet tenor voice, booming out
the hours, is in this respect particularly thoughtful.
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So now, having explained myself, I come to my story of the little lady
who needed to be loved, but did not know it, and the wounded officer who
wanted rest.