Which statements might be perfectly true, and yet hold no comfort for the possessor of place or wife. What was the use of Berrie Down without money to keep the estate properly; and what to such a man was the good of having a wife with whom even he could find no fault, unless, indeed, it might be, that she was a trifle too sweet—too perfect?
After all, it is scarcely pleasant to discover, when you have thought to make a woman supremely happy, that the world will persist in thinking it is the woman who is making you happy.
This was an idea hurtful to Arthur Dudley in the extreme, and those who loved his wife best discovered in due time that the greatest kindness any friend could do her was to refrain from speaking to her husband of the blessing he possessed.
And yet Arthur Dudley was by no means either unamiable or ungenerous. He was not a bad man; he was only that which oftentimes produces infinitely worse results, a weak one; he was not cruel, nor wicked, nor wanton, nor wasteful. He had no sins, but he had many grievous faults. He was a man going to the dogs, as fast as bad management could take him, when he married his wife; and when we enter the gates of Berrie Down Hollow he is a man going to the dogs more slowly, but not less surely still.
Every one knew that his wife was the drag on the wheels of his descent. Every person was fully aware that whatever of comfort and happiness, and real respectability, his life had held, was due to her beneficent influence; and under this knowledge Squire Dudley himself chafed secretly. Had she been an ill-tempered shrew; had she been an idle, flaunting, extravagant, wasteful woman; had she drank; had she been a confirmed invalid; had she been a loud-talking, boastful, hard, managing semi-man; had she been anything, indeed, but what she was, her husband would have had a grievance and rested satisfied. As it was, he himself could not have told what his feeling was towards her. He did not love her much, and yet she loved him exceedingly. He did not consider her at all, and yet, from sunrise to sunset, her first thought was how to benefit and pleasure him.
She had set up an idol for herself, and fell down and worshipped it; and, as is not unusual in such cases, the idol half despised her for her pains.
At the bottom of his heart, his idea about her was the same as his idea about Berrie Down Hollow.
No doubt the thing was very good; but let a thing be ever so good, if it be not the thing you want—what then? Why, then you are apt to look with a little disfavour and petulance upon it, even though it be perfect of its kind—a diamond without speck or flaw.
And besides, his marriage had not quite answered his expectations; that match, indeed, had needed to be made in a dozen heavens which would have satisfied the expectations of Squire Dudley.
A good wife, a clever manager, a home-loving woman, she was to put all crooked things straight, and to put all straight things straighter! The Dudley millennium, a reign of utter order and of utter peace, was to come to Berrie Down with the young wife. He told her all his difficulties, and she promised hopefully to help him through them. He announced to all his friends that, “once he was married,” he should get on; and his friends, to a certain extent, believed him, for they knew a mistress to be sorely needed at Berrie Down House, “where everything is going to wreck and ruin,” he stated to his fiancée, who, in due time, verified the truth of his assertion, and bravely put her shoulder to the wheel, to prevent such a consummation.