No bills were run in that pleasant Hertfordshire home; no duns ever came clamouring for payment through the gates flanked by pyracantha.
Let post-time bring what ill news it might, such ill news never arrived in the shape of an intimation that any tradesman was weary of waiting for a settlement of his “little account;” that, if a remittance for the amount of his bill (inclosed) were not immediately forwarded, the writer would place the matter forthwith in the hands of his solicitor.
Honest and honourable, as Lord Kemms had said, were these poor incompetent Dudleys. Senselessly honest, Mr. Black decided.
To live beyond their means—to owe money, the payment of which was in the least uncertain or problematical, would have seemed to them the depth of humiliation.
A horror of debt, a dread of incurring expenses which their income did not fully warrant, a proud spirit of independence, a resolute determination to spend no more than they could well afford to pay—these were the traits in his country relations which filled Mr. Black with a vague amazement, with an almost contemptuous pity.
That any man—and, more especially, any woman—should hesitate about refurnishing a house, when upholsterers existed ready to send in goods on credit, was a want of courage which, though perhaps not unnatural, was simply unintelligible to Mr. Black. That a family should refrain from luxuries, remain quietly at home, dress plainly, and strive, by a prudent economy, to make both ends meet, seemed to him the very acme of folly.
To “cut a dash” on nothing—to take a house with no certain prospect of ever paying rent for it—to furnish that house throughout on credit—to run bills for every article under heaven for which bills could by possibility be run—to trust to luck for meeting the Christmas accounts—to look on every tradesman as a mere speculator, who took his risk of ever receiving sixpence, to whom customers were as uncertain forms of profit as Lim. Lia. Co.s to Mr. Black, or else as “knowing cards,” who made the substantial householders carry them safe through the midnight flittings of a dozen less honest neighbours—these were a few of the articles to be found in the only confession of faith to which Mr. Black heartily subscribed.
From his youth upward, no delicate scruples concerning wronging his fellows had troubled the conscience of Mr. Black; and it seemed quite as strange to him to witness the remarkable honesty which obtained at Berrie Down, as it would to a pickpocket to behold a purse found in the street restored forthwith to its rightful owner.
No doubt the theory of honesty was an excellent, a beautiful science; but to carry that theory into every-day practice, appeared to Mr. Black absurd. According to his gospel, it was foolish to do without anything which could be procured for the ordering.
“Any fool,” he opined, “could buy with money; but it required some cleverness to buy without money. If I had been one of that sort, afraid of this, and that, and ’tother, I should have stayed on servant to somebody all my life. Success is just like a woman—faint heart won’t win her; and see what I have done—just look at me.”