Other men go flying over every obstacle, and gallop past him to the goal all are striving to reach, while he labours wearily after, or lies maimed and shattered beside the first gate. Yet, mark you, this is never his fault; it is his “cursed luck,” to quote Arthur Dudley over again.
Providence, in his inmost heart the Squire considered, had a spite against him from his mother’s womb, and consequently, and by reason only of this injustice on the part of Providence, he failed where others succeeded.
In the world’s great workshop he was a very bad workman, and, accordingly, he was eternally complaining of his tools. His fellows moved up in the social scale, but he never rose a step higher. With a rusty nail one picked the lock of Fortune’s treasure casket; but then, as Arthur Dudley truly observed, that rusty nail never came into his hands. With sledge and hammer, and file and chisel, common drudges, as they seemed to him, bought their estates and took rank in the country.
His schoolfellows—mere idiots he had thought some of them then—mere idiots, indeed, he thought them still, had climbed great parts of the steep hill of worldly success, and were talked of as rising men in the pulpit, at the bar, in the hospitals, in literature, science, and art.
There was Holland, for instance, who went with him to Oxford. Well, Holland had no brains, any more than most of the people Squire Dudley knew, and yet he had somehow obtained a capital post under Government, lived at the West End, and had married a beautiful young widow with, rumour said, many thousands a year.
There was Morris, also, a man without a sixpence, without appearance, connection, manner, friends, or father or mother to speak of, and yet he, even he——. But it is useless to continue the catalogue.
Fate had helped every one, except Squire Dudley, on in the world, and Squire Dudley did not in the least believe that every man’s Nemesis is himself.
Berrie Down Hollow, however, bore no traces of belonging to a person who held this peculiar doctrine regarding his own life. There was no disorder, no neglect. When once the gates swung back, friend and stranger alike beheld a place which was kept as well as Kemms’ Park:—where no weeds grew on the walks; where the grass was like a bowling-green; where crocuses and snowdrops filled the flower-beds in the early part of the year; where there was a blaze of scarlet geraniums, and a brilliant decking of white, and red, and purple verbena, of petunias and gladioli, lobelias, and all other plants that make our beautiful English summer more beautiful still.
Never a litter of dead leaves was there about those walks; never a gate hung loose for want of hinge or screw; never a thing was left undone that willing hands could speedily put to rights; and yet there was an indescribable look of shortness of money, both within and without the dwelling, which those who were in the secrets of the family knew was attributable to absolute pecuniary poverty; for, although Arthur Dudley owned house and lands, stock and well-filled barns, he was poor as a gentleman with such possessions could be.
And that was where the shoe pinched Squire Dudley. He had money’s worth, but not money. He paid no rent; he killed his fatted calves and his prime Southdowns; he brewed his own ale; his fowls were duly trussed for his table; he ate of the produce of his own lands, and drank of the only vintages English fields will yield; he had his goodly orchard, and his fair flower-gardens; he had his horses in the stable, and his colts running loose in the paddock; he had his broad meadows, and his rich pastures; he had still a young wife, and two children; he had sinned no grievous sin; he had no secret he feared being brought to light, yet he had “missed his life.” So he said, so his friends said, and the reason for this unusual unanimity of opinion chanced to be that he had no money.