To do Mr. Black justice, however, he had not the slightest idea of ruining his kinsman.
That blood is thicker than water, even though the blood be only consanguineous by reason of many and far-out marriages, was a creed of the promoter’s—the only one he held, so far as I know, and for this reason he would not have drawn Arthur into anything doubtful; doubtful, that is, as he understood the meaning of the word.
Decidedly not; he wanted to help himself on in the world, and, if Arthur would only aid him with money, Squire Dudley too.
In the distance, Mr. Black prophetically beheld Arthur rich, happy, prosperous. He saw him, not a tiller of the ground, but a coiner of gold. If Mr. Black believed implicitly in anything excepting himself, it was in the vast capabilities of the Protector Bread and Flour Company, Limited.
It was his ship; let him but once launch the scheme and the world should see. It should plough the ocean and bring back cargoes of gold; it should place Mr. Black beyond the frowns of fortune; it should make a man of Arthur Dudley; it should place him in that pecuniary harbour where the world’s storms are unheeded, in which to the gallant vessel, riding safely at anchor, the waves of the great sea signify as little as ripples on the stream.
What Mr. Black had always wanted was, according to his own statement, capital—given to him at any stage of his career (depending somewhat, however, on the stage he had reached), one hundred, five hundred, one thousand pounds, and Mr. Black saw his way clear to fortune.
All his life he had been racing after this phantom, which as constantly eluded his grasp, for what seemed capital to him one day was not capital the next. Suppose, for instance, this week one hundred pounds bounded the horizon of his desires, next week he discovered two were needed to accomplish his object. Truth was, his appetite grew by what it fed on, and the meal which one day he fancied would prove a feast, he turned from the following, as unfit to satisfy even a beggar.
To have heard Mr. Black discourse about a residence, for instance, concerning the accommodation he considered necessary, the worldly position he regarded as essential to happiness, the servants such an establishment required, no one would have imagined he had ever been reduced to lodgings in Hoxton, where he was served by the dirtiest of slipshod maids, and had his beer—when he could pay for it—from “round the corner.”
Living in Stanley Crescent, which would once have seemed a flight too great for even his imagination to achieve, within a stone’s throw of Hyde Park, with his rooms upholstered in velvet and satin, with curtains such as the imagination of Mr. Peter Black had never previously conceived could be manufactured, with carpets such as the feet of Mr. Black had never before trodden upon, surrounded by mirrors and gilding, by pictures and statuettes, waited upon by silent human automatons, his wants almost anticipated, his orders obeyed to the letter, his commands remembered, his word law, the promoter’s fancy pourtrayed for him yet greater things to come. Even in the matter of personal gratification it would seem that there is such a thing necessary as education—the education of what to desire; and this instruction Mr. Black’s youth had lacked; consequently, as the sailor’s desires were for “an ocean of rum,” and then “as much tobacco as he could chew,” and then “more rum,” so Mr. Black’s ignorant soul craved only for more luxury, a larger house, and a still better situation; more rooms to be upholstered in a still more magnificent style; costlier pictures, older china, softer carpets; a larger number of servants, equipages in which to drive round the Park; and money, money, money with which to keep up the show, and maintain still grander appearances.
A change that, from the retirement of Whitecross Street; from the shabby bed-room with use of sitting-room in Hoxton; from even more wretched lodgings into which he had been glad to creep at so much a night! In those weary days he envied Johnson driving the stout wife of his bosom out in the cart which, on week-days, delivered shoulders of mutton and sirloins of beef at the house of the said Johnson’s customers; he grudged the good fortune of every man he saw with a decent coat on his back. He would gladly have changed places with young Tomkins, who could afford apple tart and Stilton cheese after his steak in a quiet eating-house situate in Pope’s Head Alley. When a man, seated opposite to him in an omnibus, pulled out a handful of silver in order to look through it for a fourpenny or threepenny piece, Mr. Black felt that individual had wronged him.