CHAPTER II.
SQUIRE DUDLEY.
Arthur Dudley, Esquire, of Berrie Down Hollow, in the parish of Fifield, Hertfordshire, was in the habit of informing all those whom the intelligence might, and a great number whom it might not concern, that he had, to borrow his own expression, “missed his life.” And, as is usual with men who employ such a phrase, he imagined the miss had been in fortune, not in himself.
He had lost, he felt satisfied, not for want of skill in playing his game, but because the game of life was an unfair one, in which the cards were packed, and all the trumps dealt to one man, while all the low, poor, insignificant, valueless bits of pasteboard were left for another, in which from birth all the odds were against one player, while the stakes were thrust, nolens volens, into his opponent’s hand.
It is a nice, contented, comforting, reassuring creed this for any human being to hold. It makes a man utterly dissatisfied with his lot, while it leaves him only too well satisfied with himself. He is, so he thinks, as competent to take his leaps as the best in the land; and when in succession he misses every one, he still believes it was only the fault of the steed he rode, of the groom who did not girth his horse tight enough, of the saddler who sent him in reins which broke in his fingers, of the nature of the ground, of the labourer who staked the hedge, of the proprietor who wire-fenced the field.
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.
“Arthur was born to be a rich man,” said the elders among his kith and kin; but, if Nature had intended any such beneficial arrangement in his behalf, she frustrated her own design by permitting him to be born in the wrong house, and amongst the wrong people, and with the wrong temperament for much good fortune to befall him.
After all, Nature does make these little mistakes occasionally, and each man and woman amongst the unsuccessful thinks he or she could have managed matters infinitely better for himself or herself, if only the disposition of affairs had been left in the hands of the person interested.
Squire Dudley thought so, at any rate. He bore a grudge against Nature for having spoiled his worldly chances, which grudge he paid with interest to Nature’s representatives on earth—his fellow-creatures.
Had he been born at Kemms’ Park, with the typical silver spoon in his mouth, he would, doubtless, have proved a very charming member of society. As it was, he had fallen into the habit of quarrelling with the bread and butter fate had provided for him, to such a degree that there was not a labourer on his farm, a servant in his house, a friend he possessed in the world, who would have borne with Arthur Dudley’s dissatisfied temper, his discontent, and his complainings, had it not been for the sake of his wife, who was the only person on earth who thoroughly and devotedly, and believingly and disinterestedly, loved the young Squire.
Matrimonially, luck had not been against him. If the chances of marriage be but as one eel to a bagful of snakes, many a man, who thrust his hands into that lottery after Arthur Dudley, must have had cause to lament his evil fortune.
Matrimonially the Squire, who had otherwise “missed his life,” had done well, so the world thought at least; but then this was one of the many questions of which Arthur Dudley secretly joined issue with the world.
In the experiences of his earlier manhood there had been certain love passages between himself and a handsome young heiress, whom it was the wish of his aunt, Miss Alethea Hope, that he should marry.
Then visions of a life worth living, of a position worth having, beatified the dreariness of the Squire’s prosaic existence. Like all men who are utterly dissatisfied with their position, he permitted hope to tell him many a flattering tale, which had not the slightest shadow of a foundation in truth. Indeed, in the management of his farm, Arthur Dudley was but as a reed shaken by the wind of whatever fancy whispered to him over night; and it was natural enough that, when wandering about the grounds of Copt Hall, with his first real love—worth five thousand a year, and expectations—he should dream of a social position unenjoyed by the Dudleys for many a year; of a town house; of Berrie Down Hollow filled with grand company; of taking rank in the county; of, perhaps, tacking M.P. to the end of his name.
The future, then, seemed as full of promise to him as the old gardens at Copt Hall of roses. Can you wonder? Youth was at the helm and Pleasure at the prow, and an heiress about to become a passenger for the voyage of life; a handsome heiress too—graceful and accomplished, and much sought after, by reason not merely of her wealth, but of her beauty.
Among the roses at Copt Hall she promised to marry Squire Dudley, and yet before the roses were in bloom again she had consented to make another “happy.”
That was the first serious accident which befell the young man’s life-boat; and he retired to Berrie Down Hollow, feeling he had been jilted, not merely by his lady-love, but by the jade Fortune.
It is true, I suppose, that, if the cause of the mental death or paralysis of any man’s life be closely inquired into, a woman will prove to have been at the bottom of the apparent mystery.
Directly or indirectly, white soft hands fill the cup, either with strengthening wine, or pure water, or the drugged liquor, that steals the strength away, and impairs the finest genius.
Those from whom we expected the greatest results go to their long sleep, and leave no mark behind by which their fellows shall remember them; and why? because, although they had the power to achieve much, some woman prevented their doing anything.
The obstacle, which at one point or other threw them off the rails, wore petticoats, be certain. Either they did not get the right women, or they married the wrong ones. Somewhere there was a story in their lives; ay, and it may be a tragedy too. Adam, one might have thought, considering the circumstances of his marriage, had a fair chance of happiness; and yet, see what a mess Eve made of his prospects. Since which time to the present it may fairly be questioned whether any man has ever chosen the proper helpmeet; whether in effect even the Adams of the nineteenth century are not originally placed in a paradise, out of which, in due time, some woman contrives to lead them. Whether or not his matrimonial disappointment really was the cause of Squire Dudley’s ill success, one thing is undeniable, viz., that he, in his heart, attributed much of his subsequent bad fortune to it. Such natures are not, perhaps, capable of any great degree of passionate attachment; and, however unromantic the statement may sound, I am bound to confess it was never the woman he regretted so much as the heiress.
Arabella’s raven tresses never appeared before his mental vision with one-half the same frequency as did her gold. When he failed to dig nuggets out of Berrie Down Hollow, he reflected sorrowfully on the faithless fair’s five thousand a year.
Had he married another woman with money, there can be little doubt but that then he would have thought disconsolately about Miss Laxton’s face, Miss Laxton’s perfections; as it was, want of money being the one most pressing evil in his life, Cupid folded his wings and perched on one of the elm-trees, laughing to himself, no doubt, while Mammon walked with Squire Dudley up and down the meadows and across the lea.
Passionately, perhaps, as he ever loved any woman, Arthur loved the stately fair whom he had wooed in the old-fashioned gardens at Copt Hall. She was his style of beauty; his ideal of feminine perfection; haughty and queenlike; capricious and fanciful; strong-willed and domineering; a woman to rule slaves—to govern so feeble and purposeless a nature as his, despotically. Had all things gone well, she would, as Miss Hope declared, have “ruled the roast” at Berrie Down; she would have been mistress and master too; she would have led him a pleasant life of it in the old Hertfordshire home; she would have taught him meekness and submission, and it may be contentment also, for some men are like children, better satisfied when a strong hand guides their course. As it was, the years had gone by, leaving Squire Dudley intensely dissatisfied with all mundane arrangements, particularly with those arrangements which affected himself.
And yet any other person might have made a good thing out of his life. There was the rub! The owner of Berrie Down Hollow wanted not to make good things, but to have good things made for him; and it was for this the world quarrelled with Arthur Dudley.
“Hang the man,” said Compton Raidsford, who was worth half a million of money, and had worked for every sixpence of it. “A dissatisfied idiot. Has not he got Berrie Down, the sweetest place in the county, and, confound him, has he not got the sweetest wife, too?”
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.
“I have to clothe, educate, and maintain five brothers and sisters,” he declared with that frankness concerning his grievances which was a distinguishing feature of his character, and, although his future wife looked a little horror-stricken at this revelation, yet she adventured amongst those brothers and sisters cheerfully, and, without a murmur, cast in her lot with theirs.
How much of her happiness, during the early years of her married experience, she owed to that young life, Mrs. Dudley never stopped to analyze; but there were those who knew that Berrie Down would have been a terrible home for Arthur’s wife, had bright faces not grown brighter at her approach, had strong willing hands not been stretched out to smooth her way, to make her difficult path easy.
She would have found out all her husband’s faults in six months, had she been thrown solely on his society during that period; as it was, she had always something else to think about—something to step between her and knowledge. She was sorry for him, and she was sorry for the “children,” as she called them. It was hard for him, and it was hard for them; and the dear hands were always laid entreatingly on some half-turned pettish shoulder, and the dear voice was ever engaged in soothing the effect of sharp and hasty words; for Heather Dudley was essentially a peace-maker, a woman whose mission it seemed to turn away wrath, to bind up bleeding wounds, to assuage with ointment the irritation of long-standing sores.
With Heather no man quarrelled, and no woman either. She was not a good hater; she had never sounded the depths of a great sorrow, nor of a great passion. Like many women who marry very young, even love had come to her mildly. The disease taken in youth, is never so fierce as that which attacks the patient in maturity; as is the strength, so is the day; as are the years, so is the joy and the agony. She was wooed and married! Smoother never ran the course of true love. On neither side was there one to interpose an obstacle, or to prevent either following the road inclination pointed out. She was a woman “without a story,” without any previous attachment—without a wrong, a grief, a remorse, a regret. Crime was to her an awful and abstract mystery, which existed only in the police-reports, and as a secret, low-whispered in some unhappy families. Of the world, she knew nothing: of its wickedness, of its temptations, of its pleasures, of its sorrows, she was innocent as her own children. She had plumbed the depth of no human joy or grief. Through the meadows the rivulet of her life had flowed peacefully and monotonously. Vaguely she understood that there were different existences, that there were other lands, through which swept rivers, broad and deep and dark, in the depths whereof lay wrecked hopes and terrible memories; she had heard of existences lost on those great streams, of corpses which the currents carried down to the vast ocean; she vaguely comprehended that there were rapids and pools, contrary currents, cruel storms to be encountered by some human ships, but it was all vague to her—vague as the story in a book.
She had experienced trouble, but only such trouble as comes with the morning, the clouds and mists whereof vanish under the beams of the mid-day sun. Of that different sorrow which falls on humanity when the darkness of evening is closing upon man’s onward course, when there is no noonday to follow, and only the night left in which to travel darkly, her life held no knowledge. She was like Berrie Down Hollow, sweet, natural, unaffected; and Berrie Down would have seemed strange without her, while she might, at a first introduction, scarcely have seemed so entirely in keeping with any place away from Berrie Down.
She was the sun of that house, at any rate;—even Arthur knew things were “never the same” when she went visiting; and, at the moment I ask you to look out on the view from the drawing-room windows of Berrie Down Hollow, you may see the Squire seated under the shade of a chestnut-tree, reading the Times, and inwardly chafing over his wife’s absence, and wondering whether, for certain, she will return from London that evening, and bring Mrs. Ormson with her.
Mr. Dudley likes Mrs. Ormson, and he does not much like her daughter Bessie, an exceedingly pretty girl, who sits on the turf at his feet, spelling the other side of the sheet, resting her round cheek on her hand the while.
All the young Dudleys, his brothers and sisters, his own son and his own daughter, were harmless in comparison to Bessie Ormson, who had a will of her own which she asserted, and opinions of her own which she stuck to, and who was staying at Berrie Down for a couple of months, as though, Squire Dudley remarked to his wife, “the house had not enough people in it without her.”