“Something of that kind, Gerald. Not to have money for your wants;—that must be troublesome.”
“Very bad indeed,” said Silverbridge, shaking his head wisely, as a Member of Parliament might do who felt that something should be done to put down such a lamentable state of things.
“I don’t complain,” said Gerald. “No fellow ever had less right to complain. But I never felt that I had quite enough. Of course it was my own fault.”
“I should say so, my boy. But then there are a great many like you. Let their means be what they may, they never have quite enough. To be in any difficulty with regard to money—to owe what you cannot pay, or even to have to abstain from things which you have told yourself are necessary to yourself or to those who depend on you—creates a feeling of meanness.”
“That is what I have always felt,” said Silverbridge. “I cannot bear to think that I should like to have a thing and that I cannot afford it.”
“You do not quite understand me, I fear. The only case in which you can be justified in desiring that which you cannot afford is when the thing is necessary;—as bread may be, or clothes.”
“As when a fellow wants a lot of new breeches before he has paid his tailor’s bill.”
“As when a poor man,” said the Duke impressively, “may long to give his wife a new gown, or his children boots to keep their feet from the mud and snow.” Then he paused a moment, but the serious tone of his voice and the energy of his words had sent Gerald headlong among his kidneys. “I say that in such cases money must be regarded as a blessing.”
“A ten-pound note will do so much,” said Silverbridge.
“But beyond that it ought to have no power of conferring happiness, and certainly cannot drive away sorrow. Not though you build palaces out into the deep, can that help you. You read your Horace, I hope. ‘Scandunt eodum quo dominus minae.’ ”
“I recollect that,” said Gerald. “Black care sits behind the horseman.”
“Even though he have a groom riding after him beautiful with exquisite boots. As far as I have been able to look out into the world—”
“I suppose you know it as well as anybody,” said Silverbridge—who was simply desirous of making himself pleasant to the “dear old governor.”
“As far as my experience goes, the happiest man is he who, being above the troubles which money brings, has his hands the fullest of work. If I were to name the class of men whose lives are spent with the most thorough enjoyment, I think I should name that of barristers who are in large practice and also in Parliament.”
“Isn’t it a great grind, sir?” asked Silverbridge.
“A very great grind, as you call it. And there may be the grind and not the success. But—” He had now got up from his seat at the table and was standing with his back against the chimneypiece, and as he went on with his lecture—as the word “But” came from his lips—he struck the fingers of one hand lightly on the palm of the other as he had been known to do at some happy flight of oratory in the House of Commons. “But it is the grind that makes the happiness. To feel that your hours are filled to overflowing, that you can barely steal minutes enough for sleep, that the welfare of many is entrusted to you, that the world looks on and approves, that some good is always being done to others—above all things some good to your country;—that is happiness. For myself I can conceive none other.”
“Books,” suggested Gerald, as he put the last morsel of the last kidney into his mouth.
“Yes, books! Cicero and Ovid have told us that to literature only could they look for consolation in their banishment. But then they speak of a remedy for sorrow, not of a source of joy. No young man should dare to neglect literature. At some period of his life he will surely need consolation. And he may be certain that should he live to be an old man, there will be none other—except religion. But for that feeling of self-contentment, which creates happiness—hard work, and hard work alone, can give it to you.”
“Books are hard work themselves sometimes,” said Gerald.
“As for money,” continued the father, not caring to notice this interruption, “if it be regarded in any other light than as a shield against want, as a rampart under the protection of which you may carry on your battle, it will fail you. I was born a rich man.”
“Few people have cared so little about it as you,” said the elder son.
“And you, both of you, have been born to be rich.” This assertion did not take the elder brother by surprise. It was a matter of course. But Lord Gerald, who had never as yet heard anything as to his future destiny from his father, was interested by the statement. “When I think of all this—of what constitutes happiness—I am almost tempted to grieve that it should be so.”
“If a large fortune were really a bad thing,” said Gerald, “a man could I suppose get rid of it.”
“No;—it is a thing of which a man cannot get rid—unless by shameful means. It is a burden which he must carry to the end.”
“Does anybody wish to get rid of it, as Sindbad did of the Old Man?” asked Gerald pertinaciously. “At any rate I have enjoyed the kidneys.”
“You assured us just now that the bread and cheese at Ely were just as good.” The Duke as he said this looked as though he knew that he had taken all the wind out of his adversary’s sails. “Though you add carriage to carriage, you will not be carried more comfortably.”
“A second horse out hunting is a comfort,” said Silverbridge.
“Then at any rate
