第73章

Kidneys! Not for me. I think I'll take a bit of fried bacon. I also am hungry, but now awfully hungry.'

'You never seem to me to eat anything, sir.'

'Eating is an occupation from which I think a man takes the more pleasure the less he considers it. A rural labourer who sits on the ditch-side with his bread and cheese and an onion has more enjoyment out of it than any Lucullus.'

'But he likes a good deal of it.'

'I do not think he ever over-eats himself,--which Lucullus does. I have envied the ploughman his power,--his dura ilia,--but never an epicure the appreciative skill of his palate. If Gerald does not make haste he will have to exercise neither the one nor the other upon that fish.'

'I will leave a bit for him, sir,--and here he is. You are twenty minutes late, Gerald. My father says that bread and cheese and onions would be better for you than salmon and stewed kidneys.'

'No, Silverbridge;--I said no such thing; but that if he were a hedger and ditcher the bread and cheese would be as good.'

'I should not mind trying them all,' said Gerald. 'Only one never does have such things for breakfast. Last winter a lot of us skated to Ely, and we ate two or three loaves of bread and a whole cheese, at a pot-house! And as for beer, we drank the public dry.'

'It was because for the time you had been a hedger and ditcher.'

'Proby was a ditcher I know, when he went right through into one of the dykes. Just push on that dish Silverbridge. It's no good you having the trouble of helping me half-a-dozen times. I don't think things are a bit the nicer because they cost a lot of money.

I suppose that is what you mean, sir.'

'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 groom riding after him beautiful with exquisite boots. As far as I have been able to look 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.