It’s unlucky to be lucky for long
The Luminaries“It’s unlucky to be lucky for long” is a goldfields saying that Dick Mannering uses to turn Emery Staines’s sudden disappearance into a warning about fortune’s reversals. In Mannering’s telling, Staines’s rise from poverty to wealth without help made his success conspicuous—and, he suspects, dangerous.
Meaning in Context
Mannering presents the saying as a familiar rule of the fields: exceptional luck cannot be expected to last. He applies it to Staines, whom he describes as the luckiest man he is likely to know, and links the young man’s rapid success to the possibility that someone resented it. The proverb expresses Mannering’s suspicion, not proof of what happened to Staines.
Mannering’s Speculation
As Charlie Frost raises Staines’s name, Mannering notes that he disappeared on the same day as the other events under discussion. Mannering wagers that Staines was murdered, either in the river or on the beach, and that his body was carried away. He further imagines a killer at least twenty years older than Staines, framing the claim as a bet. Frost quietly rejects the theory; Mannering then characterizes him as too sensible to wager. The exchange shows how the saying lends a general air of inevitability to Mannering’s conjecture, while leaving its truth unresolved.
