‘Well, you have it, have you not?’
‘Pshaw! Pegasus won’t let himself out on hire. I can’t turn my sport into my trade. When I find myself writing for the lucre of gain, the whole spirit leaves me.’
‘That is what you have been doing for some time.’
‘No such thing. Literature was my holiday friend at first; and if she put a gold piece or two into my pocket, it was not what I sought her for. Then she came to my help to beguile what I thought was an interval of waiting for the serious task of life. I wrote what I thought was wanted. I sent it forth as my way of trying what service I could do in my generation. But now, when I call it my profession, when I think avowedly, what am I to get by it?—Faugh! the Muse is disgusted; and when I go to church, I hang my head at “Lay not up to yourselves treasures upon earth—“’
‘A fine way you found of laying them up!’
‘It proved the way to get them back.’
‘I do not understand your objection. You had laid up that sum—your fair earning.’
‘There it was: it had accumulated without positive intention on my part; I mean that I had of course taken my due, and not found occasion to spend it. It is the writing solely for gain, with malice prepense to save it,—that is the stumbling-block. I don’t feel as if I was justified in it, nay, I cannot do it; my ideas do not flow even on matters wont to interest me most. It was all very well when waiting on Arthur was an object; but after he was gone, I found it out. I could not turn to writing, and if I did, out came things I was ashamed of. No! an able-bodied man of five-and-thirty is meant for tougher work than review and history-mongering! I have been teaching a ragged school, helping at any charities that needed a hand; but it seems amateur work, and I want to be in the stream of life again!’
‘I will not say what most would—it was a pity you resigned your former post.’
‘No pity at all. That has made a pair of good folks very happy. If I had kept certain hasty judgments to myself, I should not have been laid on the shelf. It is no more than I deserve, and no doubt it is good for me to be humbled and set aside; but work I will get of some kind! I looked in at a great factory the other day, and longed to apply for a superintendent’s place, only I thought it might not be congruous with an Honourable for a wife.’