“Eh?” said Rowland surprised. “And do you think, my dear, you could make money by saving off your meat?”
“Money! oh, we never thought of money, so long as we could get on, and work.”
“And what would you work for, if I may inquire, if you had no thought of money?” Rowland asked, almost dumb in face of this enigma, which was beyond all his powers.
“I have said,” she exclaimed with a little impatience, “that unfortunately I have no distinct vocation. Mabel is medical, luckily for her. She has no difficulty. But there is always as much work as one can set one’s face to in the East End.”
“But for what, for what? Give me an answer.”
“I allow,” said Rosamond, faltering slightly, “that it is a difficult question. To be of a little use, we hope: though people say that the results are not always so satisfactory as—— But at all events,” she added, more cheerfully, “it is Work. And that must always be the best thing, whatever one may do.”
Rowland sat listening to all this, aghast. The lines of his ruddy countenance grew limp, his lips fell a little apart. “I thought I was a great one for work,” he said. But the words fell in a sort of apologetic manner from his lips, and he did not add anything about a change of opinion, which might have been supposed to be implied.
“Ah!” said Rosamond, “I know! in a different way: which chiefly means, I believe, getting other people to work for you, and directing them, and planning everything, and making money—like you, Mr. Rowland! who, in a few years, without hurting yourself in the least, have got so much money that you don’t know what to do with it. One sees that in the world. I have heard of men—not like you, who are a great engineer and a genius, everybody says—but mere nobodies, with shops and things, people one would not like to touch—” Rosamond made a slight gesture of disgust, as if she had drawn the folds of her dress away from contact with some millionaire. “But that is not WORK,” said the girl, throwing back her head. “I know people in society—well, perhaps not quite in society—who have gone on working for a whole lifetime, gentlemen, yes, and women too, working from morning to night, and even have been successful, yet have never made money. So it is clear that work is not the thing to make a fortune by. But I am of opinion that it is the first thing in the world.”
Rowland once more blew forth with a snort from his nostrils the angry breath. He felt sure there were arguments somewhere with which he could confound this silly girl, and show her that to work was to rise in the world, and make a fortune, and surround yourself with luxury, with the certainty of a mathematical axiom. But he could not find them; and he found himself instead saying in his mind, “If you have ordinary luck, if you don’t play the fool,” and so forth, evidently adding the conditional case from his own point of view. And the result was that he contented himself with that snort and a strong expression of his opinion that girls should marry, and look after their men’s houses, and not trouble their heads about what was never intended for them.
He broke up the discussion after this, and led his wife forth by the arm, taking her off to look at the view—Clyde coming in softly on the beach, and all the world clad in those sober coats of grey. And standing there an hour after, when the talk might have been supposed to have evaporated, and the day was dying off into evening, he cried suddenly, “Where would I have been without work? Not here with my lady-wife upon the terrace at Rosmore!”