“The fact is,” said Desborough, “that I am doing nothing.”
“A private fortune, possibly?” inquired the other.
“Well, no,” replied Desborough, rather sulkily. “The fact is that I am waiting for something to turn up.”
“All in the same boat!” cried Somerset. “And have you, too, one hundred pounds?”
“Worse luck,” said Mr. Desborough.
“This is a very pathetic sight, Mr. Godall,” said Somerset: “three futiles.”
“A character of this crowded age,” returned the salesman.
“Sir,” said Somerset, “I deny that the age is crowded; I will admit one fact, and one fact only: that I am futile, that he is futile, and that we are all three as futile as the devil. What am I? I have smattered law, smattered letters, smattered geography, smattered mathematics; I have even a working knowledge of judicial astrology; and here I stand, all London roaring by at the street’s end, as impotent as any baby. I have a prodigious contempt for my maternal uncle; but without him, it is idle to deny it, I should simply resolve into my elements like an unstable mixture. I begin to perceive that it is necessary to know some one thing to the bottom—were it only literature. And yet, sir, the man of the world is a great feature of this age; he is possessed of an extraordinary mass and variety of knowledge; he is everywhere at home; he has seen life in all its phases; and it is impossible but that this great habit of existence should bear fruit. I count myself a man of the world, accomplished, cap-à-pie. So do you, Challoner. And you, Mr. Desborough?”
“Oh yes,” returned the young man.
“Well, then, Mr. Godall, here we stand, three men of the world, without a trade to cover us, but planted at the strategic centre of the universe (for so you will allow me to call Rupert Street), in the midst of the chief mass of people, and within earshot of the most continuous chink of money on the surface of the globe. Sir, as civilised men, what do we do? I will show you. You take in a paper?”