"Well, why not begin?"
"Begin? To earn money? How?"
"You might work," suggested Barnabas.
"Work?" repeated the Captain, starting, "eh, what? Oh, I see, you're
joking, of course,--deuced quaint, b'gad!"
"No, I'm very serious," said Barnabas thoughtfully.
"Are you though! But what the deuce kind of work d'you suppose I'm
fit for?"
"All men can work!" said Barnabas, more thoughtfully than before.
"Well,--I can ride, and shoot, and drive a coach with any one."
"Anything more?"
"No,--not that I can think of."
"Have you never tried to work, then,--hard work, I mean?"
"Oh Lord, no! Besides, I've always been too busy, y'know. I've never
had to work. Y' see, as luck would have it, I was born a gentleman,
Beverley."
"Yes," nodded Barnabas, more thoughtful than ever, "but--what is a
gentleman?"
"A gentleman? Why--let me think!" said the Captain, manoeuvring his
horses skilfully as they swung into the Strand.
And when he had thought as far as the Savoy he spoke: "A gentleman," said he, "is a fellow who goes to a university, but
doesn't have to learn anything; who goes out into the world, but
doesn't have to--work at anything; and who has never been
blackballed at any of the clubs. I've done a good many things in my
time, but I've never had to work."
"That is a great pity!" sighed Barnabas.
"Oh! is it, b'gad! And why?"
"Because hard work ennobles a man," said Barnabas.
"Always heard it was a deuce of a bore!" murmured the Captain.
"Exertion," Barnabas continued, growing a little didactic perhaps,
"exertion is--life. By idleness come degeneration and death."
"Sounds cursed unpleasant, b'gad!" said the Captain.
"The work a man does lives on after him," Barnabas continued,
"it is his monument when he is no more, far better than your
high-sounding epitaphs and stately tombs, yes, even though it be
only the furrow he has ploughed, or the earth his spade has turned."
"But,--my dear fellow, you surely wouldn't suggest that I should
take up--digging?"
"You might do worse," said Barnabas, "but--"
"Ha!" said the Captain, "well now, supposing I was a--deuced good
digger,--a regular rasper, b'gad! I don't know what a digger earns,
but let's be moderate and say five or six pounds a week. Well, what
the deuce good d'you suppose that would be to me? Why, I still owe
Gaunt, as far as I can figure it up, about eighty thousand pounds,
which is a deuced lot more than it sounds. I should have been
rotting in the Fleet, or the Marshalsea, years ago if it hadn't been
for my uncle's gout, b'gad!"
"His gout?"
"Precisely! Every twinge he has--up goes my credit. I'm his only heir,
y'know, and he's seventy-one. At present he's as sound as a bell,
--actually rode to hounds last week, b'gad! Consequently my
credit's--nowhere. Jolly old boy, though--deuced fond of him--ha!
there's Haynes! Over yonder! Fellow driving the phaeton with the
black-a-moor in the rumble."