“Well, some other time.  Only soon.”

This call did Jack temporarily a world of good.  It helped his self-esteem.  But it was only temporary.  The black fact stared him in the face every morning that he was ruined.  And it came over him gradually that he was a useless member of society.  He never had done anything; he was not trained or fitted to do anything.  And this was impressed upon him in the occasional attempts he made to get employment.  He avoided as much as possible contact with those who knew him.  Shame prevented him from applying to them for occupation, and besides he very well knew that to those who knew him his idle career was no recommendation.  Yet he formed a habit of going down-town every day and looking for work.  His appearance commanded civility, but everywhere he met with refusal, and he began to feel like a well-bred tramp.  There had been in his mind before no excuse for tramps.  He could see now how they were made.

It was not that he lacked capacity.  He knew a great deal, in an amateurish way, about pictures, books, bric-a-brac, and about society.  Why shouldn’t he write?  He visited the Loan Exhibition, and wrote a careful criticism on the pictures and sent it to a well-known journal.  It was returned with thanks:  the journal had its own art critic.  He prepared other articles about curious books, and one about porcelain and pottery.  They were all returned, except one which gave the history of a rare bit of majolica, which had been picked up forty cents and then sold for five hundred dollars, and was now owned by a collector who had paid four thousand dollars for it.  For that the newspaper sent him five dollars.  That was not encouraging, and his next effort for the same journal was returned.  Either he hadn’t the newspaper knack, or the competition was too great.

He had ceased going to his club.  It was too painful to meet his acquaintances in his altered circumstances, and it was too expensive.  It even annoyed him to meet Major Fairfax.  That philosopher had not changed towards him any more than Miss Tavish had, but it was a melancholy business to talk of his affairs, and to listen to the repeated advice to go down to the country to Edith, and wait for some good opening.  That was just what he could not do.  His whole frivolous life he began now to see as she must have seen it.  And it seemed to him that he could only retain a remnant of his self-respect by doing something that would reinstate him in her opinion.

“Very well,” said the Major, at the close of the last of their talks at the club; “what are you going to do?”

“I’m going into some business,” said Jack, stiffly.

“Have you spoken to any of your friends?”

“No.  It’s no use,” he said, bitterly; “they are all like me, or they know me.”

“And hasn’t your wife some relations who are in business?”

“The last people I should apply to.  No.  I’m going to look around.  Major, do you happen to know a cheap lodging-house that is respectable?”