Richard had long been anticipating the advent2 of the New Year, when new resolutions were to come into force. A phrase from a sermon heard at Bursley stuck in his memory: Every day begins a new year. But he could not summon the swift, courageous3 decision necessary to act upon that adage4. For a whole year he had been slowly subsiding5 into a bog6 of lethargy, and to extricate7 himself would, he felt, need an amount of exertion8 which he could not put forth9 unless fortified10 by all the associations of the season for such feats11, and by the knowledge that fellow-creatures were bracing12 themselves for a similar difficult wrench13.
Now that he looked back upon them, the fourteen months which had elapsed since Adeline's departure seemed to have succeeded one another with marvellous rapidity. At first he had chafed14 under the loss of her, and then gradually and naturally he had grown used to her absence. She wrote to him, a rather long letter, full of details about the voyage and the train journey and her uncles' home; he had opened the envelope half expecting that the letter might affect him deeply; but it did not; it struck him as a distinctly mediocre15 communication. He sent a reply, and the correspondence ended. He did not love her, probably never had loved her. A little sentiment: that was all. The affair was quite over. If it had been perhaps unsatisfactory, the fault was not his. A man, he reflected, cannot by taking thought fall in love (and yet this was exactly what he had attempted to do!), and that in any case Adeline would not have suited him. Still, at moments when he recalled her face and gestures, her exquisite16 feminality, and especially her fine candour at their parting, he grew melancholy17 and luxuriously18 pitied himself.
At the commencement of the year which was now drawing to a close he had attacked the art of literature anew, and had compassed several articles; but as one by one they suffered rejection19, his energy had dwindled20, and in a short time he had again entirely21 ceased to write. Nor did he pursue any ordered course of study. He began upon a number of English classics, finishing few of them, and continued to consume French novels with eagerness. Sometimes the French work, by its neat, severe effectiveness, would stir in him a vague desire to do likewise, but no serious sustained effort was made.
In the spring, when loneliness is peculiarly wearisome, he had joined a literary and scientific institution, for young men only, upon whose premises23 it was forbidden either to drink intoxicants or to smoke tobacco. He paid a year's subscription24, and in less than a fortnight loathed25 not only the institution but every separate member and official of it. Then he thought of transplanting himself to the suburbs, but the trouble of moving the library of books which by this time he had accumulated deterred26 him, as well as a lazy aversion for the discomforts27 which a change would certainly involve.
And so he had sunk into a sort of coma28. His chief task was to kill time. Eight hours were due to the office and eight to sleep, and eight others remained to be disposed of daily. In the morning he rose late, retarding29 his breakfast hour, diligently30 read the newspaper, and took the Park on the way to business. In the evening, as six o'clock approached, he no longer hurried his work in order to be ready to leave the office immediately the clock struck. On the contrary, he often stayed after hours when there was no necessity to stay, either leisurely31 examining his accounts, or gossiping with Jenkins or one of the older clerks. He watched the firm's welfare with a jealous eye, offered suggestions to Mr. Curpet which not seldom were accepted, and grew to be regarded as exceptionally capable and trustworthy. He could divine now and then in the tone or the look of the principals (who were niggardly32 with praise) an implicit33 trust, mingled—at any rate, in the case of the senior partner—with a certain respect. He grew more sedate34 in manner, and to the office boys, over whom he had charge, he was even forbidding; they disliked him, finding him a martinet35 more strict and less suave36 than Mr. Curpet himself. He kept them late at night sometimes without quite sufficient cause, and if they showed dissatisfaction, told them sententiously that boys who were so desperately37 anxious to do as little as they could would never get on in the world.
Upon leaving the office he would stroll slowly through Booksellers' Row and up the Strand38, with the gait of a man whose time is entirely his own. Once or twice a week he dined at one of the foreign restaurants in Soho, prolonging the meal to an unconscionable length, and repairing afterwards to some lounge for a cigar and a liqueur. He paid particular attention to his dress, enjoying the sensation of wearing good clothes, and fell into a habit of comparing his personal appearance with that of the men whom he rubbed shoulders with in fashionable cafés and bars. His salary sufficed for these petty extravagances, since he was still living inexpensively in one room at Raphael Street; but besides what he earned, his resources included the sum received from the estate of William Vernon. Seventy pounds of this had melted in festivities with Adeline, two hundred pounds was lent upon mortgage under Mr. Curpet's guidance, and the other fifty was kept in hand, being broken into as infrequent occasion demanded. The mortgage investment did much to heighten his status not only with the staff but with his principals.
Seated in a wine-room or lager-beer hall, meditatively39 sipping40 from glass or tankard, and savouring a fragrant41 cigar, he contrived42 to extract a certain pleasure from the contemplation of his equality with the men around him. Many of them, he guessed with satisfaction, were in a worse or a less secure position than his own. He studied faces and made a practice of entering into conversation with strangers, and these chance encounters almost invariably left him with the impression that he had met a mental inferior. Steeping himself, as it were, in all the frivolous43, lusory activities of the West End, he began to acquire that indefinable, unmistakable air of savoir-faire characteristic of the prosperous clerk who spends his leisure in public places. People from the country frequently mistook him for the young man-about-town of the society papers, familiar with every form of metropolitan44 chicane, luxury, and vice45.
After breakfast he went out into the Park with his skates. The Serpentine46 had been frozen hard for more than a week, and yesterday, a solitary47 unit in tens of thousands, he had celebrated
Join or Log In!
You need to log in to continue reading
