England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Families -- Fiction; Murder -- Fiction
“Part II., Division I., Class I.” No one can do better than that. I
believe that only one man in Leonard’s year did as well. Therefore he
went down having a very good record and a solid reputation for ability
to begin with. As to private fortune, he was independent, with an income
derived from his mother of about £800 a year, and with those
expectations which, as you have seen, were certainties. He also had a
Fellowship worth at least five shillings a year, it having gone up
recently in consequence of an unexpected looking-up or recovery in the
agricultural interest. He came up to London, therefore, thus adequately
equipped, entered at the Bar, got called, without any intention of
practising, looked out for a borough, nursed it carefully for a
twelvemonth, and got in, without a contest, at a by-election, on the
Liberal side. So far he had followed the traditions of his family. He
was the third, in sequence of father to son, of University distinction.
His grandfather, son of the dumb recluse whom you have already seen, had
also done well at Cambridge, and had also entered the House, and had
also made a highly successful beginning when he was cut off prematurely
at the early age of thirty-two. His father, who in his turn
distinguished himself at the University, also in his turn entered the
House, and was also in his turn considered a young man of promise, when
he, too, was carried off at about the same age. There were moments when
Leonard asked himself whether this untoward fate was to be his as well.
There were, indeed, special reasons for asking this question, of which
he as yet knew nothing. Meantime, he asked no questions of the future,
nor did he concern himself about the decrees of fate.
The study was pleasantly furnished with two or three easy chairs and the
student’s wooden chair. Books lined the walls; two or three cups stood
on the mantelshelf, showing that the tenant of the room was no pale
student, consumer of the midnight oil; above it there was a drawing of a
country house, the same house which you have already seen. One observed
also, with pleasure, further proofs that the occupant had his hours of
relaxation. Tobacco and that vulgar thing the briar-root were
conspicuously present. That a young man who hoped to rise by the most
severe of all studies should habitually smoke a pipe should be, to any
well-regulated mind, a most promising circumstance. The study opened
into the dining-room, which was a dining-room only, and a formal, even a
funereal place, with a few books and a few pictures--evidently not a
room which was inhabited. The tenant took his breakfast in it, and
sometimes his luncheon, and that was all. There were two bedrooms;
beyond them, the kitchen and the room for the man and wife who “did” for
Mr. Campaigne.
The occupant of the flat presently laid down his pen, and sat up
turning his face to the light. Then he rose and paced the chamber.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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