A Young Man's Year - Anthony Hope

OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, ESQUIRE

It was a dark, dank, drizzly morning in March. A dull mist filled all the air, and the rain drifted in a thin sheet across the garden of the Middle Temple. Everything looked a dull drab. Certainly it was a beastly morning. Moreover—to add to its offences—it was Monday morning. Arthur Lisle had always hated Monday mornings; through childhood, school, and university they had been his inveterate enemies—with their narrow rigorous insistence on a return to work, with the end they put to freedom, to leisure, to excursions in the body or in the spirit. And they were worse now, since the work was worse, in that it was not real work at all; it was only waiting for work, or at best a tedious and weary preparation for work which did not come and (for all that he could see) never would come. There was no reason why it ever should. Even genius might starve unnoticed at the Bar, and he was no genius. Even interest might fail to help a man, and interest he had none. Standing with his hands in the pockets, listlessly staring out of the window of his cell of a room, unable to make up his mind how to employ himself, he actually cursed his means of subsistence—the hundred and fifty pounds a year which had led him into the fatal ambition of being called to the Bar. "But for that it would have been impossible for me to be such an ass," he reflected gloomily, as he pushed back his thick reddish-brown hair from his forehead and puckered the thin sensitive lines of his mouth into a childish pout.

Henry the clerk (of whom Mr. Arthur Lisle owned an undivided fourth share) came into the room, carrying a bundle of papers tied with red tape. Turning round on the opening of the door, Arthur suddenly fell prey to an emotion of extraordinary strength and complexity; amazement, joy, excitement, fear, all in their highest expression, struggled for mastery over him. Had he got a Brief?

CHAPTER		PAGE
[I.]	Of the Middle Temple, Esquire	1
[II.]	Miss Sarradet's Circle	11
[III.]	In Touch with the Law	19
[IV.]	A Grateful Friend	28
[V.]	The Tender Diplomatist	37
[VI.]	A Timely Discovery	46
[VII.]	All of a Flutter	54
[VIII.]	Nothing Venture, Nothing Have!	62
[IX.]	A Complication	71
[X.]	The Hero of the Evening	80
[XI.]	Household Politics	89
[XII.]	Lunch at the Lancaster	98
[XIII.]	Settled	108
[XIV.]	The Battle with Mr. Tiddes	118
[XV.]	The Man for a Crisis	127
[XVI.]	A Shadow on the House	136
[XVII.]	For no Particular Reason!	146
[XVIII.]	Going to Rain!	156
[XIX.]	The Last Entrenchment	166
[XX.]	A Prudent Counsellor	175
[XXI.]	Idol and Devotee	185
[XXII.]	Pressing Business	194
[XXIII.]	Facing the Situation	204
[XXIV.]	"Did you say Mrs.?"	213
[XXV.]	The Old Days End	224
[XXVI.]	Rather Romantic!	233
[XXVII.]	In the Hands of the Gods	244
[XXVIII.]	Taking Medicine	254
[XXIX.]	Tears and a Smile	264
[XXX.]	A Variety Show	274
[XXXI.]	Start and Finish	284
[XXXII.]	Wisdom Confounded	294
[XXXIII.]	A New Vision	304
[XXXIV.]	The Lines of Life	314
[XXXV.]	Hilsey and its Fugitive	324
[XXXVI.]	In the Spring	335

[CONTENTS]

[CHAPTER I]

OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, ESQUIRE