A Young Man's Year by Antonio Hope

For the next three months -- through the course of the London season, a fine and prosperous one -- Arthur Lisle played truant. The poison of speculation was in his veins, the lust of pleasure in his heart; romantic imaginings and posings filled his thoughts. The Temple saw little of him. More than once Norton Ward would have offered him some "devilling" to do, or some case to make a note on; but Henry reported that Mr. Lisle was not at chambers. Norton Ward shrugged his shoulders and let the thing drop; the first duty of an earnest aspirant in the Temple is to be there -- always waiting in the queue for employment. "You can't help a man who won't help himself," Norton Ward observed to his wife, who pursed up her lips and nodded significantly; she knew what she knew about the young man's case. Informed of his missed chances by a deferentially reproachful Henry, Arthur was impenitent. He did not want to make notes on cases and to do devilling; not so much now because of his terrors (though he still felt that Pretyman, J., was formidable) as because his own interests were too enthralling; he had no time to spare for the quarrels of John Doe and Richard Roe and the rest of the litigious tribe. There were roads to fortune shorter, less arid and less steep. Also there were green pastures and flowery dells, very pleasant though they led nowhere in particular, peopled by charming companions, enlivened by every diversion -- and governed by a Fairy Queen.

In London an agreeable young man who has -- or behaves as if he had -- nothing to do will soon find things to do in plenty. Arthur's days were full; lunches, dinners, theatres, dances, tennis to play, cricket and polo matches to watch, a race-meeting now and then, motor excursions or a day on the river -- time went like lightning in amusing himself and other people. Everybody accepted so readily the view that he was a man of leisure and wholly at their disposal that he himself almost came to accept it as the truth. Only in the background lay the obstinate fact that, in a life like this, even five hundred pounds will not last for ever. Never mind! In the autumn there would come the farce. There was a rare flavour in the moment when he wrote his cheque for a thousand pounds, payable to the order of Joseph Halliday, Esquire. Joe had asked for an instalment only, but Arthur was not going to fritter away the sensation like that.