Chapter 2342 - 293: August, Will You Take the New Business?

For most Londoners, eight o’clock is an appropriate breakfast time. However, for the tens of thousands of lower-class people, they have already had their morning meals according to their appetites before eight, and thus when the middle class is having breakfast, they have appeared at their various busy workstations.

As for the fifty thousand dignitaries firmly residing at the top of London society, most of them have not yet left their luxurious bedding, and according to their lifestyle habits, these gentlemen and ladies always wait until ten, eleven, or even noon to have breakfast.

Furthermore, those lazy souls who reside in luxurious duplex apartments on Jermyn Street and St James Street, for them, one or two o’clock in the afternoon is merely dawn’s early light. When servants serve roast lamb chops and kidney pudding on their breakfast tables, the sunset has already dyed the sky red.

Even the British Government, which favors statistical data, probably doesn’t know how many eggs are cracked open in London daily, how many of these unborn chicks are boiled, and how many are fried in oil; how many four-pound loaves of bread are sliced into thick or thin buttered bread, how many pigs are slaughtered to provide bacon slices with the perfect balance of fat and lean, and how many fuel and salt heaps are consumed just to smoke the Yarmouth kippers that appear most frequently on London citizens’ breakfast tables.

However, for Mr. Auguste Schneider, Assistant Secretary at the Foreign Office, the most troubling issue is not when breakfast should be eaten, because although he is not considered upper-echelon nobility, he is not an ordinary middle class either, and as a senior Civil Servant at the Foreign Office, he has a set of regular lifestyle habits.

Regarding the statistical data on the breakfast table?

That’s not something he should worry about, because both logically and emotionally, it’s not something the Foreign Office should involve itself in—such unprofitable and unrewarding tasks ought to be left to the Home Office.

Schneider sat in his chair, gazing at his own spacious yet utterly uncomfortable dining room and couldn’t help but sigh.

At first glance, in the corner sat a shiny sideboard purchased from the Debenham-Stor auction house, on the wall hung a personal portrait commissioned from a Royal Art Academy fellow, set against deep red curtains and a gleaming white window sill, and on the floor lay a Turkish carpet bought from the East India Company auction hall in Bilint Street.

Everything looked perfectly orderly. If guests were to visit, they might rave about Mr. Schneider’s taste and might even sincerely commend this Civil Servant for steadily climbing the ladder of the correct lifestyle.

However, only Schneider himself knew that all this outward glamour was merely an illusion painstakingly constructed in London City.

The silverware on the table came from a small silver shop in the Soho District that had already closed down, its silver plating excessively thin. The tea set was indeed purchased from a department store in Piccadilly, but after prolonged use, a faint metallic taste lingered while drinking tea.

Even the Turkish carpet acquired from the auction at Bilint Street, although classified as a luxury item in the accounts, Schneider was well aware of its origins. The item was actually a relic of a fallen colonial official, semi-new and semi-old, bought only because its pattern still appeared decent under dim lighting. Each time he walked from the dining table to the living room, the carpet’s edge would slightly curl up, as if reminding him that truly fashionable Turkish craftsmanship was worlds apart from this antiquated second-rate item.

Schneider turned to look at himself in the full-length mirror: a slightly balding scalp, a sallow complexion, bags under his eyes, and temples displaying unsettling streaks of gray hair under the morning light.

God!

He was only thirty-seven this year, yet he already possessed the kind of aging seen in Civil Servants aged forty-seven or even fifty.

Schneider stood in front of the mirror for a moment, then turned around, as though resignedly, pushed open the always locked door at the back of the dining room.

Behind the door was the most sacred place in Schneider’s home—a place he solemnly referred to as the "study."

He stayed in there for a while; God knows why he didn’t peruse the shelves full of unopened tomes of epic size but instead opened the desk drawer to take out a chequebook, gazing deeply at the numbers for five minutes.

But regardless, Mr. Schneider described this kind of behavior as "relaxation."

Yet even such brief, humble moments of relaxation now brought Schneider increasingly less comfort.

This was because the numbers on the chequebook were dwindling day by day while his expensive household expenses showed no intention of stopping.

Schneider closed the chequebook, then reopened it, as if flipping through it might magically enlarge the numbers.

However, it did not.

The numbers on the chequebook remained unchanged, much like the bills he must pay next month.

Outside the study, the jangling sound of keys clashing could be heard; Schneider knew it was certainly his wife coming downstairs for breakfast.

He hurriedly shut the drawer, then tucked The Times under his arm and left the study.

Just as Schneider came out of the study, he saw his wife already standing at the dining room entrance, her guipure lace collar ironed to perfection, her false bangs fixed overly securely, and in her right hand, she carried that familiar small basket filled with all sorts of keys—the storage room’s, the coal cellar’s, the wine cabinet’s, as well as various drawers’. Naturally, the key to Schneider’s study drawer was not among them.