The Pursuit Of Substance
A tide of indignation had reduced Sybil to a clenched fist. Dispossessed, he trod the margins of Regent’s Park and Fitzrovia, gliding from one unbeaten path to the next. His voyage was circumscribed by a legion of imposing Victorian townhouses, constructed by calloused hands to stand as a testament to the vigorous impotency of their proprietors. Together, they illuminated the heavens, beholding to the Empire the might of England. Within, lords and ladies and gentlemen exchanged trivialities on wars in Persia and Kowloon.The ease with which such platitudes were uttered with the deepest conviction scandalised Sybil who, with little pelf, still emphasised the outmoded notions of probity and virtue, which one damnable efflorescence had sought to uproot. Such a palpable sense of impurity inspirited Sybil to raze to the ground the manifestation of noetic and moral decay which bore down on him. Devoid of the necessary resources, however, he consigned himself to gazing vacantly into the middle distance. As if through a telescope, he espied the opulent environment of the drawing room in which the genteel men cantered and capered about.The saccharine wallpaper, etched with an Epilobe design, infused the room with a scent of frivolity and hedonism. Blissfully ignorant of the realities of war in the Orient, the room, replete with patricians, proceeded to kick its legs in joviality. For in a manner akin to that of Napoleon, it began to cancan to the rhythm of their nation’s barbarity. Sybil was immune to such merriment; instead, he was apprehensive over the conviviality of the evening. Nonetheless, a lowly figure like himself was expectantly intoxicated by the occult sensation of that night as, though the senses he experienced were merely vicarious, the
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