West End, St. Paul's Square.
Ryan had taken an omnibus from the East End for a full hour and a half. As his feet stepped onto the smooth stone slabs in front of the St. Blaise Royal Academy, he adjusted his clothes.
This black frock coat was something Alvin had helped him pick out at a secondhand shop. The elbows and cuffs were already worn somewhat shiny, and the waist was slightly too large, requiring an old leather belt to keep him from looking completely disheveled.
The lingering smell of coal smoke, horse manure, and rotten fish from the East End was gone. In its place was the West End's scent of freshly applied whitewash, fine carriage leather, and the bitter, aromatic scent of roasted beans drifting from high-end cafes along the street.
The vast square was packed with dozens of ornately decorated private four-wheeled carriages.
Their wheels were polished to a high shine, and the coats of the carriage horses gleamed like satin under the rare, faint winter sunlight. Most of the candidates stepping down from the carriages were elites from various public schools, or the second sons of members of Parliament and bankers. They wore hand-tailored wool overcoats, held ivory-handled walking sticks, and were followed by personal valets carrying sterling silver stationery boxes for them.
“Have you heard? This year's Latin translation is based on a text from the Cabinet Archives. Professor Harold from the Department of History wrote the questions himself. That old man has always been notoriously old-fashioned.”
“It doesn't matter. My father just had tea with Professor Harold at the club last week...”
The young men gathered in small groups, discussing openings in the Cabinet and the Foreign Office, as well as the cricket matches in the latter half of the year. This natural class barrier was like an invisible black wall, completely shutting out everyone from the lower rungs of society.
Ryan sat in the shadow of the steps of a stone pillar, pulling a piece of hard, dry bread from his pocket. He pinched off a bit with his fingernails and chewed it silently.
He watched his glamorous peers. He felt neither inferiority nor anger.
Clang— Clang—
At exactly ten o'clock, the heavy black bell tower of St. Blaise, which carried a strong church-like atmosphere, let out a grand, booming chime.
“All candidates, enter with your permits!”
The two heavy oak doors slowly swung open, revealing the examination hall inside, which smelled of aged ink and paste.
Ryan swallowed the last bite of bread, brushed the crumbs off his hands, and calmly followed the crowd inside.
Rows of wall lamps illuminated the examination hall, where hundreds of narrow wooden desks were lined up as neatly as tombstones.
Ryan sat at Desk 213. Because it was close to the cold stone wall, the draft from the aisle made the cuffs of his trousers feel chilly.
“Begin the exam!”
At the invigilator's cold command, the entire hall instantly erupted with the dense rustling of turning paper.
Rows of dense wall lamps lit up the hall, and hundreds of narrow wooden desks were arranged with extreme precision. Ryan sat at Desk 213, near the western stone wall.
Just as Ryan sat down, a soft, disgusted sneer came from beside him. Sitting at Desk 214 was a youth in a dark blue public school uniform, who was carefully dusting off non-existent dirt from his desktop with a fine chamois brush.
He glanced at the greasy secondhand frock coat Ryan wore and the wooden fountain pen with peeling lacquer in his hand, then quietly nudged his chair a bit further away.
Ryan didn't react to these petty gestures at all.
“Silence!”
On the high platform, the chief invigilator, clad in complex academic black robes, struck his brass gavel heavily.
“First subject: 《Imperial Documents and Administrative Formats》. Distribute the papers!”
Thud, thud, thud!
The thick examination papers were flipped open, and the hall instantly erupted with the dense rustling of turning pages.
The question required writing a joint memorandum to be submitted directly to the Home Secretary and the Privy Council regarding an extremely complex, long-standing case involving a colony.
Ryan looked at the prompt, his eyes showing not a single ripple of emotion.
He simply closed his eyes, and the image of the kraft paper booklets, haphazardly stitched together with thick cotton thread, that Morton had tossed to him from the deepest drawer of the archive a few days ago rose in his mind.
So this is what privilege is?
He wrote so fast that the public school youth at the next desk was left utterly dumbfounded.
The young master held a highly expensive gold pen, yet he had only managed to squeeze out less than a third of a page of messy ink on his draft paper. He turned his head, staring dead-eyed at this poor kid next to him—who wore a secondhand frock coat and reeked of the East End's sour stench—as if he had seen a ghost. The tip of Ryan's pen flew across the paper, moving like an untiring steam typewriter.
Is this guy's backing that strong? Did he memorize the Home Office's drafts beforehand? the youth cursed frantically in his mind, his fingers turning slightly white from gripping his pen too tightly.
The next subjects, 《Classical Language Translation》 and 《Historical Evolution》, arrived as scheduled on the second day of the examination.
Although translating some bizarre historical and philosophical terms was somewhat difficult, he still steadily and solidly filled in all the points he could get.
However, when it came to 《Basic Arithmetic and Natural Sciences》 on the third and fourth days, the situation took a sharp turn for the worse.
The exam paper listed compound interest calculations regarding the British Empire's complex national debt issuances in recent years, as well as the transmission ratios of mechanical gears under different steam pressures.
Lacking a systematic West End mathematical education, he calculated very slowly.
Time ticked away second by second. He only managed to solve half of two tedious geometry problems, and as for the final few general knowledge questions involving modern chemistry, he couldn't even understand the meaning of some of the technical vocabulary in the prompts. He could only rely on instinct and intuition to blindly guess a few answers in the blanks.
The youth at the neighboring desk had finally finished writing most of his exam paper smoothly. He glanced at Ryan, who was struggling with his calculations on the draft paper, and a contemptuous smirk once again curled the corner of his mouth.
Ryan paid absolutely no attention to the arrogant gazes that lit up around him once more.
Clang— Clang—
At exactly four o'clock in the afternoon on the fourth day.
The black bell tower in St. Paul's Square once again let out two dull, cold booms. The sound penetrated the high dome of the examination hall, vibrating the tense nerves of every candidate.
“Everyone, stop writing immediately! Place your pens on the upper right corner of your desks!”
The invigilator's voice, cold as a stone statue, rang out once more. Dozens of black-robed academic staff filed in from the cloisters, gathering the densely packed exam papers from the desks with near-mechanical efficiency.
Click.
Ryan calmly capped his fountain pen and slipped it into his overcoat pocket.
The surrounding candidates had already begun walking out in groups of three and four. Some couldn't help but cover their faces and weep at the entrance of the hall, while many more young masters who graduated from prestigious public schools put their top hats back on, patted down each other's wool overcoats, and loudly discussed the celebratory dinner party to be held tonight at a high-end salon in Piccadilly Circus.
Ryan did not converse with anyone. He trailed alone at the very back of the crowd, looking somewhat solitary.
By the time he stepped out of St. Blaise's gates again, the West End sky had completely darkened. The winter's swirling heavy snow had finally begun to fall, mixed with a bone-chilling wind, enveloping the towering square bell tower and the gorgeous carriages parked along the street indiscriminately in a pale, blurry curtain of snow.
Ryan pulled up the collar of his overcoat and shoved his hands into his pockets. He stood on the steps, watching the young masters climb into warm, comfortable private carriages with the assistance of their servants.
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