Doggedly at first and afterwards mechanically, abstractedly, he got through the work he had to do.

At times he even appreciated with a certain enjoyment the exquisite irony of his fate.
Perhaps, when it came to the Gin Palace of Art, he had felt that the thing was getting almost beyond a joke.

He had not been prepared for that lurid departure.

He did not realize that he was in it, that his father had staked, not only his hopes, but his capital on him.

He simply knew that "the guv'nor" was wrapt up in the horrid thing, that he had spent enormous sums on it, and he wasn't going to throw him over at the start.
But he had not the smallest intention of spending his whole life so.
As always, long ago, in the darkness of the City shop, he had seen a brilliance of his own spreading around Rickman's and beyond it, shining away into the distance, so he saw it now, flinging out a broad, flaming, unmistakable path that could by no possibility lead back there.