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023 - Chapter 23 · House with the Green Shutters

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Speaker 1: Chapter twenty three of the House with the Green Shutters.
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Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Len Nicholson. The House
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Speaker 1: with the Green Shutters by George Douglas Brown, Chapter twenty three.
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Speaker 1: Young Gurley spent that winter in Edinburgh pretty much as
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Speaker 1: he had spent the last last winter. However, it was
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Speaker 1: simply a weak need for companionship that drew him to
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Speaker 1: the house this winter. It was more, it was the
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Speaker 1: need of a formed habit that must have its wonted satisfaction.
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Speaker 1: He had a further impulse to conviviality. Now it had
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Speaker 1: become a habit that compelled him. The diversions of some
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Speaker 1: men are merely subsidiary to their lives, externals easy to
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Speaker 1: be dropped with others. They use up the man. They
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Speaker 1: usurp a life when it is never happy away from them,
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Speaker 1: When in the midst of other occupations, absent pleasures rise
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Speaker 1: vivid to the mind with an irresistible call. Young Girli's
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Speaker 1: too seeing imagination, always visioning absent delights. Combined with his
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Speaker 1: weakness of will, never gripping to the work before him,
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Speaker 1: to make him hate his lonely studies and long for
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Speaker 1: the jolly company of his friends. He never opened his
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Speaker 1: books of an evening, but he thought to himself, I
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Speaker 1: wonder what they're doing at the house to night. At
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Speaker 1: once he visualized the scene, imagined every detail, saw them
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Speaker 1: in their jovial hours, and seeing them so happy, he
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Speaker 1: longed to be with them. On that night long ago,
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Speaker 1: when his father ordered him to college, his cowardly and
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Speaker 1: too vivid mind thought of the ploys the fellows would
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Speaker 1: be having along the Barbie roads while he was mewed
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Speaker 1: up in Edinburgh. He saw the barbirollickers in his mind's eye,
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Speaker 1: and the student in his lonely rooms, and contryed them mournfully.
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Speaker 1: So now every night he saw the cozy companions in
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Speaker 1: their house and shivered at his own isolation. He felt
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Speaker 1: a tugging at his heart to be off and join them,
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Speaker 1: and his will was so weak that nine times out
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Speaker 1: of ten he made no resistance to the impulse. He
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Speaker 1: had always a feeling of depression when he must sit
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Speaker 1: down to his books. It was the start that graveled him.
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Speaker 1: He would look round his room and hate it, mutter,
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Speaker 1: damn it, I must work, and then, with a heavy sigh,
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Speaker 1: would seat himself before an outspread volume on the table,
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Speaker 1: tugging the hair on a puckered forehead. Sometimes the depression
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Speaker 1: left him when he buckled to his work, as his
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Speaker 1: mind became occupied with other things, the vision of the
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Speaker 1: house was expelled. Usually, however, the stiffness of his brains
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Speaker 1: made the reading drag heavily, and he rarely attained the
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Speaker 1: sufficing happiness of a student. Eager and engrussed. At the
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Speaker 1: end of ten minutes, he would be gaping across the
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Speaker 1: table and one what they were doing at the house?
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Speaker 1: Will Logan be singing Tam Glen or as Gillespie fiddling
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Speaker 1: Highland tunes by jing with his elbow, going at merrily, Lord,
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Speaker 1: I would like to hear miss drummondo Perth or Gray Dailist.
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Speaker 1: They might buck me up a bit. I'll just slip
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Speaker 1: out for ten minutes to see what they're doing and
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Speaker 1: be back directly. He came back at two in the morning,
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Speaker 1: staggering on a bleak spring evening. Near the end of February,
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Speaker 1: Young Gurley had gone to the house to escape the
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Speaker 1: shuddering misery of the streets. It was that treacherous spring
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Speaker 1: weather which blights only two days ago. The air had
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Speaker 1: been sluggish and balmy. Now an easterly wind nipped the
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Speaker 1: gray city naked and bare. There was light enough, with
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Speaker 1: the lengthening days, to see plainly the rawness of the world.
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Speaker 1: There were cold yellow gleams in windows fronting a lonely west.
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Speaker 1: Uncertain little puffs of wind came swirling round corners and
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Speaker 1: made dust and pieces of dirty white paper gyrate on
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Speaker 1: the roads. Prosperous old gentlemen pacing home, rotund in their
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Speaker 1: buttoned up coats, had clear drops at the end of
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Speaker 1: their noses. Sometimes they stopped their trouser's legs flapping behind
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Speaker 1: them and trumpeted loudly into red silk handkerchiefs. Young Gurli
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Speaker 1: had fled the streets. It was the kind of night
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Speaker 1: that made him cower. By eight o'clock, however, he was
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Speaker 1: merry with the barley bree and making a butt of
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Speaker 1: himself to amuse the company. He was not quick witted
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Speaker 1: enough to banter a comrade readily, nor hardy enough to
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Speaker 1: essay it unprovoked. On ella hand, his swaggering love of
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Speaker 1: notice impelled him to some form of talk that would
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Speaker 1: attract attention. So he made a point of always coming
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Speaker 1: with daft stories of things comic that befell him, at
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Speaker 1: least he said they did. But if his efforts were
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Speaker 1: greeted with too loud a roar, implying not only appreciation
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Speaker 1: of the stories, but also a contempt for the man
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Speaker 1: who could tell them of himself, his sensitive vanity was
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Speaker 1: immediately wounded, and he swelled with sulky anger, and the
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Speaker 1: moment after he would splurge and bluster to reassert his dignity.
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Speaker 1: I remember when I was a boy, he hiccuped I
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Speaker 1: had a pet goose at home. There was a titter
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Speaker 1: at the queer beginning. I was to get the price
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Speaker 1: of it for myself, And so when Christmas drew near,
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Speaker 1: I went to Old mac farlane, the poulterer in Skiin'
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Speaker 1: will you buy a goose? Said? I are ye for sale?
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Speaker 1: My man, was his answer. Armstrong flung back his head
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Speaker 1: and roared, prolonging the loud ho ho through his big
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Speaker 1: nose and open mouth. Long after the impulse to honest
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Speaker 1: laughter was exhausted, he always laughed with false loudness to
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Speaker 1: indicate his own superiority when he thought a man had
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Speaker 1: been guilty of a public silliness. The laugh was meant
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Speaker 1: to show the company how far above such folly was.
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Speaker 1: Mister Armstrong girlly scowled. Damn Armstrong, he thought, what did
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Speaker 1: he yell like that for? Does he think I didn't
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Speaker 1: see the point of the joke against myself? Would have
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Speaker 1: told it if I hadn't. This is what comes of
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Speaker 1: being sensitive. I'm always too sensitive. I felt it was
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Speaker 1: an awkward silence, and I told a story against myself
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Speaker 1: to dispel it in fun. And this is what I
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Speaker 1: get for it. Curse the big brute. He thinks I
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Speaker 1: have given myself away, But I'll show him. He was
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Speaker 1: already mellow, but he took another swig to hearten him,
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Speaker 1: as was his habit, with a damned sight. Too much
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Speaker 1: yell about your laugh, Armstrong, he said, truly enough, getting
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Speaker 1: a courage from his anger and a drink. No gentleman
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Speaker 1: laughs like that. Risu inepto raise aeneptio or nula est,
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Speaker 1: said Turmilan, who was in one of his rare visits
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Speaker 1: to the house. He was too busy and too wise
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Speaker 1: a man to frequent it greatly. Armstrong blushed and curly
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Speaker 1: grew big and brave in the backing of the great Tourmilan.
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Speaker 1: He took another swig on the strength of it, but
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Speaker 1: his resentment was still surging. When Turmillan went and the
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Speaker 1: three students were left by themselves, Gurley continued to nag
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Speaker 1: and bluster, for that blatant laugh of Armstrong's rankled in
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Speaker 1: his mind. I saw Hepburn in the street to day,
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Speaker 1: said Gillespie, by way of a diversion. Who's Hepburn, snapped Gurley.
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Speaker 1: Oh don't you remember he's the big border chap who
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Speaker 1: got into a row with old Tam on the day
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Speaker 1: you won your prize. Essy, that should surely appease the fool,
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Speaker 1: thought Gillespie. It was only for the fun of the thing.
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Speaker 1: Hepburn was at college for he has lots of money,
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Speaker 1: and here he never apologized to Tam. He said he
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Speaker 1: would go down first. It was damn right, spluttered Gurley.
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Speaker 1: Some of these profs think too much of themselves. They
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Speaker 1: wouldn't bully me. There's good stuff in the gurlies, he
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Speaker 1: went on, with a meaning, Look at Armstrong. They're not
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Speaker 1: to be scoffed. At I would stand insolence from no man,
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Speaker 1: ay Man said, Armstrong. Would you face up to a professor, wouldn't,
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Speaker 1: I said, a tipsy youth, And to you too if
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Speaker 1: you went too far. He became so quarrelsome as the
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Speaker 1: night went on that his comrades filled him up with
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Speaker 1: drink in the hope of deadening his ruffled sensibilities. It
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Speaker 1: was yes, yes, Jack, but never mind about that. Have
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Speaker 1: another drink, just to show there's no ill feeling among friends.
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Speaker 1: When they left the house, they went to Gillespie's and
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Speaker 1: drank more, and after that they roamed about the town.
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Speaker 1: At two in the morning, the other two brought Gooley
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Speaker 1: to his door. He was assuring Armstrong he was not
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Speaker 1: a gentleman. When he went to bed, the fancied insult
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Speaker 1: he had suffered swelled to monstrous proportions in his fevered brain.
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Speaker 1: Did Armstrong despise him the thoughtless poison He lay in
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Speaker 1: brooding anger, and his mind was fluent in wrathful harangues,
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Speaker 1: in some imaginary encounter of the future in which he
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Speaker 1: was a glorious victor. He flowed an eloquent scorn of
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Speaker 1: Armstrong at his ways. If I could talk like this always,
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Speaker 1: he thought what a fellow I would be. He seemed
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Speaker 1: gifted with uncanny insight into Armstrong's character. He noted every
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Speaker 1: weakness in the rushing whirl of his thoughts set him
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Speaker 1: in order. One by one, saw himself laying bare the
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Speaker 1: man with savage glee. When next they should encounter, he
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Speaker 1: would whiten the big brute's face by showing he had
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Speaker 1: probed him to the quick. Just let him laugh at
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Speaker 1: me again, thought goodly, and I'll analyze each mean quirk
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Speaker 1: of his dirty soul to him. The drink was dying
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Speaker 1: in them now, for the trio had walked for more
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Speaker 1: than an hour through the open air. When they left
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Speaker 1: Gillespie's rooms, the stupefaction of alcohol was gone, leaving his
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Speaker 1: brain morbidly alive. He was anxious to sleep, but drowsy
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Speaker 1: dullness kept away. His mind began to visualize of its
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Speaker 1: own accord, independent of his will, and one after another,
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Speaker 1: a crowd of pictures rose vivid in the darkness of
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Speaker 1: his brain. He saw them as plainly as you see
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Speaker 1: this page, but with a different clearness, for they seemed unnatural,
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Speaker 1: belonging to a morbid world. Nor did one suggest the other.
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Speaker 1: There was no connection between them. Each came vivid of
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Speaker 1: its own accord. First it was an old pit frame
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Speaker 1: on a barren moor, gaunt against the yellow west. Gurley
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Speaker 1: saw bars of iron left when the pit was abandoned,
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Speaker 1: reddened by the rain, and the mounds of rubbish, and
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Speaker 1: the scattered bricks, and the rusty clinkers from the furnace,
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Speaker 1: and the melancholy shining pools. A four wheeled old trolley
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Speaker 1: had lost two of its wheels and was tilted at
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Speaker 1: a slant, one square end of it resting on the ground.
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Speaker 1: Why do I think of an old pit, he thought, angrily,
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Speaker 1: curse it? Why can't I sleep? Next moment, he was
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Speaker 1: gazing at a ruined castle, its moldering walls mounded atop
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Speaker 1: with decaying rubble. From a loose crumb of mortar, A long,
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Speaker 1: thin film of the spider's weaving stretched, bellying away to
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Speaker 1: a tall weed waving on the crazy brink. Gurley saw
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Speaker 1: its glisten in the wind. He saw each crack in
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Speaker 1: the wall, each stain of lichen. A myriad details stamped
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Speaker 1: themselves together on his raw mind. Then a constant procession
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Speaker 1: of figures passed across the inner curtain of his closed eyes.
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Speaker 1: Each figure was cowled, but when it came directly opposite,
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Speaker 1: it turned and looked at him with a white face. Stop. Stop,
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Speaker 1: cried his mind. I don't want to think of you.
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Speaker 1: I don't want to think of you. I don't want
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Speaker 1: to think of you. Go away. But as they came
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Speaker 1: of themselves, so they went of themselves. He could not
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Speaker 1: banish them. He turned on his side, but a hundred
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Speaker 1: other pictures pursued him. From an inland hollow, he saw
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Speaker 1: the great dawn flooding up from the sea over a
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Speaker 1: sharp line of cliff, wave after wave of brilliance surging
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Speaker 1: up the heavens. The landward slope of the cliff was
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Speaker 1: gray with dew. The inland hollows full of little fields
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Speaker 1: divided by stone walls, and he could not have recalled
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Speaker 1: the fields round Barbie with half their distinctness. For a
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Speaker 1: moment they possessed his brain. Then an autumn wood rose
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Speaker 1: on his vision. He was gazing down a vista of
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Speaker 1: yellow leaves, a long, deep, slanting cleft framed in lit foliage.
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Speaker 1: Leaves leaves everywhere, yellow leaves, luminous, burning. He saw them
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Speaker 1: falling through the lucid air. The scene was as vivid
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Speaker 1: as fire to his brain, though of magic stillness. Then
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Speaker 1: the foliage changed suddenly to great serpents twined about the boughs.
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Speaker 1: Their colors were of monstrous beauty. They glistened as they moved.
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Speaker 1: He leapt in his bed with a throb of horror.
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Speaker 1: Could this be the delirium of drink? But no, He
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Speaker 1: had often had an experience like this when he was sleepless.
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Speaker 1: He had the learned description of it pat and ready
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Speaker 1: it was only automatic visualization. Damn, why couldn't he sleep?
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Speaker 1: He flung out of bed, uncorked a bottle with his teeth,
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Speaker 1: tilted it up, and gulped the gurgling fire in the darkness. Ah,
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Speaker 1: that was better. His room was already gray with the
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Speaker 1: coming dawn. He went to the window and opened it.
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Speaker 1: The town was stirring uneasily in its morning sleep. Somewhere
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Speaker 1: in the distance a train was shunting clank, clank, clank,
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Speaker 1: went the wagons. What in a cursed sound? A dray
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Speaker 1: went past the end of his street, rumbling hollowly, and
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Speaker 1: the rumble died drearily away. Then the footsteps of an
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Speaker 1: early workman going to his toil were heard in the
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Speaker 1: deserted thoroughfare. Curly looked down and saw him pass far
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Speaker 1: beneath him on the glimmering pavement. He was whistling. Why
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Speaker 1: did the fool whistle? What had he got to whistle about?
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Speaker 1: It was unnatural that one man should go whistling to
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Speaker 1: his work when another had not been able to sleep
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Speaker 1: the whole night long. He took another vast glut of whiskey,
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Speaker 1: and the moment after was dead to the world. He
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Speaker 1: was awakened at eight o'clock by a monstrous hammering on
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Speaker 1: his door. By the excessive loudness of the first knock
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Speaker 1: he heard. On returning to consciousness, he knew that his
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Speaker 1: landlady had lost her temper in trying to get him up.
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Speaker 1: Erey could shout she had thumped again. He stared at
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Speaker 1: the ceiling in sullen misery. The middle of his tongue
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Speaker 1: was as dry as bark. For his breakfast there were
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Speaker 1: thick slabs of rancid bacon, from the top of which
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Speaker 1: two yellow eggs had spewed themselves away among the cold gravy.
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Speaker 1: His gorge rose at them. He nibbled a piece of
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Speaker 1: dry bread and drained the teapot. Then, shouldering into his greatcoat,
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Speaker 1: he tramped off to the university. It was a wretched morning.
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Speaker 1: The wind had veered once more, and a cold drizzle
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Speaker 1: of rain was falling through a yellow fog. The reflections
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Speaker 1: of the street lamps and the sloppy pavement went down
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Speaker 1: through spiral gleams to an infinite depth of misery. Young
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Speaker 1: Girl's brain was aching from his last night's debotch, and
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Speaker 1: his body was weakened with the water want both of
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Speaker 1: sleep and food. The cold, yellow mist chilled him to
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Speaker 1: the bone. What a fool I was to get drunk
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Speaker 1: last night? He thought? Why am I here? Why am
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Speaker 1: I trudging through mud and misery to the university? What
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Speaker 1: has it all got to do with me? Oh? What
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Speaker 1: a fool I am? What a fool? Drown dull, care,
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Speaker 1: said the devil in his ear. He took a sixpence
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Speaker 1: from his trouser's pocket and looked down at the white
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Speaker 1: bit of money in his hand till it was wet
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Speaker 1: with the falling rain. Then he went into a flashy tavern, and,
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Speaker 1: standing by a sloppy bar, drank sixpenny worth of cheap whisky.
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Speaker 1: It went to his head at once. Owing to his
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Speaker 1: want of food, and with a dull, warm feeling in
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Speaker 1: his body, he lurched off to his first lecture for
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Speaker 1: the day. His outlook in the world had changed. The
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Speaker 1: fog was now a comfortable yellowness. Freedom and whiskey gang together,
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Speaker 1: tack half your dram He quoted to his own mind.
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Speaker 1: That stuff did me good. Whisky's the boy to fettle you.
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Speaker 1: He was in his element the moment he entered the classroom.
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Speaker 1: It was a bear garden. The most moral individual has
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Speaker 1: his days of perversity when a malign fate compels him
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Speaker 1: to show the worst he has in him. A Scottish
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Speaker 1: university class, which is many most moral individuals, has a
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Speaker 1: similar eruptive tendency. When it gets into the hands of
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Speaker 1: a weak professor. It will behave well enough for a fortnight.
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Speaker 1: Then a morning comes when nothing can control it. This
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Speaker 1: was a morning of the kind. The lecturer, who was
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Speaker 1: an able man but a weakling, had begun by apologizing
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Speaker 1: for the condition of his voice on the ground that
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Speaker 1: he had a bad cold. Instantly every man in the
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Speaker 1: class was blowing his nose. One fellow of a most
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Speaker 1: portentous snout who could trumpet like an elephant, with a
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Speaker 1: last triumphant snort, sent his handkerchief across the room when cold,
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Speaker 1: to account for his conduct. Really, sir, he said, erroom bad, cold,
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Speaker 1: Up rose a universal sneeze. Then the roughing began, to
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Speaker 1: the tune of John Brown's Body Lies a moldering in
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Speaker 1: the grave, which no man seemed to sing, but every
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Speaker 1: man could hear. They were playing the tune with their feet.
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Speaker 1: The lecturer glared with white repugnance at his tormentors. Young
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Speaker 1: Gurli flung himself heart and soul into the cruel baiting.
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Speaker 1: It was partly from his usual love of showing off,
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Speaker 1: partly from the drink still seething within him, but largely
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Speaker 1: also as a reaction from his morning's misery. This was
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Speaker 1: another way of drowning reflection, the morbidly gloomy one moment
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Speaker 1: often shout madly on the next. At last, the lecturer
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Speaker 1: plunged wildly at the door and flung it open. Go.
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Speaker 1: He shrieked and pointed in superb dismissal. A hundred and
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Speaker 1: fifty barbarians sat where they were and laughed at him,
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Speaker 1: And he must needs come back to the platform with
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Speaker 1: a baffled and vindictive glower. He was just turning, as
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Speaker 1: it chanced, when young Gurley put his hands to his
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Speaker 1: mouth and bellowed, cock a doodle doo. Ere the roar
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Speaker 1: could swell. The lecturer had leaped to the front of
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Speaker 1: the rostrum with flaming eyes. Mister Gurley, he screamed, furiously,
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Speaker 1: You there, sir, you will apologize humbly to me for
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Speaker 1: this outrage at the end of the hour. There was
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Speaker 1: a womanish shrillness in the scream, a kind of hysteria
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Speaker 1: on the stretch that contrasted with his big threat. Might
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Speaker 1: have provoked him at other times to a roar of laughter,
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Speaker 1: but there was a sincerity in his rage to day
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Speaker 1: that rose above its faults of manner, and an immediate
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Speaker 1: silence took the room the more impressive for the former noise.
18:48
Speaker 1: Every eye turned to Gurley. He sat gaping at the lecturer.
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Speaker 1: If he had been swept to the anteroom there and then,
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Speaker 1: he would have been cowed by the suddenness of his
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Speaker 1: own change from a loud tormentor in the company of
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Speaker 1: others to a silent culprit in a room alone, and
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Speaker 1: apologies would have been ready to tumble out while he
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Speaker 1: was thus loosened by surprise and fear. Unluckily, he had
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Speaker 1: time to think, and the longer he thought, the more
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Speaker 1: sullen he became. It was only an accident that led
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Speaker 1: to his discovery while the rest escaped, and that the
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Speaker 1: others should escape when they were just as much to
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Speaker 1: blame as he was, was an injustice that made him furious.
19:28
Speaker 1: His anger was equally divided between the cursed mischance itself,
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Speaker 1: the teacher who had jumped on him so suddenly, and
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Speaker 1: the other rowdies who'd escaped to laugh at his discomfiture.
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Speaker 1: He had the same burning resentment to them all. When
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Speaker 1: he thought of his chuckling fellow students, they seemed to
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Speaker 1: engross his rage. When he thought of the mishap, he
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Speaker 1: damned it and nothing else. When he thought of the lecturer,
19:52
Speaker 1: he felt he had no rage to fling away upon others.
19:56
Speaker 1: The snuffler took it all. As his mind shot backwards
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Speaker 1: and forwards in an angry gloom, it suddenly encountered the
20:03
Speaker 1: image of his father, not a professor of the lot,
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Speaker 1: he reflected, could stand a look of black girly, and
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Speaker 1: he wouldn't knuckle under either, so he wouldn't he came
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Speaker 1: of a hardy stalk, he would show them he wasn't
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Speaker 1: going to look dirt for any man. Let him punish
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Speaker 1: all our nune, For they had all been kicking up
20:21
Speaker 1: a row. Why Big Cunningham had been braying like an
20:24
Speaker 1: ass only a minute before he spied Armstrong and Gillespie
20:28
Speaker 1: glinting across at him with a curious look. They were
20:31
Speaker 1: wondering whether he had courage enough to stand to his
20:34
Speaker 1: guns with a professor. He knew the meaning of the look,
20:37
Speaker 1: and resented it. He was on his metal before them.
20:40
Speaker 1: It seemed the fellow who had swaggered at the house
20:43
Speaker 1: last night about what he would do if a professor
20:46
Speaker 1: jumped on him mustn't prove wanting in the present trial,
20:49
Speaker 1: beneath the eyes of those in whom he had imposed
20:52
Speaker 1: his latency. When we think of what Gurley did that day,
20:55
Speaker 1: we must remember that he was soaked in alcohol, not
20:58
Speaker 1: merely with his mornings put in, but with the dregs
21:01
Speaker 1: of previous carousals and the dregs of drink. A thorough
21:05
Speaker 1: toper will tell you never leave him he is drunk
21:09
Speaker 1: on Monday, with his saturday's debatch, as Truck and Wabster
21:12
Speaker 1: of Barbie put at once, when a body's hard up,
21:15
Speaker 1: his breaths a consolation. If that be so, And Wabster remember,
21:20
Speaker 1: was an expert whose opinion on this matter is entitled
21:23
Speaker 1: to the highest credence. If that be so, it proves
21:26
Speaker 1: the strength and persistence of a thorough alcoholic impregnation, or,
21:30
Speaker 1: as Webster called it, of a good soak. In young
21:35
Speaker 1: Girley's case, At any rate, the impregnation was enduring and complete.
21:39
Speaker 1: He was like a rag steeped in fusel oil. As
21:43
Speaker 1: the end of the hour drew near, he sank deeper
21:46
Speaker 1: in his dogged sullenness. When the class streamed from the
21:49
Speaker 1: large door on the right, he turned aside to the
21:52
Speaker 1: little anteroom on the left with an insolent swing of
21:55
Speaker 1: the shoulders. He knew the fellows were watching him curiously.
21:59
Speaker 1: He felt their eyes upon his back, and therefore as
22:02
Speaker 1: he went through the little door, he stood for a
22:04
Speaker 1: moment on his right foot and waggled his left on
22:07
Speaker 1: a level with his hit behind, in a vulgar derision
22:10
Speaker 1: of them, the professor, and the whole situation that was
22:14
Speaker 1: a fine taunt. Flung back at them. There is nothing
22:17
Speaker 1: on earth more vindictive than a weakling. When he gets
22:21
Speaker 1: a chance, he takes revenge for everything his past cowardice
22:24
Speaker 1: forced him to endure. The timid lecturer, angry at the
22:28
Speaker 1: poor figure he had cut on the platform, was glad
22:31
Speaker 1: to take it out of young Gurley for the wrongdoing
22:33
Speaker 1: of the class. Gurley was their scapegoat. The lecturer had
22:38
Speaker 1: no longer over a hundred men to deal with, but
22:41
Speaker 1: one lout, only sullen yet shrinking in the room before him.
22:45
Speaker 1: Instead of coming to the point at once, he played
22:48
Speaker 1: with his victim. It was less from intentional cruelty than
22:52
Speaker 1: from an instinctive desire to recover his lost feeling of superiority.
22:57
Speaker 1: The class was his master, but here was one of
23:00
Speaker 1: them he could cow at any rate, well, he asked,
23:04
Speaker 1: bringing his thin finger tips together and flinging one thigh
23:08
Speaker 1: across the other. Gurley shuffled his feet uneasily. Yes, inquired
23:14
Speaker 1: the other, enjoying his discomfiture. Gurly, Lord, what a gait
23:19
Speaker 1: was this to gang on? Why couldn't he let a
23:21
Speaker 1: blatter out of his thin mouth? And he done it?
23:25
Speaker 1: I'm waiting, said the lecturer, the words I apologize rosen Gurly,
23:32
Speaker 1: but refused to pass his throat. No, he wouldn't, so
23:35
Speaker 1: he wouldn't, you would see, the lecturer. Far enough there
23:38
Speaker 1: he gave an apology before it was expressly required. Oh
23:42
Speaker 1: that's the line you go on, is it? Said the lecturer,
23:45
Speaker 1: nodding his head as if he had sized up a
23:47
Speaker 1: curious animal. I see, I see you add contumacy to insolence,
23:52
Speaker 1: do you? Humph? Gurley was not quite sure what concumussy meant,
23:58
Speaker 1: and the uncertainty added to anger. There were others making
24:02
Speaker 1: a noise besides me, he blurted. I don't see why
24:05
Speaker 1: I should be blamed for it all. Oh you don't
24:08
Speaker 1: see why you should be had up? Indeed, I think
24:11
Speaker 1: I'll bring you to a different conclusion. Yes, I think so. Gurley,
24:16
Speaker 1: being forced to stand always on the one spot, felt
24:19
Speaker 1: himself swaying in a drunken stupor. He blinked at the
24:22
Speaker 1: lecturer like an angry owl, the blinking regard of a
24:25
Speaker 1: sodden mind, yet fiery with a spiteful rage. His wrath
24:30
Speaker 1: was rising and falling like a quick tide. He would
24:33
Speaker 1: have liked, one moment to give a rain to the
24:35
Speaker 1: Gurly temper and let the lecturer have it hot and strong.
24:39
Speaker 1: The next he was quivering in a cowardly horror of
24:42
Speaker 1: the desperate attempt he had so nearly made. Curses tormentor
24:47
Speaker 1: why did he keep him here when his head was
24:49
Speaker 1: aching so badly? Another taunt was enough to spring his
24:53
Speaker 1: drunken rage. I wonder what you think you came to
24:56
Speaker 1: college for, said the lecturer. I have been looking at
24:59
Speaker 1: your wreckord in the class. They are the worst I
25:02
Speaker 1: ever saw, and you are not content with that. It
25:04
Speaker 1: seems you add misbehavior to gross stupidity, to hellway ah,
25:10
Speaker 1: said Gourli. There was a feeling in the room, as
25:13
Speaker 1: if the air was stunned. The silence throbbed. The lecturer,
25:18
Speaker 1: who had risen, sat down suddenly, as if going at
25:22
Speaker 1: the knees, and went white about the gills. Some men
25:26
Speaker 1: would have swept the ruffian with a burst of generous wrath,
25:29
Speaker 1: a few might have pitied in their anger. But this
25:32
Speaker 1: young Solomon was thin and acid, a vindictive rat, unable
25:37
Speaker 1: to cow the insolent in present and full bloodied rage,
25:40
Speaker 1: he fell to thinking of the great machine he might
25:43
Speaker 1: set in motion to destroy him. As he sat there
25:46
Speaker 1: in silence, his eyes grew ferrity, and a sleek revenge
25:50
Speaker 1: peeped from the corners of his mouth. I'll show him
25:54
Speaker 1: what I'll do to him. For this is a translation
25:57
Speaker 1: of his thought. He was thinking, with great satisfaction to
26:01
Speaker 1: himself of how the Senatus would deal with young Gurley.
26:06
Speaker 1: Gurley grew weak with fear the moment the words escaped him.
26:11
Speaker 1: They had been a thunderclap to his own ears. He
26:14
Speaker 1: had been thinking them, but as he pleaded far within
26:17
Speaker 1: him now, had never meant to utter them. They had
26:20
Speaker 1: been mere spume off the surge of cowardly wrath seizing
26:23
Speaker 1: up within him, longing to burst, but afraid it was
26:27
Speaker 1: a taunt of stupidity, that fire has drunken vanity to
26:30
Speaker 1: blurt them forth. The lecturer eyed him sideways, where he
26:34
Speaker 1: shrank in fear. You may go, he said, at last,
26:38
Speaker 1: I will report your conduct to the university. Gurley was
26:43
Speaker 1: sitting alone in his room when he heard that he
26:45
Speaker 1: had been expelled. For many days he had drunk to
26:49
Speaker 1: deaden fear, but he was sober now, being newly out
26:52
Speaker 1: of bed. A dreary ray of sunshine came through the
26:55
Speaker 1: window and fell on a wisp of flame blinking in
26:58
Speaker 1: the grate. As Gurli sat his eyes fixed dully on
27:03
Speaker 1: the faded ray, a flash of intuition laid his character
27:06
Speaker 1: bear to him. He read himself ruthlessly. It was not
27:11
Speaker 1: by conscious effort. Insight was uncanny and apart from will.
27:15
Speaker 1: He saw that blatancy had joined with weakness, morbidity with
27:19
Speaker 1: want of brains, and that the results of these, converging
27:23
Speaker 1: to a point, had produced the present issue. His expulsion,
27:27
Speaker 1: his mind recognized how logical a issue was. Assenting wearily
27:32
Speaker 1: as to a problem proved, given those qualities in those circumstances,
27:37
Speaker 1: what else could have happened? And such a weakling, as
27:40
Speaker 1: he knew himself to be, could never, he thought, make
27:43
Speaker 1: effort sufficient to alter his qualities. A sense of fatalism
27:48
Speaker 1: came over him, as of one doomed. He bowed his
27:52
Speaker 1: head and let his arms fall by the sides of
27:54
Speaker 1: his chair, dropping him like a spent swimmer, ready to sink.
27:58
Speaker 1: The sudden revelation of himself to himself had taken the
28:02
Speaker 1: heart out of him. I'm a waster, he said, aghast,
28:06
Speaker 1: And then at the sound of his own voice, a
28:08
Speaker 1: fear came over him. The fear of his own nature,
28:11
Speaker 1: and he started to his feet and strode feverishly, as
28:15
Speaker 1: if by mere locomotion, to escape from his clinging and
28:18
Speaker 1: adherent till it was as if he were trying to
28:21
Speaker 1: run away from himself. He faced round at the mirror
28:25
Speaker 1: on his mantle and looked at his own image with
28:27
Speaker 1: staring and startled eyes, his mouth open, the breath coming
28:31
Speaker 1: hard through his nostrils. You're a guy, Ilaine, he said, Yer,
28:36
Speaker 1: a guy Ilaine. My God, where have you landed yourself?
28:40
Speaker 1: He went out to escape from his thoughts. Instinctively, he
28:44
Speaker 1: turned to the house for consolation. With the panic despair
28:48
Speaker 1: of the week, he abandoned hope of his character at
28:51
Speaker 1: its first collapse and plunged into a wild debauch to
28:55
Speaker 1: avoid reflecting where it would lead him in the end.
28:58
Speaker 1: But he had a more definite reason and for prolonging
29:00
Speaker 1: his bout in Edinburgh. He was afraid to go home
29:03
Speaker 1: and meet his father. He shrank in visioning fear before
29:07
Speaker 1: the door, face loaded with scorn that would swing round
29:11
Speaker 1: to meet him as he entered through the door. Though
29:13
Speaker 1: he swore every night in his cups that he would
29:16
Speaker 1: square up to the governor the burn so he would
29:19
Speaker 1: always when the cold light came, fear of the interview
29:22
Speaker 1: drove him to his cups again. His courage zigzagged, as
29:26
Speaker 1: it always did. One moment he tured in imagination, the
29:29
Speaker 1: next he groveled in fear. Sometimes, when he was fired
29:34
Speaker 1: with whiskey, another element entered into his mood, no less big,
29:37
Speaker 1: with destruction. It was all his father's fault for sending
29:41
Speaker 1: him to Edinburgh, and no matter what happened, it would
29:44
Speaker 1: serve the old fellow right. He had a kind of
29:47
Speaker 1: fierce satisfaction in his own ruin, because his ruin would
29:51
Speaker 1: show them at home what a mistake they had made
29:53
Speaker 1: in sending him to college. It was the old man's
29:56
Speaker 1: tyranny in forcing him to college that had brought all
29:59
Speaker 1: this on his min miserable head. Well, he was damned glad,
30:03
Speaker 1: so he was, that they should be punished at home
30:05
Speaker 1: for their own foolish scheme. It had punished him enough
30:09
Speaker 1: for one and then he would set his mouth insolent
30:13
Speaker 1: and hard, and drink the more fiercely, finding a consolation
30:16
Speaker 1: in the thought that his tyrannical father would suffer through
30:19
Speaker 1: his degradation too. At last, he must go home. He
30:24
Speaker 1: drifted to the station aimlessly. He had ceased to be
30:27
Speaker 1: self determined. His compartment happened to be empty, so free
30:32
Speaker 1: to behave as he liked. He yelled music hall snatches
30:35
Speaker 1: in a tuneless voice, hammering with his feet on the
30:38
Speaker 1: wooden floor. The noise pleased his sodden mind, which had
30:43
Speaker 1: narrowed to a comfortable stupor, outside of which his troubles
30:46
Speaker 1: seemed to lie, as if they belonged not to him,
30:49
Speaker 1: but to somebody else with the same sodden interest. He
30:53
Speaker 1: was staring through the window at one of the little
30:56
Speaker 1: stations on the line when a boy, pointing said flat
31:00
Speaker 1: white nose, and Gurley laughed uproariously, adding at the end,
31:05
Speaker 1: he's a clever cheel that my nose would look flat
31:09
Speaker 1: and white against the pane. But this outbreak of mirth
31:12
Speaker 1: seemed to break in on his comfortable vagueness. It roused
31:15
Speaker 1: him by a kind of reaction to think of home
31:18
Speaker 1: and of what his father would say. A minute after
31:21
Speaker 1: he had been laughing so madly, he was staring sullenly
31:24
Speaker 1: in front of him. Well, it didn't matter. It was
31:27
Speaker 1: all the old fellow's fault, and he wasn't going to
31:30
Speaker 1: stand any of his jaw. None of your jaw, John Gurley,
31:33
Speaker 1: he said, nodding his head viciously and thrusting out his
31:37
Speaker 1: clenched fist. None of yer jaw, d'ye hear. He crept
31:41
Speaker 1: into Barbie through the dusk. It had been market day,
31:45
Speaker 1: and knots of people were still about the streets. Gurley
31:49
Speaker 1: stole softly through the shadows and turned his coat collar
31:52
Speaker 1: high about his ears. He nearly ran into two men
31:55
Speaker 1: who were talking apart, and his heart stopped dead at
31:58
Speaker 1: their words. No, no, mister Gourley, said one of them.
32:02
Speaker 1: It's quite impossible. I'm not unwilling to oblind sheep, and
32:05
Speaker 1: I cannot take the risk. John heard the mumble of
32:09
Speaker 1: his father's voice. Well, said the other reluctantly. If ye
32:13
Speaker 1: get the Baker and Tam Wiley for security, I'll be
32:16
Speaker 1: on the street for another half hour. Another half hour,
32:20
Speaker 1: thought John, with relief. He would not have to face
32:23
Speaker 1: his father the moment he went in. He would be
32:25
Speaker 1: able to get home before him. He crept on through
32:29
Speaker 1: the gloaming to the house with the green shutters. End
32:36
Speaker 1: of Chapter twenty three.