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018 - Chapter 18 · House with the Green Shutters

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eighteen of the House with the Green Shutters. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Recording by Len Nicholson. The House with
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  Speaker 1: the Green Shutters by George Douglas Brown, chapter eighteen. Young
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  Speaker 1: Gurley had found a means of escaping from his foolish mind.
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  Speaker 1: By the beginning of his second session, he was as
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  Speaker 1: able a toper as a publican could wish. The somewhat
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  Speaker 1: sordid joviality of Allan's ring their wit combats that were
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  Speaker 1: somewhat crude appeared to him the very acme of social intercourse.
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  Speaker 1: To emulate Logan and Allan was his aim. But drink
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  Speaker 1: appealed to him in many ways. Besides Now, when his
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  Speaker 1: two apprehensive nerves were frightened by bugbears in his lonely room,
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  Speaker 1: he could be off to the houf and escape them,
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  Speaker 1: and a drink inspired him with false courage to sustain
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  Speaker 1: his pose as a hardy rollicker. He had acquired a
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  Speaker 1: kind of prestige since the night of Allan's party, and
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  Speaker 1: two of the fellows whom he met there, Armstrong and
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  Speaker 1: Gillespie became his friends at college and the house. He
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  Speaker 1: swaggered before them, as he had swaggered at school, both
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  Speaker 1: in Barbie and Skian, and now there was no swipey
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  Speaker 1: bruin to cut him over the Coxcomb. Armstrong and Gillespie,
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  Speaker 1: though they saw through him, let him run on, for
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  Speaker 1: he was not bad fun When he was splurging. He
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  Speaker 1: found two when with his cronies that drink unlocked his
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  Speaker 1: mind and gave a free flow to his ideas. Nervous
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  Speaker 1: men are often impotent of speech from very excess of perception.
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  Speaker 1: They realize not merely what they mean to say, but
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  Speaker 1: with the nervous antennae of their minds, they feel the
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  Speaker 1: attitude of every auditor. Distracted by lateral perceptions from the
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  Speaker 1: point ahead, they blunder, where blunter minds would go forward undismayed.
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  Speaker 1: That was the experience of young Girley. If he tried
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  Speaker 1: to talk freely when sober, he always grew confused. But
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  Speaker 1: drink deadened the outer rim of his perception and left
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  Speaker 1: it the clearer in the middle for its concentration in
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  Speaker 1: plainer language. When he was drunk, he was less afraid
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  Speaker 1: of being laughed at, and free of that fear, he
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  Speaker 1: was a better speaker. He was driven to drink, then,
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  Speaker 1: by every weakness of his character, as nervous hypochondriac as
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  Speaker 1: would be swaggerer, as a dull ard requiring stimulus, he
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  Speaker 1: found it drink to use his own language gave him smedum.
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  Speaker 1: With his second year, he began the study of philosophy,
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  Speaker 1: and that added to his woes. He had nerves to
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  Speaker 1: feel the big conundrum, but not the brains to solve it.
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  Speaker 1: Small blame to him for that, since philosophers have cursed
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  Speaker 1: each other black in the face over it for the
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  Speaker 1: last five thousand years. But it worried him. The strange
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  Speaker 1: and sinister detail of the world that had always been
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  Speaker 1: a horror to his mind became more horrible beneath the
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  Speaker 1: stimulus of futile thought. But whiskey was the mighty cure.
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  Speaker 1: He was the gentleman who gained notoriety on a memorable
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  Speaker 1: occasion by exclaiming, metaphysics be damned. Let us drink. Omar
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  Speaker 1: and other bards have expressed the same conclusion in more
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  Speaker 1: dulcet wise, but Girlies was equally sincere. How sincere is
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  Speaker 1: another question curiously an utterance of old Tam, one of
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  Speaker 1: his professors, half confirmed him in his evil ways. I
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  Speaker 1: am speaking now, said Tam, of the comfort of a
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  Speaker 1: true philosophy, less of its higher aspect than its comfort
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  Speaker 1: to the mind of man. Physically, each man is highest
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  Speaker 1: on the globe. Intellectually, the philosopher alone dominates the world.
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  Speaker 1: To him are only two entities that matter, himself and
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  Speaker 1: the eternal, or if another, it is his fellow man
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  Speaker 1: whom serving he serves the ultimate of being. But he
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  Speaker 1: is master of the outer world. The mind, indeed, in
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  Speaker 1: its first blank outlook on life, is terrified by the
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  Speaker 1: demonic force of nature and the swarming misery of man,
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  Speaker 1: by the vast totality of things, the cold remoteness of
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  Speaker 1: the starry heavens, and the threat of the devouring seas.
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  Speaker 1: It is puny in their midst. Goodli woke up when
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  Speaker 1: the sweat broke on him great heaven. Had Tam been
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  Speaker 1: through it too at that stage, quoth the wise man.
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  Speaker 1: The mind is dispersed in a thousand perceptions and a
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  Speaker 1: thousand fears. There is no central greatness in the soul.
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  Speaker 1: It is assailed by terrors which men sunk in the material,
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  Speaker 1: never seem to feel phenomena uninformed by thought, bewilder and depress,
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  Speaker 1: Just like me, thought Gurli, and listened with a thrilling interest,
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  Speaker 1: because it was just like him. But the labyrinth, said Tam,
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  Speaker 1: with a ring in his voice, as of one who
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  Speaker 1: knew the Labyrinthe cannot appall the man who has found
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  Speaker 1: a clue to its windings. A mind that has attained
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  Speaker 1: to thought lives in itself, and the world becomes its slave.
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  Speaker 1: Its formerly distracted powers rally home. It is central, possessing,
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  Speaker 1: not possessed. The world no longer frightens being understood. Its
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  Speaker 1: sinister features are accidents that will pass away, and they
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  Speaker 1: gradually cease to be observed. For real thinkers know the
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  Speaker 1: value of a wise indifference, and that is why they
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  Speaker 1: are often the most genial men. Unworried by the transient,
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  Speaker 1: they can smile and wait, sure of their eternal aim.
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  Speaker 1: The man to whom the infinite beckons is not to
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  Speaker 1: be driven from his mystic quest by the ambush of
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  Speaker 1: a temporal fear. There is no fear. It has ceased
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  Speaker 1: to exist. That is the comfort of a true philosophy.
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  Speaker 1: If a man accepts it not merely mechanically from another,
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  Speaker 1: but fuels it in breath and blood, in every atom
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  Speaker 1: of his being, with a warm surety in his heart.
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  Speaker 1: He is undaunted by the outer world. That, gentleman, is
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  Speaker 1: what thought can do for a man. By jove, thought Gurley,
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  Speaker 1: that's what whisky does for me, And that, on a
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  Speaker 1: lower level was what whisky did. He had no conception
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  Speaker 1: of what Tam really meant. There were people, indeed, who
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  Speaker 1: used to think that Tam never knew what he meant himself.
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  Speaker 1: They were as little able as Gourley to appreciate the
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  Speaker 1: mystic through the radiant haze of whose mind thoughts loomed
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  Speaker 1: on you, sudden and big, like mountain tops in a
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  Speaker 1: sunny mist, the grander for their dimness. But Gourley, though
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  Speaker 1: he could not understand, felt the fortitude of whisky was
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  Speaker 1: somehow akin to the fortitude described in the increased vitality
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  Speaker 1: it gain. If he was able to tread down the world,
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  Speaker 1: if he walked on a wretched day in a wretched street,
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  Speaker 1: when he happened to be sober, his mind was hither
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  Speaker 1: and yawn in a thousand perceptions and a thousand fears,
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  Speaker 1: fastening to and fastened to each squalid thing around, But
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  Speaker 1: with whiskey humming in his blood, he paced onward in
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  Speaker 1: a happy dream. The wretched puddles by the way, the
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  Speaker 1: frowning rookeries where misery squalled, the melancholy noises of the
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  Speaker 1: street were passed unheeded by his distracted powers. Rallied home,
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  Speaker 1: he was concentrate his own man again, the hero of
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  Speaker 1: his musing mind. For like all weak men of a
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  Speaker 1: vivid fancy, he was constantly framing dramas of which he
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  Speaker 1: was a towering lord. The weakling who never downed men
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  Speaker 1: in reality, was always downing them in thought. His imaginary
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  Speaker 1: triumphs consoled him from his actual rebuffs. As he walked
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  Speaker 1: in a tipsy dream he was standing up to somebody
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  Speaker 1: hurling his father's phrases at him, making short work of him.
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  Speaker 1: If imagination paled, the nearest taverns applied a remedy and
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  Speaker 1: flushed it to a radiant glow, whereupon he had become
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  Speaker 1: the master of his world and not its slave. Just imagine,
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  Speaker 1: he thought, whisky doing for me what philosophy seems to
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  Speaker 1: do for tam. It's a wonderful thing. The drink. His
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  Speaker 1: second session wore on, and when near its close Tam
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  Speaker 1: gave out the subject for the Raeburn. The Rayburn was
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  Speaker 1: a poor enough prize a few books for an essy
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  Speaker 1: in the picturesque, but it had a peculiar interest for
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  Speaker 1: the folk of Barbie twenty years ago. It was won
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  Speaker 1: four years in succession by men from the valley, and
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  Speaker 1: the unusual run of luck fixed it in their minds. Thereafter,
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  Speaker 1: when an unsuccessful candidate returned to his home, he was
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  Speaker 1: sure to be asked, very pointedly, who won the Rayburn
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  Speaker 1: a year? To rub into him their perception that he
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  Speaker 1: at least had been a failure. A body would dander
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  Speaker 1: slowly up, saying, ay, man, ye've won hame, Then, having
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  Speaker 1: mused a while, would casually ask, by the bye, who
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  Speaker 1: won the Rayburn a year? Oh? It was a Perthshire man.
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  Speaker 1: It used to come to our ert, but we seemed
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  Speaker 1: to have lost a knackot. Oh yes, sir, Barbie bred
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  Speaker 1: writers in those days, but the breed seems to have decayed.
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  Speaker 1: Then he would murmur dreamily, as if talking to himself.
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  Speaker 1: Jock Gowdy was the last that got it here away,
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  Speaker 1: but he was a clever chap. The caustic body would
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  Speaker 1: dander away with a grin, leaving a poor writhing soul.
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  Speaker 1: When he reached the cross, he would tell the deacon
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  Speaker 1: blithely of the fine one he had given him, and
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  Speaker 1: the deacon would lie in wait to give him a
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  Speaker 1: fine one too. In Barbie, at least, your returning student
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  Speaker 1: is never met at the station with a brass band.
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  Speaker 1: Whatever may happen in more emotional districts of the North,
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  Speaker 1: where it pleases into shed tear. An arctic night was
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  Speaker 1: the inspiring theme which Tam set for the Rayburn, a
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  Speaker 1: very appropriate subject, laughed the fellows quite in the style
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  Speaker 1: of his own lectures. For Tam, though wise and a humorist,
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  Speaker 1: had his prosy hours. He used to lecture on the
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  Speaker 1: fifteen characteristics of Lady Macbeth. So he parceled the unhappy Queen,
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  Speaker 1: and he would announce quite gravely. We will now approach
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  Speaker 1: the discussion of the eleventh feature of the Lady. Gurley
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  Speaker 1: had a shot at the Rayburn. He could not bring
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  Speaker 1: a radiant fullness of mind to bear upon his task.
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  Speaker 1: It was not in him to bring, but his morbid
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  Speaker 1: fancy set to work of its own accord. He saw
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  Speaker 1: a lonely, little tongue far off upon the verge of
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  Speaker 1: Lapland night, leagues and leagues across a darkling plain, dark
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  Speaker 1: itself and little and lonely in the gloomy splendor of
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  Speaker 1: a northern sky. A ship put to sea, and Gurley
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  Speaker 1: heard in his ears a scurl of the man who
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  Speaker 1: went over, struck dead by the icy water on his brow,
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  Speaker 1: which smote the brain like a tomahawk. He put his
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  Speaker 1: hand to his own brow when he wrote that, And yes,
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  Speaker 1: he cried eagerly, it would be. The cold would kill
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  Speaker 1: the brain. Ooh, ooh, it would go in a world
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  Speaker 1: of ice groaned round him in the night. Bergs ground
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  Speaker 1: on each other and were rent in pain. He heard
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  Speaker 1: the splash of great fragments tumbled in the deep, and
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  Speaker 1: felt the waves of their distant falling lift the vessel
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  Speaker 1: beneath them in the darkness. To the long, desolate night
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  Speaker 1: came a desolate dawn, and eyes were dazed by the
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  Speaker 1: encircling whiteness. Yet there flashed green, slanting chasms in the ice,
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  Speaker 1: and towering pinnacles of sudden rose. Lonely and far away
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  Speaker 1: an unknown sea beat upon an unknown shore, and the
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  Speaker 1: ship drifted on the pathless waters, a white dead man
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  Speaker 1: at the helm. Yes, by heaven, cried gourlely. I can
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  Speaker 1: see it all. I can see at all that fellow
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  Speaker 1: standing at the helm, frozen white in a stiff as
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  Speaker 1: an icicle. Yet do what he might, he was unable
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  Speaker 1: to fill more than half a dozen small pages. He
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  Speaker 1: hesitated whether he should send them in, and held them
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  Speaker 1: in his inky fingers, thinking he would burn them. He
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  Speaker 1: was full of pity for his own inability. I wish
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  Speaker 1: I was a clever chap, he said, mournfully. Ah well,
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  Speaker 1: I'll try my luck, he muttered at last, though Tam
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  Speaker 1: may guide me before the whole class for doing so
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  Speaker 1: little lot. The professor, however, unlike the majority of Scottish professors,
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  Speaker 1: rated quality higher than quantity. I have learned a great
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  Speaker 1: deal myself, he announced on the last day of the session.
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  Speaker 1: I have learned a great deal myself from the papers
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  Speaker 1: sent in on the subject of an arctic night. He're here,
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  Speaker 1: said an insolent student at the back. Where where said
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  Speaker 1: the professor? Stand up? Sir? A gigantic borderer rose blushing
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  Speaker 1: into view, and was greeted with how of derision by
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  Speaker 1: his fellows. Tam eyed him and he winced. You will
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  Speaker 1: apologize in my private room at the end of the hour,
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  Speaker 1: said aquinas as the students used to call him. Learn
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  Speaker 1: that this is not a place to bray in. The
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  Speaker 1: giant slunk down, trying to hide himself. Yes, said Tam,
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  Speaker 1: I have learned what a poor sense of proportion some
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  Speaker 1: of you students seem to have. It was not to
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  Speaker 1: see who could write the most, but who could write
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  Speaker 1: the best that I set the theme. One gentleman, he
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  Speaker 1: has been careful to give me his full name and address,
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  Speaker 1: twinkled tam And. Picking up a huge manuscript, he read
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  Speaker 1: it from the outer page. Mister Alexander mac tavish of
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  Speaker 1: ben Maxtronikhan, near och Napterholish in the island of South
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  Speaker 1: Uist has sent me in no less than one hundred
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  Speaker 1: and fifty three closely written pages. I dare say it's
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  Speaker 1: the size of the adjectives he uses that makes the
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  Speaker 1: thing so heavy, quoth tam And, dropped at thudding on
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  Speaker 1: his desk. Life is short, the art of the mc
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  Speaker 1: tavish long. And to tell the truth, gentlemen, he gloomed
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  Speaker 1: at them humorously. To tell the truth, I stuck in
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  Speaker 1: the middle. It roars of laughter and a reproving voice, Oh,
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  Speaker 1: Tapold mac tavish, whereat there was pandemonium. MacTavish was heard
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  Speaker 1: to groan, oh, why did I leave my home, to
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  Speaker 1: which a voice responded in mocking antiphone, why did you
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  Speaker 1: cross to teep? The noise they made was heard at Holyrood.
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  Speaker 1: When the tumult and the shouting died, Tam resumed with
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  Speaker 1: a quiver in his voice, for Tuphold mac tavish had
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  Speaker 1: tickled him too. Now, gentlemen, he said, I don't judge
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  Speaker 1: esses by their weight, though I'm told they sometimes pursue
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  Speaker 1: that method. In Glasgow groans for the rival university cries
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  Speaker 1: of oh in a weary voice. Please, sir, don't mention
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  Speaker 1: that place. It makes me feel quite ill. The professor
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  Speaker 1: allaid the tumult with a dissuasive harm. I believe, he said, dryly,
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  Speaker 1: you call that noise of yours the college tramp. In
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  Speaker 1: the senatus we speak of it as the Cuddy's thrudge. Now, gentlemen,
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  Speaker 1: I am not unwilling to allow a little noise in
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  Speaker 1: the last day of the session, but really you must
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  Speaker 1: behave more quietly. So little does that method of judging
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  Speaker 1: esses commend itself to me. I may tell you that
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  Speaker 1: the sketch, which I consider the best, barely runs to
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  Speaker 1: half a dozen short pages. Young Gurley's heart gave a
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  Speaker 1: leap within him. He felt it thudding on his ribs.
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  Speaker 1: The skin crept on him, and he breathed with quivering nostrils.
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  Speaker 1: Gillespie wondered why he breast heaved. It's a curious sketch,
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  Speaker 1: said the professor. It contains a serious blundering grammar and
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  Speaker 1: several mistakes in spelling, but it shows in some ways
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  Speaker 1: a wonderful imagination. Oh ho, thought Gurli. Of course, there
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  Speaker 1: are various kinds of imagination, said Tam. In its lowest form,
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  Speaker 1: it merely recalls something which the eyes have already seen
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  Speaker 1: and brings it vividly before the mind. A higher form
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  Speaker 1: pictures something which you never saw, but only conceived as
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  Speaker 1: a possible existence. Then there's the imagination which not only sees,
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  Speaker 1: but hears, actually hears what a man would say on
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  Speaker 1: a given occasion, and entering into his blood tells you
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  Speaker 1: exactly why he does it. The highest form is both
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  Speaker 1: creative and consecrative. If I may use the word merging
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  Speaker 1: in diviner thought. It irradiates the world of that high power.
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  Speaker 1: There is no evidence in the essay before me to
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  Speaker 1: be sure. There was little occasion for its use. Young
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  Speaker 1: Gurley's thermometer went down. Indeed, said Aquinas, there's a curious
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  Speaker 1: want of bigness in the sketch, no large nobility of phrase.
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  Speaker 1: It is written in gaspy little sentences, and each sentence
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  Speaker 1: begins and and and like a schoolboy's narrative. It's as
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  Speaker 1: if a number of impressions had seized the writer's mind,
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  Speaker 1: which he jotted down hurriedly lest they escape him. But
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  Speaker 1: just because it's so little wordy, it gets the effect
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  Speaker 1: of the thing, faith sirs. It's right on to the
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  Speaker 1: end of it. Every time. The writing of some folk
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  Speaker 1: is nothing but a froth of words, lucky if it
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  Speaker 1: glistens without like a blobber of iridescent foam. But in
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  Speaker 1: this sketch there's a perception at the back of every sentence.
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  Speaker 1: It displays, indeed, too nervous a sense of the external
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  Speaker 1: world name name, cried the students, who were being deliberately
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  Speaker 1: worked by tam to a high pitch of curiosity. I
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  Speaker 1: would strongly impress on the writer said the shepherd, heedless
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  Speaker 1: of his bleating sheep, I would strongly impress on the
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  Speaker 1: writer to set himself down for a spell of real, hard,
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  Speaker 1: solid and deliberate thought, that almost morbid perception. With philosophy
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  Speaker 1: to back, it might create an opulent and vivid mind.
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  Speaker 1: Without philosophy, it would simply be a curse. With philosophy,
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  Speaker 1: it would bring thought the material to work on. Without philosophy,
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  Speaker 1: it would simply distract and irritate the mind. Name name,
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  Speaker 1: cried the fellows. The winner of the rayburn, said Thomas
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  Speaker 1: aquinas is mister John Gourley. Gurley and his friends made
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  Speaker 1: for the nearest public house they occasionally thought justified a drink.
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  Speaker 1: The others chaffed gourly about TAM's advice. You know, Jack,
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  Speaker 1: said Gillespie, making the sage, what you have got to
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  Speaker 1: do next summer is to set yourself down for a
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  Speaker 1: spell of real, hard, solid and deliberate thought. That was
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  Speaker 1: TAM's advice, You know him, in his advice, said Gurley.
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  Speaker 1: End of chapter eighteen.