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Page 23
April 26. Ten days have elapsed since I have had the
heart to make any entry in my journal. Why should I
record my own humiliation and degradation? I had vowed
never to open it again. And yet the force of habit is
strong, and here I find myself taking up once more the
record of my own dreadful experiences--in much the same
spirit in which a suicide has been known to take notes
of the effects of the poison which killed him.
Well, the crash which I had foreseen has come--and that
no further back than yesterday. The university
authorities have taken my lectureship from me. It has
been done in the most delicate way, purporting to be a
temporary measure to relieve me from the effects of
overwork, and to give me the opportunity of recovering
my health. None the less, it has been done, and I am
no longer Professor Gilroy. The laboratory is still in
my charge, but I have little doubt that that also will
soon go.
The fact is that my lectures had become the laughing-
stock of the university. My class was crowded with
students who came to see and hear what the eccentric
professor would do or say next. I cannot go into the
detail of my humiliation. Oh, that devilish woman!
There is no depth of buffoonery and imbecility to which
she has not forced me. I would begin my lecture
clearly and well, but always with the sense of a coming
eclipse. Then as I felt the influence I would struggle
against it, striving with clenched hands and beads of
sweat upon my brow to get the better of it, while the
students, hearing my incoherent words and watching my
contortions, would roar with laughter at the antics of
their professor. And then, when she had once fairly
mastered me, out would come the most outrageous
things--silly jokes, sentiments as though I were
proposing a toast, snatches of ballads, personal abuse
even against some member of my class. And then in a
moment my brain would clear again, and my lecture would
proceed decorously to the end. No wonder that my
conduct has been the talk of the colleges. No wonder
that the University Senate has been compelled to take
official notice of such a scandal. Oh, that devilish
woman!
And the most dreadful part of it all is my own
loneliness. Here I sit in a commonplace English bow-
window, looking out upon a commonplace English street
with its garish 'buses and its lounging policeman, and
behind me there hangs a shadow which is out of all
keeping with the age and place. In the home of
knowledge I am weighed down and tortured by a power of
which science knows nothing. No magistrate would
listen to me. No paper would discuss my case. No
doctor would believe my symptoms. My own most intimate
friends would only look upon it as a sign of brain
derangement. I am out of all touch with my kind. Oh,
that devilish woman! Let her have a care! She may
push me too far. When the law cannot help a man, he
may make a law for himself.
She met me in the High Street yesterday evening and
spoke to me. It was as well for her, perhaps, that it
was not between the hedges of a lonely country road.
She asked me with her cold smile whether I had been
chastened yet. I did not deign to answer her. "We
must try another turn of the screw;" said she. Have a
care, my lady, have a care! I had her at my mercy
once. Perhaps another chance may come.
April 28. The suspension of my lectureship has had the
effect also of taking away her means of annoying me,
and so I have enjoyed two blessed days of peace. After
all, there is no reason to despair. Sympathy pours in
to me from all sides, and every one agrees that it is
my devotion to science and the arduous nature of my
researches which have shaken my nervous system. I have
had the kindest message from the council advising me to
travel abroad, and expressing the confident hope that I
may be able to resume all my duties by the beginning of
the summer term. Nothing could be more flattering than
their allusions to my career and to my services to the
university. It is only in misfortune that one can test
one's own popularity. This creature may weary of
tormenting me, and then all may yet be well. May God
grant it!
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