An Edinburgh Eleven: Pencil Portraits from College LifeBarrie, J. M. (James Matthew)
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An Edinburgh Eleven: Pencil Portraits from College Life
Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew)
University of Edinburgh -- Biography
We have been keeping Lindsay waiting. When he had nothing special to
do, he sat indifferently in his chair, with the face of a precentor
after the sermon has begun. But though it was not very likely that
Lindsay would pay much attention to talk about such playthings as the
laws of nature, his fingers went out in the direction of the professor
when the experiments began. Then he was not the precentor; he was a
minister in one of the pews. Lindsay was an inscrutable man, and I
shall not dare to say that he even half-wished to see Tait fail. He
only looked on, ready for any emergency; but if the experiment would
not come off, he was as quick to go to the professor's assistance as a
member of Parliament is to begin when he has caught the Speaker's eye.
Perhaps Tait would have none of his aid, or pushed the mechanism for
the experiment from him--an intimation to Lindsay to carry it quickly
to the ante-room. Do you think Lindsay read the instructions so? Let me
tell you that your mind fails to seize hold of Lindsay. He marched the
machine out of Tait's vicinity as a mother may push her erring boy away
from his father's arms, to take him to her heart as soon as the door is
closed. Lindsay took the machine to his seat, and laid it before him on
the desk, with well-concealed apathy. Tait would flash his eye to the
right to see what Lindsay was after, and there was Lindsay sitting with
his arms folded. The professor's lecture resumed its way, and then out
went Lindsay's hands to the machine. Here he tried a wheel; again he
turned a screw; in time he had the machine ready for another trial. No
one was looking his way, when suddenly there was a whizz--bang, bang.
All eyes were turned upon Lindsay, the professor's among them. A cheer
broke out as we realized that Lindsay had done the experiment. Was he
flushed with triumph? Not a bit of it; he was again sitting with his
arms folded. A Glasgow merchant of modest manners, when cross-examined
in a law court, stated that he had a considerable monetary interest in
a certain concern. "How much do you mean by a 'considerable monetary
interest'?" demanded the contemptuous barrister who was cross-examining
him. "Oh," said the witness, humbly, "a maiter o' a million an' a
half--or, say, twa million." That Glasgow man in the witness-box is the
only person I can think of, when looking about me for a parallel to
Lindsay. While the professor eyed him and the students deliriously beat
the floor, Lindsay quietly gathered the mechanism together and carried
it to the ante-room. His head was not flung back nor his chest forward,
like one who walked to music. In his hour of triumph he was still
imperturbable. I lie back in my chair to-day, after the lapse of years,
and ask myself again, How did Lindsay behave after he entered the
ante-room, shutting the door behind him? Did he give way? There is no
one to say. When he returned to the class-room he wore his familiar
face; a man to ponder over.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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