Free Born in Exile by George Gissing Page A

the other.
    By the end he had fallen into fatigue. Amid clamour of
easily-won applause he made his way into the street, to find
himself in a heavy downpour of rain. Having no umbrella, he looked
about for a sheltered station, and the glare of a neighbouring
public-house caught his eye; he was thirsty, and might as well
refresh body and spirit with a glass of beer, an unwonted
indulgence which had the pleasant semblance of dissipation. Arrived
at the bar he came upon two acquaintances, who, to judge by their
flushed cheeks and excited voices, had been celebrating jovially
the close of their academic labours. They hailed him.
    'Hollo, Peak! Come and help us to get sober before bedtime!'
    They were not exactly studious youths, but neither did they
belong to the class that Godwin despised, and he had a comrade-like
feeling for them. In a few minutes his demeanour was wholly
changed. A glass of hot whisky acted promptly upon his nervous
system, enabled him to forget vexations, and attuned him to kindred
sprightliness. He entered merrily into the talk of a time of life
which is independent of morality—talk distinct from that of the
blackguard, but equally so from that of the reflective man. His
first glass had several successors. The trio rambled arm in arm
from one place of refreshment to another, and presently sat down in
hearty fellowship to a supper of such viands as recommend
themselves at bibulous midnight. Peak was drawing recklessly upon
the few coins that remained to him; he must leave his landlady's
claim undischarged, and send the money from home. Prudence be
hanged! If one cannot taste amusement once in a twelvemonth, why
live at all?
    He reached his lodgings, at something after one o'clock,
drenched with rain, gloriously indifferent to that and all other
chances of life. Pooh! his system had been radically wrong. He
should have allowed himself recreation once a week or so; he would
have been all the better for it, body and mind. Books and that kind
of thing are all very well in their way, but one must live; he had
wasted too much of his youth in solitude. O mihi proeteritos
referat si Jupiter annos! Next session he would arrange things
better. Success in examinations—what trivial fuss when one looked
at it from the right point of view! And he had fretted himself into
misery, because Chilvers had got more 'marks',—ha, ha, ha!
    The morrow's waking was lugubrious enough. Headache and nausea
weighed upon him. Worse still, a scrutiny of his pockets showed
that he had only the shamefaced change of half-a-crown wherewith to
transport himself and his belongings to Twybridge. Now, the railway
fare alone was three shillings; the needful cab demanded
eighteenpence. O idiot!
    And he hated the thought of leaving his bill unpaid; the more so
because it was a trifling sum, a week's settlement. To put himself
under however brief an obligation to a woman such as the landlady
gnawed at his pride. Not that only. He had no business to make a
demand upon his mother for this additional sum. But there was no
way of raising the money; no one of whom he could borrow it;
nothing he could afford to sell—even if courage had supported him
through such a transaction. Triple idiot!
    Bread turned to bran upon his hot palate; he could only swallow
cups of coffee. With trembling hands he finished the packing of his
box and portmanteau, then braced himself to the dreaded interview.
Of course, it involved no difficulty, the words once uttered; but,
when he was left alone again, he paced the room for a few minutes
in flush of mortification. It had made his headache worse.
    The mode of his homeward journey he had easily arranged. His
baggage having been labelled for Twybridge, he himself would book
as far as his money allowed, then proceed on foot for the remaining
distance. With the elevenpence now in his pocket he could purchase
a ticket to a little town called Dent, and by a calculation from
the railway tariff he concluded that from Dent to