Jim Dixon, the protagonist of the novel, works as a professor of history at an English provincial university. He teaches there for the first year and has not yet been hired for work, but passes a probationary period. But from the very beginning he makes a bad impression on his colleagues. Still would. In the very first days of his stay at the faculty, he manages to injure an English professor. He would have to move calmly and calmly, as a respectable teacher of a respectable English university should, and he ... Leaving the library, Dixon gives a small round pebble lying on the sidewalk, and he, describing in the air an arc of yards at fifteen, of course, meets on on his way the professor’s knee. Dixon would have to apologize here, and instead, he first with horror and surprise watches the flight path of the stone, and then slowly leaves. He didn’t have enough spirit to apologize - as always in such cases. Two days after this incident, it does not happen that, at the very first meeting of the faculty, he, passing the archivist's chair, stumbles and overturns the chair just at that moment when the learned husband intended to sit on it. Then Dick Dream criticizes the work on the history of one of the students, and later he learns that this study was written with the blessing and on the advice of professor of history Welch, on whom his future fate depends, because it is Welch who decides whether Dixon remains to teach at this university or not .
I must say that colleagues produce on Dickson is also not the best impression. But there is nothing to do. Everyone wants to get into the staff. Therefore, mentally drawing caricatures of his colleagues and making funny faces, Dixon pays a considerable tribute to hypocrisy and tries to look like everyone else. And even trying to smooth out the bad impression of her own person, she is engaged in scientific work, writes the article “The impact of economic factors on the development of shipbuilding skills from 1450 to 1485”. True, Dixon understands the meaninglessness of his pseudoscientific studies and notes to himself that his article deserves nothing but a few strong and obscene expressions.
One day, Welch invites Dixon to come to him for the weekend and help organize a musical evening. He also gives him the task to prepare a lecture on the topic “Good Old England” by the end of the semester. At Welch's house, Dixon meets Margaret, who also teaches at the university. Three weeks ago, she tried to commit suicide due to an unsuccessful affair with a certain Cachepole. After Margaret left the hospital, she lives with Welch, in the house of the professor and his wife. Dickson began dating Margaret shortly after teaching at the university. At first, he simply out of courtesy accepted Margaret’s invitation to drop in for a cup of coffee, and then he suddenly, not understanding how it happened, turned out to be the man whom “they see everywhere with Margaret”. At the same time, he is not Margaret's lover, but rather plays the role of a comforter, from whom he no longer wants to be free.
On a musical evening, Welch Dixon comes only because he is dependent on the professor and wants to make a good impression on him. The professor’s son Bertrand arrives there, accompanied by Christina Kellegen, the niece of a certain Julius Gore-Erkvart, to whom Bertrand hopes to enter the service. Dixon takes her for another woman, for Bertrand's ex-bride. That is, again an unpleasant misunderstanding, as a result of which Dixon did not develop relations with the son of the professor from the very beginning. Enraged and upset, Jim quietly leaves Welch’s house and goes to the pub. He comes back late at night, pretty drunk. He enters Margaret's room and first tries to pester her. Margaret kicks Dixon out and he goes down to the first floor to the sideboard, where he adds half a bottle of port to the already drunk. As a result, going up to his room and falling asleep with a lit cigarette, he burns bed linen, a carpet and a nightstand. In the morning, Dixon goes down to the dining room, meets Christina there and tells her about a small night fire in his bedroom. Christine goes upstairs with Dickson and helps him cover the fire. Then Jim informs the owners that his parents unexpectedly came to him and that he was forced to leave.
For the second time, Dixon meets Christine at a summer ball at the university, where he came with Margaret. And Christina is there in the company of Bertrand and his uncle, Julius Gore-Erkvart. Throughout the evening, Bertrand talks exclusively with Christine's uncle. Margaret is also trying to get Gore-Erkvart's attention. Dixon sees that Christine, like him, is bored at this ball, and he invites her to leave and volunteers to conduct her. On the way to the taxi, they have a sincere conversation, and Christina asks Dixon for advice on whether she should marry Bertrand. Dixon gives a negative answer, clarifying that he likes Christine, but Bertrand does not. When they drive up to the Welch’s house, where the girl is visiting, Jim asks the driver to wait, and he goes to accompany Christina to the house. They break into the house through the window. Once in the room, the young people kiss for the first time, then Dixon confesses Christine's love. Leaving, Jim agrees with Christina about the next meeting.
A few days later, Professor Welch again invites Dixon to his dinner. However, when Jim arrives at the professor, he apologizes and reports that a misunderstanding has occurred and that he is going to the theater that evening. Jim meets with Welch Bertrand. Young people are seriously quarreling over the fact that Dixon took Christine from the summer ball that time. Returning home, Dixon reflects on the futility of his meetings with Christina and even tries to cancel the date. Nevertheless, they meet, and Christina tells Jim that they do not need to see each other, because she is connected with Bertrand. However, after some time, at the moment when Jim was preparing for a lecture on the topic “Good Old England”, Bertrand came into his room and rudely told him not to dare to meet Christina anymore. And then Dixon, who had already decided to not meet with the girl himself, in spite of Bertrand, said that he had serious intentions. Bertrand hits Dixon in the face, and a fight begins, in which Jim ultimately prevails, knocking the opponent down, and then sends him out of the room.
On the day Dixon needed to give his lecture, he drinks half a dozen servings of whiskey in the morning with his neighbor Bill Atkinson. Then, at the reception before the lecture, he drinks a few more glasses of sherry. And just before going to the podium, Jim meets Julius Gore-Erkvart and treats him with undiluted Scotch whiskey. As a result, Jim Dixon tries to lecture completely drunk. But he doesn’t succeed. He only makes the audience laugh, exactly repeating the intonations of Professor Welch and the dean. In the end, drunk alcohol, excitement and heat take their toll, and he loses consciousness. The next morning, he receives a letter from Professor Welch, where he advises Dixon to leave. And in the afternoon, Julius Gore-Erkvart calls him and offers a personal secretary. This is exactly the place that Bertrand sought from Uncle Christina. Jim naturally enraptures. On the same day, Dixon comes across Cachepole, and in a conversation with him it turns out that Margaret simply played the scene of a suicide attempt by taking a safe dose of sleeping pills. And then Jim returns to himself, where Bill Atkinson is waiting for him to inform: he had just talked on the phone with Christina, she was leaving and she needed to convey something very important to Dickson. Jim rushes to the station, finds Christina there, who tells him that she broke up with Bertrand: it turns out that Bertrand continues to meet with his long-time mistress. Dixon tells her his news, they say, from now on he will work with her uncle and is ready to follow Christine to London. Holding hands, young people proudly walk past the dumbfounded Welch family. Silent scene.
