Vice Versa Part 14

"If you would allow me an opportunity of explaining my position, sir,"

said Paul, "I would undertake to clear your mind directly of such a monstrous idea. I am trying to a.s.sert my rights, Dr. Grimstone--my rights as a citizen, as a householder! This is no place for me, and I appeal to you to set me free. If you only knew one tenth----"

"Let us understand one another, Bult.i.tude," interrupted the Doctor.

"You may think it an excellent joke to talk nonsense to me like this.

But let me tell you there is a point where a jest becomes an insult.

I've spared you hitherto out of consideration for the feelings of your excellent father, who is so anxious that you should become an object of pride and credit to him; but if you dare to treat me to any more of this bombast about 'explaining your rights,' you will force me to exercise one of mine--the right to inflict corporal punishment, sir--which you have just seen in operation upon another."

"Oh!" said Mr. Bult.i.tude faintly, feeling utterly crestfallen--and he could say nothing more.

"As for those illicit luxuries in your playbox," continued the Doctor, "the fact that you brought the box up as it was is in your favour; and I am inclined on reflection to overlook the affair, if you can a.s.sure me that you were no party to their being put there?"

"On the contrary," said Paul, "I gave the strictest orders that there was to be no such useless extravagance. I objected to have the kitchen and housekeeper's room ransacked to make a set of rascally boys ill for a fortnight at my expense!"

The Doctor stared slightly at this creditable but unnatural view of the subject. However, as he could not quarrel with the sentiment, he let the manner of expressing it pa.s.s unrebuked for the present, and, after sentencing Coggs to two days' detention and the copying of innumerable French verbs, he sent the ill-matched pair down to the schoolroom to join their respective cla.s.ses.

Paul went resignedly downstairs and into the room, where he found Mr.

Blinkhorn at the head of one of the long tables, taking a cla.s.s of about a dozen boys.

"Take your Livy and Latin Primer, Bult.i.tude," said Mr. Blinkhorn mildly, "and sit down."

Mr. Blinkhorn was a tall angular man, with a long neck and slightly drooping head. He had thin wiry brown hair, and a plain face, with shortsighted kind brown eyes. In character he was mild and reserved, too conscientious to allow himself the luxury of either favourites or aversions among the boys, all of whom in his secret soul he probably disliked about equally, though he neither said nor did anything to show it.

Paul took a book--any book, for he did not know or care to know one from another--and sat down at the end furthest from the master, inwardly rebelling at having education thus forced upon him at his advanced years, but seeing no escape.

"At dinner time," he resolved desperately, "I will insist on speaking out, but just now it is simply prudent to humour them."

The rest of the cla.s.s drew away from him with marked coldness and occasionally saluted him (when Mr. Blinkhorn's attention was called away) with terms and grimaces which Paul, although he failed thoroughly to understand them, felt instinctively were not intended as compliments.

Mr. Blinkhorn's notions of discipline were qualified by a sportsmanlike instinct which forbade him to hara.s.s a boy already in trouble, as he understood young Bult.i.tude had been, and so he forbore from pressing him to take any share in the cla.s.s work.

Mr. Bult.i.tude therefore was saved from any necessity of betraying his total ignorance of his author, and sat gloomily on the hard form, impatiently watching the minute-hand skulk round the mean dull face of the clock above the chimney-piece, while around him one boy after another droned out a listless translation of the work before him, interrupted by mild corrections and comments from the master.

What a preposterous change from all his ordinary habits! At this very time, only twenty-four hours since, he was stepping slowly and majestically towards his accustomed omnibus, which was waiting with deference for him to overtake it; he was taking his seat, saluted respectfully by the conductor and cheerily by his fellow-pa.s.sengers, as a man of recognised mark and position.

Now that omnibus would halt at the corner of Westbourne Terrace in vain, and go on its way Bankwards without him. He was many miles away--in the very last place where anyone would be likely to look for him, occupying the post of "whipping-boy" to his miserable son!

Was ever an inoffensive and respectable gentleman placed in a more false and ridiculous position?

If he had only kept his drawer locked, and hidden the abominable Garuda Stone away from d.i.c.k's prying eyes; if he had let the moralising alone; if Boaler had not been so long fetching that cab, or if he had not happened to faint at the critical moment--what an immense difference any one of these apparent trifles would have made.

And now what was he to do to get out of this incongruous and distasteful place? It was all very well to say that he had only to insist upon a hearing from the Doctor, but what if, as he had very grave reason to fear, the Doctor should absolutely refuse to listen, should even proceed to carry out his horrible threat? Must he remain there till the holidays came to release him? Suppose d.i.c.k--as he certainly would unless he was quite a fool--declined to receive him during the holidays? It was absolutely necessary to return home at once; every additional hour he pa.s.sed in imprisonment made it harder to regain his lost self.

Now and then he roused himself from all these gloomy thoughts to observe his companions. The boys at the upper end, near Mr. Blinkhorn, were fairly attentive, and he noticed one small smug-faced boy about half-way up, who, while a cla.s.s-mate was faltering and blundering over some question, would cry "I know, sir. Let me tell him. Ask me, sir!" in a restless agony of superior information.

Down by Paul, however, the discipline was relaxed enough, as perhaps could only be expected on the first day of term. One wild-eyed long-haired boy had brought out a small china figure with which, and the a.s.sistance of his right hand draped in a pocket handkerchief, and wielding a penholder, he was busy enacting a drama based on the lines of Punch and Judy, to the breathless amus.e.m.e.nt of his neighbours.

Mr. Bult.i.tude might have hoped to escape notice by a policy of judicious self-effacement, but unhappily his long, blank, uninterested face was held by his companions to bear an implied reproach; and being delicately sensitive on this point, they kicked his legs viciously, which made him extremely glad when dinnertime came, although he felt too faint and bilious to be tempted by anything but the lightest and daintiest luncheon.

But at dinner he found, with a shudder, that he was expected to swallow a thick ragged section of boiled mutton which had been carved and helped so long before he sat down to it, that the stagnant gravy was chilled and congealed into patches of greasy white. He managed to swallow it with many pauses of invincible disgust--only to find it replaced by a solid slab of pale brown suet pudding, spa.r.s.ely bedewed with unctuous black treacle.

This, though a plentiful, and by no means unwholesome fare for growing boys, was not what he had been accustomed to, and feeling far too heavy and unwell after it to venture upon an encounter with the Doctor, he wandered slow and melancholy round the bare gravelled playground during the half-hour after dinner devoted to the inevitable "chevy," until the Doctor appeared at the head of the staircase.

It is always sad for the historian to have to record a departure from principle, and I have to confess with shame on Mr. Bult.i.tude's account that, feeling the Doctor's eye upon him, and striving to propitiate him, he humiliated himself so far as to run about with an elaborate affection of zest, and his exertions were rewarded by hearing himself cordially encouraged to further efforts.

It cheered and emboldened him. "I've put him in a good temper," he told himself; "if I can only keep him in one till the evening, I really think I might be able to go up and tell him what a ridiculous mess I've got into. Why should I care, after all? At least I've done nothing to be ashamed of. It's an accident that might have happened to any man!"

It is a curious and unpleasant thing that, however rea.s.suring and convincing the arguments may be with which we succeed in bracing ourselves to meet or disregard unpleasantness, the force of those arguments seldom or never outlasts the frame of mind in which they are composed, and when the unpleasantness is at hand, there we are, just as unreasonably alarmed at it as ever.

Mr. Bult.i.tude's confidence faded away almost as soon as he found himself in the schoolroom again. He found himself a.s.signed to a cla.s.s at one end of the room, where Mr. Tinkler presently introduced a new rule in Algebra to them, in such a manner as to procure for it a lasting unpopularity with all those who were not too much engaged in drawing duels and railway trains upon their slates to attend.

Although Paul did not draw upon his slate, his utter ignorance of Algebra prevented him from being much edified by the cabalistic signs on the blackboard, which Mr. Tinkler seemed to chalk up dubiously, and rub out again as soon as possible, with an air of being ashamed of them. So he tried to nerve himself for the coming ordeal by furtively watching and studying the Doctor, who was taking a Xenophon cla.s.s at the upper end of the room, and, being in fairly good humour, was combining instruction with amus.e.m.e.nt in a manner peculiarly his own.

He stopped the construing occasionally to ill.u.s.trate some word or pa.s.sage by an anecdote; he condescended to enliven the translation here and there by a familiar and colloquial paraphrase; he magnanimously refrained from pressing any obviously inconvenient questions; and his manner generally was marked by a geniality which was additionally piquant from its extreme uncertainty.

Mr. Bult.i.tude could not help thinking it a rather ghastly form of gaiety, but he hoped it might last.

Presently, however, some one brought him a blue envelope on a tray. He read it, and a frown gathered on his face. The boy who was translating at the time went on again in his former slipshod manner (which had hitherto provoked only jovial criticism and correction) with complete self-complacency, but found himself sternly brought to book, and burdened by a heavy imposition, before he quite realised that his blunders had ceased to amuse.

Then began a season of sore trial and tribulation for the cla.s.s. The Doctor suddenly withdrew the light of his countenance from them, and suns.h.i.+ne was succeeded by blackest thunderclouds. The wind was no longer tempered to the more closely shorn of the flock; the weakest vessels were put on unexpectedly at crucial pa.s.sages, and, coming hopelessly to grief, were denounced as impostors and idlers, till half the cla.s.s was dissolved in tears.

A few of the better grounded stood the fire, like a remnant of the Old Guard. With faces pale from alarm, and trembling voices, but perfect accuracy, they answered all the Doctor's searching inquiries after the paradigms of Greek verbs that seemed irregular to the verge of impropriety.

Paul saw it all with renewed misgiving. "If I were there," he thought, "I should have been run out and flogged long ago! How angry those stupid young idiots are making him! How can I go up and speak to him when he's like that? And yet I must. I'm sitting on dynamite as it is. The very first time they want me to answer any questions from some of their books, I shall be ruined! Why wasn't I better educated when I was a boy, or why didn't I make a better use of my opportunities! It will be a bitter thing if they thrash me for not knowing as much as d.i.c.k.

Grimstone's coming this way now; it's all over with me!"

The Greek cla.s.s had managed to repel the enemy, with some loss to themselves, and the Doctor now left his place for a moment, and came down towards the bench on which Paul sat trembling.

The storm, however, had pa.s.sed over for the present, and he only said with restored calmness, "Who were the boys who learnt dancing last term?"

One or two of them said they had done so, and Dr. Grimstone continued: "Mr. Burdekin was unable to give you the last lesson of his course last term, and has arranged to take you to-day, as he will be in the neighbourhood. So be off at once to Mrs. Grimstone and change your shoes. Bult.i.tude, you learnt last term, too. Go with the others."

Mr. Bult.i.tude was too overcome by this unexpected attack to contradict it, though of course he was quite able to do so; but then, if he had, he must have explained all, and he felt strongly that just then was neither the time nor the place for particulars.

It would have been wiser perhaps, it would certainly have brought matters to a crisis, if he could have forced himself to tell everything--the whole truth in all its outrageous improbability--but he could not.

Let those who feel inclined to blame him for lack of firmness consider how difficult and delicate a business it must almost of necessity be for anyone to declare openly, in the teeth of common sense and plain facts, that there has been a mistake, and, in point of fact, he is not his own son, but his own father.

"I suppose I must go," he thought. "I needn't dance. Haven't danced since I was a young man. But I can't afford to offend him just now."

And so he followed the rest into a sort of cloak-room, where the tall hats which the boys wore on Sundays were all kept on shelves in white bandboxes; and there his hair was brushed, his feet were thrust into very s.h.i.+ny patent leather shoes, and a pair of kid gloves was given out to him to put on.

The dancing lesson was to be held in the "Dining Hall," from which the savour of mutton had not altogether departed. When Paul came in he found the floor cleared and the tables and forms piled up on one side of the room.

Biddlecomb and Tipping and some of the smaller boys were there already, their gloves and s.h.i.+ny shoes giving them a feeling of ceremony and constraint which they tried to carry off by an uncouth parody of politeness.

Siggers was telling stories of the dances he had been to in town, and the fine girls whose step had exactly suited his own, and Tipping was leaning gloomily against the wall listening to something Chawner was whispering in his ear.

There was a rustle of dresses down the stairs outside, and two thin little girls, looking excessively proper and prim, came in with an elderly gentlewoman who was their governess and wore a _pince-nez_ to impart the necessary suggestion of a superior intellect. They were the Miss Mutlows, sisters of one of the day-boarders, and attended the course by special favour as friends of Dulcie's, who followed them in with a little gleam of shy antic.i.p.ation in her eyes.