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 class at the upper
end of the room, and, being in fairly good humour, was combining
instruction with amusement in a manner peculiarly his own.
He stopped the construing occasionally to illustrate some word or
passage 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. Bultitude 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 class. The
Doctor suddenly withdrew the light of his countenance from them, and
sunshine 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 passages, and, coming hopelessly to
grief, were denounced as impostors and idlers, till half the class 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 Dick.
Grimstone's coming this way now; it's all over with me!"
The Greek class 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 passed 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. Bultitude, you learnt last term, too. Go with the others."
Mr. Bultitude 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 shiny 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 shiny 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 anticipation in her eyes.
The Miss Mutlows sat stiffly down on a form, one on each side of her
governess, and all three stared solemnly at the boys, who began to blush
vividly under the inspection, to unbutton and rebutton their gloves with
great care, and to shift from leg to leg in an embarrassed manner.
Dulcie soon singled out poor Mr. Bultitude, who, mindful of Tipping's
warning, was doing his very best to avoid her.
She ran straight to him, laid her hand on his arm and looked into his
face pleadingly. "Dick," she said, "you're not sulky still, are you?"
Mr. Bultitude had borne a good deal already, and, not being remarkably
sweet-natured, he shook the little hand away, half petulant and half
alarmed. "I do wish you wouldn't do this sort of thing in public. You'll
compromise me, you know!" he said nervously.
Dulcie opened her grey eyes wide, and then a flush came into her cheeks,
and she made a little disdainful upward movement of her chin.
"You didn't mind it once," she said. "I thought you might want to dance
with me. You liked to last term. But I'm sure I don't care if you choose
to be disagreeable. Go and dance with Mary Mutlow if you want to, though
you did say she danced like a pair of compasses, and I shall tell her
you said so, too. And you know you're not a good dancer yourself. _Are_
you going to dance with Mary?"
Paul stamped. "I tell you I never dance," he said. "I can't dance any
more than a lamp-post. You don't seem an ill-natured little girl, but
why on earth can't you let me alone?"
Dulcie's eyes flashed. "You're a nasty sulky boy," she said in an angry
undertone (all the conversation had, of course, been carried on in
whispers). "I'll never speak to you or look at you again. You're the
most horrid boy in the school--and the ugliest!"
And she turned proudly away, though anyone who looked might have seen
the fire in her eyes extinguished as she did so. Perhaps Tipping did see
it, for he scowled at them from his corner.
There was another sound outside, as of fiddlestrings being twanged by
the finger, and, as the boys hastily formed up in two lines down the
centre of the room and the Miss Mutlows and Dulcie prepared themselves
for the curtsey of state, there came in a little fat man, with
mutton-chop whiskers and a white face, upon which was written an
unalterable conviction that his manner and deportment were perfection
itself.
The two rows of boys bent themselves stiffly from the back, and Mr.
Burdekin returned the compliment by an inclusive and stately
inclination.
"Good afternoon, madam. Young ladies, I trust I find you well. (The
curtsey just a leetle lower, Miss Mutlow--the right foot less drawn
back. Beautiful! Feet closer at the recovery. Perfect!) Young gentlemen,
good evening. Take your usual places, please, all of you, for our
preliminary exercises. Now, the _chassee_ round the room. Will you lead
off, please, Dummer; the hands just lightly touching the shoulders, the
head thrown negligently back to balance the figure; the whole deportment
easy, but not careless. Now, please!"
And, talking all the time with a metrical fluency, he scraped a little
jig on the violin, while Dummer led off a procession which solemnly
capered round the room in sundry stages of conscious awkwardness. Mr.
Bultitude shuffled along somehow after the rest, with rebellion at his
heart and a deep sense of degradation. "If my clerks were to see me
now!" he thought.
After some minutes of this, Mr. Burdekin stopped them and directed sets
to be formed for "The Lancers."
"Bultitude," said Mr. Burdekin, "you will take Miss Mutlow, please."
"Thank you," said Paul, "but--ah--I don't dance."
"Nonsense, nonsense, sir, you are one of my most promising pupils. You
mustn't tell me that. Not another word! Come, select your partners."
Paul had no option. He was paired off with the tall and rather angular
young lady mentioned, while Dulcie looked on pouting, and snubbed
Tipping, who humbly asked for the pleasure of dancing with her, by
declaring that she meant to dance with Tom.
The dance began to a sort of rhythmical accompaniment by Mr. Burdekin,
who intoned "Tops advance, retire and cross. Balance at corners. (Very
nice, Miss Grimstone!) More '_abandon_,' Chawner! Lift the feet more
from the floor. Not so high as that! Oh, dear me! that last figure over
again. And slide the feet, oh, slide the feet! (Bultitude, you're
leaving out all the steps!")
Paul was dragged, unwilling but unresisting, through it all by his
partner, who jerked and pushed him into his place without a word, being
apparently under strict orders from the governess not on any account to
speak to the boys.
After the dance the couples promenaded in a stiff but stately manner
round the room to a dirge-like march scraped upon the violin, the boys
taking the parts of ladies jibbing away from their partners in a highly
unlady-like fashion, and the boy burdened with the companionship of the
younger Miss Mutlow walking along in a very agony of bashfulness.
"I suppose," thought Paul, as he led the way with Miss Mary Mutlow, "if
Dick were ever to hear of this, he'd think it _funny_. Oh, if I ever get
the upper hand of him again----. How much longer, I wonder, shall I have
to play the fool to this infernal fiddle!"
But, if this was bad, worse was to come.
There was another pause, in which Mr. Burdekin said blandly, "I wonder
now if we have forgotten our sailor's hornpipe. Perhaps Bultitude will
prove the contrary. If I remember right, he used to perform it with
singular correctness. And, let me tell you, there are a great number of
spurious hornpipe steps in circulation. Come, sir, oblige me by dancing
it alone!"
This was the final straw. It was not to be supposed for one moment that
Mr. Bultitude would lower his dignity in such a preposterous manner.
Besides, he did not know how to dance the hornpipe.
So he said, "I shall do nothing of the sort. I've had quite enough of
this--ah--tomfoolery!"
"That is a very impolite manner of declining, Bultitude; highly
discourteous and unpolished. I must insist now--really, as a personal
matter--upon your going through the sailor's hornpipe. Come, you won't
make a scene, I'm sure. You'll oblige me, as a gentleman?"
"I tell you I can't!" said Mr. Bultitude sullenly. "I never did such a
thing in my life; it would be enough to kill me at my age!"
"This is untrue, sir. Do you mean to say you will not dance the
hornpipe?"
"No," said Paul, "I'll be damned if I do!"
There was unfortunately no possible doubt about the nature of the word
used--he said it so very distinctly. The governess screamed and called
her charges to her. Dulcie hid her face, and some of the boys tittered.
Mr. Burdekin turned pink. "After that disgraceful language, sir, in the
presence of the fairer sex, I have no more to do with you. You will have
the goodness to stand in the centre of that form. Gentlemen, select your
partners for the Highland schottische!"
Mr. Bultitude, by no means sorry to be freed from the irksome necessity
of dancing with a heart ill-attuned for enjoyment, got up on the form
and stood looking, sullenly enough, upon the proceedings. The governess
glowered at him now and then as a monster of youthful depravity; the
Miss Mutlows glanced up at him as they tripped past, with curiosity not
unmixed with admiration, but Dulcie steadily avoided looking in his
direction.
Paul was just congratulating himself upon his escape when the door
opened wide, and the Doctor marched slowly and imposingly into the room.
He did this occasionally, partly to superintend matters, and partly as
an encouraging mark of approbation. He looked round the class at first
with benignant toleration, until his glance took in the bench upon which
Mr. Bultitude was set up. Then his eye slowly travelled up to the level
of Paul's head, his expression changing meanwhile to a petrifying glare.
It was not, as Paul instinctively felt, exactly the position in which a
gentleman who wished to stand well with those in authority over him
would prefer to be found. He felt his heart turn to water within him,
and stared limp and helpless at the Doctor.
There was an awful silence (Dr. Grimstone was addicted to awful
silences; and, indeed, if seldom strictly "golden," silence may often be
called "iron"), but at last he inquired, "And pray what may you be doing
up there, sir?"
"Upon my soul I can't say," said Mr. Bultitude feebly. "Ask that
gentleman there with the fiddle--he knows."
Mr. Burdekin was a good-natured, easy-tempered little man, and had
already forgotten the affront to his dignity. He was anxious not to get
the boy into more trouble.
"Bultitude was a little inattentive and, I may say, wanting in respect,
Dr. Grimstone," he said, putting it as mildly as he could with any
accuracy; "so I ventured to place him there as a punishment."
"Quite right, Mr. Burdekin," said the Doctor: "quite right. I am sorry
that any boy of mine should have caused you to do so. You are again
beginning your career of disorder and rebellion, are you, sir? Go up
into the schoolroom at once, and write a dozen copies before tea-time! A
very little more eccentricity and insubordination from you, Bultitude,
and you will reap a full reward--a full reward, sir!"
So Mr. Bultitude was driven out of the dancing class in dire
disgrace--which would not have distressed him particularly, being only
one more drop in his bitter cup--but that he recognised that now his
hopes of approaching the Doctor with his burden of woe were fallen like
a card castle. They were fiddled and danced away for at least
twenty-four hours--perhaps for ever!
Bitterly did he brood over this as he slowly and laboriously copied out
sundry vain repetitions of such axioms as, "Cultivate Habits of Courtesy
and Self-control," and "True Happiness is to be sought in Contentment."
He saw the prospect of a tolerably severe flogging growing more and more
distinct, and felt that he could not present himself to his family with
the consciousness of having suffered such an indelible disgrace. His
family! What would become of them in his absence? Would he ever see his
comfortable home in Bayswater again?
Tea-time came, and after it evening preparation, when Mr. Tinkler
presided in a feeble and ineffective manner, perpetually suspecting that
the faint sniggers he heard were indulged in at his own expense, and
calling perfectly innocent victims to account for them.
Paul sat next to Jolland and, in his desperate anxiety to avoid further
unpleasantness, found himself, as he could not for his life have written
a Latin or a German composition, reduced to copy down his neighbour's
exercises. This Jolland (who had looked forward to an arrangement of a
very opposite kind) nevertheless cheerfully allowed him to do, though he
expressed doubts as to the wisdom of a servile imitation--more, perhaps,
from prudence than conscientiousness.
Jolland, in the intervals of study, was deeply engaged in the production
of a small illustrated work of fiction, which he was pleased to call
_The Adventures of Ben Buterkin at Scool_. It was in a great measure an
autobiography, and the cuts depicting the hero's flagellations--which
were frequent in the course of the narrative--were executed with much
vigour and feeling.
He turned out a great number of these works in the course of the term,
as well as faces in pen and ink with moving tongues and rolling eyes,
and these he would present to a few favoured friends with a secretive
and self-depreciatory giggle.
Amidst scenes and companions like these, Paul sat out the evening hours
on his hard seat, which was just at the junction of two forms--an
exquisitely uncomfortable position, as all who have tried it will
acknowledge--until the time for going to bed came round again. He
dreaded the hours of darkness, but there was no help for it--to protest
would have been madness just then, and, once more, he was forced to pass
a night under the roof of Crichton House.
It was even worse than the first, though this was greatly owing to his
own obstinacy.
The boys, if less subdued, were in better temper than the evening
before, and found it troublesome to keep up a feud when the first flush
of resentment had died out. There was a general disposition to forget
his departure from the code of schoolboy honour, and give him an
opportunity of retrieving the past.
But he would not meet them half-way; his repeated repulses by the Doctor
and all the difficulties that beset his return to freedom had made him
very sulky and snappish. He had not patience or adaptability enough to
respond to their advances, and only shrank from their rough good
nature--which naturally checked the current of good feeling.
Then, when the lights were put out, some one demanded a story. Most of
the bedrooms possessed a professional story-teller, and in one there was
a young romancist who began a stirring history the very first night of
the term, which always ran on until the night before the holidays, and,
if his hearers were apt to yawn at the sixth week of it, he himself
enjoyed and believed in it keenly from beginning to end.
Dick Bultitude had been a valued _raconteur_, it appeared, and his
father found accordingly, to his disgust, that he was expected to amuse
them with a story. When he clearly understood the idea, he rejected it
with so savage a snarl, that he soon found it necessary to retire under
the bedclothes to escape the general indignation that followed.
Finding that he did not actively resent it (the real Dick would have had
the occupant of the nearest bed out by the ears in a minute!), they
profited by his prudence to come to his bedside, where they pillowed his
weary head (with their own pillows) till the slight offered them was
more than avenged.
After that, Mr. Bultitude, with the breath half beaten out of his body,
lay writhing and spluttering on his hard, rough bed till long after
silence had fallen over the adjoining beds, and the sleepy hum of talk
in the other bedrooms had died away.
Then he, too, drifted off into wild and troubled dreams, which, at their
maddest, were scattered into blankness by a sudden and violent shock,
which jerked him, clutching and grasping at nothing, on to the cold,
bare boards, where he rolled, shivering.
"An earthquake!" he thought, "an explosion ... gas--or dynamite! He must
go and call the children ... Boaler ... the plate!"
But the reality to which he woke was worse still. Tipping and Coker had
been patiently pinching themselves to keep awake until their enemy
should be soundly asleep, in order to enjoy the exquisite pleasure of
letting down the mattress; and, too dazed and frightened even to swear,
Paul gathered up his bedclothes and tried to draw them about him as well
as he might, and seek sleep, which had lost its security.
The Garuda Stone had done one grim and cruel piece of work at least in
its time.
7. _Cutting the Knot_
"A Crowd is not Company; And Faces are but a Gallery of Pictures;
And Talke but a _Tinckling Cymball_, where there is no _Love_."
--BACON.
Once more Mr. Bultitude rose betimes, dressed noiselessly, and stole
down to the cold schoolroom, where one gas-jet was burning palely--for
the morning was raw and foggy.
This time, however, he was not alone. Mr. Blinkhorn was sitting at his
little table in the corner, correcting exercises, with his chilly hands
cased in worsted mittens. He looked up as Paul came in, and nodded
kindly.
Paul went straight to the fire, and stood staring into it with
lack-lustre eye, too apathetic even to be hopeless, for the work of
enlightening the Doctor seemed more terrible and impossible than ever,
and he began to see that, if the only way of escape lay there, he had
better make up his mind with what philosophy he could to adapt himself
to his altered circumstances, and stay on for the rest of the term.
But the prospect was so doleful and so blank, that he drew a heavy sigh
as he thought of it. Mr. Blinkhorn heard it, and rose awkwardly from the
rickety little writing-table, knocking over a pile of marble-covered
copy-books as he did so.
Then he crossed over to Paul and laid a hand gently on his shoulder.
"Look here," he said: "why don't you confide in me? Do you think I'm
blind to what has happened to you? I can see the change in you--if
others cannot. Why not trust me?"
Mr. Bultitude looked up into his face, which had an honest interest and
kindliness in it, and his heart warmed with a faint hope. If this young
man had been shrewd enough to guess at his unhappy secret, might he not
be willing to intercede with the Doctor for him? He looked
good-natured--he would trust him.
"Do you mean to say really," he asked, with more cordiality than he had
spoken for a long time, "that you--see--the--a--the difference?"
"I saw it almost directly," said Mr. Blinkhorn, with mild triumph.
"That's the most extraordinary thing," said Paul, "and yet it ought to
be evident enough, to be sure. But no, you can't have guessed the real
state of things!"
"Listen, and stop me if I'm wrong. Within the last few days a great
change has been at work within you. You are not the idle, thoughtless,
mischievous boy who left here for his holidays----"
"No," said Paul, "I'll swear I'm not!"
"There is no occasion for such strong expressions. But, at all events,
you come back here an altogether different being. Am I right in saying
so?"
"Perfectly," said Paul, overjoyed at being so thoroughly understood,
"perfectly. You're a very intelligent young man, sir. Shake hands. Why,
I shouldn't be surprised, after that, if you knew how it all happened?"
"That too," said Mr. Blinkhorn smiling, "I can guess. It arose, I doubt
not, in a wish?"
"Yes," cried Paul, "you've hit it again. You're a conjurer, sir, by Gad
you are!"
"Don't say 'by Gad,' Bultitude; it's inconsistent. It began, I was
saying, in a wish, half unconscious perhaps, to be something other than
what you had been----"
"I was a fool," groaned Mr. Bultitude, "yes, that was the way it began!"
"Then insensibly the wish worked a gradual transformation in your nature
(you are old enough to follow me?)."
"Old enough for him to follow _me_!" thought Paul; but he was too
pleased to be annoyed. "Hardly gradual I should say," he said aloud.
"But go on, sir, pray go on. I see you know all about it."
"At first the other part of you struggled against the new feelings. You
strove to forget them--you even tried to resume your old habits, your
former way of life--but to no purpose; and when you came here, you found
no fellowship amongst your companions----"
"Quite out of the question!" said Paul.
"Their pleasures give you no delight----"
"Not a bit!"
"They, on their side, perhaps misunderstand your lack of interest in
their pursuits. They cannot see--how should they?--that you have altered
your mode of life, and when they catch the difference between you and
the Richard Bultitude they knew, why, they are apt to resent it."