Vice Versa/Chapter 13

and gay was Mr. Bultitude when he opened his eyes on Monday morning and realised his incredible good fortune; in a few hours he would be travelling safely and comfortably home, with every facility for regaining his rights. He chuckled—though his sense of humour was not large—he chuckled, as he lay snugly in bed, to think of Dick's discomfiture on seeing him return so unexpectedly; he began to put it down, quite unwarrantably, to his own cleverness, as having conceived and executed such a stroke of genius as procuring his own expulsion.

He remained in bed until long after the getting-up bell had rung, feeling that his position ensured him perfect impunity in this, and when he rose at length it was in high spirits, and he dressed himself with a growing toleration for things in general, very unlike his ordinary frame of mind. When he had finished his toilet, the Doctor entered the room.

'Bultitude,' he said gravely, 'before sending you from us, I should like to hear from your own lips that you are not altogether without contrition for your conduct.'

Mr. Bultitude considered that such an acknowledgment could not possibly do any harm, so he said—as, indeed, he might with perfect truth—that 'he very much regretted what had passed.'

'I am glad to hear that,' said the Doctor, more briskly, 'very glad; it relieves me from a very painful responsibility. It may not impossibly induce me to take a more lenient view of your case.'

'Oh!' gasped Mr. Bultitude, feeling very uncomfortable all at once.

'Yes; it is a serious step to ruin a boy's career at its outset by unnecessary harshness. Nothing, of course, can palliate the extreme baseness of your behaviour. Still from certain faint indications in your character of better things, I do not despair even yet (after you have received a public lesson at my hands, which you will never forget) of rearing you to become in time an ornament to the society in which it will be your lot to move. I will not give up in despair—I will persevere a little longer.'

'Thank you!' Paul faltered, with a sudden sinking sensation.

'Mrs. Grimstone, too,' said the Doctor, 'has been interceding for you; she has represented to me that a public expression of my view of your conduct, together with a sharp, severe dose of physical pain, would be more likely to effect a radical improvement in your character, and to soften your perverted heart, than if I sent you away in hopeless disgrace, without giving you an opportunity of showing a desire to amend.'

'It's—very kind of Mrs. Grimstone,' said Paul faintly.

'Then I hope you will show your appreciation of her kindness. Yes, I will not expel you. I will give you one more chance to retrieve your lost reputation. But, for your own sake, and as a public warning, I shall take notice of your offence in public. I shall visit it upon you by a sound flogging before the whole school at eleven o'clock. You need not come down till then—your breakfast will be sent up to you.'

Paul made a frantic attempt to dissuade him from his terrible determination. 'Dr. Grimstone,' he said, 'I—I should much prefer being expelled, if it is all the same to you.'

'It is not all the same to me,' said the Doctor. 'This is mere pride and obstinacy, Bultitude; I should do wrong to take any notice of it.'

'I—I tell you I have great objection to—to being flogged,' said Paul eagerly; 'it wouldn't improve me at all; it would harden me, sir,—harden me. I—I cannot allow you to flog me, Dr. Grimstone. I have strong prejudices against the system of corporal punishment. I object to it on principle. Expulsion would make me quite a different being, I assure you; it would reform me—save me—it would indeed.'

'So, to escape a little personal inconvenience, you would be content to bring sorrow upon your worthy father's grey head, would you, sir?' said the Doctor. 'I shall not oblige you in this. Nor, I may add, will your cowardice induce me to spare you in your coming chastisement. I leave you, sir—we shall meet again at eleven!'

And he stalked out of the room. Perhaps, though he did not admit this even to himself, there were more considerations for commuting the sentence of expulsion than those he had mentioned. Boys are not often expelled from private schools, except for especially heinous offences, and in this case there was no real reason why the Doctor should be Quixotic enough to throw up a portion of his income—particularly if he could produce as great a moral effect by other means.

But his clemency was too much for Mr. Bultitude; he threw himself on the bed and raved at the hideous fate in store for him; ten short minutes ago, and he had been so happy—so certain of release—and now, not only was he as far from all hope of escape as ever, but he had the certainty before him of a sound flogging in less than two hours!

Just after something has befallen us which, for good or ill, will make a great change in our lives, what a totally new aspect the common everyday things about us are apt to wear—the book we were reading, the letter we had begun, the picture we knew—what a new and tender attraction they may have for us, or what a grim and terrible irony!

Something of this Paul felt dimly, as he finished dressing, in a dazed, unconscious manner. The comfortable bedroom, with its delicately-toned wall-paper and flowery cretonnes, had become altogether hateful in his eyes now. Instead of feeling grateful (as he surely ought to have been) for the one night of perfect security and comfort he had passed there, he only loathed it for the delusive peace it had brought him.

There was a gentle tap at the door, and Dulcie came in, bearing a tray with his breakfast, and looking like a little Royalist bearing food to a fugitive Cavalier; though Paul did not quite carry out his share of the simile.

'There!' she said, almost cheerfully; 'I got Mummy to let me take up your breakfast; and there's an egg for you, and muffins.'

Mr. Bultitude sat on a chair and groaned.

'You might say 'thank you, said Dulcie, pouting. 'That other girl wouldn't have brought you up much breakfast if she'd been in my place. I was going to tell you that I'd forgiven you, because very likely you never meant her to write to you' (Dulcie had not been told the sequel to the Davenant episode, which was quite as well for Paul). 'But you don't seem to care whether I do or not.'

'I feel so miserable!' sighed Paul.

'Then you must drink some coffee,' prescribed Dulcie decidedly; 'and you must eat some breakfast. I brought an egg on purpose; it's so strengthening, you know.'

'Don't!' cried Paul, with a short howl of distress at this suggestion. 'Don't talk about the—the flogging, I can't bear it.'

'But it's not papa's new cane, you know, Dick,' said Dulcie consolingly. 'I've hidden that; it's only the old one, and you always said that didn't hurt so very much, after a little while. It isn't as if it was the horsewhip, either. Papa lost that out riding in the holidays.'

'Oh, the horsewhip's worse, is it?' said Paul, with a sickly smile.

'Tom says so,' said Dulcie. 'After all, Dick, it will be all over in five minutes, or, perhaps, a little longer, and I do think you oughtn't to mind that so much, now, after mamma and I have begged you off from being expelled. We might never have seen one another again, Dick!'

'You begged me off!' cried Paul.

'Yes,' said Dulcie; 'Daddy wouldn't change his mind for ever so long—till I coaxed him. I couldn't bear to let you go.'

'You've done a very cruel thing,' said Paul. 'For such a little girl as you are, you've done an immense amount of mischief. But for you, that letter would not have been found out. You need not have spoilt my only chance of getting out of this horrible place!'

Dulcie set down the tray, and, putting her hands behind her, leaned against a corner of a wardrobe.

'And is that all you say to me!' she said, with a little tremble in her voice.

'That is all,' said Paul. 'I've no doubt you meant well, but you shouldn't have interfered. All this has come upon me through that. Take away the breakfast. It makes me ill even to look at it.'

Dulcie shook out her long brown hair, and clenched her small fist in an undeniable passion, for she had something of her father's hot temper when roused. 'Very well, then,' she said, moving with great dignity towards the door. 'I'm very sorry I ever did interfere. I wish I'd let you be sent home to your papa, and see what he'd do to you. But I'll never, never interfere one bit with you again. I won't say one single word to you any more. . . . I'll never even look at you if you want me to ever so much. . . . I shall tell Tipping he can hit you as much as ever he likes, and I shall show Tom where I put the new cane—and I only hope it will hurt!' And with this parting shot she was gone.

Mr. Bultitude wandered disconsolately about the upper part of the house after this, not daring to go down, and not able to remain in any one place. The maids who came up to make the beds looked at him with pitiful interest, but he was too proud to implore help from them. To hide would only make matters worse, for, as he had not a penny in his pocket, and no probability of being able to borrow one, he must remain in the house till hunger forced him from his hiding-place—supposing they did not hunt him out long before that time.

The shouts of the boys in the playground during their half-hour's play had long since died away; he heard the clock in the hall strike eleven—time for him to seek his awful rendezvous. The Doctor had not forgotten him, he found, for presently the butler came up and ceremoniously announced that the Doctor 'would see him now, if he pleased.'

He stumbled downstairs in a half-unconscious condition, the butler threw open the two doors which led to the schoolroom, and Paul tottered in, more dead than alive with shame and fear.

The whole school were at their places, with no books before them, and arranged as if to hear a lecture. Mr. Blinkhorn alone was absent, for, not liking these exhibitions, he had taken an opportunity of slipping out into the playground, round which he was now solemnly trotting at the 'double' with elbows squared and head up; an exercise which he said was an excellent thing for the back and lungs. He had a habit of suddenly leaving the class he was taking to indulge in it for a few minutes, returning breathless but refreshed.

Mr. Tinkler was at his seat, wearing that faint grin on his face with which he might have prepared to see a pig killed or a bull-fight, and all the boys fixed their eyes expectantly on Mr. Bultitude as he appeared at the doorway.

'Stand there, sir,' said the Doctor, who was standing at his writing-table in an attitude; 'out there in the middle, where your schoolfellows can see you.' Paul obeyed and stood where he was told, looking, as he felt, absolutely boneless.

'Some of those here,' began the Doctor in an impressive bass, 'may wonder why I have called you all together on this, the first day of the week; most of those who reside under my roof are acquainted with, and I trust execrate, the miserable cause of my doing so.

'If there is one virtue which I have striven to implant more than any other in your breasts,' he continued, 'it is the cultivation of a modest and becoming reserve in your intercourse with those of the opposite sex.

'With the majority I have, I hope, been successful, and it is as painful for me to tell as for you to hear, that there exists in your midst a youthful reprobate, trained in all the arts of ensnaring the vagrant fancies of innocent but giddy girlhood.

'See him as he cowers there before your gaze, in all the bared hideousness of his moral depravity' (the Doctor on occasions like these never spared his best epithets, and Paul soon began to feel himself a very villain); 'a libertine, young in years, but old in—in everything else, who has not scrupled to indite an amatory note, so appalling in its familiarity, and so outrageous in the warmth of its sentiments, that I cannot bring myself to shock your ears with its contents.

'You do well to shun him as a moral leper; but how shall I tell you that, not satisfied with pressing his effusions upon the shrinking object of his precocious affections, the impious wretch has availed himself of the shelter of a church to cloak his insidious advances, and even force a response to them from a heedless and imprudent girl!

'If,' continued the Doctor, now allowing his powerful voice to boom to its full compass—'if I can succeed in bringing this coward, this unmanly dallier in a sentiment which the healthy mind of boyhood rejects as premature, to a sense of his detestable conduct; if I can score the lesson upon his flesh so that some faint notion of its force and purport may be conveyed to what has been supplied to him as a heart, then I shall not have lifted this hand in vain!

'He shall see whether he will be allowed to trail the fair name of the school for propriety and correctness of deportment in the dust of a pew-floor, and spurn my reputation as a preceptor like a church hassock beneath his feet!

'I shall say no more; I will not prolong these strictures, deserved though they be, beyond their proper limits. . . . I shall now proceed to act. Richard Bultitude, remain there till I return to mete out to you with no sparing hand the punishment you have so richly merited.'

With these awful words the Doctor left the room, leaving Paul in a state of abject horror and dread which need not be described. Never, never again would he joke, as he had been wont to do with Dick in lighter moods, on the subject of corporal punishment under any circumstances—it was no fit theme for levity; if this—this outrage were really done to him, he could never be able to hold up his head again. What if it were to get about in the city!

The boys, who had sunk, as they always did, into a state of torpid awe under the Doctor's eloquence, now recovered spirits enough to rally Paul with much sprightly humour.

'He's gone to fetch his cane,' said some, and imitated for Paul's instruction the action of caning by slapping a ruler upon a copy-book with a dreadful fidelity and resonance; others sought to cross-examine him upon the love-letter, it appearing from their casual remarks that not a few had been also honoured by communications from the artless Miss Davenant.

It is astonishing how unfeeling even ordinary good-natured boys can be at times.

Chawner sat at his desk with raised shoulders, rubbing his hands, and grinning like some malevolent ape: 'I told you, Dickie, you know,' he murmured, 'that it was better not to cross me.'

And still the Doctor lingered. Some kindly suggested that he was 'waxing the cane.' But the more general opinion was that he had been detained by some visitor; for it appeared that (though Paul had not noticed it) several had heard a ring at the bell. The suspense was growing more and more unbearable.

At last the door opened in a slow ominous manner, and the Doctor appeared. There was a visible change in his manner, however. The white heat of his indignation had died out: his expression was grave but distinctly softened—and he had nothing in his hand.

'I want you outside, Bultitude,' he said; and Paul, still uncertain whether the scene of his disgrace was only about to be shifted, or what else this might mean, followed him into the hall.

'If anything can strike shame and confusion into your soul, Richard,' said the Doctor, when they were outside, 'it will be what I have to tell you now. Your unhappy father is here, in the dining-room.'

Paul staggered. Had Dick the brazen effrontery to come here to taunt him in his slavery? What was the meaning of it? What should he say to him? He could not answer the Doctor but by a vacant stare.

'I have not seen him yet,' said the Doctor. 'He has come at a most inopportune moment' (here Mr. Bultitude could not agree with him). 'I shall allow you to meet him first, and give you the opportunity of breaking your conduct to him. I know how it will wring his paternal heart!' and the Doctor shook his head sadly, and turned away.

With a curious mixture of shame, anger, and impatience, Paul turned the handle of the dining-room door. He was to meet Dick face to face once more. The final duel must be fought out between them here. Who would be the victor?

It was a strange sensation on entering to see the image of what he had so lately been standing by the mantelpiece. It gave a shock to his sense of his own identity. It seemed so impossible that that stout substantial frame could really contain Dick. For an instant he was totally at a loss for words, and stood pale and speechless in the presence of his unprincipled son.

Dick on his side seemed at least as much embarrassed. He giggled uneasily, and made a sheepish offer to shake hands, which was indignantly declined.

As Paul looked he saw distinctly that his son's fraudulent imitation of his father's personal appearance had become deteriorated in many respects since that unhappy night when he had last seen it. It was then a copy, faultlessly accurate in every detail. It was now almost a caricature, a libel!

The complexion was nearly sallow, with the exception of the nose, which had rather deepened in colour. The skin was loose and flabby, and the eyes dull and a little bloodshot. But perhaps the greatest alteration was in the dress. Dick wore an old light tweed shooting-coat of his, and a pair of loose trousers of blue serge; while, instead of the formally tied black neckcloth his father had worn for a quarter of a century, he had a large scarf round his neck of some crude and gaudy colour; and the conventional chimney-pot hat had been discarded for a shabby old wide-brimmed felt wideawake.

Altogether, it was by no means the costume which a British merchant, with any self-respect whatever, would select, even for a country visit.

And thus they met, as perhaps never, since this world was first set spinning down the ringing grooves of change, met father and son before!