Kitabı oku: «Vice Versa: or, A Lesson to Fathers», sayfa 12
"You've a very odd way of showing your affection," remarked Mr. Bultitude; "but go on, let me hear all you have to say."
"It isn't much," said Biddlecomb, quite broken down; "only don't sneak of me this time, Dick, let me off, there's a good fellow. I'll stick up for you after this, I will really. You used not to be a fellow for sneaking once. It's caddish to sneak!"
"Don't be alarmed, my good friend," said Paul; "I won't poach on that excellent young man Chawner's preserves. What I am going to tell the Doctor has nothing to do with you."
"On your honour?" said Biddlecomb eagerly.
"Yes," said Paul testily, "on my honour. Now, perhaps, you'll let me alone. No, I won't shake hands, sir. I've had to accept your kicks, but I don't want your friendship."
Biddlecomb went off, looking slightly ashamed of himself but visibly relieved from a haunting fear. "Thank goodness!" thought Paul, "he wasn't as obstinate as the other fellow. What a set they are! I knew it, there's another boy coming up now!"
And indeed one boy after another came up in the same way as Biddlecomb had done, some cringing more than others, but all vowing that they had never intended to do any harm, and entreating him to change his mind about complaining of his ill-treatment. They brought little offerings to propitiate him and prove the depth of their unaltered regard – pencil-cases and pocket-knives, and so forth, until they drove Paul nearly to desperation. However, he succeeded in dispelling their fears after some hot arguments, and had just sent away the last suppliant, when he saw Jolland too rise and come towards him.
Jolland leaned across Paul's desk with folded arms and looked him full in the face with his shallow light green eyes. "I don't know what you've said to all those chaps," he began; "they've come back looking precious glum, but they won't tell me what you said," (Mr. Bultitude had in satisfying their alarm taken care to let them know his private opinion of them, which was not flattering), "but I've got something to say to you, and it's this. I never thought you would quite come down to this sort of thing!"
"What sort of thing?" said Paul, who was beginning to have enough of it.
"Why, going up and letting on against all of us – it's mean, you know. If you have got bashed about pretty well since you came back, it's been all your own fault, and you know it. Last term you got on well enough – this time you began to be queer and nasty the very first day you came. I thought it was one of your larks at first, but I don't know what it is now, and I don't care. I stood up for you as long as I could, till you acted like a funk yesterday. Then I took my share in lamming you, and I'd do it again. But if you are cad enough to pay us all out in this way, I'll have no more to do with you – mind that. That's all I came to say."
This was an unpalatable way of putting things, but Paul could not help seeing that there was some truth in it. Jolland had been kind to him, too, in a careless sort of way, and at some cost to himself; so it was with more mildness than temper that he answered him.
"You're on the wrong tack, my boy, the wrong tack. I've no wish to tell tales of anyone, as I've been trying to explain to your friends. There's something the matter with me which you wouldn't understand if I told you."
"Oh, I didn't know," said Jolland, mollified; "if it's only physic you want."
"Whatever it is," said Paul, not caring to undeceive him, "it won't affect you or anyone here, but myself. You're not a bad young fellow, I believe. I don't want to get you into trouble, sir; you don't want much assistance, I'm afraid, in that department. So be off, like a good fellow, and leave me in peace."
All these interviews had taken time. He was alarmed on looking at the clock to see that it was nearly eight; the Doctor was a long time over that call – for the first time he began to feel uneasy – he made hurried mental calculations as to the probability of the Doctor or Chawner being the first to return.
The walk to church took about twenty minutes; say the service took an hour, allowing for the return, he might expect Chawner by about half-past eight; it was striking the hour now – half an hour only in which he could hope for any favourable result from the interview!
For he saw this plainly, that if Chawner were once permitted to get the Doctor's ear first and show him that infamous love-note, no explanation of his (even if he had nerve to make it then, which he doubted) could possibly seem anything more than a desperate and far-fetched excuse; if he could anticipate Chawner, on the other hand, and once convince the Doctor of the truth of his story, the informer's malice would fall flat.
And still the long hand went rapidly on, as Mr. Bultitude sat staring stupidly at it with a faint sick feeling – it had passed the quarter now – why did the Doctor delay in this unwarrantable manner? What a farce social civilities were – if he had allowed himself to be prevailed on to stay to supper! Twenty minutes past; Chawner and the others might return at any moment – a ring at the bell; they were there! all was over now – no, he was saved, that was Dr. Grimstone's voice in the hall – what an unconscionable time he was taking off his greatcoat and gloves.
But all comes to the man who waits. In another moment the Doctor looked in, singled out Mr. Bultitude with a sharp glance, and a, "Now, Bultitude, I will hear you!" and led the way to his study.
Paul staggered rather than walked after him: as usual at the critical moment his carefully prepared opening had deserted him – his head felt heavy and crowded – he wanted to run away, but forced himself to overcome such a suicidal proceeding and follow to the study.
There was a lighted reading-lamp with a green glass shade upon the table. The Doctor sat down by it in an armchair by the fire, crossed his legs, and joined the tops of his fingers together. "Now, Bultitude," he said again.
"Might I – might I sit down?" said poor Mr. Bultitude in a thick voice; it was all that occurred to him to say.
"Sit by all means," said the Doctor blandly.
So Paul drew a chair opposite the Doctor and sat down. He tried desperately to clear his head and throat and begin; but the only distinct thought in his mind just then was that the green lamp-shade lent a particularly ghastly hue to the Doctor's face.
"Take your time, Bultitude," said the latter, after a long minute, in which a little skeleton clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly – "there's no hurry, my boy."
But this only reminded Paul that there was every need for hurry – Chawner might come in, and follow him here, unless he made haste.
Still, he could only say, "You see me in a very agitated state, Dr. Grimstone – a very agitated state, sir."
The Doctor gave a short, dry cough. "Well, Bultitude," he said.
"The fact is, sir, I'm in a most unfortunate position, and – and the worst of it is, I don't know how to begin." Here he made another dead stop, while the Doctor raised his heavy eyebrows, and looked at the clock.
"Do you see any prospect of your finding yourself able to begin soon?" he inquired at last, with rather suspicious suavity. "Perhaps if you came to me later on – "
"Not for the world!" said Paul, in a highly nervous condition. "I shall begin very soon, Doctor, I shall begin directly. Mine is such a very singular case; it's difficult, as you see, to, to open it!"
"Have you anything on your mind?" asked the Doctor suddenly.
Paul could hear steps and voices in the adjoining cloakroom – the churchgoers had returned. "Yes – no!" he answered, losing his head completely now.
"That's a somewhat extraordinary, not to say an ambiguous, reply," said the Doctor; "what am I to understand by – "
There was a tap at the door. Paul started to his feet in a panic. "Don't let him in!" he shrieked, finding his voice at last. "Hear me first – you shall hear me first! Say that other rascal is not to come in. He wants to ruin me!"
"I was going to say I was engaged," said the Doctor; "but there's something under this I must understand. Come in, whoever you are."
And the door opened softly, and Chawner stepped meekly in; he was rather pale and breathed hard, but was otherwise quite composed.
"Now, then, Chawner," said the Doctor impatiently, "what is it? Have you something on your mind, too?"
"Please, sir," said Chawner, "has Bultitude told you anything yet?"
"No, why? Hold your tongue, Bultitude. I shall hear Chawner now – not you!"
"Because, sir," explained Chawner, "he knew I had made up my mind to tell you something I thought you ought to know about him, and so he threatened to come first and tell some falsehood (I'm sure I don't know what) about me, sir. I think I ought to be here too."
"It's a lie!" shouted Paul, "What a villain that boy is! Don't believe a word he says, Dr. Grimstone; it's all false – all!"
"This is very suspicious," said the Doctor; "if your conscience were good, Bultitude, you could have no object in preventing me from hearing Chawner. Chawner, in spite of some obvious defects in his character," he went on, with a gulp (he never could quite overcome a repulsion to the boy), "is, on the whole, a right-minded and, ah, conscientious boy. I hear Chawner first."
"Then, sir, if you please," said Chawner, with an odious side smirk of triumph at Paul, who, quite crushed by the horror of the situation, had collapsed feebly on his chair again, "I thought it was my duty to let you see this. I found it to-day in Bultitude's prayerbook, sir." And he handed Dick's unlucky scrawl to the Doctor, who took it to the lamp and read it hurriedly through.
After that there was a terrible moment of dead silence; then the Doctor looked up and said shortly, "You did well to tell me of this, Chawner; you may go now."
When they were alone once more he turned upon the speechless Paul with furious scorn and indignation. "Contemptible liar and hypocrite," he thundered, pacing restlessly up and down the room in his excitement, till Paul felt very like Daniel, without his sense of security, "you are unmasked – unmasked, sir! You led me to believe that you were as much shocked and pained at this girl's venturing to write to you as I could be myself. You called it, quite correctly, 'forward and improper'; you pretended you had never given her the least encouragement – had not heard her name even – till to-day. And here is a note, written, as I should imagine, some time since, in which you address her as 'Connie Davenant,' and have the impudence to admire the hat she wore the Sunday before! I shudder, sir, to think of such duplicity, such precocious and shameless depravity. It astounds me. It deprives me of all power to think!"
Paul made some faint and inarticulate remark about being a family man – always most particular, and so forth – luckily it passed unheard.
"What shall I do with you?" continued the Doctor; "how shall I punish such monstrous misconduct?"
"Don't ask me, sir," said Paul, desperately – "only, for heaven's sake, get it over as soon as possible."
"If I linger, sir," retorted the Doctor, "it is because I have grave doubts whether your offence can be expiated by a mere flogging – whether that is not altogether too light a retribution."
"He can't want to torture me," thought Paul.
"Yes," said the Doctor again, "the doubt has prevailed. On a mind so hardened the cane would leave no lasting impression. I cannot allow your innocent companions to run the risk of contamination from your society. I must not permit this serpent to glide uncrushed, this cockatrice to practise his epistolary wiles, within my peaceful fold. My mind is made up – at whatever cost to myself – however it may distress and grieve your good father, who is so pathetically anxious for you to do him credit, sir. I must do my duty to the parents of the boys entrusted to my care. I shall not flog you, sir, for I feel it would be useless. I shall expel you."
"What!" Paul leaped up incredulous. "Expel me? Do I hear you aright, Dr. Grimstone? Say it again – you will expel me?"
"I have said it," the Doctor said sternly; "no expostulations can move me now" (as if Mr. Bultitude was likely to expostulate!) "Mrs. Grimstone will see that your boxes are packed the first thing to-morrow morning, and I shall take you myself to the station and consign you to the home you have covered with blushes and shame, by the 9.15 train, and I shall write a letter to-night explaining the causes for your dismissal."
Mr. Bultitude covered his face with his hands, to hide, not his shame and distress, but his indecent rapture. It seemed almost too good to be true! He saw himself about to be provided with every means of reaching home in comfort and safety. He need dread no pursuit now. There was no chance, either, of his being forced to return to the prison-house – the Doctor's letter would convince even Dick of the impossibility of that. And, best of all, this magnificent stroke of good luck had been obtained without the ignominy and pain of a flogging, without even the unpleasant necessity of telling his strange secret.
But (having gained some experience during his short stay at the school) he had the duplicity to pretend to sob bitterly.
"But one night more, sir," continued the Doctor, "shall you pass beneath this roof, and that apart from your fellows. You will occupy the spare bedroom until the morning, when you quit the school in disgrace – for ever."
I said in another chapter that this Sunday would find Paul, at its close, after a trying course of emotions, in a state of delicious ecstasy of pure relief and happiness – and really that scarcely seems too strong an expression for his feelings.
When he found himself locked securely into a comfortable, warm bedroom, with curtains and a carpet in it, safe from the persecutions of all those terrible boys, and when he remembered that this was actually the last night of his stay here – that he would certainly see his own home before noon next day, the reaction was so powerful that he could not refrain from skipping and leaping about the room in a kind of hysterical gaiety.
And as he laid his head down on a yielding lavender-scented pillow, his thoughts went back without a pang to the varied events of the day; they had been painful, very painful, but it was well worth while to have gone through them to appreciate fully the delightful intensity of the contrast. He freely forgave all his tormentors, even Chawner – for had not Chawner procured his release? – and he closed his eyes at last with a smile of Sybaritic satisfaction and gentle longing for the Monday's dawn to break.
And yet some, after his experiences, would have had their misgivings.
13. A Respite
"Discipulorum inter jubeo plorare cathedras."
Blithe 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. Daddy 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.
