Tales of College Life/"Aeger;" or, Mistaken Identity/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
THE SICK MAN AT HYDE PARK CORNER.
Mr. Percival Wylde's first impulse upon perceiving the advancing foe, was to wheel round, and dart through Mr. Burton's screen to screen himself, as best he might, in the mazes of Hyde Park. His second impulse was to hail a passing cab, leap into it, and bid the cabby drive to Jericho. His third impulse was to meet the difficulty in the face,—take the bull by the horns—beard the lion in his den, and the Douglas in his hall,—and trust to his own boldness and readiness to bring him off the victor.
Mr. Percival Wylde decided ta act upon impulse the third.
He did this almost instantaneously; and, without altering his pace, or betraying by his features his sense of the disagreeable nature of the approaching rencontre, he advanced to meet the adversary. As he did so, he rapidly delivered this mental soliloquy: "The Governor, by all that 's blue! What on earth can have brought him to town? I thought the old bird was safe in Shropshire. He looks uncommonly black at seeing me. By Jove! I have done it now, and no mistake! I remember now! there was that letter I sent him the day before yesterday,—through being so beastly hard up,—telling him that I was very bad, and all the rest of it; and asking him to send me a cheque for medical fees, and all those sort of things. If he 's got that letter, what will he say to meeting me here! He 's rather corky at the best of times; what will he be now? He 'll see directly that I 'm on my road to Fanny, whom he hates like the bad; and that won't improve the old boy's temper. He expects one to stick so particularly close to College, that he 'll be no end riled at seeing his hopeful play truant in this fashion. I must deny myself to the old boy, and stick out that I 'm somebody else. There 's nothing like impudence! and I flatter myself that I can be as cool as a Covent-garden full of cucumbers. Now for it!"
By this time "the Old Boy" had advanced with quickened steps and eyes of wonder, and had pulled himself up full in the face of his unfilial son. The Old Boy had a highly-coloured, port-and-claret countenance, the radiant hues of which were shown off to the greatest advantage by the snowy colour (that is to say, if white is a colour) of his white neck-handkerchief, which appeared to have been wrapped round his neck a countless number of times, after an antique fashion. The Old Boy, being of a puffy, apoplectic habit of body, was not accustomed to ascend gradients, however easy, without a certain amount of stertorous breathing, that, for a time, proved a slight impediment to the freedom of conversation; and thus, when he encountered his son, he could only gasp, "Why—why! Percie!" and was then compelled to stop short, and to lay his hand upon his son's arm to arrest his farther progress.
Mr. Percival Wylde paused, and slightly lifted his eyebrows with an air of well-bred surprise.
"Why, Percie!" at length said Mr. Wylde, senior, as he regained his breath, without losing his astonishment; "why, Percie! what in the name of fortune brings you here?"
Mr. Percival Wylde gazed calmly on his interrogator, and, without betraying himself by the slightest show of confusion, said, in a careless, drawling tone, "You have the advantage of me, Sir."
"The what! the advantage! the doose, Sir!" cried the Old Boy, exploding at the first onset. "What the doose do you mean, Sir, about the advantage?"
"Really, Sir," replied the younger one, with a well-affected air of astonishment, "I can only repeat that you have the advantage of me."
"What!" cried the Old Boy, waxing even redder in the face, and hitting his stick upon the pavement after the manner of irate parents and guardians on the stage; "what! deny your own father! mean to say you don't know your own father!"
"Father!" said the other, with a slight shadow of polite astonishment in his tone; "Father! really, Sir, I"
"What!" cried the Old Boy, "not own your own father? I suppose you 'll say next that you are not my son?"
"You flatter me, Sir, by the supposition that I could be the offspring of so remarkable an old gentleman," was the cool reply; "but, really, I must confess my inability to lay claim to so singular a parent."
"Why! you—you—" stammered the Old Boy, whose rage was now at boiling point; "but, come, Sir! no more nonsense! Just turn your steps, and come with me to Morley's." Mr. Wylde, it must be remarked, en passant, patronised this Trafalgar-square Hotel, as it was in convenient neighbourhood to his Club, which was at the opposite corner of the square.
"Excuse me, old gentleman!" replied his son, with undisturbed nonchalance; "but I have no wish to go to Morley's, although you hold out to me the tempting offer of your agreeable company. My way lies in the opposite direction."
"I know it does, Sir!" cried the Old Boy, as choleric as Mr. Wigan in "The Bengal Tiger": "I know it does! I knew it, Sir—knew it from the first! From the very first moment that I set eyes on you, I said, That rascal 's on his way to Wilton Crescent."
"You must be gifted with the spirit of prophecy, though not of politeness; for I am on my way to Wilton Crescent," was the reply.
The Old Boy was furious at this frank confession. "I knew you were!" he cried; "I knew it! and did n't I forbid you making love to her? didn't I tell you that I would never sanction any tomfoolery of love-making with a girl that won't have as much as will keep her in—in hair-oil, by Jove!" continued the Old Boy, anxious for a striking example in his statement of the presumptive fortune of Miss Fanny Douglas. "Perhaps you are not aware where I am just come from, Mr. Percie?"
"In the first place, Sir," replied the son, "as I am personally unknown to you, I cannot see why you should address a perfect stranger as 'Mr. Percie,' although that name might, perhaps, do as well as any other. But, in the second place, Sir, I think I can give a very shrewd conjecture as to the place from which you have just come,—namely, the Lunatic Asylum; to which place I should advise your speedy return. You are not fit to be trusted without a keeper."
Mr. Percival Wylde said this with perfect gravity, and with the air of pity which any one might be supposed to feel towards an unfortunate gentleman; but his words angered the Old Boy above all bounds. His loud tone of voice, his thumpings of his stick upon the pavement, and the highly dramatic action that he threw into the dialogue, had already attracted the notice of many of the passers by, and had drawn to the spot more than one of those London street-boys, who rise up, by a species of magic, wherever there is an exhibition of any thing for which no payment is demanded; and, it must be confessed, that Mr. Wylde was making a gratuitous exhibition of himself. These small boys, moreover, after the habits of their species, indulged in a running commentary on the passing scene, expressed in the common vernacular, and modelled on the Chorus of the ancient Greek drama. As may be imagined, their varied sallies of wit, and cutting sarcasms, were not without their effect; and their observations of "Draw it mild, old un!" "Don't bust yourself!" "You 'll split yer veskit, guv'nor!" were, to Mr. Wylde, as the lashings of the tail that excite the lion to fury.
"Asylum! keeper!" gasped the Old Boy, who would have roared, if his shortness of breath had permitted him to make so much noise; "by George, Sir! you 'll make me cut you off with a shilling!"
"He says," explained one small boy to another, who had just arrived upon the scene; "he says that he cut off with a bob. The old gent 's vun o' the swell mob." An explanation which was by no means satisfactory to Mr. Wylde.
"Cut me off with a shilling!" echoed the son; "really, Sir, your language is most extraordinary. But you must excuse my giving my attention to more of it, as I have my engagement to keep. Allow me to wish you good morning, and, at the same time, to thank you for your diverting society."
This was more than Mr. Wylde could bear. Catching his son tightly by the arm, he exclaimed, "Not so fast, Percie! you are not going to escape me in this way, without giving an account of yourself; and explaining why you are here in London, going to see a person you ought not to see, when you ought to be ill in bed in Oxford, running up doctors' bills, which you expect me to pay, and send you cheques for! and then to disown your own father, and—and—by George, Sir—" Mr. Wylde paused for lack of breath, not for lack of words.
"Hit him while he 's down!" cried a small boy, probably as a suggestion to Percie to take an unfair advantage of his parent, the while he was in his gasping state of speechlessness.
"Pray let me call a cab for you; you are getting outrageous. This is probably the time for one of your fits," said Percie; and with an air of kind protection, he put his arm within his father's, and sought to lead him to the neighbouring cab-stand.
"By George!" cried the Old Boy, as he recovered his breath, and broke from his son's hold, "this is more than I can bear! to be disowned, and called a madman by my own son—my own son, Sir!" he added to a passer-by who had tarried a moment, impelled by curiosity to listen to what was going on: "my own son, Sir! who ought to be at Oxford, and ill in bed."
"My eyes! ain't that a whopper, neither!" remarked one of the Chorus.
"Ill in bed, Sir!" continued Mr. Wylde, "and writing to me for cheques for doctors' bills, Sir! and then denies himself, Sir; and talks about me having the advantage,—although he confesses to being on his way to Wilton Crescent. What do you think of that, Sir?"
The gentleman to whom Mr. Wylde addressed himself appeared to be unable or unwilling to commit himself to a reply, not having seen much connexion or probability in Mr. Wylde's far-from-lucid resumeé; and his suspicions of that individual's sanity were strengthened, by the explanation which Percie gave to him and the other bystanders, in the abbreviated style of Mr. Alfred Jingle: "Poor man—touched here—very sad—sees a likeness—thinks I 'm his son—distressing case—very!"
"I 'll tell you what, Percie!" cried the Old Boy; "I 'll make you suffer for this! Disown me, and call me a lunatic! by Jove, Sir, I 'll cut you off with less than a shilling! Come with me directly, Sir; or never expect me to own you again."
"This," said a small boy, in the didactic manner of Mr. Robson. in the pathetic ballad of "Villikins and his Dinah," "this is vot that brute of a parient hobserved to the hoffspring of his haffections."
"Really, Sir," said Mr. Percival Wylde, "I have endured your eccentricities quite long enough, and it is now time to put a stop to them. You may, perhaps, be a very fine fellow down in your own part of the country, and accustomed to bully labourers and swear at tramps; but you 'll find, Sir, that this conduct won't do in London, where no man is suffered to publicly insult or annoy another with impunity. If every eccentric old gentleman was to take it into his head to claim any one he fancied as his own son, and was permitted to indulge in such absurd paternal cravings, young men, like myself, would not be able to walk the streets in safety, so long as old gentlemen like you were left at large. If you annoy me any further, I shall have no other course left than to give you in charge to this policeman." And Percie pointed to a blue-coated official who had strolled (by accident) to the spot.
"It's all stuff and nonsense!" cried the Old Boy, keeping a tight hold of his son's arm: "I 'm not going to be cheated out of my own eyesight in this way, and told to my face that I 'm a madman, and not the father of my own son—a son who deceives me, and imposes upon me with his sham sickness and his doctors' bills! But I 'm not the man to be tricked in this way; so, come along with me, Sir! I insist upon it! and you know very well that I keep my word, and am not to be trifled with."
"Vot a huncompromising old trump!" observed one of the Chorus.
"Since you compel me to adopt so disagreeable an expedient, I have no other alternative than to give you in charge: "and Mr. Percival Wylde beckoned to the blue-coated official.
"Hook it, old 'un!" cried a kindly-disposed small boy; "hook it! the Peeler 's a-coming!"
"Come, Sir!" said the Peeler: "I think you 'd best not trouble this gent, but move on: becos, if so be as he hinsists upon it, in course it 'll be my dooty to take you in charge."
"But," expostulated Mr. Wylde, "he 's my own son—who ought to be at Oxford, ill in bed—my own son!"
"Ah, Sir!" said the philosophic Peeler, "you see, here is hastonishing likenesses to be met with in the world. Sometimes it takes a wise child to know its own father, and sometimes a wise father ain't able to know his own son. We sees such things every day, bless you. But you must move on, Sir; or else I must take you in charge for annoying this gent. As it is, you 're a hobstructin' of the pavement."
"Ho, Soosanner!" sang one of the Chorus, as a consolation for the sufferer; "Ho, Soosanner, don't you cry for me! yer a goin' to Hallerbarmer, with yer banjo on yer knee!"
"I have no more time to lose, Sir!" said Mr. Percival Wylde, referring to his watch: "it is already past the time when I ought to have been in Wilton Crescent,"—(the Old Boy flinched at the mention of this locality),—"and I must again repeat, that if you persist in annoying or following me" (for I had better be on the safe side, thought Percie), "I must give you in charge. Having given you this final notice, I must leave you to pursue your own way."
"Very well, Sir!" roared the Old Boy, at the culminating point of his fury; "you shall suffer for this, Sir! I 'll teach you what it is to impose upon me with your sham sicknesses, and your cheques for doctors' bills that you never had! I 'll teach you what it is to disobey me by making love to that girl! If you were fifty sons and heirs, I'd cut you off with a shilling—I would, by George! I 'll give you a lesson, Sir! I 'll go up to Oxford at once and have you expelled the place. I will, Sir, by"
"Don't swear, Sir!" said Mr. Percival Wylde, with the same imperturbable coolness and sangfroid that he had maintained throughout the conversation; "Don't swear, Sir, I beg! for as this is a public thoroughfare, I shall feel it my duty, as a member of society, to complain of you, and have you fined five shillings, as a warning for the future!"
"Ugh!" was all that old Mr. Wylde ventured to growl in reply: and, seeing his son pursuing his way to Wilton Crescent, he strode in the opposite direction, down Piccadilly, surrounded by the Chorus of small boys, singing "Pop goes the Weasel," turning head over heels, and making the most liberal offers to do "four wheels a ha'penny" for Mr. Wylde's instruction and amusement: offers which were not received by that gentleman with the same liberal spirit in which they were made.