Vice Versa/Chapter 7

by F. Anstey

'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 ricketty 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.'

'They are,' agreed Mr. Bultitude: 'they resent it in a confounded disagreeable way, you know. Why, I assure you, that only last night I was——'

'Hush,' said Mr. Blinkhorn, holding up one hand, 'complaints are unmanly. But I see you wonder at my knowing all this?'

'Well,' said Paul, 'I am rather surprised.'

'What would you say if I told you I had undergone it myself in my time?'

'You don't mean to tell me there are two Garudâ Stones in this miserable world!' cried Paul, thoroughly astonished.

'I don't know what you mean now, but I can say with truth that I too have had my experiences—my trials. Months ago, from certain signs, I noticed, I foresaw that this was coming upon you.'

'Then,' said Mr. Bultitude, 'I think, in common decency, you might have warned me. A post-card would have done it. I should have been better prepared to meet this, then!'

'It would have been worse than fruitless to attempt to hurry on the crisis. It might have even prevented what I fondly hoped would come to pass.'

'Fondly hoped!' said Paul, 'upon my word you speak plainly, sir.'

'Yes,' said Mr. Blinkhorn. 'You see I knew the Dick Bultitude that was, so well; he was frolicksome, impulsive, mischievous even, but under it all there lay a nature of sterling worth.'

'Sterling worth!' cried Paul. 'A scoundrel, I tell you, a heartless, selfish young scoundrel. Call things by their right names, if you please.'

'No, no,' said Mr. Blinkhorn, 'this extreme self-depreciation is morbid, very morbid. There was no actual vice.'

'No actual vice! Why, God bless my soul, do you call ingratitude—the basest, most unfilial, most treacherous ingratitude—no vice, sir? You may be a very excellent young man, but if you gloss over things in that fashion, your moral sense must be perverted, sir—strangely perverted.'

'There were faults on both sides, I fear,' said Mr. Blinkhorn, growing a little scandalised by the boy's odd warmth of expression. 'I have heard something of what you had to bear with. On the one hand, a father, undemonstrative, stern, easily provoked; on the other, a son, thoughtless, forgetful, and at times it may be even wilful. But you are too sensitive; you think too much of what seems to me a not unnatural (although of course improper) protest against coldness and injustice. I should be the last to encourage a child against a parent, but, to comfort your self-reproach, I think it right to assure you that, in my judgment, the outburst you refer to was very excusable.'

'Oh,' said Paul, 'you do? You call that comfort? Excusable! Why, what the dooce do you mean, sir? You're taking the other side now!'

'This is not the language of penitence, Bultitude,' said poor Mr. Blinkhorn, disheartened and bewildered. 'Remember, you have done with your old self now!'

'Don’t say that,' said Paul; 'I don't believe it!'

'You want to be your old self again?' gasped Mr. Blinkhorn.

'Why, of course I do,' said Paul angrily; 'I'm not an idiot!'

'You are weary of the struggle so soon?' said the other with reproach.

'Weary? I tell you I'm sick of it! If I had only known what was in store for me before I had made such a fool of myself!'

'This is horrible!' said Mr. Blinkhorn—'I ought not to listen to you.'

'But you must,' urged Paul; 'I tell you I can't stand it any longer. I'm not fit for it at my age. You must see that yourself, and you must make Grimstone see it too!'

'Never!' said Mr. Blinkhorn firmly. 'Nor do I see how that would help you. I will not let you go back in this deplorable way. You must nerve yourself to go on now in the path you have chosen; you must force your schoolfellows to love and respect you in your new character. Come, take courage! After all, in spite of your altered life, there is no reason why you should not be a frank and happy-hearted boy, you know.'

'A frank and happy-hearted fiddlestick!' cried Paul rudely (he was so disgusted at the suggestion); 'don't talk rubbish, sir! I thought you were going to show me some way out of all this, and instead of that, knowing the shameful way I've been treated, you can stand there and calmly recommend me to stay on here and be happy-hearted and frank!'

'You must be calm, Bultitude, or I shall leave you. Listen to reason. You are here for your good. Youth, it has been beautifully said, is the springtime of life. Though you may not believe it, you will never be happier than you are now. Our schooldays are——'

But Mr. Bultitude could not tamely be mocked with the very platitudes that had brought him all his misery—he cut the master short in a violent passion. 'This is too much!' he cried—'you shall not palm off that miserable rubbish on me. I see through it. It's a plot to keep me here, and you're in it. It's false imprisonment, and I'll write to the "Times". I'll expose the whole thing!'

'This violence is only ridiculous,' said Mr. Blinkhorn. 'If I were not too pained by it, I should feel it my duty to report your language to the Doctor. As it is, you have bitterly disappointed me; I can't understand it at all. You seemed so subdued, so softened lately. But until you come to me and say you regret this, I must decline to have anything more to say to you. Take your book and sit down in your place!'

And he went back to his exercises, looking puzzled and pained. The fact was, he was an ardent believer in the Good Boy of a certain order of school tales—the boy who is seized with a sudden conviction of the intrinsic baseness of boyhood, and does all in his power to get rid of the harmful taint; the boy who renounces his old comrades and his natural tastes (which after all seldom have any serious harm in them), to don a panoply of priggishness which is too often kick-proof.

This kind of boy is rare enough at most English schools, but Mr. Blinkhorn had been educated at a large Nonconformist College, where 'Revivals' and 'Awakenings' were periodical, and undoubtedly did produce changes of character violent enough, but sadly short in duration.

He was always waiting for some such boy to come to him with his confession of moral worthlessness and vows of unnatural perfection, and was too simple and earnest and good himself to realise that such states of the youthful mind are not unfrequently merely morbid and hysterical, and too often degenerate into Pharisaism, or worse still, hypocrisy.

So when he noticed Mr. Bultitude's silence and depression, his studied withdrawal from the others and his evident want of sympathy with them, he believed he saw the symptoms of a conscience at work, and that he had found his reformed boy at last.

It was a very unfortunate misunderstanding, for it separated Paul from, perhaps, the only person who would have had the guilelessness to believe his incredible story, and the good nature to help him to find escape from his misfortunes.

Mr. Bultitude on his part was more angry and disgusted than ever. He began to see that there was a muddle somewhere, and that his identity was unsuspected still. This young man, for all his fair speaking and pretended shrewdness, was no conjurer after all. He was left to rely on his own resources, and he had begun to lose all confidence in their power to extricate him.

As he brooded over this, the boys straggled down as before, and looked over their lessons for the day in a dull, lifeless manner. The cold, unsatisfying breakfast, and the half-hour assigned to 'chevy,' followed in due course, and after that Paul found himself set down with a class to await the German master, Herr Stohwasser.

He had again tried to pull himself together and approach the Doctor with his protest, but no sooner did he find himself near his presence than his heart began to leap wildly and then retired down towards his boots, leaving him hoarse, palpitating, and utterly blank of ideas.

It was no use—and he resigned himself for yet another day of unwelcome instruction.

The class was in a little room on the basement floor, with a linen-press taking up one side, some bare white deal tables and forms, and, on the walls, a few coloured German prints. They sat there talking and laughing, taking no notice of Mr. Bultitude, until the German master made his appearance.

He was by no means a formidable person, though stout and tall. He wore big round owlish spectacles, and his pale broad face and long nose, combined with a wild crop of light hair and a fierce beard, gave him the incongruous appearance of a sheep looking out of a gun-port.

He took his place with an air of tremendous determination to enforce a hard morning's work on the book they were reading—a play of Schiller's, of the plot of which, it is needless to say, no one of his pupils had or cared to have the vaguest notion, having long since condemned the whole subject, with insular prejudice, as 'rot.'

'Now, please,' said Herr Stohwasser, 'where we left off last term. Third act, first scene—Court before Tell's house. Tell is with the carpenter axe, Hedwig with a domestic labour occupied. Walter and Wilhelm in the depth sport with a liddle gross-bow. Biddlegom, you begin. Walter (sings).'

But Biddlecomb was in a conversational mood, and willing to postpone the task of translation, so he merely inquired, with an air of extreme interest, how Herr Stohwasser's German Grammar was getting on.

This was a subject on which (as he perhaps knew) the German never could resist enlarging, for in common with most German masters, he was giving birth to a new Grammar, which, from the daring originality of its plan, and its extreme simplicity, was destined to supersede all other similar works.

'Ach,' he said, 'it is brogressing. I haf just gompleted a gomprehensive table of ze irregular virps, vith ze eggserzizes upon zem. And zere is further an appendeeks which in itself gontains a goncise view of all ze vort-blays possible in the Charman tong. But, come, let us gontinue vith our Tell!'

'What are vort-blays?' persisted Biddlecomb insidiously, having no idea of continuing with his Tell just yet.

'A vort-blay,' exclaimed Herr Stohwasser; 'it is English, nicht so? A sporting vid vorts—a "galembour"—a—Gott pless me, vat you call a "pon."'

'Like the one you made when you were a young man?' Jolland called out from the lower end of the table.

'Yes; tell us the one you made when you were a young man,' the class entreated, with flattering eagerness.

Herr Stohwasser began to laugh with slow, deep satisfaction; the satisfaction of a successful achievement. 'Hah, you remember dat!' he said, 'ah, yes, I make him when a yong man; but, mind you, he was not a pon—he was a "choke." I haf told you all about him before.'

'We've forgotten it,' said Biddlecomb: 'tell it us again.'

As a matter of fact this joke, in all its lights, was tolerably familiar to most of them by this time, but, either on its individual merits, or perhaps because it compared favourably with the sterner alternative of translating, it was periodically in request, and always met with evergreen appreciation.

Herr Stohwasser beamed with the pride of authorship. Like the celebrated Scotchman, he 'jocked wi' deeficulty,' and the outcome of so much labour was dear to him.

'I zent him into ze Charman "Kladderadatch" (it is a paper like your "Ponch"). It—mein choke—was upon ze Schleswig-Holstein gomplication; ze beginning was in this way——'

And he proceeded to set out in great length all the circumstances which had given materials for his 'choke,' with the successive processes by which he had shaped and perfected it, passing on to a recital of the masterpiece itself, and ending up by a philosophical analysis of the same, which must have placed his pupils in full possession of the point, for they laughed consumedly.

'I dell you zis,' he said, 'not to aggustom your minds vith frivolity and lightness, but as a lesson in ze gonstruction of ze langwitch. If you can choke in Charman, you will be able also to gonverse in Charman.'

'Did the German what's-its-name print your joke?' inquired Coggs.

'It has not appeared yet,' Herr Stohwasser confessed; 'it takes a long time to get an imbortant choke like that out in brint. But I vait—I write to ze editor every week—and I vait.'

'Why don't you put it in your Grammar?' suggested Tipping.

'I haf—ze greater part of it—(it vas a long choke, but I gompressed him). If I haf time, some day I will make anozer liddle choke to aggompany, begause I vant my Crammar to be a goot Crammar, you understandt. And now to our Tell. Really you beople do noding but chatter!'

All this, of course, had no interest for Mr. Bultitude, but it left him free to pursue his own thoughts in peace, and indeed this lesson would never have been recorded here, but for two circumstances which will presently appear, both of which had no small effect on his fortunes.

He sat nearest the window, and looked out on the pinched and drooping laurels in the enclosure, which were damp with frost melting in the sunshine. Over the wall he could see the tops of passing vehicles, the country carrier's cart, the railway parcels van, the fly from the station. He envied even the drivers; their lot was happier than his!

His thoughts were busy with Dick. Oddly enough, it had scarcely occurred to him before to speculate on what he might be doing in his absence; he had thought chiefly about himself. But now he gave his attention to the subject, what new horrors it opened up! What might not become of his well-conducted household under the rash rule of a foolish schoolboy! The office, too—who could say what mischief Dick might not be doing there, under the cover of his own respectable form?

Then it might seem good to him any day to smash the Garudâ Stone, and after that there would be no hope of matters being ever set right again!

And yet, miserable coward and fool that he was, with everything depending upon his losing no time to escape, he could not screw up his courage, and say the words that were to set him free.

All at once—and this is one of the circumstances that make the German lesson an important stage in this story—an idea suggested itself to him quite dazzling by its daring and brilliancy.

Some may wonder, when they hear what it was, why he never thought of it before, and it is somewhat surprising, but by no means without precedent. Mark Twain has told us somewhere of a ferocious bandit who was confined for sixteen years in solitary captivity, before the notion of escape ever occurred to him. When it did, he opened the window and got out.

Perhaps a similar passiveness on Mr. Bultitude's part was due to a very natural and proper desire to do everything without scandal, and in a legitimate manner; to march out, as it were, with the honours of war. Perhaps it was simple dullness. The fact remains that it was not till then that he saw a way of recovering his lost position, without the disagreeable necessity of disclosing his position to anyone at Crichton House.

He had still—thank Heaven—the five shillings he had given Dick. He had not thrown them away with the other articles in his mad passion. Five shillings was not much, but it was more than enough to pay for a third-class fare to town. He had only to watch his opportunity, slip away to the station, and be at home again, defying the usurper, before anyone at Crichton House had discovered his absence.

He might go that very day, and the delight of this thought—the complete reaction from blank despair to hope—was so intense that he could not help rubbing his hands stealthily under the table, and chuckling with glee at his own readiness of resource.

When we are most elated, however, there is always a counteracting agent at hand to bring us down again to our proper level, or below it. The Roman general in the triumph never really needed the slave in the chariot to dash his spirits—he had his friends there already; the guests at an Egyptian dinner must have brought their own skeletons.

There was a small flaxen-haired little boy sitting next to Mr. Bultitude, seemingly a quite inoffensive being, who at this stage served to sober him by furnishing another complication.

'Oh, I say, Bultitude,' he piped shrilly in Paul's ear, 'I forgot all about it. Where's my rabbit?'

The unreasonable absurdity of such a question annoyed him excessively. 'Is this a time,' he said reprovingly, 'to talk of rabbits? Mind your book, sir.'

'Oh, I daresay,' grumbled little Porter, the boy in question: 'it's all very well, but I want my rabbit.'

'Hang it, sir,' said Paul angrily, 'do you suppose I'm sitting on it?'

'You promised to bring me back a rabbit,' persisted Porter doggedly; 'you know you did, and it's a beastly shame. I mean to have that rabbit, or know the reason why.'

At the other end of the table Biddlecomb had again dexterously allured Herr Stohwasser into the meshes of conversation; this time upon the question (àpropos de bottes) of street performances. 'I vill tell you a gurious thing,' he was saying, 'vat happened to me de ze oder day, ven I vas walking down de Strandt. I saw a leedle gommon dirty boy with a tall round hat on him, and he stand in a side street right out in de road, and he take off his tall round hat, and he put it on ze grount, and he stand still and look zo at it. So I stop too, to see vat he vould do next. And presently he take out a large sheet of paper and tear it in four pieces very garefully, and stick zem round ze tall round hat, and put it on his head again, and zen he set it down on ze grount and look at it vonce more, and all de time he never speak von vort. And I look and look and vonder vat he would do next. And a great growd of peoples com, and zey look and vonder too. And zen all at once de leedle dirty boy he take out all de paper and put on de hat, and he valk avay, laughing altogether foolishly at zomzing I did not understant at all. I haf been thinking efer since vat in the vorldt he do all zat nonsence for. And zere is von ozer gurious thing I see in your London streets zat very same day. Zere vas a poor house cat dat had been by a cab overrun as I passed by, and von man vith a kind varm heart valk up and stamp it on de head for to end its pain. And anozer man vith anozer kind heart, he gom up directly and had not seen ze cat overrun, but he see de first man stamping and he knock him down for ill-treating animals; it was quite gurious to see; till de policeman arrest dem both for fighting. Goggs, degline "Katze," and gif me ze berfect and bast barticiple of "kampfen," to fight.' This last relapse into duty was caused by the sudden entrance of the Doctor, who stood at the door looking on for some time with a general air of being intimately acquainted with Schiller as an author, before suggesting graciously that it was time to dismiss the class.

Wednesday was a half-holiday at Crichton House, and so, soon after dinner, Paul found himself marshalled with the rest in a procession bound for the football field. They marched two and two, Chawner and three of the other elder boys leading with the ball and four goal-posts ornamented with coloured calico flags, and Mr. Blinkhorn and Mr. Tinkler bringing up the rear.

Mr. Bultitude was paired with Tom Grimstone, who, after eyeing him askance for some time, could control his curiosity no longer.

'I say, Dick,' he began, 'what's the matter with you this term?'

'My name is not Dick,' said Paul stiffly.

'Oh, if you're so particular then,' said Tom: 'but, without humbug, what is the matter?'

'You see a change then,' said Paul, 'you do see a difference, eh?'

'Rather!' said Tom expressively. 'You've come back what I call a beastly sneak, you know, this term. The other fellows don't like it; they'll send you to Coventry unless you take care.'

'I wish they would,' said Paul.

'You don't talk like the same fellow either,' continued Tom; 'you use such fine language, and you're always in a bait, and yet you don't stick up for yourself as you used to. Look here, tell me (we were always chums), is it one of your larks?'

'Larks!' said Paul. 'I'm in a fine mood for larks. No, it's not one of my larks.'

'Perhaps your old governor has been making a cad of himself then, and you're out of sorts about it.'

'I'll thank you not to speak about him in that way,' said Paul, 'in my presence.'

'Why,' grumbled Tom, 'I'm sure you said enough about him yourself last term. It's my belief you're imitating him now.'

'Ah,' said Paul, 'and what makes you think that?'

'Why, you go about strutting and swelling just like he did when he came about sending you here. I say, do you know what ma said about him after he went away?'

'No,' said Paul, 'your mother struck me as a very sensible and agreeable woman—if I may say so to her son.'

'Well, ma said your governor seemed to leave you here just like they leave umbrellas at picture galleries, and she believed he had a large-sized money-bag inside him instead of a heart.'

'Oh!' said Paul, with great disgust, for he had thought Mrs. Grimstone a woman of better taste; 'your mother said that, did she? Vastly entertaining to be sure—ha, ha! He would be pleased to know she thought that, I'm sure.'

'Tell him, and see what he says,' suggested Tom; 'he is an awful brute to you though, is'n't he?'

'If,' growled Mr. Bultitude, 'slaving from morning till night to provide education and luxury for a thankless brood of unprofitable young vipers is 'being a brute,' I suppose he is.'

'Why, you're sticking up for him now!' said Tom. 'I thought he was so strict with you. Wouldn't let you have any fun at home, and never took you to pantomimes?'

'And why should he, sir, why should he? Tell me that. Tell me why a man is to be hunted out of his comfortable chair after a well-earned dinner, to go and sit in a hot theatre and a thorough draught, yawning at the miserable drivel managers choose to call a pantomime? Now in my young days there were pantomimes. I tell you, sir, I've seen——'

'Oh, if you're satisfied, I don't care!' said Tom, astonished at this apparent change of front. 'If you choose to come back and play the corker like this, it's your look-out. Only, if you knew what Sproule major said about you just now——'

'I don't want to know,' said Paul; 'it doesn't concern me.'

'Perhaps it doesn't concern you what pa thinks either? Pa told ma last night that he was altogether at a loss to know how to deal with you, you had come back so queer and unruly. And he said, let me see, oh, he said that "if he didn't see an alteration very soon he should resort to more drastic measures"—drastic measures is Latin for a whopping.'

'Good gracious!' thought Paul, 'I haven't a moment to lose! he might "resort to drastic measures" this very evening. I can't change my nature at my time of life. I must run for it, and soon.'

Then he said aloud to Tom, 'Can you tell me, my—my young friend, if, supposing a boy were to ask to leave the field—saying for instance that he was not well and thought he should be better at home—whether he would be allowed to go?'

'Of course he would,' said Tom, 'you ought to know that by this time. You've only to ask Blinkhorn or Tinkler; they'll let you go right enough.'

Paul saw his course quite clearly now, and was overcome with relief and gratitude. He wrung the astonished Tom's hand warmly; 'Thank you,' he said, briskly and cheerfully, 'thank you. I'm really uncommonly obliged to you. You're a very intelligent boy. I should like to give you sixpence.'

But although Tom used no arguments to dissuade him, Mr. Bultitude remembered his position in time, and prudently refrained from such ill-judged generosity. Sixpences were of vital importance now, when he expected to be starting so soon on his perilous journey.

And so they reached the field where the game was to be played, and where Paul was resolved to have one desperate throw for liberty and home. He was more excited than anxious as he thought of it, and it certainly did seem as if all the chances were in his favour, and that fortune must have forsaken him indeed, if anything were allowed to prevent his escape.