Vice Versa: or, A Lesson to Fathers

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 chassée 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 Garudâ 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."

"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."