Vice Versa; or, A Lesson to Fathers Read online

  1. _Black Monday_

  "In England, where boys go to boarding schools, if the holidays were not long there would be no opportunity for cultivating the domestic affections."--_Letter of Lord Campbell's, 1835_.

  On a certain Monday evening late in January, 1881, Paul Bultitude, Esq.(of Mincing Lane, Colonial Produce Merchant), was sitting alone in hisdining-room at Westbourne Terrace after dinner.

  The room was a long and lofty one, furnished in the stern uncompromisingstyle of the Mahogany Age, now supplanted by the later fashions ofdecoration which, in their outset original and artistic, seem fairly onthe way to become as meaningless and conventional.

  Here were no skilfully contrasted shades of grey or green, no dado, nodistemper on the walls; the woodwork was grained and varnished after themanner of the Philistines, the walls papered in dark crimson, with heavycurtains of the same colour, and the sideboard, dinner-waggon, and rowof stiff chairs were all carved in the same massive and expensive styleof ugliness. The pictures were those familiar presentments of dirtyrabbits, fat white horses, bloated goddesses, and misshapen boors, bymasters who, if younger than they assume to be, must have been quite oldenough to know better.

  Mr. Bultitude was a tall and portly person, of a somewhat pompous andoverbearing demeanour; not much over fifty, but looking considerablyolder. He had a high shining head, from which the hair had mostlydeparted, what little still remained being of a grizzled auburn,prominent pale blue eyes with heavy eyelids and fierce, bushywhitey-brown eyebrows. His general expression suggested a conviction ofhis own extreme importance, but, in spite of this, his big underlipdrooped rather weakly and his double chin slightly receded, giving ajudge of character reason for suspecting that a certain obstinatepositiveness observable in Mr. Bultitude's manner might possibly be dueless to the possession of an unusually strong will than to thecircumstance that, by some fortunate chance, that will had hithertonever met with serious opposition.

  The room, with all its aesthetic shortcomings, was comfortable enough,and Mr. Bultitude's attitude--he was lying back in a well-wadded leatherarm-chair, with a glass of claret at his elbow and his feet stretchedout towards the ruddy blaze of the fire--seemed at first sight to implythat happy after-dinner condition of perfect satisfaction with oneselfand things in general, which is the natural outcome of a good cook, agood conscience, and a good digestion.

  At first sight; because his face did not confirm the impression--therewas a latent uneasiness in it, an air of suppressed irritation, as if heexpected and even dreaded to be disturbed at any moment, and yet waspowerless to resent the intrusion as he would like to do.

  At the slightest sound in the hall outside he would half rise in hischair and glance at the door with a mixture of alarm and resignation,and as often as the steps died away and the door remained closed, hewould sink back and resettle himself with a shrug of evident relief.

  Habitual novel readers on reading thus far will, I am afraid, preparethemselves for the arrival of a faithful cashier with news ofirretrievable ruin, or a mysterious and cynical stranger threateningdisclosures of a disgraceful nature.

  But all such anticipations must at once be ruthlessly dispelled. Mr.Bultitude, although he was certainly a merchant, was a fairly successfulone--in direct defiance of the laws of fiction, where any connectionwith commerce seems to lead naturally to failure in one of the threevolumes.

  He was an elderly gentleman, too, of irreproachable character andantecedents; no Damocles' sword of exposure was swinging over his baldbut blameless head; he had no disasters to fear and no indiscretions toconceal. He had not been intended for melodrama, with which, indeed, hewould not have considered it a respectable thing to be connected.

  In fact, the secret of his uneasiness was so absurdly simple andcommonplace that I am rather ashamed to have made even a temporarymystery of it.

  His son Dick was about to return to school that evening, and Mr.Bultitude was expecting every moment to be called upon to go through aparting scene with him; that was really all that was troubling him.

  This sounds very creditable to the tenderness of his feelings as afather--for there are some parents who bear such a bereavement at theclose of the holidays with extraordinary fortitude, if they do notactually betray an unnatural satisfaction at the event.

  But it was not exactly from softness of heart that he was restless andimpatient, nor did he dread any severe strain upon his emotions. He wasnot much given to sentiment, and was the author of more than one ofthose pathetically indignant letters to the papers, in which the Britishparent denounces the expenses of education and the unconscionable lengthand frequency of vacations.

  He was one of those nervous and fidgety persons who cannot understandtheir own children, looking on them as objectionable monsters whose nextmovements are uncertain--much as Frankenstein must have felt towards_his_ monster.

  He hated to have a boy about the house, and positively writhed under theirrelevant and irrepressible questions, the unnecessary noises andboisterous high spirits which nothing would subdue; his son's societywas to him simply an abominable nuisance, and he pined for a releasefrom it from the day the holidays began.

  He had been a widower for nearly three years, and no doubt the loss of amother's loving tact, which can check the heedless merriment before itbecomes intolerable, and interpret and soften the most peevish andunreasonable of rebukes, had done much to make the relations betweenparent and children more strained than they might otherwise have been.

  As it was, Dick's fear of his father was just great enough to preventany cordiality between them, and not sufficient to make him careful toavoid offence, and it is not surprising if, when the time came for himto return to his house of bondage at Dr. Grimstone's, Crichton House,Market Rodwell, he left his father anything but inconsolable.

  Just now, although Mr. Bultitude was so near the hour of hisdeliverance, he still had a bad quarter of an hour before him, in whichthe last farewells must be said, and he found it impossible under thesecircumstances to compose himself for a quiet half-hour's nap, or retireto the billiard-room for a cup of coffee and a mild cigar, as he wouldotherwise have done--since he was certain to be disturbed.

  And there was another thing which harassed him, and that was a hauntingdread lest at the last moment some unforeseen accident should preventthe boy's departure after all. He had some grounds for this, for only aweek before, a sudden and unprecedented snowstorm had dashed his hopes,on the eve of their fulfilment, by forcing the Doctor to postpone theday on which his school was to re-assemble, and now Mr. Bultitude sat onbrambles until he had seen the house definitely rid of his son'spresence.

  All this time, while the father was fretting and fuming in hisarm-chair, the son, the unlucky cause of all this discomfort, had beenstanding on the mat outside the door, trying to screw up enough courageto go in as if nothing was the matter with him.

  He was not looking particularly boisterous just then. On the contrary,his face was pale, and his eyelids rather redder than he would quitecare for them to be seen by any of the "fellows" at Crichton House. Allthe life and spirit had gone out of him for the time; he had atroublesome dryness in his throat, and a general sensation of chillheaviness, which he himself would have described--expressively enough,if not with academical elegance--as "feeling beastly."

  The stoutest hearted boy, returning to the most perfect of schools,cannot always escape something of this at that dark hour when the sandsof the holidays have run out to their last golden grain, when the boxesare standing corded and labelled in the hall, and some one is going tofetch the fatal cab.

  Dick had just gone the round of the house, bidding dreary farewells toall the servants; an unpleasant ordeal which he would gladly havedispensed with, if possible, and which did not serve to raise hisspirits.

  Upstairs, in the bright nursery, he had found his old nurse sittingsewing by the high wire fender. She was a stern, hard-featured old lady,who had systematically slapped him through infancy into boyhood,
and hehad had some stormy passages with her during the past few weeks; but shesoftened now in the most unexpected manner as she said good-bye, andtold him he was a "pleasant, good-hearted young gentleman, after all,though that aggravating and contrairy sometimes." And then shepredicted, with some of the rashness attaching to irresponsibility, thathe would be "the best boy this next term as ever was, and work hard atall his lessons, and bring home a prize"--but all this unusualgentleness only made the interview more difficult to come out of withany credit for self-control.

  Then downstairs, the cook had come up in her evening brown print andclean collar, from her warm spice-scented kitchen, to remark cheerilythat "Lor bless his heart, what with all these telegrafts and things,time flew so fast nowadays that they'd be having him back again beforethey all knew where they were!" which had a certain spurious consolationabout it, until one saw that, after all, it put the case entirely fromher own standpoint.

  After this Dick had parted from his elder sister Barbara and his youngbrother Roly, and had arrived where we found him first, at the matoutside the dining-room door, where he still lingered shivering in thecold foggy hall.

  Somehow, he could not bring himself to take the next step at once; heknew pretty well what his father's feelings would be, and a parting is avery unpleasant ceremony to one who feels that the regret is all on hisown side.

  But it was no use putting it off any longer; he resolved at last to goin and get it over, and opened the door accordingly. How warm andcomfortable the room looked--more comfortable than it had ever seemed tohim before, even on the first day of the holidays!

  And his father would be sitting there in a quarter of an hour's time,just as he was now, while he himself would be lumbering along to thestation through the dismal raw fog!

  How unspeakably delightful it must be, thought Dick enviously, to begrown up and never worried by the thoughts of school and lesson-books;to be able to look forward to returning to the same comfortable house,and living the same easy life, day after day, week after week, with nofear of a swiftly advancing Black Monday.

  Gloomy moralists might have informed him that we cannot escape school bysimply growing up, and that, even for those who contrive this and makea long holiday of their lives, there comes a time when the days aregrudgingly counted to a blacker Monday than ever made a school-boy'sheart quake within him.

  But then Dick would never have believed them, and the moralists wouldonly have wasted much excellent common sense upon him.

  Paul Bultitude's face cleared as he saw his son come in. "There you are,eh?" he said, with evident satisfaction, as he turned in his chair,intending to cut the scene as short as possible. "So you're off at last?Well, holidays can't last for ever--by a merciful decree of Providence,they don't last quite for ever! There, good-bye, good-bye, be a good boythis term, no more scrapes, mind. And now you'd better run away, and puton your coat--you're keeping the cab waiting all this time."

  "No, I'm not," said Dick, "Boaler hasn't gone to fetch one yet."

  "Not gone to fetch a cab yet!" cried Paul, with evident alarm, "why, Godbless my soul, what's the man thinking about? You'll lose your train! Iknow you'll lose the train, and there will be another day lost, afterthe extra week gone already through that snow! I must see to thismyself. Ring the bell, tell Boaler to start this instant--I insist onhis fetching a cab this instant!"

  "Well, it's not my fault, you know," grumbled Dick, not considering somuch anxiety at all flattering, "but Boaler has gone now. I just heardthe gate shut."

  "Ah!" said his father, with more composure, "and now," he suggested,"you'd better shake hands, and then go up and say good-bye to yoursister--you've no time to spare."

  "I've said good-bye to them," said Dick. "Mayn't I stay here till--tillBoaler comes?"

  This request was due, less to filial affection than a faint desire fordessert, which even his feelings could not altogether stifle. Mr.Bultitude granted it with a very bad grace.

  "I suppose you can if you want to," he said impatiently, "only do onething or the other--stay outside, or shut the door and come in and sitdown quietly. I cannot sit in a thorough draught!"

  Dick obeyed, and applied himself to the dessert with rather an injuredexpression.

  His father felt a greater sense of constraint and worry than ever; theinterview, as he had feared, seemed likely to last some time, and hefelt that he ought to improve the occasion in some way, or, at allevents, make some observation. But, for all that, he had not theremotest idea what to say to this red-haired, solemn boy, who satstaring gloomily at him in the intervals of filling his mouth. Thesituation grew more embarrassing every moment.

  At last, as he felt himself likely to have more to say in reproof thanon any other subject, he began with that.

  "There's one thing I want to talk to you about before you go," he began,"and that's this. I had a most unsatisfactory report of you this lastterm; don't let me have that again. Dr. Grimstone tells me--ah, I havehis letter here--yes, he says (and just attend, instead of makingyourself ill with preserved ginger)--he says, 'Your son has greatnatural capacity, and excellent abilities; but I regret to say that,instead of applying himself as he might do, he misuses his advantages,and succeeds in setting a mischievous example to--if not actuallymisleading--his companions.' That's a pleasant account for a father toread! Here am I, sending you to an expensive school, furnishing you withgreat natural capacity and excellent abilities, and--and--every otherschool requisite, and all you do is to misuse them! It's disgraceful!And misleading your companions, too! Why, at your age, they ought tomislead _you_--No, I don't mean that--but what I may tell you is thatI've written a very strong letter to Dr. Grimstone, saying what pain itgave me to hear you misbehaved yourself, and telling him, if he evercaught you setting an example of any sort, mind that, _any_ sort, in thefuture--he was to, ah, to remember some of Solomon's very sensibleremarks on the subject. So I should strongly advise you to take carewhat you're about in future, for your own sake!"

  This was not a very encouraging address, perhaps, but it did not seem todistress Dick to any extent; he had heard very much the same sort ofthing several times before, and had been fully prepared for it then.

  He had been seeking distraction in almonds and raisins, but now theyonly choked instead of consoling him, and he gave them up and satbrooding silently over his hard lot instead, with a dull, blankdejection which those only who have gone through the same thing in theirboyhood will understand. To others, whose school life has been oneunchequered course of excitement and success, it will beincomprehensible enough--and so much the better for them.

  He sat listening to the grim sphinx clock on the black marblechimneypiece, as it remorselessly ticked away his last few moments ofhome-life, and he ingeniously set himself to crown his sorrow byreviving recollections of happier days.

  In one of the corners of the overmantel there was still a sprig ofwithered laurel left forgotten, and his eye fell on it now with grimsatisfaction. He made his thoughts travel back to that delightfulafternoon on Christmas Eve, when they had all come home riotous throughthe brilliant streets, laden with purchases from the Baker StreetBazaar, and then had decorated the rooms with such free and carelessgaiety.

  And the Christmas dinner too! He had sat just where he was sitting now,with, ah, such a difference in every other respect--the time had notcome then when the thought of "only so many more weeks and days left"had begun to intrude its grisly shape, like the skull at an ancientfeast.

  And yet he could distinctly recollect now, and with bitter remorse, thathe had not enjoyed himself then as much as he ought to have done; heeven remembered an impious opinion of his that the proceedings were"slow." Slow! with plenty to eat, and three (four, if he had only knownit) more weeks of holiday before him; with Boxing Day and the briskexhilarating drive to the Crystal Palace immediately following, with allthe rest of a season of licence and varied joys to come, which he couldhardly trust himself to look back upon now! He must have been mad tothink such a thing.r />
  Overhead his sister Barbara was playing softly one of the airs from "ThePirates" (it was Frederic's appeal to the Major-General's daughters),and the music, freed from the serio-comic situation which itillustrates, had a tenderness and pathos of its own which went to Dick'sheart and intensified his melancholy.

  He had gone (in secret, for Mr. Bultitude disapproved of suchdissipations) to hear the Opera in the holidays, and now the pianoconjured the whole scene up for him again--there would be no moretheatre-going for him for a very long time!

  By this time Mr. Bultitude began to feel the silence becoming once moreoppressive, and roused himself with a yawn. "Heigho!" he said, "Boaler'san uncommonly long time fetching that cab!"

  Dick felt more injured than ever, and showed it by drawing what heintended for a moving sigh.

  Unfortunately it was misunderstood.

  "I do wish, sir," said his parent testily, "you would try to breakyourself of that habit of breathing hard. The society of a grampus (forit's no less) delights no one and offends many--including me--and forHeaven's sake, Dick, don't kick the leg of the table in that way; youknow it simply maddens me. What do you do it for? Why can't you learn tosit at table like a gentleman?"

  Dick mumbled some apology, and then, having found his tongue andremembered his necessities, said, with a nervous catch in his voice,"Oh, I say, father, will you--can you let me have some pocket-money,please, to go back with?"

  Mr. Bultitude looked as if his son had petitioned for a latch-key.

  "Pocket-money!" he repeated, "why, you can't want money. Didn't yourgrandmother give you a sovereign as a Christmas-box? And I gave you tenshillings myself!"

  "I do want it, though," said Dick; "that's all spent. And you know youalways _have_ given me money to take back."

  "If I do give you some, you'll only go and spend it," grumbled Mr.Bultitude, as if he considered money an object of art.

  "I shan't spend it all at once, and I shall want some to put in theplate on Sundays. We always have to put in the plate when it's acollection. And there's the cab to pay."

  "Boaler has orders to pay your cab--as you know well enough," said hisfather, "but I suppose you must have some, though you cost me enough,Heaven knows, without this additional expense."

  And at this he brought up a fistful of loose silver and gold from one ofhis trouser-pockets, and spread it deliberately out on the table infront of him in shining rows.

  Dick's eyes sparkled at the sight of so much wealth; for a moment or twohe almost forgot the pangs of approaching exile in the thought of thedignity and credit which a single one of those bright new sovereignswould procure for him.

  It would ensure him surreptitious luxuries and open friendships as longas it lasted. Even Tipping, the head boy of the school, who had goneinto tails, brought back no more, and besides, the money would bringhim handsomely out of certain pecuniary difficulties to which anunexpected act of parental authority had exposed him; he could easilydispose of all claims with such a sum at command, and then his fathercould so easily spare it out of so much!

  Meanwhile Mr. Bultitude, with great care and precision, selected fromthe coins before him a florin, two shillings, and two sixpences, whichhe pushed across to his son, who looked at them with a disappointment hedid not care to conceal.

  "An uncommonly liberal allowance for a young fellow like you," heobserved. "Don't buy any foolishness with it, and if, towards the end ofthe term you want a little more, and write an intelligible letter askingfor it, and I think proper to let you have it--why, you'll get it, youknow."

  Dick had not the courage to ask for more, much as he longed to do so, sohe put the money in his purse with very qualified expressions ofgratitude.

  In his purse he seemed to find something which had escaped his memory,for he took out a small parcel and unfolded it with some hesitation.

  "I nearly forgot," he said, speaking with more animation than he had yetdone, "I didn't like to take it without asking you, but is this any use?May I have it?"

  "Eh?" said Mr. Bultitude, sharply, "what's that? Something else--what isit you want now?"

  "It's only that stone Uncle Duke brought mamma from India; the thing, hesaid, they called a 'Pagoda stone,' or something, out there."

  "Pagoda stone? The boy means Garuda Stone. I should like to know how yougot hold of that; you've been meddling in my drawers, now, a thing Iwill not put up with, as I've told you over and over again."

  "No, I haven't, then," said Dick, "I found it in a tray in thedrawing-room, and Barbara said, perhaps, if I asked you, you might letme have it, as she didn't think it was any use to you."

  "Then Barbara had no right to say anything of the sort."

  "But may I have it? I may, mayn't I?" persisted Dick.

  "Have it? certainly not. What could you possibly want with a thing likethat? It's ridiculous. Give it to me."

  Dick handed it over reluctantly enough. It was not much to look at,quite an insignificant-looking little square tablet of greyish greenstone, pierced at one angle, and having on two of its faces faint tracesof mysterious letters or symbols, which time had made very difficult todistinguish.

  It looked harmless enough as Mr. Bultitude took it in his hand; therewas no kindly hand to hold him back, no warning voice to hint that theremight possibly be sleeping within that small marble block the pent-upenergy of long-forgotten Eastern necromancy, just as ready as ever toawake into action at the first words which had power to evoke it.

  There was no one; but even if there had been such a person, PaulBultitude was a sober prosaic individual, who would probably havetreated the warning as a piece of ridiculous superstition.

  As it was, no man could have put himself in a position of extreme perilwith a more perfect unconsciousness of his danger.