'Boys are capital fellows in their own way among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.'—Essays of Elia.
For some time after they were fairly started the Doctor read his evening paper with an air of impartial but severe criticism, and Mr. Bultitude as he sat opposite him next to the window, found himself overwhelmed with a new and very unpleasant timidity.
He knew that, if he would free himself, this utterly unreasonable feeling must be wrestled with and overcome; that now, if ever, was the time to assert himself, and prove that he was anything but the raw youth he was conscious of appearing. He had merely to speak and act, too, in his ordinary everyday manner; to forget as far as possible the change that had affected his outer man, which was not so very difficult to do after all—and yet his heart sank lower and lower as each fresh telegraph post flitted past.
'I will let him speak first,' he thought; 'then I shall be able to feel my way.' But there was more fear than caution in the resolve.
At last, however, the Doctor laid down his paper, and, looking round with the glance of proprietorship on his pupils, who had relapsed into a decorous and gloomy silence, observed: 'Well, boys, you have had an unusually protracted vacation this time—owing to the unprecedented severity of the weather. We must try to make up for it by the zest and ardour with which we pursue our studies during the term. I intend to reduce the Easter holidays by a week by way of compensation.'
This announcement (which by no means relieved the general depression—the boys receiving it with a sickly interest) was good news to Paul, and even had the effect of making him forget his position for the time.
'I'm uncommonly glad to hear it, Dr. Grimstone,' he said heartily, 'an excellent arrangement. Boys have too many holidays as it is. There's no reason, to my mind, why parents should be the sufferers by every snowstorm. It's no joke, I can assure you, to have a great idle boy hanging about the place eating his empty head off!'
A burglar enlarging upon the sanctity of the law of property, or a sheep exposing the fallacies of vegetarianism, could hardly have produced a greater sensation.
Every boy was roused from his languor to stare and wonder at these traitorous sentiments, which, from the mouth of any but a known and tried companion, would have roused bitter hostility and contempt. As it was, their wonder became a rapturous admiration, and they waited for the situation to develop with a fearful and secret joy.
It was some time before the Doctor quite recovered himself; then he said with a grim smile, 'This is indeed finding Saul amongst the prophets; your sentiments, if sincere, Bultitude—I repeat, if sincere—are very creditable. But I am obliged to look upon them with suspicion!' Then, as if to dismiss a doubtful subject, he inquired generally, 'And how have you all been spending your holidays, eh!'
There was no attempt to answer this question, it being felt probably that it was, like the conventional 'How do you do?' one to which an answer is neither desired nor expected, especially as he continued almost immediately, 'I took my boy Tom up to town the week before Christmas to see the representation of the "Agamemnon" at St. George's Hall. The "Agamemnon,’ as most of you are doubtless aware, is a drama by Æschylus, a Greek poet of established reputation. I was much pleased by the intelligent appreciation Tom showed during the performance. He distinctly recognised several words from his Greek Grammar in the course of the dialogue.'
No one seemed capable of responding except Mr. Bultitude, who dashed into the breach with an almost pathetic effort to maintain his accustomed stiffness.
'I may be old-fashioned,' he said, 'very likely I am; but I—ah—decidedly disapprove of taking children to dramatic exhibitions of any kind. It unsettles them, sir—unsettles them!'
Dr. Grimstone made no answer, but he put a hand on each knee, and glared with pursed lips and a leonine bristle of the beard at his youthful critic for some moments, after which he returned to his 'Globe' with a short ominous cough.
'I've offended him now,' thought Paul. 'I must be more careful what I say. But I'll get him into conversation again presently.'
So he began at the first opportunity: 'You have this evening's paper, I see. No telegrams of importance, I suppose?'
'No, sir,' said the Doctor shortly.
'I saw a report in to-day's "Times,"' said poor Mr. Bultitude, with a desperate attempt at his most conversational and instructive manner, 'I saw a report that the camphor crop was likely to be a failure this season. Now, it's a very singular thing about camphor, that the Japanese——' (he hoped to lead the conversation round to colonial produce, and thus open the Doctor's eyes by the extent of his acquaintance with the subject).
'I am already acquainted with the method of obtaining camphor, thank you, Bultitude,' said the Doctor, with dangerous politeness.
'I was about to observe, when you interrupted me,' said Paul, '(and this is really a fact that I doubt if you are aware of), that the Japanese never——'
'Well, well,' said the Doctor, with some impatience, 'probably they never do, sir, but I shall have other opportunities of finding out what you have read about the Japanese.'
But he glanced over the top of the paper at the indignant Paul, who was not accustomed to have his information received in this manner, with less suspicion and a growing conviction that some influence during the holidays had changed the boy from a graceless young scapegrace into a prig of the first water.
'He's most uncivil'—Mr. Bultitude told himself—'almost insulting, but I'll go on. I'm rousing his curiosity. I'm making way with him; he sees a difference already.' And so he applied himself once more.
'You're a smoker, of course, Dr. Grimstone?' he began. 'We don't stop anywhere, I think, on the way, and I must confess myself, after dinner, a whiff or two—I think I can give you a cigar you'll appreciate.'
And he felt for his cigar-case, really forgetting that it was gone, like all other incidents of his old self; while Jolland giggled with unrestrained delight at such charming effrontery.
'If I did not know, sir,' said the Doctor, now effectually roused, 'that this was ill-timed buffoonery, and not an intentional insult, I should be seriously angry. As it is, I can overlook any exuberance of mirth which is, perhaps, pardonable when the mind is elated by the return to the cheerful bustle and activity of school-life. But be very careful.'
'He needn't be so angry,' thought Paul, 'how could I know he doesn't smoke? But I'm afraid he doesn't quite know me, even now.'
So he began again: 'Did I hear you mention the name of Kiffin amongst those of your pupils here, Doctor? I thought so. Not the son of Jordan Kiffin, of College Hill, surely? Yes? Why, bless my soul, your father and I, my little fellow, were old friends in days before you were born or thought of—born or thought of. He was in a very small way then, a very small—— Eh, Dr. Grimstone, don't you feel well?'
'I see what you're aiming at, sir. You wish to prove to me that I'm making a mistake in my treatment of you.'
'That was my idea, certainly,' said Paul, much pleased. 'I'm very glad you take me, Doctor.'
'I shall take you in a way you won't appreciate soon, if this goes on,' said the Doctor under his breath.
'When the time comes I shall know how to deal with you. Till then you'll have the goodness to hold your tongue,' he said aloud.
'It's not a very polite way of putting it,' Paul said to himself, 'but, at any rate, he sees how the case stands now, and after all, perhaps, he only speaks like that to put the boys off the scent. If so, it's uncommonly considerate and thoughtful of him, by Gad. I won't say any more.'
But by-and-by, the open window made him break his resolution. 'I'm sorry to inconvenience you, Dr. Grimstone,' he said, with the air of one used to having his way in these matters, 'but I positively must ask you either to allow me to have this window up or to change places with you. The night air, sir, at this time of the year is fatal, my doctor tells me, simply fatal to a man of my constitution.'
The Doctor pulled up the window with a frown, and yet a somewhat puzzled expression. 'I warn you, Bultitude,' he said, 'you are acting very imprudently.'
'So I am,' thought Paul, 'so I am. Good of him to remind me. I must keep it up before all these boys. This unpleasant business mustn't get about. I'll hold my tongue till we get in. Then, I daresay, Grimstone will see me off by the next train up, if there is one, and lend me enough for a bed at an hotel for the night. I couldn't get to St. Pancras till very late, of course. Or he might offer to put me up at the school. If he does, I think I shall very possibly accept. It might be better.'
And he leant back in his seat in a much easier frame of mind; it was annoying, of course, to have been turned out of his warm dining-room, and sent all the way down to Rodwell Regis on a fool's errand like this; but still, if nothing worse came of it, he could put up with the temporary inconvenience, and it was a great relief to be spared the necessity of an explanation.
The other boys watched him furtively with growing admiration, which expressed itself in subdued whispers, varied by little gurgles and 'squirks' of laughter; they tried to catch his eye and stimulate him to further feats of audacity, but Mr. Bultitude, of course, repulsed all such overtures with a coldness and severity which at once baffled and piqued them.
At last his eccentricity took a shape which considerably lessened their enthusiasm. Kiffin, the new boy, occupied the seat next to Paul; he was a nervous-looking little fellow, with a pale face and big pathetic brown eyes like a seal's, and his dress bore plain evidence of a mother's careful supervision, having all the uncreased trimness and specklessness rarely to be observed except in the toilettes of the waxen prodigies in a shop-window.
It happened that, as he lay back in the padded seat between the sheltering partitions, watching the sickly yellow dregs of oil surging dismally to and fro with the motion in the lamp overhead, or the black indistinct forms flitting past through the misty blue outside, the pathos of his situation became all at once too much for him.
He was a home-bred boy, without any of that taste for the companionship and pursuits of his fellows, or capacity for adapting himself to their prejudices and requirements, which give some home-bred boys a ready passport into the roughest communities.
His heart throbbed with no excited curiosity, no conscious pride, at this his first important step in life; he was a forlorn little stranger, in an unsympathetic strange land, and was only too well aware of his position.
So that it is not surprising that as he thought of the home he had left an hour or two ago which now seemed so shadowy, so inaccessible and remote, his eyes began to smart and sting, and his chest to heave ominously, until he felt it necessary to do something to give a partial vent to his emotions and prevent a public and disgraceful exhibition of grief.
Unhappily for him he found this safety-valve in a series of suppressed but distinctly audible sniffs.
Mr. Bultitude bore this for some time with no other protest than an occasional indignant bounce or a lowering frown in the offender's direction, but at last his nerves, strung already to a high pitch by all he had undergone, could stand it no longer.
'Dr. Grimstone,' he said with polite determination, 'I'm not a man to complain without good reason, but really I must ask you to interfere. Will you tell this boy here, on my right, either to control his feelings or to cry into his pocket-handkerchief, like an ordinary human being? A good honest bellow I can understand, but this infernal whiffling and sniffing, sir, I will not put up with. It's nothing less than unnatural in a boy of that size.'
'Kiffin,' said the Doctor, 'are you crying?'
'N—no, sir,' faltered Kiffin; 'I—I think I must have caught cold, sir.'
'I hope you are telling me the truth, because I should be sorry to believe you were beginning your new life in a spirit of captiousness and rebellion. I'll have no mutineers in my camp. I'll establish a spirit of trustful happiness and unmurmuring content in this school, if I have to flog every boy in it as long as I can stand over him! As for you, Richard Bultitude, I have no words to express my pain and disgust at the heartless irreverence with which you persist in mimicking and burlesquing a fond and excellent parent. Unless I perceive, sir, in a very short time a due sense of your error and a lively repentance, my disapproval will take a very practical form.'
Mr. Bultitude fell back into his seat with a gasp. It was hard to be accused of caricaturing one's own self, particularly when conscious of entire innocence in that respect, but even this was slight in comparison with the discovery that he had been so blindly deceiving himself!
The Doctor evidently had failed to penetrate his disguise, and the dreaded scene of elaborate explanation must be gone through after all.
The boys (with the exception of Kiffin) still found exquisite enjoyment in this extraordinary and original exhibition, and waited eagerly for further experiment on the Doctor's patience.
They were soon gratified. If there was one thing Paul detested more than another, it was the smell of peppermint—no less than three office boys had been discharged by him because, as he alleged, they made the clerks' room reek with it,—and now the subtle searching odour of the hated confection was gradually stealing into the compartment and influencing its atmosphere.
He looked at Coggs, who sat on the seat opposite to him, and saw his cheeks and lips moving in slow and appreciative absorption of something. Coggs was clearly the culprit.
'Do you encourage your boys to make common nuisances of themselves in a public place, may I ask, Dr. Grimstone?' he inquired, fuming.
'Some scarcely seem to require encouragement, Bultitude,' said the Doctor pointedly: 'what is the matter now?'
'If he takes it medicinally,' said Paul, 'he should choose some other time and place to treat his complaint. If he has a depraved liking for the abominable stuff, for Heaven's sake make him refrain from it on occasions when it is a serious annoyance to others!'
'Will you explain? Who and what are you talking about?'
'That boy opposite,' said Paul, pointing the finger of denunciation at the astonished Coggs; 'he's sucking an infernal peppermint lozenge strong enough to throw the train off the rails!'
'Is what Bultitude tells me true, Coggs?' demanded the Doctor in an awful voice.
Coggs, after making several attempts to bolt the offending lozenge, and turning scarlet meanwhile with confusion and coughing, stammered huskily something to the effect that he had 'bought the lozenges at a chemist's,' which he seemed to consider, for some reason, a mitigating circumstance.
'Have you any more of this pernicious stuff about you?' said the Doctor.
Very slowly and reluctantly Coggs brought out of one pocket after another three or four neat little white packets, make up with that lavish expenditure of time, string, and sealing-wax, by which the struggling chemist seeks to reconcile the public mind to a charge of two hundred and fifty per cent. on cost price, and handed them to Dr. Grimstone, who solemnly unfastened them one by one, glanced at their contents with infinite disgust, and flung them out of window.
Then he turned to Paul with a look of more favour than he had yet shown him. 'Bultitude,' he said, 'I am obliged to you. A severe cold in the head has rendered me incapable of detecting this insidious act of insubordination and self-indulgence, on which I shall have more to say on another occasion. Your moral courage and promptness in denouncing the evil thing are much to your credit.'
'Not at all,' said Paul, 'not at all, my dear sir. I mentioned it because I—ah—happen to be peculiarly sensitive on the subject and——' Here he broke off with a sharp yell, and began to rub his ankle. 'One of these young savages has just given me a severe kick; it's that fellow over there, with the blue necktie. I have given him no provocation, and he attacks me in this brutal manner, sir; I appeal to you for protection!'
'So, Coker' (Coker wore a blue necktie), said the Doctor, 'you emulate the wild ass in more qualities than those of stupidity and stubbornness, do you? You lash out with your hind legs at an inoffensive school-fellow, with all the viciousness of a kangaroo, eh? Write out all you find in Buffon's Natural History upon those two animals a dozen times, and bring it to me by to-morrow evening. If I am to stable wild asses, sir, they shall be broken in!'
Six pairs of sulky glowering eyes were fixed upon the unconscious Paul for the rest of the journey; indignant protests and dark vows of vengeance were muttered under cover of the friendly roar and rattle of tunnels. But the object of them heard nothing; his composure was returning once more in the sunshine of Dr. Grimstone's approbation, and he almost decided on declaring himself in the station fly.
And now at last the train was grinding along discordantly with the brakes on, and, after a little preliminary jolting and banging over the points, drew up at a long lighted platform, where melancholy porters paced up and down, croaking 'Rodwell Regis!' like so many Solomon Eagles predicting woe.
Paul got out with the others, and walked forward to the guard's van, where he stood shivering in the raw night air by a small heap of portmanteaux and white clamped boxes.
'I should like to tell him all about it now,' he thought, 'if he wasn't so busy. I'll get him to go in a cab alone with me, and get it over before we reach the house.'
Dr. Grimstone certainly did not seem in a very receptive mood for confidences just then. No flys were to be seen, which he took as a personal outrage, and visited upon the station-master in hot indignation.
'It's scandalous, I tell you,' he was saying: 'scandalous! No cabs to meet the train. My school reassembles to-day, and here I find no arrangements made for their accommodation! Not even an omnibus! I shall write to the manager and report this. Let some one go for a fly immediately. Boys, go into the waiting room till I come to you. Stay—there are too many for one fly. Coker, Coggs, and, let me see, yes, Bultitude, you all know your way. Walk on and tell Mrs. Grimstone we are coming.'
Paul Bultitude was perhaps more relieved than disappointed by this postponement of a disagreeable interview, though, if he had seen Coker dig Coggs in the side with a chuckle of exultant triumph, he might have had misgivings as to the prudence of trusting himself alone with them.
As it was he almost determined to trust the pair with his secret. 'They will be valuable witnesses,' he said to himself, 'that, whoever else I may be, I am not Dick.'
So he went on briskly ahead over a covered bridge and down some break-neck wooden steps, and passed through the wicket out upon the railed-in space, where the cabs and omnibuses should have been, but which was now a blank spectral waste with a white ground-fog lurking round its borders.
Here he was joined by his companions, who, after a little whispering, came up one on either side and put an arm through each of his.
'Well,' said Paul, thinking to banter them agreeably; 'here you are, young men, eh? Holidays all over now! Work while you're young, and then—— Gad, you're walking me off my legs. Stop; I'm not as young as I used to be——'
'Grim can't see us here, can he, Coker?' said Coggs when they had cleared the gates and palings.
'Not he!' said Coker.
'Very well, then. Now then, young Bultitude, you used to be a decent fellow enough last term, though you were coxy. So, before we go any further—what do you mean by this sort of thing?'
'Because,' put in Coker, 'if you aren't quite right in your head, through your old governor acting like a brute all the holidays, as you said he does, just say so, and we won't be hard on you.'
'I—he—always an excellent father,' stammered Paul. 'What am I to explain?'
'Why, what did you go and sneak of him for bringing tuck back to school for, eh?' demanded Coker.
'Yes, and sing out when he hacked your shin?' added Coggs; 'and tell Grimstone that new fellow was blubbing? Where's the joke in all that, eh? Where's the joke?'
'You don't suppose I was bound to sit calmly down and allow you to suck your villainous peppermints under my very nose, do you?' said Mr. Bultitude. 'Why shouldn't I complain if a boy annoys me by sniffing, or kicks me on the ankle? Just tell me that? Suppose my neighbour has a noisy dog or a smoky chimney, am I not to venture to tell him of it? Is he to——'
But his arguments, convincing as they promised to be, were brought to a sudden and premature close by Coker, who slipped behind him and administered a sharp jog below his back, which jarred his spine and caused him infinite agony.
'You little brute!' cried Paul, 'I could have you up for assault for that!'
But upon this Coggs did the very same thing only harder. 'Last term you'd have shown fight for much less, Bultitude,' they both observed severely, as some justification for repeating the process.
'Now, perhaps, you'll drop it for the future,' said Coker. 'Look here! we'll give you one more chance. This sneaking dodge is all very well for Chawner. Chawner could do that sort of thing without getting sat upon, because he's a big fellow; but we're not going to stand it from you. Will you promise on your sacred word of honour, now, to be a decent sort of chap again, as you were last term?'
But Mr. Bultitude, though he longed for peace and quietness, dreaded doing or saying anything to favour the impression that he was the schoolboy he unluckily appeared to be, and he had not skill and tact enough to dissemble and assume a familiar genial tone of equality with these rough boys.
'You don't understand,' he protested feebly. 'If I could only tell you——'
'We don't want any fine language, you know,' said the relentless Coggs. 'Yes or no. Will you promise to be your old self again?'
'I only wish I could,' said poor Mr. Bultitude—'but I can't!'
'Very well, then,' said Coggs firmly, 'we must try the torture. Coker, will you screw the back of his hand, while I show him how they make barley-sugar?'
And he gave Paul an interesting illustration of the latter branch of industry by twisting his right arm round and round till he nearly wrenched it out of the socket, while Coker seized his left hand and pounded it vigorously with the first joint of his forefinger, causing the unfortunate Paul to yell for mercy.
At last he could bear no more, and breaking away from his tormentors with a violent effort, he ran frantically down the silent road towards a house which he knew from former visits to be Dr. Grimstone's.
He was but languidly pursued, and, as the distance was short, he soon gained a gate on the stuccoed posts of which he could read 'Crichton House' by the light of a neighbouring gas-lamp.
'This is a nice way,' he thought, as he reached it breathless and trembling, 'for a father to visit his son's school!'
He had hoped to reach sanctuary before the other two could overtake him; but he soon discovered that the gate was shut fast, and all his efforts would not bring him within reach of the bell-handle—he was too short.
So he sat down on the doorstep in resigned despair, and waited for his enemies. Behind the gate was a large many-windowed house, with steps leading up to a portico. In the playground to his right the school gymnasium, a great gallows-like erection, loomed black and grim through the mist, the night wind favouring the ghastliness of its appearance by swaying the ropes till they creaked and moaned weirdly on the hooks, and the metal stirrups clinked and clashed against one another in irregular cadence.
He had no time to observe more, as Coker and Coggs joined him, and, on finding he had not rung the bell, seized the occasion to pummel him at their leisure before announcing their arrival.
Then the gate was opened, and the three—the revengeful pair assuming an air of lamb-like inoffensiveness—entered the hall and were met by Mrs. Grimstone.
'Why, here you are!' she said, with an air of surprise, and kissing them with real kindness. 'How cold you look! So you actually had to walk. No cabs as usual. You poor boys! come in and warm yourselves. You'll find all your old friends in the schoolroom.'
Mr. Bultitude submitted to be kissed with some reluctance, inwardly hoping that Dr. Grimstone might never hear of it.
Mrs. Grimstone, it may be said here, was a stout, fair woman, not in the least intellectual or imposing, but with a warm heart, and a way of talking to and about boys that secured her the confidence of mothers more effectually, perhaps, than the most polished conversation and irreproachable deportment could have done.
She did not reserve her motherliness for the reception room either, as some schoolmasters' wives have a tendency to do, and the smallest boy felt less homesick when he saw her.
She opened a green baize outer door, and the door beyond it, and led them into a long high room, with desks and forms placed against the walls, and a writing table, and line of brown-stained tables down the middle. Opposite the windows there was a curious structure of shelves partitioned into lockers, and filled with rows of shabby schoolbooks.
The room had been originally intended for a drawing-room, as was evident from the inevitable white and gold wall-paper and the tarnished gilt beading round the doors and window shutters; the mantelpiece, too, was of white marble, and the gaselier fitted with dingy crystal lustres.
But sad-coloured maps hung on the ink-splashed walls, and a clock with a blank idiotic face (it is not every clock that possesses a decently intelligent expression) ticked over the gilt pier-glass. The boards were uncarpeted, and stained with patches of ink of all sizes and ages; while the atmosphere, in spite of the blazing fire, had a scholastic blending of soap and water, ink and slate-pencil in its composition, which produced a chill and depressing effect.
On the forms opposite the fire some ten or twelve boys were sitting, a few comparing notes as to their holiday experiences with some approach to vivacity. The rest, with hands in pockets and feet stretched towards the blaze, seemed lost in melancholy abstraction.
'There!' said Mrs. Grimstone cheerfully, 'you'll have plenty to talk to one another about. I'll send Tom in to see you presently!' And she left them with a reassuring nod, though the prospect of Tom's company did not perhaps elate them as much as it was intended to do.
Mr. Bultitude felt much as if he had suddenly been dropped down a bear-pit, and, avoiding welcome and observation as well as he could, got away into a corner, from which he observed his new companions with uneasy apprehension.
'I say,' said one boy, resuming the interrupted conversation, 'did you go to Drury Lane? Wasn't it stunning! That goose, you know, and the lion in the forest, and all the wooden animals lumbering in out of the toy Noah's Ark!'
'Why couldn't you come to our party on Twelfth-night?' asked another. 'We had great larks. I wish you'd been there!'
'I had to go to young Skidmore's instead,' said a pale, spiteful-looking boy, with fair hair carefully parted in the middle. 'It was like his cheek to ask me, but I thought I'd go, you know, just to see what it was like.'
'What was it like?' asked one or two near him languidly.
'Oh, awfully slow! They've a poky little house in Brompton somewhere, and there was no dancing, only boshy games and a conjurer, without any presents. And, oh! I say, at supper there was a big cake on the table, and no one was allowed to cut it, because it was hired. They're so poor, you know. Skidmore's pater is only a clerk, and you should see his sisters!'
'Why, are they pretty?'
'Pretty! they're just like young Skidmore—only uglier; and just fancy, his mother asked me "if I was Skidmore's favourite companion, and if he helped me in my studies?"'
The unfortunate Skidmore, when he returned, soon found reason to regret his rash hospitality, for he never heard the last of the cake (which had, as it happened, been paid for in the usual manner) during the rest of the term.
There was a slight laugh at the enormity of Mrs. Skidmore's presumption, and then a long pause, after which some one asked suddenly, 'Does any one know whether Chawner really has left this time?'
'I hope so,' said a big, heavy boy, and his hope seemed echoed with a general fervour. 'He's been going to leave every term for the last year, but I believe he really has done it this time. He wrote and told me he wasn't coming back.'
'Thank goodness!' said several, with an evident relief, and some one was just observing that they had had enough of the sneaking business, when a fly was heard to drive up, and the bell rang, whereupon everyone abandoned his easy attitude, and seemed to brace himself up for a trying encounter.
'Look out—here's Grimstone!' they whispered under their breaths, as voices and footsteps were heard in the hall outside.
Presently the door of the schoolroom opened, and another boy entered the room. Dr. Grimstone, it appeared, had not been the occupant of the fly, after all. The new-comer was a tall, narrow-shouldered, stooping fellow, with a sallow, unwholesome complexion, thin lips, and small sunken brown eyes. His cheeks were creased with a dimpling subsmile, half uneasy, half malicious, and his tread was mincing and catlike.
'Well, you fellows?' he said.
All rose at once, and shook hands effusively. 'Why, Chawner!' they cried, 'how are you, old fellow? We thought you weren't coming back!'
There was a heartiness in their manner somewhat at variance with their recent expressions of opinion; but they had doubtless excellent reasons for any inconsistency.
'Well,' said Chawner, in a low, soft voice, which had a suggestion of feminine spitefulness, 'I was going to leave, but I thought you'd be getting into mischief here without me to watch over you. Appleton, and Lench, and Coker want looking after badly, I know. So, you see, I've come back after all.'
He laughed with a little malevolent cackle as he spoke, and the three boys named laughed too, though with no great heartiness, and shifting the while uneasily on their seats.
After this sally the conversation languished until Tom Grimstone's appearance. He strolled in with a semi-professional air, and shook hands with affability.
Tom was a short, flabby, sandy-haired youth, not particularly beloved of his comrades, and his first remark was, 'I say, you chaps, have you done your holiday task? Pa says he shall keep everyone in who hasn't. I've done mine;' which, as a contribution to the general liveliness, was a distinct failure.
Needless to say, the work imposed as a holiday occupation had been first deferred, then forgotten, then remembered too late, and recklessly defied with the confidence begotten in a home atmosphere.
Amidst a general silence Chawner happened to see Mr. Bultitude in his corner, and crossed over to him. 'Why, there's Dicky Bultitude there all the time, and he never came to shake hands! Aren't you going to speak to me?'
Paul growled something indistinctly, feeling strangely uncomfortable and confused.
'What's the matter with him?' asked Chawner. 'Does anyone know? Has he lost his tongue?'
'He hadn't lost it coming down in the train,' said Coker: 'I wish he had. I tell you what, you fellows— He—here's Grim at last! I'll tell you all about it up in the bedroom.'
And Dr. Grimstone really did arrive at this point, much to Paul's relief, and looked in to give a grip of the hand and a few words to those of the boys he had not seen.
Biddlecomb, Tipping, and the rest, came in with him, and the schoolroom soon filled with others arriving by later trains, amongst the later comers being the two house-masters, Mr. Blinkhorn and Mr. Tinkler; and there followed a season of bustle and conversation, which lasted until the Doctor touched a small hand-bell, and ordered them to sit down round the tables while supper was brought in.
Mr. Bultitude was not sorry to hear the word 'supper.' He was faint and dispirited, and although he had dined not very long since, thought that perhaps a little cold beef and beer, or some warmed-up trifle, might give him courage to tell his misfortunes before bedtime.
Of one thing he felt certain. Nothing should induce him to trust his person in a bedroom with any of those violent and vindictive boys; whether he succeeded in declaring himself that night or not, he would at least insist on a separate bedroom. Meantime he looked forward to supper as likely to restore geniality and confidence.
But the supper announced so imposingly proved to consist of nothing more than two plates piled with small pieces of thinly-buttered bread, which a page handed round together with tumblers of water; and Paul, in his disappointment, refused this refreshment with more firmness than politeness, as Dr. Grimstone observed.
'You got into trouble last term, Bultitude,' he said sternly, 'on account of this same fastidious daintiness. Your excellent father has informed me of your waste and gluttony at his own bountifully spread table. Don't let me have occasion to reprove you for this again.'
Mr. Bultitude, feeling the necessity of propitiating him, hastened to take the two largest squares of bread and butter on the plate. They were moist and thick, and he had considerable difficulty in disposing of them, besides the gratification of hearing himself described as a 'pig' by his neighbours, who reproved him with a refreshing candour.
'I must get away from here,' he thought, ruefully. 'Dick seems very unpopular. I wish I didn't feel so low-spirited and unwell. Why can't I carry it off easily as—as a kind of joke? How hard these forms are, and how those infernal boys did jog my back!'
Bedtime came at length. The boys filed, one by one, out of the room, and the Doctor stood by the door to shake hands with them as they passed.
Mr. Bultitude lingered until the others had gone, for he had made up his mind to seize this opportunity to open the Doctor's eyes to the mistake he was making. But he felt unaccountably nervous; the diplomatic and well-chosen introduction he had carefully prepared had left him at the critical moment; all power of thought was gone with it, and he went tremblingly up to the schoolmaster, feeling hopelessly at the mercy of anything that chose to come out of his mouth.
'Dr. Grimstone,' he began; 'before retiring I—I must insist—I mean I must request—— What I wish to say is——'
'I see,' said the Doctor, catching him up sharply. 'You wish to apologise for your extraordinary behaviour in the railway carriage? Well, though you made some amends afterwards, an apology is very right and proper. Say no more about it.'
'It's not that,' said Paul hopelessly; 'I wanted to explain——'
'Your conduct with regard to the bread and butter? If it was simply want of appetite, of course there is no more to be said. But I have an abhorrence of——'
'Quite right,' said Paul, recovering himself; 'I hate waste myself, but there is something I must tell you before——'
'If it concerns that disgraceful conduct of Coker's,' said the Doctor, 'you may speak on. I shall have to consider his case to-morrow. Has any similar case of disobedience come to your knowledge? If so, I expect you to disclose it to me. You have found some other boy with sweetmeats in his possession?'
'Good Heavens, sir!' said Mr. Bultitude, losing his temper; 'I haven't been searching the whole school for sweetmeats! I have other things to occupy my mind, sir. And, once for all, I demand to be heard! Dr. Grimstone, there are, ahem, domestic secrets that can only be alluded to in the strictest privacy. I see that one of your assistants is writing at his table there. Cannot we go where there will be less risk of interruption? You have a study, I suppose?'
'Yes, sir,' said the Doctor with terrible grimness, 'I have a study—and I have a cane. I can convince you of both facts, if you wish it. If you insult me again by this brazen buffoonery, I will! Be off to your dormitory, sir, before you provoke me to punish you. Not another word! Go!'
And, incredible as it may appear to all who have never been in his position, Mr. Bultitude went. It was almost an abdication, it was treachery to his true self; he knew the vital importance of firmness at this crisis. But nevertheless his courage gave way all at once, and he crawled up the bare, uncarpeted stairs without any further protest!
'Good night, Master Bultitude,' said a housemaid, meeting him on the staircase: 'you know your bedroom. No. 6, with Master Coker, and Master Biddlecomb, and the others.'
Paul dragged himself up to the highest landing-stage, and, with a sick foreboding, opened the door on which the figure 6 was painted.
It was a large bare plainly papered room, with several curtainless windows, the blinds of which were drawn, a long deal stand of wash-hand basins, and eight little white beds against the walls.
A fire was lighted in consideration of its being the first night, and several boys were talking excitedly round it. 'Here he is! He's stayed behind to tell more tales!' they cried, as Paul entered nervously. 'Now then, Bultitude, what have you got to say for yourself?'
Mr. Bultitude felt powerless among all these young wolves. He had no knowledge of boys, nor any notion of acquiring an influence over them, having hitherto regarded them as necessary nuisances, to be rather repressed than studied. He could only stare hopelessly at them in fascinated silence.
'You see he hasn't a word to say for himself!' said Tipping. 'Look here, what shall we do to him? Shall we try tossing in a blanket? I've never tried tossing a fellow in one myself, but as long as you don't jerk him too high, or out on the floor, you can't hurt him dangerously.'
'No, I say, don't toss him in a blanket,' pleaded Biddlecomb, and Paul felt gratefully towards him at the words; 'anyone coming up would see what was going on. I vote we flick at him with towels.'
'Now just you understand this clearly,' said Paul, thinking, not without reason, that this course of treatment was likely to prove painful; 'I refuse to allow myself to be flicked at with towels. No one has ever offered me such an indignity in my life! Oh, do you think I've not enough on my mind as it is without the barbarities of a set of young brutes like you!'
As this appeal was not of a very conciliatory nature they at once proceeded to form a circle round him and, judging their distance with great accuracy, jerked towels at his person with such diabolical dexterity that the wet corners cut him at all points like so many fine thongs, and he span round like a top, dancing, and, I regret to add, swearing violently, at the pain.
When he was worked up almost to frenzy pitch Biddlecomb's sweet low voice cried, 'Cave, you fellows! I hear Grim. Let him undress now, and we can lam it into him afterwards with slippers!'
At this they all cast off such of their clothes as they still wore, and slipped modestly and peacefully into bed, just as Dr. Grimstone's large form appeared at the doorway. Mr. Bultitude made as much haste as he could, but did not escape a reprimand from the Doctor as he turned the gas out; and as soon as he had made the round of the bedrooms and his heavy tread had died away down the staircase, the light-hearted occupants of No. 6 'lammed' it into the unhappy Paul until they were tired of the exercise and left him to creep sore and trembling with rage and fright into his cold hard bed.
Then, after a little desultory conversation, one by one sank from incoherence into silence, and rose from silence to snores, while Paul alone lay sleepless, listening to the creeping tinkle of the dying fire, drearily wondering at the marvellous change that had come over his life and fortunes in the last few hours, and feverishly composing impassioned appeals which were to touch the Doctor's heart and convince his reason.