Chương Chương 1 · Black Monday

. 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 his

dining-room at Westbourne Terrace after dinner.

The room was a long and lofty one, furnished in the stern uncompromising

style of the Mahogany Age, now supplanted by the later fashions of

decoration which, in their outset original and artistic, seem fairly on

the way to become as meaningless and conventional.

Here were no skilfully contrasted shades of grey or green, no dado, no

distemper on the walls; the woodwork was grained and varnished after the

manner of the Philistines, the walls papered in dark crimson, with heavy

curtains of the same colour, and the sideboard, dinner-waggon, and row

of stiff chairs were all carved in the same massive and expensive style

of ugliness. The pictures were those familiar presentments of dirty

rabbits, fat white horses, bloated goddesses, and misshapen boors, by

masters who, if younger than they assume to be, must have been quite old

enough to know better.

Mr. Bultitude was a tall and portly person, of a somewhat pompous and

overbearing demeanour; not much over fifty, but looking considerably

older. He had a high shining head, from which the hair had mostly

departed, what little still remained being of a grizzled auburn,

prominent pale blue eyes with heavy eyelids and fierce, bushy

whitey-brown eyebrows. His general expression suggested a conviction of

his own extreme importance, but, in spite of this, his big underlip

drooped rather weakly and his double chin slightly receded, giving a

judge of character reason for suspecting that a certain obstinate

positiveness observable in Mr. Bultitude's manner might possibly be due

less to the possession of an unusually strong will than to the

circumstance that, by some fortunate chance, that will had hitherto

never 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 leather

arm-chair, with a glass of claret at his elbow and his feet stretched

out towards the ruddy blaze of the fire--seemed at first sight to imply

that happy after-dinner condition of perfect satisfaction with oneself

and things in general, which is the natural outcome of a good cook, a

good conscience, and a good digestion.

At first sight; because his face did not confirm the impression--there

was a latent uneasiness in it, an air of suppressed irritation, as if he

expected and even dreaded to be disturbed at any moment, and yet was

powerless to resent the intrusion as he would like to do.

At the slightest sound in the hall outside he would half rise in his

chair 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, he

would sink back and resettle himself with a shrug of evident relief.

Habitual novel readers on reading thus far will, I am afraid, prepare

themselves for the arrival of a faithful cashier with news of

irretrievable ruin, or a mysterious and cynical stranger threatening

disclosures 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 successful

one--in direct defiance of the laws of fiction, where any connection

with commerce seems to lead naturally to failure in one of the three

volumes.

He was an elderly gentleman, too, of irreproachable character and

antecedents; no Damocles' sword of exposure was swinging over his bald

but blameless head; he had no disasters to fear and no indiscretions to

conceal. He had not been intended for melodrama, with which, indeed, he

would not have considered it a respectable thing to be connected.

In fact, the secret of his uneasiness was so absurdly simple and

commonplace that I am rather ashamed to have made even a temporary

mystery 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 a

parting scene with him; that was really all that was troubling him.

This sounds very creditable to the tenderness of his feelings as a

father--for there are some parents who bear such a bereavement at the

close of the holidays with extraordinary fortitude, if they do not

actually betray an unnatural satisfaction at the event.

But it was not exactly from softness of heart that he was restless and

impatient, nor did he dread any severe strain upon his emotions. He was

not much given to sentiment, and was the author of more than one of

those pathetically indignant letters to the papers, in which the British

parent denounces the expenses of education and the unconscionable length

and frequency of vacations.

He was one of those nervous and fidgety persons who cannot understand

their own children, looking on them as objectionable monsters whose next

movements are uncertain--much as Frankenstein must have felt towards

_his_ monster.

He hated to have a boy about the house, and positively writhed under the

irrelevant and irrepressible questions, the unnecessary noises and

boisterous high spirits which nothing would subdue; his son's society

was to him simply an abominable nuisance, and he pined for a release

from it from the day the holidays began.

He had been a widower for nearly three years, and no doubt the loss of a

mother's loving tact, which can check the heedless merriment before it

becomes intolerable, and interpret and soften the most peevish and

unreasonable of rebukes, had done much to make the relations between

parent and children more strained than they might otherwise have been.

As it was, Dick's fear of his father was just great enough to prevent

any cordiality between them, and not sufficient to make him careful to

avoid offence, and it is not surprising if, when the time came for him

to 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 his

deliverance, he still had a bad quarter of an hour before him, in which

the last farewells must be said, and he found it impossible under these

circumstances to compose himself for a quiet half-hour's nap, or retire

to the billiard-room for a cup of coffee and a mild cigar, as he would

otherwise have done--since he was certain to be disturbed.

And there was another thing which harassed him, and that was a haunting

dread lest at the last moment some unforeseen accident should prevent

the boy's departure after all. He had some grounds for this, for only a

week before, a sudden and unprecedented snowstorm had dashed his hopes,

on the eve of their fulfilment, by forcing the Doctor to postpone the

day on which his school was to re-assemble, and now Mr. Bultitude sat on

brambles until he had seen the house definitely rid of his son's

presence.

All this time, while the father was fretting and fuming in his

arm-chair, the son, the unlucky cause of all this discomfort, had been

standing on the mat outside the door, trying to screw up enough courage

to 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 quite

care for them to be seen by any of the "fellows" at Crichton House. All

the life and spirit had gone out of him for the time; he had a

troublesome dryness in his throat, and a general sensation of chill

heaviness, 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 sands

of the holidays have run out to their last golden grain, when the boxes

are standing corded and labelled in the hall, and some one is going to

fetch the fatal cab.

Dick had just gone the round of the house, bidding dreary farewells to

all the servants; an unpleasant ordeal which he would gladly have

dispensed with, if possible, and which did not serve to raise his

spirits.

Upstairs, in the bright nursery, he had found his old nurse sitting

sewing by the high wire fender. She was a stern, hard-featured old lady,

who had systematically slapped him through infancy into boyhood, and he

had had some stormy passages with her during the past few weeks; but she

softened now in the most unexpected manner as she said good-bye, and

told him he was a "pleasant, good-hearted young gentleman, after all,

though that aggravating and contrairy sometimes." And then she

predicted, with some of the rashness attaching to irresponsibility, that

he would be "the best boy this next term as ever was, and work hard at

all his lessons, and bring home a prize"--but all this unusual

gentleness only made the interview more difficult to come out of with

any credit for self-control.

Then downstairs, the cook had come up in her evening brown print and

clean collar, from her warm spice-scented kitchen, to remark cheerily

that "Lor bless his heart, what with all these telegrafts and things,

time flew so fast nowadays that they'd be having him back again before

they all knew where they were!" which had a certain spurious consolation

about it, until one saw that, after all, it put the case entirely from

her own standpoint.

After this Dick had parted from his elder sister Barbara and his young

brother Roly, and had arrived where we found him first, at the mat

outside the dining-room door, where he still lingered shivering in the

cold foggy hall.

Somehow, he could not bring himself to take the next step at once; he

knew pretty well what his father's feelings would be, and a parting is a

very unpleasant ceremony to one who feels that the regret is all on his

own side.

But it was no use putting it off any longer; he resolved at last to go

in and get it over, and opened the door accordingly. How warm and

comfortable the room looked--more comfortable than it had ever seemed to

him 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 the

station through the dismal raw fog!

How unspeakably delightful it must be, thought Dick enviously, to be

grown 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 no

fear of a swiftly advancing Black Monday.

Gloomy moralists might have informed him that we cannot escape school by

simply growing up, and that, even for those who contrive this and make

a long holiday of their lives, there comes a time when the days are

grudgingly counted to a blacker Monday than ever made a school-boy's

heart quake within him.

But then Dick would never have believed them, and the moralists would

only 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 boy

this term, no more scrapes, mind. And now you'd better run away, and put

on 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, God

bless my soul, what's the man thinking about? You'll lose your train! I

know you'll lose the train, and there will be another day lost, after

the extra week gone already through that snow! I must see to this

myself. Ring the bell, tell Boaler to start this instant--I insist on

his fetching a cab this instant!"

"Well, it's not my fault, you know," grumbled Dick, not considering so

much anxiety at all flattering, "but Boaler has gone now. I just heard

the 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 your

sister--you've no time to spare."

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

Boaler comes?"

This request was due, less to filial affection than a faint desire for

dessert, 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 one

thing or the other--stay outside, or shut the door and come in and sit

down quietly. I cannot sit in a thorough draught!"

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

expression.

His father felt a greater sense of constraint and worry than ever; the

interview, as he had feared, seemed likely to last some time, and he

felt that he ought to improve the occasion in some way, or, at all

events, make some observation. But, for all that, he had not the

remotest idea what to say to this red-haired, solemn boy, who sat

staring gloomily at him in the intervals of filling his mouth. The

situation grew more embarrassing every moment.

At last, as he felt himself likely to have more to say in reproof than

on 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 last

term; don't let me have that again. Dr. Grimstone tells me--ah, I have

his letter here--yes, he says (and just attend, instead of making

yourself ill with preserved ginger)--he says, 'Your son has great

natural 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 actually

misleading--his companions.' That's a pleasant account for a father to

read! Here am I, sending you to an expensive school, furnishing you with

great natural capacity and excellent abilities, and--and--every other

school requisite, and all you do is to misuse them! It's disgraceful!

And misleading your companions, too! Why, at your age, they ought to

mislead _you_--No, I don't mean that--but what I may tell you is that

I've written a very strong letter to Dr. Grimstone, saying what pain it

gave me to hear you misbehaved yourself, and telling him, if he ever

caught you setting an example of any sort, mind that, _any_ sort, in the

future--he was to, ah, to remember some of Solomon's very sensible

remarks on the subject. So I should strongly advise you to take care

what you're about in future, for your own sake!"

This was not a very encouraging address, perhaps, but it did not seem to

distress Dick to any extent; he had heard very much the same sort of

thing several times before, and had been fully prepared for it then.

He had been seeking distraction in almonds and raisins, but now they

only choked instead of consoling him, and he gave them up and sat

brooding silently over his hard lot instead, with a dull, blank

dejection which those only who have gone through the same thing in their

boyhood will understand. To others, whose school life has been one

unchequered course of excitement and success, it will be

incomprehensible enough--and so much the better for them.

He sat listening to the grim sphinx clock on the black marble

chimneypiece, as it remorselessly ticked away his last few moments of

home-life, and he ingeniously set himself to crown his sorrow by

reviving recollections of happier days.

In one of the corners of the overmantel there was still a sprig of

withered laurel left forgotten, and his eye fell on it now with grim

satisfaction. He made his thoughts travel back to that delightful

afternoon on Christmas Eve, when they had all come home riotous through

the brilliant streets, laden with purchases from the Baker Street

Bazaar, and then had decorated the rooms with such free and careless

gaiety.

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 not

come 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 ancient

feast.

And yet he could distinctly recollect now, and with bitter remorse, that

he had not enjoyed himself then as much as he ought to have done; he

even remembered an impious opinion of his that the proceedings were

"slow." Slow! with plenty to eat, and three (four, if he had only known

it) more weeks of holiday before him; with Boxing Day and the brisk

exhilarating drive to the Crystal Palace immediately following, with all

the rest of a season of licence and varied joys to come, which he could

hardly trust himself to look back upon now! He must have been mad to

think such a thing.

Overhead his sister Barbara was playing softly one of the airs from "The

Pirates" (it was Frederic's appeal to the Major-General's daughters),

and the music, freed from the serio-comic situation which it

illustrates, had a tenderness and pathos of its own which went to Dick's

heart and intensified his melancholy.

He had gone (in secret, for Mr. Bultitude disapproved of such

dissipations) to hear the Opera in the holidays, and now the piano

conjured the whole scene up for him again--there would be no more

theatre-going for him for a very long time!

By this time Mr. Bultitude began to feel the silence becoming once more

oppressive, and roused himself with a yawn. "Heigho!" he said, "Boaler's

an uncommonly long time fetching that cab!"

Dick felt more injured than ever, and showed it by drawing what he

intended for a moving sigh.

Unfortunately it was misunderstood.

"I do wish, sir," said his parent testily, "you would try to break

yourself of that habit of breathing hard. The society of a grampus (for

it's no less) delights no one and offends many--including me--and for

Heaven's sake, Dick, don't kick the leg of the table in that way; you

know it simply maddens me. What do you do it for? Why can't you learn to

sit at table like a gentleman?"

Dick mumbled some apology, and then, having found his tongue and

remembered 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 your

grandmother give you a sovereign as a Christmas-box? And I gave you ten

shillings myself!"

"I do want it, though," said Dick; "that's all spent. And you know you

always _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 the

plate on Sundays. We always have to put in the plate when it's a

collection. And there's the cab to pay."

"Boaler has orders to pay your cab--as you know well enough," said his

father, "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 of

his trouser-pockets, and spread it deliberately out on the table in

front of him in shining rows.

Dick's eyes sparkled at the sight of so much wealth; for a moment or two

he almost forgot the pangs of approaching exile in the thought of the

dignity and credit which a single one of those bright new sovereigns

would procure for him.

It would ensure him surreptitious luxuries and open friendships as long

as it lasted. Even Tipping, the head boy of the school, who had gone

into tails, brought back no more, and besides, the money would bring

him handsomely out of certain pecuniary difficulties to which an

unexpected act of parental authority had exposed him; he could easily

dispose of all claims with such a sum at command, and then his father

could so easily spare it out of so much!

Meanwhile Mr. Bultitude, with great care and precision, selected from

the coins before him a florin, two shillings, and two sixpences, which

he pushed across to his son, who looked at them with a disappointment he

did not care to conceal.

"An uncommonly liberal allowance for a young fellow like you," he

observed. "Don't buy any foolishness with it, and if, towards the end of

the term you want a little more, and write an intelligible letter asking

for it, and I think proper to let you have it--why, you'll get it, you

know."

Dick had not the courage to ask for more, much as he longed to do so, so

he put the money in his purse with very qualified expressions of

gratitude.

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 yet

done, "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 is

it you want now?"

"It's only that stone Uncle Duke brought mamma from India; the thing, he

said, they called a 'Pagoda stone,' or something, out there."

"Pagoda stone? The boy means Garuda Stone. I should like to know how you

got hold of that; you've been meddling in my drawers, now, a thing I

will 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 the

drawing-room, and Barbara said, perhaps, if I asked you, you might let

me 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 like

that? 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 green

stone, pierced at one angle, and having on two of its faces faint traces

of mysterious letters or symbols, which time had made very difficult to

distinguish.

It looked harmless enough as Mr. Bultitude took it in his hand; there

was no kindly hand to hold him back, no warning voice to hint that there

might possibly be sleeping within that small marble block the pent-up

energy of long-forgotten Eastern necromancy, just as ready as ever to

awake 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, Paul

Bultitude was a sober prosaic individual, who would probably have

treated the warning as a piece of ridiculous superstition.

As it was, no man could have put himself in a position of extreme peril

with a more perfect unconsciousness of his danger.