Part 5 (1/2)

As his last conscious moment had been pa.s.sed in his own dining-room, the fact that he opened his eyes in a cab, instead of confirming his worst fears, actually helped to restore the unfortunate gentleman's serenity; for he frequently drove home from the city in this manner, and believed himself now, instead of being, as was actually the case, in that marvellous region of cheap photography, rocking-horses, mild stone lions, and wheels and ladders--the Euston Road--to be bowling along Holborn.

Now that he was thoroughly awake he found positive amus.e.m.e.nt in going over each successive incident of his nightmare experience with the talisman, and smiling at the tricks his imagination had played him.

”I wonder now how the d.i.c.kens I came to dream such outrageous nonsense!”

he said to himself, for even his dreams were, as a rule, within the bounds of probability. But he was not long in tracing it to the devilled kidneys he had had at the club for lunch, and some curious old brown sherry Robinson had given him afterwards at his office.

”Gad, what a shock the thing has given me!” he thought. ”I can hardly shake off the feeling even now.”

As a rule, after waking up on the verge of a fearful crisis, the effect of the horror fades swiftly away, as one detail after another evades a memory which is never too anxious to retain them, and each moment brings a deeper sense of relief and self-congratulation.

But in Paul's case, curiously enough, as he could not help thinking, the more completely roused he became, the greater grew his uneasiness.

Perhaps the first indication of the truth was suggested to him by a lurking suspicion--which he tried to dismiss as mere fancy--that he filled rather less of the cab than he had always been accustomed to do.

To rea.s.sure himself he set his thoughts to review all the proceedings of that day, feeling that if he could satisfactorily account for the time up to his taking the cab, that would be conclusive as to the unreality of any thing that appeared to have happened later in his own house. He got on well enough till he came to the hour at which he had left the office, and then, search his memory as he would, he could not remember hailing any cab!

Could it be another delusion, too, or was it the fact that he had found himself much pressed for time and had come home by the Underground to Praed Street? It must have been the day before, but that was Sunday.

Sat.u.r.day, then? But the recollection seemed too recent and fresh; and besides, on Sat.u.r.day, he had left at two, and had taken Barbara to see Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke's performance.

Slowly, insidiously, but with irresistible force, the conviction crept upon him that he had dined, and dined well.

”If I have dined already,” he told himself, ”I can't be going home to dinner; and if I am not going home to dinner, what--what am I doing in this cab?”

The bare idea that something might be wrong with him after all made him impatient to put an end to all suspense. He must knock this scotched nightmare once for all on the head by a deliberate appeal to his senses.

The cab had pa.s.sed the lighted shops now, and was driving between squares and private houses, so that Mr. Bult.i.tude had to wait until the sickly rays of a street lamp glanced into the cab for a moment, and, as they did so, he put his feet up on the opposite seat and examined his boots and trousers with breathless eagerness.

It was not to be denied; they were not his ordinary boots, nor did he ever wear such trousers as he saw above them! Always a careful and punctiliously neat person, he was more than commonly exacting concerning the make and polish of his boots and the set of his trousers.

These boots were clumsy, square-toed, and thick-soled; one was even patched on the side. The trousers were heavy and rough, of the kind advertised as ”wear-resisting fabrics, suitable for youths at school,”

frayed at the ends, and s.h.i.+ny--shamefully s.h.i.+ny--about the knees!

In hot despair he rapidly pa.s.sed his hands over his body. It felt unusually small and slim, Mr. Bult.i.tude being endowed with what is euphemistically termed a ”presence,” and it was with an agony rarely felt at such a discovery that he realised that, for the first time for more than twenty years, he actually had a waist.

Then, as a last resource, he took off his hat and felt for the broad, smooth, egg-like surface, garnished by scanty side patches of thin hair, which he knew he ought to find.

It was gone--hidden under a crop of thick close curling locks!

This last disappointment completely overcame him; he had a kind of short fit in the cab as the bitter truth was brought home to him unmistakably.

Yes, this was no dream of a distempered digestion, but sober reality.

The whole of that horrible scene in the dining-room had really taken place; and now he, Paul Bult.i.tude, the widely-respected merchant of Mincing Lane, a man of means and position, was being ignominiously packed off to school as if he were actually the schoolboy some hideous juggle had made him appear!

It was only with a violent effort that he could succeed in commanding his thoughts sufficiently to decide on some immediate action. ”I must be cool,” he kept muttering to himself, with shaking lips, ”quite cool and collected. Everything will depend on that now!”

It was some comfort to him in this extremity to recognise on the box the well-known broad back of Clegg, a cabman who stabled his two horses in some mews near Praed Street, and whom he had been accustomed to patronise in bad weather for several years.

Clegg would know him, in spite of his ridiculous transformation.

His idea was to stop the cab, and turn round and drive home again, when they would find that he was not to be got rid of again quite so easily.