Peter Ibbetson Part 7

It was an uninteresting coast on the German Ocean, without a rock, or a cliff, or a pier, or a tree; even without cold gray stones for the sea to break on--nothing but sand!--a bourgeois kind of sea, charmless in its best moods, and not very terrible in its wrath, except to a few stray fishermen whom it employed, and did not seem to reward very munificently.

Inland it was much the same. One always thought of the country as gray, until one looked and found that it was green; and then, if one were old and wise, one thought no more about it, and turned one's gaze inward.

Moreover, it seemed to rain incessantly.

But it was the country and the sea, after Bluefriars and the cloisters--after Newgate, St. Bartholomew, and Smithfield.

And one could fish and bathe in the sea after all, and ride in the country, and even follow the hounds, a little later; which would have been a joy beyond compare if one had not been blessed with an uncle who thought one rode like a French tailor, and told one so, and mimicked one, in the presence of charming young ladies who rode in perfection.

In fact, it was heaven itself by comparison, and would have remained so longer but for Colonel Ibbetson's efforts to make a gentleman of me--an English gentleman.

What is a gentleman? It is a grand old name; but what does it mean?

At one time, to say of a man that he is a gentleman, is to confer on him the highest t.i.tle of distinction we can think of; even if we are speaking of a prince.

At another, to say of a man that he is _not_ a gentleman is almost to stigmatize him as a social outcast, unfit for the company of his kind--even if it is only one haberdasher speaking of another.

_Who_ is a gentleman, and yet who _is not_?

The Prince of Darkness was one, and so was Mr. John Halifax, if we are to believe those who knew them best; and so was one "Pelham," according to the late Sir Edward Bulwer, Earl of Lytton, etc.; and it certainly seemed as if _he_ ought to know.

And I was to be another, according to Roger Ibbetson, Esquire, of Ibbetson Hall, late Colonel of the--, and it certainly seemed as if he ought to know too! The word was as constantly on his lips (when talking to _me_) as though, instead of having borne her Majesty's commission, he were a hairdresser's a.s.sistant who had just come into an independent fortune.

This course of tuition began pleasantly enough, before I left London, by his sending me to his tailors, who made me several beautiful suits; especially an evening suit, which has lasted me for life, alas; and these, after the uniform of the gray-coat school, were like an initiation to the splendors of freedom and manhood.

Colonel Ibbetson--or Uncle Ibbetson, as I used to call him--was my mother's first cousin; my grandmother, Mrs. Biddulph, was the sister of his father, the late Archdeacon Ibbetson, a very pious, learned, and exemplary divine, of good family.

But his mother (the Archdeacon's second wife) had been the only child and heiress of an immensely rich p.a.w.nbroker, by name Mendoza; a Portuguese Jew, with a dash of colored blood in his veins besides, it was said; and, indeed, this remote African strain still showed itself in Uncle Ibbetson's thick lips, wide open nostrils, and big black eyes with yellow whites--and especially in his long, splay, lark-heeled feet, which gave both himself and the best bootmaker in London a great deal of trouble.

Otherwise, and in spite of his ugly face, he was not without a certain soldier-like air of distinction, being very tall and powerfully built.

He wore stays, and an excellent wig, for he was prematurely bald; and he carried his hat on one side, which (in my untutored eyes) made him look very much like a "_swell_," but not quite like a _gentleman_.

To wear your hat jauntily c.o.c.ked over one eye, and yet "look like a gentleman!"

It can be done, I am told; and has been, and is even still! It is not, perhaps, a very lofty achievement--but such as it is, it requires a somewhat rare combination of social and physical gifts in the wearer; and the possession of either Semitic or African blood does not seem to be one of these.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "PORTRAIT CHARMANT, PORTRAIT DE MON AMIE ..."]

Colonel Ibbetson could do a little of everything--sketch (especially a steam-boat on a smooth sea, with beautiful thick smoke reflected in the water), play the guitar, sing chansonnettes and canzonets, write society verses, quote De Musset--

_"Avez-vous vu dans Barcelone Une Andalouse au sein bruni?"_

He would speak French whenever he could, even to an English ostler, and then recollect himself suddenly, and apologize for his thoughtlessness; and even when he spoke English, he would embroider it with little two-penny French tags and idioms: "Pour tout potage"; "Nous avons change tout cela"; "Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere?" etc.; or Italian, "Chi lo sa?" "Pazienza!" "Ahime!" or even Latin, "Eheu fugaces," and "Vidi tantum!" for he had been an Eton boy. It must have been very cheap Latin, for I could always understand it myself! He drew the line at German and Greek; fortunately, for so do I. He was a bachelor, and his domestic arrangements had been irregular, and I will not dwell upon them; but his house, as far as it went, seemed to promise better things.

His architect, Mr. Lintot, an extraordinary little man, full of genius and quite self-made, became my friend and taught me to smoke, and drink gin and water.

He did his work well; but of an evening he used to drink more than was good for him, and rave about Sh.e.l.ley, his only poet. He would recite "The Skylark" (his only poem) with uncertain _h_'s, and a rather c.o.c.kney accent--

"'_Ail to thee blythe sperrit!

Bird thou never wert, That from 'eaven, or near it Po'rest thy full 'eart In profuse strains of hunpremeditated hart_."

As the evening wore on his recitations became "low comic," and quite admirable for accent and humour. He could imitate all the actors in London (none of which I had seen) so well as to transport me with delight and wonder; and all this with n.o.body but me for an audience, as we sat smoking and drinking together in his room at the "Ibbetson Arms."

I felt grateful to adoration.

Later still, he would become sentimental again; and dilate to me on the joys of his wedded life, on the extraordinary of intellect and beauty of Mrs. Lintot. First he would describe to me the beauties of her mind, and compare her to "L.E.L." and Felicia Hemans. Then he would fall back on her physical perfections; there was n.o.body worthy to be compared to her in these--but I draw the veil.

He was very egotistical. Whatever he did, whatever he liked, whatever belonged to him, was better than anything else in world; and he was cleverer than any one else, except Mrs. Lintot, to whom he yielded the palm; and then he would cheer up and become funny again.

In fact his self-satisfaction was quite extraordinary; and what is more extraordinary still, it was not a bit offensive--at least, to me; perhaps because he was such a tiny little man; or because much of this vanity of his seemed to have no very solid foundation, for it was not of the gifts I most admired in him that he was vainest; or because it came out most when he was most tipsy, and genial tipsiness redeems so much; or else because he was most vain about things I should never have been vain about myself; and the most unpardonable vanity in others is that which is secretly our own, whether we are conscious of it or not.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I FELT GRATEFUL TO ADORATION."]

And then he was the first funny man I had ever met. What a gift it is!

He was always funny when he tried to be, whether one laughed with him or at him, and I loved him for it. Nothing on earth is more pathetically pitiable than the funny man when he still tries and succeeds no longer.

The moment Lintot's vein was exhausted, he had the sense to leave off and begin to cry, which was still funny; and then I would jump out of his clothes and into his bed and be asleep in a second, with the tears still trickling down his little nose--and even that was funny!

But next morning he was stern and alert and indefatiguable, as though gin and poetry and conjugal love had never been, and fun were a capital crime.

Uncle Ibbetson thought highly of him as an architect, but not otherwise; he simply made use of him.

"He's a terrible little sn.o.b, of course, and hasn't got an _h_ in his head" (as if _that_ were a capital crime); "but he's very clever--look at that campanile--and then he's cheap, my boy, cheap."

There were several fine houses in fine parks not very far from Ibbetson Hall; but although Uncle Ibbetson appeared in name and wealth and social position to be on a par with their owners, he was not on terms of intimacy with any of them, or even of acquaintance, as far as I know, and spoke of them with contempt, as barbarians--people with whom he had nothing in common. Perhaps they, too, had found out this incompatibility, especially the ladies; for, school-boy as I was, I was not long in discovering that his manner towards those of the other s.e.x was not always such as to please either of them or their husbands or fathers or brothers. The way he looked at them was enough. Indeed, most of his lady-friends and acquaintances through life had belonged to the _corps de ballet_, the _demi-monde_, etc.--not, I should imagine, the best school of manners in the world.

On the other hand, he was very friendly with some families in the town; the doctor's, the rector's, his own agent's (a broken-down brother officer and bosom friend, who had ceased to love him since he received his pay); and he used to take Mr. Lintot and me to parties there; and he was the life of those parties.

He sang little French songs, with no voice, but quite a good French accent, and told little anecdotes with no particular point, but in French and Italian (so that the point was never missed); and we all laughed and admired without quite knowing why, except that he was the lord of the manor.

On these festive occasions poor Lintot's confidence and power of amusing seemed to desert him altogether; he sat glum in a corner.

Though a radical and a sceptic, and a peace-at-any-price man, he was much impressed by the social status of the army and the church.

Of the doctor, a very clever and accomplished person, and the best educated man for miles around, he thought little; but the rector, the colonel, the poor captain, even, now a mere land-steward, seemed to fill him with respectful awe. And for his pains he was cruelly snubbed by Mrs. Captain and Mrs. Rector and their plain daughters, who little guessed what talents he concealed, and thought him quite a common little man, hardly fit to turn over the leaves of their music.

It soon became pretty evident that Ibbetson was very much smitten with a Mrs. Deane, the widow of a brewer, a very handsome woman indeed, in her own estimation and mine, and everybody else's, except Mr. Lintot's, who said, "Pooh, you should see my wife!"

Her mother, Mrs. Glyn, excelled us all in her admiration of Colonel Ibbetson.

For instance, Mrs. Deane would play some common little waltz of the cheap kind that is never either remembered or forgotten, and Mrs. Glyn would exclaim, "_Is_ not that _lovely_?"

And Ibbetson would say: "Charming! charming! Whose is it? Rossini's?

Mozart's?"

"Why, no, my dear colonel. Don't you remember? _It's your own_!"

"Ah, so it is! I had quite forgotten." And general laughter and applause would burst forth at such a natural mistake on the part of our great man.

Well, I could neither play nor sing, and found it far easier by this time to speak English than French, especially to English people who were ignorant of any language but their own. Yet sometimes Colonel Ibbetson would seem quite proud of me.