Peter Ibbetson Part 8

"Deux metres, bien sonnes!" he would say, alluding to my stature, "et le profil d'Antinous!" which he would p.r.o.nounce without the two little dots on the _u_.

And afterwards, if he had felt his evening a pleasant one, if he had sung all he knew, if Mrs. Deane had been more than usually loving and self-surrendering, and I had distinguished myself by skilfully turning over the leaves when her mother had played the piano, he would tell me, as we walked home together, that I "did credit to his name, and that I would make an excellent figure in the world as soon as I had _decra.s.se_ myself; that I must get another dress-suit from his tailor, just an eighth of an inch longer in the tails; that I should have a commission in his old regiment (the Eleventeenth Royal Bounders), a deuced crack cavalry regiment; and see the world and break a few hearts (it is not for nothing that our friends have pretty wives and sisters); and finally marry some beautiful young heiress of t.i.tle, and make a home for him when he was a poor solitary old fellow. Very little would do for him: a crust of bread, a gla.s.s of wine and water, and a clean napkin, a couple of rooms, and an old piano and a few good books. For, of course, Ibbetson Hall would be mine and every penny he possessed in the world."

[Ill.u.s.tration:]

All this in confidential French--lest the very clouds should hear us--and with the familiar thee and thou of blood-relationship, which I did not care to return.

It did not seem to bode very serious intentions towards Mrs. Deane, and would scarcely have pleased her mother.

Or else, if something had crossed him, and Mrs. Deane had flirted outrageously with somebody else, and he had not been asked to sing (or somebody else had), he would a.s.sure me in good round English that I was the most infernal lout that ever disgraced a drawing-room, or ate a man out of house and home, and that he was sick and ashamed of me. "Why can't you sing, you d--d French milksop? The d--d roulade-monger of a father of yours could sing fast enough, if he could do nothing else, confound him! Why can't you talk French, you infernal British b.o.o.by? Why can't you hand round the tea and m.u.f.fins, confound you! Why, twice Mrs.

Glyn dropped her pocket-handkerchief and had to pick it up herself!

What, 'at the other end of the room,' were you? Well, you should have skipped _across_ the room, and picked it up, and handed it to her with a pretty speech, like a gentleman! When I was your age I was _always_ on the lookout for ladies' pocket-handkerchiefs to drop--or their fans! I never missed _one_!"

Then he would take me out to shoot with him (for it was quite essential that an English gentleman should be a sportsman)--a terrible ordeal to both of us.

A snipe that I did not want to kill in the least would sometimes rise and fly right and left like a flash of lightning, and I would miss it--always; and he would d--n me for a son of a confounded French Micawber, and miss the next himself, and get into a rage and thrash his dog, a pointer that I was very fond of. Once he thrashed her so cruelly that I saw scarlet, and nearly yielded to the impulse of emptying both my barrels in his broad back. If I had done so it would have pa.s.sed for a mere mishap, after all, and saved many future complications.

One day he pointed out to me a small bird pecking in a field--an extremely pretty bird--I think it was a skylark--and whispered to me in his most sarcastic manner--

"Look here, you Peter without any salt, do you think, if you were to kneel down and rest your gun comfortably on this gate without making a noise, and take a careful aim, you could manage to shoot that bird _sitting_? I've heard of some Frenchmen who would be equal to _that_!"

I said I would try, and, resting my gun as he told me, I carefully aimed a couple of yards above the bird's head, and mentally ejaculating,

"'_All to thee blythe sperrit_!"

I fired both barrels (for fear of any after-mishap to Ibbetson), and the bird naturally flew away.

After this he never took me out shooting with him again; and, indeed, I had discovered to my discomfiture that I, the friend and admirer and would-be emulator of Natty b.u.mppo the Deerslayer, I, the familiar of the last of the Mohicans and his scalp-lifting father, could not bear the sight of blood--least of all, of blood shed by myself, and for my own amus.e.m.e.nt.

The only beast that ever fell to my gun during those shootings with Uncle Ibbetson was a young rabbit, and that more by accident than design, although I did not tell Uncle Ibbetson so.

As I picked it off the ground, and felt its poor little warm narrow chest, and the last beats of its heart under its weak ribs, and saw the blood on its fur, I was smitten with pity, shame, and remorse; and settled with myself that I would find some other road to English gentlemanhood than the slaying of innocent wild things whose happy life seems so well worth living.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'AIL TO THEE BLYTHE SPERRIT!"]

I must eat them, I suppose, but I would never shoot them any more; my hands, at least, should be clean of blood henceforward.

Alas, the irony of fate!

The upshot of all this was that he confided to Mrs. Deane the task of licking his cub of a nephew into shape. She took me in hand with right good-will, began by teaching me how to dance, that I might dance with her at the coming hunt ball; and I did so nearly all night, to my infinite joy and triumph, and to the disgust of Colonel Ibbetson, who could dance much better than I--to the disgust, indeed, of many smart men in red coats and black, for she was considered the belle of the evening.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DANCING LESSON.]

Of course I fell, or fancied I fell, in love with her. To her mother's extreme distress, she gave me every encouragement, partly for fun, partly to annoy Colonel Ibbetson, whom she had apparently grown to hate.

And, indeed, from the way he spoke of her to me (this trainer of English gentlemen), he well deserved that she should hate him. He never had the slightest intention of marrying her--that is certain; and yet he had made her the talk of the place.

And here I may state that Ibbetson was one of those singular men who go through life afflicted with the mania that they are fatally irresistible to women.

He was never weary of pursuing them--not through any special love of gallantry for its own sake, I believe, but from the mere wish to appear as a Don Giovanni in the eyes of others. Nothing made him happier than to be seen whispering mysteriously in corners with the prettiest woman in the room. He did not seem to perceive that for one woman silly or vain or vulgar enough to be flattered by his idiotic persecution, a dozen would loathe the very sight of him, and show it plainly enough.

This vanity had increased with years and a.s.sumed a very dangerous form.

He became indiscreet, and, more disastrous still, he told lies! The very dead--the honored and irreproachable dead--were not even safe in their graves. It was his revenge for unforgotten slights.

He who kisses and tells, he who tells even though he has not kissed--what can be said for him, what should be done to him?

Ibbetson one day expiated this miserable craze with his life, and the man who took it--more by accident than design, it is true--has not yet found it in his heart to feel either compunction or regret.

So there was a great row between Ibbetson and myself. He d----d and confounded and abused me in every way, and my father before me, and finally struck me; and I had sufficient self-command not to strike him back, but left him then and there with as much dignity as I could muster.

Thus unsuccessfully ended my brief experience of English country life--a little hunting and shooting and fishing, a little dancing and flirting; just enough of each to show me I was unfit for all.

A bitter-sweet remembrance, full of humiliation, but not altogether without charm. There was the beauty of sea and open sky and changing country weather; and the beauty of Mrs. Deane, who made a fool of me to revenge herself on Colonel Ibbetson for trying to make a fool of her, whereby he became the laughing-stock of the neighborhood for at least nine days.

And I revenged myself on both--heroically, as I thought; though where the heroism comes in, and where the revenge, does not appear quite patent.

For I ran away to London, and enlisted in her Majesty's Household Cavalry, where I remained a twelvemonth, and was happy enough, and learned a great deal more good than harm.

Then I was bought out and articled to Mr. Lintot, architect and surveyor: a conclave of my relatives agreeing to allow me ninety pounds a year for three years; then all hands were to be washed of me altogether.[A]

[Footnote A: _Note_.--I have thought it better to leave out, in its entirety, my cousin's account of his short career as a private soldier.

It consists princ.i.p.ally of personal descriptions that are not altogether unprejudiced; he seems never to have quite liked those who were placed in authority above him, either at school or in the army. MADGE PLUNKET.]

So I took a small lodging in Pentonville, to be near Mr. Lintot, and worked hard at my new profession for three years, during which nothing of importance occurred in my outer life. After this Lintot employed me as a salaried clerk, and I do not think he had any reason to complain of me, nor did he make any complaint. I was worth my hire, I think, and something over; which I never got and never asked for.

Nor did I complain of him; for with all his little foibles of vanity, irascibility, and egotism, and a certain close-fistedness, he was a good fellow and a very clever one.

His paragon of a wife was by no means the beautiful person he had made her out to be, nor did anybody but he seem to think her so.

She was a little older than himself; very large and ma.s.sive, with stern but not irregular features, and a very high forehead; she had a slight tendency to baldness, and colorless hair that she wore in an austere curl on each side of her face, and a menacing little topknot on her occiput. She had been a Unitarian and a governess, was fond of good long words, like Dr. Johnson, and very censorious.

But one of my husband's intimate friends, General----, who was cornet in the Life Guards in my poor cousin's time, writes me that "he remembers him well, as far and away the tallest and handsomest lad in the whole regiment, of immense physical strength, unimpeachable good conduct, and a thorough gentleman from top to toe."

Her husband's occasional derelictions in the matter of grammar and accent must have been very trying to her!

[Ill.u.s.tration: PENTONVILLE.]

She knew her own mind about everything under the sun, and expected that other people should know it, too, and be of the same mind as herself.

And yet she was not proud; indeed, she was a very dragon of humility, and had raised injured meekness to the rank of a militant virtue. And well she knew how to be master and mistress in her own house!

But with all this she was an excellent wife to Mr. Lintot and a devoted mother to his children, who were very plain and subdued (and adored their father); so that Lintot, who thought her Venus and Diana and Minerva in one, was the happiest man in all Pentonville.