Peter Ibbetson Part 13

Oh me duffer! What a hopeless failure was I in all things, little and big.

Part Three

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I had no friends but the Lintots and their friends. "Les amis de nos amis sont nos amis!"

My cousin Alfred had gone into the army, like his father before him. My cousin Charlie had gone into the Church, and we had drifted completely apart. My grandmother was dead. My Aunt Plunket, a great invalid, lived in Florence. Her daughter, Madge, was in India, happily married to a young soldier who is now a most distinguished general.

The Lintots held their heads high as representatives of a liberal profession, and an old Pentonville family. People were generally exclusive in those days--an exclusiveness that was chiefly kept up by the ladies. There were charmed circles even in Pentonville.

Among the most exclusive were the Lintots. Let us hope, in common justice, that those they excluded were at least able to exclude others.

I have eaten their bread and salt, and it would ill become me to deny that their circle was charming as well as charmed. But I had no gift for making friends, although I was often attracted by people the very opposite of myself; especially by little, clever, quick, but not too familiar men; but even if they were disposed to make advances, a miserable shyness and stiffness of manner on my part, that I could not help, would raise a barrier of ice between us.

They were most hospitable people, these good Lintots, and had many friends, and gave many parties, which my miserable shyness prevented me from enjoying to the full. They were both too stiff and too free.

In the drawing-room, Mrs. Lintot and one or two other ladies, severely dressed, would play the severest music in a manner that did not mitigate its severity. They were merciless! It was nearly always Bach, or Hummel, or Scarlatti, each of whom, they would say, could write both like an artist and a gentleman--a very rare but indispensable combination, it seemed.

Other ladies, young and middle-aged, and a few dumb-struck youths like myself, would be suffered to listen, but never to retaliate--never to play or sing back again.

If one ventured to ask for a song without words by Mendelssohn--or a song with words, even by Schubert, even with German words--one was rebuked and made to blush for the crime of musical frivolity.

Meanwhile, in Lintot's office (built by himself in the back garden), grave men and true, pending the supper hour, would smoke and sip spirits-and-water, and talk shop; formally at first, and with much politeness. But gradually, feeling their way, as it were, they would relax into social unb.u.t.tonment, and drop the "Mister" before each other's names (to be resumed next morning), and indulge in lively professional chaff, which would soon become personal and free and boisterous--a good-humored kind of warfare in which I did not s.h.i.+ne, for lack of quickness and repartee. For instance, they would ask one whether one would rather be a bigger fool than one looked, or look a bigger fool than one was; and whichever way one answered the question, the retort would be that "that was impossible!" amid roars of laughter from all but one.

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So that I would take a middle course, and spend most of the evening on the stairs and in the hall, and study (with an absorbing interest much too well feigned to look natural) the photographs of famous cathedrals and public buildings till supper came; when, by a.s.siduously attending on the ladies, I would cause my miserable existence to be remembered, and forgiven; and soon forgotten again, I fear.

I hope I shall not be considered an overweening c.o.xcomb for saying that, on the whole, I found more favor with the ladies than with the gentlemen; especially at supper-time.

After supper there would be a change--for the better, some thought.

Lintot, emboldened by good-cheer and good-fellows.h.i.+p, would become unduly, immensely, uproariously funny, in spite of his wife. He had a genuine gift of buffoonery. His friends would whisper to each other that Lintot was "on," and encourage him. Bach and Hummel and Scarlatti were put on the shelf, and the young people would have a good time.

There were comic songs and negro melodies, with a chorus all round.

Lintot would sing "Vilikins and his Dinah," in the manner of Mr. Robson, so well that even Mrs. Lintot's stern mask would relax into indulgent smiles. It was irresistible. And when the party broke up, we could all (thanks to our host) honestly thank our hostess "for a very pleasant evening," and cheerfully, yet almost regretfully, wish her good-night.

It is good to laugh sometimes--wisely if one can; if not, _quoc.u.mque modo_! There are seasons when even "the crackling of thorns under a pot"

has its uses. It seems to warm the pot--all the pots--and all the emptiness thereof, if they be empty.

Once, indeed, I actually made a friend, but he did not last me very long.

It happened thus: Mrs. Lintot gave a grander party than usual. One of the invited was Mr. Moses Lyon, the great picture-dealer--a client of Lintot's; and he brought with him young Raphael Merridew, the already famous painter, the most attractive youth I had ever seen. Small and slight, but beautifully made, and dressed in the extreme of fas.h.i.+on, with a handsome face, bright and polite manners, and an irresistible voice, he became his laurels well; he would have been sufficiently dazzling without them. Never had those hospitable doors in Myddelton Square been opened to so brilliant a guest.

I was introduced to him, and he discovered that the bridge of my nose was just suited for the face of the sun-G.o.d in his picture of "The Sun-G.o.d and the Dawn-maiden," and begged I would favor him with a sitting or two.

Proud indeed was I to accede to such a request, and I gave him many sittings. I used to rise at dawn to sit, before my work at Lintot's began; and to sit again as soon as I could be spared.

It seems I not only had the nose and brow of a sun-G.o.d (who is not supposed to be a very intellectual person), but also his arms and his torso; and sat for these, too. I have been vain of myself ever since.

During these sittings, which he made delightful, I grew to love him as David loved Jonathan.

We settled that we would go to the Derby together in a hansom. I engaged the smartest hansom in London days beforehand. On the great Wednesday morning I was punctual with it at his door in Charlotte Street. There was another hansom there already--a smarter hansom still than mine, for it was a private one--and he came down and told me he had altered his mind, and was going with Lyon, who had asked him the evening before.

"One of the first picture-dealers in London, my dear fellow. Hang it all, you know, I couldn't refuse--awfully sorry!"

So I drove to the Derby in solitary splendor, but the bright weather, the humors of the road, all the gay scenes were thrown away upon me, such was the bitterness of my heart.

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In the early afternoon I saw Merridew lunching on the top of a drag, among some men of smart and aristocratic appearance. He seemed to be the life of the party, and gave me a good-humored nod as I pa.s.sed. I soon found Lyon sitting disconsolate in his hansom, scowling and solitary; he invited me to lunch with him, and disembosomed himself of a load of bitterness as intense as mine (which I kept to myself). The shrewd Hebrew tradesman was sunk in the warm-hearted, injured friend. Merridew had left Lyon for the Earl of Chiselhurst, just as he had left me for Lyon.

That was a dull Derby for us both!

A few days later I met Merridew, radiant as ever. All he said was:

"Awful shame of me to drop old Lyon for Chiselhurst, eh? But an earl, my dear fellow! Hang it all, you know! Poor old Mo had to get back in his hansom all by himself, but he's bought the 'Sun-G.o.d' all the same."

Merridew soon dropped me altogether, to my great sorrow, for I forgave him his Derby desertion as quickly as Lyon did, and would have forgiven him anything. He was one of those for whom allowances are always being made, and with a good grace.

He died before he was thirty, poor boy! but his fame will never die. The "Sun-G.o.d" (even with the bridge of that nose which had been so wofully put out of joint) is enough by itself to place him among the immortals.

Lyon sold it to Lord Chiselhurst for three thousand pounds--it had cost him five hundred. It is now in the National Gallery.

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Poetical justice was satisfied!

Nor was I more fortunate in love than in friends.h.i.+p.

All the exclusiveness in the world cannot exclude good and beautiful maidens, and these were not lacking, even in Pentonville.

There is always one maiden much more beautiful and good than all the others--like Esmeralda among the ladies of the Hotel de Gondelaurier.

There was such a maiden in Pentonville, or rather Clerkenwell, close by.

But her station was so humble (like Esmeralda's) that even the least exclusive would have drawn the line at _her!_ She was one of a large family, and they sold tripe and pig's feet, and food for cats and dogs, in a very small shop opposite the western wall of the Middles.e.x House of Detention. She was the eldest, and the busy, responsible one at this poor counter. She was one of Nature's ladies, one of Nature's G.o.ddesses--a queen! Of that I felt sure every time I pa.s.sed her shop, and shyly met her kind, frank, uncoquettish gaze. A time was approaching when I should have to overcome my shyness, and tell her that she of all women was the woman for me, and that it was indispensable, absolutely indispensable, that we two should be made one--immediately! at once! forever!

But before I could bring myself to this she married somebody else, and we had never exchanged a single word!

If she is alive now she is an old woman--a good and beautiful old woman, I feel sure, wherever she is, and whatever her rank in life. If she should read this book, which is not very likely, may she accept this small tribute from an unknown admirer; for whom, so many years ago, she beautified and made poetical the hideous street that still bounds the Middles.e.x House of Detention on its western side; and may she try to think not the less of it because since then its writer has been on the wrong side of that long, blank wall, of that dreary portal where the agonized stone face looks down on the desolate slum:

"_Per me si va tra la perduta gente_ ...!"