Presently he came out. He had had his back towards me while he had been drinking. As he came out of the buffet, turning, he walked in the direction of the trolley on which I was sitting. He moved right past, so close to me that by putting out my foot, I could have tripped him up.
It was he. My first impression had not been wrong. That he had got cured of his fright was plain--certainly he showed no signs of it. He seemed quite at his ease. His hands were in the pockets of his overcoat, an umbrella was under his arm, a cigarette was between his teeth. There might not have been such a thing as a ghost--or the shadow of the shade of a ghost--in all the world.
Back he came. He sailed up to a porter. I heard him asking him when there was a train to town. As the man, having given the information, was making off, I cut in. I put to my gentleman the question which he had put to the porter.
"Can you tell me when the next train starts for London?"
He told me what I asked, adding a word or two on his own account, as I had expected and desired. I responded. He seemed disposed for sociability. Why should I object? We began to talk. The end of it was that we travelled in the same compartment up to town.
It was so funny!
He was that most remarkable product--an English gentleman. Given the real article--and there is no mistaking it when once encountered--there is nothing in the world which can be compared to it. I speak who know. He was tall. He was perfectly dressed. He was handsome--I never saw a more handsome man. And he had that air of infinite, yet unconscious, condescension which the English gentleman, alone of all the creatures of the world, is born with, and which, willy-nilly, he carries with him from the cradle to the grave.
They tell you in the different countries of the world that the Englishman is awkward, shy, ungraceful, seldom at his ease. May be; but not the English gentleman. He is the only man I have known who is always at his ease in every possible situation. But he is not to be found on every bush. Even in his own country he is the rarest of rare birds. Being born a peer, even though he can trace his tree to Noah, does not make a man a gentleman--you bet that it does not. I believe that an English gentleman is a caprice, an accident. He is not to be accounted for by natural laws. And though, for all I know, he may be trusted by his fellows, he is not to be trusted by a woman. He has one code of honour for his own sex and another for ours.
That is so, though it may not be according to the copybooks.
My friend the gentleman was a real smart man. As he lolled back in his seat, enjoying his tobacco, it did you good to see him smile. His voice was typical of his kind, it fell like music on your ears. As you looked at him and listened, you could have sworn that he had not a care upon his mind. He was at peace with himself, and all the world. And it was all so natural; he was to the manner born.