The Egoist | Page 7

showers on the stately garden
terrace of the Hall, in company with his affianced, the beautiful and
dashing Constantia Durham, followed by knots of ladies and gentlemen
vowed to fresh air before dinner, while it was to be had. Chancing with
his usual happy fortune (we call these things dealt to us out of the great
hidden dispensary, chance) to glance up the avenue of limes, as he was
in the act of turning on his heel at the end of the terrace, and it should
be added, discoursing with passion's privilege of the passion of love to
Miss Durham, Sir Willoughby, who was anything but obtuse,
experienced a presentiment upon espying a thick-set stumpy man
crossing the gravel space from the avenue to the front steps of the Hall,
decidedly not bearing the stamp of the gentleman "on his hat, his coat,

his feet, or anything that was his," Willoughby subsequently observed
to the ladies of his family in the Scriptural style of gentlemen who do
bear the stamp. His brief sketch of the creature was repulsive. The
visitor carried a bag, and his coat-collar was up, his hat was melancholy;
he had the appearance of a bankrupt tradesman absconding; no gloves,
no umbrella.
As to the incident we have to note, it was very slight. The card of
Lieutenant Patterne was handed to Sir Willoughby, who laid it on the
salver, saying to the footman, "Not at home."
He had been disappointed in the age, grossly deceived in the
appearance of the man claiming to be his relative in this unseasonable
fashion; and his acute instinct advised him swiftly of the absurdity of
introducing to his friends a heavy unpresentable senior as the
celebrated gallant Lieutenant of Marines, and the same as a member of
his family! He had talked of the man too much, too enthusiastically, to
be able to do so. A young subaltern, even if passably vulgar in figure,
can be shuffled through by the aid of the heroical story humourously
exaggerated in apology for his aspect. Nothing can be done with a
mature and stumpy Marine of that rank. Considerateness dismisses him
on the spot, without parley. It was performed by a gentleman
supremely advanced at a very early age in the art of cutting.
Young Sir Willoughby spoke a word of the rejected visitor to Miss
Durham, in response to her startled look: "I shall drop him a cheque,"
he said, for she seemed personally wounded, and had a face of crimson.
The young lady did not reply.
Dating from the humble departure of Lieutenant Crossjay Patterne up
the limes-avenue under a gathering rain-cloud, the ring of imps in
attendance on Sir Willoughby maintained their station with strict
observation of his movements at all hours; and were comparisons in
quest, the sympathetic eagerness of the eyes of caged monkeys for the
hand about to feed them, would supply one. They perceived in him a
fresh development and very subtle manifestation of the very old thing
from which he had sprung.

CHAPTER II
THE YOUNG SIR WILLOUGHBY
These little scoundrel imps, who have attained to some respectability as
the dogs and pets of the Comic Spirit, had been curiously attentive
three years earlier, long before the public announcement of his
engagement to the beautiful Miss Durham, on the day of Sir
Willoughby's majority, when Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson said her
word of him. Mrs. Mountstuart was a lady certain to say the
remembered, if not the right, thing. Again and again was it confirmed
on days of high celebration, days of birth or bridal, how sure she was to
hit the mark that rang the bell; and away her word went over the county:
and had she been an uncharitable woman she could have ruled the
county with an iron rod of caricature, so sharp was her touch. A grain
of malice would have sent county faces and characters awry into the
currency. She was wealthy and kindly, and resembled our mother
Nature in her reasonable antipathies to one or two things which none
can defend, and her decided preference of persons that shone in the sun.
Her word sprang out of her. She looked at you, and forth it came: and it
stuck to you, as nothing laboured or literary could have adhered. Her
saying of Laetitia Dale: "Here she comes with a romantic tale on her
eyelashes," was a portrait of Laetitia. And that of Vernon Whitford:
"He is a Phoebus Apollo turned fasting friar," painted the sunken
brilliancy of the lean long-walker and scholar at a stroke.
Of the young Sir Willoughby, her word was brief; and there was the
merit of it on a day when he was hearing from sunrise to the setting of
the moon salutes in his honour, songs of