The Egoist | Page 8

praise and Ciceronian eulogy.
Rich, handsome, courteous, generous, lord of the Hall, the feast and the
dance, he excited his guests of both sexes to a holiday of flattery. And,
says Mrs. Mountstuart, while grand phrases were mouthing round
about him, "You see he has a leg."
That you saw, of course. But after she had spoken you saw much more.
Mrs. Mountstuart said it just as others utter empty nothings, with never

a hint of a stress. Her word was taken up, and very soon, from the
extreme end of the long drawing-room, the circulation of something of
Mrs. Mountstuart's was distinctly perceptible. Lady Patterne sent a little
Hebe down, skirting the dancers, for an accurate report of it; and even
the inappreciative lips of a very young lady transmitting the word could
not damp the impression of its weighty truthfulness. It was perfect!
Adulation of the young Sir Willoughby's beauty and wit, and
aristocratic bearing and mien, and of his moral virtues, was common;
welcome if you like, as a form of homage; but common, almost vulgar,
beside Mrs. Mountstuart's quiet little touch of nature. In seeming to say
infinitely less than others, as Miss Isabel Patterne pointed out to Lady
Busshe, Mrs. Mountstuart comprised all that the others had said, by
showing the needlessness of allusions to the saliently evident. She was
the aristocrat reproving the provincial. "He is everything you have had
the goodness to remark, ladies and dear sirs, he talks charmingly,
dances divinely, rides with the air of a commander-in-chief, has the
most natural grand pose possible without ceasing for a moment to be
the young English gentleman he is. Alcibiades, fresh from a Louis IV
perruquier, could not surpass him: whatever you please; I could outdo
you in sublime comparisons, were I minded to pelt him. Have you
noticed that he has a leg?"
So might it be amplified. A simple-seeming word of this import is the
triumph of the spiritual, and where it passes for coin of value, the
society has reached a high refinement: Arcadian by the aesthetic route.
Observation of Willoughby was not, as Miss Eleanor Patterne pointed
out to Lady Culmer, drawn down to the leg, but directed to estimate
him from the leg upward. That, however, is prosaic. Dwell a short
space on Mrs. Mountstuart's word; and whither, into what fair region,
and with how decorously voluptuous a sensation, do not we fly, who
have, through mournful veneration of the Martyr Charles, a coy
attachment to the Court of his Merrie Son, where the leg was ribanded
with love-knots and reigned. Oh! it was a naughty Court. Yet have we
dreamed of it as the period when an English cavalier was grace
incarnate; far from the boor now hustling us in another sphere;
beautifully mannered, every gesture dulcet. And if the ladies were . . .
we will hope they have been traduced. But if they were, if they were

too tender, ah! gentlemen were gentlemen then--worth perishing for!
There is this dream in the English country; and it must be an aspiration
after some form of melodious gentlemanliness which is imagined to
have inhabited the island at one time; as among our poets the dream of
the period of a circle of chivalry here is encouraged for the pleasure of
the imagination.
Mrs. Mountstuart touched a thrilling chord. "In spite of men's hateful
modern costume, you see he has a leg."
That is, the leg of the born cavalier is before you: and obscure it as you
will, dress degenerately, there it is for ladies who have eyes. You see it:
or, you see he has it. Miss Isabel and Miss Eleanor disputed the
incidence of the emphasis, but surely, though a slight difference of
meaning may be heard, either will do: many, with a good show of
reason, throw the accent upon leg. And the ladies knew for a fact that
Willoughby's leg was exquisite; he had a cavalier court-suit in his
wardrobe. Mrs. Mountstuart signified that the leg was to be seen
because it was a burning leg. There it is, and it will shine through! He
has the leg of Rochester, Buckingham, Dorset, Suckling; the leg that
smiles, that winks, is obsequious to you, yet perforce of beauty
self-satisfied; that twinkles to a tender midway between imperiousness
and seductiveness, audacity and discretion; between "You shall
worship me", and "I am devoted to you;" is your lord, your slave,
alternately and in one. It is a leg of ebb and flow and high-tide ripples.
Such a leg, when it has done with pretending to retire, will walk
straight into the hearts of women. Nothing so fatal to them.
Self-satisfied it must be. Humbleness does not win multitudes or the
sex. It must be vain to have a