The Folly Of Eustace Part 1

The Folly Of Eustace.

by Robert S. Hichens.

I.

Some men deliberately don a character in early youth as others don a mask before going to an opera ball. They select it not without some care, being guided in their choice by the opinion they have formed of the world's mind and manner of proceeding. In the privacy of the dressing-room, the candles being lighted and the mirror adjusted at the best angle for a view of self, they a.s.sume their character, and peac.o.c.k to their reflection, meditating: Does it become me? Will it be generally liked? Will it advance me towards my heart's desire? Then they catch up their cloak, twist the mirror back to its usual position, puff out the candles, and steal forth into their career, shutting the door gently behind them. And, perhaps till they are laid out in the grave, the last four walls enclosing them, only the dressing-room could tell their secret. And it has no voice to speak. For, if they are wise, they do not keep a valet.

At the age of sixteen Eustace Lane chose his mask, lit the candles, tried it on, and resolved to wear it at the great masquerade. He was an Eton boy at the time. One fourth of June he was out in the playing-fields, paying polite attentions to another fellow's sister, when he overheard a fragment of a conversation that was taking place between his mother and one of the masters. His mother was a kind Englishwoman, who was very short-sighted, and always did her duty.

The master was a fool, but as he was tall, handsome, and extremely good-natured, Eustace Lane and most people considered him to be highly intelligent. Eustace caught the sound of his name p.r.o.nounced. The fond mother, in the course of discreet conversation, had proceeded from the state of the weather to the state of her boy's soul, taking, with the ease of the mediocre, the one step between the sublime and the ridiculous. She had told the master the state of the weather--which, for once, was sublime; she wanted him, in return, to tell her the state of her boy's soul--which was ridiculous.

Eustace forgot the other fellow's sister, her limpid eyes, her open-worked stockings, her panoply of chiffons and of charms. He had heard his own name. Bang went the door on the rest of the world, shutting out even feminine humanity. Self-consciousness held him listening. His mother said:

"Dear Eustace! What do you think of him, Mr. Bembridge? Is he _really_ clever? His father and I consider him unusually intelligent for his age--so advanced in mind. He judges for himself, you know. He always did, even as a baby. I remember when he was quite a tiny mite I could always trust to his perceptions. In my choice of nurses I was invariably guided by him. If he screamed at them I felt that there was something wrong, and dismissed them--of course with a character. If he smiled at them, I knew I could have confidence in their virtue. How strange these things are! What is it in us that screams at evil and smiles at good?"

"Ah! what, indeed?" replied the master, accepting her conclusion as an established and very beautiful fact. "There is more in the human heart than you and I can fathom, Mrs. Lane."

"Yes, indeed! But tell me about Eustace. You have observed him?"

"Carefully. He is a strange boy."

"Strange?"

"Whimsical, I mean. How clever he may be I am unable to say. He is so young, and, of course, undeveloped. But he is an original. Even if he never displays great talents the world will talk about him."

"Why?" asked Mrs. Lane in some alarm.

To be talked about was, she considered, to be the prey of scandalmongers. She did not wish to give her darling to the lions.

"I mean that Eustace has a strain of quaint fun in him--a sort of pa.s.sion for the burlesque of life. You do not often find this in boys.

It is new to my experience. He sees the peculiar side of everything with a curious acuteness. Life presents itself to him in caricature. I------ Well hit! Well hit indeed!"

Someone had scored a four.

The other fellow's sister insisted on moving to a place whence they could see the cricket better, and Eustace had to yield to her. But from that moment he took no more interest in her artless remarks and her artful open-worked stockings. In the combat between self and her she went to the wall. He stood up before the mirror looking steadfastly at his own image.

And, finding it not quite so interestingly curious as the fool of a master had declared it to be, he lit some more candies, selected a mask, and put it on.

He chose the mask of a buffoon.

From that day Eustace strove consistently to live up to the reputation given to him by a fool, who had been talking at random to please an avid mother. Mr. Bembridge knew that the boy was no good at work, wanted to say something nice about him, and had once noticed him playing some absurd but very ordinary boyish prank. On this supposed hint of character the master spoke. Mrs. Lane listened. Eustace acted. A sudden ambition stirred within him. To be known, talked about, considered, perhaps even wondered at--was not that a glory? Such a glory came to the greatly talented--to the mightily industrious. Men earned it by labour, by intensity, insensibility to fatigue, the "roughing it" of the mind.

He did not want to rough it. Nor was he greatly talented. But he was just sharp enough to see, as he believed, a short and perhaps easy way to a thing that his conceit desired and that his egoism felt it could love. Being only a boy, he had never, till this time, deliberately looked on life as anything. Now he set himself, in his, at first, youthful way, to look on it as burlesque--to see it in caricature.

How to do that? He studied the cartoons in _Vanity Fair_, the wondrous noses, the astounding trousers, that delight the cynical world. Were men indeed like these? Did they a.s.sume such postures, stare with such eyes, revel in such complexions? These were the celebrities of the time.

They all looked with one accord preposterous. Eustace jumped to the conclusion that they were what they looked, and, going a step farther, that they were celebrated because they were preposterous. Gifted with a certain amount of imagination, this idea of the interest, almost the beauty of the preposterous, took a firm hold of his mind. One day he, too, would be in _Vanity Fair_, displaying terrific boots, amazing thin legs, a fatuous or a frenetic countenance to the great world of the unknown. He would stand out from the mult.i.tude if only by virtue of an unusual eyegla.s.s, a particular glove, the fas.h.i.+on of his tie or of his temper. He would balance on the ball of peculiarity, and toe his way up the spiral of fame, while the music-hall audience applauded and the managers consulted as to the increase of his salary. Mr. Bembridge had shown him a weapon with which he might fight his way quickly to the front. He picked it up and resolved to use it. Soon he began to slash out right and left. His blade chanced to encounter the outraged body of an elderly and sardonic master. Eustace was advised that he had better leave Eton. His father came down by train and took him away.

As they journeyed up to town, Mr. Lane lectured and exhorted, and Eustace looked out of the window. Already he felt himself near to being a celebrity. He had astonished Eton. That was a good beginning. Papa might prose, knowing, of course, nothing of the poetry of caricature, of the wild joys and the laurels that crown the whimsical. So while Mr.

Lane hunted adjectives, and ran sad-sounding and d.a.m.natory substantives to earth, Eustace hugged himself, and secretly chuckled over his pilgrim's progress towards the pages of _Vanity Fair_.

"Eustace! Eustace! Are you listening to me?"

"Yes, father."

"Then what have you to say? What explanation have you to offer for your conduct? You have behaved like a buffoon, sir--d'you hear me?--like a buffoon!"

"Yes, father."

"What the deuce do you mean by 'yes,' sir?"

Eustace considered, while Mr. Lane puffed in the approved paternal fas.h.i.+on What did he mean? A sudden thought struck him. He became confidential. With an earnest gaze, he said:

"I couldn't help doing what I did. I want to be like the other fellows, but somehow I can't. Something inside of me won't let me just go on as they do. I don't know why it is, but I feel as if I must do original things--things other people never do; it--it seems in me."

Mr. Lane regarded him suspiciously, but Eustace had clear eyes, and knew, at least, how to look innocent.

"We shall have to knock it out of you," bl.u.s.tered the father.

"I wish you could, father," the boy said. "I know I hate it."

Mr. Lane began to be really puzzled. There was something pathetic in the words, and especially in the way they were spoken. He stared at Eustace meditatively.

"So you hate it, do you?" he said rather limply at last. "Well, that's a step in the right direction, at any rate. Perhaps things might have been worse."

Eustace did not a.s.sent.

"They were bad enough," he said, with a simulation of shame. "I know I've been a fool."

"Well, well," Mr. Lane said, whirling, as paternal weatherc.o.c.ks will, to another point of the compa.s.s, "never mind, my boy. Cheer up! You see your fault--that's the main thing. What's done can't be undone."

"No, thank heaven!" thought the boy, feeling almost great.

How delicious is the irrevocable past--sometimes!

"Be more careful in future. Don't let your boyish desire for follies carry you away."

"I shall," was his son's mental rejoinder.

"And I dare say you'll do good work in the world yet."

The train ran into Paddington Station on this sublime climax of fatherhood, and the further words of wisdom were jerked out of Mr. Lane during their pa.s.sage to Carlton House Terrace in a four-wheeled cab.

"What an extraordinary person Mr. Eustace Lane is!" said Winifred Ames to her particular friend and happy foil, Jane Fraser. "All London is beginning to talk about him. I suppose he must be clever?"

"Oh, of course, darling, very clever; otherwise, how could he possibly gain so much notice? Just think--why, there are millions of people in London, and I'm sure only about a thousand of them, at most, attract any real attention. I think Mr. Eustace Lane is a genius."

"Do you really, Jenny?"