The Folly of Eustace | Page 3

"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 assent.
"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 weathercocks will, to another point of the compass, "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 passage 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?"
"I do indeed."
Winifred mused for a moment. Then she said:
"It must be very interesting to marry a genius, I suppose?"
"Oh, enthralling, simply. And, then, so few people can do it."
"Yes."
"And it must be grand to do what hardly anybody can do."
"In the way of marrying, Jenny?"
"In any way," responded Miss Fraser, who was an enthusiast, and habitually sentimental. "What would I give to do even one unique thing, or to marry even one unique person!"
"You couldn't marry two at the same time--in England."
"England limits itself so terribly; but there is a broader time coming. Those who see it, and act upon what they see, are pioneers; Mr. Lane is a pioneer."
"But don't you think him rather extravagant?"
"Oh yes. That is so splendid. I love the extravagance of genius, the barbaric lavishness of moral and intellectual supremacy."
"I wonder whether the supremacy of Eustace Lane is moral, or intellectual, or--neither?" said Winifred. "There are so many different supremacies, aren't there? I suppose a man might be supreme merely as a--as a--well, an absurdity, you know."
Jenny smiled the watery smile of the sentimentalist; a glass of still lemonade washed with limelight might resemble it.
"Eustace Lane likes you, Winnie," she remarked.
"I know; that is why I am wondering about him. One does wonder, you see, about the man one may possibly be going to marry."
There had never been such a man for Jane Fraser, so she said nothing, but succeeded in looking confidential.
Presently Winifred allowed her happy foil to lace her up. She was going to a ball given by the Lanes in Carlton House Terrace.
"Perhaps he will propose to you to-night," whispered Jane in a gush of excitement as the two girls walked down the stairs to the carriage. "If he does, what will you say?".
"I don't know."
"Oh, darling, but surely----"
"Eustace is so odd. I can't make him out."
"That is because he is a genius."
"He is certainly remarkable--in a way. Good-night, dear."
The carriage drove off, and the happy foil joined her maid, who was waiting to conduct her home. On the way they gossipped, and the maid expressed a belief that Mr. Lane was a fine young gentleman, but full of his goings-on.
Jane knew what she meant. Eustace had once kissed her publicly in Jane's presence, which deed the latter considered a stroke of genius, and the act of a true and courageous pioneer.
Eustace was now just twenty-two, and he had already partially succeeded in his ambition. His mask had deceived his world, and Mr. Bembridge's prophecy about him was beginning to be fulfilled. He had done nothing specially intellectual or athletic, was not particularly active either with limbs or brain; but people had begun to notice and to talk about him, to discuss him with a certain interest, even with a certain wonder. The newspapers occasionally mentioned him as a dandy, a fop, a whimsical, irresponsible creature, yet one whose vagaries were not entirely without interest. He had performed some extravagant antic in a cotillon, or worn some extraordinary coat. He had invented a new way of walking one season, and during another season, although in perfect health, he had never left the house, declaring that movement of any kind was ungentlemanly