The Folly of Eustace | Page 2

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 assume 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 multitude if only by virtue of an unusual eyeglass, a particular glove, the fashion 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 damnatory 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 fashion 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," blustered the father.
"I wish you could, father," the boy said.