The Folly Of Eustace Part 5

From that day he monotonously accentuated his absurdities. All London rang with them. He was the Court Fool of Mayfair, the buffoon of the inner circles of the Metropolis, and, by degrees, his painted fame, jangling the bells in its cap, spun about England in a dervish dance, till Peckham whispered of him, and even the remotest suburbs crowned him with parsley and hung upon his doings. All the blooming flowers of notoriety were his, to hug in his arms as he stood upon his platform bowing to the general applause. His shrine in _Vanity Fair_ was surely being prepared. But he scarcely thought of this, being that ordinary, ridiculous, middle-cla.s.s thing, an immoderately loving husband, insane enough to worship romantically the woman to whom he was unromantically tied by the law of his country. With each new fantasy he hoped to win back that which he had lost. Each joke was the throw of a desperate gamester, each tricky invention a stake placed on the number that would never turn up. That wild time of his career was humorous to the world, how tragic to himself we can only wonder. He spread wings like a bird, flew hither and thither as if a vagrant for pure joy and the pleasure of movement, darted and poised, circled and sailed, but all the time his heart cried aloud for a nest and Winifred. Yet he wooed her only silently by his follies, and set her each day farther and farther from him.

And she--how she hated his notoriety, and was sick with weariness when voices told her of his escapades, modulating themselves to wondering praise. Long ago she had known that Eustace sinned against his own nature, but she had never loved him quite enough to discover what that nature really was. And now she had no desire to find out. He was only her husband and the least of all men to her.

The Lanes sat at breakfast one morning and took up their letters.

Winifred sipped her tea, and opened one or two carelessly. They were invitations. Then she tore, the envelope of a third, and, as she read it, forgot to sip her tea. Presently she laid it down slowly. Eustace was looking at her.

"Winifred," he said, "I have got a letter from the editor of _Vanity Fair_."

"Oh!"

"He wishes me to permit a caricature of myself to appear in his pages."

Winifred's fingers closed sharply on the letter she had just been reading. A decision of hers in regard to the writer of it was hanging in the balance, though Eustace did not know it.

"Well?" said Eustace, inquiring of her silence.

"What are you going to reply?" she asked.

"I am wondering."

She chipped an eggsh.e.l.l and took a bit of dry toast.

"All those who appear in _Vanity Fair_ are celebrated, aren't they?" she said.

"I suppose so," Eustace said.

"For many different things."

"Of course."

"Can you refuse the editor's request?"

"I don't know why I should."

"Exactly. Tell me when you have written to him, and what you have written, Eustace."

"Yes, Winnie, I will."

Later on in the day he came up to her boudoir, and said to her:

"I have told him I am quite willing to have my caricature in his paper."

"Your portrait," she said. "All right. Leave me now, Eustace; I have some writing to do."

As soon as he had gone she sat down and wrote a short letter, which she posted herself.

A month later Eustace came bounding up the stairs to find her.

"Winnie, Winnie!" he called. "Where are you? I've something to show you."

He held a newspaper in his hand. Winifred was not in the room. Eustace rang the bell.

"Where is Mrs. Lane?" he asked of the footman who answered it.

"Gone out, sir," the man answered.

"And not back yet? It's very late," said Eustace, looking at his watch.

The time was a quarter to eight. They were dining at half-past.

"I wonder where she is," he thought.

Then he sat down and gazed at a cartoon which represented a thin man with a preternaturally pale face, legs like sticks, and drooping hands full of toys--himself. Beneath it was written, "His aim is to amuse."

He turned a page, and read, for the third or fourth time, the following:

"Mr. Eustace Lane.

"Mr. Eustace Bernhard Lane, only son of Mr. Merton Lane, of Carlton House Terrace, was born in London twenty-eight years ago. He is married to one of the belles of the day, and is probably the most envied husband in town.

"Although he is such a noted figure in society, Mr. Eustace Lane has never done any conspicuously good or bad deed. He has neither invented a bicycle nor written a novel, neither lost a seat in Parliament, nor found a mine in South Africa. Careless of elevating the world, he has been content to entertain it, to make it laugh, or to make it wonder.

His aim is to amuse, and his whole-souled endeavour to succeed in this ambition has gained him the entire respect of the frivolous. What more could man desire?"

As he finished there came a ring at the hall-door bell.

"Winifred!" he exclaimed, and jumped up with the paper in his hand.

In a moment the footman entered with a note.

"A boy messenger has just brought this, sir," he said.

Eustace took it, and, as the man went out and shut the door, opened it, and read:

"Victoria Station.

"This is to say good-bye. By the time it reaches you I shall have left London. Not alone. I have seen the cartoon.

It is very like you.

Winifred."

Eustace sank down in a chair.

On the table at his elbow lay _Vanity Fair_. Mechanically he looked at it, and read once more the words beneath his picture, "His aim is to amuse."