II
On an August evening three days later Basil read the play to the cast on Miss Halliburton’s porch. He was nervous and at first there were interruptions of “Louder” and “Not so fast.” Just as his audience was beginning to be amused by the repartee of the two comic crooks—repartee that had seen service with Weber and Fields—he was interrupted by the late arrival of Hubert Blair.
Hubert was fifteen, a somewhat shallow boy save for two or three felicities which he possessed to an extraordinary degree. But one excellence suggests the presence of others, and young ladies never failed to respond to his most casual fancy, enduring his fickleness of heart and never convinced that his fundamental indifference might not be overcome. They were dazzled by his flashing self-confidence, by his cherubic ingenuousness, which concealed a shrewd talent for getting around people, and by his extraordinary physical grace. Long-legged, beautifully proportioned, he had that tumbler’s balance usually characteristic only of men “built near the ground.” He was in constant motion that was a delight to watch, and Evelyn Beebe was not the only older girl who had found in him a mysterious promise and watched him for a long time with something more than curiosity.
He stood in the doorway now with an expression of bogus reverence on his round pert face.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Is this the First Methodist Episcopal Church?” Everybody laughed—even Basil. “I didn’t know. I thought maybe I was in the right church, but in the wrong pew.”
They laughed again, somewhat discouraged. Basil waited until Hubert had seated himself beside Evelyn Beebe. Then he began to read once more, while the others, fascinated, watched Hubert’s efforts to balance a chair on its hind legs. This squeaky experiment continued as an undertone to the reading. Not until Basil’s desperate “Now, here’s where you come in, Hube,” did attention swing back to the play.
Basil read for more than an hour. When, at the end, he closed the composition book and looked up shyly, there was a burst of spontaneous applause. He had followed his models closely, and for all its grotesqueries, the result was actually interesting—it was a play. Afterward he lingered, talking to Miss Halliburton, and he walked home glowing with excitement and rehearsing a little by himself into the August night.
The first week of rehearsal was a matter of Basil climbing back and forth from auditorium to stage, crying, “No! Look here, Connie; you come in more like this.” Then things began to happen. Mrs. Van Schellinger came to rehearsal one day, and lingering afterward, announced that she couldn’t let Gladys be in “a play about criminals.” Her theory was that this element could be removed; for instance, the two comic crooks could be changed to “two funny farmers.”
Basil listened with horror. When she had gone he assured Miss Halliburton that he would change nothing. Luckily Gladys played the cook, an interpolated part that could be summarily struck out, but her absence was felt in another way. She was tranquil and tractable, “the most carefully brought-up girl in town,” and at her withdrawal rowdiness appeared during rehearsals. Those who had only such lines as “I’ll ask Mrs. Van Baker, sir,” in Act I and “No, ma’am,” in Act III showed a certain tendency to grow restless in between. So now it was:
“Please keep that dog quiet or else send him home!” or:
“Where’s that maid? Wake up, Margaret, for heaven’s sake!” or:
“What is there to laugh at that’s so darn funny?”
More and more the chief problem was the tactful management of Hubert Blair. Apart from his unwillingness to learn his lines, he was a satisfactory hero, but off the stage he became a nuisance. He gave an endless private performance for Evelyn Beebe, which took such forms as chasing her amorously around the hall or of flipping peanuts over his shoulder to land mysteriously on the stage. Called to order, he would mutter, “Aw, shut up yourself,” just loud enough for Basil to guess, but not to hear.
But Evelyn Beebe was all that Basil had expected. Once on the stage, she compelled a breathless attention, and Basil recognized this by adding to her part. He envied the half-sentimental fun that she and Hubert derived from their scenes together and he felt a vague, impersonal jealousy that almost every night after rehearsal they drove around together in Hubert’s car.
One afternoon when matters had progressed a fortnight, Hubert came in an hour late, loafed through the first act and then informed Miss Halliburton that he was going home.
“What for?” Basil demanded.
“I’ve got some things I got to do.”
“Are they important?”
“What business is that of yours?”
“Of course it’s my business,” said Basil heatedly, whereupon Miss Halliburton interfered.
“There’s no use of anybody getting angry. What Basil means, Hubert, is that if it’s just some small thing—why, we’re all giving up our pleasures to make this play a success.”
Hubert listened with obvious boredom.
“I’ve got to drive downtown and get father.”
He looked coolly at Basil, as if challenging him to deny the adequacy of this explanation.
“Then why did you come an hour late?” demanded Basil.
“Because I had to do something for mother.”
A group had gathered and he glanced around triumphantly. It was one of those sacred excuses, and only Basil saw that it was disingenuous.
“Oh, tripe!” he said.
“Maybe you think so—Bossy.”
Basil took a step toward him, his eyes blazing.
“What’d you say?”
“I said ‘Bossy.’ Isn’t that what they call you at school?”
It was true. It had followed him home. Even as he went white with rage a vast impotence surged over him at the realization that the past was always lurking near. The faces of school were around him, sneering and watching. Hubert laughed.
“Get out!” said Basil in a strained voice. “Go on! Get right out!”
Hubert laughed again, but as Basil took a step toward him he retreated.
“I don’t want to be in your play anyhow. I never did.”
“Then go on out of this hall.”
“Now, Basil!” Miss Halliburton hovered breathlessly beside them. Hubert laughed again and looked about for his cap.
“I wouldn’t be in your crazy old show,” he said. He turned slowly and jauntily, and sauntered out the door.
Riply Buckner read Hubert’s part that afternoon, but there was a cloud upon the rehearsal. Miss Beebe’s performance lacked its customary verve and the others clustered and whispered, falling silent when Basil came near. After the rehearsal, Miss Halliburton, Riply and Basil held a conference. Upon Basil flatly refusing to take the leading part, it was decided to enlist a certain Mayall De Bec, known slightly to Riply, who had made a name for himself in theatricals at the Central High School.
But next day a blow fell that was irreparable. Evelyn, flushed and uncomfortable, told Basil and Miss Halliburton that her family’s plans had changed—they were going East next week and she couldn’t be in the play after all. Basil understood. Only Hubert had held her this long.
“Goodbye,” he said gloomily.
His manifest despair shamed her and she tried to justify herself.
“Really, I can’t help it. Oh, Basil, I’m so sorry!”
“Couldn’t you stay over a week with me after your family goes?” Miss Halliburton asked innocently.
“Not possibly. Father wants us all to go together. That’s the only reason. If it wasn’t for that I’d stay.”
“All right,” Basil said. “Goodbye.”
“Basil, you’re not mad, are you?” A gust of repentance swept over her. “I’ll do anything to help. I’ll come to rehearsals this week until you get someone else, and then I’ll try to help her all I can. But father says we’ve got to go.”
In vain Riply tried to raise Basil’s morale after the rehearsal that afternoon, making suggestions which he waved contemptuously away. Margaret Torrence? Connie Davies? They could hardly play the parts they had. It seemed to Basil as if the undertaking was falling to pieces before his eyes.
It was still early when he got home. He sat dispiritedly by his bedroom window, watching the little Barnfield boy playing a lonesome game by himself in the yard next door.
His mother came in at five, and immediately sensed his depression.
“Teddy Barnfield has the mumps,” she said, in an effort to distract him. “That’s why he’s playing there all alone.”
“Has he?” he responded listlessly.
“It isn’t at all dangerous, but it’s very contagious. You had it when you were seven.”
“H’m.”
She hesitated.
“Are you worrying about your play? Has anything gone wrong?”
“No, mother. I just want to be alone.”
After a while he got up and started after a malted milk at the soda fountain around the corner. It was half in his mind to see Mr. Beebe and ask him if he couldn’t postpone his trip East. If he could only be sure that that was Evelyn’s real reason.
The sight of Evelyn’s nine-year-old brother coming along the street broke in on his thoughts.
“Hello, Ham. I hear you’re going away.”
Ham nodded.
“Going next week. To the seashore.”
Basil looked at him speculatively, as if, through his proximity to Evelyn, he held the key to the power of moving her.
“Where are you going now?” he asked.
“I’m going to play with Teddy Barnfield.”
“What!” Basil exclaimed. “Why, didn’t you know—” He stopped. A wild, criminal idea broke over him; his mother’s words floated through his mind: “It isn’t at all dangerous, but it’s very contagious.” If little Ham Beebe got the mumps, and Evelyn couldn’t go away—
He came to a decision quickly and coolly.
“Teddy’s playing in his back yard,” he said. “If you want to see him without going through his house, why don’t you go down this street and turn up the alley?”
“All right. Thanks,” said Ham trustingly.
Basil stood for a minute looking after him until he turned the corner into the alley, fully aware that it was the worst thing he had ever done in his life.