III
A week later Mrs. Lee had an early supper—all Basil’s favorite things: chipped beef, french-fried potatoes, sliced peaches and cream, and devil’s food.
Every few minutes Basil said, “Gosh! I wonder what time it is,” and went out in the hall to look at the clock. “Does that clock work right?” he demanded with sudden suspicion. It was the first time the matter had ever interested him.
“Perfectly all right. If you eat so fast you’ll have indigestion and then you won’t be able to act well.”
“What do you think of the program?” he asked for the third time. “Riply Buckner, Jr., presents Basil Duke Lee’s comedy, ‘The Captured Shadow.’ ”
“I think it’s very nice.”
“He doesn’t really present it.”
“It sounds very well though.”
“I wonder what time it is?” he inquired.
“You just said it was ten minutes after six.”
“Well, I guess I better be starting.”
“Eat your peaches, Basil. If you don’t eat you won’t be able to act.”
“I don’t have to act,” he said patiently. “All I am is a small part, and it wouldn’t matter—” It was too much trouble to explain.
“Please don’t smile at me when I come on, mother,” he requested. “Just act as if I was anybody else.”
“Can’t I even say how-do-you-do?”
“What?” Humor was lost on him. He said goodbye. Trying very hard to digest not his food but his heart, which had somehow slipped down into his stomach, he started off for the Martindale School.
As its yellow windows loomed out of the night his excitement became insupportable; it bore no resemblance to the building he had been entering so casually for three weeks. His footsteps echoed symbolically and portentously in its deserted hall; upstairs there was only the janitor setting out the chairs in rows, and Basil wandered about the vacant stage until someone came in.
It was Mayall De Bec, the tall, clever, not very likeable youth they had imported from Lower Crest Avenue to be the leading man. Mayall, far from being nervous, tried to engage Basil in casual conversation. He wanted to know if Basil thought Evelyn Beebe would mind if he went to see her sometime when the show was over. Basil supposed not. Mayall said he had a friend whose father owned a brewery who owned a twelve-cylinder car.
Basil said, “Gee!”
At quarter to seven the participants arrived in groups—Riply Buckner with the six boys he had gathered to serve as ticket takers and ushers; Miss Halliburton, trying to seem very calm and reliable; Evelyn Beebe, who came in as if she were yielding herself up to something and whose glance at Basil seemed to say: “Well, it looks as if I’m really going through with it after all.”
Mayall De Bec was to make up the boys and Miss Halliburton the girls. Basil soon came to the conclusion that Miss Halliburton knew nothing about makeup, but he judged it diplomatic, in that lady’s overwrought condition, to say nothing, but to take each girl to Mayall for corrections when Miss Halliburton had done.
An exclamation from Bill Kampf, standing at a crack in the curtain, brought Basil to his side. A tall bald-headed man in spectacles had come in and was shown to a seat in the middle of the house, where he examined the program. He was the public. Behind those waiting eyes, suddenly so mysterious and incalculable, was the secret of the play’s failure or success. He finished the program, took off his glasses and looked around. Two old ladies and two little boys came in, followed immediately by a dozen more.
“Hey, Riply,” Basil called softly. “Tell them to put the children down in front.”
Riply, struggling into his policeman’s uniform, looked up, and the long black mustache on his upper lip quivered indignantly.
“I thought of that long ago.”
The hall, filling rapidly, was now alive with the buzz of conversation. The children in front were jumping up and down in their seats, and everyone was talking and calling back and forth save the several dozen cooks and housemaids who sat in stiff and quiet pairs about the room.
Then, suddenly, everything was ready. It was incredible. “Stop! Stop!” Basil wanted to say. “It can’t be ready. There must be something—there always has been something,” but the darkened auditorium and the piano and violin from Geyer’s Orchestra playing “Meet Me in the Shadows” belied his words. Miss Saunders, Leilia Van Baker and Leilia’s friend, Estella Carrage, were already seated on the stage, and Miss Halliburton stood in the wings with the prompt book. Suddenly the music ended and the chatter in front died away.
“Oh, gosh!” Basil thought. “Oh, my gosh!”
The curtain rose. A clear voice floated up from somewhere. Could it be from that unfamiliar group on the stage?
I will, Miss Saunders. I tell you I will!
But, Miss Leilia, I don’t consider the newspapers proper for young ladies nowadays.
I don’t care. I want to read about this wonderful gentleman burglar they call The Shadow.
It was actually going on. Almost before he realized it, a ripple of laughter passed over the audience as Evelyn gave her imitation of Miss Saunders behind her back.
“Get ready, Basil,” breathed Miss Halliburton.
Basil and Bill Kampf, the crooks, each took an elbow of Victor Van Baker, the dissolute son of the house, and made ready to aid him through the front door.
It was strangely natural to be out on the stage with all those eyes looking up encouragingly. His mother’s face floated past him, other faces that he recognized and remembered.
Bill Kampf stumbled on a line and Basil picked him up quickly and went on.
Miss Saunders
So you are alderman from the Sixth Ward?
Rabbit Simmons
Yes, ma’am.
Miss Saunders
Shaking her head kittenishly. Just what is an alderman?
Chinaman Rudd
An alderman is halfway between a politician and a pirate.
This was one of Basil’s lines that he was particularly proud of—but there was not a sound from the audience, not a smile. A moment later Bill Kampf absentmindedly wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and then stared at it, startled by the red stains of makeup on it—and the audience roared. The theater was like that.
Miss Saunders
Then you believe in spirits, Mr. Rudd.
Chinaman Rudd
Yes, ma’am, I certainly do believe in spirits. Have you got any?
The first big scene came. On the darkened stage a window rose slowly and Mayall De Bec, “in a full evening dress,” climbed over the sill. He was tiptoeing cautiously from one side of the stage to the other, when Leilia Van Baker came in. For a moment she was frightened, but he assured her that he was a friend of her brother Victor. They talked. She told him naively yet feelingly of her admiration for The Shadow, of whose exploits she had read. She hoped, though, that The Shadow would not come here tonight, as the family jewels were all in that safe at the right.
The stranger was hungry. He had been late for his dinner and so had not been able to get any that night. Would he have some crackers and milk? That would be fine. Scarcely had she left the room when he was on his knees by the safe, fumbling at the catch, undeterred by the unpromising word “Cake” stencilled on the safe’s front. It swung open, but he heard footsteps outside and closed it just as Leilia came back with the crackers and milk.
They lingered, obviously attracted to each other. Miss Saunders came in, very kittenish, and was introduced. Again Evelyn mimicked her behind her back and the audience roared. Other members of the household appeared and were introduced to the stranger.
What’s this? A banging at the door, and Mulligan, a policeman, rushes in.
We have just received word from the Central Office that the notorious Shadow has been seen climbing in the window! No one can leave this house tonight!
The curtain fell. The first rows of the audience—the younger brothers and sisters of the cast—were extravagant in their enthusiasm. The actors took a bow.
A moment later Basil found himself alone with Evelyn Beebe on the stage. A weary doll in her makeup she was leaning against a table.
“Heigh-ho, Basil,” she said.
She had not quite forgiven him for holding her to her promise after her little brother’s mumps had postponed their trip East, and Basil had tactfully avoided her, but now they met in the genial glow of excitement and success.
“You were wonderful,” he said—“Wonderful!”
He lingered a moment. He could never please her, for she wanted someone like herself, someone who could reach her through her senses, like Hubert Blair. Her intuition told her that Basil was of a certain vague consequence; beyond that his incessant attempts to make people think and feel, bothered and wearied her. But suddenly, in the glow of the evening, they leaned forward and kissed peacefully, and from that moment, because they had no common ground even to quarrel on, they were friends for life.
When the curtain rose upon the second act Basil slipped down a flight of stairs and up to another to the back of the hall, where he stood watching in the darkness. He laughed silently when the audience laughed, enjoying it as if it were a play he had never seen before.
There was a second and a third act scene that were very similar. In each of them The Shadow, alone on the stage, was interrupted by Miss Saunders. Mayall De Bec, having had but ten days of rehearsal, was inclined to confuse the two, but Basil was totally unprepared for what happened. Upon Connie’s entrance Mayall spoke his third-act line and involuntarily Connie answered in kind.
Others coming on the stage were swept up in the nervousness and confusion, and suddenly they were playing the third act in the middle of the second. It happened so quickly that for a moment Basil had only a vague sense that something was wrong. Then he dashed down one stairs and up another and into the wings, crying:
“Let down the curtain! Let down the curtain!”
The boys who stood there aghast sprang to the rope. In a minute Basil, breathless, was facing the audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “there’s been changes in the cast and what just happened was a mistake. If you’ll excuse us we’d like to do that scene over.”
He stepped back in the wings to a flutter of laughter and applause.
“All right, Mayall!” he called excitedly. “On the stage alone. Your line is: ‘I just want to see that the jewels are all right,’ and Connie’s is: ‘Go ahead, don’t mind me.’ All right! Curtain up!”
In a moment things righted themselves. Someone brought water for Miss Halliburton, who was in a state of collapse, and as the act ended they all took a curtain call once more. Twenty minutes later it was over. The hero clasped Leilia Van Baker to his breast, confessing that he was The Shadow, “and a captured Shadow at that”; the curtain went up and down, up and down; Miss Halliburton was dragged unwillingly on the stage and the ushers came up the aisles laden with flowers. Then everything became informal and the actors mingled happily with the audience, laughing and important, congratulated from all sides. An old man whom Basil didn’t know came up to him and shook his hand, saying, “You’re a young man that’s going to be heard from some day,” and a reporter from the paper asked him if he was really only fifteen. It might all have been very bad and demoralizing for Basil, but it was already behind him. Even as the crowd melted away and the last few people spoke to him and went out, he felt a great vacancy come into his heart. It was over, it was done and gone—all that work, and interest and absorption. It was a hollowness like fear.
“Good night, Miss Halliburton. Good night, Evelyn.”
“Good night, Basil. Congratulations, Basil. Good night.”
“Where’s my coat? Good night, Basil.”
“Leave your costumes on the stage, please. They’ve got to go back tomorrow.”
He was almost the last to leave, mounting to the stage for a moment and looking around the deserted hall. His mother was waiting and they strolled home together through the first cool night of the year.
“Well, I thought it went very well indeed. Were you satisfied?” He didn’t answer for a moment. “Weren’t you satisfied with the way it went?”
“Yes.” He turned his head away.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” and then, “Nobody really cares, do they?”
“About what?”
“About anything.”
“Everybody cares about different things. I care about you, for instance.”
Instinctively he ducked away from a hand extended caressingly toward him: “Oh, don’t. I don’t mean like that.”
“You’re just overwrought, dear.”
“I am not overwrought. I just feel sort of sad.”
“You shouldn’t feel sad. Why, people told me after the play—”
“Oh, that’s all over. Don’t talk about that—don’t ever talk to me about that any more.”
“Then what are you sad about?”
“Oh, about a little boy.”
“What little boy?”
“Oh, little Ham—you wouldn’t understand.”
“When we get home I want you to take a real hot bath and quiet your nerves.”
“All right.”
But when he got home he fell immediately into deep sleep on the sofa. She hesitated. Then covering him with a blanket and a comforter, she pushed a pillow under his protesting head and went upstairs.
She knelt for a long time beside her bed.
“God, help him! help him,” she prayed, “because he needs help that I can’t give him any more.”