III
An element of vast importance had made its appearance with the summer; suddenly the great thing in Basil’s crowd was to own an automobile. Fun no longer seemed available save at great distances, at suburban lakes or remote country clubs. Walking downtown ceased to be a legitimate pastime. On the contrary, a single block from one youth’s house to another’s must be navigated in a car. Dependent groups formed around owners and they began to wield what was, to Basil at least, a disconcerting power.
On the morning of a dance at the lake he called up Riply Buckner.
“Hey, Rip, how you going out to Connie’s tonight?”
“With Elwood Leaming.”
“Has he got a lot of room?”
Riply seemed somewhat embarrassed. “Why, I don’t think he has. You see, he’s taking Margaret Torrence and I’m taking Imogene Bissel.”
“Oh!”
Basil frowned. He should have arranged all this a week ago. After a moment he called up Joe Gorman.
“Going to the Davies’ tonight, Joe?”
“Why, yes.”
“Have you got room in your car—I mean, could I go with you?”
“Why, yes, I suppose so.”
There was a perceptible lack of warmth in his voice.
“Sure you got plenty of room?”
“Sure. We’ll call for you quarter to eight.”
Basil began preparations at five. For the second time in his life he shaved, completing the operation by cutting a short straight line under his nose. It bled profusely, but on the advice of Hilda, the maid, he finally stanched the flow with little pieces of toilet paper. Quite a number of pieces were necessary; so, in order to facilitate breathing, he trimmed it down with a scissors, and with this somewhat awkward mustache of paper and gore clinging to his upper lip, wandered impatiently around the house.
At six he began working on it again, soaking off the tissue paper and dabbing at the persistently freshening crimson line. It dried at length, but when he rashly hailed his mother it opened once more and the tissue paper was called back into play.
At quarter to eight, dressed in blue coat and white flannels, he drew one last bar of powder across the blemish, dusted it carefully with his handkerchief and hurried out to Joe Gorman’s car. Joe was driving in person, and in front with him were Lewis Crum and Hubert Blair. Basil got in the big rear seat alone and they drove without stopping out of the city onto the Black Bear Road, keeping their backs to him and talking in low voices together. He thought at first that they were going to pick up other boys; now he was shocked, and for a moment he considered getting out of the car, but this would imply that he was hurt. His spirit, and with it his face, hardened a little and he sat without speaking or being spoken to for the rest of the ride.
After half an hour the Davies’ house, a huge rambling bungalow occupying a small peninsula in the lake, floated into sight. Lanterns outlined its shape and wavered in gleaming lines on the gold-and-rose colored water, and as they came near, the low notes of bass horns and drums were blown toward them from the lawn.
Inside Basil looked about for Imogene. There was a crowd around her seeking dances, but she saw Basil; his heart bounded at her quick intimate smile.
“You can have the fourth, Basil, and the eleventh and the second extra. … How did you hurt your lip?”
“Cut it shaving,” he said hurriedly. “How about supper?”
“Well, I have to have supper with Riply because he brought me.”
“No, you don’t,” Basil assured her.
“Yes, she does,” insisted Riply, standing close at hand. “Why don’t you get your own girl for supper?”
After the third dance was over, Basil led Imogene down to the end of the pier, where they found seats in a motorboat.
“Now what?” she said.
He did not know. If he had really cared for her he would have known. When her hand rested on his knee for a moment he did not notice it. Instead, he talked. He told her how he had pitched on the second baseball team at school and had once beaten the first in a five-inning game. He told her that the thing was that some boys were popular with boys and some boys were popular with girls—he, for instance, was popular with girls. In short, he unloaded himself.
At length, feeling that he had perhaps dwelt disproportionately on himself, he told her suddenly that she was his favorite girl.
Imogene sat there, sighing a little in the moonlight. In another boat, lost in the darkness beyond the pier, sat a party of four. Joe Gorman was singing:
“My little love—
—in honey man,
He sure has won my—”
“I thought you might want to know,” said Basil to Imogene. “I thought maybe you thought I liked somebody else. The truth game didn’t get around to me the other night.”
“What?” asked Imogene vaguely. She had forgotten the other night, all nights except this, and she was thinking of the magic in Joe Gorman’s voice. She had the next dance with him; he was going to teach her the words of a new song. Basil was sort of peculiar, telling her all this stuff. He was good-looking and attractive and all that, but—she wanted the dance to be over. She wasn’t having any fun.
The music began inside—“Everybody’s Doing It,” played with many little nervous jerks on the violins.
“Oh, listen!” she cried, sitting up and snapping her fingers. “Do you know how to rag?”
“Listen, Imogene”—He half realized that something had slipped away—“let’s sit out this dance—you can tell Joe you forgot.”
She rose quickly. “Oh, no, I can’t!”
Unwillingly Basil followed her inside. It had not gone well—he had talked too much again. He waited moodily for the eleventh dance so that he could behave differently. He believed now that he was in love with Imogene. His self-deception created a tightness in his throat, a counterfeit of longing and desire.
Before the eleventh dance he was aware that some party was being organized from which he was purposely excluded. There were whisperings and arguings among some of the boys, and unnatural silences when he came near. He heard Joe Gorman say to Riply Buckner, “We’ll just be gone three days. If Gladys can’t go, why don’t you ask Connie? The chaperons’ll—” he changed his sentence as he saw Basil—“and we’ll all go to Smith’s for ice-cream soda.”
Later, Basil took Riply Buckner aside but failed to elicit any information: Riply had not forgotten Basil’s attempt to rob him of Imogene tonight.
“It wasn’t about anything,” he insisted. “We’re going to Smith’s, honest. … How’d you cut your lip?”
“Cut it shaving.”
When his dance with Imogene came she was even vaguer than before, exchanging mysterious communications with various girls as they moved around the room, locked in the convulsive grip of the Grizzly Bear. He led her out to the boat again, but it was occupied, and they walked up and down the pier while he tried to talk to her and she hummed:
“My little lov‑in honey man—”
“Imogene, listen. What I wanted to ask you when we were on the boat before was about the night we played Truth. Did you really mean what you said?”
“Oh, what do you want to talk about that silly game for?”
It had reached her ears, not once but several times, that Basil thought he was wonderful—news that was flying about with as much volatility as the rumor of his graces two weeks before. Imogene liked to agree with everyone—and she had agreed with several impassioned boys that Basil was terrible. And it was difficult not to dislike him for her own disloyalty.
But Basil thought that only ill luck ended the intermission before he could accomplish his purpose; though what he had wanted he had not known.
Finally, during the intermission, Margaret Torrence, whom he had neglected, told him the truth.
“Are you going on the touring party up to the St. Croix River?” she asked. She knew he was not.
“What party?”
“Joe Gorman got it up. I’m going with Elwood Leaming.”
“No, I’m not going,” he said gruffly. “I couldn’t go.”
“Oh!”
“I don’t like Joe Gorman.”
“I guess he doesn’t like you much either.”
“Why? What did he say?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“But what? Tell me what he said.”
After a minute she told him, as if reluctantly: “Well, he and Hubert Blair said you thought—you thought you were wonderful.” Her heart misgave her.
But she remembered he had asked her for only one dance. “Joe said you told him that all the girls thought you were wonderful.”
“I never said anything like that,” said Basil indignantly, “never!”
He understood—Joe Gorman had done it all, taken advantage of Basil’s talking too much—an affliction which his real friends had always allowed for—in order to ruin him. The world was suddenly compact of villainy. He decided to go home.
In the coat room he was accosted by Bill Kampf: “Hello, Basil, how did you hurt your lip?”
“Cut it shaving.”
“Say, are you going to this party they’re getting up next week?”
“No.”
“Well, look, I’ve got a cousin from Chicago coming to stay with us and mother said I could have a boy out for the weekend. Her name is Minnie Bibble.”
“Minnie Bibble?” repeated Basil, vaguely revolted.
“I thought maybe you were going to that party, too, but Riply Buckner said to ask you and I thought—”
“I’ve got to stay home,” said Basil quickly.
“Oh, come on, Basil,” he pursued. “It’s only for two days, and she’s a nice girl. You’d like her.”
“I don’t know,” Basil considered. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Bill. I’ve got to get the street car home. I’ll come out for the weekend if you’ll take me over to Wildwood now in your car.”
“Sure I will.”
Basil walked out on the veranda and approached Connie Davies.
“Goodbye,” he said. Try as he might, his voice was stiff and proud. “I had an awfully good time.”
“I’m sorry you’re leaving so early, Basil.” But she said to herself: “He’s too stuck up to have a good time. He thinks he’s wonderful.”
From the veranda he could hear Imogene’s laughter down at the end of the pier. Silently he went down the steps and along the walk to meet Bill Kampf, giving strollers a wide berth as though he felt the sight of him would diminish their pleasure.
It had been an awful night.
Ten minutes later Bill dropped him beside the waiting trolley. A few last picnickers sauntered aboard and the car bobbed and clanged through the night toward St. Paul.
Presently two young girls sitting opposite Basil began looking over at him and nudging each other, but he took no notice—he was thinking how sorry they would all be—Imogene and Margaret, Joe and Hubert and Riply.
“Look at him now!” they would say to themselves sorrowfully. “President of the United States at twenty-five! Oh, if we only hadn’t been so bad to him that night!”
He thought he was wonderful!