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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

The freshest Boy. A short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald





THE FRESHEST BOY


IT WAS a hidden Broadway restaurant in the dead of the night,
and a brilliant and mysterious group of society people, diplomats
and members of the underworld were there. A few minutes ago the
sparkling wine had been flowing and a girl had been dancing gaily
upon a table, but now the whole crowd were hushed and breathless.
All eyes were fixed upon the masked but well-groomed man in
the dress suit and opera hat who stood nonchalantly in the
door.

"Don't move, please," he said, in a well-bred, cultivated voice that
had, nevertheless, a ring of steel in it. "This thing in my hand might
go off."

His glance roved from table to table fell upon the malignant
man higher up with his pale saturnine face, upon Heatherly, the
suave secret agent from a foreign power, then rested a little longer,
a little more softly perhaps, upon the table where the girl with dark
hair and dark tragic eyes sat alone.

"Now that my purpose is accomplished, it might interest you
to know who I am." There was a gleam of expectation in every eye.
The breast of the dark-eyed girl heaved faintly and a tiny burst of
subtle French perfume rose into the air. "I am none other than that
elusive gentleman, Basil Lee, better known as the Shadow."

Taking off his well-fitting opera hat, he bowed ironically from
the waist. Then, like a flash, he turned and was gone into the
night.

"You get up to New York only once a month," Lewis Crum was
saying, "and then you have to take a master along."

Slowly, Basil Lee's glazed eyes returned from the barns and bill-
boards of the Indiana countryside to the interior of the Broadway
Limited. The hypnosis of the swift telegraph poles faded and Lewis
Crum's stolid face took shape against the white slip-cover of the
opposite bench.

"I'd just duck the master when I got to New York," said Basil.

"Yes, you would!"

"I bet I would."

"You try it and you'll see."

"What do you mean saying 111 see, all the time, Lewis? What'll
I see?"

His very bright dark-blue eyes were at this moment fixed upon
his companion with boredom and impatience. The two had nothing
in common except their age, which was fifteen, and the lifelong
friendship of their fathers which is less than nothing. Also they
were bound from the same Middle- Western city for Basil's first and
Lewis' second year at the same Eastern school.

But, contrary to all the best traditions, Lewis the veteran was mis-
erable and Basil the neophyte was happy. Lewis hated school. He
had grown entirely dependent on the stimulus of a hearty vital
mother, and as he felt her slipping farther and farther away from
him, he plunged deeper into misery and homesickness. Basil, on the
other hand, had lived with such intensity on so many stories of
boarding-school life that, far from being homesick, he had a glad
feeling of recognition and familiarity. Indeed, it was with some sense
of doing the appropriate thing, having the traditional rough-house,
that he had thrown Lewis 7 comb off the train at Milwaukee last night
for no reason at all.

To Lewis, Basil's ignorant enthusiasm was distasteful his in-
stinctive attempt to dampen it had contributed to the mutual
irritation.

'Til tell you what you'll see," he said ominously. "They'll catch
you smoking and put you on bounds."

"No, they won't, because I won't be smoking. I'll be in training
for football."

"Football! Yeah! Football!"

"Honestly, Lewis, you don't like anything, do you?"

"I don't like football. I don't like to go out and get a crack in the
eye." Lewis spoke aggressively, for his mother had canonized all his
timidities as common sense. Basil's answer, made with what he
considered kindly intent, was the sort of remark that creates life-
long enmities.

"You'd probably be a lot more popular in school if you played
football," he suggested patronizingly.

Lewis did not consider himself unpopular. He did not think of
it in that way at all. He was astounded.

"You wait ! " he cried furiously. "They'll take all that freshness
out of you."

"Clam yourself," said Basil, coolly plucking at the creases of his
first long trousers. "Just clam yourself."

"I guess everybody knows you were the freshest boy at the
Country Day!"

"Clam yourself," repeated Basil, but with less assurance. "Kindly
clam yourself."

"I guess I know what they had in the school paper about you "

Basil's own coolness was no longer perceptible.

"If you don't clam yourself," he said darkly, "I'm going to throw
your brushes off the train too."

The enormity of this threat was effective. Lewis sank back in his
seat, snorting and muttering, but undoubtedly calmer. His reference
had been to one of the most shameful passages in his companion's
life. In a periodical issued by the boys of Basil's late school there
had appeared, under the heading Personals :

"If someone will please poison young Basil, or find some other
means to stop his mouth, the school at large and myself will be
much obliged."



The two boys sat there fuming wordlessly at each other. Then,
resolutely, Basil tried to re-inter this unfortunate souvenir of the
past. All that was behind him now. Perhaps he had been a little
fresh, but he was making a new start. After a moment, the memory
passed and with it the train and Lewis' dismal presence the breath
of the East came sweeping over him again with a vast nostalgia. A
voice called him out of the fabled world ; a man stood beside him
with a hand on his sweater-clad shoulder.

"Lee!"

"Yes, sir."

"It all depends on you now. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right," the coach said, "go in and win."

Basil tore the sweater from his stripling form and dashed out on
the field. There were two minutes to play and the score was 3 to o
for the enemy, but at the sight of young Lee, kept out of the game
all year by a malicious plan of Dan Haskins, the school bully, and
Weasel Weems, his toady, a thrill of hope went over the St. Regis
stand.

"33-12-16-22!" barked Midget Brown, the diminutive little
quarterback.

It was his signal

"Oh, gosh ! " Basil spoke aloud, forgetting the late unpleasantness.
"I wish we'd get there before tomorrow."

II

ST. REGIS SCHOOL, EASTCHESTER,

November 18, 19

"DEAR MOTHER : There is not much to say today, but I thought I
would write you about my allowance. All the boys have a bigger
allowance than me, because there are a lot of little things I have to
get, such as shoe laces, etc. School is still very nice and am having a
fine time, but football is over and there is not much to do. I am going
to New York this week to see a show. I do not know yet what it will
be, but probably the Quacker Girl or little boy Blue as they are
both very good. Dr. Bacon is very nice and there's a good phycission
in the village. No more now as I have to study Algebra.

"Your Affectionate Son,

"BASIL D. LEE."

As he put the letter in its envelope, a wizened little boy came into
the deserted study hall where he sat and stood staring at him.

"Hello," said Basil, frowning.

"I been looking for you," said the little boy, slowly and judicially.
"I looked all over up in your room and out in the gym, and they
said you probably might of sneaked off in here."

"What do you want?" Basil demanded.

"Hold your horses, Bossy."

Basil jumped to his feet. The little boy retreated a step.

"Go on, hit me!" he chirped nervously. "Go on, hit me, cause I'm
just half your size Bossy."

Basil winced. "You call me that again and I'll spank you."

"No, you won't spank me. Brick Wales said if you ever touched
any of us "

"But I never did touch any of you."

"Didn't you chase a lot of us one day and didn't Brick Wales "

"Oh, what do you want?" Basil cried in desperation.

"Doctor Bacon wants you. They sent me after you and somebody
said maybe you sneaked in here."

Basil dropped his letter in his pocket and walked out the little
boy and his invective following him through the door. He traversed
a long corridor, muggy with that odor best described as the smell of
stale caramels that is so peculiar to boys' schools, ascended a stairs
and knocked at an unexceptional but formidable door.

Doctor Bacon was at his desk. He was a handsome, redheaded
Episcopal clergyman of fifty whose original real interest in boys
was now tempered by the flustered cynicism which is the fate of all
headmasters and settles on them like green mould. There were cer-
tain preliminaries before Basil was asked to sit down gold-rimmed
glasses had to be hoisted up from nowhere by a black cord and fixed
on Basil to be sure that he was not an impostor; great masses of
paper on the desk had to be shuffled through, not in search of any-
thing but as a man nervously shuffles a pack of cards.

"I had a letter from your mother this morning ah Basil." The
use of his first name had come to startle Basil. No one else in school
had yet called him anything but Bossy or Lee. "She feels that your
marks have been poor. I believe you have been sent here at a cer-
tain amount of ah sacrifice and she expects "

Basil's spirit writhed with shame, not at his poor marks but that
his financial inadequacy should be so bluntly stated. He knew that
he was one of the poorest boys in a rich boys' school.

Perhaps some dormant sensibility in Doctor Bacon became aware
of his discomfort; he shuffled through the papers once more and
began on a new note.

"However, that was not what I sent for you about this afternoon.
You applied last week for permission to go to New York on Satur-
day, to a matinee. Mr. Davis tells me that for almost the first time
since school opened you will be off bounds tomorrow."

"Yes, sir."

"That is not a good record. However, I would allow you to go to
New York if it could be arranged. Unfortunately, no masters are
available this Saturday."

Basil's mouth dropped ajar. "Why, I why, Doctor Bacon, I know
two parties that are going. Couldn't I go with one of them?"

Doctor Bacon ran through all his papers very quickly. "Unfor-
tunately, one is composed of slightly older boys and the other group
made arrangements some weeks ago."

"How about the party that's going to the Quaker Girl with Mr.
Dunn?"

"It's that party I speak of. They feel that their arrangements
are complete and they have purchased seats together."

Suddenly Basil understood. At the look in his eye Doctor Bacon
went on hurriedly :

"There's perhaps one thing I can do. Of course there must be
several boys in the party so that the expenses of the master can be
divided up among all. If you can find two other boys who would like
to make up a party, and let me have their names by five o'clock,
I'll send Mr. Rooney with you."

"Thank you," Basil said.

Doctor Bacon hesitated. Beneath the cynical incrustations of
many years an instinct stirred to look into the unusual case of this
boy and find out what made him the most detested boy in school.
Among boys and masters there seemed to exist an extraordinary hos-
tility toward him, and though Doctor Bacon had dealt with many
sorts of schoolboy crimes, he had neither by himself nor with the aid
of trusted sixth-formers been able to lay his hands on its underlying
cause. It was probably no single thing, but a combination of things ;
it was most probably one of those intangible questions of person-
ality. Yet he remembered that when he first saw Basil he had con-
sidered him unusually prepossessing.

He sighed. Sometimes these things worked themselves out. He
wasn't one to rush in clumsily. "Let us have a better report to send
home next month, Basil."

"Yes, sir."

Basil ran quickly downstairs to the recreation room. It was
Wednesday and most of the boys had already gone into the village of
Eastchester, whither Basil, who was still on bounds, was forbidden
to follow. When he looked at those still scattered about the pool
tables and piano, he saw that it was going to be difficult to get any-
one to go with him at all. For Basil was quite conscious that he was
the most unpopular boy at school.

It had begun almost immediately. One day, less than a fortnight
after he came, a crowd of the smaller boys, perhaps urged on to it,
gathered suddenly around him and began calling him Bossy. Within
the next week he had two fights, and both times the crowd was
vehemently and eloquently with the other boy. Soon after, when he
was merely shoving indiscriminately, like every one else, to get into
the dining room, Carver, the captain of the football team, turned
about and, seizing him by the back of the neck, held him and dressed
him down savagely. He joined a group innocently at the piano and
was told, "Go on away. We don't want you around."

After a month he began to realize the full extent of his unpop-
ularity. It shocked him. One day after a particularly bitter humilia-
tion he went up to his room and cried. He tried to keep out of the
way for a while, but it didn't help. He was accused of sneaking off
here and there, as if bent on a series of nefarious errands. Puzzled
and wretched, he looked at his face in the glass, trying to discover
there the secret of their dislike in the expression of his eyes, his
smile.

He saw now that in certain ways he had erred at the outset he
had boasted, he had been considered yellow at football, he had
pointed out people's mistakes to them, he had shown off his rather
extraordinary fund of general information in class. But he had tried
to do better and couldn't understand his failure to atone. It must be
too late. He was queered fprever.




He had, indeed, become the scapegoat, the immediate villain, the
sponge which absorbed all malice and irritability abroad just as
the most frightened person in a party seems to absorb all the others'
fear, seems to be afraid for them all. His situation was not helped
by the fact, obvious to all, that the supreme self-confidence with
which he had come to St. Regis in September was thoroughly broken.
Boys taunted him with impunity who would not have dared raise
their voices to him several months before.

This trip to New York had come to mean everything to him sur-
cease from the misery of his daily life as well as a glimpse into the
long-awaited heaven of romance. Its postponement for week after
week due to his sins he was constantly caught reading after lights,
for example, driven by his wretchedness into such vicarious escapes
from reality had deepened his longing until it was a burning
hunger. It was unbearable that he should not go, and he told over
the short list of those whom he might get to accompany him. The
possibilities were Fat Caspar, Treadway, and Bugs Brown. A quick
journey to their rooms showed that they had all availed themselves
of the Wednesday permission to go into Eastchester for the
afternoon.

Basil did not hesitate. He had until five o'clock and his only
chance was to go after them. It was not the first time he had broken
bounds, though the last attempt had ended in disaster and an ex-
tension of his confinement. In his room, he put on a heavy sweater
an overcoat was a betrayal of intent replaced his jacket over it
and hid a cap in his back pocket. Then he went downstairs and with
an elaborately careless whistle struck out across the lawn for the
gymnasium. Once there, he stood for a while as if looking in the win-
dows, first the one close to the walk, then one near the corner of the
building. From here he moved quickly, but not too quickly, into a
grove of lilacs. Then he dashed around the corner, down a long
stretch of lawn that was blind from all windows and, parting the
strands of a wire fence, crawled through and stood upon the grounds
of a neighboring estate. For the moment he was free. He put on his
cap against the chilly November wind, and set out along the half-
mile road to town.

Eastchester was a suburban farming community, with a small shoe
factory. The institutions which pandered to the factory workers were
the ones patronized by the boys a movie house, a quick-lunch
wagon on wheels known as the Dog and the Bostonian Candy
Kitchen. Basil tried the Dog first and happened immediately upon
a prospect.

This was Bugs Brown, a hysterical boy, subject to fits and stren-
uously avoided. Years later he became a brilliant lawyer, but at that
time he was considered by the boys of St. Regis to be a typical
lunatic because of his peculiar series of sounds with which he
assuaged his nervousness all day long.

He consorted with boys younger than himself, who were without
the prejudices of their elders, and was in the company of several
when Basil came in.

"Who-ee ! " he cried. "Ee-ee-ee ! " He put his hand over his mouth
and bounced it quickly, making a wah-wah-wah sound. "It's Bossy
Lee! It's Bossy Lee I It's Boss-Boss-Boss-Boss-Bossy Lee!"

"Wait a minute, Bugs," said Basil anxiously, half afraid that
Bugs would go finally crazy before he could persuade him to come to
town. "Say, Bugs, listen. Don't, Bugs wait a minute. Can you come
up to New York Saturday afternoon?"

"Whe-ee-ee!" cried Bugs to Basil's distress. " Whee-ee-ee I "

"Honestly, Bugs, tell me, can you? We could go up together if
you could go."

"I've got to see a doctor," said Bugs, suddenly calm. "He wants
to see how crazy I am."

"Can't you have him see about it some other day?" said Basil
without humor.

"Whee-ee-ee ! " cried Bugs.

"All right then," said Basil hastily. "Have you seen Fat Caspar
in town?"

Bugs was lost in shrill noise, but someone had seen Fat; Basil
was directed to the Bostonian Candy Kitchen.

This was a gaudy paradise of cheap sugar. Its odor, heavy and
sickly and calculated to bring out a sticky sweat upon an adult's
palms, hung suffocatingly over the whole vicinity and met one like a
strong moral dissuasion at the door. Inside, beneath a pattern of
flies, material as black point lace, a line of boys sat eating heavy
dinners of banana splits, maple nut, and chocolate marshmallow nut
sundaes. Basil found Fat Caspar at a table on the side.

Fat Caspar was at once Basil's most unlikely and most ambitious
quest. He was considered a nice fellow in fact he was so pleasant
that he had been courteous to Basil and had spoken to him politely
all fall. Basil realized that he was like that to everyone, yet it was
just possible that Fat liked him, as people used to in the past, and
he was driven desperately to take a chance. But it was undoubtedly
a presumption, and as he approached the table and saw the stiffened
faces which the other two boys turned toward him, Basil's hope
diminished.

"Say, Fat " he said, and hesitated. Then he burst forth suddenly.
"I'm on bounds, but I ran off because I had to see you. Doctor
Bacon told me I could go to New York Saturday if I could get two
other boys to go. I asked Bugs Brown and he couldn't go, and I
thought I'd ask you."

He broke off, furiously embarrassed, and waited. Suddenly the
two boys with Fat burst into a shout of laughter.

"Bugs wasn't crazy enough!"

Fat Caspar hesitated. He couldn't go to New York Saturday and
ordinarily he would have refused without offending. He had nothing
against Basil; nor, indeed, against anybody; but boys have only a
certain resistance to public opinion and he was influenced by the
contemptuous laughter of the others.

"I don't want to go," he said indifferently. "Why do you want
to ask me?"

Then, half in shame, he gave a deprecatory little laugh and bent
over his ice cream.

"I just thought I'd ask you," said Basil.

Turning quickly away, he went to the counter and in a hollow
and unfamiliar voice ordered a strawberry sundae. He ate it me-
chanically, hearing occasional whispers and snickers from the table
behind. Still in a daze, he started to walk out without paying his
check, but the clerk called him back and he was conscious of more
derisive laughter.

For a moment he hesitated whether to go back to the table and
hit one of those boys in the face, but he saw nothing to be gained.
They would say the truth that he had done it because he couldn't
get anybody to go to New York. Clenching his fists with impotent
rage, he walked from the store.

He came immediately upon his third prospect, Treadway. Tread-
way had entered St. Regis late in the year and had been put in to
room with Basil the week before. The fact that Treadway hadn't
witnessed his humiliations of the autumn encouraged Basil to be-
have naturally toward him, and their relations had been, if not
intimate, at least tranquil.

"Hey, Treadway," he cried, still excited from the affair in the
Bostonian, "can you come up to New York to a show Saturday
afternoon ?"

He stopped, realizing that Treadway was in the company of Brick
Wales, a boy he had had a fight with and one of his bitterest
enemies. Looking from one to the other, Basil saw a look of impa-
tience in Treadway's face and a faraway expression in Brick Wales',
and he realized what must have been happening. Treadway, making
his way into the life of the school, had just been enlightened as to
the status of his roommate. Like Fat Caspar, rather than acknowl-
edge himself eligible to such an intimate request, he preferred to cut
their friendly relations short.
"Not on your life," he said briefly. "So long." The two walked past
him into the candy kitchen.

Had these slights, so much the bitterer for their lack of passion,
been visited upon Basil in September, they would have been un-
bearable. But since then he had developed a shell of hardness which,
while it did not add to his attractiveness, spared him certain del-
icacies of torture. In misery enough, and despair and self-pity, he
went the other way along the street for a little distance until he
could control the violent contortions of his face. Then, taking a
roundabout route, he started back to school.

He reached the adjoining estate, intending to go back the way
he had come. Half-way through a hedge, he heard footsteps ap-
proaching along the sidewalk and stood motionless, fearing the prox-
imity of masters. Their voices grew nearer and louder; before he
knew it he was listening with horrified fascination :

" so, after he tried Bugs Brown, the poor nut asked Fat Gas-
par to go with him and Fat said, 'What do you ask me for?' It
serves him right if he couldn't get anybody at all."

It was the dismal but triumphant voice of Lewis Crum.

Ill

Up in his room, Basil found a package lying on his bed. He knew
its contents and for a long time he had been eagerly expecting it, but
such was his depression that he opened it listlessly. It was a series
of eight color reproductions of Harrison Fisher girls "on glossy
paper, without printing or advertising matter and suitable for
framing."

The pictures were named Dora, Marguerite, Babette, Lucille,
Gretchen, Rose, Katherine and Mina. Two of them Marguerite and
Rose Basil looked at, slowly tore up and dropped in the waste-
basket, as one who disposes of the inferior pups from a litter. The
other six he pinned at intervals around the room. Then he lay down
on his bed and regarded them.

Dora, Lucille and Katherine were blonde ; Gretchen was medium ;
Babette and Mina were dark. After a few minutes, he found that he
was looking oftenest at Dora and Babette and, to a lesser extent, at
Gretchen, though the latter's Dutch cap seemed unromantic and pre-
cluded the element of mystery. Babette, a dark little violet-eyed
beauty in a tight-fitting hat, attracted him most; his eyes came
to rest on her at last.

"Babette," he whispered to himself "beautiful Babette."

The sound of the word, so melancholy and suggestive, like "Vilia*
or "I'm happy at Maxim's" on the phonograph, softened him and
turning over on his face, he sobbed into the pillow. He took hold of
the bed rails over his head and, sobbing and straining, began to talk
to himself brokenly how he hated them and whom he hated he
listed a dozen and what he would do to them when he was great
and powerful. In previous moments like these he had always re-
warded Fat Caspar for his kindness, but now he was like the rest.
Basil set upon him, pummeling him unmercifully, or laughed sneer-
ingly when he passed him blind and begging on the street.

He controlled himself as he heard Treadway come in, but did not
move or speak. He listened as the other moved about the room, and
after a while became conscious that there was an unusual opening
of closets and bureau drawers. Basil turned over, his arm concealing
his tear-stained face. Treadway had an armful of shirts in his hand.

"What are you doing?" Basil demanded.

His roommate looked at him stonily. "I'm moving in with Wales,"
he said.

"Oh ! "

Treadway went on with his packing. He carried out a suitcase full,
then another, took down some pennants and dragged his trunk into
the hall. Basil watched him bundle his toilet things into a towel
and take one last survey about the room's new barrenness to see if
there was anything forgotten.

"Good-by," he said to Basil, without a ripple of expression on
his face.

"Good-by."

Treadway went out. Basil turned over once more and choked into
the pillow.

"Oh, poor Babette!" he cried huskily. "Poor little Babette! Poor
little Babette!"

Babette, svelte and piquant, looked down at him coquettishly
from the wall.

IV

Doctor Bacon, sensing Basil's predicament and perhaps the ex-
tremity of his misery, arranged it that he should go into New York,
after all. He went in the company of Mr. Rooney, the football coach
and history teacher. At twenty Mr. Rooney had hesitated for some
time between joining the police force and having his way paid
through a small New England college ; in fact he was a hard spec-
imen and Doctor Bacon was planning to get rid of him at Christmas.
Mr. Rooney's contempt for Basil was founded on the latter's am-
biguous and unreliable conduct on the football field during the past
season he had consented to take him to New York for reasons of
his own.

Basil sat meekly beside him on the train, glancing past Mr.
Rooney's bulky body at the Sound and the fallow fields of West-
Chester County. Mr. Rooney finished his newspaper, folded it up and
sank into a moody silence. He had eaten a large breakfast and the
exigencies of time had not allowed him to work it off with exercise.
He remembered that Basil was a fresh boy, and it was time he did
something fresh and could be called to account. This reproachless
silence annoyed him.

"Lee," he said suddenly, with a thinly assumed air of friendly
interest, "why don't you get wise to yourself?"

"What sir?" Basil was startled from his excited trance of this
morning.

"I said why don't you get wise to yourself?" said Mr. Rooney in a
somewhat violent tone. "Do you want to be the butt of the school
all your time here?"

"No, I don't," Basil was chilled. Couldn't all this be left behind
for just one day?

"You oughtn't to get so fresh all the time. A couple of times in
history class I could just about have broken your neck." Basil could
think of no appropriate answer. "Then out playing football," con-
tinued Mr. Rooney " you didn't have any nerve. You could play
better than a lot of 'em when you wanted, like that day against the
Pomfret seconds, but you lost your nerve."

"I shouldn't have tried for the second team," said Basil. "I was
too light. I should have stayed on the third."

"You were yellow, that was all the trouble. You ought to get wise
to yourself. In class, you're always thinking of something else. If
you don't study, you'll never get to college."

"I'm the youngest boy in the fifth form," Basil said rashly.

"You think you're pretty bright, don't you?" He eyed Basil fero-
ciously. Then something seemed to occur to him that changed his
attitude and they rode for a while in silence. When the train began
to run through the thickly clustered communities near New York, he
spoke again in a milder voice and with an air of having considered
the matter for a long time :

"Lee, I'm going to trust you."

"Yes, sir."

"You go and get some lunch and then go on to your show. I've got
some business of my own I got to attend to, and when I've finished
I'll try to get to the show. If I can't, I'll anyhow meet you outside."
Basil's heart leaped up. "Yes, sir."
"I don't want you to open your mouth about this at school I
mean, about me doing some business of my own."

"No, sir."

"We'll see if you can keep your mouth shut for once," he said,
making it fun. Then he added, on a note of moral sternness, "And
no drinks, you understand that?"

"Oh, no, sir!" The idea shocked Basil. He had never tasted a
drink, nor even contemplated the possibility, save the intangible
and nonalcoholic champagne of his cafe dreams.

On the advice of Mr. Rooney he went for luncheon to the Man-
hattan Hotel, near the station, where he ordered a club sandwich,
French fried potatoes and a chocolate parfait. Out of the corner of
his eye he watched the nonchalant, debonair, blase New Yorkers at
neighboring tables, investing them with a romance by which these
possible fellow citizens of his from the Middle West lost nothing.
School had fallen from him like a burden ; it was no more than an
unheeded clamor, faint and far away. He even delayed opening the
letter from the morning's mail which he found in his pocket, because
it was addressed to him at school.

He wanted another chocolate parfait, but being reluctant to bother
the busy waiter any more, he opened the letter and spread it before
him instead. It was from his mother :

"Dear Basil : This is written in great haste, as I didn't want to
frighten you by telegraphing. Grandfather is going abroad to take
the waters and he wants you and me to come too. The idea is that
you'll go to school at Grenoble or Montreux for the rest of the year
and learn the languages and we'll be close by. That is, if you want
to. I know how you like St. Regis and playing football and base-
ball, and of course there would be none of that ; but on the other
hand, it would be a nice change, even if it postponed your entering
Yale by an extra year. So, as usual, I want you to do just as you
like. We will be leaving home almost as soon as you get this and
will come to the Waldorf in New York, where you can come in and
see us for a few days, even if you decide to stay. Think it over,
dear.

"With love to my dearest boy,

"Mother."

Basil got up from his chair with a dim idea of walking over to
the Waldorf and having himself locked up safely until his mother
came. Then, impelled to some gesture, he raised his voice and in one
of his first basso notes called boomingly and without reticence for
the waiter. No more St. Regis ! No more St. Regis I He was almost
strangling with happiness.

"Oh, gosh ! " he cried to himself. "Oh, golly ! Oh, gosh ! Oh, gosh ! "
No more Doctor Bacon and Mr. Rooney and Brick Wales and Fat
Caspar. No more Bugs Brown and on bounds and being called
Bossy. He need no longer hate them, for they were impotent shadows
in the stationary world that he was sliding away from, sliding past,
waving his hand. "Good-by!" he pitied them. "Good-by!"

It required the din of Forty-second Street to sober his maudlin
joy. With his hand on his purse to guard against the omnipresent
pickpocket, he moved cautiously toward Broadway. What a day I He
would tell Mr. Rooney Why, he needn't ever go back! Or perhaps
it would be better to go back and let them know what he was
going to do, while they went on and on in the dismal, dreary round
of school.

He found the theater and entered the lobby with its powdery
feminine atmosphere of a matinee. As he took out his ticket, his gaze
was caught and held by a sculptured profile a few feet away. It was
that of a well-built blond young man of about twenty with a strong
chin and direct gray eyes. Basil's brain spun wildly for a moment
and then came to rest upon a name more than a name upon a
legend, a sign in the sky. What a day ! He had never seen the young
man before, but from a thousand pictures he knew beyond the pos-
sibility of a doubt that it was Ted Fay, the Yale football captain,
who had almost single-handed beaten Harvard and Princeton last
fall. Basil felt a sort of exquisite pain. The profile turned away ; the
crowd revolved; the hero disappeared. But Basil would know all
through the next hours that Ted Fay was here too.

In the rustling, whispering, sweet-smelling darkness of the theater
he read the program. It was the show of all shows that he wanted
to see, and until the curtain actually rose the program itself had a
curious sacredness a prototype of the thing itself. But when the
curtain rose it became waste paper to be dropped carelessly to
the floor.

ACT. I. The Village Green of a Small Town near New York.

It was too bright and blinding to comprehend all at once, and it
went so fast that from the very first Basil felt he had missed things ;
he would make his mother take him again when she came next
week tomorrow.

An hour passed. It was very sad at this point a sort of gay sad-
ness, but sad. The girl the man. What kept them apart even now?
Oh, those tragic errors and misconceptions. So sad. Couldn't they
look into each other's eyes and see ?

In a blaze of light and sound, of resolution, anticipation and
imminent trouble, the act was over.
He went out. He looked for Ted Fay and thought he saw him
leaning rather moodily on the plush wall at the rear of the theater,
but he could not be sure. He bought cigarettes and lit one, but fancy-
ing at the first puff that he heard a blare of music he rushed back
inside.

ACT II. The Foyer of the Hotel Astor.

Yes, she was, indeed, like that song a Beautiful Rose of the
Night. The waltz buoyed her up, brought her with it to a point of
aching beauty and then let her slide back to life across its last bars
as a leaf slants to earth across the air. The high life of New York!
Who could blame her if she was carried away by the glitter of it
all, vanishing into the bright morning of the amber window borders
or into distant and entrancing music as the door opened and closed
that led to the ballroom ? The toast of the shining town.

Half an hour passed. Her true love brought her roses like herself
and she threw them scornfully at his feet. She laughed and turned to
the other, and danced danced madly, wildly. Wait 1 That delicate
treble among the thin horns, the low curving note from the great
strings. There it was again, poignant and aching, sweeping like a
great gust of emotion across the stage, catching her again like a leaf
helpless in the wind:

"Rose Rose Rose of the night,

When the spring moon is bright you'll be fair "

A few minutes later, feeling oddly shaken and exalted, Basil
drifted outside with the crowd. The first thing upon which his eyes
fell was the almost forgotten and now curiously metamorphosed
specter of Mr. Rooney.

Mr. Rooney had, in fact, gone a little to pieces. He was, to begin
with, wearing a different and much smaller hat than when he left
Basil at noon. Secondly, his face had lost its somewhat gross aspect
and turned a pure and even delicate white, and he was wearing his
necktie and even portions of his shirt on the outside of his unaccount-
ably wringing-wet overcoat. How, in the short space of four hours,
Mr. Rooney had got himself in such shape is explicable only by the
pressure of confinement in a boys' school upon a fiery outdoor spirit.
Mr. Rooney was born to toil under the clear light of heaven and,
perhaps half consciously, he was headed toward his inevitable
destiny.

"Lee," he said dimly, "you ought to get wise to y'self. I'm going
to put you wise y'self."

To avoid the ominous possibility of being put wise to himself in
the lobby, Basil uneasily changed the subject.
"Aren't you coming to the show?" he asked, flattering Mr. Rooney
by implying that he was in any condition to come to the show. "It's
a wonderful show."

Mr. Rooney took off his hat, displaying wringing-wet matted hair.
A picture of reality momentarily struggled for development in the
back of his brain.

"We got to get back to school," he said in a somber and uncon-
vinced voice.

"But there's another act," protested Basil in horror. "I've got to
stay for the last act."

Swaying, Mr. Rooney looked at Basil, dimly realizing that he had
put himself in the hollow of this boy's hand.

"All righY' he admitted. "I'm going to get somethin' to eat. I'll
wait for you next door."

He turned abruptly, reeled a dozen steps and curved dizzily into
a bar adjoining the theater. Considerably shaken, Basil went back
inside.

ACT III. The Roof Garden of Mr. Van Astor's House. Night.

Half an hour passed. Everything was going to be all right, after
all. The comedian was at his best now, with the glad appropriateness
of laughter after tears, and there was a promise of felicity in the
bright tropical sky. One lovely plaintive duet, and then abruptly the
long moment of incomparable beauty was over.

Basil went into the lobby and stood in thought while the crowd
passed out. His mother's letter and the show had cleared his mind
of bitterness and vindictiveness he was his old self and he wanted
to do the right thing. He wondered if it was the right thing to get
Mr. Rooney back to school. He walked toward the saloon, slowed up
as he came to it and, gingerly opening the swinging door, took a
quick peer inside. He saw only that Mr. Rooney was not one of
those drinking at the bar. He walked down the street a little way,
came back and tried again. It was as if he thought the doors were
teeth to bite him, for he had the old-fashioned Middle- Western boy's
horror of the saloon. The third time he was successful. Mr. Rooney
was sound asleep at a table in the back of the room.

Outside again Basil walked up and down, considering. He would
give Mr. Rooney half an hour. If, at the end of that time, he had
not come out, he would go back to school. After all, Mr. Rooney had
laid for him ever since football season Basil was simply washing his
hands of the whole affair, as in a day or so he would wash his
hands of school.

He had made several turns up and down, when, glancing up an
alley that ran beside the theater his eye was caught by the sign, Stage
Entrance. He could watch the actors come forth.

He waited. Women streamed by him, but those were the days
before Glorification and he took these drab people for wardrobe
women or something. Then suddenly a girl came out and with her
a man, and Basil turned and ran a few steps up the street as if
afraid they would recognize him and ran back, breathing as if with
a heart attack for the girl, a radiant little beauty of nineteen, was
Her and the young man by her side was Ted Fay.

Arm in arm, they walked past him, and irresistibly Basil followed.
As they walked, she leaned toward Ted Fay in a way that gave them
a fascinating air of intimacy. They crossed Broadway and turned
into the Knickerbocker Hotel, and twenty feet behind them Basil
followed, in time to see them go into a long room set for afternoon
tea. They sat at a table for two, spoke vaguely to a waiter, and then,
alone at last, bent eagerly toward each other. Basil saw that Ted
Fay was holding her gloved hand.

The tea room was separated only by a hedge of potted firs from
the main corridor. Basil went along this to a lounge which was almost
up against their table and sat down.

Her voice was low and faltering, less certain than it had been in
the play, and very sad: "Of course I do, Ted." For a long time, as
their conversation continued, she repeated "Of course I do" or "But
I do, Ted." Ted Fay's remarks were too low for Basil to hear.

" sa y S next month, and he won't be put off any more. . . .

I do in a way, Ted. It's hard to explain, but he's done everything for
mother and me. . . . There's no use kidding myself. It was a fool-
proof part and any girl he gave it to was made right then and
there. . . . He's been awfully thoughtful. He's done everything for
me."

Basil's ears were sharpened by the intensity of his emotion ; now
he could hear Ted Fay's voice too :

"And you say you love me."

"But don't you see I promised to marry him more than a year ago."

"Tell him the truth that you love me. Ask him to let you off."

"This isn't musical comedy, Ted,"

"That was a mean one," he said bitterly.

"I'm sorry, dear, Ted darling, but you're driving me crazy going
on this way. You're making it so hard for me."

"I'm going to leave New Haven, anyhow."

"No, you're not. You're going to stay and play baseball this spring.
Why, you're an ideal to all those boys ! Why, if you "

He laughed shortly. "You're a fine one to talk about ideals."
"Why not? I'm living up to my responsibility to Beltzman ; you've
got to make up your mind just like I have that we can't have each
other."

"Jerry! Think what you're doing! All my life, whenever I hear
that waltz "

Basil got to his feet and hurried down the corridor, through the
lobby and out of the hotel. He was in a state of wild emotional con-
fusion. He did not understand all he had heard, but from his
clandestine glimpse into the privacy of these two, with all the world
that his short experience could conceive of at their feet, he had
gathered that life for everybody was a struggle, sometimes magnifi-
cent from a distance, but always difficult and surprisingly simple
and a little sad.

They would go on. Ted Fay would go back to Yale, put her picture
in his bureau drawer and knock out home runs with the bases full
this spring at 8:30 the curtain would go up and She would miss
something warm and young out of her life, something she had had
this afternoon.

It was dark outside and Broadway was a blazing forest fire as
Basil walked slowly along toward the point of brightest light. He
looked up at the great intersecting planes of radiance with a vague
sense of approval and possession. He would see it a lot now, lay his
restless heart upon this greater restlessness of a nation he would
come whenever he could get off from school.

But that was all changed he was going to Europe. Suddenly Basil
realized that he wasn't going to Europe. He could not forego the
molding of his own destiny just to alleviate a few months of pain.
The conquest of the successive worlds of school, college and New
York why, that was his true dream that he had carried from boy-
hood into adolescence, and because of the jeers of a few boys he had
been about to abandon it and run ignominiously up a back alley ! He
shivered violently, like a dog coming out of the water, and simul-
taneously he was reminded of Mr. Rooney.

A few minutes later he walked into the bar, past the quizzical eyes
of the bartender and up to the table where Mr. Rooney still sat
asleep. Basil shook him gently, then firmly. Mr. Rooney stirred and
perceived Basil.

"G'wise to yourself," he muttered drowsily. "G'wise to yourself
an' let me alone."

"I am wise to myself," said Basil. "Honest, I am wise to myself,
Mr. Rooney. You got to come with me into the washroom and get
cleaned up, and then you can sleep on the train again, Mr. Rooney.
Come on, Mr. Rooney, please "

V

It was a long hard time. Basil got on bounds again in December
and wasn't free again until March. An indulgent mother had given
him no habits of work and this was almost beyond the power of any-
thing but life itself to remedy, but he made numberless new starts
and failed and tried again.

He made friends with a new boy named Maplewood after Christ-
mas, but they had a silly quarrel ; and through the winter term, when
a boys' school is shut in with itself and only partly assuaged from
its natural savagery by indoor sports, Basil was snubbed and slighted
a good deal for his real and imaginary sins, and he was much alone.
But on the other hand, there was Ted Fay, and Rose of the Night
on the phonograph "All my life whenever I hear that waltz" and
the remembered lights of New York, and the thought of what he was
going to do in football next autumn and the glamorous mirage of
Yale and the hope of spring in the air.

Fat Caspar and a few others were nice to him now. Once when he
and Fat walked home together by accident from downtown they had
a long talk about actresses a talk that Basil was wise enough not
to presume upon afterward. The smaller boys suddenly decided that
they approved of him, and a master who had hitherto disliked him
put his hand on his shoulder walking to a class one day. They would
all forget eventually maybe during the summer. There would be
new fresh boys in September; he would have a clean start next
year.

One afternoon in February, playing basketball, a great thing hap-
pened. He and Brick Wales were at forward on the second team and
in the fury of the scrimmage the gymnasium echoed with sharp
slapping contacts and shrill cries.

"Hereyar!"

"Bill! Bill!"

Basil had dribbled the ball down the court and Brick Wales, free,
was crying for it.

"Hereyar! Lee! Hey! Lee-y!"

Lee-y !

Basil flushed and made a poor pass. He had been called by a nick-
name. It was a poor makeshift, but it was something more than the
stark bareness of his surname or a term of derision. Brick Wales
went on playing, unconscious that he had done anything in par-
ticular or that he had contributed to the events by which another
boy was saved from the army of the bitter, the selfish, the neu-
rasthenic and the unhappy. It isn't given to us to know those rare
moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can
wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any
more in this world. They will not be cured by our most efficacious
drugs or slain with our sharpest swords.

Lee-y! It could scarcely be pronounced. But Basil took it to bed
with him that night, and thinking of it, holding it to him happily to
the last, fell easily to sleep.