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.
