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 sombre and unconvinced 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 righ’,” 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 theatre. 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 towards 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 theatre 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 towards 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 towards 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.
“—says 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 foolproof 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 confusion. 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 magnificent from a distance, but always difficult and surprisingly simple and a little sad.
They would go on. Ted Fay would
