“You certainly would be wonderful. You see, the leading man is going to be Hubert Blair.”
Breathlessly he watched her, saw her hesitate.
“Goodbye,” he said.
She came with them to the door and then out on the veranda, frowning a little.
“How long did you say the rehearsals would take?” she asked thoughtfully.
II
On an August evening three days later Basil read the play to the cast on Miss Halliburton’s porch. He was nervous and at first there were interruptions of “Louder” and “Not so fast.” Just as his audience was beginning to be amused by the repartee of the two comic crooks—repartee that had seen service with Weber and Fields—he was interrupted by the late arrival of Hubert Blair.
Hubert was fifteen, a somewhat shallow boy save for two or three felicities which he possessed to an extraordinary degree. But one excellence suggests the presence of others, and young ladies never failed to respond to his most casual fancy, enduring his fickleness of heart and never convinced that his fundamental indifference might not be overcome. They were dazzled by his flashing self-confidence, by his cherubic ingenuousness, which concealed a shrewd talent for getting around people, and by his extraordinary physical grace. Long-legged, beautifully proportioned, he had that tumbler’s balance usually characteristic only of men “built near the ground.” He was in constant motion that was a delight to watch, and Evelyn Beebe was not the only older girl who had found in him a mysterious promise and watched him for a long time with something more than curiosity.
He stood in the doorway now with an expression of bogus reverence on his round pert face.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Is this the First Methodist Episcopal Church?” Everybody laughed—even Basil. “I didn’t know. I thought maybe I was in the right church, but in the wrong pew.”
They laughed again, somewhat discouraged. Basil waited until Hubert had seated himself beside Evelyn Beebe. Then he began to read once more, while the others, fascinated, watched Hubert’s efforts to balance a chair on its hind legs. This squeaky experiment continued as an undertone to the reading. Not until Basil’s desperate “Now, here’s where you come in, Hube,” did attention swing back to the play.
Basil read for more than an hour. When, at the end, he closed the composition book and looked up shyly, there was a burst of spontaneous applause. He had followed his models closely, and for all its grotesqueries, the result was actually interesting—it was a play. Afterward he lingered, talking to Miss Halliburton, and he walked home glowing with excitement and rehearsing a little by himself into the August night.
The first week of rehearsal was a matter of Basil climbing back and forth from auditorium to stage, crying, “No! Look here, Connie; you come in more like this.” Then things began to happen. Mrs. Van Schellinger came to rehearsal one day, and lingering afterward, announced that she couldn’t let Gladys be in “a play about criminals.” Her theory was that this element could be removed; for instance, the two comic crooks could be changed to “two funny farmers.”
Basil listened with horror. When she had gone he assured Miss Halliburton that he would change nothing. Luckily Gladys played the cook, an interpolated part that could be summarily struck out, but her absence was felt in another way. She was tranquil and tractable, “the most carefully brought-up girl in town,” and at her withdrawal rowdiness appeared during rehearsals. Those who had only such lines as “I’ll ask Mrs. Van Baker, sir,” in Act I and “No, ma’am,” in Act III showed a certain tendency to grow restless in between. So now it was:
“Please keep that dog quiet or else send him home!” or:
“Where’s that maid? Wake up, Margaret, for heaven’s sake!” or:
“What is there to laugh at that’s so darn funny?”
More and more the chief problem was the tactful management of Hubert Blair. Apart from his unwillingness to learn his lines, he was a satisfactory hero, but off the stage he became a nuisance. He gave an endless private performance for Evelyn Beebe, which took such forms as chasing her amorously around the hall or of flipping peanuts over his shoulder to land mysteriously on the stage. Called to order, he would mutter, “Aw, shut up yourself,” just loud enough for Basil to guess, but not to hear.
But Evelyn Beebe was all that Basil had expected. Once on the stage, she compelled a breathless attention, and Basil recognized this by adding to her part. He envied the half-sentimental fun that she and Hubert derived from their scenes together and he felt a vague, impersonal jealousy that almost every night after rehearsal they drove around together in Hubert’s car.
One afternoon when matters had progressed a fortnight, Hubert came in an hour late, loafed through the first act and then informed Miss Halliburton that he was going home.
“What for?” Basil demanded.
“I’ve got some things I got to do.”
“Are they important?”
“What business is that of yours?”
“Of course it’s my business,” said Basil heatedly, whereupon Miss Halliburton interfered.
“There’s no use of anybody getting angry. What Basil means, Hubert, is that if it’s just some small thing—why, we’re all giving up our pleasures to make this play a success.”
Hubert listened with obvious boredom.
“I’ve got to drive downtown and get father.”
He looked coolly at Basil, as if challenging him to deny the adequacy of this explanation.
“Then why did you come an hour late?” demanded Basil.
“Because I had to do something for mother.”
A group had gathered and he glanced around triumphantly. It was one of those sacred excuses, and only Basil saw that it was disingenuous.
“Oh, tripe!” he said.
“Maybe you think so—Bossy.”
Basil took a step toward him, his eyes blazing.
“What’d you say?”
“I said ‘Bossy.’ Isn’t that what they call you at school?”
It was true. It had followed him home. Even as he went white with rage a vast impotence surged over him at the realization that the past was always lurking near. The faces of school were around
