“Get out!” said Basil in a strained voice. “Go on! Get right out!”
Hubert laughed again, but as Basil took a step toward him he retreated.
“I don’t want to be in your play anyhow. I never did.”
“Then go on out of this hall.”
“Now, Basil!” Miss Halliburton hovered breathlessly beside them. Hubert laughed again and looked about for his cap.
“I wouldn’t be in your crazy old show,” he said. He turned slowly and jauntily, and sauntered out the door.
Riply Buckner read Hubert’s part that afternoon, but there was a cloud upon the rehearsal. Miss Beebe’s performance lacked its customary verve and the others clustered and whispered, falling silent when Basil came near. After the rehearsal, Miss Halliburton, Riply and Basil held a conference. Upon Basil flatly refusing to take the leading part, it was decided to enlist a certain Mayall De Bec, known slightly to Riply, who had made a name for himself in theatricals at the Central High School.
But next day a blow fell that was irreparable. Evelyn, flushed and uncomfortable, told Basil and Miss Halliburton that her family’s plans had changed—they were going East next week and she couldn’t be in the play after all. Basil understood. Only Hubert had held her this long.
“Goodbye,” he said gloomily.
His manifest despair shamed her and she tried to justify herself.
“Really, I can’t help it. Oh, Basil, I’m so sorry!”
“Couldn’t you stay over a week with me after your family goes?” Miss Halliburton asked innocently.
“Not possibly. Father wants us all to go together. That’s the only reason. If it wasn’t for that I’d stay.”
“All right,” Basil said. “Goodbye.”
“Basil, you’re not mad, are you?” A gust of repentance swept over her. “I’ll do anything to help. I’ll come to rehearsals this week until you get someone else, and then I’ll try to help her all I can. But father says we’ve got to go.”
In vain Riply tried to raise Basil’s morale after the rehearsal that afternoon, making suggestions which he waved contemptuously away. Margaret Torrence? Connie Davies? They could hardly play the parts they had. It seemed to Basil as if the undertaking was falling to pieces before his eyes.
It was still early when he got home. He sat dispiritedly by his bedroom window, watching the little Barnfield boy playing a lonesome game by himself in the yard next door.
His mother came in at five, and immediately sensed his depression.
“Teddy Barnfield has the mumps,” she said, in an effort to distract him. “That’s why he’s playing there all alone.”
“Has he?” he responded listlessly.
“It isn’t at all dangerous, but it’s very contagious. You had it when you were seven.”
“H’m.”
She hesitated.
“Are you worrying about your play? Has anything gone wrong?”
“No, mother. I just want to be alone.”
After a while he got up and started after a malted milk at the soda fountain around the corner. It was half in his mind to see Mr. Beebe and ask him if he couldn’t postpone his trip East. If he could only be sure that that was Evelyn’s real reason.
The sight of Evelyn’s nine-year-old brother coming along the street broke in on his thoughts.
“Hello, Ham. I hear you’re going away.”
Ham nodded.
“Going next week. To the seashore.”
Basil looked at him speculatively, as if, through his proximity to Evelyn, he held the key to the power of moving her.
“Where are you going now?” he asked.
“I’m going to play with Teddy Barnfield.”
“What!” Basil exclaimed. “Why, didn’t you know—” He stopped. A wild, criminal idea broke over him; his mother’s words floated through his mind: “It isn’t at all dangerous, but it’s very contagious.” If little Ham Beebe got the mumps, and Evelyn couldn’t go away—
He came to a decision quickly and coolly.
“Teddy’s playing in his back yard,” he said. “If you want to see him without going through his house, why don’t you go down this street and turn up the alley?”
“All right. Thanks,” said Ham trustingly.
Basil stood for a minute looking after him until he turned the corner into the alley, fully aware that it was the worst thing he had ever done in his life.
III
A week later Mrs. Lee had an early supper—all Basil’s favorite things: chipped beef, french-fried potatoes, sliced peaches and cream, and devil’s food.
Every few minutes Basil said, “Gosh! I wonder what time it is,” and went out in the hall to look at the clock. “Does that clock work right?” he demanded with sudden suspicion. It was the first time the matter had ever interested him.
“Perfectly all right. If you eat so fast you’ll have indigestion and then you won’t be able to act well.”
“What do you think of the program?” he asked for the third time. “Riply Buckner, Jr., presents Basil Duke Lee’s comedy, ‘The Captured Shadow.’ ”
“I think it’s very nice.”
“He doesn’t really present it.”
“It sounds very well though.”
“I wonder what time it is?” he inquired.
“You just said it was ten minutes after six.”
“Well, I guess I better be starting.”
“Eat your peaches, Basil. If you don’t eat you won’t be able to act.”
“I don’t have to act,” he said patiently. “All I am is a small part, and it wouldn’t matter—” It was too much trouble to explain.
“Please don’t smile at me when I come on, mother,” he requested. “Just act as if I was anybody else.”
“Can’t I even say how-do-you-do?”
“What?” Humor was lost on him. He said goodbye. Trying very hard to digest not his food but his heart, which had somehow slipped down into his stomach, he started off for the Martindale School.
As its yellow windows loomed out of the night his excitement became insupportable; it bore no resemblance to the building he had been entering so casually for three weeks. His footsteps echoed symbolically and portentously in its deserted hall; upstairs there was only the janitor setting out the chairs in rows, and Basil wandered about the vacant stage until someone came in.
It was Mayall De Bec, the tall, clever, not very likeable youth they had imported from Lower Crest Avenue to be the leading man.
