“Heigh-ho, Basil,” she said.
She had not quite forgiven him for holding her to her promise after her little brother’s mumps had postponed their trip East, and Basil had tactfully avoided her, but now they met in the genial glow of excitement and success.
“You were wonderful,” he said—“Wonderful!”
He lingered a moment. He could never please her, for she wanted someone like herself, someone who could reach her through her senses, like Hubert Blair. Her intuition told her that Basil was of a certain vague consequence; beyond that his incessant attempts to make people think and feel, bothered and wearied her. But suddenly, in the glow of the evening, they leaned forward and kissed peacefully, and from that moment, because they had no common ground even to quarrel on, they were friends for life.
When the curtain rose upon the second act Basil slipped down a flight of stairs and up to another to the back of the hall, where he stood watching in the darkness. He laughed silently when the audience laughed, enjoying it as if it were a play he had never seen before.
There was a second and a third act scene that were very similar. In each of them The Shadow, alone on the stage, was interrupted by Miss Saunders. Mayall De Bec, having had but ten days of rehearsal, was inclined to confuse the two, but Basil was totally unprepared for what happened. Upon Connie’s entrance Mayall spoke his third-act line and involuntarily Connie answered in kind.
Others coming on the stage were swept up in the nervousness and confusion, and suddenly they were playing the third act in the middle of the second. It happened so quickly that for a moment Basil had only a vague sense that something was wrong. Then he dashed down one stairs and up another and into the wings, crying:
“Let down the curtain! Let down the curtain!”
The boys who stood there aghast sprang to the rope. In a minute Basil, breathless, was facing the audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “there’s been changes in the cast and what just happened was a mistake. If you’ll excuse us we’d like to do that scene over.”
He stepped back in the wings to a flutter of laughter and applause.
“All right, Mayall!” he called excitedly. “On the stage alone. Your line is: ‘I just want to see that the jewels are all right,’ and Connie’s is: ‘Go ahead, don’t mind me.’ All right! Curtain up!”
In a moment things righted themselves. Someone brought water for Miss Halliburton, who was in a state of collapse, and as the act ended they all took a curtain call once more. Twenty minutes later it was over. The hero clasped Leilia Van Baker to his breast, confessing that he was The Shadow, “and a captured Shadow at that”; the curtain went up and down, up and down; Miss Halliburton was dragged unwillingly on the stage and the ushers came up the aisles laden with flowers. Then everything became informal and the actors mingled happily with the audience, laughing and important, congratulated from all sides. An old man whom Basil didn’t know came up to him and shook his hand, saying, “You’re a young man that’s going to be heard from some day,” and a reporter from the paper asked him if he was really only fifteen. It might all have been very bad and demoralizing for Basil, but it was already behind him. Even as the crowd melted away and the last few people spoke to him and went out, he felt a great vacancy come into his heart. It was over, it was done and gone—all that work, and interest and absorption. It was a hollowness like fear.
“Good night, Miss Halliburton. Good night, Evelyn.”
“Good night, Basil. Congratulations, Basil. Good night.”
“Where’s my coat? Good night, Basil.”
“Leave your costumes on the stage, please. They’ve got to go back tomorrow.”
He was almost the last to leave, mounting to the stage for a moment and looking around the deserted hall. His mother was waiting and they strolled home together through the first cool night of the year.
“Well, I thought it went very well indeed. Were you satisfied?” He didn’t answer for a moment. “Weren’t you satisfied with the way it went?”
“Yes.” He turned his head away.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” and then, “Nobody really cares, do they?”
“About what?”
“About anything.”
“Everybody cares about different things. I care about you, for instance.”
Instinctively he ducked away from a hand extended caressingly toward him: “Oh, don’t. I don’t mean like that.”
“You’re just overwrought, dear.”
“I am not overwrought. I just feel sort of sad.”
“You shouldn’t feel sad. Why, people told me after the play—”
“Oh, that’s all over. Don’t talk about that—don’t ever talk to me about that any more.”
“Then what are you sad about?”
“Oh, about a little boy.”
“What little boy?”
“Oh, little Ham—you wouldn’t understand.”
“When we get home I want you to take a real hot bath and quiet your nerves.”
“All right.”
But when he got home he fell immediately into deep sleep on the sofa. She hesitated. Then covering him with a blanket and a comforter, she pushed a pillow under his protesting head and went upstairs.
She knelt for a long time beside her bed.
“God, help him! help him,” she prayed, “because he needs help that I can’t give him any more.”
Colophon
Short Fiction
was compiled from short stories published between 1917 and 1928 by
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Hendrik Kaiber,
and is based on transcriptions from
various sources
and on digital scans from
various sources.
The cover page is adapted from
My Daughter Gladys,
a painting completed in 1913 by
Irving R. Wiles.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
September 12, 2024, 6:37 p.m.
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