“Oh, nothing.”
“But what? Tell me what he said.”
After a minute she told him, as if reluctantly: “Well, he and Hubert Blair said you thought--you thought you were wonderful.” Her heart misgave her.
But she remembered he had asked her for only one dance. “Joe said you told him that all the girls thought you were wonderful.”
“I never said anything like that,” said Basil indignantly, “never!”
He understood--Joe Gorman had done it all, taken advantage of Basil’s talking too much--an affliction which his real friends had always allowed for--in order to ruin him. The world was suddenly compact of villainy. He decided to go home.
In the coat room he was accosted by Bill Kampf: “Hello, Basil, how did you hurt your lip?”
“Cut it shaving.”
“Say, are you going to this party they’re getting up next week?”
“No.”
“Well, look, I’ve got a cousin from Chicago coming to stay with us and mother said I could have a boy out for the week-end. Her name is Minnie Bibble.”
“Minnie Bibble?” repeated Basil, vaguely revolted.
“I thought maybe you were going to that party, too, but Riply Buckner said to ask you and I thought--”
“I’ve got to stay home,” said Basil quickly.
“Oh, come on, Basil,” he pursued. “It’s only for two days, and she’s a nice girl. You’d like her.”
“I don’t know,” Basil considered. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Bill. I’ve got to get the street car home. I’ll come out for the week-end if you’ll take me over to Wildwood now in your car.”
“Sure I will.”
Basil walked out on the veranda and approached Connie Davies.
“Good-by,” he said. Try as he might, his voice was stiff and proud. “I had an awfully good time.”
“I’m sorry you’re leaving so early, Basil.” But she said to herself: “He’s too stuck up to have a good time. He thinks he’s wonderful.”
From the veranda he could hear Imogene’s laughter down at the end of the pier. Silently he went down the steps and along the walk to meet Bill Kampf, giving strollers a wide berth as though he felt the sight of him would diminish their pleasure.
It had been an awful night.
Ten minutes later Bill dropped him beside the waiting trolley. A few last picnickers sauntered aboard and the car bobbed and clanged through the night toward St. Paul.
Presently two young girls sitting opposite Basil began looking over at him and nudging each other, but he took no notice--he was thinking how sorry they would all be--Imogene and Margaret, Joe and Hubert and Riply.
“Look at him now!” they would say to themselves sorrowfully. “President of the United States at twenty-five! Oh, if we only hadn’t been so bad to him that night!”
He thought he was wonderful!
IV
Ermine Gilberte Labouisse Bibble was in exile. Her parents had brought her from New Orleans to Southampton in May, hoping that the active outdoor life proper to a girl of fifteen would take her thoughts from love. But North or South, a storm of sappling arrows flew about her. She was “engaged” before the first of June.
Let it not be gathered from the foregoing that the somewhat hard outlines of Miss Bibble at twenty had already begun to appear. She was of a radiant freshness; her head had reminded otherwise not illiterate young men of damp blue violets, pierced with blue windows that looked into a bright soul, with today’s new roses showing through.
She was in exile. She was going to Glacier National Park to forget. It was written that in passage she would come to Basil as a sort of initiation, turning his eyes out from himself and giving him a first dazzling glimpse into the world of love.
She saw him first as a quiet handsome boy with an air of consideration in his face, which was the mark of his recent re-discovery that others had wills as strong as his, and more power. It appeared to Minnie--as a few months back it had appeared to Margaret Torrence, like a charming sadness. At dinner he was polite to Mrs. Kampf in a courteous way that he had from his father, and he listened to Mr. Bibble’s discussion of the word “Creole” with such evident interest and appreciation that Mr. Bibble thought, “Now here’s a young boy with something to him.”
After dinner, Minnie, Basil and Bill rode into Black Bear village to the movies, and the slow diffusion of Minnie’s charm and personality presently became the charm and personality of the affair itself.
It was thus that all Minnie’s affairs for many years had a family likeness. She looked at Basil, a childish open look; then opened her eyes wider as if she had some sort of comic misgivings, and smiled--she smiled--
For all the candor of this smile, the effect--because of the special contours of Minnie’s face and independent of her mood--was sparkling invitation. Whenever it appeared Basil seemed to be suddenly inflated and borne upward, a little farther each time, only to be set down when the smile had reached a point where it must become a grin, and chose instead to melt away. It was like a drug. In a little while he wanted nothing except to watch it with a vast buoyant delight.
Then he wanted to see how close he could get to it.
There is a certain stage of an affair between young people when the presence of a third party is a stimulant. Before the second day had well begun, before Minnie and Basil had progressed beyond the point of great gross compliments about each other’s surpassing beauty and charm, both of them had begun to think about the time when they could get rid of their host, Bill Kampf.
In the late afternoon, when the first cool of the evening had come down and they were fresh and thin-feeling from swimming, they sat in a cushioned swing, piled high with pillows and shaded by the thick veranda vines; Basil put his arm around her and leaned toward her cheek and Minnie managed it that he touched her fresh lips instead. And he had always learned things quickly.
They sat there for an hour, while Bill’s voice reached them, now from the pier, now from the hall above, now from the pagoda at the end of the garden, and three saddled horses chafed their bits in the stable and all around them the bees worked faithfully among the flowers. Then Minnie reached up to reality, and they allowed themselves to be found--
“Why, we were looking for you too.”
And Basil, by simply waving his arms and wishing, floated miraculously upstairs to brush his hair for dinner.
“She certainly is a wonderful girl. Oh, gosh, she certainly is a wonderful girl!”
He mustn’t lose his head. At dinner and afterward he listened with unwavering deferential attention while Mr. Bibble talked of the boll weevil.
“But I’m boring you. You children want to go off by yourselves.”
“Not at all, Mr. Bibble. I was very interested--honestly.”
“Well, you all go on and amuse yourselves. I didn’t realize time was getting on. Nowadays it’s so seldom you meet a young man with good manners and good common sense in his head, that an old man like me is likely to go along forever.”
Bill walked down with Basil and Minnie to the end of the pier. “Hope we’ll have a good sailing tomorrow. Say, I’ve got to drive over to the village and get somebody for my crew. Do you want to come along?”
“I reckon I’ll sit here for a while and then go to bed,” said Minnie.
“All right. You want to come, Basil?”
“Why--why, sure, if you want me, Bill.”
“You’ll have to sit on a sail I’m taking over to be mended.”
“I don’t want to crowd you.”
“You won’t crowd me. I’ll go get the car.”
When he had gone they looked at each other in despair. But he did not come back for an hour--something happened about the sail or the car that took a long time. There was only the threat, making everything more poignant and breathless, that at any minute he would be coming.
By and by they got into the motorboat and sat close together murmuring: “This fall--” “When you come to New Orleans--” “Wh
en I go to Yale year after next--” “When I come North to school--” “When I get back from Glacier Park--” “Kiss me once more.” . . . “You’re terrible. Do you know you’re terrible? . . . You’re absolutely terrible--”
The water lapped against the posts; sometimes the boat bumped gently on the pier; Basil undid one rope and pushed, so that they swung off and way from the pier, and became a little island in the night. . .
. . . next morning, while he packed his bag, she opened the door of his room and stood beside him. Her face shone with excitement; her dress was starched and white.
“Basil, listen! I have to tell you: Father was talking after breakfast and he told Uncle George that he’d never met such a nice, quiet, level-headed boy as you, and Cousin Bill’s got to tutor this month, so father asked Uncle George if he thought your family would let you go to Glacier Park with us for two weeks so I’d have some company.” They took hands and danced excitedly around the room. “Don’t say anything about it, because I reckon he’ll have to write your mother and everything. Basil, isn’t it wonderful?”
So when Basil left at eleven, there was no misery in their parting. Mr. Bibble, going into the village for a paper, was going to escort Basil to his train, and till the motor-car moved away the eyes of the two young people shone and there was a secret in their waving hands.
Basil sank back in the seat, replete with happiness. He relaxed--to have made a success of the visit was so nice. He loved her--he loved even her father sitting beside him, her father who was privileged to be so close to her, to fuddle himself at that smile.
Mr. Bibble lit a cigar. “Nice weather,” he said. “Nice climate up to the end of October.”
“Wonderful,” agreed Basil. “I miss October now that I go East to school.”
“Getting ready for college?”
“Yes, sir; getting ready for Yale.” A new pleasurable thought occurred to him. He hesitated, but he knew that Mr. Bibble, who liked him, would share his joy. “I took my preliminaries this spring and I just heard from them--I passed six out of seven.”
“Good for you!”
Again Basil hesitated, then he continued: “I got A in ancient history and B in English history and English A. And I got C in algebra A and Latin A and B. I failed French A.”
“Good!” said Mr. Bibble.
“I should have passed them all,” went on Basil, “but I didn’t study hard at first. I was the youngest boy in my class and I had a sort of swelled head about it.”
It was well that Mr. Bibble should know he was taking no dullard to Glacier National Park. Mr. Bibble took a long puff of his cigar.
On second thought, Basil decided that his last remark didn’t have the right ring and he amended it a little.
“It wasn’t exactly a swelled head, but I never had to study very much, because in English I’d usually read most of the books before, and in history I’d read a lot too.” He broke off and tried again: “I mean, when you say swelled head you think of a boy just going around with his head swelled, sort of, saying, ‘Oh, look how much I know!’ Well, I wasn’t like that. I mean, I didn’t think I knew everything, but I was sort of--”
As he searched for the elusive word, Mr. Bibble said, “H’m!” and pointed with his cigar at a spot in the lake.
“There’s a boat,” he said.
“Yes,” agreed Basil. “I don’t know much about sailing. I never cared for it. Of course I’ve been out a lot, just tending boards and all that, but most of the time you have to sit with nothing to do. I like football.”
“H’m!” said Mr. Bibble. “When I was your age I was out in the Gulf in a catboat every day.”
“I guess it’s fun if you like it,” conceded Basil.
“Happiest days of my life.”
The station was in sight. It occurred to Basil that he should make one final friendly gesture.
“Your daughter certainly is an attractive girl, Mr. Bibble,” he said. “I usually get along with girls all right, but I don’t usually like them very much. But I think your daughter is the most attractive girl I ever met.” Then, as the car stopped, a faint misgiving overtook him and he was impelled to add with a disparaging little laugh. “Good-by. I hope I didn’t talk too much.”
“Not at all,” said Mr. Bibble. “Good luck to you. Goo’-by.”
A few minutes later, when Basil’s train had pulled out, Mr. Bibble stood at the newsstand buying a paper and already drying his forehead against the hot July day.
“Yes, sir! That was a lesson not to do anything in a hurry,” he was saying to himself vehemently. “Imagine listening to that fresh kid gabbling about himself all through Glacier Park! Thank the good Lord for that little ride!”
On his arrival home, Basil literally sat down and waited. Under no pretext would he leave the house save for short trips to the drug store for refreshments, whence he returned on a full run. The sound of the telephone or the door-bell galvanized him into the rigidity of the electric chair.
That afternoon he composed a wondrous geographical poem, which he mailed to Minnie:
Of all the fair flowers of Paris,
Of all the red roses of Rome,
Of all the deep tears of Vienna
The sadness wherever you roam,
I think of that night by the lakeside,
The beam of the moon and stars,
And the smell of an aching like perfume,
The tune of the Spanish guitars.
But Monday passed and most of Tuesday and no word came. Then, late in the afternoon of the second day, as he moved vaguely from room to room looking out of different windows into a barren lifeless street, Minnie called him on the phone.
“Yes?” His heart was beating wildly.
“Basil, we’re going this afternoon.”
“Going!” he repeated blankly.
“Oh, Basil, I’m so sorry. Father changed his mind about taking anybody West with us.”
“Oh!”
“I’m so sorry, Basil.”
“I probably couldn’t have gone.”
There was a moment’s silence. Feeling her presence over the wire, he could scarcely breathe, much less speak.
“Basil, can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“We may come back this way. Anyhow, remember we’re going to meet this winter in New York.”
“Yes,” he said, and he added suddenly: “Perhaps we won’t ever meet again.”
“Of course we will. They’re calling me, Basil. I’ve got to go. Good-by.”
He sat down beside the telephone, wild with grief. The maid found him half an hour later bowed over the kitchen table. He knew what had happened as well as if Minnie had told him. He had made the same old error, undone the behavior of three days in half an hour. It would have been no consolation if it had occurred to him that it was just as well. Somewhere on the trip he would have let go and things might have been worse--though perhaps not so sad. His only thought now was that she was gone.
He lay on his bed, baffled, mistaken, miserable but not beaten. Time after time, the same vitality that had led his spirit to a scourging made him able to shake off the blood like water not to forget, but to carry his wounds with him to new disasters and new atonements--toward his unknown destiny.
Two days later his mother told him that on condition of his keeping the batteries on charge, and washing it once a week, his grandfather had consented to let him use the electric whenever it was idle in the afternoon. Two hours later he was out in it, gliding along Crest Avenue at the maximum speed permitted by the gears and trying to lean back as if it were a Stutz Bearcat. Imogene Bissel waved at him from in front of her house and he came to an uncertain stop.
“You’ve got a car!”
“It’s grandfather’s,” he said modestly. “I thought you were up on that party at the St. Croix.”
She shook her head. “Mother wouldn’t let me go--only a few girls went. There was a big accident over in Minneapolis and mother won’t even let me rid
e in a car unless there’s someone over eighteen driving.”
“Listen, Imogene, do you suppose your mother meant electrics?”
“Why, I never thought--I don’t know. I could go and see.”
“Tell your mother it won’t go over twelve miles an hour,” he called after her.
A minute later she ran joyfully down the walk. “I can go, Basil,” she cried. “Mother never heard of any wrecks in an electric. What’ll we do?”
“Anything,” he said in a reckless voice. “I didn’t mean that about this bus making only twelve miles an hour--it’ll make fifteen. Listen, let’s go down to Smith’s and have a claret lemonade.”
“Why, Basil Lee!”
THE CAPTURED SHADOW
Basil Duke Lee shut the front door behind him and turned on the dining-room light. His mother’s voice drifted sleepily downstairs:
“Basil, is that you?”
“No, mother, it’s a burglar.”
“It seems to me twelve o’clock is pretty late for a fifteen-year-old boy.”
“We went to Smith’s and had a soda.”
Whenever a new responsibility devolved upon Basil he was “a boy almost sixteen,” but when a privilege was in question, he was “a fifteen-year-old boy.”
There were footsteps above, and Mrs. Lee, in kimono, descended to the first landing.
“Did you and Riply enjoy the play?”
“Yes, very much.”
“What was it about?”
“Oh, it was just about this man. Just an ordinary play.”
“Didn’t it have a name?”
“‘Are You a Mason?’“
“Oh.” She hesitated, covetously watching his alert and eager face, holding him there. “Aren’t you coming to bed?”
“I’m going to get something to eat.”
“Something more?”
For a moment he didn’t answer. He stood in front of a glassed-in bookcase in the living room, examining its contents with an equally glazed eye.
“We’re going to get up a play,” he said suddenly. “I’m going to write it.”
“Well--that’ll be very nice. Please come to bed soon. You were up late last night, too, and you’ve got dark circles under your eyes.”
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 206
