Talking for a moment with Le Moyne in the stag line, Basil was hesitantly jealous and oddly shy. He resented the tall form that stooped down so fiercely over Minnie as they danced, but he found it impossible to dislike him or not to be amused by the line of sober-faced banter he kept up with passing girls. He and William Gasper were the youngest boys here, as Bessie Belle and Minnie were the youngest girls, and for the first time in his life he wanted passionately to be older, less impressionable, less impressed. Quivering at every scent, sight or tune, he wanted to be blasé and calm. Wretchedly he felt the whole world of beauty pour down upon him like moonlight, pressing on him, making his breath now sighing, now short, as he wallowed helplessly in a superabundance of youth for which a hundred adults present would have given years of life.
Next day, meeting her in a world that had shrunk back to reality, things were more natural, but something was gone and he could not bring himself to be amusing and gay. It would be like being brave after the battle. He should have been all that the night before. They went downtown in an unpaired foursome and called at a photographer’s for some pictures of Minnie. Basil liked one proof that no one else liked—somehow, it reminded him of her as she had been in St. Paul—so he ordered two—one for her to keep and one to send after him to Yale. All afternoon she was distracted and vaguely singing, but back at the Cheevers’ she sprang up the steps at the sound of the phone inside. Ten minutes later she appeared, sulky and lowering, and Basil heard a quick exchange between the two girls:
“He can’t get out of it.”
“—a pity.”
“—back Friday.”
It could only be Le Moyne who had gone away, and to Minnie it mattered. Presently, unable to endure her disappointment, he got up wretchedly and suggested to William that they go home. To his surprise, Minnie’s hand on his arm arrested him.
“Don’t go, Basil. It doesn’t seem as if I’ve seen you a minute since you’ve been here.”
He laughed unhappily.
“As if it mattered to you.”
“Basil, don’t be silly.” She bit her lip as if she were hurt. “Let’s go out to the swing.”
He was suddenly radiant with hope and happiness. Her tender smile, which seemed to come from the heart of freshness, soothed him and he drank down her lies in grateful gulps like cool water. The last sunshine touched her cheeks with the unearthly radiance he had seen there before, as she told him how she hadn’t wanted to accept Le Moyne’s invitation, and how surprised and hurt she had been when he hadn’t come near her last night.
“Then do one thing, Minnie,” he pleaded: “Won’t you let me kiss you just once?”
“But not here,” she exclaimed, “you silly!”
“Let’s go in the summerhouse, for just a minute.”
“Basil, I can’t. Bessie Belle and William are on the porch. Maybe some other time.”
He looked at her distraught, unable to believe or disbelieve in her, and she changed the subject quickly:
“I’m going to Miss Beecher’s school, Basil. It’s only a few hours from New Haven. You can come up and see me this fall. The only thing is, they say you have to sit in glass parlors. Isn’t that terrible?”
“Awful,” he agreed fervently.
William and Bessie Belle had left the veranda and were out in front, talking to some people in a car.
“Minnie, come into the summerhouse now—for just a minute. They’re so far away.”
Her face set unwillingly.
“I can’t, Basil. Don’t you see I can’t?”
“Why not? I’ve got to leave tomorrow.”
“Oh, no.”
“I have to. I only have four days to get ready for my exams. Minnie—”
He took her hand. It rested calmly enough in his, but when he tried to pull her to her feet she plucked it sharply away. The swing moved with the little struggle and Basil put out his foot and made it stop. It was terrible to swing when one was at a disadvantage.
She laid the recovered hand on his knee.
“I’ve stopped kissing people, Basil. Really. I’m too old; I’ll be seventeen next May.”
“I’ll bet you kissed Le Moyne,” he said bitterly.
“Well, you’re pretty fresh—”
Basil got out of the swing.
“I think I’ll go.”
Looking up, she judged him dispassionately, as she never had before—his sturdy graceful figure; the high, warm color through his tanned skin; his black, shining hair that she had once thought so romantic. She felt, too—as even those who disliked him felt—that there was something else in his face—a mark, a hint of destiny, a persistence that was more than will, that was rather a necessity of pressing its own pattern on the world, of having its way. That he would most probably succeed at Yale, that it would be nice to go there this year as his girl, meant nothing to her. She had never needed to be calculating. Hesitating, she alternatingly drew him toward her in her mind and let him go. There were so many men and they wanted her so much. If Le Moyne had been here at hand she wouldn’t have hesitated, for nothing must interfere with the mysterious opening glory of that affair; but he was gone for three days and she couldn’t decide quite yet to let Basil go.
“Stay over till Wednesday and I’ll—I’ll do what you want,” she said.
“But I can’t. I’ve got these exams to study for. I ought to have left this afternoon.”
“Study on the train.”
She wriggled, dropped her hands in her lap and smiled at him. Taking her hand suddenly, he pulled her to her feet and toward the summerhouse and the cool darkness behind its vines.
II
The following Friday Basil arrived in New Haven and set about crowding five days’ work into two. He had done no studying on the train; instead he sat in a trance and concentrated upon Minnie, wondering what was happening now that Le Moyne was there. She had kept her promise to him, but only literally—kissed him once in the playhouse, once, grudgingly, the second evening; but the day of his departure there had been a telegram from Le Moyne, and in front of Bessie Belle she had not even dared to kiss him good-by. As a sort of amend she had given him permission to call on the first day permitted by Miss Beecher’s school.
The opening of college found him rooming with Brick Wales and George Dorsey in a suite of two bedrooms and a study in Wright Hall. Until the result of his trigonometry examination was published he was ineligible to play football, but watching the freshmen practice on Yale field, he saw that the quarterback position lay between Cullum, last year’s Andover captain, and a man named Danziger from a New Bedford high school. There was a rumor that Cullum would be moved to halfback. The other quarterbacks did not appear formidable and Basil felt a great impatience to be out there with a team in his hands to move over the springy turf. He was sure he could at least get in some of the games.
Behind everything, as a light showing through, was the image of Minnie; he would see her in a week, three days, tomorrow. On the eve of the occasion he ran into Fat Gaspar, who was in Sheff, in the oval by Haughton Hall. In the first busy weeks they had scarcely met; now they walked along for a little way together.
“We all came North together,” Fat said. “You ought to have been along. We had some excitement. Minnie got in a jam with Littleboy Le Moyne.”
Basil’s blood ran cold.
“It was funny afterward, but she was pretty scared for a while,” continued Fat. “She had a compartment with Bessie Belle, but she and Littleboy wanted to be alone; so in the afternoon Bessie Belle came and played cards in ours. Well, after about two hours Bessie Belle and I went back, and there were Minnie and Littleboy standing in the vestibule arguing with the conductor; Minnie white as a sheet. Seems they locked the door and pulled down the blinds, and I guess there was a little petting going on. When he came along after the tickets and knocked on the door, they thought it was us kidding them, and wouldn’t let him in at first, and when they did, he was pretty upset. He asked Littleboy if that was his compartment, and whether he and Minnie were married that they locked the door, and Littleboy lost his temper trying to explain that there was nothing wrong. He said the conductor had insulted Minnie and he wanted him to fight. But that conductor could have made trouble, and believe me, I had an awful time smoothing it all over.”
With every detail imagined, with every refinement of jealousy beating in his mind, including even envy for their community of misfortune as
