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—” “When 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
