Photoplay (May 1921)

so Photoplay Magazine Co-isciously and with a deliberate effort of his will he pulled his gaze away and let it rest on the shadowy portrait of his grandfather over the white wood mantel. He too had been called Basil Crayne. Basil! Basil Crayne! What a mockery that name had become — what a mockery that all it had meant, all it could ha\ e meant in the world had been tossed away as lightly as a child discards a toy of which he is wear>'. When they found Basil after that midnight accident outside the roadhouse he had only two dollars and a few odd cents in his pockets. Two dollars and a few odd cents! — all that remained of the fortune that his father — their father — had left him. Even so, that was putting it charitably because in reality the fortune had \ anished long since. For the last two or three years Basil had been Ii\ ing on his wits. Exactly how he li\ed nobody knew. Cards, Hereward imagined. Cards and \ arious dubious transactions in oil wells and gold mines — that sort of riiljbish. For a time Hereward would have been glad to helj) him. He would have been glad to pension him just as he had pensioned the Ueans — a branch of his mcjther's famih who had fallen on evil days. But Basil would not accept his bounty. He was a beggar but he was a beggar too proud to accept charity. He threw 3'our offer back at you accomi^anied hy his eternal laughter. Then the time had come when he, Herew ard, could no longer even offer to help him. The thing had come which he, Hereward, could not forgix e. Not e\en now. Not even while Basil lay there, his sins, his incredible follies, his wild rebellious desires ready to be buried with him. ... People should arri\e any minute now. Hereward went upstairs to his study. Preceding down the hall he tapped lightly at Alethea's door. "Alethea, it's nine o'clock." ; He just managed to hear her muffled, '"^ es." "You'll be sure to go down when you're told it's time?" "\'es — yes — but leave me alone just a few minutes longer, Hereward." "It wouldn't look right, Alethea. if you didn't go down. There's talk enough as it is." "I understand, Hereward." He went on to his study and slumped into the chair before the spreading mahogany table-desk which has been his father's before him. In the brown tones of the room the reading lanij) cast a bright ring of yellow around Hereward. It fell full on his face and showed without mercy the worn lines at either side of the thin but straight, very red lips, the fine Roman nose, the dark circles beneath the steady gray eyes, the white threads in the iron-gray hair. Hereward ran true to his family type. With side whiskers and a frilled shirt and a stock he could ha\ e taken his grandfather's place in the jiortrait o\ er the m.mtel 1^ in the drawing-room. It was Basil with his ruddy gold lia' and his intensely blue eyes who had departed from the family appearance just as he had departed from the family's trad tions. Hereward picked up a leather bound copy of Marcus Aur lius which always lay ready upon his desk for him, but he four he couldn't read. The strain of waiting was at last beginnin: to tell on him. Prescnth there was a knock on his door and a slim noui man in black horn spectacles stood there to say, "Ever> bocl is here, sir. They're waiting for the family to come down." "Ha\e my son and daughter been told?" "Yes, sir, they're waiting for you at the head of the re stairs. The front hall is crowded with people." "And my wife?" "Mrs. Cravne is still in her room." "You told her?" " I knocked, sir. and she answered but I couldn't understai what she said." " I'll go to her." With his firm, unhurried tread he walked again to Alethez door; again he tapped. "They're waiting for us, Alethea." "Oh, Hereward, I — I can't go down." "You must go, Alethea." "Oh, Hereward" — her voice was like a thread ready to bre; with grief. "Alethea, this is little enough I ask of you under the circui stances. It is not of you or of myself I am thinking but of t name we bear." It was true that Alethea must go down. It was imperati that she be there beside him — beside him and his children w were not her children but those of his first wife. But he hop with all his soul that Alethea was not going to make a scei . . . He could hear the rustle of the people in the hall bcloi Her door, however, at last swung open and she stood there her white face glowing like a disembodied spirit, her bla dress accentuating the pallor of it. Her pale gold h: was wound closely around her small head. Afterwards when they were seated in the drawing-room that part near the bier which had been reserved for the fami he wondered if he had been wise in insisting that she appe; So i>ale she was he was afraid she might swoon dead away ir his arms. But not arms. No! E\'en while her senses l her she would fall the other way against those white lilies a copller^• lea\ es banked around the cofifin in which Basil Cray lay. There was a patter of notes from the piano, the tenor beg to sing in a high, clear, mournful \ oice. Hereward Crayne bowed his head, shading his eyes with t screen of one hand, his elbow resting on his knee. 1 le was conscious that the eyes of the (Continued 011 page I ANOTHER FOOL By HUGH HOLBROOK (Apologies to Mr. Kipling) A FOOL there was, and he thought he had, fE\cn as you and I.) .'\ dandy plot for a photoplay, So he '^hut himself from the world away. And . vorkcd by night and he worked by day; (Evv.n as you and 1.) Oh, the oil we waste and the toil wc waste. And the work of our head and hand Is scorned by the low-brows who never could know (And now we ha\ c proof that they never could know) And never could understand. A fool there was, and his stamps he spent, (Three little two's at a crack) Stamps and hope and a good intent. But it wasn't at all what the editors meant When they pleaded for STORIES, so back it was sent. (Why must they always come back?) Till at last he had the thing complete ; (We sometimes complete em, you know) Then he folded it twice with tender care. For a top-notch price breathed a hopeful prayer, He thought he could sell it any old where. (We always think that, you know.) But the manuscript spurned, the big effort returned. Is only the least of the shame. It's being reduced to the last lonely "jit, " And asking once more for the job that we quit. And — worse still ! — suspecting we can't write a bitThat takes all the joy from the game.