Part 13

“Let me tell you,” the young man begged. “Last night for me was—horrible. I was here to help my mother. I’d got tied up in that ghastly net, perfectly innocent of it all. My mother was going to hear, instead of the good news I’d hoped to send, that I was to be hung for murder. It would kill her—kill her with torture. And I couldn’t do—one thing. I thought of you, of course, and it came to me what you’d said that morning as I went off—do you remember? You said: ‘If I can ever do anything for you you’ll try to let me know, won’t you?’ That pleased me, you know, bishop. I’d never met anybody like you, and that you should take the trouble seemed wonderful. I knew you meant it, too. So last night in my trouble I thought of that and of how I did not know even your name. It’s an odd thing to talk about to any one, bishop, but I have to tell you. I prayed. Prayed for all I was worth that you’d help me—that you should be let know. I said aloud over and over: ‘Make him go to Lancaster—go to Lancaster.’ I thought with all my strength; I tried to get a word to you, somewhere, somehow—I couldn’t tell where or how. And it got there. Good Lord!” the boy gasped.

The bishop gazed at him thoughtfully. “Yes, it got there. It’s wonderful, of course—most things are wonderful. But it doesn’t surprise me. It’s not the first time that the Lord has made his angels messengers. ‘Angel’ means messenger, as you know—that’s their business. I wish I could get that face,” he complained half to himself. “It bothers me.”

The great young fellow was shaking. He stared with enormous eyes at the bishop. He was beyond words. But the bishop smiled his quaint, queer smile and went on quietly.

“Doctor Fletcher, whom you met just now, would call this affair suggestion or telepathy. I call it ‘the Lord’s doing, and marvellous in our eyes.’ Probably we mean the same thing—a mere difference of phraseology.”

The boy burst forth. “It was my angel of life. He and you gave me my life. Bishop—I don’t know how to say it, but—I’d do anything. If only I could show you!”

The bishop reached across the table and laid his long, steady hand on the trembling fingers. “I’m going to ask you to do something,” he said reassuringly.

“Will you?” The boy’s face lighted.

“But tell me about yourself and your plans.” And in a few words it was told; a meagre story, yet wide with courage and manliness. “So you’re only from Australia this six months, and you’ve got no friends and practically no prospects,” the old churchman reflected aloud, and then was still, his eyes alive with thought. “My boy, I’ll just say a word—first. I intend to look after you. You’ve dropped into my clutches, and I mean to clutch you. You’re the best thing that could have happened to me on earth. If you’ll do one thing for me.”

“What?” the astonished young man threw at him.

“I didn’t quite finish my story. You must wonder why I told it to you. You have it in your mind? That I ruined a man’s career? Deliberately, out of jealousy and hatred I ruined a man’s career?”

“Yes,” the boy answered and smiled, but the bishop did not smile.

“Do you want to know the man’s name?”

“Yes.” No faintest thought of what was coming concentrated the vague surprise of his mind. The bishop’s dark, luminous eyes played across him. A cricket sang his sudden drowsy song from the lily bed.

“The man’s name was Basil Lynn,” said the bishop.

The boy stared blankly for a long minute. Then: “You mean—it was—my father?” he brought out in successive shocks of words.

“Yes.” The grave eyes read him.

“Then—it must have been my mother—it was she—who hurt you?”

“Yes.”

The boy waited, battling for the ground under his feet. At length he lifted his head, and his eyes met the older man’s with a collected seriousness. “What is the thing I can do for you, bishop?”

Over the face of the old clergyman, as he watched, came a deep sadness. “Perhaps—I’m afraid—it’s asking too much of you,” he said. “I want you, in your father’s name, to forgive me.”

A flame leaped into the boy’s look. “Bishop—oh, bishop!” He bent and caught the old hands as if they were a woman’s hands. “As if there could be any debt between us that wasn’t _all_ on my side,” he cried. “She—my own mother, who is me—she made you unhappy and drove you to the one wrong thing you ever did. But we won’t talk about it!” He was very close to the black-clothed, quiet figure, and his big fingers fell on the bishop’s shoulder. “Talking’s no use—it’s time that tells. Wait till I can put in years to prove that I mean what I say. You’ll let me be—the rest of your life—a little bit what a son might have been?”

He stooped anxiously to the face below, and with that he saw that the eyes of the bishop were filled with tears. And through them he was smiling.

“It’s _just_ the sort of boy I like,” brought out the bishop emphatically. “My son—the rest of my life. But—” He stopped a moment and then spoke in a delighted tone. “That’s wonderful,” he said. “That’s the greatest thing anybody in the world could do for me. And you’re the only one who could do it. But it isn’t for long, my dear—” He hesitated a mere second. “Doctor Fletcher told me to-day that I’ve only two months more to live.”

At the quiet, cheerful words the lad started erect, horror-struck, and through the boughs of the great oak a slanting sun-ray fell suddenly on his young face and played there, and the bishop tossed up his hand sharply.

“The face!” he cried out. “It was your face! Your angel of life!” and then, as the lad dropped on his knees and bent his head wordless on the table before him, the bishop laid his hand on the fair hair as if in a benediction, and suddenly once again the queer sidewise smile, amused, whimsical, lighted his face.

“My angel of death,” said the bishop.

AMICI

AMICI

Who cares for the burden, the night, and the rain, And the long, steep, lonely road? When out of the darkness a light shines plain, And a voice calls hail and a friend draws rein With a hand for the stubborn load?

He strolled across the road and stood with both hands on the rail which guarded the landslide, and looked into the distance. Below him, at the foot of the landslide and rolling to the river and lodged in the hollows were tin cans and burnt-out kettles and broken china; the Western city had dumped its refuse along this way. From below, untidy children screamed in an untidy garden. But he did not hear or see these things.

Back of him a woman ran down a path to the gate which he had left swinging, and latched it and stood a moment watching him. All his life he had looked into the distance, she considered. A smile came, for the woman loved him. She lingered, gazing at the tall figure with its air of distinction, its shabby clothes. A breeze lifted the loose hair, and she knew, though his back was turned, how a brown-gray lock had blown across the broad forehead—the forehead of a thinker, a dreamer. She sighed. The wife of an unsuccessful inventor is likely to sigh often. She turned to go back, but a little lad scrambled suddenly over the fence.

“Letter, Mrs. Ellsworth,” he exploded. “Mother says come s’afternoon. Mother says postman made mistake.” He was scrambling back in the same second, with consistent suddenness.

She looked at the letter, saw that it was addressed to her husband, glanced at him, and went with it into the house.

The man, unconscious, still stood with those glowing eyes miles off, where the river widened and lawns sloped to it and large houses overlooked it. He threw back his head and gazed high into the orange and rosy sky, and laughed.

“Up as far as that gold-edged fellow—farther. It seems queer that I’ll be swimming there before long. But I shall. And _my_ aeroplane won’t tip over.” He thrust his hands into his pockets and smiled happily. “I’ve done it; just to get it on the market and I’ll have made good. I’ll have earned my place in the world. And a fortune for Margaret and Jack. Her drudgery over. Margaret,” he repeated half aloud; and again: “Margaret.” Then a cloud drowned the brightness from his face. “If I could get money for the model,” he spoke aloud. “The thing is so sure. It’s a hideous joke not to have a thousand or two now.”

His mind, working this way and that trying to find a solution for the problem, his thought travelling along all possible ways, came shortly on another thought, stirring sorely at a touch.

“The fellows,” he murmured. “A lot of them have money.” He drew his hand sharply from his pocket and thumped on the rail. His dreamy eyes flashed. “Not if I starve,” he cried. “Never that. I won’t poison the memory of college days. I’ve got my place among them yet; they don’t know; nobody knows.”

He dived into a coatpocket, and brought out a letter. Looking over his shoulder, one might have read that the class of such a year of Yale University would hold its thirtieth reunion three months from the date; that it was hoped that John Ellsworth of this class would be present; that he was requested to let the class secretary know. Signed with a name which brought to the man’s lips a half-laugh.

“Little old Saint Peter,” he murmured.

With that his face was grim. Peter Price had sent a letter with the formal notice; a friendly, easy letter, taking it for granted that all of the “boys” would bring to Alma Mater this June some simple gifts of the years. Such gifts as success and good spirits and manly work well done; money to enrich Yale perhaps; perhaps big lads to carry on her banner; perhaps honored names for her roll of fame. The man’s head bent farther over the flimsy rail. He caught at it again with both hands. He stared, not away now at the gleaming, darkening river, but at the rubbish—broken pottery, old chair-legs, things whose day was done. His day was done; he was fifty-two, and had not made good; he was a failure. They had expected great things of him; he was to have been a Newton, an Edison. He was to have made the class illustrious; they had said it, patting him on the shoulder in generous boy fashion, that last day in New Haven almost thirty years ago. He remembered well how, a dozen boys, they had stood together on the campus, under the elms, very tender-hearted over each other at this parting of the ways, very shamefaced at their unaccustomed softness. Jimmy Pendleton, his chum, with an arm stretched to Ellsworth’s shoulder—for Jimmy was short and chubby—had fallen into prophecy.

“We’re all great men, that’s sure, but it’s Johnny who’s going to be our crown of glory. He’s going to invent things. Flying-machines will be play. You listen while I tell you that this class will be known as the class of John Ellsworth.” And the others had growled assent in deep, friendly young voices, while Ellsworth called them all “darn fools,” with love and gratitude bursting his ribs. He had felt fairly sure that Jimmy was right.

“Apollo, too,” Jimmy went on, for Ellsworth had been voted the “best-looking man.” “And our star singster. I’m no inventor, and I can’t sing, and something tells me I’m no beauty either,” and he rumpled his shoe-brush black hair sorrowfully.

Again the group agreed cordially. “You sure are not, my son.” Peter Price had spoken. “You’re neither inspired nor beautiful—so’s you’d notice it; but don’t worry, you may be an honest man yet.”

Ellsworth, across the stretch of years, recalled such details. The years had been before him then, and sunshine had flooded them. But one by one his inventions had gone wrong; fate had been against him. And now that he had at last a certainty he must wait, honor and wealth within reach of his hand, till some other man, whose hand was not weighted by poverty, should lift it and grasp success. It is a thing that happens to inventors; many times a man has died broken-hearted close to his heart’s desire.

“Down and out,” Ellsworth said. And stood, bent, in the twilight.

So he turned and came slowly to the large, old, half-empty house, and a sound of music floated to him, and a light shone through the curtained glass. He halted. He must not frighten her. He opened the door, trying for commonplace cheerfulness. But she saw. She was playing at her old tinkling piano; the music stopped.

“What is it, John?”

It was futile to lie to Margaret. “Just bothered over my job,” he said.

Her arm was about his neck. He drew her down beside him on a sofa, and like an unhappy child laid his head against her shoulder.

“Don’t bother, dearest,” she spoke.

“It’s not just that, Margaret,” he said then. “It’s everything. I’m down and out. I’ve kept you down with me. You might have been rich, happy—”

“I am happy,” she interrupted.

“You’re wonderful,” he said. “My best friend; my only friend now. I used to have a lot and they’re all gone. Except you, my darling, I haven’t a friend in the world.”

“John, don’t,” she begged. “It’s not our affair if we have friends. We’ve just got to live our lives as well as we can, and let the rest come or go.” Her eyes fell on the letter. “For you, John. It might be from a friend, this very letter. Read it, dear. It’s from New York. It might be good news.”

He shook his head; then tore the envelope. As he read his face darkened. His wife waited.

“What is it?”

He stared angrily at the paper. “It’s—insult,” he said. “Read it.”

She took it from him and the man went and stood with his head against the mantel, his face in his folded arms. She read, and waited a long minute, considering. “I can’t see it that way.”

He whirled about. “You can’t see it as an insult that some man should want to pay my way? As if I were a pauper?”

The woman considered again. “We’re not paupers, but we’re—poor. This man must be rich. He must be fond of you to want you there. He must have a feeling for other people’s feelings, because he keeps back his name so that you won’t have any burden of gratitude. That’s fine-grained and delicate of him.” She looked again at the letter. “The secretary, Mr. Price, says that no one but he himself and the man himself will ever know.” She waited a moment, tense, biting her lip, thinking hard. Then: “I want you to go, John,” she broke out beseechingly.

“Go?” He looked at her in amazement. “Go? On charity?”

“Not charity, friendship,” she insisted. “Think about it. You care a lot for your class; suppose you had plenty of money and heard that one of them had none—wouldn’t you be eager to do this very thing? Could you do it in a kinder way? Wouldn’t you think it selfish of him to refuse you the joy of doing that? Isn’t it as big to take generously as to give generously? He has a chance to give you money and he’s taking it; you have a chance to give him pleasure and you’re— Don’t refuse it, John,” she pleaded.

“Why, Margaret,” he answered wondering, “what has got into you? You’re so proud, so independent; more than I. However poor we’ve been, I’ve known that you preferred it to letting any one, your cousin for instance, help us. You sent back his check. And you’re asking me to accept money from a man whose name we don’t know.”

“Ah, but I know he’s heavenly, or he wouldn’t have done it like this,” she threw back. “And not knowing the name helps. It’s as if an angel had flown down with manna. It would be silly to refuse manna. And, John,” she went on eagerly, “there’s possibility in it. When they heard about your airship—”

He made a quick gesture.

“No, you wouldn’t ask them; but you couldn’t refuse to let them have shares in a great—And there would be business men who would know how to organize—”

He interrupted. “Margaret, you’re dreaming. You know how I am; it’s impossible for me to exploit myself. I might not tell them if they asked.” He went on sadly: “I was thinking to-night that none of them knew I was—a failure.”

Her arm was around his neck again; her lips on his cheek. “You’re not!” she cried vehemently. “Success isn’t all making money; success is being somebody, something. And you’re that. There’s nobody so wonderful—” She flew back without a pause. “But that’s not what we’re talking about. John, you know how I’d guard your self-respect—and I want you to do this. It might mean everything. If you could only, this year, get the aeroplane started, Jacky could go to Yale.” A thrill shook her; his arm around her, he felt it, and his will and his pride were like wax in a flame.

“Where is Jacky?” he demanded.

“He had to go to the office after dinner”; she spoke reluctantly. “Extra work. But it means extra pay, and he won’t be late to-night.”

He groaned. “The boy is only seventeen; he ought to be studying and playing tennis; I can’t bear to have him spend his youth and strength in a railway office.”

“Don’t worry, dear; Jacky is boiling with youth and strength. And he’s enchanted to make money.”

Again Ellsworth groaned. “It’s wrong; it’s my fault.” He got up and paced the room; his soul was in torment. He went on fiercely: “If I were a steady-going dry-goods man; if I knew how to run a paper factory! Fool! I’m good for nothing. If I could make hair-pins!” he added longingly.

The woman laughed. “You’re so absurd, John,” she said.

“It’s not absurd.” He halted before her and fired the words indignantly. “If I had a satisfactory business in hair-pins you would have a limousine and Jacky would be in college instead of in a railway office nights—at seventeen.” He hesitated. “Sometimes,” he went on in a low voice, “I’m not sorry that the two older ones died.”

“Don’t, John.” The woman threw out her hands passionately. “I miss them—always. I never get over missing them. Don’t say you’re not sorry.” Her face was quivering. Then she pulled herself together with a quick effort. “We mustn’t talk about the babies. It’s Jacky now. John, I do think it might mean everything for him that you should go to New Haven in June.”

The man looked beyond her dreamily from his gray, vision-seeing eyes; one might have thought his mind had wandered from the subject. Then he spoke in a matter-of-fact way. “If you think so, Margaret, I’ll go.”

* * * * *

The class of thirty years back had taken for commencement week the largest house to be let in New Haven. The Thirties, as the youngsters called them, were an impressive body. There was a cabinet officer and an ambassador and a United States senator, a famous physician, and a handful of judges; there was a capitalist with a name spoken in whispers, so colossal was his wealth; there were railroad presidents and a great engineer and lesser fry who were yet not small fish. It was an uncommon collection of personages for one class. And not one of these grandees was allowed to pay fifty cents for his own taxicab or the price of a glass of beer. Each had made his contribution as he felt it fit for the reunion fund; each had all expenses defrayed from that fund, and no one but the class secretary knew what proportion each had given. They were for those days on a level—sons of Alma Mater, brothers.

Most classes coming back to reunions at Yale wear a costume for commencement time. It is considered that this common dress helps to wipe out inequalities. The Thirties wore this year blue blouses of workmen, to signify, it was said, how they felt themselves laborers in the thick of the world’s work. The strong blue made an insistent note of color about New Haven in those bright days of late June, and the grizzled heads and thoughtful faces were more distinguished for the severity of the setting. Peter Price, driving a magnificent sixty-horse-power car, in such a blouse, in the blue-crowned, visored cap of a mechanic, was a study in incongruity.

“Saint Peter,” remarked the finished and cultivated ambassador to a great court, sitting in a profound chair with his heels on the table, “Saint Peter is fooling us. Where’s he got to? He’s been gone one hour and forty minutes and what he’s after heaven only knows.”

“Likely all for your own good, Wuggie,” came soothingly from the great doctor—the Beloved Physician, men called him. “Little Saint Peter’s doing good deeds in the dark; that’s his way. You’d better shut up and keep cool, or you’ll have apoplexy; you’re getting powerful fat.”

“I’m not fat at all, Molly Allen,” growled his Excellency. The distinguished heels came down. “I’m going to find Saint Peter. He’s up to some deviltry, and we’d better trail him. Who’ll come?”

A dozen blue blouses poured out of the front door. Lazily they strolled in a long, erratic group up the diagonal walk across the green, past the three churches and into College Street. Arm was linked in arm; hands were on shoulders; they were more unconscious, more careless to the seeming than the grave lads in their scholars’ caps and billowing black gowns, the men of this year’s graduating class, whom one met as they swept, alert, serious, from one responsibility to another. These older men in their workingmen’s blouses, covering shoulders which were holding up the nation, these iron-gray men, lounging up College Street, smiled a little wistfully at the black figures swinging past, at the untired eyes, solemn to-day with this great business of graduating. Such as these had they been on that day in June thirty years back; such as themselves would these become when thirty years should be gone. “Good luck! A happy voyage! God bless you!” the gentle half-smile of the old fellows in midocean said to the youngsters as they hurried past, setting their new white sails. But the youngsters did not notice.

“Where’s Saint Peter?” demanded the ambassador, halting his blue squad.

With that the senator wailed suddenly as they stood, eleven strong, in College Street: “Oh, little old Saint Peter—hurry up.”

As if in answer, a mountainous touring-car swept around the corner of Chapel Street. Behind the wheel was a small man of fifty-odd, in a blue blouse, in a mechanic’s cap, blue-crowned, visored. At his side a dried-up, tiny countrywoman, in an apologetic black hat, sat stiffly. A purple ribbon was around the hat, and dusty, artificial violets on its brim. A clean, brown calico dress went with it, and a worn and patient but spirited old face. Under the queer hat one saw gray hair strained back and screwed in a knot; life had few frills for this farmer’s wife. A large basket of eggs was held in her lap. Peter Price drew up at the curb.

“Mrs. Ryder,” said Saint Peter, with great courtesy, “let me present Judge Whalen and Mr. Cutting and Dr. Allen and Mr. Pendleton; and Mr. Ellsworth and Judge Arbuthnot; and Mr. Secretary Loomis, and—see here, fellows, that tonneau holds five, not fifty—and Senator Butler and Mr. Garden and Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Digby.”

The blue-bloused regiment closed, bare-headed, around the little old woman.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Mrs. Ryder happily, as she bowed at each name. And one felt that she was pleased to meet one. Mrs. Ryder would have been, with a chance, a famous hostess. “Are you young men comin’ back for your fust meetin’?” she snapped out, quite in the spirit of the game, in her quaint, sharp, old New England voice.

And the “young men” roared at her unexpected little joke. Not at all shy was Mrs. Ryder, but enchanted with the situation. To the ambassador, inquiring, she explained how old Whitey and the buggy had broke down as they come along with her eggs, and how Saint Peter had rescued her with his chariot of fire. Saint Peter looked sheepish. Would they guy him, or wouldn’t they?

“Better climb out now,” he threw back to the mass-meeting in the tonneau. “Mrs. Ryder and I must get to market with our eggs.”

“They’re perfectly beautiful eggs,” reflected Jimmy Pendleton. “I need some eggs. What’ll you sell them for, Mrs. Ryder?”

“Let me in!”

“We all need eggs,” rose in chorus.

“How much, Mrs. Ryder?” demanded the president of the R. V. & St. M. Railway.

“Wal, they’re some dearer than last week,” hesitated Mrs. Ryder.

“Yes, yes. Much dearer. I think I noticed they were two dollars a pound,” suggested the United States senator.