Part 14

And jeers arose from knowing ones. “They don’t sell eggs by the pound, you poor old idiot. Two dollars a box,” corrected Mr. Secretary Loomis, and Mrs. Ryder shook with laughter.

“Eggs is sold by the dozen,” she stated.

“Of course. I knew that sounded queer,” agreed Jimmy Pendleton. “Two dollars a dozen it is. How many dozen?”

“I couldn’t cheat you young boys,” said Mrs. Ryder. “Eggs is twenty cents.”

“Apiece,” stated Pendleton firmly.

“No, _sir_,” responded Mrs. Ryder as firmly. “A dozen, ef you please.”

“But not such eggs,” said the doctor. “See, boys, what a lovely color these eggs are.”

“We couldn’t take them under fifty cents a dozen,” said Jimmy Pendleton.

And Mrs. Ryder’s New England conscience was carried by storm, and the total sum of fifteen dollars travelled from various pockets to her ancient leather purse.

“Now, I’ll do some tradin’ at the store,” she announced with perfect confidence in their interest.

“You run along with your eggs to headquarters, Saint Peter,” ordered the ambassador, “and we’ll wander back and meet you.” And the big touring-car had glided away.

Ellsworth, among the others through this episode, contributing his share, had yet felt himself an outsider. To all of these men the dollar given the old country woman was less than nothing; to him it was an item. As he realized what this difference stood for, he felt himself of another world. There were men among these far from rich, but he was the only one who might not throw away a dollar. And with that a rush of despair came over him. Why had he come? Why had he let Margaret persuade him? He must go back and face a life doubly hard because of this taste of care-free life. Nothing had happened which could help him; nothing would happen. Margaret’s eyes would ask, and he would not be able to meet her eyes. He felt physically sick as he thought of that. No one had spoken of his work except in general terms; he had shrunk from details because he had no record of work accomplished. There had been a glow of happiness in seeing the remembered faces, in hearing the old voices; they had been glad to see him, friendly, quick to give him his ancient place of honor among them. In the rush of the first days, in the levelling atmosphere which the blue blouses created, he had forgotten till this moment that these were successful men; that he was that grim thing—a failure. The kindly farce of the old woman and her eggs waked him. Not one of “the fellows” was poor as he was poor. Even Jimmy Pendleton—but, Ellsworth reflected, what did he know about that? Jimmy at fifty-two was the natural development of Jimmy at twenty-two, short, mild of face, carefully dressed, chubbier; his shoe-brush mop of black hair replaced on top by a shining baldness. There was a half-deprecating air about Jimmy which seemed to tell of a career not too glorious; it was comforting to Ellsworth.

Yet even Jimmy had tried to pay the old lady two dollars a dozen for thirty dozen eggs. Sixty dollars! Ellsworth, sauntering across the sunny green, bit his lip. How many years was it since he had spent sixty dollars thoughtlessly? When he and Margaret were married there had been enough; they had not worried when his models had taken large sums and had not returned them. But now there was no money even when its return would be certain. He thought with a pang of his flying-machine, the long-sought sure thing, doomed to lie idle till some luckier man should invent one like it and win fame and fortune. How “the fellows” would have patted him on the shoulder if he had had that success to bring to the reunion! It was cruelly unjust; he was torn with keener suffering than he had felt in all the years before.

By now the party had turned into the big house, where a blue banner hung out with the legend in white letters: “Headquarters of the Class of —.” Blue blouses poured from rooms to meet them; voices and laughter filled all the place; Saint Peter was back, and he and his eggs were the joke of the moment. Ellsworth shot through the gay crowd and made his way to a little smoking-room. No one was there. He dropped into a chair by a table; his arms stretched out, and his head fell on them. Down and out. The men’s laughter rang through the hall. Why had he come? What could these men, with their full lives, their honors, and their large affairs, care for a bit of wreckage washed among them by a chance wave from the lost sea of boyhood? He would go back to the woman who loved him and whose life he had filled with disappointments, and carry to her this disappointment more. Down and out.

“Johnny.”

He started angrily and stared up at the man whose hand was on his shoulder.

“Jim! How you frightened me! I’m deadly sleepy.” He rubbed his eyes, where tears were. “I’m not quite fit, and I dropped into a chair—” The words trailed off.

But Jimmy Pendleton was looking at him as he would have let no man but Jimmy Pendleton look. He was searching into his soul, without pretence of doing otherwise.

“Johnny, old boy, get it out of your system. We didn’t room together three years for nothing. I know something is on your mind, and I know you’d be better if you could talk it over with a man. You know I’m to be trusted.”

Across the torture that wrung him it seemed that a strong hand had laid a check. The twist of the rack had stopped; slowly, as he stared into the face of the man beside him, dim things that looked, far off, like hope and courage and peace, stirred out of the dark of his consciousness. Jimmy Pendleton’s hand was on his; it was Jimmy’s face he saw, but it was a transfigured face. Jimmy might be fat and short and bald, but how had it happened that one had never before seen the strength in the square jaw and the keenness in the eyes, the air of power in the man? He knew in that second that here was a personality on which he might lean.

“Tell me, old chap,” said Jimmy, and pressed down the weight of his steady hand.

Ellsworth told. He poured out the aches that had festered through sore years; the things which even Margaret had only half known. The sting of long misery washed away in the cool river of the other’s understanding silence. He talked on disjointedly, easing his soul at every breathless sentence. At last the tale was told, all of it. A tale of fortune failing by a hairbreadth; inventions patented and never known; discoveries anticipated, a month, a week, by some other; years of patient experiment come to nothing. He spoke haltingly of his wife, the girl whom Pendleton had also known, of her unfailing courage; of the two dead children, of the boy who could not have his birthright of opportunity.

“I haven’t been lazy, you know, Jim,” he explained. “I’ve worked. But it does seem as if I played in bad luck. And lately I’ve lost confidence. Except in this last thing; I have to believe in that; it’s the real thing. If—” He stopped.

“What, Johnny?”

Ellsworth put his hand in his pocket, hesitated, looked at the other man doubtfully. The truth was that he had kept a small drawing of his beloved machine by him, with a half-formulated idea of being ready if any chance should come. Here was, perhaps, the chance. It flashed into his mind, it was a pity that it was only Jimmy Pendleton. But he drew the drawing out slowly; a thin paper with orderly, intricate lines, numbered and lettered. The sight of them made a new man of him.

“Look, Jimmy!” He spread the paper. “Isn’t it a miracle that nobody has thought of this? It’s the simplest thing—it’s inevitable—it’s sure.” His face was brilliant. Pendleton bent over the paper. “You see, it’s this way,” Ellsworth said, and explained.

Slowly Pendleton’s expression changed. What had been sympathy turned to critical interest, to surprise, to analytical study of the thin little paper. After a long pause he lifted his head. “Johnny,” he said, “I’m not an expert, but I know something about it, and I believe you’re right. I think you’ve got a big thing.”

“Think!” repeated Ellsworth indignantly. “Think!—I know it. There’s no earthly question that it’s a big thing.” With that he groaned. “Will it ever do me any good?”

“What do you mean?”

Ellsworth hesitated. “I can tell _you_, Jimmy.” He had it in mind that this was a poor man too. He would not seem to be asking for help.

“Go on,” said Pendleton.

“The point is—the point is that I haven’t money to make my model.”

Pendleton stared at him as he talked swiftly, explaining the need of money, two thousand dollars perhaps. Pendleton, silent, stared. With that the voices down the hall were shouting a name.

“Ellsworth! Johnny Ellsworth,” they were calling. “Come down and sing; oh, Johnny Ellsworth.”

Pendleton’s chubby face lost the masterful lines. He chuckled. “We’ll have to go,” he said. “I’ll take this,” and he folded the drawing and put it in his pocket, and caught Ellsworth’s arm and drew him down the hall and into the big room where the greater part of the Thirties were gathered.

“It isn’t time for lunch,” the ambassador explained. “And Molly Allen has been talking medicine till we’re sick, and we want you to make music, Johnny Ellsworth. Get up there and sing till you bust, please.”

Ellsworth found himself swung to a chair which appeared on a table, and a learned judge was playing “Lauriger Horatius” on the piano, and he was singing it in the lovely tenor which had never grown old, which had a subtle tone somewhere in it which gripped the souls of human beings. The men’s voices rolled into his when the chorus came, and all the house rang with strong music.

Ubi sunt o pocula Dulciora mellæ Rixæ pax et oscula Rubentis puellæ.

The swinging old air thundered like the diapason of an organ. And as it ended, “Give us a jolly one,” the senator cried. And the judge at the piano dashed into “Dunderbeck,” and Ellsworth was leading, beating time with his hand, while every man jack, he who could sing and equally he who could not, was roaring out the classic lament:

For long-tailed rats and pussy cats Shall never more be seen; They’ll all be ground to sausage meat In Dunderbeck’s machine.

Some of the stouter lads of fifty gasped a bit then, while the judge tinkled an interlude on the keys. Then the doctor spoke, out of a cloud of cigarette smoke which banked his chair; lounging, with his legs crossed, and his keen face thrown back, and his eyes—the luminous blue eyes which could hold, it seemed, every worth-while human expression—with those extraordinary eyes on the ceiling, he spoke out of the smoke:

“There’s one song, you fellows, which I like to think hits off our class. The words aren’t much—pretty poor,” he reflected, half aloud, “but they seem to—do. ‘Amici.’ I’d like to hear Johnny Ellsworth sing ‘Amici.’”

Instantly Ellsworth was pelted. “‘Amici’—sing ‘Amici,’” they threw at him.

The judge struck a chord; the crowded room was still. Then the beautiful voice, with its haunting under-quality, which caught at the secret softnesses in souls, floated out over the company of middle-aged men, and behold they were boys again. Very quietly they listened. The famous doctor’s eyes were still on the ceiling; the cabinet minister stared hard at the window; the bishop’s big gray head was bent, and his look introspective; most of them gazed at Ellsworth singing. Then the chorus came, and with a stir as if a breeze had touched all across a field of corn, the whole room blew softly, deeply, into the music.

Amici usque ad aras,

and the rest.

So they sang it, gathered back to their old altars, the men who had been friends for thirty years.

When the judge’s fingers lifted from the last note there was a silence which said things none of them there could have said in words. It spoke, as a silence will sometimes, of memories and faith and loyalty. It told, as each man looked at the faces about him, carved with the tools of Time, the sculptor, the silence told of sorrow and joy, of lives each with its full measure of fighting and of pathos, but each lived by the line of straight honor, without which one does not comfortably face Alma Mater. An every-day group of American men. A country is not going to ruin at once which shows by the hundred such sons.

“Come down, Johnny Ellsworth; you’ll never sing better than that, so you’d better stop now,” said the ambassador, and Ellsworth, his hand on the offered shoulder, saw the light flash in something bright on the ambassador’s lashes, and wondered if it were possible that Wuggie Lawrence had been actually touched by his singing. Then they were in motion again and pouring out, a burly regiment, up the street to lunch at Commons.

There were two special cars waiting, after lunch, to take them, _en masse_, to the game, the Yale-Harvard baseball game, which takes place on Tuesday of commencement week, and is the rallying of the returning classes.

“I’ll save a seat for you, Johnny. In the first car.”

Pendleton called this as John Ellsworth flashed past him up the stairs, when they had come back from lunch. The writing-room was full, and Ellsworth wanted to send a word home. He ran up the two flights and began his letter. Doors were all open this midsummer day, and across the hall two maids, unconscious of him, were talking noisily. Ellsworth heard them without hearing the words until a name made its sharper impression, as names do.

“J. H. Pendleton,” the woman said. “Yis, it’s sure him. The short, fat one. That’s the awful rich Pendleton. Nora McGinnis, she says last night as how Barney O’Neill he says as how he gits tin thousand a day.”

Ellsworth got up and shut the door. Jimmy Pendleton. Of course. Even Ellsworth had heard of J. H. Pendleton, the financier. But he had never thought of his old chum as such a person. Nobody had told him. Everybody had taken it for granted that he knew. Jimmy Pendleton! And he had been patronizing him as in the college days, when he with his music and genius and good looks was a great man, and roly-poly Jimmy did not count. Suddenly he remembered their talk before lunch. He had given his confidence; he had uncovered his poverty, his need of money. His face flushed. He remembered that no word was said as to helping him; he thought, with bitter illogic, that friendship ceased at the point where effort came in. It was pleasant, this class feeling, for those who had prospered; for the unlucky it did not exist. The rich man had listened, and then had been glad to end the subject by carrying the other off to sing songs. Down-stairs the voices surged up louder, and little by little died away. They were gone to the game. This afternoon’s events were the culmination of the reunion of the classes; but he could not go. He stared out into the tree-tops; his half-written letter fell to the floor; minutes went by and rolled into half an hour, an hour. He did not stir. An hour more he sat there, sinking ever deeper into unhappy thoughts. Then his misery focussed suddenly into a push of despair. He would not meet them again; he would go home. Hurriedly he began to pack.

There were two trolley-cars to take the Thirties to the game. Jimmy Pendleton saved a seat, but as Ellsworth did not come he got out and went through the second car.

“Anybody seen Ellsworth?” he asked.

Nobody had. Then the car started, and he rushed back to his own place. Out at Yale Field things moved rapidly, yet even there, as the blue-bloused Thirties formed in procession, Pendleton cast a glance about even then for Ellsworth. He had a word which he was anxious to say to him. Coming out on the car he had sat next the great engineer; he had taken out Ellsworth’s drawing.

“What do you think of that, Digby?”

And Digby had studied it while the car shot through the sunshiny city and the uproarious crowds. He lifted his head at last, and turned and searched till he found a man two seats behind, the Secretary of War.

“Pass this to Loomis, please,” he commanded the men between, and spoke across: “Tom, you’d better get that thing for the government. It’s Ellsworth’s. It’s a go. Look at it.”

And Loomis had looked, and laughed. “I don’t understand a word of it,” he had thrown back, “but if you say it’s a go, that settles it. Where’s Ellsworth?”

The question repeated itself to Pendleton marching down Yale Field. “Where’s Ellsworth?” he wondered over and over. A vague uneasiness disquieted him through the bright turbulent afternoon, but it was not till he found himself in the midst of the mad dance all over the color-starred field, celebrating Yale’s triumph, that it came to him, with that unreasonable certainty which boys call a “hunch,” what had happened. Something had upset the man, and he had not come.

“Great Scott!” thought Pendleton; “it wouldn’t surprise me if he had taken a train.”

With that he knew that he must find him. It was hard to miss being with “the fellows” when they marched down the street together behind the class banner to make their call on the president; he cared very much that his voice should not be part of the ringing shout which would send up the name they all delighted to honor in the Yale cheer for the president of Yale. But somebody had got to see to Johnny Ellsworth.

He brushed an automobile as he left the grounds and, looking up, saw friends. “For the love of Heaven give me a lift,” he begged. “And drive fast. Important business. I’ve got to get to town.”

So that the sea of people had hardly begun to trickle back into the city when he was landed in front of headquarters.

“Mr. Ellsworth here?” he demanded of the servant who met him.

“Just gone, sir.”

“Gone? Where?” threw back Pendleton.

“Couldn’t say, sir. But he had a dress-suit case. Perhaps he’s took a train, sir.”

Pendleton whirled. He looked about for a taxi, for anything to take him to the station; everything had gone to Yale Field. The servant, watching, understood. “Mr. Price’s car, sir—” Pendleton vanished to the garage. In three minutes more he was whirling toward the station. In five minutes he was dashing through the archway to the tracks. A train was slowly pulling out. He looked up at the car windows helplessly as they passed, and suddenly, out of one of them, Ellsworth’s face of tragedy looked down at him. He caught at the hand-rail and swung on. He walked down the car and dropped down.

“Why the devil do you make a fellow run on a hot day?” he inquired, and fanned himself with his hat.

Ellsworth stared. “What’s this for, Jimmy?” he said. “It’s no good. I’m going.”

“Old boy,” said Jimmy Pendleton, “you’re going to Stamford good and plenty. That’s the first stop. I’m going there, too. But do you know what will happen then?” There was a lawless gleam in the speaker’s eye. He went on: “We’ll get off at Stamford, and we’ll catch the next train up.”

“No,” said Ellsworth.

“My son, I don’t want talking back,” answered Pendleton. “We’re going, you and I, to New Haven, to Digby and Loomis, who are hot on your trail, with that picayune little paper of yours. Digby took one look and told Loomis to lose no time pinching it for the government. So Loomis is sitting on the front steps waiting for you to come and pick up your everlasting fortune.”

Then for one moment the good angel was frightened, for his charge turned pale and trembled.

“Cheer up, old man,” adjured the good angel. “It’s good news. It’s all right.”

“Jimmy, are you lying?” demanded Ellsworth.

“_Don’t_ be an ass, old chap,” pleaded Jimmy earnestly. “It’s Gospel truth. You’ve arrived. I never was so pleased in my life, Johnny. Give you my word.” In a handful of sentences he told his tale.

“But what made you stampede, you old goat?” he inquired. “I thought you were happy as a clam after you had hypnotized us with that voice of yours. What got into you?”

And Ellsworth, laughing shakily, told his tale.

“Of course, I didn’t say anything definite,” Pendleton said, “because I wanted you to get the start as your right, not as a boost from me. I thought of Digby at once. So you couldn’t bear it that I’ve got money,” he added, a bit wistfully. “Why, that’s all I’ve got. I haven’t any music, or looks, or genius, or any boy, or”—his voice broke on the little word, but he went on thickly—“or any Margaret.”

There was an odd silence for a second, and Ellsworth slewed about and looked at him. Pendleton’s commonplace blue eyes met his with a look not commonplace, a look defiant and tragic and lonely. The blind was down and the soul of the man was at its windows. Ellsworth’s gaze was a question. Pendleton answered.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s it. I loved her. Nobody else, ever. But of course you won out. And you’ve had her. And you think your life has been hard. Fool, Johnny Ellsworth. Me, I’ve had millions—and nothing else. Millions aren’t particularly cosey to live alone with.”

Ellsworth’s hand was on the other’s now. “I never knew,” he said, stammering the short words.

“Well, you know now,” said Jimmy Pendleton, “and if you grudge me any fun I can get out of being a millionaire, you’re a devil. That boy of yours, _I’m_ going to send him to Yale; _I’m_ going to take him abroad; I’m going to—oh, damn.”

“What?” Ellsworth laughed.

“Why, you’ll be rich in six months. The boy won’t need me.”

“You shall go halves in the boy, Jimmy,” the other spoke brokenly. And then, in a flash: “There’s a man in the class I must find now, and I don’t know who he is.”

“What do you mean?” Pendleton asked.

And Ellsworth told the story of his coming to New Haven. As he finished, staring with a new passion of affection at the bald head and unclassic profile turned from him to the flying landscape, he felt his pulse leap and stand still. In that second he knew.

“Jim,” he said, “it was you.”

Pendleton turned his head and looked at him. “I suppose you’ll want to pay me,” he said sadly.

Ellsworth, quite careless of the hundred or so people about them, put his arm around the other’s shoulder. “Never, Jimmy,” he said. “You’ll never see a cent of that money till your dying day. So give it up. And I’ll never thank you. I—I can’t.”

“Go to thunder,” remarked Pendleton savagely. And then, after a pause: “Wouldn’t you have done it?”

“Margaret said that,” Ellsworth threw at him. “Margaret said it would be selfish not to take it. She said that the man who did that thing in that way was heavenly. That’s her word, heavenly.”

There was no answer, but the slow red which spread to Jimmy Pendleton’s bald head showed that he heard.

“I thought I had no friends,” Ellsworth spoke a moment later. “I thought you fellows were kind-hearted, but would draw the line at taking any trouble.”

“Johnny,” said the other, “I want you to cut out that. It’s poor. It’s cheap. Don’t be a conceited ass and think you’re the only man with decent feelings. The cockles of your heart warm up when the class is concerned, don’t they? You’d go a long way for one of us, wouldn’t you? All right, then; why shouldn’t we be as decent as you? We are; we’re pretty fond of each other, and you’re one of us. Moreover, you ungrateful chump, you’re a special one, for that voice of yours gets us where nothing else can. Nobody gives a hang, except to regret it for you, if you’ve pulled off success or not. That’s your damned self-consciousness, don’t you know. And look here, Johnny, it’s nothing new to say, but the world is full of friends if you’ll hold out your hand and take ’em. Most people are kindly; they’re only hesitating for fear you’ll snub them, just the way you’re hesitating. It’s such a foolish waste of energy to be always on guard against a lot of well-meaning good souls. When we get back to New Haven to-night just look at the fellows with new glasses—try rose color. See a friend in each one of them; he’s there all right.”

“I’ll do anything you say, Jim,” said Johnny Ellsworth. “I believe in one man now for good. I didn’t know a fellow could have as good a friend as—”