Part 16

At two he went out from it into the New Haven station—into a throng of fresh, boyish faces—with a sense of exhilaration. He rushed for a car and hung from a strap with enjoyment in the discomfort of it. Soon some one got out, and he dropped into a seat by a pair of big shoulders which prodded into him. The owner twisted about.

“I beg your pardon,” he said in a frank young voice. “I’m afraid I’m taking up too much room, but I’m wedged into this crack on the bias, and I can’t help it,” and the two laughed together.

There was an irresponsible gayety in the air, and Trefethen found himself catching it. This friendly, honest-faced boy, with his enormous, inconvenient shoulders, pleased him. He fell to talking—asking questions about the new buildings, about the regatta, the university. Surprised, amused, he felt the old enthusiasm of Alma Mater rising in him. He was a Yale man—this lad was a Yale man—the brotherhood asserted itself—for years he had not had this feeling. Past the green, serene with its three churches set like oases in its broad expanse, they shot; past rows of New England homes stately with a dignity which money does not achieve; into Whitney Avenue with its wide lawns and fine old houses, crowned with the great sweep of the Hillhouse place, and its dominating, pillared mansion. And about there the car jolted and stopped. Looking ahead, there was a line of other stopped cars—a block forward. By slow degrees the passengers got out, and studied the case, and speculated.

“Let’s walk,” said the boy. “It’s only a mile.”

And Trefethen, with a flattered sense of being officially taken into the guild of the able-bodied, swung out by the side of his new friend into a gay stream of people headed for Lake Whitney. His sponsor had gathered him under his wing with the simple, unconscious air of an older brother, which, to the man used to dictatorship, gave a piquancy to the situation. It was pleasant, if funny, to be looked after in this kindly way.

“My name is Richard Elliot,” said the lad, without preface, and gave his year, and turned his brown eyes consideringly on the older man.

Trefethen hesitated. Not to return this frank confidence would be ungracious, yet his name suggested himself too much just now throughout America to risk telling and hope to be unidentified. He compromised.

“My graduation is a quarter of a century or so ahead of yours, I’m sorry to say.” He smiled. “And my name is Lord”—and spoke truthfully, for this was his unused middle name.

At that moment the lad’s coat swung open, and Trefethen saw, pinned on his waistcoat, an Alpha Delta Phi pin. From some atrophied muscles sprang a throb which astonished him. Out flew his hand, the boy’s eyes met his, and their fingers slid into the fraternity grip.

“Why, this is bully,” spoke the youngster joyfully. “I’m awfully glad I met you. I wonder if there’s anything I can do to make you enjoy yourself. Tell you what”—he went on in a burst—“ginger! I’m glad I thought of it—come out on the water with me, will you, Mr. Lord? I’ve got a canoe, and my side-partner’s sneaked—can’t find him. Anyhow, there’s plenty of room, even if he turns up, if you’ll sit tight and part your hair in the middle. Are you used to boats?”

Trefethen smiled. “That was my business when I was in college.”

“What, were you on a crew?” the lad asked, his eyes bright with interest.

Vanity betrayed Trefethen suddenly. “I was captain of the ’Varsity crew of my year,” he stated, and then felt alarmed to see the impression.

Elliot stopped short, quite casual as to halting a long procession back of him. With that he gave his own knee a sounding slap.

“Ginger!” he exploded. “Ginger! Hullygee! and I never suspected. I might have known you were something with that build,” and he glanced over Trefethen’s figure searchingly. “Nobody has that look without its meaning something. Ginger!” he murmured again with no sense of monotony, and swung on, gazing sidewise admiringly at the embarrassed Trefethen. “Why, this is simply great, Mr. Lord,” he addressed him. “We must have you over at the boat-house to meet the men—maybe you can row on a veteran crew—I don’t know how that is—that’s not my line—but anyhow they’d love to meet you. Lord—Lord,” he reflected. “Don’t seem to remember the name—but the crews are not in my beat, as I said—they’ll place you fast enough at the boat-house. What’s your year?”

With that Trefethen realized that his incognito was in peril. “It won’t do, Mr. Elliot,” he said firmly. “I’m tired and came out for a lazy afternoon, and I don’t want to meet people, even Yale men. I’m not up to it. I’ll be delighted to go out in your canoe if it won’t inconvenience you, but I’m a back number, and would only be in the way at the boat-house.”

“Back number nothing,” responded the boy earnestly. “Of course they’d be proud and glad. Yale men don’t shelve their chaps who’ve won laurels for them. Did you win, by the way? What class were you?” he demanded.

Now Trefethen’s crew had gained an historic victory, and to give his class might place it and him. He did not want to be placed. He had an uneasy feeling that the multi-millionaire Marcus Trefethen would lose this unique comradeship which the obscure graduate Lord had found. This afternoon he had no use for his millions and his powerful name.

“Don’t pin an old bald-head, young man,” he argued. “Don’t you see I’m ashamed of my age?”

The boy drew his brows and looked surprised, yet the glory of a crew-captainship overshadowed this exhibition of human weakness. “All right,” he agreed; “but I’ll look you up, you know. What difference does it make, anyway? Did your crew win? You can tell me that, Mr. Lord, and that’s the point.”

“You bet we won,” Trefethen threw at him emphatically, like another boy.

“Hooray for you!” said the youngster, and laughed for pure love of Yale’s greatness, and with that they were at Lake Whitney.

Girls and young men shifted in and out through a scene of gayety. Gray-haired men, men in the prime of life, and not a few older women with pleased faces to be there, thronged the landing-steps, and embarked every moment in boats of all sorts. And in every mouthful of the spring air Trefethen drew a breath of that clean and happy out-of-doors’ enthusiasm, of forgetfulness of people for deeds, which is the inspiration of right athletics. In five minutes, Elliot, serious and businesslike over his responsibility, was pushing his canoe from the dock with a well-handled paddle, and Trefethen sat facing him in the bow. He realized so the tremendous development of the young figure as, his coat off, the big muscles worked through a thin silk shirt.

“You must be interested in something muscular by the look of you,” he said. “What’s your specialty?”

The frank eyes dropped. “Oh—I’m not so good as I might be at anything,” he answered, and his manner was confused. He went on quietly: “My stunt’s football, but I’d like to do it better than I do.”

“Some failure to make good, poor lad,” the older man thought to himself, and said aloud, with friendliness, “That’s too bad—you’re a strapping fellow. I should think you’d be strong at athletics if you really tried. But I dare say you make it up some other way. Probably you’re a fine scholar.”

The boy laughed. “Oh, no. Well, I’m not a positive disgrace to the family, but I haven’t made ΦΒΚ by a good bit. Oh, no, I’m afraid you wouldn’t call me a search-light as a student. I’m afraid I’m better developed on the physical than the mental tack—can’t be good at everything, you know. At least most can’t. There’s only one fellow I know in Yale who’s all ’round first-class, and he’s a miracle.” The brown eyes flashed sudden fire. “Gosh!” the lad shot through set teeth. “Gosh! I wish I had the killing of that man!”

Trefethen looked at the irate youth in surprise. “The miracle?” he inquired, smiling. “Do you want to kill the miracle?”

“No; oh, no.” Elliot’s responsive smile did not come. He was too stirred. “Not him—of course not. He’s the finest chap in Yale University—the pride of the whole class. He’s a peach. Why just let me tell you, Mr. Lord, what that fellow is: He made ΦΒΚ, he was on the Junior Prom. Committee. He made”—the boy hesitated and spoke low—“he made Bones. He’s good enough for the tennis team, and he could have been on the football team, and he’s captain of the ’Varsity crew. _You_ know what that means. He should have been here to-day—and he’s gone. And the Harvard race in June will have to do without him. We’ll lose it, likely, because of him. He’s gone—gone!” The boy hurled the word at the man.

“Where has he gone—how?” the other asked eagerly, carried away by the speaker’s intensity.

The paddle dipped in water for two liquid beats before he answered, and then it was with an evident effort for self-control. “It makes me so hot I can hardly talk about it,” he brought out in repressed tones. “But you’re a good sport, and square and all that—you’ll appreciate how we feel. Last night at the training table the captain had a telegram and a special delivery. His father has been ill, and his business has all gone wrong, and he’s—ruined. Just plain that. And when they were certain of it, yesterday, he got a lot worse at the news, and they were alarmed and sent for Carl. And the money’s all lost, you see, so he can’t come back. It’s a darned shame!” the lad brought out, losing his grip on himself again. “I’d like to have that man, that captain of industry, that robber baron, who’s got Carl down and out, at the end of my fist”—the great young hand shot out, clinched. “It’s Marcus Trefethen—_the_ Marcus Trefethen, you know—and if I got within ten feet of him I’d beat his bloomin’ brains out.” The man in the bow, eight feet away, gazed thoughtfully at the speaker.

The canoe had worked up the lake; far away beyond the bridge was a stir as if those there could see the first crews of the first race coming; dozens of boats, gay with boys and girls and talk and laughter, lay below, beyond them, but at the turn where the canoe floated it was quiet. There was deep silence.

“It’s all his work. He’s a thieving, cold-blooded monopolist,” the boy went on angrily. “He doesn’t care how much flesh and blood he chops into hash to feed to his great fortune. He doesn’t care that Carl’s father’s railroad stands for forty years’ solid, honest work. He doesn’t care that wrecking it is going to kill Mr. Ruthven—that Carl’s got to give up his career and grind for bread and butter—all that’s nothing.”

The vehement voice stopped; the boy was out of breath, and the man felt a necessity to put in a word. “There are usually two sides,” he said. “Possibly Trefethen may not be free to stop the workings of a great affair—there are many men concerned in such a business. And perhaps he may not entirely realize the suffering entailed.” He wondered at his own tone, at his desire to conciliate. Why should he care how a college student judged his conduct? But he cared.

The boy’s eyes, gazing up the course, questioned the distance. His big shoulders stiffened to alertness. “They’re coming,” he announced, and a twist of the paddle set the boat sidewise so that Trefethen also could see. “Ginger, they’re coming fast! It’s the Columbia freshmen against ours—golly, I hope we smear ’em! We lead—see—gosh, we’ve got a good lead!”

Garnished with strange interjections, the pleasant, well-bred young voice went on in staccato sentences, and Trefethen, still thunderstruck by the bolt that had been launched from the blue at him and all his works, watched the play of excitement on the unconscious face. The clear eyes followed keenly every movement of the rapidly nearing crews; they glowed with joy as the Yale boat forged ahead; they darkened tragically as the rival shell crawled up on it. It was a spirited scene and the impersonal rush of interest all about him carried the man out of himself and into the bright flood of enthusiasm. Suddenly he found himself cheering madly, waving his hat as the blue coxswain, megaphone strapped to his mouth, howled hoarse encouragement to his men—as the crew of Yale swept past and first beyond the finish stakes. How glad the boy was—and how glad he himself was! When had he had such a day?

“Hooray for Yale!”

He shouted, and laughed as he heard his own voice. He caught a long breath and drew in a mouthful of sentiments—sport—fellow-feeling—the game played fairly—he nearly choked with the unfamiliar taste—but he liked it.

The first event was finished. “Rain,” young Elliot announced, turning up his face. “We’ll put in under the bridge till it’s over. I’ll hurry, so we’ll get there before the holy-poly.”

The canoe flew in under heavy stone arches only just in advance of a crowd of others. Everybody knew his friend, Trefethen remarked. There was a shouted word for him from almost every boat which scurried in for shelter, and the boy responded with ready friendliness always, yet also, it seemed to the older man, with an unconscious air of being somebody. A rowboat with two students came bumping alongside, and one caught the stern of the canoe and pulled in to it. “Here, you, Dick—you can’t take all of the roof, if you are a great man,” he threw at Elliot.

“Lots of room,” said the boy cheerfully. “I want to present you to my friend, Mr. Lord. Mr. Selden—Mr. Van Arden,” and two hands gripped him heartily in spite of the inconveniences of the situation. “Mr. Lord was captain of the ’Varsity crew of his year,” Dick Elliot hurried to explain, and there was instant deep respect in the newcomer’s manner. “Won’t go to the boat-house. He’s tired—doesn’t want to be fussed over,” he forestalled their suggestions, and they met this with a cloud of protestation. He ought—the men would want to see him. It wasn’t right for Dick Elliot to keep a good thing to himself.

“Ought to get you two out of conjunction, anyway,” Van Arden remarked in a half-shy, eager, boyish manner. “Two captains in one canoe are overallowance!” and Trefethen looked inquiringly at him and then at Elliot.

“Why, he doesn’t know,” Jimmy Selden burst out. “Mr. Lord doesn’t know that Dick Elliot’s the great and only captain of the football team! Holy smoke! But they make ’em ignorant down in New York!”

And Trefethen—railroads and combinations entirely overshadowed—was deeply confused. Certainly he should have known—Elliot—last November’s victorious team—certainly. But he had forgotten the first name; he hadn’t thought of such luck—he simply hadn’t placed him. And the boy laughed at him as a kind and modest emperor might laugh at an obscure subject unaware of his greatness.

“Tell you what,” he flung at them, “if Mr. Lord is game, what do you fellows say to coming to feed with me at Mory’s this evening?”

“O. K.,” spoke Selden. “_We’ll_ come, anyway.”

“No, you don’t,” responded the host promptly. “This is a party for a distinguished stranger, and there ain’t going to be no party without him. Will you come, Mr. Lord?”

“My train goes at—”

“Oh, there’s another one at nine, and ten—and maybe eleven,” urged Jimmy Selden. “And we’ll have big chops and wonderful potatoes and—”

“Look here, Jimmy, who’s giving this dinner?” demanded Elliot. “Will you come, Mr. Lord? We will have those chops and things, and they’re great; but it’s none of his old business.”

“Yes, I’ll come,” said Trefethen. “I never was as hungry for a chop in my life.”

“Let’s invite Pearly Gates, so he can sing and tell about outdoor sports,” suggested Selden enthusiastically. “And you might ask Pat O’Connor—he does lovely stunts. And what about—”

“Jimmy,” shouted the entertainer, “will you let me run my own dinner?”

“Well, I don’t know,” growled Jimmy. “The last one wasn’t satisfactory. You’ve got the cash, but I’ve got the sense.”

And with that there was a spectacular, close race coming down the water—the rain was over—the canoe and rowboat flew out to posts of vantage, with parting arrangements for dinner-time called back and forth.

Mory’s is a low, wooden, two-story house on Temple Street. Trefethen, looking at it, as he and Elliot turned the corner that evening, suddenly remembered it well. It had looked just like that, small and dirty-white, twenty-five and thirty years ago. Up five or six steps and into a side door they went. In each of the three or four rooms—low rooms, with bare floors and a few cheap sporting prints about the walls—are perhaps three heavy oblong oak tables covered thick with initials cut deep into the top. They are initials of students of Yale who for twenty-odd years have been making monuments of Mory’s tables. Against the walls of some of the rooms hang other tables, initial-covered, and the legs taken off. Freshmen are not allowed in this holy place, but the three upper classes constantly give dinners here—little dinners of six or so, for the most part, and the boys sing college songs all through them. The especial feature of such a meal is a chop, enormous in size, and served on a plate twelve or fourteen inches across and supported by glorified potatoes. The chops and potatoes at Mory’s are famous.

Marcus Trefethen looked over the array of grouped letters, many of them standing for names now on the country’s roll of honor, carved when their owners were fresh-faced lads like these who stood about him, who leaned over him with a big young hand now and then familiarly, comrade-like, on his shoulder. Earnestly they studied out famous name after name to show him.

“There’s a futurity list, too, you know,” Van Arden spoke in his buoyant, eager way. “Here’s Dickey Elliot’s mark—football captain to-day, President of the United States to-morrow—who knows?”

“What’s the matter with Daisy Van Arden, editor Yale _News_ to-day—Emperor of Russia next week-ski?” Jimmy Selden contributed, and then, in an awed tone, with a big forefinger pointed to letters freshly cut, “Boys, here’s Carl.”

“Ah!” A sound that was half a groan came from them all in unison, and they leaned across each other’s shoulders and looked. “C. R.” and the year. There was a minute’s serious silence as the heads bent, crowded together.

“It’s a darned shame,” Dick Elliot said slowly, and then: “Well, let’s have some eats. Our table’s this way, Mr. Lord.”

Selden’s suggestions, though frowned upon, had been carried out rather closely. Pat O’Connor, indeed, turned up missing, but enormous chops and marvellous potatoes appeared, and Pearly Gates was on hand with the two gifts which made him a desired dinner guest. His father’s fortune having been won by Gates’s Pearly Capsules for Rheumatism, it was perhaps inevitable that the heir, Alexander, should be known in college as Pearly Gates. He was a Glee Club man with a remarkable voice, and, as Selden put it, a “peculiarly ready warbler,” and also he was born with a marvellous ineptness for athletics which amounted to an inverted genius. It had been discovered that his _au naturel_ descriptions of a sporting event threw a light on the occasion which could not be found otherwise; also it was impossible to him, though healthy and well made, to jump, run, vault, swim, skate, play football, baseball, tennis, or any known game.

“The blame thing can walk,” Elliot assured Trefethen, patting the exhibit fondly as he inventoried his qualities. “Show the gentleman how pretty you walk, Pearly,” he urged, and Pearly beamed from behind his glasses and kicked out affectionately. “Trainer says he’s made up all right,” Elliot went on. “It’s just a sort of foolishness of the muscles. We’re proud of him, you know,” he explained. “He’s the only one. There isn’t such a fool in college. Pearly, which will you do first, sing or tell Mr. Lord about the football game?”

“I’ll do anything you want in about a minute,” responded the obliging gentleman, “but I do like to chew this chop. Let me alone just a minute. Talk about me, but just let me alone.”

“Now look here, Pearly,” Jimmy Selden spoke severely. “I didn’t get you here to eat—primarily, that is. You were asked here to sing and be foolish—now do your part like a man. You’re to amuse Mr. Lord. That’s what I got you for.”

“You got him—I like your nerve,” observed the host, outraged. “Am I giving this dinner, I’d like to know?”

And the songster stuffed food placidly as war went on over him.

“In a way—in a way, certainly,” Selden agreed soothingly. “But you know, Dickey, you do give the rottenest dinners when my fatherly care isn’t about you. You know you do. Now you’d never have thought of Pearly, would you? And he’s going to be the life of the thing in a minute. Pearly—that’s enough—tune up!”

“All right,” agreed the sweet-tempered youth, and pushed his chair away a bit and tossed back his blond head, and out through the room floated, in the purest, most thrilling baritone, the words of “Amici.”

Our strong band can ne’er be broken; Firm in friendship’s tie, Far surpassing wealth unspoken, It can never die,

he sang, and the words and the young voice went to the soul of Trefethen. Twenty-five odd years ago a lad like these and other lads, his friends, had sung that song in these low, old rooms, and in their hearts was the promise—he remembered how hotly it had risen in his—that the good friendship would last out their lives. How had he kept it? What had he to show for the years—what that was worth the price paid—good-will toward the world, belief in ideals, altruism on fire to brighten the earth? Little by little he had paid these out, each bit wrapped in its cover of happiness, for a heap of money. The boys were all gone—the men—his friends—He had not seen any of them for years. He had not taken any interest. Now he thought of it, he had no friends. His fortune had followers; he had associates—that was all. And with that all the voices together rose happily in the chorus:

_Amici usque ad aras_ Deep graven on each heart Shall be found unwavering, true, When we from life shall part.

“Hooray!” yelled Jimmy Selden vociferously. “Pearly, you’re the shark on the warble. Now buck up and tell Mr. Lord how you saw the football game.”

Pearly was seized with shyness. “You fellows make a fool out of me,” he complained.

“No trouble at all,” Selden assured him.

“It’s this way, Mr. Lord,” the pink-faced, spectacled, good-humored songster confided. “All these chaps pretend they see extraordinary things and talk about ’em with queer words an’ things. An’ I don’t understand an’ I don’t think most of the others do. So I just tell ’em about how it looks to the eye of nature, an’ they think it’s funny. ’Tisn’t funny. _I_ don’t think it’s funny. I went to that game an’ I ate my sandwiches in the open, on a shelf with more like me. Humans—rows of ’em—thirty thousand. The fellows trotted on, pitter-patter, lookin’ foolish, and all of us cheered—thirty thousand. Then the other fellows trotted on, lookin’ foolish, an’ we cheered. I knew precious little what they were doin’ in the game, but it was pleasant to know they were doin’ their best an’ that we had an object in bein’ there ’s long ’s they kept it up. They squatted and reflected an’ then they fell on each other, an’ then everybody rose and yelled and waved flags and Yale had the ball—or else Harvard had it. Then they scattered out, and Harvard’s red-head got hurt once in so often, and then twice somebody—I think Yale—kicked the ball over the shinto shrine at the end. Oh, this is truck”—he appealed to his _confrères_—“don’t make me tell any more,” he pleaded. And Trefethen shook with laughter as he had not shaken for years. “’S cruel to make sport of my infirmity,” reasoned Pearly. “But it looked that way to me, anyhow.”

The dinner was over; pipes came out of coat pockets. Elliot produced cigars for his guest of honor, and the military formation of the party “fell out” about the table; chairs grouped at every angle. Jimmy Selden pumped a profound sigh.