“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.
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.
[Illustration: The beautiful voice, with its haunting under-quality,
floated out over the company of middle-aged men.]
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.