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—”
“Oh, shut up,” said Jimmy Pendleton.
* * * * *
There is a celebration at Yale the night before commencement day
which turns the campus into a stage-setting of an unearthly play.
The scenery is an orgy of light and shadow; the music is a whirlpool
of bands and voices of men. The townspeople are barred, but around
Phelps’s archway they gather by hundreds to watch the classes march
through. For all over New Haven that night are class dinners, and
from the dinners, which are early, the classes in costume march in
procession and, carrying torches, pass into the campus. By nine or
ten o’clock alumni are congregated there from all over the world, of
all ages, from the lads who graduated three years back to gray-haired
men who went out from college forty-five or fifty or even more years
ago.
Around the edge of the campus are small tents, each forming a casual
headquarters for a class, over a keg of beer. The bands play by turns
or all together. The men sing as they march; the place is sulphurous
with the reek of torches. In orange blurs against the thick air
torches flame out, a dozen torches, a hundred, spotty, dancing on the
smoke-filled atmosphere. The atmosphere is pinkish; the windows of
the buildings about flash red reflections. The quiet elms stand above
this turmoil and rustle in the June night breeze.
“Welcome back, boys of mine,” they seem to say. “You are mad with
play to-night, but so were your grandfathers sometimes; so will be
your grandsons. Come back to me always and play, always safe, always
boys, under my branches.”
And the pink smoke and the flaring red brightness lift to the
branches, and the light shines on the under side of the leaves,
and, against the absolute blackness of the night above, the million
leaves of the campus elms have the look of carvings in the roof of a
limitless cathedral.
The runaways had just missed at Stamford an up-bound train and had
waited a long time for the next. When they finally landed at New
Haven it was eight-thirty in the evening. They had dined en route,
and Pendleton was in the blue blouse and cap which he had forgotten
to change in his rush after the escaping Ellsworth. They stopped at
headquarters to leave Ellsworth’s bag and to let him get into the
class costume. Then, through the delirium of the town, the staid
old New England town gone mad with color and uproar of two thousand
“boys” of all ages, they hurried to College Street. In the tunnel of
Phelps’s archway Jim Donnelly, Yale policeman, friend of every Yale
boy for uncounted years, opposed his authority to trespassers, let
pass the rightful lords of the campus. He honored the late-comers, as
they forced their way through the crowd, with a short nod.
“Better hurry up; the Thirties are at it,” he admonished them.
Over the wall of the buildings one heard not a sound in College
Street; even in the archway one did not hear. As the belated men
stepped into the campus the noise burst on them like a clap of
thunder.
Bands played, lights flashed, brilliant figures wove and interwove,
men’s voices filled all the air. Through the kaleidoscopic crowd a
man might thread his way, but there was no empty space in the campus.
It was pandemonium let loose. With that, one caught here and there
a costume, a face, which one knew. Then, as they stood peering,
out of the smoke and darkness, out of the mad uproar, coming to
them as if out of a wood, was the head of a column of marching men.
And the men wore blue blouses. The Thirties—his class—his friends.
By the knowledge of the friend beside him he knew that. They came
on, cheered, challenged, greeted now and again out of the waving,
changing crowd, marching steadily along, the workmen of the nation.
And as they came, suddenly, by a miracle, the bands all stopped
playing at once; there was a moment’s lull, and one heard individual
voices in the half silence. And then their own band, the blue-bloused
band of the Thirties, broke into music; an indeterminate chord, and
it swung full into the familiar rhythm of “Amici.” The foremost
men were at Phelps’s archway by now, and somebody shouted “Johnny
Ellsworth,” as they saw him and connected the song with his singing
of it that morning. And behold, all along the line they were calling
his name, as if they knew, as if they welcomed him back to hope and
life and undying friendship.
Ellsworth, dizzy with happiness, took the torch that “little old
Saint Peter” thrust at him, and fell into line beside a fat, short,
bald-headed man whose face shone to him like the face of an angel.
Digby and Loomis were ahead; he had met their smiling eyes, and he
knew with a choking gladness that they knew that he had a right in
this column of efficient workmen; that he had not come with empty
hands to Mother Yale; that he, too, brought his offering of honorable
work to lay on her altar. He could not find his voice; but the
ambassador, turning, threw back a word.
“Sing, you devil,” he ordered. “What are you good for, Johnny
Ellsworth? Sing.”
And with that the voice came, and above the others, clear and sweet
through all the others, it lifted suddenly, with its undertone of
words unsaid, of things men never tell, of friendship eternal. The
strong tones of the world-worn men followed that wonderful voice, and
tears shone in some eyes as they sang, not knowing that the man who
led them was sending up a thanksgiving.
So the Thirties marched about the campus, with torches flaring and
bands playing and the classes shouting, and Ellsworth’s voice led
them singing “Amici.”
THE CAPTAINS
THE CAPTAINS
There was consternation in the great offices of Marcus Trefethen,
for the chief had given an order that could not be understood. It
was a sentence of twelve words, but its result, carried out, would
be the sacrifice of more dollars than might be calmly contemplated.
Beside infinite further consequences—throwing away, for instance,
the glory, now almost in reach of these offices, of seeing their
head the richest man on earth; that was a probable result if the
twelve words went into action. It is easier to knock things to
pieces than to build them. A great fortune assured, a great place
in the financial world won, a future tremendous enough for a Dumas
romance lying a few steps on—and the man who had done the work was
tossing these immensities from him like playthings. What did it
mean? Three men skilled in affairs, in touch with the delicate
pulse of business life, bent their heads together and discussed it.
Friday the policy of the office had been in the full vigor of its
unhurrying, unrelenting swing. Saturday the chief had been restless,
and had gone away and left things in a plastic form which needed
his master-touch—an action out of character. And the first thing on
this Monday was the extraordinary order. As long as they dared they
discussed it, Compton and Barnes and Haywood, the three who stood
next the throne, and at length, not over-eagerly, Compton knocked
and went into the inner room of the great man and closed the door.
He emerged five minutes later with a slight dizziness in his air. He
answered the inquiry of his associates’ attentive silence.
“It’s so,” he said. “The order is to be carried out. He’s gone clean
mad. ‘All negotiations as to the Southwestern road to be stopped at
once.’”
In the inner room a man sat at a desk littered with the crisp sheets
of a large mail, and stared out of the window, down over a wide
landscape of jutting roofs and soaring sky-scrapers, over a harbor
filled with shipping, and a broad quiet ocean. He was a big man,
with a look of bygone athletic form; his face was lined, and every
line meant accomplishment; his mouth was set now as if he were this
moment engaged in something whose doing called for force. He drew a
breath, and spoke aloud.
“It’s done,” he said. “Thank the Lord it’s done. Compton and the
lot think me insane; but they can’t undo it now. Thank the Lord
it’s done.” Then he dropped his head into his hand and, gazing once
more across the brilliant volcano of the feverish city, across the
water-city of masts and smokestacks, his eyes rested on the sea. With
the crystal-clear, unwavering, and rapid consideration which was
his greatest power he reviewed events; he followed up a clue which
Compton and Barnes and Haywood had missed. Clearly as if it were a
business affair he reviewed the time—but fully he did it—no moment
of the three days’ crisis was forgotten. For an hour he sat so,
withdrawn from the whirlpool in which he had been the master-swimmer,
which flowed about him yet.
On Friday at ten there had been a short meeting of the directors of
the Imperial and Western Railway; seven men present had decided in
half an hour a few questions which would affect twenty thousand. The
Southwestern Railway, covering much of the same country, willing
or unwilling, was to be consolidated. Unwillingly it would be, for
it was an old road, with a large clientage which could be held in
spite of the new Imperial, and the routes differed enough to make
both still useful. That was the point. If there was money to make,
why should not the Imperial merge the Southwestern and make it all?
There was a large mortgage on the Southwestern, and Marcus Trefethen
held the bonds; the Imperial and Western was richer; they could
afford to lower their rates, forcing the older road to do the same;
it was a question of a short time before the Southwestern would be
making no money and would be unable to pay interest on the mortgage.
Trefethen could foreclose—the two roads would merge. And beyond
this, to Trefethen’s far-seeing eye—the eye of a poet in stocks and
combinations—sounded the rhythm of a greater combination, a poem
in which railroads rhymed to each other, and whose metre was the
swing of accumulating millions. It was not money he wanted—he had
plenty—it was the interest of the great game which drew him, the
poet’s joy to fit the verse and realize the vision.
The seven men decided that there was no reason why money should be
made within reach of their grasp which they did not grasp. Marcus
Trefethen unexpectedly demurred for a moment. In a flash of memory it
came to him who the president of the Southwestern was, and that all
his fortune was in the road.
“It seems a bit brutal,” he said, “to undo solid work of forty years’
standing.”
“It’s a case of the survival of the fittest,” Carroll’s harsh voice
answered. “Centralization makes for efficiency—this is a world where
the inefficient goes under.”
“The Southwestern isn’t inefficient. It’s a well-managed business,
with a future as well as a past.”
“That’s why we want it,” Harrington slid in with suave readiness, and
the others laughed cheerfully. Carroll took up the thread.
“Don’t strain at a gnat, Trefethen. You’re new to this business of
absorbing small corporations, but if you want to do large work
you’ve got to get used to it. If you believe in evolution you must
see the reasonableness. The big beast preys on the little one through
nature, and you can’t stop with a jerk when you get to man. We’re
part of the scheme. Like the other beasts, if we want to live we’ve
got to eat small fry.”
“Live!” said Trefethen, and he threw a glance around the circle of
multi-millionaires, and gave a short laugh.