Carter Clews smiled with boyish pleasure, for one of them was “Newt” Riggs, who used to row on the crew and was now a corporation attorney in Chicago; and there was Billy Drowson, who used to flunk examinations as easily as if he meant to do it; and the third was Joe Crane, who was making his two hundred thousand a year in metal refining in Colorado; and the little man was Lapham, the surgeon, who had been marshal of the class.
The last had just seated himself comfortably in the carriage, when Clews succeeded in pushing his way into the gap they had left in the crowd. Both Joseph Crane and Lapham, seeing him take a step toward them, opened their eyes in innocent surprise; neither of them recognized him. He stopped for a moment of embarrassed hesitation, and in that moment he felt with the sharp old pang that he belonged among them no more. They were successful men.
Carter Clews stepped back into the gray shadow of the portico. The carriage started away with a laugh and the scrape of a wheel on the curb, and Clews started on his way once more. His daily trudge to and from his office was the result of a calculation that enough car fare each year was saved to buy an extra gown for his daughter. Life had toyed with him, showing her splendors and snatching them from his fingers; had taught him culture and then laughed at him.
The rattle of his key brought his wife to the door, and the usual smiles and kisses of welcome reminded him of the old duty of keeping his feelings to himself.
“Was there any mail to-day?”
“There was a postal-card came to-day for you, dad. It had been to all of the four places we have lived since we came back from Iowa, and so it was late in getting here. It was the announcement of the twenty-fifth anniversary dinner of your class; you’ll go, won’t you?”
“Where’s the postal?”
“Do go, dad, we don’t like to have you forgotten. It’s only six. The dinner’s at eight. You’ll have plenty of time, father.”
Clews took the card, holding it under the light of the lamp on the center-table. His fingers trembled a little as he read it.
“The last dinner I went to was in our Senior year, just before I graduated and went West; I was toastmaster at that dinner. It was a spring night like this. I remember a little crowd of us sat under a tree in the college yard and talked until daylight. We promised each other, half in fun, that the one who got to be forty-five years old and wasn’t successful should jump into the river. And then we went up to my room for a cold bath, and I built a fire and heated the poker and burned my name into the mantel-piece.”