“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.