“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?”