“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Dean when Wallace announced himself. “Sit down, Wallace. You’re going, David? Then we may consider the matter settled?”
“If you’re sure you really want it so.”
“I’m sure. Good-bye.”
As David passed out, Wallace was still standing by the door, embarrassed, with downcast eyes. He had given David no greeting and seemed to desire none. Such evidence of his bitterness shadowed David’s happiness—shadowed it, but not for long. How could he help being happy? The sacrifice that he had been prepared to make was unnecessary; the friend who was helping him was a friend whom he knew and loved and understood, not one who in all essentials was a remote stranger. The only disappointment involved in the discovery was his loss of the vague belief that Dr. Wallace had chosen generously to testify his professional admiration for an unappreciated confrère. And that disappointment was balanced by satisfaction in Mr. Dean’s declaration that he had been actuated by his liking for David’s father as well as for David himself.
How splendid it was of Mr. Dean! And then David thought how thrilled and excited his mother would be at learning the unexpected solution of the mystery. He began a letter to her as soon as he reached his room; he had not finished it when Wallace stood in his doorway.
“Hello, Lester!” David could not quite keep the note of surprise out of his voice. “Come in and sit down.”
Wallace closed the door quietly behind him and dropped into a chair.
“I’ve just told Mr. Dean of my cribbing in the examination. I decided it was the only thing to do.”
“That took sand all right!”—The old admiration shone from David’s eyes.
“No, it didn’t. After the way you talked to me I felt I didn’t want to go on always knowing I’d done such a crooked thing without ever trying to make it right. I told Mr. Dean that I should never have confessed if you hadn’t found me out. So he knows I didn’t deserve much credit.”
“Just the same, I think you do, and I guess he thinks so,” David said warmly.
“He was mighty good to me,” Wallace acknowledged. “He asked me what I thought should be my status now, and I had to say that, as I hadn’t honestly passed the examination, I supposed I ought to be put on probation again. He said he supposed so, too, but he said he didn’t want the school to know the reason for it all; he thought that, as I had come to him, the story needn’t be made public. I said I was willing to take my medicine, but of course I should be grateful if I wasn’t shown up before everybody. So he’s just going to let it be known that I’m on probation again, after all, and that there was some mistake made in letting me off it; people can draw whatever conclusions they please.”
David went over and seated himself on the arm of Wallace’s chair; he slipped his own arm round Wallace’s shoulders.
“Lester,” he said, “I feel somehow as if I’d done a mighty mean thing to you. I guess I did talk like a prig.”
“You were right about it, anyway. And I’m glad I’ve got the thing off my chest. I don’t want you to think of me as crooked, Dave.”
“I won’t! I never will! I was afraid you didn’t care any more what I thought of you!”
“Well, I do!” Wallace reached up and gripped David’s hand. “Look here, Dave—what was all that about your not coming back next year?”
“Oh, that was a mistake. I was feeling blue; I am coming back all right.”
“Good enough! Don’t you think we might make a go of it if we roomed together, Dave?”
“I’d rather room with you than any other fellow here, Lester. I’ve often hoped you’d suggest it. But Mr. Dean has asked me to live with him next year. He needs some one. That was what we were talking about this evening.”
“Well, I’m sorry.” Wallace hesitated a moment and then said, “You know, I like Mr. Dean. He’s making an awfully plucky fight. I never stopped to think about that. The way he talked to me this evening—he was white clear through. I’ll tell you one thing, Dave.” Wallace got slowly out of his chair. “Nobody’s going to have any chance to put me on probation next year.”
That resolve, however, as David knew, did not make it any easier for Wallace to face the surprise, the disappointment, and the inquiries of the school. The next day all St. Timothy’s buzzed with rumor and excitement; the strangeness of Wallace’s case, off probation one day, on again the next, and his own reticence as to the cause, led to gossip and speculation. All he would say in reply to the questions of his best friends was that Mr. Dean was not to be blamed in any way for thus disqualifying him for the school nine; it was all his own fault, and he did not care to talk about it.
Henshaw, captain of the nine, came to David.
“I’ve got to try you now at first,” he said. “I guess you’ll hold your end up all right. But Lester makes me tired! He was the best batter on the team.”
Wallace himself tried to make amends to the team for failing them. He gave the members batting practice; he played on the scrub; he heartened and encouraged the players with his praise. And his spirit of willing service went far toward reëstablishing him in the affections of the school.
The game that year was played at St. John’s, and thither on the day appointed all St. Timothy’s journeyed—even Mr. Dean. And during the game Mr. Dean and Wallace sat side by side on the players’ bench, and Wallace reported to him the progress of events. He clapped his hands with the rest when in the second inning David made a hit that brought in a run—the only hit, to be sure, that he made during the game. It was a hard-fought game, in which Carter, the St. Timothy’s pitcher, had a little the better of it up to the ninth inning. Then, with the score four to three against them, St. John’s came to the bat. The first man struck out, but the next singled and the third was given his base on balls. Carter seemed nervous and unsteady. Henshaw came in from third base to encourage him; the St. John’s supporters had taken heart and were keeping up a distracting tumult along the third-base line. Wallace leaned forward, gripping cold hands together; Mr. Dean sat with an expression of patient expectancy. Henshaw returned to his position, and Carter faced the captain of St. John’s. The captain had determined to “wait them out,” but Carter recovered control, and after having two balls called sent two strikes over the plate. Then the batter hit a hard grounder toward Adams, the second baseman; Adams made a brilliant stop and tossed the ball to the short-stop, who was covering second, and the short-stop shot it to David at first just ahead of the runner. The game had been won in an instant; the St. Timothy’s crowd burst into a tremendous roar.
Mr. Dean cried, in the midst of the bellowing, into Wallace’s ear, “What happened?” and Wallace shouted back:
“Double play—Adams to Starr to Dave.”
And then Mr. Dean stood up and waved his hat and shouted with the rest.
David sat with Mr. Dean in the train going home. Near by sat Wallace and Ruth Davenport, and David noticed that they talked together seriously and did not seem affected by the jubilation and jollity that prevailed throughout the car.
It was growing dusk when they reached St. Timothy’s, and lights were glowing in the windows of the buildings. The hungry swarm poured into the dining-room and rattled into their places at the tables; the clatter of knife and fork did not, however, subdue the clamor of tongues. Inexhaustibly they dwelt upon the afternoon’s triumph. David, receiving congratulations and compliments from every side, was fairly simmering with happiness. Then he caught sight of Wallace, sitting at a distant table, quiet and forgotten, and compassion for Wallace, who was missing all the pleasure and the satisfaction that might have been his, checked the laughter on David’s lips. After supper Wallace was not to be found. David walked down to the study; Ruth Davenport, waiting at the rectory gate, called him across the road to her.
“Lester told me the whole story in the train to-day, David,” she said. “You know, he’s awfully glad that you put him right. So am I.”
“Lester’s all right,” said David. “He was always all right.”
“He’ll be all right next year, anyway,” Ruth answered. “I always liked Lester, but he’s had the idea that nothing mattered much so long as he had his own way. You know, I like him better because he told me!” she added irrelevantly.
“Nobody could help liking him,” David answered.
“Or you, either, David.”
And for David that little speech from Ruth put the crown upon a glorious day. The study bell rang and summoned him, but for some minutes after he was seated at his desk his mind was elsewhere than on his books; his eyes saw, not the printed page, but the girl in white standing by the gate and looking up at him with her honest, friendly eyes.
It was a pleasant and happy summer vacation that David passed. He was gratified to find that Ralph had grown in strength and athletic promise, and he complimented him with fraternal frankness on the fact that he had acquired more sense. His mother seemed to grow younger; at any rate, she was more cheerful than when he had last seen her; only occasionally did the look of sadness and of longing for the past come into her eyes.
They spent a month camping in the woods on the shore of a lake; Maggie went with them, though she protested that she did not see why they wanted to leave a nice, tidy little apartment and run wild like the Indians. She made that protest to Mrs. Ives and to Ralph, not to David. Somehow she could not feel quite so free and easy with David as formerly; he was not any longer just a boy. He had grown older and bigger, and involuntarily Maggie found herself treating him with a deference almost like that which she had been accustomed to observe toward his father. To be sure, before the summer was over a good part of that constraint wore off; but she never again could open her heart to him in full and whole-souled criticism as in the old days.
For Mrs. Ives the ideal that Dr. Wallace had embodied was shattered. David laughed to see how much she begrudged the grateful thoughts that she had entertained toward the distinguished surgeon through all those months.
“You know, he didn’t commit a wrong, mother, in not sending me back to St. Timothy’s,” David reminded her. “You seem almost to feel that he’s done us an injury.”
“No, of course not, David, but it does make me cross to think of all the feelings I’ve had about him, and he never caring in the least! And all the time I never once thought of that good, kind, poor Mr. Dean!”
From Mr. Dean came letters; he was passing the summer in Boston, getting instruction in a school for the blind. “Interesting, but not very encouraging,” he wrote. “If I were younger, perhaps I shouldn’t be so stupid. But I’ve made some progress, and perhaps next year I shall find that the lack of sight is not so troublesome.”
As David’s vacation drew to a close, his mother became again subdued and wistful. She talked hopefully, she was glad that Mr. Dean had intimated his intention to prepare David for the career that the boy’s father had intended, but she could not readily resign herself to the wrench of another parting.
“We live so far away,” she lamented on the last morning. “It takes so long for letters to go and come. I can’t help feeling that you’ll be less and less my boy, David, dear.”
He scoffed at her, but nevertheless her words struck home to a tender spot. Of course he would never grow away from her in his heart, but he realized that he would be away from her more and more continuously as the years went on, and with a pang of shame he suddenly knew that the separation would mean more to her than to him. He determined then and there that he would try his best to make up to her through his letters for the loss that she must always feel, to convince her that she always had his confidence as well as his love. And during the next year he fulfilled faithfully that resolve. It was a busy year, for besides doing his own work he had to give a good deal of help to Mr. Dean; moreover, as a sixth-former he had responsibilities and offices that demanded a considerable amount of attention; his athletic avocations, in which he had a gratifying success, were numerous. But the more he had to do the more he found to write home about and the gayer and cheerier was the spirit of what he wrote. It pleased him when in the short vacations at Christmas and Easter his mother said: “I can hear you in your letters, David. You write me such good letters!”
Between Mr. Dean, dependent on David in so many little matters, and David, dependent on Mr. Dean in one large affair, the friendship grew stronger and closer. The boy admired the man for his learning, his kindness, his courtesy, and most of all for his courage; David wondered how any one stricken with such an affliction could make so little of it. And the man liked the boy for his responsiveness and for a certain stanch and honest quality that could not fail to impress even one who was blind. So the association was a happy one—so happy that the masters commented upon it among themselves and wondered how Mr. Dean would manage the next year; he seemed to have nobody in training to take David’s place. David himself often wondered about it, but refrained from asking any questions; and Mr. Dean kept his own counsel, kept it, indeed, until one evening two weeks before the end of the school year, the evening of the day on which St. Timothy’s had again met St. John’s upon the ball field and been victorious. The members of the nine had been cheered at the bonfire built in their honor, Lester Wallace, the captain, had made a little speech, and then David had slipped away to go to his room. But as he passed the open door of Mr. Dean’s study the master called him.
“A great celebration, David?”
“Yes, pretty fine.” David came in and described the scene round the bonfire.
Mr. Dean smiled. “Yes, I could hear the cheering. It was a great game! I wish I could have really seen it! And you played well at second base?”
“I managed to pull through without any errors. But Lester was a wonder at first—just like lightning!”
“You and he seemed to develop some fine team play together. And not just on the ball field, either. You have shown good team play in everything this year. At Harvard next year I hope it will continue; there will be just as many opportunities for it.” Mr. Dean hesitated a moment and then said, with a shade of diffidence and embarrassment, “And I think our team play has been pretty good, David, don’t you?”
“Yours has been splendid, Mr. Dean.”
“You’ve done your share, David. So well that I don’t know how I shall get on without you. In fact, I don’t want to get on without you.”
David was silent for a moment in embarrassment, not knowing what to say. “Anybody else would be of just as much help, Mr. Dean,” he said finally.
“Nobody else could be, because I couldn’t feel about anybody else as I do about you, David. Well, I can’t ask you to stay on and be a schoolboy indefinitely, can I?” Again Mr. Dean paused; he was apparently finding it hard to say something that he had in mind. “I’ve talked with the rector and told him that I shouldn’t come back next year. He was very kind and urged me to reconsider—but I told him no. I’m not so useful as I once was, and I can’t help being aware that in some ways I hamper the administration. So it’s best for St. Timothy’s and for me that I should withdraw.”
“The school will be awfully sorry to lose you, fellows and masters both,” said David.
“I hope they’ll feel a friendly regret, the same that I feel at parting from them. But the step is one that I’ve decided to take. And now the question is, What am I to do with myself? I have enough money to live comfortably. I was wondering, David, if your mother wouldn’t like to take a house in Cambridge or Boston, since you’re to be at Harvard, and take me in as a boarder? I know it’s asking a tremendous lot—to suggest that she undertake the care of a blind man; she mustn’t feel under any obligation to say she’ll do it. But I thought perhaps she might like to be near you; and then there’s your brother Ralph—we might arrange about his education, too. How do you feel about it, David? And how do you think your mother would feel about it?”
“I think she’d feel it was too good to be true!” said David enthusiastically. “Oh, Mr. Dean, I’m sure she’d feel it was the finest thing in the world!”
Mr. Dean could recognize the eager ring in David’s voice even if he could not see the eager sparkle in the boy’s eyes.
“Of course she mightn’t feel so at all,” he said, smiling. “She might not want to move away from the place that had been her home. But if you will sound her on the matter, David, when next you write, I shall be very much obliged.”
“When next I write! I’m going to write to her this minute, Mr. Dean!”
Perhaps the master waited as eagerly as David for her reply. And one morning the boy came to him with a letter.
“It’s just as I knew it would be, Mr. Dean,” he said; his eyes were shining, his face was happy. “She’s so excited she couldn’t even write straight; her hand was all shaky. She thinks more than ever that you’re the finest person in the world.”
Mr. Dean laughed joyously. “She’ll have plenty of opportunity to discover that I’m not. Well, David, old man, I guess you’ve got me on your hands for life.”
Indeed, Mrs. Ives had written to her boy a letter that was throbbing with joy and happiness. Yet toward the end she had admitted misgivings. She felt that she should be overawed by Mr. Dean. Her looks would not matter, of course, but she was afraid he might not like her voice or the way she read aloud, and of course he would want to have some one who could read pleasantly to him. David laughed and did not pass on those doubtful questionings to Mr. Dean. He knew that his mother’s voice was all right. He laughed, too, over the end of the letter. “I’ve just told Maggie, and she said, ‘The dear sake! Of all the crazy notions! You mean to tell me you’re going to pull up stakes, root and branch!’ I said I thought I really should, and then Maggie said, ‘Very well. But you and a blind man—you’ll need me to look after the both of you!’ Isn’t it nice of her? As for Ralph, he’s simply wild with delight—” and so on.
Before the end of the school year the arrangements were partly made. Mr. Dean was to spend the summer in Boston at the school for the blind. About the first of September David was to bring his family on from the West, and then they would all go house-hunting together. David went round those last few days walking on air; examinations did not bother him; everything was fine; every one was happy.
And then there came upon him a sense of melancholy, even of sadness. He did not want so soon to leave this place that had been so dear to him. The days slipped by inexorably. And on the last night, in the middle of the school hymns, he was very near to weeping, and when he shook hands with the rector and said good-bye he could not say more than just that word.
Outside he saw a figure in white standing behind the rectory gate. He crossed the road and spoke to her.
“I hate to go, Ruth. You’ve been awfully nice to me here.”
“I’m sorry to think that you and Lester and all the rest are leaving, David. That’s the trouble with being a girl in a boys’ school. Your friends are always leaving you—over and over and over.”
“You make so many new ones that perhaps you don’t miss the old.”
“Yes, I do, David. You’ll come up and see us sometimes, won’t you?”
They bade each other good-bye, and he went away. Yes, he would go back to St. Timothy’s and see them, he said to himself quite distinctly—often and often.