The departure from the city that had been their home cost David and Ralph few pangs. To them it meant faring forth gayly into a world of novelty and excitement. They assumed light-heartedly that the friends and places that they were leaving would always be friends and places that they would love and revisit; and on the last morning when they stood with their mother beside their father’s grave they felt that in future years they would often return to this shrine. Mrs. Ives laid a spray of roses against the headstone; her hand rested for a moment gently on the mound of earth. When she stood up the tears were flowing down her cheeks; she caught and pressed the hands of her boys and cried, “Oh, I can’t go! I can’t go!” Then they stood, renewing each of them poignantly the sweetness and the bitterness of their common sorrow, loath to turn from that little, hallowed spot of ground. In the row of cedars that partly screened the graveled driveway below them birds were singing; the fragrance of pine and hemlock, of clipped hedges and mown lawns, of white phlox and candytuft and sweet alyssum were in the air. A squirrel suddenly sprang from a tree and ran away over mounds and headstones.
“Look, mother, look at the squirrel!” cried Ralph.
“Yes, dear, yes.” Mrs. Ives dried her tears. Children could not be expected to be sad for very long. The scamper of that inconsequent bit of furry life, with plumy tail streaming behind, and the eager instant cry of the small boy closed the chapter of wistful meditation; Mrs. Ives turned away from her husband’s grave.
In comparison with that no other parting could be sad. And when at last they were on the train, and the train was pulling out of the city, the mother’s spirits rose like Ralph’s; for at heart she was almost as much a child as he.
“Look, Ralph!” she said. “There’s the academy and the library—and the church. It’s so queer to think we shan’t be seeing them again in a few days. But just think of all that we shall see—the Longfellow house and Bunker Hill and Plymouth Rock! The last time I took a long journey like this was on my honeymoon!”
“I was awfully excited the first time I made this trip East,” observed David. “I’ve been over the road so often now that I know it all pretty well. How do you like it, Maggie?” He could not help feeling his dignity as the experienced traveler, but the degree of patronage that he bestowed upon the members of his party was not offensive, even to Ralph.
Maggie, replying to his question, reached what was for her the acme of enthusiasm. “Oh, well enough so far,” she said. “I don’t know how it’ll be when it comes night.”
Indeed, to all of them the journey was one that held the spirit of romance. It was an adventure that was altering the course and current of their lives, and because they were all embarked in it together and it was beginning so pleasantly they felt happy and hopeful concerning the outcome. Each river that they crossed, each town that they left behind, marked a stage in their progress toward romance—mysterious romance in the person of a poor blind man who waited for them eagerly, who had been their friend and helper and who now needed their friendship and help.
For two days they traveled; then in the middle of the afternoon—a warm, golden afternoon—their train drew into Boston. Nervousness overcame Mrs. Ives at this approach to the first crisis in her new life.
“Do you think Mr. Dean will be at the station with some one to meet us?” she asked David.
“I think very likely. He knows we’re arriving by this train.”
“Do you think I look all right, David?”
“You surely do. But it couldn’t make any difference if you didn’t.”
“That’s true. I keep forgetting. But anyway I always feel that, if I look all right, I shall be more likely to behave in a way that will make a good impression. And I do want to do that. Even though Mr. Dean can’t see me, he is sure to form some impression of me.”
“A nice shy little person that he’ll like the better the more he knows her—that’s the impression he’ll have of you. Yes, your face is clean, and your hat is straight, and your veil too.”
Nevertheless, it was an agitated little woman that, clinging to her elder son’s arm, was swept along the platform in the midst of the streaming crowd. She clutched him still more tightly when he cried, “I see him, mother! I see him!”
The next moment he had Mr. Dean by the hand, and Mr. Dean’s face had lightened; even the black glasses that he wore seemed no longer to cloud it as he cried, “David, my boy! So you’re here! And your mother? And Ralph?”
“Right here,” said David. “This is mother, Mr. Dean.” He placed her hand in the blind man’s.
Mr. Dean, holding her hand, took off his hat and bowed; to Mrs. Ives the careful courtesy of his greeting to one whom he could not see was touching. “Oh, Mr. Dean,” she exclaimed, “how good of you to meet us!”
Then the blind man, enclosing her hand in both of his, said, “You’re David’s mother; I knew that I should like the sound of your voice.”
Next there was Ralph to be greeted. “And this is Maggie, Mr. Dean,” said David, and Mr. Dean said at once:
“You’ll find me a great care, Maggie, a great care, but no worse, I’m sure, than you’re expecting.”
At that Maggie giggled, quite at a loss for an answer and greatly delighted with a blind gentleman who had such power to read her thoughts.
“Now, Edith,” said Mr. Dean, turning his head. “Where are you, Edith?”
The attractive lady in gray whom David had noticed and who had stood back a little during the greetings came forward with a smile.
Mr. Dean introduced her. “Mrs. Ives,” he said, “this is my friend Mrs. Bradley, and she can tell you all the outs about me—though she probably won’t.”
“I feel as if I already knew David and his mother,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Now we’re going to take you to a hotel—we’ve engaged rooms for you—and if you’re not too tired you must come and dine with us this evening.”
She led the way with Mrs. Ives and Ralph; David and Mr. Dean walked arm in arm behind.
“We’ll go sight-seeing—house-hunting, I mean—to-morrow, David; we’ll do it leisurely. And”—Mr. Dean dropped his voice—“you mustn’t let your mother worry about hotel bills or anything of that kind; that’s all arranged for, you understand.”
“But, Mr. Dean—” began David.
“No, it’s all settled. I’ve prevailed on your family to come East for my benefit, and I don’t intend to have them do it at their expense. After all, David, you know I’m to be one of the family now.”
Mrs. Bradley marshaled them all into her big motor car; a few minutes later she and Mr. Dean were leaving them at the entrance to the hotel.
“We’ll see you then at seven this evening,” she said. “Good-bye.”
“I know I haven’t clothes fit to wear to such a house,” began Mrs. Ives as soon as she was in her room. “And I can’t help feeling shy and quiet with such people; they know so much more than I do.”
“People aren’t liked for their knowledge,” said David. “Just for what they are.”
“I don’t know whether there’s anything encouraging for me in that idea or not,” said his mother.
Nevertheless, in the excited spirit of gayety rather than with reluctant diffidence, she prepared to go out for dinner. She even tried to draw from Maggie, who was assisting her in her preparations, some more pronounced expression of satisfaction than had yet been forthcoming. She invited Maggie to subscribe to her eulogy of Mr. Dean. But Maggie only answered, “I’m glad he seems to realize he’ll be an awful care.”
As Mrs. Bradley had explained that her house was only a short distance from the hotel, the Ives family set forth on foot. Their directions took them across the Common; in the twilight it seemed to them a romantic place, but it was in vain that Mrs. Ives, for the benefit of her sons and for the heightening of her own excitement and pleasure, strove to recall to her memory the events that gave it historic significance. “I know there were great doings here of some sort,” she said, “but I can’t remember just what they were. It’s so discouraging to have my kind of a mind.”
Anyway, it was all mysterious, romantic, and adventurous to be strolling in this manner among presumably historic scenes that were brooded over by lofty, venerable elms—trees novel and enchanting to Western eyes. The illumination of the city streets shining across the open spaces was enlivening; the soft air was hospitable; the melting colors in the west communicated a glow to timid hearts. Entering the sphere of tranquil dignity that circumscribes Beacon Hill, the visitors ascended to the top of Mount Vernon Street; there, while searching for the designated portal, Mrs. Ives bethought herself to convey in an undertone to Ralph a last injunction: “Remember, Ralph, to sit quiet and wait for things to be passed to you; don’t ask and reach as you do at home.” Ralph’s inarticulate reply betokened a subdued spirit.
A white colonial door with a brass knocker presented the number of which they were in search; they were conducted up the stairs and into the spacious drawing-room, where four smiling Bradleys welcomed them. Mr. Bradley, a tall, bald-headed gentleman with a white mustache and wrinkled brow, looked twenty years older than his animated and handsome wife; more reasonably than she he seemed the friend and contemporary of Mr. Dean. To David he was at once the least interesting and important member of the family. Richard, a tall, slim youth of about David’s age, with a nose too short for his height and a mouth the corners of which seemed habitually pointed upward as if in search of amusement, engaged David’s most favorable attention. Marion Bradley was tall and slim also, but in no other respect resembled her coltish and informal brother. There was no hint of disproportion in any of her features; their very exquisiteness was severe, and David felt at once both chilled and perturbed by the young creature’s beauty. The steadfastness and depth of luminosity in her dark eyes were disconcerting to an inexperienced youth. With a sense of his own cowardice he turned to the brother as to a refuge and left Marion to consider and to ruminate upon the defenseless Ralph. It was the easier to do that because in the first few moments he learned that he and Richard were to be classmates at Harvard, and each had eager questions to ask.
Mr. Dean’s voice was heard calling from above. Marion answered in a voice the cultivated quality of which chimed distractingly on David’s ear; then with mature serenity she left the room to go upstairs to the blind man’s aid. Presently she returned, arm in arm with him.
“My family have arrived?” asked Mr. Dean, and upon Mrs. Bradley’s replying that they had, he said, “Then I must begin to get acquainted with them; Mrs. Ives, won’t you lead me over to the sofa and sit down with me?”
“If Mrs. Ives will go down to dinner with you instead,” said Mrs. Bradley. “It’s all ready.”
It was a cheerful gathering, and Mrs. Ives soon felt quite at her ease with Mr. Dean and with all the Bradley family except Marion. She found afterwards that she and David had formed similar impressions of Marion.
“I suppose she hasn’t really a better mind than her father or her mother, but she makes me more afraid of it,” said Mrs. Ives.
“She’s too self-possessed and doesn’t feel any responsibility for entertaining her guests—just sits and sizes them up,” David observed. “Not the kind I like—not a bit like Ruth Davenport up at St. Timothy’s. Richard’s a brick, though, and so is the old man.”
Mrs. Ives concurred in that opinion. After dinner Mr. Bradley had invited her to leave the others and accompany him into his library where they might have a talk.
“Mr. Dean has asked me to inform you more or less as to his affairs,” he said as he closed the door. “He feels it would be embarrassing for him to discuss them at the very start, and yet they must be discussed. As I’m his man of business, I can put them before you. He is quite comfortably off. He wants you to rent a good large house in an attractive neighborhood in Cambridge, a house in which he will have a comfortable study, bedroom, and bath. He would like to have you take charge of all expenses and disbursements for the house. And he wishes me to pay to you monthly one thousand dollars for house and family expenses—including David’s expenses at college and Ralph’s at school.”
“But it’s too much!” cried Mrs. Ives, quite aghast at the idea of having to dispose of an allowance of such magnitude. “Why, I thought he meant just to be a boarder! And to pay twelve thousand a year for board and lodging! I never heard of such a thing!”
“His mind is made up, and you must let him have his way. He has the money to spend, and he is convinced that he can’t use it to any better purpose.”
“But I can’t feel that it’s right! I don’t feel that I can accept such an arrangement.”
Mr. Bradley set about overcoming the expected resistance. He dwelt upon the disappointment and distress that would fall upon Mr. Dean if the plan, which it had given him great pleasure to devise, were rejected; he assured Mrs. Ives that Mr. Dean’s heart was wrapped up in David, and that he was already anticipating the development of a similar affection for Ralph; he pointed out that Mr. Dean had no relatives to feel aggrieved at such a bestowal of his affections. Furthermore, after the necessary expenses for the education of the two boys were deducted, the allowance that was contemplated would not be more than sufficient to surround Mr. Dean with the comforts that he desired. Mr. Bradley urged Mrs. Ives to think how little there was in life for the blind man and how cruel it would be to deny him his happiness; he drew such an affecting picture of Mr. Dean’s forlornness in the event of her rejecting his proposal that the soft woman could not in the end be anything but submissive.
“If you think it’s right that I should accept it, Mr. Bradley—if you feel that it would really disappoint Mr. Dean—” She spoke with a quiver of the voice.
“Of course I think it’s right; I shouldn’t be trying so hard to persuade you if I didn’t,” said Mr. Bradley. “Now let’s go in and relieve the poor man’s suspense. I’m afraid the length of our interview is making him uneasy.”
Mr. Dean would not listen to Mrs. Ives when she tried to make a little speech of appreciation. “All settled, is it?” he said. “That’s good—no, no, my dear lady, you don’t know what you’re in for; I assure you, you don’t; so there’s no use in your trying to say anything—absolutely not anything. And to-morrow perhaps you’ll go with Mrs. Bradley and try to find a house. Mrs. Bradley knows pretty well the kind of house I have in mind, and if you and she can agree on one, I shall be satisfied.”
Walking back across the Common to the hotel, Mrs. Ives breathed aloud her blessings. Pious longing followed them. “If only your father could know! Perhaps he does. What was to become of us—that troubled him so in those last days! Oh, boys, you won’t forget him—you won’t lose sight of what he was and what he hoped for you! In this new place, where there will be nothing to remind you of him, you must keep him in your thoughts. You will, David; you will too, Ralph!”
“Yes, mother,” each boy answered; and Mrs. Ives looked up at the quiet stars and told herself that here in this strange place even as at home a loved and loving spirit watched over her and her two sons.