The suburb in which David Ives lived and in which David’s father had most of his medical practice was by no means one of the wealthy and prosperous suburbs of the wealthy and prosperous city. It was a new and raw-looking region; many of the streets were unpaved, littered and weed-grown; and unfenced lots and two-family tenement houses were alike its characteristics; there were numerous billboards along the sidewalks; the trees were few in number and had grown half-heartedly.
But David, returning from the baseball field on a hot July afternoon, saw nothing depressing in the neighborhood. He walked with his coat flung over his shoulder and his cap in his hand. He had distinguished himself at the bat; he was thirsty and thinking of the cold ginger ale he would drink; he was hungry and thinking of the raspberries he would eat; he was pleasantly tired and thinking of an evening to be passed in comfort and interest over “David Copperfield.” A gust of wind flung dirt and dust into his face and made him wonder why the watering-carts so seldom visited Rosewood,—for such was the misleading name of the suburb,—but the next moment he turned into a more shaded and attractive street and forgot his displeasure in the satisfaction of drawing near his home. He passed the Carters’ bungalow and the Porters’ Queen Anne cottage and the Jennisons’ mansard dwelling, and then he turned up the flagstone walk that led between two narrow bits of lawn to his father’s door.
The house was square and gray and shabby; there was a room thrown out at one end of the wide front porch, and over the door that admitted to this room hung a lantern bearing the words, “Dr. Ives.” The door and the window were both open, and just before passing into the front hall David had a glimpse of his father seated at his desk in a characteristic attitude, with his gray head resting on his hand while an invisible patient recited her symptoms. That the patient was a woman David knew, because he heard the querulous drone of her voice—it was just the drone that he associated with his father’s numerous charity cases.
In the dining-room Maggie, the maid of all work, was setting the table for supper.
“Where’s mother, Maggie?” David asked.
“Search me!” replied Maggie, who looked red and hot and at war with the world.
As there was obviously nothing to be gained by complying with Maggie’s request, David passed on to the parlor and the library, and not finding his mother in either place, went upstairs three steps at a time. Then he saw her sitting in her room, looking disconsolately out of the window. So sad was the expression on her face that David forgot what had been in his mind and exclaimed:
“What’s the matter, mother?”
Mrs. Ives rose and came toward him, with her arms outstretched.
“Oh, David dear, I can’t bear to have you go, I can’t bear to have you go!” With her arms round his neck she was sobbing on his shoulder.
“Go where?” David was bewildered and distressed. “What are you talking about, mother?”
She did not immediately answer, but went on weeping quietly. Then she said: “I will let your father tell you about it. It is his decision.”
“Then it can’t be anything so very terrible, mother,” David said, and he stroked and patted her while she clung to him.
“Not for you, perhaps, David, but it seems very hard to me. It may all be for the best, but I don’t know—I don’t know—”
David could not help reflecting that his father was always the optimist of the family and his mother usually the pessimist, and that therefore it would be desirable to await his father’s unfolding of the mystery. So he set about getting his mother into better spirits, which he did by tweaking her ears, kissing her, and telling her that he did not know where he was going or for how long, but that, wherever it was, they could not keep him from coming back to home and mother. She was a pretty little woman who looked scarcely old enough to have such a tall and stalwart son, and as he held her in his arms she seemed to be a kind of child mother—an anxious, diffident, confiding, appealing little person, with sensitive lips and timorous, soft brown eyes. David looked like her and yet not like her; his eyes were brown and shone affectionately, but there was fearlessness rather than timorousness in their glance; his lips were sensitive, but their curve showed a resolute rather than a vacillating character; he had his mother’s wavy brown hair. Soothing his mother, he smoothed her hair, he took her handkerchief and dried her eyes with it. “And now does this come next?” he asked, reaching for a powder-puff. So he got her to laugh, and her face had brightened when he led her downstairs.
“Found her, did you?” said Maggie as they passed the dining-room. Her tone was one of good-natured interest, but David did not feel it necessary to reply. He had reached an age when he was beginning to dislike Maggie’s familiar manners. Mrs. Ives admitted she was too much of a coward to try to correct them.
As David and his mother entered the library, his ten-year-old brother Ralph rushed in breathlessly, declaring his satisfaction at finding that he was not late for supper. “I guess you will be, if you try to get yourself properly ready for it,” remarked David, looking the unkempt and dirty-faced small boy over with disfavor. Ralph thrust out his tongue, but when David commanded him sternly to go upstairs and get clean, with some stamping and scuffing he obeyed.
Across the hall rose the violent clamor of the supper bell, which Maggie always rang as if she were summoning the neighborhood to a fire. David and his mother had just seated themselves at the table when Ralph came crashing down the stairs, bounced into the room, and hurled himself into his chair, snorting and panting.
“Gee, you do make a noise!” David said.
“So do you—with your mouth,” Ralph rejoined promptly.
“Boys, boys!” sighed Mrs. Ives, and David turned red and restrained the ready retort. It was hard, because Ralph looked across the table at him jauntily, defiantly.
The entrance of Dr. Ives had a quieting effect on the provocative younger brother. David, glancing at his father, had the uneasy, vaguely apprehensive feeling that had frequently taken possession of him of late. He was always expecting, always hoping that his father would conform in appearance more nearly to the mental picture to which the boy constantly returned—the picture of a tall man, straight and ruddy and broad-shouldered, with laughing eyes and a collar that fitted his neck snugly. It was disappointing—it was worse than disappointing—to realize that his father’s shoulders looked thin and angular; that his cheeks were pale, and his eyes, though kinder than ever, preoccupied and less sparkling; that his collars were looser about his neck than comfort required them to be. David often wondered whether his mother had noticed it, and if so what she thought about it. He did not wish to mention it first; if she was not worrying about it already, he was not going to put a new reason for anxiety into her head.
“Well, David,” said Dr. Ives in his usual cheerful voice, “have you had a talk with your mother?”
“I couldn’t tell him, Henry,” said Mrs. Ives plaintively. “I’ve left it for you to do.”
“Mother said something about my going away somewhere,” added David.
Ralph looked from one to another while his round eyes grew rounder in wonder and concern.
“Yes,” said Dr. Ives, evading his wife’s glance and speaking with great cheerfulness, “I’ve decided to send you away to boarding-school, David. To St. Timothy’s, in New Hampshire.”
“In six weeks,” added Mrs. Ives tearfully.
David felt a thrill of exultation and excitement, and then, because of his mother’s sadness and his father’s forced cheerfulness, he felt sorry. Ralph sat open-mouthed and subdued.
“Why am I going to St. Timothy’s, father?” David asked.
“Just what I wanted to know!” said Mrs. Ives. “Hasn’t David been doing all right in high school?”
“Yes,” Dr. Ives admitted, “he has. But I think that now he is ready for a change; it will be broadening and instructive. I think, moreover, that both he and Ralph will be the better for being separated for a time from each other. It will do David good to get out into a world of his own, and it will do Ralph good to take over some of the responsibilities at home that David has had. Those are some of the reasons.”
Mrs. Ives shook her head forlornly. “I can’t see that they are sufficient.”
“Well,” said Dr. Ives, “I want my boys to have the best there is—and to be the best there are. From all that I can ascertain, St. Timothy’s is one of the best schools in the country. David already knows what he wants to be. He feels that he has a bent for surgery; he means to make that his profession. I should be glad to have him model his career on that of the best surgeon I know—Dr. Wallace. As far as I can I mean to give him every opportunity that Wallace had. Wallace went to St. Timothy’s School, and to Harvard College, and to the Harvard Medical School. So shall David.”
“But Dr. Wallace’s father was rich, probably, and you are not,” said Mrs. Ives.
“I feel able to meet all the necessary expenses, and I can trust David not to be extravagant.”
“New Hampshire is so far away! And it will be so long before we see David again!”
“We shall hope to see him in the Christmas vacation.”
“Yes, of course. But I can’t help feeling that David will be leaving home for good; he will be coming back to us now only for visits! You don’t want to go, do you, David?”
“I don’t know, mother,” David said, torn by various impulses. “Yes, I think I do.” And then he jumped up and, going behind her chair, put his arm round her and his face down on hers and kissed her.
That evening Dr. Ives had to go out on some professional calls; he chugged away in the shabby little second-hand automobile that he had bought three years before. “Some day, when all my patients pay their bills, I’ll get a new machine,” he was accustomed to remark to the family. He also was accustomed to declare that he rather enjoyed tinkering the old rattletrap.
Now David, sitting in the library and perusing the catalogue of St. Timothy’s School, suspected that for some time he had been the object of his father’s many economies. Turning over the pages, he resolved that he would justify his father’s faith in him, that he would work hard and not be extravagant, and that he would come home showing that he had profited by the opportunities given him by the family’s sacrifice. And as he turned the pages the thrill of eager anticipation grew stronger in him. He glanced over the long list of names—boys from all quarters of the country, boys even from far corners of the earth. David, who had never traveled more than forty miles from the city in which he had been born and brought up, and who had never known any boys except those in the immediate neighborhood of his home, felt a tingling of romance as he read the names.
While he read Ralph sat quiet over a storybook, and Mrs. Ives, with a pile of mending in her lap, worked at intervals and at intervals gazed wistfully at her older boy. He was her favorite, though she felt guilty in admitting it even in her heart; Ralph had always been more thoughtless, more unmanageable, a more trying kind of boy. It made her feel quite helpless to think of dealing with Ralph alone after David had gone. But that was not the worst to which she must look forward, that was not the saddening thought. What weighed her down was, as she had said, the premonition that when David went away it would be really for good and all. It would be years and years before home would be more than a place to which he made visits. Perhaps what was now, and always had been, his home would never really be his home again. And his father and his mother, who had always been so near to him, would never be so near to him again. Tears filled her eyes and fell unnoticed while David and Ralph read; she wiped them away furtively and determined to be brave. Perhaps it was all for the best, and she would not begrudge anything that was best for David. But it seemed such a doubtful venture,—and David’s father did not look well,—but she was not going to imagine that any more; it produced such a heaviness about the heart. She was going to try to be cheerful; she had never been cheerful enough.
She anticipated the usual rebelliousness and struggle when at nine o’clock she said, “Bed-time, Ralph.”
“All right, mother.” To her astonishment he spoke with the utmost docility; he closed his book at once and came over and kissed her. With the same unusual docility he went across the room and kissed David. “I’m sorry you’re going away, Dave,” he whispered, and then he fled upstairs.
David looked at his mother.
“He’s a pretty good kid,” he said. “He won’t give you much trouble—not more than I’ve done.”
“You’ve never given any trouble, David.”
“Haven’t I?” He sprang up and went over to sit beside her. “Then don’t let me begin doing it now. Stop looking so troubled about me. That’s right, smile.”
She did her best, remembering that she had resolved to be cheerful.
Anyway, as the days passed and the time of David’s departure drew near there was one development on which his mother liked to dwell and from which she hoped and even dared to expect much. Dr. Ives had yielded to her persuasion and, as the first vacation that he had taken in years, was to accompany David on his journey. “A rest is all he needs,” his wife kept assuring herself. “A rest and a change—and when he comes back I won’t have to worry about him any more.” Dr. Ives had wanted her to take the trip, too, but she had refused. She knew that he could ill afford such an additional expense, and besides there was Ralph to look after; no doubt Maggie was competent to care for him, and his Aunt Hattie would be willing to take him in, but Mrs. Ives felt that the absence of his father would give her the most favorable opportunity of getting on the right terms with her younger boy. His sense of chivalry would be more likely to awaken when he was not under the surveillance of a masculine disciplinary eye.
David’s mother went with him to the shops and helped him to purchase his slender wardrobe. A careful purchaser she was, leading him from shop to shop in search of bargains, feeling with distrustful fingers the material of the suit at last selected, insisting on underwear of the thickest woolens and on pyjamas of flannel, for doubtless New Hampshire winters were even colder than those at home. David felt that he was rather old for his mother to be buying his clothes for him,—he was sixteen,—but he had not the heart to assert any independence in the matter, to intimate that he had outgrown the need of her guidance.
Likewise he restrained the desire to intimate to Maggie that her criticism and comments were unwelcome. Maggie attacked him one day when he was alone in the library.
“What’s all this, David, about your goin’ away to boardin’-school?” she asked truculently, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips.
“Well, it’s true,” David answered.
“Ain’t there no good schools near home?”
“Yes, but not so good.”
“Funny thing that nothing but the best is ever good enough for some folks.”
David, disdaining to reply, held his book up in front of his eyes and pretended to read.
“It’s none of my business,” continued Maggie in a somewhat more pacific tone, “but I think your pa and your ma both need looking after, and you’d ought to stay home to do it. Of course what it means is, it’ll all fall on me; things always does.”
“Nothing’s going to fall on you; what do you mean, Maggie?”
“Oh, it’s all very well to talk. But everybody can see your pa’s been failin’ of late and is in for a spell of sickness, and your ma gets upset so easy it’s always a matter of coaxin’ and urgin’ her along.”
“Father’s all right except that he’s been working too hard; a rest will fix him up,” David declared. “And mother’s all right, too, except that she worries.”
“Oh, yes, it’s all all right,” Maggie agreed with gloomy significance. “All I can say is, they’re lucky to have me to fall back on. I can deal with trouble when it comes.”
David disliked to admit to himself that this interview disturbed him. But there was no escape from the fact that it did have a depressing effect. He tried to assure himself that Maggie always delighted in forebodings of trouble, but in spite of that he was half the time wishing that he might withdraw from the adventure on which his father was launching him. Every day the expression in his mother’s eyes affected him as much as her tears could have done, every day he was troubled by his father’s haggard look. He had of course learned something about the burden in dollars and cents he was to be to the family, and he wondered if there could really be wisdom in his father’s decision. “It throws a big responsibility on me,” David thought gravely.
He suspected that in some ways his father was an impractical man and that he was often visionary in his enthusiasm. He had never forgotten how hurt he had felt once as a small boy when he had overheard his mother say to her sister, “It’s no use, Hattie; if Henry once has his mind set on a thing, the only thing to do is to give him his head.” David did not know what had prompted the remark, but he had not liked hearing his father criticized even by his mother.
In those days he noticed in his father a nervous exuberance over the prospect, which, if it failed to quiet David’s doubts, served to convince him of the futility of questioning. Dr. Ives talked gayly of the interest and happiness David would find in his new surroundings and of the increased pleasure they would all take in his vacations, told Ralph that he must so conduct himself as to qualify for St. Timothy’s when he grew older, and declared that for himself merely looking forward to the trip East with David was making a new man of him.
One morning Dr. Ives went downtown with David in the shabby little automobile to purchase the railway tickets. As they drew up to the curb a tall man in a gray suit came out of the ticket-office; he was about to step into a waiting limousine when Dr. Ives hailed him.
“O Dr. Wallace!”
“How are you, Dr. Ives?” Dr. Wallace nodded pleasantly and waited, for Dr. Ives clearly had something to say to him.
David, following his father, looked with interest at the distinguished surgeon whose career was to be an example to him. Dr. Wallace was a younger and stronger man than Dr. Ives, and, so far as prosperity of appearance was concerned, there was the same contrast between the two men as between the shabby runabout and the shining limousine.
“Dr. Wallace,” said Dr. Ives, speaking eagerly, “I won’t detain you a moment, but I want to introduce my son David to you. David’s going to St. Timothy’s; I know you’re an old St. Timothy’s boy, and I thought you might be interested.”
“I am, indeed,” said Dr. Wallace, and he took David’s hand. “What form do you expect to enter?”
“Fifth, I hope,” said David.
“That will give him two years there before he goes to Harvard,” said Dr. Ives.
“Going to Harvard, too, is he?”
“Yes, and then to Harvard Medical School—following in your footsteps, you see, doctor.”
“That’s very interesting, very interesting,” said Dr. Wallace. “I must tell my boy to look you up; you know, I have a boy at St. Timothy’s; his second year; he’ll be in the fifth form, too.”
“And he’ll also be following in your footsteps, I suppose?” said Dr. Ives.
“Not too closely, I hope,” Dr. Wallace laughed. “I’m very glad to have met you; I wish you the best of success.” He shook hands again with David and again with David’s father, then stepped briskly into his limousine and was whirled away.
“That was a stroke of luck,” remarked Dr. Ives. “Now you won’t be going to St. Timothy’s as if you didn’t know anybody. Young Wallace will be friendly with you and help you to get started right.”
David accepted this as probable. He asked if Dr. Wallace was really so very remarkable as a surgeon.
“Oh, yes; he’s the ablest man we have,” replied Dr. Ives.
“I’m sure he’s not a bit better than you, father.”
“Oh, I’m a surgeon only under stress of emergency and as a last resort. The less surgery a family doctor practices on his patients the better for the patients.”
“Anyway, you could have been as good a surgeon as Dr. Wallace if you’d studied to be.”
“Oh, we don’t know what we might be, given certain opportunities. That’s why I want you to have those opportunities—the best. So that you can go far ahead of me.”
“I guess I never could catch up with you. And I don’t care what you say, I think you’re way ahead of Dr. Wallace or any other doctor. I’m sure you do more for people and think less about what you can get out of them.”
“I shall have to think more about that now, I shall for a fact,” said Dr. Ives, chuckling good-humoredly. “When you come home for the Christmas vacation, David, you’ll probably find me turned into a regular Shylock.”
“You couldn’t be that, and mother isn’t the kind that could turn you into one. If only you had Maggie to manage you and get after patients—”
They both laughed.
But in spite of all the brave little jokes, in spite of all the loving words and loving caresses, David’s last two days at home were painful to him and to the others of the family. He caught his mother shedding tears in secret; he felt her looking at him with a fondness that made him wretchedly uncomfortable; he received a mournful consideration from Ralph as disconcerting as it was novel; he could not help being depressed by the grim and relentless quality of Maggie’s disapproval. In such an atmosphere Dr. Ives desperately maintained cheerfulness, assumed gayety and light-heartedness, and professed undoubting faith in David’s adventure and enthusiasm over his own share in it.
The bustle and confusion of packing lasted far into the evening; Mrs. Ives hurried now to the assistance of David, now of his father; Ralph prowled round in self-contained excitement until long after his bedtime. It was long after every one’s bedtime when David finally got into bed; and then his mother came and knelt beside him and besought him to think often of home and to do always as his father would have him do. Together they said their prayers as they had done every night when David was a little boy and as they had not done before for a long time; and it made David feel that he was a little boy again, and that he was glad to be so, this once, this last time in his life.
The next morning the expressman came for the trunks before breakfast; and before breakfast, too, Maggie showed her forgiving spirit by presenting David with a silk handkerchief bearing an ornate letter “D” embroidered in one corner. After breakfast while the family waited in the front hall, David bade Maggie good-bye, and for one who was usually so outspoken and fluent, Maggie was strangely inarticulate, saying merely, over and over, “Well good-bye, David, I’m sure; good-bye, I’m sure.”
They took the trolley car to the station, and there after the trunks had been checked they all went aboard the train. Mrs. Ives and Ralph sat facing David and his father, and occasionally some one said something—just to show it was possible to speak. David said, “Ralph, you’re to take care of mother while father’s gone,” and Ralph said, “I guess I know that.” Dr. Ives looked at his watch and said, “Well, Helen, it’s time for you and Ralph to get off the train.”
That was the hardest moment of all—the last kisses, the last embraces, the last words.
Then, for just a few moments longer, David gazed through the window at Ralph and his mother on the platform—Ralph looking up solemn and round-eyed, his mother smiling bravely and winking her eyelids fast to stem back the tears. For a few moments only; then the train started, and the little woman and the little boy were left behind.