CHAPTER VIPROBATION
It was after dark on the January afternoon when the sleigh in which David Ives and Lester Wallace drove from the station to the school drew up in front of the rectory. The boys had made the last stage of their journey in company with a number of others; from New York it had been a jolly and exciting trip. David had been surprised as well as pleased by the greetings of fellows whom he had hardly known, by the way in which they had said, “Awfully glad you’re coming back to the school, Ives.” Even Henshaw had been, as David expressed it afterwards to Lester, “mighty decent to him.”
The welcome from the rector was equally cordial. He kept David for a few moments after Lester had gone.
“There are just one or two things that I might add to what I wrote in my letter, David. Your friend who is putting you through wants you to be under no handicap in your relations with theother fellows; in other words, he wants you to have the usual amount of spending money, so that you shall be able to take part freely in the games and sports.”
“That’s pretty fine of him, isn’t it!” David exclaimed. “But honestly, Dr. Davenport, it doesn’t seem to me right to—to let him be so generous.”
“I don’t think he will spoil you by over-indulgence,” the rector said smiling. “If I were you I should accept the situation and make the best of it. By the way, I wish you’d stop in and see Mr. Dean. He has been expressing the greatest pleasure at the prospect of having you back here, and I know he will appreciate your looking him up.”
So at once David betook himself to Mr. Dean’s cottage, and there in the study he found the master, sitting in front of the fire, with the old green eye-shade over his eyes.
“Hello, David!” Mr. Dean rose and came forward; he led David into the room. “Something told me that we should have you with us again; I felt sure that somehow you’d manage it.”
“Ididn’t manage it,” David said. “It came to me as a great surprise—a Christmas surprise,too.” Mr. Dean looked interested. “I suppose you know, Mr. Dean, how it happens that I’m back.”
“I understood that some one who sympathized with your father’s wishes for you was arranging it.”
“Yes. I don’t know who it is; at least I’m supposed not to know, though I can’t help suspecting.”
Mr. Dean took off his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief.
“It’s odd that the man should want to make a mystery of it,” he remarked.
“Yes, I don’t quite understand that. He’s a doctor at home who knew my father and wrote the finest letter about him! Well, I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you who I think it is; it’s Lester Wallace’s father.”
“An old St. Timothy’s boy himself. Good for him! He won’t be sorry.”
“I hope you had a good vacation, Mr. Dean.”
“Not the best. I had to spend most of it in Boston under an oculist’s care, and I have to look forward to some tedious hours. No more reading at night. Take care of your eyes, my boy.”
“They’re pretty strong, I guess. I’m sorry you’re having trouble with yours, Mr. Dean. Ifyou ever want somebody to come and read to you, I wish you’d send for me.”
“Thank you, David; I’ll do that.”
But Mr. Dean did not care to talk about himself; he questioned David concerning his mother and Ralph, expressed his sympathy for Mrs. Ives’s feeling of forlornness at her son’s return to St. Timothy’s and said he should think she would really hate the man who was responsible for it. “Oh, no,” David hastened to say; “she’s just as grateful to him as I am; only she couldn’t help being sorry, too.”
“Well, if it’s Dr. Wallace, it’s a pretty good investment, so far as his own boy’s concerned,” remarked Mr. Dean. “Lester slid off badly last term after you left us. Do you think you can take hold of him again and keep him going?”
David was willing to try; he found Wallace willing to submit. Indeed, Wallace seemed unwilling to make any independent effort with his lessons; he needed the stimulus of David’s interest and David’s prompting. Without them his mind was incorrigibly preoccupied with athletics; it did not matter what the season might be; his passion for athletics was universal. Now, in midwinter, snowballing, coasting, snowshoeing, and hockeywere keeping his mind as active as his body; in study hours he was planning expeditions, arranging snowball fights and ambuscades, imagining himself the hero of exciting hockey games, in which he dodged brilliantly through the opposing forces, steering the puck always before him. Even when the weather was so bad that no form of outdoor sport was possible, Wallace’s attention was not more easily fixed on books. Then thoughts of the gymnasium engrossed him, of the brilliant feats that could be executed there.
Indeed, as the time of the spring exhibition drew near, he became more and more intent on qualifying himself for some prominent part in it. He and Monroe practiced together daily and became proficient in feats of ground and lofty tumbling. David, going into the gymnasium one afternoon, was much impressed by the quickness, sureness, and rhythm of their performance—somersaulting over each other, snapping each other up from the mat, giving each other a hand at just the right moment. “Pretty slick,” was David’s admiring comment. “You make a great team.”
That was the opinion of the gymnasium instructor, who looked forward to putting them on as one of the principal features of the exhibition. Wallacelived in the gymnasium not merely during playtime; his thoughts were there at all hours, and his studies suffered accordingly. He rejected David’s offer to help him with his Latin out of hours, and, as Mr. Dean did not see fit to renew the arrangement that had been so advantageous to him the preceding term, he no longer received any assistance from his friend. His Latin recitations grew more and more uncertain; frequently he attempted to bluff them through—seldom with any degree of success. A week before the gymnasium exhibition, Mr. Dean set the class an hour examination; David, glancing up from the task, which he found simple, observed Wallace lolling indifferently in his seat and tapping his teeth idly with his pencil. Later, when he looked again, Wallace was writing busily, and David felt encouraged; he relinquished hope, however, when he saw Wallace leave his seat half an hour before the full time allotted for the examination had expired, hand in his work at the desk, and depart jauntily from the room.
He did not encounter Wallace until after luncheon; then they met in the hall of the dormitory.
“Cinch, wasn’t it?” Wallace said, and in surprise David asked, “What?”
“Old Dean’s exam. I killed it. Did you see me get through way ahead of time?”
“Yes, I was afraid that meant you hadn’t been able to do much with it.”
“Oh, there were some things I didn’t know and others that I just made a stab at. But I’m pretty sure I killed it. And I had an extra half-hour practicing in the gym while you poor guys were writing away.”
David thought no more of the episode. Two days later, after the Latin recitation, Mr. Dean returned to the boys their examination books, with marks showing their rating. A was the highest mark attainable, E meant failure. David, well pleased at seeing the large A in red ink on the cover of his book, walked slowly down the corridor, turning over the pages. Monroe joined him, happy at being awarded a B, and they descended the stairs together and stood outside the door of their building comparing their books. Suddenly Wallace burst out upon them; they looked up, startled by his flaming, angry face.
“What do you think of that?” he cried and thrust his examination book under their eyes. His hand shook in his rage. “See what that old fossil’s done to me!”
The letter E adorned the cover, and under it was written: “I have hesitated over this mark. In ordinarycircumstances I might have given such work as this D; it is poor enough at best, but it is not wholly bad. Had you chosen to exert your mind to the utmost during the full examination period, you would unquestionably have passed; because you did not choose to do this, I mark you E.”
“A dirty trick!” exclaimed Monroe. “He admits you wrote a paper good enough to pass you, and then he turns round and gives you E!”
“How does he know what I might have done if I’d stayed through the hour!” Lester turned irately upon David. “Well, what do you think of your friend now, Dave?”
David looked troubled. “It does seem pretty rough. But I suppose Mr. Dean thought that was the only way of making you work.”
“Making me work!” Wallace’s eyes flashed more angrily than ever. “I did enough work to pass; he admits it. That’s all I want. I’m not a grind, like you; I don’t have to be. I don’t want to get A’s like you; I don’t have to. Fooling round old Dean so much has turned you into a prig.”
He walked rapidly away and left both David and Monroe to an uncomfortable silence. David felt hurt; that Lester should take a fling at his necessitywas unkind. He sympathized with Lester, but he sympathized with Mr. Dean, too. He said to Monroe, “Mr. Dean’s not trying to be nasty; he’s just trying to keep Lester headed straight.”
“If Lester’s paper was good enough to pass him, he ought to have passed,” replied Monroe obstinately.
The next morning in the Latin class Wallace sullenly said, “Not prepared,” when his name was called. Mr. Dean looked at him for a moment and then said, “I will ask you to wait and speak to me, Wallace, after the hour.”
What that interview brought forth David was soon to learn. In the noon intermission he was walking up to the dormitory when Wallace joined him.
“He’s put me on probation,” Wallace announced, “because of my Latin flunk. If I’d passed my Latin, I’d have been all right.”
“It’s hard luck.” David could think of nothing more to say.
“It’s pretty tough because now I can’t take part in the gymnasium exhibition. It’s hard on Monroe because it cuts him out of a good half of his stunts.”
“Did you talk to Mr. Dean about it?”
“Oh, yes, but it did no good. When I tried to argue with him, he said he didn’t care to hear me. He has it in for me; that’s the size of it. There’s just one thing that might help.”
“What?”
“Well, if you went to him and told him that you thought he hadn’t been quite fair in his treatment of me, and if you’d show him how unfair to Monroe it all is, he might reconsider. He likes you, and he’d listen to anything you say.”
“I’ll explain to him about you and Monroe,” said David.
“I wrote home about the stunts we were going to do, and father thought it was great. He’ll be awfully disappointed if I tell him I couldn’t take part because of being on probation.”
So David went on his mission of intercession. He pleaded Wallace’s cause as well as he could, but Mr. Dean remained unmoved.
“The boy has been loafing, and now he has to pay the penalty,” declared Mr. Dean. “And when he urges that it’s hard on Monroe, the only answer is that in most cases the innocent are involved with the guilty.”
“But if he really wrote an examination good enough to pass him, it seems hardly fair—”
“Do you think, David, that I am choosing to be unfair to Wallace?”
“No, I shouldn’t have said that; but Lester thinks that you’re being unfair to him.”
“He’s not willing to abide by consequences. It’s not a case for leniency, David.”
David delivered the message and received nothing but reproaches.
“I guess you didn’t let him see what a skunk he is,” Wallace grumbled, and David replied:
“You know I don’t think he’s anything of the kind.”
“Monroe thinks he is,” declared Wallace with satisfaction. “I don’t see why they keep an old fossil like that on here. You can stand up for him, of course, because you’re one of his favorites; he’s a great fellow for having pets.”
David walked away without making any retort. He was depressed and disappointed. He had not believed Wallace could be so unjust. His sense of obligation to Wallace’s father made his distress all the more keen. It was not only Wallace that blamed him; Monroe also was cool to him and thought that he could have made things right with Mr. Dean if he had chosen to exert himself.
For a few days they let him alone, and he wasquite unhappy. Then came the night of the gymnasium exhibition; he sat among the spectators and saw Monroe execute his various acrobatic feats in partnership with Calvert, a stripling of the fourth form; it was a creditable performance, but not what it would have been with Wallace to assist. Nevertheless the applause was generous, and Monroe was awarded a medal—first prize—for his work. This success apparently took the soreness out of Monroe; at any rate, he responded heartily to David’s congratulations afterwards and resumed his old friendly relations with him, as if they had never been interrupted. But Wallace’s stiffness did not relax; he did not drop into David’s room, or do any of the little things that had formerly been the natural signs and consequences of intimacy.
For David those were the dullest days of the year. The weather was so bad that there were no outdoor sports; on account of Wallace’s attitude he could not thoroughly enjoy the companionship of any one, for somehow the friendship of no one else could compensate him for the loss of Wallace’s.
And then, too, there was the sense that to Wallace indirectly, to Wallace’s father certainly, he was under an obligation that he could never repay.It made him unhappy to dwell on those thoughts, and so he occupied himself as much as possible with his studies and with reading; and he went more often to Mr. Dean’s rooms. He and the master took walks together; in the evening sometimes Mr. Dean summoned David from the schoolroom and asked him to read aloud; it would be usually from something that David enjoyed—Thackeray or Dickens or Shakespeare. Mr. Dean would sit in an armchair before the fire, with his green eye-shade over his eyes and his fingers interlocked; sometimes he would chuckle over a phrase, or ask David to read a passage a second time; and David, thus having his attention particularly drawn to those passages, was not long in seeing why they were noteworthy. Those evenings with Mr. Dean were the most pleasant of his diversions, though they did not tend to increase his popularity. He knew that he was growing more and more to be regarded as a grind and, worse than that, as a master’s protégé.
Ruth took him to drive one day when the first breath of spring was in the air.
“Oh,” said Ruth, “won’t you be glad when it’s summer again? Don’t you get restless at this time of year?”
“There isn’t much to do in the way of sports,” David admitted. “Yes, it does get tiresome.”
“Father says that there’s always more disorder just before the spring vacation than at any other time—and less studying. Just think of Lester Wallace. I wanted to see him win in the gymnasium exhibition—and the foolish boy got into trouble instead.”
“Yes, it was too bad.”
“I scolded him for it, and he tried to lay the blame on Mr. Dean. But it was too silly! He seemed to think that you and Mr. Dean were under some obligation to put him through!”
David’s face clouded over. “I don’t know about Mr. Dean, but I feel under such an obligation. Only it hasn’t seemed as if Lester wanted my help.”
“He oughtn’t to want it. I’m disappointed in him. I told him so right out.”
She sat up straight with her lips firmly together and her cheeks flushed; David, glancing at her, decided that he should dislike very much hearing from her that she was disappointed in him.
“I told him,” she went on, “that he was getting dependent on everybody but himself, and that if he had any proper spirit he wouldn’t accept help now from any one. And he got sarcastic atthat and thanked me for my helpful advice and said that he could get along very well without any more of it. Since then we’re very cool to each other.”
“That’s the way it is with Lester and me,” said David. “I dare say I’ve given him too much helpful advice, too.”
“Anyway, he’ll have a good chance to come to his senses during the spring vacation. You will probably be going home with him, won’t you?”
“I’m not sure yet that I’m going home. It’s a long trip and pretty expensive.”
David wondered if Ruth had reported that uncertainty of his to her father, for that evening the rector summoned him to his study.
“I should have told you before this,” he said, “of a communication that I’ve had from your friend, David. He wants you to spend your vacation with your family. And so you may regard that as arranged.”
David’s face lighted up. “Isn’t that splendid! Oh, I wish you’d tell him, Dr. Davenport, since I can’t, how thoughtful and generous I think he is!”
Dr. Davenport smiled. “I’ll convey your appreciation, though I think he is aware of it.”
David’s happiness was further increased when two days before the close of the term Wallace said to him, “Want to share a section with me on the train west of New York?”
“Sure, I do,” David answered.
“All right. I’ll match you for the lower berth.”
They matched, and David won. “I’d just as soon take the upper,” he said, but Wallace would not consider such a change.
David was so glad to renew the old relations with Wallace that he did not wonder very much why there had been any lapse in them. On the journey Wallace took a Vergil out of his bag and began to study.
“I’m going to make up my Latin this vacation,” he explained. “I want to play ball next term.”
“Let me help you,” urged David. “I’ll translate with you if you like.”
“No, I told Ruth Davenport I wouldn’t let anybody help me after this, and I won’t. She got pretty fresh, taking me to task, and I’ll show her.”
Wallace wore an injured look as he settled down in his seat and began to study. After about half an hour, he glanced up. “Confound it, Dave,I’ve got to have help on this! Here, how does it go?”
And David spent most of the journey tutoring his friend, and had the satisfaction of feeling that in a way he was paying for his trip home.