PROBATION
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 the other 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.”
“_I_ didn’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. If you 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 hockey were 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.
Wallace lived 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 ordinary circumstances 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 necessity was 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 was quite 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 at that 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.