THE NEW NEIGHBOR
Within a week Mrs. Ives and her family were established in a house
in one of the little, shaded, unexpected streets that in those days
contributed to the charm of Cambridge. It was a large square house set
well back in half an acre of ground; to one side of it lay a garden
with rustic seats and rose trellises and flower beds bright at that
season with asters and marigolds. There were elms and larches in front
of the house, and enormous robins hopped about on the smooth lawn on
sunny mornings and sunny afternoons.
With the interior of the house Mrs. Ives was as pleased as with its
surroundings――with its spacious rooms and the tiled fireplaces and the
latticed casement windows that looked out upon the garden; the house
had been the property of an aged professor of Greek who had died a few
months before, and it seemed to her that the austere dignity of the
late owner continued to invest its walls. She felt that it was by its
associations an appropriate abode for Mr. Dean, and that its classical
atmosphere must in some subtle way communicate itself to his senses.
At any rate she saw to it that he had the largest and most comfortable
room in the house, the room into which the morning sun poured its
liveliest beams. David led him through all the rooms, showed him where
his books were arranged, helped him to explore the garden and described
to him in detail the wall-papers, the pictures and the articles of
furniture. Mr. Dean gratified Mrs. Ives by telling her that his only
fear was lest she had sacrificed her own comfort to insure his; he
gratified Maggie by his appreciation of her cooking; he gratified Mary,
the waitress, by his pleasant recognition of her small attentions and
kindnesses; he soon endeared himself to the entire household.
Mrs. Ives was not long in finding out that Mr. Herbert Vance, a
professor of Latin at Harvard, was the owner of the adjoining estate; a
gate in the garden hedge testified to the friendly intercourse that had
existed between him and his deceased colleague. One afternoon, while
the family were seated on the piazza overlooking the garden and David
was reading aloud to his mother and Mr. Dean, the gate in the hedge
opened and a young girl advanced, shy and smiling. She was bareheaded;
the sun struck red-gold lights in her hair, and when she smiled her
eyes and face seemed as sparkling and sunny as her hair.
“I’m Katharine Vance, Mrs. Ives,” she said. “Are you settled enough to
be willing to receive callers?”
Mrs. Ives assured her that they were beginning to feel lonely for the
lack of them.
Mr. Dean at once entered into the conversation. “When I was teaching
Latin I had rather have seen your father’s library than that of any
other man in America,” he said.
“I hope you’ll still be interested in it,” the girl answered. “You must
come over and let father talk to you about it. He’s prouder of his
collection than of his child.”
“I’m sure he can’t be,” said Mrs. Ives, with the polite obviousness
that was her social habit.
“Oh, yes――and he knows ever so much more about it. One of my school
friends is Marion Bradley. Don’t you love her? She’s the brightest girl
in school. She asked me to come and see you as soon as you got settled.
Of course I should have done that anyway.”
Her friendly, observant eyes roved from one to another of her audience.
“Yes, you’re quite right about Marion; _I_ love her,” said Mr. Dean.
“These other people don’t know her well enough probably to have reached
that stage as yet. Are you a Latin scholar like your father?”
“Oh, no; Marion always beats me. Marion always leads the class.”
She turned her attention to David and said she had heard that he came
from St. Timothy’s, and asked him whether he knew Lawrence Bruce and
John Murray; and David regretted now that he had not cultivated the
acquaintance of those young fifth-formers. But she was not discouraged
by his inability to claim intimacy with them――there were other subjects
just as interesting――and she chatted about the incoming freshman class,
of which she knew quite as much as David himself, and asked him what
sports he meant to take part in and where he was to room and what
courses he was to elect.
“Oh, tea!” she exclaimed in rapture when the waitress appeared with the
tray. “We never have it at home.”
She displayed a hearty appetite, and that completed her conquest of
Mrs. Ives. After she had returned through the garden gate, Mrs. Ives
remarked that they had a very attractive neighbor, and Mr. Dean tried
without much success to draw from David a description of the young
girl’s looks.
As the days went by the gate in the hedge was often opened; the members
of the two families came to be on easy-going, neighborly terms. Mr.
Vance, a shock-headed, stoop-shouldered elderly widower with a scant
regard for his personal appearance that caused his daughter both
distress and amusement, was enchanted with Mr. Dean, his scholarship
and his appreciation. Over the telephone he would frequently invite him
to his study for an hour of conversation and would then present himself
at Mrs. Ives’s door to act as guide. Mrs. Ives revered her new neighbor
not only for the vast knowledge that had qualified him for the post of
professor at Harvard University, but even more for the associations
of his youth, which he sometimes recalled while she listened in rapt
wonder. He had studied under Lowell and Longfellow, he had seen Emerson
and Hawthorne, he had been in the audience that heard Lowell read the
“Commemoration Ode,” and he had even dined at the Autocrat’s table.
Mrs. Ives, who on her second day in Cambridge had audaciously plucked a
tiny sprig of lilac from the hedge in front of Longfellow’s house and
was preserving the treasure between the leaves of a dictionary, and who
had stood that same day a worshipful pilgrim in the gateway in front of
Lowell’s mansion, listened to her neighbor’s reminiscences and comments
with mingled exultation and amazement, although she lost some of them
owing to her habit of incredulously congratulating herself in the midst
of his talk upon her extraordinary privilege.
Within a few days the college had opened and David had taken up his
quarters in one of the dormitories. But he came home daily and either
walked with Mr. Dean or read to him; after Christmas this daily visit
acquired greater importance for his mother and perhaps also for the
blind man. For Ralph had now gone to St. Timothy’s, his entrance there
having been delayed, and much of the time the house seemed subdued
and perhaps a little sad. David’s visits were cheerful episodes, and
Katharine Vance contributed to her neighbors’ happiness. She made Mr.
Dean her especial care and came in to see him two or three times a
week; moreover, she got some of her friends to call and succeeded in
imbuing them with the feeling that it might be a rather nice, pleasant
charity occasionally to sacrifice themselves to the entertainment
of the blind man. So, even with David in college and Ralph at St.
Timothy’s, Mr. Dean was seldom lonely; and Mrs. Ives gradually found
her place in the community and was happy in her tranquil, comfortable
life. Only at times her mind took her back to the house that had been
the scene of her greatest happiness and her deepest sorrow, and the
tears would suddenly fill her eyes. She wondered whether the little
cemetery lot was being well cared for; at those times she longed
desperately to visit it and lay flowers on the grave.
In college David acquired the reputation of being a good all-round man
of no special brilliancy. He always held a high rank in scholarship; he
took part in athletics, though he never made a varsity team; he sang in
the glee club; he was elected an editor of one of the college papers;
and by reason of all his activities and the earnestness and enthusiasm
with which he entered into them he became one of the most widely known
and popular members of his class. He took no such conspicuous place,
however, as that which his friend from St. Timothy’s, Lester Wallace,
seized almost immediately and held throughout the college course.
Lester captained the victorious freshman football team and was elected
president of the freshman class; he played on the freshman baseball
nine, and in subsequent years he won a place on both the varsity eleven
and the varsity nine. Even if he had not been endowed with a brilliant
talent for athletics, he could have danced and sung his way into
popularity; there was no livelier hand at the piano than his, no more
engaging voice when upraised in song, no foot more clever at the clog,
the double shuffle, the breakdown, or the more intricate steps of the
accomplished buck-and-wing performer.
David shared the general admiration for his gifted friend, even though
he did not share Lester’s point of view on many subjects. Throughout
his college course Lester so arranged matters that never on any day was
he troubled with a lecture or a recitation after half-past two o’clock.
“Get the dirty work of the day over with as soon as you can and then
enjoy yourself; that’s my motto,” he declared; and he expostulated with
David for choosing courses that occasionally required laboratory work
through long afternoons.
“But if you’re going to study medicine, you ought to have a certain
amount of laboratory knowledge to begin with,” David replied.
“Oh, you can get it when the time comes,” Lester responded easily.
“These four years are the best years of your life, my boy; it’s a crime
to waste any part of them――particularly the afternoons and evenings.”
With that philosophy, with his attractive personality, and with the
prestige of spectacular achievement on the athletic field, Lester was
sure to have a gay and ardent following. Among those who attached
themselves to him with an almost passionate devotion was Richard
Bradley. Himself a youth of lively and humorous disposition, not of a
studious turn of mind, an admirer of athletes rather than athletic, he
found in Lester his beau ideal; and when in their sophomore year Lester
consented to room with him, Richard felt a jubilant happiness similar
to that, perhaps, which the young swain who has received a favorable
reply from his sweetheart experiences. Richard’s family, with the
possible exception of Marion, who was non-committal, were less happy
about the arrangement.
“I am afraid you regard your college course merely as a social
experience,” said Mr. Bradley when Richard told him that he was to
room the next year with the most popular man in the class, already
president of it and likely to be first marshal also. “It would do you
more good to room with the best scholar than with the best athlete.”
“Just wait till you know him,” pleaded Richard.
One Sunday he brought Lester in to lunch with the family and was
satisfied with the result. Even his father had fallen a victim to
Lester’s charm. As for the young ladies of Boston and Cambridge whom
Lester met at the numerous parties that he graced with his presence,
half of them sang his praises and half of them denounced him as
spoiled, conceited, or insincere.
Katharine Vance told David that she did not like Lester Wallace because
he was too much a man of the world.
David had come to be on terms of intimacy with all the Bradley family
except Marion, and possibly he was piqued by her consistent formality.
He spent his summer vacations, as it were, at the Bradleys’ door; on
their estate at Buzzard’s Bay there was a small house that they called
the cottage and that they had always rented to Mr. Dean. Now they
enlarged it and rented it to the “Dean-Iveses,” as they conveniently
termed the family. David and Richard played tennis and golf and sailed,
and went for a dip in the sea two or three times a day; and Ralph
grew old enough to be of some use and companionship. Usually the
Bradleys’ big house was filled with Richard’s friends; the Bradleys
were hospitable people. Only Marion was cool to David; and it wounded
him, because he could not help admiring her. She spoke French and read
Italian and commanded at least a jargon about pictures and sculptures
and had a solid grounding in music.
“No wonder,” thought David ruefully on many an occasion when ignorance
kept him dumb, “no wonder that she despises me!”
He acknowledged to himself that it did seem as if school and college
had done little for him, so far as qualifying him to make a brilliant
appearance in society was concerned. Biology was not a parlor subject;
chemistry made the hands unattractive; physics was a thing in which no
girl was ever interested. Now Lester Wallace――there was a fellow who
could prattle like a man of parts! He knew how to talk to such a girl
as Marion.
Nevertheless Lester was frank in commenting upon her to David. “She’s a
nice girl, but awfully high-brow and intense. It’s a great strain for
one who has just what you might call a quick intelligence.”
David laughed. “Think what it would be if you had a slow one――like
mine,” he said.
After all, David’s chief interests were not social or athletic even
in vacation time; every day for six weeks each summer he went to the
school of marine biology at Woods Hole, and the talks that he and Mr.
Dean had over algæ and jellyfish and sponges and crustaceans were more
interesting to him than the porch conversations of his friends, in
which he was mainly a listener. Mr. Dean had been a collector of shells
and an amateur student of biology and stimulated him in his research.
“You’ll find that these studies that you’re following now will help you
when you get into the medical school,” said Mr. Dean. “It isn’t only
the scientific knowledge you’re acquiring that will be valuable to you,
it’s the accustoming yourself to scientific methods.”
Lester Wallace and Richard Bradley, however, professed inability to
comprehend David’s actions. “In some ways, Dave, you’re almost human,”
Lester said to him. “But this choosing to spend your vacation in
study――and such a study! Sculpins and jellyfish and other slimy things!”
“You’ll get queer like some of those fishes you’re interested in,” said
Richard. “They say that people who make a study of birds always come
to look like birds, and it’s much more dangerous to make a study of
fishes.”
“He’s getting goggle-eyed already,” asserted Lester.
“Yes, and his chin has begun to fall away, and his mouth sags at the
corners,” remarked Richard. “A fish is an awfully sad-looking animal,
Dave.”
“I think they’re more interesting than porch lizards and parlor
snakes,” said David.
The significance of the remark was such that it provoked a scuffle, at
the end of which David was lying prone upon the sand of the beach and
Lester and Richard were sitting triumphantly on his back.