“Professor Keredec, you’d better understand at once that I mean to help undo the harm you’ve done. I couldn’t tell you last night, in Harman’s presence, but I think you’re responsible for the whole ghastly tragi-comedy—as hopeless a tangle as ever was made on this earth!”
This was even more roughly spoken than I had intended, but it did not cause him to look less mildly upon me, nor was there the faintest shadow of resentment in his big voice when he replied:
“In this world things may be tangled, they may be sad, yet they may be good.”
“I’m afraid that seems rather a trite generality. I beg you to remember that plain-speaking is of some importance just now.”
“I shall remember.”
“Then we should be glad of the explanation,” said Ward, resting his arms on my table and leaning across it toward Keredec.
“We should, indeed,” I echoed.
“It is simple,” began the professor. “I learned my poor boy’s history well, from those who could tell me, from his papers—yes, and from the bundles of old-time letters which were given me—since it was necessary that I should know everything. From all these I learned what a strong and beautiful soul was that lady who loved him so much that she ran away from her home for his sake. Helas! he was already the slave of what was bad and foolish, he had gone too far from himself, was overlaid with the habit of evil, and she could not save him then. The spirit was dying in him, although it was there, and IT was good—”
Ward’s acrid laughter rang out in the room, and my admiration went unwillingly to Keredec for the way he took it, which was to bow gravely, as if acknowledging the other’s right to his own point of view.
“If you will study the antique busts,” he said, “you will find that Socrates is Silenus dignified. I choose to believe in the infinite capacities of all men—and in the spirit in all. And so I try to restore my poor boy his capacities and his spirit. But that was not all. The time was coming when I could do no more for him, when the little education of books would be finish’ and he must go out in the world again to learn—all newly—how to make of himself a man of use. That is the time of danger, and the thought was troubling me when I learned that Madame Harman was here, near this inn, of which I knew. So I brought him.”