“Everyone says he will do splendidly,” added the mother; “and you can’t think how modest he is about himself, and how anxious to do well, and to please us by his success.”
“Ah! that’s good.”
The Professor was full of sympathy. Hadria was astonished to see how animated her mother had become under his influence.
They fell again to recalling old times; little trivial incidents which had seemed so unimportant at the moment, but now carried a whole epoch with them, bringing back, with a rush, the genial memories. Hadria remembered that soon after his last visit, the Professor had married a beautiful wife, and that about a year or so later, the wife had died. It was said that she had killed herself. This set Hadria speculating.
The visitor reminded his companions of various absurd incidents of the past, sending Mr. Fullerton into paroxysms of laughter that made the whole party laugh in sympathy. Mrs. Fullerton too was already wiping her streaming eyes as the Professor talked on in his old vein, with just that particular little humourous manner of his that won its way so surely to the hearts of his listeners. For a moment, in the midst of the bright talk and the mirth that he had created, the Professor lost the thread, and his face, as he stared into the glowing centre of the fire, had a desolate look; but it was so quick to pass away that one might have thought oneself the victim of a fancy. His was the next chuckle, and “Do you remember that day when——?” and so forth, Mr. Fullerton’s healthy roar following, avalanche-like, upon the reminiscence.
“We thought him a good and kind magician when we were children,” was Hadria’s thought, “and now one is grown up, there is no disillusion. He is a good and kind magician still.”
He seemed indeed to have the power to conjure forth from their hiding-places, the finer qualities of mind and temperament, which had lain dormant, perhaps for years, buried beneath daily accumulations of little cares and little habits. The creature that had once looked forth on the world, fresh and vital, was summoned again, to his own surprise, with all his ancient laughter and his tears.
“This man,” Hadria said to herself, drawing a long, relieved breath, “is the best and the most generous human being I have ever met.”
She went to sleep, that night, with a sweet sense of rest and security, and an undefined new hope. If such natures were in existence, then there must be a great source of goodness and tenderness somewhere in heaven or earth, and the battle of life must be worth the fighting.